by Lou Cadle
“What about who we’ll encounter?” Misha said. “We’ve always said, whenever this came up in the past, all the good land will be defended. We don’t have the weapons to defend ourselves, so we also don’t have enough to take over anyone else’s land.”
Dev shook his head. “We won’t do that. Or I won’t. I know how hard it was to keep us alive here, and I wouldn’t drive anyone else off their homestead. I’d respect their work and pass them by, even if we had a thousand rounds of ammo and not just these few.”
“What do you imagine us doing?” Joan said. “I mean, how far would we go?”
“It might have to be in stages,” Dev said. “We might need to travel for a month, find a place, settle down for another growing season to get enough food to provide for us for another month or two of travel, and so on. But as for me, I’d like to end up at a place that could sustain my grandchildren and great-grandchildren for another two hundred years. Even if it takes us five years of travel to get there, or even ten years. That’s my ultimate goal.”
Everyone started talking, and Dev stood and held up his hands. “Here’s what I’d like you all to do. Talk among yourselves, in your own family unit, as you work today. Sleep on it one night. And we’ll meet back here tomorrow and discuss it. I have a lot of ideas, and I’ll have more by tomorrow, but it’ll take all of us using our God-given brains the best we can to make this work. And everybody gets to decide for themselves. I know what I’m going to do, but—” and he looked at Zoe with a pained expression on his face “—everybody gets to decide for themselves.”
“C.J. and Nina are too young to make such a decision,” Joan said.
“That’s for you and yours to decide,” Dev said. “Now I’m behind two days on work, so I need to finish pulling up the plants. And I’m sure there’s grain that’s ripe, so I’ll get to harvesting after that.”
And he brushed his hands on his worn pants and walked away. Zoe threw a sad smile in Sierra’s direction and then hurried after him.
“He’s right about short-term thinking, at least,” Pilar said, to no one in particular. “There’s been far too much of that for far too long. And I’m not excluding myself from that indictment.” He stood. “I have work to do too.”
Sierra looked around. The young people—the orphans—were old enough to make their own decisions. The guys could stay with her and Pilar, or they could each decide something different. She wouldn’t hold any grudges, no matter what happened there. “I agree with Dev,” she said to the young men who had been living in her barn and to Georgia, the woman who had shared her room all these years. “It’s up to each and every one of you. I respect whatever you are going to decide.” To Curt and C.J., who were standing together, she said, “I’ll be over tonight after dinner, and the three of us will talk.” She went to C.J. and pushed his hair back from his forehead. “Love you, kid.”
Then she followed her father, her mind spinning with ideas. How would they accomplish this? How many of the hens could they take, and how would they carry them? Would a rooster be too dangerous, noisy and announcing their approach to potential enemies? If twenty—or seventeen, she remembered with a sick recall of those who had been lost—if seventeen people and a horse and wagon were traveling along, what would be the dangers? How often would they have to stop and try to hunt or trap? Weapons, traps, hoes and shovels, so much to take. How much could a horse pull in a wagon?
They’d counted the horses when they’d burned them. The meat had not been safe to eat. There were two still missing that might yet be recovered. Even one would double what they could carry, right? So much to think about, and to talk about.
But for the first time in a long while—a long, long while—she was feeling an emotion she had buried. Excitement. Almost optimism. Yes, the road would be full of dangers. But there was a chance of a better future ahead. A different future.
She closed her eyes and dreamed of it. They could find a river, a wide river that ran past a meadow that would be easy to plant. Everything would be green, as it had been when she was a little girl. There was a lot of high desert up north. They’d want to be out of the new “government’s” range, so that would mean they’d have to get beyond the Painted Desert, probably. All the way up to Colorado, maybe. That was a long way to walk.
A long way through the land of people who would not look kindly on strangers. Some of them might be no better than what they were fleeing.
They would have to avoid those sorts of people.
Chapter 25
“I think the success will lie in good scouting,” Curt said. It was the next morning. The three of them had had a difficult conversation the night before. C.J. wanted to do whatever his father did, and Sierra had to remind them both that she had two families, and she didn’t want to have to choose one child over another.
At that point Curt had been unconvinced. This morning, he seemed to have swung around to Dev’s way of thinking. Or at least swung around to a point where he was willing to consider it seriously.
Sierra had been there from the moment Dev had suggested it. Her father was still undecided.
“What I believe I should do for the next two days is try and find those other horses,” Curt said. “I know I’m not the best rider in the world, but I think I can manage this horse now. If we can find even one more, we could always have a scout out ahead and the other horse pulling. The scout can ride back to warn us of danger ahead, or of opportunity.”
There were several nods.
Troy cleared his throat. “I don’t want us to get too far in talking until you all know this,” he said. “Some of us from Payson—well. If you are all going that way, some of us want to go back to Payson, if they’ll take us.”
Joan said, “I’m sure they will.”
“It isn’t that we don’t love you like family. But we think there is strength in numbers, that we might be able to survive better in a bigger place.”
“Even against an avenging army?” Dev asked.
