At least Jeb took me to the least crowded spot in the long, sunny cave. He had Ian pulverize the hard-baked dirt ahead of us, while I flipped the clods over and he followed behind, crushing the chunks into usable soil with the edge of his shovel.
Watching the sweat run down Ian’s fair skin—he’d removed his shirt after a few seconds in the dry scorch of the mirror light—and hearing Jeb’s grunted breaths behind me, I could see that I had the easiest job. I wished I had something more difficult to do, something that would keep me from being distracted by the movements of the other humans. Their every motion had me cringing and flinching.
I couldn’t do Ian’s job—I didn’t have the thick arm and back muscles needed to really chew into the hard soil. But I decided to do what I could of Jeb’s, prechopping the clods into smaller bits before I moved on. It helped a little bit—kept my eyes busy and tired me out so that I had to concentrate on making myself work.
Ian brought us water now and then. There was a woman—short and fair, I’d seen her in the kitchen yesterday—who seemed to have the job of bringing water to the others, but she ignored us. Ian brought enough for three every time. I found his about-face in regard to me unsettling. Was he really no longer intent on my death? Or just looking for an opportunity? The water always tasted funny here—sulfurous and stale—but now that taste seemed suspicious. I tried to ignore the paranoia as much as possible.
I was working hard enough to keep my eyes busy and my mind numb; I didn’t notice when we hit the end of the last row. I stopped only when Ian did. He stretched, pulling the pick overhead with two hands and popping his joints. I shied away from the raised pick, but he didn’t see. I realized that everyone else had stopped, too. I looked at the fresh-turned dirt, even across the entire floor, and realized that the field was complete.
“Good work,” Jeb announced in a loud voice to the group. “We’ll seed and water tomorrow.”
The room was filled with soft chatter and clanks as the tools were piled against the wall once more. Some of the talk was casual; some was still tense because of me. Ian held his hand out for my shovel, and I handed it to him, feeling my already low mood sink right to the floor. I had no doubt that I would be included in Jeb’s “we.” Tomorrow would be just as hard as today.
I looked at Jeb mournfully, and he was smiling in my direction. There was a smugness to his grin that made me believe he knew what I was thinking—not only did he guess my discomfort, but he was enjoying it.
He winked at me, my crazy friend. I realized again that this was the best to be expected from human friendship.
“See you tomorrow, Wanda,” Ian called from across the room, and laughed to himself.
Everyone stared.
CHAPTER 24
Tolerated
It was true that I did not smell good.
I’d lost count of how many days I’d spent here—was it more than a week now? more than two?—and all of them sweating into the same clothes I’d worn on my disastrous desert trek. So much salt had dried into my cotton shirt that it was creased into rigid accordion wrinkles. It used to be pale yellow; now it was a splotchy, diseased-looking print in the same dark purple color as the cave floor. My short hair was crunchy and gritty; I could feel it standing out in wild tangles around my head, with a stiff crest on top, like a cockatoo’s. I hadn’t seen my face recently, but I imagined it in two shades of purple: cave-dirt purple and healing-bruise purple.
So I could understand Jeb’s point—yes, I needed a bath. And a change of clothes as well, to make the bath worth the effort. Jeb offered me some of Jamie’s clothes to wear while mine dried, but I didn’t want to ruin Jamie’s few things by stretching them. Thankfully, he didn’t try to offer me anything of Jared’s. I ended up with an old but clean flannel shirt of Jeb’s that had the sleeves ripped off, and a pair of faded, holey cutoff sweatpants that had gone unclaimed for months. These were draped over my arm—and a bumpy mound of vile-smelling, loosely molded chunks that Jeb claimed was homemade cactus soap was in my hand—as I followed Jeb to the room with the two rivers.
Again we were not alone, and again I was miserably disappointed that this was the case. Three men and one woman—the salt-and-pepper braid—were filling buckets with water from the smaller stream. A loud splashing and laughing echoed from the bathing room.
“We’ll just wait our turn,” Jeb told me.
He leaned against the wall. I stood stiffly beside him, uncomfortably conscious of the four pairs of eyes on me, though I kept my own on the dark hot spring rushing by underneath the porous floor.
After a short wait, three women exited the bathing room, their wet hair dripping down the backs of their shirts—the athletic caramel-skinned woman, a young blonde I didn’t remember seeing before, and Melanie’s cousin Sharon. Their laughter stopped abruptly as soon as they caught sight of us.
“Afternoon, ladies,” Jeb said, touching his forehead as if it were the brim of a hat.
“Jeb,” the caramel woman acknowledged dryly.
Sharon and the other girl ignored us.
“Okay, Wanda,” he said when they’d passed. “It’s all yours.”
I gave him a glum look, then made my way carefully into the black room.
I tried to remember how the floor went—I was sure I had a few feet before the edge of the water. I took off my shoes first, so that I could feel for the water with my toes.
It was just so dark. I remembered the inky appearance of the pool—ripe with suggestions of what might lurk beneath its opaque surface—and shuddered. But the longer I waited, the longer I would have to be here, so I put the clean clothes next to my shoes, kept the smelly soap, and shuffled forward carefully until I found the lip of the pool.