Second Chances (23 page)

She traded her work to Victor for food and other supplies. She didn't have time to spare to gather the materials most of the time though; she just ran through them too quick and had other duties to attend to. Now that it was warming up the animals they had bred during the fall were dropping young almost daily. But, to her surprise, she found bundles or reeds and grass near her hut every evening with a bit of food, usually meat wrapped in leaves with some fresh greens.

She resented being anyone's charity case though. She'd had enough of it all winter. Finally she got fed up and set up a trap. She spied on her hut to see who was leaving stuff. She saw John leave some stuff as did Doc, Carlene, and Miranda. She wasn't sure what to make about it. She'd had been on her way to berate John when she'd seen the others put things down by her door.

She did make a point of helping Miranda when she asked or even if she didn’t. She found that amusing, that the shoe was on the other food. Slowly the two formed a closer friendship. She felt her tension unwind; she found herself smiling more often and even laughing when the occasion warranted it. The kids and animals were usually sources of amusement. Seeing Victor slip and fall on his ass had all the girls in stitches. Victor's aggrieved look at their mirth had put the icing on the cake. They'd squinted and giggled at each other for days afterward.

Having a friend, real friends after being so long on her own, was new to her. She felt it and after a while treasured such contacts. Everyone was busy, but even a brief smile in passing was enough to make her feel better.

She talked with Miranda hesitantly while they worked in the stables. Loni admitted she'd had a husband when she'd been younger. He had been an ass. He'd slept around, gotten drunk and lost all his and her money all the time. When she'd finally gotten on his case he'd gotten drunk, then beaten her so badly she'd been hospitalized. She'd left Texas sending him the divorce papers in jail. She'd never looked back.

“I don't want a man. I never will again,” she growled. “Not on any terms but my own,” she said.

“Then you are fixing to live a long, lonely life alone,” Miranda warned her. “Unless you become a lesbian,” she said. Loni shook her head.

“There is no one here for me,” Loni said.

“Except John,” Miranda said slyly.

“Him? That piece of work?”

“Me thinks the woman doth protest too much,” Miranda quoted, amused. “You two are so full of it, so full of...passion. I bet when you do fall it will be hard,” she said. Loni growled. Miranda chuckled. “Sorry, but it's true. And unfortunately we don't exactly have a lot of males to go around. Even Bert is dating Pat now,” she said. That got a snort of amusement from Loni.

She sat back on her haunches, dusting her hands off as she thought. “You know, you're right?” she asked. Miranda blinked in surprise. “Not about him but about the guys. What are you going to do?” She asked.

Miranda shrugged. “I'm either going to shack up with another couple, make it a threesome, or I'll wait for the next generation to grow up enough to rob the cradle,” she said smiling wickedly. “Probably what you'll end up doing. A little cougar action?”

Loni snorted in amusement. The very idea of getting in bed with a kid that wasn't born...or...she shook her head in annoyance and put the thought aside.

“Well, think about it. He's...well, not young, but he's fit, you know that. He's stacked and packed, not a bad thing. A damn good provider; you of all people should know that,” Miranda said. Loni nodded in reluctant agreement. “I bet he's well hung too,” she said conspiratorially. “Come on,” she said nudging Loni. “You can tell me,” she said.

“He's got a nice body, but I haven't really looked closely,” Loni said with a put down in her tone.

“Well, be careful, I heard some of the widows may be after him. They've got families to support,” Miranda warned. “Hell, I might chase him too!” She said. Loni stared at her in shock. “Why not? I may not be interested in marrying the guy but having a kid with him? Sure, why not? Or just a really good...” she grinned wickedly. “A girl has needs, you know?” She asked. Loni blushed.

“You'd...”

“With him?” Miranda asked. “Sure!”

“No, um, I meant a threesome...I mean the Bible...”

