“The people,” she said through a tight throat. She desperately needed a drink of water. Funny that she could be so wet and so thirsty at the same time. “Do they ever come back?”
He stared at her, and then his face sort of went blank.
When he finally spoke, she could barely hear him.
“No.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
GRAMMALIE ROSE
The old woman glowered at her. Lucy dropped her eyes. A thin trickle of sweat crept down her neck. The rain had stopped again as suddenly as it had started, and now the sun was blazing once more. She’d taken off the sweatshirt and dumped it and her leather jacket in a pile with her backpack. Even in just the thermal shirt she was hot, and also grimy with mud and what she had a sneaking suspicion was manure. Whatever Lucy had been expecting, it wasn’t this. She leaned against her shovel and looked out over the straight rows of vegetables, the vines rambling over wrought iron gates planted in the earth like trellises, the greenhouses made from old storm windows. In the distance she glimpsed others working. They moved slowly and their faces, from what she could see, were sort of strange. There were bumps and ridges where there shouldn’t have been, and their skin was smooth but strangely colored. They wore hoods and long robes. Monks, maybe? But she was too exhausted to ponder it for long.
This mean old woman had made her dig potatoes, carrots, and beets; pick beans and zucchini; stake straggling tomato plants; and remove slugs and beetles from the leaves of Swiss chard and spinach until her fingers were covered with a gluey black residue of insect slime and guts. She hadn’t complained, though, mostly because she couldn’t. Grammalie Rose, who must have been in her seventies, had worked right alongside her, silently, one of her black shawls pulled over her hair and tied under her chin. Lucy had stared at her tough, reddened hands with their short, blunt nails as she squished bugs between her fingers and brushed dirt off of waxen potatoes before piling them into plastic buckets and tubs. She pulled rows of peas with a minimum expenditure of energy. None of the wrestling with tough stalks that Lucy was doing. Another one of those situations where her awkwardness wasn’t doing her any favors. She could almost hear her brother, Rob, pipe up, “Lucy loses to a plant!”
Lucy kept waiting for the woman to ask her questions or just make small talk, but she didn’t. It was like she conserved energy. She marched along the rows, picking or digging, her back hunched, keeping up a solid pace while Lucy had trailed a few yards behind, her back screaming and her knees aching, barely able to drag the full container behind her. Finally, Lucy had casually asked where Aidan was.
“Out scouting, probably. Hunting or foraging. He likes to roam, that one,” the old woman said before pointing out a cluster of bright green caterpillars on a head of lettuce.
And now that they were finally sitting down at the edge of the lot, Grammalie Rose was sticking with the silent treatment and giving her the evil eye. It was making her feel uncomfortable. The thought that Aidan had probably known what was in store for her and had uttered no warning again! made her stutter with rage, but she shoved it down to her belly where it simmered and spat. She ground her teeth and shot the old lady her best under-the-bangs-slit-eye stare. Grammalie Rose just looked amused and lit another one of the foul-smelling brown cigarettes she liked. The threads of black smoke it gave off stunk like burning hair.
“Have you never shelled beans, zabko?”
As she said this, Grammalie Rose was stripping the leathery pods from the dried beans and tossing them into a pail where they rattled like marbles. She made it look really easy. Snap the end, pull off the string, split the shell with her thumbnail before spilling the purple and white beans into the palm of her hand, and throwing the shriveled ones onto a compost heap. Lucy had tried to copy her and ended up cutting her fingers to shreds and losing most of her beans in the dirt. They rolled everywhere, and who would have known that the dry pods sliced flesh like the edges of thick envelopes? Lucy hunched her shoulders, ignored the pain in her fingers, and yanked on a stubborn pod string.
“Did you eat nothing but meat and acorn mush?”
“Cattail bulbs. Chicory,” Lucy said. “Wild onions.”
“No wonder you are so skinny. And without energy.”
“I outran a tsunami today, and then I hiked over a couple of mountains,” Lucy said, feeling her ears go red. She hurled a handful of beans into the bucket with force. Her legs were falling asleep and it was impossible to find an inch of soil without rocks to sit on. “Shouldn’t we be preparing or something, in case the Sweepers come back?” she asked the old woman.
“They will be back.”
Lucy stared at her. “So?”
“So, people must eat. Life goes on.”
“You’re saying that we shouldn’t do anything?”
Grammalie Rose just nodded and kept shelling. Her plastic bucket was full already, and she hooked Lucy’s with the toe of her clog and drew it closer. Her hands dipped and rose and dipped again.
Lucy bit her tongue. She felt like she might explode.
“But… that’s… just… grrrrr!” she shouted finally, leaping to her feet and pacing back and forth.
After a few seconds, Grammalie Rose thumped the ground beside her. The frown was back on her face. Despite her annoyance, Lucy marveled at the bushy blackness of Grammalie Rose’s eyebrows and the wrinkles fanning across her crumpled-tissue-paper face. How old was she?
“Sit down,” she said.
There was no arguing with her tone, and Lucy could hardly pull her knife on the old woman. She exhaled through her nose and sank down ungracefully, crossing her legs and shifting until she found a comfortable spot. Grammalie Rose thrust a bucket of bean pods at her.
“We are doing something, zabko,” she said.
“I’m not a frog!” Lucy said, turning a hot stare on her.
Grammalie Rose snorted out one of her dry laughs again. “Wilcze, then,” she said, seeming amused.
“What does that mean?” Lucy snapped, suspecting that she was being teased. She felt like she was being treated like a three-year-old and struggled to control her temper.
“Wolf cub,” she said, gesturing to the full bucket. “Full of snarls and bites.” She chuckled and held Lucy’s gaze until she sat and began work again.
Lucy slid her nail into the tough bean skin and split it, finding a rhythm that was missing before. Gradually she relaxed. I could still leave, she told herself, anytime I want.
She pushed her hand into the bucket and let the smooth beans sift through her fingers. She played with a pod, crunching it, and cast her mind about for something to say.
“How many people live in this settlement?”
“About thirty-five now. There were close to seventy-five when I first came, but some chose to move on. North. Some prefer to live on the outskirts and come in on market days. And others were taken.”
Less than forty, Lucy thought. And most of them kids.
She cleared her throat and reached for a bottle of stale-tasting water. She’d drunk about a gallon already, and it seemed that she’d never get enough.
“Did you build all of this?” She waved her arm. Around the periphery of the lot were tumbled dinner plate–size slabs of concrete, rubble, and mounds of garbage big enough to climb. A chain-link fence sagging and busted through snaked around the edge.
“Not me personally.”
Lucy stared at her. The black eyes gleamed through their veil of smoke. Was she joking with her?