Among the Brave

Chapter Ten

“Okay. Ready to go?” Mark asked. “Now?” Trey squeaked. He wanted more ceremony somehow — a commissioning service, perhaps, or an anointing of the heroes, like he’d read about in books. Some acknowledgment that brave men (okay — boys) were about to head into danger.

Or maybe he just wanted a delay. A chance to change his mind.

“What — you want to wait until the Population Police make it a crime to go anywhere? Of course now!” Mark said.

Trey could feel Smits’s eyes on him.

“P-papers,” Trey managed to stammer. “We’ve got to take the papers from the Talbots’ house first”.

He didn’t know why that seemed so important suddenly, except that he’d brought papers to the Talbots’ and it didn’t seem right to leave them behind.

“The Talbots? Trey’re the ones in the big house over there?” Mark asked, pointing.

Trey felt so disoriented that he barely could have identified up from down, but he nodded.

Mark shrugged. “Always wanted to see inside one of those monster houses,” he said.

And Trey was glad, because he wasn’t sure he could muster enough courage to go back into the Talbots’ house alone, then Leave again, if he was also supposed to be gathering courage to go rescue Lee.

Mark extinguished the lantern, and Trey stepped from the dark of the barn into the dark of the night. Mark led the way, holding branches back so Trey had a clear path. They were halfway to the Talbots’ house before Trey realized Smits hadn’t followed.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Smits — I mean, Peter?” Trey asked.

“I sent him to bed,” Mark said. “He’s just a little kid.”

He’s a Baron, Trey thought He’s used to other people doing his dirty work for him.

What if Trey adopted that attitude? What if he just sent Mark out alone to rescue Lee?

It was a tempting thought.

Trey reached the door of the Talbots’ house, and Mark hesitated for the first time.

“They don’t have any of those fancy alarms on this, do they?” he asked.

“I just walked out this door fifteen minutes ago,” Trey said. “No alarms went off then. The electricity’s out, anyway. What are you, scared?”

Trey enjoyed taunting Mark, but his bravado was false. For all Trey knew, there could be silent alarms rigged up on the door, ones that secretly alerted the police even without electricity. Would that kind of an alarm be battery-operated, or would the Talbots have needed a backup generator? If they had a backup generator, wouldn’t the lights have stayed on in their house even when the rest of the neighborhood lost power? What if it was all a trick?

While Trey was still considering every possibility, Mark shrugged and stepped into the Talbots’ house. Nothing happened. Feeling sheepish, Trey followed.

“Draw the shades, and I’ll light the lantern again,” Mark said.

Trey pulled blinds down over the window he’d used for spying, and jerked curtains along a rod to cover the sliding door they’d just walked in through. Then Mark struck a match and lit the lantern. His jaw dropped and his eyes widened.

“Those Barons must have lived like pigs,” he said, surveying the mess before him.

“Their house was searched, remember?” Trey said. “Fifty guys in uniforms trashed it. I bet this house was a showplace before.”

He didn’t know why he felt compelled to defend the Talbots. He just didn’t like the note of glee in Mark’s voice.

“Well, get your papers, then,” Mark said.

Trey had hidden them in the kitchen cupboard. He retrieved them and, straightening up, saw the avalanche of papers covering the counters.

“I should take those, too,” he said. The thought had just occurred to him. He hadn’t read any of them, and they were probably worthless, since the uniformed men hadn’t carted them off and Mrs. Talbot apparently hadn’t wanted them either. But it seemed wrong, suddenly, to leave them behind. Trey’s father had taught him that nothing was more valuable than the printed word, and Trey couldn’t shake that belief now.

Mark didn’t seem to be listening.

“So much food,” he muttered, looking at the boxes and bags strewn about the kitchen. “It was true, then: they even had more food than we did — and we were the ones growing it.”

“All that food’s not doing the Talbots any good now,” Trey said.

Mark squinted, and the dim light from the lantern turned each squint line into a deep shadow.

