Page 31 of Trade
“You’re tired,” Dalton says. He unstraps a rolled blanket attached to the top of his backpack and spreads it on the grass between the fire and the steep, rocky base of the hill.
I don’t argue about sharing or taking his bed from him or demand to know his intentions. I just immediately lie down on my side, facing the fire. I’m bone tired.
“Got your knife?” he asks.
I’m confused, but I take it from my pocket. I should have figured he wasn’t going to let me keep it.
“Put it here while you sleep.” He sets it a few inches from where my hand rests on the scratchy wool. “If shit goes down, you don’t want to have to dig around in your pocket. You want your weapon at hand.” He says the last part like he’s quoting something he’s been told many times.
He settles himself a few feet away, rests his back against his pack, and crosses his long legs, propping the heel of one boot on the toe of the other. His striking profile is backlit by the fire. If you ignore the body of a Greek god and focus on his face, he could be a Pre-Raphaelite painting of a woman, the lines are that dramatic, that strong.
He unsheathes his machete and lays it at his side. My sense of self-preservation finally pipes up loud enough to break through my exhaustion.
“Why do we need weapons at hand?” I squint into the woods, but past the fire, it’s pitch black. I can hear the occasional hoot or honk, but the crackling of the wood covers any possible rustles or snaps.
“Scroungers,” he says.
“Aren’t you a scrounger?”
He shrugs. “Not that kind.” I wait, but he doesn’t seem inclined to elaborate.
“What would they do?”
“Kill me. Take my shit. Take you.”
My blood runs cold. “But you’re not that kind?”
He shrugs again. “Not usually.”
What does that mean? Oh God. How did he get the hundred barrels of oil? “Did you kill anyone for the oil?”
His jaw tightens. He turns his head away from me, glaring into the fire. “What does it matter?”
“It matters.” My voice rises.
He glances over at me, as grim as when I first saw him, then turns back to the embers. “You don’t want to know,” he mutters. “You want to live under a mountain and have your food and fuel delivered to your door. You’re so attached to your easy life that poking your nose out into the real world for a few hours is fuckingterrifyingto you.”
“You have no idea. And it’s not ‘a few hours.’ It’s to be raped and maybe beaten or murdered.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know what you people do to us.”
“Wetrade.”
“How is it a trade? I didn’t get any oil. Noscrip. You saw them push me out. Who traded, Dalton? Not me.”
He sits up with bent knees, tensing, scowling. “You let me do it.”
Shame and fury flood my veins. The cold and my aches and pains and fear vanish. “What would you have done if I’d fought?”
“Your people never fight.”
I want to fight him now. I want to punch him in that perfect, pretty face like in movies. “You mean ourwomen. And if that’s true, why do you beat them?”
“Beat them?” He scoffs, incredulous. “Bullshit. We don’t hurt you. Remember the rules?No leaving marks. No scrounger would risk his ability to trade.”
“I’veseenthe women when they come back. Black eyes. Broken jaws. Nails ripped out.” I’m standing now. Shaking. Yanking at my own fingers to show him, to force him tolook, toadmit it, the utter horror hitting me like it never hit me in the bunker when I was ushered with my tea into the back corners of dimly lit dorms surrounded by frightened whispers.
