Jesse went to the farm, as directed, kicking the broken fence by the gate to unlatch it. As he approached the house, torn up but not tumbling, he distinctly heard loud sobbing and moved faster.
"Jesse," Cathy said, opening the door. "She's pretty upset. Should probably leave this one to Ma."
He shrugged. "I got orders," he said. He pushed the door to Ma's room open and stepped in.
Celia had flung herself down on the bed and and was crying with her hands under her face. Ma was sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing her back and talking quietly. Jesse leaned on the wall and watched.
"It's not your fault," Ma said, patiently. "There are bad men all over the wastes, honey."
"I want Lionel!" she cried. "I want to go home!"
"Home is where the heart is," Ma said. "Where is your heart, Celia?" The sobbing all but stopped. "Your heart is here, with us," Ma said. "Where you are."
Celia grew quiet. Ma looked up at Jesse, with a question in her eyes. He mouthed, "Amos," and she nodded. She motioned him over to the bed.
"Celia," she said, "I've got food on. Jesse is here; if you need anything, you ask him, okay?"
Celia didn't say anything, but Ma left anyway. Jesse flopped down onto the bed, leaning back on the headboard, with his arms behind his head. For a moment, he watched her breathing, since he couldn't see her face under the tangle of brassy curls.
"What ya thinking?" he asked, and stretched out his legs, crossing them.
She made a muffled noise.
"Eh?" he said, and put a hand to his ear. "What's that? I can't hear you over all that hair."
She shook her head. Jesse grinned to himself.
"I guess I'll go get the shears, then, if I'm ever gonna be able understand you," he said, and sat up.
A hand came out and pushed back a knot of hair over her ear, and she looked up at him with a bloodshot eye. "No," she said, hoarsely.
"If you sit up and talk proper-like, I promise I won't," he said, his hand over his heart.
Slowly, Celia pulled herself up off the bed, and sat, dejectedly, facing him. She glanced at him.
"That's better," he said.
She sniffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "They're all gone," she said. "Everyone I ever knew."
Jesse nodded. "I haven't got anyone left, either," he said.
"You didn't doom your people to death, though," she moaned, and flipped her hair forward into her face, covering it, crying into her hands again.
"When Amos found me, I was living on the streets," Jesse said. "Stealing, breaking shit, being a general nuisance. Before that, I lived with my mom and dad in a shack in Spalding." She slowed a bit. "Anyway," he continued, "I left home after my dad died. Some insanely old guy came by and offered to buy me off my mom." Jesse frowned, and remembered. "I seen the look in his eyes, before. Hadn't seen the one in my mom's." He flopped backwards onto the bed. "Mommas selling their babies, they ain't mommas."
She'd stopped, and was probably watching him through the tangles. Jesse kept his eyes on the spot where hers would have been, if he could see them. He laid there, thinking about the day that he'd run away. He fully believed his mom would have sold him, and probably would have gone off and drank away every last cap.
Dust floated through the air, catching the lone stream of light from the grimy window. He remembered when Amos had dragged him out of a dumpster, and dragged him kicking and screaming, back to the farm. Ma had taken one look at him, thrown him into the sheep tub, and scrubbed until the water ran red. He grinned. At least there had been enough food to fill his belly, after!
"My mom's dead," she said, monotone. "Never knew my dad."
"Well, then," Jesse said, scratching his nose. "You ain't got too much to hold onto, already."
She sputtered. "I want Lionel," she said.
Jesse said the first thing that came to mind. "Why?" He sat up again. "He's just some grumpy old gimp with a habit of beating on ladies."
Celia slapped him in the stomach. "You shut up!" she said.
"Ow-how!" he moaned, doubling up. "Sheesh, lay off. I'm saying the truth. He popped Lilian one!"
"It's not a habit!" she said, angrily.
"How you do know?" he asked her. "You said yourself, you've only known him for, like, ten months." He rubbed his stomach.
She stared at him through her hair. "You're right," she said. "I don't know. But that's not who he is."
"Alright, if you say so," Jesse said. "You tell me who he is."
She paused for a moment. "He's strong," she said, "and brave. He lost his arm when we were trying to escape the soldiers at On-the-Bay." She drew her legs up to her chest. "I was stupid, and didn't shoot Wade when I ought to have."
Jesse agreed, but didn't voice it.
"He's grumpy, because he's got to be one hundred and fifty years old, at least," she went on, "and because he's a ghoul, and no one likes ghouls."
"So why do you like him, so much?" Jesse asked her, annoyed. He didn't like ghouls, but this was a whole different thing altogether. She didn't seem to realize what was implied between the two of them.
She wiped her nose. "No one likes me but him, anymore."
Jesse beamed a winning smile at her. "I like you," he said. "Well, when you aren't chucking apples at me, or ganging up on me with Cathy."
She gave a little sharp, short laugh.
