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The Wasteland often clings to Max for days after he comes in. It isn’t as easy to scrub off as the ground-in dirt and sand, the blood under his fingernails; it lingers. He recoils from contact, struggles for words, hovers in Furiosa’s shadow until he remembers how to be a person again in shade of the rocks. Mostly that’s okay. He’s started coming sometimes even when he doesn’t have anything to bring: no precious seeds or tools or parts, just himself and his lonesomeness. She welcomes him the same regardless.
It’s almost like a habit now, to press his forehead against hers in the garage, to have bath and get clean, to share a quiet meal and sleep in a room that locks, far above the Wastes. Which is why it’s so jarring when he sputters in one day and Capable tells him that Furiosa isn’t there.
“She’s gone on a trading run,” she tells him, correctly interpreting his noise of wounded bafflement. “She’ll be back this afternoon maybe, if the weather holds clear, or tomorrow sometime.” She pats him gingerly on the shoulder. “You could get a bath while you’re waiting.”
Max decides not to take offence to that: he knows how he smells after fifty-odd days of desert.
Furiosa’s room is empty, and he puts his things there, but balks at making himself comfortable without her present. It feels too much like intruding.
He bathes quickly in one of the communal washrooms: not much more than a deep crack of the corridor where the water trickles down from above and pools halfheartedly in a shallow natural basin at about knee height before draining back away, to be reused somewhere else in the Citadel. He fills the pitcher left there for this purpose and scrubs himself down with a rag, getting the worst of the dust and grime from his hands and face, shakes the dust out of his jacket and makes a token attempt at his arms, unwilling to strip down.
Cheedo finds him hovering uncertainly in the door of the kitchens. It’s between mealtimes, a hive of activity, and he’s hungry but he’s not sure of the protocol without Furiosa, who commands respect as easily here as anywhere else in the Citadel.
“When did you get here?” says a voice at his elbow. Cheedo’s wearing cutdown warboy trousers and braids in her hair, and carries an empty basket on her hip.
Max shrugs at her, scratches his ear. She hums.
“You eaten? Hang on, hold this.” He takes the basket from her, bemused, and follows her into the kitchens, where she bustles about, cheerfully greeting the workers as she gathers vegetable scraps into the basket and corrals some unattended food into a tin cup for him. Back in the corridor, she pauses and looks at him, then says, “Come on, it’s quiet in the pens.”
He’s got a mouthful of wasteland yet, and it’s easier to follow her than not, so he does.
The animal pens are at the very top of one of the rock towers. The plants over here are sparse and straggling, and mostly weeds and things that aren’t much good for eating. “Seemed like a good place to put them,” says Cheedo. There’s a haphazard sort of fence preventing the leggy chickens and goats from bolting over the edge to their deaths, but the animals seem mostly content to mill about together in the shade of their shelters, the chickens pecking at the greenery and the goats rolling in the dust.
“Here, trade,” says Cheedo, and hands him the tin cup in exchange for his basket of scraps, which she heaves over the fence. “Go on, go sit. Eat. I have work to do.”
There’s a prong of rock nearby casting some shade; he sits. The heel of a loaf of coarse, seedy bread, a handful of small potatoes boiled soft and packed in salt, a few strips of some sort of bitter green leaf. His mouth is dry when he’s finished, but he drank water not even an hour ago, and he has to be careful not to overdo it when he comes to the citadel; he might make himself sick, or worse, accustom his body to water on demand. He licks the salt from his fingers and let his tongue shrivel, pats his belly.
Cheedo is wielding a rake very efficiently despite the interference of some very interested goats and the apparent alarm of the chickens. Max thinks about offering to help, but Cheedo is grinning as she maneuvers around the animals, talking to them in a quiet voice. He hasn’t spent much time around Cheedo - she hasn’t got Toast’s eagerness to learn, nor Capable’s bottomless, fatalistic kindness - but he likes her. He likes her cunning and cleverness, the way she watches people so she can protect herself from them, or with them. He likes that she trusts him enough to turn her back to him now.
A high-pitched noise startles him from his reverie. There’s no danger nearby, and the only movement is a fist-sized bundle of wiry fur peering up at him with tiny brown eyes.
Max extends a cautious hand. The thing flops onto its side and motors its little legs excitedly.
“Aww, pup,” says Cheedo. “How did you get out from your box? Where’s your mum?” She bends down to poke it. “Furiosa brought back a dog on the last trading run, says she swapped it for a keg of aqua. Turns out the thing was pregnant. I dunno what we’re meant to do with them.” The puppy is on its back now, legs straight up in the air. It seems to be stuck.
Max gently picks the puppy up and sets it back on its feet. Under the wiry hair, its little body is warm and tender to his roughened hands, the tiny ribs fragile.
“Can’t milk it,” says Cheedo, “and no eggs. Meat?”
