California: A Novel

by Edan Lepucki

  If only she could tell Anika; Anika would understand. But no, Frida had promised.

  They would make plain wheat bread today. No frills. Frida had decided last night. She and Anika had been too decadent lately, acting as if their reserves of chocolate, of coconut, of vanilla extract, were endless. If August went on a trip to Pines and returned empty-handed, she and Anika would be blamed for raiding the root cellar. Or she would be; Anika, special and feared, was probably above reproach. Yet another fancy dessert might imply irresponsibility to the rest of the Land, and that needed to be avoided.

  The kitchen was dark when she reached it, the oven unlit. Where was Anika? Frida’s heart hiccuped. She imagined the baby flipping inside her like a quarter, heads to tails.

  “Hello?” she called out.

  She hadn’t told anyone about the drawing she’d seen in Anika’s room, but when she’d left it, she hadn’t closed the door, and someone might have gone in there uninvited. The drawing had to be a secret; why else hang it on the ceiling? What if someone had found out that Anika had told Frida about Pines? As an outsider, perhaps Frida wasn’t supposed to know. Anika could be in trouble. Come to think of it, Frida hadn’t seen her at dinner. Don’t panic, Frida told herself. Not yet.

  She wanted to run back upstairs and wake Cal. She would tell him everything in one long breathless rush, the same way he’d confessed Bo’s story. That morning, weeks before, he’d led her back inside, and in the center of the very house the Millers had died in, he told her the truth. All of it. She wondered if that would ever happen again.

  Now there were other people to consider.

  She waited in the kitchen, her body alert and taut as a predator’s. She could just make out the outline of a candle on the table and the box of matches next to it. Well. At least she could solve the first problem. Frida was striking a match against the strip of carbon when she heard the door open.

  Anika walked in with a scarf around her neck and a glow stick in her hand. Frida had always imagined Anika walking through the Hotel in the dark, sniffing her way to her destination like a wolf seeking its dinner.

  “You’re late,” Frida said. Wasn’t that what Anika had said to her, that first morning?

  “Sorry. I actually slept last night.”

  “You did? How long has it been?”

  Instead of answering, Anika set to work lighting the other candles and getting the oven going. She unwound her scarf before the room was warm: a tiny form of penance.

  “Did you dream?” Frida asked.

  Anika shook her head. “Comatose.”

  “Why don’t you ask August to get you some sleeping pills?”

  “That stuff scares me. Anyway, I don’t like pharmaceuticals.”

  “What about birth control?”

  Anika smirked. “You’re not wasting any time this morning.”

  “How can I, after what I saw in your room? That child’s drawing.”

  Anika stuck another branch into the oven.

  “When I was about six years old, my dog, a golden retriever mix, jumped onto the counter to get at a near-empty bag of Cheetos. Remember those? They were chips, sort of. Orange and powdery.”

  Frida nodded.

  “Well, no one was home, and Bongo got his face caught in the bag of Cheetos, and he couldn’t get out. He suffocated in there.”

  “That’s awful,” Frida said. She meant it, but she couldn’t help but smile. “And absurd.”

  “Curiosity kills, Frida.”

  “So does gluttony, apparently.”

  Anika shook her head. “You’re not understanding me.”

  “Are you telling me there aren’t any answers here? No Cheetos?”

  Anika held up a branch as if she were considering displaying it on a mantel. “It’s been so long since everything happened, I wonder if it means anything anymore.”

  “It means something to you. I can tell.”

  Anika threw the branch into the fire, which was strong and hot by now. “Let’s get started,” she said. “We’re running late.”

  Frida told her she wanted to make bread, nothing fancy, and Anika didn’t offer her opinion, as she usually did.

  The bread didn’t take much time to prepare; it was so easy, it was hard to ignore the truth: that their morning baking was just an excuse to share stories. A ruse.

  “Okay,” Anika said finally. “I do want to talk about it.”

  “Then go ahead,” Frida replied. “I’m a pretty good listener.”

  “But you’ve kept the most important thing from me.”

