TRANSITIONS, cont'd.
"Sheriff Wilkins?" The young deputy called from the outer office.
"Come in, Connors. What's up?"
"We got another killing. Jimmy Jones found an old guy beat on the head. He said this guy down on West Market Street told him he heard something last night in the empty house next door and wanted Jimmy to check it out. Jimmy said the guy was from down the street, so he had to have been lookin' around for something to take there. We figure somebody else didn't like it and busted his head. You want to go look? We didn't move anything."
Dan Wilkins shoved his chair back and said, "I don't want to John, but I'd better go."
He grabbed his ball cap that said SHERIFF on it and followed the deputy out. They walked the eight blocks to the old house. Dan hated to see this kind of thing, but it was inevitable, he supposed. People were fighting and killing over scraps. His town was going to the dogs, and he didn't like it a bit. He had let the salvaging go on and turned his head about it, because people needed any advantage they could get to keep on living. Now it was getting ugly.
Inside, the place was a mess. Like so many other deserted houses, it had been ransacked more than once. Only some junk furniture remained, cabinets were open and empty, trash on the floor and, of course, the body of the old man. His shirt, shoes, and pants were gone, only his dirty underwear remained. It was a lot like the last murder scene he had looked at, except that man had been younger and appeared to have put up a fight. This old guy looked to have been surprised from behind.
"I guess I've seen all I need to see. Call the burial crew and get him in the ground. Any kinfolk around?"
John Connor said, "Not that we know of. The man next door said this guy lived alone."
"Any chance the neighbor did it?"
"Not from what I saw. He's scared to death, afraid it will be him and his wife next. And they ain't got anything in their house, either. I mean, it's pretty clean and all, but they are thin as scarecrows and they're too timid to do something like this."
"Okay. Get this cleaned up. I'm going to have to get this salvaging thing under control, or else."
The Sheriff walked back outside and headed for his office, taking the alley behind the house. It was an old neighborhood with big trees. The alley would be pretty dark at night. He heard a scuffling in the next garage and looked in. A couple kids, not over 10 years old, were trying to hide in the corner.
He asked them, "Do you kids have a place to live? Something to eat?"
They cowered in the corner and didn't speak.
Dan sat down on his haunches and tried again. "I can find you something to eat if you need it. Come on out in the sun where it's warm."
Finally, the two came out, a boy and a girl a bit older. He told them, "If you're hungry, you can go with me to the office and we'll get you a meal. There is room for you at the school, if you need a safe place. There are good people there who are helping kids. You want to come with me?"
The girl said, "I know you. You're the Sheriff, ain't you?"
Dan nodded, "That's right. It's my job to look after people."
"Do you really have something to eat? We're real hungry."
"Yes I do. It's nothing fancy, but it's good food. Are you okay? Not sick or hurt?"
The girl shook her head. "No, we ain't hurt. Just hungry. That makes you feel sick."
Dan nodded again. "Yes, it sure does." He reached in his back pocket and took out some homemade beef jerky. "This is beef jerky. You can chew on this as we walk, okay?"
Dan and the kids walked slowly down the alley toward his office building. He sighed and thought, "Two more to feed. I hope we can keep on doing it."
He handed off the kids to a woman deputy who got some hot soup into them, and began getting them cleaned up before taking them to the elementary school that had become the de facto orphanage of the town. Dan sat in his office and thought a while, made some notes and then went looking for something to make some signs. People needed some direction, and it had become his lot to supply that guidance, so he set his jaw and began to write.
Later that Tuesday afternoon, he had signs posted on the Courthouse lawn, on the entrance to the Fairgrounds where the Market was held, and on each major road through town.
TOWN MEETING SATURDAY AT FAIRGROUNDS.
BE THERE.
NEW LOOTING ORDINANCES.
THIEVES AND MURDERERS WILL BE SHOT OR HUNG.
TRANSITIONS, cont'd.
It looked something like a Roman chariot, but with an old tractor seat that had been reupholstered with denim from some old jeans.
Charlie asked Alan, "I give up. What is it?"
Alan looked up from his work and said, "The Amish call it a Fore Cart. It is basically an Amish tractor, when you hook the horses to it. The drawbar in back lets you pull any tractor drawn implement with a pin type hitch. Like a wagon, for instance. If we can use the horses to shuttle wagons around, we don't have to burn gasoline in the small tractors. We need gasoline worse for chainsaws and emergency car trips."
Benny admired the thing, ungainly as it was, and commented, "Yeah! And if you put a couple rows of hay bales down the middle of the wagon, it's a bus!"
Alan said, "Yes, that's how the Amish haul kids to their schools."
Charlie asked, "Is that a brake pedal?"
"Yep! Got to be able to stop a load, and the horses can only hold back so much. In this hilly country, we need brakes. I used the rear end out of that junk 3/4 ton truck in the gully, and found two of the tires that would hold air. I took the master cylinder off and the brake pedal and hooked it up with new brake lines. The big box is so I can fill it with rocks for weight to keep the wheels from sliding when I step on the brakes. The brake idea is something Nathan saw out in Amish country. He copied it on his wagon, and I copied his."
Benny asked, "D'you need any help here?"
"Well, if you want to break down those other two tires, we can maybe figure out if they can be patched for spares. These tires are old, so they may give out."
Charlie said, "There's a pile of old tires at the County Landfill. I saw 'em when I was out there haulin' off trash."
Alan looked up at him and said, "Thanks. We'll look into that. I guess you could go ahead and take those tires off the rims and get the rims cleaned up and repainted. I turned that old truck over with the backhoe yesterday while you were gone, so we can get the front axle off easier. I can make another cart out of it, so we're going to need more tires. Nathan said they want one, too, and Jeannie has 3 more head of horses at their place getting taught the basics of working. Clint and Ruby Voyles owned them and gave them to Jeannie because they couldn't feed them. They bought 4 sets of new harness and a bunch of used collars from the Amish harness maker right before the war started. Nathan said it took every dollar they had, but he is REALLY glad they did it."
