Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Asia
“Ms. Bridget, Ms. Bridget!”
I listened to the giggles, the sound of stampeding feet.
“Now what do we have here?” Bridget said.
I glanced over from where I was weeding Uncle Levi’s tomato bed to Bridget.
She was resting on the porch, getting ready to prepare the afternoon meal.
I’d sent Uncle Levi to bed to rest, and even though I knew I would hear about it, I’d told him I would take care of the plants because he needed the rest. Jack would give me crap because I was supposed to be on supply duty, but what was the good of living through the end of the world if I had to stick to Jack’s schedule?
I smiled as the girls approached. They were twelve-year-old twins, Ellie and Evie, and over the past few weeks at the farm, they’d blossomed. I remembered the first time I saw them, looking terrified, dirty, and simultaneously younger and older than their tween years.
“We found mushrooms!” Ellie—or maybe it was Evie, I still wasn’t sure—said.
“Well, what do you have here?” Bridget said.
She’d found an old pair of Aunt Kathleen’s glasses and said the prescription was close enough. She pushed them up on her nose, and I laughed, noting that she seemed to be looking over them instead of through them.
“Huh,” she said, studying the mushrooms.
“What do you think?” Evie said.
“Well, you know, you have to be careful with mushrooms. The wrong one and—” She slashed her hand across her throat, and the girls giggled.
“But you told which was which?” Bridget said.
“No,” Evie said.
“Yeah, but you always gotta make sure. So what do you think? Can we use these or not?” Bridget asked.
The girls shifted, looking at each other, then back at the mushroom.
“Well, this one has pores and not gills,” Evie said.
“Yes, it does, but description isn’t identification, sweetheart. Is it poisonous?”
The girl twisted, then finally looked at Bridget.
“It’s not,” she said.
Then she stood, waiting, and practically preened when Bridget nodded.
“That’s right. Not poisonous. So go find any others that you can. We’ll look at them all together,” Bridget said.
The girls ran off—another little mini-stampede, but retreating this time.
“Bridget, you grew up in Brooklyn. How do you know anything about mushrooms?”
“Asia, my darling,” she said, a soft smile on her lips.
“I should be offended. I am a very knowledgeable and worldly woman, and I’ll have you know my beloved Irv was a mushroom connoisseur.
I remember for our twentieth anniversary, we went to France, and he got to see one of those truffle-rooting pigs. ”
“And you enjoyed that?” I asked.
She laughed. “I liked shopping on the High Street in Paris, but the things we do for the ones we love,” she said.
I smiled, and she did too, but I noticed the shadows in her eye. I saw the same whenever Uncle Levi mentioned Aunt Kathleen. I stood up, dusting my hands off, and then went over to grab Bridget’s.
“Thank you.”
“For what?” she asked, even though her eyes still contained a bit of the haunt.
“Those girls have really taken to you. Their dad is gone, and after what happened to their mom…”
I trailed off and glanced toward the bunkhouse where Ellie and Evie’s mother stayed almost all of the time now. I tried to check on her, but as the girls blossomed, she seemed to wither. I hoped she’d shake it off soon, but I didn’t count on it.
“Well, I’m no one’s mother, and never have been, which makes me quite happy, I’ll have you know. But it’s good—people taking care of each other. There should have been more of that in the world,” she said.
Her voice took on a quiet, wistful tone, and I squeezed her hand again.
“Maybe they should have done that. But now we have—”
“Everyone, get out here now!”
I looked at Bridget, her eyes wide, probably reflecting my own surprise. It was Jack, and he was yelling.
Jack didn’t yell.
Ever.
I grabbed the shovel and hustled to the sound of Jack’s voice.
We made a lot of progress on shoring up the farm, and one of the things we had done was subdivide some of the land to create smaller plots that people were responsible for.
Jack also tasked some of the hands to construct new outbuildings that we could use for storage.
He planned to raid local areas soon, seeing what we could find, and wanted to make sure we had space for it.
So he stood now in the spot that was designated for the next storage building.
“Everything all right?” I said.
The others gathered quickly, and soon all of our new little community—except Uncle Levi and Elliot, who was keeping watch—was here. A group of twenty, all of them focused on Jack.
“No, everything is not fine,” Jack said.
