The World Without Flags

I nod and help by taking the gag off of him. He groans when the sock comes out of his mouth. I look up at Pest who’s untying the rope. I reach out and touch his shoulder to get his attention.

“Thanks,” I tell him.

Pest just nods at me and then looks back at the knots.

When Norman is untied, I walk back to Eric. I pull him away from the tree.

“Unh,” he says.

“You’re okay,” I tell him. I reach into his shirt and pull out the rag I use to wipe his mouth. I clean him up a little, and I’m glad to see the quantity of black bile has gone down a lot since he coughed up that worm ball. I’m so glad that he’s still here, with me, that I don’t mind his smell that much. I want to hug him, but I’m afraid that he might snap his jaw and bite me accidentally. I settle for rubbing his shoulder. “You’re okay,” I tell him again. Then I tie the rope around him again.

When I turn back, Pest has Norman sitting up against a tree. I’m glad to see him unbound, but it makes me a little nervous too. Pest walks over to me and sighs.

“He’s going to wake up soon,” he says.

“He’s determined to kill Eric,” I say. “What’re we going to do?”

Pest looks at Eric and then at me. I watch as the dawn of a plan lights his face. “You’re going to run,” he says.

65

There are three horses at the Homestead: Bandit, Jezebel, and Flint. We use them all for work, so they don’t get ridden too much. Like I noticed before, the one that Norman and Pest rode on is Bandit. He was never my favorite. He was always lazy and obstinate and never wanted to do what he was told. The only person who could ever ride him well was Norman, and that was mainly out of fear. Norman has no patience with horses. If they don’t do what they are told, they know about it, quick. It’s my bad luck that when they went out in search of me, Norman took Bandit, just because he was the only one who could ride him well. As we try to get Eric up on Bandit, I wish we had Jezebel. She’s a sweet old thing.

Bandit, however, hates the smell of Eric. We planned on just tying him down to the saddle like a corpse, but Bandit won’t even let us do that. I can’t say that I blame the poor horse much. Eric’s smell is so bad, both Pest and I have to walk away and gag a couple of times during the whole process. We try and try, but Bandit will not let us load him with Eric. He neighs, his eyes roll, he tosses his head, and then prances away nervously. Once we almost had it, but then Bandit bucked just a little, and before we knew it, all three of us were on the ground. Pest and I scrambled to get out from under Eric. Then we stood back, defeated.

Now we’re sitting down by the fire, exhausted and confused about what to do. There’s no way to get Eric on Bandit. We don’t have much time. Norman could wake up at any moment. Eric is standing next to the fire, leaning forward and to the right awkwardly. We had to take off the backpack and without it, he looks even weirder than normal. However Eric stands, it just looks wrong. No human would ever stand like that. He’s like a handful of broken twigs.

I’m sitting, looking into the fire and eating dried meat when I remember one of the books that Eric made me read for history. Eric used to divide up the days among subjects when I was younger. One day would be math and another day would be science and another day would be history. I think Eric liked history most. He’d get excited talking about events from hundreds of years ago. It was hard for me to be too excited about it after a hard day in the fields, or on a cold winter day when we had to huddle near the fire to keep from shivering. But Eric always liked talking about history and reading about it and encouraging me to read about it. What I remember suddenly is that Native Americans didn’t have the wheel, so they didn’t have carts or wheelbarrows or anything like that. When they moved camp, they used a different method.

“I’ve got an idea,” I tell Pest, springing to my feet. “Come on, help me!”

Pest follows me into the forest, and when I tell him what I have in mind, he catches on immediately. We don’t have a hatchet to cut down small trees which would have been the best, so we have to settle on gathering fallen trees and branches. We gather them into a pile, and then we quickly pick out the best, dragging them back to the camp. We arrange the wood into a kind of sled and then lash it together as best we can with the rope I use to tie up Eric. I’m kind of at a loss as to how to attach the sled to Bandit until Pest pulls out some more rope from Bandit’s saddlebags.

“What’d you bring rope for?” I ask Pest as we work tying one end to the makeshift sled.

Pest doesn’t answer at first. “Franky wanted us to bring you back.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it.