by Donna Callea
If Jacob only knew how much I hate him.
But he’s grown very fond of me, the dung-face hypocrite. He says he considers himself a brother to me.
The men here all like to call each other brother. A lot of them probably are brothers. In a place like this, you can’t help but have some inbreeding.
They treat the women like shit, though. And unless you happen to be one of the twelve chosen—one of the Righteous Ones—this is really not a great place to be a man, either. I’m told that every now and then, men who have no hope of ever attaining master status get fed up and move to Winnipeg.
But Jacob is sure that won’t ever be me. I’m special.
I got the backpacks ready and moved them out of his house early. He thinks I brought them to the men’s house next to the dairy barn, which is where I’m supposed to be living from now on.
Instead, before anyone else was awake, I hiked over to where good old Caleb hid the sun-cycle, and made sure it was ready.
Rebekah is supposed to sneak away after the ceremony, and head to the mill, where I’ll meet her. She’ll tell Sally she feels sick, and needs to go back to the house for a little while and lie down. If anyone can fake sickness, Rebekah can. She’s had lots of experience pretending to be something she’s not.
No one will be at the mill. Everyone will be at the wedding.
But I’m still a little nervous. A lot nervous, if I’m honest. I try not to let it show.
What if someone discovers one of us is gone, then looks for the other? What if Rebekah is caught leaving the compound walking toward the mill? What would they do to her? They would probably beat her. Or worse. Men here think nothing of beating women to keep them in line. When you think about it, women are at the mercy of men not only here, but everywhere. Men are bigger and stronger than women. There are a lot more of us.
It’s amazing that women in the Coalition, and Winnipeg, too, have figured out how to keep us under control.
But it’s a whole different story here. Men rule.
If anyone hurt Rebekah what would I do? I’d want to kill him. I’d try to kill him. But really, what could I do? I love her so much. I’ve loved her my whole life. I’d give my life for her. But I’m just one man. I’d be powerless to save her. I don’t care what they’d do to me.
It doesn’t do any good to think about any of that now. We’ve just got to get out of here.
Caleb looks over and smiles at me, the little idiot. The truth is, I kind of think of him as a younger brother now. He’s about Simon’s age. I never thought I would, but sometimes I miss Simon. I hope he’s doing okay back in Seneca Falls. Ethan, too.
I don’t think Caleb will get in trouble. At least I hope he won’t. As long as keeps his mouth shut and acts dumb—which isn’t too hard for a boy his age—there’s no reason for anyone to suspect him. Jacob and the others will just conclude I wasn’t trustworthy after all, and figured out a way to abscond with Rebekah.
Rebekah. Being away from her, worrying about her all the time, is making me crazy. It’s strange to see her wearing a dress, looking like she’s one of the cowed, meek women who don’t have any option but to stay here. My Rebekah should be dressed as a boy. The kind of boy no one messes with. Or dressed any way she wants to be. Or undressed in my arms.
I bet the Righteous Ones would be shocked to know that it was a lowly woman—an inferior creature—who cooked up and orchestrated most of our plan all by herself.
I slip away from the meeting house during the ceremony without any trouble. No one notices.
The sun-cycle starts like a dream. Thank The Designer sun-cycles don’t make any noise.
And then I ride to the mill and wait. Wait for what seems like forever.
I think that if we can just get on the sun-cycle and ride away, we’ll be safe. I doubt they would come after us. It would be too much bother. And for what? A troublesome girl? Rebekah would always give them hell, always cause trouble. They could never subdue her.
As for me, Jacob told me from the beginning I could leave. They’ve been glad to have me these past few weeks. I know how machines work, I know how to fix things. But they must realize I’d be no use to them at all if they forced me to stay here.
No, they won’t go to a lot of bother chasing us on sun-cycles. But they will make us pay if they find us now.
Where’s Rebekah? She should be here by now. Maybe Sally told her she had to tough it out if she was sick. Or maybe someone went to the house to check on her, and discovered she was gone.
Then, finally, I see her in the distance, walking toward the mill. No one’s following her.
She runs into my arms, and we hug each other so tight it’s as if we’re trying to become one person instead of two.
“David,” she says. She keeps repeating my name between kisses. “I was so worried about you.”
“Me too. I thought something must have happened to you.” We’re both breathing hard, touching each other all over, reassuring ourselves that the other is really here. It’s been such a long time since we’ve been together.
But we can’t keep this up. We have to get going. We mount the sun-cycle. Rebekah has to hike up her dress around her waist so it won’t get caught in the wheels. Her bare legs are so beautiful. But I have to pay attention to what I’m doing. I have to get us out of here. It won’t do us any good to get lost forever in the wilderness.
I look for landmarks. We have to backtrack some. It’s taking us a lot longer to get back to Winnipeg than it took to get to Eden Falls. But The Designer must be with us.
We don’t stop until we can tell for sure where we are—on the outskirts of the city, but still shielded by forest.
There’s no use hurrying into Winnipeg now. We’re not even sure where we should go. Probably back to the Birch and Bay. The captain won’t be there, of course. But the owner is supposed to have a wealth of information on monogamist settlements. I doubt it. But who knows? Maybe she could have warned us away from Eden Falls.
