by E A Lake
She gazed past me at the neighbor’s place. “I wonder where all the people went? I haven’t seen a soul here.”
I hadn’t either, and I too found that odd. But I didn’t want to say anything that might upset Violet.
“Without people, witnesses, we may never know what took place,” I said, joining Violet in the neighbor’s brown front yard. “And there sure as hell ain’t anything here pointing us towards Daisy.”
Violet looked up at me. “We should go back downtown and check through things. Just in case there’s something there. Right?”
All I could manage was a shrug. “I suppose it can’t hurt, but their headquarters looked pretty burnt out.”
She took my hand, pulling me away from her house. “Come on, let’s find out.”
Amongst the little that remained unburned in the former office of Stuart Callies, I found a melted, plastic, gas can. I held it up for Violet’s inspection.
“It was intentional,” I said, tossing the still-warm, melted item aside.
“How long ago do you suppose?”
I’d noticed a small amount of smoldering here and there in our stroll through town. “A week, maybe ten days ago. Doesn’t seem like they did this before they took her. It’s rained since then, several times. I can’t believe anything would still be warm or giving off smoke if this were three weeks old.”
Plopping down in the middle of the street, Violet took off her sneaker and shook out some sand. I could see it on her face; she was ready to give up. Funny, she’d lasted an hour longer than me.
“You ready to go?” I asked, kicking through a pile of charred papers.
“Whenever you are,” she replied, standing near me again. Scared the crap out of me. I swear that girl could levitate. “We’re here to find information. If you think there’s some here still, we’ll keep looking.”
“Thanks,” I replied, smiling at her.
That was the problem, though, there wasn’t much here. And though it made it easier to search, the results were predictably meager. In what I assumed had been an hour, I had found nothing that helped. Hell, nothing at all really.
I noticed Violet in what I thought was the former anteroom Daisy and I had been held in the previous winter. She bent and rummaged through a pile, standing almost as quickly, dusting her hands off.
“Do you ever wonder what their problem was?” Violet asked, coming closer to me. “I mean, they were always causing some kind of trouble. So what exactly went wrong here in Covington for them?”
She covered her eyes and surveyed what was left of the once small, quaint Northwoods town. I watched her as her facial expressions alternated between sadness and anger. Anger won in the end.
“Are you upset because of the apocalypse?” I asked, looking through the last pile of ashen crap I wanted to. “Or are you upset of what people became because of it?”
“Who the hell burns an entire town to the ground?” she said, shaking her head. “And don’t bother answering; the question was rhetorical.”
That, dear Violet, was a good question — rhetorical and all.
Day 1,145 - continued
We found exactly nothing of use in Covington. After a short walk past the local library, also now a pile of blackened, smoldering rubbish, we agreed to head back to Wilson’s.
It was probably going to be dark by the time we wandered back into our friend’s compound. But we both decided that was better than the alternative. With no standing unburned structures left in town, our only other choice was to sleep in the woods. And since the last few nights had been cool, that option was quickly vetoed — by both of us.
Late afternoon found us stopped along the side of the road taking a water and dried fruit break. I watched as Violet pulled back on her hair, wrapping it in some kind of bun behind her head. Several questions floated through my head, and she caught me mid-stare.
“What?” she asked, grinning like she knew something I didn’t, which she did.
“Can I ask you a couple questions that you promise to answer honestly?”
She nodded slightly, still grinning. “You already know my heart belongs to you, so why not throw in my mind.”
“How old are you…really?” I watched to see if she diverted her eyes, which she didn’t.
“Eighteen,” she answered as if the question was too easy. “And I look young still, so that’s why the lie at first. Immature little girls don’t draw a lot of attention from most people; especially bad people.”
She looked away, her grin fading. “I hated it when people called me a little girl. I was 15; I knew what was going on. But those stupid Callies people would just pat my head and send me away. Morons.”
“Do you think Susan Weston knew?” I asked, unsure why it mattered.
“I don’t think she cared,” she answered, looking back at me. “I don’t think someone that evil gives a damn about anyone but herself.” Her eyes narrowed. “My turn.”
I shrugged. “Fire away, little girl. You know most everything there is to know about me.” I chuckled when she glowered about the “little girl” comment.
She became serious, more so than I had seen before. “Why Daisy?”
I shrugged again. Damn it, I thought. That felt like a betrayal to Daisy to me.
“She was easy to love,” I answered, taking my turn to look off down the road. “She loved without constraint, so it was easy to feel the same.”
“Was?” Violet asked, making a funny, confused face. “Or is?”
Ah, past or present. Was she gone or was she coming back? Very good catch on her part.
My head hung forward. I was unwilling to look at her. “I’m not sure,” I whispered.
Walking in the late day sun, the chill of early autumn closed in around us in the shaded stretches. I gave Violet my coat when I saw her wrap her thin arms around her chest.
“Why me?” I asked, though we hadn’t said a word in the past hour or so.
She looked ahead, avoiding my gaze.
“That’s a really stupid question,” she answered, barely above a whisper. “You should know the answer by now.”
