Charlinder's Walk

by Alyson Miers

  "No one, it's just me and this sheep."

  "You've traveled this far all alone? What are you doing here?"

  "I'm on my way to somewhere else, just passing through. I've never heard of your village before, in case you thought this was my intended destination and I was up to some mischief." Although he wasn't sure what else he could have said in its place, the words sounded ridiculous as soon as they were out of his mouth. There could only be one logical conclusion to "passing through," and what he'd seen of this settlement did not suggest an enthusiasm for hospitality. A more knowing expression came over the entitled man's face, though he didn't address that issue just yet.

  "In your village back on the East Coast, what kind of work did you do? Any position you held in your community?"

  "I was the village schoolteacher. Have you ever taught school, sir?"

  "I'm afraid I've been too busy managing the affairs of my town, but that's an unusual line of work you've taken. Where is this place you're headed?"

  "It's not on this continent," said Charlinder.

  "You can answer Mr. Hyatt's question better than that," said one of the thugs.

  "No, it's fine," assured the man apparently called Mr. Hyatt. "I trust your interest isn't with us. But by 'passing through,' I suppose you'd like to have a place to sleep for a day or two, and something to eat?"

  "That'd be really nice. If you've got no room at the inn, though, it's fine, I've been sleeping on the ground for the better part of the last several months, so I'll just move along..."

  "I haven't heard the expression 'no room at the inn' for years," said Mr. Hyatt curiously. "Let me see that sheep," he said, beckoning towards Lacey.

  Before Charlinder could ask exactly what "see that sheep" implied, the thug on his right steered Lacey up to Mr. Hyatt's desk. "I'll warn you, there probably isn't much meat on her," Charlinder said nervously. "She's a dairy and wool animal, and she's a special breed that keeps lactating on demand without further lambing, but..."

  "No, we're not going to slaughter her," said Mr. Hyatt, finished with his inspection of Lacey's wool growth. "I have no problem with you 'passing through' our town, but we'll need some collateral. You can shear your sheep, leave the fleece with my staff, and we'll find a place for you to stay until you're ready to move on. When you're about to leave, we'll give your share of the fleece back to you."

  "How much is 'my share'?"

  "That will depend on how long you stay. We certainly have 'room at the inn,' but it doesn't come for free."

  Charlinder thought it over for a moment. He looked down at Lacey. "Well, I was sort of wondering what to do with all that wool on you."

  He was escorted outside by the two thugs and Mr. Hyatt, whose given name turned out to be Jansen. They showed him to a courtyard near the building and let him get his shears out. Jansen Hyatt and his guards, as well as a small crowd that gathered, stayed to watch Charlinder shear Lacey. He wondered at first if this community had sheep of its own, until he noticed that the crowd, especially the children, were looking more at him than at what he was doing.

  The reason for Charlinder's ability to draw attention was yet to be revealed. After Lacey was shorn, one of the thugs scooped up the fleece and carried it off somewhere else. Jansen dismissed the other one and led Charlinder to a friend's house. The friend and her husband agreed to house Charlinder and shelter Lacey for as long as he needed to stay while passing through and, to their credit, Vilma and Peter did not look at him like a mutant animal. Lacey was kept generously tethered to a tree on their property so she could eat the grass but not the garden plants.

  Vilma brought her two youngest children along to show Charlinder around the town. There was the windmill, the tannery, the courthouse and prison, the graveyard behind the church, the market, the butcher shop, and so on. Charlinder wanted to be impressed, but after his interrogation the positive impressions were slow to come. Now that he was out with Vilma, the locals were more inclined to come and introduce themselves, but here he noticed a striking contrast. The white neighbors had no trouble getting acquainted with Charlinder and stopping to chat with Vilma and coo over the two children with them. They all looked like models of excellent health, like descendants of Plague survivors. The mixed-black neighbors were as reticent as the others were garrulous. They stopped to ask about him, and though they seemed curious they didn’t stay long to talk. They also appeared a much less healthy bunch of people than their white neighbors; most walked with a distinct limp, some were wall-eyed, and one or two had to monitor the corners of their mouths to keep the spittle inside, though by their speech they seemed perfectly intelligent.

  At her house, Vilma refused to let Charlinder help her cook. The most he was allowed to do was help with her babies, who were young enough to be cute but old enough to make chaos. As he was having an unknown portion of Lacey's fleece taken in exchange for her hospitality, Vilma didn’t want to make him work. Her sister, Ella, joined her with their knitting in the back garden and asked Charlinder to tell her about his job as a teacher to young children. He held Vilma’s one-year-old son in one arm and let the baby poke at his hair while he told Vilma and Ella about his work.

  "Then I'm sure you'll make a very good father some day," said Vilma.

  "No, I won't," Charlinder replied. He figured that if his hostess was going to be so generous, then he could be honest. "Men in my village raise their sisters' kids, and since I’m an only child, I won’t be a family man."

