Charlinder's Walk (19 page)

"I guess that's how he knows you and Peter like to be hospitable."

"Among other things, yes."

There was a fishing pond leading to a stream next to the southwestern corner of their town, which Peter showed him after dinner that evening. Though he wasn't quite sure why, he didn't want to go back to the house yet. He assured his host he could find his way back, and Peter left him to sit by the pond. He liked the quiet out there. He needed some time alone, without a lot of people surrounding him and asking questions about his life. It was because he'd never seen a settlement of this size, he supposed, that he needed to get away. Vilma and Peter were nice enough, and their children were sweet and cheerful, but he still couldn't help but feel uncomfortable in their settlement. After all his months of walking, Charlinder was accustomed to being the only human face in sight. That must have been why he needed the quiet.

There were footsteps coming towards him. Charlinder looked around, and there were two people coming to join him. Both were of the more reserved set who kept wanting to meet him but didn't have time to stop and chat. There was an older man and a younger woman, closer to Charlinder’s own age. Both were limping, though he didn't find that unusual by then. They didn't wait for an introduction to sit down, and for some reason it didn’t seem like an intrusion.

"You’re the new boy on his way somewhere else, right?" asked the man, and Charlinder nodded. "I'm Randall, and this is my daughter, Cleo. How do you like it here so far?"

"It's...it's really something. I've never seen anything like it before, and I've covered a lot of ground in the last few months."

"I guess it’s different, eh? You're staying with Peter and Vilma, right?" he said. Charlinder nodded again. "They're good people. Friends with that Hyatt, but we don't hold that against them. Did they tell you how this town got put together?"

"No, why would they?"

"Well, let me tell you--our eyes are bothering you, aren't they?" Randall said all of a sudden.

Once they were close up, Charlinder noticed that both Randall and Cleo were markedly wall-eyed, and he didn’t know how to make eye contact. They must have caught him puzzling to figure out where to look.

"No, no, I'm sorry," he stammered, but Randall cut him off.

"It's okay, son, you don't have to look at our faces," Randall assured him. Ashamed of himself, Charlinder looked at his knees, and Randall continued. "Let me ask you, then: how did your village get started?"

"Nothing really special about it. A handful of survivors from one town found some others, they came to a farm and turned it into their new home. We're using the same plot of land to this day."

"How many survivors were in that first group?" asked Cleo.

"There were twenty of them at first. Three people died in the first winter, but the rest of them did pretty well."

"That's a small group," Randall observed. "Did they all look like you?"

"No, they were a really diverse bunch. There were some other survivor groups in the region, too."

"And, did everyone keep in their own group, or did they mix?"

"They weren’t really worried about staying in their own groups. I don’t even how many villages my ancestors come from."

"See, that's why you’re so good-looking," said Cleo, at which Charlinder jumped.

"Excuse me?"

"I mean, you walk normally, your eyes face in the same direction, and the muscles in your face are under control," she explained. "Because they had better things to worry about." Charlinder had never before been told he was "so good-looking."

"Now, I'll tell you how this place got started," her father continued. "There were around sixty survivors at first, and they had a good thing going. They grew crops, had some livestock, built houses; they figured it out as they went along. The problem was a smaller group to the south, who weren't doing so well. They kept sneaking into our territory in the middle of the night and stealing things. They took food, firewood, tools, clothing, anything they could carry off in one trip. And that wasn't such a big deal; folks just figured they'd have to keep a closer eye on things. And it went on for about a year, then it got worse."

"A woman was out picking blackberries, and some guy came and attacked her," Cleo explained. He could guess what she meant by attacked.

"Then it happened to another woman who took a little walk out south to do a job," said Randall. "And another one. Then some poor girl went to the village kitchen to grab some ingredients, and there was some guy in there waiting for her. When she came out with blood and other business running down her legs, the villagers called a meeting. They were tired of working so hard and then getting robbed. Now their girls were getting attacked on their own turf, and something had to be done. There were a pair of twin brothers in the village, the Hyatts, who'd owned a pig farm and survived the Plague together. They got a bunch of guys together and decided to put their foot down. They took a horse-driven cart south and came back with about ten young men tied up in the back. They led the guys around the village long enough for the girls to say who'd gotten them, then they dealt with that bunch."

"Dare I ask what you mean by 'dealt with' them?" asked Charlinder.

"The Hyatts grabbed the nearest axe and chopped the bastards' feet off," Randall explained. "The ones who lived through that, and the ones who never attacked anyone, were invited to stay. The villagers put them in houses, gave them work to do, and made sure they were provided for, and the guys were okay with that. That wasn't all, though. Once the south guys were straightened out, the Hyatts took their cart north and found another smaller group having a hard time. The Hyatts invited them to come join our bunch before they started stealing anything, and they agreed. So the Hyatts rode back home a few days later with twelve new people in the cart, mostly young women, who were happy for a new place to live."

"Sounds like those Hyatts became really popular," Charlinder remarked.

"We can only imagine how much," said Randall. "The stealing and raping were over, they had new hands to work, and all those people who were struggling before suddenly had a place. The ones who were identified as attackers couldn’t hurt anyone else. Everyone was so happy with what the Hyatts had done, they agreed to let them and their descendants be in charge of the community from that point on. And they took charge. They made sure everyone had a job to do, and everything got done. They made sure everyone had a place to live, and they organized how to build things. Every time a decision had to be made for the village, folks went to the Hyatts for their approval. Can you see where this is going?"

"I'm not sure," said Charlinder honestly.

