Across the field, all five men sat eyeing one another uncomfortably as they sipped on beer or scotch. They'd overheard the shrill laughter of their women and felt envious of their obvious ease with one another. Daryl finally became so restless that he went into his tent and emerged with a handful of sticks and his carving knife. He tucked a small bottle of scotch between his knees and set to making arrows.
"Where'd you learn to shoot?" Shane asked out loud.
Daryl stayed silent and waited to hear an answer, completely focused on his task. When no one answered he looked up and found four pairs of eyes staring back at him. Startled, he answered swiftly.
"Umm, my old man 'til he drunk himself dim, then Merle."
"You always hunted with a crossbow?" That was T-Dog.
"No, my arms weren't long enough till I was older. We used to go bow huntin' almost every weekend with my grandfather. After he passed Merle and I got ourselves set up with different weapons. I picked the crossbow, and Merle had himself a regular arsenal what with his bein' in the military and all."
"You didn't want to go into the military?" Glenn asked.
Daryl huffed. "Someone had to stay behind and take care a' the old man."
Shane scoffed. "Christ, you're a better man than me, that's for sure. Judging from them scars on ya back, I would've shot the old bastard," he said loudly tipping the nose of his bottle back and taking a deep drink.
"Shane," Rick said quietly.
Daryl was quiet for a moment. He focused on the point he was carving sharp.
"I would've, but his name was on the deed to the house. Wasn't ever sober for long enough to make up a will or nothin'. Had to keep him 'round," Daryl replied gruffly.
The men fell silent. Daryl paused in his work long enough to take a pull from his bottle, eyeing Shane who stared into the fire.
"Said you was a shootin' instructor?" he said to the man.
Shane raised his eyes.
"Best there was," Rick drawled, kicking at Shane's boots.
Shane smirked.
"How'd ya get into that?" Glenn asked.
Shane shrugged, finishing his beer and reaching for another.
"Back in the academy, we had to put in some hours every week at the range. The more I practiced, the better I got. Saw a few guys who were havin' trouble and walked them through. Sergeant Hale said I should train to be an instructor so I thought, what the hell, right?"
Shane's eyes had glazed over as he told the tale. The other men watched him silently, as he pulled on the beer in his hand.
"I was putting some money away to buy my own gun shop with a range, you know, sort of a retirement plan, before all this."
Rick glanced over.
"I didn't know that," he stated quietly.
"I'd only just started a few months before. I was gonna bring ya in on it when I socked away enough cash."
Rick started to laugh.
Shane crinkled his brow. "What?"
Rick shook his head and pulled on his beer, finishing it. He glanced over at his friend.
"Would you believe I'd been putting money away for years and was looking at a piece of property just a week before I got shot?"
"You serious," Shane asked his eyes wide with disbelief.
Rick just chuckled shaking his head. "Lori and I used to fight about it. She wanted to save the money for retirement. I told her it would get me off the streets. She'd say we had enough guns around Carl with the three I had. Funny how things turn out," he finished bluntly.
They talked more and grew at ease with each other. When the beer was done, they began drinking just straight scotch, passing a bottle around.
Glenn threw more wood on the fire.
Daryl had finished his bottle and was now squinting at the head of an arrow. The liquor made his head a little fuzzy. And his tongue went loose.
"A'ight short round, spill it. How does the farmer's daughter fantasy play out?"
T-Dog coughed and choked on his swallow of scotch in shock. Rick and Shane stared at Daryl like wide 'eyed teenagers and bit their fists to stifle the laughter.
Glenn was too far gone to care. He smiled widely and accepted the bottle from T-Dog, taking a deep swig. He coughed and passed it to Daryl.
"Funny you should ask. I notice my tent's not the only one rockin' lately. Tell me Daryl, how does the 'lonely widow' fantasy play out?" he said, mocking the man's former tone.
"Ooooohhhhhh," was the resounding loud male response.
Daryl smiled and raised the bottle to his mouth. "Too late to ask her kid, I banged the
memory a' those lonely nights right outta 'er," he said, throwing back a chug.
The men roared with laughter, T-Dog pounding Daryl on the shoulder once before swiping the bottle.
Across the field, the women paused in their frenzy and listened to the men hootin' and hollerin'. Patricia rolled her eyes and continued filing her nails.
"Locker room talk," she said sarcastically.
