Resurrecting Home

by A. American

  “Research. I used to read a lot.”

  “We’re glad you did, Teach,” Danny said as he wiped sawdust from his pants.

  “Now we have to make another piece: the pestle to pound everything out with,” I said.

  Thad leaned into the tangle of what was once the canopy of the old tree. Coming out with the end of a limb about eight inches in diameter, he asked, “Will this work?”

  I nodded and grabbed it. Together we pulled it out and Danny used the saw to cut it off about five feet long. I picked it up and put it over my shoulder while the guys grabbed the tub. We carried everything over to Danny’s shop. It’d be easier to work on the pestle there. Using hand saws, rasps, and some sandpaper, we shaped the pestle. At the lower end it was nearly its full girth, with only the bark removed. Going up the handle was about two inches in diameter. The face of the lower end was rounded slightly and smoothed with sandpaper, then hardened in a small fire Danny quickly built for the task. While we were making the pestle, Tyler and Jeff sanded the interior of the tub, getting nearly all of the charred wood off. When they were done, it was as smooth as glass.

  Thad picked up the pestle, grasping the top two-handed, and pounded it into the tub. “Think the tub can handle it?”

  I nodded. “I think so—the bottom is nearly four inches thick. Let the weight of the pestle do the work.”

  “Cool.” Thad smiled. “Let’s pound some roots!”

  The dried root was piled into the tub, and I started pounding. It was “for real, no shit” work, and after a couple of minutes, I held my hands up. “My arms are killing—time for someone else to do some work.”

  We took turns, making it into a competition of sorts. There were plenty of comments and quips thrown in for motivation, again, taking out the sting of the job.

  Jeff was working the pestle like a jackhammer when Jess, Lee Ann, and Taylor walked up. Sweat fell from his face in steady drips.

  “What are you guys doing?” Jess asked.

  “Processing these roots,” I said.

  “I pounded ’em into dust!” Jeff said triumphantly.

  Jess looked at him with a small smile on her face. “I see that.”

  Jeff smiled and went to raise his arm, to make a muscle. “Yeah, check these out.” But he’d put so much effort into the task that he couldn’t raise his arm. “Ow, ow,” he said.

  Jess started to laugh, as well as the rest of us. He was doing his best to impress her, but it wasn’t quite working out.

  “You need someone to rub them for you?” Jess asked with a sly smile.

  Jeff grinned and nodded in reply. Jess batted her eyes at him. “I’m sure Thad will do it for you. He’s got strong hands.” Her reply caused everyone to bust out laughing—everyone except for Jeff, that is.

  Thad looked up from his work. “You want me to massage them chicken wings?”

  Irritated, Jeff rotated his shoulders. “I don’t need no massage. I need a drink of water.” With that he walked off.

  Taylor was covering her mouth. “That was funny.”

  “You shouldn’t be so mean to him, Jess,” I said, chuckling.

  “He’s a big boy, he can take it,” Jess replied.

  Danny reached into the tub and scooped up a handful of the powder. It was full of fibers from the root. “How are we going to get the fiber out?”

  “We need some sort of a sieve or something,” Thad said.

  Looking at Danny, I asked, “You have one in the kitchen?”

  He shook his head. “No, it was broken.” Then he looked up. “What about the classifiers?”

  “You still have them?”

  He nodded and stood up, heading for the shop.

  “What’s a classifier?” Thad asked.

  “Danny and me used to go up into the Carolinas and pan for gold. Classifiers fit in a bucket and have different-sized mesh in them, to sort out rocks and stuff.” I examined the mound of powder in the bottom of the tub. “They’ll work great.”

  Danny came back with the classifiers and a bucket. Setting one in the top of the bucket, he nestled it with a slightly larger mesh into it and started to drop handfuls of the powdered root in. Thad knelt down beside him and started bouncing the screens, and the starch quickly began to filter through, leaving the coarse fiber behind.

  “This works pretty good,” Thad said.

  “Can we help?” Lee Ann asked.

  “You want to do it?” I asked.

  “Yeah, you guys did the hard part—let us do this,” Jess said.

