The scratched and dented metal pot was about three-quarters full of the grain mash the beer makers had thrown out. The stuff wasn’t good to eat, but it was useful for another purpose. Using some of the sloppy mash as bait, Gord set a trap for the pigeons that were everywhere in the slums. A pair of them made a good meal, and Leena couldn’t eat more than the breasts of two, so there’d be plenty for him to have also-if he got them. The rest of the stuff he saved for rat bait. He hated to eat the dirty rodents, but sometimes he managed to trap one, or drop a big stone on one. Then they had rat to eat. Leena would skin it and gut it and toss it into the iron kettle to boil. The slumgullion of rat and near-rotten vegetables was one of the better meals she made.
Bubbling coos brought his attention back to the here and now. A half-dozen of the blue-gray birds were on the ground nearby, pecking at the soggy mess that Gord had set out for them. Gord peered out of his hiding place around the corner of a shack, holding a long piece of leather thong in his hand. That item was one of his prized possessions. The thong was tied to a short stick. The stick supported an old door, so that the structure formed a lean-to. Under this “shelter” Gord had placed most of the bait. The birds were working their way under the trap now, having first pecked up all the mash that was not directly beneath the door. Gord waited impatiently, and when it looked as if four or five of the pigeons were inside the trap, he jerked the thong with all his might.
Squawk! Thump! Flap-flap-flap-flap… Only four birds were winging away!
Gord ran over to the door and levered it up after jumping on it to make sure the two pigeons beneath it would not be able to get away. He twisted each neck thereafter, just to be certain again. After tucking his prized catch into his baggy outer garment, a poncholike thing that was tied with twine around his waist, Gord headed for home. Tonight, at least, Leena would be happy, he would have a full belly, and all would be well. Maybe he was a runt, and he was weak. But he was smart, and that made up for it. Let them call him a coward, but inside Gord decided that it was better to be gutless and alive than brave and dead.
So the days slipped past in this way, one by one. Each brought its own load of troubles, its own little triumphs or petty tragedies, into Gord’s drab existence. With each incident his perspective changed. The difference was minute, so infinitesimal that it couldn’t be noted. Only when reflecting back from one season to the last could the boy begin to detect change. He wasn’t growing much in height. There was no great increase in Gord’s girth of bleep. Yet he was growing better fit to survive. A year passed, then another. Things were becoming harder and harder in the slums. More crazy folk were dwelling in the district these days, and there were more homeless boys, wandering scavengers, more competition.
“Why are you trying to starve me to death?” Leena whined that question frequently these days. Gord was having trouble finding food these days. It was early winter, and in addition to being hungry the crone was feeling the cold and damp. Gord almost felt sorry for the poor old woman in her endless suffering-only he suffered too in his own way.
“Wake up, Leena,” Gord said one day as he entered the little shack the two of them had moved into at the start of the cold season. “I found a half-loaf of dark bread and a store of winter apples someone must have forgotten about!” He was proud, because the sum of what he’d brought home was sufficient to feed both of them for several days. “The apples are in a burlap sack, and the sack in a box.” Firewood and food in one fell swoop! Leena remained still, lying under her rag-heap by the cold ashes of the little stove of tin and stones they had fashioned.
In his eagerness to share his good news, Gord didn’t worry about being punished for waking her up. The boy grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her gently. “Come, on, old woman, your provider has plenty to keep you from starving to…” Leena was cold to his touch, and her normally gray color was ashen. “Leena? What’s wrong? Leena!” The old woman made no response. There was no movement, no flutter of the eyelids, no breathing. Gord released his grasp and shrank back.
Her death was a terrible blow to Gord. The crone had been mean and miserable, and had beaten him, but only as an expression of her own despair. For all her faults, and for as little as Leena had taken care of him, she still had been his only parent, his foster mother, his one human constant. Her protection was a key factor in Gord’s survival, too. All that she was, and all that she was to him, had disappeared in the space of an afternoon. Gord was only twelve, but his reaction to Leena’s death showed that he had understanding beyond his years.
Two tears ran down Gord’s cheeks as he sat back on his heels and stared at the corpse. He quickly wiped them away with his sleeve. He was a man alone now-or he had to try to be that. He had to deal with the reality of things here and now, and it was necessary to do so immediately. There was no such thing as burial, not in the Slum Quarter. Many a body he had seen simply tossed out into the street. Some were removed by the carts of the cleaners, most were dragged off by mongrel dogs to provide their food. Rats ate what dogs left, people killed some of the dogs and rats, and the cycle of life went on.
“I must take your valuables, Leena,” the boy said as he shifted the old woman’s body this way and that. All he found were two near-worthless iron coins. “Even this tiny wealth I must have,” he said to her earnestly, as if she could hear. “I am alive, you are dead, and I might need it.” Although the boy knew it was foolish, he carefully wrapped the frail body in the worn blanket Leena had treasured as shawl and cloak. That done, Gord set his jaw and moved the corpse out of the shack. Well up the narrow lane, in a place where there was a rubble-strewn yard, he finally let go. Leena’s funeral was over. There was no more to it. Gord went back to the hut, closed and wedged shut the small door, and carefully made a little fire to warm himself by. The night was frosty, and the thick scattering of bright stars in the sky indicated it would get colder too.
“You won’t need these rag-blankets anymore,” he said aloud, as if old Leena were still there to hear. “I’ll take charge of my inheritance now too,” he added, as he lifted the old wooden box out of the hidey-hole Leena always made under where she slept.
Gord had known about the box for several years, ever since the day he had accidentally discovered Leena’s current hiding place while groping around under her bed for a scrap of food he had dropped. She wasn’t in their shack at the time, so he took the opportunity to leaf through the pieces of parchment he found inside. None of them had meant anything to him or even interested him, so he had simply put the whole batch back in the box and replaced the container in the hole. Leena had cuffed him soundly and cursed him viciously when she realized the box and its contents had been handled-and threatened to do much worse to him if he ever touched the box again. Since he didn’t have any use for the thing anyway, it was not at all difficult for him to leave it alone, but he had not forgotten about it.
Clutching the small coffer, and with a thick mattress of rags around him, Gord crooned himself to sleep beside the slowly dwindling flames of the fire.
The next day he moved from the hut to a cellar beneath the ruins of an old building, fairly near the old site where he and Leena had dwelled. Gord thought it would be a good idea to move, because as soon as the rest of the neighborhood found out that Leena had died, the other boys would terrorize him even more than they did already. His new place was small, dark, and difficult to enter for anyone or anything larger than the size of a small boy. An old chimney provided ventilation for a fire, and the little space was easy to warm. It suited his needs perfectly, and he was happy at having found such a good place so quickly.