Charlie was adding up in his head, "So, Nathan and Jeannie had their pair, you have 3 borrowed, and she has 3 more. That's 8 horses. And there is harness for all of them?"
Alan nodded affirmatively. "That means we can do a lot of farming with horses if we can find enough suitable machinery. Some tractor stuff will work, and some won't. Horses don't have a Power Take Off shaft like a tractor to power something like a hay baler. We'll have to cross those bridges as they come up. But from what news I've heard, there isn't going to be any gasoline or diesel available for a long time. Worse than that, there aren't any factories running that I know of, so we can't keep tractors running for very long before we need a part that we can't get or make."
Benny had gone to Alan's tire equipment and taken the valve stems out of the two wheels, letting any air escape. Alan had made a lever operated bead-breaker to dismount tires. Benny was familiar with it and had the two tires loosened from their rims in short order. Charlie had found the
tire irons made from old crowbars and started the process of prying the tires off the rims. Both tires proved to be rotten.
Benny said, "Looks like these are no good. They're all cracked. What d'you want to do with 'em?"
Charlie said, "That boy of Rich's could use a tire swing, I bet!"
Alan looked at the tires and said, "Well, they are too thick to make sandals, and too rotten for much of anything else. Yeah, make him a tire swing. There's some old rope scraps in the barn, hanging on a beam."
Charlie took off to work on the swing idea.
Benny asked, "Should we work on getting the front axle off the truck now? I worked on cars a little as a kid."
Alan said, "You just as well do that. Save all the bolts you can. Heck, better save everything you take off of it. They ain't making any more in Detroit right now."
Benny was thinking. "How about we take off whatever we can reach on the bottom of it, then turn it back over? If the backhoe craps out, it will be in a better position to work on then, and get anything we want from the topside later. That way we don't have to store very much stuff inside a building. It can just stay on the truck for now."
Alan agreed. "Yeah, I like that. You're thinking ahead, and that's important now."
"I'll get Charlie to help when he gets done with the swing." Benny picked up a toolbox and headed for the gully where the truck had been left.
_______________
That evening, Melinda and Allison had been invited to Benny and Charlie's place for a cookout. Wondering what that would be was half the fun. When they got to the RV trailer, the men had a campfire going that was burned down to coals. There was a table nearby with planks for a top supported by concrete blocks. Some firewood blocks had been up-ended to serve as stools. The fire was contained inside an old tractor wheel rim they had found somewhere, and had a wood post on each side with wood pegs at intervals. On the pegs was a piece of steel pipe, and a chain hung from it hanging a kettle over the fire. Whatever was simmerng in the kettle smelled spicy. The men had a pan of vegetables and chunks of meat on the table.
"Step right up ladies," Charlie called. "Nothin' fancy here, just our version of Shish-Kabob. Pick your own combination of fixings and shove 'em on a stick. There's some Sassafras tea in the kettle, and mugs on the table. Benny's cookin' up a pan of cornbread, too. If you go away hungry, it's your fault."
Benny found a ladle for the tea and poured for the women. The men had cut fresh green Willow sticks for roasting the food, so the women began to load their sticks with chunks of meat, potato and medium sized onions, saving tomato chunks to eat cold.
Melinda squatted by the fire next to Benny and said, "I haven't roasted anything over a fire since Girl Scouts. This is nice."
"I've had to do a lot of cooking over a fire, but this is a lot nicer place for it," Benny answered.
"Margaret said you were both in the Army until last year."
Benny said, "Yeah. Me an' Charlie have been a lot of places together."
Melinda looked up from the fire to watch the last of the sunset showing over the hilltop. "It is nice and peaceful out here. I am SO glad to get out of town."
Benny looked at the grim expression she had for a minute, soon replaced with a slight smile as she thought about other things. He said, "Won't be able to do this much longer. It'll be getting cool out soon."
Melinda asked, "How do you heat the trailer? Is it gas?"
"Yep. And that ain't going to last. We prob'ly got enough for this winter if we don't cook on the stove too much now. Can't put a wood stove in the trailer. Not room enough, and it ain't safe. We've been talking about building a log cabin back here. Alan said it would be okay. Said he'd deed us some ground, if we wanted him to. If that means anything now. We need something more substantial to live in, and there's room enough. Already got a well and a big root cellar here, 'cause there was an old house here ages ago."
"UH-OH! I'm going to burn that potato!"
"Don't worry about it. Just peel off the burnt part and eat it. They always burn some on the outside."
"Okay. I'll take your word for it. I want to see that root cellar. Where is it?"
Benny grinned, "Michael had to show us and we were standing on it! It's in the briars back there. We fixed it up and put a new door on it, so it's pretty clean now. I'll show you after we eat."
Allison had fun teasing Charlie about making them cook their own supper, and he told her his middle name was Tom, as in Tom Sawyer. She didn't get the joke until he told her about Tom Sawyer conning his friends into painting the fence for him. "You oughta read some of Mark Twain's stuff. He is funny as they come."
"I suppose we'll have to read books now, with no internet or TV. Maybe that's okay. TV shows were dumb anyway."
"I don't miss it any, but then, I didn't get to see much TV for a long time in the Army."
"I used to think I had to have something exciting going on all the time," Allison said. "Now, I've had enough excitement to last me a lifetime."
Charlie agreed, "Yeah, me too."
"Any more of that tea left? That's good stuff."
"There's more in the kettle and lot's more where that came from. The woods is full of Sassafras. It's the sugar that is goin' to be scarce."
"Isn't that the truth! I don't know where you'd get sugar now."
