It is larger than I imagined, with at least ten solid houses as well as a church and what looks to be a saloon or general store. People go this way and that on their business, and it might seem completely normal excepting that there are a fair number of Negroes.
It looks as near to Heaven as I have ever imagined.
Mr. Redfern turns back to Jane and me. “Well, here we are.”
“Indeed,” I say, leaning against Jane. I am still a bit taxed from the after-effects of Gideon Carr’s injection, and the relief that we have finally reached our destination fairly overwhelms me.
“Why don’t we see if anyone has seen Sue or Juliet?” Jane says. But we do not have to go looking because Sue finds us.
“Jane! Katherine! Sheriff Redfern!” Sue yells from the frame of a house in the midst of being raised. The folks working together get the frame up and in place before she strides over to us. She beams as she gathers both Jane and I up into a massive hug. “You ain’t dead!” she exclaims, releasing us and giving us a huge grin.
“We are not,” I say.
“But we are tired and thirsty and need somewhere to put our poor chickens,” Jane says. Sue’s exuberance has made the chickens flap in the cage. Feathers fly up and around us.
“Those chickens are going to be bald by the time they get to a henhouse,” I mutter, waving away a stray feather that tries to creep up my nose.
“They’ve had a taxing journey,” Jane says. “It ain’t their fault.”
“Well, you two are just in time,” Sue says. She points behind her to the house being raised. “That’s for me and Roy. We’re getting married!”
Jane whoops in delight, and I cannot help but clap my hands with happiness. I might be tired, but we all begin to jump up and down in excitement, which of course just causes the poor chickens no end of grief.
Our celebration is interrupted by a scream splitting the otherwise lovely day, and a woman with lightly burnished golden skin runs toward us, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her hat, a lovely powder-blue confection that matches her day dress perfectly, flies off, and a couple of men rush to retrieve it. She is beautiful, so much so that it is impossible to look anywhere but right at her.
“Jane, my baby, is that you?” the woman wails, now fully into her hysterics. We all freeze in our felicitations because the woman bears an uncanny resemblance to Jane.
Sue smiles and squeezes Jane’s shoulder. “She been waiting for you,” she says, voice hushed.
Jane for her part looks as though she has seen a ghost, her eyes wide and skin gone ashen.
“Momma?” she whispers.
The woman gathers Jane up in her arms even as Jane has frozen, shock making her limbs rigid. Sue and I take a few steps back to give Jane and her momma room. On the other side of Jane, Redfern melts into the gathering crowd. Apparently heartfelt reunions are not his thing.
“Jane, what happened to your arm?” the woman wails, and the question unmoors Jane. She takes a step back, putting space between herself and her mother.
“Is Auntie Aggie here?” Jane asks, hope brightening her eyes. She looks past her mother to a woman that had been walking with her, a couple of small boys holding each of her hands.
“Oh, Jane, I am so sorry. Aggie didn’t survive the trip out west. Her heart, you know. But this is Edith, do you remember her from Rose Hill? And look, these are your brothers, Jane. Are they not the most precious? Robert, that’s my husband, well I’m not quite sure where he’s gotten to. He’s the mayor! I am once again a woman of consequence.”
The woman continues on, telling Jane about her life in Haven, and her long trip from Kentucky to the sea, and then by boat to California. But Jane is not listening. Tears streak down her cheeks, her face twisted with an anguish her momma either cannot or will not acknowledge.
Without warning, Jane drops the cage holding the chickens, the fragile cross-hatching shattering. The chickens fly up a few feet, feathers flying in all directions. Jane’s mother takes a few steps back, and Jane, without a word, turns on her heel and walks back the way we came.
—JANE—
Chapter 49
In Which the End Is Near
My first two weeks in Haven are spent shoring up the town’s defenses and avoiding my momma.
The former is on purpose, the latter is a fortunate happenstance.
Haven needs a strong wall. The mountains provide some protection, but the dead are stalking California now, and it is only a matter of time before they come knocking on Haven’s door. People are arriving every day, brought in by the same advertisement that Jeb and the others from San Francisco saw. It seems to me that making sure any town is safe should be a priority. Even if we can all agree that it ain’t forever. But something is better than nothing, so strong defenses it is.
And so, I get to work with the help of Sue, Katherine, and a few others.
A better wall, a water wheel built off Gideon Carr’s notes from his thrice-cursed but useful notebook, and a series of fortified fences to provide a necessary boundary against shamblers, whenever they arrive.
There’s also a diagram for some sort of battery in the notebook, and while I have no idea what the schematic says—it seems to be written in math, that foulest of all languages—Mr. Stevens is quick to pitch in. We might even learn how to erect an electric fence soon.
As for Mr. Stevens, he’s very helpful and always underfoot, and one night at dinner my mother has the audacity to say, “Jane, I do believe you are being courted.”
“A body has to want to be courted to be courted,” I say, and it puts an end to the conversation right quick.
Suffice it to say, my reunion with my mother is nothing like I’d imagined. Our conversations are full of stop-starts and long pauses. I ask about Auntie Aggie, about how her end came about, and Momma begs off because it’s too painful. Edith ain’t much help. She never knew Auntie Aggie very well, and all she can tell me is that she was buried somewhere alongside the trail on the way from Sacramento. Her heart, like momma said, gave out. And that is that. Sometimes the people we love fiercest leave the world like a whisper.
It’s a blow that I ain’t been expecting. Momma also doesn’t want to hear anything about my trials and tribulations on the way to Haven. Whenever Robert, a fine man with velvety brown skin and a keen mind but perhaps questionable taste in women given how he dotes on my mother, asks about the combat school or my life up to now, Momma gives him a sharp look and declares, “Let’s not talk of such things at supper.” It’s like there’s no room for my life in her portrait of domesticity. The dead, and all the woes they bring, have no place in her world.
Day by day, my discomfort grows. While everyone else seems to adore Haven—Sue is jumping the broom, Lily attends school and helps Miss Mellie May with her boardinghouse, Tomás teaches all the other kids swears in Spanish, and even Katherine has found some aptitude as a teacher of the defensive arts—I am at a loss. Haven is a sheep’s pen and I am a wolf, lean and hungry and deadly. I do not belong here.
But the hardest thing to accept is that my momma really did forget about me. She’s been building a new life, one of love and warmth, while I’ve been struggling just to survive, to hold on to my humanity. Aside from our first meeting, during which she performed her grief and joy for the whole town, she has seemed more put out by my presence than happy. I find myself helping out where I can with the building of houses and the planting of gardens rather than spending an extra moment with her. The whole situation causes a curious sort of bitterness to rise up, and I tend it like a spring seedling, feeding it my grief.