by Stan Morris
“First of August,” Mike muttered. “It’ll be summer. Good.”
The procedures that had been established the previous winter were quickly set in place, and the transition to a wintertime existence was a lot smoother this year. The kids respected the curfew, they knew how Jean would run the school, and they knew how much hanky-panky they could get away with before being hauled up before the Council.
The Social Committee did not have to invent all new entertainments. They knew which kids could sing, which kids could perform in skits, and which kids could dream up new jokes. And before Kevin and Nathan had left, the twins had taught some of the other kids the dances that they had learned last winter. Dance classes proved to be popular.
The Christmas tree was hauled into the Lodge and set in a five gallon bucket. During the year, the Social Committee had made ornaments, and now these were hung from the tree. There were more couples than last year, and this led to more presents being presented. After they had retired to their room on Christmas Eve, John handed Desi a box. Desi had not been feeling well. Everyone hoped it was just morning sickness.
“Told you I would get that Mr. Potato Head done, Honey,” he said with a grin.
“You, moron.” She sighed as she opened the box. Then she stared at the small ruby encrusted ring.
“John,” was all her strangled voice managed. Astonished, she looked up at him.
“Will you marry me, Desi?” he asked gently.
“Yes, oh yes,” she said through her tears as she grabbed him, and they held each other a long time before they lay back on their small bed.
Christmas Day, Desi showed off her engagement ring. The boys made the appropriate noises. The girls were ecstatic.
“This is so cool!” Yuie exclaimed, marveling at the lovely rubies.
“It really is beautiful,” agreed Kathy wistfully. She looked over at Hector who was talking to John and Ahmad. I’ll be sixteen in March.
“Where in the name of Heaven did you find a ruby ring, John?” Ahmad asked.
“I asked Mrs. Brown if she had a ring to trade,” said John. “I owe her a month of work. I’ll help Ralph finish the new barn next year.”
“I don’t suppose she has another ring that she would like to trade,” said Howard. He was looking at Jean.
“Uh, hey, babe, I mean, I like you and everything, but…” Jean began to back away, panic in her voice.
“I’m thinking that Tyler might have to give Gabby another gift this winter,” Howard explained.
Jean stopped short. “Oh. Oh,” Jean said with a mixture of understanding, relief, and disappointment in her voice. Howard just smiled.
That night, Yuie said to Mike, “Did you see how flustered Jean got when she thought that Howard meant to get a ring for her?”
“Howard does mean to get a ring for Jean,” Mike replied. “I’m not that clueless.”
The engagement lifted everyone’s spirits, which had been depressed since Luis’ disappearance. In January, they had a memorial service for the missing hunter. Maria had known Luis well, and she offered to say some words. Luis was remembered.
It was cold in January. Many of the girls abandoned their rooms to sleep by the fireplace or by the central fire. A few girls snuggled up to the barrels just outside the boys’ cave. The problem that Mike and Howard faced again this year, was that the boys’ sleeping areas were warmer than the girls’ sleeping areas. The loft had turned out to be a nice warm area, since the heat from the fires rose towards the ceiling of the Lodge. Mike and Howard were getting a lot of complaints from the girls that the sleeping arrangements were unfair.
“They love having those rooms until it gets cold,” Mike remarked wryly.
“So, what do you think, Chief?” Howard asked. “Do we let them share a bunk with a boy? Some of them have boyfriends.”
Mike looked over at Desi who was chatting with Lily and Jean.
“Do you think pregnancy is contagious, Howard?” he asked.
“That is a primitive superstition, Chief,” Howard answered as he followed Mike gaze. “Okay. The girls don’t get to share a bunk with their boyfriends. So then, what?”
“Ask for volunteers from the boys to sleep in one of the upstairs rooms. Tell them that all volunteers go to the head of the shower line. If we get enough volunteers, move all the boys out of the loft, and then put some of the girls up there. The rest will have to sleep around the fires and the barrels.”
Howard made the arrangements. “That was almost acceptable to everyone,” Howard reported.
