The day after: An apocalyptic morning (54 page)

              She was talking to the three women who were carrying the chunks of wood from the pile to the truck, following them from one place to the other but not offering to don a pair of work gloves and lend a hand. "I'm telling you," she told them, "that hussy actually admitted she was having sex with that poor boy. She confessed it to us right there in the meeting. Can you believe that?"

              They could believe it. "I told you," one of the women said knowingly to a companion. "That little bitch is shameless. Absolutely shameless."

              The companion shook her head sadly (although secretly wondering just what it would be like to have sex with a fourteen-year-old). "I knew she was a slut," she said as if in disgust. "But I didn't think anyone was that slutty. Shocking."

              There were some more comments tossed back and forth between the four of them, all of them disapproving at what Stacy had done. The word "bitch", "slut", "hussy", and even that most hated word among those of the female species: "cunt" were used with increasing frequency. Finally Candice, or Candy as she was known, broached the subject that Jessica had really wanted addressed.

              "So what are we going to do with her?" she asked. "Is she going to be exiled?"

              "I would certainly hope so," one of the others put in. The rest then echoed this sentiment.

              "She will not be banished, or even punished for that Micker," Jessica said sadly, shaking her head as if a great travesty of justice was taking place.

              "She won't?" they cried. "What do you mean?"

              "Paul won't vote to exile her," she said. "I tried and I tried to get him to see reason but he just won't do it. I tried to explain to him that this was a crime. That it was rape. He just kept saying he didn't see anything wrong with it and he wasn't going to do anything about it."

              "Unbelievable," Candy said. The rest of the group agreed with her.

              "He's been influenced by Skip too much," Jessica told them. "I'm telling you, Paul does whatever Skip tells him to do and votes however Skip wants him to vote. Skip may as well be the one who is on the committee, that's how much influence he has over him. So anyway, Paul kept us from being able to exile that bimbo like we all know she should be, and now she's going to walk away scott free and be allowed to just keep molesting him all she wants."

              This declaration caused a fresh outburst of anger. "Do you mean that nothing is going to be done about it?" someone asked. "Nothing at all?"

              "Nothing," Jessica confirmed. "There's nothing that we can do. We can't very well put her on kitchen duty, can we? Of course I moved that we at least order her to stay away from him."

              "I would hope so," Candy said righteously.

              "And of course Dale and I both voted yes, which means that she has a committee order telling her to stay away from that young man. But she told us herself that she won't do it and there's nothing we can do to stop her. Paul said he won't vote to exile her no Micker what and there isn't anything else we can do to her for punishment. Not that anything less than exile would be acceptable anyway."

              "So you can't do anything about it?" the woman next to Candy asked as she dropped a log into the truck. "We just have to put up with her doing... doing that to him?"

              "It looks that way," Jessica agreed sadly. "Unless..."

              "Unless what?" they all wanted to know.

              "Well this is just an idea," she said mysteriously, as if it wasn't something really worth mentioning.

              "What?" they all demanded of her.

              "Well," she said, speaking slowly as if this was just occurring to her that moment. "It seems to me that the will of the community should take precedence over a committee meeting, shouldn't it? I mean, that's how Skip and his friends got to stay here in the first place. The committee voted that we wouldn't let him stay, but we put it to a community vote and the ruling was changed. Why shouldn't that same thing apply to banishing that slut? If the community agrees that she should go, then she should go, right?"

              This darkened the expressions of three of the women present. These were three that had been either caught at or suspected of fornicating with an attached man - an offense that Jessica wished people expelled for. But before the thought that what she was suggesting could one day be turned against them was even fully formed, Jessica covered that particular loophole.

              "Now you'd have to understand," she said, "that it should take more than a simple majority vote to overturn a committee decision. Particularly for something as drastic as exiling someone. I would think that nothing less than a two-thirds majority would do for something like that."

              "Two thirds?"

              "Two-thirds," she said. "Like when they tried to impeach Clinton, remember? If two out of every three people of voting age in this town say that that pregnant hussy should be exiled for what she's doing, then that should be what happens."

              There was a momentary pause as everyone went over this thought in their head, their minds doing some quick addition. Though there were probably enough people against what Stacy had done to get her thrown out of town using that rule, the same ratio would not hold up when it came to simple fornication. The people most against the act of sleeping with another woman's partner were the women who had the partners, or roughly, twenty-one of them. Twenty-one was not even a simple majority, let alone two-thirds. There did not seem to be any danger involved in supporting this plan.

              "That sounds like a pretty good idea, Jess," Candy said carefully, still trying to find the hidden loopholes that Jessica was so famous for.

              "Yes," one of the others put in. "I think the town would go for something like that."

              "It gives us a little more power," said another.

              Jessica smiled, knowing that she had them. "I think it's a good idea too," she said. "I'm going to propose this amendment at the next committee meeting tomorrow morning. Now I don't know how Dale or Paul are going to vote, but I'm certainly going to say aye to a rule allowing the community to overturn a decision."

              "And what if it passes?" Candy asked, already knowing, as did everyone else present, that it was as good as passed as long as it was only a majority committee vote and not a unanimous one. "Are you going to use it to throw her out?"