"Nathan is planning to put out some Sorghum next year an' make syrup out of it. He's got a press to get the juice out and they'll turn it with a horse."
"What is Sorghum?"
"That's what they use to make molasses. It's the flavor in brown sugar, too. Don't know how it would taste in tea, but it's awful good on pancakes. There's a neighbor of theirs that has some bees, too. He'll get rich selling honey when the sugar runs out."
"Hey! Yeah! You could do that too!"
"I don't know nothin' about bees and hives and all. Guess I could talk to that guy. There's some wild bees that hang around here, but I don't know how you'd catch 'em. I'll talk to John next time I see him."
"Who's that?"
"John Avery. He and his wife live across the road from Nathan and Jeannie. He has a lot of grapes, too. I think he plans to make wine. I'll have to take you up there some time when we go. They live on top of the hill down the valley. You go down here past Roy and Mandy Bates' place, and turn at the corner, then go to the next..."
"Whose place? Roy Bates, did you say?"
"Yeah, the next house down that way. They rent from Julie."
"I know Roy Bates! He married Mandy Sullivan. She was in my class in school! And she lives just down the road?"
"Yeah, Julie's farm house. The big white one."
"Melinda! Did you hear that! Roy Bates and Mandy Sullivan live next door! Just down the road!"
"You're kidding! I haven't seen them for a while, but they used to come in the bank. Roy was in my class, and wasn't Mandy in yours?"
"Yes! I need to see her. Somebody told me she had a baby."
Charlie said, "Yeah, her name is Shari, and she's about 3 or 4, I think. Cute little kid."
"Well. How about that. I don't feel quite so lost now, I guess."
Charlie said, "Now, don't you go gettin' lost! It was trouble enough to find you the first time!"
"I wasn't lost!"
"Well, I hadn't found you yet! An' I'd like for you to hang around for a while, okay?"
"Yeah. Okay. I wasn't planning on going anywhere right away," She smiled at Charlie for the first time.
Charlie was amazed how pretty she was when she smiled. He thought, I gotta get her to smile more often.
____________
Oliver Rice decided that he had done some things right. Getting his money out before it all disappeared was good. And spending it was better. Paper money wasn't good for much of anything now, but the extra silver and gold he bought would always be good. He had thanked God daily for Margaret Walters who had stopped on her way home one day and told them to "Get forted up, because it is all going to hell now".
She had word from their relatives who had friends in the military that a big war was starting and they'd better buy what they could now, because it wouldn't be available later.
She had said, "Get anything that you can't make or grow, and do it fast. We don't know how much time we have, but it won't be long."
Oliver had kept his livestock trailer. He had hooked that to his new pickup and gone shopping, spending money like water for 2 1/2 days. He had his wife get the farm fuel tanks and the LP tank filled. It was all he and his wife could do to get the stuff unloaded and in the barn before he went to bed at night. But they were up again the next day at daylight and on the road again. They had been to farm stores in 4 counties and bought everything from barbed wire and steel posts, to overalls, boots, veterinary medicines, canning lids, two tons of salt from the feed mills, mineral blocks, and chainsaw supplies. They went to other places and got food items, and he brought home a whole trailer load of seeds--clover, timothy, orchard grass, Kentucky 31 Fescue, garden seeds, and Great Northern beans. He got a load of fertilizer in bags from the farm supply North of town, unloaded it and went back for more. He got nails, paint, oil, grease, tractor parts, and spare tires and tubes. His wife thought he was going overboard buying shotgun shells and rifle shells at every place that had them. He was coming home on the 3rd evening from town with another load when the radio gave the news. That was his last trip.
There were things he had forgotten, but he resigned himself to the fact that nobody is perfect, and he made mistakes and forgot things like everyone else. It still galled him when he remembered something that he could have bought that would have made life easier now, but overall, he felt pretty good about it. What bothered him more was that having been to town in the days that followed, he had a good idea how things were going downhill there.
Soon people would be robbing each other, and he had nobody to keep watch at night. So far, they hadn't had any trouble, but it was a matter of time, he was sure. Somebody would get desperate and they might catch him asleep. His old dog didn't hear very well now, either. The young one didn't know much yet, but she was learning.
Being well off the highway back a long lane was a help in these troubled times. Anyone unfamiliar with the place wouldn't know what was back there. He had purposely not done anything to the lane to make it look better lately for that reason. Not driving on it for a couple months had allowed the grass and weeds to grow up so it looked more deserted. Then, he had made a gate, and it wasn't just a farm gate. He had dropped a tree about 2 feet thick across the lane and made it look like it had blown over if you didn't look too close. He could get out with the truck through a field if he had to, but you had to know the way.
He wanted some notice if somebody tried coming close to the house, so he tied a fishing line across the lane just past the tree and ran it to a homemade switch in a tin can. If the the switch got tripped, it turned on a light in the kitchen and in the bedroom, wired to his truck battery. He started the truck and let it run a while every week or so, to keep the battery up. A time or two, a deer had tripped his alarm. Had to be a deer, because he'd set the line high enough that dogs and other wildlife would pass underneath it. He didn't mind a few false alarms. It kept him on his toes.
The young dog barked and woke him one night just as the light came on in the bedroom. The wind up alarm clock said 2:30 AM. He switched off the little light, grabbed his shotgun and went barefoot to the front upstairs bedroom and looked out the open window. There were two young men carrying guns in his yard. He shot them both before they knew what hit them. Oliver sat there a while, shushing his wife who came running into the room. There might be more of them. He had survived the jungles of Vietnam, and he had the advantage here, because this was his own yard, and he knew it like the back of his hand. He planned to win any fight that came along.
