Chapter Four: Fabric of a man
The next day, several things improved. For one, Richard's leg felt almost back to normal, and he could walk on it without assistance and with minimal soreness. He also sat with Ronnie during their breakfast, and with a chewing nod and a mutual pat on the other man's shoulder, Richard felt they had finally resolved the conflict from the night before. Even though a final decision about whether or not another round of people would be sent back to Honoré still had yet to be established, Richard regretted the way that conversation went down, and at least now, he felt the personal animosity had been assuaged. Another, more unexpected improvement came when they were surveying all of the combined resources from the plantation and the Honoré elementary school and Haley Matheson came forward with a brilliant way of multiplying their materials.
"See?" she asked, crouching down to grasp some of the material in her hands. "These aren't curtains; they're drapes."
Richard risked a side-eye to several others in the group, wondering if they were as lost by this revelation as he was. They seemed to be.
Luckily for them all, Haley wasn't finished explaining. She turned over the fabric to show its back. "That means they're lined with an extra layer of fabric on the backs to help block the sunlight when they're drawn. If we cut along the seams here, we'll be able to get an extra sheet of fabric, doubling our yardage for each of these drapes."
Haley proved to be a wealth of knowledge once fabrication of the X began. Because their sewing materials were the scarcest, she showed the group how to cut strategic slits and corresponding flaps in the fabric that could be used as anchors to weave one item to the next. This minimized the amount of actual sewing required to fix each piece to the next, while still maintaining the integrity of each joint. It took everyone a while to understand the tying methods she was demonstrating, but after a while, they eventually got the hang of it and started to make decent progress on the project.
Richard enjoyed this kind of work. It felt good for his hands to focus on a task that required fine motor skills rather than the broad swings of a machete or the lifting and setting down of heavy loads. It reminded him of when he used to conduct forensic experiments in his little shack or at the office, delicate work that required careful precision. Once he understood the pattern of cutting, weaving, and then tying that Haley had demonstrated, Richard settled into an easy rhythm.
And he wasn't the only one. As people started to have more familiarity with the pattern, they were able to stop focusing on it so painstakingly, and previously tense shoulders were able to slope a little more. It was probably about 45 minutes into the project that levels of proficiency began to rise and quiet conversations began to start up. When Richard was certain that he and the others had been working on the project for several hours, he was happy to look up and notice many easy and even jovial conversations bubbling all around him. For a moment at least, life felt almost normal: neighbors chatting about trivial things while at a summer picnic. Everyone at one point felt the urge to liken this event to simpler days spent in "arts and craft time" at school. That inspired several funny (and sometimes horrifying, in hindsight) anecdotes to be shared by certain members of the group, and Richard found himself, on more than one occasion, chuckling at these ludicrous antics his compatriots seemed to engage in as youngsters.
"What about you, Inspector?" somebody asked, no doubt because, though he had enjoyed listening to the conversation forming around him, Richard hadn't felt inclined to speak a single word through any of it.
"Hmm?" was the best he could manage now.
"What sort of trouble did you get into as a child? I'm sure it'd have to be something…"
Richard raised his eyebrows expectantly and waited for the other man to find the right word.
"…truly devious," the man finally said with a cheeky grin. Then, he asked to the open circle, "Don't you think?" The question was met with smiling and hearty agreement from pretty much everyone, and Richard smirked at them all. Apparently, everyone was equally amused by the thought of a tiny Richard being the terror of Cheshire.
"Excuse me. Sorry. Excuse…" a young voice came from behind Richard. He looked over his shoulder just in time to catch the blur of young Trevor, running out the mouth of the cave, one hand clutching his stomach and the other coming up to cover his mouth.
Immediately, Richard turned and met gazes with a knowing Dr. Holden. The two of them exchanged a look of shared concern and thin worry before Holden stood from the circle and quietly excused himself to follow the young man.
"Well Inspector?" an adolescent girl prompted after a moment.
Richard's gaze lingered on the exit of the cave for a beat longer, worrying after the doctor and his very miserable patient. He turned back to the group after a moment and echoed his earlier response. "Hmm?"
