by A. American
“We are.”
“You said veggies. That’s what my food eats,” Jeff said as he fought to keep the kayak upright.
“If you’ll just relax, that boat will stay right side up. We can look for some game too, but plants are easier to get. They don’t run and you don’t have to shoot them.”
“Easy for you to say. Lead on, O great one.”
I instructed him on how to turn his boat and get it faced into the current. Once he was facing the right way, I gave him a quick lesson on how to maneuver and control the kayak. After a few failed attempts, we were on our way. It was nice on the water. Since it was still early, it was cool, and the fog was just starting to burn off. We paddled side by side for a while, my eyes scanning for a stand of arrowhead or wapato.
I eased over to the left side of the river, keeping my eyes on the water’s edge. It didn’t take long to find a stand of the arrow-shaped leaves. Now came the fun part.
“Over here,” I said with a nod in the direction of the stand of plants.
I let my boat glide up to the plants, back-paddling to stop beside them.
“What’re you doing that for?” Jeff asked as I shoved my paddle into the mud and started working it back and forth.
“We’re getting wapato. Come over here and use your paddle like I’m doing.”
“Wapato? What the hell is that?” Jeff asked.
“A lot like potatoes, you can boil and mash ’em or bake ’em. They’re pretty good, they were a staple food of Native Americans all over the country. Typically it was the women that collected these, they would wade out into the water, use their feet to release the tubers, and collect them when they floated up.”
“How do you know what they look like?”
I pulled a leaf off one of the plants. “See the shape of the leaf?”
“Yeah, it looks like an arrowhead.”
“Exactly, it’s the only thing in the river that looks like this. We want to get the tubers that are growing in the mud.”
Jeff used his paddle like a pole, shoving it into the mud and pushing his way over to the stand of plants. He watched what I was doing for a moment, and then began digging into the mud. I was half waiting for him to turn the boat over. It wasn’t long before he was stretched out with one side of the boat tipped almost in the water.
“Shit!” he shouted.
“Pull, dude, pull hard, or you’re going swimming!” I said with a laugh.
He managed to get the boat under control and sat there shaking his head. “This is harder than it looks.”
“Yes, it is, my friend. It’s a little tricky.”
Using my paddle, I swept some floating tubers toward my boat and picked them up. “This is what you’re looking for. Let’s see how many we can find.”
Soon enough, tubers were floating all around us, ranging in size from the diameter of a dime to the size of a golf ball. We raked them toward the boats with the paddles and plucked them out of the water. It wasn’t long before they were piling up in the boat.
Jeff was examining one of the golf ball–sized tubers. “Very cool,” he said, and dropped it back into his boat. “Food you can just pick out of the river.”
“They are as close to a direct replacement for store-bought spuds that you’ll get. Let’s see what else we can find.”
I paddled slowly into the current, keeping my eyes on both sides of the river.
“How’d you learn all this?” Jeff asked.
“I studied it a lot. Me an’ Little Bit would go out and see what we could find on the weekends. She had a lot of fun doing it, and it was a good excuse to get her out in the woods.”
“But why? Have you ever used any of this before?”
“Food is freedom. Control the food, control the people. While a lot of people don’t see it that way, if you think about our current situation, it really applies. How many people do you think have gone to the camps because they are hungry? Humans lived for tens of thousands of years before grocery stores, but take them out of the equation and folks panic.”
“I see what you mean. Once the canned food or whatever was stored was gone, most people didn’t know what to do. Hell, I didn’t. If it wasn’t for you guys I’d be fucked.”
I laid my paddle across the cockpit and looked over at him. “But you’re learning and not just sitting on your ass waiting for someone to come rescue you. That’s precisely why I studied it. It offered a level of security for me and my family.”
Jeff nodded. “I get it. All right, boss, what’s next?”
We continued upstream, stopping once to pull a bunch of watercress. I explained to Jeff that it was a green that was similar to spinach. He shook his head. “This is so cool.”
At a bend in the river, there was a large stand of cattail on the inside edge. We paddled over, pushing the boats up onto the bar created by the plants.
“You might want to take your boots off for this one.”
Jeff looked at me like I was nuts. “You want to get in the water?”
I stuck my hand in the river and splashed him. “Yeah, you afraid? It ain’t too cold.”
“I’m not afraid, asshole. What do you want to do?”
“We’re going to get some of the stalks, but mainly I’m after the roots.”
Jeff took his boots off and began trying to extricate himself from the boat. It was like watching a turtle stuck on its back. I laughed at him for a minute then went over and helped pull him out.
“Thanks,” he said begrudgingly. “Now what?” he asked, looking around at the water.
I grabbed a plant and cut it off about a foot above the water, then ran my hand underwater and grabbed the base and pulled. The plant came up, pulling other roots that were running away from the plant with it. I grabbed one of the pencil-thick roots and held it up. “We want these. See the little knots? That’s the good part. Try and follow them out and pull them up. In another couple of weeks, there will be new shoots we can eat. They’re really good.”
