by Annie Oldham
Chapter Eleven
After Dave and I leave the fire, I hear footsteps behind us, and see Mary shadowing us. I stop. I can’t let her just follow us upstairs, see us both go into the same room, and then seethe herself to sleep. When I turn, she freezes, the anger and surprise etched in deep furrows between her eyes.
Dave puts a hand to the back of his neck and clears his throat. “Um, well, did you have fun, Mary?”
He hadn’t seen her hovering on the edge of the firelight, watching us. I saw the hurt in her eyes, all the while trying to appear stony. I feel bad I cause her so much pain, but I am Dave’s friend. I can’t just walk away from him.
“What do you think?” She crosses her arms.
“Look, Mary, I’m sorry for whatever it is that’s going on here that’s hurting your feelings. Really, I am. But that was so long ago—”
Her hands clench. “And what? So easily forgotten? You’re such a jerk.”
She whirls around, back to the dying fire. Tears glitter on her cheek in the dim light. How much do I really need Dave? If I don’t have him, would I hurt as much as she does?
Dave reaches for my hand and leads me up the stairs. In his room, he flops down on the small, dusty mattress by the door and gestures to his bed by the windows. I lie down and look at the ceiling. I can’t look at him just now. If I do, all the second thoughts that Mary brings on will be forgotten. I need those second thoughts. I need to stay grounded.
The mattress creaks as Dave shifts his weight. I can feel his eyes on me.
“I’m really sorry Mary is making this hard on you. She’s not the easiest person to get along with right now. She has this black and white sense of morality, and there’s no middle ground. She can make things difficult.”
He really thinks that’s the problem? I prop myself up on my elbows. I roll the stump of my tongue around in my mouth. There is so much I need to tell him about how confused I am.
He looks like a lost boy. “That’s not what you were thinking?”
I fall back on the bed with a dissatisfied whump. He growls in frustration. Then he brings me a paper and pencil.
“So tell me what it is you’re feeling.”
I clutch the pencil. Telling him the jumble of thoughts in my head doesn’t seem like a very good idea. But I promised myself honesty from here on out. Where I come from is the only lie I’ll tell. I scribble on the paper, wad it up and chuck it at him. He irons it out and brings a candle close to it.
“You really think she’s still in love with me?”
I raise an eyebrow. Is he really that dense?
“But she couldn’t be. Not after being away for so long and everything that happened. No—she couldn’t still be. I’m positive.”
What does he think happened in Seattle? From everything Nell told me, it wasn’t pretty. I motion for the paper and he tosses it back.
Then why is she so angry at me?
“I don’t know—she doesn’t trust you. Nell did say she had a rough time in Seattle. Maybe she just doesn’t trust strangers any more.”
You just don’t see it. It’s more than that. She’s jealous of me. For nothing, though. We’re only friends.
His eyes shoot up. I can’t tell if he’s hurt by the last sentence or just realizes the truth about Mary. I’m afraid to ask.
“So did you have anyone back in Arizona? Anyone that tempted you to stay?”
My first thought races to Jessa. If I knew she wouldn’t be okay without me, I would have sacrificed my dream for her. I ache to know if she and Brant are okay, if they’re on the Juice Deck kissing or down on Field #3 tending the corn. If they’ve found some new place to go on a date that no one has thought of yet. If she is happy.
But that isn’t what he’s asking. I grab the pencil. Unexpected regret twinges in my stomach as I realize Matt would have loved to make me happy. But why in the world am I thinking about this now? My perfectly happy day is turning into confused mush.
“Matt? Doesn’t sound like you guys were too serious.”
No, he was definitely more enthusiastic than I was.
Dave laughs and sets the paper aside. Then he coughs and the mood deepens like the dark around us. I lie down and pull the thin blanket up around me.
“The supply drop will be dangerous,” Dave says. “I don’t want to take you, but I think Red’s right. Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
I grunt to him, and stagger into sleep with worry lines etched on my face.
The next day Red finds me behind the school, melting wax from the beehives to make candles. All the power stations are government operated, and the settlement doesn’t want to draw attention by sucking electricity, so all their light comes from candles. I stir with a big paddle the way Nell showed me. She is a few feet off, trimming string she found in some blinds in one of the town’s houses.
“You ever shot a gun before, Terra?” Red asks, watching the paddle go round and round the big pot of wax.
I shake my head.
“If you’re coming tomorrow, I think you should learn. Everyone else here at least knows how to fire a gun, even if they don’t do it on a regular basis. You got to learn to be careful with a weapon, and got to know how to protect yourself.”
I understand the reasoning, but I’m not so sure I trust myself. Mr. Klein told plenty of stories about how dangerous guns are. I thought of him that first day on the beach when I saw Mary throw hers to the ground. Guns are delicate weapons, easily misused. I shudder.
