Welcome to Paradise

by Rosalind James

  “Cows aren’t that smart,” Stanley replied. “They haven’t figured out how to lift a rope over a post just yet.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think they teach that at Cow University,” Kevin agreed. “Now, if we had a chimpanzee in here . . .”

  “One of the horses could have nudged it over, maybe,” Martin persisted. “Horses are smart, right? I’m sure I fastened the rope on.”

  “Just say you must have forgotten,” Gabe said in exasperation. “It’s not a crime to screw up. But it sure as hell is one not to admit it.”

  “I didn’t screw up, though.” Martin dug in his heels, flushed and flustered with defensive anger. “I fastened it! I’m sure of it!”

  “This is getting us nowhere fast,” Stanley said with finality. “What’s done is done. We’d better get that garden fence finished, that’s the bottom line. How bad is it?” he asked Gabe.

  Gabe shrugged. “We’re going to be a little low on salad greens, but could’ve been worse. If you’re OK working without me for a while, I’ll go see what I can do to help clean things up over there.”

  “What do you think?” he asked Stanley three days later, reaching out to shake a fence post, testing its set in the ground. “Another day?”

  “Yeah,” the older man answered, tipping back his hat and wiping his brow with a red bandana he pulled from a pocket. “Finish it tomorrow, while the women are doing the laundry. We’ll have it done before the challenge. All of us sleeping in the loft . . . that’ll be a novelty.”

  “Might not be crowded in there, all the same, for more than a night,” Gabe said with meaning. “If we win on Saturday.”

  “Yeah. That’s really the only choice, isn’t it? He’s tried hard enough, give him credit for that. But he’s like John said. A menace out here. Now, Kevin . . . I thought at the beginning that he’d be the dead weight, but he’s shaped up right nicely.”

  “You ever worked with a gay man before?” Gabe asked with a smile. “New experience?”

  “Not that I know of, I haven’t. And I wouldn’t have said I was prejudiced. We’re all God’s children, that’s the idea, isn’t it? But I never had one for a friend either. I guess I had some bias after all, because I didn’t expect much, going in.”

  “Well, to be fair,” Gabe acknowledged, “I wouldn’t say Kevin came across as much of a he-man at the beginning. I think he’s surprised himself.”

  “And among the women . . .” Stanley went on. “Maria-Elena would be first there, you ask me. She’s a real sweet girl, and working harder than I would’ve expected, but the other two are better. But all that’s down the road. Martin first.”

  “If we win,” Gabe corrected.

  “Yeah,” Stanley said heavily. “If we lose, I’m pretty worried about our Miss Mira. Hoping it’ll be Arlene on the other side, but . . .”

  “He’s not popular,” Gabe agreed. “Alec knows I don’t want Mira leaving, but there’s no love lost between him and Scott.”

  “Well, then.” Stanley shot him a penetrating glance. “If it’s important to you, I guess we’d better win.”

  Mira crouched by the creek, dipped her bucket into the cold, clear water, then straightened and turned. For some reason that made perfect sense at the moment, she was barefoot, wearing only her chemise, fully transparent in the strong sunlight. Showing all those beautiful curves, the luscious peach of her skin glowing through the thin fabric.

  She saw him standing there, and her face lit up with her slow, sweet smile. As he watched, she set her bucket down, reached for the hem of the garment, pulled it slowly over her head, and tossed it aside, her eyes on him all the while. Pulled out the pins holding her hair in a knot at the back of her head, shook her head so it fell around her shoulders, down her back. And then just stood there, naked and glorious, and looked at him, that smile warming him, beckoning him. Inviting him.

  “WOOF!” The deep, sharp sound of Daisy’s warning bark shot Gabe straight out of the dream. He sat up with a start, fumbled to disentangle himself from the twisted blankets as the barking frenzy began in earnest.

  “Shit!” He threw the blankets aside at last, searched in vain for his boots, heard the vicious snarling amongst the barks. “Coyotes!”

  “I’ve got it!” Martin said, breathing hard with excitement. Gabe finally located his boots and pulled them on. Heard, to his instant alarm, the sound of the shotgun being broken open, then slammed closed again. Struggled to see Martin in the inadequate starlight, caught sight of him running toward the chicken coop. Toward the noise of the continuing struggle. Toward the cabin.

