It seemed a bit overly dramatic to Martha, so she suggested they borrow Lem and Larry’s dosimeters and sort them according to which were radioactive and which were not.
“Dosimeter smosimeter! Come on, Martha! Do you realize how much there is to pick up? And then the time involved in first checking then deciding whether to take it or leave. And the discussion. Why, with the way people are at this time, there would be fights all over the place! You can’t take that. My husband loves that. I want that. Oh, good I can keep this but she can’t keep hers!”
Dody had a point, so Martha went with his notion, suggesting they use the old root cellar up near where the old Matthews place burned down to store them.
Dody was standing still now. “Didn’t think’a that.”
“I think it would work. Also, once the doors are closed, kids and dogs would not be able to get in at the stuff.”
“Martha. You’re genius!”
“And you’re not? Come on. Let me show you where I’d like you to put the shelves.”
The Matthews family was reluctant to have their root cellar used. It didn’t matter that the house on the property was no longer habitable. Lem argued that even if there was radioactivity in the clothing, it should not be a problem for them as when FEMA or SEMA finally arrived, they’d get them to remove the hazardous clothes…assuming they were hazardous…and FEMA or SEMA could figure that out at that time with some of the instruments Lem knew they had available to them. And depending on the evidence or lack of evidence of radioactive fallout in the clothing, they could handle the materials accordingly.
Also, as one of the Newcomer wives pointed out, as by now everyone should have started their KI pills, she was not sure what other risk there might be other than to the thyroid if the clothes were picked up and moved as suggested. And as long as everyone was taking their KI daily, she did not think there would even be a risk to the thyroid.
The Council meeting on the removal of the clothing was longer—and the arguing more heated—than it had ever before been. This struck some as odd, as what each was being asked to give or do was less than almost all had previously given or done most willingly. Previously they had offered to volunteer long hours. With minimal to no encouragement they had carried out physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausting assignments. Everything from building shelters to opening their homes to strangers to collecting and sharing food, water and clothes with this amorphous group of unknowns whom everyone now regularly referred to as the Newcomers. The difference was that for this assignment, apprehension ran rampant among the Townees and, as the Newcomers were under-represented at the meeting, it ruled the day. Whether the presence of more Newcomers might have tipped the balance or not was only speculation. But tonight one could almost smell the fear. Fear based on ignorance. But at that point they could not know that.
Finally, however, reason trumped, helped by the decision that the Newcomers could do most of the work. Lem said that if one thought about it, the newly appointed deputies could be called upon to enforce the Council’s rulings should the people not respond favorably on a volunteer basis. Beyond a few hrumps, everyone chose to ignore that suggestion. And a few wondered what had gotten into Lem. Didn’t he realize the risk?
So Pete Sanford, one of the Newcomers, volunteered to drive the truck for half a day if someone else would take his place another half day, with others spelling the first two until all the area was cleaned. The Town decided to loan its sand truck to the Newcomers. Dody asked for some help from other carpenters in making sticks with hooks, which seemed to be the least of the problems. And the Matthews realized they had neither a penny nor a stone with which they might successfully fight against the use of the root celler. So Operation Hookup was instituted and within a few days the areas around the camps and firehouse became rag free and mothers of small children and animal owners breathed more freely and adults walked in more direct routes back and forth from house, vehicle, shack, or shanty to the firehouse, lakeside or molding privies. And even the trees were stripped of their wind-tossed rags.
6. Decon and Clothing
Except for Natalie’s father, who had been outside in the parking lot of a large shopping center not far from The Plant, everyone seemed to be all right. Natalie’s father had been hospitalized to have his hand and facial burns treated, and he appeared to now have radiation sickness and Natalie’s mother was not sure what would come of it. Natalie called her mother late each evening when the lines were more likely to be free. One day her mother was optimistic. The next day she expected the worst. Natalie assured her that the doctors were doing all they could for her father and that Thaw and Lem, who knew about such things, remained optimistic.
Natalie felt torn about whether or not to join her mother, but even travel to Bain remained a challenge, as one never knew what to expect on the road: In parts of Ellensville there had been some fighting and looting, and in parts of Bain there had been fires and looting. Also, as in Bain there were plenty of planners and administrators, here in Lochlee, Natalie felt she was needed more. Also in Bain her involvement would have been less up close and in your face. Here she was an integral part of the tight original team that had formed so spontaneously with Thaw, Lem, his sister, her sister and Martha, and Dody. The list went on, but Natalie knew that to help most personally, one had to be part of a team, and the tighter the team, the better the results.
Also she was part of the wonderful, spontaneous Locklee emergency response team. It wasn’t so named, but that’s what it was. And from Natalie’s viewpoint, “It was as good as it gets!” Further, she could not even imagine how it might work in Bain; there were so many more people in the city and they were so much more spread out. But here in Lochlee all the Townees knew one another and teaming seemed natural. Also, because the area was small, a team could change its direction from day to day as newly identified needs took precedence over earlier ones or others moved in to take up the slack, freeing the team’s natural leaders for new responsibilities. Communication was quick and easy; everyone lived near everyone else. Word of mouth often worked better than telephone.