“Close enough for government work,” said Mike. “And, after all, I am the government.”
“You’re the Chief,” Howard agreed.
The only real complaint was that the boys in the upstairs room were spying on the girls in the loft as they were dressing. Much to Yuie’s disgust when she reported this, Mike started laughing, and he wouldn’t stop.
“Tough,” he said finally.
When it got warmer, the sleeping areas were rearranged again.
One day, two boys got into a fist fight. Mike had the Spears drag them into Council. They stood dejectedly in front of the Council, one with a bloody nose, and the other having a bloody lip.
“So what’s your problem?” asked their very annoyed Chief.
“He started it!” yelled the boy with the bloody lip. “He keeps telling people that Makayla likes him better than me.”
“No, Chief, he started it by telling people that Makayla likes him,” the other boy countered.
“Get Makayla.” Mike gave this order to Kathy. Moments later, Makayla entered the room, eyes downcast and wringing her hands.
“All right, Makayla, which one of these bozos do you like?” Mike asked sternly.
Makayla’s face reddened. “I don’t like either one of them, Chief,” she answered angrily. “They are both dumb a’s. I don’t know why they are saying things about me. Make them leave me alone.”
Mike asked Makayla a few more questions, and then he excused her. He turned to the two boys.
“Makayla doesn’t like either one of you, see?” he said. The two fighters gave each other puzzled glances, and then they turned back to Mike.
“What’s your point?” bloody lip asked.
John guffawed and Eric snickered. Some of the other Council members shook their heads in disgust or disbelief.
Mike was about to explode when Howard hastily said, “You guys go outside and let us talk about this.” The two fighters left the room.
“I say we have the Spears give them a beating,” Mike grumbled.
“No we can’t have the Spears give them a beating,” said Desi. “Besides, they are already dying.”
“What?” Mike asked, startled at her statement.
“They’re already dying of terminal stupidity,” said Desi. “It’s no use beating up stupid guys like that. It won’t make anybody feel better.”
“It might make me feel better,” Mike mumbled.
“I don’t think those guys have a very good chance of getting a girlfriend,” said Yuie. “So they probably won’t have any children, thank goodness.”
“Yeah, they won’t pass their stupidity genes along,” Jean added.
“Think of it as evolution in action,” Eric said.
John looked at Eric. “Scifi writer?” he asked.
“Yes,” Eric replied. “But I forget who.”
Mike separated the two fighters. For three days, one was forced to remain in the loft, coming down only to eat, and the other stayed in the boys’ cave for the same period. Makayla noisily made it clear that she considered them to be the village idiots. Insulted by her attitude, the boys agreed to fight over a different girl.
So January passed. In February, the villagers experienced another cold snap. This time, the fireplace and the barrels were not enough to make any of the rooms comfortable. Once again, the tribe moved into the small cave, but this time they were not frightened, just annoyed by the inconvenience. Everyone doubled up, and once again, Mike
shared a double sleeping bag with Yuie.
Jacob offered his sub-zero mummy sleeping bag to Desi who was showing by now. John was very grateful. Jacob took Desi’s regular sleeping bag, and now he needed to double up with someone. It was at that point when he realized what a quandary he had made for himself. Everyone else had someone they were used to doubling with, and the only one not with a partner was their newest addition, Lily. The intrepid hunter was extremely nervous when he asked Lily to double with him. He hoped she wouldn’t think the worst of him.
He needn’t have worried, for Lily was gracious when he made his offer. She thanked him and accepted. Jacob found that sharing a double sleeping bag with Lily was quite comfortable. They didn’t need to make a lot of small talk, and they both enjoyed listening to Hector play his harmonica.
This snowy cold snap was a short one, and after two days the sun came out, the barrels got hot, and most of the tribe left the small cave, although many still kept to the central area instead of moving back into the rooms. Over the next week, the Lodge warmed enough to allow the rooms to be used again.
