by Maddy Barone
But his father cut him off, voice stern. “If you want Miss Anton to be your wife, you’ll enter the Bride Fight and win her, fair and square, just like any other fella.”
Eddie nodded and stepped back, considering who was likely to enter the Bride Fight. He could beat them all. Maybe it wasn’t fair, all things considered, but he wanted Lisa. She had the most delicate, beautiful face he’d ever seen, but she was so skinny most men would prefer the other woman, Carla. On the other hand, there were close to two thousand men in need of a wife in a fifty mile radius. They might think the way he did—a few months of hearty meals would put some meat on her bones. They could think that if they wanted, but Lisa was his. Something about her made his primitive side want to roar.
“Okay?” his dad said to the six men crowded around. “The entry fee will be ten gold or the equivalent. Anyone can apply to enter, but me and the missus will have final say over who gets to fight. Applications gotta be turned in by nine tonight, and we’ll announce who gets to fight right before breakfast.”
Ten gold? Eddie was startled but not displeased. He had the money, but that was a lot of cash for most men. It would cut the entries down considerably.
“That’s pretty fast,” Steve said doubtfully, smoothing a brown hand over his long, silver-blond hair. “We won’t be able to get the word out to everyone.”
“It’ll get out to enough,” Eddie’s dad declared. “I don’t want them gals in my house longer than they need to be. Don’t wanna tempt any outlaws to mount an attack to take them gals by force. Even if that didn’t happen, we’d have half the country traipsing through our yard to take a look at ’em if we keep them more than a day.”
Faron Paulson folded his arms over his barrel chest with a frown. “That’s something else, Ray,” he pointed out. “Men will want to see what they’ll be fighting for.”
“Uh-huh. Tell ’em they can come to my outer office from seven to eight tonight. They can look through that mirror-window and decide. Aright, get a move on and get the word out about the Bride Fight.”
Eddie watched the men file through the gate to spread the news through Kearney. “Dad, what about the plane crash people? How are we going to help them?”
Ray Madison turned. “We’re not. They ain’t no concern of ours. Unless you was wantin’ to go off and find them?”
Not with the fight for Lisa to be won. But some of his friends didn’t have the money to enter the Bride Fight. They could go, and if there were more women there, maybe they could find wives they didn’t have to fight for.
His father placed a heavy hand on his shoulder. “I know you’d like me to just give you Miss Anton. But I can’t do that. The whole town would think you didn’t deserve her, and they’d think I was playing favorites. You’ll fight for her, same as anyone else. Now, you go on and head out to spread the word. You got the west end of town and the farms out that way. Be back home by seven, hear?”
Eddie saddled a horse and dutifully travelled all over the western section of town telling everyone he saw about the Bride Fight and the conditions his father had set. But while following his father’s orders, he dreamed about pale blonde hair and a delicate face with big blue eyes. Now, at nearly seven o’clock, he hurried up the steps to the back porch and into the kitchen, anxious to see Lisa. But the only person in the kitchen was his sister, emptying the tub she and their mother used to bathe.
Bree let the empty tub settle on the floor and went to the stove to pull a plate of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and creamed corn out of the warming tray. “Here, eat your supper.”
It smelled good, and normally Eddie would have lingered over it to savor his mother’s cooking, but now he bolted it down as quickly as he could so he could go find Lisa. Where was she?
His sister must have seen the question on his face because she shrugged. “Lisa and Carla are in dad’s office, and they’re not happy. Dad told them about the Bride Fight, and for a minute I thought Carla was going to bite him.”
“What about Lisa?” he asked quickly.
“She cried. A lot.” Bree shook her head. “I don’t know how she manages to look so angelic when she cries. When I cry, my nose turns red and runs like a pump.”
As he headed out of the kitchen to the office, his sister called, “You can’t go in there right now. Mom lit the fire in the stove, and they’re combing their hair to dry it. You better go into the outer office. Dad says he wants some men he trusts in there in case the men who apply to fight get out of hand.”
