When I get there, a silent crowd has gathered. I have a sinking feeling in my chest. Is this all of us? The benches have been moved around several tables. Crystal has been cooking cornmeal cakes all morning. Someone brought up a new gallon of maple syrup, and Crystal is at the stove in the corner of the room, frying a dozen onions or so. She fries the onions down until they are dark and sweet and then puts them on the cakes with some maple syrup. Everyone is eating, but it’s hard to have an appetite. I look around, trying to be thankful for who’s left, but everyone I see just reminds me of someone who is gone. When I look at Pest, all I can see is the shadows of all the people who are dead now and burned to ashes. Crypt. Gunner. Matt. Rebok. All gone. When Crystal gives me my cornmeal cake, I see Rhonda in the kitchen in the farmhouse, giving me oatmeal cookies. I see her slumping down after Crystal shot her in the back of the head.
I look around, but don’t have the heart to count people. It’s easy to see we’ve lost more than half. We eat without talking. There’s just the sound of forks and knives scraping against plates. Maybe a statement here and there about the weather. Maybe some talk about what needs to be done, but quietly, half-heartedly. We are in the company of ghosts. We can’t say anything. We can’t think too much about it. Our lives have to go on. It’s a new world, more haunted than the old one. None of us want to remember.
I finish my first cornmeal cake without noticing that I’m eating, and Crystal slides me another. Norman passes me the maple syrup from across the table, and I pour it over the yellow cake and onions. I eat quietly.
While I eat, I think. It keeps the ghosts at bay. I think about Eric burning away with fever up in the woods. I think about how I’m going to take care of him. What I should do when he dies. Will I tell people? Will I say I just found him like that? Will they believe that? What will they think when they find out that I lied to them? I think too of more practical problems. How will I get Eric to eat? How will I keep his temperature down? What will I do if he cracks? How will I find the strength to shoot him? It has to be me. I won’t let anyone else do it if it has to be done. This reminds me I have to get Eric’s gun.
I hardly notice when Franky rises. He gets up and walks around the tables, clapping backs. I watch him move around and I can tell he’s already thinking of himself as the leader in Eric’s absence. People will follow him. They’re already used to asking for his help when something breaks. I would have thought he would be useless with grief after losing Diane and Amber, but instead he seems steady. I also detect in the way he moves around the room that he’s enjoying this, enjoying his new role in the community. I begin to think he’s always wanted something like this. He’s always been waiting for his chance. Eric had a powerful influence over people, without really trying, so Franky never made a move, but now… I don’t watch Franky directly. Just out of the corner of my eye. Something about the way he comforts people. The way he smiles sadly. Squeezes their shoulder. I don’t trust it. I am more sure than ever before that if I bring Eric back now, he’s a dead man. No doubt it would be Franky himself who would put him out of his misery. For the good of us all.
As I finish the last forkful of my second corn cake, Norman gets up and goes to Franky. They’re talking in low voices. I notice they’re both wearing guns. I think I see them glance over to me. I don’t know what they’re saying, but I can guess. People will want to hear from me about Eric. I have some power here, some kind of influence, as Eric’s shadow. They are talking about that. I don’t know if it’s positive or negative, but I suddenly feel a twisting in my stomach. I don’t trust those two, not at all. I can see now that they are re-grouping with themselves as the leadership: Franky and Norman forever. I huff out in spite of myself. It’s amazing how quickly people change. Whole communities. They are either becoming different people or more themselves. It’s hard to know which is which.
I turn my attention to the others. They are not nearly so together. Curt, who lost his mother and sister, is sitting in a kind of stupor, his food untouched in front of him. Wanda and Luna are sitting together, looking just as lost and confused. Willis and Hubert are sitting next to them protectively. They were never very talkative, but now they seem to have lost all power of communication. Even their eyes are dead. Susie Moore, who usually prattles on like a hen, just sits there, slumped down, her lips quivering, right on the edge of disaster. I see how fragile we are, how fragile we always were. If Eric didn’t need me, maybe I would be more like them, beaten down by grief and shock. As it is, I keep the grief away for Eric’s sake. If I go catatonic like them, Eric will die. They’ll shoot him in the back of the head. I can’t help imagining it. I see Franky shoot Sam. I remember him falling, the smell of smoke in the air. I see Eric then in place of Sam. Then, before I can stop it, I see Artemis in the pyre, her hair smoking and burning. I shake my head of that and focus on the people around me.
They need a leader. I try to soften my perceptions of Franky and Norman. They probably see this too. They see that someone needs to step up. There’s nothing wrong with that. I am only paranoid because I have to lie.
But still. I can’t shake it. I do not trust them.
I’m not used to being seen or paid attention to. I never really thought anyone had any opinion of me, really, not beyond Eric’s shadow. When I see Norman and Franky glance at me, I see that I was wrong. They’re thinking something.
I reach out to touch my knife. It’s there.
32
Franky starts speaking soon. People listen. I mean, they really listen, their bodies tense, their eyes wide open and hungry. They want direction and assurance. Franky tries to give them both. He reads out a list of names. All of them are ashes now. He says we will gather later to turn their ashes into the cemetery soil. He says the flowers are just beginning to sprout there. He says a few words about our grief, our loss, a few words about Diane and Amber.
“But we can’t give up,” Franky says, straightening his back. “We have to keep living. They don’t want us to die. They want us to live our lives and be as happy as we can. So as hard as it is, we have to keep working.”
He talks about the necessity of boiling water, of hauling the wood to keep the boiler going. Franky switches then into organizing jobs and he has a chore for everyone, even me. He even has a clipboard. I’m to help Crystal in the farmhouse. With Rhonda gone, she’ll need someone to help prepare the food. I nod. When he’s done, he puts down his clipboard, and looks serious.
“Eric has left for now,” he says. I guess word has already gotten around because no one seems surprised. A few people glance at me with a variety of emotions, but mostly anger. Eric has always been that way. People need him, but they don’t appreciate him much. “Eric wants time to think about this. I’ve always been willing to give Eric the time he needs to think,” he says, and again, I hear a hidden scorn in the word. “So we’ll be patient with him and do our work until he gets back.” I don’t know if anyone else hears it, but there’s something unmistakable in his tone. Something paternal, like Eric is a wayward son. Not our absent leader at all, but someone who requires patience and even a little pity. From here, I realize, the criticisms will only magnify and grow.
Not that I care. Whoever leads the twenty-odd people who are left doesn’t concern me. I have bigger problems than who gives orders to who in the next few years. But what does concern me is just how quickly it happened and who I have to watch. I think of Eric out in the woods, probably dying of the Worm, and I see just how precarious our position is. If they find him, he’s a dead man. Oh, they’ll be sad when they shoot him.