But Natalie seemed to take no notice of the high level of activity in these areas. She rode facing straight ahead, hands clasped before her in her lap. Silent.
Once at the Sickbay they alighted and Lem lead Natalie to Thaw who, while lying quietly, was nonetheless awake. Natalie ran the back of her right hand over Thaw’s cheek, picking up his right hand with her left one. As she stood there, tears ran quietly down her cheeks.
“Don’t cry, Nat. Please don’t cry. You know I hate it when you cry.”
“Sometimes I can’t help it, Thaw.”
“Try to help it, Nat. I’m going to be okay.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She laughed and wiped away the tears.
“I brought you a sandwich, Thaw.”
“Not deer, I hope.” A hint of a smile lit his face.
“Fish. May made it. She made me one, too.”
“What about Lem?”
Natalie opened the wrap on one of the sandwiches and broke off a piece for Thaw.
Lem answered Thaw’s question. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve eaten.” And turning to Natalie he asked, “What do you think? Want me to check back later, Natalie? In case you need a lift or anything?”
“That’d be nice, Lem.”
Natalie had pulled up a chair to be nearer to Thaw as he took a small bite of the sandwich she had brought for him.
10. Victory Gardens
Granny was most readily known by her actions. She had been at Martha’s a bit more than a month and already the others were looking to her to make the coffee and pancake batter in the morning. She maintained a healthy stock pot that converted in a blip into any one of a variety of soups, the first of which would be clear and light and the later of which would become increasingly heavy, dark and spicy. And she scolded them if they failed to put any vegetable waste into what she called her composting bin.
Her first composting bin had been an old washtub with a rusted-out bottom, but when she complained that it was not large enough and did not permit the air to circulate well enough, Lem found her some old chicken wire and together they rigged a three-foot-high bottomless container. They accomplished this by rolling out on the ground twelve feet of chicken wire. Then they nailed five three-foot lengths of wood along the wire at intervals and bound the ends together to form a neat cylindrical container into which the mulch was moved. To the soil and grass cuttings and leftover leaves from the fall, Granny daily added the day’s accumulations of potato peels, onion skins, egg shells, coffee grounds, tea leaves, and when they were available, an occasional orange or grapefruit skin, covering them all over with some top soil from behind the shed.
Even after the first three weeks had passed and, according to Granny, the temperature of the compost pile had peaked and fallen, whenever the lawn was mowed and clippings were available, they were raked and moved to the mulch barrel and the mulch stirred. Granny explained that the grass cuttings were adding nitrogen to the mulch and the stirring was increasing the aeration of the pile, which helped to further speed the curing of the compost.
Most of this was all news to Martha and Martha’s crew. And although never to her face—they all respected her too much for that—they generally referred first to the tub’s and later to the bin’s contents as “Granny’s witch’s brew.” However, joke as they might, Granny’s delight at any limp potato skins, browning lettuce, or stray banana skin kept them all willing conspirators in its building.
“Martha,” Granny said just after waking one morning.
“Yes, Granny.”
“What you gonna’ do with those storm windows out in the shed?”
“I don’t have a plan. Just waiting to find a use for them. They’re the original storms from this house, but the wood is good. I imagine they were changed simply because they were heavy and the double panes in the replacement windows made them unnecessary.”
“I was wondering if I could have a few.”
“Of course. Take all you like.”
“Six?”
“Six is fine.”
“Then six it is. Thank you.” And with that she absented herself from Martha’s presence.
That evening, when she returned from the distribution center, Martha noted that at the bottom of the slope of the lawn on the flat area nearer the drive, a small greenhouse had been constructed. Rather than worrying about it being pilfered by passersby, Granny had chosen to place it where it was most likely that the drain off would keep it moist. It was square in shape and composed of a storm window on each side and two across the top. The two across the top and each of the house’s four corners had been hinged together with cuts of canvas taken from the traveling bag Granny had toted with her on her arrival. Obviously someone had found her a box of tacking nails with which someone, probably Granny, had nailed the canvas to the window frames. The result was a sturdy green house about three feet high and six feet square covered by two storm windows, either of which could be lifted as if it were a trap door and laid back on the other window while the gardener tended to the plants below.
Martha approached this new accretion to her property with both amusement and curiosity. Looking within she found the ground had been cultivated and appeared ready for a planting. She noticed coffee grounds, tea leaves and various composting remnants mixed into the soil. They lent the dirt an airier, lighter aspect than any she might have expected in this area of the lawn, as here, even in drier weather, the soil tended to remain somewhat damp.
Granny came round the corner of the house carrying a colander filled with potato eyes and a wrinkled looking dried-out pepper.
“Thought I’d get us a garden started. Already late,” she said, reaching to open one of the roof windows.
“Here. Let me help you.”
Granny reached into her apron pocket, pulled out a trowel and handed it to Martha.
“These here potato eyes should sprout, and the pepper seeds should be dry enough for planting. Think we could have a larger plot dug? Couldn’t find any flats for starters, but I think this arrangement will work well enough. With the size household we have, we’ll need a sizable garden.”
