They saw each other daily, and soon Jeremy was seeking out the Reverend, or vice versa, for an animated discussion on history, religion, or philosophy. He was surprised to learn that Reverend Thomas had served in the Korean War, not as a man of the cloth, but as a soldier. Looking at the white-haired man in front of him, Jeremy had difficulty imagining Reverend Thomas at war, with a gun in his hand. That is, until the old man’s face lit up with grim excitement as he described the fierce fighting during Operation Killer in late February 1951. It gave Jeremy a new respect for this man, who had seen war and yet turned to far more peaceful pursuits in the years since.
When he looked back on those days of painful recuperation in the church’s infirmary, Jeremy was unable to explain how or why he decided to become a minister. Perhaps it was his way of paying back the reverend’s kindness and patience with him, or perhaps he just didn’t like to leave stories unfinished. A month into Jeremy’s convalescence, he had been listening to a familiar story, one of his mother’s favorites, the Book of Esther. Reverend Thomas had just gotten to the part where Mordecai learns of the impending slaughter of all Jews in the land when the reverend’s face went slack. Not wanting the reverend to feel embarrassed or to lose the thread of the story, he quickly spoke up, recounting how Mordecai gave a copy to Esther of the king’s decree dooming the Jews. A few minutes later, the reverend snapped out of it and picked up the tale when Haman was being warned by his wife and friends to stop pursuing the death of Mordecai. Later, Reverend Thomas thanked Jeremy for his timeliness.
“I was diagnosed back in 2014 with it, and it has slowly been getting worse. Especially since there’s been no medication to be had these last few years,” the old man explained. They struck an unspoken deal of sorts: the reverend would share his sermons with Jeremy and, if he faltered, Jeremy would intercede, first with the kids’ Bible lessons and the stories the reverend shared with the men, and eventually with the weekly sermons. He learned to recognize other signs of the disease, which included confusion and mood swings, as the Alzheimer’s began to increasingly affect the reverend’s daily life.
Before the year was out, Jeremy was helping Reverend Thomas with all other factions of his work—coordinating weekly church meals, writing sermons, caring for the orphans and new patients in the infirmary, and visiting parishioners. It was this last duty that brought him back in contact with Grace Wilkes, who had withdrawn after her father’s death and the attack on the Wilkes farm. A visit to her mother from Jeremy and Reverend Thomas had revealed her mother’s concern.
“She won’t go much farther than the back porch there,” Karen Wilkes said, gesturing to the back of the house. Jeremy and the reverend could see Grace huddled on the bottom step, close to where they had buried her dog Danny. The devoted old Border collie had died defending her against the raiders. “And she won’t say nuthin’ but maybe a whisper in response to a direct question if she can’t find a way out of saying nothing at all.” Karen’s face twisted in pain, “I don’t know if she thinks Danny and her Daddy dying was her fault or what, but she just won’t talk at all nowadays. Barely eats; I just don’t know what to do, Reverend.”
Jeremy stared at the girl. She was small for her age, just thirteen and looked eleven at the most. What she had escaped, he shook his head, remembering what Chris had told him about the man who had tried to take her and Liza. She was just a kid. He turned back to the reverend and Karen Wilkes, “Ma’am, we could use some help with the orphans, if you could spare Grace. We could come and get her a few days a week, get her out of the house and around others. The kids are all small, she’d be of use, and,” he paused, staring back at her silent unmoving form on the steps, “maybe it would help her snap out of it.”
Karen Wilkes had been leery at first, but as the weeks wore on and Grace continued with her silence and sadness, she had quietly arranged for her stepson Tommy to bring Grace with him on his way to serve militia duty. Tommy had come by the church, Grace following a distance behind, and handed a note to Jeremy. “Mom said to bring Grace here and give you this.” Tommy had been eight when his mother died and barely nine when Anthony had remarried and Karen moved in, giving birth a year later to Grace and then Victor just three years after that. Tommy was quiet, but his face bore the strain of filling his father’s shoes as he struggled to keep the Wilkes farm going with a grieving stepmother, and two young half-siblings to care for.
