Renewal 3 - Your Basic Swiss Family (2 page)

“Ok, thanks.” Terry started rearranging his gear.

“So what brings you out so soon? Couldn’t get enough of Red Sally?” Jeffry asked with a slow wink. “All I gotta say is, you must be a brave man, sir.”

Terry blushed and replied, “No... I need to speak to Bill. Dusty and I ran into a little problem in town.”

“Problem, huh? Ok, let me call town hall.”

Terry followed Jeffry back into the third house, and watched with surprise when he picked up a yellow telephone handset and dialed the number 1 on the rotary dial. Terry could hear a high pitched voice blasting out of the little speaker. Jeffry pulled it away from his ear and spoke loudly to compensate.

“Yeah, Ellie... Terry Shelton is up here at the road... Yes, that Terry Shelton. Anyway, he said there’s a problem in town, and Dusty sent him to tell Bill... Right. Ok, thanks.” Jeffry set the handset back on the receiver. “Ok, Terry. We caught him in the office. He’s on his way up here.”

“Thanks. I was all ready to hike down to Teeny Town,” Terry said, still looking at the phone.

“My dad did that, too. He found an old switchboard in the storage room of a phone company exchange, and wired up about a dozen phones around the place. It helps. We used to keep little kids around as message runners. I hated that job.”

“Saves time and shoe leather, huh?”

“You bet.” Jeffry said, then seemed to notice his rifle. “I’d better get back to my post. Raid the fridge, if you want.”

“Ok, Jeffry. Thanks again.”

“No problem. See you later, Terry.” Jeffry turned and bounded up the stairs, two at a time. Within seconds, the house was silent again.

Terry looked in the refrigerator, just out of curiosity, but didn’t feel right just taking food. He did pour himself a cold glass of water, and headed out to the back porch to wait for Bill. There were no chairs on this porch, and Terry went over to the middle house where he had first met these people. It seemed like a long time already, but it was less than a week since he had stumbled across this entire thriving community.

He didn’t wait long. Bill came striding across the field behind the house, loaded for a war, with two handguns, an old military rifle, and a shoulder strap with extra magazines. As soon as he got within shouting distance, he called out, “What’s the problem, Terry?”

“It’s not an emergency! Not yet.”

Bill cycled through the gate. Terry realized too late that he could have helped Bill, since he was working the latches with one hand.

“No, no. Sit down.” Bill said as he hopped up on the porch and dropped into the chair across from Terry. “Ok, what’s up?”

“Dusty and I had a conversation with Jerry Doan Jenkins this morning. He wasn’t happy with my report.”

“The Judge isn’t happy, huh? Big surprise...” Bill looked ready to bite the Judge on the leg.

“We worked hard to get our reports straight, but he didn’t really care. He was the one who requested the survey because, according to him, he won this land in a card game. He tried to trip me up, but Dusty and I practiced to make sure we had the story nice and tight. In the end, he couldn’t really argue with the report, but he said his men told him there were a bunch of houses out here, so he wants to come see for himself, tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow morning? Fantastic!”

“Yeah, and he’s making me and Dusty come with him, along with some of his men, I assume. He said we’re taking the truck.”

“He said truck, not trucks?”

“That’s what he said, but who knows? Maybe he expected us to warn you, and he’ll show up with a lot of men.”

“That’s good thinking. I think we’ll prepare for the worst. That usually works out better.”

“Oh, and Dusty told me to say it looks like a java situation,” Terry added.

“It certainly does. We’ll have a few tricks up our sleeve. Don’t you worry.”

“Dusty pointed out that you could make a claim for this entire area with the state, and that the Judge might not want the state poking around in county business.”

“From what we know, that should be true, but what we don’t know is who the Judge has in his pocket at the state level. Could be nobody, or it could be the governor. Legally though, Dusty’s right. We made our legitimate claim to all of this land, over 2000 acres, right after the law was passed and we were granted the deed a year later, in ’41, so technically the Judge can go take a flying leap. Unfortunately, things don’t always work out the way they should.”

“So, what will you do?” Terry asked with a worried look on his face.

