The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

Chapter Ten

December 26

Jodi went into labor early this morning. Knew it was coming on, so just watched. Going to have a bad time.

December 27

She’s exhausted. Only two fingers dilated. Walked her until she cried and begged to lie down. On her side now. Have misoprostol but so far she’s refused it. Can’t c-section, she’d never survive. Sent Honus in to talk her into the drugs if he can. Ate something. Gonna lay my head down for a few minutes and then go back in there.

December 28

Fucking mess.

Knew it would end this way. Fucking knew it. Don’t know why I let their hope get to me. Stupid.

Two feet of snow outside and frozen ground, we can’t even bury the body. They named it. No point in writing it down. No point in naming it. She was right, it was a boy. No point no point.

Can’t talk them into cremation. Told Honus the kid can’t be in the house, and if we cover it with snow or put it in a box, animals may find it. He just about puked when I said it, but wouldn’t budge on the idea of burial.

Jodi lost a lot of blood. Hard birth. Repaired the tearing while she was passed out, then gave her a shot to kill the pain and put her out. She didn’t consent to it. Don’t give a shit. Needs to rest.

New Year’s Day

Honus and I cremated the baby last night. He had some time alone with the body while I built the pyre. We did it down the road a ways so that Jodi won’t see. He’s going to tell her we buried the kid, and plant flowers there in the spring. Plan to be gone by then.

Burned quick. Not much there, and we poured lighter fluid on the base to help it along. Held Honus while he sobbed.

Jodi is not recovering well. Can’t blame her for not wanting to, right now. Dragged the kiddie pool outside, drained so much blood out of it… weird to see it all collected. Poured it out on to the snow. Still warm, and the red spread and steamed. Stared at it. Bloom bloom red the last rose. Rose red. Snow white.

She’s weak, thready pulse, distraught. The two of us are tending her all day. The house is silent except that I can hear them both crying through their bedroom doors. Alone.

Each and every one of us = last person on earth.

* * * * *

Chronicles were written all over the world. Some were diaries, like the Book of the Unnamed Midwife. Others were histories of cities and settlements as the years moved by. Each marked time in their own way. Some were read, others lay forever forgotten when their owners stopped writing.

* * * * *

The New Year went largely unmarked, except in these books. Times Square lay silent under a dusting of snow, stirred by the wind now and again. A small group in upstate New York marked the day a week later, guessing. Five men clinked glasses together in a toast to something none of them believed in anymore.

* * * * *

On that same blistering hot day, a pair of sisters swam near the foot of Iguazu Falls on the border between Argentina and Brazil. The two of them had not seen another human being in more than a month. They stripped off their clothes and swam for hours, watching the water’s surface flashing in the sun.

* * * * *

A harem of three women in the Ukraine chose that day to kill their captor. They celebrated, but not because it was a holiday.

* * * * *

The limited government that still functioned in Seoul appointed new guards to the facility housing the remaining two hundred and forty two women left in the country. The previous guards had been publicly shot.

* * * * *

The winter killed many, with cold and isolation and loneliness. The Huntsville ward moved all survivors into the Bishop’s large house. Bishop Graves had died of a massive heart attack, so Patty had been married to Bishop Lewis, who had been appointed on his twenty-sixth birthday.

* * * * *

If they could have compared notes, one colony of survivors to another, they would have found that the number of successful human births on earth that year had been zero. But they did not know, and so hope persisted.

* * * * *

Jodi had been in bed for six days when Dusty brought her Christmas presents to her.

“Hey, you don’t have to get up and you don’t have to talk. I wish you’d eat, but I can’t make you. So I thought you might like something comforting. The batteries are all charged up.”

She arranged the batteries and DVDs on the bed, and left Jodi a couple of granola bars. Jodi did not respond, even by opening her eyes. Dusty knew she was awake.

An hour later, Jodi had sat up and put her headphones on. When Honus went to check on her, she refused to look at him. The granola bars were untouched. The screen showed long-dead people dancing in a club. He kissed her on the top of her head and closed her door.

Dusty sat on the living room sofa, reading. Honus sat beside her, put his elbows on his knees, and buried his face in his hands.

“She’ll come out of it,” Dusty said to her book.

“She’s going to die. She wants to be with the baby. She’s going to leave me, too.” Honus’ voice was thick with tears.

