December 8
Because Maggie wasn't coming to the farm today, Glenn drove to her in the SUV. He brought Lori and Rick with him so Lori could have a medical visit with Hershel. The veterinarian was no gynecologist, but he'd delivered plenty of animal babies, and, as it turned out, he even owned a veterinary ultrasound. While the generator was fired up, they plugged it in. Rick and Lori couldn't see the baby on the simple machine, but they could hear the heart. Or rather…the hearts. Lori, it turned out, was pregnant with twins.
"Why ain't she fatter?" Daryl asked in bed that night after thier love making.
"Because she was skinny to begin with." Carol traced the sinews of his muscular left arm with a fingertip as she spoke. "Hershel said she needs to increase her protein intake, though. He sent her home with three pounds of ground beef."
"Got plenty of venison. Gonna get me another deer. Chickens are laying. Don't need their charity."
"It wasn't charity. Just…friendly concern." She kissed his bare shoulder and then settled her head against it. "That's moving fast. Glenn and Maggie."
"Found their love nest," he said.
"What?" she laughed.
"Wasn't lookin' for it," he clarified. Was just out explorin'. 'S at the top of the log flume, where it goes through that tunnel before it plummets."
"That must be cold in December." Carol shivered at the thought of it, and she appreciated the faint whisp of electric heat drifting down from the vent above their bed.
"They got an iron fire pit inside there. Cut a hole in the roof to vent the smoke. And they're keepin' sleepin' bags and blankets up in there."
"Unless that's Beth and Dixon's love nest," Carol said.
"Damn well better not be! She's with Jimmy."
"I'm not sure she is," Carol told him. "I think Beth may have broken up with him. Sophia stumbled on Beth and Dixon kissing yesterday, by that kissing booth outside the Tunnel of Courtly Love. It broke her little heart."
"Hell you mean – broke her heart?"
"Sophia has a crush on him. You didn't notice?"
"Dixon?" Daryl half sat up in bed. "He's five year's older 'n her!"
Carol shrugged and snuggled in, forcing him to lie back down as she did so. "I had a crush on my sixth-grade teacher when I was her age. It's harmless."
He was silent for awhile and then asked, quietly, "She a'ight?"
Carol smiled at his gentle concern. "She'll be over it in a week or two, I'm sure. But she could probably use some special attention from her other favorite guy tomorrow to help her get over it."
"Who?" Daryl barked, as if the idea of one crush was already too much for him to handle and now he was being told about a second one.
Carol chuckled. "You, Pookie. I meant you. Maybe you could do something fun with her tomorrow."
"Oh."
December 9
Daryl asked Sophia if she wanted to have one of her tea parties the next morning. "I'm too old for tea parties," she answered gloomily.
"Hell you are!" He repeated what she'd once said to him: "Queen of England has tea parties, and she's like…a hundred."
"I don't feel like it."
"Wanna do some small game huntin'? In the woods by the tracks?"
"I'm no good that," she muttered. "You know that." He couldn't argue that. Carl Grimes had taken to the hunting much better. Sophia just didn't like killing animals.
"Candy shop?" Daryl suggested. They hadn't taken the candy into the warehouse, but had left it in place in the shop. "Could have us another circus peanuts battle."
That perked her up. "I get the good catapult this time."
They went to the candy store and hid behind their separate bulk barrels and intermittently slid around or leapt up to catapult stale circus peanuts at one another (Daryl was pretty sure they'd been stale before the Outbreak, that circus peanuts were always stale). The model catapults, about two-feet high each, had come from the Medieval Kingdom gift shop.
Sophia claimed victory, and Daryl let it slide, even though he was sure he'd hit her with ten circus peanuts to the six she'd pegged him with. After the battle, they sat on the checkout counter, each with their own selected candy to eat - Daryl his Neco wafers and Sophia a box of Swedish Fish.
"Carl's mom's going to be mad we wasted all those circus peanuts," Sophia said.
"Nah. Lori thinks candy is the devil's food. Probably be glad we can't eat it now."
Sophia snickered. "No one likes circus peanuts anyway." She ate a red fish and then pulled out another yellow one.
"What makes 'em Swedish, do you think?" Daryl asked as he popped a wafer in his mouth.
Sophia turned the fish in her fingers and frowned. "I don't know. Probably because they're pretty. Like Beth." She ripped off the head angrily with her teeth.
"Beth ain't that pretty," Daryl lied.
"Yes, she is. She's about the prettiest girl I've ever seen. And I'm ugly."
"The hell you are!"
"I've got this dirty color hair," Sophia grabbed a clod of her dirty blonde hair, "and these ugly freckles all over my face and this nose."
