CHAPTER 40

Four days after their arrival at the Grasslands, Jeff Stavers was leaning in the doorway of a classroom and watching Robin Tharp finish up her classes for the day. Jasper had seen the way Margaret O’Brien’s grandkids took to Robin during their quarantine, and he’d asked her to lead one of their classes for the village’s elementary-aged kids.

She glanced up from the book she was reading and smiled. He nodded back and slipped outside. Though it was early August, midafternoon, there was still a slight chill in the air, and it felt good. The sky above them was a limitless blue, broken only by a high, thin band of white cirrus clouds far off to the west. Jasper and his people did an amazing job of planning this place out, Jeff thought. They had fresh water from the Cedar River to the south and plenty of land for farming and cattle and development. He breathed deeply, and realized that he felt wonderful. He could really, finally, breathe.

“Hey there, handsome.”

Jeff turned. Robin was standing there, a copy of The Celery Stalks at Midnight clutched over her breasts. Kids ran around her on the way to the playground. One of them stopped to hug her, then ran off after the others.

“You sounded really good in there. I’d never be able to manage all those kids.”

She reached down and took his hand in hers. “I’m enjoying this. The teaching. It’s wonderful.”

“It shows,” he said. “What were you reading them anyway?”

She showed him the book.

“The Celery Stalks at Midnight. Cute. What’s that about?”

“It’s about a vampire bunny named Bunnicula who drains the juice from vegetables. There’s a cat named Chester and a dog named Harold who try to stop him but never quite manage it.”

“Bunnicula, huh? You know, I’d have thought that kids these days would have had enough of being scared.”

“It’s actually a pretty funny book. But you know, I don’t think kids will ever really get tired of scary stuff. It’s part of growing up, you know? You can read a scary story and compartmentalize it, own it, in a way, because it’s a bite-sized chunk of terror. Sort of like a vaccine against an illness. Once you master your fear of the scary stuff in the story, you can approach the larger world, growing up and stuff like that, with a little more self-assurance.”

They had been walking down a dirt lane toward the pavilion, but he stopped and looked at her. Really looked at her. “Robin,” he said. “That’s brilliant.”

She huffed.

“No, really. I mean it. You’ve really given this a lot of thought, haven’t you?”

“I have a lot of life experience to back it up,” she said.

He nodded to that.

They started walking again, and he said, “So, you’re happy? You think we made the right choice coming here?”

“I think so,” she said. “Jeff, I love being a teacher. It’s wonderful. And Jasper’s great, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Jeff, you’re wonderful. Don’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way. You really are a wonderful man. Smart, caring, even a little sexy—in a dopey kind of way.”

“Thanks.”

“But you’ve got to understand something, Jeff. Even you, when you met me that first time—remember, in Colin’s limo?”

“I remember.”

“Well, even you, sweet as you turned out to be, when you looked at me that first time, you recognized me. You had this impression of me that was based on what I did. But Jasper, when he first saw me, he didn’t see a…Well, you know. He saw somebody who could teach children to read. He looked at me in a way I’ve never been looked at before. Do you have any idea how that feels?”

“I bet it feels great,” he said.

She gave him a sexy pout. “I knew you’d take it the wrong way. I wasn’t criticizing you.”

“How am I supposed to take it? You just lumped me in with every pervert who ever watched a porno.”

“You are a pervert.” She smiled at him, the tip of her tongue just visible between her lips. There was mischief in her eyes. “You’re a cute pervert, though.”

“Yeah, right.”

She took his hand as they walked past a group of squealing kids in the middle of a game of tag.

“So how about you?” she asked. “How’s life on the farm?”

He grunted. She meant the farming work he’d been doing in the vegetable fields. That first day, in quarantine, while Robin was discovering the teacher within, he’d gone through a rather embarrassing question-and-answer session with Aaron. After answering “None” to a whole string of questions about his experience with the practical survival skills of carpentry, plumbing, brick making, and animal husbandry, he’d been assigned to work in the fields. But it wasn’t all bad, the farming. He’d met another Harvard alumnus, a real-estate attorney from Maryland, and the two of them had had a pretty heated discussion about the recurrence of the True Thomas folktale in Keats’s poetry while they shoveled manure from the bed of a pickup.

Jeff didn’t tell Robin about that, though.

She said, “So what are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know. I was going to get some lunch. You hungry?”

