With guards out people felt safe to work and planters were appointed. They judged what would grow best and where to put it. Mostly they worked on truck gardens. Farming big fields was out of reach this season. They put in a lot of potatoes because wheat would be only what they scythed from old fields and corn would also be scarce.
Old men taught young ones how to handle a cradle scythe, and they made a hay crop by hand and stacked it handy on top of Toby's coal field.
Later on, stock would need shelter, and after some debate a team armed with wrenches went three farms down and dismantled a brand new Butler building that hadn't been up a year. They stacked it carefully on three flat-bed wagons hooked in tandem and used the tractor to bring it in. When they could, they worked at putting it back up, but there were other things more pressing.
There was a big meeting on housing that Toby allowed to run on as good ideas kept surfacing. He used it to explain the direction he intended to take. His plans left them whistling and head shaking. The schemes seemed too daring for a bunch that still had people in tents and crops not yet sprouted. If Toby had any doubts he disguised them. He allowed a little enthusiasm into his voice but not enough to sound a dreamer.
"We're going to build careful and well here. We'll plan on this community lasting a long time, not for just a year or two.
"Now there's no need to start making all the old mistakes we lived with before. The houses we put up will be part underground. All windows will face south and we'll heat solar for the most part.
"Oh, don't roll your eyeballs around. All the material in the world is out there for us to use, and we don't need money or permission. We've a couple of horses that can pull loads, and where they can't, we will do it with our own muscle. Whether it's planks or pipes, glass or roofing, we'll tear what we need from where it's now standing and bring it here.
"Our first house will be a duplex. We'll dig it back in right there." He pointed to the hill a little way from the cave. "There will be three rooms each side, and we'll plumb in one bathroom to be shared. Later on, when we're richer, one family can have the whole place.
"Some of you have heard of Trombe walls? We'll use them. We'll put on greenhouses, and we will have batch solar collectors for hot water. We'll raise herbs on the earth roofs and when we can get to it, we'll put up the windmills and make electricity. Later when it gets safe enough, we'll run wire and have a generator or two below dams on Cocolamus Creek." That was enough to stagger most but Toby was only starting.
"No matter how the country or the world comes along, it'll never run on oil again. All that pumping, shipping, and refining will take miracles to rebuild. Anyway, none of it will wind up here in Perry County during our lifetimes. So, we are going to plan on using alcohol and probably methane.
"The alcohol principle is simple. From corn or the like we distill alcohol. Not alcohol good enough to drink, but strong enough to run an engine. Then we modify our engines to use it.
"Methane is made from decomposing garbage or sewage. When we get hogs going in decent quantities we can make methane gas and burn it in engines just as they do propane right now.
"Problems come up right from the start though. First, we've got to cook corn mash to make alcohol without using up more energy than we make. Methane takes piping and maybe some particular techniques that we haven't learned or even heard about, but we'll assign mechanics to figure those things out. They'll use sun for heat, probably wood as well . . . but that'll be their jobs—we've got the books that'll tell them how.
"Building efficient stills and compost heaps isn't beyond us once we get to it, and modifying tractor engines to use other fuels is reasonable. It'll be hard to raise enough corn without machinery to make enough alcohol to run tractors so that we can grow more corn—if you follow that—but we'll do it." He went on to other subjects.
"We've children and there will be more, so we need a school. We are already tortured with toothaches and sickness so we must find a doctor and a dentist.
"Now around this state are lying all kinds of things that are useful. They'll either get picked up by others or they'll get spoiled unless we find them first. We need teams of smart people who can go into empty houses and burned towns and know what to bring back. They need to clean out every medicine cabinet and scratch through every drugstore.
"Hell, we need boots, pants, blankets, and any food, of course. Sure as I stand here there are jugs of kerosene in old cellars, good lamps, maybe gasoline in abandoned cars.
"As soon as planting is caught up, I'll assign two foraging teams. They'll have to defend themselves and be cunning and alert. They will have to work out their own ways of doing things, and as long as they succeed, we'll let 'em go at it.
"People are already drifting in and asking to join our village. As you know, we've turned them all away.
We've got to be sure that every mouth we plan to feed is worth more than the two hands it brings. As hard as it is to stick to, we've got to turn away big families and people that are needy unless they can help us. Now that isn't being selfish or mean, it's just plain necessary.
We move careful and we move strong or we go under, and you all remember how bad that is."
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Despite Toby's grand plans, most thought his showers and washroom the best idea of all. Raised with modern plumbing and appreciative of clean clothes on clean bodies, daily bathing under hot water approached the ultimate luxury. Compared to heating water in buckets and sponging off in a tub, even Toby's simple arrangement appeared miraculous. Morale jumped a hundred fold and civilization regained a giant step. Almost everyone bathed every night and the few accepted visitors were known to appreciate an offer of a hot bath at least as much as a proffered meal.
Toby had built two adjoining long-walled enclosures with a common shed roof and duckboard floors. On the roof they mounted an old five hundred gallon tank and ran a single two-inch pipe from it the length of both enclosures. A half dozen shower heads easily salvaged from old homes protruded downward in each enclosure. Each head had a faucet to turn it off or on.
