Friday, October 22, 2010
"To what do we owe the honor of your presence?" Michonne asked Daryl when he joined them for breakfast the next morning. He was usually gone from the house by sunrise.
"Need a big breakfast. Goin' outside the gates. Huntin' overnight. Maybe two nights."
"Oh?" Carol asked.
"Told ya I was gonna."
"True." He had mentioned planning to go, weeks ago. But he'd never actually gone. He'd kept catching small game inside the gates – and then there was the alligator – and of course the stored burgers and hotdogs, which were gone now. "You just didn't say when you were going."
"Well, Daryl the Rogue can sleep in the Dungeon of Clemsworth until you come back," Sophia told him. "Then he'll have his health restored."
"Good, 'cause him and Carl the Wizard are gonna have to kick that dragon's ass when I get back."
"Car-all!" Andre exclaimed from his booster seat. "Car-all! Car-all!"
Carl smiled at him. "Hey, Dre. Like those canned peaches?"
Andre squeezed one in his hand, lifted it up, and said, "Pieces! Andre looooooves pieces!"
Sophia sighed like a mother hen. "I'm going to have to wash those hands later."
[*]
Carol walked with Daryl to the exit gate so she could close and deadbolt it behind him when he left. He was wearing a long-sleeve tan canvas shirt beneath his leather vest. "Are you going to be warm enough in that?" she asked. "Temperature is down to the forties at night now."
"Got m'sleepin' bag. Be fine. Get hot durin' the day trackin' anyhow." He had his pack with bedroll on one shoulder, and his crossbow on the other.
"If you do get a deer, how are you going to carry it back that far alone?" Ed always took the truck when he went hunting. And there were always other men to help get the deer back to the truck, if he did shoot anything, which he rarely did.
"Field dress it on the spot. That'll take off twenty-five, thirty percent of the weight. Got a tarp and twine in my pack. Take some sticks, make a drag sled and drag it back."
"You don't have to stay out the whole time I'm on the rag, you know."
"Pffft. What?"
"Well, the timing," she said. "It all seems rather convenient. You've been talking about hunting out there since we got here, but you choose today to it? The day after I tell you aren't getting any for a few days?"
"C'mon. Freezer's gettin' on empty. There's room for a whole deer. 'S why I'm goin'. Thought I'd go sooner, but then I lucked on that gator."
Carol smiled, a little affectionately, a little doubtfully. "A likely story."
"If I don't go now, gonna be out of meat soon." He stopped before the gate, unlatched it, swung it open, and then turned to face her.
She handed him Shane's walkie talkie. Rick had the other one, for now. "Call when you get back so someone can open the gate. Check in each night and morning to tell us you're alive?"
"These things only got a four-mile range, and that's with no obstacles."
"Really? Then how does Rick think that man he gave his other radio to - "
"This ain't a long-range two-way radio like that one. Just a walkie talkie."
"Well, how many miles are you hiking?"
"Less than four, probably. Just don't want ya to get all worried if you don't hear from me. Might catch a good trail, track a long way. Might be interference."
"Well, I am going to worry about you. Sorry. There's nothing you can do about it."
"Ain't used to it. Someone worryin' 'bout me."
She smiled affectionately and kissed his cheek. "Get used to it," she whispered.
[*]
Carol tried to stay busy to avoid the worry. She did some laundry in the lake in the morning with the help of Sophia – sheets and underwear, mostly - and left them to dry. Andrea and T-Dog were fishing together, just a few feet apart along the rail, laughing and joking.
Then Carol did some practice firing on the B.B. gun range, followed by knife practice at the balloon booth, while Sophia was training with Michonne using her "wahsa-whatever" as Daryl called it. Carol had started calling it that, too.
After a late lunch, she joined Rick and Michonne in one of the gardens for an hour and tried not to be too much of a fly on the wall, but it was hard not to eavesdrop, and hard not to notice all the little subtle glances Rick kept shooting the pretty woman's way when she wasn't looking. No wonder Lori had been marking her territory more and more lately.
"So, when's the baby due?" Michonne asked Rick as she pushed some seeds into the little hole she'd just dug.