Dusty was sick to death of this pain. She was awash in her own grief and terror. She thought Honus was right and Jodi would die, but it was such a small thing beside her dawning certainty that no children would ever be born again.

Never again never again look upon this wasteland.

She wanted out of her head so bad that she considered going raiding for enough alcohol to get blackout drunk and stay that way a while.

Honus’ long frame sagged. His posture was all grief, and even his silence was leaden. His misery felt like a weight on her and it was all she could do to keep from screaming at him. She sat, staring into her book but not reading, deciding that she would pack up and move to another house in the neighborhood. She tried to remember which ones still held food in the pantry.

Honus pulled her book out of her hands. She looked at him and tried to conceal her anger. His eyes were enormous, red-rimmed and bright blue. He hadn’t shaved in a few days. He looked for once more like a man than a boy.

“Please,” he begged her.

“What?” She could barely get it out.

He crawled into her lap with an urgency that woke everything in her. Heat poured into her body from some unknown spring and she flushed all over. He clung to her like a child and she was mother and lover and barely sane.

He cried like he would break and molded himself to her. She found herself shushing him like a frightened child and laying down to hold him prone. The couch was an awkwardly small space and the two of them barely fit its width, even pressed together. He lay his face in the crook of her neck and sobbed.

She held him while a wild stabbing need ran through her body like a triangular circuit, current carried from her nipples to her clit and back again. She was out of her mind. Grief and rage and sex came together in waves of wordless ache.

She kissed him.

She kissed him and it was like a knot being untied. She tasted his tears and felt his groan in her mouth, felt him shake and harden at once.

A few gasping flurries of clothing and he was inside her without preamble. She didn’t care. She was as wet as she had ever been and they ground their hips together, legs held by jeans only half rolled down. She rocked and rocked and came against him, squeezing him tight. She bit his shoulder and stifled a scream. He buried his face in her neck and whimpered as she felt him throb it out inside her. She held him as they calmed, but she could already feel him pulling away.

He rolled off the couch and knelt, fastening his pants and straightening his shirt. He glanced nervously down the hallway.

Dusty lay on her back and zipped her jeans. Done cannot be undone, and there was nothing either of them could say.

Honus walked down the hall and closed his bedroom door. Dusty did the same, and slept better and deeper than she had in months.

January 5

We keep saying that it can’t happen again, that we shouldn’t and she’s going to know. But we do and I don’t know if she does. We are assholes.

After the first time I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but he comes to my room most nights around midnight. Talk and fuck and talk again. Never had anyone teach him anything. Never even done it any way but missionary. Fucking a missionary. Joke funny hahaha. Loves when I show him something new but his guilt just gets deeper. Don’t know what to do about it.

Jodi is not getting better. Refusing to eat. Healing slowly, not like she should. Doesn’t want me looking. Won’t let Honus touch her. Woke us both up screaming the other night that the baby wasn’t dead but we had hidden him from her. Inconsolable = had to knock her out.

Still want to leave but the snow doesn’t let up and Honus says it will break his heart. Don’t know that I have a heart to break. Don’t love him, just something more along the line of a need. Somewhere to pour all the things that I feel besides this book. Relief. Is that so bad? Would Jodi be angry if she knew it was only a comfort? Rationalizing. Of course she would. Betrayed. But at least I have no intention of stealing him.

Why steal men these days? Men = dime a dozen.

They always were.

* * * * *

Fuck, Jodi. I’m sorry.

The snow stopped and rain took its place. Downpour washed away the white and dripped off every edge of the house. A small leak started in the kitchen and Honus patched it with plastic as best he could. They still had to keep a pan in the place where it dripped.

Jodi came back slowly, but preferred to watch her movies all day. She didn’t want to speak or eat with them. She put up with small hugs from Honus, but she would not allow Dusty to touch her. Her eyes were large with dark circles beneath and she grew thinner by the day. She did not get out of bed.

Dusty and Honus lay in her bed one night listening to the rain pattering on the roof. Some nights it was loud, like living inside a drum. Tonight it was milder, but enough that they couldn’t sleep. She had fucked him four times, each time thinking he would wear out and fall asleep. He didn’t.

“What’s going to happen?”

“Happen to what, Honus?”

“To us. To you and me and Jodi and everybody in the world. What are we going to do?”

“I’m going to move on in the spring to somewhere I can settle down permanently. Somewhere safe with less snow and maybe where I can grow things. You two will probably go back to Huntsville, since it’s what you know.”

