Sundry Days (24 page)

Chapter 45

David

On the Road Again

This may be the last time our wine is taken to Winnipeg. There was a big community meeting at the Gathering Place to discuss whether we should go at all. The consensus was maybe this one last time.

Because we have ties there—Dora, Willa, Caleb, my grandmother— it was agreed that Rebekah and I should go instead of Abraham and Zora.

I can’t believe that Anna Gardener has foisted herself on the poor people of Winnipeg. She’s been there several years now, though we haven’t seen her. This will be our first trip back. Our last trip.

Abraham and Zora are really getting too old to travel all the way to Winnipeg, although neither would admit it. But they did happily agree to stay home this time instead, and take charge of Michael. They consider him their grandchild.

Michael just turned six, and is really a handful. Abraham and Zora might have an easier time walking to Winnipeg than keeping our little demon out of mischief.

We’re still living with them, and probably will until they die. Which, we hope, won’t be for a long, long time. They’re our family now, and unless Rebekah and I make more Michaels—Holy One help us—the house is plenty big enough. Even if we have another baby or two, which I hope we don’t for at least a while, it would be better to build an addition than to move.

Zora and Abraham gave us a crash course in negotiating before we left, but Miriam and Edward will probably handle most of the business in Winnipeg—if there’s any business left to do there. We’re really just along for the company and the heavy lifting, and maybe some protection.  It’s said that there’s safety in numbers, but four isn’t much of a number. So we’re hoping it won’t come to that.

Winnipeg is a long way from Thunder Bay, a long way from the Coalition. But things haven’t been good there since the upheavals back home, and they’re getting worse, according to Abraham, Zora, Miriam and Edward. Their twice yearly reports have been increasingly grim. Which is why this will likely be the last time we ever see Winnipeg.

Funny, some part of me still thinks of Seneca Falls as home. Rebekah and I are very worried about our family there, especially my mother. But what can we do?

We’re told that Captain Blinn and the other smugglers haven’t been back to Winnipeg for years now. All ships have been confiscated by the government. So commerce has come to a standstill. And Edward says people are worried that there could be raids by Coalition forces.

It’s hard to believe that more than six hundred years after The Great Flood—which brought nothing good except an end to wars—people have to worry again about being attacked by hostile forces.

Or maybe it’s all just rumors.

But I think it’s important to find out what’s going on beyond New Eden.  Rebekah, too.  She’s always been fearless. That hasn’t changed. And, so far, the journey has been invigorating.

I’d almost forgotten how wonderful it is to make love under the stars.

Rebekah is still as fiery as her hair, which she wears in a long, thick braid down her back. It’s a very warm night and we’re both naked.

“Remember the first time we did this out in the open, that first night we ran away?” I ask, as I look up from kissing her, neck to navel, pausing briefly before continuing downward.

“As I recall, we didn’t exactly do it. Well, you did. I had my period and wanted to wait. But then you came all over my chest.”

“Oh, is that the way it was? And I suppose your fondling my pecker so brazenly had nothing to do with that?”

“I had no idea your penis would be that big. It boggled my mind. Is it that big tonight, David? Let me check it out.”

I start tickling her, and then she rolls over and tries to take me in her mouth, except we’re both laughing so hard by then, she ends up spitting me out. And then we get serious, and make love more intensely than we have in a long time.

With the sky above us, and the forest surrounding us, and a slight breeze on our backs, it feels as if we’re the only ones in the world.

Of course, Miriam and Edward are going at it on the other side of the wagon. But the sounds they make are indistinguishable from the other night sounds of animals and birds.

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am, how lucky we are, how different things would have been for both of us, if we behaved ourselves and did what was expected back in Seneca Falls. I guess it didn’t occur to us that our parents would be sick with worry—that we were deserting our families forever. That we could have gotten killed or worse. I don’t remember feeling guilty.

I wonder how Rebekah and I would feel if Michael someday puts himself in that kind of danger when he’s a stupid adolescent and thinks he knows everything. How would we like being abandoned by our child? Worrying about him every day he’s gone?

The Holy One only knows what kind of a world he’ll inherit. But New Eden, at least, is a far better place than we could ever have hoped, thanks to Her unprecedented blessings. A far better place than anywhere else.

“One more day of walking,” Edward announces in the morning. “You two sleep okay? Seemed like it was pretty noisy on the other side of the wagon.”

“Forest sounds, Edward. You must have heard forest sounds,” I tell him.

We’re planning to make the Birch and Bay our first stop in Winnipeg. With any luck, Grandma will be too busy doing whatever it is she does to make time for us. Then we’ll make the rounds of the shops that are still open.  We’re also hoping that at least one of the pharmaceutical factories is still operational. Rebekah’s got a long list of drugs the infirmary staff requested.