Eddie set his jaw when he got to the well-lit outer office and saw half a dozen men there, all staring intensely at the one-way window behind the desk. A few of them, like Steve Herrick, were his father’s trusted men—there to be sure any visitors didn’t get out of line. Steve stared through the glass.
“Steve, are you guarding the women or just staring at them?” Eddie asked sarcastically.
Steve smiled slowly. “No law against looking.”
A flicker of jealousy moved through Eddie. “Are you entering the Bride Fight?”
That made Steve tip back his head and laugh. “Me? Uh-uh. Those girls are too young for me. If I ever marry, I’d like someone more my age, a little more mature.”
He knew Steve was over forty, but that wasn’t too old to want a young, pretty wife. His work as a carpenter kept his body fit, and he made a comfortable living between his carpentry business and leading Kearney’s maintenance force. His sister said Steve was a handsome man. So why didn’t he have a wife already? Steve arched a brow at Eddie’s intense glare and backed away to look over the other men in the office, back in guard mode.
Eddie knew all of the men present by sight, and some of them he knew well, like Doug Gray, who had been his classmate in school. Taye Wolfe from north of town was there too. Wolfe seemed fiercely intent on what he saw through the window, too caught up to notice Eddie. Eddie turned to follow his gaze and found Lisa and Carla wore flannel nightdresses, towels draped over their shoulders to protect their clothing from wet hair, in his father’s private office.
“What’s her name?” Wolfe asked quietly.
“Which one?” Eddie returned, unwelcome jealousy sparking inside.
“The pretty one with the long, brown hair.”
Relief surged through him. He had never been jealous before. He found it an uncomfortable feeling. “That’s Carla. She’s a singer.”
Wolfe nodded, eyes going back to Carla. Eddie looked through the glass, his own eyes finding Lisa and staying there. His sister’s nightgown hung loose on her, the neck coming chastely up to her throat, but the sleeves buttoned inches above her wrist, and several inches of slender leg showed below the hem. Her hair looked like silk when she drew an odd, bright purple comb through it. Eddie wanted to smooth his hand over it. When she got up from the stool to stand in front of the fire, even the thick cotton couldn’t keep the firelight from shining through the gown and revealing her painfully thin figure. A sharp ache near his heart made Eddie put a hand on his chest to rub the discomfort away. He would win, and once she was his wife, he’d make sure she never went hungry again.
Her face was so pale. Bree was right—tears didn’t mar her beauty; they made her eyes bluer and more luminous. Lisa slumped on the stool, clutching the brightly colored comb while she wiped tears away with a knuckle. Carla stomped from one side of the small office to the other, nightgown hem snapping with her agitated strides, waving her arms in a tirade the glass muffled. Eddie couldn’t pick out a single word and wondered if Taye Wolfe could hear every word plainly.
“Mine,” he heard Wolfe growl.
He could have Carla as far as Eddie was concerned. The only one he wanted was Lisa. Delicate, fragile Lisa, whose tears he wanted to wipe away while he held her against him to protect her.
He stayed in the outer office while men came and men went. Sometimes the office was so crowded and tempers so high fist fights almost broke out. Wolfe showed his teeth in a snarl when a man made a crude comment about Carla. Eddie
couldn’t blame him. He hated it when he noticed men stare at Lisa. But Eddie controlled his temper and helped Steve and Faron Paulson keep order. He took careful note of those who went to find his father to apply to be entered in the Bride fight. He sized them up as possible opponents, already planning strategy for the fights tomorrow. He never wanted a wife before, but he wanted Lisa. He would win. Nothing else was acceptable.
* * * *
It was after midnight when Eddie crept on bare feet to the room Lisa and Carla had been given. His parents were finally in bed. They stayed up late discussing the applicants for the Bride Fight, deciding who would be allowed to enter, but banned him from joining the conversation.
The furious whispers coming from the women’s room fell silent when he tapped softly. After a moment, Carla’s voice said, “Who is it?”
“It’s me. Eddie. Can I come in? I want to talk to you.”