"Ain't nothin' wrong with your nose! Cute as a damn button. And freckles, hell, that adds character. And who wants just a plain solid color hair, all one borin' ass blonde shit? You got blonde and brown in there. You got two for one!"
Sophia twirled a strand of hair around her finger and looked at it. "Plain blonde is kind of boring," she agreed.
"Complete snooze fest," Daryl told her.
Sophia leaped off the counter and started collecting circus peanuts from the floor. "And the battle begins," she said, "in three, two…"
Daryl tossed the rest of his roll of wafers on the counter and scrambled for his ammunition.
December 10
Daryl leaned back against the tree in the deer blind, almost shoulder to shoulder with Dixon. They weren't really hunting. They were testing the strength of the blind they'd recently finished building and evaluating their vision from this vantage point.
Daryl hated hunting from blinds – there was less sport in it - but winter was coming, and the trees would soon be completely barren. The game would see them coming. Baiting and waiting would be a better option to feed the camp in the dead of winter.
"Hell you doing, kid?" Daryl asked.
Dixon lowered his rifle. "Checking out my range. And thinking about gathering some of those acorns to use for bait later."
"Nah, I mean, what the hell you doin' with Beth? Gonna 'cause problems, goin' after some other guy's girl."
"I'm not going after her. I'm being friendly. And helpful."
"Helpin' her to learn to play tonsil hockey, you mean?"
"What's tonsil hockey?"
"Sophia saw you kissin' 'er."
"Well, I was giving Beth a tour of the park. And we passed that old kissing booth. So…" He shrugged.
Daryl realized he had no idea what this kid had been like before they met. He'd been homeschooled, so Daryl had this vision of a somewhat isolated, anti-social kid, but maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe he'd had a girlfriend on each arm, for all Daryl knew. "Take it that wasn't your first kiss," Daryl said.
"No, I had a girlfriend back in North Carolina. We met at this library teen book club thing. We dated for ten months. But…" He sighed. "She broke up with me when we moved to Georgia. Said long-distance relationships were too hard. She's probably dead now." He turned his head to look at Daryl. "It wasn't exactly Beth's first kiss, either."
"Yeah, 'cause she's with Jimmy," Daryl told him.
Dixon looked forward again. "She's not Jimmy's property. Just because he was the only one there when everything went to shit doesn't mean she has to default to being his girlfriend. She gets to make up her own mind about who she wants to date. Or if she wants to date anyone at all. And it's not my fault she suddenly has options. Anymore than it's Patricia's fault T-Dog does."
"What?"
"Nevermind. Listen, Beth said she broke up with Jimmy. For real this time."
"Fuckin' fantastic." Daryl fished out a cigarette and lit up. "Just what we need," he muttered around the cigarette. "Conflict 'tween the camps."
"You can't be smoking when we're really hunting, you know. The scent might cause a problem."
"Ain't never had that happen," Daryl told him as he slid the lighter Merle had given him back in the front pocket of his shirt. "Shot a deer more than once with a cigarette danglin' out my mouth."
"Well, my Hunting and Field Guide says - "
"- Fuck what some dumbass book says. Book learnin' is for pussies. I got thirty years of deer huntin' while smokin' says otherwise."
"You've been smoking since you were seven?" Dixon asked.
"Twenty-six years, then."
"That's still only eleven. Is that when you started smoking?"
Daryl pulled the cigarette from his mouth. "Smoke scents don't scare 'em off. Smoke masks human odor. Only thing that might scare 'em off is the movement when I'm lightin' up." He took a puff and blew out the smoke before concluding, "Native Americans used to stand in the smoke from their fires 'fore they went out to hunt."
"How do you know that?" Dixon asked. "Did you read it somewhere? Maybe in a dumbass book?"
Daryl glowered and blew out another stream of smoke. "You're a smart kid," he said. "Careful you ain't too smart for your own damn good."
"That's what my second grade teacher told me. After she told me that if I kept reading ahead in class, I'd be punished by having to sit in the corner. That's why mother pulled me out of school and never sent me back."
"Well, that was one dumbass teacher then. I'm just tellin' you don't be so cocksure of yourself."
"What's wrong with being sure of yourself?" Dixon asked. "If you mess up, you mess up and you learn from it, but no reason to be down on yourself in the meantime."
Daryl smoked in silence for a moment and thought about that. His father had always told him not to be an uppity little shit. He hadn't thought about the possibility that when he was being an uppity little shit in his father's mind, maybe he was just refraining, for a rare moment, from being down on himself. But no one had ever taught Dixon he was stupid or worthless. His mother hadn't let them.
Daryl didn't like thinking about his father, about the lessons he'd taught. So he asked, "What do you see in 'er anyhow? Beth?"
"She's pretty," Dixon said.
"That it? That worth maybe fuckin' up a sweet trade deal over?"
