Welcome to Paradise Page 21

  “Oh, boy,” Zara said with satisfaction. “We’re going to kick butt on this. Arcadia’s only just got their garden fence up, Hank told me last night.”

  “You’re not secretly rooting for him?” Mira asked.

  “I should be, I suppose,” Zara said, sounding surprised at herself. “Because if they win, I know I’m not going to be the one going home this time. But I can’t help it. This is my team.”

  “Since you’ve got an extra man, Arcadia,” Cliff was saying now, “you’re going to need to sit somebody out. I’ll give you a minute to decide who that’s going to be.”

  “Only one choice,” Zara muttered. But to Mira’s surprise, the decision wasn’t happening easily. She could see Scott’s furious face, his vehement refusals, Alec’s posture eloquent of disgust as he rapped out a few choice words. Calvin merely stood, arms crossed, while Hank looked back and forth between the two angry men, his expression bemused. After several minutes of argument, he shrugged, said something to the others, and turned toward the bench.

  “Looks like I’m taking a break,” he said, sitting down beside his wife as Mira shifted to make room for him.

  “Now that you all have got that sorted out,” John said, taking over from Cliff to address the remaining men, “you’ve probably figured out that you’re going to be building fence today. Building a pigpen, to be exact. Got everything you need for a ten by twelve pen, just enough for a sow and some piglets. Guess we’ll see what you’ve learned out here, because I’m not going to tell you any more than that. Points for how fast you do it, points for how good you do it. That’s about it.”

  “Challenge is on,” Cliff announced.

  As the two little groups huddled over their materials, Zara reached for Hank, gave him a quick kiss, rubbed her hand down the grizzled stubble on the side of his face. “What happened just then?” she asked him. “Not that I’m not glad to have your company, but I would’ve said that was a no-brainer, unless he actually wants to leave.”

  Hank shot a glance at Mira.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she assured him. “There’s not much you can say at this point that would surprise me.”

  “Well.” He took off his hat and scratched his head, then set it firmly in place again against the midday sun, stretched his lean legs out in front of him, and considered. “Can’t tell that man a thing, is what. Thinks he knows it all. And he sure can’t take criticism. Sets his back right up. He can’t be sat out, because that’d mean he was the worst. And he can’t be the worst. Wasn’t much we could do, short of hog-tying him and dragging him off. Which a couple of ’em would have done, quick enough,” he added with a grin.

  “Trouble already,” he added with a sigh, eyeing his team’s progress. “Unless Paradise finds some way to mess up bad, you all are gonna win this one.”

  It was true. The Paradise men had seemed to decide quickly on a strategy. Stanley had paced off the dimensions of the pen, and Kevin had searched through the supplies for a piece of string and was laying it out along Stanley’s hypothetical fenceline. As soon as he was done, each of the men picked up a posthole digger and started in.

  Meanwhile, Arcadia was still talking, Scott and Alec again in vehement disagreement, Calvin wandering over to the pile of supplies, seemingly deciding to get started on his own.

  “Yep. I smell another crash and burn,” Zara pronounced.

  “We’ll see,” Hank said with a grin. “We may have a late surge. You never know.”

  “Now that we’ve got that going,” Cliff said, having made his way over to the women’s bench, where a camera crew had been filming all along, “time to get you ladies started. Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten you.”

  “We don’t mind being the decorative audience,” Rachel assured him. “Or the cheerleaders. We’ve lost Melody and Chelsea, but I’m sure I could scare up some pom-poms somehow. And Mira’s got a cute ponytail now and everything.”

  “Nice try,” Cliff smiled, “but no dice. Come on over to the kitchen area, and you can take a look at what we’ve found for you to do.”

  The clucking that greeted them from a pen near the covered structure, the four chopping blocks set up, each with a hatchet and bucket set ready, told their own story.

  “Oh, no,” Maria-Elena groaned. “Oh, gross.”

  Mira felt a little sick herself as Cliff went on. “It looks like you’ve got the picture. Two women from each homestead are going to prepare a rooster for the pot. I know Alma taught all of you how.” He nodded to the woman who came out to join him. “And she’s here to judge how you do today. You’ve all eaten a chicken or two out here, haven’t you?”

