by J. D. Palmer
And the night comes too soon, and we gather by the fire to pull out splinters, our bodies too exhausted to stay up, but our minds crying out for companionship.
I’m pulling on my gloves, flexing hands sore from work that doesn’t involve holding a knife or a gun, when a sound breaks the silence. A keening. A high, melodic wave of song, sharp in the winter air, sung to an open stage.
I step outside to a quiet world. No blizzard, and no clouds either. For the first time in what seems like ages, I see the sun rising over the mountains. The land is blanketed, as if God is endeavoring to follow through with his disposal of all things mankind. Snow paint covering up an old, horrible piece of artwork.
Jacqueline stands by the fence, hood thrown back, head raised to the sky. She sings, and the cows appear on the dell, trotting across the pristine white landscape towards her.
All but one.
A red streak that ruins the tapestry.
“Wolves.” That’s all Sam says.
“Should we… Do we hunt ‘em?” Excitement thrums through my veins at the possibility of doing something. Of defending something. Of finding something dangerous to do.
He looks me in the eyes. “Why? Wolves gotta eat, too. At least, that’s what I’ve learned.”
BERYL | 25
LIFE AT THE ranch is, to be honest, wonderful. Six women and three men. Well, two men and a boy. Brody is only six and the woman who found him, Wren, isn’t sure if Brody is, indeed, his name or the name of a loved one. He is a shy child, hovering behind Wren or one of the other women as soon as one of us enters the room.
An old man called CD sits at the window by the fire. He reads a book or sleeps or more often than not simply stares out over the land. Watching the cows or thinking back on some bygone time, I don’t know. He talks, a small smile on his face, of how this was exactly the way things were for him growing up. Heating snow on the fire for water. Making candles from animal fat. Spending the winter mending clothes.
Sometimes he calls me Rachel. I don’t mind.
The other man, Sam, is obviously more comfortable on the outskirts. He hates groups, and is rarely seen at any major gathering. If he is around the fire at night then he will be at the edge, and he will have something to work with in his hands. He doesn’t take orders, but he listens and does what Karen says. I think there is a difference.
I feel safe here. Partly because I don’t feel threatened by the men. Which is, I would think, understandable given the last couple years. But whatever fear I harbor from men pales in comparison to the hate that Felicia feels.
She is a woman of intensity. Dark eyes beneath dark brows and dark hair, cut short, shot through with white even at her relatively young age. A sharp nose above a pinched mouth. Striking in her severity.
When night falls and the winds howl, she stands in front of the fire and speaks. She tells the group of the Goddess. She talks about how God is dead and now truth can finally shine, unfettered by ego and physical dominance. She talks about how men put themselves in power, how they ran the world, always with women under their thumb, until finally they destroyed it. She says that with the Goddess there will be a guide. Balance. Equilibrium. But men must first learn to respect her. They must learn humility and they must learn remorse for their prior ways.
Wren rolled her eyes at me when I first came to watch, but she is an ardent believer. I think everyone else is, too. Jane often snorts with derision, but she is derisive of most everything though, so hard to figure that one out.
I think these people needed a change. Hungered for it. An upheaval from before. A way to say “we are starting from scratch.”
Felicia gives them this, and a way to pray, too.
And the men are given a system of behavior. It doesn’t matter too much to Brody or CD, the young and old either being beyond reform or already indoctrinated. But Harlan, Josey, Theo, Sam… They are required to attend all meetings, to listen and to try to understand. And there is a very specific code of conduct regarding the hierarchy at the ranch. Permission must be asked for, and granted, for almost all things. No decision that impacts the ranch can be made solely by a man. There is a long rant regarding respect that I lose interest in. But I snap back to attention when she brings up the punishments.
Physical discipline belonged in the man’s world, she says. But silence. Solitude. Servitude. Those are the tools by which The Goddess teaches. She can barely contain her glee as she speaks, her eyes directed to the corner of the room where my clan sits.
Felicia has plans for the future as well.
She says that the children born at the Ranch will worship the Goddess. She says they will grow up knowing a new respect for the feminine power. She speaks this, as if she would approve of a man and women coupling long enough to produce a child.
Brody loves these nights. He sits on Wren’s lap and nods when the women nod and says “yes” when the women say yes.
The women here seem to love it, too. And I have to ask myself if I don’t like it as well. This feeling of safety. Innate feminine kindness but with a backbone. With ferocity. Does this not make sense?
I ask, and I find the answer is no. I didn’t grow up being paid differently or being treated differently because I was a woman. Like Felicia, I was raped. But that same man took something from Harlan as well. The evil of one, or a few, or even many, gives you caution. Not hate. Better to kill them and be done with it than to waste time on something so trivial as malevolence. I do not think it fair to buy strength built on the hatred of a faceless mass.
The ranch is comprised of one large building, two stories tall with two wings containing guest rooms. There are two outbuildings close by; one is a shop that sits next to the barn. Sam stays there, a small trail of smoke from the chimney letting us know when he’s home. The other building is a bunkhouse, a small cabin that Karen says used to house the children who came here in the summer. Apparently the ranch would host a “kid’s camp.” Horseback riding, hiking, night classes teaching the kids about constellations… It sounds wonderful.
