“What are you?” Janice Coates, holding Michaela tight, spoke to Evie over her daughter’s shoulder. “Who gave you this power?”
Evie smiled. A green light hovered around her. “I’m just an old woman who looks young for the time being. And I don’t have any power. Like the fox, I’m only an emissary. It’s you, all of you, who have the power.”
“Well,” Blanche McIntyre said, “let’s talk it out. Like a jury. Because I guess that’s what we are.”
“Yes,” Lila said. “But not here.”
2
It took until the afternoon to gather the inhabitants of the new world. Messengers were sent to every corner of the town to call forth the women who hadn’t been at the supermarket.
They walked from Main Street in a quiet column and climbed up Ball’s Hill. Blanche McIntyre’s feet were bothering her, so Mary Pak drove her in one of the golf carts. Blanche held Andy Jones, the infant orphan, bundled in a blue blanket and told him a very short story: “Once upon a time, there was a little guy, who went here and there, and every lady in the place loved him.”
Tufts of green were sprouting. It was cold, but spring was on the verge. They had almost caught up to the time of year it had been in the old world when they had left. The realization surprised Blanche. It felt to her as though a far longer period had elapsed.
When they left the road and started up the moth-lined path through the woods, the fox appeared to conduct them the rest of the way.
3
Once Evie’s terms had been re-explained for those who needed to be caught up, Michaela Coates stood on a milk crate, donned her reporter’s hat (perhaps for the last time, perhaps not), and told them all what had happened on the outside.
“Dr. Norcross convinced the vigilantes to stand down,” she said. “A number of men gave their lives before reason prevailed.”
“Who died?” one woman shouted out. “Please say my Micah wasn’t one of them!”
“What about Lawrence Hicks?” asked another.
There was a babble of questioning voices.
Lila raised her hands. “Ladies, ladies!”
“I ain’t no lady,” grumbled an ex-inmate named Freida Elkins. “Speak for yourself, Sheriff.”
“I can’t tell you who’s dead,” Michaela resumed, “because during most of the fighting I was stuck in the prison. I know that Garth Flickinger is dead, and . . .” She was about to mention Barry Holden, then saw his wife and remaining daughters looking at her expectantly, and lost her nerve. “. . . and that’s about all I know. But I can tell you that all the boy children and infants in Dooling are fine and well.” Praying with all her heart that this was so.
The audience erupted in cheers, whoops, and applause.
When Michaela was finished, Janice Coates took her place, and explained that everyone would be given a turn to make her choice known.
“For myself,” she said, “I vote, with some regret, to return. This is a much better place than the one we left, and I believe the sky is the limit. Without men, we make decisions fairly, and with less fuss. We share resources with less argument. There has been very little in the way of violence among the members of our community. Women have irritated me my entire life, but they have nothing on men.” Her personal irony, that her own husband, poor Archie, bounced from life by that early heart attack, was such an equable, sensible man, she did not mention. Exceptions were not the point. The point was the general case. The point was history.
Where Janice’s features had once been lean, now they were burned down to the bone. Her white hair flowed down her back. Plunged in their sockets, her eyes had a distant shine. It struck Michaela that her mother, no matter how straight she stood or how clearly she spoke, had become ill. You need a doctor, Mom.
“However,” Janice went on, “I also believe I owe it to Dr. Norcross to go back. He risked his life, and the others risked theirs, for the women of the prison when I doubt many others would have. Related to that, I want to make it known to you women who were inmates at the prison that I will do whatever I can to see your sentences commuted, or at the very least lessened. And if you want to double-time it for the hills, I will inform the authorities in Charleston and Wheeling that I believe you were killed in the attack.”
Those former prisoners came forward in a bloc. There were fewer than there had been that morning. Kitty McDavid, among others, had vanished without a trace (except for a brief flurry of moths). No doubt remained about what that might mean—those women were dead in both worlds. Men had killed them.
And yet every single inmate voted to go back. This might have surprised a man, but it didn’t surprise Warden Janice Coates, who knew a telling statistical fact: when women escaped prison, most were recaptured almost immediately, because they did not usually double-time it for the hills, as men were wont to do. What women did was go home. First on the minds of the former inmates who spoke at that final meeting were the male children in that other world.
For example, Celia Frode: Celia said Nell’s boys would need mothering, and even if Celia had to go back to lockup, Nell’s sister could be counted on to stand for them. “But Nell’s sister won’t be much use to them if she’s asleep, will she?”
Claudia Stephenson spoke to the ground so softly that the crowd called for her to repeat herself. “I don’t want to hold anybody down,” she repeated. “I’ll go along with the majority.”
The First Thursdays also voted to return. “It’s better here,” Gail said, speaking for all of them, “Janice is right about that. But it’s not really Our Place. It’s someplace else. And who knows, maybe all that’s apparently happened over there will make that place better.”
Michaela thought she was probably right, but likely just in the short term. Men promised never to raise another hand to their wives or children often enough, and meant it at the time, but were only able to keep their promises for a month or two, if that. The rage came around again, like a recurring bout of malaria. Why would this be different?
Large, cool gusts rippled through the high grass. V-shaped flocks of geese, returning from the uninhabited south, crossed the blue pane above the crowd.
It feels like a funeral, Mary Pak thought. It was so undeniable—like death was—bright enough to scald your eyes, cool enough to go through your coat and your sweater and raise goosebumps along your skin.