Max tentatively rubs between the pup’s ears. It topples over in glee and licks its privates. “Mmm,” he says. “Not meat.” The puppy sets its little teeth into the cord around his wrist. “Can hunt,” Max manages. “Loyal. Good dog,” he says, and the puppy yips excitedly, turns around in a circle and falls abruptly to sleep against his boot.
When Max looks up, Cheedo is watching him evenly, thoughtful. “Do me a favour and take this one back to its mum? Just over in the shed there. There’s a box.”
The puppy wakes up enough to try to squirm out of Max’s grip, and he juggles it carefully from hand to hand. As he approaches the shed, he can hear the excited squeaking of the other puppies, the warning bark of a bigger dog.
The pup apparently escaped by chewing a hole in the corner of the box. The mother dog is lying across the gap now, which doesn’t seem to be stopping the two pups still in the box from climbing over and burrowing under her in brazen escape attempts. She makes a displeased noise, not quite a growl, when Max leans over the box, but he just clucks at her and deposits the runaway right in front of her nose, to explosive excitement from its siblings. They form a frantic ball of fur and high-pitched noise, and the mother casts her eyes up at Max, gives a great, weary sigh, and puts her head down on her paws.
There’s mashed-up bean stuff on a slab of tile in the corner of the box, and a spreading soggy puddle around a shallow dish. It’s cooler in the shed than outside, but not that cool.
Cheedo’s fussing over a chicken when he comes out. it doesn’t look any thinner or sicklier than the others, but her brow is furrowed with concern.
“You right?” she asks. “ Dogs ok?”
“Mm,” he says, and holds up the water bowl.
“Oh,” she says. “Pump’s over there, do you need?”
He waves her off, and she goes back to crooning at the chicken. Max knows that there’s a plan to breed the birds, that they’re valuable for their eggs and their rich manure more than their meat right now in the resource-starved waste, but he rather hopes this chicken doesn’t make it. The thought-memory of a tasty, grease-skinned drumstick is making his stomach clench and gurgle.
The pump sputters to life and overflows the shallow bowl straight away, splashing on his arms and down his front; he licks the drops off his fingers as he saunters back to the shed.
The hole in the box needs fixing; he finds a strip of flexible plastic and fastens it in place with wire, which should hold until the pups are big enough to wander. The dogs watch him curiously, except for the biggest pup, which fixedly watches the water dish like it’s waiting for something to happen, stubby tail beating against the bottom of the box.
When the box is secure, Max checks each of the pups over. Two males, including the daring escapee, and a female; all wee curly things with short excited tails and unlikely ears. The mother is a mid-sized mutt of no particular type, stump-legged and long-faced and patchy, so the pups will likely be more of the same. They all seem healthy, though the mother could use more food if she wants to keep suckling the pups, and blessedly free of ticks, fleas, mites, or infection.
He drops the last pup back in the box to wriggle with her siblings, and gets a wet slobbering lick on the wrist for his trouble.
“Aw,” he says before he thinks about it, and offers his knuckles for further investigation.
He should go back and find Cheedo, probably, see if there’s work that needs doing, update the maps he’s started leaving here where they’re safe and useful. One of the puppies nips a little too hard at his fingers, and he says “Uh-uh, no,” and pushes the pup away firmly, because it’s important to teach good habits early. That’s a fun game, though, and within moments he needs two hands to wrestle all the excited pups, shoving them this way and that so they tumble over each other and go tipping into their mother. She gives him another long-suffering look and shuffles out of the way.
“I see you’re entertaining yourself,” someone says, a shadow appearing in the opening. Max twitches with alarm, drawing the current squirming pup instinctively close to his chest, but relaxes almost immediately. Instead he holds the puppy out in explanation, and Furiosa huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, I’m not sure what we’re gonna do with these.” She comes to crouch carefully next to him, smelling of hot dust and engine oil.
Max holds the puppy carefully at eye level. Its tongue lolls out, and the wagging of its tail sets its whole back end trembling. “Train ‘em,” he manages. “Useful.”
Furiosa sets her knuckles against his upper arm, a gentle reward for the words. “We’ll see,” she allows. “We don’t have enough to breed, but I guess these ones can stay.” She reaches out tentatively, and the puppy nearly falls off Max’s hand in its eagerness to investigate her steel fingers. “Huh,” she says.
Max settles the puppy away in the box, bumps his shoulder against hers, makes a questioning noise.
“All good,” she says. “Just out west a ways. There’s a gang been growing hemp in a swamp but it’s making them sick. It’s good for cloth and rope, so long as you don’t eat it, so we’re setting up a trade.”
Max thinks about that. “Swemp,” he says, and raises his eyebrows expectantly.
She pinches him. “Take your dog and get out,” she says, but the corner of her mouth is twitching. “God, the shit you say once you get talking.”
Max produces a sound of pretend offence and let her haul him to his feet and lead him off, to sink back into the citadel and being a person and not a grain of sand blown about the wasteland. He thinks maybe he’ll stay a while, to make sure the puppies are being looked after and learning good habits. He thinks maybe he’ll take one with him when he goes. Be nice to have someone to talk to out there.