“I can understand if you don’t want to. Lots of people feel the same way. But it’s necessary, you see. Everyone needs to know how to use a gun to defend themselves and get food. And everyone going on the supply drops needs to be ready to use one.”
His gray eyes study me very closely and very deeply. I’m not comfortable under his gaze. He, more than anyone else here, could figure out the secrets I’m hiding just by looking at me long enough. Even though I don’t feel it, I nod my head resolutely.
“Good then. As soon as you’re done helping out my Nell, why don’t you meet me on the steps and I’ll teach you a few things.”
He saunters away, slightly favoring his left leg. Nell watches him go with a fond smile. She ties the strings to several long sticks.
“He’s a good man.” She brings the sticks over to the pot.
We slowly dip one stick of strings into the pot and raise it up, then balance it on the backs of two chairs. The first layer of about a hundred for this set of candles.
“He wants to keep us all safe, and I know it’s getting harder on him as he gets older. He still has that same sense of chivalry he had when he found me near Seattle.”
We dip another set of strings. I look at her and raise my eyebrows.
“What happened in Seattle?”
I nod. More importantly, I want to know what happened to Mary in Seattle, and I hope the conversation leads that way.
Nell’s eyes glaze for a moment, and she lets the strings sag. I motion that it’s alright. If this is too painful a memory, she doesn’t have to tell me.
“No, no, Terra. It’s fine. I just haven’t talked about it for so long. I was twenty when I decided to leave Seattle. I had lived there almost my whole life with my mother and father and two older brothers. We lived in an abandoned apartment building with a few other families. The scanners recorded our movements every day. If someone didn’t report to work in the morning, an agent collected them and took them to a camp. All the watchers—”
I held my breath. They called the cameras watchers too.
“—were rewired from local law enforcement. The feed goes directly to the capitol. No one trusted each other. Not even the families who lived together. No one knew who was an agent and who wasn’t. Food was scarce. If you happened to scrounge up more food, plant more food, catch more food—however you came upon it—in the morning it might be missing if you weren’t careful. Everything was looted and windows were smashed. The military did very little about it. They didn’t
care about buildings. They just cared about people’s loyalties. And hungry people were dependent on the supply drops.
“It was quiet because there weren’t very many people, not like when the city was alive. But it wasn’t a peaceful quiet, not like here. Cars were left in the middle of the street, abandoned, doors and windows hanging open. It was an unfriendly, scary kind of quiet. You never knew who was watching you. You felt nervous just walking down the street, no matter what time of day it was. My father never let any of us go out by ourselves. We always had to go out together.
“One night my father and brothers came home with big sacks full of food. They had found a basement under one of the buildings that hadn’t yet been looted. They had found all kinds of canned food. We hid it away in a corner like we always did.
“That night, I woke up to the smell of burning. Our building was on fire. I couldn’t see through the smoke, and it filled my lungs and I couldn’t breathe. All I could think of was finding a way out. I finally managed to escape, and when I got outside, I saw another of the families that lived in our building. They had stolen all of the food from our hiding place and lit the building on fire. They thought we should have shared our find with them. But they had never shared anything with us! Their oldest daughter saw me crawl out a window. She pulled out a knife and came after me with it. I managed to scramble away and escape. But I was never able to come back and try to help my family. They all died in the building that night.”
Nell sits down for a minute in one of the chairs that holds the dipped strings. I kneel down on the ground beside her and put a hand on her knee. But she isn’t crying.
“I have no more tears for that night. They ran out a long time ago. But my heart still aches every time I think of it.”
I lay my head on her knee and she runs her fingers through my hair.
“I decided to leave Seattle and find somewhere else, someplace where the quiet was peaceful. I was terrified to leave. I had never been alone before, and I knew if I got caught, I would be better off dead. The first thing I did was cut out my tracker. Red found me that way, covered with blood and carving my tracker to pieces. I was so scared of him. His hair and beard were flaming red and long and wiry and sticking out in every direction. I thought he was a demon. But he saw how spooked I was, like a cat, and never came nearer to me than we are to that pot. He started slow. He could see it was something that would take time. But he would talk to me for hours, telling me stories. I wouldn’t say, couldn’t say much to him. It was still too fresh. But he didn’t seem to mind. It reminds me a lot of you and David.” A smile tweaks the corners of her mouth.
“And so we wandered together. And by the time we found ourselves at this settlement, I had fallen in love with him. Dear man.” With those words, a tear slips from the corner of her eyes and down her cheek to fall on mine. She can cry tears of happiness now. I squeeze her leg, letting her know how much I enjoy her happiness. She laughs and shoos me off so we can finish another few rounds with the candles.
“We can’t hope to get these done today, but I’m sure someone else will help me with them while you’re gone.”
I stir the pot again.
“And Terra? Please be gentle with Mary. She went through a lot in Seattle. I think she had romantic notions of helping establish the city back to the way it was. And if it was just the city, maybe she could. But that’s not where the problem starts. She found out it’s not much different from when I was there. She’s lucky to be back here.”