The winter was passing with much less trauma than last year. Mike kept waiting for trouble to develop between Tyler and Gabby, but although there was some bickering between them, there was never a major blow up. Tyler seems to be growing up, Mike thought one day, and then he laughed at the thought. He, himself, was only fifteen, and Tyler and Gabby were only a year younger than he. Having Howard to help him, allowed Mike to concentrate on planning for the year ahead, and their resident carpenter was always someone he liked to talk to when considering those plans.
“I need to oversee the barn at Mary’s place,” Hector said, when they discussed the coming year. “There will be some work to be done on the Lodge. Kat and I will try to insulate the outer walls. What I really want to do is build a sawmill.”
“A sawmill?” Mike asked. “How can you do that? Do you think you can use the electricity from the wind turbine? It barely generates enough electricity for the lights in the dining hall and in Chief’s Headquarters.”
“I was thinking of water power,” Hector replied. “I was thinking of trying to build a water wheel to generate power. Two centuries ago, that’s how they built sawmills.”
“The river,” said Mike, understanding at last.
“Right, Chief. I just have to figure out how. Eric might be able to help. And if I could just turn out planks, well, there are a lot of uses for planks. I’m thinking that they could be used to build more A-frames. We know where we can get our hands on some engines. There are a lot of parts we may be able to use like camshafts, crankshafts, flywheels and gears. It’s just a matter of adapting the stuff to turn a blade sharp enough to cut through a pine.”
February became March. The snow still fell, but there was a lot of sunshine, too. Some days, there were eight hours or more of usable sunlight on the solar panels, so more than half of the tribe could take a ten minute shower. The ambience in the Lodge was noticeably better this year than last.
One evening in late March, the tribe was hailed from outside. It was Ralph, and he was delivering a load of fresh food. The horses had made it through the drifts.
“Didn’t have as much buildup this year as last. And last week’s rain melted more of it,” he explained. “So I thought I would see if I could get through. It wasn’t hard at all. Mary wanted to do it, but I talked her into letting me try. I’m a fair rider these days.”
His face grew grim when he heard the news of Luis. “I suppose that something was bound to happen, but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept,” was all he said.
There was not much news from the farm to report.
“We made it through the winter fairly well. We lost some chickens and some rabbits to the cold, but most of them survived. We all caught colds, but we all got better in a few days. Paige and Nathan hooked up for about a month, and then they broke up. Kevin and Kylie got mad at each other, and that made rough on all of us. They made up, thank goodness. We made some progress on the barn. Mary said to tell John that she is looking forward to getting a lot of hard work out of him. What’s up with that?”
Ralph laughed when he saw Desi’s expanding belly. “I should have known it would be something like that.” He left the next day, promising to tell Mary the good news.
On the first day of April, Jacob and Jean left to look for Luis. Fearing the worst, Mike had them take a large strip of black plastic. The scouts knew that Luis had gone upriver. Lily and Howard were anxious, but they understood that the scouts needed to search for a clue to the whereabouts of the lost villager.
Mary and her clan came for a visit while they were gone. The kids in the tribe oohed and aahed over how much Star and Comet had grown. Comet asked why Desi had gotten so fat. Star was allowed to stay in the Lodge with the older girls again.
Nathan had been allowed to drive the wagon. Mary brought the plow, and the fields in the meadow were prepared to receive seed, which the villagers sowed by hand. After a few days, Mary and her clan returned to their farm, taking with them John and another pair of teens.
Tyler liked it when the Brown clan came. He liked Mrs. Brown and her kids, and he had enjoyed working at the farm the previous year. When he was at the Brown farm, there was no chance of being called on the carpet in Petersburg. Being called on the carpet now, he thought gloomily. And he didn’t even know why. All he knew was that someone had been sent to tell him that the Chief wanted to see him. They hadn’t said why. He wondered. Did the Chief find out about…? Nah, that was too long ago. The Chief can’t hold that against me now. Can he? He knocked on the door at Chief’s Headquarters.
“It’s open,” he heard Mike say, so he went in.
“You wanted to see me, Chief?” he asked, try hard to project politeness.
“Oh. Tyler. Come in,” Mike said.
