Chapter 4
It turns out Mom didn’t know we were out here, and she was not happy about it.
There was a very angry comm argument me and Max heard at a distance while we were repairing a fence.
Pop stays away from us most of the afternoon so we won’t see all the details in his Noise, and when he finally comes over to us later, all he says is, “Time for dinner.”
We take the fissioncar over to the Smith farm, where I first find Angharrad so I can give her a brush and some feed. Then I go inside where Lee has dinner ready for us, and Wilf and Jane and Bessie Jaye are all coming in from their afternoon work, too.
“How’s Hildy?” Wilf asks Pop before he even sits down at their big wooden table. He’s always called Mom this, even though he knows her name full well.
“In the city,” is all Pop says.
“It’s just stew and greens,” Lee says, setting the food out on the table, “but it’s hot.”
“Sounds good,” says Bessie Jaye.
Lee is blind, like I said before. His eyes were burned away in the last war, but he became such good friends with Wilf that Wilf started seeing for him through shared Noise.
That’s how Lee learned the transition to a life of physical blindness.
Neither Lee nor Wilf took the cure, so when Wilf stopped being mayor and Lee married Bessie Jaye, they set up this double farm with their wives: farmhouses across the road from each other, shared fields and chores.
They all seem happy out here. Wilf and Jane never had any kids, and Lee and Bessie Jaye are about the right age of any they might have had, so they just call themselves a family and get on with it.
Lee’s always been someone I watched from afar. He makes his way around the world just fine, even if Wilf or Pop aren’t there to share Noise. The farmhouse is set up so he knows where everything is, and I know he cooked this entire meal with everyone else being out in the field.
It’s kind of what I’ve tried to do with my voice.
Tastes good, I type in the comm, because it does.
“Thank you, Ben,” Lee says, sitting down next to Bessie Jaye, who rubs his arm affectionately.
“We’ve still not seen no giants,” Jane says, sitting by Wilf.
“But we believe what you saw,” Bessie Jaye adds quickly. “Todd’s Noise was scary enough.”
Bessie Jaye is where the Smith of Smith farm comes from.
She was one of the first of the new settlers to stake out a plot of land and start working it.
Hard to do on your own, so she asked Wilf if he could help.
Wilf brought Lee, and that’s how they met.
She’s dark-haired, small, but I swear she could arrange for a mountain to be moved if she wanted to.
She was the one who pushed hard for me to go to upper school.
Big optimist about the future, Bessie Jaye, which is rarer than you think around here.
“I didn’t say we don’t believe ya,” Jane says. She’s a flinty one, but Wilf loves her, so that’s all there is to it.
“Still nothin’ from yonder Sky?” Wilf asks Pop.
“He said he’d look into it,” Pop says, eating his stew. “That’s all I know.”
There’s a little important-feeling quiet, then Lee says, gently, “Viola doesn’t like that you’re out here.”
“She called you, did she?” Pop says.
“She did. She thinks the city is safer.”
“No place is safer than any other,” Pop says. “And I’d rather keep my boys where I feel comfortable fighting, if fighting is what needs to happen.”
You just hate the city, I type.
“Burly sure ain’t making me love it no more than I already didn’t.”
“Burly is who they elected,” Wilf says, with no inflection, his Noise as clear as mountain lake water. “Burly is who they get.”
He’s doing an okay job, I type.
The table is very silent at this.
Sorry, Wilf, I know how he beat you, but I mean, we make him out to be this villain when he’s kind of just doing his job, right?
Pop looks flabbergasted. “What side are you taking here, son?”
Why does it have to be sides all the time? He talked to us, and some of what he said made sense.
“What he said was to lie to everybody,” Max says. “I guess you must think lies are okay.”
You know that’s not what I think–
“We’ve seen what lies can do to a city, Ben,” Lee says. “It’s even worse when someone does it thinking it’s for the common good.”
But that assumes all mayors are as bad as the one you fought. How can that be right when Wilf was mayor?
“Wilf was a good mayor,” Pop says.
“Wilf was a great mayor,” Bessie Jaye says. “Who didn’t feel the need for lies.”
Because they’d be in his Noise.
“Oh, you can lie in your Noise,” Pop says. “Trust me.”
You’re not saying Wilf lied, though. And yes, Burly’s done things that aren’t great–
“The way he talked about my husband,” Jane says, eyes bright and angry. “That man should be drawn and quartered.”
“No, he shouldn’t,” Wilf says. “He’s just a man, like any other. Full o’ wisdom and foolishness like the rest of us. I was a mayor, tryin’ to do my best. I’m sure that’s what Burly’s doin’, too.”
And that, it seems, is the end of that discussion.