The woman turns out be Mason's sister Dolly, the midwife. The young man is his son Carson. While Michonne sends for Rick and takes Dolly inside, Daryl helps Carson and Mason retrieve the body. After they heft the carcass into the bed of the truck, Carson clicks the tailgate shut.
"Thanks for letting us know," Mason says.
"'Course." Daryl glances at the red-headed young man. "Get bit on the ear?" he asks, because the kid's left one appears to be missing.
"No, sir," Carson replies. "I got shot during the refugee uprising. I was lucky that's all I lost."
[*]
In the library, Dolly pulls a home doppler out of a blue duffle bag. "Have you heard the heartbeat yet?"
"No," Michonne says. She looks excitedly at Rick, who sits next to her on the couch.
Rick tells Dolly, "Elijah – he's sort of our camp's doctor – only has a stethoscope."
"It's too early to hear it with that," Dolly replies. "But would you like to try to have a listen on the doppler?"
Michonne and Rick both nod eagerly and Dolly gets the battery-operated machine set up. There's nothing but static sound for a while as Dolly moves the probe about Michonne's stomach. Then something breaks through the fuzz – a whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
Rick sniffs and a hand flies to his eyes while I smile breaks out across Michonne's face.
"170 beats per minute," Dolly reads from the screen.
Rick's hand drops from his face. "Isn't that too fast?"
"Not this early," Dolly reassures him. "It'll slow down as the pregnancy progresses." She turns off the doppler. "Now, I'm not a doctor," she clarifies. "And I'm certainly not a surgeon. I won't be able to help if you need a C-section. But I do have some basic medical training, more than your typical midwife. And I've dealt with breech births and all sorts of challenging deliveries."
[*]
Enid and Elijah, talking and laughing, walk toward the inn from the fields where they've been digging irrigation. They stop when they see the pick-up and the visitors.
"This is my boy," Mason tells them. "Carson."
Elijah and Enid introduce themselves, and Elijah keeps throwing glances at Caron's ear.
Carson points to it. "Ugly, I know."
Enid shrugs. "I once had a boyfriend who was missing an eye. That stuff doesn't bother me. We're going in for a drink of water. Want to come?"
Carson looks to his father, who nods, and then he follows the young people inside.
As they go in, Dianne, smelling of mesquite, approaches the truck. "We got the deer butchered and the meat strung up in the smokehouse," she tells Daryl. "It's curing." She nods at the kids retreating into the house. "Who's that?"
"My boy Carson," Mason tells her.
"He doesn't look a thing like you."
"He takes after his mother. His older sister Sarah took after me. But she died at the start of the Epidemic, God rest her soul."
"My daughter died toward the start also," Dianne says. "She wasn't sick, but she got bit. The first month."
"And your husband?"
"I don't know what happened to my ex-husband," she says. "He probably survived. He could always luck his way out of messes. Usually messes of his own making."
"Sounds like you got badly burned," Mason says.
"It was a long time ago. It was another world." She nods to the men and walks on.
Mason turns and watches her walk away for a moment before turning back to Daryl. Then he slides his hand into his jacket pocket and pulls out two cigarettes. "Might as well smoke while we wait."
[*]
"I need this at Dead End," Dolly says as she puts the doppler back in the bag. "Javier's niece is pregnant, as I suppose you know. He's here often enough."
Michonne nods.
"In January, you should be able to hear the heartbeat with a stethoscope," Dolly continues. "I probably won't come out here again until early April, and then we can talk about your birth plan. When you go into labor, which I'm guessing will be toward the end of May, you can reach Mason on the radio, and he'll have me here within fifteen minutes. Provided, of course, Javier's niece Martina doesn't go into labor at the same time. But she's not due until late June."
"And Amos is okay with all this?" Rick asks.
"My father doesn't know. But what he doesn't know won't hurt him."
"And what do you want in exchange?" Michonne asks.
"Just the chance to see the hope of another innocent life coming into this broken world."
[*]
"Nice kitchen," Carson says as Enid hands him a glass of water. He sits down on the bench before the table in the breakfast nook. "It's bigger than ours."
"I thought everything was bigger and better at Dead End." Enid sits down across from him and next to Elijah.
"Well, we do have an outdoor kitchen, too. And a huge dining hall. It's like one of those big wedding reception tents, with the pull-down plastic sides."
"How big is your camp?" Elijah asks him. "Javier said seven families. But how many people?"
"Why are you asking?" Carson asks suspiciously.
"Just curious," Elijah answers.
"Well it's big. Much bigger than yours. And very well-armed. And ready for anything."
"Okay, relax," Enid tells him. "We aren't planning to try to invade it."
