Outland Exile: Book One of Old Men and Infidels

by W. Clark Boutwell

  “And I’ve made things so much worse for her,” she said.

  “Sally, you’ll have a chance to apologize to Jesse too, but if he doesn’t forgive you, I’ll report him to the association. See if I don’t,” Moses replied.

  This appeared to galvanize her. Sally sat up and buffed the tears from her eyes before dropping the twisted handkerchief to the floor and standing stiffly.

  “No time like the present. I was in the wrong, and it’s not getting any righter, my talking about it,” she said as she threw a shawl around herself and left the house to find the old man.

  Only after Sally closed the door did Delarosa ask, “Does she always go from hot to cold so fast?”

  “She knew she overreacted even before we heard what you and Malila had to say. She never asked me about this last trip. She was so tied up with the baby and with babying Malila. Those two really hit it off, and I think she swallowed anything the girl said. Seems Malila believes some of what Sally said as well. I guess she thought there was no way it could be explained in Jesse’s favor.”

  “Malila Chiu is lucky to be alive … luckier to have run into the old man instead of me. I would have followed orders,” said Delarosa.

  Moses nodded. Jesse was always following his own drummer … always had if you believed the stories, Xavier thought.

  “Malila might try to apologize. Why don’t you explain it to her, Moses? She’s not a believer, but she might understand and agree. It’s hard to guess with these Union types; it is all about hierarchy and status with them.”

  “I dunno, Xavier. This is serious. I can’t have the girl spreading lies and be under my roof, like I agree with her. Jesse doesn’t deserve it … and neither do we.” Moses flung himself down onto his rocker.

  “So far it is just among the five of us. If Jesse accepts her apology, will that serve?” Xavier asked.

  “You heard what she said! How many times has she broken faith with the old man?” Moses replied at once.

  “But if he does accept her …?”

  Moses stopped as if considering. It was a few seconds later before he looked up.

  “If he does, I do. I’m not gonna be out-Jesse’d by the man,” replied Moses with the shade of a smile crossing his lips for the first time since the old man had exploded out his front door.

  “Let me go talk to him, and you talk to Malila.”

  Moses nodded and rose.

  Delarosa opened the door and stepped out into the cold air of the front porch.

  “… and I had no right to accuse you of any action I didn’t witness myself. I have no excuse. I was wrong to believe the words, to voice the words, and to act on the words. God be a witness to my sorrow and sincerity. Jesse, please, forgive me.”

  Jesse was standing uncovered in the cold, his hat lying on the ground. Sally was kneeling with her hands held out palm down on the old man’s open palms. She was looking up into Jesse’s face with new lines of bright tears on her cheeks.

  “I accept your apology, given freely with no threat or reward asked or offered to you, my sister, and I guarantee that our communion is intact and unaffected. I forgive you, Sally.”

  At the last words, she rose to her feet with the help of the old man, Jesse leaning down and quickly kissing her cheek. She, in turn, hugged him, before turning away to hurry back into the house.

  When they were alone, Delarosa turned to Jesse.

  “Moses is pretty upset with Malila. He won’t have her around telling lies about you.”

  “Not all of it was lies. I was pretty hard on her. The last two weeks I was holding on by my toenails. I saw the signs. I was getting hazy and apathetic. It would be a terrible thing to make the girl walk for six weeks and then to die alone at the last go-round. I was getting weaker and stupider. It was a pretty close-run affair at the last.”

  “Anything that you ought to be ashamed about?”

  “Me? I stopped blushing after they convicted President Bokassa. No, Xav, I was the very soul of a good jailor. Yes, I stripped her, I winkled out her implant, and I didn’t ask ‘Mother, may I?’ neither. She’s pretty enough, and I won’t say I wasn’t tempted, but I never touched her that way. I wasn’t easy with her, but I wasn’t easy with me. That is why General Thomas hired me.

