Renewal 2 - Echoes of the Breakdown

Renewal – Part 2: Echoes of the Breakdown

By J.F. Perkins

Copyright 2011 J.F. Perkins

Kindle Edition

Website/Blog: http://www.jfperkins.com

Renewal - Part 2: Echoes of the Breakdown

Chapter 2 - 1

Terry was reeling from the revelations of the last two days. He and Bill were retracing their paths through the cornfields, heading back to Teeny Town. The village had been established right under the collective nose of the county government, the official local authority of the reconstruction of America. As they approached the huge defensive gate between the northern barns, Terry saw that his boss was leaning against one of the barns, spitting tobacco juice on the ground. Dusty held up his hand in greeting, and Bill gave him a meaningful nod in return.

“You figured it out, huh?” Dusty asked, watching Terry closely.

“I think I did. I’m still confused about things, though.” Terry replied in a muted voice. The confidence he felt earlier had given way to a sliding feeling of apprehension. What happens next?

Dusty seemed to read his mind. “I’ll bet you’re wondering what to do now...”

 “Right... I have no idea where to go from here.”

“Well, don’t worry about it right now. We’ll have plenty of time to plan your entire life later.” Dusty smiled and tousled Terry’s hair in a way that suggested he was talking to a small child. Terry pulled his head away, and both men laughed at the reaction.

Bill said, “For now, let’s see about some lunch.”

The men led Terry back to the place they had met earlier that morning, and slid right back into the back corner booth with the solid plank walls separating them from the rest of the tavern. Terry noted, for the second time, the strange disconnect between those plank partitions, and the shiny Formica tabletop. He knew the planks were much newer, but the table looked the part of the sleek, glossy future that had been stolen from Terry’s generation.

“What’s on today, Sam?” Bill shouted cheerfully at the bartender.

Sam answered with a weekly standard. “Barbecue pork, corn, beans, and Texas toast!”

“Three.” Bill said, holding up the appropriate fingers with a friendly smirk. Then he turned to Terry.

“So, Terry... I’m sure you have questions. Might as well ask ‘em while we wait for some food,” Bill said, turning to face the young man.

“About this place? I have a million questions, but that’s not my problem right now. It’s all about the rest of the world, you know?”

“Yes, I do, but, as you might expect, my concern is what you intend to do about Teeny Town. The rest, we can figure out.”

“Well, Bill, I’ve spent the last twenty minutes trying to fit everything together in my head. I’d have to say that there’s no doubt that I have to keep this place a secret. If the county knew about everything you’ve got here, they’d be out here to ‘recover’ it.”

Bill and Dusty both moved restlessly, shaking loose some tension they weren’t even aware they were holding.

“Good,” Bill said, “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that.” He reached across the table and gave Terry a couple of slaps on the shoulder. “Really glad.”

“The problem is, it seems to me that the best way to do that is to go back, file a false report, and keep going like nothing happened. All I really want to do now is to stay here and get to work.” Terry looked at both men, waiting for some secret formula to be shared.

Instead, Dusty said, “Well, it was easier for me. My foster parents were in on the deal, and as far as anyone knew, I was spending summers on my uncle’s farm in Bedford County. By the time I grew up, nobody even thought to worry about where I went.”

Bill added, “Yeah Terry, I’m sorry, but if you want to maintain the illusion, it looks like you’ll have to work twice as hard. You’ll have two lives to live.”

“Great. Here I thought I had stumbled into the land of milk and honey, but really, I just found another version of
there ain’t no free lunch
,” Terry said with a cynical twist of his mouth.

The men laughed, thought better of it, but when Terry smiled in return, they laughed even harder.

Three thick, steaming pottery plates arrived, piled high with red-sauce barbecue. Terry thought of all the dry, fired-cooked goat he had eaten in his life, every time believing it was a real treat, and his entire childhood adopted a pale gray hue in his memory.

“Dig in, boys,” Bill said, already talking around a mouthful.

As they began to eat, Sam delivered three more pottery mugs full of a red, cloudy beer. Terry hadn’t had this much beer since he and two of school buddies had found a wooden keg full of beer on a loading dock and proceeded to help themselves. They would have gotten away with it, too, if they had been able to walk when they were caught. They ended up pitching hay for three months to make up for that little adventure.

Terry washed down another mouthful of food, and asked, “Do you always eat this well?”

“Pretty much, yeah. We’re making up for lost time. We work hard for the privilege, but not nearly as hard as we did back in the day,” Bill replied.

“That’s for sure,” Dusty said. “Even after Kirk found me, I remember a whole lot of tree rat and turnips.”

“I’ll take goat over squirrel any day,” Terry added.

“Amen to that.” Dusty took another swig of his beer, and slid out of the booth. “Well, boys, I’m heading back to town. Terry, I’ll make sure that no one worries about you until tomorrow, but you need to head on back in the morning.”

“Yes, sir. I will.” Terry said between the rapid forks full of beans.

Dusty gave a sloppy salute to Bill and walked out of the tavern.

Terry set his fork on the plate, leaned back as far as he could, and burped out loud. “I feel... not full, more than full...”

“We call that feeling ‘stuffed’.”

“Stuffed, yeah... That’s a good way to put it.” Terry smiled and Bill snorted, trying not to laugh at the young man across from him.