After about an hour of no movement in the moonlight, he went out to investigate. He had never seen the young men before, and he thought he knew about everybody in the county. They looked to be well fed, clad in some kind of military garb, and carried those Chinese made assault rifles. He absolutely hated the sight of those things. He took the rifles and the web gear with extra ammo, and their back packs. He dug through their pockets for any identification and found none. One man had tattoos, but it was too dark to make them out. He did find some silver coins and two gold Eagles in one guy's pockets. One of them had a pair of binoculars.
Oliver carried what he had taken off them into the house. His wife was frantic, sitting on a kitchen chair and sobbing. He reassured her as best he could and went back out. He then went to the machine shed and got his feed cart, a big plastic bin on two wheels. One at a time, he hauled the dead men back to the shed and looked them over good where he could have a light without showing it outside. There he could see that both men had tattoos, and each had one that was the same, apparently a gang insignia, although he didn't recognize it. His farm belt knife removed those handily, which he put in his pocket. He took the bodies one at a time on down the farm lane behind the barn and dumped them in an old washout. Back to the barn with the feed cart and he loaded a bag of lime. Wearing the rubber gloves he used for mixing weed killer, he proceeded to cover the naked bodies with the lime and then shovelled manure and dirt over the top. That done, he kicked the sod loose from the banks of the washout and the burial was complete.
In the machine shed, he took the top 3" off the stack of old newspaper there, and opened a bag of salt. A layer of salt went on the newspaper stack, then he spread the removed tattoos on it, added a layer of salt and replaced the papers on top of it all.
Oliver went back to the front yard with a couple 5 gallon buckets of water and washed down the area where the men had fallen. In a few days, the grass would recover and all evidence would be gone. Back at the barn, as the sun was coming up, Oliver turned their milk cow out into the yard around the house to graze. He walked back out the lane and reset the switch on his alarm. His wife would have to milk the cow this morning, he thought. I'm tuckered out. He went back in the house and drank a glass of milk to settle his stomach. He found his wife asleep on her chair in the living room. He wrote her a note saying he was tired, to let him sleep a while, and please do the milking this morning.
When Oliver awoke, it was mid-morning. He still woke up all at once, ever since 'Nam. When his
eyes opened, he was fully alert and listening. What he heard was the normal wildlife and livestock sounds. No problem, he thought. Out the window, he saw his wife picking some greens to cook. It looked like just another day, if anyone should happen by today. He took a walk out in the front yard and noted with satisfaction that the old cow had deposited a big wet cow flop on the scene of the crime. He left that alone and went back in for something to eat.
After breakfast, he took inventory of the packs he had brought in, put most of the food away and loaded one pack to suit himself. It was the same GI issue ALICE pack that he was familiar with. He checked out the binoculars. They were pretty good, he thought, even if the name on them was Russian. They got put in his pack.
Today he needed to go see Alan Walters, he thought. Then, he decided that Nathan Tilson was closer. He had married Alan's girl, and he was a fine young man. Besides, he needed to know they had problems around the neighborhood. And he might need one of those Chinese rifles, if he didn't already have something. Maybe he should take both of the Chinese rifles to him. He didn't really want to have to look at them. He should take his wife with him. It would be good for her to have someone to talk to now, and Alan's girl was just the one. He didn't want to leave her by herself with this sort of riffraff on the loose. She could carry one on those rifles for him.
______________________
Nathan said, "I don't need the rifles, but I know who does. Right across the road. I don't think John Avery has much of anything in the way of guns, 'cause they've had it kinda hard since he got his back tore up. I think he's got an old shotgun , or somethin', but that's about it. He could sure use those rifles. He'd be glad to use 'em to put holes in the likes of what used to carry those, too."
"All right, you make sure he gets 'em then. I don't need 'em and I don't want 'em around. Seen too damn many of them in my time. Say, how're you folks doin' now? I ain't got a chance to see you fer along time."
"Oh, we're pretty good. Got more horses than we know what to do with now. No, we know what to do with 'em, but we ain't got enough grass for 'em. They're gonna eat down what grass we have and leave us short for winter. W'ell have to take 'em down to her Dad's, I guess."
"I got plenty of grass. And the barn's full of hay from last year, since I sold off all the beef I didn't need near all of it. I can let 'em run on pasture with the cows, and it won't bother a thing. If it don't get eat down, it'll get tough and go to seed and not be worth much for hay or pasture. Want me to take 'em home for a while?"
Jeannie was listening. "Boy, that would be a life saver for us. I'm supposed to teach them some manners about working, but I could come over to your place. It's not that far across the fields. Just go up our road past those big hollows, and cut off through the woods and you come out almost at your lane."
Oliver nodded, "Yup, that's the way we come over. On'y 'bout half a mile, or mebbe three quarters."
Jeannie saw that Oliver's wife Sherryl was pretty upset, so she said, "Come on up to the house with me, and we'll get something going to feed these men. You're probably thirsty, too, after that walk."
Sherryl gave a weak smile and followed her. On the way, Jeannie let the other woman think about what she wanted to say, without leading her into it. Buster dog greeted them at the door,
and Sid, the Cockatoo was bouncing around in her cage, anxious to meet the newcomer. Very prettily, Sid said "Hello!"
Sherryl was fascinated by the bird and sat down by the cage to visit with her. Jeannie fixed some cool drinks and joined them. Soon they were sharing secrets and unloading the tensions of this new life. Sherryl found the younger woman to be sympathetic, but emotionally tough. They went to the kitchen and did the normal things for getting a meal ready on the wood cookstove. It was getting hot in there by the time the stew was ready, so they all went outside to eat, including Sidney in her own portable cage. There were a lot of hawks around and Sid felt more secure in her cage.
The men came up to eat, they talked of farm things, what needed attention, and how to get the 3 extra horses home. It turned out that Sherryl could ride a little, so she would ride the older gelding and Oliver would ride the young mare, leading the other mare. The plan went just right, seeing the older couple home well before dark in time to do the milking.