After a moment, the door opened and Carla stepped back to let him in. She was dressed for bed, her still-damp brown hair in a braid down her back. Eddie looked past her to where Lisa sat hunched on the side of the bed, her blonde hair glorious in the dim glow of the lamp, her pale face miserable. Her fingers pleated a corner of the sheet with jerky movements. Eddie wanted to hug her and tell her everything would be okay. Instead he put his hands in his jeans’ pockets and tried to smile.
“What do you want?” Carla asked rudely.
“Shh! Not so loud,” he whispered. “Let’s not wake up my parents.”
“Are you supposed to be here?” Carla asked.
That made him smile. “Of course not. I’m going to be fighting tomorrow. If the other men knew I was here, they’d think I was taking unfair advantage.”
Carla’s glare could have parted his hair. “You’re fighting tomorrow? In this stupid Bride Fight thing?”
“Shh!” he said again. “Yes, for Lisa.” Did that sound rude? “You’re very pretty too,” Eddie hurried to say. “But—”
Carla cut him off with the first real smile he’d seen from her. “That’s okay. I hope no one shows up to fight for me.”
Eddie remembered the dozens of men who passed through his father’s office that evening, especially Taye Wolfe, who stood with arms folded grimly over his chest for the entire visiting hour. Eddie didn’t say anything. He looked over at Lisa. She had crumpled the sheet in one fist and gazed at him pitifully. She reminded him of a half-drowned kitten.
“Eddie,” she said softly. “What is going to happen to us? We can’t be married to someone we don’t even know.”
The singer’s anger could almost be felt in the air, like the electricity Mr. Gray talked about, but Lisa’s helplessness touched him. He wanted to protect her. It was an effort to force himself to stay with his back against the door instead of going to sit beside her on the bed. “It will be okay tomorrow. I’ll win, and I promise I’ll be the best husband in the world.”
She blinked tearful eyes at him. An expression crossed her face. There was an alien hardness to those delicate features. “Better the devil you know, I suppose,” she muttered. Then the hardness was gone, replaced by soft vulnerability. “This isn’t right! Is your father doing anything for the people at the plane?”
Eddie suppressed the urge to shuffle his feet. “No, they’re not in Kearney, so they’re not his responsibility. Some of my friends who didn’t have enough gold to enter the Bride Fight are going to look for them, though.”
“But it’s our responsibility to find help for them!” Lisa glanced at her friend. “Carla and I volunteered to go find help.”
“You have found help. Cory and the others will help them.” Eddie dared to leave the door to stand beside Carla in front of the woman he intended to make his wife. “This must be very different for you. In the Times Before, there were enough women for everyone. A woman who didn’t have a father or a brother or a husband didn’t have to worry about being stolen.”
“The times before what?” Lisa asked.
“Stolen?” the other woman squawked and then slapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she said quietly.
“That’s what they call the times when there was electricity and all that, before the bombs and plagues and the asteroids.”
Carla was pretty. Not as pretty as Lisa, but her eyes were large and dark-lashed. She looked at him fiercely. “So women here are like horses and cows at a livestock auction? The highest bidders get to take them home? None of the women I know would sit still for this. They wouldn’t let themselves become possessions.”
Lisa leaned forward, a shadow of hardness back in her eyes. “That’s right, Eddie. It’s been only fifty years. How could women go from being doctors and senators to slaves?”
Heat trickled down his body to settle in his groin. Lisa sounded almost as fierce as Carla. He liked it. “Not slaves! Does my mom seem like a slave to you? But women can be vulnerable. They have to be protected.”
Carla pounced. “Protected from what? Men who want to give them away as prizes to the best fighters?”
They don’t understand how it is now, Eddie thought. How can they? “Well, I can see how you’d think that. But there’s a lot more to it. The world has changed a lot in fifty years.”
Lisa lost the fierceness to something more calm, but very serious. “So tell us what exactly happened to make this place like this.”