  “Did I tell you that the implants keep women from having their cycles? When she started her first period, the poor thing near came apart at the seams. I can see how she thinks I planned to humiliate her, but …”

  “But she gave her parole, her word of honor, and then tried to kill you. She shoulda too! Save us all a lot of trouble. You dumped her into an ice-water bath instead of killing her. Why?”

  “Nearly did kill her, Xav. Seemed like the thing to do; she’s just a kid.”

  “She has been a soldier since she was ten years old, you know, Jess. People in the Union only live to be about forty-two or so. She’s nearer being middle-aged.”

  A smile flitted across the old man’s face. “So what are we to do if Moses won’t put up with her anymore? If you move her, you just set her up for another blowdown, doncha know? You want me to accept a phony apology from her?”

  “No, I want you to accept a real apology from her … and I want you to really forgive her.”

  “She doesn’t like me much, Xav …”

  “Yeah, I noticed. But Sally thinks she needs to stay. I agree. Tough as she is, she’s still a kid. She can operate in a group, but she dissolves on her own. If I move her, she’ll be a basket case and useless to us.”

  “Is she worthwhile to you now … I mean the intelligence?” asked the old man.

  “No way to know. I’ve already gotten a lot out of her just by what she doesn’t know.”

  Jesse laughed.

  “Moses is okay with her staying?”

  “Only if you are … It all comes down to whether she can apologize to you and you can forgive.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Xav. It’s that time of year.”

  “Are you warm enough, huddled out here? This may take a while.”

  “I’ll be fine, Xav. Go on and see what you can do. If you get a moment to send out some of Sally’s cookies and coffee, they won’t be wasted, I promise.”

  “This is a waste of time. It is just another way for that old man to humiliate me,” said Malila, waving her hand into the air.

  Even as a gleam on the dark horizon of her despair began to show, Malila refused to trust it.

  “No, you can’t think like that. Jesse can be hard as nails, but he has forgiven things in people that would make my heart stop. This is important, and you have nothing to lose,” Sally pleaded. “If you don’t try to apologize, you have to leave. If he forgives you, you get to stay with us. It may not mean much to you, but getting to act like the Shepherd, even a little bit, is important for us … and Jesse.”

  Malila thought that being a sheep organizer was no great reward but said nothing. She rehearsed the phrases with Sally. The foreignness of the ideas was difficult enough, but the restrictions were burdensome. If Jesse perceived any insincerity, he would not agree.

  With little enthusiasm, Malila went outside. Jesse sat huddled near the woodpile. An empty cup was at his elbow.

  Jesse’s face was grim as she approached, like that of a magistrate. She was on trial now, and she had to admit her guilt.

  She got close enough to the old man to kneel and reach out, palms downward. If Jesse did not take her hands, nothing more could be done … her apology was discarded out of hand. Malila watched his face for some telltale sign of reaction but could find none. She closed her eyes and waited. It was still a shock when she felt Jesse’s warm, dry palms under her own. She could not bring herself to look up into his face as she began.

  “I’m a stranger here, and I don’t understand your customs. Sally says that I have to ask your forgiveness for what I said about you
r treatment of me on the trail. I may have exaggerated some things, and I’m sorry that she took them the wrong way.”

  “I see.”

  It was already going wrong. Telling Jesse about her own feelings wasn’t going to work; Sally and Moses both had warned her of that. Malila’s heart sank, and her hands started to slip off Jesse’s warm palms. She tried again.

  “I lied to her, and she believed me. I lied about how you treated me. I broke my promises to you. I’m ungrateful. You saved my life.”

  “Good, lass.”

  “But you embarrassed me; you got me drunk; you gave me your tea; you fed me … You didn’t force me; you didn’t want me; you helped me when I bled; you sang me songs … You hit me,” she said, taking events at random and throwing them up like a makeshift barricade against the old man.

  “I admit all that. I thought you were better than your promises. Breaking them surprised me … made me angry, lass. That is no excuse. I’m sorry for hitting you, for humiliating you. Please forgive me.”

