Rebirth

by Sophie Littlefield

  Dor winced. He’d seen Cass and Smoke together; it sometimes seemed as though the more he tried to avoid them, the more frequently he ran into them. After they’d put Ruthie down to sleep for the evening, it was their habit to walk the aisles and corridors of the camp, holding hands, exchanging greetings with nearly everyone, but declining offers to share a meal or play cards. Sometimes they’d be in the back of a crowd gathered to listen to someone playing the guitar or reading-Cass encircled in Smoke’s arms, leaning against him with her eyes closed and a dreamy half smile on her face. They pitched in together; when they helped put up tents or mend the fence or serve meals they shared a wordless efficiency, passing each other objects with secret, intimate smiles. Later, their expressions often seemed to promise, later we’ll be alone.

  And it had irritated him. Dor, who was alone even when he was with others. Who chose solitude because he had never learned anything else. Whose marriages had both ended when his wives finally despaired of ever reaching him-and God knows they’d tried, the good women who’d loved him. Even his daughter, even Sammi-he’d loved her so much he had to leave her behind, because she got to him, got too close, made him feel too much.

  Feeling too much was dangerous. It drained him, took away his focus, his power.

  But what of Cass and Smoke? When he looked at them it was like looking through a cursed glass at his inverse. Neither was especially gregarious, but when they were together, they were unguarded, two people who seemed to be completely open to each other. Who made expression of emotion seem effortless. Who shared themselves without hesitation. How did they do it?

  Still, Dor knew a secret about Smoke. He thought the two of them had shared everything, but now he realized that Smoke hadn’t told Cass his one great mistake, his shame, the thing that made him leave and would always now compel him toward the abyss.

  It was this secret that weighed on Dor’s mind as he got painfully to his feet and folded the blankets, replacing them with care on the couch that might never again be used by anyone. Cass thought she knew everything about her lover, but there was one thing that would shock her to the core. If she knew that one thing, she would understand why her man had left. If she knew it, she might not have come to him last night, might not have thrown herself at him like her life depended on having him.

  He was disgusted with himself for letting her. He should have told her Smoke’s secret instead. But now it was all fucked up. One of them owed the other something-but he wasn’t sure who and he wasn’t sure what it was. He had a feeling that they were a combination that could never be stable, that as long as they were together they would just keep cutting and devastating each other. He should never have let her come. She hadn’t given him any choice. He ought to part ways with her as soon as Colima was in view. Give her the car, the guns, the stores, everything, and tell her to take Ruthie back where they would be safe. He’d started over with nothing more times than he could count-and didn’t he always come back stronger?

  Only this time he wasn’t sure. This time, he had the unsettling feeling that he had lost control of what came next.

  17

  CASS WOKE WITH RUTHIE SNUGGLED INTO HER arms, her daughter’s sweet, even breaths tickling her bare shoulder.

  She lay still for a moment and took stock. She’d managed to get her clothes back on last night, grabbing them up off the floor and bolting from the room, leaving Dor standing awkwardly to the side with his own clothes bunched in his big hands in front of him. It might have been funny, the way he was almost shielding his nakedness from her, after what they’d just done-except she couldn’t actually see that humor in the moment.

  And it didn’t seem any better this morning after a restless night. Her shirt had no buttons; they’d tumbled to the floor when Dor tore it open. Cass shuddered, remembering his fury. At the time it had provoked her, stirred that part of her that couldn’t back down, the hurt and angry part that had split off from the rest of her when her stepfather whispered his lies and threats. She had carried this other self with her for years, and while sobriety helped and having Ruthie helped and running helped, it never truly disappeared. It had receded, with Smoke, until it was only a distant shadow, a presence that tempered her best moments and deepened the worst.

  The very few times she and Smoke argued-when she begged him to stay instead of going to train with Joe or taking an extra shift or visiting Dor’s trailer-the shadow came closer, close enough to remind her of its dormant power. She coped by shutting down, by refusing to engage, by letting Smoke win every time. She pressed her lips together and didn’t speak. She walked the well-worn path around the Box, lap after lap, until she was able to convince herself that it didn’t really matter. So she awoke alone more mornings than not-wasn’t it better to let it go than to risk her anger coming back and rupturing the peace they’d built together?

