Farnham's Freehold (13 page)

Duke tells Karen that she must be patient.

I should not criticize Duke; he is probably going to be my husband. I mean, who else is there? I could stand Duke but I’m not sure I could stand Grace as a mother-in-law. Duke is handsome and is considerate of both me and his sister. He did quarrel with his father at first (foolishly it seemed to me) but they get along perfectly now.

In this vicinity he is quite a catch.

Myself? I’m not soured on marriage even though I struck out once. Hugh assumes that the human race will go on. I’m willing.

(Polygamy? Of course I would! Even with Grace as senior wife. But I haven’t been asked. Nor, I feel sure, would Grace permit it. Hugh and I don’t discuss such things, we avoid touching the other, we avoid being alone together, and I do not make cow’s eyes at him. Finished.)

The trouble is, while I like Duke, no spark jumps. So I am putting it off and avoiding circumstances where he might pat me on the fanny. It would be a hell of a note if I married him and there came a night when I was so irritated at his mother and so vexed with him for indulging her that I would tell him coldly that he is not half the man his father is.

No, that must not happen. Duke does not deserve it.

Joe? My admiration for him is unqualified—and he doesn’t have a mother problem.

Joe is the first Negro I’ve had a chance to know well—and I think most well of him. He plays better contract than I do; I suppose he’s smarter than I am. He is fastidious and never comes indoors without bathing. Oh, get downwind after he has spent a day digging and he’s pretty whiff. But so is Duke, and Hugh is worse. I don’t believe this story about a distinctive “nigger musk.”

Have you ever been in a dirty powder room? Women stink worse than men.

The trouble with Joe is the same as with Duke: No spark jumps. Since he is so shy that he is most unlikely to court me—Well, it won’t happen.

But I am fond of him—as a younger brother. He is never too busy to be accommodating. He is usually bear guard for Karen and me when we bathe and it’s a comfort to know that Joe is alert—Duke has killed five bears and Joe killed one while he was actually guarding us. It took three shots and dropped dead almost in Joe’s lap. He stood his ground.

We adjourned without worrying about modesty, which upset Joe more than bears do.

Or wolves, or coyotes, or mountain lions, or a cat which Duke says is a mutated leopard and especially dangerous because it attacks by dropping out of a tree. We don’t bathe under trees and don’t venture out of our clearing without an armed man. It is as dangerous as crossing Wilshire against the lights.

There are snakes, too. At least one sort is poisonous.

Joe and Hugh were starting one morning on the house leveling and Joe jumped down into the excavation. Dr.-Livingstone-I-Presume jumped down with him—and here was this snake.

Doc spotted it and hissed; Joe saw it just as it struck, getting him in the calf. Joe killed it with his shovel and dropped to the ground, grabbing at his leg.

Hugh had the wound slashed and was sucking it in split seconds. He had a tourniquet on quickly and permanganate crystals on the wound soon after as I heard the hooraw and came a-runnin’. He followed that with rattlesnake anti-venom.

Moving Joe was a problem; he collapsed in the tunnel. Hugh crawled over him and pulled, I pushed, and it took three of us—Karen, too—to lift him up the ladder. We undressed him and put him to bed.

Around midnight, when his respiration was low and his pulse uncertain, Hugh moved the remaining bottle of oxygen into the room, put over Joe’s head a plastic sack in which shirts had been stored and gave him oxygen.

By morning he was better.

In three days he was up and well. Duke says it was a pit viper, perhaps a bushmaster, and that a rattlesnake is a pit viper, too, so rattlesnake anti-venom probably saved Joe’s life.

I am not trusting
any
snakes.

It took three weeks to excavate under the house. Boulders! This area is a wide, flat, saucer-shaped valley, with boulders most anywhere. Whenever we hit a big one, we dug around it and the men would worry it out with crowbar and block and tackle.

Mostly the men could get boulders out. But Karen found one that seemed to go down to China. Hugh looked it over and said, “Fine. Now dig a hole just north of it and deeper.”

Karen just looked at him.

So we dug. And hit another big boulder. “Good,” said Hugh. “Dig another hole north of that one.”

We hit a third oversize boulder. But in three days the last one had been tumbled into a hole next to it, the middle one had been worried into a hole where the last one had been, and the one that started the trouble was buried where the middle one had been.

