Daryl's gone in the morning when Carol arises. She knows he slept in his bed, though, because it's unmade. She makes it up again. After Sophia's left for school, she spends her morning in the warehouse, helping "Handsy Andy" organize shelves. And now she knows why Daryl called him that.
Andrew puts a hand on her in some supposedly innocent way (to move her out of the way with a touch to the small of her back, to brush against her ass "accidentally" in passing, to put his hand over hers when showing her where something is) at least a half a dozen times before she jerks away and spits, "Cut that shit out!"
Andrew freezes, blinks, and apologizes. He glances down at her handgun in its holster, as if maybe he's heard about the butler. But he doesn't touch her again, not one single time, over the next hour of organizing.
Carol wonders why she didn't say something sooner. She supposes a woman doesn't become assertive overnight. She's still working on it, step by step, and she doesn't quite have her timing right. Sometimes she lets it boil up until it bursts.
After the warehouse, she has lunch with Sophia, who tells her all about her school day, including "I think Ivan has a crush on Carina."
"Oh? And here I thought he had a crush on you."
"Ewww! Ivan's my friend."
Carol chuckles but leaves the subject alone. After lunch, she goes for a private firearms lesson with Noah on the range behind the mansion. It's a bit humbling, but also informative. She's improving at hitting stationary targets, but moving ones are another matter. She asks a lot of questions, and eventually Noah tells her, "I think we have to wrap it up. I have to go chop wood for my sponsor. How do you have so much free time? Don't you have a lot of chores for your sponsor?"
The truth is, other than saying, "Laundry'd be nice" that one time, Daryl hasn't actually asked her to do a single thing during the day. "I should probably get back to work, too," she agrees.
She doesn't, though. Carol goes inside the mansion to look for the butler. She traded half her box of 9 mm ammo to Noah for .223, and she expended all that on the range. She wants to be on that list of people authorized to receive practice ammunition. So when she finds Arthur, she asks him to arrange a meeting with Jefe for her.
"As I previously informed you," Arthur tells her, "Jefe does not take impromptu meetings."
"I know. That's why I asked you to arrange one for me."
The butler nods his head slightly. "I will endeavor to make the arrangements, Ms. Doyle, but I make no promises."
When she gets back to the cottage, Sophia isn't home, so she goes to check if her daughter is playing with Ivan, but Ivan is busy chopping wood in back of his cottage, and he says he hasn't seen Sophia since school.
A little nervous that she doesn't know where her daughter is, Carol begins walking around the camp. She finds Sophia in one of the barns, with Carina, brushing down a golden brown stallion. When she sees Carol, Sophia tells Carina, "I should probably go. Thanks for letting me ride Dorado. I'll see you tomorrow?"
Carina nods and continues her grooming, and Sophia exits the barn.
"I was worried about you," Carol says as they begin walking back toward the cottage together. "You shouldn't just run off like that without telling me."
"It's safe here, Mom. And you went to the range."
"I know, but you could have left a note on the kitchen table."
"I will next time," she agrees. "But Carina said I could go riding with her, and it's so hard to get in line to ride the horses! You have to make a reservation, like, way in advance. But Carina doesn't have to. She has her own horse. Did you know her mom was Ms. Garcia? And that she's the leader of this whole camp? The one everyone calls Jefe?"
"I am aware of that," Carol replies. "And I'm glad you're making friends with Carina. She was a little mean to you at first, but I bet it can be lonely, being in her position. She's teaching you to horseback ride?"
Sophia nods. "She's really good. She can do jumps and stuff."
Jefe didn't mention that, only that her daughter couldn't shoot well and was squeamish around blood, but horseback riding seems like an excellent skill to have on a farm and in a world where the gas will eventually spoil.
Sophia and Carol make dinner together. "I guess we'll go ahead and eat," Carol tells her. "I have no idea when Mr. Dixon will be back from hunting."
After dinner, Ivan shows up like clockwork to ask Sophia to come play chess with him. Daryl wanders into the cottage twenty minutes later, while the sun is setting, and so Carol whips the tinfoil off his plate of food. It's lukewarm now, but it's still fucking fantastic to him.