"Sheriff Wilkins?" The young deputy called from the outer office.
"Come in, Connors. What's up?"
"We got another killing. Jimmy Jones found an old guy beat on the head. He said this guy down on West Market Street told him he heard something last night in the empty house next door and wanted Jimmy to check it out. Jimmy said the guy was from down the street, so he had to have been lookin' around for something to take there. We figure somebody else didn't like it and busted his head. You want to go look? We didn't move anything."
Dan Wilkins shoved his chair back and said, "I don't want to John, but I'd better go."
He grabbed his ball cap that said SHERIFF on it and followed the deputy out. They walked the eight blocks to the old house. Dan hated to see this kind of thing, but it was inevitable, he supposed. People were fighting and killing over scraps. His town was going to the dogs, and he didn't like it a bit. He had let the salvaging go on and turned his head about it, because people needed any advantage they could get to keep on living. Now it was getting ugly.
Inside, the place was a mess. Like so many other deserted houses, it had been ransacked more than once. Only some junk furniture remained, cabinets were open and empty, trash on the floor and, of course, the body of the old man. His shirt, shoes, and pants were gone, only his dirty underwear remained. It was a lot like the last murder scene he had looked at, except that man had been younger and appeared to have put up a fight. This old guy looked to have been surprised from behind.
"I guess I've seen all I need to see. Call the burial crew and get him in the ground. Any kinfolk around?"
John Connor said, "Not that we know of. The man next door said this guy lived alone."
"Any chance the neighbor did it?"
"Not from what I saw. He's scared to death, afraid it will be him and his wife next. And they ain't got anything in their house, either. I mean, it's pretty clean and all, but they are thin as scarecrows and they're too timid to do something like this."
"Okay. Get this cleaned up. I'm going to have to get this salvaging thing under control, or else."
The Sheriff walked back outside and headed for his office, taking the alley behind the house. It was an old neighborhood with big trees. The alley would be pretty dark at night. He heard a scuffling in the next garage and looked in. A couple kids, not over 10 years old, were trying to hide in the corner.
He asked them, "Do you kids have a place to live? Something to eat?"
They cowered in the corner and didn't speak.
Dan sat down on his haunches and tried again. "I can find you something to eat if you need it. Come on out in the sun where it's warm."
Finally, the two came out, a boy and a girl a bit older. He told them, "If you're hungry, you can go with me to the office and we'll get you a meal. There is room for you at the school, if you need a safe place. There are good people there who are helping kids. You want to come with me?"
The girl said, "I know you. You're the Sheriff, ain't you?"
Dan nodded, "That's right. It's my job to look after people."
"Do you really have something to eat? We're real hungry."
"Yes I do. It's nothing fancy, but it's good food. Are you okay? Not sick or hurt?"
The girl shook her head. "No, we ain't hurt. Just hungry. That makes you feel sick."
Dan nodded again. "Yes, it sure does." He reached in his back pocket and took out some homemade beef jerky. "This is beef jerky. You can chew on this as we walk, okay?"
Dan and the kids walked slowly down the alley toward his office building. He sighed and thought, "Two more to feed. I hope we can keep on doing it."
He handed off the kids to a woman deputy who got some hot soup into them, and began getting them cleaned up before taking them to the elementary school that had become the de facto orphanage of the town. Dan sat in his office and thought a while, made some notes and then went looking for something to make some signs. People needed some direction, and it had become his lot to supply that guidance, so he set his jaw and began to write.
Later that Tuesday afternoon, he had signs posted on the Courthouse lawn, on the entrance to the Fairgrounds where the Market was held, and on each major road through town.
TOWN MEETING SATURDAY AT FAIRGROUNDS.
BE THERE.
NEW LOOTING ORDINANCES.
THIEVES AND MURDERERS WILL BE SHOT OR HUNG.
TRANSITIONS, cont'd.
It looked something like a Roman chariot, but with an old tractor seat that had been reupholstered with denim from some old jeans.
Charlie asked Alan, "I give up. What is it?"
Alan looked up from his work and said, "The Amish call it a Fore Cart. It is basically an Amish tractor, when you hook the horses to it. The drawbar in back lets you pull any tractor drawn implement with a pin type hitch. Like a wagon, for instance. If we can use the horses to shuttle wagons around, we don't have to burn gasoline in the small tractors. We need gasoline worse for chainsaws and emergency car trips."
Benny admired the thing, ungainly as it was, and commented, "Yeah! And if you put a couple rows of hay bales down the middle of the wagon, it's a bus!"
Alan said, "Yes, that's how the Amish haul kids to their schools."
Charlie asked, "Is that a brake pedal?"
"Yep! Got to be able to stop a load, and the horses can only hold back so much. In this hilly country, we need brakes. I used the rear end out of that junk 3/4 ton truck in the gully, and found two of the tires that would hold air. I took the master cylinder off and the brake pedal and hooked it up with new brake lines. The big box is so I can fill it with rocks for weight to keep the wheels from sliding when I step on the brakes. The brake idea is something Nathan saw out in Amish country. He copied it on his wagon, and I copied his."
Benny asked, "D'you need any help here?"
"Well, if you want to break down those other two tires, we can maybe figure out if they can be patched for spares. These tires are old, so they may give out."
Charlie said, "There's a pile of old tires at the County Landfill. I saw 'em when I was out there haulin' off trash."
Alan looked up at him and said, "Thanks. We'll look into that. I guess you could go ahead and take those tires off the rims and get the rims cleaned up and repainted. I turned that old truck over with the backhoe yesterday while you were gone, so we can get the front axle off easier. I can make another cart out of it, so we're going to need more tires. Nathan said they want one, too, and Jeannie has 3 more head of horses at their place getting taught the basics of working. Clint and Ruby Voyles owned them and gave them to Jeannie because they couldn't feed them. They bought 4 sets of new harness and a bunch of used collars from the Amish harness maker right before the war started. Nathan said it took every dollar they had, but he is REALLY glad they did it."
