On Wednesday, Daryl helps two of the hunters – Barry and Steve - pluck and clean the ducks they shot in the wee hours of the morning, while he was still sleeping with Carol in his arms. They do the work at the butcher's table in the settlement, and Daryl listens to their banter. They talk about hunting, about their weekend plans, and about Barry's teenage daughter's boyfriend. "I always make sure I'm cleaning my guns when he comes to pick her up for their dates," Barry says.
Daryl smirks to himself and thinks that's what he'd do, if he had a teenage daughter.
"Where does he take her?" Steve asks.
"Picnics," Barry says. "Rowing on the river. The movies."
"Movies?" Daryl grunts.
"They show them in the theater in the museum on Saturdays and Sundays at noon and seven," Steve answers. "You have to sign up ahead of time if you want to go. Limited seating. A ticket costs an ounce of tobacco, an ounce of moonshine, or a can of soup. What are they showing this weekend?"
"The Little Mermaid in the morning and Ghost in the evening," Barry answers.
"Seriously?" Steve asks. "Just a kids' movie and a chick flick? Nothing for the men?"
"Well, I wouldn't say that. Pretty sure my wife's going to be horny after seeing Patrick Swayze shirtless in that pottery scene."
Daryl has no idea what they're talking about. He's never seen a chick flick in his life, and the only thing he knows Patrick Swayze from is Red Dawn, which he saw in his early teens, after sneaking into the movie theater through the exit door his cousin, an usher there, left propped open for him. For the next month, he fantasized about resisting an occupation with guerilla warfare and all the girls who would finally fall all over him when he did.
Hank, from the sheriff's posse, the one who signaled with the flag, walks by the table where they're plucking. A rifle dangles from his shoulder. "Good job, boys!" he says.
"You going to that party in the Indian Village Friday night?" Steve asks him.
"No can do," Hank replies. "I volunteered for night patrol by the docks."
"Now why would you volunteer for night patrol on party night?" Steve asks him.
"Because there's gonna be an officers' poker game onboard the Godspeed. Which means they're gonna have a couple topless ladies up there on deck serving drinks. Well within my purview."
"That's not how you use that word," Barry says, and Steve chuckles.
Hank walks on. Daryl's on his last duck when Garland comes to get him, saying, "I need your help with something."
They end up fixing a few broken slats in the settlement fence together. With a nail dangling from his mouth, Daryl asks, "How'd the sheriff get stuck doin' this?"
"Wednesday's technically my day off, unless there's an emergency, but I'm working for my orphan's rations. Next we shovel shit."
"Hope that's a metaphor," Daryl replies after he pounds in another nail.
It's not.
When they're mucking out the stables together, Garland asks, "What did you do? In the old world?"
It doesn't bother Daryl anymore, that question. It doesn't make him feel ashamed. He knows status is determined differently now, that the question is an idle one, and the answer will have no effect whatsoever on his ranking in this world. "Same sort of shit 'm doin' here. Odd jobs. Just gettin' by."
"Before I was a cop, and then a homicide detective, I used to do roofing. In the summer. In Virginia. In the afternoon."
Daryl chuffs. "That must of sucked worse than shovelin' shit."
"What's the worse job you ever had?"
"Once, m'brother, Merle, got us this two-day job, cleanin' out some hoarder's house." Daryl dumps a shovel of horseshit in the fertilizer pile and then follows Garland back into the stable for more. "I thought we grew up in a trash pile, but this place…damn. Floor-to-ceiling newspapers and magazines, wall-to-wall soda cans and bottles, an entire clothes closet where this old lady'd been storing her Depends for months."
"The adults diapers?" Garland asks.
"Yeah. Her used Depends."
"Jesus. Did you wear hazmat suits?"
"Should of. Just wore gloves 'n paper masks. We found three dead kittens, too."
"Afternoon, sheriff," says a curly haired woman who strolls inside holding a brown leather doctor's bag and wearing knee-high boots.
"Afternoon, Carolyn. Carolyn, this is Daryl. Daryl, this is our veterinarian."
Daryl nods a greeting.
"Dead kittens?" she asks. "In one of the barns?"
"Ah, nah. 'S long time ago. Just tellin' a story."
"Oh, good," she sighs. "I was afraid Sphinix's new litter had gotten sick. Are you the one the convict stabbed?"
