Citizens of Logan Pond Box Set

by Rebecca Belliston

  One of the patrolmen whistled, bringing the barking dogs to a halt. Even from a distance, he looked smug.

  “Cards!” he demanded loudly enough to carry up the hill.

  From their bone-thin bodies, weathered clothes, and shattered expressions, Greg figured the squatters’ pockets were as empty as his.

  An older man stepped forward, hands up, pleading with the officer. But it was a younger man—a boy really—that caught Greg’s eye. He looked restless and fidgety against the barn. The boy was ready for a fight. Greg couldn’t help but wonder what he’d do in that teen’s shoes. For all he knew, he and his mom were two minutes away from such a scenario. Arrest. Life in prison. Work camps. Death. Their only crime: homelessness.

  The officer closest to the boy noticed the same movement and shouted, “We don’t want to harm you! For your own sakes, we advise you to not resist arrest.”

  The teen took two defiant steps forward, the rage in him palpable.

  A man, possibly a father, put a hand on the boy’s shoulders. Chin dropping, the boy stepped back in obedient surrender. Greg was simultaneously relieved and disappointed. The boy would live, but what kind of life?

  For a moment, it looked like it would be a peaceful arrest. The patrolmen kept shouting orders, and the small clan lined up. Greg perched on the balls of his feet and gave his mom the signal. In a second, they’d make a run for the woods behind them. She looked white as a sheet but nodded.

  Then it happened. One of the patrolmen, haughty and unfeeling, reached for the screaming baby.

  “No,” Greg’s mom breathed, echoing the cry of the baby’s mother. Yet the mother had no choice. She was trespassing on government property, squatting on land designated for true American citizens. She had no legal papers to protect her, no government-issued citizenship card. She was on a fast track to some work farm, which meant her baby was a ward of the state—as was the little girl being herded into the farthest patrol car. The mother was a mother no longer.

  That’s all it took.

  The teen charged forward, head down, fists balled, swinging for the nearest patrolman. Caught off guard, the officer stumbled backward and landed on the slushy ground. The boy didn’t stop. He plowed on and headed for the next patrolman, the one with the baby.

  A third patrolman raised his gun and, in one deafening shot, ended the dispute.

  The boy dropped.

  Dead.

  Greg’s mom screamed a loud, piercing scream. Greg whirled, too stunned to do anything but stare at her. The only thing that saved them was the simultaneous yelling and barking that erupted below. The patrolmen were too preoccupied with the frantic squatters to notice two more illegals up the hill.

  Greg didn’t take the chance.

  He grabbed his mom and ran. They hunched low as they raced over the deserted field. One hundred feet. Two. They flew as fast as their awkwardly hunched bodies could.

  Muscles burning, Greg risked a glance over his shoulder. The patrol dogs weren’t pursuing them, but he didn’t stop. Even when his mom wheezed and gasped for air, he forced her on until they could reach a place where there would be no more running.

  * * * * *

  The early March wind whipped through the empty field. With no crops growing, it was free to bluster and swirl on top of the frozen soil. Carrie Ashworth stood in the middle of the field, head tipped back, eyes closed, and arms stretched out as far as they would go.

  A laugh escaped her.

  Spring was coming. Of all the people in the Logan Pond Clan, she was the only one who felt that way. The rest had predicted a long, hard winter followed by a cold, wet spring. But they were wrong. Winter was losing its grasp in northern Illinois, and soon the forsythias would bloom, the spireas would explode, and the magnificent flowers of the Midwest would make their show.

  Even after the rain started, Carrie kept her face parallel to the sky, letting each cold drop find a spot on her skin. It felt wonderful. Rain. Not snow. Then the moment had to end. She dashed across the soon-to-be-garden toward home. Her home was only three houses down from May and CJ’s, but she sprinted anyway. If her clothes got wet, there would be no drying them for a week. Dancing in the rain would have to wait for a summer day.

  “It’s raining!” she announced as she entered her two-story brick home.

  Amber and Zach cuddled under a patchwork quilt on the couch, noses in a book. Carrie was pleased to see them reading after getting on them earlier for neglecting their studies. Sometimes it was hard being sister and parent, even after five years.

  She shook the moisture from her coat.