“So that’s it, then?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You won’t stay with me? We could be married. All three of us.”

“Oh god.”

“What? It’s not that bad. I love you, you know.”

“I know.”

“That’s it?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Say that you love me too, Dusty. Jeez. I know you do. You wouldn’t be with me like this if you didn’t.”

She stared at the ceiling. She thought about Jack, who she had loved. The way they had treated each other, how they had known each other. This was not that.

“Well?”

“You don’t even know my name. Look, you love Jodi. You two can have a life together. We… all three of us, we got stuck together. If things hadn’t happened this way, we probably never would have met.”

“But we did meet. I believe that God sent Jodi to you for a reason.”

She sighed. “Maybe I kept her from dying in childbirth. Maybe. But your reasoning sucks. God killed most of the people on Earth with a plague so that we could have all this? God sent you here to sleep with me and ruin your marriage? God set you up to burn the body of your first child?”

He didn’t answer.

“Not everything has a meaning. Maybe there is no plan. Maybe there’s no reason we met, and we’re fucking because we were both really frustrated and lonely.”

“I can’t believe you think that way.”

“I can’t believe you still think there’s a plan.”

“So what if you get pregnant? We’ve been making love for a while, without any… protection.”

She got up off the bed and grabbed her old pack. She ripped it open to show him her cache of pills and rings and patches.

“This is my plan. This is what makes sense to me. Not dying while giving birth to a dead baby. I’m going to try and give them to your wife before I leave, because without someone to attend her, she might not get through this again. So there is no ‘what if.’ Don’t worry about it. What you need to worry about is that your wife may be the only woman in the county or in the state after I leave. That should worry you.”

“What do you think will happen? Someone will—“

“Kill you. Rape her. Maybe make you watch. Maybe you’ll go back to Huntsville and you’ll have an accident so that someone else can marry her. I’ve seen what it’s like out there. As long as you’ve got her, you’ve got trouble.”

“Then you’re in just as much danger. Why not stay and let me—“

“Let you protect me. While your wife hates my guts because I let her baby die and then fucked her husband. That sounds grand, when do we start?”

“Why are you being like this?”

“I don’t belong here. I can’t stay. Just please let this be what it is. Don’t try to make it last forever.”

They lay and the sound of the rain talked over them.

“What is your real name?”

“What did you name the baby?”

Honus got up and left.

January 10

Want to leave in the middle of the night without a word. Don’t owe anything. Not even an explanation. Want to run the fuck away from all of this. From everything. Toward nothing. Where do I go? For what, to who? Honus isn’t an answer, this doesn’t fix anything. Honus = placebo.

Grow carrots. Eat carrots. Shit carrots. Die. That’s the best thing I can imagine. And the last generation of humanity winds down to zero. Got into the wrong business after graduation. Profession is doomed.

Can’t leave without a word. Can’t leave them raw like Roxanne left me. Can’t be a mystery like Jack is a mystery. Make them hate me, or leave with grace. Hate is easier.

Get her to take the shot. Give her enough to share. Tell her not to give it to that Patty kid until menarche. Not sure she can handle it, or will do it at all. Have to try. Prolong life preserve quality of life fight for life FOR WHAT FOR WHAT FOR WHAT

If I do it now, there won’t be any snow to show it. Get away from the house, let the rain wash me away. They’d never find me. Leave without my pack and they’ll know. Leave with only the gun and they’ll know. Do it with a needle and they might not know. No. No. No.

Not gonna do it. Can’t come up with a good reason except the awful fucking awful way I feel, but not gonna do it. Fuck a reason why. There never was a reason why. Making copies is not a reason why. Now until the end is mine, and I won’t spend it in misery/boredom/terror.

Gonna leave. Soon. But won’t punish them with it. Don’t deserve that.

* * * * *

Dusty woke up in the morning and the two of them were crying in Jodi’s room together. She walked to the door. It was open, but she stood in the doorway without entering.

They sat together on Jodi’s bed, sobbing. It took them a while to notice her. Honus stood up when he did, rubbing his hands on the legs of his pants.

“She had a nightmare.”

Dusty nodded. Jodi looked like she’d been crying all night, but she looked alive. Alert.

“Do you want to try and eat something?”

Jodi nodded, but she did not look up.

