The town had been shaken to its foundations by the shootings. But Independency citizens did not have to weather worsening conditions evolving elsewhere on top of the murders. Independency families were weaned from so much of the mass culture and its interconnected systems. That the underpinnings of the greater society outside Independency’s borders were crumbling would probably have little direct impact on the colony in the future, Abel reasoned. The townspeople were isolated from the growing horrors of daily living in a food-short society, both literally and figuratively. That isolation was sure to be an effective psychological buffer, he guessed. They might not soon have a wheat flour roll for dinner, but there were alternatives, not the alternative of having nothing at all to eat.
Independency worked, he had no doubt about that. It could carry them along through the difficulties ahead. The village would nurse him and his neighbors back to health. They would get their supply of grain from across the lake, he’d make certain of it. In the days and weeks ahead, life in town would return to a normal state, familiar neighbors coming to work each morning, children running and playing each day, community dinners prepared and enjoyed as was their custom, paintings painted, musical instruments played, dramas performed, a piece of special furniture loving crafted.
The man filled page after page with hastily scribbled notes. Where citizens across the country had few options once foodstuffs ran out, Independency residents still had most avenues open to them. Of all the people in a land of 300 million inhabitants, they were the ones who would not go to bed hungry this night or any other night. They would not have to watch loved ones waste away to bone.
Abel rose from his chair and paced the room, lit only by several candles on the table by the woodstove. Animated, hands gesturing, talking out loud, he told the walls that no others would die at Independency in the face of hardship. Yellowstone had already taken his daughter; it would not take another. They had the means for their own salvation in their very hands. He would see to it they succeeded, every man, woman and child.
Chapter Ninety-Eight
The latch on the door to the little study tripped. Abel turned in his chair, expecting to find wood mouse scurrying on the floor or rummaging in his pack.
“Hello, Abel.”
A figure materialized at the door. Abel sat confounded.
Winnie stood in the opening, trembling. She had tracked Abel up the bluffs for a mile. She had felt confident, ebullient on the way up, but, when she saw smoke rising from the chimney, her emotional braces bent and fell away.
Abel stared at the woman, the candlelight shadows hollowing out his eye sockets and wide-open mouth.
“Hello.”
After ten seconds of silence, that was all the man could muster. He was, for once, bereft of words.
Winnie didn’t know what to do with her hands; she kept sweeping them through her hair, over and over again. Since the death of Abel’s daughter, she had been thrashing in the drifting wreckage of her personality. Coming upon Abel clutching his lifeless and bloodied child in the baths was such horror. Her iron constitution, her professional coolness, all of it disintegrated before the baptism of death.
Abel beheld a wild-eyed creature, as if Winnie’s expression were that of a raccoon cornered by a scent hound. Her mouth agape, she brought her hands up to it to hide her expression from him. Liquid ran in sheets from her eyes, soaking her cheeks. Somewhere at the deepest recesses of her lungs came a whining pitch, an audible warble etched with the sting of pain.
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Abel.”
Winnie shuffled backwards into a corner, holding a hand out as if seeking assistance least she lose her balance and fall.
“It’s my fault.”
The fallen angel before him vexed Abel. Why was she recoiling from him?
“Winnie, what is it?” he called quietly.
“It’s my fault.”
“What’s your fault?”
Your daughter,” Winnie sobbed. “I killed your daughter. I killed her.”
Tremors swept through her body, convulsions so powerful that she seemed to deform before Abel’s eyes. Instinct prodded him. He raced forward, grabbed the woman and locked her to his chest in a vice-like embrace to try to dampen her thrashing throes. Winnie pounded her forehead against his chest repeatedly, flooding his chest with moisture from her tears.
Roaring in agony, Winnie coughed up nonsense. “I can’t stand it. I want to die, I want to die.”
Abel stood as if a granite block, letting her emotions play out in his embrace. She needed release just as he had needed it. He found catharsis through work, hastily writing down his thoughts hour after hour by the heat of the woodstove. She would need to take a different path to exorcize her demons.
It took nearly five minutes for the bonds of Winnie’s emotional seizure to loosen. The outcry left her panting for oxygen. She clung to him, childlike, as if afraid of a nightmare beast in a nursery closet.
Abel stroked her unruly hair. She placed her left temple against his heart and let the quiet whoosh of blood pumping reassure her. She ran her fingers through the hairs on his chest. It was a comfort to do so.
After long minutes standing mute at the corner of the studio, Abel suggested they sit quietly for a time by the fire.
“I have a present for you,” he said, hoping the little revelation would take her mind off her melancholia.
“You do?” In a whisper: “What is it?”
“I’m not telling. Come on.”
His arm around her, Abel led Winnie across the room and sat her down next to the fire. He loaded an armful of logs into the flames. The place had to be toasty warm to ward off all chill, real or imagined.
He went to his small cupboard and pulled a corked bottle from it, then pulled two heavy tumblers off a shelf. He sat down at the table next to her and poured a dram of fluid into each glass.
“Here you are, Winnie.”
She accepted a glass. “Thank you. What is it?”
“Your favorite. It’s Courvoisier. We left it here, maybe a year ago.”
Winnie grinned sheepishly, then broke into a smile.
“I thought you might like some.”
“It’s perfect.”
While Winnie sipped, Abel tidied up the small space. He lit several more candles, set the tin of soup Penny had made atop the woodstove so the contents would warm slowly, and returned to his chair.
“Penny’s white bean soup,” the man pointed out.
“What could be better?”
“Not a thing. Best soup on Planet Earth these days.”
Chapter Ninety-Nine
Abel and Winnie shared a meal of Penny’s potato soup and bread, chatting quietly as they brought to an end days of hunger. Abel was intent on discovering why she had returned to Independency village, but, more importantly, he wanted to know details about what had taken place during the shooting. He had almost no recollection of what had happened, but he knew that she had materialized from thin air and had intervened somehow in the terrible events of the day.
“How did you do what you did?” Abel asked as he put aside his soupspoon.
“Do what?”
“People were shooting at us. Somehow you had something to do with, ah, I think, putting an end to it. How did you do it?”
“I don’t have any idea.”
“How could you not know?”
“I was scared to death. Something overcame me, though.” She paused a moment, staring vacantly across the little space. “I saw your daughter on the floor. She had been shot. I remember that. And I remember an overwhelming sense of hatred, of pure loathing for the men outside. But I don’t remember much of anything else, not a thing.”