Working With Cedar: A Post Apocalyptic Tale

by Terry McDonald

  WORKING WITH CEDAR

  By Terry McDonald

  COPYRIGHT December 15, 2015

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WORKING WITH CEDAR

  BY

  TERRY MCDONALD

  WORKING WITH CEDAR

  A Post-Apocalyptic Tale

  WEST TENNESSEE AUGUST 2068

  What I like about cedar is how easy it is to work. Mind you, it takes a decent section of log to get boards with grain that runs straight, but with the right piece, you get planks that will plane true.

  Two winters ago, my boy Jess and I discovered an abandoned sawmill more than twenty miles from the homestead. It was a small, private operation tucked back in deep woods, but the metal-roof of the seasoning shed, rusted and wind-rumpled, was mostly watertight. Peeled cedar posts supporting the shed were in great condition as was the lumber protected by the structure. That’s another attribute of cedar; it takes forever to rot.

  We hauled away two trailer loads of rough-cut cedar planks and timbers. That was before Hank Junior broke his leg and I had to shoot him.

  I dislike working with the stubborn bastard, but I had to pull his daddy, Hank senior, out of retirement. It wasn’t fair to the old mule either. He earned his old age at pasture fair and square.

  I’m figuring twenty-four boards will provide enough wood for four sturdy boxes. Most of what I’ve been doing the last few years has involved nothing more than mindless repetition of homestead tasks; chopping firewood, feeding the chickens, pulling my shift on guard duty. Old age does have a way of creeping up.

  Sometimes I like mindless repetition because it gives me time to think. Contrariwise, sometimes I hate mindless repetition because it gives me time to reminisce. I’d much rather think.

  Thinking about thinking set me to think further; the good thing about having the time for repetitive tasks is that it’s indicative I’m not in the midst of a chaotic situation.

  It took an effort to harness ole Hank, worn out and arthritic, and even more of an effort to convince him it was his duty to pull the wagonload of boards to my work area. His son, Hank Junior was easier to work with.

  Held in place with iron hoops, heavy hickory-wood sections replaced the tires on the rims of the trailer. The load bounced, jostled by every crosswise rut in the path from the lumber shed to my work area, I parked the modified Ford Ranger we use as a trailer on the shady side of the barn. At my age, working in the full sun of an August day in West Tennessee isn’t practical.

  After unhitching Hank, I led him back to the barn and gave him a feedbag of scratch corn for his troubles. I’d already had my breakfast, three boiled eggs and a pan of wilted dandelion greens. There’s not much better than those greens stirred a quick moment in a spoonful of hot pig fat with a little bit of minced wild garlic.

  Now that I’ve started working on a board, pushing my jackplane slightly off-grain to avoid digging in, watching the shaving change from pale yellow to a rich burgundy as the blade crossed heartwood and then back to yellow, smelling the clean, aromatic fragrance of the cedar, my mind is already wandering. Not thinking, I’m off reminiscing. Won’t do any good to attempt altering the path, I found out long ago a thought goes where it pleases.

  I drift back to Atlanta, June 2023. I’m in the kitchen of my apartment waiting for a frozen pizza to finish baking. The doorbell chimes. That sound is the beginning of this particular mental script. It is an oft-tread tale.

  IN THE PAST

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  JUNE 2023

  The gate guard at the entrance to the upscale apartment community phoned to let him know his sister was at the gate requesting permission to enter the complex. He gave his permission and waited for her inside his living room. At the chime, Nash Vaughn opened the door. His sister, Nora Bates, without a greeting, brushed past him, went to his living room and plopped her overweight butt onto his sofa. Nash, puzzled by her peremptory manner and the serious expression on her normally jovial face, followed close behind her.

  Not taking a seat, he asked, “What’s up sis, you all serious and… Hey, did you finally decide to leave that asshole you married?”

  “No, and he’s not an asshole just because you two hate each other. Grab a seat. I need to tell you a few things and I don’t have much time.”

