Chapter Text
“Where we goin’, Barn?”
“Nowhere.”
“This is stupid.”
“Shaddup.”
He was right, he pondered to himself as they pushed back the brush from yet another dry and dusty highway exit ramp and poked their heads out. The traffic was near non-existent and dawn was settling in, sheathing the Iowan countryside in blues, oranges, and pinks. Waverly was bigger than the two boys had thought. They knew they lived just outside the city itself, between the center of Waverly and an even smaller place called Shell Rock. They both knew, or at least the older of the two, Barney Barton, knew that if they kept walking towards Shell Rock and down the length of the highway, hiding under the cover of night, they could go as far West and as far North as they wanted for a long time without seeing a single face up close.
“The signs still say 3, Barn.”
“I can read, Clint.”
“You said it was gonn’ turn into 65 and we were gonn’ go North!” Clint pulled his head back into the brush. The land around them was flat as far as you could see, and with dawn rising quickly, the boys were out in the open during the day and had to lay low. Local sheriffs noticed in small towns when new boys wandered in when they should be at school. Sometimes, they didn’t care enough to bother, had bigger things on their minds (catching the speedsters on the straight and narrow, for example) but if they were particularly bored… “This is a stupid dec…deckision.”
“Decision, Clint.” Barney wasn’t looking at him anymore, he still had his head outside of the brush, watching as a speeding Volkswagen took the highway by storm, rustling up the dust from the corn in the next field over.
Clint frowned and pulled his arms across his chest, straightening the dusty red backpack on his shoulders. He wasn’t stupid. He knew how to say that word. Barn would gently correct him (usually), but they had been walking for an entire day (or two, Clint wasn’t sure anymore) and both boys were rather grumpy. Clint knew he had eaten through at least an entire granola bar shoved into his pocket next to the lint that hadn’t been washed out from the boy who wore the jeans previously, and his stomach was rumbling.
But he knew better than to complain. Papa never liked it when they complained, and complaining wasn’t proper in a situation like this; Clint learned fast to be tight-lipped and courteous, and to keep the amusing bite in his words locked up. Clint was smarter than he seemed; third grade taught him enough to get by, and he could read at the fifth grade level so says Mrs Bloomington but books weren’t something in high quantity at the Barton household.
However, the Barton brothers did know how to run.
Barney withdrew his head and reached into his own backpack, pulling out a lukewarm plastic water bottle and handed it to his brother. “Take a swig, Clint – we’re gonna make one more dash for it.” His younger brother took the bottle and quickly inhaled some of the water, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and handing it back. Barney drank about a third of it. Clint knew how to conserve, but Barney was always greedy.
“How far away is the next stop?”
“I dunno, ‘bout a mile or two,” Barney glanced down the flat empty highway and shrugged, squinting as he set his sights for the barely visible shadows of the next town over. “Or four or five…”
Clint winced; his feet ached. They were already about 25 miles or so (27, as the crow flies) away from Waverly and his shoes were hand-me-downs from Barney, who got them from another foster kid, who probably got them from another kid who was particularly well-off, once upon a time. They were a bit too big and the soles flapped if he didn’t run on the tips of his toes now and again to aid the secrecy with which they fled.
“You ready?”
The younger boy shifted from foot to foot, anxious. “This is stupid.”
“Shaddup.”
And the boys ran, sneakers leaving dusty footprints in the tarmac highway that was warming up with the rising of the sun, and booked it for the next town.
Rain pitter-pattered on the sheet of tarp they had draped over two large bows of an oak that had split in half weeks ago during the last storm. The ground was damp and they hadn’t thought of grabbing logs along the way to keep dry for kindling; it was too unsafe to light a fire anyway. They could risk being noticed, or the fire could catch if the rain dried out, and the last thing Clint needed was for Barney to be locked up in Juvy for starting a forest fire and for himself to reenter the foster system.
The younger boy sat on his old padded denim jacket, another pass-down, and curled his arms around the worn backpack, resting his chin on the top and staring through a hole in the blue tarp. The clouds were moving really slowly, and the rain didn’t show signs of stopping very soon.
Barney was whittling a piece of wood the best he could; it was damp and the stick was breaking in places he didn’t want it to, and the bark was peeling off in large chunks instead of small slivers. It seemed as though he was attempting to make a point from the stick; Clint shivered as a gust of wind blew past the open flap of their makeshift tent and Barney tossed the stick to the side with a huff. At least, the tarp Barney had thoughtfully nicked from a farmer’s forgotten barn came in handy and kept the boys reasonably dry. It was still damp, and cold, and quite lonely and scary for an eight year old. Clint’d never admit he was scared though; he was taught early on not to let on that you’re scared of something. It only makes the something you’re scared of even worse in the end…
“Barn?”
“What now?”
“This is like… this is like the Boxcar Children, ain’t it?”
“Isn’t it.”
“Isn’t it?” Clint reaffirmed.
Their mother used to read them the Boxcar Children stories before bed when they were younger and Clint couldn’t read. Barney enjoyed reading about Henry Alden, the oldest of the four boxcar children, because “Henry can do anything! He can… he can help the doctor and gets moneys and protect Benny and his sisters! He’s in charge!” but Clint quite liked the girls, Violet and Jessie. Jessie wasn’t afraid of anything; when Henry in the stories went off to do work to provide the money for the children to eat and survive, Jessie took care of everything back at the boxcar, cleaning, and making sure everything was tidy, in order, and most of all – secret. No one could find them, or they’d be in trouble! Clint thought it was a very important job to have, and he liked making sure everything looked as if it had never been disturbed.
