“Both,” says Swift Fox. “But we didn’t see any two guys. Zeb says the pigs must’ve chased them away. We did find a dead piglet, a little farther along: spraygun kill, Zeb said. A hind leg cut off. He says we should go back for it later because those pigs aren’t likely to throw themselves in our way again, not after one of their young has been killed, so we should make the most of any stray pork. But we heard some of those crazy vicious dog splices, so maybe we’ll have to fight them for it. It’s a zoo out there.”
“If it really was a zoo there’d be fences,” says Lotis Blue. “That Mo’Hair was stolen, right? It didn’t just wander off. Those two guys must’ve been quite close to us and nobody saw them.”
“That’s creepy,” says Ren.
Swift Fox isn’t listening. “Look what else I got,” she says. “Pregnancy tests, the kind where you pee on sticks. I figure we’ll all be needing them. Or some of us will.” She smiles, but she doesn’t look at Toby.
“Count me out,” says Ren. “Who’d bring a baby into this?” She sweeps her arm: the cobb house, the trees, the minimalism. “Without running water? I mean …”
“Not sure you’ll have that option,” says Swift Fox. “In the long run. Anyway, we owe it to the human race. Don’t you think?”
“Who’d be the dads?” says Lotis Blue with some interest.
“I’d say take your pick,” says Swift Fox. “The line forms to the left. Just choose the one with the longest tongue hanging out.”
“Guess you’ll be stuck with Ivory Bill then,” says Lotis Blue.
“Did I say longest tongue?” says Swift Fox. She and Lotis Blue giggle, Ren and Amanda do not.
“Let’s see those pee sticks,” says Ren.
Toby stares into the darkness. Should she follow Zeb? He must have finished his shower by now: the cobb-house showers are never long, unless it’s Swift Fox, using up all the sun-warmed water. But Zeb is not in evidence.
She stays awake in her cubicle, just in case. Moonlight silvering her eyes. Owls calling, in love with each other’s feathers. Nothing she wants.
Weeding
No Zeb all morning. No one mentions him. She doesn’t ask.
Lunch is soup, with meat of some kind – smoked dog? – and kudzu with garlic. Polyberries that could be riper. A salad of mixed greens. “We need to figure out how to get some vinegar,” says Rebecca. “Then I can do a proper dressing.”
“First we’d need to make the wine,” says Zunzuncito.
“I’m all for that,” says Rebecca. She’s put some arugula seeds into the salad, for a peppery effect. She has a plan for making a saltworks – an evaporating pan, down by the shore. Once the coast is clear, she says. Once the Painballers are accounted for.
After lunch there’s indoor time, undercover time. The sun’s high and burning, the storm clouds not yet building. The air is sticky with moisture.
Toby stays in her cubicle, trying to nap but sulking instead. No sulking allowed, she tells herself. No wound-licking. She can’t even be certain that there’s a wound to lick. Though she does feel wounded.
Late afternoon, after the rain. Nobody’s around, with the exception of Crozier and Manatee, standing sentinel. Toby’s kneeling in the garden, killing slugs. It’s an act that would once have made her feel guilty – For are not Slugs God’s creatures too, Adam One would say, with as much claim to breathe the air, as long as they do it somewhere else in a place that is more congenial for them than our Edencliff Rooftop Garden? But right now killing them serves as an outlet for her. An outlet for what? She doesn’t wish to ponder that.
Worse, she finds herself editorializing. Die, evil slug! She drops each plucked slug into a tin can with wood ash and water in the bottom. They’d used salt earlier, but there’s little of that to spare. Perhaps a swift blow with a flat rock would be kinder to the slugs – the wood ash must be painful – but she’s not in the mood to weigh the relative kindness of slug execution methods.
She yanks out a weed. How thoughtlessly we label and dismiss God’s Holy Weeds! But Weed is simply our name for a plant that annoys us by getting in the way of our Human plans. Consider how useful and indeed edible and delicious so many of them are!
Right. Not this one. Ragweed, from the look of it. She tosses it onto the pile of discards.
“Hey there, Death Squad,” says a voice. It’s Zeb, grinning down at her.
Toby scrambles to her feet. Her hands are dirty; she doesn’t know what to do with them. Has he been sleeping in until now, or what? She can’t ask what happened with Swift Fox, or if anything did: she refuses to sound like a shrew.
“I’m glad you came back safe,” she says. And she is glad, more glad than she can say, but even to herself her voice sounds fake.
“Me too,” he says. “Trip was more than I bargained for. Wiped me out, slept like a log, must be getting old.”
Is this a coverup? How suspicious can she get? “I missed you,” she says. There. Was that so hard?
He grins more. “Counted on that,” he says. “Brought you something.” It’s a compact, with a small round mirror.