by Mike Mullin
“He didn’t,” I said.
“Either way, caring for Mayor Petty became a way to avoid her brother-in-law. And then I guess Mom and Petty fell in love or something.”
I sighed. My whole body felt heavy, like God had cranked the gravity up by twenty percent. I felt like yelling at him, Could you turn the thermostat up too, while you’re at it? I didn’t want to deal with it, didn’t want to think about my mother anymore.
My sister skied more slowly, falling a little behind. I had to strain to make out her words. “I thought I could help, that I could be there for her, change her mind. But nothing ever really changes, does it? And now . . . and now she doesn’t even want me around anymore.”
I heard a choking sound—half animal snarl, half sob—and twisted to look back. Rebecca was crumpled in the snow behind me, sobbing. I performed a laborious step-turn, wishing I had skis like Rebecca’s that I could snap in and out of easily. Darla and Zik skied on a bit before noticing we had dropped back. I pulled up beside Rebecca and fell into the snow beside her, wrapping my one good arm around her, supporting us both on my hook, thrust deep into the snow beside us.
“No matter what happens, I’ll always be your family” I sat in the uncaring snow, holding my sister and sharing her tears.
Chapter 60
I woke before dawn on the morning of the wedding, dressed quietly, stepped outside, and looked to the east. Light was just beginning to emerge from the horizon, a flame-orange streak that looked more like a prairie fire than a sunrise. On the spur of the moment, I decided to climb the icy roof of the long-house to get a better look. Getting onto the roof was easy—it stretched all the way to the ground. Still, the first time I tried to climb it, I slid back. I went inside, got a claw hammer to carry in my natural hand, and using that and my hook as improvised ice axes, I managed to scramble to the top.
I straddled the peak of the roof, getting cold while staring at the horizon. The sun still wasn’t visible; it existed only as a bright smudge under a yellow-gray sky. But sometimes at dawn and dusk the sky came alight with riotous color—shows so surreal, it seemed as though we had been transported in the night to some alien planet.
That morning the sunrise was exceptional. Yellows, oranges, and reds slashed across the sky in vibrant swathes. Here and there, violets and greens emerged as if to reassure me that there was still some blue sky behind the yellow-gray murk, biding its time patiently until the thinning ash and sulfur dioxide allowed it to reemerge. The whole eastern sky flared with brilliant color, wrapping around and above me in a psychedelic embrace from the god of impressionist painters.
I waited and watched, reveling in the sunrise, until the sky faded to a uniform yellow-gray again. My legs had frozen to the roof. I pried them free and slid down to prepare for the big day.
We held the wedding in the original longhouse. We had cleared all the bedrolls and detritus of our day-to-day lives out of the middle and festooned the longhouse in plastic greenery and flowers. I stood at the front alongside the makeshift altar, trying not to shift nervously from foot to foot. Max and Ben stood beside me, Rebecca and Anna on the other side of the altar.
Darla stepped through the longhouse door on Uncle Paul’s arm. She was a vision in her long white dress, its bodice made of some material that sparkled, playing flirtatiously with the electric lights overhead. With every step she took, the sparkles in her bodice picked up more of the light from the candles burning alongside the altar, making their flecks yellow instead of white, warming her as she neared me at the front of the room.
Her shoulders were bare, showing off her powerfully muscled upper arms. She wore the homemade necklace I had given her three years ago, its pendant—a 15/16 nut— nestled at the curve of her breasts. Her exposed skin was red from the cold wind outside, and I suppressed an urge to run down the aisle and lay my jacket over her shoulders. Despite its shoulderless style, the dress sported sleeves so long that they nearly hid her hand and hook. I almost laughed out loud when her skirts shifted and I caught a glimpse of her feet—she was wearing her usual black leather combat boots under all that frippery. What did brides normally wear on their feet? Glass slippers? I wasn’t sure. Anyway, the combat boots were much more practical for waiting around in the snow outside while the rest of us filed in.