  “I have?” Frida said. She had the large bowl of dough in her hand. It was ready to rise, and she held on to it tightly. Anika knew she was pregnant. She must have guessed from Frida’s vomiting. Or maybe she had heard her and Cal whispering in her bedroom. Maybe everyone knew.

  “The Millers,” Anika said.

  Frida exhaled. Her friend was just as oblivious as ever. “What about them?”

  Anika brought her voice to a whisper. “As soon as he heard, August told me they were dead. He would never keep something like that from me.” She paused. “But why? Why did they do it?”

  “Anika, I have no idea.”

  “Bullshit. Tell me why they killed themselves.”

  Frida put down the bowl. In an hour the dough would be ready to knead. After only a few days of working in the kitchen, Frida’s hands and arms were baker-strong again, able to make loaf after loaf of bread for the Land. The body never forgets.

  “I swear I don’t know, Anika. It’s haunted me for months.”

  “When August told me the news,” Anika said, “I nearly fell down. He had to hold me up.”

  “Cal buried them,” she said. “It was horrible.”

  “You know what’s horrible? That I thought you’d have something useful to tell me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “All this time, I hoped you’d be able to shed some light on what happened, give me some solace. Help me understand. We allowed Micah into this place so that he’d protect us, and he let two of our founding members die.”

  “They weren’t here anymore to be protected,” Frida said. “Why did they leave?”

  Anika didn’t reply.

  “What difference would it make if I knew anything?” Frida asked. She grabbed Anika’s wrist. It felt wrong, like putting her hands on a stranger.

  “This isn’t a fair exchange,” Anika said.

  “No, it isn’t.” Frida didn’t say that it reminded her of marriage, which was never fair, but at least it always changed. You gave and gave and gave, and then, eventually, you found yourself taking. Which was the better side to be on?

  Anika hadn’t moved her wrist from Frida’s grasp, and Frida took this as a good sign. “Tell me about the drawing,” she said, her tone almost imperious. She sounded like Anika herself, and Anika obeyed.

  “I had a boy,” she said. “That funny little egg shape in the picture? With the eyes? That’s my baby. Jane drew it for me—it’s of the three of us. I was like an aunt to that girl.”

  She had her son late, as far as those things went. Forty-four. When she missed her period, she initially thought maybe she was going menopausal. But in June, on the longest day of the year, “literally and figuratively,” Anika said with pride in her eyes, she gave birth. The labor took forty-two hours; he was born in the barn, like an animal. They named him Ogden. “Not after the poet,” Anika said, but Frida had no idea who she was talking about. Cal would, but she didn’t think she could tell him this story.

  “Was he the first child to be born here?” Frida asked.

  “We weren’t the only ones, Frida.”

  The Land used to have families. It wasn’t teeming with kids, but there were about fifteen or so when Micah arrived.

  “There were children here when the Pirates attacked?” Frida said. “How could you leave something like that out?”

  “I’m sorry,” Anika replied. “Sometimes…it’s too much.”

  “We
re they hurt by the Pirates?”

  “No, not physically. But they were just as afraid as we were, if not more so.”

  Frida kept her voice gentle. “Tell me about the children. You have to.”

  All but three had been born here; the oldest, Melissa, was twelve and had come with her parents. The girl remembered her life before: the crime, the hunger, how the city had been promised paved roads, schoolbooks, medicine, but they never arrived. She was five when her parents decided to follow some old friends out here. “They’d come from Merced, so you can imagine.”

  In the bowl, the dough was rising. Frida imagined it inflating like lungs.

  “A few babies died,” Anika said. “And we lost one woman to childbirth. That was in the beginning, before we had a handle on agriculture, when our nutrition was poor. I mean, our nutrition was never great, but in the beginning, it was the worst. If a pregnant woman doesn’t get enough protein, she’s at risk of hemorrhaging when she gives birth.” Anika sighed. “It’s harsh out here, for anyone. But for a kid? Melissa had been sick with the flu for days when Micah showed up.”

  Her brother. This was where the story changed.

