“Okay, May. I think that does it.”
May gave her brother a playful hug. “Arthur, what would we do without you?”
Lem hugged her back. “I’ll be at the firehouse communications and distribution center until around three. I’ll be handling the main computer. Be back somewhere around seven or sooner, if the trading goes well.”
May had a thought. “Do you think you could you get some rabbit for stew?”
“I’ll try to strike a deal with the rabbit lady this morning and pick us up two rabbits tonight.”
“You know, maybe we should get some young rabbits to raise ourselves.”
“I suppose. But she’ll only sell hers slaughtered. Waits ’til they’re full grown. Gets more money that way and does not set up any competition for herself.”
“Oh.”
“But I could get us some young hare in the woods, if you like.”
“Oh, Arthur. I think that’s a great idea!”
He checked his pocket for the keys to his truck.
“And Arthur,…see if you can find us some fruit among the peddler stands. Cheaper than in the market.”
“Yeah. I was planning a quick swing around the stands after work. Never know what you might find.”
“And see if you can get some hair conditioner. Dahlia’s hair is so fine and dried out that every time I comb it, more and more breaks off.”
Lem slipped his arm around May’s shoulder and pulled her sideways to him at the waist, planting a kiss on her increasingly white-salted hair. “Sounds like a bit of a challenge but I’ll try.”
Those who settled newly in Ellensville were mostly a mix of those who owned nothing before the event and those who had lost everything because of it. Mostly they were working class people with few options. Now, however, a strong back and the will to work was better tender than money, as even with money, what was needed could not be bought. And for the first time in New Carlton history there were minorities, mostly Spanish speaking with a smaller percentage of blacks. But they all seemed willing to work cooperatively and were usually ready to take on any job to better the community that harbored them. Given their willingness to work, their presence at times seemed more a gift than a burden.
Those Newcomers who preferred to labor less and to enjoy a more routine existence tended to move on. Also those who wanted a more varied existence, more “culture,” and the no-hassle pleasure of the use of money rather than the barter system, left. The result was that the communities of Ellensville and Locklee settled into an odd but relatively harmonious existence primarily governed by rules of decorum and respect, albeit with the rules somewhat changed from earlier times. But complicating the quieting picture continued to remain the likelihood of the arrival at some point in time of what might well prove to be somewhat less than welcome increased help from the organized outside world. Such sources might include with greater involvement entities earlier much sought after but now something becoming more and more an afterthought…SEMA, FEMA, and the likes.
At dusk Lem returned with a truck empty of wood and a cab laden with two rabbits, two bottles of hair conditioner, two cakes of soap, one box of strawberries, four large cans of canned tomatoes, one can of pumpkin, six boxes of pasta, a bag of dried white beans, a five-pound bag of flour, two pounds of sugar, a tin of coffee, a box of Lipton’s tea, eight rolls of toilet paper, and a bag of apples. The whole list had cost him about twenty-five bundles of wood and kindling. The eight rolls of toilet paper, two large cakes of soap, two bottles of hair conditioner, and the can of coffee had cost him ten bundles alone. But he knew where there was a tree that had fallen in one of last year’s early thunderstorms. Tomorrow he would go to work on it. Also, they still had a shed full of seasoned wood for the fireplace come winter.
“Strawberries! Strawberries!” chanted Carrie and Dahlia, however Lem diverted them each with a stick of gum, which he took from his shirt pocket and which the two girls immediately accepted and began to open.
“Hey. Don’t I get a hug?” he asked.
Carrie hugged Lem and returned to opening the wrapper, but Dahlia remained hung up in opening the gum papers. So Lem grabbed her and lifted her over his head. Still she pointedly ignored him, intent on the gum. But when he threatened to bring no more, she reached for his neck to hug him and laughingly landed a firm kiss on his cheek. It was not the first time they had played this game.
