The curtain rasps open and closed. There's a jangling of belt and zipper. The bed shifts and Daryl drapes a strong arm over Carol. He smells like smoke. She crinkles her nose. "Were you smoking?" Given the value of tobacco, she'd really prefer he not resume that habit.
"Nah. Dante and Gunther were. Some cigars Gunther rolled. Gunther wanted to congratulate 'em on the kid."
"Oh. I thought Dante quit?"
"Sorta. Ain't allowed to do it 'round 'Nola."
"Yeah?" Carol asks with a slight smirk. "What else do you boys do when your wives aren't around?"
"Went down to the strip club," he murmurs.
Carol laughs. "I don't think Jamestown has a strip club. And you're about as likely to go to one as to a revival meeting."
"Ain't much diff'rence. Both got someone up on stage tryin' to sell ya a fantasy." He settles his chin on her head. "Sorry didn't mean that as an insult to yer – "
" – I know. It was funny. In its way. Did you have a good time?"
"Yeah. Needed that. Thanks." He breathes in, dips his head, and nuzzles her neck with his nose. "Wanna fool 'round?"
She chuckles. "Not with Henry right there on the couch five feet away. Besides, what's the chance you have whiskey dick?"
"Zero." He thrusts against her slightly so she can feel his erection poking through his boxers.
"Tell your friend to stop knocking and come see me another night."
"'S already here."
"The house is all locked up for the night."
Daryl sighs and rolls on his back. Carol smiles and rolls to her side to settle her head on his shoulder. "I'm glad you had a good time with the boys. You have been spending a lot of time in the daddy department. I remember that with Sophia. Sometimes you just want to feel like an adult."
"'N what 'bout you?"
"What about me?"
"All ya do lately is work. Work at work. Work at home. It's work 'n work 'n Sweetheart. All work and no play makes Carol…dunno. Wha's it make Carol?"
"I play. We play. In the evenings sometimes."
"Yeah, but when ya got time to play with yerself?"
Carol hides her snort against Daryl's neck.
He chuckles.
"You'd like to see that wouldn't you?" she asks.
"'S a beautiful sight to see."
"I should probably get some extra alone time. Maybe at the range. It's relaxing."
"'N do it."
"When?"
"We'll figure it out." He squeezes her close and then his arm droops away. He might be horny, but he's even more tired, and he's asleep before she is.
[*]
At the Jamestown docks, Carol embraces her son and then pulls away. "You take good care of Rachel, you hear," she tells him. "Pregnancy can be exhausting."
"I will," he assures her. "I am. And I guess we'll see you at the trade trip in November?"
"If you don't come to visit on the mail boat before then," Carol hints.
"I have a pregnant wife to take care of, remember?" Henry says. "Besides, you could visit on the next mail boat."
"The mail boat isn't stored here. I'd have to stay two weeks. I can't get away that long." Not now that she's lieutenant mayor, though she will be gone for a week for the trade trip, because it involves a four to five day's round-trip journey by slow-sailing ship and two days at Oceanside.
"November," he promises her. "You can feel Rachel's belly."
Carol chuckles. "I'm not sure she's going to want me to do that."
"You can have a drink at Henry's Tiki Tavern, then."
"Is that what you're calling it?"
He shrugs. "That's what they're calling it."
Harry gets on the boat behind Cyndie, who has recently kissed Captain McBride goodbye and is now readying the gears. Dianne is already standing in back and readying herself in the position of watchwoman, with bow and quiver on her back. Gunther has said his temporary goodbyes to her and is now saying his more permanent ones to Candy. He puts a hand on her shoulder. "If you change your mind, you know, if he doesn't treat you right, there's always the tavern."
"I assure you my treatment of Candy will be on the up and up, hunky dory, of the utmost – "
"Eugene, baby, can you wait for me on the boat?" Candy asks.
Eugene nods and takes the two bags she's packed with all of her earthly belongings and begins securing them on the boat.
"I'm going to be fine, Pa," she tells Gunther sarcastically. "We'll honeymoon at Oceanside for a night, and then it's off to my castle in Alexandria."
He sighs and lets his hand slide off her shoulder. "I hope you know what you're doing."
"I always know what I'm doing. Well, except when I do some dumb ass thing like get my best friend in trouble for killing some rapist – "
"- Don't," he interrupts her. "None of was not on you." He chuckles. "Your best friend, huh? I thought that was Trisha."
Candy shrugs. "A girl can have more than one. You take care of yourself, old man." She hugs him and then he helps her onto the boat.
The speed boat roars to life, and then Cyndie shouts to Rosita, who is still kissing Sheriff Earl goodbye against a picnic bench on the grass alongside the docks, "Mail boat's leaving! If you aren't on it in sixty seconds, you're staying for two weeks!"
Earl bends down and whispers something in Rosita's ear. Rosita smiles and waves her hand at the boat in a go on then motion.
"Suit yourself," Cyndie calls, and the boat is off, kicking up a white stream on the river behind itself.
[*]
The birth and adoption record book, which remains in the Council Chambers, has been turned to a new page. Yet another baby joins the ranks of Jamestown in August – Sherry gives birth to a little boy, whom the couple names Dwight, Jr. The mail boat has come and gone again, and, once again, Rosita did not go home with it. The Council has given her some "temporary" work assignments, though nobody yet knows if it's really temporary, or if she's moving in permanently with Earl. Not even Earl knows. Maybe not even Rosita knows.
