by Mic Roland
“Okay,” Martin said. “The air mattress works fine. What’s with all the papers? How much recalculating of the food supply will it take?”
Margaret sat at the table with her papers and books arrayed around her. “I needed to do a review and rebalancing anyhow. Lucas might be small, but young boys tend to eat as much as an adult anyhow. Eight will use things up faster than seven. I’m trying to figure out how much faster.”
“What’s with the cans and boxes all over the counters?”
Margaret did not look up. “Refreshing the inventory, too.”
Martin spotted an odd little can among the familiar cans of veggies. Hominy. It was one of the few cans that Susan got from their last grocery run. Susan. She had come a long way since that first day in Cheshire. She had been through a lot, just to get up to New Hampshire. He could almost hear her saying… He shook his head vigorously. He needed to think of other things. He focused on the little can in his hands.
“What the heck is hominy? From the picture on the can, they look kinda like a bean thing.”
“No. It’s a corn thing,” said Margaret.
Martin mumbled to himself. “Funny looking corn.” He carried the can to his office. He forgot to knock.
“Oh. Martin,” Susan said with pleasant surprise.
“Whoops. Sorry,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “I should have knocked.”
“That’s okay, because I kinda wanted to…”
“I just came in to get a book.” She sounded like she wanted to talk, but he was not ready for that. When he allowed himself to think about her, his thoughts quickly became like three fat hens trying to get through the same small coop door at the same time. His anger had proven to him that he was deep inside foreign territory. He wanted to get back to familiar territory. Talking with her at that moment would not help that plan. “Ah. This is the book. Sorry to disturb you. I’ll be going now.”
“But…”
Martin pulled the door shut behind him. He blew out a sigh and shook his head to chase away the three fat hens. He would have to be more careful in the future.
He pulled out the chair opposite Margaret. His book was one of the encyclopedias he bought when Dustin was two years old. It seemed like a great idea at the time: a tool for future homework, reports, projects. By the time the kids were in school, however, Google had rendered the encyclopedia set a quaint anachronism: the eight-track-tape of information systems. Martin used it more than they ever did. Even so, it was set of books that would never wear out.
Homestead. Homing. Hominid. Hominy: a corn dish traditionally prepared by boiling the corn in a dilute lye solution made from wood-ash leachings until the hulls could be easily removed by hand flushed away with running water…Wood-ash is still often employed in this process to impart calcium to the kernels.
“Ever made hominy?” he asked.
“No. Never cooked with it either.”
“Hmmm.” Martin had plenty of wood ash in the bin. He had those two bags of feed corn he planned to coarse-grind into scratch for the chickens. Making hominy seemed like an experiment worth indulging in. The caustic nature of lye meant he should use one of the stainless steel pots. He sorted out a cup of whole kernels. He sifted out a cup of wood ashes. Would the little black bits matter? He had no idea. He added a cup of water and stirred. One to one to one seemed like it would be a handy ratio, but he had no idea if it was right or not.
“What are you doing?” Margaret asked.
“Hopefully, making hominy, but it looks more like molten mud,” he said. The wet ash stirred like mud.
“Really? That looks disgusting.”
“Hmm. It kinda does. I guess it needs more water. The book did say ‘dilute lye solution’. Looks like it needs some more ‘dilute,’ I think.” The added water turned the mud into gray soup. The hard corn rattled and scraped on the pot as he stirred.
“And how long does that take?” Margaret asked.
“No idea. I’m figuring this out as I go. The book just said ‘boiled’ and that the hulls could be rubbed off by hand. Guess it needs to go awhile. Give it a stir now and then? I need to show Carlos and Anna around before I add them to the watch rotation.
While Martin was showing Carlos around the property for his first patrol, an old white F350 lumbered down the road. Enough chrome trim had fallen off over the years, to give the truck the awkward plainness of an aging Hollywood star without makeup. Martin met Charles at the end of the driveway, waving and pointing to the best parking spot.
“Hey Charles,” Martin had to shout over the noisy engine. It clattered like a furious six cylinder sewing machine. “Over there will be good.”
“Hey Martin.” Charles rolled out of the driver’s door. “What do you think? Huh? Old Henry will work, right?”
Martin walked all the way around the tired crew cab. A homemade flatbed with stake sides had replaced the pickup bed years ago. They could set up the gasifier in the flatbed, but they would need to pipe the gas up to the engine. The long delivery tubes might help with the cooling. “Not much rust for it’s age,” Martin said. He hoped Charles would not interpret his comment as a dig. Men tend to grow fond of their trucks.
“No.” Charles beamed. “We don’t take him out on the salty roads. Just boppin’ around the farm. Just put in a new clutch a few years ago.”
“What’s all this in the back?” Martin asked.
“Oh, that. We guessed at some of the junk you might need.” Charles hefted himself up into the bed. “We had this little barrel out back. Hydraulic fluid, originally. We had this trash bin, too. We used it for deer guts and stuff, so it kinda stinks. Got some black pipe and ductwork scraps. Not sure if you could use this stuff or not.”
