Chapter 16: with a lightness in my step and a song in my bones

Friends, maybe. Okay.

Next couple of days are days off. Hershel needs to do some other work around the farm; things have honestly been getting neglected, and this isn't the most pressing thing he has to deal with. Daryl offers to keep working on his own, but when he makes the offer, standing near the barn and watching - trying to be unobtrusive about it - as Beth leads one of the horses out through the doors and toward the pasture beyond the far side of the house, he doesn't really mean it with all that much sincerity, and he's pretty sure Hershel can tell.

She gets that from somewhere, that ability to see right the fuck through people, and he's getting hit with it no matter where he turns.

So Hershel calls a temporary halt. Take a day. At least one. Daryl has informed him that he's still nominally employed by Elmer; this will give him a chance to get a little work done there. Like it's some kind of favor to him. Probably Hershel thinks it is.

Beth heading out to the pasture, hair a blond cascade at the back of her head. The graceful line of her neck - how the fuck can he see that at this distance? His eyes hate him. Every part of him hates him. He's well acquainted with self-loathing, and he's well acquainted with regarding his own body - and mind - as enemies, but this seems so particularly unfair, because all he wants to do is look at her.

So yeah, this is a favor. It really is.

He gives Hershel and Shawn a goodbye and agrees to be back on Thursday or Friday - whatever gets decided, they'll let him know - and he gets in the truck and heads back into town.

That night he goes out with Merle and he gets drunker than he's been in a very, very long time. Throwing up in a ditch on the way home while Merle leans against the side of the truck and takes swig after swig of Irish Rose and laughs at him, he thinks he's pretty much a redneck asshole piece of shit, but at least he knows it.

Better to know that. Better to know that and leave her alone than to be completely unaware of it and press his case and be a terrible person and make her hate him too.

The next morning - really it's afternoon, he doesn't wake up until almost one - he looks at himself in the bathroom mirror and notes that the flesh around his right eye is a wonderfully rich shade of purple. He doesn't remember how it happened. Apparently it did.

So there's that.

He does some work for Elmer. He very firmly doesn't answer questions about the eye, but Elmer doesn't ask, so his firmness is ultimately of no consequence. He does some basic stuff around the store, makes a couple of deliveries, and he starts to feel better. Not good, but better. Things have had some time to sink in. Scab over. He's not quite so raw. Maybe he was angry at her before - an awful, sick kind of angry which wasn't really angry at all, not even close - but he didn't resent her then and he doesn't resent her now, and the anger is fading. He can go back to work. He can be around her and deal with it. He's pretty sure.

He believed her when she said she liked him. He still does. It's hard to, and he's a little surprised that he manages it, but he does. He doesn't think she talked to him and brought him coffee and took him to her ruins and wanted to sing for him just because she felt sorry for him or something. He doesn't think Beth Greene runs on pity. He doesn't think that's her particular fuel.

And she can't help what she is.

She can't help her own perfection.

It's Wednesday. That night he doesn't get drunk. He drops Merle off at a juke joint a couple of miles out of town where they have poker games and goes off by himself. Not for any particular reason. He just wants to spend some time alone. More time alone. He feels like he's doing a lot of that, even when he's not actually alone. Sinking into his own head.

Then again, he's always spent a lot of time there.

When someone is hurting you, that's something you can do. He learned how to do that when he was very young. Someone hurts you and there's nothing you can do about it; okay, you just remove yourself from the part of you that feels the hurt. You leave your body where it is and you take your mind somewhere else. You learn to regard your own body as this piece of meat you ride around in. Maybe it's there, but you feel no special attachment to it, and it doesn't matter what happens to it so long as it keeps running and gets you from place to place. Like a shitty old car.

Like the truck. Cursed with music.

He was never a poet and he doesn't want to be one now.

She's not hurting him the way he was hurt then. Not at all. There's no cruelty in this. She doesn't want to make him feel like nothing, like worse than nothing, like this hateful little thing undeserving of anything other than pain. She doesn't want that at all. Everything she's done for him has been with the intention of making him feel good, and that's extraordinary, because she's done it without expecting anything in return except for him to accept her kindness.

She's a sweet girl. He doesn't think there's a single mean bone in her body.

God.