We had no organ or piano, of course, but we had scavenged a fiddle, and Elaine, one of the young women who had been shot outside of Warren, was a Suzuki-method violinist. She managed a pretty decent rendition of “Here Comes the Bride.”
Reverend Evans started saying something, but I couldn’t hear him. All the space between my ears was full—full of Darla. I had been in love with her almost since the first time I’d seen her: an overall-clad angel with a needle and thread to sew closed my wounds. But I had never felt that love as keenly as I did at that moment. I loved the small mole on her back under her left shoulder blade. I loved her earlobes and the way she giggled when I kissed them. I even loved her hook, with its ungainly wrench and screwdriver sockets.
“Ahem,” Reverend Evans was clearing his throat, “would you take the family candle, please?”
Darla was holding a lit candle and glaring at me. I could read that glare as clearly as a billboard—it said, “Now, dumbass!”
I smiled an apology at her and picked up the other lit candle. Five unlit candles were arrayed on a stand between us in front of the altar: four smaller candles in a square pattern and a large one in the middle. The candles were mismatched—purple, red, and white, their sizes irregular too. Candles were exceedingly difficult to come by now and worth a fortune in trade; burning a few inches off these would easily be the most expensive part of this ceremony “We light the memory candles to symbolize those who have passed on and cannot be here in body, but who are surely here in spirit, blessing this union.”
Darla tipped the candle she held to light one of the smaller candles. “For my father, Joseph Edmunds.” Her voice was clear and brave. She lit the next one. “For my mother, Gloria Ed—” A tear raced down her cheek, and she bit her lower lip.
I lit a candle. “For my father, Douglas Halprin.” I lit the fourth small candle. Did it make sense to light a candle for my mother? She wasn’t here, but she wasn’t dead either. Was I saying she was dead to me? She wasn’t, I decided—would never be so long as we were both physically alive. I would hold onto hope even if she couldn’t. “For my mother, Janice.” Did I call her Janice Halprin or Janice Petty? I hadn’t thought about it, so I just used her first name.
After a short pause, Reverend Evans stepped into the silence. “And now we light the unity candle to symbolize the joining of these two families.” Darla and I tipped our candles toward the large one, letting our flames mingle and light it. We put our candles in the candelabrum and stepped back to listen to the remainder of the service.
The rest passed in a blur. There were readings and prayers, and Reverend Evans preached a sermon of sorts—I barely heard it. My mind burned as brightly as the candles before us, full of wonder at the beautiful woman beside me, soon to be my wife.
Then I was repeating after Reverend Evans, taking the vow that would bind us forever. I remembered what Darla had said in the snowbank outside Stockton, when we thought we were dying: that we were already married, that we had taken a vow stronger than the one that bound most married couples.
In a way, she was right. So many people mouthed these words and then ignored their meaning, ignored the hard work and sacrifice the vow required. In that sense, we were already more married than many couples and had been for more than two and a half years.
But in another way, she was wrong. There was something wonderful about saying the words here, in front of our whole community. In front of God, maybe. I had never been much of a believer, but in that moment, it wasn’t difficult to feel that something holy was taking place, that we were being watched and blessed from above.
Max fumbled the ring, and it rolled around on the floor for a moment. I had visions of it falling
through one of the cracks in the floorboards. We had built the long-house fast and loose—there were plenty of ring-size cracks in the floor. But Max stopped the ring by the simple expedient of stomping on it. He plucked it off the floor and handed it to me, his face burning redder than the candles.
“With this ring, I thee wed,” I said as I slipped it onto Darla’s finger. She slipped my ring onto my right hand—I would wear it there forever. Darla had offered to make me a ring holder for my hook, so I could wear it on the traditional side, but I had said no. I wanted the ring against my skin, where I could feel it, reminding me of this day and of this promise.
Then Reverend Evans spoke the words I had been waiting through the whole service to hear. “You may kiss the bride.”
I kissed Darla gently like the first time we’d kissed on an old couch in an abandoned house east of Worthington, Iowa, more than two and a half years ago. When our lips parted, Darla whispered, “Did I ever tell you that you’re a five-star kisser?”
