October 27, 2010
Nine days after the other two groups arrived, Shane still hasn't spoken to any of the Greenes or Rick. T-Dog's ventured out to work with the other men regularly on the never ending task of securing the property lines and adding to their survivability here. It took Glenn longer, but without the need to be constantly on supply runs, he's been working on picking up other skills.
Michonne pointed out that the young Korean's been shadowing Eastman a lot. They both decided to leave that in peace. Whatever Glenn needs the psychiatrist's company for isn't any of their business unless Eastman says otherwise. Shane can't exactly picture Glenn having the sort of dangerous psychotic break he or Rick had, so he doubts that'll become an issue.
Not all the houses have propane furnaces like Shane's, and even those that do, they want to reserve the propane for the worst of winter cold if they can. Although there's a lot of propane they can collect in King County or nearby, it is a finite resource. Wood is not.
Today's supply runs were entirely for firewood. While they can cut trees on property, the wood needs to season for at least half a year or more to dry out enough to burn. Shane's got a trailer backed in at Karen's little cottage, unloading seasoned firewood collected from other properties with wood stoves or fireplaces. Morgan went out with him for the run, but he's inside installing the wood stove since the small house didn't even have a fireplace.
It's nearly ninety degrees today, Georgia's October weather as spastic as always. Over the weekend, they had the temps at night drop into the damned forties, and now they're right back up to seventies at night. By tomorrow, it could shift back the other way. He's wishing he'd unloaded wood on one of the cooler days, because he's about sweated through his shirt when he pauses to drink half the water bottle.
"Need some help?"
While Beth's voice doesn't exactly startle him, Shane steels himself as he turns to face the young blonde. She's standing there, looking grubby but serene. Since she was out on a hunt with Daryl, Sophia, and Carl this morning, he guesses they made it back.
"Sure, if you want. How did the hunt go?" Small talk in the apocalypse, he thinks with a hint of amusement as he tosses her a spare set of work gloves. No sense in the girl getting splinters while helping him out.
"Got another deer. Carl's kill, so he's happy, since it's a five-point." Beth reaches for a stick of firewood, dropping it neatly between the braces he put in to hold the cords of wood.
"Ah. Better than Daryl's three-point the other day, I see." And still a relatively young deer, which is important to their digestive enjoyment.
"Exactly. We brought back a bunch of squirrels, too."
"You decided to escape the cleaning crew?" While Beth's been around Shane's house quite a bit, it's always been for something with Michonne. She doesn't usually venture near him, and he honors the distance. It seems her observation period is done, though, because he isn't naive enough to not realize where this conversation will lead.
"The kids kind of swarmed down wanting to help."
"I think it's the thrill of using knives." Granted, Luke and Andre aren't allowed yet, but Molly is getting really good at cleaning squirrels. Duane is probably capable of cleaning a deer on his own now, if he had to, and the older kids certainly able.
"Maybe. Daryl looked like he might jump in the lake and swim away. Don't think he's used to that much help all at once."
With help, getting the wood that can be easily reached doesn't take long, and Beth hasn't really brought up the subject of Otis yet like he expected. "Hang on. I'll dump the rest of the load."
Beth watches as he runs the controls to tip the remainder of the wood into a jumbled pile on the ground behind the dump trailer. "Why didn't you just dump it right away?"
"Less bending to get the wood off the trailer to stack it. I know Karen would probably get it all done with her and Noah, but seemed a bit lazy to just dump it." Plus he's not entirely sure how much either of them know about firewood storage, or if messing with the wood is a great idea with the kid's asthma. "Morgan's going to bring materials down to build a lean-to shed over the wood once we're done."
"Makes sense." Beth thunks another piece in place, looking at the already complete cord set in two neat rows, each eight feet long, four feet high, and the width of the two foot lengths of firewood. Under each row, plus the ones he and Beth are working, is a set of treated railroad timbers to keep the wood off the ground. Each row is bookended by a pair of five foot T-posts Shane drove into the ground. "How much wood are you leaving here?"
Shane gives her credit for curiosity. There are more railroad ties and T-posts waiting to be set up, after all. "Three cords right here handy. It should last out the winter with a house this small, especially since they might not run a fire round the clock."
"And that is how much wood?" She shrugs when he looks up at her. "We never really did much with wood heat back home, although I guess we would have figured it out this year."