  She and Dor had no peace. From the first time they met, the day she and Smoke arrived in the Box, he had seemed hard and distant. Of course, she’d begun their relationship by asking something from him. Dor did not part with things easily. As she came to learn, he exacted a fair price for everything he traded, plus his cut. No exceptions. He’d helped her get into the stadium to find Ruthie, but only after Smoke traded their most valuable possessions for the privilege. Dor paid Smoke handsomely, but she had noticed that he never traded with her, never asked for anything from her garden. It was as though he would not allow himself to, though she didn’t understand why-the herbs and vegetables she grew were the only ones that most people had had for months; people had already offered fantastic trades for the tiny green oranges on her trees, once they matured.

  But Dor acted as though he didn’t see the garden, didn’t see her. It was as though he reviled not just her but everything she touched.

  Ruthie shifted in her arms, sighing and snuggling closer. Cass stroked her soft cheek and kissed her shiny hair, but she felt her face color with shame, remembering the way Dor had fought her last night. And the way she had fought harder.

  He could have stopped her at any moment. He was powerful. Strong. He’d battled himself more than he’d battled her, Cass understood that. She even understood why he’d done…what they’d done; she had given him little choice. There had been some hard volatile kernel there, some imbalance between attraction and repulsion, an unstable compound which she’d deliberately ignited.

  Her mortification deepened and she pulled gently away from Ruthie, tucking the blankets carefully around her daughter’s small shoulders, adjusting the pillow, before sitting on the edge of the bed doubled over, her arms wrapped around her knees, her nails digging into the soft skin of her thighs, trying to make it hurt enough.

  She’d seduced Dor and she’d fucked him. He may have thought he’d been culpable, that he was willing when he turned her over, took her hard, slammed home all his disgust and resentment, but he’d only done it because she gave him no choice. There was a point past which anyone could be made to lose control, and Cass was an expert at that fine line, a stellar student of lust and urgency. She had seen a thousand variations-some rolled their eyes back and others’ breath came short and still others muttered and hummed-but in the end it was the same, a place where the conscious mind gave itself over to instinct. That’s all it had been-not just last night but on hundreds of nights before, starting at the age of sixteen, when she’d merely been looking for an escape from Byrn’s midnight advances, for a substitute for her real father who’d left them to seek his fortunes as a guitarist in a band up and down the California coast. She’d gone looking hungrily. She’d worked her way through all the boys and then moved on to men-five years, ten years, twenty years older than her, in so many bars and parking lots and cheap apartments as she taught herself a few more tricks for forgetting.

  Dor didn’t know that. Even Smoke didn’t know all of it, though she’d told him plenty-another mistake, another thing she’d given away. No more giving away. Anger colored Cass’s thoughts, clouding her remorse, giving her a st
rained and bitter kind of strength. She forced herself to relax her grip, to stop hurting herself; she slowly sat up, breathing deep and ragged breaths.

  Okay. All right. She had lost control last night, but at least she hadn’t given anything away. She hadn’t given any more pieces of herself away. She had been the strong one. She’d made Dor do what she wanted him to do, and so she’d won. She had to win, every time, because now it was just her and Ruthie again. Smoke was gone, and that was that, and it was up to her to make sure no one took anything from them. She would be smart, and she would be careful. And as long as she stayed strong, it would be all right. This world demanded strength.

  By the time Cass went outside with Ruthie in her arms, Dor had built a fire in the back patio barbecue pit. There was split wood stacked against the shed in the backyard, and he’d laid it out neatly, a tidy flame flickering from an economical arrangement of tinder and wood. A kitchen pot simmered on top of the grate. He didn’t hear her coming, and for a moment she and Ruthie watched him warm his hands high above the orange flames, turning them one way and then the other. He was wearing a shirt she didn’t recognize-a plaid overshirt lined with fleece, black and gray with bits of blue-and she wondered if he’d found it in the house somewhere. If so, it had come from the blocked-off room, the room of unknown horrors that he had taken pains to shield her from.

  Cass thought about that, watching Dor. He was turned away from her, his gaze fixed at some distant point down valley-the direction of the Rebuilder headquarters, maybe. He had shaved; the rough shadow of a beard that had abraded her skin last night was gone. His hair was damp, the ends curving against his collar. His expression was hard to read, but he wasn’t happy.

