Chapter 2
For a moment it had seemed like Pelican town was in the midst of a renaissance. When it had felt like the population would only dwindle down to nothing, Leah showed up. A bit reclusive, but an artist and young. This was potential. This meant a new generation of people might feel the valleys charms. Then Elliot. Another recluse, poor beyond being able to stimulate the local economy at all, but still, young and new. Sure, Haley left the second she graduated high school, but nobody had ever expected someone like her to stick around anyway. Besides, Marnie’s nephew was coming to town. And soon after that, after so many years dormant, the farm was occupied again.
Then Maru left. A mass exodus had begun. Abigail skipped out, Sam drove off and then Sebastian followed. Of the young folks of Pelican town only Alex and Penny remained. To make matters worse, it seemed like Leah and Elliot were not anywhere near obtaining a spouse, let alone having kids like the town had so desperately hoped. Shane was a pathetic alcoholic. Not even the good doctor seemed able to settle down and have a family. Joja mart was slowly killing Pierre’s. George died. Evelyn moved into a senior’s home out of town.
The once bustling coastal hub – or maybe not bustling and maybe not a hub per say, but a lively and sweet town to be sure – was now half occupied. Or half empty, as Lewis thought on his darker days. It was strange to be there now, after having grown up in it being full of life. The other towns people had adjusted to the emptiness, but Maru, having been one of the first to leave, having left when things seemed on the up, was struck with it at all once.
Maru does end up bringing Penny one of her dad’s casseroles. If only because it’s a safer place to toss it away, Alex’s old dog Dusty being only meters away.
She knocks on the door, feeling the heat radiating off the metal of the trailer. An anticipatory heat shiver runs through her only thinking about the stagnant humidity that must be inside. She’d always avoided it here, even back in the day.
Pam opens the door a crack, her eyes blood-shot and sagging, her hair untamed. “Whatchya want- oh Maru.”
“Hello Pam-”
“PENNY! Your friend is here.” Pam yells over her shoulder, disappearing back into the dark heat of the trailer.
Maru wonders if she should follow in but decides not to. When Penny appears in the doorway she looks shrunken. Her red hair is in slight disarray, not its usual perfect roll. She’s pale as anything and doesn’t step close enough to the door frame to allow any ray of light to touch her.
“Hi.” She says quietly and Maru wonders if she’s imagining that Penny’s looking down at her with slightly narrowed eyes.
“Hi Pen, I brought you this.” Maru holds up he casserole. Penny stares down at the foil wrapped dish blankly.
“Oh. You didn’t have to.”
“Probably better if I didn’t. It’s cave carrot and squid.”
They stand there a moment, Maru holding the unwanted offering between them. Eventually Penny moves to take it, then steps back into her home.
“I’m sure it’s fine.” She says without emotion.
“Are you busy? Do you want to take a walk?” It’s what they used to do.
“Sorry, I can’t.” She offers no explanation.
“Okay… Um, I’m back for a while. So if you ever want to… I’m around.”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Great.”
“Goodnight.”
And she shuts the door.
Maru’s left on the step feeling strange with the realization that even Penny’s being weird with her.
Shane washes his hands under the cool flow of the mountain spring water gushing from his tap. He turns the faucet, the water stops.
Fixed, he thinks, good.
When he’d taken the job on the farm he hadn’t anticipated what he’d become. The original agreement had been for him to take care of the chickens, part-time. Ry’s reasoning for hiring him being that the stupidity of the birds only brought out her bloodlust, so for the productivity of the farm, she needed someone else to manage them. His job expanded to full-time when she expanded to more livestock. One morning he’d shown up and there were ducks and rabbits cohabiting in the coop and Robin was laying the foundation for a barn.
He’d been scratching his head, wondering how he hadn’t noticed such a large dent out of Marnie’s stock when Ry had come over and told him he better quit joja for good.
“What if I don’t want to?” He’d said, petulantly.
She’d just shrugged, “then don’t.”
He quit that afternoon. Walked out without notice.
He told himself it was only because he relished causing Morris pain, and not because it had anything to do with Ry, or her stupid farm. Though it was plain to anyone that the job suited him. It was quiet and Ry didn’t pester him with meaningless chitchat. Sometimes he’d go three quarters of the day without even seeing her, as she kept to the fruits and vegetables and didn’t have time to spare on conversation. The few times they did have to work on something together - whether it was repairing fences or rotating feed in the silo – they either said nothing or dove right into a specific topic.
They got to know each other slowly. After a year Shane realized there was a confidence shared between them unlike one he’d shared with anyone else. She knew about his miserable past, she knew how hard it was for him to stay sober and how some days he’d think he couldn’t do it anymore, but more than that, she also knew the things he liked, the things that got him excited or as close as Shane ever let himself get. They started sharing lunch together every day and Shane found, shockingly, he looked forward to these times, even cherished them.
A few more seasons passed, and Shane dared to think he might be… happy. Content, at least. What an incredible least to possess. He expected to lose it any second.
“Why’d you hire me? “ He asked her at lunch once. They were eating on her front porch, out of the beating sun, both of them too sweaty and dirty to want to be indoors.
She’d shrugged, chewing on a sloppy bite, sauce on the corner of her mouth. “I needed help.”
“Yeah but why me? I didn’t apply for the job.”