“Lady, if it's one thing I've learned, hell, we've all learned, is that some things are best left alone. I don't want to be left out in the cold. One guy, two gals, or two guys and a gal, group marriage, whatever you want to call it. Whatever works here. This isn't like it is back home. We work with what we've got,” Miranda said, getting to her feet and hefting her basket on her hip. “Toodles cowgirl, think about what I said,” she said, leaving. Loni frowned thoughtfully, watching her go.

Competition for John started with the widows in the community. Wendy started flirting and dropping hints as did Yung Lin. Sophia would occasionally drop by his cabin, sometimes with food. Others joined in when it was clear Loni wasn't showing any jealousy.

Loni didn't like to lose but didn't want him, or so she kept telling herself. She wasn't sure what to do. She roundabout talked with Carlene a little about the subject, but the other woman got called off to take over for Eric in child rearing, nipping off that conversation.

She realized John was very busy though and attempts to ply him with food were hard. He was never in the base for long during the day, and when he was it was on an irregular schedule. He was up before dawn and out hunting or cutting wood. She was amused that none of the other women save Wendy was brave enough to go after him. And usually Wendy got so wrapped up in her own tasks that she came back tired and exhausted, too tired to flirt and play.

A few of the girls had tried to play hard-to-get with the guys, but really, there were more girls than guys now. That was a problem. Not that she cared one least little whit about the whole birds and the bees situation, Loni thought doing her best to put an end to the wool gathering and to refocus on the job at hand.

Loni planted her truck garden near her hut. She was angry when she left the base only to come back to find others had trampled it in her absence. Cliff apologized. He'd needed to get in to work on the stable, and the only way to where he had to go was through her garden.

She tried to make a fence out of sticks, but the lashings wouldn't hold well. John brought in saplings and branches and showed her how to make a woven fence. Once she got the idea, she brushed him off testily. He put his hands up and walked off. She went to work, then turned enough to see him go. She frowned thoughtfully turning his actions over in her head.

~~~~~~(@)~~~~~~

They worked on various projects including groves of berries and fruit trees and a pasture. The pasture was a fenced area for the animals to graze outside of the base. It was scary though; a risk to let the animals out with such a flimsy defense.

With fuel for the construction vehicles and a supply of river rock nearby, John was splitting his time improving the field stone wall around the farm fields and new pasture. Until the wall was complete, they had to guard the animals. Miranda, Trisha, Loni, Carlene, and others guarded them while on their own animals. It took the efforts of everyone to drive the animals back into the base each day and bed them down for the night.

The welcome return of the migrating herds brought all work to a halt. A few were put out over some of the fields being trampled. “At least they’re fertilizing it,” Wendy sighed, making sure her little one saw the animals. Carlene and the other new parents were on hand with their kids to make sure they saw the parade.

“It's beautiful,” Yung Lin murmured.

“Beautiful yes. Lunch also,” Bert said. That got a laugh and a ragged cheer. A few of the passing animals honked in reply. That set their imprisoned animals honking. “Great, now they'll never shut up,” Bert grumbled.

Loni found she liked curing and caring for some of the animals. The Tauntauns loved it; they came whistling and running to get attention now that they were half domesticated. A couple of the dinosaurs did as well; they liked the treats she fed them.

However, she narrowly dodged getting her foot trod on by a Hadrosaur twice but still liked the big animals. A tail swipe that hit Bert enough to knock him on his ass and crack a rib taught everyone to watch the animals carefully. Loni was fairly confident it had been an accident, but Bert was a bit put out over the entire incident and handling the dinosaurs from then on.

~~~~~~(@)~~~~~~

They worked like dogs on the moat as well as gathering material. The moat was expanded and deepened, then lined with rock and Sal's fired bricks. With the fuel situation partially solved, John let Rick use one of his dump trucks and a loader to make runs to the nearest clay deposit. He flat out refused to allow them to go to the ore deposits with the vehicles though. Since Wendy had found a cliff face covered in polyps while John had been busy with other things, they had enough polyp juice to supplement the diesel. Trey had worked out a rough ratio of one part diesel to four parts polyp juice by experimentation.