"That's what happens when you mix scotch and beer. Thank god they left the vodka for y'all..." Lori said, squinting at Carol's eyebrows with her tweezers.
Andrea shook her head at the sound of more laughter from across the field. She watched as Carol refilled her glass and took a large sip.
It was her third drink of the night.
Andrea grabbed her drink and downed the rest. She looked towards Carol.
"So Carol, how's Daryl in the sack?"
"She's a pistol. I'm tellin' ya, I ain't never been wit such an animal," Daryl slurred at the group. "Shocked the hell out o' me...that woman did me backwards, forwards and upside down. She was starvin' for it…I was just barely keepin' up," he exclaimed drunkenly, slumped in his chair and gesturing with his hands while staring up at the star filled night sky.
"And that was just the first night," he finished holding a lazy forefinger in the air.
"You really nailed 'er in Dales RV?" Rick asked a wide grin on his dazed face.
"That little table there's sturdier than ya think," Daryl replied, his words running together.
From his place next to Daryl, Glenn stared at the man; slack jawed in his own drunken state.
"Wow," he said.
"She left a fuckin' hickey on my neck this afternoon…took her behind the shed in broad daylight. The shit is still bleedin' a bit," he added, absently rubbing the large mark on his neck.
"Quiet ones are the freakiest kind didn't ya know?" Shane questioned Glenn.
Glenn giggled and snorted. "I'm only just finding out," he said like he was a teenager talking about seeing his first pair of boobs.
"Yea, them farm girls sure know what they want, don't let 'em fool ya," T-dog slurred from Daryl's other side.
The other four men took a minute to absorb his words and as one, looked towards him, confused.
"Whatcha know about farm girls? Thought you was a city boy," Daryl questioned.
"We ain't in the city no more is we?" T-Dog said with a huge smile on his face.
Rick smiled.
"I take it you and Patricia got all biblical with one another?" he asked.
"Son, there ain't nothing holy about what we did," he bragged, staring at the sky.
Carol spit her drink all over the ground. She coughed, and wiped her mouth.
"Andrea!"
"Oh no, don't you try and act all proper. It's the end of the world sweetheart, and you are going to give it up!"
"Oh my god Carol, you guys did it?" Maggie asked her eyes wide beneath the mask she wore.
"More than once, the little hussy," Andrea announced.
"Tell us everything! Is he huge, I bet he's packin' a big-"
"Patricia!" Carol exclaimed, mortified and clearly embarrassed.
"Oh come on Carol, give us the good stuff! What's he like in bed? Is his ass as hard as the rest of his body? How did it happen the first time and where did you go?" Lori exclaimed in one breath, like she had been holding all that in for awhile.
Carol looked around the circle, bewildered. She bit her bottom lip and took another sip of her drink. She sighed and shook her head, and it all came spilling out.
"After we all talked on the porch that afternoon, he came to me and asked me to get the splinters out of his hand. I don't know, it must have been the conversation we'd had and I know I said I would be patient, but there he was, standing next to me by the sink in the RV. He smelled so good and his hands were touching mine and he was so close. I could feel that something was different, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I was washing his hands off and I don't know what came over me, but I just leaned forward and kissed him."
The women gasped.
"And then the strangest thing happened."
"What?" they said in unsion.
"I whispered an apology and turned away from him. Then he started to walk away, heading for the door."
There came another gasp and a small whimper.
"Oh no," Maggie cried.
"My heart absolutely broke. I was so pissed at myself."
The other women frowned and Andrea pouted.
"That's when I heard it," Carol said.
"Heard what?" Patricia asked.
Carol smiled. She looked up and met their eyes.
"He clicked the door lock," she said in a voice just barely above a whisper.
Carol's chin began to quiver as she remembered the emotion of that moment. A part of her wanted to run across that field and leap into Daryl's arms.
"We stared at each other for what I thought was a lifetime, and then he started to walk towards me. All the while I kept thinking that I was dreaming because only in my dreams would a man like Daryl ever look at me the way he did in that moment."
The women were silent. Lori, who had been sitting the closest to Carol, placed a hand on her back, acknowledging her friends bittersweet memory.
Andrea, who had been listening intently and hanging on the woman's every word, impatiently gestured towards Carol.
"So, what happened next?"
Staring into the fire, Carol smiled.
