The group had a late "healthy" dinner at some picnic tables to make up for their indulgence in the candy store. Carol had whipped together a beet salad of sorts, using the baby corn, beets, green beans, and some vinaigrette salad dressing. The kids were wincing with every bite.
The picnic tables were situated outside the indoor theater where they'd decided to settle for the night while the stench in the House of the Future finished clearing. There was even a port-a-potty on the sidewalk just outside the theater. It had probably been for the use of the set builders, so they wouldn't have to walk all the way to the nearest bathrooms.
"Do I haaave to eat more?" Sophia asked.
"Yes," Carol told her. "You need some vitamins. It's not that bad."
"Then why doesn't Daryl have to?"
Carol wasn't sure when Sophia had taken to calling him Daryl. "Mr. Dixon is eating his vegetables. He's eating green beans."
Daryl had opened a 32-ounce can of green beans and walked off popping them into his mouth like French fries. They had no idea where he had wandered off to or when he would be back, but Carol supposed he'd had more than his fill of socialization for the day and probably needed to decompress alone.
Still, she was starting to get a little worried when, an hour later, the sun had set, and he still wasn't back yet. Shane, Andrea, Lori, Glenn, and T-Dog were socializing by the glow of an oil lantern back at the picnic tables, while Rick and Carol were watching over the kids across the way at the rope ladder game, with two lantern flashlights set upright on either side so the kids could see. The moon and starlight helped, too.
Sophia had desperately wanted to play this game when they first came to Fun Kingdom, but of course Ed wouldn't pay for it. It involved trying to crawl up a sloped, rickety rope ladder all the way to the top to ring a bell without flipping over and falling on the padded protection below. Tonight, it had only taken Sophia three tries to get the hang of it. She rang the bell yet again – for her fifth time tonight, flipped herself intentionally, and dropped.
Carl growled with frustration as he flipped over just eight rungs up. He'd yet to make it to the top even once. "It's your ladder!" he cried. "You have the better ladder!"
"Fine, we'll switch," Sophia assured him and bounce-ran over to the ladder he'd been climbing. She carefully balanced on the bottom run, made two tentative steps, and then spider crawled her way up in no time to ring the bell, while Carl flipped on rung six of the "better ladder" this time.
Rick chuckled. "Did Sophia used to take gymnastics?"
"Oh, God, no. Ed never would have paid for that."
"Carl did little league and junior swim team. And soccer and flag football. And basketball."
"That's…a lot."
"Different seasons. Well, both soccer and flag football were in the fall, and that could get a little hectic. Sometimes we'd be at two games on one day." He sighed. "Nine a.m. on a Saturday."
"Did he like doing all that?" Carol asked skeptically.
"Lori thought it would be good for him. That it would keep him out of trouble."
Trouble? Carol thought. How much trouble could a barely twelve-year-old kid get into? "And what did you think?"
Rick shrugged. "I thought it wasn't worth arguing about."
"Well, I'm not exactly one to talk," Carol admitted, "but…you're allowed to have a say in your marriage, you know."
Rick laughed, looked down, and scuffed his shoe against the asphalt. That was a nervous habit of his, the shoe scuffing, like Daryl's thumbnail chewing or Glenn's smiling. She was learning all their little tells. He looked back up at the kids playing on the rope ladders and rested a hand on his hip near his revolver. "It took the whole world to come crashing down for her to let Carl have an unscheduled existence."
"Silver lining, I guess," Carol quipped.
"I'm glad for today. Glad that today, at least, these two just get to be kids. I want them to enjoy it while they can. Because childhood doesn't last long anywhere, but certainly not in this world. They've already seen things that have ripped their innocence to shreds. I'm glad they can still laugh and play like kids today, despite everything they've seen, even though the dead are walking around outside those iron fences. They're going to have to grow up so quickly. And that other one I've got coming…" He glanced back across the way toward the picnic tables, where Lori was laughing at something. He looked forward again and gritted his teeth. "That one will never know a world that didn't have walkers in it. Or a world that had civilizations."
It was strange to think of such things, of the end of civilization. Carol didn't want to think of it. "I wonder what Daryl's up to?"