"Sorry," Carson mutters. "It's just…we've been attacked from within."
"We were attacked from without," Enid says. "And I'm still inviting you to sit at our kitchen table."
Carson sips his water bit by bit without saying anything.
To break the awkward silence, Enid says, "So I hear you're going to be a daddy."
"What? Me? No!"
"You didn't get Javier's niece pregnant?"
"Jeez, Enid!" says Elijah, flushing and looking from her to Carson and back to her.
"What?" she asks. "It's what Javier said."
"Not that it's any of your business," Carson says, "but Martina and I didn't go that far before she jilted me for Santiago. I can't possibly be the father, whatever Javier wants to believe."
"How far did – "
"- So!" Elijah interrupts Enid. "What did you do in high school, Carson? You know, for extracurriculars?"
[*]
The smoke from Mason's cigarette curls over the top of his cowboy hat and drifts back toward the truck. "Why couldn't the baby Jesus be born in Georgia?"
"Dunno." Daryl replies "Why?"
"Because they couldn't find three wise men and a virgin."
Daryl laughs around his cigarette.
"What's the definition of safe sex down in Georgia?"
"Know this one." Daryl takes his cigarette out from between his lips. "Puttin' warnin' signs on the animals that kick."
Mason touches his nose. "What's – " He stops because his son is heading down the porch stairs and toward the truck.
"Hey, Dad," Carson says as he approaches, "Elijah used to be on a robotics team at his high school, too. Can he come over sometime and look at that thing I've been building? See if he has any ideas for a work around to the battery drain?"
"I don't think your grandfather's going to welcome that idea, son. But if you want to bring your project here the next time we come to trade, you might could do that."
"But Elijah's leaving once they finish digging the irrigation and planting the fields. He's just going to take his bus and roam."
"Well, I doubt that very much," Mason says. "Given the way he looks at Enid."
Dolly comes out onto the porch with her duffle bag.
"You ready, Sissy?" Mason calls.
"I'm ready," she replies.
[*]
The next morning, Daryl takes the tail feathers of the first turkey he managed to kill and makes a sort of fan to hide behind, so that he looks like the butt end of a bird. He waits patiently, stomach down and obscured by the tall grass, in a far field where he's seen plenty of droppings.
Eventually, the turkeys come. He does the scoot and shoot and wounds one, but the other two take off in a wild, skittish frenzy. He stands, draws his knife, and finishes off the wounded bird. "Two down," he mutters. "One to go."
[*]
Jesus and Aaron roll back home that afternoon. They've scored ten cans of possibly edible food, a flask of whiskey, and only two more gallons of gas than they left with. They do, however, have one good surprise find – four solar-powered space heaters, which will be a godsend this winter. They also find spare strings for Daryl's crossbow and about two dozen arrows in a rural house.
Daryl fixes his bow on the coffee table in the first-floor living room, while Carol knocks the last cobweb out of a corner with a broom. She's already scraped out the fireplace, and it's gently burning now.
"Someone movin' in here?" he asks.
"Probably, when it gets colder, so they can be near a fireplace. There are six bedrooms without fireplaces, and only four of those space heaters." She shoots him a teasing smile, "Someone might have to sleep in our room with us."
Daryl's glower makes her laugh. "Can have the library," he mutters.
"And Nabila's got that Merlot Suite," Carol tells him. "Ezekiel could always move in with her for the fireplace."
"Little matchmaker, ain't ya?"
"I try."
[*]
Carol awakes in the middle of the night to Daryl's cursing and scratching.
"What's wrong?" she mutters.
"Goddamn fuckin' chiggers! Thought it was too damn late in the year for 'em." He's sitting up in bed. He cranes his neck all around and scratches and scratches. "What I get for lyin' in the grass."
She sighs. "I know we cleared some hydrocortisone out of that pharmacy aisle at the general store. I'll go get it."
Later, when she's sitting cross-legged behind him on the bed and rubbing the cream on all the bites on the back of his neck, he mutters, "Guess this is the worse of the for better or worse part, huh?"
Her fingers still on his neck as the implications of his words sink in. "You…do you think of us as married?"
He turns on the bed, until he's almost facing her, with one leg drawn up. His teeth find a hangnail on his thumb. "Ya don't?"
"I…" She blinks.
"Mean…" His thumb falls to the bed. "Ya told Mason we ain't officially married. So don't that mean we's unofficially married?"
Carol thinks maybe her heart stops beating for the tiniest of moments. She swallows the insane mixture of emotions that are spilling up into her throat and mind, but they come out in a little hiccup. "Yes," she says. "Yes. We're unofficially married."
He nods, like that's all he needs to know, and then he turns back around again. "Get the ones on my shoulders, too. Itch like hell."