  Cass kicked a stone, and as it skittered across the brick patio and disappeared into a flower bed choked with dead kaysev, Dor turned toward her. She saw him take in her own shirt-something she’d found in the closet of the room where she and Ruthie slept, an older woman’s shirt, cotton broadcloth in begonia pink with embroidery on the yoke-and knew that he too was remembering the night before, the ripping of her buttons.

  And everything else. Everything.

  She shifted Ruthie in her arms and stared at the ground. Kaysev had rooted in the cracks between the brick pavers. Even a month ago the plant would have been lush and green. Cass had the stray thought that now, while it was dormant, would be the time to weed it from between the pavers so that the roots wouldn’t work their way underneath and unseat them. It had been a nice patio, with outdoor furniture still covered in plastic except for a couple chairs whose covers had blown off in some storm. It could be a nice space again, especially in the spring when the kaysev came back, and the fields would be a deep emerald-green as far as the eye could see.

  When the kaysev leaves had started to brown a few weeks ago, when they withered and shrank at the ends of the stems, when the stalks themselves turned brown and woody, some people panicked. They thought it had died. Some thought it an act of God, or a second apocalypse caused by some unknowable malevolent force. Cass reassured anyone who would listen that the plant was merely dormant. She snapped off roots to show that beneath their tough brown exterior they were still creamy yellow, dense with retained moisture, even fatter than usual. She explained that they could take ninety percent of the root for food and still leave a viable plant. But it was only after she put a dormant plant into her makeshift greenhouse, a small tent Smoke rigged from scrap canvas and plastic and poles for that purpose, and tricked it into rebirth that people believed her.

  They believed. But then quickly they all wanted to know exactly when the plants would spring back to life, something Cass couldn’t tell them. She was keeping a detailed, daily diary of the plants’ habits, and a year from now she would be able to tell them all sorts of things. Assuming she was still alive then. Assuming anyone was around to listen.

  “There’s water,” Dor muttered, interrupting her thoughts. “Enough to wash. And I made coffee and oatmeal.” He pointed to the picnic table where a flowered mug was covered with a saucer, and a bowl was steaming in the cold air. Next to it was a smaller, second bowl and a plastic tumbler.

  “I found some Crystal Light inside. Think she’ll drink it? I mean, if you don’t mind her having it.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Then…I’ll be inside. When you’re ready.”

  He walked back into the house without looking at her. Cass set Ruthie down gently in front of the oatmeal and tested it with the knuckle of her little finger. “Wait a minute. It’s still too hot.”

  Ruthie picked up her teaspoon and stirred the oatmeal. Cass had traded for oatmeal for Ruthie a few times before as a treat, the individual-serving kind that was flavored with apples or cinnamon. This was the real stuff, the slow-cooked steel-cut kind, and Cass’s stomach growled in anticipation. “I wish we had some sugar.”

  Ruthie put her finger to her own puckered mouth, touching her lips as though hushing herself. Then she scrambled down from the table and ran for the house. Cass started to go after her but Dor was standing at the sliding glass doors. He opened them for Ruthie and she slipped inside and he crouched down next to her, as she pointed and gestured. If Cass went now it would look as though she didn’t trust him. Not that she did. But…not that she didn’t.

  Dor had been gentle with Ruthie, but he was such a tall man, several inches over six feet, and strong and solid-Cass worried he would frighten Ruthie. There were the tattoos, the earrings, the fact that he never smiled-all of that. But Ruthie followed him into the house, out of view, never looking back-and Cass sat down on the bench and tried not to look concerned. She stirred her oatmeal. She took a sip of coffee. It was instant, not very good, but not terrible.

  After a while the door opened again and Ruthie came back, holding a china bowl with both hands, taking tiny steps, concentrating on not spilling. She held it up to show Cass and she saw that it was a sugar bowl, a plump white china one with a bee painted on the side and nearly full of sugar.

  “Ruthie! How did you-” Cass took the bowl from her daughter and was rewarded with a smile. And not just her usual tentative, uncertain smile but something closer to a grin, her loose front tooth giving her a rakish look. “Did you see the sugar bowl inside before?”