She swallowed and seemed to think about it. “I just liked you, I guess.”
“I was an asshole to you.” He's not apologizing, just stating the obvious.
She snorted, “yeah, you were.”
“Then why?” He's surprised by himself, pressing for answer. Normally he's a don't ask don't tell kind of guy. Preferring the cloudy misery of his assumptions.
“Because I liked you despite it. I don’t know, you ever get the feeling you can just tell about someone?” She lounges back and looks out over the farm with a somewhat thoughtful expression.
“Hell no. I hate everyone.” Though he's not sure if that's exactly true anymore.
“Liar.” She quirks a small smile, before glugging down an entire glass of water.
“It’s true. That’s just my gut reaction to everyone I see.”
She snorts, only mildly choking on the dregs of her drink. Recovering, she says, “well, it wasn’t mine. You seemed fucked up and you were an asshole but then I found out you really do know your shit about animals, and I was like yeah.”
“You were desperate," he points out, knowing the truth.
She shoves him. “Shut up. Well, I was, a little. But that’s not the point. You were a dick to my face and would tell me to fuck off and that’s how I knew you wouldn’t bother me.”
“Logical.” But he does get it, somehow.
“I mean it. I put on a friendly façade out there, but why the fuck do you think I moved out here? To talk to people? No.” He's not sure if he believes her. She always talks about being so different in the past, being a nervous wreck around people and never knowing what to say, but he can't quite see it. She's more quiet than most people, but when she does talk it never seems forced or awkward.
“Well, we talk now. Should I go eat my lunch in the barn?”
After the cows, and the goats, and the sheep, and the pigs, he’d sauntered into work one morning to find Robin laying another foundation.
“Yoba, not another barn I fucking hope?”
Robin startled, whether at his tone or his sudden appearance he wasn’t sure. “No… Not another barn.” She had narrowed eyes like his question didn’t make any sense. He became suspicious. Robin wouldn’t answer his questions, said she had too much work to do.
“What’s the new building for?” He demanded of Ry when he saw her pruning tomatoes later that day.
“What?” She asked lazily, the summer heat making her sluggish.
“What’s Robin building?”
Ry shrugged, “you wanna go for a swim?”
“No.” Even though he did, “you’re not bringing in someone else to work here are you? Because I can handle the animals. I fixed that hole in the fence, last week was a total fluke…”
“I’m not bringing in someone else.”
“If you bring in someone else I’ll quit.”
“Shane, you don’t want to live at Marnie’s forever, do you?” She said it matter-of-factly, examining the scaly green film the tomato pollen left on her fingers.
He opened his mouth to respond but found he was too pissed to say anything. He walked away. He went to the forest and jumped in the lake without her. To cool off, emotionally and physically, but also out of spite.
The cabin she’d had built for him lay dormant, untouched and collecting dust. Shane didn’t speak to Ry for a week, he was so pissed about her organizing his life like that. She never brought up him moving onto the farm again.
He would lay in bed at Marnie’s and stare at the ceiling, listening to her and Jas talk about their days, the future. For so long he’d stared into the void of the future, thinking it was nothing but darkness, the same as all his days were. Then the faint flicker of hope, and the only thing he’d focused on was sobriety, on getting through the day. He’d ticked off almost two years of days without a relapse. Was it time to think of something more for himself?
“I don’t like freebies.” Shane said to Ry one day at work.
“Neither do I.” Ry said plainly, not asking for him to clarify although he wasn’t sure if she knew he was talking about the cabin. They’d been talking again lately, avoiding his housing situation as a subject. It had been mostly normal.
“It’s not an improvement going from being a burden on one person to the next.” He said darkly.
She exhaled as if she were exhausted. “You work for me, Shane. This is essentially a monetary exchange. It means you won’t show up late anymore. I have the space. And I feel better knowing there’s someone close that I trust.”
She trusted him.
He’d never thought of that.
“Why didn’t you tell me before? Why didn’t you ask me, at least?”
“Honestly Shane? Because I knew you’d be mad and think I was meddling and I didn’t know how to bring it up.” She shrugged, “I’m not always great at communicating. You know I’m working on it.”
“You’re not just trying to micromanage me and make sure I stay sober out of some fucked up saviour complex you’ve got?”
She rolls her eyes. “You’ve been sober for almost two years, pal. You don’t need me for that.”
He moved into the cabin. He worked full time on the farm. He’d learned to manage more tasks than just the animals, occasionally being trained by Ry or Robin, depending what it was. He was still sober. And he’d just fixed the water line that ran to his cabin without having to consult anyone. He splashed water on his face. He felt good.
Ry came around the corner and stopped in her tracks when she saw him standing by his outdoor sink.
“Oh, you’ve fixed it.”
“Yeah.”
“How do you feel about having power?”
“What?”
“Solar power. I was thinking we should get your cabin hooked up before the days start getting darker.”
“I don’t know, I’ve been enjoying being unconnected from all that.”
“Fair.” She’s thoughtful a second, “so I should tell Alex not to come then?”
“Uh, what?”
“Alex said he’d come over and hook it up, or show you how to I guess.”
Shane wants to accuse her of meddling again, but he’s not sure why he thinks that.
He shrugs nonchalantly, “I mean, if he’s already agreed to come we might as well. A light might be good.”