Sam scowled when Karen told us about it, muttering something about “little shits.”
They offered the bunkhouse to us, but it would be too hard to keep warm. The cold has too strong of a grip on the building, and it’s frankly too much of a pain in the ass to slog through the drifts back and forth. So we take turns in our room sleeping, and then keeping vigil down by the fire. A way for us to ease into this new routine, and a way for us to help. One of our “jobs” is to keep the fire going. What a harsh price we pay.
The blizzard rages outside. Sheets of white streaking by windows frosted shut. The house creaking with wind and the groans of wood warping with the cold on the outside and the warmth on the inside.
It’s beautiful.
I wrap myself in a blanket and watch the landscape change a million shades of white. And the others are happy, too. Thankful that we are alive. And taken care of. And not moving. And safe.
They go easy on us that first month. Kid gloves. Patience. Understanding. From everyone but Felicia. In a way that’s comforting to me. The others wish to know more about us but are too afraid to ask. They ask broad questions and avoid topics that they can only guess might upset us. All while yearning for more intimate details. To a group used to bluntness it can be awfully taxing. Felicia’s open disdain is almost a breath of fresh air.
To a point.
There are people who can read the behaviors of others well. I have always been good at it, most likely due to my hypersensitivity involving my living situations. Are we friends? Do I get to live here? Do they like me? And now, after everything, I would say that my awareness has increased a hundredfold. For everyone, I think. Gut instincts now trusted. We are like animals. Every nerve, every muscle striving to know just what kind of people we have encountered. I wonder if this is why everyone always seems either dangerous, or pathetic. Maybe it’s because we approach them as either predator or prey. It would be too human of us to find a place for them
somewhere in between.
There are people who can read the behavior of others well…
Felicia is not in that group. She lives in a literal world, still, even after the downfall. Even after suffering whatever tragedy found her in those first, dark days, she is unable to pick up on the undertones, the tics, the vibrations under the surface.
Otherwise she’d know how close she is to seeing the red of her own blood.
The danger is not just from me. I dislike her behavior, true, but I have reached a point in my life that I can ignore the small shit. Maybe even feel sorry for it. But there is a knife’s edge to pity now, if you feel sorry for something then that is a weakness. And weaknesses can cost you.
Like not killing Rita the moment I met her.
Felicia is a series of small storms. Fits and tantrums followed by loud silences. She scrambles for control over situations, over people, ways to stay grounded. Her religion is her purpose, now, and she clings to it with a vehemence that is borderline fanatical.
I understand this, had Stuart not drilled his warped and perverted sense of religiosity into us then maybe I, too, would have found sanctuary in theology.
I had thought that she held more of a leadership position here, especially after the day we were brought in. Barking orders and dismissing Jacqueline. The way she treated Sam.
It isn’t true. She is loud, and passionate, and tolerated.
The women that are close to her, that listen and reflect her ideas about a new Goddess, are young, and quiet, and also searching for something new. Something that would make the future less bleak. The same way that you would put aside your social life for fitness. The bottle for pills or pills for the pipe. A new crutch is always more stable than an old one.
There are moments of embarrassment now, as if they see her through our eyes. A point that is not lost on Felicia.
I know, now, that she decided to end our “recovery” time her own way, and that it was not at the behest of Momma Kay. She rudely marched into our bedroom and told us to get up, get dressed, and meet her in front of the house. Without further explanation she marched out.
We thought we were under attack. We came spilling out of the house, fanning out to the sides, scanning for danger. We didn’t have our guns with us. They had returned them, in a way, by putting them on a rack by the front door. We had wanted to take them to our room. Hell, I thought Sheila couldn’t sleep without cold metal somewhere on her body. But to take them from that rack was a statement we weren’t willing to make.
And they weren’t there when we came down the stairs. So we ran outside as we were. And there was nothing.
Felicia was waiting with a long duffle bag full of firearms. Our firearms. She told us that if we were going to stay then she was going to teach us the proper way to not only hold a gun, but how to respond to her signals. That’s when Sheila almost killed her.
She confiscated my knife. That’s when I almost did. The first time.
It’s hard to divorce myself of the hard logic. To try to retain a sense of kindness that I want, desperately, going forward. I can tell the others feel it, sense it, but haven’t accepted it in their hearts. Felicia is a problem. She is erratic. A fanatic. She will hurt someone in the long run, and it would be best to get rid of her.
I don’t say this to anyone.
I cannot be the instrument of her destruction. For there is no telling what Harlan would think of me after that… If I kill her offhand then there is a chance that he will find me too far gone. More than I already am. I know that he strives for something more, I know that he wants to be… kinder.
Harlan is the one she really should be afraid of.
If he killed her we’d rally to him. Sheila for sure, and Theo. Even Josey.
She has labeled us as she first perceived us, and even after a few weeks seems unable to change her opinion. She struts in front of us, unaware of the rising ire. “If you’re going to stay here then you’re going to prove to me that you can help defend the ranch. That means walking the perimeter, scanning for signs. That means knowing how to shoot. It means knowing what to shoot.”