"Those two rows there? That's a cord. About five thousand pounds of wood, give or take." He thunks a piece of wood against the trailer as a pointer. "Trailer hauls a little over ten thousand pounds, officially, but the loads vary with the firewood since it doesn't stack precisely."
"So you'll make another run for firewood before you're finished here?"
"Yeah. Probably split the rest of the load with another of the houses, but I might just leave it here for extra security."
"Because it'll just get used next winter?"
"Exactly. Or if it's needed elsewhere, we can move it later. Rule of thumb, though, is about three cords of wood a winter per thousand feet of heated space. Granted, this is Georgia. Might use half that if winter's mild or blow through extra because we get freak ice storms."
"There's always so much to learn," Beth mutters, eying the wood as if it caused offense.
Shane can't help laughing just a little. "You sound like Sophia."
"Not sure she sleeps, to keep up with everything that interests her."
"Me either, to be honest." Although Shane has noticed that some of Sophia's burning drive to constantly do more and learn more tapered off once her mother is on the property. He's not sure if it's the reassurance of Carol being here or the fact that they have more people to help, but he's happy to see her lose that anxiety that underlay a lot of her projects before.
They fall silent as they finish stacking the wood, with Beth handing her borrowed gloves back at the end and leaning on the trailer to just look at him calmly. Shane braces himself for whatever is coming, uncertain of the girl's temperament other than being told that she's open to discussion, at least, unlike her sister. All he really remembers of her from the farm is her sobbing grief after he forced the issue with the barn - and the suicide attempt.
"You killed Otis."
The words still claw at him, a guilt he suspects will never actually fade. "I did. We weren't both going to make it, and he wouldn't leave me."
"And Carl wasn't going to live without those supplies," Beth finishes. "Rick told us that much. Why would he have to leave you? I understand that he wouldn't, because that's just how Otis was, but you were in better shape than him by a lot."
Shane realizes that he never made a big deal of the injured ankle, and grief over losing someone they knew meant the Greenes and Patricia weren't really paying him close attention. "We got trapped in the school gym. I went up the bleachers, but Otis couldn't fit out those windows, so he went through the locker room while I kept them distracted. When I jumped out the window, I landed wrong. Fucked up my ankle."
She blinks, thinking that over. "And he found you hurt, so he wouldn't leave you."
"He was a good man, Beth, a better one than I am. But we were both going to die if he wouldn't leave me." He can tell she's putting the pieces together without him saying the ugly, sinister words that the older man ended his time on this earth as a distraction to cannibalistic dead.
"Poor Otis." Beth sniffles a little, but Shane doesn't move to offer any comfort. Inappropriate doesn't even begin to cover that impulse. It's almost worse than the scrambled eulogy he gave at the funeral. "He would be glad that Carl lived, though."
"I hope so." As far as Shane living, he doubts even the most forgiving man would really be glad about that.
"Maggie and Daddy, they don't understand what it's like, to be in a situation like that," Beth says, surprising him. "Daddy hasn't really had to face the world much, and Maggie? It's like she's got a magical veil protecting her."
Recalling Carol telling him and Michonne how they ended up with Karen and young Noah, Shane knows it's easy to forget that Beth was with Daryl the day they had to save Karen and the teenage boy from attackers. "What you did was different."
She shrugs, pushing her blonde hair back from her face. "Maybe as far as the quality of the man I shot, but what I mean is that you don't think the same way when something like that happens. When you had time to think and plan, your first plan wasn't to kill Otis, was it? You helped each other escape at first. Later? That was panic."
No matter how many others have told Shane that state of mind in that situation would be entirely different than cool reason at another time, it still feels odd when people explain it to him. He's supposed to be the cop with all the psychological training, after all, but he knows that in that trapped moment, he lost all sense of that training and panicked.
"I don't ask for forgiveness for it. It was a cruel and undeserving way for him to die."
"It was, but the funny thing about forgiveness, Mister Walsh, is that you don't have to ask for it to get it. That much my parents taught me, even if Daddy's struggling with the concept nowadays." Beth waves her hand in general around, as if indicating the entire property. "Long as you keep going as you are, I'm forgiving, because that's what I need to do. I also figure that's what Otis would want, too."
"That's kind of you." His voice wavers, but she just shrugs.
"There's a reason they had all the different laws before about punishment after someone was killed, right? Considering the intent and all. Locking you up wouldn't make any sense. From what I can see, you've sentenced yourself to serving the community, and your own psychiatrist says you're not dangerous. Maybe it's kind of me, but maybe it's just selfish, too."
