Rosemary: Religious fanatic, horse lover, and Lily’s best friend.
Her crime: possession and use of a crank-powered CD player.
Rosemary Palmer was not a troublemaker. She lived to please, be it her mother or father or any of her eight older siblings. She sang at mass, loud enough to show her enthusiasm, but not so loud as to show off. She was a master with the sewing needle, and had built up a formidable clientele, but was ready to drop it at a moment’s notice if her father approved a suitor for her. Her parents were major players in Augustana’s corn trade, and by all accounts, Rosemary was quiet, pious, and unquestioning. She was a model product of the Palmer’s estate.
This was the case, of course, when she wasn’t with Lily. In Rosemary’s eyes, Lily was impossibly daring. She was constantly sneaking off to far-away ruins, looking for books and newspapers and whatever other artifacts caught her eye. Rosemary was far too afraid to tag along. In Rosemary’s rigid world, Lily was a spark of excitement, of uncertainty, and while her guilt was overwhelming, she couldn’t resist when LIly offered to bring her some souvenirs.
In a miraculous turn of events, Rosemary awoke to discover that neither her parents nor any of her siblings were home. She draped a fine lace scarf over her shoulders, pinning it with a tiny gold crucifix. She waltzed through her family’s country estate, calling out names to no avail. A swirl of shame and excitement brewed within her.
Retreating to her room, she peered out her window, looking beyond the stone walls surrounding her estate. The maid was engrossed in herb picking and the wall’s guardsmen were playing a heated game of poker. It was now or never.
Above her vanity hung a painting of the Virgin Mary, and above the painting was a mounted semi-automatic rifle. It was nearly her most prized possession– second only to her copy of “Now That’s What I Call Music 2011”.
Rosemary kneeled in the corner of her room, below framed drawings of wild horses, and fiddled with a loose floorboard. She lifted it just enough to wiggle out the sun bleached CD case, crank-player, and wire headphones.
She locked her door and crossed herself, preemptively pleading for forgiveness. It was time to party rock.
Rosemary sat on the edge of her bed, heart thumping, as she pressed the play button.
Party Rock is in the house tonight, everybody just have a good time…
She was giddy as a schoolboy, eyes wide, tapping her foot ever so slightly to the beat. This contraption’s ability to produce sounds at the click of a button frightened and fascinated her. The song was electrifying, almost spiritual, every noise entrancingly foreign.
Everyday I’m shufflin’.
Rosemary had absolutely no idea what it meant, and it was exhilarating.
Rosemary heard her front door open, and scrambled to hide her contraband. It was 12 noon on a Friday, and she had already finished all of her tailoring for the week. Her mother’s footsteps tapped up the stairs. Rosemary braced herself as the footsteps approached her door. They stopped, for a moment, then turned around, and headed down into the kitchen. Rosemary silently thanked God. She crept down the stairs. Bumping into her mother would certainly provoke an interrogation about whether Rosemary had finished her tailoring orders, which would then lead to a lecture on how a much of a shame it is that a young woman of Rosemary’s pedigree would waste her time being a seamstress, and how Rosemary’s older sisters were all married by the time they were 18, and Rosemary was nearly that age, and would be facing a long, tragic path of spinsterhood if she didn’t get busy courting. Rosemary would stand silently, and apologize, as she always did, and both would exit the conversation in a state of despair. She snuck out of the back door unnoticed.
Despite her talent, Rosemary really didn’t care much about sewing. It was just the only occupation that allotted her some control of her own schedule, i.e., time to ride Bucky The Horse.
She jogged over to the barn, giving herself a few minutes to dote over Bucky. She trotted off into town, passing by the guardsmen as one revealed a royal flush.
She hoped Lily had something interesting going on.
—
The midday sun laid heavy on Lily’s head. She hoped her best attempts at politeness were succeeding. Truth be told, she had expected someone older and wiser, someone fearsome and professional. Jack was young and bumbling and woefully ill-informed– insulting, Lily thought, that the Federation cared so little as to send someone so unprepared.
Lily nodded along with Jack’s small talk, half listening, watching to see if anyone looked strangely at him. His unfamiliarity was, so far, unnoticed. Jack stopped to watch a horse-drawn carriage loaded with a precarious pile of stones roll by.
