Within the last month or so, the Red Cross had parked a large supply van permanently in the shopping plaza in Ellensville. There it maintained a list of people looking for relatives and needs expressed by specific members of the community, and provided prepared meals for those who sought them. For those wise enough to seek out the Red Cross help station, their wants were more likely to be met procedurally without encouraging them to resort for vandalism and thievery. The guards at the lumberyard were released as there was no longer any lumber to steal, the bulk of it having been sold to emigrants seeking to build everything from shanties to makeshift beds and tables and benches. The lumberyard owners however continued to light the yard well at night and the community patrol continued to cover the area regularly lest any Newcomers in frustration over the lack of availability of carpentry and building materials should begin to tear it down piece by piece for the aged lumber of its fences and sheds.
Thaw and Natalie had discussed with some amazement how quickly the Newcomers had learned to build shanties from two-by-fours and plywood. With eight eight-by-four sheets of plywood and a dozen eight-foot long two-by-fours, they could provide the walls to an eight-by-eight-foot shanty in which a family of four might sleep comfortably once a floor was nailed in place and a roof provided. And for those with means, doubling the size to sixteen by eight was just as possible. They found that even a mother or father inexperienced in the use of a hammer and nails very soon learned to drive them straight, holding the hammer near the handle end for maximum strike power. And given the plywood sheets came in standard sizes, one needed only to estimate the length needed for the two-by-four supports and, with a borrowed saw, to cut the length accordingly.
As the year progressed, the sick and dying were weeded out leaving primarily the healthy. So although initially most of the Newcomer shanties had been borrowed from local fisherman, now the healthy took pride in, at first chance possible, building their own shanties and returning the borrowed ones to their owners. And so it came to be that the make-shift shanties made from up-ended truck beds, tarps and pipes and even up-ended half buried tubs were also replaced by what became mostly a standard eight-by-sixteen shanty. And these the villagers took some care in lining up along what came to be avenues at right angles newly named Elm, Cinderwalk, Due East, Mud Row, and Shady Lane. Soon thereafter the Newcomers took to numbering their shanties and painting the number and avenue name on the front with the family name painted below it. With this it became possible to even give directions as to how to find one shanty or another, which served well to facilitate the contacts by family members through the Red Cross.
Some of the shanties had makeshift or real mailboxes affixed to their fronts and a minority of inhabitants even managed to coax some grass to grow on the 20 by 30 foot plot each one had been assigned. So, thrown together as it was, the shanty town came to have an air of reassuring organization about it, with pets tied and children playing within the ten by twenty foot area generally kept as a front yard for each shanty. And on the sunny side of a number of the shanties, foot wide gardens were planted for climbing tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers, which the residents coaxed up strings nailed to two-by-fours about six or seven feet from the ground. And as most Newcomers were not regularly employed, they sat in their front yards on nicer days and visited with their neighbors, sharing stories and ideas. In this way helpful tips on gardening and building spread like hot fire and not one but all came to know that tomatoes, squash and cukes can be coaxed to grow up a string from a plot of land only a foot wide and that nasturtiums, onions, and marigolds keep away pests and that lettuce and pea planting can be staggered. And with this came a sense of community that stemmed from a gentle kind of competitiveness related to things such as seeing whose cukes would produce first, whose onions were the largest, and whose lettuce was most continuously in production.
The problem that remained, however, was getting the plants off to a good start, for as most of the people were not really farmers, they tended to over-seed, over-water, and inadequately prepare the soil for the first planting. And so it was they looked to purchase small plants ready for planting. Thus when Domingo set up his greenhouse built of Martha’s leftover, cast off storm windows, he could not keep up with the demand. And as well as bartered materials in exchange for his young plants, he began to accrue a little cash.
On a warm morning when Domingo was out preparing some seeds by carefully planting them one at a time in some vermiculite held in the sections of two paper egg cartons he had salvaged from the garbage dump, a man on a bicycle with several lengths of weathered barn wood under his arm arrived. “Good morning. Do you have any tomato plants you’d be willing to sell?” he asked.
“How many do you need?” Domingo queried, eyeing the wood the man was toting.
“I’d like eight, but I’d settle for four if they’re healthy,” responded the cyclist.
“That’d be ten dollars,” Domingo told him.
“I’ve only got two,” said the man.
“How about we make a trade?” proposed Domingo.
The man looked interested. “Trade what?”
Domingo named his offer. “Those two pieces of wood for eight plants.”
“For real?” The cyclist looked a bit skeptical.
Domingo’s head bobbed up and down. “For sure, for real.”
“No money?” Now the cyclist looked puzzled.
“No,” Domingo confirmed. “Keep your money.”
“It’s a deal,” said the cyclist firmly, proffering his hand, which Domingo shook once firmly.
