July 16, 2010
Shane turns at hearing his name, puzzled at the youngest Dixon seeking him out, but smiling at the girl anyway despite his mood. It earns him a bright smile in return, easing away some of the bubbling anger from Lori's bitchy behavior. How the hell the woman thinks he deliberately would leave Rick - his brother in all but blood - behind on purpose, he doesn't know.
She also seems to blame him for the group deciding to go west instead of east, even when Rick himself came round to it being the best idea.
Harper shifts from one foot to another, glancing back at where Sophia is waiting about ten feet away. He realizes belatedly that the girls must have overheard Lori taking Carl away, and that they can probably both sense his temper is high.
"Did you need something, sweetheart?" he asks, keeping his voice carefully soft. It's not the girl's fault that Lori's treating him the way she is.
"You were showing Carl how to catch frogs, right?" she asks at last, tugging at the tail of her dark braid. Her hopeful expression leads him to what he thinks the girls are leading up to.
"You two want to learn how to catch frogs?"
"Yeah. I've eaten frog legs before, but never went out and caught them," Harper admits. "And I'm tired of squirrels."
Sophia nods vehemently, her blond hair fluttering around the soft blue headband she's wearing today that matches a T-shirt he's fairly sure he saw Harper wearing last week. Considering they're more or less the same size and age, it makes sense they might share clothes.
He laughs despite himself and motions for the girls to join him. They shed their shoes and socks and roll up the legs of their pants to their knees, wading into the shallows to join him.
"Can I tell you girls a secret?" he asks, grinning as he wades further in the water after passing them Carl's net.
They chorus yeses at him, curious like any kid being let into a secret from an adult.
"It's the wrong time of day to catch a lot of frogs, but Carl doesn't know how to swim."
Harper thinks that over, still hefting the net. "But if he's catching frogs, he's playing in the water and cooling off without being afraid, right?"
"Exactly."
She eyes the net, her friend, and Shane before shrugging and setting the net down. "We're allowed to swim with an adult watching, but Miss Carol's worries she can't do laundry and watch us swim."
The hint doesn't get any more blatant than that. "Alright. Well, I did happen to work as a lifeguard back in high school, so think that'll pass your mamas' inspection?"
"Sure." Always the more confident of the girls, Harper's already wading toward him. The water that's not even to his backside is reaching her waist.
Sophia glances toward her mother first, but Carol's looked this way and seems perfectly fine with where her daughter is. She follows more hesitantly, only going as far as her knees.
"When is a good time for frogs?" she asks.
"Catching frogs is best at dawn, dusk, or nighttime. Think about when you hear those big fellas getting all noisy."
"Huh. Yeah." Sophia smiles and wades a few steps further, because Harper's already flopped into the water and is floating just beyond Shane. "And being down here at night would kinda freak people out, right?"
"Just a lil bit," he tells her. "We could probably hunt the shortline and find us a few hiding out right now, but it would be a small supper."
"We can ask Mama if we can come down at dusk," Harper says. "She probably would say yes." She bobs under the water before he can answer, reappearing a few feet away in deeper water.
Sophia finally takes the plunge, moving past Shane and dog paddling toward her friend. "You're too fast!"
Harper giggles and swims back all the way to Shane. She's got an idea sparking, he can tell. "Can you toss us?"
He arches a brow. "Like out in the lake?"
"Yeah. Merle does it when we swim back home at the lake. Please?"
Shane figures why the hell not, so he cups his hands for Harper to step into. He crouches in the water and then launches the girl up and over his head. She's not fibbing about doing it before, because she rolls through the air to splash down.
Resurfacing with a big grin, she calls out, "That was awesome. Again, please!"
He glances toward the women doing laundry, but while a few seem alarmed, Carol's just smiling as Harper reaches him to repeat the flip through the air.
It takes two more flips after that before Sophia braves asking. Even though he knows his shoulders are going to be sore as hell, he keeps it up until they're tired of it.
Maybe Carl won't be his frog catching apprentice, but he has to remember the boy isn't the only child in the camp who appreciates attention.
Rick takes a seat beside him at the fire with a plate heaped with fish from Andrea and Amy's foray with the canoe and a frog leg from his and the girls' surprisingly successful hunt. Harper's prediction that her mother would let them go back to the shoreline at dusk proved true, although Micah trailed along to help keep an eye out for anything dangerous while they caught the frogs.
"Carl is real disappointed that a couple of girls outdid him at frog catching. I'm sorry the walker scare earlier got Lori so worked up she brought Carl back to camp."
It might be best to leave it at Rick's excuse, so Shane delays answering by taking a bite of his own frog leg. He chews slowly.
"I just wish I thought of asking the girls along with Carl. They came and found me. I guess I figured Harper would already know how, since she hunts and fishes."
"I remember Daryl telling Jesse to have the girls help with the squirrels. Do they really?"
T-Dog snorts. "Man, those two girls are like little Iron Chef Redneck Edition contestants. Sophia's been learning so fast you'd never know that girl hasn't been at Harper's side her whole life. Just wait til one of them brings you over a foil packet of grilled snake."
Shane and T-Dog laugh at Rick's disbelieving look. "It's true, Rick. Daryl and Harper came back with a big ass rat snake a few weeks ago and cooked that sucker up over their fire. She came around sweet talking everyone into 'just a little taste'."
"How was it?"
"Not half bad. Wouldn't say it tastes like chicken, like people joke. More like fish. That white one that Lori liked to cook all the time. Lotta bones to pick around though," Shane answers.
T-Dog nods in agreement. "Honestly, if she had just brought the meat without the bones, she could have passed it off to me as fish and I wouldn't have known any better."