Parked on a completely empty stretch of road, open fields on both sides, he lies in the truck bed and stares up at the sky. The stars are scattered glass chips across a dark road caught and illuminated by invisible headlights. The moon is just rising. Somewhere he hears an owl. Cool breeze across the fields and over his skin and through his hair - it smells like autumn. Summer is dying. Soon she'll go back to school, finish up her senior year, graduate... Then what? What happens to a girl like Beth Greene in the world? The world outside this, the world to which he has no access and never will? She goes to college, maybe. Dates. Gets married. Maybe Jimmy, or maybe she meets another Nice Boy from an equally Nice Family and she has a kid or two, a house, and maybe she goes to Atlanta or something or maybe she stays in the country or a small town, or maybe she leaves Georgia entirely. Gets out. Gets free.

He's never been out of Georgia. And he doesn't think she would regard it as getting free of anything. This is home to her. This isn't an endlessly circling thing she can't break out of.

In college, what would Beth Greene major in? What kind of job would she get, after? What kind of house would she want? What would she put in it, how would she decorate its rooms?

What's Beth Greene's favorite color? What's her favorite food?

What would she name a daughter? A son? Which would she rather have? How many? Does she care?

Where would she go on vacation? What would her Christmas trees look like? What does she want for Christmas? What does Beth Greene look like coming out of church on Easter Sunday, her dress and her hair and her subtle little pieces of jewelry? Will she go to prom this year? Of course she'll go to prom. What will she wear? She said she likes to dance. He's heard her sing but he's never seen her dance. What does Beth Greene look like when she's dancing?

He wants to know the answers to all these questions. He tries to imagine them, but all he comes away with are vague and unsatisfying flashes of imagery and sound. These are his fantasies, and he can't even have them properly because he cares too much about the real thing.

He wants to know everything about her.

That's kind of creepy. He's being kind of creepy. He's being creepy by himself, but still.

He moans softly and closes his eyes and lays his forearm across his face like he's hiding from something.

His body feels very far away.

She texts him the next morning, close to noon. Two words. He sits on the couch in last night's clothes and looks at them for a while.

come over

This continues to be very unfair.

He showers and changes and heads over.

There doesn't seem to be anyone around when he pulls up the drive. There are no vehicles that he can see. He knocks on the door but there's no answer, turns around and stands on the porch and wonders if he imagined the whole thing. But he checks the phone and it's still there.

come over

This is perplexing.

"Over here."

A little ways away. He moves to the edge of the steps and looks, and there she is under one of the big old trees in the yard, guitar in her lap. He feels a twinge of something but it's really not all that bad. It's manageable. He'll be okay.

He goes over to her and stands, looking down. She looks back up at him and smiles, and it's not tight or uncomfortable. It's just warm.

"Hi."

"Hey." He clears his throat and glances around. "Where is everybody?"

"Mama went to the store with Shawn. Daddy had to run out to see a neighbor, got a cow's not doin' so well."

"Why'd you want me to come out?"

She shrugs. "I dunno. Kinda bored, maybe. I have stuff I gotta do, but." She leans back against the tree. "I don't feel like it. Summer's almost over. I wanna do all the doin' nothin' I can."

He gives her a faint smile. Very faint, very small. Very felt. All the pain is gone, suddenly - melted away like snow - and he's just happy to be here. It's a little strange that she texted him and not Jimmy, but that's not really his business and he's not going to poke it too hard. "Yeah, doin' nothin' ain't so great when it's all you do."

She arches a brow. "You do a lotta nothin'? Seems like you're always workin'." She nods at the ground. "Sit down, lookin' up at you is weird."

It is weird. He sits, crosslegged, and pulls up a couple blades of grass and begins to shred them between his forefingers and thumbs. "Sometimes I'm workin'. Sometimes not." He smiles again, tiny and crooked. "Drifter."

She makes a quiet noise - not quite a laugh - and lifts a hand, points at his face. "What happened to your eye?"

For a second or two he's actually confused. He had forgotten about it. He pauses his grass-shredding until he gets it. And he could lie, maybe, but again - he sucks at lying at the best of times, and lying to her just straight-up doesn't work. So he opts for the next best thing and gives her the assumption from which he's been working.

"Fight."

"Over what?"

He shakes his head. "Don't remember."

"Were you drunk?"

Absolutely no judgment in that question. Not that he can detect. No judgment, no distaste. She's just asking. And he wants her to think well of him - God help him, he still does, wants her to think he's better than he is - but he can't help this. And there's no point in being upset about it anymore.

