Though frustrated by their loss of the bear, Jackson and Daryl do not emerge from the forest empty handed. They return with a wild turkey, enough to yield eight pounds of meat for the camp. They'll pluck and clean and brine it tonight, and then let it smoke all day tomorrow for a communal dinner.
When they enter through the west gate to the shoreline, Daryl spies Carol in the distance, just off the dock, talking to T-Dog not far from one of the garden plots.
He shoves the turkey he's holding, feet-down, at Jackson, "Clean it," he demands, and then paces on ahead quickly, leaving Jackson holding the bird. When he reaches the pair, they fall silent and look at him as though they expect he must have an urgent message, and maybe it looks like that from how fast he was walking. But all he manages to do is to bark, "What's for dinner?"
T-Dog smiles uneasily and glances at Carol.
Carol looks slightly puzzled, but answers, "Looks like you caught something. Does it need to be cooked tonight?"
"Nah. Won't be ready tonight. Turkey. For tomorrow. Needs to brine and smoke."
"Well, good timing then, because I have dinner plans for tonight at T-Dog's place."
Daryl feels a sudden panic. T-Dog asked already? She said yes already? All he can think to do is ambush the whole thing. "A'ight. What time?" Daryl stares T-Dog in the eye. "Need us to bring somethin'? I got a can of green beans."
"Uh…" T-Dog looks at Carol.
"I think T was just planning to cook for two," Carol tells him. "But there's plenty of leftovers in our fridge still. I'm sure you'll find something you like for tonight." She smiles at T-Dog. "So seven?"
"Seven it is." T-Dog steps back and nods to Daryl a little warily before he heads off.
Carol smiles at Daryl as though expecting him to say something, but he's all out of plays. Right now, he's just annoyed, more annoyed than he should be, probably. "Gotta help Jackson clean that turkey," he mutters before he stomps toward the butcher's table.
Later, when the turkey is brining and Daryl has cleaned up his hands and arms and face using the water trough on shore, he returns to their houseboat and goes below deck. He can hear Carol moving around in their little bathroom, getting ready for her big date. She's taking a damn shower. Like she needs her whole body clean for it.
When she comes out to the kitchenette, where he's rummaging through the fridge, she's not in her usual baggy brown cargo pants with all the pockets. She's in blue jeans. And they fit tightly around her ass. And instead of a dull-colored canvas long-sleeve shirt, she's wearing some kind of softer-fabric, long-sleeved burgundy-colored shirt with a v-neck. A goodman v-neck. At least he thinks that's what they call it when it's cut low like that, low enough to see some cleavage.
"How do I look?" she teases, pulling the shirt a little lower by its tail.
He grimaces and slams the fridge door. "Ain't shit worth eating in there."
"I'm sure you'll manage."
"Thought we were having dinner together today."
"Well, we have dinner together every day, Pookie. It's not like we had special plans."
"But T-Dog's got special plans?" he grumbles.
Carol leans back against the counter. "Well, he's cooking for me. It's nice to have someone cook for me for a change."
"I can cook."
"You don't," she observes.
"Can. Can cook. I'll cook for you."
"Yeah? Okay, then why don't you cook for me the day after tomorrow? Since we're having a communal meal tomorrow with that turkey."
"A'ight," he answers cautiously.
"Then it's a date."
A date. He feels like maybe he got himself into something he didn't mean to and isn't going to be very good at. He can cook. Survival cooking. Campfire cooking. Won't get you sick cooking. Not really candlelight impress-a-girl cooking. "But you're going to T-Dog's tonight?"
"Well, he invited me."
"Yeah. Just you," Daryl observes. "Why's that?"
"Well why do you think, Daryl?" she asks, and he can't quite tell if she's teasing or annoyed.
"'Cause he wants in your damn pants."
She snorts. "I don't think T-Dog is going to try to get in my pants tonight."
"Of course he is! Why do you think he's gonna light candles and shit?"
"I wasn't aware he was going to light candles and shit, but, if he does, I'm sure it will be pleasant evening with no serious attempt to get in my pants by the end of it."
Daryl glowers.
Carol pushes off the counter. "I better get going. You have a good evening."
"Yeah, you enjoy the sunset," he mutters.
When she's gone, Daryl slams around the kitchen a bit, not even sure what he's looking for, eventually realizing he just wants to open and slam cupboards. He isn't hungry. He slumps on the couch and opens that Kierkegard book Jackson gave him, which he still hasn't been able to make himself read. Like he's going to make himself read it now. He flips through the pages and pauses when he sees the glow of a yellow highlighter over a single line: "During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk." He shuts the book and tosses it on the coffee table.
Daryl climbs up on the deck and clatters down the metal ramp, which they leave down until they go to bed, onto the dock. He makes his way onto shore all the way to the boathouse, as they call it, where Rick stands up top on watch. It's a good solid perch from which to see the whole camp. Rick is slowly walking back and forth the short length of the flat roof, with the camp's best sniping rifle in hand. It's a small cinderblock building with a once air-conditioned rental office from which the houseboats were rented, but it also has an open shore front window for renting the kayaks and rowboats that are stacked in racks along the building's sides.
He scales the iron ladder in the back the single story to the roof and tells Rick, "I'll take over. Go be with your family."
"You sure? You're on watch tomorrow at midnight again."
"'M sure. Got you a pregnant woman at home. Go on. Get."
Rick shrugs and hands over the good rifle. "I can't wait until this baby is out. Maybe Lori will stop waking me up at two a.m. with charlie horses."