The important thing now is that Rebekah and I have escaped, and we’re together. That’s all that matters.
We smile at each other, giddy with relief. We laugh and kiss and roll around on the leafy ground.
“Is there still an old set of my boy clothes in my backpack?” she asks.
When I tell her yes, she strips off her dress, tears it apart and spreads it out so we can lie on it.
I feel like devouring her. I breathe her in. I thank The Designer in my head.
Not surprisingly, I come too fast. But she comes too, along with me.
The dappled late afternoon sun makes streaks of fire in her hair. I nuzzle her all over, and we both fall asleep while I’m still inside her.
Soon enough, we’ll figure out what to do.
Chapter 32
David
Words in Winnipeg
Rebekah and I are two boys again. Brothers. David and Rob Fine. The desk clerk at the Birch and Bay recognizes us.
“You two are back again?”
But he doesn’t say it in a mean way. He says it more like he’s surprised to see us, like he’s taken aback.
“Is Miss D. available?” I ask, figuring we’ve got nothing to lose. “Is there any way you can get word to her this time, that two of Captain Blinn’s crew are here and really would like to talk to her? It’s important.”
“Sure,” he says. “Sure. I’ll make sure she knows.”
He’s not being sarcastic. In fact, he looks a little sheepish, which is odd. The last time we were here he called us punks and told us there was no way he’d get word to Miss D.
“Just so you know,” he says now, “I did give your captain the note you left him—gave it to him when he was headed out. He read it, and then he went to talk to Miss D. Went right up to her house. Brave man. I was told after that, if you ever came back here—which was highly unlikely—to make sure she knows. I’ll tell one of the women, who’s almost done upstairs, to let Miss D. know. You can wait in your room.”
“You can settle up later,” he says. He gives us a key. Doesn’t even ask if we want to schedule any activities.
Maybe our luck is changing. Who knows? In any case, Rebekah and I hurry up the stairs. She says she sees a hot bath in her future.
It’s late now. Almost dark. We’re both hungry. Neither of us has eaten since breakfast. But we’re more hungry for each other than anything else.
We take a quick bath. Rebekah’s not interested in lingering this time. She just wants to get into bed. Me too.
“Do you know how much I missed you, David?” she asks rhetorically as she works her way with kisses from my lips to my penis—which is very, very happy that she’s so intent on making up for lost time.
How could I ever live without Rebekah?
We don’t waste any time having some of the best sex of our lives. Wild. Boundless. We’re both slick with sweat when we’re finally spent. We take another quick bath and get dressed.
Then we go downstairs, to see if Miss D. is ready to meet with us.
“She says she’ll come to your room in the morning,” the desk clerk tells us. “In the meantime, dinner is on her.”
So we go to the dining hall.
“Why do you suppose we’re getting such a different reception this time?” Rebekah asks me as we eat. The food is very good. We’re hungry.
“We’ll find out when we see her, I guess. Maybe the captain told her about us. Maybe now that she knows you’re a girl, she wants to hire you. She could probably always use another pleasure woman to work here.”
“Well, we’re almost out of money,” she teases. I know she’s teasing. “I could support you for a while.”
“Very funny, Rebekah. Don’t joke about that. The whole time we were in Eden Falls I worried that some righteous old fart would claim you. That he’d force himself on you. It drove me crazy.”
“If anyone tried, I would cut off his balls in his sleep. I could do that, you know.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not real reassuring.”
Seriously, though, this whole conversation is putting me on edge. How are we ever going to get to a place where Rebekah and I can spend the rest of our lives together in peace? Where no other men will want her or try to take her?
Rebekah once told me that the women of the Coalition have been trying for generations to breed jealously out of men. You can’t be a jealous man if your wife regularly has sex with several other husbands. But for some reason, I seem to have escaped their breeding efforts. I was clearly born with a huge capacity for jealousy, which always rises to the top whenever I imagine anyone else with Rebekah. Better not to even think about that.
I need to change the subject.
We congratulate each other about our escape.
“That was a brilliant idea you had to use Caleb as a messenger,” I tell her.
“Yeah,” she says. “But I couldn’t have done it without Willa. I hope she’ll be okay. Do you think there’s any chance Jacob will be gentle with her?”
“He’s counting on keeping her for a long time, so maybe he will,” I say. “But I think maybe you should have taught her how to cut off his balls in his sleep, since you know how. That would serve him right.”
She smiles at me.
“I did teach her some things. That’s why I asked you to send the sea sponges with Caleb. It would be very risky for her to get pregnant right away. She’d probably die in childbirth. Did Caleb ask you what was in the package? He didn’t even seem curious when he handed it to me.”
“No. He didn’t seem to care. He took his role as courier very seriously. I’d been giving him stuff, you know. He looked up to me, I think. That’s probably why he was so loyal.”
“Well…,” she says. But doesn’t finish her thought.
“What?” I ask.
“I gave him things, too.”
“You did? What things?” What could she have possibly given him?
“Nothing. Never mind. It’s not important.”
