Bo seemed surprised by this question, as if its answer were obvious. They went back to the shed, he said, and began building the house.
“Why did you build so far from the shed?”
Bo laughed. “We conceived of the shed as a hidden shelter, should we need secondary protection. Safer that way.”
“Is there reason to be afraid?” Cal asked. “You still haven’t told me much.”
“I’m getting to that,” he said.
The first time August approached in his chariot, Bo and Sandy assumed he was from the Spikes, as they’d begun to call them, and Bo stepped out of their house with his rifle. It wasn’t exactly a house just yet, only its skeleton.
“August was here to trade. He wouldn’t say much about where he was from, only that he was a middle man. He told me he liked to make sure everyone was getting along all right, that no one was sick.” Bo paused. “He said the people who’d built the Spikes simply wanted to be left alone. They’re separatists, and they don’t allow their community to go beyond the border.” The border, it seemed, was the Spikes; they’d built them long ago.
Bo told Cal he would have liked to get more information, but August was already off the buggy, showing Sandy his various goods. She wanted the shovel.
“It was like a shopping center for her,” Bo said, and Cal thought, Shopping center. The phrasing had to be a clue to where Bo was from; that kind of information was always lodged in speech.
Bo’s story made Cal think immediately of the Communities. Gated, under surveillance, exclusive to everyone but the very rich. Back in L.A. Frida had often wondered aloud what they were like inside; before the Internet became too expensive and then stopped working altogether, she’d scoured it for information, for stupid gossipy facts. No smoking allowed! All the houses look the same! Some catered to Christians (mostly evangelicals), a few to Jews, while others didn’t mention religion at all. All of them, though, claimed to have working electricity; clean, paved streets; excellent schools; and secure borders. If you lived behind those gates, the oil crisis was merely a nuisance. If you had money, you had everything.
Cal had just shrugged at Frida’s interest, didn’t want to encourage her curiosity. Not like Micah, who loved to discuss them. The Communities made him murderously angry. They pissed off Cal, too, but he tried not to think of a world he couldn’t enter.
“Did you ask August how many Spike People there are?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
After Cal’s conversation with Bo, when the work of survival was backbreaking and difficult and the night a stinging kind of cold, Cal thought he and Frida might like being among the Spike People. Sometimes he felt the loneliness wrap around them like a net, especially once the Millers had died and they were living in their house. It was then that he wished to be allowed inside those spiky borders.
But he knew better. At the end of his story, Bo had leaned forward. “It’s better to stay put, Calvin.” His voice was stern, and then it turned ragged, almost desperate. “They’re not afraid to use violence. That’s what August told me. You stay put, Cal. You understand me?”
Cal said nothing. Frida and Sandy were headed toward them, their voices getting louder, closer. “Don’t tell your wife about this,” Bo whispered.
“Why not?”
“No need to worry her,” Bo said, which had made sense at the time.
So Cal had never told Frida what he knew, maybe only because he had promised to keep quiet. He didn’t want to scare her, but now she knew so little that she might do something rash. She didn’t realize that they had to stay put in order to remain safe. Their curiosity would get them killed. How could he tell her that, without revealing all that he’d kept from her?
Cal realized now that Bo had known all along that he and his family would die soon. That’s why it was easy to pass on the secret. Maybe it was a parting gift.
After the Millers had poisoned themselves, Frida and Cal spent a lot of time trying to understand their motives. But they kept coming up empty-handed. Had one of them been sick? Had they felt a sudden exhaustion with this life? Was someone after them? They only had questions.
By the time August found them living at the Millers’ place, he didn’t ask many questions. He had wanted to know where the others were, and when Cal said, “They ate poison,” the man simply nodded and went on with his sales pitch, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“You don’t look surprised,” Cal had said to him, when Frida ran inside to grab something to trade. “About the Millers, I mean.”
August merely raised an eyebrow.
“I’m not implying anything,” Cal said quickly.
“I didn’t think you were,” August said. “But, no, I’m not surprised. Bo got the poison from me. He traded me his gun for it. He asked for assistance, and I gave it.”
“Are you one of the Spike People?”
“What?” But then August understood. “Bo told you.”
“Why don’t they come here?”
“They believe in containment.”