by Edan Lepucki
Cal didn’t want to admit it, but recently he’d become so consumed by the meetings, he’d stopped thinking much about Frida. He still thought about their baby, suspended impossibly within her like a galaxy of color in a glass marble, and about the Vote, what it might mean for them, their future. But that was their life, something shared, handed back and forth between them. Frida herself had drifted from his mind. He didn’t think about whom she might be hanging out with when they weren’t together, or how she was feeling, or even how she looked: someone had trimmed her hair and given her a pair of men’s boots to wear, and he hadn’t noticed either until she pointed them out. “Hel-lo?” she’d said, tapping her toe, pretending to be upset by his absentmindedness. Or pretending to be pretending. He could see that she was a little hurt by his cluelessness. It had been days since he’d really looked at her.
Just the night before, she’d nuzzled into him in bed, and he’d said, “I’ve got my period,” which was their shorthand for being too tired for sex. She’d laughed and given a fake whimper, and he’d wondered if there was something truthful to her little cry. He’d grabbed her hand then, so that she wouldn’t feel rejected. He must have fallen asleep soon after, though, because he couldn’t remember what had happened next.
Someone had to have let go of the other’s hand first.
Peter was right; he was distracted, as stupid as it was. At first he was consumed by the connections between Plank and the Group, and he’d started to wonder if Toni had recruited Sailor and the others. Now, he was trying to understand the Land’s connection to Pines. He didn’t know what he’d tell Frida or if he’d tell her at all. He was still trying to make sense of it himself.
He thought about what Micah and the others had said about Anika. Frida probably had no idea that the men were concerned about the women’s morning baking sessions. They didn’t want Frida to confide in Anika about the baby. Was that all? Whatever their suspicions, Frida would go on being unaware of them because Cal wouldn’t say anything. He felt a prick of guilt at that, but nothing more. He didn’t want to tell her. Why alarm her? Besides, if Frida was as cunning as she thought she was, she’d figure out their suspicions on her own. And if he told her, she’d probably just laugh. “Do they think we’re getting freaky in there?” she might say, and brush off the men’s concerns as silly.
On his way back to the Hotel, Dave and Sailor stopped him to ask if he wanted to join them on security after dinner. “It’s the night shift,” Sailor said. “So you better take a nap.”
“Sounds good,” he said, and smiled.
He tried not to seem too eager. He remembered his arrival here almost two weeks before, how he and Frida had rounded one Form and then another, his mouth so dry it felt like he’d swallowed a handful of pebbles. And Sailor, stepping forward with his fake-brave grimace, like someone’s pest of a little brother, piggybacking on a game of cowboys and Indians.
If he and Frida were voted out and they had to leave the Land, how would they become an army of two again? Three, with the child. At first, Cal couldn’t wait to get away from these people, from her brother. Now he found himself happy to awake on their sharp hay mattress, thoughts of the meetings, of the Land, filling his mind.
Micah, that sneaky bastard. He knew Cal would like it here. It was fun.
He went to find Frida in the kitchen. As soon as he saw her, standing at the worktable before a pile of chopped onions, he remembered what Peter had said about making sure she didn’t feel vulnerable. She did look a little lonely, he thought, as she pushed the pile of glistening, weeping onions into a small hill. He called out her name.
In front of everyone, he put his hands on her shoulders. With his thumbs he searched for the knots along her shoulder blades; there they were. He was a terrible masseuse—she’d always complained about it—but that didn’t stop him from trying.
“Let’s go to the Bath,” he said.
Burke lifted both eyebrows and said, “Nice.”
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Frida said to him, and Cal felt himself blush. She slipped from his embrace and turned around. With a hand to his cheek, she held her eyes on him for a moment longer than usual.
“Those onions are strong,” he said, his eyes tearing.
“Aren’t they?”
Cal tried to put his arm around her on the walk over, but she said she wanted to wash up first. “I smell too much like onions,” she said. “You better stay away.” He nodded, and they were silent the rest of the way.
Even once they were alone in the Bath, they didn’t speak. Cal tried to figure out what to say.
“You okay?” she asked after a few minutes, as if she were waiting for him to unleash the darkest contents of his soul.
Cal told her what he was doing that night.
“Security?” she repeated. After a moment she said, “You know, only men are on that detail.”
Frida was tweezing her eyebrows. As she spoke she looked at her reflection in a hand-mirror that had been taped to a bowling pin. Whereas in the kitchen she’d been keen to meet his gaze, now it was as if she couldn’t pull herself away from her own reflection.
“It makes sense,” Cal replied, eyes on his fingernails. He loved the clippers on the Land; it was so much better than using his teeth to bite his nails down. The clippers were sharp and precise, with a little plastic reservoir that caught the cut nails.
“It does?” Frida said, finally looking up. “Cal. I weigh more than Sailor.”
“It’s about upper-body strength.”
“To fire a gun?”
Her voice was louder now, and when Cal spoke again he was careful not to match her volume, even though he knew she hated how calm he could be. Unflappable was the word he’d use to describe himself, but she had once called him robotic.
“Would you even want to stay up all night to watch nothing happen?” he asked.