“First of all, don’t go thinking this is your fault. We knew the request had been made, and who made it, so we knew that Jerry Doan would come sniffing around sooner or later. The only way to stop him would have been to give him exactly what he wanted, which was probably a hunting getaway with room for all of his cronies. Greedy assholes...” Bill said. “Second, we have planned for this situation for a long time. You’ll see in the morning. The only thing you need to do is to tell Dusty that you two are going to stand on the end of whatever lineup the judge brings, and if any shooting starts, you and Dusty run for the ditch, ok?”

“Ok, Bill. I guess I’d better head back into town. We’re supposed to meet the Judge at seven in the morning.”

“Why don’t you stay for a while? We can give you ride home. We’ve got trucks too.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am,” Terry said, smiling sardonically.

Bill grinned back at him. “It’ll take a while to get it set up. I’ll be right back. Gotta make the call.”

Bill went into the house next door to use the phone. He could hear Bill talking, but couldn’t make out the actual words. It sounded like Ellie was more than happy to work the switchboard. Bill was making emphatic tones in a loud voice. After a few minutes, Terry heard the phone clap down, and Bill quickly came out the door with two bottles of cloudy homemade beer, talking as he approached.

“Ok, Kirk’s on it. Double guards tonight, in case the Judge sends out advance men, and a complete setup by six in the morning.”

“Everyone talks like Kirk is a scary man. What’s his story? Is he in charge of defense?” Terry asked as Bill took his seat and handed him the second beer.

Bill took a long pull on the beer and said, “Yeah, he’s in charge of defense and our version of military training. He learned most of it from Arturo.”

“Arturo made it back?”

“Are you trying to skip ahead?”

“No, wouldn’t want to do that, mess up the story.”

“Damn straight...As for scary, yeah he’s a scary man. I’m scared of him myself. He was always a serious kid. He spent a lot of time getting kicked out of soccer games as a kid.”

“Soccer?”

“It’s a sport we used to play, back before the Breakdown. My dad always said it was a dumb game, but everyone played it when we were little.”

“Ah, I’ve read about sports. Baseball seems pretty good.”

“Now that’s a sport. I’ll show you how to play sometime.”

“Thanks, Bill.”

“Anyway, Kirk got scary in a hurry once everything fell apart. I think he was born angry, and the Breakdown just gave him a good excuse.”

“Seems like it gave everyone excuses for a whole lot of bad stuff.”

“That’s about right. I still wonder what the world would be like if it just kept going the way it was going. My dad believed it might be worse. He admitted that he wasn’t surprised when it happened, just caught off guard by the timing. He told us he had prepared for it at our old house in Nashville. He was pissed off for the rest of his life that it happened while we were away from home.”

“Were lots of people prepared?” Terry asked.

“By today’s population, yes, there were lots of people who were ready for it, but not many in any one place. If you think about it, people who are still alive today were either prepared, or very lucky, or both. I think my family was very lucky. The fact that all of us survived the Breakdown is remarkable. I can’t think of many other families who made it through intact. By 2012 standards, when there were over six billion people on the planet, there were very few people who were really prepared. This area did fairly well though, because lots of old farm families were prepared without even knowing it. Some people just kept on living the way they always had, and if no one came around causing trouble, they didn’t even need to adjust.”

“So, when you left off, Arturo had left for Florida, and there was a big covered hole in the ground...” Terry said, trailing off like he couldn’t quite remember.

“You really like to hear me ramble, don’t you?”

“Well, let’s just say my grandfather refused to talk about it, and he wasn’t a very good storyteller anyway.”

“Ok. You asked for it. Let me fortify myself first. I think it’s your turn for the beer run. They’re in the fridge.”

Chapter 3 - 2

Arturo was very much on our minds the next morning, and his son, Jimmy, had to be especially upset. He was hanging out with Francine, who still had not moved or eaten. She wouldn’t talk to him, so he occupied himself by drawing outlines around her legs in the dirt. Even Mom wasn’t sure how to handle his weird behavior. She just let him be. Mom was really starting to worry about the shell-shocked old lady, and even more so after Kirk loudly announced that Francine was going to grow roots like the tree she was leaning against.