As fast as any spot had been cut deeply enough Hugh propped it up with pieces of log; he was worried lest the shelter shift and crush someone. So when we finished the shelter had a forest of posts under it.

Hugh then set two very heavy posts under the uphill corners and started removing the inner ones, using block and tackle. Sometimes they had to be dug under. Hugh was nervous during this and did all the rigging and digging himself.

At last the uphill half was supported on these two big chunks.

They would not budge.

There was so much weight on those timbers that they sneered at our efforts. I said, “What do we do now, Hugh?”

“Try the next-to-last resort.”

“What’s the last resort?”

“Burn them. But it would take roaring fires and we would have to clear grass and bushes and trees for quite a distance. Karen, you know where the ammonia is. And the iodine. I want both.”

I had wondered why Hugh had stocked so much ammonia. But he had, in used plastic Chlorox bottles; the stuff had ridden through the shocks. I hadn’t known that iodine was stocked in quantity, too; I don’t handle the drugs.

Soon he had sort of a chemistry lab. “What are you making, Hugh?” I asked.

“Ersatz ‘dynamite.’ And I don’t need company,” he said. “The stuff is so touchy it explodes at a harsh look.”

“Sorry,” I said, backing away.

He looked up and smiled. “It’s safe until it dries. I had it in mind in case I ever found myself in an underground. Occupying troops take a sour view of natives having explosives, but there is nothing suspicious about ammonia or iodine. The stuff is safe until you put it together and does not require a primer. But I never expected to use it for construction; it’s too treacherous.”

“Hugh, I just remembered I don’t care whether a floor is level or not.”

“If it makes you nervous, take a walk.”

Making it was simple; he combined tincture of iodine and ordinary household ammonia; a precipitate settled out. This he filtered through Kleenex, the result was a paste.

Joe drilled holes into those stubborn posts; Hugh wrapped this mess in two batches, in paper, and packed a bundle into each hole, tamping with his finger. “Now we wait for it to dry.”

Everything that he used he flushed down with water, then took a bath with his clothes on, removed them in the water and left them, weighted down with rocks. That was all that day.

Our armament includes two lovely ladies’ guns, .22 magnum rimfires with telescopic sights. Hugh had Duke and Joe sight them in. The sighting-in was done with sandbag rest—heaped-up dirt, that is. Hugh had them expend five bullets each, so I knew he was serious. “One bullet, one bear” is his motto.

When the explosive was dry, everything breakable was removed from the shelter. We women were chased far back, Karen was charged with hanging on to Dr. Livingstone, and I was armed with Duke’s bear rifle, just in case.

Duke and Joe were on their bellies a measured hundred feet from the posts. Hugh stood between them. “Ready for count?”

“Ready, Hugh.”—“Ready, Dad.”

“Deep breath. Let part of it out. Hold it, steady on target, take up the slack. Five…four…three…two…one…
fire!
”

A sound like a giant slammed door and the middle of each post disintegrated. The shelter stuck out like a shelf, then tilted ponderously down, touched, and was level.

Karen and I cheered; Grace started to clap; Dr. Livingstone jumped down to investigate. Hugh turned his head and grinned.

And the shelter tilted back the other way as the ridge crumbled; it started to slide. It pivoted on the tunnel protuberance, picked up speed and tobogganed down the slope. I thought it was going to end up in the creek.

But the slope leveled off; it ground to a stop, with the tunnel choked with dirt and the whole thing farther out of plumb than before!

Hugh picked up the shovel he had used to heap up shooting supports, walked down to the shelter, began to dig.

I ran down, tears bursting from my eyes. Joe was there first. Hugh looked up and said, “Joe, dig out the tunnel. I want to know if anything is damaged and the girls will want to get lunch.”

“Boss—” Joe choked out. “Boss! Oh, gosh!”

Hugh said, in a tone you use to a child, “Why are you upset, Joe? This has saved us work.”

I thought he had flipped. Joe said, “
Huh?
”

“Certainly,” Hugh assured him. “See how much lower the roof is? Every foot it dropped saves at least a hundred feet of aqueduct. And leveling will be simple here; the ground is loam and boulders are few. A week, with everybody pitching in. Then we bring water to the house and garden two weeks early.”

