Red River Blue
Chapter 4
"We don't want to be any trouble," River said. She stuck close to Daryl's side and casted another nervous glance around at the odd assortment of people that had gathered in the small paved area outside the prison walls. As she tried to get a read on them, she could tell a lot of them were staring back, wondering if they could trust her. "The girls and I can sleep in the camper."
After some brief negotiations between Daryl and Rick, the man that seemed to be in charge of this place, River had been allowed to walk back down the long drive and drive her camper in through the gate. Rick insisted on looking around inside her camper when she got it parked. River didn't like it. She didn't know this man or trust him. But after a nod from Daryl she agreed to step out and let the man inside. It seemed like he was just checking to make sure no one was hiding inside, so River relaxed a little.
"Ya ain't sleepin' in a camper out here," Daryl insisted, "Y'all are comin' inside where it's safe." River's eyes darted around. Looking at the people that she was going to be rooming with. They didn't look particularly scary or dangerous, but they were still strangers to her. When they first came in, Wren had run over to hug her father. She stood with him inside the fence while Harley and River walked down to get the camper. But now she was crowded back in next to River's side, her arm around her mother's waist as she stared around with big wide eyes.
Wren had seen other people a few times since the otubreak, mostly from afar. But it had been a long time since she had spoken to anyone besides her mom and her sister. Maybe close to a year now. They stayed quiet and they stayed away from other people. That was how they stayed alive this long. Wren lifted her hand, her thumb sliding between her teeth where she bit down on the tip of it and chewed at the skin around her thumbnail. She wasn't really afraid. But she was feeling shy and nervous. Especially since there was a boy here about her age.
Wren watched as her father stepped forward, taking a step towards her older sister. His arms were slightly lifted, like he meant to hug her. Harley stepped back, mantaining the distance between them, her hand moving quickly to the gun on her hip. He backed off. Wren thought he looked sad. She was the only one that hugged or touched him. Even her mom kept her distance from him.
Daryl watched the awkward scene developing. He couldn't say he blamed Harley for how she was acting, but it wasn't going to help Merle out around here if everyone found out even his own daughter was afraid of him. Daryl didn't wait for River to decide if she was going to sleep inside the prison, he just tossed an arm around her shoulders and started herding her and the girls inside. They were like a flock of geese. River was the head goose and wherever he led her, the girls followed behind like little goslings.
"Wait," River said. She ducked out from under Daryl's arm and hurried back to her camper, giving Merle a wide berth. She climbed inside and popped back out a few seconds later with a large basket of peaches. She glanced around nervously again and then returned to Daryl's side.
"We got these this mornin'," she explained. "I uh... I thought y'all might like some." It came out sounding like a question. So Daryl reached in and plucked a peach from the basket, smelling it before he took a bite. "They're a lil' underripe still, but not too bad," she added, fiddling with the edge of the basket and shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
A older looking woman with short gray hair stepped forward. She had a baby in her arms, but she handed it off to a pretty young blonde girl that looked about Harley's age. Then she held her hands out for the basket of peaches. She gave River a smile, the first one she had gotten from anyone besides Daryl in this place. River handed her the basket.
"Thank you," the woman said. Seeing that Daryl was obviously not planning to introduce her, Carol figured she better just do it herself. Sometimes he really acted like he was born in a barn.
"I'm Carol." She nodded towards the girl that was holding the baby. "That's Beth and the little one is Judith."
"I'm River," River said, "this 'ere is my girls Wren and Harley." The older girl nodded, but the younger one just ducked in closer to her momma. Carol smiled at the girl, but seeing her brought back some painful memories. She was about the same age Sophia would have been if she was still alive.
The younger girl looked a lot like her mother. But the older one was on odd mix of Merle and River. She had wildly curly blonde hair and her mother's full lips. But she had Merle's eyes. And from the looks of her, it seemed she had his angry disposition as well. Carol tried not to be too obvious about it, but as she glanced back and forth between them, the identical scowls on their faces made her want to laugh. There was no denying who's child that was.
"Come'on," Daryl said. He didn't put his arm around River again, but he pulled at her shirtsleeve, leading her along behind him like she was on a leash. When they walked inside, River took a good look around. The place was not exactly the Red Roof Inn, but it did look secure. The walls were thick and the doors locked. It was pretty dirty inside, but nothing that a little soap and water wouldn't fix. She knew Daryl was watching her to gauge her reaction to the place so she gave him a shrug and a smile. This place had potential. But she would wait a while and get to know the people a little better before she made her final judgement. Daryl led her through the first area, which was mostly open and scattered with a few tables and chairs and some wooden pallets. Then they turned a corner and headed into what looked like an actual cell block.
"This'un here is mine," Daryl informed them, pointing to a cell.
"Can we have the room next to yours?," Wren asked, finally piping up in her sweet little chirpy bird voice. River leaned, looking into the cell in question. It looked unoccupied, so she nodded at her daughter. Wren ran inside and started jumping and climbing all over one of the metal bunk beds. "Can I have the top bunk?"
"No dumbass," her sister told her, "Yer gonna have ta sleep outside with the dead." River turned, trying to hide her smile.