Tonight both girls would have baths and their hair washed and tomorrow they would go sweet-smelling to the school they now attended half days since the classes had to go double-session to permit half of the school to be used for shelter for the Newcomers. And in the morning while her daughters were at school, May would enjoy the luxury of a soapy bath and the use of hair conditioner herself. Ablutions however, she was happy to just stand with one of the bars of soap close to her nose breathing in its freshness.
2. Getting It Together
As summer shook her hips and settled with full weight around the lake she brought a mix of light, breezy and heavy, humid days. The traffic, while still crowded due to the increase of through-traffic from emigrated vehicles, had come to move more steadily. On all but the most sticky-hot of days, tempers flared less when slow moving traffic snarled. But with the use of makeshift carts and over laden bicycles and the inevitable unpredictability of kids and disoriented vagabonds, problems with traffic jams continued. So equipped with walkie-talkies, pepper spray, and their very evident shotguns—none of which had ever actually been fired in the line of duty, but all of which remained loaded and ready—the Red Hats remained, albeit in smaller numbers, along the main route in and out of town, visibly on guard in their effort to ensure the peace and to keep the traffic moving. At this point in time, Lem worked as the dispatcher between the points of arrival into and exiting from the village. He also coordinated the dispatch system for the community watch group.
Then gradually, with cutback in call for their services, some of the Red Hats oiled and put away their guns in wait for the next season, wondering as they did so if there would be any deer to hunt as they had harvested not only buck, but also does and fawn in their off-season foraging for food for the Townees and Newcomers.
Occasionally the road needed to be opened for important deliveries of food, medicine and supplies. Generally it was, but when it was not, the community, with the coordinated efforts of the Red Hats, made sure it became open. From his communications post, Lem, and amid the traffic, Thaw and Dody, each served gigs as Red Hats. The stories that emerged from their time beside the road ranged from the laughable to the incredible.
One day Dody arrived at Martha’s to confer with Jorge on the topic of closets. Martha opened the door but before she could say hello, Dody was in the middle of the room. He tossed his red hunting cap to score a ringer on the post back of a slider rocker.
“Never saw such dang craziness! Just crazy. That’s what I call it. Crazy.”
Martha said nothing. She knew Dody. All she had to do was stand there. They could converse about it later. After the performance. If Dody felt like it.
“Here’s this ambulance tryna get through with supplies and t’ pick up this guy at the nunnery who has burned his hands and face with lye he was using for some privy he thinks he’s an expert on and there’s this here homeless guy with a shoppin’ cart hangin’ with bulgin’ plastic bags and full of glass jars and catsup bottles. Now what is he gonna do with them? Beyond me. Not the deposit kind. Every kind but. And there he is just walkin’ in the middle of the road goin’ about the speed of a runny nose on a sub-zero day in mid-winter. So I go up to him and ask him to move over to the side of the road, but he just keeps on walkin’ down the double yellow with the traffic near bumper to bumper on either side out there near Bloakie’s where they blasted through that rock to take that hairpin turn out of the road. And here’s the ambulance right up his gazoo waitin’ for him to move outa the way. Nothin’. He don’t move. He hardly even keeps movin’ forward. So the guy in the car to his rig
ht says somethin’ like, ‘Hey, bud, there’s an ambulance comin’ through.’ Nothin’. Then the kids in the car on the other side start chanting, “Move it over, move it over, move it over, now. Move it over, move it over, move it over, NOW.” Then the ambulance starts its siren. Real low at first, kind of beepin’. Then it gets louder and louder and the cars on both sides that have pulled over so the ambulance can pass start beepin’. And after about five minutes of this and me talkin’ to him a mile a minute all the while, he just kind of makes a left and weaves between the cars, and once near the rock, continues on his way. And ya’ know what, in all that time he don’t never lift his eyes from them bottles, change his speed or say a word. So I think maybe he is deaf or somethin’. So I follow him to the side of the road to see what he is up to and he turns to me and real nonchalant like says, “With all those crazy drivers honking and yelling, you certainly have your work cut out for you,” and he looks at the bottles again and just keeps agoin’ the way he was, but this time along the side of the road.