Shane isn't entirely sure how it's selfish, other than the comparison helps when she thinks of having to fire an arrow into the rapist chasing Karen down. Even justified shootings fuck up a person's brain, he knows, which is why the department always insisted on counseling after a shooting regardless of circumstances. "You talked to one of the shrinks?"
She smiles. "Yeah. I like Denise better than your guy, though. He's got a guilty air to him, whatever his story is. Denise doesn't mourn that she had to kill people to get her people to safety out of Virginia. Makes it easier."
It isn't Shane's story to share, but he can understand Beth's comparison of the two psychiatrists. Part of what made it easier to start talking to Eastman was his admission of graphic revenge on the man who killed his family. Granted, his victim was no innocent, but he and Shane share enough of a sense of regret and guilt to make talking easier.
"Long as you talk to someone." As much as he hated the idea of shrinks back in the old life, nowadays, he's thinking they must have a whole flock of guardian angels to end up with two of them here.
Beth smiles slightly, looking across the road. "Dammit. Maggie's about to have a shit fit because I'm talking to you. I best go let her have her fit." She pauses toward the edge of the yard to look back, even as Shane thinks Daryl's language choices are influencing his proteges. "When you bring the next load in, I'll help again."
It's as close to acceptance by the teenager as he ever thought he might get from one of the Greenes, so Shane nods. He watches as she takes her time strolling down the opposite driveway, her entire stance seeming to be set to piss off her sister. Maggie's still on the porch, hands on her hips, and glaring between where Shane's standing and her sister. Feeling like it's not his fight to witness, he heads in the house to help Morgan with the wood stove.
Somehow he's not surprised when they leave, that they pass Beth at the curve in the road, a heavy canvas bag slung over one shoulder. Shane slows next to her. "Need to walk it off, or want a ride?"
Although she shows signs of having cried, Beth seems like she's bleeding off anger more than tears as she studies first him and then Morgan. "I'll ride. Think Daryl or Carol is at your place?"
"Probably. With fresh venison, they'll fire up my grill for supper." The cooks will send shares to Rick's household, but after the first introductory breakfast, it's not unusual for Paul and his people to join everyone in turning Shane's deck into an outdoor dining hall.
Beth climbs the side of the trailer, perching against the raised side as Shane pulls off, careful not to dislodge her. He exchanges a glance with Morgan, who sighs.
"Family is having some growing pains, I think," the older man says. "She wants to grow up, and they don't know how to let her. Good thing Daryl and Carol have that spare bedroom, right?"
Hell, considering he's seen Carol request and get furnishings for that room, he thinks the couple knew this was coming. "Better that than completely solo," he responds. Not that they would allow that here, but in the old world, a fight like the Greene sisters are enduring would probably have Beth tramping off somewhere entirely new.
At least right now, they're less than half a mile from each other. In time, the anger and hurt will blow over, and the sisters will likely forgive each other. Shane doesn't like the feeling of guilt that he's part of the spat, but he's also aware from Carol that the two have been butting heads for a while as Beth explores young adulthood. Maybe this will spur Maggie to see Denise or something. Girl's got to have a ton of grief and frustration saved up, with all she's experienced since the world ended.
But that's not his decision to make, so he tucks away the worry. He doesn't have to fix everything, and he trusts that Daryl and Carol know the girl well enough to keep Beth's best interests in mind.
He feels some of the weight on his shoulders lift a fraction, though, because if a teenager who obviously cared for Otis can see something redeemable in him, it's easier to believe what he's being told. Becoming the man who deserves to have survived when Otis didn't is an honorable goal, after all.
A/N: Poor Maggie is getting the grumpy whump at the moment. I feel a little bad, since I don't plan on any stories that really let us see inside her head, although I suppose the sisters will reconcile for Beth's story to let her be seen there.
Pacing the two stories forward here, since I doubt y'all need chapter upon chapter of daily life. Keep in mind that small progresses would be going on "unseen", like the children slowly healing and Rick's slow progress toward recovery.
I don't think I will push this story long enough for Judith's birth, as I intend to have Shane and Michonne settled together by Christmas in the story. That said... rather than have it as a side note of someone else's story (like Merle's or Beth's), I may do a short story as a "special" one to lay out the birth and reactions in multiple POVs. Probably from Lori's POV, which will retroactively report Rick's recovery process.