"Would you risk a trade deal for Carol?"
"Carol ain't some piece of ass I met three Wednesdays ago."
"Neither is Beth!" Dixon sat angrily forward. "I mean, yes, I met her three Wednesdays ago, but she's not some…I'm…I'm not like that. I just like her, okay? And not just because she's pretty. But because she's sweet. And…innocent."
"Innocent?"
Dixon sighed and sat back against the tree again. "I mean…I can't explain it. She's got this…like this world hasn't crushed that part of her yet, the way it's…" His nostrils flared and he bit down on his back teeth. "The way it's half-killed that part of me. She saw her mother and brother die and had to bury them. But she's never stood there and watched a man kill two other men. She's never come back home to a girl feasting on her own father after murdering him. I'm not just trying to get in some girl's pants here! She makes me feel like…like there's still hope."
Daryl sighed out a long stream of smoke. "Sorry," he murmured. "Didn't know."
"Besides, if I was just trying to get in her pants, I would have got her drunk when she asked me to give her her first ever drink the other day. Instead, I just gave her a little," he held his fingers an inch apart, "Peach Schnaps."
"Come on! You didn't give her no damn peach schnapps for her first drink? Really?"
"Because I knew it wouldn't get her drunk," Dixon replied. "Too much sugar. And also…no one else wants to drink that crap."
Daryl chuckled. "She like it?"
Dixon smiled. "She pretended to. And then she kissed me at that kissing booth. And that's when she told me she was officially ending it with Jimmy."
"Well, let's hope Jimmy doesn't give you a black eye when he comes to practice. And let's hope Hershel doesn't find out you gave his daughter booze and lose his shit. And let's hope this trade deal, which is very much to our advantage, keeps on…" Daryl rolled the hand that was holding his cigarette, and the smoked rolled in a circle. "Rollin'."
"Was my father a womanizer?"
"What?" Daryl asked.
"Well…just…the assumption you seemed to leap to about me. It made me wonder - was he?"
"Merle never cheated on your mama."
"That's not exactly an answer to my question. I mean, they were only together seven – eight – months total."
Daryl took another puff. "Yeah," he sighed out. "He was."
"Well, I'm not one. I'm not trying to get in Beth's pants."
"'Course you are, kid," Daryl said with a smirk. "But you're tryin' for more than just that. Sorry I misjudged."
"Beth says she doesn't believe in sex before marriage anyway. So..." He shrugged, raised his rifle, and peered down the scope. He looked around for awhile and lowered it.
Daryl bit down on his cigarette and scrambled to raise his bow from his lap, because there was a deer, right there, right between the trees just half an acre of forest away.
By the time he had his bow aimed, Dixon had already shot it. Daryl's bolt followed a split second later and landed in its side as it fled, and the wounded creature stumbled, regain its footing, and staggered off through the woods.
The hunters scrambled down from the blind and began to follow the trail of blood. An hour later, they were dragging another week's worth of venison back to camp.
"What I tell you?" Daryl said. "Cigarette smoke didn't bother it at all."
December 11
Jimmy didn't give Dixon a black eye when he came to practice the next day, because Jimmy didn't come to practice the next day. He didn't set foot in Fun Kingdom at all.
Maggie did, along with Glenn, who had spent the night at the farm last night. They thundered up on her horse with a clatter that rose through the baby monitor receiver like cracking thunder, Glenn yelling, "Hurry! Open up! We've got a problem!"
In minutes, Daryl, Carol, and Rick were armed and at the gate. Rick swung open the gate to let the horse in. Maggie and Glenn dismounted quickly.
"What's wrong?" Carol asked.
"Jimmy left this note for Beth this morning." Maggie reached into her wool-lined jean jacket to pull out a sheet of paper. She unfolded the letter and handed it to Rick, and Daryl and Carol flanked him on either side to read over his shoulder.
Dear Beth,
I was there for you through thick and thin from the start. When your mama died, and when your brother died, and when they had to die again. I've stood by you while the world was falling apart, farmed your father's land, groomed your horse, loved you and no one else for months.
And this is how you repay me? By dumping me for some sweet-talking motorbike racer you met three weeks ago?
Well, I can tell when I'm not needed and I'm not wanted. Maybe I oughtta take my talents elsewhere, work to tend animals and grow vegetables where I'll be appreciated. Maybe somewhere where I can find another girl who knows a good thing when she's got it.
So, I'm leaving before the rooster crows this morning. I'm taking the farm truck that was my daddy's and my few things, and I'm headed to that Woodbury place your new boyfriend warned you about. I found it on a map.
Maybe it's not so bad as he says. It's a town after all, with a school and power and everything. And maybe they'll want me there.
- Jimmy