To give everyone energy for the continued digging of the irrigation, Carol uses half of the two pounds of bacon, ten of the eggs, and three of the radishes they got from Dead End to make a scramble for breakfast. Even with the vegetable padding, it spreads thin over so many people, so she serves roasted pumpkin seeds on the side.
"What did you do with the pumpkin guts?" Jerry asks.
"I pureed and jarred them," Carol says. "So we can have pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving."
"Hell yeah!" Henry pumps his fist.
"Been spending time with Daryl, I see," Carol says with a smile.
[*].
Michonne and Maggie are doing inventory in the kitchen while also trying to keep an eye on the kids. H.G. sleeps in his sling across Maggie's chest, but the little girls are getting into things.
"For meat," Maggie says, "We have some canned tuna and Spam and a little canned chicken. But all that will only last two weeks, and that's at only five ounces of meat a day per person."
"Daryl's tracking a deer," Michonne says. "He says when he gets it, the meat should last us five or six days at six ounces each."
Henry hobbles over on his crutches and blocks a crawling Gracie from going out the kitchen doorway to the dining room.
"When the fields are done," Maggie says. "Dianne and Jerry can also hunt. Carol can trap. And we can preserve more meat in the smokehouse for the winter."
Judith drags Gracie back to where they were drumming on pots and pans and hands her a wooden spoon.
Maggie flips back to her notes. "In terms of the canned and boxed food that was scavenged, we have enough to last until mid-January, but that's when it gets dicey."
Michonne talks over the drumming: "And Nabila says most of the spring crop won't come in until April. We'll probably have some spinach from the greenhouse at that point, and maybe some broad beans in March, but that's it."
"The Council needs to send Jesus scavenging again," Maggie insists, "for things to trade to Dead End. And if we can get three wild turkeys, they said they'll give us fresh produce for that."
"Someone say turkey?" comes Daryl's gruff voice from the back door of the kitchen.
Judith instantly stops drumming. She stands and shouts "Bawk! Bawk! Bawk!" as she toddle-runs over to Daryl, who is holding a wild turkey upside down from its feet.
"Gobble, gobble!" Daryl corrects her.
"Din Din," Judith says.
Daryl shakes her head. "Not our din din, Gonna smoke it. Gonna be Dead End's din din. And we're gonna get lots more fresh veggies."
"No!" Judith stomps her foot.
"Need yer veggies."
She crosses her arms over her chest and pouts.
"And pumpkin pie," he reminds her, and that brings a smile to her face.
[*]
Rosita is in the rear watch stand and also on "communications duty" when the Dead End radio crackles. "Come in. Come in. This is Javier Santos."
"Hola," Rosita replies and releases the button.
"Ah, I wasn't expecting to get you right away, hermosa. Have you been standing by the radio waiting for me to call?"
She raises the radio to her mouth like she's jerking a barbell. "No. Of course not. I just have it on me at the moment. Lucky you." She scans left and then right. "So what do you want?"
"What do I want?" he asks.
She turns to the back of the stand. "Why are you radioing?"
"Uh….To check in? Like you wanted me to do."
Rosita turns to the front. "Oh yeah."
"So…" His voice grows lower. "What are you wearing?"
Rosita rolls her eyes. "Sunglasses, my cap, fingerless gloves, and an M16. Because I'm on watch."
"And nothing else?"
"That would be chilly."
Javier chuckles. "How are you?"
"We're making progress on the irrigation. You?"
"The men are harvesting, the women are canning and jarring, and the kids are pretending to help with both. And the old ones are lecturing us all on how we're doing it wrong."
Rosita chuckles. "And how's your niece? Maria was it?"
"Martina. As stubborn as ever. She won't listen to me about trying to make it up with Mason's son Carson. She thinks she's in love with Santiago."
"And you don't like Santiago?"
"He's got nothing at all going on upstairs. He can pick things out of the ground, but he can't build or plan worth shit. He can't think past today."
"Well then he must have other talents," Rosita quips.
"I don't want to think about his other talents, por favor. Listen, I have to get back to work. Just wanted to check in."