“No. Tell me. I’m curious.”
Rebekah shrugs. “I let him look at me.”
“Look at you? What do you mean, look at you? He could look at you whenever he wanted to. He lived in the same house.”
“David,” she sighs, as if I’m being thick. “What do you think a 12-year-old boy would want to see? What do you think would make him agree to run errands for a woman all the adult men considered used and from a wicked place?”
Now I’m starting to get mad. I can’t help it.
“What did you do, Rebekah?”
“What did I do? Do you really want to know?”
“No. But tell me.”
So she does.
Why am I so furious? Why do I clam up and look away from her?
“David,” she says, “don’t be mad. There was no other way. And it worked.”
“How could you do that, Rebekah? I can’t believe you would do that.”
“Well, if I didn’t, we would still be stuck in Eden Falls hell.”
“I would have thought of something.”
“Well, you didn’t, David. I thought of something and it worked.”
She can see I’m fuming. Now she’s mad, too.
“Do you think I liked getting naked for a horny little boy? Do you think I liked letting him put his grubby little hand on my breast?”
“I wish you hadn’t, Rebekah.”
“Wish I hadn’t? Wish I hadn’t? Who are you to wish I hadn’t? You didn’t come up with any ideas. You didn’t figure out a way to communicate. You didn’t have a plan. I did.”
We’re fighting now. Really fighting. Not yelling at each other. Not raising our voices. But taking jabs at each other. Rebekah is right. I didn’t save us. She’s the one who figured out what to do. But knowing that just makes me angrier. I can’t get the picture out of my mind of Caleb ogling Rebekah, actually touching her breast. The little shit. And she let him.
This is the first time we’ve ever intentionally tried to hurt each other. Not physically, but worse. A lot worse.
Rebekah’s face is getting as red as her hair. Then the tears start silently running down her cheeks. He nose runs, and she starts sniffling. Her lips tremble. She bites them, and tries to look defiant.
I feel like crying, too. Finally, I tell her we should go back up to room. Finish this conversation there.
She throws herself on the bed and really begins sobbing. I pace back and forth across the room. Then, after a while, she turns and looks over at me.
“I’m sorry, David, but what choice did I have? He was only a stupid boy,” she hiccups and stutters through her tears. “He was harmless and it worked.”
It’s breaking my heart to see her cry like that. Rebekah never cries. She’s the bravest person I know.
“I’m sorry, too,” I gulp, coming to my senses. “I’m an idiot. Don’t cry anymore, Rebekah. Please don’t cry. I’m sorry. I have no right to be mad at you.”
She looks up at me through her tears, and reaches up her arms for me.
We comfort each other then, but not with sex. Just by holding each other. We’re both exhausted. She sniffles some more. And then she falls asleep with her mouth open.
I kiss her forehead. I don’t ever want to fight with her again. Not like this. But I’m guessing we probably will. Even people who love each other as much as we do must fight sometimes—argue for stupid reasons. And I can be such an idiot.
It’s a good thing she loves me.
Chapter 33
Rebekah
Miss D.
I wake up early. I’m a mess. I hated fighting with David last night. I still don’t feel like myself. He was in the wrong, of course, not me. He realizes that now. He’s sorry. And so am I. After all, I knew he’d be upset about Caleb seeing me naked and touching my breast. I could have figured out a better way to tell
him. Or maybe I shouldn’t have told him at all.
David’s pride was hurt. Probably still is. I knew it would be. He’s a very prideful man. And jealous. What a throwback, he is. A complete failure of female efforts to subdue men. His mother should be ashamed of herself.
So why is it that, deep inside me, if I admit it to myself, I love that he’s prideful? And jealous. It’s part of who he is, part of why I fell in love with him, if I’m honest. He tells me that he’s always loved me, ever since he can remember. Well, I think I’ve always loved him, too—everything about him, even those traits that, by all rights, should have been bred right out of him, considering that Susannah is a know-it-all family counselor.
That’s mean of me. Susannah deserves better than that. She’s been a good and loving mother to me as well as David. She cares about me. I know that. I’ve felt it, even when I was so intent on giving her such a hard time. I wonder what she thinks of me now—now that her extremely difficult adopted daughter has stolen away her precious son. Her David. My David.
The Designer knows he stirs something in me. It’s not just that he’s so wonderfully made—his strong, lean, beautifully muscled body like a work of art to my eyes. His face, all angles and planes perfectly aligning. His eyes—sensitive, kind, intelligent, and piercing my heart when he looks at me.
He just wouldn’t be David if he weren’t so stubborn sometimes—so prideful. If he didn’t get so jealous.
I try to push him out of bed. We need to be dressed when Miss D. comes to our room. Whenever that will be. But he doesn’t want to get up. He reaches for me, and I can’t resist. We’re both warm and naked and musky from the night. He touches me all over. Touches me in ways that get me so roused, I come before he even enters me.
Then I mount him, and go a little wild. A lot wild. I forget about everything. I forget about our fight last night. I forget about the time. I forget about our worries for the future. There’s only now. There’s only me and David in this world, and I want to stay in bed with him like this forever.