  “It’s raining,” she said again.

  “Grand,” Zach muttered without looking up. “Mud.”

  “You should be happy,” she said. “You don’t have to do the chickens in the snow.”

  He rolled his eyes and went back to his book.

  Carrie squeezed onto the couch to share the warmth of the blanket. Both siblings moved to give her plenty of space. Too much space. She wanted to snuggle while they read. Sadly, some traditions couldn’t last.

  She was tempted to ruffle Zach’s hair to get his attention. The color matched her own—a mix of blond, brown, and red, and yet none of the three. It was shaggy, though. He could barely see the pages through his mop. Time to ask Jenna Kovach for a haircut. Carrie groaned. Though Jenna cut everyone’s hair in the clan, she made sure they knew how much she hated doing it.

  Carrie checked Amber’s hair, but it looked beautiful like usual. Of the three Ashworth kids, Amber looked the most like their mom: flowing auburn hair, straight petite nose, and full pink lips. If she’d ever look up, stunning dark eyes would peek up under a shelf of thick lashes. At sixteen, Amber was ten times the beauty Carrie was at twenty-two. The two of them barely resembled sisters, but Carrie didn’t mind. She loved having a living picture of her mom to stare at every day.

  Amber lowered her book. “Problem?”

  “Sorry,” Carrie said. “Did Oliver stop by yet?”

  “No. Wow. Something went right today.”

  Carrie frowned. “Be nice. Without Oliver, we’d be—”

  “Speaking of annoying people,” Amber cut in, “your other best friend was just here. I swear you love torturing me, leaving me alone with those two all the time. Oliver won’t talk, and May won’t shut up.”

  “May stopped by? Why didn’t she check the field? I was right out her back door.”

  “Hello. It’s raining,” Amber said. “She forgets how weird you are.”

  Carrie ignored the dig. “What did she want?”

  “She brought us their leftover goat cheese.”

  Carrie smiled. May and CJ Trenton had kept a close eye on the three orphans over the last five years, becoming the grandparents they didn’t have. Carrie and May had grown especially close and played two- or three-man Canasta every week, depending on whether CJ would put up with May’s skewed rules. It was amazing CJ and May didn’t starve when they kept giving away their food.

  Amber went back to her book, but the storm darkened the room, making it impossible to read. She knew better than to ask for a candle in the middle of the day. Instead, she stared gloomily out the window. Zach stopped reading as well.

  “Do I have to do the chickens today?” Zach whined. “My ankle hurts.”

  “Yes,” Carrie said. “But you can wait until the storm passes.”

  “Good. Then I’m going to sit on the porch.”

  Carrie smiled as Zach jumped up. She wasn’t the only one who loved a good storm.

  She stood. “Are you coming, Amber?”

  Based on the look Amber shot her, Carrie didn’t wait for a response.

  The second Carrie stepped onto the porch, she forgot about the rain. She squinted through the downpour and saw May’s front porch light on. Of the thirty-eight homes in the Logan Pond subdivision, the Trentons were the only ones who owned their home, the only people who weren’t living illegally on government property. As such, they were the only ones
with coveted citizenship cards and even-more-coveted electricity. Even then, May and CJ only used electricity a couple of times a year and only for absolute necessities. Not for something as useless as a front porch light. And during the day, too?

  “Stay here,” Carrie told Zach. Then she made another mad dash through the rain.

  By the time she reached May’s door, her curiosity was fully piqued. She heard several voices inside even though there wasn’t a scheduled clan meeting. She knocked the clan signal—two fast, one slow, three fast—and waited.

  May opened the door and threw her arms around her. “Carrie! Oh, Carrie! You’ll never believe it.” Then little old May Trenton, so frail and seemingly breakable, bounced up and down on her toes. “She came. She came!”

  “Who came?” Carrie asked. Their clan never had visitors. Ever.

  May answered by tugging her inside.

  Carrie gasped. Not only was the front porch light on, but all the lights in the house. It had been five years since Carrie had seen a home fully illuminated. It took her breath away. But she didn’t have time to ponder the joys of electricity as May pulled her through a dozen clansmen into the bright kitchen.

