His announcement apparently stunned the caravanners into silence, until someone at the back said below their breath, "No way!"
A ghoul man near the front said, almost reverently, "Damn, brother!"
Then everyone was talking. "Is that even possible? Aren't ghouls supposed to be sterile?" "They may say that, but how could it be true of everyone?" "No, no, it makes sense. You know what Mama's like. Anybody hit that, they ain't gonna be just any old scavver." "But ghouls, they got a withering disease. You ever seen ferals nekkid, you know it shrivels up and drops off." "Bullshit, you gonna say that man ain't got stones anymore?" "Her kid has got a look of him about her."
Luckily Cooper Howard's ghoulish skin was naturally reddened, or they might have noticed the flush he felt heating his face. "It's true. I am Janey's father. I've been trying to find her—them—for years. A few weeks ago, I finally got a lead, and here I am. I trust y'all won't embarrass me by making me show off the goods in front of a crowd."
They laughed.
He went on. "What, if anything, can I tell you to reassure you I only want to find my family and keep them safe?"
"Hmmm….Can you tell me what's unusual about their cat?" asked the woman in front.
"That is a good question. I don't know anything about any cat they might have. Now if you were talkin' about their dog—. As of five years ago, they had a dog named Kirby with two heads and two tails. That I know because I got a letter Lana wrote to me. I got it five years late, but I got it."
"That was a good answer" the woman nodded, reaching for the beer they had offered at the beginning and passing bottles to the rest of the crew. "Yeah, they still have Kirby. Now where the fuck you been, man? Your little girl needs her daddy. I don't care what kind of grief you got with Mama, but you got to show up for your kid."
"Yeah. Just cause Mama can manage without you doesn't mean she should have to. Or that she wants to. You know how many people, men and women both, your woman turned down on account of she's got a kid and her kid has a dad and she don't want to do nothing to mess up her kid's life until she knows what happened to you? She coulda made her life a lot easier but she didn't." chimed in another woman. "Some of them had more caps than they could spend in a lifetime."
"That—I don't know."
"The only thing I know she's afraid of is something happening to her kid. Your kid." said another member of the caravan.
"That's something she and I have in common, then. Can we cut through this conversation to the part where you tell me where they live, or where I can find them?"
The caravanners gave each other looks. "You better be as good as people say you are, man. Cause as far as we can tell, they're stuck at the next caravan station."
"Stuck? Stuck how?" he asked.
"Caesar sent out a bunch of men to try and find them. You know what kind of rep the Legion has." The ghoul man said.
"Yeah, they're slavers and rapists." A woman said. "In fact, the stations are warning people to steer clear of that one because there are at least fifty Legionaries staking the place out. If you have women in the crew, they say go the long way, up by 80 to Truck, and then south."
"Is that what she did?" Lucy asked.
"No. She went to Bollocks, which is the next station, and we know they didn't find her because they're still looking. But if she got through to Kibbers, she'd have sent word back. She said it wasn't the first time people had been after her and she had disguises for them."
"Disguises?" Howard asked.
"Yeah. I don't know what they were." The woman said.
"Um…" Lucy began, "Is it true she actually skinned one of Ceasar's men alive?"
"That?" the first woman who spoke scoffed. "No. It would take too long and she'd be worrying about her kid."
"Not the whole man, anyway. She probably just picked a spot that would hurt bad and skin that. Like his face, or his…" said another of the caravanners.
"Okay!" the Vaultie interrupted.
When the caravanners had polished off the beer, the Ghoul and Lucy returned to the station.
"Not a word out of you, Smoothskin," he warned her.
"I just think that characterizing you as a deadbeat dad adds… a whole new dimension to your character," Lucy said demurely. "Also, you didn't say anything about how Lana didn't actually give birth to Janey."
"Didn't want to confuse the issue," he said. "Besides, after five years, if what all we hear is even half true, Lana Hunter is just as much Janey's mama as my ex."
"So…what are you going to do? It would be cruel to separate them, in that case." Lucy remarked.
"I don't plan on it. I reckon that if Miz Hunter and me can get along, I can find a place right near wherever they're living, or build one, and we can parent Janey together."
"For a moment there, I thought you were going to say that if you two got along, you'd get married." Lucy laughed.
He was silent for a long moment. "Nah. When you're in hell," he said, cryptically, "you're lucky to get any kind of snow cone, never mind the flavor."
When they returned to the water shack, the woman at the counter waved to them.
"Yoo-hoo! I found it!" she called across the station.
"Much obliged, Ma'am," he tipped his hat to her.
Later he read,
'Dear Cooper—
You don't mind if I write to you in a more friendly way, do you? Of course you don't. You will never read this.
Besides that, I have to say that adopting Kirby was absolutely the right decision. If I had known Janey would shed so much of her anxiety by having a dog, I would have left the Vault to find one months ago. All the weeks we spent without privacy in which to pee—Janey would start having meltdowns when I was out of her sight, so I had to leave doors open and talk her through the separations. It was a very long time before she was comfortable sleeping in her own bed in the same room, and she always woke up if I turned over or got up.
Of course, as soon as we left the vault, the situation did an about-face, and I was the one who got anxious if she was not in sight. I had dreams in which I turned around and she was gone—taken by a trafficker, or a cannibal, or molester, never to be seen again.
Kirby has fixed that for both of us. I don't know if we trained him or he chose to become the world's best therapy dog/guard dog in one, but he is her protector. As long as he is with her, I can do night watches for the caravan without waking her up and making her come along. And she sleeps so much better with him there to cuddle.
We are in the mountains now, and I am starting to look around for a place we can live. If I knew where home was, I'd go there. Or maybe I do know, and it is where Janey and Kirby are. This lean-to with its sleeping bags is not much, but we cowpokes take it as it comes, or so Janey tells me.
I have no idea who you really were as a person. No one could live up to your image in the movies, the lawman who was steel-true and blade-straight under a slightly rusty, trail-worn exterior, but I hope you were really the man Janey thinks you were. Maybe it was just a façade, and you had lovers in secret, addictions to alcohol or other drugs, and a gambling problem.
I would rather think of you as a good father and a good man.
I had a father, too. Well, I suppose I had several. One of whom was the father of the woman whose brain-scan they imprinted on me, but then there was Father, the leader of the Institute, and a man named Kellog, whose tenacity and ferocity they wanted to instill into me—he was the source of at least a third of my genes. None of them were what one might call a good father. As for mothers, I had none that I can recall.
At any rate, I have a daughter. I have Janey. Some day I may have to tell her that there wasn't an earthquake or a power outage, that I chose to wake our little Sleeping Beauty because I needed someone. I needed a purpose. Without a reason to leave the vault, I think I would have stayed there forever, a calcified fetus in the womb of its concrete walls.
I wonder if she will hate me for it.
I wonder when (or more likely if) her mother would return for her.
Anyhow, in terms of housing, I am looking for a small cabin or other dwelling with at least two bedrooms, a real fireplace or wood burning stove, near running water. I can chop wood; I can't necessarily get a fusion furnace running, particularly if the wiring has gone bad. I also have doubts about my ability to build a fireplace into a place that doesn't have a chimney already. I would forever be afraid of the house burning down.
They tell me there are radhogs in them there mountains—enormous, mutated crossbreeds between feral pigs and wild boars which escaped after being imported for game. They can reach as much as two thousand pounds and are, I am told, pound for pound more ferocious than yao gui or deathclaws.
I say—good. One pig should easily get us through the winter, in that case.
Yours in hope of finding tons of pork running around loose,
Lana Hunter'