  “I was about to take a pizza out of the oven. Give me a minute.”

  “Bring two plates. I missed breakfast.”

  Nash, picturing how his couch sagged when she sat, thought, “Like she needs to eat. It wouldn’t hurt her to miss breakfast and a few more meals. Christ, she’s only twenty seven, four years older than me, but she looks terrible.”

  He brought the pizza to the living room, placed it on the coffee table and sat on a cushioned chair across from his sister.

  She reached for the pizza cutter. Nash, seeing the rolls of fat on her arm, had a hard time reconciling her present form with the girl who graduated from high school only ten years ago. Back in high school, hair curly blonde, always done fashionable; a cheerleader, popular, hanging with the in-crowd. Then she married Hank Bates, a jock who lettered in four sports. Now, dye gone and two children later, her natural brown hair hung limp from her scalp.

  Hank’s short-lived straight out of high school claim to fame was showing up for three days of practice with the Georgia Tech University football team. A fractured spine put him off the team and out of college. Now he drove a big-rig, owned it, paid for with an insurance settlement. For some reason he felt driving a tractor-trailer meant he was still top dog.

  Nora used the pizza cutter, slid half of the pizza onto a plate and said, “Plain cheese and pastrami is the best.”

  Nash glanced at her plate, and thought, “So much for saving some for later.” Hank had his hunting and fishing buddies to hang with. Nora had food for comfort; that, and his nieces, two boring girls, Sandra, eight and Carol Ann, five, both of them borderline obese.” Aloud he said, “What’s up, Sis? It’s nine A.M., aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

  Nora swallowed a huge bite of barely chewed pizza and quipped, “Aren’t you?”

  It was a running joke between them. She worked for a public relations firm that had several elected officials as clients. Her company also had contracts with major private and government entities.

  Nash, on the other hand had never held a nine-to-five. He’d quit school a year before graduating simply because he was well on his way to becoming a millionaire based on the profits of cellphone and computer apps he’d created. Since then, all from the comfort of home, he’d founded a company that employed over thirty programmers.

  Now, twenty-three years old, he was worth well beyond a million, but lived, by millionaire standards, quite modestly. He could afford a home, and did in fact own several, all rentals, but preferred the close-nit communal feeling of apartment dwelling. No Porsche or Mercedes for him, his love for off-roading was why he had a hardtop Jeep parked under his carport.

  Nash, unlike his sister, kept himself lean and trim. Regular workouts at the fitness center and the guidance of his personal trainer, Kasandra Jenks, assured that. A six-foot tall Ethiopian with the build of an Amazonian, Kasandra was the equivalent of an army drill sergeant.

  He waited until his sister swallowed her huge first bite of his pizza, and then asked again, “Seriously, why are you here?”

  She looked at her greasy fingers. “Could you get me a napkin please?”

  “Get it yourself. You know where the kitchen is.”

  “Come on Nash, just get me a napkin.”

  When he returned with the paper napkin the pizza on her plate was almost gone. “Jeez Nora, are you even chewing your
food anymore?”

  Nora took the napkin, wiped her lips and fingers and said, “I told you I’m in a hurry. Nash, the shit is about to hit the fan. I have a close friend, Peggy Castile over at the CDC. I met her through the company. We have a couple of small contracts with them. Anyway, Peggy and I have known each other for several years… she has a girl about the same age as mine. She came to see me late last night with some urgent news.”

  As Nora spoke, it crossed Nash’s mind that any urgent news from someone who worked for the Center for Disease Control would not be good news.

  Nora continued speaking. “I’m repeating from memory what she told me, so some of the facts may be a little off, but here’s what’s happened.

  “Ten days ago there was an event in a small village in the DNC, a country that used to be Zaire. The UN sent an international group of thirty doctors to see firsthand the stringent controls the republic had put in place to identify, isolate, and treat Ebola patients. On their last day, the entire group toured a triage facility at a refugee camp way out in the boonies. They didn’t come into actual contact with any of the patients so they weren’t wearing full protection.”