Domingo selected eight five-to-six inch-high tomato plants, which he placed carefully in two paper bags supported by some cardboard cut to size in the bottom of each, and the man gave him the wood.
“Bring me two more boards like these and you can have eight more plants of anything you choose,” promised Domingo.
“Be back before noon,” replied the man and wheeled off on his bike, whistling as he went, the two paper bags gently swaying back and forth, one over each handle as he peddled off down the avenue.
In this way Domingo expanded his greenhouse to three times its original size with two windows to each section supported below by the lengths of barn wood standing on end, and it came to be that he supplied and continued to supply most of the shanties’ gardens with their most prized plants throughout the summer. And as he did, he accumulated cash enough to feel he needed to deposit it in the bank where he rented a security box to which he added regularly each time he saved forty dollars to deposit. By the end of the summer his shanty had in it all the niceties his family might have asked for in their new situation, and he had saved some eight hundred dollars kept safe from the IRS, computer failure and thieves in the security box at the Ellensville Bank. Meantime his family ate well from the garden at Martha’s where recently Miriam had been reunited with Jorge, her husband. As Domingo had taken an immediate liking to Jorge and their wives were already well-acquainted, it wasn’t long before the two families began to get together at least weekly to swim, picnic, and plan for the future.
From this developed a joint plan for securing some land and building their houses adjacent to one another with Jorge handling the stone work and Domingo doing the landscaping and the two of them working together building at first two basements in which their respective families might temporarily dwell as they worked above. Then as soon as they might, they would add above ground what would eventually become their homes. They would build Domingo’s cellar first and then Jorge’s. Included in the plan was Luis, Jorge’s Columbian friend and traveling companion, whose eyesight had completely recovered from the damage done by the intense light of the nuclear blast. He would be given Domingo’s shanty as soon as Domingo and his family could move into their cellar. That was of course in exchange for the Columbian’s help in building it. After the moves, the three would then set to work on Jorge’s future home.
When the Red Cross arrived they brought some of their own equipment and
Lem brought some from the firehouse to link up the two communication centers. They were set up in the basement of the Episcopalian Church. There also cots were set up in what became the Red Cross workers’ living room and dining area. In this way the community was permitted linked twenty-four hour coverage of the computers, phones, walkie-talkies, and short wave. And the assignment of duties became easily shared through contact between the Red Cross and the firehouse as both provided two-person volunteer twenty-four-hour coverage for the station for the area. But as the Red Cross help station had the most direct ties with state-wide and national networks, the community found that the more broad community-based or medical emergencies could be generally expediently met if the Red Cross was contacted first.
Thus when the abandoned nunnery became a sickbay for persons on their way to the hospital, the Red Cross would be called upon to hunt up needed supplies. And when a message came in by phone, computer, walkie-talkie or short wave of a victim of heat stroke, malnutrition, heart failure, or any number of bizarre kinds of injuries caused by people using things they don’t know how to use…guns, lye, tents, campfires…the people in the communication center in the firehouse, having grown up in the area, could speed the Red Cross on its way to finding an answer. This was because it was found that even without a written index or computerized list, the Townees usually knew who might best be the first responder to the situation. Thus it usually did not take long to get some appropriate attention to a problem: First phase was almost always calming the reporter. Second phase generally required determining whether the problem would be best treated on site by neighbors or at the hospital, supply center, sickbay, or at a medical center. The next was usually arranging for transportation for the staff of the Red Cross and/or medical team.
In most emergencies, the communication center found that the primary need was for transportation and/or initial treatment at the sickbay. Sometimes as many as fifteen people would be waiting there for transportation to the nearest doctor or hospital.
The sickbay was run by volunteer nurses with supplies from the Red Cross. But the Red Cross was better able to secure medicines than it was to secure decon and infection control materials as even soap to disinfectant seemed perpetually at a shortage. Just keeping up with the laundry was problematic and using standard hospital precautions was further complicated by the lack of gowns, gloves, and masks and a staff that was overworked, stressed out, and at risk themselves of collapse.
Learning of the severity of the challenges associated with infection control, not only in the sickbay, but throughout the community, the Episcopalian Ladies Group took it upon themselves to learn how to make soap. Their product was not unlike the large cakes of yellow Fels Naptha soap once available in the stores for washing clothes. They distributed it first to the medical support stations and then to the community at large. Nonetheless, wherever a cake went, it was accepted with thanks and appreciation. So the women kept mixing the lye and fat and the incredibly powerful yellow soap kept dribbling out in batches of ten to twenty cakes at a time and the villagers remained grateful to the Episcopalian Ladies as the spread of illness throughout the village kept to a level pretty much as it had always been: present but not overly frightening.
