Outrun the Moon

I don’t disagree, though to me, the number matters greatly. I want four to stop haunting me, but more importantly, I want to turn forty-four around for Ma so it doesn’t follow her into the afterlife. If such a thing does exist, I want to ensure that hers will be more abundant than the life she had here.

  Francesca adjusts her hat. “I’m more worried that soldiers will show up and wonder where we got the food.”

  “We’ll just have to eat the evidence before it can be inspected. It seems outrageous that they would shoot a bunch of girls just for trying to feed others, but all it takes is one nervous finger. Who was that soldier?”

  “One of Marcus’s friends from Wilkes College. I didn’t recognize him in the uniform.” She stares through the grass. It’s no longer neatly trimmed, but trampled with mud slicks. “They’re all rich boys wanting to play soldier, and here’s their chance.”

  Something catches her eye. “Look!” She points.

  Fifty yards away, a line has formed near Minnie Mae, who sits on a crate milking Forgivus. I don’t know what shocks me more, the sight of the Southern miss with sleeves rolled up and a determined look on her normally fragile face or that Forgivus seems to have the world’s most bountiful teat.

  “How much milk can one cow give?” I wonder aloud.

  “All the farmers I know milk once in the morning and once at night. This one must be a special cow.”

  The deaf man’s image returns to me, his sad eyes and large hands, the neatly pressed overalls. “I think that man knew it, too.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s a miracle he showed up with her when he did.”

  “And there’s another miracle right there.” I nod toward our camp, where a small two-level cart has been parked. Katie and Harry are pulling tarps out of it, and half a dozen paint cans occupy its bottom level. The camp is deserted except for Elodie, who has finally stopped writing and is looking at the sky, head cradled in her hands. Her formerly splendid boots are now caked with dirt.

  When they see us, Katie and Harry hurry over. Before they ask any questions, Francesca peels back the picnic linen and gives them a peek at her sack of porcinis.

  Harry looks suspiciously at my chest. “That’s all you got?” she asks.

  Francesca sighs. “These are from Parma.”

  “We got a few things,” I tell her with a glance at Francesca’s hat. “You just have to know where to look.”

  “Well, you can put them on your new worktable.” Katie sweeps her arm toward the cart. The girls remove the last of the supplies—cans of paint, miscellaneous brushes, and a ladder.

  Francesca unswaddles her porcinis. “Wherever did you get this?”

  “Found it in the street. Harry and I pulled it back all by ourselves.”

  After we’ve unloaded everything, we stand back to admire our plunder: porcinis, garlic, crackers, pasta, herbs, dried tomatoes, dried apricots, two Abbiati salamis (one with bite marks), cheese, cinnamon, wooden spoons, and a bag of rice. Last, I remove the oranges.

  Francesca frowns at the bounty, which looks a lot more meager than it felt to carry. My heart droops. This will never feed forty-four people. I’m so hungry, I could polish off the whole pile in one sitting. Perhaps I will need to ask Mr. Pang to show me his fish-caning techniques. I shudder, thinking about the leeches.

  Katie leans down and sniffs the salami. “Wish we could sample this right now.”

  I sigh. Why not? If the lion eats a mouse now, he might have strength to catch a sheep later. “One end of the salami got damaged. Let’s eat that.”

  Francesca unrolls the meat from its waxy package. “I wish we had a knife.”

  Katie pulls a tool from her pocket. “What about a painter’s knife? I washed it.”

  Francesca takes it from her and wields it by its wooden handle. The rectangular blade attached to the handle doesn’t look very sharp.

  She neatly cuts off four circles of salami while I take back one of the oranges. Chinese make offerings of oranges to the dead, and I’m tempted to keep this one for Ma. But Katie stares as if she was attempting to peel it with her eyes, and I know Ma wouldn’t begrudge us for eating these particular fruits. Ma had her beliefs, but she was practical at heart.

  One orange yields ten wedges: We each get two, with two remaining. We save the second fruit for our feast. Not bothering to sit down, we munch our salami in silence, though Francesca moans now and then. All of us save the orange slices for last.

