by Alan Black
She recalled that Rodrigo said there was a ragged stream of orphans and runaways working their way toward her school, moving from farm to farm, seeking a safe haven, and a good meal. That is why she assigned her stonemason and his crew to build dormitories for children first. No one who arrived at her place would be turned away or go hungry, but not everyone trusted the rumors on the net.
The original Pioneer Compact endeavored to plan for balanced agribusiness to feed city populations. The unexpected loss of so much food production to the south was beginning to impact hungry people. The Compact did not specify which crops to plant or which farming methods to use. They did not generate preliminary harvesting plans beyond a few quick, voluntarily submitted surveys. The Compact’s rules allowed some farmers and ranchers to rely on water, wind, and muscle power only with the rallying cry of “getting back to the land.” That back-to-the-land crowd had neighbors who invested in tractors and combines, and implemented the most advanced farming techniques they could afford. Veronica understood their desire to remain non-technical, though she was not a Luddite or a neo-Luddite. After all, horses and oxen, if properly managed, generated their own replacements. Equipment such as tractors could not replicate themselves—she learned that difficult lesson losing Cal. I would have had to bury a horse if the Halberds shot it. It was easier disposing of my field bot. Hmm, but you can eat horses, can’t you? I wouldn’t, but if the folks in Landing City are getting hungry, why not?
During the first year on the planet, many farmers only planted profitable cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, and hemp. The fact that tobacco and hemp were illegal throughout Earth’s North American Continent was a driving factor for many relocating. They were looking for the lack of rules, both old and new. But freedom from government restrictions and laws came with a downside, the biggest problem right now was that people in the cities could not eat cotton, tobacco, marijuana, or opium derivatives.
Soybeans were going to become expensive in the near future because they were high in protein, vital to human life. Chicken ranchers were already raking in profits from their high protein flocks. They reaped a harvest every five to seven weeks. Like everything else made from scratch, it took a long time to build flocks of chickens large enough to feed a whole planet. They had no choice but to grow their feeder chicks from the eggs up. It took far longer to raise hogs or cattle for consumption. Cattle especially were land and water-intensive animals.
Veronica was still trying to find cattle to replace her slaughtered herd. She might get a boost in that direction from Vandersleuu—if he caved in and accepted her offer. She did not know how many or what breed of cattle her neighbor owned, but it would be a new start. Polat and Kat were eager to work cattle, but no one was selling. Everything was going to the slaughterhouses. Adding to their problems, it took a long time for farmers to raise enough feedstock to supply the grower’s needs for expanding chicken flocks, cattle herds, and hogs.
Veronica stopped mid-thought and snapped up her data-patch. She typed in a query, it bothered her that she did not know what to call a group of pigs. When she learned they were called a drift, it did not matter. It took a lot of feed to keep pigs from starving before they were ready to be harvested for ribs, ham, bacon, sausage, chops, and even ears, snouts, and feet. She was not actively looking to raise hogs, though she was recently offered the option to buy a starter drift. She missed bacon, but none of her staff had the necessary experience to manage a swine operation—yet. She missed chocolate, but she was not ready to start growing cocoa beans. She might plant a few cocoa beans in the garden behind her ramada if she could get them, but it would not feed a hungry city dweller any more than a plug of tobacco would.
Chuck Reynolds recently told her most of the corn crops were going to feed animals. Corn stalks held little nutrition, but chopping them up as additional feed kept the animals from starving to death.
Steve convinced Veronica to plant soybeans because of their high protein content. There were not enough animal herds ready for slaughter to fulfill the protein needs of the current population. Soybeans were better for humans than corn because they were easier to digest and had a higher nutritional value. He also recommended she split her cornfields in half. On one half they would grow sweet corn to feed humans and on the second half, they would plant field corn for feeding livestock.
Trying to balance the best mixture of crops was another owner’s headache she had to deal with.
Veronica looked at Polat. “You filed for land?”
Polat said, “Yes, the area just south of Steve and Pushta’s. We sell to you now. You teach our children to be smart, to be more than dumb farmer like me. Someday our children will be businessmen. This is a big planet and much room for them to grow, but like all crops, our children must be planted and watered to grow healthy and vigorous.”
Veronica said, “I offer you fair market value on the land or we can work it as a cooperative property. We can all work it together and then split the profits.”
Polat shook his head. “We left Europe for America to avoid such schemes, but even America was filled with too much group-think politics. We want our children to see the worth of an individual’s own labor. We sell now.”
Veronica said, “It’s a big planet and there’s plenty of land available if your children decide they want a place of their own to farm.”
Polat snorted. “Why would a doctor or a lawyer want a farm?”
She shrugged. “I was a university professor. I’m beginning to wonder why I wanted a place of my own to farm.”
Steve slapped Polat on the shoulder. “Exactly my point, boss, any place has issues. You get to deal with the bad news and you get the headaches that come with them.”
Kat cleared her throat to interrupt. “Bad news from town.”
Veronica smiled, “It’s becoming a ghost town?”
Kat said, “Yes, but we saw Buckner Halberd take his daughter into Tiffany Eustace’s brothel and leave her there.”