"Wait," she says. "Daryl caught a turkey today. When he gets two more, will you come to trade? Dead End wanted three for Thanksgiving, right?"
"I'll come to trade. And uh…have some fun, no?"
Rosita smiles. "Maybe."
[*]
For dinner, Carol makes a fresh butternut squash casserole with bits of bacon and a baked radish and goat cheese dish on the side. She's using up everything fresh from Dead End first, and then she'll hit the canned goods when that runs out.
"What's for dessert?" Henry asks.
"Baked apples again," Carol tells him. "And then we'll have fresh apple slices with our oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow, and then that entire bushel's already gone. The bacon's gone, and so is the squash. And half the milk." They gave Judith and Henry a full two cups each of that, because they haven't had any since the Hilltop. Gracie still gets two servings of milk a day from Nabila. "Half the cheese. A third of the butter. I'm making a broccoli, cabbage, and carrot salad for dinner tomorrow, and then most of that will be gone, too."
"It all seemed like a lot more at the time," Rosita says.
"It was a lot," Maggie tells her, "for just a case of beer. But there's nineteen of us, not counting H.G. We could be in for a rough winter."
[*]
Another day passes, and Daryl thinks he now knows where to find that deer he's been tracking. Unfortunately, his crossbow is currently in need of replacement strings, which Jesus and Aaron swear they'll find on the supply run they left for an hour ago.
In the meantime, he'll have to rely on a rifle. From their inventory, he selects the Remington 700 long-range, and now he's got it disassembled on the picnic table for a much-needed cleaning.
Henry rests his crutches against the table, sits down on the bench, and snaps up his fall jacket. "Don't you ever get cold?" he asks.
"Got my jacket on."
"It's sleeveless." Henry says.
"Got a long-sleeve shirt on under it."
"What's winter going to be like, if this is November?"
"Be fine," Daryl insists.
"Do you think Enid's too old for me?" Henry asks.
Daryl slides a cleaning rod down his disassembled barrel. "Too old how?"
"To be my girlfriend."
Daryl rips the rod out of his barrel, takes off the cleaning cloth, and sets both down on the table. "Kid, she's five years older 'n ya."
"Isn't Carol five years older than you?"
"That don't make a difference when yer forty. Makes a hell of a difference when yer barely twelve."
"Yeah," Henry says despondently. "That's what I thought. But how about when I'm thirty?"
"Won't matter when yer thirty."
"Twenty?"
"Won't matter when yer twenty."
"But by the time I'm twenty," Henry says, "I guess she'll probably be Elijah's girlfriend. Won't she?"
"Dunno," Daryl says. "Worry 'bout it when yer twenty."
[*]
Daryl doesn't get the deer – not quite yet – so Carol adds canned chicken to their cabbage, carrot, and broccoli salad.
Rosita asks Daryl why he doesn't concentrate on hunting turkey first. "We need to trade."
"Somebody needs something anyway," Tara says, and Jerry belly-laughs.
Rosita glares at Tara over her water glass.
"What?" Tara asks. "Why can't Javier just come over without an excuse?"
"For one, he's working all the time managing the harvest," Rosita says. "And for another, they're rationing gas now. For the farm equipment. So they're only leaving the vineyard if there's a really good reason to. And Amos doesn't think getting laid is a good enough reason."
"What's getting laid?" Henry asks.
"The world sure is different without television," Rick says. "I think Carl knew what that meant when he was eight."
"Sounds like Dead End would trade for gas," Maggie notes.
"Got the thirty gallons," Daryl says. "In them cans."
"But that's all we've got," Carol reminds him. "And Jesus and Aaron took five for the road, just in case. I don't think we should part with any more until we have at least fifty. Let's hope they find some."
[*]
The next morning, Daryl settles in at spot where, based on the tracks, he suspects the deer come to drink from the stream in the afternoon. He's on his stomach, buried beneath a pile of cold, damp leaves for two hours before three does finally show up.