"Harley. Language. And please don't tease your sister." Harley rolled her eyes.
"Fine," Harley said, "but yer still sleepin' on the bottom bunk." Just to get her point across she gave the younger girl a quick rabbit punch to the arm. Harley barely even touched her, but of course Wren squealed like it was the end of her life and went running for mom. River closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. Did the girls have to start kicking off now? In front of all these people they didn't even know and that probably already had their opinions of her mothering skills because she was affiliated with Merle. This had nothing to do with a stupid bunk bed anyway. Harley was mad at Wren for acting like what she considered to be a little traitor and hugging Merle.
Daryl leaned down and whispered to the girl. "Bottom bunk is more comfortable." He patted Wren on her head, thinking about how much taller she was than the last time he saw her. Wren let go of her mother and hugged him around the waist. Then she ran back into the room and plopped down on the bottom bunk mattress, a cloud of dust rising up around her and making both girls cough.
"Maybe I better get our sleepin' bags out of the camper," River said. And an allergy pill for each of the girls before they sneezed themselves to death. She took a step in the direction that would lead her back outside and then glanced back towards the girls. They had not been alone around people she didn't know since before the outbreak. She knew she was just walking outside, but it still terrified her. There were other men here besides Daryl and Merle. Men she didn't know or trust.
"I got 'em," Daryl told her quietly. She nodded, feeling more grateful to him than she thought the situation actually warranted. It was hard to explain, but she had been so afraid to even walk off a few feet away from the girls to pee for so long now. To have someone she trusted to share the responsibility with felt like the weight of a thousand giant elephants being lifted off her back. She told the girls she would be right back and headed for the camper. Daryl watched his brother to see what he was going to do. The man hesistated a moment, then went walking out after River like someone lit a fire under his ass. Daryl watched him go, letting out an inaudible sigh.
River pulled herself up into the camper. The sleeping bags were in a rumpled heap on the bed. She thought about rolling them up, but instead she folded them up into a big wad and gathered them up into her arms. The camper rocked a little to her left, which meant someone big had put their weight on the steps to get in. River dropped the bags, her hand going to the knife on her belt. Her rifle was already inside, leaning against the metal bars of Daryl's cell.
"What?," she asked, her hand coming away from her knife once she saw Merle standing inside the doorway of her camper. The camper wasn't exactly large. But it wasn't tiny either. It was somewhere between a full size RV and a pop up. She had taken it from a lot near her apartment after it became clear that no one was going to get in trouble anymore for stealing things. But Merle looked huge standing in her small space, like Gulliver when he went to the land of the little people.
He stared at her a moment before he answered, so she leaned down and started gathering the sleeping bags back up into her arms. She rolled them into a bundle and set them on the table. Then she took a good look at the father of her children.
He looked thin. And old. Years of hard drug use and harder living had not been kind to him. If she didn't know him, she would have never guessed that he was only about six years older than her. He looked closer to fifty than forty. Even his hair was starting to go gray. Her eyes moved down from his face. His body was still hard and solid looking. That had not changed.
"What's that thing on your arm?," she asked. It was obviously used for killing the dead, but she couldn't figure out why it was covering his whole hand. That didn't seem very practical. Merle still didn't speak to her. Instead he loosened up the straps on the strange metal contraption and slid it off his arm to reveal a disgusting looking badly healed stump where his right hand used to be. River's blue eyes got wide, but she didn't look away. It was obvious to her now that he had been through something traumatic. Not just because of the stump where his hand used to be, there was something there in his eyes. A look she didn't recognize.
She felt the urge to cross the slight distance between them and take him into her arms. To offer him the comfort of her body. Give him the only kind of love that men like Merle understood. But instead her hand came up, the tip of one finger rubbing over the crooked bump in the bridge of her nose. She had believed for years that if she only loved her husband hard enough, it would make him better. Cure him. But she had learned the hard way that love wasn't always enough. River squared her shouders up and chewed at her bottom lip before she spoke.
"Just 'cause ya lost yer hand don't mean I'm getting back together with ya," she informed him. That made him smile. Not the scary I am about to kill you smile that he usually offered up to people. A real smile. It was soft and sad and it made River feel the endless hole in her chest that she liked to pretend wasn't there.
"Ya could at least say hello to me," he said. River's words were more telling than she knew. She never announced that she wasn't getting back with him unless she was thinking about taking him back. If she really wanted to get rid of him, she would swear and throw things.
"Hello Merle," she said, swallowing hard since her mouth felt like it was filling up with spit for some stupid reason. Her palms were sweaty and she wiped them against the thighs of her jeans. Merle moved towards her, discarding the metal contraption he had pulled off his arm on the table next to the jumbled pile of sleeping bags. He moved slowly, well aware that if he spooked River he was likely to recieve a hard knee to the junk or maybe even worse for his troubles.
He brought his hand up, the tip of his finger running over the bump in her nose. Touching it just like he had seen her doing a few moments before.
"Told you a long time ago I would pay to get that fixed," he reminded her.
"And I told you a long time ago I like it better this way," River said. It was not the first time she told him that. He knew her well enough to read between the lines. Better this way did not mean her nose. It meant her life. She liked it better without him in it.
