Chapter 20
Power
Early one morning in June, we awoke to the sound of a truck outside the cabin. We nearly jumped out of our skins, so alien was the sound. Nevertheless, we threw on our clothes and went outside to see who was invading our Eden. Fern was delighted to see Lauren and John Powell driving an ancient pickup truck. I was happy to see them too, but I was a little worried that they’d tell the authorities where I was.
Lauren sat and talked with us as John quietly went about unloading the pickup. She was as animated and outgoing as her husband was calm and unobtrusive. A perfect fit, I thought. They had brought us a chicken coop with one rooster, three laying hens, and twelve chicks. Lauren explained that since PF Day there had been no canned food manufactured to replenish Fern’s pantry, so they brought live food instead. They also had some home-canned food, but it wouldn’t be enough to last us through the next winter.
The next thing Lauren said astonished us. “Now that the power is back on, maybe we’ll be able to buy food for you before winter.”
The power was on. It hadn’t occurred to us that it was a possibility, or even a concern to us for that matter. I wondered if Mom and Dad had power now, and if they would stay on the farm to await justice or decide to try to stay ahead of the law. Hopefully they wouldn’t find us out here in the woods and force us to give them sanctuary.
At one point, Lauren pulled me aside and said gently, “Taylor, we’re so sorry about Irvine. We heard about it in town before we came here.” She pulled me into a hug. It seemed lots of people other than my family liked to hug me, and I was beginning to like it. It felt like I was a part of ‘normal.’ She continued, “How are your Mom and Dad?” When I murmured that they were okay, she added, “If you ever need anything, Taylor—food, clothes, a place to stay, anything—you are always welcome in our home. Remember that, okay?” My head was dizzy with the thought of being able to be a part of my dream family.
The Powell’s left with promises to return after the harvest to replenish the firewood supply and bring more food. Fern hugged them and said, “You are so good to me. What did I ever do to deserve wonderful friends like you? How can I ever repay you?”
To which Lauren replied, “We can never repay you for the wonderful friendship and care you gave Grandma. But I’d come to see you just because you’re you and I love you, Fern.” They both had tears as they hugged goodbye. Even John hugged Fern as Lauren hugged me. And then they were off in the rattletrap truck, apparently one of the few vehicles that survived the sun’s assault on PF Day.
The lovely days of spring rolled into hot and humid summer days, filled with satisfying chores and invaluable lessons in survival. We tended the garden beds, first planting and then checking on them every day to ensure the most successful harvest. Fern planted by the ‘square foot’ method instead of by rows so there were hardly any weeds to pull. She explained how she and her dear late husband, Jack, had improved the concept by combining it with another gardening concept called hugelkultur, which helped to ensure that the beds stayed moist during droughts. They first dug two or three feet down into the ground and placed rotted wood, branches, and small trees into the trenches, which would hold moisture and add nutrients to the soil, then built the raised beds on top. They also added pipes coming directly from the well that Fern could open in extremely dry weather to automatically water the beds. The combination was an ingenious way to amplify the harvest with a minimal amount of work.
Fern showed me the small root cellar that Jack had dug into a small hill near the cabin. It went down twelve steps and opened up into a room about ten feet square, lined with shelves and bins for storing harvested vegetables and some fruits such as apples. I loved the earthy smell of dirt and drying vegetables. The temperature was markedly cooler in the cellar. Fern said it stayed about 50°F year-round. It wasn’t cool enough for actual refrigeration, but she said that in the old days, people would cut huge chunks of ice from frozen rivers or ponds, wrap them in straw and sawdust, and store them in the cellars. The ice blocks would last most of the summer, providing not only refrigeration, but also ice for things like lemonade and making ice cream.
I was amazed at the cleverness of people in the old days and somewhat sad that most of that knowledge had not been passed down to modern society. Fern said often as she was teaching me the old ways combined with some new methods of survival, “Remember, dear, know-ledge is power. And even more important, knowledge is the key to survival. As you can see, canned food will run out and without the knowledge to find and grow food, long-term survival is nearly impossible.”
I realized how lucky my family had been to have Uncle Owen’s farm to go to and how we had lived primarily on Aunt Helen’s home canned food. If Mom and Dad decided to stay there, they were going to be in trouble soon though, when that food and the grain to feed the hogs ran out, because they didn’t have the knowledge nor the drive to grow more. I hoped that since the power was back on, manufacturing and commercial agriculture would soon pick up to feed the starving, technology-dependent people of the world.
I thought it ironic that the people we used to think were backwards, the indigenous tribes and the poor of third world countries who lived without electricity, had probably fared better than the ‘civilized’ people. I also thought about all the useless ‘knowledge’ we learned in school and the wasted time we spent learning it. If knowledge is power, then certainly it should be the right kind of knowledge to help one survive in any situation.
Chapter 21
Harvest
The heat and cloying odor of summer melted into autumn, the cool crisp air invigorating both Fern and me. While we had enjoyed the lazy days at the river and nights sleeping under the stars on the verandah of the cabin, we looked forward to harvesting our gardens and processing the yield, canning some, dehydrating or storing others. There was so much to learn and I was more eager than ever to soak it all in.