  Elodie has propped herself up on her elbows, watching us. With a subtle tick of my head, I gesture toward her. Francesca’s chewing picks up, and Katie makes a face. We all know the charitable thing to do, but it’s hard when the object of charity has never thrown more than salt in our direction.

  “She hasn’t done anything but decorate the lawn all day,” mutters Katie.

  Francesca licks her fingers and surveys the rest of the park. “Where is everyone else? I need to get started. Lots of prep work to do.”

  Katie rocks back and forth on her feet. “We sent Georgina and the Bostons to scrounge up dishes. We were going to go with them, but Harry overheard someone talking about a butcher’s shop. It was very hush-hush.”

  “What butcher shop?” I ask.

  Harry’s cheeks bloom. “There’s a rumor that a shop on the corner of Lincoln and Second might give away its meats since they’re going to spoil.”

  “Then we better get there before the rumor becomes fact.”

  Francesca wraps the remaining salami. “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, you need to start cooking, and Katie and Harry can help you.” I turn my back to them. “Elodie.” My voice slices through the air. “You look a little peckish. We have a few extra snacks here. Interested?”

  “I don’t take charity.”

  “Suit yourself.” I turn back around. Through the reflection of Harry’s glasses, I watch Fancy Boots’s pride wrestle with her stomach. It only takes five clock ticks for her to pick herself up and skulk over. With a placid expression, Francesca slices a piece of salami and Harry gives her the remaining orange wedges. Elodie downs the food so quick, I doubt her tongue got a taste. She even licks her fingers.

  After she chases it with a drink of milk, I tell her, “Now it’s time for you to pitch in.” I remove all traces of pleasantness from my voice. As our fishmonger always said, “The sooner a fish jumps back into the stream, the better its chances of living.” I tell her, “If heaven made him, surely earth can find some use for him.”

  “What’s that drivel supposed to mean?” Elodie’s violet eyes shrink.

  “You and I are going to fetch the main course for our dinner.”

  “No, thanks.” She begins to leave, but I grab the back of her dress.

  “How dare you.” She whips back around.

  “No, how dare you.” I look pointedly around our neatly swept campground and then at our hard-fought bounty on the painting cart, anger whirling in my chest like a frenzied bird.

  Katie wears a satisfied smirk, and Francesca, ever the lady, is discreetly tidying the supplies. I take a breath and flap my jacket a few times to cool myself. “I need the kind of help that only someone like you can provide, and I would be grateful”—the word nearly gets caught in my throat—“for your assistance.”

  Without waiting for an answer, I march south past Elodie’s tent and continue toward the footpath that meanders to the southern border of the park. After the past few weeks of butting heads with Elodie, I am learning that the best way to get anywhere with her is to simply turn around.

  Soon, I hear footsteps behind me. I slow a little to let her catch up, remembering when we undertook a similar mission only five days ago. We both walked differently back then, our dreams making us tall and sure-footed. She had her mother’s proud nose, and I, Ma’s bossy cheeks.

  Who are we now, without mothers to define us? Where will our path
s lead? I don’t actually believe Fancy Boots can fetch meat better than the others, but something tells me she needs me more than she thinks.

  Maybe I need her a little, too.

  32

  ‘‘I WON’T LOOT,’’ ELODIE MARCHES WITH HER fists clenched like snowballs. She brought her pearl bag, which swings pertly on her wrist.

  “We never loot; we borrow. And anyway, they might be giving the meat away.”

  “I don’t take charity, either.”

  “Then I’ll be sure to have Forgivus start a tab for you.”

  She scowls. I walk at a fast clip, passing folks clustered under cypress trees, eyes vacant, expressions hungry. Children linger around the broken carousel, held back by their parents. A snowy tiger, flamingo, and bear have dominoed onto one another, and the concrete dome housing the ride looks a sneeze away from collapsing. A few of the swing sets are still standing, while others are twisted heaps of metal and wood.