Merle was good at keeping his emotions hidden. But she saw the subtle twitch in his jaw. Whether it was from anger or regret or a mixture of both she couldn't say.
"Does give yer face some character," he teased.
The joke was so far past inappropriate, River felt the giggle bubbling up out of her before she could stop herself. She choked off her laughter and tried to look angrier than she felt. Merle shifted his hand, rubbing his thumb over the bridge of her nose instead of his finger so he could cup her face with the rest of his hand. His thumb felt rough in contrast to the gentle way he was touching her. He was close enough to her that she could smell him. Tobacco and sweat mixed in with the woodsy almost grassy smell that was distinctly Merle. Like dew on the grass after the rain. The smell of the trees and the leaves just clung to him.
River had not kicked his balls up his ass or stuck a gun in his face yet, so Merle ran the ball of his thumb down over the tip of her nose. The edge of his thumb dipped into the little vertical cleft above her lips and then down just slightly further to trace the outline of her lips themselves. She always did have a good mouth for kissing. Pouty and soft with a bottom lip that was fuller than the top one. She closed her eyes, her hands clenching and unclenching into fists at her sides as a violent shudder rippled up her spine.
She felt his breath before his lips, ghosting over her. The tip of his nose touched hers and she felt the slight movement of his head shifting as he rubbed his nose against hers. He hadn't done that to her in years. Not since Harley was just a little toe head squirt and liked to called it eskimo kissing. Eski-MO kiss me daddy! Now do it to Mommy. Instead of shoving him away and smacking him off like she knew she should do, River found herself leaning in closer. Her hands found his chest and fisted into his shirt as his lips found hers.
"MOM!"
The loud squak came from outside the camper and for once River was grateful that her younger daughter could never remember to keep her loud mouth shut. She suddenly realized what the hell she was doing and how crazy stupid it was. Crazy stupid and dangerous. She shoved Merle back and away from her, turning around quickly to scrub at her face with her hands before she answered her daughter's calls. The girl was pulling herself up inside the camper by now and River could see that Carol, the gray haired woman that had taken the peaches from her a short while before was with the girl. She had some under the excuse of walking Wren out to the camper, but River had a feeling the woman was really coming to check on her. Because she saw Merle follow her outside.
"MOM! I want my comic books from outta the camper!," the girl hollered.
"Samantha Wren!," River scolded the girl, "how many times have I told you to keep your voice down." The girl glanced at her father and then turned about fifteen different shades of red.
"Sorry mom," the girl mumbled. "Can I take my comics inside?," she asked in a more reasonable tone of voice.
"Haven't you read them all?," River asked. She had been thinking about tossing the whole pile. The girls hadn't touched them in months. Wren took that as permission to go digging for the books. This involved flipping up the seat of the table bench and making a horrible mess all over the inside of the small camper.
"Yer going to be cleanin' that all up tomorrow," River told the girl, as she grabbed the pile of sleeping bags and stepped back, trying to stay out of the line of rapid fire books, junk and magazines that were being tossed willy nilly onto the floor and table. Merle had grabbed his arm piece back and was shoving his hand back into it like he had been caught with his pants down.
"What do you want the comics for anyway?," River asked the girl. She bent down to retrive one of her own books. A trashy romance novel she had read about a hundred times already. She was thinking it might come in handy later.
"Carl has some and he said he would trade me," Wren announced. She must have found the books she was looking for since her head finally popped up.
"Who's Carl?," River asked. She had seen a lot of people sort of standing and milling around, but she had not really been introduced to most of them yet.
"Rick's kid," Merle told her, "the one in the hat." River nodded. She had seen a boy about Wren's age in a sheriff hat. That must be the kid her daughter was talking about.
Wren dragged herself to her feet, her thin arms loaded to the brim with a sliding pile of comic books. Merle reached over to catch half the stack before they flopped on the ground. He tucked them against his chest. Wren looked up at him like he had saved her from a heard of dead instead of offering to carry a lightweight stack of books for her.
"Thanks Daddy," she said, her smile beaming from ear to ear. Wren flounced down out of the camper, paying no regard to the wild tornado mess she left behind her. River just shook her head and watched Merle climb down after the girl. She stepped down and stood next to the camper with Carol, watching the two of them head into the building. Wren was bouncing along, chittering at him. And to his credit, Merle was at least pretending to be interested in whatever she was telling him. River only heard the last part of it.
"I'm so glad we are going to be livin' in the same place as you daddy. Now we can finally be a real family."
River didn't say anything, but her emotions must have been showing plainly on her face. Because she felt Carol's arm go around her shoulders, offering her silent support. River swallowed the lump in her throat and hugged the other woman back as best she could with an armload of sleeping bags. It was a new experience for River. Feeling understood by someone she just met. But there was something there in Carol's eyes. Not judgement or pity. Just a silent offer of support and understanding. River had a feeling they had more in common than she would have guessed.
"Here," Carol offered, grabbing one of the bags that was ready to slip from River's grasp and fall down on the dirty cement, "you don't have to carry it all by yourself. Not anymore."