"We're going to need to add another worker to the daycare," Mayor Barron insists at the next Council meeting.
"We've got Dante and Inola's baby," Dr. Ahmad agrees, "Sherry and Dwight's, and Trisha's baby is due in early October."
"And Lieutenant Merriweather's knocked up his wife," Captain McBride says. "Kelley. The Kingdom beauty." He smiles at Carol. "The other one," he adds apologetically.
Carol chuckles and shakes her head.
"She's due in December," Dr. Ahmad notes.
"How about Laura?" Deputy Thomas asks.
McBride's ruddy face is all stunned surprise. "You knocked her up? I didn't think you two had made it past second base."
"No! I meant to work at the daycare. She loves kids. And second base? What are we? In 3rd grade?"
"I was trying not to be crass," Captain McBride says. "I'm a little out of my element off a ship."
"I could sure use Laura to wait tables now that Candy is gone," Madame Linda says. "And Trisha can't be on her feet much longer, as pregnant as she is. I'll just have the boy soon."
"Hold up, hold up," Gunther insists. "Laura is on the fields!"
"It seems everyone is on the fields!" Thomas exclaims.
"Because it's August," Gunther tells him, "and the early fall harvest is just around the corner."
"Some harvest is always just around the corner with you," Linda grumbles.
"Forgive me for feeding the entire town, Linda."
"My beau feeds this town, too, you know," she tells him. "He's your boss as a matter of fact, Assistant Farm Manager."
"Ernesto hasn't done any of the grunt work for almost a year," Gunther insists. "Would he like to get back out in the fields if you snatch up Laura from me?"
"Well, he's in poor health," Linda says. "His ticker, you know."
"You can put Laura's brother on the fields when we bring him back from Newport News," Thomas tells Gunther.
"Are you sure you can persuade him to come," Commander Witherspoon asks. "He didn't want to come the first time."
"When he sees how well Lauar's doing, he'll come," Thomas assures the Council.
"And what about he others?" Carolyn asks. "What if they want to come? We have no one to vouch for them. And there was some implication some of them might have been rapists in the past? Before the cult?"
"If what the cult leader told Laura was true," Carol replies. "But something certainly messed those women up."
"We don't have to bring the others," Thomas says. "We can just bring Laura's brother. If that's what the Council decides."
It is what the Council decides. They also decide on a team to check on the progress of the evaporation of the salt ponds in Hampton and on Laura's brother in Newport News. McBride will go, to Captain the ship, along with several sailors, while Commander Witherspoon will be in charge of the Navy here at Jamestown in his absence. Deputy Thomas will go, with Laura, to check on her brother. Santiago and Sarah, who are already familiar with the area from the last trip, will be assigned. Instead of Carol, they'll send Daryl this time, at her suggestion. She thinks he needs to stretch his legs and get out a little adventure-lust, and, besides, she could probably use some more one-on-one time with Sweetheart.
"Now that's decided," Garland says. "It's back to work assignments. We need a waiter or waitress and a childcare worker. The dorm is built, there's not a lot of construction right now, maybe we can take someone off of the building crew?"
"Well, Inola's not here to protest," Gunther observes.
"I think it would make more sense if we trained up a couple of teenagers getting ready to start an apprenticeship," Carol says. "Rather than pull someone with a different set of skills. Don't we have at least four kids who are going to turn thirteen within the next six months?"
"They need to learn real skills," Gunther says, "like farming."
"We're growing. Childcare is a real skill, and one that's going to be increasingly in demand," Carol replies.
"We're growing," Gunther counters. "So we're going to have more and more mouths to feed. We need more farmers."
"I could always close down the tavern two or three days a week," Linda suggests.
"No!" Gunther, Commander Witherspoon, and Captain McBride shout in horrified unison.
"Then let's figure this out," Linda replies with a smirk.
The council assigns a teenage apprentice to the daycare. They reasign a young, twenty-something woman from the construction team to the Tavern, because Inola's work evaluations suggest has not proved a very competent builder. Perhaps she'll be better at waiting tables. "She better be," Linda mutters.
[*]
Daryl's wearing his tan work shirt, the one with jagged tatters from the sleeves he sawed off with his hunting knife. Carol offered to cut the sleeves off his shirt neatly for summer, and hem the material around the shoulders, but he prefers to do it this way. It's more efficient. She doesn't have time for all that cutting and hemming, and he couldn't care less what his shirt looks like.
The muscles of his arms and shoulder glisten in the August sun as he swings his crossbow onto his back. "Be good for yer mama," he tells Sweetheart and ruffles her hair.
"Hug!" Sweetheart demands, reaching her little arms up toward him where they stand on the docks. Daryl lifts her up into a great big bear hug, peppers her giggling face with kisses, and then hands her back to Carol.
Carol shifts the girl onto her hip and kisses him. "You be safe out there."
"Hell, ya already killed all the bad guys."
"Well, I don't know. A handful of the ones we left may have been bad guys. Just be careful."
He nods. "You be careful, too." He ruffles Sweetheart's hair again. "Watch out for this one. She's sneaky."
"Sneeeeeakeeee!" Sweetheart repeats with a mischievous grin.
"Are you talking about her or me?" Carol quips.
"Both m'girls." He kisses Carol on the cheek and then heads toward the ship.
As Daryl climbs up onto the Susan Constant to set sail with the crew, he tries not to let his heart be cracked by Sweetheart's sudden cries of, "Daddy, no! No, Daddy go! No go, Daddy, no!"