Under the Beetle's Cellar by Mary Willis Walker Page B

it.”
    “Yeah,” Lucy said.
    Walter turned toward Sue Ellen. “That’s a good point. Most of us do eat the meat of dead animals, which really isn’t much different from what Jacksonville ate. But some people are grossed out by the vulture’s habit of eating carrion.”
    “What’s carrion?” Sue Ellen asked.
    “Dead animals,” he said, “and they’re often rotting by the time the vultures find them. Of course, you and I know that vultures do a lot of good by cleaning up the roads, but still, some people just—”
    Hector interrupted. “But didn’t you say that Jacksonville had been trying to stop eating meat? That he was trying to become a vegetarian?” Walter had noticed that as they all got hungrier, both his story and the kids’ questions turned more and more toward the subject of food. Just the mention of meat, even rotting carrion, could make his mouth water now. After forty-six days of nothing but cold cereal with a little milk and an occasional peanut butter sandwich, they were all food-crazy. It was one of the main topics of conversation: what each of them was going to eat when they got home.
    “Yes, that’s right, Hector,” Walter said. “He’d been trying hard for several years to change his diet, but it wasn’t working out very well. Jacksonville found he needed meat to keep his strength up. Flying takes lots of energy and his body craved meat even though his mind didn’t like the idea of it.”
    “Maybe we’re all going to get sick ’cause we don’t get meat,” Conrad said. “My mom always talks about protein and how we have to get enough.”
    “Yeah,” Sue Ellen said, “aren’t there sicknesses you get without meat?”
    “Lots of people are vegetarians,” Walter replied, “and they’re healthy. There’s protein in the cereal they give us and the milk. And lots in peanut butter.” He had been surprised at how basically healthy they all had stayed on the limited diet they’d been given. It was boring as hell, but they were surviving on it.
    “So,” he said, getting back to the story, “Jacksonville turned out to be like all the people in the world who go on diets and can’t hack it. He went back to eating whatever he could scavenge.
    “Now, the Tongs were all standing around his cage talking, but Jacksonville didn’t know what they were saying. See, he didn’t know their language, which was Tonganese. When he saw them gathering more firewood and building up the fire under the pot, he was so scared he nearly passed out. What scared him, of course, was that it might be him that was going to get cooked in that pot.
    “Then he noticed the Tongs were bringing baskets of things and dumping them into the pot, things that looked like onions and potatoes and carrots. Maybe in this village they were vegetarians. That was a hopeful idea. But then he remembered what Tong teeth looked like and he was afraid.
    “And something happened that scared him even more. A bunch of Tong warriors were standing in front of his cage looking in and laughing. One of them, a big guy with a huge gut on him, did something really scary. He pointed at Jacksonville, then he stood on his tiptoes andcrowed like a rooster—cock-a-doodle-doo. Then he did this with his finger.” Walter stuck out his index finger and drew it slowly across his throat. “This made all the men laugh and pound their spatulas on the ground. Then they all danced around flapping their arms up and down like they were trying to fly and then they all collapsed to the ground laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world. And when they laughed you could see all their teeth, these long pointed teeth that Jacksonville found really scary. He felt like he was going to throw up.
    “By now it had gotten dark and people were gathering around the fire. It looked like the whole village was coming. There was even a parade of old people with fur and feathers around their necks. Something was about to happen. Definitely.
    “Then two