T-Dog spoke of his encounter with Patricia. They'd fallen quiet as the man concluded his story, each silently recalling the last few days spent in the company of their lovers. Daryl pursed his lips and looked up.
"Thing is… I think I might be in love with Carol."
Daryl's drunken declaration seemed to jolt the men's attention.
Surprisingly, Shane was the first one to speak.
"That's just ya dick talkin..." he slurred.
Daryl frowned. The man's attitude reeked of condescendence.
"Man, it's been less than a week. You're just lust drunk. Give it more time," T-Dog said.
"I agree. Make sure the timing is right if you tell her. Don't want anyone to get hurt ya know?" Rick said, staring into the fire.
Glenn nodded his agreement. "Yeah, you gotta be careful man. She may not feel the same way; you could be the one who gets hurt!"
Suddenly pissed, Daryl stood up, unsteady on his feet and threw his empty scotch bottle in the fire. The glass shattered and broke the men's reverie.
"Hell wit, y'all, I know how I feel. None o' you were there, you ain't seen her when we…" Daryl paused, thinking of Carol and the way she kissed him… held him…gazed. His face grew stoic.
"Think just 'cause we're out here talkin' and drinkin' that y'all know me or some shit?"
Rick stood up. "Now Daryl," he started burping a little, "Just calm down, we didn't mean no harm."
"Na, forget it. Screw all y'all, why don't you all go back to your bitches and leave me be!"
Shane stood up. "I know you didn't just call my woman no bitch ya dumb ass hick!" He stepped quickly towards Daryl, his face a mask of furry.
Daryl met him half way and they got in each other's face. Glenn got up, stumbled towards the pair and grabbed Daryl's arm trying to pull him back weakly. Rick got behind Shane, ready to pull the man back.
"Come on guys, we're all just drunk. Don't do something you're gonna regret! We all have to leave together in a few days and we can't be doin' this," he said, his speech slurring.
Daryl shook his arm free of Glenn's hold as Shane backed off, submitting to Rick's firm pulling.
Still seated, T-Dog shook his head. "White boys," he muttered as they all plopped back in their chairs. "Y'all think about ya dick's too much as it is," he said pointed out.
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Shane asked, confused.
"Everything's a pissing contest wit' you people and it always gotta come to blows. Now, in my neighborhood, we settled shit like men…on the court."
Shane scoffed. "How many times did you get arrested anyways?"
Daryl glared at him. "The basketball court asshole," he said in a low voice.
Shane just glared back.
T-Dog was undeterred. "Street ball is a man's game boys. I was undefeated for a long time."
"You played for money?" Rick asked, trying to get things settled back down.
"When I was younger I had to so I could help my mom raise my sister. My pops died when I was ten…drunk driver," he said shaking his head at the memory.
"My mother did what she could, but she was trying to finish school and couldn't hold down jobs for very long, having to go to class and all, so I started hustlin' on the court. Told my mother I was busin' tables to help out. I brought home the grocery money and paid the light bill and we got by."
Glenn spoke of his life in Michigan before moving to Georgia.
"I waited tables before college. My parents owned a restaurant, fusion cuisine."
Daryl crinkled his brow and took a swig of beer. "The hell is that?"
Glenn finished his beer with a burp. Lightly beating his chest he answered, "When you mix different styles of cooking its called fusion. My father was an awesome chef. He trained in Korea and spent a good part of his twenties in the Caribbean, so he mixed the two."
"Korean and island food, bet he made a killing" said T-Dog.
"The restaurant was right in the heart of Lansing. The last time I talked to him, he told me he'd trained his sous chef to take over for a few weeks so my family could come see me. A few days later, the phones went." Glenn frowned, lost in thought.
Rick had been silent for a bit. Now he studied the men, all staring into the fire.
"We got ourselves quite the trip coming up. Now that we're a bit calmer, maybe we could talk about it."
"What's to talk about? We go, wet get shit, and we get back with the quickness. Easy breezy," Shane slurred.
"It occurs to me that we may not see one another as family. That some of us may not feel the others have their backs."
Shane and Daryl glanced at one another but remained silent.
Glenn cleared his throat and raised his hand. "Uh, I have a really bad idea…"
Starry eyed with admiration, the women listened as Carol finished her story. Speaking softly, she would get choked up every so often causing the youngest of them, Maggie, to sniff just a little as she was not yet used to keeping her emotions in check.