  Nash spoke around a mouthful of pizza, “I take it some of them caught Ebola. I’m sure it’ll get contained just like always. This isn’t the first Ebola merry-go-round. Besides, they have a vaccine now”

  Nora swallowed the last bite of her half of the pizza, wiped her fingers and said, “This isn’t the same merry-go-round. There isn’t a lot of vaccine ready at hand, only a few thousand doses, not nearly enough to handle what’s coming, Peggy says time is too short to ramp up production to make a difference.

  “Nash, this is serious. Before this event, with proper precautions it was hard to catch Ebola. You had to have contact with the one infected or with their body fluids, but listen; seven days ago, after the group of doctors left, headed back to whatever countries they came from, almost everyone in the village that they visited is down with the disease.

  “This strain of the virus hits faster and harder. Twelve of the villagers and two doctors have already died. The reason is the virus has mutated. It’s transmissible airborne and the onset of symptoms is quicker. As of yesterday, nearly all the twenty-five doctors sent by the UN are in hospital isolation units. Maybe today the rest of them have come down with Ebola. What’s worse, there were fifty UN Peace Keepers sent with the doctors to protect them. Many of them are in isolation as well.

  “What Peggy told me is that the Ebola virus is present in every nation represented by the doctors and Peace Keepers. It’s too late to contain the spread of the disease. The thousands of people they came into contact with while travelling to their respective nations have undoubtedly been infected. Think planes, trains and buses.

  “Then there are those they’ve interacted with since arriving at their destination, family members, friends and work associates. Just the military escort alone had to have had contact with thousands

  “In this new form, a person is infectious before showing major symptoms… I mean the first symptom is what seems like a mild cold or hay fever, sneezing and watery eyes. Anyhow, every time one of the infected sneezed or coughed, he or she infected many of those in their immediate area. Like I said, all combined the doctors and their contingent of guards have been in contact with, and infected, possibly thousands of people.”

  Nash was a newshound and knew the deadly ramifications of Ebola being transmissible through a cough or sneeze.

  “What are you and Hank going to do?”

  “Yesterday afternoon, the CDC, in concert with the World Health Organization sent a warning to the UN to prepare for a full blown pandemic. There is no way to stop the spread. That’s why Hank and I are in a hurry. Peggy stressed the spread of the virus, like the flu, is all about vectors, avoiding contact with the infected is the only way avoid catching it. We’re going somewhere safer than the city, fewer chances of interacting with other people.

  “Hank’s at home packing our SUV. As soon as I leave, I’m on my way to buy food and other supplies. This afternoon we’re driving down to Valdosta to pick up his mom and dad.”

  “Have you spoken to Val?” Nash asked. Val, Valerie Vaughn is Nash and Nora’s mother.

  “Yes, this morning before I came here. You know how she is since dad died. She told me she’ll stay at home and the lord will protect her.”

  Their father had suffered a massive stroke two years ago. He died three days later. Without his controlling force, their mother had gone full-bore religious. Her faith was unshakable and Nash knew it would be wasted effort to try to pry her from the home she and his father had lived in since the day they married.

  “Where are you and Hank going?”

  “A couple years ago Hank and some of his buddies went to Missouri to hunt on acreage one of them owns. He said there’s a cabin there. It’s ramshackle, but it has a well and a generator. We plan to drive our SUV and to rent a small U-Haul moving truck. On the way to Valdosta and then to Missouri we’ll stop at stores along the way to buy nonperishable food and other supplies until the rental is full.”

  Nash could tell by her obvious omission that she wasn’t there to invite him to go with them. Not that he would. He and Hank were polar opposites and their association had always been abrasive. He couldn’t picture himself trapped in a cabin with him for even an hour.

  “So why are you here wasting time instead of shopping. You could have told me this on the phone.”

  Nora stood. “Yes I do need to go, and yes, I could have called you, but I’m here to hug you and get goodbye kiss. Nash, Peggy says this could very well be a near extinction event for the human race. It’s possible one or both of us will not survive. This may be the last time we see each other.”