Clint remembered liking Violet, too. Violet was shy, but she liked purple and liked animals. Clint thought he would’ve been friends with Violet and Jessie more than Henry. Henry would’ve been bossy, and Clint didn’t like being bossed around very much.
He fiddled with the frayed strap of his backpack and expectantly looked at Barney. “We don’t have a boxcar,” Barney finally said.
Clint hung his head, “No, we don’t… but, they were orphans and on the run, too…”
They hadn’t read many Boxcar Children books before their Papa sold them off to the neighbors for cash; the boys never got to find out what happened to the four Alden orphans or how the mysteries played out in the end. “We don’t solve mysteries either.”
Clint sighed, “No, we don’t…”
“I’d rather be the Hardy Boys,” Barney stated, picking a damp leaf off the bottom of his sneaker and tossing it outside. Clint’s eyes narrowed; he didn’t know much about the Hardy Boys, only that they were brothers who solved mysteries and that Barney had read a few for school. He didn’t get to that level yet…
“That ain’t fair! They solve mysteries too!”
“So?”
Clint huffed and averted his gaze upward, watching as the rain dripped heavier. At least the Boxcar Children got themselves out of bad decisions, he thought.
“This is stupid, Barn and you know it.”
Thunk, thunk, thunk. Three solid shots; three arrows embedded in a tree trunk. Nimble, not yet calloused fingers eased the arrows out of the tree by the shafts, each one wiggled out with dexterity and care. They hadn’t found the circus when they were eight and thirteen years old, the circus had found them. The boys had reached the outer limits of Iowa within about three weeks (no one had reported the boys missing; foster homes never cared, and orphanages cared less), with the help of slipping onto local school buses unnoticed and their own two feet. Sitting in a diner with $2 to their name, a pretty young lady with a gap between her two front teeth found them, wormed the story out of Barney, and roped them in.
Carson had been furious at first, but Donnie was insistent they could be used for something. “Pete and ‘Lila left two weeks ago – we ain’t got nobody to clean up the popcorn tent or nothin’,” Donnie had crooned at Carson. Truth be told, the nineteen year old acrobat was smitten with Barney and his shock of strawberry ginger hair hidden under a ragged blue cap, and the freckles that dusted his cheeks. Never mind that he had been only thirteen… Now, at twelve and seventeen, they brought in Carson’s Carnival the largest gig attendance the circus troupe had ever seen. “I told ya’,” Donnie sweetly proclaimed after the first week Carson had trusted Jacques, the swordsman, to train both boys and have them give a demo to the waiting crowd outside the tent before the real show started. “They bring in the tips, Carson…them biiiig tips…I think it’s them cute little faces,” she had prefaced with a pinch on Clint’s tanned cheek and a ruffle of Barney’s hair.
Barney had taken up finances with Carson instead of continuing to throw knives like he had been taught shortly thereafter. Clint couldn’t count very well, so Jacques kept him.
He didn’t make nearly enough profit as his brother did, anyway. Donnie accused him of being jealous once, as they lay in bed nose to nose, her hair draping around his shoulders, and a snarl had masked his face. “Jealous? Nah, Don you’re full of shit!” His eyes rolled in an almost comical fashion. Donnie would’ve laughed, but instead she pushed her frizzy brown hair back up over her own shoulder, and sat back on her heels. “I can see it, Barney… you’re jealous o’ him. It’s okay y’know, you can ask Carson for a sideshow… like when you’s was little…”
“I don’t need a side show!” He had nearly pushed Donnie off of her lumpy mattress before stalking out of the caravan. He hadn’t spoken to her for a week; he was busy…concocting a plan.
Barney now stood, leaning against a wooden post to which one of the ‘Ride-A-Pony’ ponies was lazily chewing on straw-coloured, dry, grass, watching his younger brother check each arrow before replacing it in his pack. “Naw, it’ll work fine Clint, just you wait and see.” Clint bit his lower lip, casting one last examining look over each of the twenty arrows stowed in the leather, Native American ‘influenced’ (“Got it off a real one in New Mexico,” proclaimed Jacques; Clint didn’t ask how) quiver before undoing the strap and handing it, and his longbow, over.
“Can you even draw it back?”
A withering scowl met Clint’s eyes as Barney reached for an arrow to nock. He took two paces to the line Clint had drawn in the dirt, and spoke, “I was taught by the same man as you, little bro. I’m as good as, if not better ‘an you.”
“You’re not as short as I am though.”
“I ain’t.”
“Am not…”
“Whatever. I can fit in your get up; it’s nothin’ Donnie can’t fix for me.”
Clint’s winced as the creaking of the longbow echoed in his ears and Barney drew back. “You can’t fix it permanently, Barn!” He shouted, and Barney chose the same moment to release, hitting three inches off the center of the spray painted target. Barney threw down the quiver and thrust back the bow.
“You did that on purpose!”
“Did what?!” Clint questioned in surprise at Barney’s sudden aggression; his voice rose in pitch and hands swiftly gripped the bow and scooped up the quiver, adjusting loose arrows before they tumbled to the ground.
“Interrupted me!” Barney shouted. His face was turning red, blotching out the freckles that were beginning to fade as the boy was growing up. “I can shoot just as good as you, and I will and I’m tellin’ ya, nobody ain’t gonn’ be able to tell the difference!”
As Barney stalked off into the dusk underneath the trees separating the practice clearing from the circus tent, Clint barely heard his older brother mumble, “Nobody ‘cept you, and me… or else…”
Angrily, Clint re-strapped his quiver and ripped off his finger pads, allowing the bite of the string to pierce his skin.
Thud, thud, thud, thud!
“This is fucking stupid…”