  Danny and Thad stepped back and let the girls in. They quickly went to work using the same basic technique.

  “Thanks for the help, girls,” Danny said.

  Taylor looked up and smiled in reply.

  “What I want to know,” Thad said, “is did you guys ever find any gold up there?”

  “We did, actually. Nothing big—dust, really, but it was fun.”

  Thad was looking at the bucket. “That’s cool.”

  “Wish we had some of that gold dust now. It may have a real use soon,” Danny said.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Who are we going to buy from? There’s no one around.”

  Thad slapped his hands together, knocking the dust off. “That’s true. Ain’t nuthin’ to buy.”

  Danny looked back at the girls sifting the starch. “What are we going to do with that stuff?”

  I looked at Thad. “How about some chicken-fried steak tonight?”

  “I need a meat mallet. We could cube some venison up, then I guess we can dust it with that and fry it up?” Thad asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah, let’s give it a try.”

  “I’ve got a tenderizer,” Danny said.

  “Go get it, and tell the ladies we’ll make supper tonight,” Thad said with a smile.

  With a laugh Danny replied, “I’m sure they won’t complain.”

  The dogs came trotting through the yard, as if on a mission. I watched them head out the gate and start down the road. “Where in the hell are they going?”

  Thad looked over and shrugged. “Who knows, why don’t you ask ’em?” He laughed at his own little joke.

  “I think I’ll follow them. They look like they’ve got something they’re checking out.”

  “Be careful,” Danny said. Thad nodded his agreement.

  Tyler offered to go with me. “I could use a walk.”

  I nodded. “Let me run and get my gear.”

  After grabbing my carbine, I went out to the road and called to the dogs. They stopped and looked back, ears erect. Seeing me walking toward them, they turned and waited. As we passed Tyler’s house, he ran in real quick. This time he came out with a pistol strapped to his side and his Ranch Rifle over his shoulder.

  I nodded at the dogs. “Let’s follow them and see where they’re going. They’re gone a lot and don’t eat much, so they’ve got to be getting it from someplace.”

  “Cool, let’s go.”

  As we started walking toward the dogs, they turned and resumed their travel, indifferent to our approach. At the end of the street they turned left.

  “They sure look like they know exactly where they’re going,” Tyler said.

  “Yeah, I’m curious to see what they’ve found.”

  Tyler kicked a rock down the road. “Hey, man, thanks for bringing us over here. It’s been really great. Brandy’s really happy having the other women around.”

  “No problem, man. It’s great having your kids around for Little Bit too, and not to mention you’ve been a big help.”

  “Sure thing. A little work is a fair trade to be able to sleep soundly at night and have some food to eat.”

  “Yep. Having more people around makes the workload a little easier to manage.”

  “Yeah but it’s more mouths to feed,” Tyler said, sounding a bit guilty.

  “Dude, don’t sweat it. Brandy does her part too. You guys aren’t an uneven burden or anything.”

  Tyler looked over and smiled. “Thanks, m
an, that’s really good to hear. Brandy’s kind of worried you guys are going to ask us to leave—you know, food being so scarce and all.”

  “Would never dream of it.”

  The dogs hit the intersection with Highway 19 and turned left, trotting in the the middle of the road. I shook my head. “Hope these mutts don’t go far.”

  “Me too.”

  Just as Tyler replied, the dogs made a right onto a small dirt drive. We had to pick up our pace a bit to catch up to them. Just like the dogs, we walked down the center line of the highway. It was an odd feeling, the old mores of modern life still firmly in place.

  Tyler gave voice to my thoughts. “Wonder how long it will take before it no longer feels weird to walk down the middle of the road.”

  I looked at him and laughed. “I was just thinking the same thing. It’s funny, isn’t it?” I said as I looked back, fully expecting to see a car zipping down the road toward us.

  “It is kind of cool, though. Feels like we’re breaking the rules or something.”

  “All things considered, I’d rather this road be full of cars.”

  “That’s true. I can dig that, man.”

