James Axler – Shadowfall

Now it was coming to it.

“Jamie knows all about math and history and places and science and stuff, Dad.”

“He’s been well taught.”

“Not like me,” Dean muttered, head down, not looking up to meet his father’s eye.

“No. Not like you.” He moved close enough to put an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “You’ve been taught in a different school. School of life. Sure, Jamie knows all that learning stuff, Dean. But put him in a wilderness with a knife and no shelter, and he’d die in forty-eight hours. Probably much less. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re the most self-sufficient boy I ever met. Bet you a bucket of jack that even Jak Lauren wasn’t as good as you when he was your age.”

“You reckon?” Dean seemed happier at that idea.

Ryan followed the course. “You can look after yourself, Dean, anytime and anyplace. You’ve been in tight spots that would make someone like Jamie sit down and wait for the last train to the coast.”

“Sure, but”

“It worry you that Jamie’s got such a good education, Dean? That it?”

“Suppose it is, Dad. Am I real stupe?”

“For worrying about it?”

“Yeah.”

” ‘Course not. Everybody wants to be better than they are. I envy Mildred the way she shoots and all she knows about medicine. J.B. for his knowledge of weapons. Krysty for her wisdom. Doc for the bedrock of learning he’s gotten himself. Jak for his way with knives and his tracking skills. Everyone has things they reckon they’re good at. As well as things they envy others.”

“I suppose so.”

“You wish you were better book-learned. Jamie wishes he could do all the things you can do.”

“Does he?”

“Sure he does.”

“How do you know?”

Ryan shook him gently. “Hey, you doubting me, Dean? I’m telling you it’s so.”

“But I mean Do you think there’d ever be a chance of me having some sort of real learning, like him?”

“I think it’s possible. I know that Krysty once talked about some kind of school where you live for a year or so. Not that far from Harmony ville, where she came from. Get yourself a real book education.”

Dean nodded, eyes screwed up as he considered this totally new option in his life.

“A year?”

“Or two years. I don’t know. I know that there’s an awful lot of learning that a man could get. Doc sometimes says that knowledge is power, and I believe him.”

“Do you, truly, Dad?”

“Yeah. We’d keep in touch. Visit. Then, afterward, it might be that me and Krysty’ll have settled down someplace. And you’d come join us.”

“Like Jak did?”

“Yeah.”

He glanced up at his father. “And have kids?”

Ryan swallowed hard. He hadn’t seen that particular question coming. “Mebbe.”

“Brothers and sisters for me. I think I’d probably like that, Dad.”

“If you got plenty of education, then you could pass it on to them.”

Dean grinned, jumping to his feet. “Can we get back to the ville and talk to Krysty?”

“Not yet.” Ryan stood and looked behind them, where the fog had thinned down to a veil of white mist, opalescent in the first light of the new day.

“Nobody’s coming after us.” Dean was staring intently down the trail, through the trees. “We could cut back down onto the main track and be in the ville in about four or five hours.”

“We could, but we aren’t. Been thinking about a sort of a plan. Been taking its own shape while we walked and talked. Now it’s time to bring it out and shake it down and hold it up. See if it might work.”

THEY CROSSED THE TOP of the hill, looking down the far side into another steep-sided canyon.

The trail seemed to vanish as it reached the highest point of the scarp. The hogback ridge continued northward, and it was just possible to make out where it curved round eastward in what looked like the box end of the heavily wooded valley.

“Hey,” Dean squeaked, pointing with an arrow-straight finger. “Look, pigs.”

Ryan looked where his son was indicating, wishing that he had the boy’s keen vision. He’d been so long with only one eye that he automatically accommodated to it, having no problem with spatial concepts.