“Knowing what to shoot?” Sheila drawls sarcastically. “So the old rule of shooting the bad guys and not shooting the good guys doesn’t pertain here? Or is it just ‘shoot the guys?’”
Felicia’s face flushes and she takes a step towards Sheila. I find myself actually hoping she is dumb enough to pick a fight.
“You know how to tell who is who in the middle of a wind storm? Or who’s out in the trees?”
Sheila smirks again. “I’d have to imagine that if someone is out in a storm instead of inside, they’re probably not friendly.”
Before Felicia can respond Harlan steps forward. “We’ll do it. Go ahead.”
I know Harlan is trying to diffuse the situation. We can’t afford to get kicked out of here. Not now. Nor, I think, would we want to take it by force. That would take us… too far.
But Harlan saying “go ahead” came across as him giving Felicia permission. As if she wasn’t in charge of this little demonstration. She doesn’t say anything, but I can tell it has been noted and filed away for later retribution.
She unloads the bag onto a flat stump, producing two rifles and two handguns.
“Four bullets each, that’s it.” She looks around the group. “Take this to that near tree, and this other one to the fat dead tree in the middle.”
She is holding out a pair of small tarps, large painted targets in the middle. She is looking at Theo.
“You got a problem with the word ‘please?’”
Silence.
“You will do it!”
Theo shrugs. “No, I won’t. Especially when all I’m asking for is a little politeness.” Suddenly he laughs. “Fuck, my mama would’ve slapped you silly.”
Felicia is too stubborn to say please. To lose control of something she didn’t have control of in the first place.
“I got it.” Harlan takes the painted targets and slogs out across the meadow. I wonder if he is demeaning her intentionally.
“Beryl? That’s your name, right?”
I nod.
“You’re up first.”
I pick up the handgun and walk a few paces in front of the others, Har giving me a nod and a smile as he returns. I do this because of the effort he is making. This is a waste of time, and bullets, and makes a mockery of what we’ve gone through. But we must try, and I cannot leave them the full responsibility.
“Kick your feet apart, they’re too close to each other.”
Well, fuck.
“Your left hand needs to cradle the other, it looks like you’re pushing it to the right…”
She trails off as I lower the gun. My head drops and I take in a deep breath as I try to master the rage that sweeps through me. I’m so intent on controlling my anger that I don’t hear the crunch of her footsteps coming up behind me. Only suddenly her hands are reaching around to grip mine and force them up into firing position again.
Clink. A chain rattles in my mind, the clasp of a manacle making a small sound, a small sound that is so loud that it drives out all other noise. I cannot hear, I cannot see. I only feel the terror that comes with him forcing his touch upon me. My head snaps back and then I’m still. I cannot move. To move would invite punishment. To move…
My feet travel slowly, too slowly over the white sand as I head to my tree. As if I’m not walking in sand at all, but something thicker. The land doing its best to slow my steps.
Why?
I never used to feel sad, or angry, about coming to my home. Now… a melancholy settles onto my shoulder like a mantle as I open the stone doors and start to climb.
“Beryl?”
I pause in the breaking room. I feel the fury, lurking somewhere. But distant. I focus on it, try to bring it to the front of my mind. To find a way to replace the sadness with something more familiar. Anger. Anger is what works.
“Beryl.”
My eyes open. It’s
like the feeling of water being drained from your ears after living in an ocean. I’m smacked in the face with the cold, though that’s not why my shoulders shake.
Harlan’s face is in front of me, eyes worried. “Hey. I’m here.”
“You think you can fucking get away with this? You’re all gone. You’re all fucking—”
Felicia’s sudden silence makes me look. She’s on the ground, nose bloody. There is a pain in the back of my head where it apparently came in contact with her face. Sheila stands over her, a newly acquired gun pointed at her head.
“You touch her again, you die.” Harlan says it, and there is no other way to describe the words other than that they seem to linger in the air, a part of the cold now manifested forever in the winter of his rage.
She does not say anything.
Ego made her do this by herself. And now she’s on her back, with a gun aimed at her head. Alone with a group that is, to say it lightly, not averse to a little violence if it will protect the core.
Thirty heartbeats of silence before Sheila meets my eyes. A silent message between sisters, and then she raises the gun and shoots the bullseye with the entire clip.
Har is the only one subjected to a “punishment.” His crime being the threat of killing Felicia. That kind of behavior, that kind of mindset, apparently, was what was wrong with the world before. He is sentenced to a week of servitude to Momma Kay. So far, little has been asked. Once, after I found him gone in the middle of the night, I tracked him down in the kitchen, making tea and talking with Karen. So I don’t think this punishment is a bad thing.
But it’s hard for me not to feel ashamed. I had made so much progress. Or so I thought. Now… Now I’m not so sure. It’s hard to leave Harlan’s side.
I know we had embraced the life as foragers. Scavengers. Fighters. Drifters on a wasteland carrying with them the promise of death.
This return to normalcy, even just the semblance of it, tests us in whole new ways. Another change. Another upheaval. And it’s hard. Hard not to jump at noises and hard not to carry a gun, or a knife, everywhere.