  Jack would’ve loved a chance to ride those swing sets and that carousel. I never brought him here. Ten years have passed since they refused our money to ride the boats at Stow Lake—the only way to get to Strawberry Hill—but time did not blunt my anger. A girl with cloud-like curls and a bonnet with daisies was given the boat I wanted to ride. The girl and I traded stares, hers confused and mine resentful, until her mother pulled her away. The girl could’ve been someone like Elodie.

  “You ever been to Stow Lake?” I ask.

  “Hasn’t everyone?”

  A wine bottle lies broken in the pathway, along with a gunnysack of what looks like onion peelings. Tidiness seems such a luxury now, as the park fills up with traumatized masses. I stop to retrieve the glass shards and drop them in the gunnysack. “It must get tiring for your mouth to always be throwing out jibes.”

  Her gaze cuts to the sack in my hand. “What exactly are you planning to do with that?”

  “Put it in the rubbish bin, of course.”

  “The whole city is a rubbish bin right now. You’re just shifting the garbage around.”

  “I’m saving someone a few stitches in their heel, which is a lot more than—”

  “You have to save everyone, don’t you, Mercy? Save the world, save Headmistress Crouch, save the leeches even. I know what you were up to, you and those three sheep that baa when you tell them to. I saw you dump those”—she shudders—“things back in the river.”

  My bossy cheeks flush. “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

  “I have a mind to tell Headmistress Crouch what you did. It would serve you right.”

  That stops me cold. “If you did, you might kill her of shock.”

  “I doubt that. She’s as tough as a buffalo hide.”

  She must be bluffing. I erase all emotion from my face and march onward. “Well then, go right ahead. No skin off my chin. There is no St. Clare’s to get expelled from now. And I was only trying to help her, not that I expect you to understand.”

  The path zigzags down a grassy knoll to Lincoln Street, the park’s southern boundary. We cross into the inner Sunset District, which is made up of mostly sand dunes, with the occasional building. This part of town is typically cold and blustery, but today, swirls of hot air mingle with the cold. Ma would say this kind of uneven weather weakens energy because our bodies are forced to constantly adjust.

  At the bottom of the hill, I find an overflowing rubbish bin. I place the gunnysack beside it.

  Elodie tsks her tongue, and the sound is like the scrape of a match.

  “Imagine, if everyone picked up a few bricks and put them back where they’re supposed to be, we’d have this city rebuilt in no time.”

  “That would never happen. Everyone is out for themselves in the end, even the ones you think you can trust. You think I’m heartless, but I’m just speaking the truth.”

  “I never said you didn’t have a heart. But it would be nice if it beat every now and then.”

  We finally arrive at a redbrick building with the words Burkhard’s Butcher Shop painted across the wall in overly sophisticated scrolled writing. How fancy can a side of beef be, anyway? Behind the writing sprawls a clover-studded mountain range, split up the middle by a crack in the facade. Besides the crack and the blown-out windows, the structure appears mostly unharmed, as do the few around it—an electric-lamp store and a place selling feather mattresses for five dollars.

  People mill about the dirt streets, kept moving by a handful of soldiers who must think temptations abound here. The butcher shop might attract the hungry, but how far can you get with a feather mattress? Where exactly can you plug in an electric lamp with all the cables busted?

  If I were running the show, I’d spend the manpower setting up a medical center and temporary shelters. People are too busy trying to survive to scheme.

  In front of the shop, a man sweeps glass into a pile. One long stroke, and then two short ones.

  We cross the street, drawing a wide arc around a dead mule. Elodie steps delicately over fallen bricks and glass.

  A couple approaches the sweeper. “Can’t even spare some jerky? We’ve got mouths to feed.”

  The sweeper rests his arm on top of his broom. “They gave away all the jerky yesterday.” His voice is hard.

  “What are they going to do with all that meat? It’s just gonna spoil.”

  The man shrugs, then puts his elbows to the task again. “Making more jerky so they can give it away,” he says in a testy voice.

  “Let me do the talking,” I tell Elodie. Her head lolls back as if she is bored.

