The woman and the twins were still hard at work, so Alex convinced Lee to come and peek into the smaller shack. It was empty except for some bedding, a pair of pants and a shirt hanging on nails, a lantern hanging from a nail in a ceiling beam, a big wooden tub standing in a corner and an accordion lying on a box in another corner.
Lee felt more uncomfortable. They were snooping. People really lived here.
She froze. A noise came through the back wall of the small shack- a scraping noise. They rushed outside and lay down in the tall weeds by the side wall.
“Check it out.” Alex pointed, his mouth right beside Lee’s ear.
Lee shrugged, crawling ahead on her elbows and knees. She giggled. “A goat.”
A white nanny rubbed her head back and forth on the wall of a small lean-to built onto the back of the shack. The rope she was tied to had wound around a stake so often that the goat could only just reach the wall of the lean-to with her head. She looked at the children and bleated. A fluffed-up mother hen strutted from the lean-to, leading a string of five chicks.
Lee crawled around the corner and stood up. From here the twins and their mother could not see her. She petted the animal and untangled the rope.
“I don’t know about goats, but my friend Roy’s horse could never eat this much grass in two weeks.” Alex shook his head, looking at the large, almost bare patches. The hen clucked her chicks away from him toward the tall trees. “These people couldn’t have such a big pile of compost in two weeks either.” He scratched a mosquito bite on his neck. “Not if they’re normal people!”
“Let’s talk to them,” Lee said. “Maybe they can explain.” She looked around the corner of the shack.
Just at that moment the woman’s boot slipped on the log. The axe she had swung high over her head came down with a thud on her leg. She screamed and fell off the trunk. The twins screamed as well. “Ma! Ma!” the girl yelled.
Lee gasped. She ran through the clearing, jumped over the creek and crouched beside the woman’s head.
“Who are you?” the girl asked, obviously surprised but distracted by her mother’s cries. The boy was already bent over her leg.
The woman lay moaning, her eyes closed.
“Ma!” The girl pulled the heavy pant leg up to the knee. The boy started untying the string that was used as a boot lace.
“She’s bleeding a lot,” the girl said.
“We’ll have to stop the blood.” The boy pulled the string from the boot and tied it around his mother’s leg, above the cut. “I’ll hold it. Get a tourniquet.” He swatted the flies away.
The girl rushed to the shack. A few minutes later she returned with a strip of cloth and a stick. While the boy unwound the string, the girl wrapped the cloth around the leg, again above the cut. Putting the stick through the cloth, she twisted. The flow of blood stopped to a trickle.
How had the twins known what to do? Lee wondered. They couldn’t be any older than she or Alex, but they seemed so sure. They needed water now, to clean the cut. Getting up, Lee saw Alex standing by the creek. He was never very good with injuries and he hated the sight of blood.
“Bring some water,” she called to him.
“Sterilize it first,” the boy said.
“Sterilize?” Lee wasn’t sure what he meant.
“Boil it,” the girl said.
“How?” Lee asked.
“On the fire.” The boy looked at her curiously, taking his dirty checkered cap off. He wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeve, showing a tanned wrist and hand, but white skin where his sleeve normally covered his arm.
“Who are you?” the girl repeated.
Everyone said their names before the boy, Willard, helped Lee rekindle the fire. Alex filled the kettle with water. The girl, Clare, stayed with her mother, who cried out in pain.
When they had cleaned the leg and put an old, folded blanket under the mother’s head, Willard said, “We’ll have to put iodine on it. It’ll sting, Ma.” The woman nodded.
He ran to the larger shack and returned with a small bottle of rusty-coloured liquid. Carefully he poured some on the cut, staining the leg. The mother’s eyes were closed, but Lee saw her mouth grimace in pain for a moment. Beads of sweat formed on her face.
“We need an ambulance. Phone 911,” Alex called, standing back by the creek again.
“Do you have a phone?” Lee looked at the questioning faces of the twins.
“911?” Clare said, her eyebrows raised.
“I guess not,” Lee said. Looking at the woman on the ground, she said, “Your mother needs to go to a hospital.”
Willard stood between his mother and Lee. “She’s staying here.” He looked at his sister.
“She needs help.” Lee felt a bubble of unease creeping up from her stomach. “She can’t stay here. We need a doctor, or someone from a rescue team.”
When the woman made a sound, everyone turned back to her.
“We’re here, Ma.” Clare kneeled by her mother’s head. She wiped the pale face with a wet handkerchief before loosening the tourniquet. She tightened it again when blood started to flow heavily.
“Ma, d’you need a doctor?” Clare asked.
“No.” The woman shook her head slightly. “We can’t pay. I’ll be fine.” Pain flashed across her face while she talked.
“We can give him corn for coming up here,” Willard said. “Or the hen. The chicks, they’re old enough now. He can come up with Pa. I can run down ’nd tell him.”
“No.” The woman shook her head more firmly.
“You’d better go,” Clare said, getting up. “We don’t want to upset Ma. Don’t make trouble.”
“Trouble? She needs stitches.” Lee looked at the cut in the leg. It was at least twice as big as the cut on her friend Janet’s arm when she tripped on the bicycle rack at school, and Janet had needed a dozen stitches. The principal had taken her to the doctor in his car. “She needs help.” Lee was determined. She walked over to the woman.
But Clare stopped her. “Leave Ma alone.”
Lee felt the girl’s strong hands pushing on her arms. She looked at the flashing brown eyes in the tanned face. Clare was worried.
“If we help you, we can get her to the shack,” Lee said. Maybe she could show these kids that she and Alex were only trying to help.
“They’re cabins, not shacks,” Willard said, glaring at Lee, his hands on his hips.
The woman grimaced as she tried to sit up. She fell back onto the blanket.
The
