“If you’ve been watching my channel, then you’ll know what I’ve been through. Her jeans were snug enough the boots fit over them. She’d bought them at a PX in Kentucky earlier that year for almost two hundred dollars, and they had earned the nickname “shit-kickers” before she’d even paid for them. They were like big sneakers, with a padded ankle, an Air Jordan profile, and soles like tractor tires. She paused, glanced down at the van floor as if to gather her thoughts, then went back to cramming her feet in her boots. Guess that’s what I get for not eating enough oranges?” And I think I might be getting a sore throat. You might be able to hear I’ve got a bit of a sinus thing right now. She put on her socks and boots as she talked, long green army socks and a pair of comfortable combat boots. “Good morning, Internet-Land,” she said, her whiskey-and-cigarettes rasp exploding like a hand-grenade in the silence. Taking a moment to screw the heels of her hands into her eyes again to grind away any remaining sleep, she slapped a bongo beat on her cheeks to redden them, then turned the camera on and started recording. Tucked into the pocket of yesterday’s jeans was an orange prescription bottle.
There were several mounts around the van, including two on the dash and two clamped to the wing mirrors.
Once she was dressed, she put the camera on a screw-mount in the corner, facing her. Robin leaned over and gave her oldest friend a kiss on the nose. Nosy’s proboscis was a lot more limp these days-both of his glassy wings and four of his six legs had been stitched back on at some point-but he was still whole and had both of his big white Muppet eyes. Several edged weapons had been mounted on pegs and held in place with little clips-a broadsword, a short-sword, a kuhkri knife like a boomerang with a handle, a wicked black tomahawk, a Cold Steel katana painted matte black, the gilded silver dagger from the video.Ī fifteen-year-old stuffed animal, a fuzzy blue mosquito peeked over the edge of a tub, his own personal plastic sarcophagus.
PENNY PINCHING PACKRAT FULL
Another tub contained handfuls of stacked twigs, another was full of something that might have been ginger root, or perhaps bits of wild mushroom.Ī large pegboard occupied one half of a wall directly behind the driver’s seat. Packets of trail mixelectronics parts still in their blister packscondiment packets from just about every restaurant under the sunbarbers’ clipperstoiletries and shaving razorsUSB cablesname-brand AA, AAA, D, and tiny dime-like watch batteriesa rats’ nest of power adapter cablesOne tub held baby-food jars emptied of their contents and refilled with alcohol.
The entire back half of the van was lined with rails, shelves, and wire frames in which nested dozens of small plastic bins containing all manner of things: Makes the summers hotter and the winters colder. She wore nothing but a pair of gray panties and even inside the van, warmed by her farts and body heat all night, the air was graveyard-clammy, so she knew the late autumn morning outside would require something a little more substantial than usual.ĭamn Georgia humidity, she thought, pulling on a pair of jeans and a light jacket over a band T-shirt.
PENNY PINCHING PACKRAT SKIN
The smell of burning bark still floated among the dust, as if the smoke had permeated her skin and hair. She sat up and lifted a camcorder from its customary place in a tub lined with soft black foam, then wriggled out of her sleeping bag and dug through a tub full of rolled clothes. Her cell phone told her it was a few minutes after ten the morning of October 23. She lay staring at the carpeted ceiling, breathing hard and fast, trembling, trying to mentally scrub off the feeling of being a kid again, the smell of cut grass, the sensation of clutching that wooden hand again-Ĭondensation dribbled down the curve of the van’s rear windows, refracting stony gray light. Robin woke from another nightmare of trees and flame and gulped a deep breath as if she’d surfaced from the ocean.
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