“No,” I said. “There aren’t enough stars in the sky to describe how it feels to be kissed by you.”
Darla smiled and turned to the crowd, holding my hand aloft. “Let’s party!” she shouted.
Everyone quickly cleared out the middle of the long-house. We didn’t hold a procession—there was nowhere to proceed to anyway. I turned to snuff the candles; we might need them if our electricity failed.
The violinist was joined by a banjo player, and Max set up a scavenged drum kit. It was a strange trio, but the banjo player knew a bunch of square-dancing songs, so he led and Max and the violinist just followed along.
Flasks and bottles appeared as if by magic, people sharing their long-hoarded personal stock to celebrate. Nearly everyone offered me a drink, but I turned them all down. I didn’t love the taste of alcohol, and there was no way I wanted to be drunk on my wedding night. Darla drank until her cheeks were flushed, and her smile grew a little brighter than usual.
We did as many of the usual reception rituals as we could. Darla tossed a plastic bouquet over her head, and Alyssa snagged it out of the air. She carried it back to where the band was set up and leaned over to smooch Max. He was so surprised, he dropped his drumsticks.
I went over and pounded Max on the back by way of congratulating him. He stood up and leaned close, whispering, “Someone left a necklace under Alyssa’s pillow three nights ago. She thinks I did it.”
“You didn’t?” I said.
“No.”
“I wonder who’s giving her stuff? Whoever it is has been remarkably secretive—it’s been going on for what, a year now?”
“A year and a half,” Max said.
“You’d better tell her it’s not you, before she finds out some other way.”
“I guess you’re right.” Max shrugged, and I went to rejoin Darla.
We didn’t have a traditional cake, but someone had made a dense, fudgy concoction from supplies we’d gotten from the Wallers. Darla and I cut the ersatz cake and smeared it all over each other’s faces. I held her tightly and cleaned off her face with my tongue, while Rebecca looked on in disgust. I thought I was being eminently sensible, though—no sense letting all those calories go to waste, right?
Eventually the party wound down, and people started retiring to their bedrolls at the edges of the longhouse. I told the band to pack up so those who wished to could sleep. Darla and I stayed up a while longer, talking with the remaining revelers, some of whom were well and truly smashed. My feet ached and my head spun, more from exhaustion than the tiny bit of alcohol I had consumed.
“You want to go to bed?” I whispered to Darla.
“Thought you’d never ask,” she replied with a wicked grin.
Usually we all slept out in the middle of the longhouse floor. There was no privacy whatsoever. A room that can sleep ninety-eight people comfortably can’t really be cut up into ninety-eight bedrooms, and we didn’t have the time or manpower to build partition walls anyway. Greenhouses took priority. For tonight, though, someone had erected a temporary screen made of plywood panels around one corner of the room. I lifted Darla into my arms and carried her into our makeshift bedroom to the catcalls and cheers of the partiers.
Someone had strewn plastic roses all over our bedroll. I laid Darla down atop them, and she immediately started rolling, digging around and tossing the roses aside. I brushed the faux roses off my side of the bedroll, kicked my shoes off, and lay down beside her.
Darla attacked me—that’s the only way I can put it. She rolled on top of me and kissed me with a fire and passion and intensity that left me breathless and bruised. Her hand was everywhere, and she was in far too much of a hurry to bother undressing. Instead she shifted bits of clothing and undergarments, and things were going much too fast, but I wanted nothing more than to lie back and enjoy it, to let her do whatever she wanted with me.
But I couldn’t. I pushed her off me, rolling her onto her back beside me.
“What the hell?” she said, loud enough that I was afraid people on the other side of the screen would hear.
“We can’t,” I whispered. “I mean, I want to, and we can do anything you want to except that, but . . .”
“But what?” Darla said, still talking way too loudly for my comfort.