“Crazy is what it is. Just crazy. And we’re supposed to know what to do when these things happen. And here I am there, was there, saw it, saw it not work, saw it work, and I haven’t got a clue as to why this guy would not move and even less of a clue as to why he finally did. And I don’t think he was deaf, and when he spoke he talked like some college professor using all his -ings and fancy ‘t’ sounds.” Dody stopped to catch a breath. “Got any cold water, Martha? Need a drink. Need a big drink. Need a big drink of cold water.”
It was almost a year since The Event. They had survived a summer, a fall, and a winter and were already well into their second summer. Natalie was working part-time for the Lochlee County and Thaw was back to Nick-Sue for the summer session. The community in its patchwork way seemed more or less settled in when a wave of petty crime swept it. Over the past month, some half dozen properties were hit. Gardens were raided for food and houses were broken into for whatever could be carried, used or sold. Determining if the perpetrators were community members resulted in a beefing up of the neighborhood watch system with the Red Hats maintaining a border at the beginning and end of each town. At each stop, as people passed they are required to identify themselves and state whether or not they were just passing through. As a similar stop was maintained at each entry to each town, it became possible to determine if those who said they were just passing through really did. And for those who failed to pass through in a couple of hours, when they did arrive at a stop post, they were pulled over and searched.
Martha’s place had not had a difficulty with vandalism, but one day at Butternut, May, as she was returning from having dropped the children off at school, heard Tufty settin’ up a rukus at Thaw’s and Natalie’s. She edged her car up closer as she knew both had probably left for work, and there she found a teenager wielding a heavy stick to keep Tufty at bay. The legs of a second boy were to be seen scrambling through an open window.
Unobserved she backed away and used her two-way to contact Lem, who, within minutes, arrived in his truck. Taking his shotgun down from its resting place across the window and clapping on a red hunting hat, he headed up the hill to where he found the younger boy throwing food out the window. He noted that the older boy had enticed Tufty into a game of fetch, which kept the dog distracted.
Lem pulled up at a slight distance, stopped, and descended from the truck, being careful not to trigger the readied shotgun.
“Mornin’. How you boys doin’?”
The younger one ducked down behind the window ledge within the house. The older one looked up startled, but he managed to get out an, “Oh. Good morning.”
“How you doin’?” Lem queried.
“Pretty good,” the older boy answered.
“I’m Lem,” Lem offered and held out his hand.
The boy accepted it. “I’m Jason. Nice to meet you, Lem.”
“Say, Jason, do you think you could get your brother out here?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He turned toward the open window. “Hey, Marty! You can come out now.”
Marty raised his towhead above the sill of the window. He looked to be somewhere between eight and ten years of age.
“Whatcha’ doin’ there, Marty?” asked Lem.
“Cleaning.” Marty always had an answer.
“Cleaning out, you mean,” suggested Lem. “Cleaning out the refrigerator.”
“Yeah.” Marty appeared nonplussed. “Something like that.”
“Well, Marty, suppose you get yourself out here and pick up this stuff and put it back where you got it. My friends would miss it when they got back if you didn’t.”
“Whatcha’ going to do with us?” asked Jason as Tufty approached to restart the play.
“Well, first of all I’m gonna’ to take you down to my house and give you each a bowl of soup. And second of all I’m gonna’ take you down to the Red Cross station so they can arrange for you to get your next meal.”
Jason looked up from petting Tufty. Relief filled his face. “Really?”
Lem just stood there. “Really.”
“Maybe I’d better go help Marty. Make it faster.”
But Lem was not that trusting. “No. You stay right there. You got the benefit of the doubt from me this time. But not that much benefit. I figure you and your brother are just hungry kids looking for a handout…but I didn’t say I know it to be true. So you can just stand there thinking about how you are going to explain to me how you were an accomplice in breaking and entry into my best friend’s home and how as the older brother you set your younger brother up to become a thief.”