He was correct. The shelter was level in a week, and this time he triggered the end posts with crosspieces; blasting was not needed. Best of all, the armor door cranked back without a murmur and we had air and sunlight inside—It had been stuffy and candles made it pretty rank. Joe and Hugh started the ditch the same day. In anticipation of the glorious day, Karen sketched on the walls of the tank room life-size pictures of a washstand, a bathtub, a pot.

Truthfully, we are comfortable. Two mattress covers Karen filled with dried grass; sleeping on the floor is no worse than the bunks. We sit in chairs and play our evening rubber at the table. It is amazing what a difference level floors make and how much better it is to have a door than to climb down a ladder and crawl out a hole.

We had to cook over a campfire a while as our grill and Dutch oven were smashed. Karen and I have thrown together a make-do because, as soon as water is led to the house, Hugh intends to start on ceramics, not only for a toilet and a sink but also for a stove vented out through the periscope hole. Luxury!

My corn is coming up beautifully. I wonder what I can use to grind corn? The thought of hot corn bread buttered with deer grease makes me drool.

December 25th—Merry Christmas!

We think it is. Hugh says we are not more than a day off.

Shortly after we got here Hugh picked a small tree with a flat boulder due north of it and sawed it off so that it placed a sharp shadow on the boulder at noon. As “Keeper of the Flame” it has been my duty to sit by that boulder from before apparent noon and note the shortest shadow—follow it down, mark the shortest position and date it.

That shadow had been growing longer and the days shorter. A week ago it began to be hard to see any change and I told Hugh. So we watched together and three days ago was the turning point…so that day became December 22nd and we are celebrating Christmas instead of the Fourth of July. But we got our flag up, as Hugh had planned, to the top of the tallest tree in our clearing, with its branches lopped to make it a pole. As Keeper of the Flame I am charged with raising and lowering it but this was a special occasion; we drew lots and Joe won. We lined up and sang “The Star Spangled Banner” while he hauled it to the peak—and everyone was crying so hard he could hardly sing.

Then we pledged allegiance. Maybe it is sentimental nonsense by ragged castaways but
I
don’t think so. We are still one nation, under God, free and indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Hugh held divine services and read the Christmas story from the Gospel According to Luke and called on Karen to pray, then we sang carols. Grace has a strong, sure lead; Joe is a bell-like tenor, and Karen, myself, Hugh, and Duke are soprano, contralto, baritone, and bass. I think we sound good. In any case we enjoyed it, even though Grace got taken by the weeps during “White Christmas” and it was contagious.

We would have had services anyhow as today would be Sunday by the old calendar; Hugh holds them every Sunday. Everybody attends, even Duke who is an avowed atheist. Hugh reads a Psalm or some other chapter; we sing hymns; he prays or invites someone to pray, and ends it with “Bless This House—” We are back to the days when the Old Man is priest.

But Hugh never uses the Apostles’ Creed and his prayers are so nonsectarian that he does not even end them “In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”

On a rare occasion when he and I spoke in private—waiting out a noon sight last week—I asked him where he stood on matters of faith? (It is important to me to know where my man stands even though he is not my man and can’t be.)

“You could call me an Existentialist.”

“You are not a Christian?”

“I didn’t say that. I can’t express it in the negative because it’s affirmative. I shan’t define it; it would only add to the confusion. You are wondering why I hold church since I refuse to assert a creed?”

“Well…yes.”

“It’s my duty. Services should be available to those who need them. If there is no good and no God, this ritual is harmless. If God is, it is appropriate—and still harmless. We are bleeding no peasants, offering no bloody sacrifices, raising no vanities to the skies in the name of religion. Or so I see it, Barbara.”

That had better hold me; it’s all I’ll get out of him. In my past life religion was a nice, warm, comfy thing I did on Sundays; I can’t say it agonized me. But Hugh’s Godless offering to God has become important.

Sundays are important other ways. Hugh discourages work other than barbering and primping or hobby work, and encourages games, or any fun thing. Chess, bridge, Scrabble, modeling in clay, group sings, such like—Or just yakking. Games are important; they mark that we are not just animals trying to stay alive but humans enjoying life and savoring it. That nightly rubber of bridge we never skip. It proclaims that our lives are not just hoeing and digging ditches and butchering.