Dad’s solution to all emotional problems was to keep busy, and right after breakfast, he put us to work moving all the food supplies into our new underground pantry. Kirk and I loaded the packages and cans into the wheelbarrow, carted them over to the pit, and ran up and down the dirt stairs, handing armfuls to Dad, who stacked them according to his own arcane sense of order. We had finished up by midmorning, and added the liberated tools from the school to the underground lair. Then, Dad spent some time rearranging the packs and placed all but two of them in the pit as well. Next came the confiscated weapons and ammunition, which Dad placed on top of the stacks. Lastly, he covered everything with unfolded plastic garbage bags to keep our supplies dry.

“That will do for now,” Dad said. He hadn’t said much else.

We all climbed out of the pit, and looked at it from the top.

“It’s like buried treasure,” Kirk said.

“It
is
buried treasure,” Dad replied and turned to me. “Bill, how did you get up the tree?”

I walked over to the trunk and repeated my climbing act on the lowest branch. When I levered myself onto the branch, and Dad saw how it was done, he tried it himself. Instead of hanging underneath the lowest part of the branch and shimmying out to the fork, he just jumped and grabbed the fork directly. He tried to kick his feet up into the crotch between the branched, but never managed to do it. After several attempts, he dropped to the ground.

“Well, that ain’t easy for your old man. I think it’s fairly secure,” Dad said with a sheepish grin.

We had no idea what he meant.

“Ok, men...”

Here we go,
I thought.

“Time for more saplings, lots more saplings,” Dad said.

Oh, boy.
I looked at the raw blisters on my hands.

We had five different axes, and two hatchets, after Dad and Arturo had raided the school supply shed. Dad ducked into the pit, and came up with three of them, and a machete. He handed an ax each to Kirk and me, and kept the big double ax and machete for himself. Instead of going back to the place we had cut saplings before, Dad led us over to a place on the slope, just west of our maple tree. The slope had been logged in the not-too-distant past, and the entire hillside was covered in young trees, from three to eight inches in diameter.

“Ok boys, we’re aiming for the smaller ones first. The big ones are too heavy. Cut as close to the ground as you can without hitting the dirt with your blade. That dulls them really fast. Let’s start cutting.”

As we scoped out our first trees, we noticed that Dad was breaking the rules. He went straight for an eight-incher and started chopping about eighteen inches off the ground. We had learned by now that he always had a reason, and we turned to our small trees and started whacking away. A remarkably short time later, Dad’s tree fell with the crown hitting downhill from the base. He gave a little whoop of joy. I was thinking that he was just showing off at that point, but I continued chopping and kept an eye out for what he was doing. My first tree fell and I rested for a minute before choosing another one. Kirk had started cutting too low, and had to start over to keep his ax out of the dirt.

Dad was hitting the stump with his ax for some mysterious reason. Maybe he was just beating on it out of frustration. Soon, he stopped and marched over the crest of the hill. He came back shortly with the bow saw, and used that instead. He cut slantwise into the stump until he was close to the middle. Then he made a mirror of that cut and pulled a diamond-shaped piece - ragged from the ax on top and smooth on the bottom - out of the v-shaped saddle he had cut into the stump. We were still baffled.

He picked up the ax and stepped down the log about twelve feet until he reached the point where the branches began. Just short of the lowest branches, he started a new cut, and managed to cut almost all the way through with the ax. He picked up the saw and finished the cut. The log rolled a couple of inches to the side when it was free, and the rest of the tree shuddered and settled.

“Boys, help me out, please.”

We set our axes down and walked over to Dad’s log. We could tell that he intended for us to lift it. He was squatting down, waiting for us.

“Let’s lift it up into the notch.”

Kirk and I took the opposite side and heaved. The log moved more easily than I was expecting.

“Watch your fingers!”

I changed my grip as the end of the log passed over the notched stump. Dad gave it a mighty pull and set the log into the saddle. We let go and panted for a bit. He led us down to the other end and put one of us on each side while he stood on the end, straddling the upper part of the tree.

“Ok, we’re going to lift this end and try to push the log as far as we can.”

We grabbed and pulled the log off the ground. When it was at Dad’s belt buckle he pushed it uphill, sliding the log through the notch until it hit the slope on the other side.