The young girl smiled, showing crooked teeth, and said, "Tell us about your childhood."
"I didn't have a childhood," Richard said matter-o-factly, resuming his tying. He glanced back over at the girl slyly and added, "I was born an ugly old man. Just like this."
The several children in the circle all giggled at that, and even a few of the grownups snorted good-naturedly, but most of them eyed him, knowing that he was skirting the question.
"No you weren't!" Lukas, one of Ronnie's boys, exclaimed. "Your mommy's tummy would've exploded!"
Richard's facade broke at that and he had to laugh. Everyone else laughed too, accompanied with a few comments like, "He got you there!" Richard nodded and pointed at the boy. "And that is a use of very sound logic. Quite right, too; I was just telling a fib."
"Which only lends credence to my theory," the first man added.
"No, actually-" Richard began, but was cut off.
"Inspector?"
Richard looked up to find Owen hovering over his shoulder. "Yes?"
"Could I borrow you a moment?"
Richard started to move the sheets off of his lap so he could stand up, but the rest of the crowd started to protest. "Wait a minute, he still hasn't answered yet!" they said.
But Richard relished in his escape. "Sorry, duty calls. I have, very important things to do, as you can see." Offering no time for rebuttal, Richard scampered away, patting Owen on the back in gratitude. "What is it?"
"Well, we were just gearing up to take a bath and laundry team to the springs," Owen answered, not totally understanding what he had just interrupted, or why the inspector seemed to be so amused by it.
"Ah, yes. And you'll be needing a gun for the group," Richard finished, already setting off in that direction. There were several people in the total group of survivors who had what Richard would call "workable knowledge" of firearms, but there were only three of them who had professional knowledge of them: Namely, Richard and his two officers. Because of this, Richard, Fidel, or Dwayne always had to personally inspect and load every weapon that was to be sent out with a team. It was one of the hard rules Richard had instated when their little society was first established. Originally, he didn't want anyone other than trained professionals handling the guns at all, but after a few days spent with multiple teams having to head out in different directions and for different tasks, that dream quickly proved impractical. Eventually, Richard settled for awarding "weapons bearing status" to a few civilian members of the group after subjecting them all to a safety lesson and demonstration. The fact that some of them already had hunting or recreational firing range experience was very helpful.
"Well yes, sir." Owen said, following the detective over to the cache of weapons. "But also, you're on it."
"I'm what?"
"The rotation? It's your turn to go up to the pools for a wash. You and four others," Owen replied, bowing his head a little bit in embarrassment, obviously understanding how purely ridiculous it was to be telling a grown man that it was time for his bath.
Still, Richard swallowed the embarrassment rather well, considering he was…well…himself. Overall, this seemed like good news. Before the cryptos surfaced, if there were two things on which Richard Poole never wavered, it was his sartorial standards and personal hygiene. Now, Richard couldn't think back to the last time he had bathed. If he had to take a guess, he would think it must be close to 20 days, maybe a little more. And he hated it. He hated smelling himself every day and walking around in his own special concoction of sweat, dirt, dead skin, and microbes. Because water was so scarce, the last thing anyone would want to do was splash around in it or pour it over one's head. So their only option to clean themselves was when a small team could head up closer to the peak of the mountain, where several, natural, hot springs were located. It wasn't entirely ideal. With the high temperatures that plagued the island, slipping into a hot bath was not altogether enjoyable. But washing certainly was, regardless of the temperature.
"Oh, cracking," Richard said in reply. Lifting one of the handguns and pulling the top back to check the chamber. He inspected the weapon and wished, not for the first time, that they had a proper cleaning kit. But he secured and loaded the weapon, handing it to Owen with the safety still engaged. "You can pop out with that, please, now that it's loaded, and I'll just be a minute."
