Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1)(51)
“Well,” I say after a long pause, “you let me worry about that. We’re in this together, whether you like it or not.” Katherine rolls her eyes, but she keeps up with me when I start walking again. Time to change the subject. “I ever tell you about the garden back at Rose Hill?”
Katherine shades her eyes as she looks at me. “Jane, what are you going on about?”
I pull Katherine up into the shade of the boardwalk. The church is just across the street, a white picket fence setting it off from the rest of the town. “Back at Rose Hill, Auntie Aggie—that was the woman that mostly raised me—would plant a huge garden full of okra and carrots and cabbage, green beans, and black-eye peas, everything you needed to feed a plantation full of hungry people. Everyone had to work the garden at least a couple of times a week if they wanted to eat good, and even my momma would put on her big sun hat and go out and pull weeds. It was a necessity in a place where a trip beyond the barrier fence to the market could mean death.
“One summer, the garden was plagued by a rabbit. This wasn’t no ordinary rabbit, this was a hare of unnatural ability. It would always find a way inside of the fencing, filling itself up on the fruits of our labor. It was, as Momma said, a bastard of a rabbit.”
Katherine gasps and looks around. “Jane! Such language.”
“Let me finish my story. Anyway, Auntie Aggie and a few of the boys put out snares and traps galore, everything from crates baited with carrots and bits of lettuce to complicated tie snares I found in an old frontiersman’s book Momma had from her dead daddy. Nothing worked. Every morning we’d go out and see the parsley munched down to nubs, or nibbles in the cabbage. The frustration was enough to put one off of gardening altogether, truth be told.
“But Auntie Aggie never let it faze her. Every night she would set out the same kind of snare, a simple loop knot that someone had taught her long ago. And every morning, when the rabbit wasn’t caught, she’d retie that snare, same as she did the day before. I asked her once if she was scared the hare was going to eat the whole garden clean before that trap of hers caught him.
“‘Jane,’ she said, ‘look at this garden. Look at the lettuces and those beans! And those tomatoes? They are especially fine this year, don’t you agree? Trust me on this: it’s just nature for creatures like him to get greedy.’ That was all she said to me.”
Katherine’s listening now, her eyes narrowed. “So what happened?”
I grin. “She was right. After nearly two weeks of trying to catch the hare, Aunt Aggie made us a nice rabbit stew from that fat bunny. See, while the rabbit was skinny and hungry, that snare couldn’t catch him, and he was cautious enough to avoid it. But once he got fat, he couldn’t fit through the same holes he used to. I ain’t lying when I say he was big enough to feed darn near all of Rose Hill that night. And tasty? Well, all of his good eating meant even better eating for us.
“The point is, sometimes when the rabbit gets too fat, too comfortable, he makes mistakes. But the gardener, she ain’t got nothing but time. Because even the hungriest rabbit can’t eat the entire garden. At some point the good sheriff will make a mistake, some gross miscalculation, reveal some weakness, and that’s when we’ll find our freedom.”
Katherine is nodding now, her expression thoughtful. “We will be patient gardeners.”
“Yes. We will be the most patient gardeners, and we will fatten up that bunny like nobody’s business. And when that rabbit is nice and plump, we shall set the snare, and let him run right on through it.”
Katherine nods. “Thank you, Jane.”
I smile, because I’m relieved that she didn’t ask the question I’ve been dreading since we got here.
What if we’re not the gardeners, but the rabbits?
One of the biggest challenges here at Rose Hill is boredom, and making sure that the people here don’t fall into vice.
Chapter 20
In Which I Meet a Questionable Man of God and a Kind Madam
Summerland’s church is bigger than I expect. I’ve only seen a handful of folks walking around the town, but the church is easily the size of the First Baptist, the second largest church in Baltimore. While the rest of the town looks ragged and tired, the lone house of worship is fresh and clean: the building’s walls are crisp with whitewash and a real stained glass window is set high in the front of the building. The only similarity between the rest of the town and the church is the small windows covered with iron bars, but the shambler proofing is barely noticeable on such an impressive building.
We walk up the path in silence, and before we can reach for the door it swings open. The whitest white man I ever saw beckons us, his blue-veined hands shaky, his false teeth overly large in his mouth. “Miss Deveraux. Please, join me inside. The sun is frightful fierce today.”
Katherine gives the man a beatific smile. “Sir, your kindness is greatly appreciated. Oh, I fear what this sun is going to do to my complexion. I can already feel a powerful flush coming upon me.”
She sweeps inside the church and the cool darkness beyond the threshold. I make to follow her but the old man stops me with a hard look. “I’m sorry, but it’s our way here that those bearing the Curse of Ham don’t enter the church.”
I scowl. “The Curse of Ham?” I ain’t ever heard of such a thing, and I have a feeling it’s got nothing to do with supper.