Troy looked uncomfortable. “The army won’t be coming for Payson. It’ll be coming for you.”
Pilar said, “And it’ll be faster than us. If we’re going to do this thing, leave, carry all our stuff with us, we need to be doing it in two weeks, maximum. We’ll be weighted down with our supplies. They’d be moving at twice the speed, or better, and I don’t want them to overtake us.”
Misha said, “That’s not long to decide.”
Sierra said, “But it’s worse than that. If we want to leave in fourteen days, we need to start preparing to leave no later than a few days from now. Building a wagon, deciding what to take and what we can afford to leave behind, figuring out what a horse can pull, slaughtering the oldest hens and smoking the meat. It’s a lot of work.” She looked around. “So whatever we decide, we don’t have long to decide it. Two or three days, max.”
“That’s assuming they come up and attack us,” Joan said. “Or that they know it’s us they should attack. If you young people all go to Payson, you may be in as much danger as if we all stayed here.”
Wanda cleared her throat. “Well, we were thinking....” She was flushed.
Dev said, gently, “Go on. Say what’s on your mind. No one will be angry with you for being honest.”
“We were thinking, if you abandon your homes, and we go back down there, and the military arrives?” She looked around at the others in her group. “We’ll tell them it was you. And that you left. We can say you went around Payson and up toward Strawberry, to throw them off your trail. That’ll gain you more time.”
“What about when they find you lied?” Pilar said.
“We’ll swear that’s what you did. If you changed your mind later, we weren’t around to hear about it.”
Brandie said, “I want you all to know, I’d rather go with you. I think my baby will have a better future with you. But I don’t know that I can travel. I mean, if you are stopped when I give birth, and stay wherever you are for three or four months, that’d work ou
t. But what if the timing is different? I decided on Payson because of that. Otherwise, I’d be going along with you.”
Pilar said, “I don’t know if I can keep up either. If I work too much, I limp. That’s all there is to it. I’d slow you down, and I wouldn’t want to. So I should probably stay here.”
Dev said, “I was thinking you could drive the wagon.”
Pilar looked surprised. “I don’t know how.”
“You can learn. And someone has to. We should all of us learn how, and whoever is hurt—which right now is you more than anyone else—well, that person can drive instead of walk.”
Sierra felt a wave of gratitude that nearly brought her to tears. She hadn’t thought of that herself, but Dev had. She said, “I want to go. I’m sure of it. And Pilar, I want you to go too. If you stay, I’ll have to stay.” That was a lie. She’d go with her children, but leaving her father behind would rip her in half.
He looked troubled.
Dev said, “Everybody needs to decide. In two days from now, at dawn, let’s meet again. I want to hear from everyone, what ideas you’ve had, no matter how silly they might seem. Curt’s is great. If we could have two horses or three, that would help a lot. I think he should go out as soon as possible.”
“Three would be a dream,” Curt said. “Two to pull, one to scout with.”
“It had better be two to pull,” Misha said. “I made a list of what we’d need to take to set ourselves up again. It doesn’t even include food to eat while we travel. It’s a lot.” She reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out folded sheets of paper, pages of a book she’d torn out. There had been a paragraph or two printed on them, but the rest of one side and the other side had been blank, and Misha had filled it with tiny printing. “And one line says ‘seeds and seed potatoes’ and that’s going to weigh a lot all by itself.”
“Read it aloud, slowly, would you?” Dev said. “And good job being so organized about it and making a list.”
Misha began to read her list. It began with “Feed for the hens. Fencing for the hens.” And it had a few items Sierra hadn’t thought of.
Dev had her read it straight through once, and then again, line by line, while they discussed every item in detail. He encouraged the young people to give their opinions, even if they didn’t plan on coming along.
They didn’t get far down the list the second time before he called a halt. “Look, stay or go, we have things to do today. So let’s take a few minutes to add to Misha’s list to end this meeting. Would you jot down the new items, please, Misha?”
Curt said, “I have two, and then I’m going to take off and try and find those horses.”
“Can I go along?” C.J. said.
“I need you to check the traps and work the farm, son. I won’t be long. At latest, I’ll be back tomorrow evening. And for the list, I have mostly tools I’ll want to take, and I’ll have to look at them before I can tell you which ones I can’t live without. The other thing is I want to dismantle one of the bikes at the well head—probably the laundry one—and take it and a hand pump.”
Sierra watched him go. “C.J.,” she said, “if you need anything while he’s gone, you come and ask me or Pilar. Or you can stay with us at night if you want to.”
“I’m not afraid of the dark,” he said, and there was nothing snide in his tone. “Or of being alone.”
“I know. But if you want us, we’re there.”
“I’m going to go check the traps,” he said.
He walked off. He was nearly a grownup now in some ways. He seemed to be picking up a few of Curt’s mannerisms. C.J. wasn’t her baby any longer, but she’d be damned if she’d let him be separated from her. Everybody from the core group went or no one went.
She’d miss the young people if they split off. But she understood why they felt as they did. This had been their home for six years, but Payson had been their home for twice that long before they were orphaned. Probably seeing familiar faces had made them long to go back.