Owen nodded and headed outside while Richard made his way back over to his little bed. To call it a bed was probably generous. Like everyone else here, he had constructed his sleeping place out of anything remotely comfortable and squishy he could find. He had a few man-made items, including his old suit, a top and bottom blanket, his leather briefcase, and a seat cushion which used to preside in the police jeep but which now served as his pillow. Most of his "mattress," however, consisted mainly of Spanish moss which he covered with his bottom blanket to keep it from irritating his skin all night. He folded the edges of his blanket under itself to try to create a wall of sorts to keep the moss from spreading out too much after he put his weight on it, but it was the sort of thing that needed adjustment most every night.
Right now though, he hadn't come to adjust his little mat, he had come to collect his other outfit. Things as they were, he was limited to two: The shirt and cargos which he currently wore, and the suit jacket and trousers which he had been wearing the day they evacuated into the hills. If he was hoping to wash his daily clothes up at the springs today, he would need something else to wear while they dried. He pulled back his top and bottom blankets to uncover the upper half of his pallet. This was the half which he felt needed to be the most fortified and so he had bundled his meager fabrics to place as support for the arch of his back. He pulled out the suit and unrolled it, letting his thumbs pass over the material almost fondly.
The suit was utterly ruined, which would be a surprise to no one. The heavy fabric had adopted hundreds of wrinkles and creases and the whole thing reeked of moss. But even still, the simple tactile reminiscence under his fingertips was like running into an old friend, a moment somehow fraught with sameness and change all at once. As he thumbed the fabric, Richard wondered who had changed more, the man who used to wear the suit, or the suit that used to embody the man.
Before the cryptos surfaced, Richard had worn a suit to work every day not because he enjoyed it, but because his professional station called for it, at least by his reckoning. His job came with a badge, one that stayed mostly in his pocket and hardly ever needed to be used. His real badge, the one he wore blatantly every day, which marked his identity in more ways than one, was the white checkered shirt, gray jacket, matching trousers, leather belt, tall black socks, and black leather brogues. He knew, in the middle of the tropics, he stuck out like a sore thumb in this attire, but he meant to. He was a British police officer, after all; and the way he saw it, a fish was a fish whether it was in the water or not. Why pretend to be anything other than what he was?
It was a recurring conversation where Camille or Dwayne or Fidel (but more often than not, all three) would try to talk him into trying a different outfit, something lighter that breathed a little better, could take a little bit of the intensity out of the Caribbean heat. But the truth was that he would be uncomfortably hot in this climate no matter what he wore, and his suits, though thick and warm, provided a different sort of comfort that his colleagues apparently couldn't understand. He was Richard Poole when he wore them. Without them, he would be something less.
Fast forward a little bit, past the end of the world, and here he was, crouched over his old suit like a snake returning to its old skin, trying to remember what it felt like to be that Richard. If pushed on the matter, he would say that he still felt like himself, just…a different kind of himself. And as he tried to take account of all of the differences, he wondered if they were all positive. He hoped they were, but he suspected some of them were not.
Rolling his suit back into a little bundle, Richard tucked it under his arm and then made his bed again. Standing to leave the cave, he stopped by Ronnie and told him where he was going, leaving the fabrication of the X to him. He also reminded him to make sure that the group took enough breaks, especially for food and water. Then, after shaking the other man's hand, Richard headed out to join the rest of the bathing team outside the front of the cave.
Dr. Holden and Trevor were back on their little log, with Trevor's head between his legs and the doctor looking very forlorn indeed. With a heavy sigh, Holden looked up and noticed Richard. The inspector asked a question with his look and the doctor sadly shook his head. The medicine wasn't helping.
Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Part of the reason I wanted to write this story was because I was entertained by the thought exercise of what life would be like in a survival situation like this. I realize chapters that revolve around how baths and weapons privileges work might seem kind of boring to some of you, but I find these moments really interesting. Thank you for indulging me in them. Also, I feel like Richard gets some worthwhile character exploration in this, so that helps to even out some of the more tedious details.
I really hope you are enjoying this story. Things get REALLY interesting in the next few chapters, so I encourage you to keep reading. You won't want to miss what's coming up. I'll see you there!
