Dante and some laborers are returning from an outside forest with a horse and cart full of freshly cut lumber when Mitch and Daryl get back from the hunt. The men help them stack the lumber to the side of the museum for drying and then toss the deer on the cart to be taken to the butcher. Mitch goes up with it, but Daryl and Dante linger behind.
"Whatcya buildin'?" Daryl asks as they walk toward the museum to wash up in the men's employee locker room.
"A cabin," Dante days. "That hut's tiny. By the time the baby's walking…Inola says she's going to want a bigger place. The Council is comping me some of the materials and hours because that will free up the hut for future housing."
"Lucky you. I had to use m'own tobacco to buy labor from some asshole to build mine."
Dante grins. "You just didn't bother to make a reasonable application. Who knows what they might have given you."
"How's Inola?" Daryl's learned to make small talk. It took him an apocalypse and almost ten years, but he can do it now. Besides, he likes Inola and legitimately wants to know.
"Ready for it to come out. Waking up in the middle of the night with Charlie horses, keeping me up walking them off. You don't know what that part's like."
"Yeah, well, know the baby'll keep ya up more." Daryl pushes open the door of the men's employee locker room and goes to the third of the three sinks to begin scrubbing the dirt and blood from his hands. Dante leaves a sink between them as he washes up.
A sign on the doors to the toilets says – Water restrictions in effect until August by order of the Council. If it's yellow, let it mellow.
"I wonder which of our wives came up with that little ditty," Dante says. He slaps the faucet off. "Better hurry up."
Daryl does, cleaning his flesh as fast as he can under the warm, running stream. He wonders if Carol crafted that sign and how long they had to spend debating the water restrictions. He's glad leadership hasn't fallen on his shoulders here in Jamestown. He did his part in the past, and it would be a lie to say he didn't enjoy the respect, but he never really wanted the burden of making people's decisions for them. It was one thing in a time of war and day-to-day survival, but he couldn't stand doing it in so ordered and settled a world, with so many rules and procedures for how decisions get made, and so many rules to make.
He sat across a council table from Carol in the prison, but that was a different time and a different place. He doesn't want to sit across the table from her here. He loves the freedom of the hunt, where he's the only one making the rules, and the only table he wants to share with her these days is the dinner table, eating her delicious cooking and listening to the soothing, happy chatter of their child.
Daryl slaps off the faucet, shakes the excess water off his hands, and then dries them by running them through his hair.
"They've got towels," Dante tells him as he dries his hands on one hanging from a ring.
They part ways when they exit the bathrooms, Dante down the hall toward a back door and Daryl down the hall past the infirmary toward the daycare. When he sees Raul and Enid inside the clinic, working on blending herbs into medicines, he stops to say hello. "Stayin' awhile?" he asks Enid.
"Yeah, I'm not going back with the mail boat tomorrow," Enid replies. "I'm staying until the next one. Jesus and Aaron are on top of things back home, and my apprentice is really stepping up."
"Good to see ya. How's Hershel?"
"Still growing like a weed," Enid tells him. "He starts at the lower school next month."
They talk a bit longer, and then Daryl heads on toward the daycare. He's walking down the hall when he hears a familiar voice behind him: "Up to no good?"
He turns an smirks at Carol. "Gonna arrest me, deputy?"
"I suppose not. I'm off duty in five minutes. I packed a lunch for Sweetheart. Want to leave her a little longer and take your wife out to lunch at the tavern?"
Daryl snakes an arm around her and pulls her close. "S'pose I could take m'girl out to lunch." He nuzzles her neck and kisses that especially sensitive spot that curves into her shoulder.
She pulls away, chuckling. "We better hurry if we want to get there before the mid-day closing. It takes a while to walk that far, and I know you aren't getting on a bicycle."
"Got m' real bike out back of the museum. Wanna ride?"
Carol does want a ride, and she wraps her arms tightly around him as the motorcyle roars down the docks and kicks up dirt on the path that winds its way to the Village.
[*]
Eugene is just leaving when they arrive. "See you back at dinner time, honey!" Candy calls after him.
Eugene pauses before the saloon doors, which are still swaying from Carol and Daryl's entrance, and says to Candy, "I see you have assessed the data and extrapolated a pattern of behavior."
"I don't know what that means, sweetheart, but I know when a man's become a regular. It's too bad you're leaving tomorrow."
Eugene seems pleased by that statement and nods a greeting to Carol and Daryl. "The soup today is, for lack of a more accurate descriptor, hunky dory."
"Good," Daryl grunts.
"Is your couch available for the proverbial surfing again tonight?"
"You're welcome to sleep on our couch," Carol tells him.
"I'll be out of your hair for dinner though," Eugene assures them. "Candy is correct in her assessment with regard to my culinary plans. I did happen to stumble upon a small cache of ammunition and I would be remiss not to put it to good use while I'm here. I'd stay and partake of an adult beverage with you two if I did not have a meeting with your electrician at 1400 hours."
Daryl's already left before Eugene's quite finished speaking, and he slides onto a stool at the bar. Carol, detained a little longer, soon joins him.
"Your friend talks funny," Candy tells them as she rests on her crutches and Trisha dries out a pint glass.
"He does have a unique way with words," Carol agrees.
"He's a peculiar bird," Candy says. "But he sure does like it here. I think he's spent over ten hours here since that speedboat docked."
"He likes the captive audience," Trisha suggests.
Soon, Daryl and Carol have bowls of soup and pint glasses before them.
"Hey, handsome!" Candy calls as Daryl picks up his spoon.
Carol turns slightly to see Thomas entering the tavern. He takes a seat two stools away from Carol, as though not wanting to impose by sitting too closely. "Just a beer please. I ate already."