Eddie lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the floor. “Well, I only know what I’ve been told and what I’ve read in the old newspapers.” Eddie straightened his spine and mimicked the voice of Mr. Gray, the man who taught history in Kearney for the past forty years. “In October of 2014, terrorists set off nuclear devices in hundreds of big cities all over America and overseas. So many were sick and wounded the hospitals and rescue services couldn’t keep up. People ran away from the cities to the country, but food ran out and…” Eddie let his voice slip out of Mr. Gray’s tones back to his own. “Now, this was twenty-five years before I was even born, so I wasn’t there. But think about it. What if a quarter of the people in the city you live in died in less than an hour? How many people live in your city right now—or did in 2014? How long would it take to bury a quarter of them?” Eddie saw Lisa’s smooth forehead wrinkle in horrified thought. “And what if another quarter of them got sick from radiation poisoning? How many hospital beds does your city have? Would there be enough doctors to help them?”
Eddie glanced from Lisa to Carla. Both women were looking shocked but thoughtful. He pressed on. “Now suppose most of the people who weren’t killed or sick decided to leave the city. They drove their cars to smaller cities and towns, or maybe to relatives who lived on farms. But how much gas would it take to run hundreds of thousands of cars for hundreds of miles? Would there be enough?”
“But what does that have to do with why women have to be protected?” Carla protested, sitting on the bed next to Lisa.
“I’m getting to that. Hold on and let me tell the whole story.” Eddie pulled his knees up and draped his arms over them. “Suppose a town had a population of ten thousand on Monday, and by Sunday there were twenty thousand, and a week later thirty thousand. Would there be enough food for everyone? I know there were stores loaded with food in the Times Before, but how long would that last? Not forever, especially if some people went to the stores and took away all they could carry to keep for themselves.”
“But the stores would have ordered more,” Lisa objected.
“From where?” Eddie asked gently. “The cities? There was no one left in the cities except the dead and the sick. And that is the next part of the story. See, the terrorists didn’t just set off bombs. They also put viruses into the water supplies in the cities. The people who ran away to the country brought the viruses with them. There were several different diseases, but the worst was the one we call the Woman Killer Plague. It has some fancy scientific name, but that’s what everyone calls it. About ninety percent of the women who got it died. About eighty-five percent of men who got it recovered, but it did somethin
g to them so they couldn’t have daughters. At least, that’s what Doc Whitten thinks.”
It made sense to Eddie, but he could see the women were skeptical. He shrugged and went on.
“In the first ten years after the bombs, only one in every two or three hundred births was a girl. It’s better now. One in every one hundred births is a girl these days. But that still leaves a lot of men without wives. Men get pretty desperate.”
“For sex,” said Carla flatly.
“Yes.” Eddie didn’t want to scare Lisa, but he had to let them know the Bride Fight was the best option. “In some places, eight or ten men share one woman. Sometimes the men take good care of their woman, but mostly the woman dies young of over-work and over-use and too many pregnancies too close together. That could have happened to you. A lot of people east and west of us think our town is strait-laced—one man, one woman. We don’t share our wives. And if a man and woman sleep together, they are considered married.”
“What about divorce?” Lisa asked.
That hurt. “There isn’t divorce. But if a woman is unhappy with her husband, she can repudiate him and return to her parents’ or brother’s house. She can marry someone else. Or a man can challenge the husband. If he kills the husband, he becomes the woman’s new husband.” He saw the look on Lisa’s face and hastened to add, “But that’s rare. I can remember it happening once in the last ten years. Women are treated very well here.”
Carla folded her arms tightly across her chest. “Unless they don’t have a father or brother to run home to … so you think we should be grateful to your dad for handing us out as prizes?”
Who could blame her for being unhappy? “You might not be grateful now, but after you’ve been here long enough to know what could have happened to you, you will be.” Eddie rose to his knees and moved close enough to the bed to take Lisa’s hands in his. The scent coming from her hair was strange and sweet, making him wonder what she washed it with. He looked up. “I know this is hard for you. I’ll win tomorrow. You can trust me.” He turned his head to glance at Carla. “My parents are allowing only the best men in town to enter. Whoever wins you will be good to you. You have nothing to worry about.”