“A little.” She glanced around, like she was making sure they were alone. Then she said, “Of course, we don’t have to go get lunch. I mean, if you don’t want to.”

“What else would we do?” he said.

He looked at her. She smiled back.

The dormitories weren’t that far away.

Later that afternoon, Jeff was walking around, exploring the area around the new adult-education building to the south of the common area, when he bumped into a heavyset black woman in her early sixties named LaShawnda Johnson. He recognized her as one of the original Family members, the people who had come with Jasper from his church in Jackson. Jeff had met her that first day, after dinner, when he was trying to get settled in the dormitory. At the time, she’d acted like a den mother, smiling and laughing and telling jokes like she was determined to fill the day with sunshine. But she wasn’t acting friendly now. She seemed stiff, almost cold, like she’d caught him doing something dirty with a girl way too young for him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, thoroughly mystified. “Did I do something wrong? I was just looking around.”

“You just go on back to the pavilion till suppertime. Don’t come round here without permission, you hear?”

“Sure,” he said. “I hear you.”

“Go on,” she said.

He excused himself and walked away. But when he looked back, just before he turned the corner between the kitchen and the pharmacy, he saw she was still watching him, her expression hard and forbidding.

Confused and a little rattled, he made his way back across the main road, past the tool room and the vehicle garage, and past the education buildings. Most everybody seemed to be indoors, and the public areas were quiet.

LaShawnda Johnson was out of sight, but the feeling of unease he’d gotten after speaking with her remained. What had done? Why did she get so defensive? Unable to hold back his curiosity, he doubled back to the adult-education building, where classes in subjects as varied as soap making and canning and carpentry were held each night, and he started looking around. A moment later, he heard the sounds of a struggle coming from within the building. A body hit the floor. He heard men and women grunting, muffled snarls.

Swallowing hard, Jeff headed toward the front of the building and stopped at the doorway. Inside, he saw Jasper standing on the riser of a small stage on the far side of the rectangular building. Aaron stood beside him. A dozen or so members of the original family were on the floor, formed in a loose circle around a tall, lanky, brown-haired man in a blue T-shirt and brown corduroy pants. They were hitting him, kicking him, forcing him back into the center of their circle each time he tried to make a break through their line.

One man landed a hard right punch to the man’s face and knocked him backward, onto his knees. Then he stepped forward and kicked the tall man in the belly. The tall man collapsed to the ground and several others closed in on him, throwing punches and kicking him.

The tall man on the floor lurched with the blows, but offered no resistance. Jeff stood wide-eyed, not quite able to make himself believe what he was seeing. The tall man on the floor made a feeble, defeated sound, and Jasper raised a hand in the air.

Instantly, the family backed away.

“A moment, friends. Let him speak.”

Jasper kneeled down next to the man’s bruised face. “Tell me, friend. Why have you forsaken me?”

“I haven’t,” the man said. “Please.”

“But you have, friend. Don’t you see that? You were trusted with the safety of our people, and you betrayed them when you tried to flee.”

“No,” the man said.

“Yes,” Jasper answered. “When I send you on a gathering detail, that’s a sign of my trust. Why, then, friend, would someone so much in my confidence see fit to run the first chance he gets?”

The man made a feeble, inaudible reply.

Jasper rose, shaking his oddly square head. His sunglasses glinted in the sunlight that streamed in through the windows.

Jeff heard the crunch of gravel around the left side of the building. From the right side, he heard the sound of someone breathing hard. He looked around for someplace to hide, but there was no place to go, no cover.

He heard LaShawnda’s voice. “I’m telling you, I saw him going this way.”

Oh shit, Jeff thought. He looked around him again.

Then he looked down.

When LaShawnda and the other four members of the Family rounded the corner, they found the porch empty.

Aaron stepped out of the front door. “What’s wrong?” he said.

“I saw that Jeff Stavers boy come this way.”

From beneath the porch, Jeff looked up through the slats. In the thin sliver of daylight that filtered down to him, he could see them gesturing toward the outhouses on the far side of the building. Jeff held his breath and waited, listening as Aaron told LaShawnda to keep looking around.

She stood, looking at the buildings around her, then left the porch and followed after the others. Aaron went back inside the education building.

Jeff waited, listening.

A few minutes later, he heard Jasper order the Family to resume their beating of the tall man.

And while the Family punched and kicked, and the tall man whimpered beneath the blows, Jasper laughed.