"Oh…late May I think. Hard to keep track of time these days. But I wouldn't be surprised if the baby came at the start of May. Lori was early with Carl."
"Huh," Michonne said. "She said yesterday she had to be induced with Carl. I guess I assumed that was because he was taking so long. Why induce her early? History of big babies in your family?"
"I…I don't remember." Rick glowered and walked over to the wheelbarrow for another bag of fresh soil. He brought it back and flopped it down on the low stone wall around the flowerbed they were converting to grow onions from seeds, since seeds were all they had instead of bulbs. They planned to overwinter the seeds and hoped they would grow in spring, when the weather warmed. They would plant more gardens in the spring, warmer weather vegetables then. They planned a watermelon patch for summer.
In addition to the supplies from the nursery, they'd found the wheelbarrow, more mulch, soil, and fertilizer in the bed of a landscaping truck in the park, but those landscapers had only been planting flowers.
"Andre was five weeks early," Michonne told him. "One day earlier than that, and he would have been considered premature. But he's a fighter that one. Lori's doing a great job teaching him. Do you know he spelled out ASS yesterday with those wooden letters?"
Rick chuckled. "I bet Daryl taught him that."
"No, I think he's just a genius, my son. Gets his brains from his mother."
"And his humility, too?" Rick asked.
Michonne chuckled. Then she said, "You're awfully quiet, Carol."
"Just working."
"I hope you're cooking tonight," Michonne told her. "I swear, if you weren't already taken by Daryl, I'd try to snatch you up just for the stir fry."
Carol chuckled. "Stop joking around. Daryl already thinks you're a lesbian."
Rick let out a sharp laugh, and then looked embarrassed that he laughed so hard at the notion. "I mean, obviously she's not," he said, flushing slightly.
"Why so obviously?" Michonne asked him with a raised eyebrow.
"Well, I…uh…I mean…you have a child. By a man."
"That is the most convenient way for a woman to get with child," Michonne told him. "By a man. But you know, plenty of gay people have children, for all sorts of reason, with all sorts of people."
Rick dropped his hand garden shovel and squatted back on his haunches and looked at her. "So…what are you saying?"
Michonne flashed him a smile, chuckled, and walked over to the wheelbarrow for another packet of seeds.
[*]
There was news over dinner, delivered with a bit of discomfort and irritation by Shane. "We're having a bedroom rearrangement," he announced. "Let's just get it out there right now in the open so everyone knows and there's no idle gossip. I'm moving into the space room. With Glenn and Carl. Andrea's going to have that king bedroom to herself."
T-Dog looked at Andrea with a grin and then returned his attention to his food, still smiling.
"Cool!" Carl said. "But you have to take a bottom bunk, Uncle Shane, because Glenn and I already claimed the tops. You should sleep under me!"
"I just might do that."
"We tell ghost stories at night," Carl said excitedly. "So bring your flashlight."
"For the shadow puppets," Glenn explained.
Rick eyed Shane warily, as if perhaps he didn't want his "best friend" moving in with his son, right next door to the bedroom Rick shared with his wife, who carried Shane's child in her womb. "Why don't you just move in with Daryl?" Rick asked. "He has two beds in there."
"No!" Carol exclaimed. They couldn't fool around in there if Shane was his roommate, and they certainly couldn't fool around in her bedroom, with Sophia on the trundle. "I mean…" She lowered her voice, embarrassed by her own vigorous objection. "I just…I think it would be better if…"
Shane came to her rescue: "We all know Daryl's a bit prickly, not really a roommate kind of guy, needs his space, needs his privacy." He nodded slightly to Carol and then looked pointedly at Rick, who suddenly seemed to get the message.
"All right," Rick agreed. "The space room it is, then,"
[*]
Glenn did the dishes tonight, while Carol tried to reach Daryl on the walkie talkie but couldn't. She went back to the dining room and drank a cup of decaf coffee with the others and only half listened to their conversation. Then she played a game of Monopoly - Kingdom Edition - with Sophia and Carl and Rick on the living room table.
When that was done (or rather when they all decided to call a draw and pack it up), she headed outside with the walkie talkie. Under the light of the moon and stars, and with her lantern flashlight in hand, she walked across the way to one of the tables outside the ice cream shop, sat down, and set her flashlight upright on the table's center. Then she pressed the talk button. "Come in," she said. "Daryl, come in. Over."
