Dusty picked up the thread. “I know my family was not prepared for anything. Bill’s brother, Kirk, found me in the woods west of here, eating bark and leaves to survive. Kirk was a scary man at that point, but even he couldn’t stand the pathetic situation I was living in. I knew nothing. My parents knew nothing, and because of it, they and my sister were dead.”
“Dusty came here when we were camping down at the creek, and we could barely feed ourselves, so we sent him to some contacts in town. They raised him, made sure he went to school, and we had him during the summer so that he could get our kind of education too. In exchange, we made sure they had fresh meat from time to time. Now he’s family. He’s my nephew, in fact, married to Lucy’s oldest daughter.”
“So, Bill,” Terry said. “Your entire family survived the Breakdown?”
“Yes. I think you know from my story that I have my dad’s smarts to thank for it. He spent the rest of his years teaching us, and anyone else who would listen, everything he knew about how things worked, and how they were supposed to work. He was serious about the idea of America, how it was meant to be, and because of him, we all grew up to think that way. We believe that anyone who works hard should share in the rewards, and be able to make the best life he can.”
“So, if I agree with what you are telling me, I have to file a false report to keep the county away from here, which means that everything I thought when I left the office is a lie.” Terry said, keeping his eyes cast down towards the table.
The bartender finally showed up with two beers in clay mugs, and slid them onto the old Formica table to join Dusty’s half-empty stein.
Dusty said, “Well, you really have a lot of choices, but none of them are simple. You could decide to protect this place, and file that false report. You could file a complete and honest report and let us deal with the fallout. It will probably happen eventually anyway. You could just fail to go home, and the fact that you disappeared will keep the county looking to safer territory, but that means abandoning your parents. We could pick them up for you, but if we do it any time soon, someone will get curious and come out here to check on you. It was easier for me to cover it up. These people saved my life.”
“But,” Bill said, “It’s your choice. We don’t want to fight if the county decides to take this place, but we are pretty well prepared to do so. The problem is that the county is official, and we are not, so if they want this place and can’t take it themselves, they can always call in the state to help, and that’s more than we can handle. On the other hand, we can’t really ask you to do something you don’t want to do. Dusty told us you were a good man before you came out, and I’ve seen the same thing. This county is short on good people these days, so we’ll live with your decision either way.”
This was a bizarre revelation to Terry. His whole life had been an endless series of people taking from other people, throwing principles out the window for hunger, and having someone tell him that they would do something that was right, even if it cost them, was almost beyond belief. But then, he realized that he was one of those people too, a young man who tried to do what was right even if it made him hungrier the next day. But this… This was the first time that it really became difficult to tell right from wrong. It wasn’t right and wrong. It was both, no matter what he decided.
“Anyway, I keep interrupting the tour. How about we look around a bit more?” Bill looked hard at Terry, trying to see what he was thinking.
“Ok, Bill. I’d like to see it.”
“All right… Dusty, we’re heading down to the creek. We’ll see you at dinner.”
Dusty said, “Ok, gentlemen, see you later. Terry, relax. These are good people.”
Bill and Terry slipped back out into the bright sunshine. Terry had time to wonder how it was so cool inside, when it was getting downright hot out here. They started walking north. People waved but didn’t come over to talk, and soon enough, they had left the town proper, were following the lane past a nice collection of draft horses, and into the corn fields beyond.
“Corn’s easy here, as long as we get enough rain,” Bill was saying. “Wheat doesn’t really like Coffee County, but we manage to get enough for bread, year round. Lucy is still in charge of farming, but her daughter, Sherry, is set to take over any time.”
They finally reached the end of the shelf, and Terry was prepared to look over the edge for the creek Bill had mentioned, but what he saw was a series of dams. Three little lakes stepped down the slope heading east, until the creek disappeared around a bend, about a quarter mile away. Each dam was made from concrete, some exposed steel, and a few heavy timbers, and each one had a race of water flowing out from the base. Terry could hear a low humming sound under the rush of water, and tried to figure out where it was originating.