"Who knows." Rick smiled. "He's like an outdoor cat, that one. He'll come wandering home when he feels like it, maybe with some dead animal as a love offering to the family."
Carol smiled, in part because the comparison was apt but in part because it made her recall their conversation in the tobacco shop about families without the fucking.
"Carl!" Lori cried from the picnic tables. "Carl, it's getting late, honey. We should get your teeth brushed."
Rick swiveled. "Twenty minutes!" he yelled. "Just give him another twenty minutes!" The yell turned to an irritated under-the-breath mutter as he turned back to the rope ladders again – "Just twenty goddamn minutes. It's not asking much."
Daryl finally came back, shinning a flashlight to light his steps, after they'd all brushed their teeth using bottled water and spitting in the bushes and everyone was reconvening at the picnic tables to head in the theater and setting up the beds.
"Find anything interesting?" Shane asked.
"Found these." Daryl tossed a handful of foil-wrapped condoms on the table in front of Shane. The hazy light of the oil lantern glittered off the foil. "All yours, since you're the only one who's gonna need 'em, at least as long as Lori's already knocked-up."
Carl snatched one up. "What are they?" he asked. "Some kind of candy? Or a toy?"
Lori flushed and yanked the package from his grip. "Jesus, Daryl. Could you be more discreet?" She slid it in the back pocket of her jeans while Shane scooped up the rest from the table and shoved them in his pockets.
"Kid's twelve!" Daryl exclaimed. "How the hell can he not know by now?"
"He's barely twelve," Lori insisted. "He was just about to start sixth grade. That was still elementary school in our district."
"What is it?" Carl asked again.
"It's a condom," Rick said hastily. "It's something you use to make sure a woman doesn't get pregnant when you…do things that can make a woman pregnant."
"What things?" Carl asked.
"Sex," said Sophia as she sat on top of the picnic table and rested her feet on the bench. "It's when a man gets an erection and then inserts his penis in a woman's – "
Carol put her hand over Sophia's mouth. "Let his parents explain that to him, honey." She dropped her hand to Sophia's shoulder and looked apologetically at Lori. "When she asked about it last year, I just gave her a straightforward, biological explanation."
"So, I see," Lori said.
"Got 'em from a vending machine in one of the men's rooms." Daryl smirked at Shane. "Had cock rings in it, too, if you need one of those."
"Daryl!" Lori scolded.
"I definitely do not need one of those," Shane replied.
"Cock rings?" Andrea asked loudly, and Lori put her hands over Carl's ears. "Seriously? Condoms and cock rings in a family amusement park? I didn't even know they still had those machines in men's rooms, outside of maybe some seedy gas stations."
T-Dog grinned. "Maybe they're expecting people to get busy in the Tunnel of Courtly Love."
"Daryl was joking," Shane told them. "He was giving me a hard time. I'm sure they don't have cock rings and condoms in the bathrooms of Fun Kingdom."
"Then where did you get the condoms?" Andrea asked.
"Can we stop this conversation right here?" Lori asked.
The group filed into the theater together, Shane and Andrea first, then the kids and T-Dog, then Rick and Lori, then Carol, and behind her, Daryl and Glenn.
Carol heard Rick whisper to Lori, "You haven't told him about sex?"
"I thought that was your job," Lori hissed back.
Behind her, she heard another exchange, Glenn asking Daryl, "So…uh…what's a cock ring? Exactly?"
Daryl snickered.
[*]
When Carol awoke the next morning on the stage of the theater, Daryl was gone. She supposed this was how it was going to be in the weeks and months to come. He would draw away and vanish from the group for chunks of time. He'd done it at the quarry camp, but it had seemed less strange then. They always just assumed he was hunting.
Despite the lingering stench, the group – absent Daryl - took a tour of the House of the Future after breakfast. They agreed they needed to give the place another day to air out, but for now, they wore Fun Kingdom bandanas around their mouths and noses in order to better tolerate the smell as they unloaded the loot from the pick-up truck into the museum room and hallway, leaving a clear path to walk. They also loaded beer and wine into the refrigerator and brought over two extra drink fridges, plugged those in, and filled them, too.
