The next day Carol stops by Rosita's double-wide trailer where the harried woman is cajoling Gene to get down from the top of the cabinets he's somehow managed to climb up on. The toddler has wedged himself stomach down in the narrow space between the cabinet and the ceiling.
"He's a monkey," Rosita tells her. "I don't know how he does it. God help me. He was walking at elven months, and now he's climbing!"
Carol helps her get the boy down, and when he's on his feet, Rosita launches into a stream of angry Spanish that only makes Gene laugh. "You're going to your room, young man," she tells him, and whirls him around and marches him to his bedroom before rejoining Carol. "Sorry I'm late for the briefing. I take it that's why you're here? Eugene hasn't gotten back from his rounds with the Director of Energy."
"We can just have the briefing here."
Rosita walks to her kitchen. "Coffee?"
"Please."
They sit at the four-person card table in her cramped kitchen, and Rosita goes over what the defense forces have accomplished so far in mapping and scouting the island of territory they have made for themselves. "The Kingdom is mapping north and east, and then we'll share notes."
Carol asks Rosita how she'd feel if she put herself in for the Director of Defense position next term to give Rosita a break, but also because it's a position she's been thinking about all morning. She misses her days as a general in the War with the Saviors sometimes.
"I don't want a break!" Rosita exclaims, glancing toward Gene's room. "I'd go insane if I didn't have work to go to. And he'll be weaned soon. I can get out more with the scouts. I want to get out more. Eugene's got Gene covered."
"But…Gene's your son, too," Carol says. Actually, biologically, Gene is only Rosita's son, though Carol doesn't say that. "They grow up faster than you think. You blink, and - "
"- Why aren't you running for mayor again?"
Carol tells her and Rostia mutters, "Chick town? CHICK town?" She peers at Carol through narrowed eyes. "And Carol Dixon's going to take that sitting down?"
Carol's momentarily startled because no one's ever called her Carol Dixon before. She finds she kind of likes it, and she smiles, but her smile fades when she thinks about what Rosita has just said.
Carol didn't come all this way from Ed to have a bunch of men tell her what to do. But she agrees with Aaron. She doesn't want Roderick to end up mayor. He's not a bad man, or even an incompetent one, but he's not ready for that level of responsibility. Besides, they need him in his position as Director of Farming. "Aaron will make a great mayor," she says, but whether she says it to reassure herself or Rosita, she's not sure.
"Yes, he will," Rosita agrees. "In about two more years. After you've served your last full term. Carol, you can't take your name out of the running."
"What if Aaron's right? What if Roderick wins just because he's a man? And nearly all the men vote for him?"
Rosita leans forward over the table confidentially. "If he's going to get most of the men, he needs the vote of the scouts, of the watch, of the eradicators. Those are my people. And I can tell you right now who I'll be campaigning for. By the time I'm done, they're going to be convinced Roderick will gut our defenses."
"Well, I'm not sure he'd gut them, exactly – "
"- Roderick needs the hunters, too," Rosita interrupts her, "and I can bet who Daryl will be campaigning for."
"Daryl won't be campaigning. Period."
"He can put in a word for you with his hunters."
Carol shakes her head. "I'm not going to ask that of Daryl. That's way outside his comfort zone. But…" She smiles. "If you want to be my campaign manager…"
[*]
"…and Cyndie speared that fish before I could even see it."
"Shhh!"
Daryl and Henry are sitting in ghillie suits, camouflaged in the brush not far from a pile of acorns, waiting for the deer to take the bait. With the leaves falling, tracking them without being seen has become more difficult, but they can still hide.
"Did you know Cyndie was a Robert Heinlen fan? She's read all of his books by now, just like me."
Daryl turns his eyes on him, gives him a burning look, and says, "Well, ya can tell Jessica all about Cyndie the next time ya stop by the Kingdom. For now, shut the fuck up."
Henry swallows and falls silent. He doesn't speak for another hour, and he redeems himself by being the first to spy the approaching deer and nudge Daryl. They sit as still as stones until the opportune moment arises, and then they make their shots. One of the three deer falls, and two flee. They chase down one, but the last gets away.
Henry grins as he begins to field dress the freshly fallen deer. "Two. I'm going to win my bet with Jacob."
In the distance, Merle, who was left to guard the first fallen deer, barks. "Finish up," Daryl tells Henry and runs back to the other deer.
Merle has inserted himself between the fallen deer and a walker and is barking like crazy. The dog leads the walker away from the deer a step at a time every time the walker shifts its interest from the dog to the deer.