I stopped abruptly as she continued forward. “What?” I was really, really confused.
She turned and rolled her eyes at me. “Don’t be stupid,” she sputtered. “You know what I mean. It was Daisy’s doing.”
I walked up to her, opening my arms as I got closer. “What in the hell does Daisy have to do with any of this?” Okay, I shouted that part. But who cared? We were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees and wild animals.
For some reason, Violet’s reaction was more subdued than I expected. “I didn’t like you for the first year I knew you. You were older, all buddy-buddy with my dad, my mom thought you were sweet. All that crap.”
Okay, somehow I was more confused. I shook my head at her. “Yeah, that sounds real terrible. Kind of like I am.”
Looking away, her face became pained. “I spent a lot of time alone with you when you were hurt. That kind of changed my mind, a little, maybe. Then Daisy showed up and I started to see you in a different light.”
She peeked at me. “I started to see you through her eyes. She started telling me how sweet you were, how you did little things for her and for Libby. When she told me you cried when you buried her son, well, the ice melted in my heart.”
“In my defense,” I countered with a slight grin, “I only teared up. But I did all of that for her, not you. I know there aren’t many men around, but why would you want one who was already taken?”
She patted my arm and dragged me along as we continued back to Wilson’s place. “Yeah, let’s think about that,” she replied in a slightly sarcastic tone. “Jim and John Wilson are morons; in case you didn’t know that already.”
That I did know. Even their old man referred to them as dimwits…and that was being gracious, I discovered. They once decided to play war and went after one another with sickles. It took their father two days to stop the bleeding. The worst p
art was that the “play” war had happened just last summer.
“Dizzy was gross,” Violet continued, “and Mr. Wilson was too old. So yes, I had choices; just not any good ones.”
“We need to find Daisy,” I recanted, walking next to her. Swatting away the last of the season’s mosquitos, I dared a peek at her.
She stared straight ahead, her eyes never moving from the road.
“I couldn’t agree more,” she replied, sounding as if she was pissed…again.
I wasn’t sure what that was all about, but at least she knew where my heart was. I hoped.
Day 1,145 - continued
We made it back to Wilson’s place in the dark. Nate watched us approach the gate and swung open the fence meant to keep others out.
I watched as he locked the device and then went immediately to his sister.
“Glad you’re back,” he said, giving her a stiff hug. She was the passionate one of the pair, and yet the return hug was only a little less formal.
“How are the girls?” Violet asked, sounding more tired than I thought she actually was. She glanced at me and signaled with her head that I should follow.
“They’re sleeping,” Nate called out, going back to his guard duty. “Have been for a while now. Grandma wore Libby out playing with her all day. I think she’s sleeping, too.”
In the dim light just outside the back door, Violet grabbed my arm. Halting my reach for the knob, I gazed at her.
“Can you do me a favor tonight, please?” Her tone was civil again but had an icy edge to it.
I wondered what she wanted. Because this girl, young woman, always wanted something.
“Whatever the sleeping arrangements are, can you please just accept them? Can you just this once not make a big scene about things?”
She knew something I didn’t, and she knew I wasn’t going to like it.
“We don’t need to share a bed, Violet. If that’s what this is all about.”
She looked away for a moment and then back at my chest. “For the love of dear God, Bob, can you just not be an asshole tonight. Can you just accept things the way they are? Please?”
I knew she was completely worn out. I also knew what she ultimately wanted. However, it wasn’t what I wanted.
“You’ll have to put Hope between us,” I replied, checking to see if Nate was trying to listen in, which he wasn’t. He was too busy with some old sci-fi novel to care about his sister and I.
She shook her head, pulling on one of the buttons on my jacket. “Hope has a crib here, just like back home. I’ll throw Libby between us.” She looked up at me finally. “Happy?”
I shrugged. Not really, but it would have to do.
When I awoke in the morning, the first thing I noticed were Libby’s legs draped across my stomach. The girl wasn’t large — tiny actually — but she sure used her fair share of the bed. And part of mine.
Once I readjusted her, I rolled over to find Violet staring at me. She was on her side, with her head propped up on her elbow. She was already scheming something, I just knew it.
“I’m gonna make you a deal,” she whispered, apparently not wanting to wake the sleeping child. “We’re gonna go look for Daisy. Now. We’ll start over in northern Wisconsin and hit as many camps as we can in three weeks.”
I nodded to let her know I was paying attention, and agreeing somewhat.
“If by the first snow we don’t find her,” she continued softly, “we come home. And we stay home. No more running around all next summer looking for a needle in a haystack.”
I let the words settle in my mind and between us.
“And?” I asked, knowing there was more.
“While we’re out there looking for her, I promise to not say a word about anything but finding her. I’m not going to whine to you anymore about my feelings. I’m going to put that all aside for these three weeks and just concentrate on helping you.”
That sounded good…perhaps a little too good to be true. “And in return?”
She bit her lower lip for a moment, choosing her next words carefully. “If we don’t find her, when we come back, I want you to consider me and you.”
And there was her plan. That’s what was in it for Violet. If we found Daisy, she made it sound like she would step aside. If we didn’t, I was hers and hers alone.