  “Wait!” he shouted urgently. “Hold on! Martin! Stop!”

  The blast of the big gun, then, splitting the night like a blow from an axe. The snarling ceasing, the barking continuing, fading now. Daisy, chasing the pack of coyotes as they fled.

  “Got ’em!” Martin laughed triumphantly as Gabe ran up to him, a cameraman close behind. The gun was still aimed at the cabin, and Gabe knocked the barrels skyward before snatching the heavy thing from the other man’s hands.

  “You idiot!” he snarled, rage and fear fighting for ascendancy. “Are you trying to kill somebody?”

  “What do you mean?” Martin fired angrily back. “They were trying to get our chickens, and I chased them off!”

  “You shot at the house!” Pure fear, now. “Oh, God. What did you hit?” Gabe saw the glow of light, the door opening as the others began to pour out of the little structure. Stanley in the lead, the lantern in his hand.

  “You guys OK?” Stanley asked. “What happened?”

  “Is everyone here? Everyone all right?” Gabe strained to see past the pool of light, his night vision destroyed now. “Count heads.”

  “All here,” Stanley said with relief as Kevin appeared, still buttoning his pants. “What happened?”

  “Martin took a shot at the cabin, is what happened,” Gabe answered grimly, shaking with anger and the residue of adrenaline.

  “OK, I’m sorry. Sorry,” Martin gabbled. “I misjudged, that’s all. No big deal. Everyone’s OK. No harm done. Just an accident.”

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Gabe demanded.

  “I was scaring them off!” Martin protested. “Like John told us to do!”

  “He also told us,” Stanley pointed out, his voice uncharacteristically cold, “that you never aim a gun at anything you’re not intending to kill. No thanks to you that you didn’t kill anyone. Because that hit the cabin. There was one heck of a thud. Didn’t hear any glass breaking, so I don’t think it hit any windows, thank the good Lord.”

  “It was below our window, I think,” Mira said, her voice a little shaky. “The one in our loft. I felt it . . . hit.”

  Gabe looked at her in alarm. “It didn’t hit the window?”

  “No. No. I was standing right there. I heard it, and felt it. But it didn’t break the glass.”

  “You were standing there?”

  “I heard all the noise. The dog, and then the shouting,” Mira said, her explanation coming out in choppy bursts. “And I got up to see. But Martin’s right. Nothing hit the window.”

  Gabe looked at her as closely as the inadequate light allowed. Realized she was trembling. The night air, the shock. “Let’s go inside, out of the cold,” he said abruptly. “No reason for us all to be standing around out here.”

  He didn’t breathe easily until more lanterns had been lit and he’d seen for himself that Mira truly wasn’t hurt, merely shaken. “Time to break out that medicinal whiskey,” he decided. “Kevin and Maria-Elena, go grab some blankets from the lofts. We all need to get warm and calm down.”

  Once everyone else had their allotment of whiskey and were beginning to laugh and joke in a release of tension, he and Stanley climbed the ladder to the women’s loft, examined the window.

  “Nothing. Not even a crack. That was damn lucky,” Stanley said soberly, measuring the bottom of the frame against his body. “I don’t know how close it did come, of course. Guess
we’ll see in the morning. But this was Martin’s last piece of guard duty. I’ll stay out with you the rest of tonight.”

  “He’s got to go,” Gabe said with finality. “We’d better win this next challenge, because enough’s enough. He’s got to go.”

  He was even more sure of it the next morning when they were all standing under the loft window under Danny’s watchful lens, looking at the wall of the cabin just below the sill. At the hundreds of tiny black pellets embedded in the logs, forming a circular pattern almost two feet in diameter.

  “That’s what you did,” Stanley told Martin grimly. “If you’d aimed just a foot or so higher, Mira standing at that window . . .”

  Martin shifted uncomfortably. “But I wasn’t higher,” he pointed out weakly. “And it’s ammunition to kill birds, right? So it wouldn’t really have hurt her badly, would it?”