But New Eden can exist without what Winnipeg has to offer.

If the rest of the world leaves us alone, we’ll be fine. We can survive.

Whether the rest of the world can survive is another question.

Chapter 46

Rebekah

Slavers

Dora is my mother. I don’t want to leave her alone and lonely in Winnipeg.  Miriam and Edward wouldn’t object to bringing her back with us in the wagon. But she won’t go.

They’ve killed Tina. The slavers have killed Tina, and taken the rest of the Birch and Bay women and all the little girls they could find. All the females they could find everywhere.

I still can’t believe such a word as slaver exists.

They came in ships to Thunder Bay, and then, armed with knives and clubs and brute force, they trekked west looking for women. Any women. But they likely won’t come back. There are no more women to be had. No more women worth capturing anywhere, as far as they know.

But Dora is still here, and Willa—thank the Holy One—and David’s grandmother, and a few more, no doubt, hiding for their lives.

“We shouldn’t have come,” says Miriam.

She’s right. But here we are.

Dora hugs me when she sees me. Fiercely. I hug her back and we both start crying. Then she orders me to leave. Immediately.

“It’s not safe for you and Miriam to be here. There are still men in Winnipeg, local men, who are now completely without women. They’ve never before been violent. They weren’t able to muster any kind of defense against the slavers. But who knows what they’ll do now if they get wind of fresh females? Take Willa.  Please, just take Willa and go.”

Willa has survived thanks to her brother, Caleb. Caleb of the wide eyes and grubby little hands on my breast. Caleb who has grown tall and strong and fierce.

David’s grandmother has survived, I suppose, because not even the slavers wanted to mess with her. She and her husbands are living in the Birch and Bay.

We’ve agreed that Willa must go with us. Caleb, too. It will be good to have extra protection on the way back. And they’ve been raised to be monogamists. In time, I feel sure, they’ll fit in.

Dora could, too. An extra older woman, a widow, would be welcome enough. She loved only Tina sexually, and in every other way, for most of her life. It wouldn’t be held against her that she was compelled to have two husbands—my fathers—when she lived in the Coalition.

But Dora says she will stay in Winnipeg, what’s left of it, with the few old men who’ve been her employees forever. And with Anna Gardener, and her ever-faithful trio of husbands, Matt, Jeff and Lars, who spend their days scrounging for food and other supplies.

Many of the Winnipeg men have left to look for sustenance from the land beyond the city. To hunt, to scratch the earth for what it can provide. They need food to survive, even if they’re unlikely to survive for very long. Some may even have wandered as far as Eden Falls, stumbled upon it. There was rich farmland there. And women. No one in Winnipeg has seen anyone from Eden Falls since Jacob was cured of his lechery years ago. So who knows what’s left there.

It’s unclear whether the slavers found any of the monogamist settlements. Probably not. We would have heard if they raided any of the communities that have ties to New Eden. Most likely they were on the lookout for monogamist outposts on the way to Winnipeg, and on their way back. But the settlements are all nearly impossible to find by outsiders. And this part of the continent is vast.

The slavers came on three ships. That’s what Dora says she heard. And there were maybe fifty of them, riding into Winnipeg on sun-cycles, followed by a caravan of horses and wagons.

“It was like nothing anyone had ever seen,” says Dora. “Frightening. Unbelievable. Horrible.”

They attacked the pleasure establishments first.  When they came to the Birch and Bay, Tina fought back so fiercely, she was knifed as a result.

“I held her in my arms.  There was so much blood. We were both covered in her blood. They took all our girls. And they left me,” says Dora. “They decided I was too much bother to take, and too old anyway.”

“I’m so sorry,” I tell my mother when I find my voice to speak. “I’m so, so sorry. I liked Tina very much. She was a good woman, a friend.”

My eyes fill with tears again, and I embrace my mother.

It’s a miracle that Willa wasn’t taken. Caleb managed to hide her in the forest for the duration.

The captured women and girls were all herded together like animals. Some were tossed into the wagons, others were forced to walk. And then the slavers left.

That was two months ago.

Dora says she doesn’t think they’ll be back. There would be no point going to all that trouble again for what can only be a few stray women left.

But there are still men in Winnipeg hungry for women. So far, they’ve not been a problem. They’re just trying to survive. And they assume the slavers took all the women worth having. Which is almost the truth. Caleb snuck Willa back to the Birch and Bay after the slavers left, and she’s stayed hidden.

“I should have gone to help Marjorie,” says Willa. “I wanted to.”

“You couldn’t have helped her. You couldn’t have stopped her. You would only have put yourself in danger. Marjorie would want you to be safe,” Dora tells her. Probably for the hundredth time. “You know that.”

