Chapter 7: Rent Day

The oldest elder of the Rim pack lifted the tarp, and then she lifted her cane, and then she did not move at all.

I was standing forty feet away in the rent line beside my father, with a coffee I could not drink.

The line stretched across the lodge lawn, two hundred tenants of the seven packs waiting to pay the quarter's water rent.

My father held our envelope in both hands.

"What is she looking at?" he murmured.

"I don't know," I lied.

My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it.

The elder reached under the tarp with her free hand.

She took hold of something by its stiff, frosted foot, and she pulled.

A dead javelina came out of Tammy Kimbrough's truck bed, tusks bared, trailing a feed sack.

The old woman held it up in the morning light with a hard, still face.

A sound ran down the line, a long low murmur.

Ramiro was at the tally table with the rent book, and he did not move either.

He had told me to stay in the line and say nothing.

I stayed and said nothing, and it was the hardest thing I had done since April.

Tammy came across the lawn with a go-cup of coffee and a bright morning smile.

She was twenty-six, in a clean pressed shirt, and she was waving at the tenants.

Then she saw what the elder was holding.

Her smile came off her face in one piece.

"Put that down!" she said, and the cup fell from her hand.

"That's not, that was never going to be in the Upper Spring!"

The line went silent.

I have heard silence on the Rim before.

I had heard it on the Count night, before the horn.

This one was quieter.

Tammy heard it too.

She stopped, one hand halfway to her mouth, and her face went white.

The oldest elder lowered the animal slowly until its snout touched the gravel.

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