Charlie was adding up in his head, "So, Nathan and Jeannie had their pair, you have 3 borrowed, and she has 3 more. That's 8 horses. And there is harness for all of them?"
Alan nodded affirmatively. "That means we can do a lot of farming with horses if we can find enough suitable machinery. Some tractor stuff will work, and some won't. Horses don't have a Power Take Off shaft like a tractor to power something like a hay baler. We'll have to cross those bridges as they come up. But from what news I've heard, there isn't going to be any gasoline or diesel available for a long time. Worse than that, there aren't any factories running that I know of, so we can't keep tractors running for very long before we need a part that we can't get or make."
Benny had gone to Alan's tire equipment and taken the valve stems out of the two wheels, letting any air escape. Alan had made a lever operated bead-breaker to dismount tires. Benny was familiar with it and had the two tires loosened from their rims in short order. Charlie had found the
tire irons made from old crowbars and started the process of prying the tires off the rims. Both tires proved to be rotten.
Benny said, "Looks like these are no good. They're all cracked. What d'you want to do with 'em?"
Charlie said, "That boy of Rich's could use a tire swing, I bet!"
Alan looked at the tires and said, "Well, they are too thick to make sandals, and too rotten for much of anything else. Yeah, make him a tire swing. There's some old rope scraps in the barn, hanging on a beam."
Charlie took off to work on the swing idea.
Benny asked, "Should we work on getting the front axle off the truck now? I worked on cars a little as a kid."
Alan said, "You just as well do that. Save all the bolts you can. Heck, better save everything you take off of it. They ain't making any more in Detroit right now."
Benny was thinking. "How about we take off whatever we can reach on the bottom of it, then turn it back over? If the backhoe craps out, it will be in a better position to work on then, and get anything we want from the topside later. That way we don't have to store very much stuff inside a building. It can just stay on the truck for now."
Alan agreed. "Yeah, I like that. You're thinking ahead, and that's important now."
"I'll get Charlie to help when he gets done with the swing." Benny picked up a toolbox and headed for the gully where the truck had been left.
_______________
That evening, Melinda and Allison had been invited to Benny and Charlie's place for a cookout. Wondering what that would be was half the fun. When they got to the RV trailer, the men had a campfire going that was burned down to coals. There was a table nearby with planks for a top supported by concrete blocks. Some firewood blocks had been up-ended to serve as stools. The fire was contained inside an old tractor wheel rim they had found somewhere, and had a wood post on each side with wood pegs at intervals. On the pegs was a piece of steel pipe, and a chain hung from it hanging a kettle over the fire. Whatever was simmerng in the kettle smelled spicy. The men had a pan of vegetables and chunks of meat on the table.
"Step right up ladies," Charlie called. "Nothin' fancy here, just our version of Shish-Kabob. Pick your own combination of fixings and shove 'em on a stick. There's some Sassafras tea in the kettle, and mugs on the table. Benny's cookin' up a pan of cornbread, too. If you go away hungry, it's your fault."
Benny found a ladle for the tea and poured for the women. The men had cut fresh green Willow sticks for roasting the food, so the women began to load their sticks with chunks of meat, potato and medium sized onions, saving tomato chunks to eat cold.
Melinda squatted by the fire next to Benny and said, "I haven't roasted anything over a fire since Girl Scouts. This is nice."
"I've had to do a lot of cooking over a fire, but this is a lot nicer place for it," Benny answered.
"Margaret said you were both in the Army until last year."
Benny said, "Yeah. Me an' Charlie have been a lot of places together."
Melinda looked up from the fire to watch the last of the sunset showing over the hilltop. "It is nice and peaceful out here. I am SO glad to get out of town."
Benny looked at the grim expression she had for a minute, soon replaced with a slight smile as she thought about other things. He said, "Won't be able to do this much longer. It'll be getting cool out soon."
Melinda asked, "How do you heat the trailer? Is it gas?"
"Yep. And that ain't going to last. We prob'ly got enough for this winter if we don't cook on the stove too much now. Can't put a wood stove in the trailer. Not room enough, and it ain't safe. We've been talking about building a log cabin back here. Alan said it would be okay. Said he'd deed us some ground, if we wanted him to. If that means anything now. We need something more substantial to live in, and there's room enough. Already got a well and a big root cellar here, 'cause there was an old house here ages ago."
"UH-OH! I'm going to burn that potato!"
"Don't worry about it. Just peel off the burnt part and eat it. They always burn some on the outside."
"Okay. I'll take your word for it. I want to see that root cellar. Where is it?"
Benny grinned, "Michael had to show us and we were standing on it! It's in the briars back there. We fixed it up and put a new door on it, so it's pretty clean now. I'll show you after we eat."
Allison had fun teasing Charlie about making them cook their own supper, and he told her his middle name was Tom, as in Tom Sawyer. She didn't get the joke until he told her about Tom Sawyer conning his friends into painting the fence for him. "You oughta read some of Mark Twain's stuff. He is funny as they come."
"I suppose we'll have to read books now, with no internet or TV. Maybe that's okay. TV shows were dumb anyway."
"I don't miss it any, but then, I didn't get to see much TV for a long time in the Army."
"I used to think I had to have something exciting going on all the time," Allison said. "Now, I've had enough excitement to last me a lifetime."
Charlie agreed, "Yeah, me too."
"Any more of that tea left? That's good stuff."
"There's more in the kettle and lot's more where that came from. The woods is full of Sassafras. It's the sugar that is goin' to be scarce."
"Isn't that the truth! I don't know where you'd get sugar now."