“Violet, I have to be honest with you about something,” I replied, stroking the top of Libby’s blonde head, thinking of Daisy. “I’m not certain I could ever forget Daisy. I’m not sure I could ever love you like I loved her. Can you live with that?”
Something in her eyes told me she had been awake for hours thinking about this. Something in the way she crinkled her nose said she was way ahead of me.
“What was Shelly like?” she asked, laying her head back on the pillow. “You never talk about her much. Did you love her?”
I laughed out loud and saw Libby’s eyes flutter. “Of course I loved Shelly. She’s my soulmate.”
Violet inched closer in the bed. “Even more than Daisy?”
I saw where she was headed. “The world fell to hell, Violet. I’m never seeing Shelly again. We both know that.”
Nodding several times, she pushed up from the bed and slipped a shirt over her thin nightgown.
“And if you never see Daisy again?” she asked over her shoulder.
Damn it, I hadn’t seen that one coming.
Day 1,146
Lettie stared at me over some type of steaming beverage. If it was coffee, it was mighty week. Perhaps some kind of tea, I decided.
“Thaddeus,” she barked from her spot at the table, “remind me again how many fish camps there are within 200 miles of here.”
Her logic was simple, and the same as Violet’s. But I didn’t care about any needles or haystacks. All I cared about was finding Daisy.
At the stove, Wilson paused his stirring and raised a boney hand to scratch his chin. “Well, Ashland is just over 100 miles to the west…” he paused, looking back at the group. “And Munising is about 100 miles to the east. If you go along the shore from Ashland to Munising I think there’s probably 100 camps, maybe a few more.”
I shook my head at Lettie. Nice try, old woman. “We’re just going to hit the bigger ones. And I don’t think we’ll go all the way to Ashland. That seems out of the Weston’s’ trading zone. I’m thinking Ironwood to Marquette. That has to cut the number down.”
Wilson turned at a sloth’s pace and nodded. “Probably 60 or 70 that way. Not even a day’s walk between most camps. So you could hit most of them in the next two months, I suppose.”
Not exactly the news I was looking for, but it was a start. And still, Lettie shook her head at me.
“It’s not gonna work, Bob,” she said in a slightly contrite tone. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t see you finding her.”
I tapped the table several times, watching Libby eat a pile of scrambled eggs.
“I’m still gonna try,” I muttered, even if only to myself.
Through a side window, I watched Violet and Jimmy Wilson, Hope’s daddy, talking in the late afternoon sunshine. It would have been a good day to leave for our trip, but old man Wilson put a stopper in that plan.
Wilson claimed he knew a man a couple miles further back in the swamp who had the in on everything that went on in these parts. Funny, I thought that position was already occupied by my host.
But the news of Covington being burned to the ground was not something Wilson had heard about. So off he went to find this friend and get me all the reconnaissance I needed. He promised to return by sunset, but then backtracked and came back when it was dark.
That was fine with me. I was working on a plan of my own. A plan that might remove the leech who planned to be attached to my hip for the rest of my life. Luckily, Jimmy Wilson was just the young man to do the deed.
“Well, there’s a pair of idiots,” Lettie announced, sneaking up beside me. I flinched, not expecting her.
I grinned. Stupid
or not, I needed the pair at least communicating.
“I see young love rekindling, Lettie,” I said, suppressing a snicker.
“I wasn’t talking about him and her,” she crowed, inching up to peek out the window closer. “I was talking about him and you.”
Funny, real funny. “They have Hope in common. Just give them time and pretty soon they’ll be sneaking off, making baby number two.”
Coughing first, Lettie began to laugh. She slapped my shoulder and pulled me away from the window. “First off, she’s only got eyes for you. Second, and more important, he’s only got eyes for Darcy Kimber.”
“Who?” I hadn’t heard the name before.
Lettie’s smile was almost infectious. “She lives with her folks about six miles east of here. She’s some 16 year old with big boobs that catch all the boys’ attention.” She nodded for a moment. “Sure caught Jimmy’s eye.”
“But this is here and now,” I countered. “Violet isn’t six miles away. She’s standing right next to him.”
We went back to the window and watched. Why wasn’t Violet smiling? Jimmy certainly was. He moved closer, reaching to stroke Violet’s arm. I prayed he had the guts to stroke more than that.
“Wait for it,” Lettie whispered next to me. “Wait for it…”
Wait for what, I wondered? The hug, the kiss, maybe even some groping?
Violet exploded in a fit of anger and spun away from the young man. When he reached to take her arm, she turned and drilled him in the balls with her knee.
Jimmy rolled in the barnyard dirt, moaning and grabbing his crotch. Violet strode towards the house, her face reflecting the same anger her knee delivered to her baby daddy.
“Well, I guess he told her,” Lettie finished, turning to return to wherever she’d appeared from.
“Told her what?” I called out.
Pausing in the doorway, Lettie slowly turned. Her grin was ear-to-ear, and a little beyond.
“Darcy’s nine months pregnant,” she replied, laughing at me. “Jimmy’s next baby is due anytime now.”