Bill said, “Here’s the key to the whole thing. Local power. Each of these dams has a hydroelectric generator. We started with really basic systems, car alternators and such, but we eventually found much better - and bigger - equipment. We even have a couple of spares. We make enough power for at least four times the land we have, and we still work hard to use as little as possible. The lines are still pretty exposed and a little makeshift, but the generators themselves are well protected.”
“In town, we have whatever grid power comes. We never know when it will be on. The landowners seem to have power though. We can see the lights from their places at night. There are some windmills, but they are used to pump water, not power.” Terry said thoughtfully.
“Look up in the trees,” Bill pointed, “and you can see the sentries we keep posted around the lakes.”
Terry shaded his eyes and looked, hard. Finally he spotted a tree house across the lake, on the wooded hillside beyond. It was a jumble of lumber and sticks that looked more like a giant squirrel’s nest than a manmade construction. Once he had seen it, he was able to pick out three more within his range of vision. “I see four,” he told Bill.
“There are actually six, but we only man three of them unless there is trouble about,” Bill replied.
“We maintain this patch of woods just for the defensive aspects of being able to hide in the trees, and to keep passersby from being able to see through them, but over the ridge there, we use that land to harvest wood. It comes across the lake right here and we cut it down there.” He pointed to the lowest lake. “The power from that lake is reserved just for our industrial operations, lumber mill, machine shop, workshop, that sort of thing. It’s a little harder to keep safe out here, but it keeps the town quieter.”
Terry was smart enough to be impressed, but he was thinking of new questions by the minute. Before he could ask any of them, Bill spoke again.
“Our biggest hope is that we can get past where we are now. We still have to maintain guards. Too many people are hungry, still, thirty-seven years after the Breakdown. Eventually, we’d like to feed more, but it’s too risky, and the hard truth is that people still have the idea that help is coming. My father gave up that idea as soon as the missiles struck. He knew that any future we have is one we would build with our own hands.”
“You know, Bill, I think you are right. Just now, when you said that, I realized that you are right. All we’ve been doing my entire life is waiting for someone to put it all back together. The entire town of Manchester checks the highway every day, I guess expecting a convoy of food and supplies and building materials to come down the road to fix our lives. We all make do, we eat when we can eat, and fight when we need to fight, and we all try to find some way to work and trade and stay alive, but there is no recovery happening. All that is happening is people holding on, and other people using up the resources to make themselves happier, while the rest of us barely survive.”
“I wasn’t old enough,” Bill replied, “to understand how things really worked. I was eleven when the world broke, but my dad taught us every chance he got, and what he taught us was that, once, this country was built just like we are building our little community, with our hands and the smartest use of resources we can devise. He called it “19th Century Style.” He also taught us that the country had changed, and that too many people were just like the people in Manchester, just getting by while they waited for someone more powerful to give them a hand, that too many people did things that helped no one, made no lives better. He said in the end that we mostly just worked to pass money back and forth, and everyone who had money come across their desk tried to grab as much of it as they could while it passed by.”
They stood in silence for a while, watching the ripples float wilting, late-Spring blossoms around the lake.
Presently, Terry spoke up. “It’s different than I thought, right and wrong.”
“That does happen from time to time. Probably always will.” Bill said.
Bill turned slowly away from the water, back toward Teeny Town, and started walking. Terry took a couple of quick steps to catch up, and strode with a new confidence back towards his future.
###
About the Author
This is my first Kindle title, and I thank you for reading it. The story is my response to the feeling of precariousness in American life right now. I’m not a survivalist and I don’t live in an abandoned missile silo. In fact, I live in a suburb in Washington State with my lovely wife, five dogs (all of whom are rescues and brilliant furry idiots) and two cats that encompass both ends of the cat social scale.
Connect with Me Online
I have a sadly neglected blog at http://www.jfperkins.com but if you bug me enough, I may decide to give it some love. I have another blog related to a fundraising bicycle trip I took with my dog a couple of years ago at http://www.bigdummyproject.com. I am also on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/videojimmy but I’ll be honest. I mostly use it to post pictures of the dogs. I don’t use Twitter, because frankly, I’m way too wordy.