Fire From The Sky | Book 9 | Brimstone

by Reed, N. C.

  Clay had responded to this with an open invitation to anyone who felt as if they could just waltz in and lay claim to the work of five generations of his family.

  There had been no takers.

  At the time, Clay had dismissed both Pickett and Dawson, and their apologies, telling them in no uncertain terms that they were not welcome anywhere near the farm or its occupants. He had meant it at the time, angry at what he considered a waste of his time and resources in helping Jordan get on its feet simply in hopes that the farm would not be so isolated and alone in the new landscape they found themselves in.

  Over time, however, Clay had come to realize that his decision was somewhat short sighted. The people on the farm deserved to be able to ply wares and trade their skills to people in Jordan, and the farm could certainly use labor from the town, purchased with beef from the Sanders' ranch. He mentioned that item to Poncho now.

  “Does that mean we're allowing people from town out here to work?” Jose frowned.

  “Hell no,” Clay's reply was immediate. “So far, the biggest deal I've made is trading smoked beef for cords of fire wood. Jake made a similar deal for wheels, tires and other parts stripped from vehicles abandoned on the Interstate. Things he can use in his shop. He made a list and gave it to somebody he knows. Once they've got the stuff ready, we'll take a truck and pick it up, and drop off the beef and some fresh vegetables in return.”

  “Well, that does sound like a good deal for us,” Jose agreed. “It means we don't have to keep freeing up our own people for labor runs.”

  “Exactly,” Clay nodded. “We got enough going as it is, right now. For that matter, I'll be on a combine harvester starting tomorrow, so you'll be in charge unless there's an emergency.”

  “I thought your niece was going to do that?” Jose frowned. “Not to mention Cliff Laramie. What happened that you have to drive?”

  “Well, Abby is still going through the training program with the women who volunteered for it,” Clay reminded him. “Her, Sam, Marcy George and Jasmine Webb all decided to try their hand at it. So far no one has quit, have they?”

  “No,” Jose shook his head, a bit embarrassed that he hadn't remembered Abby being part of the training class.

  “And Cliff's hand is still a bit iffy,” Clay made a shaking motion with his own hand. “Remember that rail caught his hand back a couple months ago.” That had been when the farm had been grabbing old railroad rails for the steel.

  “Yeah, I just thought he was going to be able to operate the machinery,” Jose was nodded, making a small note on the white board along the wall.

  “He can operate most stuff, and is driving a truck right now that's hauling hay,” Clay informed him. “But operating the harvester is a bit more complicated. Even the one we have to pull behind the big tractor. So, it's Ronny and me for the most part, with Dee Talbot and Robert helping out on the side. Gordy could normally help, but he and Corey are only just now getting back to battery and I don't want to interrupt their recovery. They're working out three times a day trying to get back into fighting trim, and I want to let them finish. Besides, it's a lot quicker job this year, anyway, since we aren't hiring out to gather crops for other folks,” he sighed. “It's just us, now.”

  “Still going to do Jordan's?” Jose asked.

  “Their fields are behind ours since they planted so late,” Clay shrugged. “If we do decide to, we can do it after we're done. But the majority of what they planted this year has to be gathered by hand. We can do some things, but vegetable gardens are still vegetable gardens, no matter how huge they are. They do have a few large corn fields I know, so we may do that for them, but if they want to keep it on the cob then they'll have to drag it by hand. They've got the people for it,” he shrugged again. “They can manage.”

  “Well, sounds as if we've got it covered then,” Jose closed the marker in his hand and set it on the desk. “It's been so quiet-,”

  “Don't jinx it,” Clay said immediately, picking up a stapler and mock threatening to throw it at his friend.

  “Okay, okay,” Jose chuckled, raising his hands. “No jinxing today. What now?” he looked at his watch.

  “I'm going to get something to eat,” Clay rose, stretching before grabbing his rifle.

  “That sounds like a fine idea, actually,” Jose agreed. “See you later.”

  -

  Lainie Harper had found herself in a curious position when things had first come apart. As Clay's girlfriend, she certainly had a place on the farm. But she knew nothing of farming, and less of handling livestock. As a former runaway, turned waitress, turned exotic dancer, and finally turned night club manager, Lainie did not have many talents that lent themselves to farm work. She was strong, much stronger than she appeared to those who didn't know her, but she was still unskilled.

  As time wore on, however, one particular skill of Lainie Harper's had come into its own without any sort of fanfare or difficulty.

  Lainie was an excellent seamstress. Excellent as in she could make anything, even without a proper pattern. If you had an old pair of overalls and wanted a new one, she could dismantle the old pair and use them as a pattern. She had a sewing machine that would do almost anything that such an instrument could be made to do, and she had plenty of materials. In a pinch, she could do it by hand.

  Lainie had not been rich when the lights went out, but she had been rather well off. Not only had she owned the night club she had worked in all her life and rose to manage, she had carefully managed the often excellent pay she had received both as waitress and as dancer, turning that money into a rather hefty portfolio of stocks and bonds. As soon as Clay's niece and nephew, a pair of brilliant twins, had announced that the CME had struck, Lainie had returned to Nashville and liquidated her assets. Some she had put into gold and silver at Clay's suggestion. The rest, she had put into things. Well over one hundred thousand dollars, closer actually to two hundred thousand, had been spent in a matter of hours as she, Clay, Gordy and Janice Hardy, a teen girl that Lainie had befriended, ran themselves ragged filling truck and trailer.