"Nah," Daryl replies. "He stabbed m'…m' fiancé." Because that's what Carol is. His fiancé. She's going to be his wife. He's going to be a married man. The idea still stuns him a little every time he's reminded of it.
"Ah. Details often get lost in the grapevine." Carolyn sets her bag down and pulls out a stethoscope.
They finish shoveling the shit and then go to split wood. "Were you married in the old world?" Garland asks as they work.
Daryl's surprised by the question. Does he seem like the marrying kind? Of course, Garland knows he is getting married. So maybe he does. "Nah. 'S just me 'n my brother."
"I had a little sister. I got her out of Richmond when it was overrun by cannibals. We settled for a few months in a camp with about twenty other people. A buddy and I went out scavenging one day, came back three days later, and found the whole place transformed. No idea what happened. I had to put my own sister down." Wood cracks beneath Garland's axe.
"Had to put m'brother down, too," Daryl tells him, and brings the axe down hard on the wood. It splinters in two. He hasn't mentioned that in years. It's a strange relief, to be able to just say it right out like that.
"I suppose we should talk of more cheerful things. When's the wedding?"
"Few weeks after we get back." They should reach the Kingdom by the end of April, and the fair is at the end of May. Daryl supposes he'll see Carol safely to the Kingdom and then return to the Hilltop to hunt as much as he can for three weeks and fill the smokehouse as a parting gift. Then he'll take Dog and what few possessions he has and move to his new world. They'll be married at the fair, and he'll start building that cabin. It should be finished by August. The sense of purpose this thought gives him is foreign, but strangely exhilarating at the same time. He's going to be a husband, Daryl realizes once again.
Daryl Dixon. A married man.
Merle would laugh his ass off.
[*]
That evening, they have duck for dinner, which is a welcome change from the usual fish. In the evening, after Grandma and Gary have gone to bed, he sits in the arm chair, listening to Carol and Shannon and Garland talk and sometimes making a gruff comment or two himself. He's grown to like Garland and thinks he might actually miss having the man around when they're gone.
That night, Daryl makes out with Carol in bed, but it doesn't go very far. She's worn out from all the sewing she did for the orphans today, more than she should have, no doubt, and so she's taken that pain pill she swore she wouldn't, and she fades to sleep mid-kiss.
Daryl sighs, kisses her forehead, and turns off the oil lamp. "Settle down," he orders his hard-on, and, eventually, it does.
[*]
On Thursday, Carol volunteers to help Shannon in the gardens. "Oh, no, not with those stitches still in," Shannon tells her. "Weeding and digging and planting…it's exhausting. Not to mention all the movement."
"I'm bored. Can't I at least water with a watering can or something?"
"Well, I could work in the greenhouse today. You could sprinkle a little fertilizer. I'll get you some garden gloves."
Shannon leads her to a part of the settlement she hasn't seen, beyond the triangular fence. "Hello, Rodrigo!" Shannon calls and waves to a man with salt-and-pepper hair who is standing by the pig pen and taking notes on a clipboard while talking to another man who is throwing slop.
He turns around and Carol sees by the crow's feet around his eyes that he's probably close to seventy. "Morning, Shannon," he replies and goes back to his notes.
"That's the manager," Shannon whispers. "My mama's new beau."
Once in the greenhouse, they chat while they work. Shannon asks, "So when's the wedding?"
"In May. During our spring fair."
"So I take it you two have sealed the deal?"
"Yes, we're officially engaged," Carol answers as she pushes the fertilizer into the soil.
"No, I mean… I presume you've started doing a bit of the crumpet."
Carol laughs. "A bit of the what?"
"A bit of How's Your Father? Boppin' squiddles. Dancing in the sheets." Carol forgot she told Shannon they hadn't had sex yet, but she laughs more with each euphemism. "A little churning butter. A little bedroom rodeo. Dipping the wick. Dancing the forbidden polka."
Carol puts a hand on her side.
"Oh, sorry!" Shannon apologizes. "I forgot laughing hard can cause an ache."
Carol regains control of herself. "It's okay. I have to be able to laugh."
"So?"
"Not yet," Carol says, sprinkling a little fertilizer in another pot. "Not while we're guests."
"Oh, honey, what do you think I made sure you had a bedroom for?"
"I just want it to happen on the road. The two of us, solo travelers. All the time in the world. And I want the stitches out so we can…you know…really knock those boots clean."
Shannon laughs.