Dusty walked away to the kitchen. She was planning to carry the plates back to the bedroom but Jodi and Honus came quietly to the kitchen table. Dusty made them powdered milk to drink and sat down with her solitary cup of coffee, eyeing them both with a weary dread.

Jodi drank milk and ate a forkful of egg. Honus cleaned his plate as always.

“So, did you decide to live?”

Jodi looked up. “What?”

Dusty was not in the mood to talk at the speed she normally set for conversations with Jodi.

“Did you decide to live instead of dying slowly in that bed? Are you going to live, or are you just going to have breakfast before you die?”

“It’s not like a decision. I’m just alive. I didn’t decide anything.”

“Bullshit.” She drank her coffee.

Stubbornly, Jodi ate another forkful of egg.

Honus cleared his throat and pushed his plate away. “Jodi… we both think we should go back to Huntsville. Not now, when she’s stronger. I’m going to look around for a car, but we might end up having to walk.

Dusty nodded. It was what she predicted they’d do.

“You could come with us…” Honus looked at Dusty and she couldn’t look away.

“Go on.”

“You’d be welcome in Huntsville. You’d…we’d have to tell them… You couldn’t fool them forever.”

“Mhmm. And then I entertain suitors.”

“The bishop would…”

Dusty started to laugh. “Show me where to get my white dress. I can’t wait.”

“What are you going to do, Dusty? Where are you going to go?”

“Not Huntsville.” She sipped her coffee.

“Can’t you just…” Honus was not crying yet, but she could see it coming.

I can’t and you can’t. Jodi needs you and I don’t. Get the hint, Honus.

“I had a nightmare.” Jodi was staring at the middle of the table, at nothing. “I had a nightmare about the two of you. Honus was cheating on me with you. Isn’t that weird?”

“That’s really weird, Jodi. Why do you think you dreamt that?”

Honus’ face had lost all its color. He sat rigidly in place and did not speak.

“I guess I had been thinking about the baby for so long—“ Her voice caught on the word ‘baby,’ but she pushed through it. “That I forgot I have a husband. And I love him, and he needs my attention. You know?”

“Yes, that makes sense.” She was cold. Completely cold, in her veins and in her heart there was nothing but cold, cold water.

“Like, I know it would never really happen because you’re gay and stuff.”

“Am I now?”

Jodi ignored her. “But still, I woke up really mad. Like really mad. So I woke up Honus and told him we had to move on. Try again.”

“Try again?”

“Once I’ve healed. We can try again to have a baby.”

“I see.” Dusty drained her coffee cup. “I have a counter-offer. I have drugs that will help you—“

“No. I’m not going to take birth control in this world. This world needs babies more than it needs anything else.”

“I can give it to you. In case you change your mind.”

“I’m not going to. I’m sure that Honus and I will have a baby that will live. I don’t want it.”

“You might change your mind if you live through another one like this.”

Jodi’s eyes reddened. “That won’t happen again.”

“No. You’re right. Next time, without any help, you’ll probably die. Duty done, punch out. I tried to have babies who would die but instead I did the dying myself. Hang a wreath around me, call me saint. Call me mama.”

Jodi got up so suddenly that her chair shot out behind her. “You’re just jealous! You’re just jealous of me and Honus because you have nobody!”

I could tell her now and it would destroy them both. Take the last thing I know that hasn’t fallen apart and crumble it. For what?

Dusty did not move. She stared into her empty coffee cup. “If only I had my own sexless marriage and dead baby. Then I could be like you. You’re right. You have so much and I wish, Jodi. I wish.”

“Dusty.” Honus spoke to her as though punishment was his to give.

Dad’s mad. Fuck you.

“Fuck you both,” she said rising from the table. “Go when you want. I am done giving a shit. Don’t worry about your nightmare, Jodi. Your husband is as uninterested in sex as you are. Save it for procreation. He doesn’t care.”

She walked out of the room and went to the back of the house. She started to pack.

* * * * *

The house was silent. Dusty dreamed of Roxanne, who spoke in Jack’s voice. “Hey, sweets. Let’s walk the bridge?”

“Where are we going?”

“With the chicken.”

She turned around and saw they were on the Golden Gate Bridge, and Chicken was there, holding Joe’s hand.

“To get to the other side,” he said sullenly.