Nearby, on the ground, another tank was built over a fire pit and connected by hoses to the higher tank. During the day, children pumped the tanks full from a shallow well that George had used to irrigate his beloved fields.
Before quitting time, a fire was built and the lower tank quickly heated. As hot water rises, the hottest water sped to the upper tank as the colder flowed downward. Within an hour both tanks were piping hot. Everyone showering took a decent turn on the pump and the water level stayed up. Used water could be flushed across the fields if they chose or shunted into a dry well.
Women to the left and men to the right was the rule. There was a lot of joking about peepholes through the common wall but none appeared—drilled either way.
Out behind were half a dozen washtubs and each Saturday the tanks were fired up for family laundering. They still had to chop wood for the fires but they knew it was worth it. And Jesse Holman was tinkering with some chain saws so they would run on alcohol—which he was also making in small quantities by distilling mash made out of almost any vegetable raised or wild that he could find. Things were beginning to look up a little.
Toby motioned to Chop one day, "I think we need a name for this community so that we can identify ourselves, so I'm naming this place 'Hope.' That's what we'll call it from now on."
It was a good name but it failed to stick. Asked where they were going, people were prone to say, "Over Shatto's way.", "Up Shatto's way" and "Down Shatto's way." A few thought that was the name of the place and spoke of the village as Shatto's Way. To Toby's disgust, and Chop's vast amusement and declaration of "that's fitting!" that name took root and movers began looking for the farm place called Shatto's Way. There, it was said, people lived like they used to live.
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In late June old Jimmie Valent got hurt real bad and Shatto's Way experienced again the fear of marauders. It was worrisome, but the way things were handled
was also satisfying and helped them believe they were in the safest place around.
Old Jimmie limped over to his small place in Hunter Valley to pick up a few things he could use again. When he got there he found strangers living in his small house. Being alone and too old to row about it he avoided the house and went to the shed where his things were. Two men found him and beat him badly. He was a long time getting back to the village.
It was dark when old Jimmie almost crawled up to the roving guards. They took him straight to the cave where the light was best and laid him out on a plank table. Glenna Holman cut the shirt off him, clucking in sympathy and anger that brought old Jimmie as much relief as the warm water they washed him with.
Toby took a good hard look. "Who did this, Jimmie?"
"There was two of 'em, Toby, with their women lookin' on and laughin." The old man winced under the tender ministrations.
"One held me while the other hit me. Broke my nose and cut my eye. Broke my false plate too so's it cut up the inside of my mouth. Can you see it, Toby?"
He could see it. The old man's face was pulped and his body was a mass of bruises and lacerations.
"Right on my own place they did it, Toby. Laughed at me when I told 'em. Called me a thief and put their boots to me when I was crawlin' off." Toby's hand on his shoulder quieted him for only a moment.
"It was hard gettin' back here, Toby." He tried to chuckle and grimaced instead. "That old Wildcat Ridge got a lot higher than it was when I went over, and I thought I'd never get across the valley." He sounded proud as he added, "But I made it, Toby. I made it."
Toby again patted him quiet, "You made it, Jimmie, and you can rest easy. We'll take it from here."
He leaned close and spoke so softly into the old man's ear that only Glenna could hear. Jimmie winced again at his own laughter and his ruined face tried to smile. Later Glenna told it around that Toby had said,
"We'll bring you back three or four of their mangy hides all ready for mounting, Jimmie."
Outside, Chop shook his head, "God that old man's tough. You know how many miles it is across there, Toby?"
Toby seemed preoccupied, "No, not exactly, but I'm going to find out right now."
He started to turn away but Chop's fingers closed like a vice around his bicep, and Chop's voice was as determined as his own. "Oh no, Toby. This time, we go together!"
Toby hesitated only an instant, "You're right, Chop. We'll take a few others. This is a town matter that we're all concerned with."
They reached Jimmie's small farm only a little after dawn. Toby motioned men to watch the front and back from the cover of the woods and he and Chop marched straight for the backdoor.
If the door was fastened they never knew. Chop's shoulder drove it off its rattley hinges and halfway across the room.
A scraggly-haired woman half rose from a chair before Toby's backhanded slap knocked her nearly unconscious with a split lip and bleeding nose.
Chop was already into the only other downstairs room where a long young man with a dirty beard was just rising from Jimmie's old sofa. He managed, "Hey, man . . ." before Chop's huge fist descended in some primal overhand smash squarely into his complaining face. Toby thought maybe Chop had killed him, but he didn't wait to see.
He beat Chop to the stairs and found one of the two upper rooms occupied by a couple in bed. They were scrambling free of covers when Toby did his best to emulate Chop's example. The man went "Whmmph" and sagged down again. To be sure, Toby hit him again, then one more because it felt good.
The woman was making gobbling noises and clutching an armful of clothes to sagging breasts. Toby grabbed a handful of greasy hair and heaved her in the general direction of the stairs.
His man was making peculiar swimming motions with arms and legs so he knew he hadn't done as well as Chop.
He dragged the man through the door by one leg and pitched him down the stairs. He liked the sound of his head hitting a good whack every once in a while.