Besides harvesting food from our gardens, there were lots of wild herbs and greens such as dandelion and purslane, mushrooms, berries, and medicinal plants to find and process. We had been smoking fish and small game we had snared all summer, and we had collected wild berries as they ripened. There were also several fruit trees on the property—apple, peach, and pear—as well as blueberry and gooseberry bushes to gather fruit from at different times throughout the summer and fall. We had butchered a couple of cockerels—young roosters—a nasty, smelly process, and collected eggs from our hens, being careful to leave a few to hatch new chickens to replenish our stock.
Fern said she had been rather lazy, not doing much home canning since Lauren had been bringing her manufactured canned foods, but now we would have to can as much as we could in case Lauren couldn’t get enough for us. It was much easier with two people and now that she had me, she was eager to get started.
The canning process was hot and tedious, but it helped that we were able to do it on a stone wood-burning grill that Jack had built outside instead of heating up the cabin. After cleaning and cutting up the fruits or vegetables, they were cooked with seasonings in a pot on the grill. Then the cooked food was sealed into clean Mason jars, which were then sealed and boiled in a special canning pot full of water for a specified amount of time, depending on the food. Fern had a book that told the times as well as many recipes. She cautioned that if not done properly, bacteria like deadly botulism spores could grow in the jars and poison us. I was careful to pay special attention to the process. It would be such a cruel irony to have survived this long only to die from something we had done to ensure our continued survival.
We harvested and canned, dehydrated, and stored food in the cellar for several weeks. By the end of September, we felt confident that we had enough food for a family of four to survive comfortably until spring.
On October 12th, Fern, Spook, and I were sitting in the rockers on the front porch, relaxing at the end of another fruitful day when we noticed the sky glowing after sunset. As the darkness of night enve
loped us, the eerie glow in the north pulsated and danced, signaling the arrival of yet another coronal mass ejection, or CME. As Fern and I watched the beautiful spectacle, we couldn’t help but wonder how it would affect the world. Would it destroy what was left of the crippled power grid? How would people survive this time? The Aurora was visible for several nights in a row, so we thought it must have been another big one.
Our answer came a few weeks later in the form of Lauren and John along with their youngest son, Calvin, who I knew from school, although this time they rode in a horse-drawn wagon. They confirmed that a second CME had reached the earth, again collapsing the power grid and that this time there was little hope of power being restored in the foreseeable future. They couldn’t stay long though, because they were still trying to harvest what they could on their farm in the old way with a horse-drawn reaper.
They didn’t have much in the way of canned food for us, but they brought grain for the chickens, smoked beef and pork, flour, and honey for us, and some other essentials like homemade candles and soap that they had bartered for in town. Lauren looked quizzically at me when I asked where they had gotten the pork—I wanted to be sure Uncle Owen’s ghost wouldn’t inadvertently be allowed into our sanctuary—but she assured me that they had traded beef to their neighbor for it. Fern insisted that Lauren take some of her dried medicinal herbs “for their trouble.”
While John cut firewood, Calvin and I hauled it back to the cabin and stacked it in an oddly specific manner that Calvin insisted upon. When I asked about it, he explained that it was important to stack it in a way that the wood could dry and season correctly. I always knew that Calvin was smart—he and I were always vying for the top spot in the class grade rankings—but that day he impressed me with his knowledge of survival techniques to add to those that Fern had already taught me. He told me about a washing machine of sorts he had helped make for his mother out of some buckets and an oar, as well as a bicycle-powered grinding mill for making flour from grain, and solar lights made from soda bottles. He said he would be happy to come back after the harvest and help me implement some of these ideas to help Fern and me with our chores.
After they had left, my brain was in overdrive. Calvin had made me start thinking about ways to automate some of the more mundane or time-consuming chores such as laundry, which we had been doing by hand in the big wash basin in the cabin, and processing the harvest. I started making plans in my head to create some of my ideas through the winter months.
Another thing kept bothering my brain after their visit, and it had nothing to do with harvest or plans or survival, and everything to do with Calvin.
Chapter 22
Need
In early December, after weeks of thinking about, of all things, a certain boy, I decided we needed some supplies from town so I could work on my inventions. Fern was all for it, perceptively guessing my real reason for going when I mentioned that I might have to go on over to the Powell farm to get what I need.
“Yes, yes,” she said with a wink. “Go get what you need, dear.” I’m sure I blushed because she grinned and shook her head. “Ah, to be young again…”
I decided I’d better check on Mom and Dad if they were still on the farm, so I left early in the morning to stop by there. Spook walked me to the edge of the woods as usual and then stopped. As much as I wanted a companion for the trip, I was concerned how the townspeople would view him—as a pest or meat, maybe—so I decided to leave him to protect Fern and take my chances alone.
I found Dad tending the hogs, and he barely acknowledged me as I went by, just a nod in my direction so I knew he had seen me. I couldn’t tell by his haunted eyes if he even registered that I had been gone for six months. Mom wasn’t much better, but at least she hugged me limply and told me she missed me. The oppressive air clawed at my senses and the stench of the hogs made me gag. I couldn’t wait to be on my way after making sure they had enough to survive, albeit not what they needed to be happy.