Polat said, “We called for the sheriff, but he would not do anything. He said there was no law to stop Halberd from living off his daughter’s whoring.”
Veronica felt the pressure of a beginning headache.
Kat said, “Halberd said it was your fault. You killed his sons and chased Tania away. They have to put their daughter to work. He said they have no other income.”
Veronica closed her eyes. When she opened them, everyone backed away a step. She swept the maps off the hood of the truck and scattering them on the ground.
“Mags, please get down.”
Veronica got into the truck and activated the door locks and safety shield to keep Mags out. When she started the truck, its blowers scattered maps and papers all over the field. Spinning the steering yoke, she headed directly for Peaceful Junction. The town might be peaceful now, but she did not plan to leave it that way.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Veronica yanked the steering yoke, sending the hover truck into a tilting slide. The skirts rose slightly, showering the front of Tiffany Eustace’s brothel with a splattering of sand and pebbles. The truck settled to the ground with a hiss. She snapped off the safety shield protecting the bed of the truck and looked in the back.
There was little use. She wanted a weapon and the best she could find was the four-foot section of a broken shovel handle. She picked it up and took a tentative swing before following through with several full swings. Law or no law, she knew what was right and what was wrong. Selling a girl, not yet fourteen, into prostitution was not right. Pioneer Compact or not, Sheriff Eustace notwithstanding, she would not allow this to happen.
She realized it was Saturday afternoon. It’s the weekend, she thought, strange how the days blend together on the farm. The town should be full of outlying farmers and ranchers, coming in to trade, sell, and buy goods, or for a change of scenery and some entertainment.
A couple of men came out of Tiffany’s. She glared at them, and they scurried away.
In theory
, Veronica had no problem with prostitution. She had no practical experience, one way or the other, so theory was all she had to base her opinion on. She always thought of it as an activity between consenting adults. How it affected a husband and wife’s union was between the husband and the wife. Prostitution had a place in almost every culture down through human history. Many religions practiced prostitution as a part of their rituals. Often times those religions accepted children into their temple rituals. No matter what history or religion said, Veronica believed forcing children into prostitution was wrong.
Veronica opened the unlocked door. Business was booming. She looked around at the men in the waiting room, before she swung the shovel handle in the air a few times, generating a whooshing sound.
One man stood up and cleared his throat. “Um, maybe I’ll come back later.”
Veronica said, “Maybe you should go home to your wife.” She did not know the man. Looking closer at the clientele, she did not believe she recognized any man in the room, but she perceived she hit the mark with her comment. There should not be many single men in Peaceful Junction when just one year ago the Pioneer Compact required married couples.
Most of the others followed the first man out the front door.
One remaining man glared at her. “I go where I want when I want. Where I go is no concern of yours.” He said.
Finally recognizing the man’s voice, Veronica nodded. Wife beater. She felt the urge to attack him, but she did not.
A cry coming from a room down the hall interrupted their staring contest. She sprinted down the hallway. She hit the door with full force, shattering hinges and splintering the composite particle board around the strike plate. In two steps, she reached Manning Tatum. Swinging the makeshift club, she whacked the man across the side of the head. Her thought was to crush his skull, but she pulled back on her swing, only giving it enough force to knock him away from Eve Halberd. He crashed to the floor.
She pointed the end of the club at Tiffany Eustace. “Backup. I’ve never brained a woman with a club before, but I’ll make an exception for you.”
Tiffany was helping Tatum hold Eve down. She released her grip on the girl and backed toward the door. “I don’t have any other choice. You gave Tania enough money for her to leave and she took Mary Beth with her. I can’t run this place with just Janie and Harla.”
“You can’t run this place anymore at all. I don’t have a problem with prostitution, but I do have a problem with child abuse and catering to pedophiles. It’s time you got out of town.”
“You can’t run me off. You aren’t—”
“I’m not running you off,” Veronica interrupted. “I’m giving you fair warning that the next time I see you—in the streets, in the saloon, or even in this building—I’m going to beat you. Every time I see you, I’ll beat you—with a stick, with a rock, with a hammer, with whatever I have at hand. I may even hire someone to come around and give you a beating. Take your girls and get out.”
Tiffany said, “We’ll see what my husband says about this.”
“Good. You feel free to go tattle. I still have business here.” She tossed a robe to Eve. “Go ahead and cover yourself up.”
Tatum started to get up from the floor, reaching for his pants as his erection withered away.
Shaking her head, Veronica tapped him on the back of the head with her club. She grabbed his pants and stripped the belt out of the loops before tossing them onto the floor.
“Get on your feet, Tatum. Face the wall,” she said. She swung the shovel handle in a vicious figure eight to emphasize her command.
She looped the belt around the man’s neck as he struggled to stand, giving it a jerk.
Tatum gasped.
“Keep your hands to your sides. Do what I say or I’ll choke the life out of you, like Buckner and Dillon Halberd did to Missy Halberd.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Tatum said.
“Keep quiet,” she commanded. “I don’t care what you know or what you don’t know. I don’t like people who abuse and rape children.”