It took a few minutes to make sure no one else was around the place, then they herded the four into the overgrown yard. It had been almost enjoyable inside, but their intentions were too serious to take real pleasure.
Both women were bleeding, one from Toby's backhand and the other from sudden stops in the stairwell. Neither man looked good. Toby's was thoroughly cut and bruised and he had broken a wrist coming down. Chop's didn't know where he was and couldn't balance himself well. One eye and his nose partially blended from Chop's single blow.
They prodded the women and booted the men to the yard pump and made the women pump water over them all until it appeared they understood what was happening.
They were a seedy bunch, one man buck naked and his woman with only part of a dress dragged on. If anyone wondered if Toby's determination was weakened by their sad condition they quickly learned different.
"Yesterday you licked and kicked an old man who came for what was rightfully his." One of the men started to speak and Toby swatted him open handed without slowing his talk.
"Today you're paying for that beating. Then you're going to leave and go a long way. If you come back anywhere around here we'll shoot you on sight. Is that clear?" The women nodded, quaking like aspens and hanging onto each other. Chop's man was slow answering, and Toby hit him under the chin with a short uppercut that snapped his head up and dropped him sitting in his tracks. He asked again, "Is that clear?" and they all nodded vigorously.
Now that the heat was out of it, Chop didn't want to do more. He guessed he wasn't up to just beating a man into pudding the way Toby sounded as though he intended, and he was sure the others weren't. In fact, he began getting a little fearful about what Toby was going to do.
He was steeling himself to hold up his end when Toby continued.
"You women got to watch a lot of beatings these two days. Remember these as lessons." He hadn't asked, but they nodded frantic understanding.
He turned to the thoroughly cowed men. "Rats like you two ought to be shot dead." He drew a .45 Colt and Chop held his breath. One of the intruders sobbed but Shatto didn't seem to hear. He looked them over thoughtfully, seeing one gingerly supporting his broken wrist.
"Seems to me you ought to get at least the same all around." His pistol came down with crushing force on the other man's right wrist, smashing it. The man howled and again sank to the ground clutching his injury. His companion dropped beside him sobbing and weaving his body around.
While everyone stood frozen by the calculated cruelty of it, Toby swung to the women, "You've got five minutes to gather what's yours and be starting out. Don't take any longer or you'll regret it."
He pointed them toward the house, "John, go in with 'em and make sure no guns get in their belongings.
"You two!" He waved the broken men to their feet and then stood almost unfocusingly close in their faces. "You're getting off easy, and don't doubt it. Just remember, there's no second chance in these parts.
"I'll expect you to pass on the warning to stay away from these valleys, because we'll not be so kindly again."
When the four were gone he sent two men after to make sure they kept going before starting for home.
There wasn't much said for a long time, but when a path got wide enough Chop moved up beside Toby. He looked across, seeing Toby's jaws knotted and his teeth sort of bared.
After a moment, Toby became aware of Chop's glance and the hardness eased from his features. He shook himself like a dog would and got on the beginnings of a smile.
"God, Chop, you hit that bum so hard my own hand started hurting." Chop had to grin, nodding satisfaction, but Toby's smile left as fast as it had come and he looked half sick.
"It's getting harder all the time, Chop. I thought sure I'd get used to it after awhile, but all the killing, beating, and threatening—it's getting to me, Chop, it really is." He walked a few more paces, "It's got to ease off, it really has to." His voice sounded hurt and sort of desperate.
Chop pu
t his big paw on his friend's shoulder and squeezed a little in camaraderie. He thought how often he had done that over the years. Doing it Shatto's way wasn't always easy for either of them.
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Chapter 21
For two weeks they had swung at anchor in the lee of the island. Fresh fruit and simple vegetables were luxuries after the monotony of canned meat, and muscles inactive from months of confinement luxuriated in hiking along beaches and climbing to the island's wind-blown summit.
Villagers welcomed their presence, although Jeff Towling tended to monopolize their time. A gentle man, Towling endlessly marveled at their daring voyage and was as utterly appalled by Hanna's insistence on continuing.
"But Hanna, it is still hurricane season. This time you were exceedingly fortunate. A day later and you could have been lost. By November the great storms will be past, and if you still insist on leaving this tropical paradise you can at least do so in some safety."
"Now, Jeff, by then winter will be closing in where I am going and sailing then would be terrible, not to mention how cold and hard it could become once we leave the boat."
"Well, there you are! Why leave at all? You've heard the stories of what is happening in the United States. Why, the land may be cindered and radioactive and . . ."
"No, no, Jeff. There's a radio station working from near Washington. It sounds as though the country is coming back quickly. They don't say, of course, but no one would have dropped bombs on Perry County, way out where I am going. Up in Perry we are mostly farmers. Why, there isn't even a big town and the ridges are all wooded and run on for miles and miles. Things won't be changed up there, Jeff. My people are tough." She laughed with pleasure just thinking about them.
"But you haven't any close relatives, you say, Hanna? What will you do and where will you live? And don't believe all that radio has to say either. They probably aren't telling all the bad things."
The questions troubled Hanna more than she let on.
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