Only static.
She left the static crackling as she got up and walked the path past the spaceship ride and over to a bench in front of a T-shirt shop, as though the location might make a difference, and tried again. "Daryl, come in. Over." No response.
She sat a minute and then walked over to the Sky Kingdom Swings, pulled up the metal bar on one, and sat down. Using the very tip of her toe, she gave herself a little push off the asphalt and then sat back. The swing swayed lightly. She waited as long as she could – about three minutes – before trying again, her heart half in her throat. "Come in," she said. "Daryl come in. Over."
The walkie talkie crackled, and this time, there was a voice: "Hey, Miss Murphy. Whatchya wearin'?"
Carol laughed with relief.
Their conversation was short over the cumbersome communication device, but she learned he'd shot a deer, gotten a single bolt in its gut just before sunset, but had given up the trail when it got dark. He was going to camp out and then "blood track" it at sunrise. He expected to find it near dead when he did. "Just hope the coyotes don't beat me to it."
"Or walkers," she told him.
He told her not to be surprised if she couldn't get in touch with him tomorrow, that he was getting out of range, but he expected to be back with that deer tomorrow before sunset.
She returned to the House of the Future feeling a thousand times lighter.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Daryl was up before the sun to eat a light breakfast and pack up his camp, but he waited for the sun to rise to light his trail before he started tracking, his boots crunching softly over autumn's first thinly scattered golden yellow blanket of fallen leaves.
He loved this part of the hunt the most. He could sit patiently and wait for them to come to the feed, and there was something almost zen about that waiting, he didn't know what other way to put it. And there was something the opposite of zen about actually shooting the thing – a rush of power, the adrenaline-fueled thrill of the moment, and then the growling satisfaction of hitting your mark.
But this…the tracking…this was something in between the two, something that drew from both the calm and the passion of hunting. It was pure balance. It was the moment when he felt most at one with the forest, when every solitary step gathered to a purpose.
He was intent on that purpose now, had been so intent on it for a full mile as he followed the trail of blood, that he almost didn't sense the fresh presence of life until he heard the faintest snap of a twig, and tore his eyes from the trail. That was when he saw a second deer, bigger than the one he was tracking.
Daryl froze like the deer, froze in every inch and fiber of his body except for one – the slow smile that spread across his face. He was going to come back with over one hundred pounds of meat from two deer.
Like the sudden crack of a whip, his body snapped into action. He swung his crossbow up to fire, but just as his finger touched the trigger, before he could smoothly pull it back, the deer jerked in place and let out a bleating, grunting cry of pain.
It was the cry he heard first, though that made no sense, because the cry couldn't have come before the blast of the rifle that inspired it. But that's how he heard it, somehow – the cry of the deer, and then the blast of rifle, and then…another cry, the scream of pain in his own shoulder as the bullet that tore all the way through the deer tore into him.
[*]
Carol used the sheets she'd laundered yesterday to remake her bed, then Sophia's, then Daryl's. As she tucked the sheets under the mattress of Daryl's bed, she smiled to think they were just going to get them dirty again after he came home tonight with all that venison.
Her unwelcome visitor was still in town, but she'd decided she didn't need reciprocation tonight. She had every intention of rewarding him for his victory and showing him just how much she had missed him.
[*]
The sunlight filtering through the canopy of the trees and reflecting off the golden yellow and light orange leaves was the most beautiful thing Daryl had ever seen outside of Carol's gentle smile.
He blinked against the light, opened his eyes again, and saw the light dance, and through the hazy dance of the light, he saw Carol's smile.
He faintly felt the earth beneath his back, the small pebbles and twigs digging into the old, scarred-over lashes. Most of all, though, he felt the pain coursing through his shoulder like electricity. He could smell sweat and gunsmoke. He could smell his own fear. He could sense his consciousness slowly seeping out of him like the blood that was seeping out of his shoulder. He could hear the birds cawing madly above.
The light danced off that soft, closed-lip smile in the sky. "Hey, Miss Murphy," he murmured, and then his eyes drew down heavily, and all was blackness.