              "You bet your butt," she said. "We'll have a community meeting at dinner tomorrow night and have a vote on it. If two-thirds of the people want her out, then she'll be walking across the bridge the next morning."

              They all grinned as they thought of this, as they envisioned Stacy waddling across the canyon out into the forest beyond the bridge. They all thought that would be a sweet sight to see, that hussy being ejected from their town, although none of them could have told you just why that would be a sweet sight.

              Jessica left them to their work a few minutes later, knowing that those five women would vote the way she wanted them to. With a smile she reentered the subdivision and found her way back to the community center. Outside was a work-crew of four, also staffed exclusively with town women, that was tending the fires that heated bath and cooking water.

              "Hi, Jess," they greeted with mixed levels of enthusiasm. Though she was valued as a gossip source and a leader, they did not like her personally.

              "Hi, girls," she said, putting back on her solemn expression. She gathered them around her and then began to speak, her topics neutral at first. Within two minutes however, the subject of Jack and Stacy was brought up, giving her an opening. "It's interesting that you should mention that hussy," she said, putting her angry expression on. "We had a meeting about that just this morning."

              "You did?" she was asked.

              "Of course," she said. "After I found out that that young man had been in the hussy's house half the night, I certainly wasn't going to let the issue drop."

              "So what happened?" they inquired.

              "Well," she said, settling down into storytelling mode, "we brought the two of them in for questioning about just what happened in there. And guess what they said?"

              "What?"

              And so the story was told again, to the shock of the latest bunch. Just like with the wood-gathering crew before, they fumed and cursed about the outrage of Stacy's actions and then asked what was being done about it. When told that nothing was being done about it, they demanded to know why. When told why, they ranted for a few more minutes about the injustice of it all and then Jessica slyly slipped in the suggestion about the two-thirds majority rule. As before, after a few uneasy worries were soothed, the idea was embraced with enthusiasm.

              From the fire-tending crew, she moved on to the childcare crew. From there, she moved on somewhere else. She figured that she would be able to talk to every woman in town by 2:30, which would give her more than enough time to catch her afternoon nap.

              Guard position 4 was located in the top story of one of the abandoned houses in the southeast corner of the subdivision. Except for the bridge lookout, it was the most isolated of all the posts, far away from any of the occupied houses. It watched over the rough hills between the eastern wall and the sheer impassible cliffs beyond them. It was a post that would have been obsolete had Skip been allowed to station guards on Hill 1557, but for now, it was manned and on this day Paula and Maria Sanchez had the duty.

              At 3:30 Skip made his visit to the post after making the twenty-five minute walk to it from the community center. He found Maria and Paula seated before the window in card table chairs, a pair of binoculars, their walkie-talkie, and a game of gin rummy laid out on the end table between them. Leaning against the table was the high-powered rifle that every guard position had and one of the AK-47s.

              "Good afternoon," Skip greeted them as he entered the room and sat down on the bed.

              "Hi, Skip," Paula greeted, offering him a friendly smile.

              Maria too gave him a semi-cordial greeting. Unlike many of the town women, Maria, who was Hector's official woman, was used to hard work and didn't complain much about being assigned to the detail. As such she did not seem to have as many hard feelings for Skip as others did.

              He made small talk with them for a few moments, asking them how their shift was going. They reported that they had not seen a single person all day, making it nearly two straight weeks since a straggler was last spotted from this particular position. Soon Maria, who had heard the rumors about Skip and Paula, sensed that her presence was not exactly wanted at the moment. She announced that she was going to go out on the front porch for a cigarette and got up, disappearing down the stairway.

              "So how are you feeling today?" Paula asked once she was gone.

              "Like shit," he said honestly. "My first post-comet hangover. A historical moment indeed."

              "Me too," she said. "I forgot how miserable I felt after drinking until this morning. Now I remember. But what I meant was how do you feel about what happened last night? And what we talked about last night?"

              "Oh," he said with a sigh. "That how do I feel."

              "That's the one."

              "I don't really know," he told her after a moment. "My mind is having a hard time convincing me that you were serious about what you suggested."

              "I was serious," she said. "I suppose I could now tell you that it was the alcohol talking, but it wasn't. The alcohol just gave me the courage to bring it up. The idea itself was conceived and perfected while I was cold sober. And I still think that it's the only way."

              "It just seems so... strange. I could understand if you were trying to steal me away from Christine, but to share." He shook his head a little. "That's the bizarre part."

              "But you mentioned it to Christine?" she asked.

              "How did you know that?" he asked.

              "She gave me a look at breakfast this morning that spoke volumes about how she felt about me. It was more than just the look that she would have given had she merely heard the rumors about you and I. I was pretty sure that you told her my suggestion. Did you do it while you were still drunk?"

              "Yes," he said. "She was waiting up for me when I got home. The subject was kind of forced upon me. As you guessed, she didn't react very favorably towards the suggestion."

              "I told you that she wouldn't at first," she reminded him. "It is quite a shocking suggestion to have to deal with. I think she'll come around though. There's not really anything else for her to do."

              "She slapped me across the face," he said. "And it hurt. I don't think a woman who reacts with physical violence to a suggestion is going to work her way around to accepting it."