We spent the better part of two hours pulling the rhizomes out of the mud. It was a messy job—the kayaks as well as our clothes were covered in mud by the time we finished. Thankfully the sun was warming up nicely. With the kayaks loaded, we headed back to the cabins. Going with the current made it a fairly quick trip, even with Jeff’s occasional screwy paddling.
The girls were down at the river’s edge as we came up. As the boat drifted to where they were standing, they looked at the tangled mass of roots and tubers and laughed.
“What is that?” Taylor asked, pointing to one of the tubers.
“It’s going to be your dinner and part of your breakfast. You better get used to it,” I answered.
Jeff whooped as he stepped out of his boat. “Oh man, I’m a mess!”
Little Bit pointed at him, giggling. “You’re all muddy!”
“I’m the muck monster!” Jeff shouted as he started toward her with his arms out, walking like Frankenstein.
She squealed and took off running. I asked Taylor to go get the big washtub and bring it down. When she returned with it we loaded all the tubers, rhizomes, and finally the watercress into it and carried it up to the picnic table. Mel saw us walking up with it and met us.
She looked at the muddy mess in the tub and scrunched her nose. “What’s all that?”
I held up a wapato tuber. “You remember eating wapatos a few summers ago? We were camping out at Lake Norris and dug some of these up and cooked them over the fire.”
She nodded in recognition and pointed to the white mass of cattail roots. “That’s right. What about that?”
“Cattail rhizomes. We’re going to process them for starch.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“We’ll use it in some pancakes tomorrow for breakfast. It’ll make the mix we have go farther.”
&nb
sp; When the girls heard the word pancakes, they all got excited. “Really? Pancakes!” Lee Ann exclaimed. It was the first time I had seen her smile in weeks.
I looked at them and smiled. “With real syrup too.” Taylor and Lee Ann high-fived.
I explained to Mel that the tubers would need to be peeled before cooking, and she immediately volunteered the older girls for that job. She said she’d take care of the watercress and that I needed to deal with the cattails, as she put it.
I took the tub with the tubers down to the river and washed them by shaking them in the water repeatedly. It was quite an effort to get most of the mud off, rubbing at them with my fingers and swishing them around in the water. Once they were as clean as they were going to get, I filled the tub with enough water to cover the rhizomes. I was wet and filthy by this point, and went back to the cabins to change. It’s a good thing Thad’s gonna teach the girls how to make soap, I thought, looking down at my muddy clothes.
When I came back out, relatively clean, Danny and Thad were sitting on the picnic table.
“You guys done getting the wood?” I asked.
Danny pointed to a massive woodpile over by the chicken coop. “That should take care of us for a few days.”
“What’d you guys find?” Thad asked.
I pointed at the tubers that the girls were peeling. “We got some taters, some cattail roots, and some watercress greens.”
Thad picked up one of the tubers. “What are these?”
I explained to him what they were and how we could use them. He and Danny both nodded their approval. I told them to come down to the river so I could show them the roots. On my way, I stopped by the woodpile and picked up a piece of oak about the diameter of my forearm.
Thad kicked the side of the tub of tubers. “What are you going to do with this stuff?”
“We’re going to get the starch out,” I said. Using the end of the wood, I started to pound the roots.
As I worked I explained to them the process: First, you pound the roots as thoroughly as possible, so the water turns cloudy white. Then, you remove as much of the fiber as possible and let the water settle. Once all the starch settles, you pour off most of the water and allow the rest of the water to evaporate. I told them that you could speed up the evaporation process by heating the tub, as long as you were careful not to scorch the starch.
“That’s pretty neat,” Thad said.
“We can use it to cut things like pancake mix. I’ll make some tomorrow for breakfast.”
“Oh, the girls are going to be so excited,” Thad said.
“Screw that, I’m excited for pancakes. What else can we use this stuff for?” Danny asked.
“Anything you would use starch or flour for, like dusting fish for frying or thickening stews. The uses are really unlimited,” I said.
After I pounded the roots out more thoroughly, the bottom of the tub had a soft layer of starch. Satisfied, I stood up and we started making our way back to the cabins. It was time for our soap-making lesson.
“I know you get lye from wood ash. What else do we need?” I asked.
Thad pulled a pillowcase from the table. “We need to fill this with ashes. And we’ll need a few empty buckets.”
We’d had a fire burning in the pit nearly nonstop since we moved into the cabins, so there was a lot of ash. When the pile of ash got too high we would dump it in a pile at the edge of the woods. We went to this pile with the pillow case and a shovel. Thad held the case open while I shoveled the ash into it.
Mel and Bobbie were at the table when we got back.
“You gonna show us how to make this soap?” Bobbie asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Thad said with a smile, “but it takes time. It isn’t a fast process.”
“What is, these days?” Mel joked, with a smile. “How long does it take?”
“The soap mix can be done in a day, but then you gotta pour it into a mold to set for at least another day. Then when you take it from the mold, it has to cure for a month.”
Mel and Bobbie were both shocked. “What? A month?” Mel asked.
“Yeah, otherwise it’ll burn your skin. It’s got to cure. How much soap do we have left?”
“We still have some, but we’ll probably be out of it in a few weeks,” Bobbie said.
