ma instructs lucy to say she fell against the stove while packing. it hardly matters—when ba and sam return that evening, they’re too preoccupied with trotting the new mule out from its hiding place behind the toolshed, with loading the new wagon.
as sam carries ma’s rocking chair over the threshold, wind blasts through the door. nearly bowls sam over with its fury. a wind from inland, with a sound like the slap of water.
they head out anyhow, bent against the gusts. between the miners’ shacks, down the main road, people stare frankly. when they reach the road out of town, they find it flooded. muddy water stretches wide as a river. an ocean.
for weeks they’ve heard rumors of entire valleys flooded inland, the once-dry land birthing a hundred hundred lakes. now wind has blown the brown water here, cutting off the trails in and out of town. they’re trapped.
“it’ll go down tomorrow,” ba reassures them after they’ve returned to a shack even more dismal than usual. a candle stub flickers over the bare table—they’ve left the tablecloth, the plates, most of their belongings packed in the wagon. “next week,” he says when tomorrow comes. “this weather isn’t but a run of bad luck. it’ll pass.”
ma’s eyes go blank as a caught rabbit’s. she averts her face from the mention of luck.
jackals follow the floods. soon they circle the town, howls braided into the wind. people say the creatures are drawn to the mines, parts of which are burning again even as other parts flood. a charred breeze. ba alone doesn’t blame the jackals. he rails against the clogged rivers and cut-down trees, the small game overhunted to extinction, the mines that destroyed hillsides till the soil runs like inkbizui, ma snaps. tells him to quit stirring up trouble.
—
lucy can’t sleep. when she does she dreams of that lost fleck of gold. it appears each night in a new location: in the yawning mouth of a jackal, pinned to the mine boss’s hat, above a drawing of her own face reading wanted, studded in ma’s neck, winking from a bleeding gunshot hole where ba’s eye once was. she wakes, whimpering, and spends the rest of the night watching the door.
no flesh-and-blood people arrive. the threat of beasts keeps the town indoors. the mine closes indefinitely, all its tunnels flooded now. ba and ma argue about what to do. ba wants to set out and swim their wagon across the road—but ma points out that wind has toppled several oaks and is liable to blow them off course. ma says, the baby, the baby, the baby. he’s due soon now. any day.
they settle down to wait with everyone else. the valley a brown bowl, starting to froth.
—
signs are posted.
wanted
jackal hides
$1 bounty
packs of men roam the hills at night, former miners desperate for any pay. sam petitions to join the hunt, pestering till ma cries, shaking sam’s arm, why can’t you be a good girl?
—
for all that the men go hunting, the number of jackals only grows. howling thrums their ears. clouds so dark they look like pieces of sky cut out, wind whipping them along, the air like a drum about to burst—though rain is still withheld. children are warned from outdoor chores.
the air in the shack goes soupy. sam, cooped up, is prone to sudden fits of motion, thudding heels against the walls, chasing nothing round and round for hours. ma quits scolding—there’s no stopping sam, and anyhow the baby is kicking too. ma spends her days laid flat, talking to the baby. she coaxes him to stay sleeping. to stay inside.
ba returns with news of food prices gone sky-high, people sickening on dirty creek water. miners form grim lines outside the hotel, whose owner posted about the bounty. no one’s been paid for their hides yet.
—
and then a child is taken.
ba and ma whisper. won’t share details. they say it isn’t fit for children, say they don’t want to give lucy and sam bad dreams. lucy doesn’t explain that her dreams are bad enough anyhow.
—
that night a man howls, and the jackals join in. so mournful that a body might think they were the ones who’ve lost