“Probably not,” she said. “But why would my brother be interested in a male-run world? Hasn’t history taught him anything?”
Cal caught her gaze in the mirror. “What’s got you so riled up?” He put down the clippers and sat up straight. “Do the other women feel the way you do?”
Frida lifted the tweezers to her face. If she wasn’t careful with those, her brows would be as curved as his fingernail clippings.
“You think I’d tell you what the women think?” she said. “You’re a narc.”
“And you like that about me,” Cal said. “Admit it.”
She didn’t smile. “We’re doing this a lot lately.”
“Doing what?”
“Bantering. Bickering, really.”
She was right. “I guess I hadn’t noticed,” he said.
“What have you noticed? Or wait, no, don’t tell me. You can’t tell me.”
Cal looked away. All the concern he’d had for her in the kitchen, that she might be feeling alone, that she felt tense, seemed suddenly inconsequential next to his annoyance, his anger. She’d been the one treating the Land like sleepaway camp. She’d been the one to make him look like a moron in front of her brother.
“How many times do we have to go over this, Frida?” he asked.
“Go over what? We hardly talk.”
“Do you want me to stop going to the morning meetings? Is that it?”
“Today when you grabbed my shoulders,” she said, “I thought I might faint, it felt so strange. You never look at me. You hardly touch me.”
“Stop being so dramatic,” he said, and he stopped before he said anything meaner. He made his voice as even as he could. “I’m going to make things okay. You have to listen to me and promise me that you won’t say anything about the pregnancy.”
“I already promised you that.”
“You have to trust me. If you don’t trust me, none of this will work.”
“Do we want it to work?” Frida said. She was still seated at the mirror, and she looked up at him, tweezers poised. “Every day our child becomes…I don’t know…more and more
itself. More part of us, Cal.” She paused. “At first, I didn’t even care if it lived or died, as long as we got to stay here.”
“Don’t say that,” he said. If she wanted him angry, if she wanted his voice to fill this tiny space, well, he’d give her that.
“It’s not how I feel now. Now I’m more and more nervous about the Land.”
“Baby,” he said.
She let go of the tweezers, and they clinked against the counter with a little pitiful sound. She said his name, so quietly he thought he might have imagined it.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Don’t you know what went on here?” she whispered.
Micah and the other men didn’t spend much time talking about the past: their meetings were obsessed with day-to-day details, with securing communication with Pines and making sure the settlers around them behaved, stayed put, didn’t try to conquer the area or head for Pines. Cal had never thought to ask about what had gone on before. Before what?
“What did you find out?” Cal asked softly. “You can tell me.”
She shook her head. “Can I?”
It was the worst thing she could say, and they both knew it. She didn’t trust him.
“Micah doesn’t seem concerned with whatever used to go on here,” he said. “That’s in the past.”
“It is? You sound like someone else, Cal. Are you changing that fast?”
“What did Anika tell you?”
Even before he asked the question, Cal felt himself bifurcate: there was the Cal who wanted to whisper Frida’s name into her hair until it was like he wasn’t saying anything at all. And there was this new second self. He wanted to hear what Frida had to say, and he would weigh what her story meant, both for their family and for the Land. The other men seemed suspicious of Anika, and maybe they were right to be. What was she telling his wife?
Frida hadn’t answered. She was squinting at him, as if trying to see something far away. Maybe she’d seen that he’d broken into two.
“I know you miss Plank,” she said, “but you can’t pretend like you’re back there. This isn’t college, Cal. It’s not about harvesting vegetables and reading boring books all day.”
“I know that,” he said. “That’s like me telling you this isn’t the Ellis Family Christmas.”
“Fuck you,” she said.
“That’s nice. Thanks.”
“Cal, my brother chopped off a man’s head.”
“What? Whose?” His insides spun.
“A Pirate’s. He killed a Pirate and chopped off his head in front of the children.”
“What children?”
Frida let out a little moan, like she was imagining the worst and couldn’t bear it.
“Frida? You okay?”
She shook her head. “I want to stay here, too, Cal. What other choice do we have? But we need to know everything. Find out, okay? Find out everything.” She paused. “Even if you can’t tell me, just find out.”
“Next time you’re scared, come to me.”
Frida laughed. “Sure, okay. If you let me.”
“Don’t be like that.” And then he said, “You find out everything, too. No more secrets.”
Frida didn’t agree or disagree. Instead she said, “Don’t get lost in the dark tonight,” and stepped out of the Bath, leaving without a goodbye.
* * *
After his nap, Cal had done his best to avoid Frida before his security duty. He hoped that by the time he was scheduled to return from his shift, she might already be with Anika, baking dinner rolls or pumpernickel or some elaborate tiered cake. He didn’t want to see her because he didn’t know if she was angry with him, or still upset, or what, and he’d never been so confused about his own wife. He certainly didn’t want to rehash their conversation from earlier.
Sailor and Dave were waiting for him on the porch of the Hotel. Other men were on the detail, Dave explained, but at various locations: on the second lookout Tower, patrolling the Forms, and so on. Frida wasn’t entirely correct—a couple of women did participate, but never in the Towers or the Forms and never with a weapon; they sat on porches or walked the center path. If they fell asleep, no one cared; the other morning Micah had actually said, “If a lady dozes off, let her.” If Frida knew her brother had made such a comment, she’d be livid.