When the first Newcomers had arrived, the village had been more or less ready for them. Following the directions of the on-site coordinators, Newcomers left their clothes outside the school in a pile near the curb and hurried down between blankets hung on clotheslines to shower in either the boys’ or the girls’ locker rooms. When they emerged from the showers, they were given clothes close to their size. The system worked well enough for the first couple of days, but when the emigrant numbers swelled beyond fifty a day, there were not enough clothes. Also, the increased traffic in people necessitated making use of some hastily-built outside showers near the firehouse. There, men’s showers were in front, women’s in back. Blankets on clotheslines divided the two areas. A fire truck was parked in front of the men’s shower to provide them some privacy. However, by the time the number of Newcomers had reached near a thousand, all hope of providing them clothes immediately after showering was abandoned. A state of nudity became a necessity for most.
This upset some of the more conservative women in the community. “Why, there was this man and his son walking right across the road. Nothing on but what they was born in!”
“Yes. And I saw a woman with two children sitting on the ground under a tree. The woman was sound asleep and the children played near her. Not a stitch on a one ov’em!”
The State Police charged with patrolling the community were rarely to be seen, and when they did appear, they seemed to pay no heed to the nudity. It seemed they were uninterested, unwilling or unable to do anything about the situation, so the governor was called. The governor’s staff recognized that public nudity was illegal in the state and reported that the governor promised he would see what he could do about it. They promised that as soon as he was able he would put in a call to SEMA and the Red Cross on the matter. And the ladies who had taken it upon themselves to call the governor then suggested he might consider
calling in the National Guard. Having said that, these women, for whom nudity seemed to represent some sort of a particularly serious threat, felt better. Still, they and their cohorts noted that days passed and no additional clothes arrived.
When these same incredulous and appalled women shared their observations with their more practical neighbors, they found listening ears but confusing responses. Mostly they found themselves being encouraged to go house to house asking for donations of clothing to cover these poor defenseless and unclothed people. Observing the increasing numbers of apparent nudists, as the women referred to them, they decided to put a call through to the Salvation Army in the State of James requesting help. As the Salvation Army’s answer was equivocal, they then began telephoning and knocking on the doors of the residents of Lochlee.
Together, two of the offended women knocked on a door at the end of their street. The door opened. A cheerful middle aged woman greeted the two with a resounding, “Good morning, Arlene. Good morning, Nellie.”
“Good morning, Gladys.”
“Yes?” Gladys was in the middle of making a large batch of bread to take down to the school shelter.
“Oh, Gladys! Nellie and I have established a Lochlee Clothing Committee. Some of the Newcomers are in need of clothing. We were wondering if you might have anything to donate.”
“Oh. Yes. Well, I collected all the socks, underpants, undershirts, shorts, pants, and sweaters from the house last week. That was after we heard about how they would all have to strip before showering. And, poor souls, most with no decontaminated clothes with them! Dropped them all off on Friday.”
“Well,” sputtered one of the incredulous and appalled women to the other. “Some people certainly do move fast, don’t they, Nellie?”
“Yes, they do, Arlene,” sniffed the second.
“Shall we go, Nellie?” hrumphed the second, and together they hurried off without so much as a thank you or a goodbye, sliding their bustling bodies into opposite sides of the front seat of the car they had come in and closing the doors after themselves in unison.
It was a Salvation Army truck from the state of James that came through first. It arrived completely filled with hanging and folded clothes. By that time, however, although the clothes were welcomed, three weeks had passed and nudity was no longer a particularly shocking event.
The truck had arrived in late response to the citizen’s communications center’s appeals across the state and nation, to stores and manufacturers, for donations of underwear, socks, shoes, shorts, t-shirts, sweat pants, sweat shirts, diapers, sheets, pillows, pillowcases, and sleeping bags. Meantime, the villagers had continued to sift through their own closets for clothes and items to pass on to the Newcomers. Some of the clothes were channeled through the clothing committee established by Nellie and Arlene after their call to the Governor, but most of the clothes were simply dropped off at the firehouse by residents when they came into town.
With these turns of events, the problem of lack of goods was quickly replaced by what seemed to be almost an over abundance. So teams were set up to sort and organize the incoming items. Also someone showed up with a dosimeter to measure radiation rads, and using it, they selected those clothes with low or no levels of radiation which then permitted the recycling of new emigrants’ own clothes.
The informal emergency response team talked among themselves: “Why do we make these poor people come here to the firehouse to sort through everything? Half of them are starving; half are sick; and all of them are just plain exhausted. Why don’t we just pile the stuff into school buses and drive it around?” suggested the school principal present at the time of the discussion.
“We could label one of the buses Men’s Clothing, one Women’s and one Children’s,” added another member of the response team.