  Vilma and Ella both looked stunned. "So...if the men don't become fathers," Vilma began, "who do their sisters have their children with?"

  He shrugged his shoulders while disengaging the baby's hand. "Whatever guys they want. Preferably not related to them within a few generations, but no one's really keeping track."

  "So, what happens, then?" asked Vilma. "Does everyone just go around sleeping with anyone they want?"

  "Yeah, pretty much."

  Vilma and Ella looked at each other. Vilma threw a glance at Charlinder, then in the other direction. "There's actually something to be said for that," she said to her sister. "Don't tell Jansen we had this conversation, okay?" she requested of him.

  "Wouldn't dream of it," he promised. "How did you become friends with that guy, anyhow?"

  "Our dad was his dad's best friend, our families spent a lot of time together, and Ella and I used to play with him when he was little, which his mother really liked. He trusts us, and we can ask him for a favor here and there."

  "I guess that's how he knows you and Peter like to be hospitable."

  "Among other things, yes."

  There was a fishing pond leading to a stream next to the southwestern corner of their town, which Peter showed him after dinner that evening. Though he wasn't quite sure why, he didn't want to go back to the house yet. He assured his host he could find his way back, and Peter left him to sit by the pond. He liked the quiet out there. He needed some time alone, without a lot of people surrounding him and asking questions about his life. It was because he'd never seen a settlement of this size, he supposed, that he needed to get away. Vilma and Peter were nice enough, and their children were sweet and cheerful, but he still couldn't help but feel uncomfortable in their settlement. After all his months of walking, Charlinder was accustomed to being the only human face in sight. That must have been why he needed the quiet.

  There were footsteps coming towards him. Charlinder looked around, and there were two people coming to join him. Both were of the more reserved set who kept wanting to meet him but didn't have time to stop and chat. There was an older man and a younger woman, closer to Charlinder’s own age. Both were limping, though he didn't find that unusual by then. They didn't wait for an introduction to sit down, and for some reason it didn’t seem like an intrusion.

  "You’re the new boy on his way somewhere else, right?" asked the man, and Charlinder nodded. "I'm Randall, and this is my daughter, Cleo. How do you like it here so far?"

  "It's...it's really somethi
ng. I've never seen anything like it before, and I've covered a lot of ground in the last few months."

  "I guess it’s different, eh? You're staying with Peter and Vilma, right?" he said. Charlinder nodded again. "They're good people. Friends with that Hyatt, but we don't hold that against them. Did they tell you how this town got put together?"

  "No, why would they?"

  "Well, let me tell you--our eyes are bothering you, aren't they?" Randall said all of a sudden.

  Once they were close up, Charlinder noticed that both Randall and Cleo were markedly wall-eyed, and he didn’t know how to make eye contact. They must have caught him puzzling to figure out where to look.

  "No, no, I'm sorry," he stammered, but Randall cut him off.

  "It's okay, son, you don't have to look at our faces," Randall assured him. Ashamed of himself, Charlinder looked at his knees, and Randall continued. "Let me ask you, then: how did your village get started?"

  "Nothing really special about it. A handful of survivors from one town found some others, they came to a farm and turned it into their new home. We're using the same plot of land to this day."

  "How many survivors were in that first group?" asked Cleo.

  "There were twenty of them at first. Three people died in the first winter, but the rest of them did pretty well."

  "That's a small group," Randall observed. "Did they all look like you?"

  "No, they were a really diverse bunch. There were some other survivor groups in the region, too."

  "And, did everyone keep in their own group, or did they mix?"

  "They weren’t really worried about staying in their own groups. I don’t even how many villages my ancestors come from."

  "See, that's why you’re so good-looking," said Cleo, at which Charlinder jumped.

  "Excuse me?"

  "I mean, you walk normally, your eyes face in the same direction, and the muscles in your face are under control," she explained. "Because they had better things to worry about." Charlinder had never before been told he was "so good-looking."

  "Now, I'll tell you how this place got started," her father continued. "There were around sixty survivors at first, and they had a good thing going. They grew crops, had some livestock, built houses; they figured it out as they went along. The problem was a smaller group to the south, who weren't doing so well. They kept sneaking into our territory in the middle of the night and stealing things. They took food, firewood, tools, clothing, anything they could carry off in one trip. And that wasn't such a big deal; folks just figured they'd have to keep a closer eye on things. And it went on for about a year, then it got worse."

  "A woman was out picking blackberries, and some guy came and attacked her," Cleo explained. He could guess what she meant by attacked.

  "Then it happened to another woman who took a little walk out south to do a job," said Randall. "And another one. Then some poor girl went to the village kitchen to grab some ingredients, and there was some guy in there waiting for her. When she came out with blood and other business running down her legs, the villagers called a meeting. They were tired of working so hard and then getting robbed. Now their girls were getting attacked on their own turf, and something had to be done. There were a pair of twin brothers in the village, the Hyatts, who'd owned a pig farm and survived the Plague together. They got a bunch of guys together and decided to put their foot down. They took a horse-driven cart south and came back with about ten young men tied up in the back. They led the guys around the village long enough for the girls to say who'd gotten them, then they dealt with that bunch."