The great thing about the juice was that they could harvest it over and over again. Animals frequented the vines as well, Quincy deduced that they dumped their waste products and ate the weeds and plants around the vines, which created a symbiotic relationship.

Bert, Guy and John took the trucks out after they had hunted successfully for two weeks to get ore. They managed two loads and a load of polyps before an irritable Rex family drove them out of the area. The last they saw of the animal it was making a nest with a pair of juveniles along their route.

Once they were finished with that, Bert lent a hand to John as he cut trees and then worked on the pasture and field walls and moat.

When they judged a lot of the basic spring chores were done they held a party on the day the late Russel had judged was the Spring Equinox. Bert brought in a Hadrosaur to roast along with a couple animals that looked like a cross between a warthog and a bear.

They talked during the community party unwinding and catching up. Cliff turned it into a rally doing his best to get their morale up. John pointed out the paper they now had. “You are doing well,” he said nodding to Yung Lin. She bowed slightly.

“Yeah, but it's got ragged edges,” Kevin said, wrinkling his nose in distaste. “Crude, like everything here,” he said.

“That's just a trim job,” John replied with a shrug. “A long knife will fix that. I bet if we don't have one Adam can make one,” he said. Adam nodded.

“With that and the ink Wendy's making we're pretty well off for writing material,” Pat said with Teresa on her hip. “What will it take to make a book though?”

“Well, with ink and paper, we're not far off from making or even printing signatures,” John said thoughtfully. “That's a series of double pages with a fold in the middle,” he explained to his audience. “Then we can use some of that hoof glue Bert makes or some thread to stitch signatures together into a book. A bit of flat wood covered in leather hide and you've got yourself a book,” he said.

“It's not a computer though,” Kevin said snidely. “Sounds like a lot of work for nothing. And you don't have a press,” he said.

“True,” John said slowly, cocking his head to eye the young man's negativity. “But we can deal with that. The trick is to break a seemingly impossible project down into more manageable projects, then knock them down one by one. You'd be surprised what you can achieve that way,” he said. Pat nodded.

“Like this place,” she said, poking her son. Kevin hunched his shoulders but nodded grudgingly.

“As far as the press...well, I think a few people have those kits to make your own ink,” John said. Gerald nodded and raised his hand. Nel did as well. “Now, if we can't get local material to work with the printer, we can make a press. We'd have to, oh, make a hydraulic press, the letters and then stamp them onto the paper.”

“But that's still a lot of work,” Kevin said.

“You have something better to do during the winter, Kev?” Carlene asked. Kevin set his jaw but didn't respond to her dig. “Besides, we don't need a lot. A couple books will work; we'll have a community library,” she said. “Check a book out, then return it.”

“Good idea honey,” Eric murmured, then kissed her on her hair. She dimpled twisting in amused delight at his public display of affection.

Other people brought up ideas for things. If John was stumped, Gerald, Earl or someone else readily stepped in with ideas on how to tackle the problem. The show
How It’s Made
was referenced several times.

When they got bored with that talk it switched to the kids and how fast they were growing. Just seeing them crawling was amazing. “Has it really been over a year?” Carlene asked in wonder.

“Over a year local time,” Trisha said. “Almost two back on Earth,” she said.

John coughed, then waved to Bull. “I've got to go, my shift.” he said. He passed his battered red cup over to Bert and then waved.

“Darn,” Wendy said, watching him go to the tower, then begin to climb it. “I'd hoped to get a dance with him,” she said.

Loni watched him go with narrow speculative eyes.

~~~~~~(@)~~~~~~

They had a brief Indian summer, which made the gardens and plants outside the base explode in growth in the warmth, sun and spring rains. Their first initial truck garden harvest followed three weeks later. Loni was startled by the growth and produce. She started to hoard it, trying to think of ways to can it or store it for later.