"To look at him, you just would never know Daryl Dixon would…go that deep," Lori declared.
Carol smiled faintly and glanced up at her friend. "Discovering what lurked underneath all that fodder…the wait was well worth it," was all she would say.
Silent contemplation followed, drinks were sipped and small talk ensued. Lori took the curlers out of her hair and finger combed until her brown locks cascaded over her shoulders.
"Rick's gonna love your hair darlin," Patricia said, helping with the curlers.
"I know," Lori giggled. "This is how I wore it when we first met. He couldn't stop runnin' his fingers through it."
Andrea was staring across the field towards the men's camp.
"God, that story made me so horny, I just want to run across the field and jump into Shane's lap," she said low and slurred.
The rest of the women murmured an agreement.
"Not before I give y'all my presents!" Maggie exclaimed reaching for the shoebox under her chair.
"What presents?" Carol asked.
Maggie's face grew serious. "They're leavin' the day after tomorrow," she said softly.
The women looked up and frowned.
"We're gonna be alone 'ere," she said. "Only relyin' on each other and all,"
"Dale will be here, and you're dad too," Andrea said softly trying to soothe the girl.
"I don't mean men; I mean most of our protection. Some of the strongest we have are goin' but some of the strongest are stayin'."
Maggie slowly opened the shoebox and fingered the items inside.
"When I was in high school, my dad married Annette. I was angry at him for so long, thought he was trying to forget my mom. I smoked, I drank, typical teenage stuff. One day, I came home and found her gluing little bits together. She asked me if I wanted to learn how to make pins to sell for extra money. We started talkin' and weren't quite payin' attention," Maggie said, smiling at the memory.
"When I looked up, she had glued some of the little bits to the dining room table. We had a good laugh, and after a little nail polish remover and some wood cleaner, we got them all off. We spread newspapers down after that," she said laughing a little.
The women smiled at her story.
"I started making these, and we sold them at the flea market for a few seasons. Then I went off to school and I guess Annette didn't want to do it without me. Found this box in the linen closet when you all first got here," Maggie said as she handed out the small pieces to everyone.
Carol accepted Maggie's gift with a smile, and turned towards the fire to study the object.
It was a brooch. The depiction was a mother holding a baby, reminiscent of Madonna and baby paintings. The beautiful carving was ivory colored and mounted on a gold flat oval disc. Everyone had the same one.
"Oh honey, their beautiful," Lori gushed, fastening it to her blouse.
The women followed suit, Andrea pinning hers to the collar of her jacket, while Patricia clipped hers in the middle of her shirt, drawing attention to her slight cleavage. Carol thought for a moment, and pinned it to the strap of her tank top.
Maggie stared down at the box and pulled out one more. She fastened it to her jacket.
"I'm giving these to us as a reminder," she said.
"So we could remember our girl's night?" Carol asked with a smile.
Maggie smiled back. She sighed, closed the box in her lap and gazed around at the group.
"We ain't weak. They're gonna go and we're gonna hold it down. That's what we do, that's what we're good at. We're women, we give life, and we sustain it. We're built to be strong. When they leave, we'll watch them go and it'll be sad, but then we'll get back to work."
The women were silent as Maggie spoke, grim faced but determined to grant her words justice.
"The stronger we are, the stronger they are. They CAN'T worry about us when they're gone or things will go wrong."
She paused, fingering her brooch.
"We wear these to remember all that when things get bad. And they will get bad before they get better. And we'll come back from it, we always do," she finished.
Andrea stared at Maggie as she sat back, staring into the fire. She raised her cup towards the girl in tribute.
"To holding it down," she toasted.
The rest of them raised their cups together.
"To holding it down," they said in unison.
"Don't be such a pussy. 'Sides, this was your dumbass idea to begin with," Daryl muttered grabbing Glenn's hand.
Glenn squeezed his eyes closed and yelped as the knife sliced the palm of his hand.
Shaking his head, Daryl gritted his teeth and brought his knife down, slicing open his own palm.
Wincing from the pain, Glenn and Daryl silently met eyes.
A beat…
Silent contemplation…
Glenn held his hand out first.
And so Daryl grasped it firmly with his own bloody hand; no recoil, no going back.
Earlier, in a drunken tirade of what appeared to be a last ditch effort to get the men to finally put aside any and all differences, Glenn told a story.