“That would help us, too. Give us more space. Make it easier to sort by size,” said a woman standing in the back of the hall where they had gathered.
“We could put different sizes in different seats.”
“Or shirts on one, shoes on another and so on.”
“Who’s going to ask about it?”
“I will,” said the same school principal who had suggested the Newcomers get their clothes delivered in the first place.
Who’ll you ask?”
“I suppose the Board of Education. I’ll stop by the communication center. Perhaps they’ll help us in developing the plan and making the essential contacts.”
And so those school buses not assigned as shelters became distribution vehicles. And when the distribution of soap and disinfectants became a problem, a school bus was used to travel around among the Newcomers so they could self select.
“Soaps at the front door, sir.”
“Disinfectants at the back door, madam.”
“One to a family, m’am”
“We’ll be back next week when we have more.”
Shovels were delivered out both doors of the bus for use digging the shallow molding privy holes and all the carpenters in the area were called upon to build “step-ups” with seats that, if possible, latched to ensure that any wandering animal or child would not fall into one of them.
The Council had asked Natalie to map out where the “step-ups” were to be placed. In the process she had Dody help her assess the ground surface for digging and the land for drainage possibilities. They set a time to meet and Dody arrived with a local man who was an excavator and Larry, the geologist. Together, the four of them assessed what appeared to be likely spots with easy availability to the camp. They chose areas with soft dirt, good drainage, and available duff. And whenever possible, they chose spots with natural cover, like low hanging limbs or large rocks near them that could be used to provide a degree of privacy without additional work.
Natalie, thinking of the need to accommodate to the size of those who were to use the privies, easily addressed Thaw’s dad by first name. “Dody, I think we need to make some small double step-ups for the children,” she said. “And we should set them nearest the campsites. Perhaps a set of two every hundred feet along the periphery of the sites. We could use some beach umbrellas to provide them privacy or, when it rains, shelter.”
“That’s fine in the daytime. But what about night, Natalie? You can’t be dragging kids all over creation in the dark. They’re jittered enough.”
The excavator spoke. “Then maybe we need to distribute buckets, Dody. When it is dark out, they can use them and just empty them into the privies mornings. This way parents could keep their children within the shelters for the night.”
Larry liked that idea. He had two girls in middle school and a six-year old son. He liked to protect them in all reasonable ways. But he also liked privacy for himself, so he suggested that for the adults they might move back into the trees a bit and mark a specific path to each so those using the privy wouldn’t beat down more bushes than necessary on reaching it. “It’s the bushes that are most likely to offer readily available privacy, so we need to keep as many green and growing as possible.”
Dody was ready. “Well, let’s see if we can get a half a dozen or so staked out afore lunch, then after lunch we’ll go and find us some willing diggers and get’em started.”
In the shelters where the men were yet able-bodied, usually they were the ones that offered to dig. But in shelters where the men were ill, the older children or the wives came to dig. By four in the afternoon some ten privies had been started. Shovels had to be distributed just one to a privy site, so the diggers had to take turns. Given, however, that many of the Newcomers were not in the best of shape, instead of being a deterrent to progress, sharing one shovel actually acted as an impetus, with even the smallest and weakest being able to participate if they chose to do so. And while some were in emotionally fragile and physically weakened conditions, it became a rallying point that almost everyone could support in some small way. The whole process offered each shoveler, duff retriever, and supportive onlooker a sense of purpose. It gave eac
h participant a small sense of progress and hope. In the process, the practical use to which these walled depressions in the ground would be put to use seemed quite far away and remote in contrast to the excitement offered by this community project in which everyone might participate.
Each site developed its own digging pattern. At some the digger dug until fatigued. As even wristwatches had mostly been discarded as potentially radioactive, instead of timing turns at some sites the digger counted his or her strokes and then passed the shovel to the next shoveler. A few sites developed songs and digging turn-taking games. At none of the sites did the digging stop before it was completed. And so, premature though it might be, each person near enough to a site to use one could do so that night, and the next morning the building of the privy sides began.
The sick in various degrees of advancement of illness were everywhere among the Newcomers. Sickbays were set up in the various local churches to accommodate those who were ill and needed medical attention. Lochlee’s single church was somewhat away from where most of the Newcomers were located. A truck with a tarp over it was assigned to transport the ill. They sat or lay on the mattresses in the back of it on their way to the church. Air mattresses, cots, mattresses, and bedding were solicited from the community.
“Arthur. Are you going to take that air mattress I saw in the back of the closet down to the church?” asked May.
“Might as well,” Lem replied. They need it more than we do.”
“Natalie said her sister and niece were each going to sleep on an air mattress until you decided to give them your bed. You think we should ask Thaw for his?”
“I’m sure Thaw has one.”
“Well, do you think I should ask Thaw for his?”
“Up to you, May. But knowing Thaw, I’m sure he’d be glad to give it down.”
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