  “Melissa,” Anika said, “she—”

  “What happened when my brother got here?”

  “Don’t interrupt me.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “He arrived in the carriage one evening, right after dark. With August and a handful of other men: Burke, Sailor, Dave. None of the others yet—they would come later. Three weeks earlier, before sunrise, a group of Pirates had come.”

  The Pirates had raided their reserves of food. They’d tied a red flag to the steeple as a warning, but no one saw it until afterward. “Almost all of us were still asleep when they rode up. I was awake, just about to head with Ogden to the river to do laundry. I had him strapped to my chest, and it was cold, so my hands were wrapped in scarves, to keep them warm. I don’t know why I remember that. I never do that now, haven’t since that morning.

  “As soon as I heard their horses’ hooves pounding against the ground, I screamed until my voice went hoarse, my hands over Ogden’s ears. He started crying but miraculously stopped a moment later, as if he knew not to draw attention to himself.

  “This time, the man with the scaly arms, the long-haired one, wasn’t there. A new Pirate was in charge. He was young, he couldn’t have been more than eighteen, and very tall. I remember thinking he was taller than any of the men on the Land. It looked like he’d tried to grow a mustache, but it didn’t take, it was just a bunch of dark scraggly threads. Not that it mattered, he was in charge, all the others followed his orders. There was something horrible and unfeeling about him, and I knew right away that things were going to be worse for us now that he was running the show. He trained his gun on me as his men pulled the others out of the Hotel and lined them up. One of the women tried to run, and she got clocked in the face.”

  Frida shuddered. “What did they take this time?”

  “What they took doesn’t matter,” Anika said. “It’s who.”

  “Another woman?”

  Anika shook her head. “The Pirate, the one who was now in charge, he got off his horse and walked down the line of us. He was wearing old black basketball sneakers, the toes mended with duct tape. I kept my eyes on the shoes as they moved from person to person. Even the kids knew to be still. It was quiet except for the wind, which was blowing pretty hard. Some door was slapping open and closed.”

  Frida said nothing.

  “Randy was eleven years old then, big for his age. He was the second-oldest kid and had been born in L.A. We sometimes joked that someday he and Melissa would get married.”

  Anika smiled, but for only a moment.

  “When the Pirate got to him, he stopped. Randy’s father was one of the first men killed by the Pirates, and, I don’t know, maybe that marked him. I remember Deborah, Randy’s mother, was farther down the line. When the Pirate nodded at Randy and pulled him out of line, Deborah saw what was happening and screamed. The babies started crying—but not Ogden, though. I remember whispering to him that we’d be all right. But, really, I was so scared.

  “When a few of our men tried to step in and stop what was happening, they were shoved to the ground. Deborah ran toward her son, but one of the other Pirates tackled her. She would’ve let them kill her, except her son got right on the Pirate’s horse, as instructed. The boy didn’t say anything. Maybe he already knew what it all meant, that he was being recruited into their terrible army. And maybe his silence was what kept the rest of us in line. Randy was looking down at the horse, as if he’d never touched a saddle. It was like he was being sacrificed for our safety, and he’d accepted it.”

  “He just let them take him?”

  Anika didn’t answer.

  “Anika?”

  “We told Deborah that Randy was a hero for giving himself up like that, for the good of all of us. What else could we have said?

  “We’d been so terrorized, that when Micah and the others showed up three weeks later, we were afraid. I came running at them with the scythe, screaming once more. They could slice out my vocal cords if they wanted to, I didn’t care. Micah held up his hands in surrender, and I was caught off guard. He had a pear in his hand. A peace offering.”

  A few hours later in the Church, August asked them why they hadn’t fought off the Pirates. “We said we’d tried, but that we didn’t have the manpower or any more weapons. Micah did, and he had twenty-five more men and women waiting nearby, ready to come to the Land to protect us. He had a solution.”

  The Pirates were using the Land, he said. “Unless there was a real threat against them, they would continue to steal from us until we didn’t produce enough to make it worthwhile, and then we’d be unceremoniously murdered, every last one of us. I remember he’d looked at Deborah and said, ‘But before that happens, they’ll take the stronger boys. I don’t want to say what they’ll do to the girls when they get older.’”