“C’mon.” Lily ordered, her frustration building.
“Do you think that’s gonna fall?” Jack mused, mouth agape.
Lily tugged his arm, pulling him forward.
“Can you try, just– just try to not look so…” Lily trailed off, trying to find polite wording, “So ‘not from here?’”
Jack pulled her hand off of his arm, and moved his hands to his hips. He looked away, then back at Lily.
“Does anyone here know I’m from the federation?” Jacked asked, exasperated.
“...No.” Lily replied.
“Are they ever going to know?”
“No.”
“Lily.”
“I know–”
“Lily, that’s like, the whole point. I’m supposed to be building bridges. Metaphorical bridges. Good relations, whatever. How am I supposed to do that if they don’t even know who I am?” Lily noted that Jack was theatrical when angry, flailing his arms and moving his hips to the beat of his words. Lily stifled a laugh. He looked ridiculous, in a way she found strangely endearing.
“First of all: They know that the aid we received is from the Federation. That’s plenty of bridge building. Second of all, you’re also here to learn about Augustana, right? You can only do that if no one knows who you are. If Big Jim heard anything about a Fed coming here– aid or no aid– you’d have a very different welcome.” Lily stated flatly, as had so far been her trademark. Jack’s face fell.
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“What do you mean?” He asked, already certain of the answer.
“I mean he’d totally kill you.” Lily playfully mimed a handgun, vocalizing a faint pew-pew sound. Lily laughed. Jack did not.
Jack pivoted, ignoring Lily’s gesturing. “Big Jim– I know about him.”
“That’s new,” Lily interjected. Jack decided to ignore that as well.
“He’s like your mayor? Idie mentioned him.”
“Kinda. He owns the railroad, taxes all the corn getting shipped out. Owns half the town. Hates Feds, especially after what happened in the Ozarks last month. That’s why I told him you’re my cousin visiting from up North.”
“Does everyone have to report to him like that?” Jack asked.
“No,” Lily replied, “But this place is small. Word gets out– figured I’d get ahead of the gossip.”
They paused for a few moments, turning a corner to a much quieter street. It was narrow and winding, and ivy crept up the wooden facades they walked between. Old men with beer bellies and flushed faces sat outside a saloon, arguing about nothing in particular.
“Lily?” Jack squinted, shielding his eyes with his hand. The sunlight, bouncing off of the white gravel, was blinding.
“What?”
“Just so we’re on the same page– how exactly did Idie pitch this to you? This whole mission?”
“She said you work for a sociologist from the New American Federation, and that you’re here to do an enormous amount of damage control.” Lily stated.
Jack furrowed his brow, “That’s not– I think that’s an unfair assessment.”
“How’s it unfair?” Lily retorted.
“All I’m here to do is learn about Augustana, and make things friendlier.”
“And give us massive amounts of aid.”
“Yes, as payment for your cooperation,” Jack defended, “Is that a bad thing?”
Lily paused, not wanting to stir the pot any further, “No. It’s just funny timing.”
Lily was right, and Jack knew it.
The Heartland Correctional Zone– which Augustana sat in the center of– was established sixty years earlier as a containment area for anyone the New American Federation didn’t feel like dealing with. The Federation was first unified with an iron fist, and in its early years, officials were particularly trigger happy when sending suspected criminals and political opponents– guilty or not– to this small patch of plains surrounded by wasteland. Once the Federation began to democratize, the Heartland fell out of use. For the next fifty years or so, they ignored the Heartland’s existence entirely.
This was until the Federation got wind that the Correctional Zone was overflowing with corn– millions and millions of acres, knee high by July, and only occasionally getting pillaged by gangs of warring nomads. The Federation had painfully unlucky geography, and desperately needed a breadbasket. Or a corn basket.
At first, they moved in with diplomacy. They got a cargo train up and running and a bit of trade going, but it was not nearly enough.
A month earlier, an expedition of Federal troops was sent to suss out some potential farmland for taking. These troops failed to consider that in the Heartland, a roaming gaggle of armed foreigners would be met with immediate hellfire artillery from whichever village they happened upon. Down near the Ozarks, this inevitable shootout occurred, as did a PR nightmare for the Federal government.