The walker lunges and sweeps at Merle's face. Merle growls and sinks his jaws into the walker's hand. With its hand tearing off in Merle's mouth, the walker bares its teeth and leans down, but before it can chomp the dog, one of Daryl's arrows pierces the monster's neck.
The walker staggers backward as Daryl reloads and Merle steps back, still barking. Daryl shoots again, hitting the rotting creature's forehead this time, and it sags to the forest floor.
Merle barks triumphantly.
"Good dog!" Daryl shoulders his bow. "Good boy!" He fishes in his pocket and tosses a piece of jerky, which Merle gnaws on happily. Daryl scratches the dog's head and says. "Yer tough as nails, boy." Just like his namesake. But sometimes, Merle's just as big a dumbass as his namesake. "Don't let 'em get so damn close next time! Don't wanna lose ya."
Merle stands guard over Daryl as he field dresses the deer. Daryl glances at the dog and wonders, for the hundredth time, why animals don't get the disease. Merle was bit by a walker, once, on his hind leg, but Daryl killed the ugly bastard before it could bite the dog a second time. Daryl spent the next twenty-four hours anxiously wandering the woods and then pacing the cabin, sure the dog was going to get sick and die, angry and sad and taking no comfort from Carol, who assured him Ezekiel's tiger had never been infected. "The tiger ate walkers, Daryl," she told him, "and it didn't get sick. Merle bites walkers all the time, and he doesn't get sick."
"Yeah, but this ain't bitin'!" Daryl cried. "It's bein' bit!"
But Carol was right. Merle lived. His bite wound healed. But Daryl's still afraid that, one day, the dog will get too close, and walkers will eat him alive. "Be safe," he tells the mutt as he cuts through the muscle tissue of the deer.
Merle barks.
[*]
Carol waylays Aaron when he's picking Gracie up from school. She suggests to little Hershel that he and Gracie play outside for a while to get some exercise. "But stay within half a block," she orders the kids.
"I'll keep an eye on them!" shouts Barbara from the cabin across the way. She's sitting in a rocking chair on the porch and knitting. That woman is a saint. She babysits the entire town, and she's recently taken in a third orphan from Oceanside. (She already had two from Alexandria.) Her kids, aged ten to twelve, are playing jacks on the porch.
Carol invites Aaron inside the cabin, where they drop Hershey and Gracie's packs by the door. "Can I offer you some tequila?" Carol ask.
"You have tequila?"
"Daryl brought it back from his trip to the Kingdom."
"All trade supplies are to be inventoried upon – "
"- It wasn't a trade supply. He found it in a house."
"All supply run supplies are to – "
"- Aaron, he wasn't on a supply run. It falls under personal scavenging. Now do you want some or not?"
"He hasn't drunk it all already?" Aaron asks.
"Daryl rarely drinks."
"Really?" Aaron asks in surprise.
"His father was a drunk. He's determined not to be." She goes to the kitchen, which is directly off the living room, and draws the bottle down from the cupboard, along with two whiskey glasses.
"Isn't it a little early in the day for tequila?" he asks as he follows her into the kitchen and looks around.
"You're going to want it after you hear what I have to tell you."
Aaron looks at her warily as she hands him two ounces in a glass. He sniffs it and takes a small sip. "Not bad. I got so messed up on this on spring break my senior year in college. I'd just had my first heart break. My fiancé broke off our engagement."
"Fiance?" Carol asks as she leads him to the kitchen table. "Back then, it wasn't legal – "
"- she was a woman." Aaron sits down across from her. "In retrospect, I see why it didn't work out."
Carol chuckles.
"But I did love her." Aaron takes a small sip of the tequila. "Sometimes I wonder what happened to her. Do you ever wonder? About all the people you used to know?"
"I didn't know a lot of people." She let Ed cut her off from her friends and family. That's how she thinks now. Not Ed did X, but I let Ed do X. "But I wonder about the postman. We talked every day, for at least five minutes. I made him treats a few times a year."
She fell in love with him, for a while, if you could call that love. It was more like a schoolgirl crush. Her little secret liaison, her way of sticking it to Ed. Smiles and conversation and cupcakes. Once, he patted her on the shoulder. He was married too, she knew, because she noticed the ring. Maybe he was sticking it to a controlling wife, the way Carol was sticking it to Ed. Or maybe he was just a friendly man.