"Forgive me if I hope eating snakes doesn't become common for us," Rick jokes. "Frog legs are about as adventurous as I like to be."
Carl sits, looking sulky. "What's it taste like, Dad? Mom wouldn't give me one."
Shane suppresses a grin when Rick hands off the remainder of his frog leg to Carl to try. The boy grins and makes short work of it, to the amusement of those already eating.
Rick assesses his son's plate with a frown. "You didn't want any of the mushrooms or daylilies?"
The delighted expression Carl wore while eating the frog leg fades. "I'm not allowed to eat those."
Rick frowns, looking around everyone else's plates. Shane knows what he's seeing. Not everyone has the daylilies, but everyone has a mix of the two types of mushrooms. "Why not?"
Shane answers to save the boy from implicating his mother. "Lori doesn't allow him to eat anything the other kids collect, not even if I verify the mushrooms. And the chanterelles are the ones I know best. Others are hedgehogs, according to what Daryl's taught the kids. Merle and Harper brought the daylily flower buds back from one of the yards near where they dumped trash."
"I don't know that they are safe," Lori interrupts, sitting on Carl's other side, with a particularly ugly look toward Shane.
"Well, I sure hope they are, or we'd all be really sick or dead by now." Jacqui punctuates her statement by taking a deliberate bite of a daylily bud.
Shane remembers she was hesitant at first about some of the odd things the Dixons brought back out of the woods, but most of them turned out pretty good. He knows she's been going with the kids here and there too, like this morning's blueberry hunt that had yielded a tasty extra serving for lunch despite the walker discovery. Even startled, they all held onto their berry buckets.
"It's not just going on their word either," Shane explains. "Harper has some books she lugged along. I compared a couple of things to the books a while back and they're being careful."
Glenn laughs as he swallows his bite of frog leg. "Some. The girl has an entire gym bag of books, and none of them fiction."
"She's even loaned me one. It's pretty interesting reading," Jacqui says. "She wanted to be a botanist, before all this. I assume Carol warned you to go easy on the daylily when she gave you your plate?"
"Yeah. She said some folks can have allergic reactions to it," Rick replies.
"Then you're good. They're tasty. The roots are a bit weird. Makes me think of a nutty potato." The older woman gestures at the roasted tuber on her plate, which Carol hasn't served Rick, probably due to the allergy potential being unknown.
"They're also how you know which ones are safe to eat. If you dig one up and it looks like this, it's the right kind of daylily. If it's a bulb, it's a real lily and poisonous. Supposed to be a good source of vitamin C and A, which we sure don't have a lot of out here in the woods. Just don't eat too much at once or you'll feel like you downed a batch of Ex-lax."
Shane's impressed. He knows Jacqui tries to engage all the kids, making him wonder if she had kids of her own, grown or missing. He's never asked, in case the answer is that she's lost them to the dead rising. The three little girls all seem to enjoy the attention.
Rick reaches over and takes one of Shane's two remaining buds and passes one to Carl. "Here. We can be guinea pigs together." Carl stuffs the thing in his mouth so fast that Lori can't even begin to get any objections out.
"Tastes like asparagus," Carl says, making a face. "You'll like it, Dad."
Rick pops his into his mouth and chews thoughtfully before swallowing. "No wonder Shane had a few more than I did. You remember how much he likes asparagus."
Lori huffs, obviously displeased at being overridden, but unwilling to make a scene with Rick in front of everyone. Her own plate is rather sparse, just the canned baked beans and fish.
It's a miracle the woman isn't suffering from malnutrition. From all the legitimate complaints he has about the rough behavior of the oldest two Dixons, Shane can't deny that having a variety of fresh foods, if odd at times, hasn't livened up their meals here.
"How are your shoulders feeling?" Jacqui asks, flashing him a grin. "You got a hell of a workout this afternoon."
Shane laughs. "They sure don't follow that one at the gym back home. Shoulders and back are a bit sore, but nothing bad."
Rick's looking curious, so Jacqui elaborates. "Before they went frog hunting, Sophia and Harper had Shane tossing them in the lake, repeatedly. I swear, from where we were, it looked like Harper was flying twenty feet up."
"Nah, probably more like ten, but kid's an acrobat. At least half of that air time was her doing."
"Sounds like you had quite the afternoon," Rick says, his smile a happy one.
"Yeah, I did." It's a good feeling, and one he wishes he achieved more often.
The dishes have all been gathered and washed by firelight, since the fishing and frogging expeditions pushed supper to well after dark. Everyone's around the fire, just chatting in general. Shane relaxes in his spot, feeling content but lonely with Carl cuddled up to his dad instead of Shane.
He can't help the glance toward the Dixon camp, where Merle is playing Uno with all of the kids, his antics not much more mature than theirs. Carol is busy with the never-ending supply of mending, while Daryl and Quinn are bent over the road atlas, likely going over the plans she, Shane, and Rick ironed out earlier.
He barely notices Amy leave the fire, despite the playful bickering with her sister about privacy, fighting the feelings of jealousy he's having toward not only his partner, but Merle Dixon after time spent swimming and frog hunting with the girls.
It's ironic that he spent years avoiding the commitment of a family, yet keeping Lori and Carl safe for Rick for two months seems to have ignited a need in him he never expected.
His attention toward the Dixon camp means he's the first one around the bigger fire pit to alert when Xander shoots to his feet, the dog's hackles raised as he growls low and deep.
But he doesn't have time to turn and react before Merle draws his Browning and fires twice toward the RV, damn near over their heads, roaring "Get your ass back in the RV, girlie!" as Amy screams and slams the door.
Both walkers hit the ground, just as the camp's hit by a damned swarm of the dead.