He stood there, glaring down at Travis, who tried his best to wriggle away. Jack didn’t budge, and I watched as Travis pulled—Jack not moving an inch, but the threads of his shirt starting to fray.
“Please!” Travis said.
“What’s going on?” I said.
But Travis either didn’t hear me, or knew who he needed to be focused on. He clasped his hands together in prayer, pleading with Jack.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I won’t do anything like that again.”
“What happened?” I said.
Jack glanced at me, though he tightened his grip on Travis’s shirt.
“This fucking pig was stealing from us,” Jack said.
“What are you talking about, Jack?”
“Tell her, Travis,” Jack said.
He wasn’t yelling anymore, and Travis—panicked as he was—realized that was a very bad thing.
“I’m sorry. I just… I needed to make sure I had…”
“Travis, talk,” I said.
Something in my voice snapped him back into place. He stood up, and Jack released his shirt.
“I know it was wrong, and Levi—all of you—have been nothing but great to me. To all of us. But I was just worried and…scared,” Travis said, looking at me, imploring me with his eyes to understand.
“We’re all worried and scared.”
Jack looked away from Travis and out at the crowd. Then settled on me. “But you put yourself in ahead of everyone else, didn’t you, Travis?”
He seemed to deflate in front of me. “It was just a little bit. I snuck a few things here and there. Just in case there wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to be hungry,” Travis said.
“Just in case, huh?” Jack said.
I noticed his other hand then, noticing that he was holding a pillowcase—a very bulky, heavy-looking pillowcase. I could make out the shape of canned goods, so many they were testing the threads of the pillowcase.
“I’m sorry,” Travis said.
I glanced at Jack, worried for a split second that he might crack Travis in the face with it, even though he deserved it.
Then I looked back at Travis. “You were stealing from us?”
“I told you, I’m sorry,” he said.
He stood up straight, wiping his cheeks, though I wasn’t sure that I had seen a tear fall.
“I can’t believe that,” I said, looking at Jack.
“I can,” Jack said.
It wasn’t I told you so, but it may as well have been.
I was stupid for advocating for Travis, but then remembered why I was doing this. For those girls, the others.
For myself.
I glared at Travis.
“There has to be punishment for this. You just can’t—”
“You’re right, Asia. There does have to be punishment for this,” Jack said as he moved his hand toward his knife.
“Jack, wait!”
But he was already moving.
Moving so quickly that I was a second behind processing—as he retrieved the knife from his sheath. He didn’t swing wildly. He didn’t hesitate either.
Just used a fluid, practiced motion to slide the knife between Travis’s ribs like they weren’t even there.
Travis squealed, the sound inhuman in its horror.
No.
This wasn’t happening.
I told myself that, willing it to be true.
But this was happening.
I remembered Jack’s warning.
Knew he was a man of his word.
I should have expected this.
Prevented it.
Stopped Travis from gambling with his life.
Felt a flash of violent rage at his stupidly.
Hated him for this.
But the knife wasn’t in Travis’s hand.
Someone screamed, and I looked back and saw Ellie and Evie, faces that were bright, happy, just minutes ago, something else now.
Something they’d never be able to recover from.
Bridget put her arms around the girls, and turned away, but not before she caught my eye, the crease between her brows deeper now than I’d ever seen it before.
I saw something else in her eyes, too.
Disappointment.
Accusation.
Because I did this—had let him do it.
Jack pulled the knife out and plunged it in again—the squish, the twist, the low hiss that told me he nicked one of Travis’s lungs—the only sound.
He crumpled slowly, his blood gushing out, staining the hard-packed dirt. He lay there, gurgled, twitched, and then finally was still.
I looked at the others, all of their faces a mix of shock and revulsion.
Jack stood, the sun high overhead, and looked each and every one of them in the eye.
“If you think—if you’re even tempted to steal—you should leave. Because this is how we handle thieves,” he said.
He swept the group again.
“Any questions?”
Then he settled his gaze on me.
Looked at me like he had so many times before.
Save the knife that was still in his clenched hand, a dead man’s blood sliding off in a languid drip, drip, drip, this could have been any other day.
Knew that to him it was.
I turned and walked away, my steps steady, my hands shaking.
“Miles, grab a shovel, and let’s clean this up,” Jack said.
I didn’t dare look back.