  Only then did Malila realize she was glaring up at Jesse, and she quickly looked down. This was not going as Sally had told her it would. She was doing it all wrong. She was not supposed to try to justify it or explain. Now Jesse had apologized to her instead. Sally had said he might “forgive” her, but Malila had no concept of what that would entail. All she knew was that if Jesse forgave her, she could stay. If not, she would be adrift in this chaos beyond the Rampart. She hesitated. The silence stretched away in front of her. Her palms greased with sweat, and her heart raced.

  At length, Jesse said, “Will you forgive me for hurting you when I was angry? There is no excuse for that, and with my God’s help it will not happen again.”

  The old man’s voice was low and modulated. Malila looked up in surprise. Jesse gazed at her with a steady, almost detached look, but beneath the look Malila knew he was all quiet intensity.

  “I don’t know how to forgive you. I should have kept my promises, Jesse. Sally says I need you to forgive me.” The pale-gray eyes of the old man watched her. His face gradually changed into a mask of perplexity as the silence continued. Malila broke her gaze, feeling her eyes fill, and contemplated the old man’s boots, even as they blurred with new tears.

  “Forgiveness is tough, lass. Forgiveness doesn’t make things like they never happened, but it makes things right … Can you see that? It means I give up feeling bad about your breaking your promises.”

  His image swam as her tears fell. She felt better hearing the words, not knowing why that should be. She looked up and tried to buff her tears away with a coat sleeve without removing her hands from the warm palms.

  “Jesse, I forgive you for hurting me when you were angry. I give up my feelings about that. Please forgive me for … for trying to kill you and for … for all the things I’ve said about you. You have saved my life, fed me, clothed me, and cared for me. I owe you for that … I’m so sorry …”

  Even as she spoke, the litany of the old man’s actions—his decision to spare her life convicted her. He’d pulled her away from suicide. He’d looked out for her better than he had for himself. It was so unanswerable. She would always be in his debt. She could never repay it. A flash of dismay and grief raced through her as she recognized the truth.

  Jesse’s face swam as she looked up before again bowing her head with racking sobs of regret. She had done it all wrong, she knew. Jesse would never forgive her; she had bungled the whole thing. She had taken too much from him. It was several seconds before she sensed the old man beside her with his red bandana pressed into her hand and his solid arm around his shoulder.

  “Malila … it’s all right. It is … I accept your apology, lass. I do.” Then shifting to another gear, he said, “And I thank you for forgiving me.”

  The bland words worked another miracle on her. Her sobs morphed into gentle hiccups as the old man cradled her in his arms. Malila found her breath coming in ragged sighs as Sally came over and shooed Jesse away, helping Malila to her feet. Minutes later, when she looked around, they were alone in the yard.

  CHAPTER 41

  THE COMING

  It was midafternoon when Malila awoke. Sally had insisted that she lie down after coming inside. Wrung out, she had fallen asleep almost at once.

  Above the silence of the house, Malila heard a low-frequency buzz of activity at the horizon of her hearing. The noise drew her to the front yard, and she found it crowded with horse carriages, small horseless carts, and heavier electric cars. Once out in the cold air, she heard a melodious beat of song and followed it to the barn Moses had been preparing. Coatless men turning whole venison and hogs on spits over beds of red coals nodded to her as she pushed the barn door open a crack before slipping in. The building was almost full of villagers and farmers.

  “Merry Christmas!” a smiling woman wished her as Malila turned to shut the door. Malila gathered that the snatches of conversation between Moses and Sally she had been hearing all week long had been referring to this event … whatever it was.

  Near the entrance, a tack room had been transformed. Over the entrance a sign read, “Obamaroom.” The space was filled with projectile rifles on open racks guarded by several unsmiling men. The next thing she noticed was that everyone else was facing the narrow dais on which a meaty man in denim overalls, with the help of a woman with an accordion, was leading a song with vigorous arm motions.

  … the weary world rejoices,

  as yonder comes her new and glorious dawn.

  Malila made her way to stand behind Moses and accepted Ethan from Sally’s arms with a smile. Both Moses and Sally returned to singing, Sally in a silvery soprano and Moses in a rumbling bass.