So he nods.

She smiles a little. "Might not wanna do that so much."

"Yeah, it's not exactly the kinda thing you plan." He pauses, looking at her and down at the grass again - pulling up more of it - and he remembers the night before and all those questions and how badly he wanted the answers, still wants the answers, how badly he wants to know who this girl is, this girl who's cut him open and hollowed out a place inside him for herself, and he realizes that there's a technique he can use to get those answers and have them and know them. Keep them.

Maybe.

"You ever been lit before?"

She shakes her head. "Never even had a drink."

He's surprised, and he doesn't try to hide it. He figured by eighteen pretty much everyone would have at least given the whole thing a shot. "Nothin'?"

"No."

"Ever want to?"

She shrugs. "I dunno. Never seemed worth it, really. Daddy..." She hesitates and sighs. "Daddy had a problem. Has a problem. He can't drink at all. There's no in between for him. Either he doesn't drink or he drinks so much he can hardly stand up. Or that's what he says."

He cocks his head. Some things are a little clearer now. "You know that don't have to be you, though. Like... That ain't your problem. Right?"

She breathes a laugh and leans forward, her fingers stroking across the strings at the neck of the guitar and raising a soft, lingering sound. "Daryl Dixon, you tryin' to get me drunk?"

"Tryin' to expand your horizons, girl." He's actually not sure what he's doing, but it's so much easier than he thought it would be, and it feels nice. Like it did at first, just being around her. Still confusing, and he sort of can't stop looking at her and the fine, neat lines of the single braid in her hair, but it's okay.

It'll be okay.

"Think my horizons are wide enough." She's still smiling, but then it fades and she's quiet for a moment. "I'll do all that stuff when I go to college. Probably. I dunno. I don't really care."

"What college you goin' to?"

She gives him a little half shake of her head and strokes her fingers over the guitar strings again, this time with more purpose. She makes a couple of chords and he watches her hands move. They're slender. Delicate. But clearly quite strong. "I dunno. I don't think I'm goin' right outta school. I wanna think about some things first."

"Like what?"

"Like what I'm gonna do. I know, I know." She rolls her eyes. "I'm supposed to know that already. But I don't. I got no idea. Lookin' at everyone else, seems like they're makin' plans just 'cause they think that's what they're supposed to be doin'. But I don't wanna do somethin' just to do it. I wanna know what I'm doin'. I wanna know why."

He's never heard anyone talk like this before. Never in his life. For a minute or two he just stares at her, torn blades of grass cool and slightly moist against the pads of his fingers. Then that smile again, pulling at his mouth. Pulling at all of him. Around her, he's discovering, part of him is always a smile. "You're kinda fuckin' weird, girl."

He's said this before. And before she smiled at him, wide and happy, and she said-

"I know."

She fingers the guitar strings again, plucks and then strums, her other hand moving against the neck. "You cut out before. I ain't mad," she adds, before he can say anything. "You wanna hear somethin' now?"

He doesn't. God, he so does. Everything in him tightens up for just a few seconds and he nods, because what the fuck else is he going to do? Once again, probably completely without meaning to, she's trapped him.

That keeps happening. You'd think he'd have more of a problem with it than he does.

There's no more preamble. She starts to play and sing and he sits there, hands motionless in his lap, whole body still, and he listens. Her voice drifts up through fresh late summer air and lingers in the branches overhead, almost like an echo caught in a large room. Maybe it was sweet in the truck and maybe it was even sweeter in the coffee shop, but here in the shade in the early afternoon it's the sweetest it's ever been. She sings one song and finishes and slips right into another one, effortless as breathing - the kind of thing he's thought before. Music is in her, deep down. Permeating everything. She sings like she can't not sing.

He wonders if you can be born with something like that. If it can lie inside you, waiting like a seed, and emerge when it's time.

just where it now lies I can no longer say
I found it on a cold and November day
in the roots of a sycamore tree where it had hid so long
in a box made out of myrtle lay the bone of song

the bone of song was a jawbone old and bruised
and worn out in the service of the muse
and along its sides and teeth were written words
I ran my palm along them and I heard

He listens to her and it seems like her voice carries the time away, and he's happy to let it go. Because this is okay.

This is more than okay.

lucky are you who finds me in the wilderness
I am the only unquiet ghost that does not seek rest

Note: song is "Bone of Song" by Josh Ritter