But, of course, Frida hadn’t mentioned the pregnancy to August. She hadn’t told him about her baby, but about her baby brother.
“In her defense,” August explained, “she was high as a kite when she told me about Mikey and his suicide.” He smiled. “I gave her a Vicodin.”
“Ah, Frida,” Micah said, and snorted. “She always loved getting fucked up.”
Cal was hardly paying attention. Frida had lied to him, and now these men knew it. He looked like an ass, keeping a secret without even knowing he was doing so.
“How far along is she?” Peter asked him.
Cal admitted he didn’t know. “Not very far.” He paused. “But she’s happy about it, and so am I.”
Again, no one said anything.
Cal stood up, the words get out, get out ringing in his mind. He was so upset with Frida, with her betrayal, he needed to be alone. “I have to go,” he mumbled.
Without looking at Sailor, Peter said, “Help him with his bag.”
Cal stepped across the aisle to retrieve it. Sailor grabbed one of the handles, and they both carried it out of the Church.
The bag was heavy. What possessions did August think they needed? Cal and Sailor carried the duffel toward the Hotel, where Cal expected they’d haul it onto the bed and unzip it—to find what, exactly? Cinder blocks and sneakers, maybe; a heartless joke, and here he’d been, despite his protests, lusting briefly for his gray sweatshirt and his khaki shorts that Frida had mended beautifully a few months back, so that they felt almost new. There was no way August knew what things they’d been longing for.
It was a short walk, but the main street felt endless when your arms hurt; Cal had learned this recently, carrying all those damn bricks. Apparently, the two wheelbarrows were in use elsewhere on the Land. “It’s meditative to carry the bricks with our hands,” someone from his team had claimed. From then on, no one had complained. It felt like such a Plank thing, to take one’s sweet time constructing something new and to value the hours ticking by. Cal had been annoyed; it fetishized the inefficient.
When he and Sailor finally got to the room, they dropped the bag on the floor. Sailor lingered in the doorway.
“I doubt you need my help unpacking.”
“I guess not. There’s no place to put things, anyway.”
Sailor didn’t move.
“Congratulations, man.”
“Oh, thanks.” Cal paused. “Should you be saying that?”
“There’s no protocol for this kind of thing.”
Cal waited. Sailor wanted to talk; Cal knew it. He wanted to introduce this world to an outsider, and if Cal waited long enough, Sailor might tell him everything.
“No one’s had a baby here for a long time,” Sailor said. “I’ve never seen it happen.”
“And that doesn’t seem weird to you?”
He shrugged. “This life—it’s my second education.”
“What was your first?”
Sailor held up his fist and knocked at the air.
Cal’s voice caught in his throat. “You’re a Planker.”
“Last class. Well, would’ve been. Everything shut down after my first semester.”
Shut down. Cal saw the farmhouse, and the fields, and the stove in the room of some lucky second-year, gone cold.
“How’d you get here?” he asked.
“I guess you could say there was a recruiter of sorts. Dave, Burke, and I agreed to come. There were a few others from the year above. Who wouldn’t be interested in ghost-town living? We were told we’d come out here to tame the Wild West.”
“Where’s your family?”
“In Wilmington.”
“North Carolina?”
Sailor nodded. “Or they were. Hurricanes, you know.”
“My parents were in Cleveland. Years ago. The snowstorms.”
They were silent.
“How come there are no families here?” Cal asked.
“We believe in containment, you know that,” Sailor replied. “We’ve got limited resources.” He stood up straighter. “Plus, there isn’t medicine if they got sick or enough food for them to eat…and what about providing them with an education?”
“But you’ll die out.”
“Us and the whole world.” Sailor wasn’t smiling. “The Land isn’t against growth, Cal. We just choose who gets to join us.”
“Oh, please. What about human nature? What about the desire to procreate?”
Sailor shrugged. “I’m not ready to be a parent, and in this world, I wouldn’t want to be. Not ever. Micah says if we don’t have examples of fatherhood to follow, we won’t seek out that path. I think he’s right.”
“And the women?”
Sailor shrugged. “I’m not the person to ask.”
Cal sat on the bed.
“I should go,” Sailor said. “Leave you to your stuff.”
“One more thing,” Cal said. “Did the recruiter who came to Plank say anything about the Group?”
“I can’t answer that question,” he said, the color leaving his face.
“What do you mean?”
“The Group, it’s not really part of the Land.” He stepped backward. “Well, it is.” He was almost out the door now. “But it’s not that simple.”