  The King of Kings lay thus in lowly manger;

  In all our trials born to be our friend.

  Malila had never heard such songs, either this one or the several to follow. The songs she knew were either love songs or heroic ballads about the cadre. Some of the crowd around her referenced small tablets, but most sang from memory. Malila spotted Jesse in the crowd, nodding to her as he bellowed out in a confident baritone.

  At the conclusion of the songs, the meaty man held up his arms to signal silence, and Malila’s attention drifted back to the sleeping bundle in her arms. There was a generalized happy buzzing around her.

  “A joyful Remembrance Day of the Coming, brothers and sisters,” the man announced.

  “Before we get started, I want us to thank Moses and Sally Stewert for the use of the hall. This’ll be the third time we’ve celebrated here since we started the colony. God has blessed us with his bounty and his peace.”

  There was a general stomping and clapping at the statement, but Malila lost track of the speech after that, as Ethan started fussing. For a while, people took turns reading an odd and disturbing story about an ancient pregnant breeder and her patron. The story included spirit beings, hereditary rulers, soothsayers, religious functionaries, animal caretakers, and feeding troughs, no part of which she understood.

  The meaty man then asked someone in the audience to “prey,” and Malila looked up startled as every other head in the barn looked down. It took her several seconds to decide nothing predatory was in the offing. Lowering her head, realizing this was the ritual that Jesse, Sally, and Moses did before each meal, feeling a little silly, she hardly listened to the man’s sonorous phrases. He finished, and at once people moved toward the trestle tables, carrying her along.

  She had grown accustomed to the abundant fare of the Stewerts’ workaday table. After the scant rations of the trek, it had seemed unreal. At times, Malila had wondered if their bounty was artificial, an effort to fool her as the prisoner of war.

  However, the food laid out for the Coming was a magnitude more lavish, not just in quantity, which was copious, but also in variety. Men and women hovered over some dishes, urging her to “try a little.” Small signs identif
ied a golden mound of mashed rutabagas with butter dripping from it, deeper orange sweet potatoes, red new potatoes wafting steam, hearty dark-green collards, peaks of pale mashed potatoes, green beans, platters of sliced roast turkey, darker grained venison, rich roast goose dripping fat, and pale savory roast pork. Some even had proprietary names like “Susan Brannon’s bean casserole” or “Cathy Wood’s Brunswick stew.”

  On another table was a bouquet of fruit pies, puddings, and colorful tarts, with an older woman there shooing children away unless they showed her an emptied wooden plate. Most amazing to Malila was a pyramid of orange spheres. They were fruits that people were supposed to peel and eat raw.

  Having not eaten since dawn, Malila was wiping her mouth on her sleeve by the time Sally retrieved Ethan. Planning on sampling a small serving of each dish, Malila eventually took just the ones that looked least familiar to her, retreating to a corner to enjoy her bounty. The celebration, for the tenor of the crowd was jubilant, was at once joyous and disturbing.

  Sampling some of the rutabagas, the bitter-sweet taste a welcome change from the saccharine sweet potatoes, Malila recognized that the Coming narrative was unique.

  Childbirth was considered an ordinary occurrence in the outlands, she knew, but there was some social stigma attached to the story of this birth. Moreover, despite the irregularity of his birth, the baby was supposed to be a king. That was absurd.

  Malila knew about the inferior forms of government. Kingship was a protection-hierarchy model: goods and service were extorted from the numerous weak citizens with promises of protection and/or threats of violence by the few influential citizens. It was an inherited condition. No baby could be born a king. If his father were still alive, then, by definition, he was not a king. If his father were dead, someone else would have already been chosen king, and again he was not king. The story was nonsense on the face of it.

  The Unity had no celebrations such as this one, of course. Her homeland acknowledged current achievements rather than past events. It was sad that these people had so little in the way of triumphs, clinging to their outdated superstitions, their children, and their guns. She finished eating and went to place her plate on a table reserved for the purpose.