Thad smiled. “Then I guess we need to get this soap made.”
Mel clapped her hands. “So! What do we do?”
Thad grabbed the large pot and nodded toward the river. “First, we need to get some water boiling.” After filling it with water from the river, he set the pot on the fire. As we were waiting for it to boil, Jeff came back out in a fresh change of clothes.
“This the soap-making class?” he asked.
“This is it,” Bobbie said.
“Do we get merit badges?” Jeff asked with a smile.
“No merit badges, but you will get to wash your laundry. And from the looks of you and Morgan after your adventure today, your clothes need it,” Mel said.
Soon enough, the water in the pot was boiling. Thad set the pillowcase of ash into one of the buckets, then asked Danny to pour the boiling water into it. Danny quickly dumped the steaming contents in as requested. Thad folded the edges of the sack over the rim of the bucket and looked up, “Go fill it again.” Danny jogged down to the river and refilled the pot. When he returned Thad told him that pot needed to boil too.
While we waited for the water to boil, Thad explained the next step in the process.
“When that one boils, we’ll pour it into one of those other buckets. Then the bag has to be dunked in and out of the water, like you’re making tea.”
We sat around talking while we waited. With so many eyes on it, the pot seemed to take forever to boil. Once it did Danny poured it into the sack as well. Thad grabbed the top of the sack and closed it up, then began dunking it up and down.
“Once this is done we need to boil everything down.” Thad looked up at Mel and Bobbie. “Either of you have a big enameled pot?”
“I do, it’s about the size of that one,” Bobbie said, pointing to the pot used to boil water.
“That’ll work.”
“This is pretty cool, Thad. I always wanted to learn to do this. It was one of those things I always figured I’d get to.” I looked over at him. “Just another example of putting things off till tomorrow. Sometimes tomorrow doesn’t come.”
“I know what you mean. I never thought of this as a skill I would someday rely on. It was just a way to keep something from the past alive, in a way.”
I looked down into the slurry. “There’s decades of skills lost that would make our lives easier. The rush to make life easier, more convenient, overshadowed those skills, and we’re paying the price now.”
Thad grunted. “Yeah, people made fun of folks who held on to the old ways, calling ’em hippies or whatever. I bet they are a lot more comfortable right now than most folks.”
Thad poured the slurry into the pot Bobbie handed him. “We’ll cook this down for a while.” After scraping the bucket out with a stick, he set it on the fire.
“How long does it take?”
Thad looked up and smiled. “Till it’s done.”
Chapter 3
Ted guided the boat slowly down the river. Between the four of them and all the gear, the boat was almost overloaded.
Doc sat beside him with his feet stuck out on his pack. Wish I had a flipping stick, he thought. His thoughts drifted to a few months ago. Doc’s tour was almost up before things went south, and he had decided it was time to get out. His parents were both gone now and he had no siblings. He had planned to fix up his parent’s old place in Tennessee just as the shit hit the fan. To say he was bitter about the way things worked out would be an understatement.
Sarge sat in the front seat with his legs outstretched on the bow
and the SAW lying across his lap. In the cool morning air, it was a peaceful ride down the river. The calm before the storm, Sarge thought.
The Guard camp was located on a sand plain six or seven feet above the river, spread out under the old live oaks and gum trees. On the previous visit, Doc had told Captain Sheffield that as nice as the area was, in the summer it would be crawling with ticks, and he was right.
The river became narrow and shallow, and soon, the landing ramp came into view. Captain Sheffield stood at the shoreline waiting for them. Lieutenant Livingston was sitting behind the wheel of a Hummer, and Ian, the adopted marine, was sitting in a second Hummer. Sarge stood as the bow of the boat hit the sand abruptly, launching him out.
Sarge landed on the sand, took one big step to slow his forward momentum, and stood up. “I meant to do that.”
Sheffield shook his head. “It almost looked that way.” He stuck his hand out, and Sarge took it with a grin on his face.
“Good to see you, Captain.”
“Good to see you, First Sergeant.”
Ted cut the engine and he and the guys started unloading their gear. Ian came down to help, and together, the four started carrying the gear up to the camp.
“Hey, Doc, I got a couple of guys I need you to check out when we get to camp,” Livingston called out.
“Sure thing, what’s the problem?”
“Some kind of stomach bug.”
“Where are they staying?”
“We isolated them in a tent by themselves.”
“Smart move. As soon as we get up there, I’ll look at them.”
With all the gear unloaded, Sarge got in the Hummer with Sheffield and Livingston while the guys rode with Ian.
“So what’s the old man’s plan?” Ian asked.
Mike laughed. “I don’t think he has one.”
“Let me guess: we’ll make it up as we go along?”
Doc leaned forward to look at Ian. “And how long have you known Sarge?” All the guys started to laugh.
They drove through the camp, which was bustling with activity. People were visible everywhere. Tents were spread out under the old oaks along the river, civilian and military ones mingled in a loose organization. Numerous smoky fires burned throughout the camp. The smoke hung like clouds in the canopy of oak trees and Spanish moss.