"The Hyatts started making rules, and folks went along with it," said Cleo. "Most of it was fine, like how many cattle to raise in a year, how to rotate crops. Then they started telling people how to live. People were so scared of the world outside, any time the Hyatts made a new rule it looked like a good idea. They chose some clergy, and told everyone to come to weekly prayer sessions. Folks said okay. They said women can't leave the village alone, and folks said okay."

"My daughter can't leave the settlement without me, or my son, or her husband, unless she's in a group of at least five women," Randall explained. "We haven't seen a woman raped by anyone outside the settlement in over a hundred years--all the other survivor groups live so far away we never even see anyone else except for the ones who come to join us--but that rule hasn't changed."

"Then they said we're only allowed to have sex within marriage, and all marriages have to be approved by the Hyatts," Cleo went on. "I wasn't around to see if anyone asked what in the hell is this about, but we know how it ended up. Folks said okay."

"And they usually approve a marriage with no problem, only they made another rule about that," said Randall. "The white folks are one group, and the rest of us are another, called the browns. Now, can you imagine how that must have felt? Nobody asked the Asians if they figured they had more in common with the whites. Nobody asked the one Native person what she thought about this arrangement. None of the white folks asked the blacks for their thoughts on the matter, but that’s how the survivors got divided up. The Hyatts said whites and browns aren't allowed to marry each other. Folks said okay. I don't know what the white folks thought about the rule, but they didn’t put up a fight. Not enough to make a difference, anyway."

"I take it this led to problems?" asked Charlinder.

"In the original survivors," Cleo began, "there were eight blacks, three Asians, and one Native. The rest were white. Both of the smaller groups they brought in were all white, too," she explained. "On the 'everyone else' side, that wasn't very many of us."

Charlinder waited for the rest of the story.

"Every year or two, someone from the Hyatts manages to go out and find someone new to join our village, and it always ends up being someone white," Randall went on. "So the whites do all right, they have lots of mates to choose from. We browns have gotten no new blood since the new rules, so we're all related now. And the whites wonder why we all look so sick. They don't have to marry their cousins."

"My grandma said when she was a girl, it wasn't like this," said Cleo. "Her generation and up were healthier, so the white folks were comfortable with them and they felt more like they were in it together. She said this is what happens when people marry their own cousins for generations running; it causes problems in the kids."

"Has anyone asked the Hyatts to reconsider the rules?" asked Charlinder.

Randall shrugged. "They've got their clergy to do their answering for them. They say God made us in different colors for a reason, and we have to stay apart to keep up our diversity. But, you know, they didn’t mind letting a lot of different colors blend together, just as long as the white folks stayed on the other side of the line."

"And I take it these clergy are all white?"

"No, they've got some of ours in there, too, but they all say the same thing," Randall answered. "They're no better off than the rest of us, but they always toe the Hyatts' line. If this is what they call 'diversity,' I don’t see what’s so great about it."

"How does the village treat you otherwise?" asked Charlinder.

"They don't make any other rules against us," said Randall. "We can live where we want, we learn all the same skills and do the same jobs as the whites, but the damage is done."

"They act like everything's okay, but you can tell they start feeling bad whenever they spend time around us," said Cleo. "It's hard to pretend everything's fine, and there's nothing they can do about it now. We can either die out or keep going in the same direction, as long as the Hyatts are in charge, and what to do about them is anyone's guess."

"And you say the Hyatts have never allowed in a new non-white person?"

Randall scoffed. "The story's always the same. Either there are no other brown folks in these parts--and that might be the truth--or they're happy where they are, but then look what happened when you came in this morning. They see a healthy young man like you, and Jansen's goons take you in to their boss to give you the third degree. What're they afraid of, you might like it here and stay a while?”

"That
was
the first time anything like that happened to me," Charlinder admitted.

"Yeah, this place is really something, isn't it?"

Chapter Sixteen

Trapped

His mind was full of questions once he went to bed in Peter and Vilma's house. Why did the "browns," as they were labelled, stay in this settlement? Had any of them ever tried to leave and go somewhere else, where they were free to choose their partners on their own terms? Had some of them in fact already done so, and thereby narrowed down the remaining population even further? How often did anyone try to broach the subject with the Hyatts? Were there any negative consequences to criticizing the rules? Were the whites aware of the cause of their neighbors' problems? Were the browns even knowledgeable about it, or was it only a matter of speculation by a few individuals like Cleo's grandmother? Charlinder knew just enough about genetics to understand that too much reinforcement of genes was generally a bad idea. His community paid attention to paternity, if identifiable, so they could keep track of who was related to whom. In fact his community had a rather unorthodox attitude towards sexuality and family life in general, as Charlinder had by now learned. His village was not descended exclusively from its original survivor community. They would occasionally have a young woman immigrate to their village from one of the surrounding settlements because the Paleola women had a better deal, but no one was about to tell her she could only do sex with a certain group of men. In fact all women were expected to bear at least three offspring who lived to adulthood, but if any woman had six children by as many fathers, no one would find anything wrong with it. It was a common practice for Paleolan women to venture out to neighboring villages and come back pregnant. There was nothing controversial about it. It was probably because of this flexibility that Paleolans were not in obvious genetic dysfunction like the people here.

If Cleo's grandmother had seen her cohort in better condition, then the unhealthy traits had only surfaced within the last few generations; was that why the enforced segregation had gone unchallenged for so long? Was there some frightening penalty for trying to leave the settlement, of which Randall and Cleo had not told Charlinder? Did the Hyatts chop the feet off of deserters, too? As distasteful as he'd found his introduction to the local government, he couldn't quite picture Jansen Hyatt resorting to such measures.