Jack was there because the Feds wanted to extend an olive branch. Moreso, he was there because his father was good friends with the NAF’s chief public relations officer.
Lily stopped, turning to the front door of a dingy storefront. A sign hung above it, reading in dainty cursive: Augustana Historical Center. Lily fiddled with the lock.
“Is this where I’m staying?” Jack was puzzled, unimpressed with the windowless shack in front of him.
“Yes.” Lily opened the door, beckoning Jack inside.
“In a museum?”
“No, you’ll be sleeping in my spare room. The museum is in my living room.”
Jack paused, relaying in his head the long, regrettable chain of events which led him to this moment. He remembered, suddenly, a mention of a local historian within one of Idie’s long, rambling telegrams.
“Lily! The historian!” Jack exclaimed, “I forgot, Idie did mention you.”
Lily smiled, “Historian– That’s a kind word to use.”
“Is it not true?”
Lily looked away and pondered for a moment, “It is. I’ve just never described myself as one. But I think I’m your best bet as a cultural resource.”
Lily beckoned him inside.
–
Rosemary walked beside Bucky, pulling him to a hitching post next to Lily’s house. She squinted into the distance as a figure approached from the opposite direction.
“Jimmy!” Rosemary shrieked.
Jimmy Jimson waved, beelining for Lily’s front door. He was the town constable, attempted (and failed) suitor of Lily, and son of Big Jim, as made excessively clear by the surname Big Jim made up for him. One of the most pivotal events in Jimmy’s adolescence was a screening of the first and only film he’d ever seen: The Outsiders. Lily had set up a scavenged battery-powered CD player for what she hoped would be a romantic movie night. What followed was a nearly religious devotion in Jimmy’s young mind to the tales of Ponyboy, Two-Bit, and Sodapop– who he assumed were popular pre-calamity folk saints.
He kept a crude illustration of Patrick Swayze in his wallet to remind himself of the suave, rough-and-tough renegade he strived to be. And sometimes he just liked to look at it.
Unfortunately, the only thing in the world he loved more than those rowdy greasers and their Christ-like trials was aged Augustinian bourbon, which he drank constantly.
Big Jim bestowed upon little Jimmy the title of “constable”, a largely symbolic position under Big Jim’s total authority. Augustana’s borders were constantly on the defense, but in town, things were often quiet. This bored the Hell out of Jimmy. He began to entertain himself by, every couple of days, taking a goat from one farm and tossing it into its neighbor’s pasture. He would then, as is the constable’s duty, be called out to mediate these two squabbling farmers. He’d dramatically and self-indulgently settle the dispute, find the missing goat, and they’d all part ways with a warm glow in their hearts, having persevered through the power of friendship.
Other than that, he mostly used his constable status to order rounds for all at the local pub, by means of “martial decree”. These drinks would then, unbeknownst to Jimmy, be charged to his father’s tab.
“How’s your horses, Jimmy?” Rosemary asked as they stopped on Lily’s front steps.
“I’m just horses up, Rosemary. What about you?” Jimmy responded in his classic jubilant tone.
“I’m good, too. Horses up, even.”
They exchanged a typical Augustinian greeting, complete with horse and horse derivatives. Even Lily, the closest thing they had to a historian, couldn’t figure out how the Augustinian dialect became so obsessed with this animal.
They stood and chatted for a few moments. Jimmy gave needless excuses as to why he was popping by, as was Augustianian custom– an unmarried man alone with an unmarried woman was sacrilege, but an unmarried man stopping in to borrow any sort of random knick knack from an unmarried woman was a perfectly acceptable loophole. They turned to open Lily’s front door, as they had a hundred times before. Their eyes met as the knob refused to turn. Strange, they thought. Her door was always unlocked during shop hours.
“Lily?” Rosemary yelled, knocking on her door. A muffled response came from inside. Finally, the door opened a crack.
“Hey.” Lily said, peeking her head through.
“Everything okay?” Jimmy asked.
“Yeah. Everything’s good. My cousin just came to town, so I closed up shop for today.” Lily opened the door wider, easing. Jimmy and Rosemary glanced at each other, perplexed.
“You have a cousin?” They asked in sync.
“Can we meet him?” Rosemary continued. Lily paused for a moment.
“Sure,” Lily answered, “Come in.”