  "Dare I ask what you mean by 'dealt with' them?" asked Charlinder.

  "The Hyatts grabbed the nearest axe and chopped the bastards' feet off," Randall explained. "The ones who lived through that, and the ones who never attacked anyone, were invited to stay. The villagers put them in houses, gave them work to do, and made sure they were provided for, and the guys were okay with that. That wasn't all, though. Once the south guys were straightened out, the Hyatts took their cart north and found another smaller group having a hard time. The Hyatts invited them to come join our bunch before they started stealing anything, and they agreed. So the Hyatts rode back home a few days later with twelve new people in the cart, mostly young women, who were happy for a new place to live."

  "Sounds like those Hyatts became really popular," Charlinder remarked.

  "We can only imagine how much," said Randall. "The stealing and raping were over, they had new hands to work, and all those people who were struggling before suddenly had a place. The ones who were identified as attackers couldn’t hurt anyone else. Everyone was so happy with what the Hyatts had done, they agreed to let them and their descendants be in charge of the community from that point on. And they took charge. They made sure everyone had a job to do, and everything got done. They made sure everyone had a place to live, and they organized how to build things. Every time a decision had to be made for the village, folks went to the Hyatts for their approval. Can you see where this is going?"

  "I'm not sure," said Charlinder honestly.

  "The Hyatts started making rules, and folks went along with it," said Cleo. "Most of it was fine, like how many cattle to raise in a year, how to rotate crops. Then they started telling people how to live. People were so scared of the world outside, any time the Hyatts made a new rule it looked like a good idea. They chose some clergy, and told everyone to come to weekly prayer sessions. Folks said okay. They said women can't leave the village alone, and folks said okay."

  "My daughter can't leave the settlement without me, or my son, or her husband, unless she's in a group of at least five women," Randall explained. "We haven't seen a woman raped by anyone outside the settlement in over a hundred years--all the other survivor groups live so far away we never even see anyone else except for the ones who come to join us--but that rule hasn't changed."

  "Then they said we're only allowed to have sex within marriage, and all marriages have to be approved by the Hyatts," Cleo went on. "I wasn't around to see if anyone asked what in the hell is this about, but we know how it ended up. Folks said okay."

  "And they usually approve a marriage with no problem, only they made another rule about that," said Randall. "The white folks are one group, and the rest of us are another, called the browns. Now, can you imagine how that must have felt? Nobody asked the Asians if they figured they had more in common with the whites. Nobody asked the one Native person what she thought about this arrangement. None of the white folks asked the blacks for their thoughts on the matter, but that’s how the survivors got divided up. The Hyatts said whites and browns aren't allowed to marry each other. Folks said okay. I don't know what the white folks thought about the rule, but they didn’t put up a fight. Not enough to make a difference, anyway."

  "I take it this led to problems?" asked Charlinder.

  "In the original survivors," Cleo began, "there were eight blacks, three Asians, and one Native. The rest were white. Both of the smaller groups they brought in were all white, too," she explained. "On the 'everyone else' side, that wasn't very many of us."

  Charlinder waited for the rest of the story.

  "Every year or two, someone from the Hyatts manages to go out and find someone new to join our village, and it always ends up being someone white," Randall went on. "So the whites do all right, they have lots of mates to choose from. We browns have gotten no new blood since the new rules, so we're all related now. And the whites wonder why we all look so sick. They don't have to marry their cousins."

  "My grandma said when she was a girl, it wasn't like this," said Cleo. "Her generation and up were healthier, so the white folks were comfortable with them and they felt more like they were in it together. She said this is what happens when people marry their own cousins for generations running; it causes problems in the kids."

  "Has anyone asked the Hyatts to reconsider the rules?" asked Charlinder.

  Randall shrugged. "They've got their clergy to do the
ir answering for them. They say God made us in different colors for a reason, and we have to stay apart to keep up our diversity. But, you know, they didn’t mind letting a lot of different colors blend together, just as long as the white folks stayed on the other side of the line."

  "And I take it these clergy are all white?"

  "No, they've got some of ours in there, too, but they all say the same thing," Randall answered. "They're no better off than the rest of us, but they always toe the Hyatts' line. If this is what they call 'diversity,' I don’t see what’s so great about it."

  "How does the village treat you otherwise?" asked Charlinder.

  "They don't make any other rules against us," said Randall. "We can live where we want, we learn all the same skills and do the same jobs as the whites, but the damage is done."

  "They act like everything's okay, but you can tell they start feeling bad whenever they spend time around us," said Cleo. "It's hard to pretend everything's fine, and there's nothing they can do about it now. We can either die out or keep going in the same direction, as long as the Hyatts are in charge, and what to do about them is anyone's guess."