* * * * *

Jodi dreamed of her baby boy. If she sat him down, she could watch him and see him smile. He made sweet little gurgling noise and she ached all over. When she picked him up, she was only holding a twisted-up blanket. She woke up alone in her bed and cried softly until she drifted back out to sleep.

* * * * *

Honus dreamed that he was with Jodi, but Jodi wanted him with the heat and abandon that Dusty had shown. Her belly was round and tight between them and he knew that the child would be a girl.

“We’ll have to sell her.” Jodi was Dusty, her face changed and her voice was no one’s. Her lips didn’t move. “If we sell her she’ll be safe.”

“We can’t do that.”

“We can do it in Mexico.” Jodi was naked, but out of reach. Receding. Receding. Out of reach.

* * * * *

Somehow the three of them knew that today would be the day. At first light they were all up and making ready.

Jodi found Dusty in the pantry.

“Hey, I was going to pack up most of this, since you guys are headed to Huntsville. But if there’s anything you want, you can have it.”

“You hate powdered eggs anyways.”

Dusty did not turn to face her. “I do. You can definitely have those. The Ovaltine, too.”

“Hey. Dusty?”

She turned this time.

“Nevermind.” Jodi left the kitchen.

I never did.

Dusty walked back to her room and passed Honus in the hallway. He was carrying a bag out to the front porch. It looked as though the Obermeyers were packing light.

Dusty grabbed a rifle and a box of shells and followed him out.

“Take this.”

“I don’t need it.”

“You don’t know what you’ll need. Maybe you’ll hunt with it.”

He took it uncertainly and gently set the butt of it down on the ground. “I don’t know how to use it.”

“Jodi does. I taught her the basics. Just take it, ok?”

“Ok.”

She stalked back in. When she came into the living room, she was ready to go. She was carrying more than she wanted to and she knew she would not go far today.

Honus had his hand on Jodi’s shoulder. “Go ahead.”

Jodi looked sullen. “I… should thank you. You probably did save my life. Thank you. Like really, thank you.”

Dusty looked from Jodi to Honus. “You don’t have to thank me. It’s just what I do. You also don’t have to do anything Honus tells you. Not now, not ever. He needs you way more than you need him. Think about that.”

She turned to him, suddenly. “Could you leave us alone for a minute? Just step out on the porch. One sec.” She turned back to Jodi without waiting for an answer. Dismissed by Dusty’s eyes, Honus stepped out.

She pulled a brick of plastic cartridges out of her bag. “This is enough birth control for three years. You just take one a day. It’s very simple.”

Jodi did not reach for the banded bundle. “I told you, I’m not going to-“

“Listen, listen. Just listen to me for one second and then you won’t ever have to do it again. Something bad is going to happen. I guarantee it will. Probably it’s going to happen to Honus, and you’re going to have to deal with a lot of guys. Maybe they’ll be ok, maybe they won’t.”

“It won’t! You don’t know.”

Dusty glared. “Fine then, I’m crazy and nothing has changed and you’ll be in charge of bake sales forever. In case you’re not, hide these somewhere. And if you end up with someone who isn’t Honus, maybe who isn’t a nice person, you have the option to not go through this again. Or maybe if you and Honus are unlucky again, you’ll want to take a year or two off from this horror. Or give it to Patty when she gets her blood. Just fucking take them. Take them. Just to remind yourself that you have the option. Ok?”

Jodi accepted them finally, and when she looked up Dusty could see she was crying. “You don’t understand. It isn’t going to be like that. Everything’s going to be…” Jodi lost her breath, strangling to hold in sobs.

“Wonderful. Everything is wonderful. Be careful, Jodi. Keep your eyes open.” The impulse to hug her was strong, despite everything. She was tired of them, but still it tore a little.

Honus came back in and Jodi went out. She did not say goodbye.

As soon as the door closed, Honus took Dusty in his arms. He crushed her to him and she was turned on, all the way up, instantly ready. He kissed her and she shook. She pulled back from him, disgust beginning to well up within her.

“Come with us. Please come with us. Don’t let it end like this. We’ll work it out.”

“Honus, don’t embarrass yourself. We’re done here.”

His face went white.

“Look, you’re a coward. You’ll never really be honest with Jodi, not about you or me or anything else. You don’t know how. I think you married her so that you’d never have to try too hard.”

“That’s not why.”