  That included fabric of every usable kind that Lainie could find, and thread to go with it. Lainie repeated this action at Columbia just a day or so later, buying bolt after bolt of denim and other hardy materials to be used in making clothing in years to come when 'off the rack' was just a distant dream.

  So, when people began showing up without clothing, Lainie was one of people in a position to help, and help she did.

  One of her first jobs had been to sew jeans and shirts for Gordy's friends. The poor boys had nothing but the clothing on their backs, and while they were provided with the BDU uniforms the others wore most often, a person sometimes wanted to wear plain old jeans. She had made sure they could.

  Odd jobs here and there had led her to where she was now, which was operating a small shop in Building One, where a clothing 'store' of sorts had been established. Beverly Jackson and Amy Mitchell worked there as well unless needed elsewhere.

  One of the things that had been done in recent weeks was a systematic search of every empty house for miles. Every usable item that could be found had been taken and brought to the farm for use at a later date, including every single item of clothing.

  That clothing had been washed thoroughly in their small laundromat, disinfected with Lysol and other cleaners, and then sorted by size and then type. Many of the people on the farm had found themselves there with nothing but the clothes they wore. Many other refugees would be in the same shape. These clothes, left behind by people who had fallen victim to the Storm in one way or another, would be repurposed to help those individuals. Anything that had no real use or purpose would be taken and reused in some other way. Thin material that was unsuitable for wear as work clothing, for instance, was repurposed into making underwear.

  Lainie, as the best seamstress on the farm as well as being far ahead of most everyone else in the area of working materials, had been placed in charge of all that.r />
  “Lucky me,” she muttered to herself as she began to sort through another bundle of recently cleaned clothing.

  “Lucky what?” Beverly Jackson asked as she finished relocating the new bundle of freshly laundered clothing from the laundry room.

  “Just thinking how lucky I was to find something I could do,” Lainie smiled, more or less telling the truth.

  “True,” Beverly nodded, the look on her face showing that she knew, more or less, what Lainie had actually meant. “I have to admit I didn't care for this idea at first,” Beverly waved at the clothes. “I mean, you know, other people clothes. But then I got to thinking about it. How is it any different from going to a consignment store, or a dig store or whatever they call them around here? People go to places like Goodwill, or did, anyway, and buy clothes all the time. We're washing and disinfecting the clothing, so. . .where's the difference?”

  “There isn't one,” Lainie nodded. “And, we're lucky to have so much, considering how many people here on the farm came here with so little. This is a big help.”

  “It is that,” Beverly agreed with a firm nod.

  “How are the boys doing?” Lainie changed the subject, stopping to look at her friend over the latest bundle of clothing.

  “They're coping,” Beverly had relaxed her ethical restrictions some in the wake of the CME. While she would still never violate the confidence of someone who used her professional skills as a psychologist, she would and did discuss broad subjects such as how someone was faring during a trauma.

  “Kade was more than a friend,” Beverly continued sadly. “He was more of a brother. The situation is very similar to when we lost Big John. And the boys, despite their age, seem to be taking their cues from their mentors and bottling up their anger and grief rather than releasing it. They will occasionally talk about times they shared when they were little boys, but steadfastly refuse anything else. Their visits are becoming less and less frequent, now. Soon they won't be coming at all.”

  “Some people have to work things out for themselves,” Lainie shrugged. “I just. . .Kaden's presence was so big, it's hard to see it empty, now.”

  “It was the same for John Barnes,” Beverly nodded in understanding. “Ultimately, all we can do is be here for them,” he sighed deeply. “And trust that if they need our help, personal or professional, they'll come to us.”

  “If they're really modeling themselves after Clay and the others, I wouldn't hold my breath on that,” Lainie sounded almost mournful.

  “I'm not,” Beverly agreed as she took the laundry basket and headed back to the small laundry room. “I know better.” Lainie watched the other woman out of sight before returning to her task. No sooner had she started, however, when the sound of a throat clearing drew her attention toward the back door of the building, the closest entry to where they had established the small clothing area.

  Lainie looked to find none other than Angela Sanders standing there.

  Straightening, Lainie had to resist the urge to run her hand through her hair and straighten her clothing to make herself 'presentable' to the woman who was, in essence, her mother-in-law. Relations with her had gone from strained to non-existent many weeks ago, all due to Angela's own behavior toward her youngest son.

  Now, here she stood.

  “Can we talk?” Angela asked politely, catching Lainie by surprise.

  “Of course,” Lainie gestured toward a near-by chair.

  “No,” Angela shook her head. “I…I'd like to take a walk, if you don't mind. I have a lot to say, and it honestly helps me think about it all when I walk.”

  Lainie looked at all the work around her and almost refused, but something about Angela's attitude made her reconsider. Finally, she nodded.

  “Sure. I could use a break. Just let me tell Bev.”

