Scarlett Gorman's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The older man left at sunrise with a promise to return by dusk. Scarlett walked him to the porch and watched him take the river road. She turned back inside and saw a purple boot print pressed into the soft dirt by her bottom step. The crust around it glowed faint pink and green. Scarlett knew that print. Sara had been here while she slept, sniffing around the man she had decided to keep. Scarlett dressed and packed a crate. She loaded six bottles of fizzy soda with bright labels, a wheel of cheese, two loaves, and a heavy chain badge she kept in a drawer. The badge was metal, engraved with a snarling face and old marks of ownership. She had won it years ago and never wore it. Today she would. She hung it around her neck and felt the weight settle on her belly. She walked to the iron gate at the edge of her marsh path and pushed it wide. Glowing fungi laced the bars. The gate marked where her land began. She set the crate on a flat stone just past it and sat down to eat. She drank the first bottle in long pulls and let the first burp go loud enough to roll across the water. Birds lifted off the reeds. Sara came out of the trees within the hour. Purple dress, big belly held high, the same walk Scarlett used. Scarlett did not stand. She opened a second bottle and drank. Sara stopped at the gate. Scarlett tore bread, ate, drank, and burped again, longer this time, the sound bouncing off the iron. She patted the top of her belly and looked Sara in the eye. "You stepped on my dirt," Scarlett said. She lifted the chain badge off her chest and let it drop against her stomach with a flat clang. "Read the marks. This is my road. My porch. My man." Sara opened her mouth. Scarlett drank the third bottle straight down and burped over whatever Sara meant to say. The sound went on. Scarlett kept her eyes locked on Sara's face the whole way through. She finished with a small one, polite, almost a laugh. Sara's jaw worked. She tried a burp of her own. It came out thin. Scarlett smiled and ate more bread. Sara took a step back. Her heel pressed into the wet ground and left a clean print in the crust. She turned and walked into the trees without a word. Scarlett stayed at the gate until the last bottle was empty. She walked over to the fresh print Sara had left and set her own bare foot beside it. Hers sank deeper. She went home with the badge swinging against her belly and the crate under her arm. The man would come back at dusk. Sara would not be waiting on the porch this time. Scarlett had cleared her own road. Keeping him was still the harder part.