  “At that range?” Stanley said. “You bet it would’ve, huh, Gabe?”

  Gabe swallowed as his vivid imagination painted the picture. Birdshot and glass shards. “Yeah,” he said shortly, mindful of Mira standing silently nearby. “Yeah, it wouldn’t have been good.”

  “Excitement’s over,” Zara said briskly. “Back to work. We’ve got a challenge this afternoon, and plenty to do before it.”

  “You OK, hon?” Gabe heard her ask Mira as the women turned back. “Want me to do the garden?”

  “No.” Mira shook her head decisively. “Of course not. I’m fine. It was close, that’s all. And close doesn’t count, except in horseshoes. Like they say.”

  But Gabe was watching Danny pan slowly over those damning black holes in the cabin wall, just below the window where Mira had been standing. Sometimes, close counted. And this was going to be one of those times.

  “Well, since we’re done with fencing,” Stanley decided when the men were alone again, “guess we’d better get started on that haying. We’re low on feed, and I’ve got a suspicion that something like that’s going to come up in a challenge at some point. Might as well get working on it, get some practice.”

  “But, Martin,” he said, struck by a sudden thought, “if you wouldn’t mind, it’d be good to get some more wood chopped before we head out. Running low there too, and nobody’s going to feel like doing that tonight.”

  “Right,” Martin said, clearly relieved that the discussion of his actions of the night before was over. “I’ll do that.”

  “Don’t want him out there with a scythe,” Stanley said to the others as they walked out toward the tall grass. “Chop someone’s leg right off.”

  Mira was returning from the creek with yet another bucket of water when she heard the scream. Nothing like Melody dropping her iPhone down the hole. This was louder, truly agonized. Before she had fully registered the blood-chilling sound, she had dropped her bucket with a splash and was running toward it, Maria-Elena following belatedly behind.

  Mira got there first. Martin was on the ground, on his back behind the chopping block. The first thing Mira saw was his contorted face. And the second was the axe handle, sticking straight up into the air above the hands desperately clasping his leg. Because the axe was in his foot.

  She turned back to Maria-Elena, running up behind her. “Run get Gabe!” she ordered. “Right now!”

  “Oh, my God.” Maria-Elena stood stock-still and stared at Martin, her face going white.

  Mira turned her bodily. “Run!” she demanded fiercely. Shoved her hard. “Run!”

  She turned back to Martin. Registered Zara running along the path from the outhouse. And that Martin was still screaming. She scrambled around to his feet just as Zara came up. Should she pull the axe out? she wondered desperately. Or would that make it bleed more? The dilemma was solved for her as Martin jerked his leg skyward and the axe clattered to earth, narrowly missing her.

  “What?” It was Zara, panting to a stop.

  “The axe was in his foot,” Mira shouted over Martin’s screams. She picked up the foot in question by the ankle. Elevate it to slow the bleeding. She knew that. Hurry, Gabe, she prayed.

  Zara dropped to the ground next to Martin, held his arms, began talking to him urgently. “Help’s coming. We’ve got you. You’re going to be all right.” Over and over, as Mira held Martin’s booted foot in the air.

  Mira wondered for a brief moment if she should try to get the boot off. But it was all she could do to hold his leg up, the blood flowing down, running red over his leg, her hands. At least his screams had subsided to a steady, anguished moaning under Zara’s calming influence.

  It seemed she’d been holding on forever, her arms aching, mind whirling, but it couldn’t have been more than five minutes before Gabe was running toward them, the rest of the men, and Danny with his camera, close behind.

  “Good,” Gabe said sharply, coming up next to her. “Come around the side, hold his calf from underneath.” He began unlacing the heavy boot, his fingers fast and sure. Loosened the laces and pulled the boot off, revealing the once-green wool sock, dark and wet with blood. He pulled the sock quickly off in its turn, revealing the long gash, the flesh split cleanly open almost all the way through, the edges of bone showing white. And all the blood. Mira swallowed and looked away quickly.

  “Apron,” Gabe snapped, taking over holding Martin’s foot in the air. “Get it off and give it to me.”