Carol pours herself a glass of water and joins him at the table, even though she's already eaten. But after all those years of being told too salty, too sweet, too dry, too moist (how can anything be too mosit?), she likes to hear someone hum over her cooking.
"So I met Handsy Andy today," she tells him, and it seems perfectly natural to talk about her day, in a way she never bothered to talk about her day to Ed. "I mean…I experienced him."
"Yeah?" he asks with his mouth full, and then he chews, and mhmmmms, and then swallows, and then mhmmmms again.
"He's not going to be handsy anymore."
"Wave a gun in his face like you did to Jeeves?"
"No. I used my words."
He chuckles.
"Any luck on the hunt today?"
"Got a ten-point buck."
"Is ten-points good?" Ed always bragged about his hunting skills, but he never really caught anything, except one time, with his cousin, and Carol was pretty sure it was his cousin who really shot that deer. But they split the meat, and every time Carol cooked some of that venison, Ed would tell Sophia, Thank your daddy for killing this ten-point buck in one clean shot. And Sophia would thank him, even though it was clear she didn't believe him either. Ed said ten-point every time, too, so Carol figured ten points must be a lot.
"Not really," Daryl says. "Most young bucks with decent genetics have at least eight by the age of two."
"Why do the points matter?"
"Gotta live a long time to have points. Live a long time, and they get more meat on 'em. That's the only reason guys brag about the size of the rack they bag."
Carol spurts out a laugh. "Sorry. Sorry I just…"
He smiles. "Get your mind out the gutter, woman. 'Talking 'bout antlers."
He finishes his last couple of bites of food, sits back, and puts a palm flat on his stomach and pats it contently. She clears his plate and silverware and glass to the sink.
"Ain't got to wash my dishes every night," he tells her.
"Why, you want to wash them right now?" she asks skeptically.
"Nah, but they can sit a few days."
"I'd rather they not." She proceeds to wash them.
She startles as she feels him brush past her, sliding between a tucked-in kitchen chair and her at the sink. As he opens the upper cabinet beside her, he says, "That wasn't intentional. Swear. Don't wave a gun in my face."
"I did not wave a gun in the butler's face. Or in Handsy Andy's."
Daryl pulls down the vodka. "Want some? I'll even get you a glass. Since you're precious and all."
"It's not the glass thing. It's just that I've never had vodka straight. What does it even taste like?"
"Nothing," he answers as he pulls down a glass and sets it by the bottle.
"Well that doesn't sound very interesting."
"Could make it a voot beer."
"A what?" Carol asks as she dries off his plate and puts it in the cupboard.
"That's a root beer coke and vodka."
"You have root beer?"
"In the root cellar," he replies.
"That's Coca-Cola."
"Oh. Want a Coca-Cola coke and vodka?"
"Yes!" And then, with a little less obvious excitement. "That sounds great. I haven't had a soda in over eight months."
"Soda? You from up north?"
"No! I'm from Georgia. Born and raised. Never left the state lines."
He shakes his head as he heads toward the door, muttering, "She calls her coke soda."
He returns with a bottle of Coca-Cola and pops the cap off between the counter and the flat of his hand before filling half the glass. He leaves the other half in the bottle. "Save that for your girl." Then he generously pours two ounces of vodka in the coke, takes a swig from the vodka bottle himself, and sets it down again on the counter next to her mixed rink. "Enjoy." Fishing his cigarette packet out of his shirt, he says, "Going for a smoke."
And then he just leaves. He just leaves. She thought he was going to join her.
More disappointed than she has any reason to be, she takes a small sip of her drink, says, "Not bad" to the empty kitchen and then takes the oil lamp and walks to her bedroom to peer out the window. He's smoking and strolling up the hill beneath a half moon and a smattering of stars. She watches him until he disappears into that grove of trees. She can't see him after that, but she's sure he's going up to the big house. That mansion – and Jefe within it – is the only thing in that direction.
Carol frowns into her drink, and then she shoots a good ounce of it.
