Sarny by Gary Paulsen Read Free Book Online Page A

wet.
    Rained all day into dark. The road was a mess and close as we were to it we got to watch the soldiers working at getting south. The mud churned under their feet like runny brown butter and soon they were in it up to their knees, mud sucking their shoes off. Some tried to walk out to the side but it soon was the same and then they just walked in it. The horses sunk to their bellies and the wagons and big cannons went down to their axles and it was near impossible for them to move but they kept going. Men screaming curse words and whipping the horses.
    “War don’t care,” Lucy said, sitting under the oak with the blanket over us. “Don’t careabout people, don’t care about horses, don’t care about weather—war it just goes on no matter.”
    I thought on a picture I’d seen in the big house where we found Tyler Two. Big old thing on a high wall with a fireplace. Showed some battle somewhere with men using big knives and spears, wearing armor. Everybody in the painting was stopped forever the way the painter he caught them. Knife in air, never come down, man screaming forever with spear through him.
    It was the same watching the soldiers going by. Men pulling on wagon spokes, screaming at each other, calling God bad names, mud and pouring rain and fallen horses and mules all frozen some way. Pictures in my brain that didn’t seem to move. After dark it kept raining and there was some lightning and I was worried it might strike the oak but it never did, never did, and with each flash I would see pictures like the picture over the fireplace. Men beating horses, screaming at each other except the sound wouldn’t cover the thunder—flash of light and then gone.
    Lucy she was right. War don’t care. Don’t care spit for nothing.

EIGHT
    Rain didn’t stop for two days.
    It let up some the second day and I thought it might clear but then it came on again and just kept coming.
    The soldiers had a kind of slick cloth to keep the rain off their backs, hung around them like a tent, and Lucy she found three cloths soldiers had cast off or lost.
    The blankets were soaked through and hardly slowed the rain down so we tied the three slick sheets together with bits of string and made a shelter that only leaked a little at the seams. Made some difference but camp was still cold. We ate cold ham—getting down to the end of it—and I saved the last of the corn bread for Tyler Two. Young bellies need that break-down food.
    He still didn’t talk but I saw him smile once when a soldier slipped and fell in the mud. I thought on it. Young are tough. Come backquick long as they aren’t reminded of what brought them down.
    Took me to distraction, sitting waiting for the rain to stop. Had a dream that little Delie and Tyler were on a train. Never seen a train ’cept for a drawing in one of the newspapers we stole back at Waller’s. Big thing, ran on some kind of rail and they said it went fast. In the dream I thought here I sit in the rain while little Delie and Tyler are on the train going away from me. Made me want to run, catch up, and I woke with my legs moving like I was running.
    Middle of the third night I was asleep and suddenly woke up. Still, quiet ’cept for men and horses moving on the road, and for a speck I couldn’t think on the difference. Then I realized it had stopped raining.
    Cool breeze and stars all over the sky.
    “Wake
up
.” I shook Lucy. “Wake
up
.”
    She shook her head free of sleep. “What’s the matter?”
    “The rain stopped.”
    “It’s still dark.”
    “I don’t care. Same as war for me. War don’t care, I don’t care. Sarny don’t care if it’s dark anymore. We’re going.”
    Stupid. But I just couldn’t sit any longer. Mud was still some bad and the wheelbarrowproved evil in the dark. Found every rut there was. But we started and I wouldn’t stop and by light we had made a good two miles, maybe more. The morning sun baked the mud dry in no time and then it was just a job to