"Nathan is planning to put out some Sorghum next year an' make syrup out of it. He's got a press to get the juice out and they'll turn it with a horse."
"What is Sorghum?"
"That's what they use to make molasses. It's the flavor in brown sugar, too. Don't know how it would taste in tea, but it's awful good on pancakes. There's a neighbor of theirs that has some bees, too. He'll get rich selling honey when the sugar runs out."
"Hey! Yeah! You could do that too!"
"I don't know nothin' about bees and hives and all. Guess I could talk to that guy. There's some wild bees that hang around here, but I don't know how you'd catch 'em. I'll talk to John next time I see him."
"Who's that?"
"John Avery. He and his wife live across the road from Nathan and Jeannie. He has a lot of grapes, too. I think he plans to make wine. I'll have to take you up there some time when we go. They live on top of the hill down the valley. You go down here past Roy and Mandy Bates' place, and turn at the corner, then go to the next..."
"Whose place? Roy Bates, did you say?"
"Yeah, the next house down that way. They rent from Julie."
"I know Roy Bates! He married Mandy Sullivan. She was in my class in school! And she lives just down the road?"
"Yeah, Julie's farm house. The big white one."
"Melinda! Did you hear that! Roy Bates and Mandy Sullivan live next door! Just down the road!"
"You're kidding! I haven't seen them for a while, but they used to come in the bank. Roy was in my class, and wasn't Mandy in yours?"
"Yes! I need to see her. Somebody told me she had a baby."
Charlie said, "Yeah, her name is Shari, and she's about 3 or 4, I think. Cute little kid."
"Well. How about that. I don't feel quite so lost now, I guess."
Charlie said, "Now, don't you go gettin' lost! It was trouble enough to find you the first time!"
"I wasn't lost!"
"Well, I hadn't found you yet! An' I'd like for you to hang around for a while, okay?"
"Yeah. Okay. I wasn't planning on going anywhere right away," She smiled at Charlie for the first time.
Charlie was amazed how pretty she was when she smiled. He thought, I gotta get her to smile more often.
____________
Oliver Rice decided that he had done some things right. Getting his money out before it all disappeared was good. And spending it was better. Paper money wasn't good for much of anything now, but the extra silver and gold he bought would always be good. He had thanked God daily for Margaret Walters who had stopped on her way home one day and told them to "Get forted up, because it is all going to hell now".
She had word from their relatives who had friends in the military that a big war was starting and they'd better buy what they could now, because it wouldn't be available later.
She had said, "Get anything that you can't make or grow, and do it fast. We don't know how much time we have, but it won't be long."
Oliver had kept his livestock trailer. He had hooked that to his new pickup and gone shopping, spending money like water for 2 1/2 days. He had his wife get the farm fuel tanks and the LP tank filled. It was all he and his wife could do to get the stuff unloaded and in the barn before he went to bed at night. But they were up again the next day at daylight and on the road again. They had been to farm stores in 4 counties and bought everything from barbed wire and steel posts, to overalls, boots, veterinary medicines, canning lids, two tons of salt from the feed mills, mineral blocks, and chainsaw supplies. They went to other places and got food items, and he brought home a whole trailer load of seeds--clover, timothy, orchard grass, Kentucky 31 Fescue, garden seeds, and Great Northern beans. He got a load of fertilizer in bags from the farm supply North of town, unloaded it and went back for more. He got nails, paint, oil, grease, tractor parts, and spare tires and tubes. His wife thought he was going overboard buying shotgun shells and rifle shells at every place that had them. He was coming home on the 3rd evening from town with another load when the radio gave the news. That was his last trip.
There were things he had forgotten, but he resigned himself to the fact that nobody is perfect, and he made mistakes and forgot things like everyone else. It still galled him when he remembered something that he could have bought that would have made life easier now, but overall, he felt pretty good about it. What bothered him more was that having been to town in the days that followed, he had a good idea how things were going downhill there.
Soon people would be robbing each other, and he had nobody to keep watch at night. So far, they hadn't had any trouble, but it was a matter of time, he was sure. Somebody would get desperate and they might catch him asleep. His old dog didn't hear very well now, either. The young one didn't know much yet, but she was learning.
Being well off the highway back a long lane was a help in these troubled times. Anyone unfamiliar with the place wouldn't know what was back there. He had purposely not done anything to the lane to make it look better lately for that reason. Not driving on it for a couple months had allowed the grass and weeds to grow up so it looked more deserted. Then, he had made a gate, and it wasn't just a farm gate. He had dropped a tree about 2 feet thick across the lane and made it look like it had blown over if you didn't look too close. He could get out with the truck through a field if he had to, but you had to know the way.
He wanted some notice if somebody tried coming close to the house, so he tied a fishing line across the lane just past the tree and ran it to a homemade switch in a tin can. If the the switch got tripped, it turned on a light in the kitchen and in the bedroom, wired to his truck battery. He started the truck and let it run a while every week or so, to keep the battery up. A time or two, a deer had tripped his alarm. Had to be a deer, because he'd set the line high enough that dogs and other wildlife would pass underneath it. He didn't mind a few false alarms. It kept him on his toes.
The young dog barked and woke him one night just as the light came on in the bedroom. The wind up alarm clock said 2:30 AM. He switched off the little light, grabbed his shotgun and went barefoot to the front upstairs bedroom and looked out the open window. There were two young men carrying guns in his yard. He shot them both before they knew what hit them. Oliver sat there a while, shushing his wife who came running into the room. There might be more of them. He had survived the jungles of Vietnam, and he had the advantage here, because this was his own yard, and he knew it like the back of his hand. He planned to win any fight that came along.