The slavers didn’t kill the grumpy old doctor who was always so kind to Willa. Like Tina, she lashed out at them. But they didn’t bother knifing her. Caleb found her later, lying on the ground outside her clinic. Apparently, in her fury, she’d had a stroke and died shortly after.

There’s nothing for us to do now but unload our wine, which will at least bring some comfort to Dora and the others left at the Birch and Bay, and head back to New Eden as quickly as possible.

David’s grandmother insists that she would be a fine addition to our community, and begs us to take her with us. We gratefully leave it to Miriam and Edward to refuse.

“We’re very sorry, Mrs. Gardener, but New Eden is strictly monogamous,” says Edward. “We’re very sorry for your misfortune here, but we could never welcome a woman with three husbands.”

“I’ll leave my husbands here,” she offers.

“Yes, but you’re still married to three men, and we can’t take you with us,” says Miriam.

David sits with Anna—she’s his grandmother, after all—and tries to console her. He tells her that she has a great-grandson, that at least her family is continuing. She doesn’t seem too impressed. He asks for news about Seneca Falls, but she has nothing to offer.

Dora, though, smiles when I describe Michael to her.

“Maybe someday you’ll have a girl,” she says. “I did.”

“Yes. Maybe someday. I’ll think of you, Mama.”

Mama. Did I really call her Mama? Why not? What does it hurt?

“I love you, Rebekah,” she says. “My life doesn’t amount to very much now. Not without Tina. But at least you’re alive and well and living someplace sane.  Knowing that is enough.”

“I love you, too,” I whisper in her ear.

And then we’re off.

Chapter 47

David

          Hypothetically

There are no mathematicians in New Eden. No one trained to figure out weighty problems involving numbers. But some of us, lately, have been pondering a hypothetical question to which there’s maybe no answer.

Okay. Not some of us. Mostly just me, as far as I can tell. But it’s been on my mind a lot. Rebekah listens as long as she’s able. And with others, it’s sometimes a good conversation starter. Usually also a good conversation ender. But when wine is involved, friends tend to tolerate my musings for a while.

Here’s the question: If the sex ratio in the Coalition doesn’t improve, or gets worse, how long will it take before the population there shrivels to nothing?

When Rebekah and I left, there was only a one in six chance of a girl being born. Everyone talked about it, worried about, tried to fix it.

Things obviously aren’t any better now, or the depraved shits in power wouldn’t have resorted to sending slavers to capture women as far away as Winnipeg.

So how long can this go on?

If, hypothetically, all fertile women in the Coalition give birth once a year, and every seventh birth results in a girl, and every woman has fourteen children, what would happen in, say, twenty years?

“Nothing good,” says Gordon. “And you’re making my head hurt, David. There’s nothing we can do about it anyway.”

“Who has fourteen children?” asks Abraham. “No woman in her right mind has fourteen children.”

“I know. It’s just hypothetical,” I say. “I’m just trying to get my mind around what might be happening in the Coalition, what could be happening. In the future, you know? In the rest of the world.”

We’re sitting outside after dinner, drinking wine. Caleb, too. Until recently, the rest of the world was not of great concern to the people of New Eden. But the fact that slavers have captured women in Winnipeg, and maybe other places, has everyone more than a little on edge.

“Are we going to be all that’s left?” I ask.

“Would it be so bad?” replies Abraham. “If the Holy One wants to leave it to us to repopulate Her Earth, then we’ll repopulate the Earth.”

He takes another sip of wine and smiles.

“Well, not me personally. Zora and I have already done what we can. We’re more than happy to keep trying, of course, but I think we’re a bit too old now to help out with any more populating. Generally speaking, though, what else do we have to do here over the next 600 or a thousand years? Life will go on, David.”

“But why here? Why just you people? I mean, why us?” asks Caleb. Sometimes he forgets that he’s one of us now.  He’s taking this conversation to heart, happy to be included.

“Why does The Designer—I mean the Holy One—like New Eden better than anyplace else?”

“You like it better than anyplace else, don’t you?” I tease.

That’s putting it mildly. Caleb thought he’d landed in paradise when we brought him and Willa here.  All it took was the sight of bare female breasts in the open air to turn him into New Eden’s happiest new citizen, and a true believer to boot.

But I know what he means.

“This is the best place there is,” says Caleb, with a very serious expression on his face. “I know that. I just don’t understand how come girls aren’t rare here. No matter how many people I ask, and how many people say it’s because of the Holy One, it still doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Yeah, well not everything makes sense, my boy,” says Gordon. “Like David’s hypothetical question about fertile Coalition women. Things just are the way they are.”

There was some talk, when we got back from Winnipeg, about whether it would be necessary to prepare to defend ourselves.  But taking up arms of any kind goes against what people here believe.