  A woman stood by the kitchen table, the center of attention. She was in her mid-fifties with brown, wet hair that hung in her face. She looked exhausted and yet smiled at all the commotion.

  Carrie’s eyes widened in recognition. “Mariah?”

  Mariah turned, surprised to have been called by name when she couldn’t do the same.

  May Trenton took Carrie in one arm and her only daughter in the other. “She came!” May sang again. “She came!”

  two

  NEWS SPREAD FAST.

  Within minutes, the Trenton home filled with all thirty-four members of the clan. Apparently it wasn’t just May’s daughter who had come north, but her grandson as well. Carrie hadn’t seen Greg yet, nor was she in any hurry to. She hung back on the edge of the crowd, staying in May’s kitchen, out of sight.

  The lights were off again in the house, but in a way, everyone was more comfortable like that. The clansmen stayed quiet, most sitting on the floor to listen to Mariah speak. Even the little children felt the importance of having two unfamiliar faces around—the only people they’d ever seen outside of the clan besides Oliver. They sat in quiet amazement as Mariah explained how she and Greg had traveled on foot from North Carolina to Illinois.

  As Mariah spoke, Carrie glanced up at the Trenton’s family picture behind her. May and CJ were surrounded by their two children and five grandchildren. Mariah looked older now by twenty years—they all did—but she still had the same lovely face and CJ’s kind, green eyes. Mariah’s two children sat beneath her in the portrait: Kendra, an adorable toddler—who for some reason wasn’t in the front room—and Greg, a five-year-old blond up front.

  Carrie couldn’t count how many times May had dragged her to that family picture to play the What if? game.

  “What if they didn’t live so far away?” May would say. “What if you could meet my Gregory? He’s a wonderful boy. You shouldn’t be single, Carrie. Times are hard. This isn’t the time for a woman to be alone. You need a man to take care of you. A man like Gregory.”

  Carrie didn’t agree with the statements, but rarely corrected her dear friend. Without computers, phones, or even mail service, contact between Illinois and North Carolina was impossible, so it seemed harmless to play the old woman’s games. Just a way to pass the long winter days. Now that Greg and his mother had defied all odds crossing the country—on foot no less—and everyone but Greg knew his grandma was about to play matchmaker, Carrie wanted nothing more than to disappear. She backed further into the kitchen.

  A movement caught her eye. Amber emerged from the crowd.

  “He’s waaayy cute,” Amber whispered. “And have you heard him talk yet? He has the best accent.”

  If there was ever a time to be a fly on the wall…

  “What’s North Carolina like?” she heard a kid ask in the other room. One of the Dixon twins.

  “Oh, it’s real lovely,” Mariah answered wistfully. “There’s miles and miles of pines and rolling hills that stretch as far as the eye can see. I’m gonna miss it.”

  Amber shot Carrie a look. “They’re staying?”

  Carrie closed her eyes. Her small, secluded clan suddenly felt much smaller and more secluded.

  Please, May. For once in your life, keep your big mouth shut.

  “Did you see any cars on the roads?” another kid asked.

  “Not many. Most of the roads are still empty. But y’all wanna know somethin’?” Mariah added excitedly. “We saw a train in Tennessee.”

  A few little kids gasped.

  “Was it moving?” Zach asked.

  Zach’s voice snapped Carrie back to reality. She was missing her chance to watch the children—and her little brother—get a small glimpse outside of their confined world. Cars and places like North Carolina were things most of them had only heard about, things that could only be proven to exist through books. And she was missing it for what? Some silly speculations of a lonely grandma?

  Carrie left her giddy sister and stepped around the people in the front room. Finding a spot of open floor behind shaggy-haired Zach, she wiggled in. Little Jeffrey Kovach, an adorable three-year-old, left his mom to climb onto Carrie’s lap. His dark eyes were as big as Ping-Pong balls.

  “Look, look!” he said, pointing at Mariah.

  Carrie hugged him. “I see.”

  Smiling, Mariah noticed but kept the narration flowing. As she spoke, CJ kept one arm around her and May clutched her hand. Their happy, radiant faces said it all. Their long-lost daughter was home at last.