Unexpectedly, I feel sorry for Mary. I don’t know the details of her wounds, but I can’t blame her for being angry. Dave is the one thing she trusted, and things just haven’t been quite right between them since she came back.
After several more dips into the pot of wax, Nell says I should go see Red. I groan as I walk around to the front steps of the school. I really don’t want to learn to shoot a gun. If everyone around here learned at one time or another, then there are more than enough people to cover the bases.
Red sits on the steps, sipping a glass of water and looking to the horizon where you can just see the thin ribbon of the Sound through the trees.
“So you’ve never even held a gun?” he asks as I sit next to him. I shake my head.
“That by your own choosing?”
I look at my mud-caked boots. Not really, there are no guns in the colony. But if I had been given the chance, I would have turned it down.
“I can understand that you’re nervous about it. I can respect that. But guns are important to survival around here. You’ve got to understand how to handle one. Especially since you’re coming tomorrow. We’ll each have one, including you, and you need to know how to use it.”
I will carry a gun? He watches me, studying my face. He looks back east and takes another sip of water, and then stands up slowly, his joints popping. There is a rifle on the steps. Red grips it and starts south.
“There’s a field a few hundred yards off where we can practice. Follow me.”
Not a request, an order. I know Red can feel the anxiety rolling off of me, and he takes deft control of the situation. I have to follow him. My limbs feel wooden as I plod after him through the waist-high grass and scrub.
The sun settles toward the west, and the only salvation I can hope for is dinner in an hour. Until then, I am stuck out here with Red and a gun.
The grass in the field is shorter and the trees are sparse. Targets hang from the branches and shells litter the ground.
“We come through and clean those up once in a while. We can manage to repack ’em. Found a few tools for it in a town not far from here. Boring, tedious job. But sometimes that’s just the thing you need around here. Now watch. You’ll only get one chance. We don’t want to draw attention with too many gun shots.”
Red carefully turns off what he calls the safety. He makes a deliberate show of always pointing the gun away from me. Then he brings the rifle up to his shoulder and wedges it tight against the joint. He points to a sack full of holes hanging from a tree.
“Cover your ears.”
I stuff my fingers in both ears and squint. I don’t want to watch, but I know I have to. This lesson will never end if I don’t pay attention.
The sound makes me jump. It sounds worse than the thunder the night I slept outside the school. Red’s shoulder jars back slightly, and I keep my eyes on the bag. It spins as another hole pocks the fabric.
“Once you’re done, flip the safety again. Always remember whether the safety is on or off. Always.”
I nod, my hands still against my ears. Red laughs.
“You okay, Terra?”
I am still staring open-mouthed at the bag. He nudges my shoulder.
“Uhh?” is all I can manage.
“You ready for your turn?”
I shake my head. I don’t want to touch that thing.
“Now I know you’re nervous and heaven knows what’s made you that way, but you’re going to learn if it’s the last thing I do. If you come tomorrow, you’re learning, and that’s final.”
I lower my hands and nod. I reach for the gun. Red places it in my hands and doesn’t let go until my fingers are wrapped securely around it. He makes sure I’m not pointing it at him. Or at me. He helps me raise it up against my shoulder.
“Now tuck it in there nice and tight. This girl’s got some kick and you don’t want to have a bruised shoulder keeping you home.”
I nod and hold the butt firmly against my shoulder. I feel like I’ll dislocate my shoulder if I hold it there any tighter.
“Now turn off the safety.”
With a click I turn it off. I feel like I have a snake in my hands and if I let go, it’ll bite me.
“Now sight along the length of the barrel. Try for the bag in the closest tree. Hold it steady, and when you’re ready, ease on the trigger.”
I look down the long, dark shaft of metal at the bag hanging in the tree. It is a hundred feet away. I gaze at it until the sweat drips in my eyes. The b
ag hardly moves but it seems impossible to hit.
Red clears his throat. “Any time now, Terra.”
How long have I been standing here? I can do this. I am still alive after the past few days, and I can do anything. I take one last look at the bag, then close my eyes.
The force of the shot knocks me backward and Red scrambles away. As soon as I realize I’m not shot, I let go of the gun and lie with my eyes shut, listening to my heart race.
“You okay?”
I see Red’s shadow through my red eyelids. I put my hands over my face. My shoulder aches, but I nod.
“Then next time why don’t you try keeping your eyes open?”
Next time? Surely there won’t be a next time?
“You can’t hope to hit anything if you don’t open your eyes. Best as I can figure, that bullet made it all the way to the Sound.”
I laugh then, and when Red realizes I’m not insane, he joins in. “Maybe next time you could try a hand gun. A bit easier to manage.”
A gun in any form will be torture, but easier to manage would definitely be an improvement. I just hope I don’t have to use it tomorrow.
