| |
“That doesn’t sound good,” said Coral.
Benjamin glanced around again. “It’s not awful—but it’s strange.”
“Levi, you mean? Or Parnell?”
“A few things. Yeah, them too.” He pulled his jacket tighter.
When he adjusted his mask on his face, she remembered hers and dug in her pocket for the bandana, finding it and slipping it on. “Tell me,” she said.
“Let’s keep walking, but slowly.”
“Maybe we should head for the kitchen.”
“We have some time before supper.”
“So let’s walk around the block.”
“Sure.” He rewound his scarf. “Cold.”
She nodded. It was getting colder. Or maybe going in and out of heated spaces was making the cold feel worse.
“He asked about what we’ve seen out there. I explained more about the cult. He wouldn’t give me my rifle back.”
“That’s not surprising.”
“He said he’d think about it the first time he sent me out hunting.”
“What do you mean, hunting?”
“Like Kathy and them were doing when we met them. Scavenging, really. Looking for supplies and canned food.”
“Then he gave you that as a job?”
“That’s his hope, he said, that it would work out. For now, I’m to apprentice as a perimeter guard—no gun, just a lookout—and I help Parnell out when he needs me. That’s what I did today.”
“What’d you do?”
“All he had me do today was report to another guy who had me haul boxes of books and scrap wood to the kitchen, for burning.”
“What was weird about that?”
“This isn’t some sort of utopia,” he said.
“No.” She hadn’t believed it would be. It was better—or closer to the old world—than anything they’d seen so far, but she no longer trusted other people. “What’s bothering you in particular?”
“I got to see Levi’s quarters when I took wood there, for one thing. Just a glimpse, but it’s pretty fancy, compared to Doug and Abigail’s place. And he has a stove, and it had heat coming off it, even though he wasn’t there.”
“Does he live alone?”
“Can’t say for sure.”
“No one else was there?” She wondered why they’d waste fuel for the stove, then.
“There were signs a woman had been staying there. When I asked another laborer if he was married, he laughed. Apparently, there have been several women.”
Coral said, “That’s not too odd. If the women are willing, it may be the privilege of command. I mean, presidents slept around a lot, right?”
“It wasn’t the idea of a woman, or her nightgown, or whatever. It was the place, and everything in it. He definitely uses more than his share.”
“Some of us are more equal than others,” she said. When Benjamin looked at her strangely, she said, “It’s a quote from a book I read in high school. I mean, you have government of any sort—and Boise counts as a place with government—then you have a privileged class, right?”
“You’d have to see it. Some of what was in there was not necessary. It was indulgent.” He was getting frustrated trying to communicate with her. “It was wrong.”
“Okay.” Coral didn’t want to belabor the point. Besides, she trusted Benjamin’s view of the situation. Even if he couldn’t put something into words, she believed in his judgments. “What else?”
“It was—I don’t know. Then Parnell was interested in you, which makes sense. But there was something else going on.”
She grabbed his jacket sleeve to stop him and make him look at her. “Whoa, you mean something sexual from him? Toward me?”
“No, no. I don’t mean interested in that way. There was a kind of greedy look in his eyes. Not sex. Some other kind of greed I can’t identify. So be careful with him. And something else odd? After talking with Levi a few minutes, after I’d answered his questions about our route, and what we’d seen, I felt like I was disappearing, right before his eyes. Like I was turning invisible for him.”
Coral could easily imagine that. That couldn’t be good news. The leaders could reject Benjamin from the community and force her to stay. Not going to happen, no how, no way. If they didn’t want him, she would leave with him. “I shouldn’t have let them separate us,” she said. “It was stupid of me. Tomorrow, I’ll talk to him, tell him that if he wants me as a doctor, you need to assist me.”
“I’m not qualified to do anything like that. I’m not even good with people.”
“Who cares? We’ll pretend you’re doing one thing and you can be useful doing another. You can be the receptionist, pull up patient files, tidy the rooms. Whatever. We need to stick together until we know more about this place.” And before any kind of serious trouble visited them while they were apart from one another.
Benjamin was shaking his head. “I don’t think that’s going to fly.”
“We won’t know what he’ll think about it until we ask.” And she’d ask for their supplies back too—all of them, including the hatchet and rifle. If they wanted her as their doctor so damned much, they could accommodate her requests. Benjamin and she began to walk again. “Did anyone order you to be somewhere tomorrow morning?”
“I’m supposed to report to Parnell again after breakfast, in the library.”
“Good. I’ll come—” but she was interrupted by a call from a person in the distance too far away for her to make out. “Who is it?” she said.
“Martin, I think,” said Benjamin.
Coral raised a hand in greeting, and Martin detoured their way.
When he came closer, he yelled, “If you’re headed to supper, you’re headed the wrong way. It’s over there.” He pointed back the way they had come.
“Oh, right,” Coral said.
“I’ll walk with you, so you don’t get lost.”
She and Benjamin would have to finish their conversation later. But that was okay. She needed to think on how to approach Levi, how to sell him on the idea that Benjamin was required at the clinic.