Bill thought about how he lived his first eleven years without ever being truly hungry, and then it was many years before he ever felt full on a regular basis, much less stuffed. He found it sad that Terry didn’t even know how to describe the feeling of eating more food than he needed.

“Well, you ready for a little more tour?” Bill asked as he placed his cloth napkin next to the empty plate.

“Yes, Bill. If I can walk with this belly...”

“Alrighty then, up you go.” Bill slid out of the booth and pantomimed tugging Terry out of his seat. They were both laughing as they strolled past the bar.

“Wait, Bill. Don’t I need to pay Sam?”

“I tell you what, Terry. Sam and I have an agreement, an account. This time it’s on me. Later on, we’ll talk about how you pay, ok?”

“Ok, if you’re sure,” Terry said, then over his shoulder, “Thank you, Sam. That’s about the best food I ever ate.”

“You’re welcome, young fella. Come back any time.”

This time, Bill led Terry out through the east gate of Teeny Town, following the gravel lane towards a long spur of woods that extended from the three lakes north of the village, almost to the top of the rise to the south. The men walked through a newly sprouted field of what Terry guessed was beans until they crossed another lane that seemed to curve around the entire settlement. From that point, the road ended and they crossed open pasture until they slid into the shadows of the trees.

The land dropped sharply into a gully. Terry leaped across the trickle of water, flowing slowly north to Brewer Creek, and scrambled up the far side, following Bill deeper into the woods. Terry decided that the goal was in the pasture beyond the woods when Bill stopped at the base of a white oak, and yelled, “Hello, the lookout!”

Terry heard a feminine voice from directly overhead. “Hello, the old man!”

Bill rolled his eyes and replied, “Drop the ladder, sassy britches!” He stepped back from the tree to avoid the rope ladder that spun and leaped out of the sky, nearly clubbing Terry in the head on its final bounce. “Terry, hold the ladder for the old man, will you?”

Terry set his foot on the bottom rung and grabbed one side of the ladder as Bill scrambled up like a very not-old man indeed. Terry grabbed the second rope as Bill climbed out of reach. Bill’s legs disappeared quickly onto a platform forty feet off the ground, and then his head popped out in the same spot. He called down to Terry, “Come on up!”

Terry, without a stabilizing helper on the bottom, ended up climbing the edge of the ladder, more like a knotted rope than a ladder, and he took quite a bit longer than Bill to reach the top. When he pulled himself over the edge, and stood up panting a bit, he found himself facing a young woman, maybe his age or thereabouts. She wore leather boots and tan work pants, leather gloves, a heavy shirt with leather patches on the shoulders, and a seriously large knife strapped to her hip. By the time his eyes reached her face, centered on greenish-gray eyes, scattered with light freckles, and framed by copper-red hair, he was thoroughly intimidated. The bolt action rifle didn’t help in that regard. He was instantly entranced, and couldn’t look away.

The woman, on the other hand, was looking at his tall, strong form, deep hazel eyes, and sandy brown hair, but none of that mattered, because she could smell his fear.

“Get a good look, did you?” She said.

“Uh, well... see. I was...” Terry tried to speak.

Bill rescued him. “Terry, I’d like you to meet my second daughter, Sally. We named her after a special woman, and all we get in return is attitude. Sally, be nice to our new friend, Terry Shelton.”

Terry stuck out his hand automatically, since the autopilot was the only part of his mind still functioning. Sally just looked at him for ten long seconds. Terry was about to give up, when Bill gave his daughter a sharp look. She shrugged, leaned her rifle against the tree trunk, and returned Terry’s handshake with a perfunctory single pump.

Terry found his voice and said, “Pleased to meet you, Sally.”

“Likewise, I’m sure,” she replied, picking up her rifle and turning towards the guarded edge of the platform.

“In case you couldn’t guess, Terry...  Sally is also known as Red Sally, Sally the Red, Here-comes-Sally-run, and The Terror of Teeny Town, depending on who you ask. Somehow, I think she takes after her Uncle Kirk more than me, but I don’t ask too many questions about that.” Bill smiled. “My folks used to say you could blame these obviously misplaced children on the mailman, but I don’t think that excuse works anymore.”

Sally looked over her shoulder, and said, “You forgot Bloody Sally and Sally-so-mean-she-hurt-my-little-feelings...”

“True, but I think we’ve scared Terry enough, don’t you?”

Sally turned to face the men, and gave Terry another hard, thorough look and replied, “No, not enough... Not yet.” She smiled just long enough to make Terry’s heart leap twice in his chest, and then turned around again.

Bill said, “All right, my little maniac, you’re relieved of watch. We’ll take it until the shift change at four.”

“Great!” Sally said, “That’ll give me enough time to make some babies cry.” She handed her rifle to her father, and promptly slid over the edge. Just when Terry thought it was safe to breathe again, she stuck her head back over the edge and said, “See you later, Terry.”

“Uh, bye Sally...”

He heard a zipping sound, a quiet thud as she hit the ground, and tried to figure out how to watch her walk away without being obvious about it in front of her father. In the end, he couldn’t find an excuse to go to that particular side of the platform and had to settle for her tiny silhouette walking across the bean fields.

Bill, of course, missed nothing and smiled quietly to himself as he quickly scanned every approach to the watch.