  The drive they turned onto had a few small houses on it, all sheltered under a hammock of oaks. It was actually a nice area, though it was obvious all the houses were abandoned.

  “I don’t think anyone is here,” Tyler said.

  “I was going to agree, but look here—tracks,” I said, pointing at a smallish set of footprints in the roadbed.

  “Let’s follow them,” Tyler replied with a smile.

  The footprints lead to a small house typical of early Florida: wood frame, lapboard siding, with a porch. The yard was enclosed in a fence, the gate shut. The barking of the dogs took away any uncertainty as to where they had run off to. We edged closer.

  “Sounds like they’re playing,” I said.

  “Sounds like more than just those three too.”

  We stopped at the gate. The front door was open behind a screen door. Barely thirty feet of neatly cut St. Augustine grass separated us from the porch.

  I cupped my hand to my mouth and called out, “Hello, the house!” Silence.

  After a moment I called again.

  “I don’t think anyone’s in there,” Tyler said.

  He was immediately proven wrong when a woman’s voice came through the screen. “I heard you the first time.” The voice had a hint of an Appalachian twang, but her tone wasn’t unpleasant. Through the screen door, I could make out a small figure standing there. She looked all of five foot nothing.

  “Hi there. I’m Morgan, this is Tyler.”

  “That’s close enough, Morgan and Tyler.” To emphasize her point, the door opened a couple of inches and the barrel of a shotgun came out.

  “Sorry, we didn’t mean to scare you,” I said. “We were just looking for our dogs.”

  “You two just wait where you are till Batman gets back. He should be here shortly.”

  Tyler looked at me and whispered, “Batman? Who’s Batman? This chick’s lost her marbles.”

  A burly man in a white T-shirt and cut-off jeans came around the corner of the house. He wore a nice leather holster hung low in a western fashion with a very large revolver tucked in it. I nodded toward him. “I guess he is.”

  “Batman, you out there?” she called out.

  “I’m here, Gena.” He glared at us and walked toward the gate. As he did the screen door behind him opened, and the petite woman stepped out. She wore a broad-brimmed straw hat, a pair of overalls cut off into shorts, and a T-shirt. The shotgun she held looked nearly as big as she was.

  Batman stopped a little short and looked at us. “I can’t spare any food, boys, sorry.”

  “Oh no, sir, we’re not looking for food.” I nodded at the dogs, now lying in the grass. “I was just curious where our dogs were getting off to every day, so we followed them here.”

  He looked down. “These three yours?”

  “Yes, sir—well, two of them are really mine, that black lab just kind of fell in with them.”

  “I love dogs. They been coming around here for a while now. We feed ’em a little,” the woman said.

  I stuck out my hand toward Batman. “I’m Morgan, this is Tyler. We live just down the road from you guys.”

  He stepped forward and shook it. “I’m Dylan.”

  Tyler stepped up to shake hands as well. “I thought you were Batman.”

  Dylan smiled. “That’s just her nickname for me, don’t ask.”

  Gena stepped up. “I’m Gena.” Jutting her thumb toward Dylan, she said, “I’m his doomsday bitch.” She said it with a smile, looking genuinely happy. She proffered the shotgun to Dylan. “Honey, take this, it’s heavy.”

  He took the gun and looked at her. “You all right, you feeling bad?”

  “No, I’m fine, just can’t carry that thing too long.”

  Dylan looked back at us. “Gena has MS.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. We’re not trying to get into your business,” I said.

  “Oh, it’s fine, don’t worry about that. He just worries about me,” Gena said. What she said next really surprised us. “You want to come in? We’re about to have supper.”

  “Oh, uh, that’s really nice, but we couldn’t impose ourselves on you. Besides, there’ll be supper waiting for us back at home,” I said.

  “Thank you, though. You don’t see that sort of hospitality nowadays,” Tyler added.

  “It’s no bother. You’re welcome,” Gena said.

  “If you won’t have supper, how about a mead?” Dylan asked.

  Tyler looked at him questioningly. “What’s mead?”

  “It’s the bestest stuff on earth! Honey wine. I make it myself,” Gena said, proudly.