Eve stared at the floor while standing quietly to the side of the bed with the robe loosely tied around her. “I can’t go home. Pa and Ma will just bring me back here.”
Veronica said, “You can come home with me, Eve.”
Eve looked up in surprise. “Really, I could live with you?”
Veronica said, “Yes. Do you have anything here that’s yours?”
The girl shook her head. “They threw out the dress I had when Pa brought me over. I don’t care what I wear, I just want to go.”
Veronica said, “We have some cleaning up to do before we go. We can’t leave this mess behind. We have trash to haul out.” She grabbed Tatum’s pants. “Let’s go, pervert.” She placed the end of the shovel handle against Tatum’s neck and pulled the belt loop snug enough to be threatening, but not enough to cut off his air.
Using the belt and shovel handle like reins, she guided Tatum out of the brothel. She marched him into the street, then around the alley, and up to the front of his building. He looked panicked like he did not know which was more important, keeping the belt loop threatening to cut off his air from tightening around his neck, or keeping his privates covered—a job his shirttail barely managed.
Tatum tried to pull away as they got close to the doorway to his office and home.
Veronica slammed the club against the back of his head, knocking him to his knees. “Stay put, Tatum, or I swear I’ll split your skull next time.”
Eustace ran up to them, his face red, lungs heaving, and sweat dripping down his forehead.
Veronica pointed the club at him as an implicit warning against interfering. There was a gathering crowd. She shouted toward the building. “Mrs. Tatum, get your fat fanny out here!”
She looked around at the crowd. Most of them were faces she only recognized from other Saturdays in town. There was no one in the crowd she would call on for support. She wondered about the wisdom of making this stand without having Auggie and Mags along. Then she spotted Mags sliding off Maine’s old air ski across the street.
Mags returned Veronica’s nod of recognition, but the woman stood still, leaning against a building with her arms folded. Veronica did not doubt the woman would be at her side in an instant if she needed help.
Veronica spotted another face she recognized in the crowd, the farmer she directed toward Chuck Reynolds. It seemed like years ago, but it was only a few months.
She nodded at the man, “Sir, are you still doing business with this man?”
The man nodded and pulled away from his wife as she tried to drag him from the scene. “He corrected his pricing and stopped shortchanging me, so I didn’t see any reason to go all the way to that other fellow.”
“Let’s see what kind of man you are after you hear what I have to say about Manning Tatum today.”
Mrs. Tatum came out of the building to see her husband kneeling in the dirt, blood trickling from his scalp with his shriveled genitals on display. “Oh! Stop this.” She looked pleadingly at Sheriff Eustace.
Eustace said, “Now, let’s all just calm—”
“Shut your pie hole, useless,” Veronica said. She tapped Tatum on the top of his head for emphasis. “Sheriff Eustace, did you tell people there is no law against Buckner and Dee Halberd selling their thirteen-year-old daughter into prostitution?”
A ripple of gasps filtered through the crowd. These folks may be farmers and small-town people trying to get away from big government interference, but most of them had a strong moral code embedded into their lives, rubbed in deep, generation after generation.
“There aren't any laws against it,” Eustace said. He puffed himself up, knowing he had the law on his side.
Veronica said, “Especially since it’s your wife who’ll profit by it and she’ll share those profits with you, right? Profits from child sex slavery?”
Eustace deflated.
Veronica said, “The Pioneer
Compact may not have codified such a law, but I have laws in my heart that says what is right and what is wrong. Rape, child abuse, and slavery are wrong.”
Eustace said, “It isn’t like that—”
Veronica tapped Tatum on the head. “It is precisely like that.”
“You can’t go around beating people like Manning Tatum and threatening Tiffany, just because you think you know better.”
Veronica looked at Mrs. Tatum.
The woman stared back in horror. Her eyes darted to her husband and back to Veronica.
“Mrs. Tatum, what do you think we should do with a man caught raping a thirteen-year-old girl?” Veronica asked.
Mrs. Tatum stepped forward and slapped her husband across the face with enough force it pulled the belt out of Veronica’s hand.
Veronica looked at the wife of the farmer she had spoken to earlier. “What do you say?”
The woman’s eyes glared. “I say we get a rope and finish the hanging you started.”
Veronica said, “That would be justice, but it would be vigilante justice. I say we should arrest him, put him in jail, pick a judge, impanel a jury, give him a trial, and then hang him. Unless Tatum gets out of town within twenty-four hours and never comes back. I say he’s done in this town and I don’t care where he goes as long as he is not here.”
She turned to Eustace. “You and your wife are done, too. Get out.”
Eustace said, “You can’t do that. I have a contract.”
“You can be buried with your contract unless you and your wife are gone before Manning Tatum and his wife leave town.”
Mrs. Tatum said, “I am not leaving with him.” She pointed at her husband.
Veronica said, “You are not leaving your trash behind.” She stabbed a finger at Manning Tatum. “And you are not staying. I don’t care whether you all go in the same car, or you walk out going your separate ways. You will get out, or I’ll burn you out.”