  Micah and his people were looking for a place to settle. “They needed a permanent territory, and we were it,” Anika went on. “Back then, there had been a few Forms; they were built long before we came around, probably by some eccentric artist. Did you see them on your way in—they’re smaller, but no less frightening.”

  Frida shook her head.

  “Those original Forms gave Micah an idea. ‘It’s a natural border,’ he told us. ‘And you’ll be protected.’ Peter wanted to know more.”

  “Peter was here all along?”

  “One of the first.” Anika turned to Frida then and gave her a soft smile, as if she were a kind but firm boss about to lay off her least-productive employee.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Frida said.

  “I suppose it’s time I tell you that Peter was Ogden’s father.”

  A silly gasp escaped from Frida’s mouth. “You and Peter?”

  “It’s long over,” she said. “It ended even before I gave birth.”

  “So you guys came here together.”

  “No, he came from Portland with a few of the others. We were from all over, though. I’m from Oakland. A bunch of us communicated online years before, and then we finally decided to meet and make a go of it. Not that we knew what we were doing. We came out here without any conception of what we’d need to survive.” She shook her head, a rueful look on her face. “We barely had enough food. We lived in constant fear of Pirates. Melissa was very sick, and when Marie’s milk dried up a few weeks earlier, her baby had nearly died of starvation until another woman got him to eat some sweet potato.

  “I remember Peter’s arguments well, because they were articulated so clearly, it was almost impossible to find fault with them. He said we’d all perish if something didn’t change. We had to welcome Micah and his gang of settlers. They had skills; they would help us. He said that Micah’s plan meant safety for everyone. Peter’s confidence in Micah convinced everyone else.”

  Frida nodded.

/>   “The Pirates only returned to the Land once more. We’d started security shifts, and Micah told us to let that little shit leave the red warning, pretend we hadn’t seen him come and drop the bandanna in front of the Hotel in the middle of the night. Micah didn’t want them to know anything had changed, and that was smart.” She sighed. “Two days later, when the Pirates finally arrived, your brother stepped out of the house he’d claimed as his own, and without even a word he shot the young leader in the chest. The kid gasped, and he fell off the horse. I remember the way his long body hit the ground: sort of dripping off the animal. Randy was with them, on his own horse, his hair matted into knots, shirtless and in a pair of red gym shorts. He was sunburned, and he had what looked like cigarette burns all over his arms.

  “Micah told the others to hand over Randy right away. I think the men were shocked. When Randy didn’t move, August and Sailor came out from behind another building and shot his horse. Randy fell off. For a moment, he wasn’t sure what to do. Micah said to stand up. As he spoke, some of our men emerged from other houses, all of them with guns. The Pirates who were left whistled once and turned around. I guess the new kid wasn’t worth a fight. I bet one of them was ready to take the throne after the assassination.

  Frida wasn’t sure if this was surprising or predictable. Her brother was capable of shooting a man point-blank in the chest. She should have known. That’s what Cal might say. The Group had inured him to violence, made it into a game. And these Pirates had done unspeakable acts to the Land, and taken one of their children. She remembered her brother as a kid: long eyelashes, arms thin and lanky, pen marks all over his hands from drawing on the butcher paper Dada had bought them. Micah had never been interested in guns and shoot-’em-up games. He’d been sweet.

  “You should know, Frida. Micah beheaded that man.”

  “He what?”

  “He called us all over and told us to watch. He pulled the body from the ground, and with his knife sliced his head off at the neck.” She paused. “If that sounds like it was quick, it wasn’t. The head didn’t come off easily, and your brother had to saw across bone and tendons until it was removed. One of the babies didn’t understand what was happening and was squealing with laughter. I remember Sandy covered Jane’s eyes—but Sandy didn’t keep herself from looking. None of us did. What Micah was doing was horrible, but that man had taken Randy. We wanted to see it.