Granny interpreted Martha’s silence as assent. “I remember back in the seventies when I was volunteering with Ecology Action group, we determined that if you did it right you could get vegetables for a family of four from a hundred-square-foot plot. That was if you gardened biointensively. I think I still remember most of what I learned then, so if I plan about a two-hundred-square-foot plot, that would provide vegetables for eight.”
Granny was definitely on a roll. “I paced off the driveway on this side and found it to be about forty feet long, so I thought maybe we could just string it out here along the drive, real low to the line of the property so that even if the summer is dry it’d catch enough water so as to not have us always havin’ to worry about totin’ water to it.”
“I’ll talk to Lem, Gran. Maybe he could help us. Or better yet, I’ll see if Dody couldn’t find us somebody willing.”
As it turned out, Martha got to talk to Dody first, and so it was he who talked to Lem. And instead of Dody, it was Lem who sent up a Puerto Rican man whom Lem said was working on a garden down by the shanty in which the man and his wife and children lived by the lake. The garden wasn’t very large, perhaps six feet by two, but by Lem’s report, things seemed to grow like magic in it.
Lem also said that if they needed seeds, he could probably order them online, which set Granny off on a trip to Lem’s communication center. There the two of them looked up Ecology Action and came up with a website called growbiointensive, which not only confirmed that the biointensive movement had started as Ecology Action in the1970s as Granny had suggested, but that its ideas were still valued and indeed they still sold seeds.
According to the Ecology Action site, if you were gardening biointensively, you broadcast-seeded in one set of flats, transitioned to a second set of “fresh flat soil” and then moved into what was call
ed the “growing bed.”
“Well, we can skip the talk of flats. Don’t have any. Martha is not a gardener. If these seeds are broadcast, it will be right into the greenhouse and then out into the garden.”
Lem laughed. “How about if I get you some old wooden cheese boxes to use as flats?”
“Where you gonna get them?”
“Not get. Got.”
“Got how?”
“Not how.” Lem was ready to play. “Where?”
“Well, got where?”
“Got what?”
Granny laughed. “You know what.”
They both laughed and then Lem said, “Well, the what is where I saw them yesterday.”
“Where?”
“Ah, now, you come to me.” He wiggled his pointer finger near to Granny’s nose. “In my shed.”
Granny gave him a slap on the shoulder. “Course I want ’em. But they gotta be at least three inches deep.”
“They are. I bet they’re fifty years old or older. Long wooden American cheese boxes. Maybe four inches across by ten inches long and about four inches high.”
“Ideal! When can I have them?”
“Le’me bring them up to you this evening.”
“You wanna do that, don’t expect me to try’n stop ya.”
“Deal!”
“Deal!”
As it turned out, Domingo was not without his own ideas. He offered Martha a trade she couldn’t refuse: He said he’d turn over, prepare and tend a garden that would run the length of the drive with a width equal to his arms’ width, finger tip to finger tip, if she, in turn, would let him run a garden along the side of hers of half that width, which he would also turn, plant and tend in exchange for the opportunity to grow fresh produce for his family. What was there to lose? But then he would have to understand that this garden would be gardened biointensively.
Domingo recalled he had first thought Martha would want the garden up by the shed where the sun shone down freely and the ground was well drained, but when Granny had explained it, he had immediately recognized her selection of the lowest level on the land in order to save on the need for more frequent watering as a better idea. So when Martha mentioned biointensive gardening, he decided that whatever it was, it would probably improve upon what he already knew, and anyway it was her garden.
So a garden larger than anyone in Locklee had seen in many a year grew up along the side of Martha’s drive. And when Domingo’s wife told the story of his success along the lake in shanty town, the news spread like hot fire. Then all kinds of deals were floated and agreed to with the result that in Locklee and Ellensville most lawns sprouted lengths, circles, squares and rectangles of gardens of varying sizes. The most common-sized garden was about ten by ten feet. Some of the gardens flourished and some turned to weeds and a few were then replanted as lawns. Failures were sometimes the result of a gardener’s lack of understanding as to how to get things to grow. But more often they were caused by things such as the Newcomers moving on or becoming unexpectedly ill with radiation sickness. This left little reason for the property owners to rail at anyone. However, it did leave them feeling somewhat weak, had, helpless and shaking their fists when dry periods turned the gardens into dust bowls and later rains turned them into ugly weed patches.
Grass seed had run out at the lumber yard. It seemed that in their effort to keep down the mud when it rained, the Newcomers in Shantytown had done everything they could to grow lawns near their shanties. So, for most, there was little left to do but to mow the scarred lawns and wait for the abandoned garden plots to put forth new green on their own. And the villagers knew that if they continued to mow weeds and grass alike, the thicker roots of the grass would overtake the weeds. So if not this year then next year, when the grass re-rooted and spread or when grass seed once more became available, the lawns would again take on their former continuous greenness. The Townees continued to mow and to wait.
But wasn’t the whole town waiting for something?
Wherever there was a garden, the gardeners began to hope and pray for rain. Not too much. Just enough. And anyone among them who walked or rode to the lake learned to always take with them a jug for water for use in one garden or another on their return. And when the days brought rain they carried the jugs just as they did when there was no rain. For there would come again a day when there would be no rain. And as long as they knew all their jugs were full and ready, dry days were less of a threat.
