Back at camp, Jackson and Addison are welcomed, but not without some mutual caution on all sides. Addison seems to relax a little when Beth greets her cheerfully.
Everyone is stunned to hear the young man is Daryl's son. "How old were you when you had him?" Lori asks in disbelief. "Twelve?"
"Sixteen," Daryl answers with irritation. "Probably seventeen when he was born."
"Probably?" Lori asks. "You don't know?"
Daryl stares at her coolly.
"My biological mother put me up for adoption right after I was born," Jackson explains. "Daryl didn't even know she'd had me. She never told him. When I turned eighteen, I went looking for my birth parents. Daryl and I met once for coffee. So...this is only the second time we've seen each other."
T-Dog laughs and shakes his head. "Daddy Dixon," he says. "Well I'll be."
Daryl frowns.
Deciding where to house the newcomers is tricky. They'd like a houseboat of their own, especially since they are sure how safe they are among these strangers yet, but as Rick points out, "We aren't sure how safe you are yet either. And you both have rifles. I don't think we want you two alone on a boat. Besides, we drained and stored the gas from all the boats that aren't a hybrid of solar and gas. You won't have electricity or running water on any of those, and the engines won't work."
Rick insists they stay in one of the spare rooms on one of the solar powered boats. Carol and Daryl's boat has only two bedrooms, and although T-Dog has a spare bedroom on his boat the siblings can share, Jackson seems reluctant to allow his sister to sleep on a boat nearby a strange, strong, sizeable man.
That's understandable, Carol thinks, given what they went through at their last camp. Jackson is willing to stay on Hershel and Beth's boat, however. An old man and a teenage girl must not seem like much of a potential threat to him, but it's Hershel who hesitates there—he's reluctant to have a nineteen-year-old as of yet unknown male sleeping wall to wall with his teenage daughter.
The Grimes family boat has a spare room, but also a baby coming that may eventually use it as a nursery, and six in one of these little houseboats is bound to get crowded. In the end, Maggie and Glenn come to the rescue. "We have a spare bedroom," Glenn volunteers. "It even has bunk beds in it."
Hershel regards him warily. He has to know by now Maggie and Glenn aren't sleeping in separate bedrooms, but he probably prefers not to think about it. Jackson looks Glenn over, then looks at Maggie. The fact that there's a woman on that boat, and that Glenn is clearly in a relationship with her, seems to reassure him. The fact that Glenn appears far less formidable than T-Dog in stature probably helps, too. Jackson accepts the arrangement.
They make dinner on the shore for the evening, and Daryl has to endure a lot of amused looks from those who have just been told Jackson is his son. Carol feels sorry for him. He's clearly embarrassed as he's forced to give a terse summary of his relationship with Jackson's mother—such as it was—though his embarrassment, as usual, presents as irritation. There's a lot of musing on the resemblance in their physical features.
"Were you both tow heads when you were little?" Lori asks.
"I was," says Jackson, running a hand through his now light, sandy brown hair. Daryl, whose hair is a shade darker, simply nods. Jackson glances at his redheaded sister. "Guess I should have caught on sooner I was adopted."
"Daryl's not your dad, too?" Carl asks Addison.
"No," she tells him.
When dinner is over, and the sun has not yet quite begun to set, they sail the boats out to the middle of the lake and anchor near one another. They usually wait until sunset to fish, but it's a warm day for September, and the water isn't frigid, so soon Carl and Beth are diving in. Daryl pumps up the floating ring they picked up for Carl and tosses it into him, and soon he's climbing aboard. Beth topples him off and takes possession of the throne.
Carol asks Daryl to pump up her unicorn floating circle for her, and he rolls his eyes, but he does it. "Are you going to join me on your lounge chair?" she asks.
"Only if you let me have your rationed beer for the week. Already drank mine." They don't have much beer in their little refrigerator, and they've judged how long it will take for it to turn completely, and decided they can have two a week each until it's gone.
"Fine." She leans back against the rail of the deck and watches him as the muscles of his bare arms flex and he pushes up and down the manual pump.
Rick, now in swim trunks and a swim shirt (they looted a bunch of swim gear, goggles, and snorkeling gear for everyone) dives into the water and swims out to his son. On Glenn and Maggie's houseboat, Jackson and Addison stand watching on the deck, mere yards from where Daryl is at work pumping up the floaties. Jackson leans on the rail and calls, "Aren't you afraid of deadheads in the water?"
"Walkers you mean?" Rick calls back. "We watched the lake for three weeks before we ever got in the water. Never saw one out here."
"They can't swim!" Carl calls back to him. "They can only wade. It's too deep for them here."
Jackson shakes his head. Addison looks longingly at the water. Glenn emerges from the cabin and hands Jackson a bottle of beer. "It's okay with you if he drinks?" Glenn calls over to Daryl.
"I ain't in charge of 'em!" Daryl calls back in disbelief, and Glenn shrugs.