“S’pose it would be stealing to take some of it?” Mark asked. “Just in case, I mean — if we’re going to be gone a while….”

Trey didn’t like thinking about how long they might be gone. He didn’t even like thinking about the fact that they were going anywhere.

“Mrs. Talbot said other people were welcome to anything in this house,” he said, trying to shrug casually. “She left it all behind and didn’t care.”

“Anything?” Mark asked, his eyes big.

In the end, Trey took only some food and the papers, and bags to carry it all in. But after they’d stepped out into the darkness again, Mark kept casting longing glances back at the house.

“Bet it’ll all be gone before I get home," he muttered regretfully.

Trey was more convinced than ever that Mark was a lunatic.

Trey loaded everything into a mud-covered pickup truck back in the scary barn. Mark stuffed the papers into a slit in the seat—”Just in case we get stopped,” he muttered. The food from the Talbots’ house went into battered bushel baskets in the back. Mark covered the top of each basket with a layer of moldy-looking potatoes.

He was admiring his work when someone pounded on the door of the barn. In a flash, Trey dived under the truck.

"Mark!" a voice called from outside. “Mother says you’ve got to come in to bed now.”

“Just a minute," Mark called back.

From his hiding place under the truck. Trey could see the door open. Another boy stepped into the barn.

“What you doing out here anyway?” the boy asked.

“Loading the truck for Dad to take to town. So’s he can take the potatoes to market,” Mark said. Trey was amazed at how calm Mark sounded, how even he kept his voice, how easily he lied.

The other boy snorted.

“Dad ain’t going to town,” he said. “The way things are going, Dad ain’t never leaving home again. And neither are we.”

“You’ve been sneaking out to see Becky,” Mark said. “You’re risking your life to go visit your stupid, ugly girlfriend.”

The other boy didn’t deny it. He didn’t even defend his girlfriend. Trey couldn’t see anything of him but his bare feet. The feet shifted awkwardly.

“So?” the boy said.

"So what do you see when you go?” Mark asked. His voice was low now, almost hypnotic. “You seen any soldiers or anything? Policemen? Anybody tried to stop you?”

“I walk four miles there and four miles back, from Becky’s house,” the other boy said. “Through the cornfields. Ain’t no soldiers or policemen hiding out in the cornfields.”

“Oh,” Mark said, almost sounding disappointed that the other boy hadn’t run into dozens of police officers, scads of soldiers. Mark, Trey decided, was smarter than he looked. He was trying to prepare for his trip by pumping the boy for information.

But Mark and Trey wouldn’t be able to walk through cornfields to get to the Grants’ house.

“Don’t you go tattling on me,” the other boy warned.

“I won’t,” Mark said.

Apparently satisfied, the boy walked out of the barn.

Mark bent down and whispered to Trey

“I’ve got to go in now. Matthew — my brother — he’d tell Mother and Dad if I didn’t. We need some sleep anyhow. I’ll come back at dawn and then — and then..

“And then we leave,” Trey whispered back.

“Reckon so,” Mark said roughly. In the shadows, Trey could barely see his face. “I’m sorry I can’t invite you into the house so… you know. You’ll be okay out here, won’t you? You won’t — won’t go nowhere or nothing, will you?”

“Where would I go?” Trey asked.

And then Mark went away, taking the light with him. In the dark, Trey twisted around uncomfortably on the hard packed-dirt floor.

I should have told Mark I’d go back and sleep at the Talbots’ house and he could come and get me there in the morning. I could have slept in the lap of luxury tonight; instead of on dirt.

But the Talbots’ house seemed scarier than ever now. He’d seen the gleam of greed in Mark’s eye when Trey had said that Mrs. Talbot had abandoned all her possessions and didn’t care about getting them back. There had to be dozens of others, even greedier, who wanted what the Talbots had had. Trey could close his eyes and imagine hordes descending upon the Talbots’ house: boys in flannel shirts, like Mark; men in uniform, like the Population Police; new Government bureaucrats in suits and ties.

And Trey was afraid of them all.