And as the population stabilized in the houses that had become wayside camps, a few of the more innovative began to divide up their lands into temporary family-sized “victory gardens.” And within these garden rectangles, Newcomer families often developed outdoor “homes.” These areas held tables and chairs and occasional pup tents or sun umbrellas or makeshift lean-tos, and depending on each family’s tastes and preferences, a variety of seasonal vegetables were planted.
In this way the nutritional needs of the forced emigrants were better met. Also, the overcrowded conditions in the more permanent homes of many of the Townees were somewhat alleviated. And as long as the weather held, the resident Newcomer gardeners found in these patches a small sense of increased independence and freedom.
At Martha’s, Domingo thought of himself as the property caretaker, appearing and leaving at regular intervals, mowing the lawn regularly in exchange for his own set of six storm windows, which he moved to the lake where he sprouted lima beans, snap beans, lettuce, pole peas, green peppers, corn, and sunflowers—which sprouted in a week or two—and tomatoes—which might take up to six weeks because they were always in such demand. Whatever he grew there, he sold at a prime rate to others not so lucky as to have their own green house. And, as he continued to honor his garden agreement with Granny and Martha with the conscientiousness of a devoted family member, occasionally he bartered away or sold for cash any excess of cherry tomatoes or lettuce he produced there.
Domingo and Granny together planted about one hundred and fifty sprouted pieces of potatoes. And as they both liked peas, they agreed to stagger the pea season with the result that peas were available from early summer through late fall. Their lettuce matured almost immediately, it seemed. So they staggered the plantings of lettuce, too, and as long as the weather remained warm, fresh salad was available to all in Martha’s crew.
When the potatoes were ready, they harvested them and planted bush beans and corn in their place. These Granny had readied before time in the flats and greenhouses. And when the first peas had been harvested along with the onions and beets, they replaced the onions with a second pea planting and the peas with more lettuce and chard. They tried broccoli but with poor results. Although it was edible, its blooms were minimal. So instead of cooking the broccoli, Granny and Rozlyn just mixed the small florets into evening salads.
But the tomatoes were everyone’s greatest joy. The cherry tomatoes came in first, followed by the Italian ones, and later by the beefsteaks. Little did they know that come fall Granny would have everyone red to the elbows preparing tomatoes for canning in every stray bottle or jar she had been able to barter, beg or steal throughout the summer.
They had decided against carrots as the land was not sufficiently sandy, but they went with a small planting of radishes all the same and lots of onions and spinach and a generous number of pepper and tomatillo plants. This last was Domingo’s suggestion, to which Granny had agreed on the condition that Domingo would grow some rhubarb and promise he would keep it as well watered as he would the squash and cucumbers.
While the young, dark haired, proud Puerto Rican and the slight, graying Granny in the garden worked together like thieves, Granny permitted Domingo into the house only for water and to use the bathroom. When it was time to eat the soup or sandwich she prepared for him daily, and to drink the cup of coffee she always offered him (which he insisted on taking “Black. No sugar. No milk, please,” and seemed bent on repeating daily), she had him sit on the back porch.
It seeme
d that each of them had his or her own standards.
And limits.
FOUR Summer and into Fall, 2020
1. Settling In
As the size of the population maxed out, Newcomers and regular residents had no choice but to accept the crowded, marginal to severely substandard living conditions in which they found themselves. Newcomer village life-styles had divided into those who lived in the shanty town along the lakeside and those who had been partially or completely integrated into the homes of the Townees. Then of course there were the Townees, most of whom lived as they had, in a way that wrapped the youth of the town to the socio-economic history of their parents and their parents’ parents in houses handed down from father to son. Gas had been rationed. The loss of delivery trucks in the fiery aftermath on the periphery of the event, coupled with the loss of some gasoline producing refineries in West Cordaban State necessitated it. But due to the importance of the Citizens’ Electronic Communication System to the community, Lem was among those prioritized to have gasoline for his truck.
The back of Lem’s truck was filled with seasoned firewood and kindling. He was getting ready to leave to trade the truck’s contents for food and necessities among the Newcomers. Now, even at larger stores where the electronic banking system remained down, the lack of available cash necessitated considerable use of the barter system.
The exchange rate for wood was roughly one bundle of kindling or ten two-foot long quarter cuts of logs for six dollars of goods or one rabbit, one chicken or one cake of soap. Cigarette lighters were in such shortage that for one of them Lem had to trade four bundles of kindling and logs. And he found that lighter fluid could run as high as six. And as the hunters increasingly had to go higher and higher into the mountains in search of game, the fear for their lives without a lighter or compass had caused even the smallest of compasses to be exchangeable for groceries for four for the week. Further, with the distribution of electricity still makeshift, in the shanty town flashlights, candles, and batteries were at a premium. A flashlight or a package of regular flashlight batteries might cost as much as two bundles of cut wood and an armful of faggots or two rabbits or six pounds of fresh fish. A roll of toilet paper cost one bundle of wood or three pounds of fresh fish.
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