"It's not just me. Ma and Cathy like ya. I'm pretty sure Amos and Avery think you're alright." He grinned. "I dunno about the other little shits running around here."
"I guess," she said.
"If you're so desperate for someone to like you, you don't gotta look far, is all I'm saying." He flicked a finger at her hair. "If you can see them through this mess, anyway."
She laughed again, but it was more relieved than anything. "Okay," she said. "I'm okay."
"Good, I was running out of one-liners," he said, and pantomimed a "whew" noise. She swatted at him again, and he ducked.
Dragging his leg behind him, Lionel muttered curses under his breath. Times like this, he really missed that extra fist to throw in a bar fight. It hadn't gone as planned but he was limping away, at least. He kept going. Didn't need to lose any more toes, or the leg it was attached to.
Might as well go find a razorback and let myself get eaten, he thought.
Landis was following him, about a half hour behind. He'd ignored him for the first two days, noticing him cresting a hill in the distance behind him, moving just as slow as he was. Lionel was worn out. He limped to a crumbling building off the Hi-Highway and sat down on a pile of debris, eyeing his leg.
Sometimes, he reflected, it was good to be a ghoul. The amount of damage he'd received lately would have been enough to kill a normal person, or at least reduce them to a coma. He stretched out on the rubble, and felt his back muscles moving against the stones, the wrong way against his bones. ((Damn, he thought. ((That can't be good.
He put his hand behind his head and stared up at the sky through the collapsed roof. It had felt good to be in an old-fashioned barroom brawl again, he wouldn't lie. Made him feel real good about himself, getting the better of some other lunkheads who wanted to kick his ass. He grinned a little.
The sky was clear tonight. Good camping weather. He started thinking about camping along Lake Michigan, curled up under the same sky with some pretty little thing. But not actually sleeping, of course. What was the name of that girl from Detroit, the one who'd stolen his ship in a bottle off the dresser in his houseboat? Heather? He felt the gearshift moving in his head.
The grin disappeared from his face. He closed his eyes, willing the memories away. A rock had worked itself in between two muscles in his back. He heard footsteps echoing. Gimme a fucking break, he thought.
"You still alive, rotgut?" Landis asked.
Lionel opened his eyes. "You could call it that," he grumbled.
Landis grunted. "Hitting the sack?"
"Ain't moving, am I?"
Landis dropped his sack and walked around, gathering up and dropping a bundle of wood onto the floor. Lionel sat up and picked the rock out of the back of his shirt. After a moment, a fire was going, and Landis warmed his hands next to it.
"Don't think you'll last long on that," Landis said, after a time.
Lionel shrugged. "Had worse."
Landis squinted at him. "I seen. How'd you lose the arm?"
Your stupid daughter, he thought to himself, the memory taunting him. "Bad break," he said, aloud.
"Huh," Landis pulled out a beer, handed it to Lionel. "What's your name?"
"Lionel," he said, trying to figure out how to open the beer. Hurt too much to hold it between his knees. He set it down.
Landis' sleepy-eyed look vanished, replaced by suspicion. "Lionel," he said.
"Don't wear it out," Lionel said, wearily.
Landis looked at him dubiously, took a long drink. "Not Meisburg?"
He sighed and laid back down on the ground. "You Landises are going to be the death of me," he said.
Landis reached over and uncapped the beer. "Here," he said.
"Ugh," Lionel said, when he'd managed to get back up. "Think your shit is skunked."
"Better than no shit 'tall," Landis said, and drank up.
The two stared each other down for a good long while. "So," Landis said, "my girl found you?"
"She did." Lionel stared at the fire. The glare bothered his eyes. "Told me about Joey's journals, about her family."
"I hope she's smarter than all the Landises before her," he said, thoughtfully.
Lionel couldn't help himself, but burst out laughing. When he had control again, he said, "She's nearly as much trouble as Joey was."
"The curse of the family line," Landis toasted, holding out a beer to the air. "Guess the Vault finally crapped out."
"Some of them stayed in," Lionel said.
"So why's she so far north?"
"Traveling," Lionel said.
"The town is near Grayling, huh?"
Lionel nodded.
"That where you met her?" Landis eyed him, skeptically.
"Yeah." He looked down at his leg.
"Huh." Landis put the empty bottle onto the ground. "Guess you wouldn't tell me why my kid is traveling with a melt-faced zombie?"
Lionel rolled his eyes and didn't answer.
"Aw, I hurt your feelings?" Landis chuckled. "I don't have to like your kind. I've been to Detroit."
This time, Lionel stared the man down. "I don't have to like you either, you wrinkled old nutsack."
Landis laughed, coolly. "You're good sport," he said. "I'll come with you to Gladstone."
Later, when Lionel was actually able to sleep, he thought that Landis was very much like Celia, in their curiosity. The only difference between them was that Landis had satisfied his.