Little House on the Wasteland

Twenty-Seven: Wastebird

One morning before sunrise, Pa went out hunting. He was gone the whole day. When he returned at last, he came bearing two rabbits and some astonishing news.

It was Jack who first spotted Pa approaching, a dark speck crossing the empty wastegrass. All day long, Jack had waited there at the edge of the soy field, watching the horizon.

He had been upset to be left behind. Jack had wanted to go hunting with Pa, but Pa told him he must stay and look after the homestead. So Jack waited and watched. He waited and watched until the shadows of the little soy seedlings grew long and the whole field was striped in light and dark just like his brindled coat.

Laura was playing by the creek when she heard Jack bark. There was even less water in the creek now than when they had first arrived on their claim. What remained was a skinny ribbon of mud dribbling down from Crescent Pond, one that Laura could easily step over without getting her boots wet. Still, hidden within its diminished banks, there were things to be seen. That afternoon, Laura had found a fat brown water beetle, and she was watching it intently as it attempted to crawl from her hand only to fall into the palm of her other hand.

Oprah sat on a nearby rock. Lately, Laura had been conscious of outgrowing her ragdoll. She had carried Oprah with her all the way from the Wisconsin, but somewhere on the long journey across the old number roads her attachment to the doll had begun to feel less essential. She did not confide in Oprah as she used to. Some days, she forgot about her companion entirely. It made Laura feel a little sad, and perhaps that was why she had made sure to include the doll in her exploration of the creek that afternoon.

When she heard Jack bark, Laura jumped up, for she knew that meant Pa had returned. She set the beetle gently back down into the mud, grabbed Oprah, and ran towards the shanty.

Ma and Mary stood outside the shanty. Laura ran right by them and out into the soy field. Jack continued to bark. "Come on, Jack," Laura told him as she passed, and together they ran on towards the speck on the horizon that was Pa.

When she reached him, Pa showed Laura the rabbits. They hung from the barrel of his rifle, tied together by their feet. They were long-eared jackrabbits of the type that made their home in the Wastes, smaller than the jackrabbits that lived in the Yowa and the Wisconsin but still much bigger than an average cottontail.

"I'm sorry I've been out so long," Pa told Laura. "But I hope to make it right when you hear all the news I have to tell."

Laura wanted to know the news right then, but Pa would not say another word.

"All in good time, my little soybean," he told her. "If I don't hurry up and get this meat back to your mother, she's as like to skin me as she is these rabbits."

So Pa took her hand, and she walked with him back to the shanty. A cool breeze rolled in from the west, sending ripples across the wastegrass.

"Thank goodness," said Ma when she saw the rabbits. "We'll be needing plenty of game if we're going to make our stores stretch to harvesttime. I baked biscuits today, and we're down to our last sack of soymeal. I ground up some of those beans from the billabong to cut the soymeal. But it's a trick I can only use so many times."

"Pshaw, I'm not worried," said Pa. "We'll find a way if it comes to that. And as for meat, the hunting out there's fair enough when a man has a chance to get to it. If I could just let these fields alone, we'd have fresh meat on the table every night. A bit of rain, that would make all the difference. Ah, but rain or no, I have news that will set your mind at rest. I don't reckon we'll have much trouble filling our bellies once I bring home a wastebird."

Pa looked up from untying the rabbits and raised his eyebrow at them with a sly smile.

"Did you see one, Pa?" Laura asked, in excitement.