The kids rode the ramp up the stairs twice before Carol reminded them of Daryl's admonition to conserve energy. "We should find a way to disable that," she suggested. "It's too tempting for the kids."
Rick found an electrical box that allowed him to turn off power to the ramp. The kids pouted and Rick shooed them outside to play. He and Lori followed to supervise, and Glenn came with them, letting out a pleased "Ahhhhh!" When he hit the fresh air.
The others continued to unload. There was an awkward moment when Andrea assumed she and Shane would be sharing a room. Shane hemmed and hawed, and Andrea said, "Fine, I guess you're bunking with Daryl then. Or with Carl and Glenn in the space room. Because I'm taking that king. Or maybe Daryl wants to bunk with me."
"You're not bunking with Daryl, I'm sure," Shane said.
The couple was arguing in front of the faux fireplace in the living room. Carol, who was in the kitchen reading the sign on the counter by the stovetop to see how it worked, jerked her head up at Andrea's mention of Daryl.
"Why not?" Andrea asked. "He's not bad looking. And I bet he likes it hard and raw. Could be fun."
"What the hell are you doing?" Shane asked. "You're not going to make me jealous of Daryl."
Andrea shrugged. "I'm just saying. You aren't the only man around here. Glenn would be eternally grateful to any woman who gave him the time of day. There's T-Dog, too."
"I'm available!" T-Dog yelled, apparently overhearing this conversation from where he was organizing boxes in the hallway by the display room. He strolled into the living room smiling. He put a hand on his chest. "Seriously, Andrea, I'm at your service if you ever want to upgrade from Officer Uncommitted here."
Andrea chuckled.
Carol couldn't tell how serious T-Dog was. He seemed to be joking – mostly to give Shane a hard time - but the truth was, he probably wouldn't turn Andrea down if she offered. Carol wondered if Daryl would. The idea that he might bothered her.
"Don't be coming onto my girlfriend like that," Shane told T-Dog.
Andrea raised an eyebrow. "Your girlfriend?"
Shane sighed. "All right, fine, we'll share the bedroom with the king. Daryl can have that one with the double beds to himself. And Glenn can be Carl's bunk buddy."
"That means I get the queen," T-Dog said. "So, you know, I'll be right next door. If you need me for anything." He winked at Andrea and went back to his work in the hallway.
"Don't make me kick your ass!" Shane shouted after him.
"I'd like to see you try!" T-Dog shouted back.
[*]
Daryl caught up with them later that day when they were having lunch at the tables outside the ice cream shop. Nachos this time, with nacho chips, Velveeta cheese they'd heated in the microwave in the house, jalapenos, hot sauce, and a sprinkling of beef they'd ground and cooked from four of the frozen hamburger patties. Those were going to be gone in no time if they didn't slow down their consumption.
Daryl wolfed down the food that was offered him, guzzled a bottle of water, and wiped his hands on his pants instead of the napkin Carol had given him. As she was gathering the paper bowls and napkins to dump in the nearby trash can – they'd need to collect all this trash eventually and burn it somewhere, she thought - Daryl walked over to her. "Let someone else clean up. C'mon. Knife lesson time."
He started to walk as though expecting her to follow. He looked back. "You comin'?"
"I have to arrange childcare," she told him. "I can't just walk off whenever I want like you."
"Oh."
Carol asked Lori and Rick to keep an eye on Sophia for the rest of the afternoon. Rick told her he was happy to do so and to "Take all the time you need. I was planning to start firearms lessons for Lori and the kids today anyway." He held up a hand, "Don't worry. No real shooting yet. Just getting used to the guns."
"Sophia, you mind Mr. and Mrs. Grimes now," Carol said. "Be respectful, follow instructions. You'll learn a lot."
"Yes, Mama."
Carol joined Daryl and walked beside him to wherever he was leading her. He walked with a sense of relaxed purpose. He was comfortable around her now, she thought.
"Where were you all morning?" she asked.
"Out."
"Discover anything exciting?"
"That little lake by the ferris wheel's definitely got fish. Took a pole over there and dropped a line. Caught one but it was too little. Threw it back. Better luck tomorrow. And uh…" He reached into the inside pocket of his new black, sleeveless vest and pulled out a knife in a brown leather sheath. "Got you this."