He closes one eye until the largest deer is in his sights. Slowly, steadily, he squeezes the trigger. The blast echoes across the mountains. He has to shoot again before he brings the doe down, and by then one of the other two deer is completely out of sight. The third, and smallest, is disappearing through the half bare trees, but he manages to wound it. It keeps going.
The leaves rasp and flutter off Daryl as he scrambles to his feet. He tears off running after the second deer, his boots crunching over twigs and fallen leaves. He runs zig-zagging through the trees until he sees an open shot, and then he stops, aims, and brings the animal down.
He field dresses the deer on the spot, slings the carcass over his shoulders, and returns to the first fallen deer, only to find it being feasted upon by a walker, which stops, looks up at him, gnashes its jaws, and rises from its knees.
Daryl steps back to get some distance from it, drops the deer from his shoulders, and draws his knife just as the walker falls upon him, teeth gnashing.
Daryl's knife slides into and out of dead flesh with one quick thrust-and-pull, and the walker slumps to the forest floor.
"Mangy cur!" Daryl curses and spits on the dead walker. "That was my deer!" Now he's left with only the smaller kill.
He crouches down to rifle through the walker's pockets and finds a pamphlet from the Bed and Breakfast with a handwritten phone number on the top and the note Call me sometime. He also finds a pamphlet for Dead End Winery. Family owned and operated, the pamphlet boasts, for eighty years. That also has a phone number written on it, along with a woman's name.
"Looks like ya gotta 'round," Daryl says. "Bet ya got condoms." He pulls out the walker's wallet, and, sure enough, he finds two condom packets. He also finds about $600 in $50 bills and a driver's license that reads Cooper Weatherford. "Well shit," he says looking at the fallen walker. "You're one of theirs."
[*]
Daryl leaves the deer with Jerry and Dianne, who will butcher it and hang it in the smokehouse, and then he goes and gives the now bloody driver's license to Rosita. "Better tell Javier."
She gets on the radio and lets Javier know what they've found. "That's one of Amos's sons," he replies. "Mason's youngest brother."
"Do you want to come fetch the body for burial?" Rosita asks.
"I'm sure the Weatherfords will want to, but I feel bad for the widow."
"She's still with you?"
"Sí. And the family already had a funeral for him at the start. They assumed he was dead. She doesn't need to go through it twice."
"Well, maybe this will give her some closure," Rosita says.
"Also…uh…she doesn't know Cooper was staying at that B&B when the Epidemic started. She thought he was on a hunting trip in West Virginia with his buddies."
"I see," Rosita says. "I hope the whore turned in the night and bit his dick off in his sleep."
"Ouch. He wasn't your husband."
"So are you coming?" she asks.
"They aren't going to send me to fetch the body. I'm not blood. And even if they did, it would probably be in poor taste to use the opportunity to…uh…"
"Fuck?"
"Sí. But I'll drive over there as soon as we have a good reason to trade. Did Daryl get three turkeys yet?"
Rosita sighs. "No. We still only have one. He got a damn deer today instead."
"Never heard anyone complain about a deer before," Javier says. "I think maybe you miss me, hermosa."
[*]
Carol is on the lower watch, studying the scene with a pair of binoculars, when an unfamiliar, 1950s, bright red pick-up pulls to a stop at the stop sign. Mason is driving, but there's a young man wedged in between him and a woman on the passenger's side.
All three slide out of the truck. The woman wears a hand-knit sweater and an ankle-length denim skirt beneath which peak out a pair of brown boots. Her long white hair might make her look sixty if her face didn't make her look thirty-five. Carol guesses she's somewhere in the middle. Her silver-blue eyes search the gate.
The young man must be about nineteen or twenty. He's a freckled, red head with eyes that are more green than blue. Nothing but a fleshy scar remains where his left ear must have once been.
"Hello?" Mason calls, because it's hard to see the stand through the small grove of trees where they've buried it, or at least it will be until all the leaves drop.
Carol climbs down, weaves the short distance out of the grove of trees, across a short bit of grassy field, and then to the dirt road. She swings opens the gate.
"Howdy, Carol," Mason says without his usual cheer. "We've come to collect our kin."