Tyler entered and sat down on the plastic chair that was for visitors.
“Tyler, I need to talk to you about something,” Mike said and Tyler tensed.
“I’ve been thinking about Major Collins.”
Tyler relaxed slightly, but he was baffled by the Chief’s statement. What does the Army have to do with me?
“If he figures out where we are, I think that he’ll send someone to find us as soon as he can. He might come, himself. I think the earliest date they could arrive is in the middle of May. So I want you to pick three people. The four of you will man a guard post a mile beyond the Brown farm. I’ve already talked to Mrs. Brown about it. You can share the Brown attic, but you’ll be jammed in unless you want to sleep in the barn. You’ll be in charge.”
Stupefied, Tyler stared at Mike an instant, and then he stammered. “You want me to be in charge of a guard post, Chief?”
“Yes, Tyler,” Mike replied mildly with a nod. Mike picked up the dead radio that had been sitting in the cabin since he had first moved in. “And I’ve got a plan.”
Amazed at the notion that the Chief was putting him in charge, Tyler listened to Mike’s plan. When Mike finished, Tyler got up to leave.
“I want you to be ready to go by the seventh day of May,” Mike added. “And Tyler, you can’t take Gabby.”
I can’t take her, Tyler thought, as he grinned while walking away from the cabin. But I can tell her.
The third week in April, an exhausted runner arrived from the guard post upriver. Jean and Jacob had found Luis’ body. They would arrive at the Lodge the next day. It was a weary and grim pair of scouts that returned. They met with the Council in Chief’s Headquarters and described what they had found.
“His body was in a bad state of decay,” said Jean. “But he was still wearing his jacket, and we could tell that he had been shot in the back by, what I think, was a high powered rifle. We found him about four days from the Retreat.”
For a few minutes, there was silence among the Council after they heard the news. Until now, they had supposed that Luis had been killed accidentally, or that he had been caught in the snow and had froze
to death.
“Murdered,” Mike said, stunned at the news.
“Yes,” Jacob said. “Someone from the Retreat? Maybe.”
“Is there any doubt?” Howard asked angrily.
“Yes,” Jacob answered.
“We wrapped him in the plastic,” Jean said. “We didn’t have the tools to bury him. We were so far away that we couldn’t carry him all the way back, and still be here when we were supposed to be, so we carried him as far as we could, and then we found a crevice in the side of a hill. We put his body inside and built a cairn of rocks. We know where he is. Give us some help, and we’ll go get him.”
“Yes, certainly,” said Mike. “You guys rest a couple of days, and then take Nathan, Kevin, Ahmad, and Rasul, and bring him back. We’ll bury him in the graveyard. Howard, pick a crew to start digging a grave.”
“One more thing,” Jacob said. “His rifle was missing.”
“Not good,” Eric said.
“It was someone from the Retreat,” Howard maintained.
“Howard, we’re not sure, but we’re not taking any chances either. Jacob, make sure the burial detail is armed,” Mike said.
“We’ll post guards behind us on our way back,” Jean said.
“Good idea,” Mike agreed. “When you get back to the guard post, leave some weapons there. We’ll man it armed from now on.”
Alarm and consternation filled their community when the news was reported. The villagers still remembered the violence they had experienced two years ago. Mike had Hector make a list of all of the firearms and the corresponding ammunition that they had accumulated from the bikers. He thought about the Major and his unit, but he was not yet ready to contact them. He put Eric in charge of the spear throwing exercises, and he put Yuie in charge of the archery practices. Everyone in Petersburg, except for Desi, was required to practice one skill or the other for at least two hours daily.
The burial detail left, and with them traveled Hector and Kathy to man the upriver guard post. Nine days later, Jacob and the others arrived at the site of Luis’ cairn. Jacob sent Ahmad and Rasul farther ahead to serve as a rear guard. Then he and Jean removed the rocks that protected Luis’ body. They lifted the plastic covered body and placed it on the litter. It was noon, and they had been traveling since sunup, so they rested before starting back.