“Shhh. Almost done. What I told you will happen, about someone trying to take her from you, that’s going to happen. That will happen soon. Watch your back, don’t go on any mysterious errands or hunting trips. Don’t trust anyone. Remember that you have the one thing that everyone wants.”

He was shaking his head, grinning. “I knew you loved me. I knew it. You wouldn’t be so worried if you didn’t.”

“That’s not why.”

“Why, then? Why do you even care?” He smiled like a man who knows he has won.

“Because you’re both helpless. This is like helping a kitten get out of a tree. It’s not love, it’s pity. Just try to stay alive, ok?”

Smile gone, he reached out to take her hand. She had cut her hair down to nothing and bound and bundled. She shifted her pack on to her shoulders and ignored his gesture.

“Come on, Dusty. Come on.”

She looked back to him and put her hand out. He held it awkwardly and they stared at one another.

After a moment, he let go. She adjusted her pack and headed to the door. The house seemed dingy with their shared life. Outside of it, she felt the twin dawning of loneliness and relief.

“You know where we’ll be.” Honus raised his hand in farewell.

“I know. Goodbye.” She turned her back and started to walk. They watched her a minute before turning to head to Huntsville.

* * * * *

The Obermeyers were welcomed warmly at the stake center. Nothing was made of their absence and they were not asked to explain it. Less than a dozen in Huntsville had survived. Jodi was the third woman. The ratio of men to women was closer, but competition had increased. Close living quarters and desperation had made the congregation touchy and ragged.

Bishop Lewis was jealous of Patty to the point that no one saw her. She was as closeted as she had ever been, and spent her days sewing and mending for the household. Sister Sterling told Jodi first when the day came that following summer that Patty had gotten her first period. Jodi’s thoughts ran to the untouched brick of pills Dusty had given her, but she said nothing.

Jodi miscarried twice that year. Both times it was early, and she had told no one. She put them out of mind as hard late periods. Not children. Just blood. Just cramps and a few tired days.

Two more suicides slipped out in the night. Bishop Lewis was furious and began setting a night watch so that no one could get away from the house they all shared. The house was old, built more than a hundred years before. Young men were bunked together in twos and threes in the old servants’ quarters. Jodi and Honus had a small room to themselves close to the master suite.

They were the first to know when Lewis started having sex with Patty. The crying went on and on, even when the shrieking had stopped.

The night watches failed and little by little people dispersed. Two young men one night and three the next. The weather was warming up and they were close to other small towns where they knew they could settle.

By August, the three couples remained. The Sterlings were badly matched and hardly spoke to one another. Lewis and the hollow-eyed Patty behaved around each other as predator and prey. Jodi and Honus grew insular, spending all their time together, trying to live inside a bubble that kept out the rest of the world.

Sister Sterling was gone one day and her husband raged after her in a car, determined to bring her back. Neither one returned. In the fall, Honus asked Jodi to leave with him.

Jodi had a moment alone with Patty. She gave the girl a laundry basket full of clothes she told her needed mending. They were old clothes she didn’t want anymore.

Inside them was the entire three year supply.

Honus and Jodi opened the front door and walked out that night as the full moon rose. Without a word, they walked back to the house where they had spent the last winter. It was exactly the way they had left it. They set about provisioning the house for the winter.

Honus searched and searched for a sign of Dusty, for anything she had left behind. He had a wild hope that he would find a note from her like he had once found from his wife. Unidentifiable hairs in the shower drain, anonymous finger smudges on the doorframe. Books she must have touched but had left no trace. He and Jodi slept together in the room that had once been only hers. He sat in Dusty’s room sometimes, to think. He pulled open her dresser drawers one day and found neatly folded in the top drawer the pajamas he had given her for Christmas. He touched them gently and closed the drawer.

The Obermeyers celebrated Christmas again that year, but it felt hollow. Honus brought his wife more DVDs and batteries, she surprised him with a very nice pocketknife. They sang the same songs and lit the same tree. They both felt like hell, and they talked long into the night.

“It’s not right. It wasn’t enough. We shouldn’t have left her there.”

“What wasn’t enough?” Honus didn’t understand.

“Never mind. We have to go get her. We have to.”

“You’re right. I’m scared to do it, but you’re right.”