  The sweeper sees us and plants his broom in front of the doorway. I peer inside the shop, where a man with a sock cap hacks a cleaver into a slab of meat on a white counter. Above him, carcasses hang on hooks—beef, pork, and lamb, but no fowl. Maybe they gave that away already. Fowl fouls as fast as fish, as the saying goes.

  “Good afternoon. We wondered if we might have a word with the proprietor.”

  The sweeper lifts his cap a notch, not out of respect but so that he can get a better look at us. “Let me guess. You want a handout, too.”

  I glance at Elodie, who’s examining the ends of her hair.

  “Well, the fact is, people are starving out here. And there’s no better feeling in the world than helping—”

  He holds up his hand, showing us a palm studded with callouses. “Save me the guilting, I’ve heard it all before. The answer is no.”

  “But, if we could just talk to the proprietor—”

  “I am the proprietor.”

  “But . . .” I glance again at Miss No-Help-At-All, now brushing a lock of dirty hair against her cheek, “we heard you tell those other folks—”

  “I say what I need to say to send them on their way. I’m a busy man, and I can’t afford to give away my inventory on charity. Nothing’s going to waste here. All I need to do is dry my meats and get the hell out of this dice cup of a city. Now move. I won’t be gulled by a coupla girls.”

  He starts to sweep again, forcing us to move to avoid being hit by flying glass.

  I should go; he could easily call the soldiers over. But those bossy cheeks of mine begin to flare once again. One day, they may get me killed, and today might very well be that day.

  His broom stops again, and he groans louder than is natural when I don’t leave.

  I quickly say, “It wouldn’t be a handout, just a loan. We’d repay you. Plus, giving us some meat would be good for business. We would tell everyone where we got it, and how generous the proprietor was in the giving.” I manage to say that part with a straight face. Generous as a bald man with his last hair, more like. “When San Francisco is rebuilt, people would remember the good-hearted butcher Burkhard.”

  He continues to frown. “I’m not giving away meat for free, and that’s final.”

  “This is tiresome,” comes Elodie’s bored
voice. “We’ll buy it from you. How much?” She twists the clasp of her pearly purse.

  She’s got money in there?

  “Well now,” Burkhard says, his voice becoming sly. He tries to get a look into her purse, but she snatches it away. “That depends on how much you want.”

  “Enough to feed fifty people,” I say.

  “Fifty? Your best bet is to get a split side. That’ll feed a good crowd.”

  “How much is that?” I ask.

  “Fifty dollars.” His grin spreads to his earlobes.

  “Fifty dollars? We could buy two cows and a pig for that.”

  “These are good meats. Nothing off the horn like the other boys sell.”

  “They don’t look too good to me. That one’s full of gristle, and how long has the other been sitting out?” It clearly has a green sheen.

  Elodie waves a hand at me. “We’ll take it.” She holds up something between her fingers, but it’s not money. It’s her pearl ring. “Here you go.”

  “A ring? What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “You can’t give that away,” I hiss. “It looks like an heirloom. It’s not worth it.” Chinese place great value on heirloom jewelry, which helps us venerate our ancestors.

  “It’s my jewelry,” she says grandly. “I can do whatever I want with it.” With a heavy sigh, she holds the ring up so Burkhard can see it clearly. “If it’ll feed all those people, I’ll gladly part with it.”

  “No, I can’t let you. Let’s go.” I pull her toward the street.

  We don’t even step off the curb before Burkhard says in an indulgent voice: “Well, if it’s that important. I’ll take the ring, and you can have the beef.”

  Elodie hands it to him, too quickly in my opinion. I bet we could’ve wangled some salted pork out of him as well. The man drops the ring into his shirt pocket. “Follow me.”

  She puts her mouth close to my ear and whispers, “It’s paste, you idiot.”

  I nearly smile but catch myself in time.

  The iron scent of meat hangs heavy in the shop, and flies buzz around the carcasses now that the ceiling fans have ceased running. Burkhard says a few words to the man with the sock cap in a language full of hard sounds. I think it’s German.