The note was difficult to read, and Jeremy had been surprised it was given to him, although this would become a growing trend in the months to come as the residents of Tiptonville increasingly turned to Jeremy for the things they would normally have gone to Reverend Thomas for. The note from Karen, full of misspelling and obviously written with difficulty, asked Jeremy to please help Grace “wit her leters” and noted that Grace was very kind and “thoughtful” and would be good with the children. Essentially, it appeared that Karen wanted to send Grace into town every Monday, have her stay at the church with the orphans and then have Tommy pick her back up on Friday to spend the weekend at home.
Jeremy smiled at the girl, and handed the note to Reverend Thomas. The reverend read it with difficulty, squinting at the scribbled words, then nodded and said, “Grace, there is a cot in the girls’ dorm where you can stay during the week. Why don’t you have the girls show you where it is at?” Once she had gone, the old man turned back to Jeremy, “They don’t have much in the way of food right now, and Mrs. Wilkes is terrified that Cooper will come back while Tommy is out in the fields or off on militia duty. She would feel safer if we could watch over the girl during the week while Tommy is away.”
“How did you get all that from that note?” Jeremy asked.
The old man smiled, “I didn’t. I just took a good look around when we were there visiting last month. They don’t have much in the way of livestock, and Anthony never was particularly successful at farming. Figure in the bad soil, and not enough crop rotation...”
The old man’s eyes had a faraway look and his mouth turned down as he added, “And from the amount of locks on the inside of their front door—I’d say Karen Wilkes is terrified, morning and night. She’s doing the right thing sending the girl away during the week. Fear like that is a poison.”
Tommy would prove to be a far better farmer than his father, and eventually the Wilkes farm would help subsidize the church’s infirmary and orphanage through bushels of produce. Grace’s schedule never changed though, and as the months passed she would stay with Jeremy, Reverend Thomas, and whoever was gracing the infirmary or occupying the orphanage. She slowly began to speak again, shot up three inches during the space of a few months, filled out, and Jeremy thought she looked quite pretty.
One day, shortly after Reverend Thomas’s Alzheimer’s had taken a turn for the worse, she and Jeremy were working in the kitchen. He sat on a chair at a low table chopping vegetables. His legs ached constantly and sitting was somehow easier. Grace was stirring a huge stock pot of vegetable soup which would serve for two of the three meals they would be eating the next day.
They worked so often in silence that Jeremy was startled by Grace’s voice in the gloom of the large commercial kitchen, “I can’t forget.”
“Forget what?”
“What happened that day—the day Daddy and my dog Danny died.” She continued to stir the soup, took the remaining vegetables he had finished chopping, dumped them into the soup, and then turned the heat down to the lowest setting. The blue flames sputtered for a moment and then settled, lightly flickering. Grace peered at him through a mass of brown curls. “You saved me. I heard what that man would have done to me if you and Mr. Perkins and Chris hadn’t come and stopped him.”
“We did what was right, Grace. No one deserves that. I wish we had known sooner. I wish we could have saved the Austins, saved your daddy, and your dog.” Jeremy closed his eyes, wincing at the memory of Karen Wilkes cradling her husband, soaked in his blood and screaming.
Grace stared at his legs; the right one was
still twisted and Liza had tried to convince him to let her re-break it and set it straighter. But Jeremy had had quite enough of being bed-bound and in pain and told her no. “You can’t walk right anymore ’cause of me.”
Jeremy shrugged, “It wasn’t you that caused the accident.”
Grace nodded, “Well, I’m gonna do what’s right too. When I’m old enough, I’ll marry you and take care of you. Mr. Perkins is way too old and Chris is already married. And besides,” she said, as Jeremy gaped at her, “I think you are plenty good-looking.” And, having spoken more than she normally would in an entire week, she pulled her apron off, walked over to where Jeremy was sitting, and pecked him a goodnight kiss on the cheek. Then she left the room.