  The longer she spoke, the more Carrie wondered if Mariah was toning things down a bit. In the five years since Carrie’s family left that tiny Aurora apartment, she hadn’t ventured far. She’d barely left the neighborhood, but she’d heard the stories. The financial and societal collapse of America hadn’t been pretty: homelessness by the millions, starvation, and more deaths than anyone—including the government—could count. Yet as Mariah talked about her and Greg’s trek north, she offered their clan a cheerful tale.

  Her lips were cracked and weathered, her shoulders hunched with weariness, and she had several fresh scratches on her cheek. Yet her green eyes were vibrant as she spoke. Coupled with her slight southern drawl, she had the whole group captivated. Even Little Jeffrey stayed quiet on Carrie’s lap.

  As for Greg, Carrie wasn’t ready to look yet. He stood against the side wall. She kept her gaze locked straight forward on his mom.

  “They divided Nashville into two dozen municipalities,” Mariah went on. “I couldn’t believe it. There are fences everywhere. Fences, but few people. We walked and walked, but rarely saw anybody. ‘Course, we were avoiding most everybody as best we could, sticking to the back roads and deep woods. We coulda passed thousands of clans and never known it.”

  Zach straightened. “How long did it take to walk here?”

  Mariah smiled down at him. “Guess.”

  “Two years?”

  “Nope.” Mariah motioned for others to try.

  “Three weeks?” someone called.

  “Forty hundred months?” a Dixon twin asked.

  While Mariah waited for the right answer, Carrie’s eyes betrayed her. She glanced sideways.

  Greg leaned against the side wall, arms folded. Like she remembered from his pictures, he had a great face with steady eyes and a strong jaw. The fact she could see his jaw was strange. All the men in their clan wore thick beards, having given up the tedious shaving ritual long ago. Oliver shaved, as did most patrolmen, but then again, patrolmen lived differently than the rest of the world anyway.

  Greg was average height and thin, much thinner than his pictures in May’s photo albums. He wore a faded, light blue UNC shirt which looked like it had been stretched in the wash. His jeans were ripped, more so than those in the clan. Even then, he was better look
ing than she remembered. Of course, after five years of the same thirty-four people, he could be part horse and she would think he looked amazing. His hair wasn’t bleached blond anymore, like the younger version of himself, but had deepened to a chestnut brown, close to Mariah’s shade. It was short, though, like a buzz cut. Another curious thing. Most the men in the clan had hair at or past their shoulders. From what May said, Greg was a few years older than Carrie, making him twenty-four or five, which also surprised her. From the lines etched in his forehead, he looked closer to thirty.

  It took her that long to notice Greg’s expression, and then she couldn’t see anything else. Where his grandparents’ eyes were full of light and excitement, his were dull and irritated. Where his mom smiled endlessly, he seemed stuck in a scowl.

  Carrie faced front before people read more into her curiosity than what was there. So what that she was single and Greg was single and no one else within a decade inside her confined society was?

  People kept guessing until Jeff Kovach called out, “Eight months?”

  “That’s it!” Mariah said with a clap of her hands. “Eight months to the day. Can y’all believe it? I never thought it’d take half that long to walk here. Greg figured it’d take us six months, but I guess I slowed him down a bit.”

  “How did you escape the Raleigh municipality?” Dylan Green asked.

  Carrie’s eyes widened. Escaped? The last letter May and CJ had received, Mariah, Greg, and Kendra were living in a small illegal clan outside Raleigh. Not in a government-run municipality. Of course, that was four and a half years ago.

  “Well, it cost me all my jewelry, a gold tooth, and a night spent under two feet of garbage.” Mariah’s nose wrinkled. “Let’s just say, my boy made some interesting friends in the time we were there.”

  Carrie’s curiosity won out again. Her gaze flickered to Greg, still leaned against the wall, arms folded.

  Sneaking past electric fences or guards couldn’t have been as easy or lighthearted as it sounded, but Greg’s blank expression didn’t change. Nor did it as Mariah went back to her story—their treacherous walk through the Smokies, being chased by a pack of wild dogs in Kentucky and spending six weeks snowed in a barn in Decatur. His mom never glanced at him for confirmation or addition to the story, as if she expected his silence. Other than a few mentions of him hunting down “little critters” for dinner, he was hardly even part of her tale.