  “I’d love one,” I said.

  Tyler held up his social finger. “Yes, please.”

  Dylan opened the gate. “Come on up to the porch.”

  We followed them up to the house, where several chairs were arranged on the porch. Dylan told us to have a seat and disappeared inside. Gena sat down as well, the effort apparent on her face.

  I unslung my carbine and leaned it against the house, then looked at Gena. “Sorry about the hardware.”

  She gave me a dismissive wave. “Don’t worry about it. Just the way things are now.”

  Dylan emerged from the house with several large brown bottles in tow. He handed Tyler and me each one. Dylan took a seat and opened his, taking a long pull. I opened mine and took a drink. It was like a shock to my taste buds, so flavorful and unlike anything I had had before.

  “Wow, what’s in this?” I asked.

  “This one has strawberry in it. Good, ain’t it?” Dylan said with a grin.

  Tyler sniffed the bottle suspiciously, then took a timid sip. He swished the brew around in his mouth, a broad smile spreading across his face. “That’s . . . amazing. Wow. I feel alive again! Woo!” We all chuckled at his enthusiasm.

  Examining the bottle, I asked, “Are you still brewing?”

  “Oh yeah. We’ve got several hives, so honey isn’t an issue,” Dylan said.

  “Where are you getting the yeast?”

  “It took a little experimentation, but we’re allowing natural yeast to do the job now. It makes the process longer, but it works.” Dylan picked at the label on the bottle. “These were bottled before things went to shit, though.”

  I raised the bottle in a salute. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s working. Really good,” I said, then took another long drink.

  I was surprised when Gena produced a small silver case and took out what looked like a home-rolled cigarette from it and lit it. The smell, though, instantly told me it wasn’t tobacco. Gena caught me looking at her and grinned. “It’s for the MS, it’s the only thing I have. Doesn’t take the pain away but puts my mind in a place where I can deal with it.”

  “It does have its uses. We recently had to use some for one of our people with a bad wound. Don’t have
any painkillers or anything, and he said it helped. It was just dumb luck that I had it,” I said.

  “You need more?” she asked.

  I was taken aback. “Uh, well, actually, we could use some for him. I’m not into it and we don’t use it recreationally, but I think it’s good to have on hand. What could we trade you for some?”

  “I don’t know, y’all seem like decent people. You don’t have to trade. I’ll give you some if it will help someone.”

  “I appreciate it, okay. But fair’s fair. I’ll think of something to bring over here for you.”

  “Sounds like a deal,” Dylan said, then he stood up. “Follow me around back.”

  Taking our bottles, we followed him around the corner of the house, Gena bringing up the rear. The small house hid a very nice greenhouse behind it.

  “Wow, that’s nice,” Tyler said.

  “Oh yeah, I love my greenhouse,” Gena said.

  When we stepped through the door the temperature rose immediately, along with the humidity. Inside was a tropical paradise with lush green hanging from the ceiling and climbing up from the ground. A seemingly infinite variety of vegetables and fruits were growing in several raised beds. On one end was a thick, unruly stand of marijuana plants.

  “Holy crap, look at all this,” I said. Tyler echoed my sentiment with a low whistle.

  “You don’t have a garden?” Dylan asked.

  “We just got it in recently, so it’s going to be a while before we see anything from it,” Tyler said.

  “If you need some, we can spare it,” Gena said.

  Again, I was dumbfounded. Not only were they showing us the store, but they were offering to give it away. I couldn’t imagine letting someone, anyone, in on what we may or may not have. It made me realize just how this situation had challenged our typical rules of courtesy and civility.

  “Okay, we will take you up on this offer, but I insist that we trade for it. I mean, food is tough to come by now. You’ve got to need something,” I said.

  Gena thought for a moment, then looked at Dylan. “Can you think of anything?”

  He shrugged then asked, “Got any salt?”

  “Yes!” I practically shouted, causing Tyler to choke on his mead and startling Dylan and Gena.”Sorry, but that is one thing we do have. How about a pound of salt,” then thinking, ahead I added, “and some fresh pork?”