“We could. That big trash can is perfect. We couldn’t find anything like that at the dump. Who throws away trash cans, eh?” Martin waved to Dustin as he came around the corner of the house. “Hey Dustin, come see what Charles brought. Big trash can! Maybe Judy can take over the watch for a little while and help him get this stuff unloaded. Where is she?”
“She’s up on meadow with the radio again.”
“Well, call her in for a half hour or so. Have her watch out back while we’re busy out front here.”
Dustin keyed the walkie talkie. Judy did not sound happy about the interruption of her news searching, but trudged down the hill.
Martin showed Carlos and Lucas his brush pile and explained what he wanted to see for wood chunks and chips. It would take awhile to amass enough chunks to fuel up a larger gasifier. Tin Man would need fuel to run some of the power tools too.
“Dad,” said Dustin. “We’ve got lots of parts to work with, and probably enough sheet metal screws, but we don’t have enough JB Weld or anything like that for a project this size. Too many seams to seal.”
“JB Weld?” Charles asked. “Why don’t you just really weld the joints? Sure, some of it’s galvanized , but you could grind that back.”
“I don’t have a welder.” Martin looked over his shoulder. “But Nick does. I saw him using it to make the pipe rack on his truck. I’ll go ask him about that. But first, I need to check on something.”
“So, how’s the hominy?” Martin asked.
“No idea, Dr. Science,” quipped Margaret. “It’s your experiment, not mine.”
“That’s no way for a lab assistant to talk. Where would Dr. Frankenstein be if Igor…Whoa. It’s kinda back to looking like mud again. You stirred it, right?” Margaret nodded without looking up. Martin studied the bubbling mud as he stirred. The kernels did not rattle or scrape. They were puffy and rounder. He could see what looked like soft beetle backs in the mud. Hulls?
He rinsed the kernels in a bowl of water. Rubbing the kernels between his hands created more beetle backs that stuck to his fingers. More water. More rubbing. More rinsing. Eventually, the colander held puffy round kernels that resembled those printed on the can label.
“Pozole?” asked Anna.
Martin jumped. “Whoa. I didn’t know you wer
e back there.”
“Sorry, Mr. Martin,” said Lucas. “Mama said she smelled something and wanted to come see.”
Martin stepped aside and tilted the colander so Anna could see better. She took a kernel and ate it slowly. She smiled broadly. She spoke to Lucas. Martin still did not understand Spanish beyond the few obvious words and his one special, pointless word: peligro.
“Mama said you made pozole. It smelled like how her grandmother used to make it. She said it tastes like grandmother’s too.”
“Really?” Martin stared at his colander of puffy yellow kernels. “What did they do with them?”
After a bit of muted dialogue between Lucas and Anna, Lucas listed off more dish names than Martin’s memory could hold. “Okay, okay. I get the idea. Margaret, do you have any listings for hominy in your nutrition books?”
“I think so. Why?”
“Apparently, we can make hominy — or pozole. I’ve got those two bags of corn down in the garage. We should figure that into your calculations. That’s got to help. One cup of dry corn yielded about a cup and three quarters of hominy. Should be filling, if nothing else.”
“Really? Let me try this hominy stuff.” Margaret came around the counter. “Hmm. Interesting. Not much to it, but a bit of salt, maybe a touch of butter…”
“Mama said you can also mash up the pozole while it is soft and make a dough for tortillas.”
Martin studied the wet hominy for a moment. “So, Margaret,” Martin said. “How about if you only recalculate with one of the bags of corn. I might need the other one for something else.”
Martin made sure to clear his throat loudly a few times as he walked up to the Oldham’s home. No one liked being surprised. Nick looked relieved that it was only Martin at his door. Jess’s worried look had become her new default. The kids were quieter than Martin could remember them being. Martin asked about Nick’s welder.
Once in the garage, Martin asked quietly, “So, how are things going?”
“Oh, pretty good.” Nick avoided eye contact.
“Come on, Nick. Really. How’s your food holding out? Jess still looks worried.”
“Well, truth is, Jess figures we’ve only got a week’s worth left. She and I have been cutting back to leave more for the kids, but…”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Martin whispered.
Nick looked away to fuss with the welder. “I figured I’d find some bigger game in the woods any day now. I saw some turkey tracks the other day.” His shoulders sagged. “But I haven’t even been close to getting anything big like that. I shot cardinal three days ago, using Teddy’s pellet gun. I breasted it out in the woods: told them it was a dove. I haven’t seen anything else in the woods all week.”
“Yeah. I haven’t gotten anything in my snares for a week either,” said Martin. He needed to get the conversation off of food. “So I was thinking that we use your welder. It needs about the max our generator will produce, but it should work.”
“You want to borrow it?”
“Well, no. I don’t know how to weld. I was thinking that if you were to help us make this bigger gasifier — you know, be our official welder — that you should get, like, paid for the work.”
“What?”
“Well, not money, per se. I mean, I don’t have buckets of money, and what would you do with it now anyhow, but I do have some corn. We just figured out how to make hominy out of feed corn. You’ve got wood ashes. You can make it too. Hominy isn’t exciting, but it’s food. What do you think?”