  Ruthie nodded and pulled herself back up onto the bench. Cass hadn’t noticed the bowl. She hadn’t thought that Ruthie had noticed much of anything; she’d been so sleepy. And she was surprised her daughter would even know what such a bowl was-except, of course-this bowl was similar to Mim’s, and Ruthie had been with Mim and Byrn during those terrible months when Cass was struggling her way back to sobriety. Long enough for her to see Mim put sugar in her coffee dozens of times, two carefully measured spoonfuls stirred precisely three clockwise turns. It was a habit Cass had once loved to watch when she herself was a little girl.

  “Well…aren’t you clever,” Cass said. She spooned sugar into each of their bowls, swirling it in and testing the temperature of the back of the spoon before handing it back to Ruthie. “Mmm, that looks so good. Aren’t we lucky today?”

  Ruthie took a bite and smiled. “Mmm.”

  Cass froze. It wasn’t a word-not really. Just a sound. Ruthie hadn’t even opened her mouth to make it. But it was a sound nevertheless. Progress. Change. She wanted to throw her arms around Ruthie, pick her up and swing her in a circle. She wanted to celebrate, to kiss her and tickle her and make her laugh. But that was too much.

  She had to let Ruthie come back at her own pace, and not make her selfconscious. Selfconsciousness-that thing that kills the real self. At first she had clung tightly to Cass whenever she was awake, but gradually she’d become bolder. In recent weeks she’d been happy to stay with Coral Anne and occasionally played with Feo when the older boy was willing to entertain her for a few hours. Cass’s instinct was to let it lie. But as Ruthie ate her oatmeal, Cass’s spirits lifted.

  When she gathered the dishes and they headed back inside, there, watching them through the kitche
n window, was Dor.

  18

  THE MORNING SKY WAS THICK WITH CLOUDS, but there was no moisture in the air. The wind buffeted the Jeep on the two-lane road. Dor kept his speed to thirty, even though the road was clear as far as she could see.

  Ruthie twisted in her seat as they drove away, watching the little house recede into the distance. She’d remained mute while Cass washed her with the warm water, brushed her teeth and combed her hair and dressed her in clean underwear and yesterday’s clothes. Cass washed herself as well as she could, carrying the hot water around the corner of the house and stripping naked on the dead lawn, trying to wipe away every trace of what they’d done the night before while she held her blade in her free hand. Outdoors, away from the Box, she was never without a weapon, and she felt almost unbearably exposed as the cold morning air reached her body. She used deodorant, a rare indulgence, since she owned only one tube and tried to make it last. After she dressed, she went through the dresser in the room in which she and Ruthie slept, taking turtlenecks and too-big nylon underwear, as well as three pairs of neatly rolled knee socks.

  “After we cross Leverett Canyon Road, Colima’s only another twenty miles,” Dor said after a while. “That last stretch might be tough. It’s an old road, mostly just local traffic since they built the highway. Not sure what we’re gonna find.” He’d been drinking from a plastic bottle of water, and he offered it to her. Cass looked at his hand holding the bottle, the black lines of his tattoo curling down onto the broad flat plane below his wrist.

  She didn’t want to take from him, didn’t want to accept any kindness from him.

  They passed the occasional ranch or farmhouse, but none appeared to be inhabited. Even a couple of months ago, a few squatters were still trying to tough it out alone in their homes, boarding themselves inside and venturing out only to raid at night, trying to avoid the Beaters. For most, it was a losing proposition. Nearly all the easy pickings had been scoured from those houses and stores that weren’t infested with Beaters. Water, canned food, medicine; shoes and warm clothes; toiletries and gasoline and propane-all of these were nearly impossible to find. Kaysev alone couldn’t make a subsistence life out here sustainable. Waste had to be disposed of. Water still needed to be boiled. Some squatters eventually gave up and made the journey to the nearest shelter, but there were recent rumors that some shelters were beginning to turn travelers away in an effort to conserve resources. Those who spent too many days on the road were guaranteed to be attacked; there were simply too many Beaters and they were increasingly desperate and hungry. The lucky ones made it to the Box or to a shelter that would still accept them; others grew despondent and chose a quick death-drowning, hanging, a leap from a bridge or building.