New Eden is not a place where doctrine is foisted upon others. But there are two tenets which everyone agrees cannot be messed with: Sex must only be for loving monogamous couples, and violence can never be tolerated.

We think what will save us from attack is the fact that no outsider has any idea women are not rare here.

For all the rest of the world knows, New Eden and the other settlements like ours have the same ever-dwindling supply of females as everywhere else.

No one has any reason to suspect that things are different here. We’re in the middle of nowhere, off every beaten path. We’ve taken care of the occasional wanderer with spiked wine. And we have no expectation that armed hordes will suddenly appear.

Word has filtered to us from some of the other settlements like ours.  They’ve heard about the slavers, and know there may be desperate men at large from Winnipeg and thereabouts. But they’re not overly concerned either.

Sailing across two Great Lakes again, and then trekking across half a continent to collect maybe a handful or two of women from places that are nearly impossible to find, can’t make much sense to anyone in the Coalition. No matter how desperate things get. And the Winnipeg men are just trying to stay alive.

We won’t be going back to the city, not even out of curiosity, for a long, long time.

So, as Abraham says, life goes on.

But I do think of our family back home. My mother, my fathers, my brothers.  What’s become of them, now that crazy, desperate men are in control of the Coalition?

I remember a history lesson from when I was in school.  After the fall of the Roman Empire, there was a long period in Europe during which civilization seemed to go backwards.  It was called The Dark Ages, as I recall.  It was a bad time, intellectually, economically, philosophically.  There were plagues. Something called The Black Death.  Maybe the population shrank then, too.

But then, eventually, another era replaced it. I remember there was something called The Renaissance, and then later, The Enlightenment. There was progress in the form of inventions, discoveries, and cultural things like art, music and literature.

All of this happened way, way before The Great Flood. And not everything got better, obviously. There were wars, always wars, one worse than the other, no matter what the era happened to be.

I wonder why it is that people have always been so inclined to hurt each other and behave so badly in the end. As a whole, anyway. There are probably always good, peaceful people around. Just not enough to make up for the nasty ones who are motivated by greed and power.

Gordon is right. Not everything makes sense. And now I’m making my own head hurt, thinking about this stuff.

Better to think about things right here, where life, by just about any measure, is very good.

“We’re going to make adjustments to the hydro system today,” I tell Caleb in the morning, as we walk to work.

He nods. He’s as tall as I am now, and an eager trainee. He’s almost a grown man, I realize, like my brother Simon would be.

Caleb has been living with us since Winnipeg. His sister is staying with Miriam and Edward.

“Hey, David,” he says, evidently not inclined to discuss the hydro system, “when you’re in love here, you can get married. Right?”

“Yeah,” I say, cautiously, knowing what he’s probably going to say next.”

“Well, I’m really in love with Lily. Do you think I’ll be able to marry her?”

“You know you’re still a little idiot, don’t you, Caleb?”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “But I really do love Lily.”

“What do you love about her, Caleb?  Besides her perky young breasts and pretty face, I mean?”

“No. It’s not that. Not just that,” he insists. “Anyway, the weather is cool now, so she’s always covered up.”

Caleb spends most of his free time now visiting Willa, who just happens to be living in the same house as Lily.

“You’re a little younger than Lily, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” he says. “But you’re a little younger than Rebekah, aren’t you?”

“Listen, Caleb, love is a very serious business here.  It’s nothing to mess around with. You can’t go putting your hands on Lily. Not like you did that one time with Rebekah. You have to control your urges.”

“I was just a kid then,” he says. “I thought you forgave me.”

I did. Sort of. But I’m not going to tell him that.

“Have you told Lily how you feel?” I ask.

“No. Not yet. We’re never alone.”

Well, that’s good, anyway.

“But there’s something between us,” he insists. “She feels it, too. I’m sure of it.  We brush up against each other, accidentally, whenever we can. We look at each other. It’s like she’s looking right into my soul. I don’t think I can live without her.”

So.  Maybe it is meant to be.

“If you love Lily, and she loves you, and you’re both absolutely sure that you want to be with each other and only with each other for the rest of your lives, you better get everything all talked out with Lily and her parents. Sex is forever here, Caleb. Marriage is forever.”

“I know. But, listen. I’ve had sex in Winnipeg. With a pleasure woman. Does that count? Does that mean Lily won’t have me?”

“I don’t know, Caleb. If she loves you, she’ll probably have you. Go talk to her after work. Talk to Miriam and Edward.”

I hope he does get married to Lily, and quickly. It’ll be good to have the big lump out of our house.

Life is complicated. It’s unpredictable. It’s impossible to know whether it’s even continuing in a place that now seems a lifetime away.

But here, it goes on. And that’s nothing but good.