“What’s Rip Van Winkle?” Eric prodded again.
“Oh yeah,” said Jim. “Lost track of what I was saying.” He pulled his head back, and rolled over, so that Eric pictured him talking to the high ceiling. “Rip Van Winkle is a bridge,” he continued. “That’s where Billy met them Minutemen and made them give back the boy. You see, what them Minutemen do is they go into a town and they just start recruiting. That’s what those bastards call kidnapping. Then they bring the ‘recruits’ back to Boston where Jacobs is building the new capital. An army too, I guess, but no one knows for sure. No one who goes to Boston ever comes back. They’re pushing east and south. Billy reckons that Jacobs wants to take New York City, and he’ll need a hell of an army for that. That city ain’t nothing but a burning mess, filled with gangs who’re ripping each other to pieces for food. The Minutemen are recruiting as far as Pennsylvania, they say.”
Eric blinked, trying to digest all this information.
“Well,” Jim continued, “the Minutemen fucked with the wrong person. One day this girl comes in crying. She says the Minutemen just up and took this boy away. They were from Warren, not far from here. Billy says to us, if we let them take this boy, they’ll be taking us next, so we grab some guns and Billy has us set up on each side of the Rip Van Winkle. When they tried to cross, we ambushed them. It was a quick, dirty little gun fight, but the Minutemen surrendered. Then Billy takes back the boy and tells them sons of bitches how it is. After that we started calling her Good Prince Billy.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Jim said. “I think it’s a song.”
“Who is she?”
“Used to be just Mary who worked at the grocery store. Had some trouble with her second husband, that was what most everyone knew of her. After the Vaca B, that all changed. She helped us get things together, take care of ourselves, organize. It was tough as hell, but without her, we would’ve vanished like a lot of towns round here done. She was just what we needed, I guess. And before the worm came all she did was work at the grocery store. Strange, ain’t it?”
“Yeah,” Eric agreed. “Strange.”
Jim’s head appeared again. “You know I wouldn’t be telling you shit, amigo, but Billy likes you. She says you people are welcome to stay here, and you ought to know what you want to know.”
“Is that why you’re sleeping here?”
Jim rested back in his bed. “Anymore questions?”
“Not now, no,” Eric said.
“Good, I’m bushed.” The bed creaked above him, and then went quiet. It took a few minutes for Eric to realize that the conversation was completely over and Jim was probably asleep.
Sleep did not come as easily for Eric.
When he did sleep, he had uneasy dreams. Birdie was emerged in still water, her hands clasped on her chest as if she were in a coffin. Her eyes were closed peacefully, and her hair floated about her head in soft tangles. He wanted to reach her, but he didn’t dare touch her dead body. But he couldn’t leave her either.
He just hovered in the water, indecisive, drowning.
During breakfast, a beautiful meal of bacon, pancakes, and fresh eggs, Lucia slid next to him. Her body was so close to him, he helplessly imagined the silky warmth of her skin.
“Good morning,” she said to him with a smile.
Eric smiled shyly at her. Now, without the stress of being out there, alone, he saw her again as she was: beautiful, with shining brown eyes and luminous, smooth skin. Her lips were moist and shined. His heart stumbled in his chest like a drunk.
“Morning,” he managed with difficulty.
“They have a farm,” she told him. “Not far from here. They’ve converted an old brick house into a barn.” She smiled widely at him. “I’m going to help with the cows today.”
“Good, that’s good,” he said. He knew what she wanted.
“Sergio is already there,” she continued. She looked down at her plate. “I have a good feeling about these people. Don’t you, Eric?”
Eric didn’t answer. She was asking him to abandon Birdie. To stay here with these people, maybe for the rest of their lives. Maybe she was right. Alone, they were such a disaster. He was thinking of it. It hurt.
All he could do was shrug.
It wasn’t until after lunch, slices of bread covered with chopped venison, onions, and carrots, that Good Prince Billy came to see him. During the day, she looked even more formidable. Her hair, in tight silver curls, formed a tidy circle around her head, like a crown. Her eyes, narrow and shallow, shined with the same, intelligent energy as it had the night before. Today she walked with the aid of a cane, the handle of which was a deer leg, the cloven hoof bent toward her. When she saw Eric sitting under a tree outside the church, his empty plate in front of him, she came to him. Halfway to him, however, a man intervened.
“Billy,” the man said. “Jenny and Dale are at it again. Jenny says she ain’t letting no one work on her place until it’s been dealt with.”
“What is it this time?”
“Jenny says Dale’s goats been in her garden. She says he does it on purpose.”
“Goddamit,” Billy said. “Them two are worse than badgers. All right, that’s it. I’m moving Jenny and her cows to the east side. Get Mack and Bob to help get that place set up, the one we was looking at last week for horses.”
“What about horses?”
“We’ll use Jenny’s place.”
“She ain’t going to like it.”
“Let me tell her,” Billy said.
“What if she don’t want to move?”
“She’ll move,” Billy said. When he seemed doubtful, Billy smiled. “You are a young one, ain’t you? Them two say it was a mutual break up, but I don’t believe it. I’ll just let Jenny know that moving away from Dale will prove to him she don’t give a damn for him no more. It’ll irritate the hell out of Dale. She knows that. Them two ain’t done with each other yet.”
“All right, Billy,” the man said with a smile, obviously impressed.
“Damn world is gone, and them two are still bickering like teenagers. Don’t nothing really change, remember that.” The man nodded at her, still smiling, and left them alone.
Good Prince Billy, leaning on her cane, sat next to him. She groaned as she sat, and then clasped her hands on her lap and turned to him. “Well,” she said. “Where should I start?”
“I guess you know by now that I’d like you to stay with us,” Good Prince Billy began. “I been talking with Sergio and Lucia this morning. Nice folk, them two. I think the both of them are glad to be here. I can see they want to stay here, I can see it in their eyes. I think you can too. But they got an awful respect for you. They won’t stay if you leave. I’ve seen this kind of thing before. There are bonds that, once made, can’t be broke. Not love, not hate, not anything will stand between two people who’ve been brought together by catastrophe and terror. It’s a bond even stronger than blood. I know you haven’t asked for this. I can see how uncomfortable you sit with yourself. You don’t think you’re set to be no leader, and I know you never asked for the responsibility, but there it is, Eric, whether or not you like it.
“I don’t know but the best leaders are the ones who never wanted it. Responsibility ought to hurt. It ought to keep you up at night. But like it or not, they follow you. They’ll go if you go, but they don’t want to.
“I know you feel like you need to search for this little girl. I respect that. I do. But I want you to understand something. Out there, there is danger. There’s the Minutemen coming in from the east, making people awful jumpy around strangers. There’s other gangs too. Who knows how many between here and this island of yours? To say nothing of starvation and deprivation. Or Zombies or the cold winter you got waiting for you if you get there. Maybe that’s something you can risk for yourself, but how about them two? You going to drag them into it, too?