They finished their list, which was long indeed, and Misha said she’d make two other copies that day and deliver them by suppertime to Dev and Pilar, so that everyone had a chance to look it over and consider what might be missing. “Or what we might be able to leave behind, or consolidate. It’s too much weight already. I mean, I don’t know for sure what two horses can pull, but probably not this much. And we don’t know yet we have two horses.”
Dev said, “Good point. Maybe prioritize those things, marking them one, two, and three. The twos we’ll be able to take if we have two horses, and the threes are things you think we can do without.”
Sierra and Pilar walked back together. “I can’t believe you were thinking of letting me go without coming along,” she said.
“It’s because of you—and my grandchildren—that I didn’t want to come.”
“That’s crazy! Of course they want you there. They both love you. I love you.”
“And I love you.” He laughed. “I almost said ‘more than you’ll ever know’ but of course you know. You’re a mom twice over.”
“It still confuses me sometimes how my mother could have left me. I’ve had some hard times connecting with both of my kids, but I’d kill to stay with them—kill to protect them.”
“I guess she had other things to do,” Pilar said. “And she trusted me.”
“She was right in that, at least. You’re a wonderful father and a wonderful grandfather, and I have to tell you something else. A confession, of sorts.”
“What, sweetheart?”
“If you’d have said you wouldn’t go, I’d have tied you up and put you in a sack and dragged you along. Behind the wagon, maybe, bumping along on the highway.”
He laughed. “I’m glad it won’t come to that.”
“Me too. I’m not getting any younger myself, and you’d be heavy!”
They had come into the yard. Sierra stopped her father. “Every hour that passes, I’m more sure that this is the right thing to do. I mean, look at all of it. Pretend you’ve never seen it before and really look.” She gestured at the house, the still wind turbines, rusting away, the dead forest. A landscape of sand-colored plants, barely clinging to life. And the house, bleached to a light gray. It was a dying land. And she did not want to die along with it.
“We do have some problems,” he said. “But we have so much. A roof.”
“Falling apart. If it rained again, we’d have water dripping on our head, and the house would fall down sooner.”
“If it rained again, other problems would disappear. But I know what you’re saying,” he said. “I’m attached to the place is all. I raised my beautiful daughter here, and her grandchildren, and I was happy here more often than not.”
“You’ll take your own happiness with you,” she said. She’d never said it before, but in saying it, she recognized the truth of it. “You’ll be fine anywhere you go. Arch? Maybe he knew exactly what he was doing the other day. Maybe he foresaw this, the end of the neighborhood and the necessity of moving. He couldn’t have managed that. Probably not physically. Definitely not emotionally.”
“I’m not so sure about me physically,” Pilar said, moving forward again. “I’m fine right now, no aches and pains, but some days I hurt.”
“I’ll carry you if need be.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, and I love you too, but you’ll have plenty of other things to carry.”
Three days later, the neighborhood as it had been these past six years began to break apart.
Chapter 26
Curt had found one of the two horses and led it back. The third one, he had looked and looked for, but it was nowhere to be seen. He came riding back, leading the second horse, and found Dev in the lower grain field.
Dev thought someone might have found the missing horse and killed it for food. Which concerned him. “We don’t know anything about human life uphill. Who lives there? Do they have hunting ranges we might be tripping over?”
“
I never have seen a sign of that,” Curt said. “You haven’t either.”
“I stuck to the areas across the highway, but no. I never did run across another hunter, nor any sign one had been there.”
“I’ve been quite a way uphill,” Curt said. “Maybe the last horse was taken down by a bear, or fell down a gully and broke a leg. Or maybe it’s still wandering out there, and it was beyond my ability to track it.”
“So the two horses are ready to go?”
“I need to devise a harness and—not sure of the terminology, but a way for them to pull the wagon. I have plenty of scrap leather. Might have to fashion some wood pieces. They’ll do us for a while,” Curt said. “But when the first horse throws a shoe, we may have trouble.”
“If shoes are so important, why weren’t they traveling with extra horseshoes? No one found any on the clean-up.”
“I don’t know that it is so important. But these two are definitely shod. And I wonder if pulling the wagon isn’t a stress that requires shoes. But I don’t know. Maybe they can go without. Or they’ll be fine with some hoof trimming, not that I know how to trim or what to trim.”
“Don’t ask me,” Dev said. “I was in 4-H, but I never hung out with the horse people. I suppose I should have, and we’d know these things now.”
“Hard to anticipate a lifetime of needs when you’re fifteen or sixteen and the world is churning along pretty much the same every year.”
“True,” he said. “How’s C.J. taking to the idea of leaving?”
“He’s excited, I think. Nervous but excited. How about your kid?”
“Determined, is what I’d call her mood. I think she is starting to cry a little, as she thinks about it, but she’s doing a pretty good job of hiding that from me.”
“Makes sense. It’s all she’s ever known. It might be easiest for me. After all, my first cabin burned down, so I already let go once.”