  -

  Lainie walked in silence next to Angela Sanders, allowing the older woman to set the pace of a conversation she had wanted to initiate.

  “I have done so much wrong,” Angela finally said, or more accurately sighed. “Maybe incorrect in some instances rather than wrong, but either way, it still wasn't right, which is all that's important.” She paused a minute before smiling slightly, though it was a bittersweet look on her.

  “I used to think I ran this place, you know,” she told Lainie. “I'm sure you could tell that by the way I treated you when you first showed up here. I never really had a job away from this farm after Gordon and I married, or at least once we started our family. I worked in a garment factory until I was pregnant with Robert, and after he was born, I just stayed at home.”

  “It was a good life, if a hard one sometimes. It's a true saying that there's no real easy work on a farm or a ranch either. Even cooking and cleaning for so many and so much is exhausting. With a child added to that, working away from the farm was just not practical.” She stopped walking, and Lainie stopped beside her.

  “We were never poor, you understand,” Angela continued. “Oh, we had times when things were strained, of course. Everyone does. But they were temporary, and usually brought on by us trying to get something done as quickly as possible. But between Leon the Elder and Gordon, this place grew, and thrived, and we never really did without. Gordon was always good to me,” she smiled softly at the memory of better times. “He essentially let me do whatever I wanted, and so did Leon, though he griped about it, of course,” she actually laughed at that.

  “So, over the years, I came to think I ruled this place,” Angela began walking again. “When all this started, I thought I took it okay. I made my lists and I went and bought things I knew we would need going forward and might never be able to get again. But in my mind, in the back of my mind I mean, I think I saw this as some temporary thing. Even with Clay and the twins warning that it would be catastrophic and permanent, I think in the back of my mind I just viewed this as any other disaster we've weathered, and planned accordingly.”

  “Gradually I realized how wrong I was,” she admitted after a brief pause. “As I did, realize it I mean, I began to try and hold this place together as it had always been. Whatever happened out there in the rest of the world, I wanted to keep this place normal. Safe. Unchanged, maybe is a better word but I think normal suits my mindset at the time much better.” She looked at Lainie closely.

  “I wanted this one place to be untouched by the misery around us. I thought if I could do that, just to this one little place, then we would all be better off. And at first, that was okay,” she made a slight nodding motion with her head that ended in a side-to-side movement of indecision. “Clay argued with me of course, and Leon, the Elder I mean, did too. Gordon usually sided with me, but I can see now that he did that out of love for me and not necessarily because he thought I was right. He's a good man, like that. Love means a great deal to him. For all of us, I mean,” she waved an arm to encompass the original Sanders' farm.

  “I wanted things that I thought Clayton should go and get for us,” she went on. “I wanted thing done my way. I wouldn't see the dangers he tried to show me, because they interfered with the normality that I so wanted to preserve here. When we had to build that orphanage, I wanted beds and mattresses for the children. All children need beds and mattresses. Malitha and Marla agreed with me, so here we went, demanding that he go and get them. You remember how that turned out.”

  “Then there was the fight over the lesbian couple,” she sighed again, much more deeply this time. “My bible tells me their lifestyle is a sin, and that was as far as I was willing to see. Clayton was the one who reminded me that there were plenty of other sins, and that we were supposed to love the sinner even as we hated the sin. Isn't that something? I should have been teaching him, and yet he was teaching me. What does that say about my attitude?”

  Sensing this was not a question Angela wanted her to answer, Lainie remained silent.

  “Anyway, I sided with the others against my own son,” she exhaled mightily at that admission. “Even when I found out Malitha h
ad lied, I still insisted things be done my way. I would never have tolerated that before all this happened, Lainie. Never in a million years. I can take a lot and still smile, but not a lie.” She paused.

  “And yet, I tolerated one of the most terrible lies ever, didn't I?” she continued after that brief pause. She stopped suddenly, looking at Lainie.

  “I didn't mean to just unburden on you that way,” Angela apologized. “That wasn't the purpose of my visit. I need your help, Lainie. I want, no, I need to repair my relationship with my son. I need to make up for the way I've treated him, but more than even that, I need for him to see that I love him dearly. He is my son and I would love him no matter what he did. I might chastise him for doing wrong, but I would love him while I did it.”

  “I have allowed my fear to override my good sense,” she said frankly. “I really am not scatterbrained, you know. I may not have a college education, but I did graduate high school, and in the top twenty at that. But despite that, I have allowed fear of all this,” she waved her hand to encompass all points around them, “to dominate me, and to lead me into making some terrible decisions. Decisions I never would have made otherwise. Of course, without all this happening, I wouldn't have had to make them to start with, would I?” she shrugged slightly.

  “I need to undo that damage, Lainie,” Angela stated firmly. “Part of that has to begin with you, I think. I need to make amends to you for the way I've slighted you at times. We, by which I mean our entire community before the disaster, can be a stuffy bunch. Looking down our noses at those who make different life choices than we do, and never once considering what led them to make those choices. How those choices might have been all they had at the time. How desperate they might have been to escape their situations. We call ourselves Christians, but we fail to show it when we act like that,” the older woman shook her head slowly, then looked up again.