  “Once,” Zara said. “We decided it was too much work. Which it is.” She and Mira exchanged a concerned glance. In fact, the guys had done the worst parts for them. Stanley had killed the two young roosters they’d sacrificed to the cause last week, and Gabe had cleaned them. All the women had had to do was pluck, but the whole thing had been disgusting and tedious enough that they’d made a unanimous decision to stick to corned beef, trout, and rabbit from then on.

  This was one time when the Paradise men’s consideration might work against them. Because Mira was willing to bet that Scott hadn’t cleaned anyone’s chicken. And sure enough, it was obvious from Rachel and Lupe’s confident nods that they had a leg up on this. She felt a surge of trepidation.

  “So, Paradise. You’ve got the extra member this time,” Cliff went on. “Who are you sitting out?”

  The three women looked at each other. “I’m sorry, guys,” Maria-Elena said, appearing truly ashamed. “It’s just, like, so gross. I’d be puking the whole time. I don’t think I can.”

  “That’s OK,” Mira said firmly. “Zara and I can do it, can’t we?”

  “You bet we can,” the older woman agreed, her chin lifting. “Go sit down and cheer us on, Maria-Elena. Don’t get distracted and wander back to look at cute guys, now.”

  “I won’t,” the girl said earnestly. “I promise.”

  “Ready to get to it?” Cliff asked.

  “Ready,” Mira called back as Maria-Elena took herself off to the spectators’ bench.

  “Then I’ll let Alma explain what you’re going to be doing,” Cliff said.

  “You all know,” Alma said briskly. “Least you should. I’ll be judging on time, and on preparation. You leave pinfeathers in, do a sloppy job of cleaning, that’s points. I want to see a nice, clean bird.”

  “And with that,” Cliff said, challenge is . . .” He lifted his arm in the air. “On!” he shouted as he dropped it.

  All four women raced to the wire pen, Rachel getting there first. Within seconds, they had each grabbed a young rooster. Mira wrapped her arm around the flapping wings as she ran to one of the chopping blocks, forcing her mind onto autopilot.

  Upside down, she remembered, visualizing Stanley holding the thing by the feet to quiet it, then laying it on the block, holding it down for the hatchet. She did the same, then realized she didn’t have the hatchet, had to lean over awkwardly again to pick it up, trying not to lose her hold on the struggling rooster in the meantime. She heard the thunk from the block next to hers, and saw that Lupe had already dispatched her own bird.

  She lifted the hatchet. “Sorry,” she whispered. Forced herself not to close her eyes, brought the blade down, severing the neck with one strong blow. And then had to close her eyes after all for a moment against the sight.

  Drop the body in the bucket. She did it even as she heard the shriek, and looked up to see that Rachel had forgotten that important instruction. Her rooster was running, headless, blood spraying from its neck, and Rachel had lost her usual aplomb.

  “Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” the other woman moaned, until Lupe ran out from the kitchen, caught up with the still-moving body, gathered it up and stuffed it into Rachel’s bucket with a quick word.

  Mira raced for the kitchen herself, toward the Paradise stove with its kettle of boiling water. Reached into the bucket for the fe
et again, dipped the rooster’s body by them into the water, careful not to burn herself again in the process.

  The stench immediately rose to fill her nostrils, and she fought back the sickness, wishing she hadn’t eaten lunch. She pulled the body out, made way for Zara to scald her own bird, and moved back outside, where Lupe, of course, had already begun plucking, sitting on her chopping block surrounded by feathers.

  Mira took a deep breath, hustled to her block, pulled the wet, stinking body from her bucket, and began to pull out handfuls of white feathers. This, at least, she’d done before. And the smell, the feel of it were just as disgusting this time. Her gorge rose, higher and higher, until she couldn’t stop it. She leaned over and lost her lunch next to her stump, wiped her mouth on her sleeve, and went grimly back to plucking.

  You can do this, she told herself fiercely. She knew how hard the guys were working, and that Gabe and Stanley, at least, would be putting forth that much extra effort on her behalf. She wasn’t going to let them down.

