Page 113 of Enemy
It’s nice…
It almost feels like the summer camps I’ve seen in movies, which is oddly fitting, considering where we are, and as I stand at Road’s side, sipping beer from a bottle someone handed to me, with the vast woods stretching in every direction, I’m surprised by the sense of peace settling inside me despite all the people around me being strangers or—until recently—enemies. Rough fingers ghost over mine, as if Road wants to touch me despite not being quite ready to make it obvious, and it just feels so damn peaceful.
“So you are the man of the hour,” a middle-aged woman in a hoodie sewn out of a patchwork of fabric leaves says.
I chuckle and squeeze her hand. “Hardly, but I appreciate the big bash.”
Road strokes my back as he fills me in. “This is Rhonda, she made most of our breakfast and often works in the canteen.”
I pick up on that, eager to make allies. “It was great, especially the pancakes. I heard someone at Vulture Hollow makes the honey?”
The woman laughs. “The bees. But yes, we have a beekeeper, so it’s produced on site, along with a large portion of what we eat.”
“Brigid started this place as a self-sustained community,” Road adds, and while I know for a fact he isn’t particularly into the whole thing and can’t cook for shit, he appreciates nice food as much as anyone.
“My family was among the first to settle here,” Rhonda says with obvious pride. “And look at that, almost twenty years on, Vulture Hollow is thriving. You’ll like it here.”
I’m still worried if I’ll be alive next week, but her positive attitude is building up hope in me. Road smiles at me with… pride? Like he’s happy to be seen as my man.
“Clyde is a great cook, I’m sure he’ll appreciate the kind of fresh food we have here.”
I’m now ashamed I talked shit about this commune being a hippy meth lab. Maybe they’re the ones who got it right.
Rhonda lights up and claps her hands, her sun-kissed wrinkles deepening as she smiles. “There’s always help needed at the canteen if you need a job in the future. No better way to people’s hearts than to feed their souls.”
Okay, maybethatis a bit too woo-woo for me, but I’m not about to voice that when I’m still wearing the necklace from Prophet. It doesn’t hurt, I guess.
An older man taps Road on the shoulder, trying to pull him away, and the green eyes settle on mine, as if he needs to make sure I am okay with him leaving. At this point, some of the tension in my heart melts away, and I feel so comfortable in Rhonda’s company I offer my man anod and follow her across the meeting area. People keep stealing glances and whispering, even though most aren’t comfortable chatting to me yet, but with this gray-haired mother hen, I’m somehow even more at ease than with Road. Warm, smiling, she is like everyone’s grandma, and by the time she leads me to the grilling area close by, I’m confident that I am not leaving this party with broken bones.
“Harold, I brought you a helper,” she beams at… Yeti. “Clyde is a great cook from what I’ve heard, so you won’t be complaining about the burgers being overdone.”
Harold? Really? I have to hold back a snort.
The massive, hairy guy is manning a beast of a barbecue where meats are sorted by type, and include burger patties, hot dogs, wings and chicken legs. He scowls at me, but Rhonda pats me on the back with a smile.
“I’ll leave you boys to it.”
As she leaves, his dark gaze skims over me, and he grabs tongs off a plastic table, only for them to slip out of his hand and to the ground. The growl he utters is like the roar of some unknown underground creature. “That’s your fault!”
I bite the inside of my cheek not to laugh at his plight. “How is it my fault?”
He grabs the utensil off the moss, and when he shows me his hand, my amusement dies, because he is missing a finger. All of a sudden I know exactly why he’s blaming me. He lost it in the warehouse fire that almost killed both myself and Road.
The firemybomb caused.
I could mock him, say he still has the other nine to pick his nose, but that’s what Butcher Clyde would do. It’s no longer my job to antagonize every Vulture I meet.
I clear my throat. “Does it help that I was in a weeklong coma with broken ribs?”
Yeti’s thick brows lower, and his lips open, as if he were surprised. “Yeah. Actually, it does.”
For a moment, we stand in uncomfortable silence, so I stretch my social muscles. “So… you like to grill?” Not the smoothest segue in the history of conversation, but it’s a start, a little white flag, which seems to be welcome, as he turns the chicken on the grill and mutters.
“People just aren’t good at cooking meat. I can’t count the times I ate it prepared by someone else, only to get something too raw, or dry, or not salty enough. Don’t trust any meat I didn’t cook myself.” He sighs and looks straight at me, offering a flag of his own, though I’d call it pink rather than white. “Hope you don’t eat yours well done.”
I’m glad I have the bottle to give me something to do with my hands. “No, I’ve got standards, but Road once left a chicken breast in a pan and forgot about it. That thing was charred and dry as wood chips, but he ate it and said it was ‘protein’.”
Yeti’s eyes shut, and he exhales, as if the weight of the world has just dropped on his wide shoulders. “That sounds like him. Man has a stomach like a trash can. Each time everyone got sick eating something shitty on the road, he was always fine.”
