Page 74 of Everything Under the Sun

My stomach grumbled.

“You can wash up first,” Emily insisted; she pointed at the kitchen sink over the bar. “Wash on the left side, rinse on the right. There’s a dishtowel on the counter to dry off with.”

“Thank you,” I said kindly.

Atticus just nodded.

Standing at the kitchen sink together, we scrubbed the dirt—and blood, in Atticus’ case—from our hands. I glanced at his hands, making a mental note of their condition. They appeared to heal well; scabs had reformed over the tiny cuts; the redness and swelling had faded considerably.

We all sat around the table and enjoyed the food and conversation, though not so much Atticus, who sat in silence, eating. He had taken the chair where the only thing behind him was a wall, probably so he could keep everyone in his sights.

I thought it was odd to be having fried chicken for breakfast, but then realized how odd it was to be having fried chicken—or breakfast—at all. How was it that Emily still had flour and spices and oil to fry the meat with?

“I ain’t gonna lie,” Emily told me, “that vegetable oil I’ve been usin’ for ‘least four years now”—she laughed and shook her finger at no one in particular—“Y’know, back when we had TV, I saw once on one of them food shows that there’s a mom-n-pop restaurant somewhere in Texas, I think, that’s been usin’ the same oil to fry with since 1979, or somethin’ like that”—she swallowed her food—“that stuff never goes bad. It’s like honey.” She tore off another bite of chicken with her teeth, chewed quickly and pointed her finger again. “And I saw on National Geograhical, or one of them stations, they opened a mummy tomb over in Egypt and found honey still wet in the jar that was over three thousand years old.” She nodded as if to underline her point, then went back to her chicken, grease glistening on her fingers.

“So, where’d you two come from, anyway?” David spoke up across the table from Atticus. He dug his fingers in his chicken breast, tearing the rest of the meat away from the bone. “I’m guessin’ farther north, judgin’ the accents.”

I wasn’t aware I had an accent.

“Yeah, we’re from farther north,” Atticus said, but wouldn’t elaborate.

“And are you…related?” Rachel asked, sitting next to her father, across from Atticus, but she was only looking at Atticus. “I mean…are you together?” She glanced at me sitting next to him. It made me uncomfortable, but I wasn’t sure why.

“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. “We’re not together like that, we’re just—.” I stopped abruptly when I felt Atticus’ knee knock against mine underneath the table.

“She’s my sister,” Atticus cut in, though I got the feeling it wasn’t what he had wanted to say. “And we’re on our way to Shreveport. We have family there.”

Rachel’s eyes seemed alight with relief and excitement.

I looked over at Atticus. He didn’t look pleased that I’d spoken up.

ATTICUS

I wanted no one—David especially—to think Thais was fair game. It wasn’t safe for her to be unattached to a man. And while although I settled with pretending to be her brother—because it was too late not to—and took comfort in thinking David may not pursue her on that account alone, I felt that later, when we came in contact with more people on our way to Shreveport, we would need to play a different role.

“So how is it you’ve survived here like this,” I asked between bites, “without being attacked by raiders?” I thought about the raiders from Lexington City, recalling the maps, knowing that scouting parties had been this way before.

David pointed his fork at me; a lopsided smile hung on his lips.

“Oh, we been attacked all right,” he confirmed, “but we can protect ourself. There used to be ‘bout fifteen of us here.”

“But we ain’t been here but ‘bout two years,” Emily spoke up. “We was travelin’ like you, all the way from St. Louis, until we found this place. It wudn’t this nice in the beginnin’, but we been makin’ it nice since we moved in.”

“What happened to the rest of you?” I asked.

“Died fightin’,” David answered straightaway, chewing.

“Well ‘cept for Dana and her husband,” Rachel said, and the table got grimly silent.

I glanced askance at David, Emily, and Rachel, in turns.

“What happened to them?” Thais spoke up.

Emily and David exchanged dark glances; Rachel looked down into her food, moved her eggs away from the gravy distractingly.

“M’daddy killed ‘em,” Shannon said matter-of-factly as she entered the kitchen.

She walked past everyone and set her plate on the counter. Then she turned to face us sitting at the table, crossed her arms firmly over her busty chest. I made note of the hardening of her jaw and the threatening gleam in her eyes as she looked across at me and Thais.

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