  Nash stood to join her. “Tell Hank he’d better make sure you and my nieces survive.”

  Nora pulled him into a tight hug and kissed his cheek. Releasing him, she reached into her handbag for a folded sheet of paper. “This is a map to the cabin. Come find us after the disease runs its course.”

  Nash took the paper. “I will.” He paused a moment and then said, “They’re keeping this situation under some tight constraints. I’ve not seen a thread or blog, much less any mainstream media reports hinting at a problem. Did Peggy tell you when there will be an official pronouncement from the government or UN?”

  “She’s says all hell is about to break loose. Tomorrow or the day after, the President will call an emergency meeting of the Congress and Senate to make an announcement and to declare a state of martial law. Peggy thinks that within two months the rate of infection will be so high, global-society will collapse and that even here in America we’ll be in a condition of anarchy.”

  Nash reached for Nora and hugged her tight. “I can take care of myself. I’ll find you when it’s safe.

  WORKING WITH CEDAR

  I had hoped to finish smoothing all the boards today and then build the boxes tomorrow morning, but that’s not going to happen. I’ll finish the smoothing, but the final scraping and polishing will wait until tomorrow. I called my mule old and arthritic, that’s me calling the kettle black. Truth told Hank’s in better shape than I am. That’s why Conway Barker led the men out before dawn instead of me. My ‘Leading the Charge’ days are over. At sixty-years, arthritis is chewing me, not to mention my left foot, half of it missing, lost due to a falling wall of stacked cars blocking my way to deal with a den of cannibals located south of here, just shy of the Alabama border.

  That was eight years ago. The bastards heard me climbing and pushed the wall over hoping to kill me. Jagged metal cut through my boot and sliced my foot off an inch past my toes. I had to back off due to the fact I was leaking blood so fast. Damn foot hurt a mite too. I consider myself lucky not to be dead. Along with what happened to my foot, I broke two ribs in that fiasco. They didn’t set properly and consequently my right side is another major arthritis spot. I never did get back to wipe out that nasty bunch, but Conway Barker
and the men from his homestead paid em a visit and killed every man and woman there. They scored eight salvageable children in the process.

  Post-plague attrition hit the female population hardest. In the immediate aftermath, rape was common, and too often, the rapists killed their victims. Another factor that contributes to slow population growth is women who caught, but survived the virus, are infertile. The result is children are more precious than gold.

  Young ones rescued from wandering gangs of ruffians are easiest to assimilate into a clan. Orphans found scavenging the empty homes in the cities are hard-put to adapt, but most of them have at least some language skills. A feral child of the woods is the hardest to bring into the fold, often needing a long period of training in the art of socializing.

  Betty and I did our best to tame a wild little girl. She was only nine or ten, but god almighty could that one bite, I nearly lost a finger to her. In the end, mainly because we couldn’t get her to eat, we took her back and released her in the forest near the pond where we caught her. She ripped off the clothing we forced her to wear, took off running for the trees and never looked back at us. Betty worried about the child, but I’d remind her how healthy and strong the girl was when captured.

  I’m only going to finish one side of the boards. The smooth side will be on the inside of the boxes. How the outside looks doesn’t matter, but I don’t want any chance of splinters snagging cloth when we load em.

  A few minutes ago, I saw Eunice come out the kitchen door and go into our root cellar the boys of our holding dug into the side of the rise behind the house. She’s gone to visit with Betty, my wife.

  Several years ago, needing a bigger root cellar, I set the boys in our compound to the task. It was a huge undertaking since all we had was hand tools. It took two years to complete. They dug a twenty-foot long passage to get deep into the hill, shoring it with cedar timbers as they progressed. The room they widened inside the hill is big enough to store our root vegetables and to have a place for nearly twenty-five children and adults ride out tornados. In the summer time, it’s a good place to cool off. That’s why Betty is in there. Jess is chilling beside her.