Carol took the sheathed knife and looked at the ornate carving of flowers on the sturdy, dark cherry wood handle. The same flower pattern was stitched into the brown leather of the sheath. "Where did you get this?"
"Medieval Kingdom Gift Shop. You know, one of the ones we didn't check out 'cause none of the keys worked?" There were a handful of places the magic ring of keys had failed to unlock yesterday. The gates could all be unlocked and rolled up with a single master key, but then a key had to be found that would work in the doors. The guard must not have had them all. "I busted in. They were sellin' swords and battle axes and maces and shit. Half of it was fake. Ornamental. Some were toys. Wooden swords. Light-up swords. But there was this one glass case of real knives. Think they were sellin' 'em on consignment from local craftsmen. Anyhow, busted the case open, took this one."
"Thank you. It's beautiful. And…I mean, practical, too, I assume. But this carving on the handle…itsbeautiful."
"Ain't like it cost me anything."
No, but he'd taken the time to break in and get it. He'd though of her and her desire to learn to use a knife. All that, she considered a return serve on the previous day's flirting. Maybe her skills weren't as rusty as she'd thought they were, and maybe Daryl's weren't as non-existent as she'd imagined.
Not that she'd been flirting with any purpose, she assured herself. She was just practicing. Having fun. She didn't really want anything from Daryl in that department. Still, it felt good to receive a gift from him, just because he'd thought of her.
As she walked, Carol ran a finger over the carving on the handle. She could feel Daryl watching her. He didn't have the sunglasses on this afternoon. She looked up, and when her eyes met his, he flitted his away. But he slowed his gait slightly. "Know the flower?" he asked.
"They're jasmines, I think?"
"Yeah. Know the story?"
"The story of jasmines?" she asked. "No."
He pulled a toothpick out of his shirt pocket, tucked it between his teeth, and began gnawing on it. It was either that, a cigarette, or his thumbnail, she thought. It made it easier for him to talk, somehow, if he could talk around something.
"This duke in Europe, he got this one jasmine plant from China. Just one." Daryl held up a single finger. "Rich asshole wanted to keep it all to himself." He took the toothpick out of his mouth for a moment. "But he had this poor gardener who wanted to give his sweetheart something. So, the gardener picked a sprig for her to wear in her hair. Just a tiny sprig. That's all it was. Small thing. Weak thing." He put the toothpick back between his teeth. "Ain't nobody would expect that little thing to become anything much. Well, the gardner's girl didn't wear it. She planted it…thing took root…grew big…and so the gardener, he made more cuttin's from it. Grew more and more jasmine plants. The gardener sold the flowers and got stinkin' rich, so then he and his girl could afford to get married and buy their own land."
"That's the story?" Carol asked.
"True story. From that one little, weak sprig bloomed an entire garden. All it needed was good soil and time." His eyes flitted briefly to hers again and then away. "And someone to tend it."
Carol caressed the jasmine carving in the handle and felt her breath catch. He really had taken his time to pick it. The gesture was so unexpected coming from a man so rough-around-the-edges. But he'd chosen this specific knife for her - because she'd been a weak, little sprig, but she was determined to grow. She was determined to cut one strength out of another and to plant each new one until it bloomed. "It's perfect," she said quietly.
Carol stopped walking to clip the sheath to her jeans but had trouble opening the clip.
"Here," he said and turned and took the sheath. He slipped his hand into her waist band to tug it outward, like he had when helping her with the holster the other day. But this time the back of his fingertips briefly brushed her silky underwear. She felt suddenly embarrassed that she was wearing such a silky pair, but that was simply what had been clean. "Just got to make sure ya push that back piece of the clip here. Got to spread it good and wide so you can slide up on in." He didn't even seem to notice how sexual that last line sounded.
He clipped the sheath to her pants and let go of her waistband. Then he tugged hard on the sheath to make sure it wouldn't easily come loose from her jeans. "That'll do ya."
Not until he was done did she realize she'd been holding her breath the whole time he was clipping it on. She let out that breath now, all at once, and Daryl seemed suddenly to realize just how close he was to her. He took two steps away and started walking again.