Jeremy sat there in the room for long minutes, in shock, turning over in his head what she had said. She’s fourteen, he reasoned, just a kid. She’ll grow out of this. And with that thought a reassurance to him, a man of thirty years, nearly old enough to be her father and terrified of being labeled some pedophile child rapist, he felt better. After all, he was way too old for her. Jeremy hobbled off to bed.
There’s No Place Like Home
“I took the news hard. David said I didn’t talk much for days and that when I did, a huge piece of me was simply ‘not there.’ But in the weeks that followed, well, I didn’t have time for self-pity. There were repairs to be made, seeds to be planted, and skills to be bartered. I guess the sorrow played itself out and was drowned in the sheer amount of work to be done. I survived. Somehow I even survived understanding that there would be no answers, no bodies to lie to rest. But it hurt so bad. It still does; their loss haunts me to this day. I guess it will forever.” – Jess’s Journal
It was a beautiful warm spring day. It had rained last night, a big booming thunderstorm with wild winds and strong rain. By the time the sun rose in the morning, the clouds reduced to wisps, drifting high in the clear blue sky. There was no wind now, not even a real breeze, and the earth was already warming. Spring had come early again this year and summer was close on its heels. Already finished with their blooming, the jonquils and tulips were now making way for the iris. The grass was green and lush where it had been left to grow wild, and already rows of lettuce and other greens were ready for harvest. A few feet away, Tina was quietly picking strawberries. From the looks of it, more of them were ending up in her belly than in the basket.
Jess pushed into the rich, loamy soil with her bare hands, setting in the last of the bush beans she had been given and pulling at the opportunistic weeds. Beneath all of the neglect, there was richness waiting. This soil was dark and loose in her hands and the weeds came out easily when pulled. So many years of love and attention would trump the year and a half of abandonment.
She thought of her mother, Julie, hair piled up on top of her head, streaks of gray flying in wisps, and a halo of stray hairs around her head. Her hands had dug deep in the dirt, just as Jess’s hands did now. Those memories of her mother struck so often. Julie Aaronson lived on in this garden and it gave her daughter bittersweet memories of her each day. Here in the yard, shaping, digging, planting, and weeding—Julie had poured her heart and soul into the rich loam. She had done her best to make this tiny patch of suburbia into a green paradise, despite her lawn-loving neighbors.
Jess remembered as a child that their neighbors would look at the family’s trellises, fruit and nut trees, and raised beds and shake their heads. They would mow their perfectly green, dandelion-free lawns, and talk among themselves, convinced that the Aaronson’s were just a little on the odd side.
That had all changed after Black Monday. When times had gotten tough, they had changed their tune and the rest of the neighborhood had transformed. “Victory gardens” had once again become vogue and sprung up in every yard, even the unoccupied ones. Julie Aaronson had taught class after class to their neighbors, and even to scores of city-dwellers from the surrounding metro, who were all eager to learn how to raise their own fruits and vegetables. She had readily passed on her knowledge of composting, companion planting, cooking with fresh herbs and more. Jess’s dad, Michael, had even caught the teaching bug and enthusiastically educated scores on how to construct and install rain barrels, build raised beds, and even—Jess grinned at the memory of the students’ faces—how to compost human feces in buckets of sawdust. That last one had been a real winner.
Jess’s mom had even begun writing a book on gardening in Missouri. This had become difficult when the power started going out regularly. She had begun writing notes longhand, muttering over the order of the pages and asked Jess for help with sketching the different plants. That had all changed when the Western Front troops had marched through, cutting through the streets, ransacking, burning, and taking whatever and whoever they wanted.
It seemed that most of their neighbors had not made it. The yards and the pitiful remnants of their victory gardens were now full of weeds and lay untended. Half of the houses on their block had burned to the ground and most of the others were badly damaged. Jess’s home was one of only two still standing. It was eerily quiet. Jess kept listening for the sound of a mower, but there was not a sound to be heard but the birds and a distant hammering, probably old Mr. Banks. He had said his shed needed a new roof.