After about an hour of no movement in the moonlight, he went out to investigate. He had never seen the young men before, and he thought he knew about everybody in the county. They looked to be well fed, clad in some kind of military garb, and carried those Chinese made assault rifles. He absolutely hated the sight of those things. He took the rifles and the web gear with extra ammo, and their back packs. He dug through their pockets for any identification and found none. One man had tattoos, but it was too dark to make them out. He did find some silver coins and two gold Eagles in one guy's pockets. One of them had a pair of binoculars.
Oliver carried what he had taken off them into the house. His wife was frantic, sitting on a kitchen chair and sobbing. He reassured her as best he could and went back out. He then went to the machine shed and got his feed cart, a big plastic bin on two wheels. One at a time, he hauled the dead men back to the shed and looked them over good where he could have a light without showing it outside. There he could see that both men had tattoos, and each had one that was the same, apparently a gang insignia, although he didn't recognize it. His farm belt knife removed those handily, which he put in his pocket. He took the bodies one at a time on down the farm lane behind the barn and dumped them in an old washout. Back to the barn with the feed cart and he loaded a bag of lime. Wearing the rubber gloves he used for mixing weed killer, he proceeded to cover the naked bodies with the lime and then shovelled manure and dirt over the top. That done, he kicked the sod loose from the banks of the washout and the burial was complete.
In the machine shed, he took the top 3" off the stack of old newspaper there, and opened a bag of salt. A layer of salt went on the newspaper stack, then he spread the removed tattoos on it, added a layer of salt and replaced the papers on top of it all.
Oliver went back to the front yard with a couple 5 gallon buckets of water and washed down the area where the men had fallen. In a few days, the grass would recover and all evidence would be gone. Back at the barn, as the sun was coming up, Oliver turned their milk cow out into the yard around the house to graze. He walked back out the lane and reset the switch on his alarm. His wife would have to milk the cow this morning, he thought. I'm tuckered out. He went back in the house and drank a glass of milk to settle his stomach. He found his wife asleep on her chair in the living room. He wrote her a note saying he was tired, to let him sleep a while, and please do the milking this morning.
When Oliver awoke, it was mid-morning. He still woke up all at once, ever since 'Nam. When his
eyes opened, he was fully alert and listening. What he heard was the normal wildlife and livestock sounds. No problem, he thought. Out the window, he saw his wife picking some greens to cook. It looked like just another day, if anyone should happen by today. He took a walk out in the front yard and noted with satisfaction that the old cow had deposited a big wet cow flop on the scene of the crime. He left that alone and went back in for something to eat.
After breakfast, he took inventory of the packs he had brought in, put most of the food away and loaded one pack to suit himself. It was the same GI issue ALICE pack that he was familiar with. He checked out the binoculars. They were pretty good, he thought, even if the name on them was Russian. They got put in his pack.
Today he needed to go see Alan Walters, he thought. Then, he decided that Nathan Tilson was closer. He had married Alan's girl, and he was a fine young man. Besides, he needed to know they had problems around the neighborhood. And he might need one of those Chinese rifles, if he didn't already have something. Maybe he should take both of the Chinese rifles to him. He didn't really want to have to look at them. He should take his wife with him. It would be good for her to have someone to talk to now, and Alan's girl was just the one. He didn't want to leave her by herself with this sort of riffraff on the loose. She could carry one on those rifles for him.
______________________
Nathan said, "I don't need the rifles, but I know who does. Right across the road. I don't think John Avery has much of anything in the way of guns, 'cause they've had it kinda hard since he got his back tore up. I think he's got an old shotgun , or somethin', but that's about it. He could sure use those rifles. He'd be glad to use 'em to put holes in the likes of what used to carry those, too."
"All right, you make sure he gets 'em then. I don't need 'em and I don't want 'em around. Seen too damn many of them in my time. Say, how're you folks doin' now? I ain't got a chance to see you fer along time."
"Oh, we're pretty good. Got more horses than we know what to do with now. No, we know what to do with 'em, but we ain't got enough grass for 'em. They're gonna eat down what grass we have and leave us short for winter. W'ell have to take 'em down to her Dad's, I guess."
"I got plenty of grass. And the barn's full of hay from last year, since I sold off all the beef I didn't need near all of it. I can let 'em run on pasture with the cows, and it won't bother a thing. If it don't get eat down, it'll get tough and go to seed and not be worth much for hay or pasture. Want me to take 'em home for a while?"
Jeannie was listening. "Boy, that would be a life saver for us. I'm supposed to teach them some manners about working, but I could come over to your place. It's not that far across the fields. Just go up our road past those big hollows, and cut off through the woods and you come out almost at your lane."
Oliver nodded, "Yup, that's the way we come over. On'y 'bout half a mile, or mebbe three quarters."
Jeannie saw that Oliver's wife Sherryl was pretty upset, so she said, "Come on up to the house with me, and we'll get something going to feed these men. You're probably thirsty, too, after that walk."
Sherryl gave a weak smile and followed her. On the way, Jeannie let the other woman think about what she wanted to say, without leading her into it. Buster dog greeted them at the door,
and Sid, the Cockatoo was bouncing around in her cage, anxious to meet the newcomer. Very prettily, Sid said "Hello!"
Sherryl was fascinated by the bird and sat down by the cage to visit with her. Jeannie fixed some cool drinks and joined them. Soon they were sharing secrets and unloading the tensions of this new life. Sherryl found the younger woman to be sympathetic, but emotionally tough. They went to the kitchen and did the normal things for getting a meal ready on the wood cookstove. It was getting hot in there by the time the stew was ready, so they all went outside to eat, including Sidney in her own portable cage. There were a lot of hawks around and Sid felt more secure in her cage.
The men came up to eat, they talked of farm things, what needed attention, and how to get the 3 extra horses home. It turned out that Sherryl could ride a little, so she would ride the older gelding and Oliver would ride the young mare, leading the other mare. The plan went just right, seeing the older couple home well before dark in time to do the milking.