  She hastily untied it and pulled it off, fleetingly grateful that she’d put it on clean this morning in preparation for the challenge. Handed it to Gabe and then, without his prompting, grabbed Martin’s calf again, allowing him to fold the cotton into a pad and set it against the wound. He pressed both hands to it.

  “How long did they say?” he asked Danny.

  “Less than ten minutes.” Danny looked a little pale himself, but kept his camera trained steadily on the scene.

  “A few minutes ago,” Gabe calculated. “OK. Kevin, get over here and help me elevate this leg, give Mira a break.” He glanced at Maria-Elena, sobbing in Stanley’s arms, and seemed to dismiss her. “Mira,” he said. “Go get me kitchen towels. As many clean ones as we have. And a blanket to cover him.”

  She nodded and ran. Came back with them, realizing belatedly that her hands were wet and red with Martin’s blood. Gave the blanket to Zara, who covered Martin with it. Then went back to stand by Gabe, handing the towels to him one at a time as he continued to apply firm pressure to the wound.

  Zara continued to talk reassuringly to Martin. A string of words, always the same meaning. “We’ve got you. You’re going to be all right. Help’s coming.”

  And at last, the welcome sight of the ambulance, jolting over the track into the yard. The doctor and paramedic running to them with the gurney, loading Martin onto it and into the back of the vehicle.

  “OK,” Gabe said with a sigh of relief as they watched the ambulance disappear again. “That was a little more excitement than we were expecting today.”

  Mira laughed, heard the edge of hysteria in her voice, stopped herself abruptly. Looked down at her hands and swallowed hard.

  “Let’s get you sitting down,” Gabe said, his attention shifting abruptly back to her. “All of you. Let’s go.” He put a steadying arm around Mira, walked her into the cabin and sat her down on a chair.

  “Feeling faint?” he asked her.

  “No. Just a little shaken,” she assured him. She was trembling with reaction, he saw, the vestiges of adrenaline. The second time in less than twelve hours. Too much. And her hands, her dress were covered in blood.

  “Zara. You OK?” Gabe asked.

  “Yeah,” she said soberly. “I’m good.”

  “Then take Mira, get her cleaned up. She’ll feel better once she gets that blood off her. Maria-Elena,” he snapped at the still-sniffling girl, “make some coffee.” She nodded and moved automatically to obey. The familiar activity would calm her, he knew.

  “And Kevin,” he decided, “get everyone some water in the meantime. Everyone sit a bit. I’m going to go clean up too.” He looked d
own at himself, as soaked with blood as Mira. The difference was, he was used to it.

  Working the Alliances

  “It’s been quite the week, hasn’t it?”

  Cliff’s wry comment prompted some subdued laughter. The Paradise homestead had been surprised to get the summons to the Clearing after the previous day’s challenge had been canceled.

  “We’re not going to have to get rid of somebody after all, are we?” Maria-Elena had asked nervously over breakfast. “Which homestead would even, like, vote?”

  “No,” Kevin said positively. “It’s not that. They don’t want to get rid of more than one team a week. That’d mess their season right up. They just want to talk to us, get some reaction shots across the aisle. Have us see what’s going on over in Arcadia, them see what’s happening here. Let everyone at home analyze the homestead bonding versus the original team connections, how those stack up after a couple weeks of this.”

  “Good to know we’ve got you to explain it to us,” Zara said. “It’s like we’ve got a spy in the production camp.”

  “My talents may be meager,” Kevin proclaimed, “but the lessons learned from a life wasted watching reality TV cannot be denied.”

  “What do you think has been going on over there? At Arcadia?” Mira asked him, getting up for the coffeepot where it was keeping warm on the stove and pouring second cups all around.

  “Well,” he began judiciously, “based on what we saw last week, and what Rachel said then, we’re a whole lot more functional than they are. Who did we have who wasn’t really meshing with the group? Melody and Martin, and they’re both gone.”

  “And they’ve lost Chelsea and Arlene now,” Zara pointed out. “So there may only be two women left, which would be a whole lot of work, but I’ll bet there’s zero conflict in that kitchen now.”

  “But on the men’s side . . .” Kevin pointed out, with a meaningful glance at Gabe.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’ll be interesting to see, won’t it?”