Nick stared into the middle distance. “How do we figure out wages in corn?”
Martin shrugged. “What if we just start with a day’s work equalling enough corn to feed your family for a day?” Martin had imagined saving up all the welding to do in one session, to conserve wood fuel in Tin Man, but that would not help out Nick and Jess very much. Instead, Martin figured to have Nick on hand for several days, doing a bit of welding each day and calling it a full day of work.
Nick sat up straight and smiled slightly. “Cool. I’ll be bringing home the bacon — or corn — again. You’ve got a deal.”
Martin was gambling that Tyler and Charles’ plan to become trucking entrepreneurs would actually pay off: that his quarter share of their enterprise would amount to anything. If it did not, he was bargaining away half of his new-found food source.
Plans and Confrontation
“Hey, Lance,” called Martin. “Come on over.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over Tin Man, the generator and Nick’s welder.
“I can see you’re busy,” said Lance. “But, I got some news on that other odd gun you found.” He held up the cardboard box in his arms.
“That’s okay. I’m mostly just watching.” Martin pointed to the next seam waiting to be welded. Nick nodded. Lance and Martin walked further from the generator. Lance set the box on a half-consumed pallet of firewood.
“So, pretty weird finding two of those old guns, eh?” Martin said.
“Remember, I said they ain’t old.” Lance wagged his finger. “Just an old design. They’re both pretty new. I left this one disassembled for show-n-tell.”
“Custom, handmade things?” Martin guessed.
“I’d have guessed that too, based on the first one, but look in here.” Lance held the bolt upside down. “See those machine marks? That little ridge there? Well, I would have guessed this was hand machined and the maker just didn’t get his second pass quite lined up with his first. But that first gun had exactly the same little ridge.”
“And look in here.” Lance held up the frame. “See these wavy lines? The first gun had ‘em too. They’re chatter from side cutting — travel too fast, or too few flutes.”
“Meaning what?” Martin was more familiar with working in wood, not machining metal.
“That these two were CNC machined, and whoever wrote the program didn’t clean it up. Machinists tend to be perfectionists, you know? This was more of a bean-counter product. And those chatter marks. That’s a bean-counter sign too. Less-expensive two-flute cutter, running faster than it should be.”
“Meaning that they were supposed to be cheap?” Martin wondered out loud.
“That’s my guess,” Lance said with a nod. “And probably not worried about long term reliability. The bolt rails fit kinda loose. That’ll cause trouble down the line.”
“And that ain’t all.” Lance dug in the box. “That little box of rounds you gave me. Really odd. First off, they’re close to being a .41 JMP, but not quite. See that little shoulder? I bet even a real .41 JMP wouldn’t sit in there right.”
“Hmmm,” Martin held the little white box close to his eyes. “This little box was designed to hold only five of these odd .41 caliber rounds. Who produces five-round boxes?”
“Oh yeah, and I took one of them rounds apart.” Lance pulled out an envelope. “Cast lead bullet, but even though it’s a magnum case, the powder load was light.”
“So these things look all killa bad, but don’t have much bite?” Martin asked.
Lance could only shrug. “I don’t get it. Maybe the thugs found somebody’s inventory of a bad product that didn’t sell.”
Tyler walked up, interrupting their theorizing. “Hey you guys. I’m going around the area telling guys that there’s a meeting at 2:00 up at Gene Merdot’s place. You’re supposed to come.”
“Me?” Martin asked.
“All of you,” said Tyler. “I guess we’re organizing a neighborhood watch thing. All the able-bodied men around Stockman Hill are supposed to come. You’re also supposed to bring your preferred long gun with you, and whatever you’ve got for two-way radio. I’m off to get Charles. Don’t forget: 2:00, Merdot’s house up on the top of the hill.”
Martin and Dustin took seats in the back row of the eclectic mix of chairs in Gene’s living room. Tyler and Charles were up front. Lance sat at the end of one of the curved rows. Nick was there, as was Micky Baldwin. Lyle Talbot sat up front, along with three other men
that Martin did not recognize.
“Thanks for coming, everyone,” said Gene. “Chief Burgh wants people to organize local defense groups in case trouble comes looking. You boys had quite a run-in with some rascals up in Manchester. Could be they’ll come looking to even the score.”
Martin thought it was unlikely the thugs would come all the way out to Cheshire. How would they know where the convoy of trailers was going? Nonetheless, a local defense group would be good for all sorts of possible troubles.
“And, speaking of troubles, I’ve got some news to pass along from Walter, before we get started,” Gene said. He read from notes he had taken. “You all probably heard about that plane with food aid crashing at Manchester airport. Well, turns out it wasn’t a crash. Apparently, it landed okay in Manchester, but lots of people heard it was coming too. Thousands rushed out onto the runway. I guess no one wanted to miss out on a share. Two people were killed when the jet’s wheels ran over them. They stormed the plane and somehow it caught fire. It burned to the ground right there in the middle of the runway.”