Candy, resting her weight on her good ankle, pours him one. "No lunch with Laura today?" she asks as she slides the pint glass across the bar. There's a hint of woundedness in her voice.
"I couldn't possibly afford to take her out every day."
"Well, she could take you out, you know," Candy tells him. "She earns tobacco rations, too."
"It's not like she's my girlfriend."
"But you want her to be, don't you?" Candy asks.
"She's been through a lot" is all Thomas will reply.
"Haven't we all," Candy says with a sigh.
Trisha shoots Candy a sympathetic glance and then goes to serve a couple by the fire.
"No Eugene?" Thomas asks. "I thought he'd be here every open hour until he headed back."
"He had a meeting," Candy says.
"I never thought about what it must be like to be a bartender," Thomas muses. "You have no choice but to talk to people."
"It's not so bad, talking to him."
"Ya mean listenin' to 'em talk?" Daryl asks.
Candy chuckles. "I don't mind. I feel bad for him. He seems lonely. I think he's a virgin." She looks at Carol, as if for confirmation, but Carol says nothing. Daryl busies himself with his soup.
"I can't imagine how he wouldn't be," Thomas replies.
"Oh, now don't be mean!" Candy scolds.
"You're the one who said it!"
"Well it just seems like he probably is," Candy replies. "I'm thinking of offering to pop his cherry for him."
Daryl chokes on his soup, coughs, and works it down after thumping his chest with a balled up fist. Carol looks at him with a faintly amused smile.
"You said you were done with that!" Thomas cries with alarm. "I really though you meant it."
Trisha has returned now and dips an empty pint glass in a tub of soapy water. "You did promise you were done. How can you not be, after what you went through? Didn't you mean it?"
"I did mean it," Candy insists. "I'm not talking about turning a trick. I'm talking about a freebie."
"A pity fuck?" Trisha asks. Then she flushes as though remembering other people are at the bar. "Excuse my French."
"Well I probably don't have to worry about STDs," Candy says. "And it's not like I wouldn't enjoy it. Virgins are the best. They're always so eager and grateful. And the look on their faces. I just love the look on their faces."
Daryl seems more annoyed than embarrassed by the conversation, but Thomas is ear to ear red. "You can't be serious," Thomas says.
"Why not? I think it would be nice of me."
"So you're just going to offer to have sex with him, and then he leaves tomorrow, and that's that?" Thomas asks.
Candy shrugs.
"I thought you wouldn't want to do that after…" he trails off. "I thought you were done with that. Completely."
"Sex?" Candy laughs. "Oh God, no. I don't think I'll ever be done with sex. I like sex. One asshole isn't going to change that, especially not one that got what he deserved."
"Oh," Thomas says.
"I better start wiping down the last of the tables." Candy grabs a rag and hobbles away with the crutches beneath her arms.
"You think she'll really do it?" Thomas asks Trisha.
"Why do you care if she does?"
"Don't you care?"
"I don't think it's the smartest thing she can do," Trisha says. "But I don't think it's the dumbest thing she's ever done either. But you ought ask yourself why it bothers you so much." Trisha winks at him and then goes to pour some moonshine into two shot glasses.
[*]
Sweetheart's sound asleep with Dog beside her bed. Daryl's bow strings are waxed and Carol's rifles are cleaned. The kitchen is swept and the dishes done. They slump onto the couch, and Carol eases into the crook of Daryl's arm before laying her head on his shoulder.
"Think Eugene's getting his cherry popped?" Daryl asks.
"I don't know," Carol replies. Candy's not staying in the tavern's loft these days, not with those crutches. The tavern's supply closet has been unloaded, the goods put in the loft, and Candy given that as a bedroom. Gunther and Thomas brought down all her furnitrue and belongings. She has a closed-door room now. She has the privacy for vistors. "The tavern doesn't close for half an hour, though."
They're quiet for a few minutes. Daryl stares at the empty hearth. It's too hot for a fire, and only the oil lamp lights the living room. "Miss TV," he mutters.
"Do you really?"
"Dunno. Most shows were shit. Maybe just miss havin' somethin' to stare at when there ain't nothin' has to be done. Used to be a good reason not to talk."
"You don't have to talk when you don't want to you, know. Not with me."
He lets out a content sigh, and they don't talk, not for several minutes, until Carol says, "What was your favorite TV show?"
"Thought ya said I don't have to talk?"
"You don't. You can just not answer."
"Pffft. Bet that would go over like a led balloon."
Carol smiles. "I used to watch Jerry Springer."
Daryl snorts. "Nah."
"I did. It made me feel better about my own life. I'd say, well, at least I know who the father of my child is. At least he wouldn't throw a chair at me in public. On stage. Only behind closed doors."
"Damn."
"There was this show that came out, right toward the end. Supernanny. I loved that, too. I thought, at least I don't let my kid talk to me like that. At least I don't let my kid run around with an axe in the back yard."
"'S wrong with that? How else's the kid s'posed to chop wood?"
"This kid wasn't chopping wood."
"Mhm. I always liked Cops."
Carol laughs. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. Like ya said, I'd think, well, least I ain't stupid 'nuff to take a swing at the cops when they try to put me in the back of the car. 'N I know a chokehold's illegal."
Carol snuggles in a little more. "Are you coming to see me debate this weekend?"
"Ya gotta do that again?"
"Every year, before every election."
"Ain't nothin' new to say, is there?"
"Well, there's a lot new. People are going to want to know our positions on strengthening the Alliance, increasing the number of mail deliveries and trade trips, how much we're willing to invest in this joint power project, what kind of threat the people we left behind at those apartments might be…I think there's going to be a lot of questions to answer, actually."
"Be there," he assures her. He settles his head against hers, and he drifts off to sleep there, sitting up.