[*]
The sun rises on a chilly, November morning at Hillcrest Vineyards. The irrigation is dug, and planting has begun in the fields. Most of that small deer is devoured, except what they'll be eating tonight for dinner, and three turkeys now hang in the smokehouse, awaiting trade.
"Your people will finish planting the fields tomorrow," Elijah tells Enid as they sit under the gazebo, watching the leaves float down from the trees and blanket the earth in a quilt of yellow, gold, and red.
"And that means you're leaving?" she asks.
"Well…I've been thinking. What if Michonne needs a C-section? And she loses too much blood during surgery? She'll need me to help with the blood transfusion. She'll need the things in my bus. I guess I should probably stay until May. Until she has the baby. You know…in case I'm needed."
"You are needed, Elijah." Enid leans over and kisses his cheek. When he turns toward her in surprise, she kisses his lips, too.
[*]
"Hell ya lookin' at?" Daryl asks as he swings his crossbow on his back.
Carol is standing by the bedroom window, a white terry cloth bathrobe tied over her naked form. They rose with the sun this morning, but then they made love lazily beneath the thick quilt, and Daryl has just finished dressing.
"Enid just kissed Elijah."
"Well don't go creepin' on 'em."
Carol draws the curtains closed. "I'm not creeping on them. But Enid doesn't have a mother. Someone's going to have to look out for her."
"How come ya ain't worried 'bout lookin' out for Elijah? She's the one kissed him, ain't she?"
"Fair point." She walks over to her dresser and opens it and starts drawing out clothes. "Like you don't have double standards."
"Yeah, but mine make more sense."
Carol laughs.
[*]
The Dead Enders arrive in the late afternoon, perhaps because they know they'll be invited to stay for dinner if they do. Carson is riding in the bed of Javier's big black pick-up, and he vaults himself out when it jerks to a stop before he porch. Javier and Mason exit the cab.
Elijah clamors down the stairs as Carson throws down the tailgate. The two young men slide out a huge cardboard box with some kind of machine on conveyer-belt-style wheels inside of it. Each holding one end of the box, they carry it together around the back of the inn.
"What in the hell is that?" Rosita asks.
"Carson's latest toy," Javier tells her.
"It's a solar-powered, battery backed-up, precision robot seeder," Mason elaborates.
Rosita rolls her eyes toward him. "Can you say that in English?"
"When he gets it to work more efficiently," Mason explains, "It'll roll across the fields and detect the best location for planting seeds and insert the seeds at the proper depth."
"What do you have for us?" Rick calls as he walks toward the pick-up. He comes to a stop by the lowered tailgate.
"A portable electric pump for cleaning out your septic tank," Mason says. "Yours to keep. This is our backup. My father wanted to hold onto it in case ours breaks, but I trust my brother Garrett's ability to fix anything. So now it's yours. "
Javier pulls out a portable power pack. "We also recharged this for you from our solar bay, so you can run the pump a few times."
"And there's the gourds," Mason says, jerking his thumb toward the pick-up.
Rick peers into the bed, which now contains only three small colorful gourds.
"This is all very useful," Rick says. "Sanitation is essential, but…uh…we were expecting a bit more. More food especially." He looks at Rosita.
Rosita peers at Javier. "I thought you were going to lend us your pump regularly as part of our past deal." She didn't think the old sweet deals were off the table, too.
"Yes, but now you own one," Javier says. "So even when we can't get here, because of snow or what – "
"- We need food," Rosita interrupts. "Three turkeys? That's almost thirty pounds of meat. We might as well keep them."
Javier laughs. "That's not all, hermosa." He walks to the door of the extended cab and pulls it open.
The seats and floor are completely covered. There's a large crate full of cabbage, carrots, broccoli, and turnips. Next to that is a burlap sack. "Sweet potatoes," Javier says. Then there's a bushel full of apples. A cardboard box holds two bunches of grapes, two bags of peanuts, and "three dozen fresh eggs," Javier tells her.
On the floor sit two large red coolers. "Three gallons of milk," Javier explains. "Four pounds of cheese, five pounds of butter, four pounds of bacon, eight pounds of mutton, and a twelve-pound ham."
Rick laughs. "Now you're talking." He whistles over some others to help unload.
When the truck is empty, and Mason is following Rick inside the inn, Javier clicks shut the tailgate. Rosita says, "I thought I wasn't getting anymore sweet deals from you?" The content of the coolers alone probably would have been worth the trade.
Javier shrugs. "What can I say? Our people really want turkey for Thanksgiving. And also…maybe I missed you."
"So you're saying you're horny?"
"It's been days and days, hermosa."
Rosita seizes his hand and tugs him toward the inn.