"Did you have family?" Aaron asks. "I mean, I know you had a husband and daughter, but…"
"I had a younger brother, but I hadn't seen him in …oh…fifteen years when it happened." That's what they call the outbreak these days. It. "He managed to get out of our little town. He went to California for college on an academic scholarship and never came back. He called on occasion."
"Sent Christmas cards?" Aaron asks.
"He wasn't really a card guy." She looks at him directly. "I've decided I'm running for mayor again. This election."
Aaron blinks. "Ah." He takes a longer sip of the tequila this time. Then he hisses. "By the tone of your voice, I'm guessing there's no wiggle room in your decision?"
"None."
"And if Roderick wins because of it?"
"Then either you or I will be Chairman of the Council. And we'll be picking up his slack."
"The Chairman job is hard enough with a competent mayor in that office."
"I know how hard you work," she assures him. "I know how hard I work. But I'm still running. And I'm asking you not to. This time. So we don't split the vote and I have a better chance of defeating Roderick."
Aaron sighs and scratches his cheek. "Why? Why can't you just wait four years and serve your last term? Maybe you'll develop some more ideas by then."
"Chick town?" she asks.
"Daryl told you that?"
She nods.
"Well, I think you're making a mistake. But I also know that look in your eyes. So…" He shrugs. "You have my vote." He raises his glass and smiles. "That is, if I can get another ounce of this."
"So I'm buying votes now?" Carol jokes as she pours him a little more. "And I thought you were a stickler for the rules."
[*]
Carol turns off her kerosene lamp and slides the top of her rolltop desk shut over it. The fire lightly illuminates the living room, along with the help of the dancing flames of a candelabra by the couch. Hershey went to bed an hour ago.
She stands and pauses to poke at the fire and bend down and scratch Merle behind the ears before sitting down on the couch and grabbing her book.
In his armchair, Daryl rips a piece of thread with his teeth and then ties it off.
"Are you sewing?" she asks.
"Ghillie suit got torn up today." He rethreads the needle. "Just puttin' some of the fibers back in."
"Daryl Dixon," she mutters with a shake of her head. "Sewing."
"Ain't sewin'. 'M fixin'."
"Looks like sewing to me." She opens her book. "You want me to do that for you?"
"Nah. I got it. Read yer book."
"You did clean my gun yesterday."
He pauses from his work and peers at her. "'M startin' to think ya just don't want to finish that book."
"It's kind of boring."
"Then hell, give it back to the lieberry 'n start 'nother one!"
"I can't. I can't not finish something I started."
"Yeah? 'S that why yer still with me?" he asks.
She laughs. "By that logic, I'd still be with Ezekiel."
Daryl glowers.
"Although I liked you first."
He pokes the needle into the ghillie suit, pokes himself, hisses, and sucks his finger.
"Let me do that for you, Pookie. I like to do things for you."
He smirks. "Oh yeah?" He glances down at his lap.
"I'm not giving you a blowjob. Tonight anyway."
He frowns but brings the ghillie suit over to her. "Thanks," he says. "Wanted to clean my rifle anyhow." He disappears, returns with the weapon and his cleaning supplies, and lays them on the coffee table.
"Would you put down a drop cloth, please? I don't want my table stained. More than it already is."
He grumbles, but he goes to the kitchen and returns with –
"No! That's my good tablecloth!" Carol exclaims. "Get one of the old sheets from the hall closet."
"Yer damn high maintenance, woman," he mutters as he returns the tablecloth to the kitchen.
When he's settled on the floor, his back to a sleeping Merle and the fire, and his rifle disassembled on an oil-stained sheet, she pulls a thread through his ghillie suit and says, "I've changed my mind. I'm running for mayor after all."
"Mhmm." He sprays some lube on a cloth and wraps it around the tip of a cleaning rod.
"That's all you've got to say? Mhmhm?"
He rams the rod down the barrel of his rifle and pulls it out. The cloth has blackened. "What ya want me to say?"
"I'm not going to write your script for you. I'm just wondering what you think about it."
"Ain't surprised."
"I mean, what do you think about my chances?" she asks. "Do you think I'll lose?"
"Think yer a good mayor."
"Do you think I'll lose?"
He turns the cloth over and sprays it again. "Think ya deserve to win."
"Do you think I'll lose?" she repeats, more slowly this time, emphasizing each word.
"Think I'll vote for ya."
"Daryl," she scolds.
"Carol," he replies.
"Tell me what you think."
He pulls the rod out of his barrel and sets it down on the coffee table. "Think ya feel like ya got somethin' to prove."
"Maybe," she admits.
"So prove it."