  The next hour was a disgusting blur of plucking, pulling pinfeathers, and, finally, working with a sharp knife to clean the bird. By the time she’d finished, Mira had vomited twice more. On the other hand, everyone but Lupe had done the same. It was a pale, sweating group that laid their birds out on the kitchen workbenches for inspection. Lupe was first to finish, Zara barely last. And when the judging was over, Paradise had lost for the first time.

  “But only by 15 points,” Zara pointed out shakily as they sat in the shade, having washed up as best they could with the pitcher and bowl provided. She wiped the sweat from her face with the underside of her blood-splattered apron and took another big gulp of water from the Mason jar. “Not too bad. The guys don’t have too much to make up.”

  “I wanted to win it for them, though,” Mira said miserably, wiping her eyes on her own apron as she had so many times out here. “You know they’re trying to do it for us.”

  “Did you do your best?” Zara demanded.

  “Yes,” Mira said, still a bit tearful. “I really did.”

  “I couldn’t even do it,” Maria-Elena put in. “You guys did awesome. It’s just that my mom’s really good at that stuff.”

  “And that our guys are too nice to us,” Zara agreed ruefully. “Chivalry has a price. But I did my best too, and that’s all anybody can do. Let’s go back over there, see how they’re doing. Looks from here like they’re well in the lead. I’m guessing that they’re going to bring it home for us one more time.”

  Gabe glanced up at the sight of the five women coming wearily back across the Clearing to join Hank on the bench. His eyes flew, as always, to Mira. He saw the blood staining her apron and was alarmed for a moment, until he realized that the rest of the women, except Maria-Elena, looked the same.

  “Looks like a rough one,” Stanley grunted, working with Kevin to lift a top rail into place near the spot where Gabe was digging yet another posthole. They’d dug the holes on the first twelve-foot side together, then settled that Gabe, the strongest of them, would dig the remainder, while Stanley and Kevin worked to set and tamp the posts, fasten the rails in place.

  “Yeah,” Gabe agreed, reaching down for his jar of water and taking a swig. “We know who won?”

  “Arcadia,” Stanley said grimly. “Cliff just told us. But only by 15 points. And judging by the looks of them,” he nodded in the direction of the other homestead’s pigpen, “we’ve got this. Long as we keep it up. You want me to spell you some on that?”

  “Nope. I’m good.” Gabe looked at Stanley’s shirt, the huge sweat-soaked patches on the back, under the arms, and knew his own looked the same. But Stanley was almost thirty-five years older than he was, and the day was hot. “You’re drinking enough, right?” he cautioned. “You get dehydrated, we’ll lose for sure.”

  “Yeah, Doc,” Stanley grinned back tiredly. “I’m drinking. You just keep digging. Don’t worry about your girl. We’ll win it for her.”

  “All righty, then.” John stood in front of the bench where the six men sprawled, dirty and exhausted, an hour and a half later. “We’ve got us two pens here, all right. Let’s talk about how you did.”

  He walked to Paradise’s pen first. “Stanley,” he began. “Want to tell me why you decided to put your rails on the inside of the posts, instead of the outside like Arcadia did? What made you choose to do that?”

  “Thought a pig’d be less likely to push the posts over that way,” Stanley answered, wiping his handkerchief over the back of his neck, wet now from the pitcher of water he’d poured over himself.

  “And that was a good thought,” John said approvingly. “Get a 400-pound sow shoving up against those posts, she’ll push ’em right down. That’s 10 points from Arcadia, putting the rails on the outside.”

  “What?” Scott exploded. “Nobody ever told us that!”

  John looked at him coldly. “I have a pretty good recollection of talking about building fence with you all. If you weren’t listening to everything I said, thought you knew it all already, guess that’s your look-out.”

  “Now,” he went on, “what about the latch on the gate here? Now that, Arcadia, you did put on the inside. What was your thinking on that?”

  “That you’d care more about getting out fast than getting in fast,” Scott said proudly. “In case there was any trouble.”