[*]
Daryl looks physically exhausted when he comes in the cabin that evening, and his hair is wet. When he leans in to kiss Carol, he smells of baby shampoo.
"Did you take a shower?" Carol asks.
"Yeah. Dug irrigation all damn day in what must've been the hottest damn spot in the camp. Garland said I could have one. Down at the museum." He nods to Shannon, who is busy in the kitchen. "Also said he ain't gonna be home for super. Got a business meeting with the manager."
"Well that explains why you're home, Mama," Shannon says. "Instead of agreeing on stuff with the manager."
Grandma Bonnie appears befuddled by the remark but Carol hides a snort behind her hand.
After dinner, when Grandma and Gary are in bed, and Daryl, Carol, and Shannon are enjoying tea in the living room, Daryl asks, "'S yer day?"
Carol smiles. Maybe by the time they leave Jamestown Garland will have trained him in all sort of little nuptial niceties. "Shannon and I did a little gardening. I nearly popped a stitch laughing."
Shannon says, "You look tired Daryl, sugar. You and Carol should go right to bed when you finish that tea." She gives Carol a little wink.
But when they do get to bed, and Carol slides up to him, lying on her uninjured side, and presses her lips tenderly to his forehead, Daryl's already half asleep. When she kisses his nose, he's three-quarters of the way there, and when she kisses his lips, he's all the way out.
[*]
On Friday, Daryl helps prepare a deer hide for tanning and gets to know two more hunters. He delivers firewood to the Indian Village, and patches a hole in the roof of one of the huts.
In the evening, he's plopped in the arm chair, silently watching Carol as she sits in the rocking chair and hems a pair of pants for one of the orphans. He thinks she's beautiful when she's concentrating on her sewing. There's a calm look in her eyes, and sometimes she sticks her tongue out ever-so-slightly when she's trying to get the stitch just right. He wants to suck that tongue.
She looks up at him and smiles. "Penny for your thoughts?" she asks.
"Ain't got no thoughts."
Garland tucks in Gary while Shannon puts away the washed and dried dinner dishes in the hutch.
"I think I'm going to bed, too," Shannon's mother Bonnie says as she folds the drying towel and sets it on the counter. "It's been a long day."
"What, no hot date tonight with the manager tonight, Mama?" Shannon asks.
"He has that poker game." She disappears into the room she shares with the little boy. Garland comes out and shuts the door behind him.
"Mama just reminded me, Garland," Shannon says, "you've got that poker game tonight."
"I don't want to go to that damn game," he mutters.
"All the movers and shakers will be there, baby. Movers and shakers. You really need to put in an appearance. Pretend to relate to the hoi poi. I told you what Harold said."
Garland sighs. "Those games are so vulgar."
"Well, sometimes you have to be a politician, Garland, whether you want to be or not." She draws out a bottle of wine and puts in on the table in the kitchen nook.
"Why are you taking out the wine?"
"Because if you get to go to a poker game and look at half naked women, then I get to split this bottle of wine and play cards with Daryl and Carol."
Carol looks up from her sewing and catches Daryl's eye. "Half naked women?" she asks. Daryl looks down at the dirt beneath his fingernails.
"A couple of the prostitutes are going to be serving drinks topless," Shannon explains. "No touching allowed though. At least not for Garland. But if he gets to see them, I get wine."
"Gets to see them?" Garland exclaims. "You're the one who's making me go! And that wine was supposed to be for a special occasion."
"Having guests is a special occasion. And if you recall, it's actually their wine. You'll get your share of moonshine and Jamestown brew at the game, I'm sure." She sashays up to him, kisses his frowning lips, and says, "Have fun, baby."
Garland sighs loudly, plucks his white Stetson from the hook on the door, and sets it on his head. "You're to blame if I come home horny."
"Just bring it home to me, baby. Always to me."
"Only you," he agrees and kisses her cheek before heading out the door.
"Poker or rummy, kids?" Shannon asks as she pops the cork from the wine bottle.
"I ain't playin'," Daryl mutters. "Got a knife needs sharpenin'." Really, he just doesn't want to have to socialize, and Shannon asks a lot of questions.
"Spoil sport," Carol tells him, and puts down her sewing to walk over to the kitchen nook. She pauses to kiss Daryl on the top of his head. "I'm game for anything," she tells Shannon as she sits down at the table. "Especially the wine. Deal me in."