But, no, Cal thought, he wouldn’t let Frida into his mind. He’d focus on security. It was a welcome distraction.
Cal followed the boys toward the Bath.
“Our job is to watch for anything out of the ordinary,” Sailor said. “It rarely happens—in the whole time I’ve been here, only a few people have ventured into the Forms. And they quickly turn back if we exert enough pressure.”
“What do you mean by ‘pressure’?”
“If you see something,” Dave said, “we want you to blow your whistle. Whoever’s been designated the muscle will go investigate. The rest of us wait as backup.”
Sailor smiled. “I was the muscle the day you and Frida got here.”
“We’ll spend some time in the western Tower,” Dave said, “and then we’ll separate for an hour or two.”
“We need to show you the lay of the land first,” Sailor said.
There were a few people walking the main path and sitting out on porches, bundled in heavy coats and blankets. The Hotel and the Bath anchored each end of this path, and it reminded Cal of a promenade. From across the field, right by the barn, smoke rose from one of the two nightly campfires where people congregated to play music and tell stories. Peter told Cal that he made it a point of attending at least twice a week: “Just because we’re in charge, doesn’t mean we should live separately,” he’d explained.
The houses had all been winterized, their windows giving away nothing. Cal wondered which rooms were filled with people, and which were still empty. Right now somebody must be pulling up the covers and blowing out a candle.
It was cold out tonight. His breath would be visible by midnight, but with a hat on, and his sweatshirt, Cal would be comfortable. The sky was obscene with stars.
Once they’d passed the Bath, Dave said, “Here.” He handed Cal a whistle on a string.
“Put this on,” he said. “We’ll go over the calls in a few minutes.”
Cal nodded. The whistle felt good around his neck.
“Also this,” Dave said. He was giving Cal his gun back.
“I cleaned it,” Sailor said. He grinned as he passed Cal a small box. “More bullets.”
Cal nodded, clutching the gun. He tucked it into the back of his pants and put the bullets in his pocket.
“Ours are in the Tower,” Sailor said. Guns, Cal realized.
Cal had always wondered what it might be like to climb a water tower. The ladder, with those semicircles of metal jutting out every few rungs, as if they might keep anyone safe. Each platform was another dare. Are you sure you want to climb higher? As a kid, Cal wondered how scary it might be to reach the top. Did the whole thing rattle in the wind, sing like shaky old bridges did?
This Tower was built of splintery wood, and its sawdust smell made him think of fall carnivals and pumpkin patches. The ladder reminded him not so much of a water tower but of the high dive at the local pool his mom would take him to during the summer. Damp. No frills. Possibly unsafe. But once you were up there, you definitely couldn’t turn back, or you’d run the risk of embarrassing yourself in front of the kids below. He understood why Dave and Sailor had told him to go first.
Up, up, up he went. When Dave started climbing, the whole tower seemed to sag with the added weight. Up, up.
When he got to the top, he didn’t look over the edge. Not yet. The Tower’s room was a small turret, with walls that went chest high. The floor was crowded with a bucket of rifles, a pile of coats, some miners’ helmets with flashlights attached, a megaphone, and a bedpan. Empty, thank God. From a hook hung the binoculars he’d seen Peter and Dave using the first time he’d caught sight of them.
Once Sailo
r and Dave had reached the top, Cal finally allowed himself to look out. The moon had been full the night before, so there was some light. From here, the Land seemed almost puny. Just that one strip of buildings, and the field with its barn, garden, and showers. Encircling it all were the Forms. From here, Cal could see where they ended.
Beyond all this: trees and more trees. They were tall, and in the dark their greenery turned woolly. To the east, a speck of orange firelight pulsed. Cal blinked and saw, farther out, a second fire.
“There,” Sailor said, pointing north, “the old highway cuts through.”
“Where does it lead?” Cal asked. He suddenly felt vulnerable. He didn’t know what was beyond the Land, and he didn’t know if he could trust the people who did.
Dave smirked and said they better go over the whistle calls.
If Cal saw anything suspicious in the Forms, he was to blow one long whistle. “Do it until you’ve run out of breath. Your job on security is simple: to watch for outsiders and to alert us if anyone tries to enter the Forms. You’re patrolling for anything out of the ordinary. And I mean anything. If we end up going nuts about a rogue raccoon, so be it.”
“We also have arm signals for the daytime,” Sailor said, “but they won’t do you any good while it’s dark.”
“For tonight you only really need that one call,” Dave said. “The others you can learn later.”
As soon as the lesson ended, Dave walked to the other side of the platform, scanning with the binoculars. He pulled a walkie-talkie out of his jacket and began exchanging observations with someone in the Forms. The reception was scratchy, and Cal didn’t recognize the person’s voice. He had only just learned of the walkie-talkies that morning. August was going to lobby for a few more sets from Pines, plus more batteries.
What wouldn’t they ask for?
“No women ever want to come up here, and do this job?” Cal asked. “I mean, come on, everyone digs walkie-talkies.”