At Martha’s things went along rather well. The vegetable gardens continued to yield food. The women seemed to enjoy cooperative cooking and cleaning. As for Jorge, most of his early months in the house, he had worked to build a closet in each room in which there had been none. The closets were intended to be used by each room’s respective inhabitant or inhabitants. Even Dody, rather than seeing Jorge as a competitor in the carpentry field, enjoyed the man-to-man discussions they had on how to achieve well-finished closets using ingenuity and any available building materials.
At Martha’s house a minimum of seven sat to dinner each evening with the eighth chair often filled by Lem or Dody or Thaw or Natalie, each of whom never arrived without something for the household to share, including fish from the men, clothes and supplies from Natalie, and knitted mittens and head bands made by hand by May to be used in the coming winter.
Interestingly, as the table only sat eight, unless any of them were specifically invited as a couple, each took care to come alone. This worked because the village was so close that each could apprise the others directly or indirectly of his or her visiting plan. As such, no one could recollect an evening in which more than one of them arrived shortly before dinner to chat and deliver gifts and, under protest, to sit down to enjoy one of the tasty meals prepared and served by the team headed by Granny but participated in by Rozlyn, Juanita, and when she was home, Martha.
Marlena, given all the attention she received daily from the household, had calmed down significantly, and when on occasion it was Dody who stopped by, she simply licked his hand in greeting, sought out a preferred toy, and lay down to chew on it in the corner.
Only Dody doggedly refused to ever share a meal, insisting always he had one waiting at home. He did, however, generally welcome a large glass of cool water, which he would nurse through the meal but for which he would not accept any replenishment.
“Granny, may I have more vegetable soup. It’s delicious,” said Rozlyn one evening during dinner.
“Thank you, Rozlyn.” Granny started to rise but Jorge signaled for her to stay, rising instead and picking up Rozlyn’s bowl and adding a ladle full to it.
“You and I always like it when it is thickest with tomatoes and beans, Rozlyn,” commented Grandma. “May I have some, too, Jorge?”
“And I?” prompted Martha.
Soup constituted an important part of most evening meals and tonight almost everyone at the table asked for seconds. Rozlyn cleared the bowls away and Miriam and Martha served a small piece of fried fish to each person followed by a boiled potato and some green beans. Most of the people at the table cut or mashed the potato and drizzled olive oil over it. Black coffee and tea were served with a bowl of dry milk to be passed around for those who preferred it. The meal was light but healthy, and looking in on a nightly basis one would be forced to conclude that the meat and fish and dry supply contributions of the almost nightly guests were very important to the nutritional health of this family and that without the success of Granny’s garden they would all be going hungry.
Potatoes were stored in the dark corners of the cellar. Piccadilly, tomatoes, pickles and rhubarb had been canned and stored along the stairs to the furnace room. Corn had been dried for popping. From blueberries picked on Thaw’s property, enough blueberry jam had been made for Lem, Thaw, and Martha’s households. Seeds had been collected and preserved for the next spring. A large bag of chestnuts had been stored at the head of the stairs to the attic along with a bushel of green apples bartered in exchange for eight ears of corn at the swap market. A couple of jars of each kind of canned goods had been distributed to May and Natalie for use in their homes.
Gathered around the table talking and laughing on any given evening who might guess from a casual glance the horrendous happening that brought together this merged and alternate family? Nor how Martha’s openness to newness and diversity and trust in other people might have provided the basis for this non-experimental communal life they had evolved among themselves. In time it all would change, but for now this is how it was and would continue, perhaps for at least another six months to a couple of years or until such time as each person had gathered his or her resources and made plans for starting again.
But it had been agreed between Martha and Granny that whatever else was to happen, Granny, who was without family, would stay with Martha for as long as she so chose, and Martha had told her that if she chose to stay permanently that would be fine.
But Jorge and Miriam and their girls would want their own home. As would Elaine as soon as Manfred returned.
But none of this was relevant then. There they were and there they stayed, warm in the circle of Martha’s makeshift crew and happy to have one another in such a time of devastation in the outs
ide world.
Unlike at Martha’s, however, things at Butternut were in for some rapid and significant change, although Thaw did not know it when he called Tufty from under the table where she lay, opened the cabin door, let the two of them out, and started down the hill. He still kept his arm covered. The area of the tear remained fragile and the scar pretty ugly and red, but despite some difficulty straightening the arm out fully, the hand was working.
The weather was clear and a hint of early fall was in the air. They wandered towards Lem’s, the dog bouncing happily along beside the man. Before he reached Lem’s house, Thaw spied Lem in his shed. He was working with a piece of wood and some hooked screws. Since they had started locking the door, it seemed to Lem they were always trying to locate one set of keys or another. So he was making a key holder to place near the front door of his house for everyone to use on entering.
“Hey, Lem. Haven’t seen much of you lately. Whatcha’ upta?”
“Making a key holder.”
Thaw sensed from its brevity that the answer was a bit of a defense so he pursued the question further.
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