[*]
The next morning, Carol gets up early, with the sun, leaves Sophia snoozing, and emerges from her bedroom. Daryl's bedroom door is open. A large hiking pack rests on the unmade bed before which he stands. He closes it up, attaches a tightly rolled sleeping bag to the top, and swings the pack over both his shoulders. The canteen attached to its side jangles. Then he grabs his rifle from the closet. He doesn't usually take the rifle, she thinks. He slings that over the strap of the pack on his left shoulder before plucking up his crossbow from a corner of the room.
She wanders quickly away before he turns around, to the kitchen table, and pretends to be straightening a chair, so it doesn't look like she was spying.
"You're up early," he says. "Was I too damn noisy packing?"
"No. I just…got up. Why so much gear?"
"Ain't comin' back for a bit," he tells her. "Camping out. Be gone about three days."
She wonders if he would have left her a note to that effect if she hadn't been awake, or if he would have simply left without a word, leaving her to ask other people where he'd gone and when he'd back.
"Caught hint of a brown bear trail yesterday," he continues. "Gonna see if I can follow it all the way to the source."
"I didn't know we had brown bears in Georgia. I thought we just had the black ones."
"Didn't used to," he says. "Guess they're being pushed south."
"By walkers?"
"Walkers?" he asks in confusion.
"I mean, the thrashers. I started out with a group that called them walkers."
"Why in hell would you call 'em walkers? That sounds so…"
"Pedestrian?" she asks with a smirk.
He chuckles. "Harmless, was gonna say. And we all walk. Ain't the walking that distinguishes them. It's the thrashing and gnashing and the rotting flesh and all the damn people-eating."
Brown bears are bigger than black bears, she's pretty sure. Bigger and more dangerous. Should he really be tracking one alone? "If brown bears aren't normally here," she asks, "shouldn't we refrain from hunting them? Give them a chance to…populate?"
"If I don't get this one, the thrashers probably will. Better me than them."
"Hard to argue with that logic." She crosses her arms over her chest and leans back against the table. "But are you sure you don't just want a trophy?"
"Wouldn't you love a big ass bear skin rug right in front of that fireplace this winter?" He points at the hearth with his crossbow. "All cozy to cuddle up on?" For a confused second, she thinks he's talking about cuddling up with her, until he adds, "With Sophia?"
She glances toward the fireplace. "A bear skin rug would go great with the grandmother furniture."
He snorts. "That is some gaudy ass shit, ain't it?"
"All the furniture in the world, and you end up with that."
"Could always go looting sometime. Pick out what you like. We'll do it sometime."
We'll do it? He's going to take her on a supply run? She's not sure how she feels about that. Pike cleaning is one thing, but a supply run is much further out there, beyond the woods, on the streets, in the ashes of civilization. And the last time she was out there… "I couldn't possibly take Sophia."
"'Course not. She'd stay here. Nadia'll check in on 'er. Only be gone one night. You want better furniture or not?"
"I do. Yeah, I do. Let's do it. Sometime."
He nods. "A'right then," and then he heads out the door.
Sophia yawns herself awake an hour later, and in another fifteen, she's off to school. A few minutes after she leaves, Carol gets a "wild game delivery" brought by a woman named Valeria. It comes in a small Igloo cooler packed with ice. The ice is made in the freezers of the big house, and the meat, Carol is told, should keep up to three or four days if she puts the cooler in the root cellar. There's a bit of venison steak, some ground venison sausage, and a sandwich-sized sealed Ziplock bag of mystery mixed meat cubes. "Might be squirrel," Valeria tells her. "Might be possum. Might be groundhog. It's always a mystery. But it's good for stew."
Valeria tells Carol she can expect duck next week and not to be alarmed if she hears shotguns going off by the pond this weekend. "Take the cooler back to the big house when the ice is all melted."
When she leaves, Carol glances at the gaudy, floral-patterned armchair and matching love seat in the living room and thinks how glad she'll be to replace them. She wonders what Jefe will think about it, whether she'd approve of Daryl – who for all Carol knows might be her lover - taking another woman on a private supply run.