It seems there was a friend, Dylan, to which Glenn had become close to as a child. The two boys went everywhere together. They played on the same little league team, their families spent Christmas holidays together, backyard birthday parties, the requisite tree house, water balloon fights, basement and attic discoveries, Cowboys and Indians, even tortured insects with a magnifying glass ...inseparable they were.
And then came the rainy afternoon when Dylan and his parents weren't home. Nearly a three days passed when Glenn's parents finally began to worry along with their son. His mother thought that maybe there had been a death in the family. But Dylan only had his Grandma, and she lives across town, the child informed his mother.
Glenn followed his father to the house next door and observed the piled up newspapers and a week's worth of mail sticking out of the slot in the door. As they were clearing the mess on the porch in an attempt to be neighborly, a car pulled up in the driveway. Dylan's father got out, with the engine still running and appeared to be in a hurry. He greeted Glenn's father but was clearly distracted as he led them inside and told them what happened while running about the house gathering some things.
Dylan had taken sick quite suddenly. He'd developed a high fever and started coughing up blood in the middle of the night. He'd been in the hospital and there was a good chance he wouldn't be coming home. The doctor's said he'd lost his will to fight and wouldn't wake up. At this, Dylan's father grew weak in the knees as Glenn's father caught him in a hug and brought him to a chair. All the while, Glenn stood there listening while staring at a picture on the foyer table of the two boys holding the little league trophies they'd only gotten a few weeks before. Glenn crept away from the older men and made his way to Dylan's room. After a few minutes, he went back to the kitchen and requested to see Dylan.
At first, Dylan's father said no, but some gentle coaxing from Glenn's father and the man relented.
They drove to the hospital that afternoon. Glenn was silent the whole time. He listened as his parents spoke about how their son would handle seeing his best friend in such a state.
When he saw Dylan lying unconscious in that bed, Glenn said nothing. Instead he climbed up on the bed and lay next to him, despite the small whimper of protest from Dylan's mother. As the adults consoled one another Glenn reached into his pocket and pulled out Dylan's pocket knife. He made a small knick on each of their hands and kept them pressed together. After a long while, Dylan woke up. The first person he saw was Glenn. The boys smiled at one another and their hand pressed together tighter.
It was a number of weeks before Dylan was strong enough to go home. Glenn had been to the hospital everyday and had feigned innocence about the origins of the cuts on the boy's palms. The doctor's took all the credit of course, but Glenn and Dylan knew it wasn't medicine that brought the fight to Dylan.
It was his brother.
And it was for many years after that. Puberty, girls, the first car, the first job…all done together. They parted ways of course, as some friends do when it's time for college, but spoke regularly and always introduced one another as a brother.
"I spoke with him two days before the turn. He wanted me to come out to California and visit him when the semester was over…"
The men were silent, mulling over the story in their heads.
Surprisingly, it was Daryl who reacted first. Grabbing the boy's hand and taking the lead.
Their group had trust with no bond, and that was a problem. They survived together, worked together against a common enemy, offered protection to their loved ones, but that was it. There was no element to this small group of men that made them special, or worth risking death for one another.
And so each man took his turn, cutting his palm and locking it with all the others.
After Glenn the next to approach Daryl was Rick. It was an easy choice too, for neither man held the other in a bad regard and were only too happy to address themselves as brothers.
T-Dog stood to Daryl next. There was some hesitation on the part of the black man, silently acknowledging his bit in what happened to Daryl's actual brother.
"I'll understand if you don't…" T-Dog was cut off when Daryl extended his hand.
In the spirit of the "no questions" look on Daryl's face, T-Dog simply grasped the man's hand and held it for just a little longer than he meant to, and that was just fine.
And then it was Shane's turn.
This time, both men hesitated. Glenn, Rick and T-Dog, amidst their own ceremonies, stopped and held their breaths as the would-be rivals faced each other.
It was a battle of wills. Who would be the bigger man or who would look like an asshole? After staring each other down in silence, the three other men were relieved when both held out their hands at the same time. It was short, the handshake, but the point was made.
Blood brothers…a bond stronger than friendship; and the missing piece of a puzzle only just laid out. That night by the fire, a group of men became a family. It was understood that this too was necessary.
You see in their world, friends could just simply die.
It is a family that will fight to live.