"You know," Carol tells him as he tosses her the now inflated unicorn ring. She sets it aside, upright against the rail for a moment, "you could have offered to sleep on the couch and given them your bedroom. Did you not want them staying with us?"
"More room with Glenn and Maggie. And they got bunk beds."
"It's just, it might have been a good way to get to know your son."
Daryl gives her a wary look. "Carol, he don't know me from Adam."
"That was sort of my point." She tosses her ring in the lake and, in her black and blue dive suit (a sort of shorts and shirt sleeve shirt combo) dives in and swims out to it.
Glenn has joined them now, while Hershel and Maggie have has gone around to the rear of their boats to drop a couple fishing lines. Lori is watching from a lawn chair on the deck of the Grimes houseboat, as is T-Dog from his boat, with a rifle across his lap and binoculars around his neck, because it's his hour for guard duty. The newcomer siblings are leaning on the rail of Maggie and Glenn's boat and whispering to each other as they glance at the swimmers having fun in the lake.
The sun is beginning to shift in the sky. Carol closes her eyes against the rays and lounges in her unicorn ring, the water cold beneath her, and the sun warm above her. She hears a splash and opens her eyes to see the blue lounge chair floating atop the lake, and Rick swimming suddenly for it.
Daryl emerges headfirst from his dive into the water, shakes his wet hair, and growls, "That's my chair!" He begins freestyle stroking with fervent speed and beats Rick to the floating throne. He pushes Rick back with one arm, while half-treading water with the other. Rick uses his free arm to send a torrent of water splashing into his face, and Carl laughs as Daryl dunks Rick beneath the lake.
Eventually, Daryl is victorious and claims his throne. He's wearing a brown wife-beater t-shirt, dark enough that the scars on his back aren't noticeable when it's soaked wet – and knee-length swim trunks bearing an image of the Confederate flag. Carol's already given him her opinion of those swim trunks, but he loves them. "Couldn't you have at least picked one with the American flag?" she asked him and he replied, "Well that would just be sacrilegious."
Daryl fishes into the pocket of his swim trunks – that's one thing he loved about these trunks, the pockets – she knows he keeps a waterproof knife in there—and fishes out his sunglasses. He slides them on his face and relaxes with both arms down on the arms of the floating lounge cheer and then cries, "Shit! Forgot m' beer! Someone toss me one!" He sits half up on his lounger. "T-Dog, man!"
"I'm all out!" T-Dog calls back.
"Lori!"
"You don't need another beer, Daryl."
"Another one?" he roars. "Ain't had one today!"
On the deck of his new houseboat, Jackson looks down at the open beer bottle in his hand, and seems to regret it's already open and he can't toss it. He takes another sip, winces, and swallows. He doesn't even like beer, Carol thinks. He just wanted to be polite in accepting it. Jackson extends the beer to his sister, who shakes her head. Jackson shrugs and takes another sip.
Carol closes her eyes again and floats in blackness to the sound of laughter and splashes. When she bumps something, she opens her eye and sees her unicorn horn has pumped into Daryl's hip. He seizes the horn and gives the ring a twirl, which only spins her around until their floating devices bump again and her dangling legs are half over his just below his knees. "Did you want to give me a foot rub?" she asks.
"Stahp!" He lifts her ankles, gives the soles of her feet a push, and sends her ring floating slowly away.
When she's pretty sure he's closed his eyes again (though it's hard to tell beneath those glasses), she paddles back and navigates just so to poke him in the ribs with the horn again. He sits up abruptly, plunges off his raft while pushing it aside, and tips her ring over completely in the water. She's stuck in it for a second upside down before she pops it off her butt and emerges from the water. "How dare you!"
"'S what you get!"
Daryl turns to reclaim his lounge chair, but finds Rick has climbed atop it. "Flip me over, and you're taking my watch shift tonight," Rick warns him.
"Need to go get my beer anyhow," Daryl replies, and swims to their houseboat and scales the ladder that hangs down the side.
"We need to get you two swimsuits!" Beth yells to the siblings on the deck of the boat and Jackson replies, "Y'all crazy! Could be deadheads out there! Do you have some kind of Nietzschen death wish?"
"Nee-what?" Beth calls back, and Jackson just smiles and shakes his head again.
"Just saying," he calls, "y'all are going to be the snacks for heroes if you don't watch out!"
Beth narrows her brow in confusion and then shrugs and swims toward the ring Carl is floating in.
Carol closes her eyes and relaxes into the floating. This may be the last day it's warm enough to swim or float or sport in the already chilly water, and she's going to enjoy it. When she finally opens her eyes again, she finds Daryl watching her from the deck. At least, she thinks he's watching her, but it's hard to tell through those dark sunglasses. But by the way he suddenly turns away and walks around to the back of the houseboat, she's pretty sure that's exactly what he was doing.