Thaw and Natalie returned home that night to a full refrigerator and May got to serve the potential thieves a meal. And the potential thieves reported being separated from their parents who commuted to work in a town near Magdum Heights. According to the older brother, Jason, the mother worked as a speech pathologist in the schools in Aesopolis and their father worked as an engineer at Magdum Heights. Calls to their respective work numbers by Jason had received non-working number responses.
According to the boys, when the Heights went down, they were repairing a bike in the basement of their home. Suddenly the ground shook beneath them. Emerging from where they were, they discovered fires in the distant south. As it was unclear as to how close or far they were or what might have been their cause, Jason had ordered Marty to fill his school backpack with cans of food and a large bottle of water. He had done the same but included also two forks, a sharp knife, a can opener, and a roll of toilet paper. Jason then had ordered Marty to don a sweat suit with a hood over his clothes in case the weather turned cold or they wound up sleeping outside. The two of them then took off for the main road where a truck driver picked them up and took them perhaps thirty miles north. After this it was more difficult getting a lift but in the first truck they had learned from the trucker’s two-way radio that Magdum Heights had gone down. This had confirmed Jason’s greatest fears. Saying nothing of the implications of what Jason mentally also referred to as “the event” to Marty, the two of them had continued to hitch all the way to Bain where they had managed to find room in a shelter in which they subsisted until the winter broke. But Jason, by now having gathered enough information to pretty much confirm he would never see his parents alive again, and not yet ready to return to view the devastation or lack thereof of their locked but abandoned home, determined to push northward, away from the city and away from the crowded shelter where emigrants and Bain street people slept mixed in a crowded room containing twelve cots.
In the shelter, Jason had managed to get a cot for Marty next to his, and by pulling it closer each was able to reach out a hand to confirm at various times throughout the nights the safety of the other. In this way they passed the winter with Jason looking, mostly unsuccessfully, for employment and Marty playing in the alleys and streets of Bain and wandering in and out of stores for warmth and safety. By mid winter, Marty had become quite facile at helping himself to small items such
as gloves and caps and candies and crackers with peanut butter or cheese on them, which he stored beneath his mattress for rainy days. Jason, however was able to pick up a bit of cash now and then, washing store windows and shoveling snow with a shovel he had stolen from an old lady’s front porch. Most of it he saved, but what he spent he spent on items such as packages of sliced ham or bars of soap which he shared with his brother. When, around Christmas, he spied his brother’s stolen stash beneath the mattress, he reprimanded him, started him on an allowance and bought him a shovel so he could earn his own money when it snowed, which it did rather frequently but never heavily that year. And when spring broke he bought them each a ticket north by train to Ellensville where they camped in the woods in a pop-up tent he had purchased in Bain and survived on wild berries, vegetables stolen from gardens, and fish Jason would buy in town until he was able to steal a fishing pole and catch his own.
And so it was that they had in their wanderings eventually stumbled onto Thaw’s property and found it ripe for picking. Tufty was anything but ferocious, and one of the windows had been left raised to let in the breezes from the lake. Cutting the screen had not been a problem, but then Lem had presented himself and so it was that they landed in the best place possible, given their situation. After they had enjoyed a hot dinner prepared by May of leftovers, Lem took them down to the Red Cross station and arrangements were made for them to live temporarily in a shelter. Next, the Red Cross, after careful questioning, managed to locate a hospitable maternal aunt who lived in Ohio, and so the two boys were shipped off to stay with her and her family (with a stipend to be provided by the county), who would list them as foster children. There they would attend school and return to a more normal lifestyle, orphans still, but no longer on the road and without proper food, housing and schooling. There they would live parentless but better provided for than many of the children in Ellensville where, due to the overcrowding issue, the kindergarten through high school building remained only half available as a school, the other half being utilized as a shelter.
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