  “Uh-huh,” John said. “Only problem with that is, pig’s smarter’n a dog. She can figure out how to lift that latch in no time. Now she doesn’t even have to push over the posts. She can just open that gate up, walk right on out. That’s another 10 points from Arcadia. Ten more points gone for being second, and another five for being second by a country mile, and we’ve got . . . Paradise winning by 35 points,” he finished.

  “And that means,” Cliff said, “since Arcadia won the women’s challenge by 15 points, that Paradise wins today by 20 points. And that I’ll see all of you here tomorrow night, when Paradise will be doing the talking once again.”

  “And I know you’re all pretty hot and tired after all that,” he went on over the sounds of celebration on the Paradise side, the glum silence from Arcadia. “Probably don’t feel much like cooking dinner tonight, do you?”

  “Nope,” Rachel agreed with a sigh. “Not even chicken.”

  “Well, I’ve got good news for you,” Cliff said. “You don’t have to. Go home and get cleaned up, take care of your animals, and come on back here. You’re going to get the best dinner you’ve had yet out here tonight, and a surprise too.”

  “What about our chickens, though?” Rachel asked practically. “After all that work, we’d better get to eat them.”

  “Already in the freezer,” Cliff promised. “We’ll give them to you last thing tonight so you can cook them for dinner tomorrow. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, though, to put them in the springbox until you’re ready to do that. Nobody’s died on America Alive yet, though you’ve made some pretty good attempts at it. We’d like to keep it that way.”

  I Will Fight No More Forever

  The first thing they noticed was the smoke.

  “Barbecue,” Stanley said appreciatively. And sure enough, the long table set up in front of the kitchen area wasn’t the only thing that had changed when they returned to the Clearing a few hours later. Two huge barbecues were now pouring smoke into the late-afternoon sky, manned by two men, while two women moved between kitchen and table. The men’s jeans and long-sleeved shirts weren’t much different from the homesteaders’ own attire, but their coloring was impossible to mistake.

  “I wondered about this,” Gabe said. “If they were ever going to talk about the original inhabitants. About time, too.”

  He broke off then to greet Alec, nodding to the rest of the Arcadia group. Scott, he saw, stayed near Lupe as she greeted her daughter with a warm hug.

  “Yeah,” Alec said, following the direction of his gaze and reading his thoughts perfectly, as always. “The only one softhearted enough to give him the tim
e of day at this point. I have to say, sorry you won. Because having him around another week is going to be a killer. And I’m guessing you aren’t going to be voting Mira out tomorrow.”

  “Nope,” Gabe confirmed as they walked toward their dinner. “Not hardly.”

  “Welcome,” Cliff said when they were all seated around the long table. “I promised a good dinner tonight, didn’t I? Fresh salmon, to be exact, graciously provided by members of the Nez Perce tribe, who are your hosts tonight.”

  Food had never tasted so good, Gabe decided, as their hosts served the meal and settled down to eat it with them. He was always hungry enough out here to enjoy anything put before him, but the perfectly cooked salmon fillets, so fresh they must have been caught that day, took it to a new level. Add buttery, pine nut-flecked carrots, tender roasted potatoes, and tortilla-like flatbread, and he was a happy man.

  He groaned aloud when dessert was set in front of him. “Maria-Elena, I think you’ve just been given a run for your money,” he announced. “And vanilla ice cream. I think I’ve just died and gone to heaven. What kind of pie is this?” he asked the woman across from him, who’d introduced herself as Deborah.

  “Huckleberry,” she smiled. “They’re ripe now. You should find some good patches up the mountain a bit from you. Have you done much exploring?”

  “Not much chance,” he said ruefully. “You’ve just given me a good reason to make time, though. These are delicious.” Like blueberries, but smaller, with a tart/sweet quality all their own.

  “Just watch out for the bears,” she cautioned. “They’ll be pretty interested too.”

  Finally, though, the last piece of pie was consumed—by Stanley, Gabe was amused to see. Well, that had been a pretty tough challenge today. He’d eaten two pieces himself, and was starting to wonder if undoing the top button of his pants was an option.