"Ain't the baby gonna wake you up at two a.m. then?"
"Oh, yeah. Probably. But it won't blame me when it does."
"She blames you for the charlie horses?"
"For getting her pregnant, which led to the charlie horses."
"Mhmm," Daryl murmurs, and tries not to show in his face what he's thinking, that Rick wasn't the one who got her pregnant. Everyone knows. He thinks Rick probably knows, too, but being the honorable man he is, he's decided to pretend he doesn't know. It's better for the baby that way. Better for Carl too. Sure as shit better for Lori. Daryl's not quite so sure it's better for Rick. He wonders what it must be like, to raise a kid you know is not your own. Of course, some other man did it with his son, and tha man did a pretty decent job, too, it seems, even if he wasn't around as much as Jackson wanted, even if Jackson did end up with a temporary drug habit. At least his adoptive father didn't beat him. He made sure Jackson was fed, housed, educated, and rehabilitated. That's more than anyone ever did for Daryl or Merle. That man did a better job with Jackson than Daryl ever would have done, but he's trying to do something now. Trying to be a mentor, like Carol said.
Rick pats him on the shoulder, hands over the binoculars he's wearing around his neck, and heads down. Daryl surveys the shore and resists the urge to look at T-Dog's houseboat for as long as possible, but eventually he does swing the binoculars that way. They aren't below deck, so he can see them clearly. T-Dog's put a little two-person folding card table right out on the deck, with two candles in some kind of silver stands right in the center, and it's got a tablecloth. A fucking tablecloth. In the apocalypse. "Ridiculous," Daryl mutters to himself.
[*]
"This is delicious," Carol tells T-Dog as she licks her fingers clean of the barbecue sauce on the venison and then wipes her hands on the cloth napkin he provided.
"It was my grandmother's recipe, modified for the ingredients we actually have. I wasn't sure if it would work on deer. It's meant for pork." He glances toward the boathouse, and Daryl, whose standing watch atop it, turns and walks to the other side. "I think we're being spied on."
Carol chuckles.
T-Dog leans back in his chair. "So what's going on there, really? He seemed a little miffed about me asking you to dinner."
She sighs. "I don't know what's going on there. Sometimes I think something is about to go on there…and then it doesn't."
"But you'd like it to?" T-Dog asks bluntly.
"Maybe," she admits.
"Then why did you say yes to dinner with me?"
"Because it's nice. It's pleasant to be romanced a little, especially after what my marriage was like with Ed. And you're harmless."
"I'm harmless?" T-Dog asks with a grin. "How do you figure that?"
"Because you aren't really attracted to me, are you?"
T-Dog shrugs. "I could be. There's no reason I shouldn't be. You're a lovely woman."
"But you're not."
"No, I'm not a lovely woman."
She laughs. "I mean you're not attracted to me."
"Like I said, I figure I could be. I like your company."
"I don't think it works like that," she tells him.
"At some point I have to move on."
"From?" she asks.
"My life before."
"I don't really know much about your life before," she admits.
"None of us has talked about any of that too much, have we?"
"I know you played football in college, and that's where you got the nickname. That your real name is Theodore."
"Who told you that?"
"Jacqui."
T-Dog nods. He looks gloomy, a rarity for T-Dog. He's probably thinking of leaving Jacqui behind in the CDC to make her final choice. They were close, Jacqui and T-Dog, but Jacqui was sweet to everyone.
"And I know you were really involved in your church," Carol continues, "that you went around saving people in the church van when it all started."
"I was a sports minister."
"A sports minister?" Carol didn't even know there was such a thing.
"Yeah, I organized all of the church's youth sports programs. We had soccer and flag football and basketball, for K through 8th grade. I was thinking of trying to get a little flag football game going here, actually, before it gets too cold."
Carol smiles. "That would be fun." She realizes she's never asked this. "Did you have someone?"
T-Dog nods. "Her name was Destiny. She was my high school sweetheart. We got married after I was injured in college and lost my football scholarship. There's never really been anyone else. I'm like Rick I guess. Except he's still got Lori."
"I'm so sorry. I had no idea."
"Were you and Ed high school sweethearts?"
She shakes her head. "I was twenty-four when we met. We got married because I got pregnant with…" She swallows. It hurts to say the name. "She came five months after the wedding. It was a bad reason to get married. I shouldn't have been so afraid to be a single mother." She thinks of asking if he had children, but that might be too much.
"I guess Daryl had a girlfriend in the old world," he says.
"Daryl? No. I doubt it."
"Ummm….Jackson."
"Oh. Yes, he…he had sex with Jackson's mother. Obviously. I mean…I don't think he's ever had a girlfriend girlfriend. Really."
"No? But you're waiting for him to figure out how to have one? All on his own?"
"It does sound a little silly when you put it that way."
T-Dog smiles and glances back at the boathouse roof. "Well, as long as we have an audience, why don't we put on a show?" He stands, goes to the portable stereo he has on deck, and puts on some music. Then he extends his hand to her. "Care to dance?"
Carol smiles, puts her napkin on the table and stands to take his hand.
[*]
Daryl sullenly lowers his binoculars. Fucking hell. How is he supposed to compete with that? He doesn't know how to dance. And he's supposed to have dinner with Carol in two nights. She said it's a date.
He sighs and walks to the edge of the roof, toward the east gate, and peers in that direction for a change. A stray walker has lurched its way to the fence line and has caught itself up in the barbwire laced around the rails. He climbs down the ladder and jogs down the shore to dispense with it by knife point.