“You already know what,” I said. We had tried to buy condoms during our visit to the Wallers. There weren’t any to be had at any price. They had a small stock of Triphasil—a birth control pill—but it would have cost us a small fortune in kale. We had opted to buy more antivi-rals and antibiotics instead.
“I don’t care, Alex. I want children. Lots of them. You know that. There’s no reason not to start now.”
“There’s every reason not to start now!” Now I was the one talking too loudly. “You could easily—”
“That tired old argument? Animals have babies without veterinarians every day. Women had babies back when medical ‘science’ consisted of balancing the humors in the body with leeches. I won’t magically self-destruct just because I get preggers.”
“Animals die in childbirth, Darla—you know that better than I do. And women used to die at a far higher rate than I—”
“At what rate?” Darla was flat-out yelling now. “One percent? Two percent? Ten percent? I don’t care. I will take that risk. I want to take that risk.”
“I can’t,” I whispered. “I can’t take that risk. I can’t lose you, Darla.”
She was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was softer. “I think we should take that risk. A baby would be important to our community. Important to Speranta. It would bring real meaning to the name Hope.” “You don’t have a baby just to give hope to other people. And if we added another grave—your grave—to the rows outside, it would kill me. Might kill Speranta too.” Darla made a scoffing noise.
“You underestimate yourself. Without you, we’d have no Bikezillas, no greenhouses, no wind turbines—”
“I couldn’t have figured out the electronics without your uncle.”
“You would have, eventually. You’re the heart of this community.”
“No, you’re the heart. I’m the brains.”
“On every subject but this one, I agree with you,” I said. Darla scowled at me for a too-long moment. Then she forcefully smoothed down the skirts of her wedding dress so that they covered her long, muscular legs. She reached up to switch off the lamp. Then she rolled over, ignoring me. And that was how I ruined our wedding night.
Chapter 61
More people filtered into Speranta over the following weeks and months. The wedding had been in April, and by mid-June, Charlotte’s census had passed four hundred. People were crowded into the two long-houses we had finished.
I worried that the extra refugees would be a burden, a weight that would sink the precariously floating SS Speranta, but I was wrong. Charlotte had a positive genius for finding skills we needed among the newcomers. We got a guy who had paid his way through college by working in his dad’
s well-drilling company. With his help, we were finally able to get a well drilled inside Speranta, ending the constant, mile-long water treks to the nearest farmhouse.
Charlotte practically bounced off the walls with joy when a woman showed up who had sold irrigation equipment in her old life. I didn’t see what the big deal was until we hooked her up with a plumber, and they designed and built an automatic watering system for one of the greenhouses. The new system increased production and freed up a massive amount of labor for building more irrigation systems and greenhouses.
We built greenhouses at a furious pace, managing to stay so far ahead of our population, we were able to store surplus food, begin paying down our debt to the Wallers, and buy more supplies from them. After the third such shipment, the Wallers’ leader, Dean, relented on the hostage deal and allowed Ed and our other people to move back to Speranta. More than thirty Wallers accompanied Ed—they had grown tired of hiding in the warehouse and wanted to help build greenhouses. I welcomed each of them with a hug, and Charlotte welcomed them with a twenty-minute quiz.
One of the newcomers had been a hard-core organic gardener in her previous life. She convinced us to dig up our old latrine pits and compost our fecal matter instead of burying it. Dr. McCarthy argued with her about it for a while, but eventually she won him over by promising to properly monitor the temperature of our compost piles. I wasn’t sure what good that would do, but it satisfied Dr. McCarthy, which was good enough for me. We also had to start peeing into a five-gallon pail fitted with a toilet seat instead of into the latrine. Evidently, human urine diluted properly is a fabulous fertilizer. Who knew? The productivity of our greenhouses climbed further.
Another newcomer, Ranaan Kendall, had served in the second Iraq war. He was young—maybe in his late twenties—but he had a ridged and grooved face, pitted from childhood acne too much sun and sand, or both. He worked with Ben to improve our military readiness. They set up flags so our snipers could account for windage, and they developed a system of arm signals so we could communicate without wasting precious ammo.