The walk to town was fraught with a mixed bag of emotions, mostly sadness and loneliness for my brother, but with some happy memories mixed in, and of course excitement about possibly seeing Calvin again. I was amazed when I realized that I hadn’t thought much about Grammy and Irv while I was at Fern’s. Maybe it was because I was usually busy there, or maybe because I felt so at home. Maybe it was that Grammy’s and Irv’s spirits were with me there, watching over me and making me feel loved all the time. Whatever it was, it was definitely not with me as I walked briskly along the deserted highway, feeling lonely and anxious.
In my backpack, I carried dried medicinal herbs and tinctures with instructions for their use, which Fern had made to trade for the items I needed for my inventions as well as some books, if I could get a hold of some. Fern was hungry for some new reading material since she had read the books in her library over and over. “Anything by John Grisham, please,” she implored.
When I got to town just before noon, I was saddened to see some of the old buildings on the square burnt to the ground and others boarded up tight. The once manicured lawns of proud homeowners were overgrown and choked with the weeds of neglect, now a low priority for people struggling daily to survive. One bright spot, however, was Tipton’s diner. It was open and several people were hanging around the front. One of the girls I knew at school, Jenny Garten, saw me and called me over.
“Hey Taylor, it’s good to see you!” She threw her arms around my neck like we were long lost friends. Even though we really hadn’t been, I enjoyed the idea. “Some of the kids are hanging out in back. You should come around with me.” I agreed, thinking that Calvin just might be there against all the odds of a coincidence like that, since he lived a few miles the other way out of town.
Serendipity! For once that word belonged to me. There stood Calvin along with his brother Bracken, Skylar Tipton, the daughter of the restaurant owners, and several other kids from school. As I walked around the building, they all stopped talking and looked at me, and I realized that not only were they surprised to see me, they also were at a loss for what to say about Irv. After all, they had known about his death before I had.
Calvin was the one to break the silence and he sounded genuinely happy to see me. “Hi, Taylor!” After that, everyone said hi as Calvin pulled up a patio chair for me to sit in.
Bracken put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Hey, Taylor, we were all so sorry to hear about Irv. He didn’t deserve that.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer, but I wanted them to know that at least for Irv, his death wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to him. “It’s okay,” I said. “He’s at peace now.” They all nodded like they understood, and I’m sure they did; everyone in town knew about Irv’s addictions.
Then the conversation moved to other topics, including sad news about other deaths and happy news about weddings and babies and such. In addition, the group was celebrating Calvin’s fifteenth birthday, which had been two days before. Skylar brought out some food for all of us and insisted it was on the house when I tried to pay with some of the dried herbs I had brought to trade. She has always been such a sweet girl.
An hour later, I realized I would have to get to the square to make my trades if I was going to get back home before dark. I was reluctant to leave Calvin, but he decided to come with me, making some lame excuse about needing some supplies for some of his inventions. Ironic, right?
Chapter 23
Thunder
After an oddly enjoyable hour shopping with Calvin, I told him I’d have to hurry in order to get home before it was too dark out. The thought of walking the highway alone at night gave me the creeps even though there was not likely to be anybody else on the road. Calvin didn’t like the idea either and said he had an idea. We went back to the diner to find his brother.
After a quick conference with Bracken, they insisted I allow them to take me home on their horses. Skylar volunteered to come as well. I was relieved for the chance to get home before dark and have
companions along the way, but I eyed the horses with some trepidation. Even though I had spent most of my life in a town surrounded by farmland and chock full of schoolmates like Jenny Garten who owned horses, I had never been around the huge smelly beasts. Their manure and their sweaty hides assaulted my nostrils, although not nearly as bad as the same sources from the hogs. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement about sitting atop one of them with my arms around Calvin. I admonished my brain to stop thinking these crazy thoughts; I didn’t need a boyfriend—I was only thirteen after all.
Wait, was I just thirteen? I realized I missed a birthday somewhere in there. February 12th was the day of my birth, but my parents only occasionally recognized it as a special day. That year, I didn’t blame them even minutely for forgetting though, as it was right after Irv left our world, and none of us were in the mood for celebrating anything, let alone an anniversary of coming into the world. Nonetheless, I smiled to myself, recognizing I’d survived to fourteen and was now only two months away from fifteen.
The ride home was thrilling. The pounding of the horses’ hooves, the nearness of Calvin as I clung to his back, the camaraderie of the four us enjoying our youth—all these things were as new to me as the happiness that had settled over my life. My heart soared with the hope that Irv was sure I had had all along. We made it to the hog farm in less than half the time it would’ve taken me to walk. I told Calvin to take me there and to not mention to anybody that I lived with Fern in the woods. Not that I didn’t trust Bracken and Skylar, but you never know when something might accidentally slip out. The fewer people who knew, the better.
As we came galloping up to the house, the horses’ hooves sounding like thunder from a gathering storm, Dad suddenly appeared on the porch with a shotgun pointed at us, yelling, “Get the hell off my property or I’ll blow you away.”
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