She reviewed the list of projects in her head. Fix the northeast corner of the roof, install more raised beds, repair chicken coop, till the south side of the house, and plant a crop of corn. Each morning she and David sat at the table in the kitchen and discussed the priorities for the day. Tina was good at fetching and carrying small items. And she could watch Jacob in a pinch, but it was Jess and David who shouldered the burden of getting the mountain of tasks done.
The townspeople had helped them enormously. They had dipped into the community stores and brought them jars of food, most of it grown fresh and canned the year before. The town was in better shape than any others they had encountered along the way, as well as well-armed and organized. Jess and David were required to put in time with the local militia each week, patrolling the outskirts of the town for intruders, much as Thurman Banks had been doing the day they arrived. There was a schedule posted on Main Street and everyone adhered to it faithfully. Their survival, individually and as a community, depended on it.
Visitors to Belton were rare, but a returning ’Ender was rarer still. The ones taken by the troops that bleak day now eighteen months past had not come back. If they had it had been soon after. Wounded, they had trickled in half-dead, starving. Most had died within days of their return. The town’s inhabitants had kept themselves alive by retreating from the rest of the world. They let in the odd trader, watched them at all times and sent them on their way quickly. Any strange soldier was drawn down on and shot if he did not leave immediately.
It also helped that Belton had nothing that anyone else might want...at least not visibly. Well hidden from sight, they had a plethora of cropland and seed, and several large herds of cattle. In this new world, they were well placed. This area of Missouri had a decent growing season and an excellent water supply, with fertile land and livestock. There was plenty to trade.
Part of the roof, damaged in a recent storm, was actively leaking. Farley, who had been a banker and was now mayor, told her that it would have to wait until the crops were in the ground before fixing it, “You can’t depend on handouts,” he admonished her, as if he were speaking to a child, “You will have to make sure and produce enough food for you and yours to eat.”
Jess refrained from pointing out that they had been surviving on their own for well over a year, and rather well at that, without his patronizing advice. Still, she had to admit that he was right; the repairs to the house would have to wait until the means for survival were well in hand. Meanwhile, to minimize the damage any rainfall might do, they draped a tarp over the affected area and held it in place with landscaping stones.
Jess’s dad, an avid homebrewer, had planted hop plants along the entire length of the south side of the house. Alrea
dy they were beginning to emerge from the ground. By summer, they would wind their way up the trellis mounted to the walls of the house. The vines would reach all the way to the roof of the house and then, a few weeks later, the first of the hop flowers would emerge. Jess figured they would be a good item for trade to those interested in brewing beer. She would keep some, as according to Madge’s notes the flowers could be used for stimulating appetite and also as a sedative.
The rest of the south side of the property they tilled and planted with corn. When the corn emerged and grew to half a foot, Jess would plant beans and squash at the base of each stalk—an ancient method of companion planting known as the ‘three sisters.’ Madge had spoken of this planting method and Jess wanted to try it and see how successful it was. By fall they should have a lot of canning to do.
The back yard of the house was fenced and Jess and the kids planted peas and beans along the entire perimeter, stapling chicken wire to the base of the fence for the plants to climb on. She realized, as she walked through the front yard, that many of the plants her mother had growing in it were actually herbs or beneficial wild edibles. Here was wild carrot, yarrow, and lemon balm. Madge had filled a handwritten journal and Jess’s head with all kinds of details on how these plants could be used. Some were good for eating, others eased nausea, relieved menstrual cramps, and still others had antibiotic or healing properties.
Jess knelt on the ground, loosening the dirt around an emerging plant. This one was foxglove, also known as digitalis, a powerful heart stimulant. It was dangerous in just about any quantity. Madge had said that even nibbling the leaves could kill you. Jess debated on whether or not to keep it. Everything in the gardens and yard had to have a purpose. Mainly that purpose was to ensure the survival of her little family. She worried that Jacob would get into it. He would be walking in a few more months and she had to think of what would be safe, or not. As she debated, Tina walked over, hands caked with mud.
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