They went out and started up the snowmobile. They rode back into Huntsville and let themselves in the unlocked door of the house. It was silent and dark. They crept up the stairs. Patty and Lewis were in a king bed, feet of distance between them. The girl slept curled tight into a ball. Jodi held the rifle and aimed it at Lewis. Honus woke Patty up quietly. She opened her eyes wide at his first touch. She scrambled out of bed naked and stood blue-white in the starlight that came through the window.

“Who’s there?” Lewis was awake and peering into the dark.

“It’s Jodi and Honus Obermeyer. We’re taking Patty to live with us.” Jodi sounded surer than she felt. She had her finger on the rifle’s trigger, but she had forgotten to load it.

“You can’t take my wife.” Lewis was struggling up out of bed. He was a young man, but he was working on an impressive beard already. He wore white shorts and had to feel on the nightstand for his glasses.

Honus had found a nightgown and dropped it over Patty’s head. She raised her arms obediently, letting him dress her like a doll. “Do you want to stay here?”

Patty couldn’t answer. Her eyes were pure terror.

“See, she’s fine. Now you two go on back to wherever you came from.” He stared at the barrel of the rifle while he spoke.

Honus picked Patty up off her feet. She weighed nothing at all. He held her to his chest and she was rigid, trembling.

Honus walked out the bedroom door and Jodi inched backwards to follow.

“Who do you think you are? You can’t just come in here and—“

“She’s just a kid! What you’re doing is wrong and you know it.”

“She’s a woman, and she’s my wife. When she’s older she’ll understand better. It’s just hard for her to understand right now.”

Jodi was still moving backwards. “Don’t follow us or I’ll shoot. Stay right here.” She turned and slammed the door behind her. She bolted down the stairs to the snowmobile where Honus had Patty on the seat behind him and Jodi got on after so that the two of them held her there.

As they pulled away, they saw Lewis come out the front door yelling, waving his arms at them. Honus prayed that he didn’t have a gun. There was no sound of a shot.

They made it home and got Patty dressed and drinking hot Ovaltine in front of the tree. It took Lewis hours to follow their tracks back to Eden. He rattled the doorknob, screaming.

Honus took the rifle and loaded it. “Go to the back of the house.” Jodi took Patty to the back bedroom and the two of them sat in the closet. Honus opened the door.

“She’s staying with us, and you’re going to leave.” He held the rifle low, but kept it pointed toward Lewis.

Lewis was shivering. His cheeks were red and his glasses were fogged. “Don’t be ridiculous. I am your bishop and she is my wife.”

“You’re not our bishop anymore. We—“ The gun went off as his nervous hand squeezed it. The shot hit Lewis in his hip and he went down, wheezing. Honus dropped the gun in shock and stared. Jodi ran out to them.

“Oh my gosh. You shot him!”

Honus could only stare.

“What do we do?”

He shook his head and his jaw worked, but no sound came out.

“Shoot him again.” It was Patty. They both turned to look. Patty stood there as if she had not spoken.

“I can’t. I can’t.” Honus was approaching hysteria. He was gasping tiny breaths, his chest hitching.

Patty picked up the gun and looked at it. It was nearly as tall as she was, and she had never handled one before. Gently, Jodi took it from her. She worked the bolt and took a deep breath. She aimed at Lewis’ head and pulled the trigger. The hole was small but blood gushed out, staining the snow.

Honus sat down hard and his eyelashes fluttered. He grayed out.

Jodi put the rifle beside the door and pushed Patty back inside. Then she helped Honus to stumble to the couch. She locked the door.

“We’re gonna be a family. No one is ever going to mess with us, like ever again.” She sat down next to Honus and patted his hand. He did not respond.

Patty was cold, but present. She pulled her knees up under her chin.

Jodi started a song and Patty joined her. Honus took more than an hour to come back to himself.

In the morning, Jodi told him to bury the body. He built a pyre as Dusty had once done and burned it. He came back to the house and found Jodi and Patty talking like sisters.

The three of them got on very well. They were a family, as Jodi had said. They never spoke of Lewis and they rarely spoke of the plague or the time before. Jodi miscarried over and over, and she told Patty what had happened with their first child. Patty listened without emotion. She said she would never get married again.

* * * * *

Six years later, Jodi went full term with a girl. They both died, the child never left her body. Honus was wrecked with grief and Patty did the burning. Four bodies, one place. The rain churned their ashes into the soil.

* * * * *

It was less than a year before the two of them started sleeping together. Patty was barren. They lived together the rest of their lives and never again saw another human being.