2nd Earth 2: Emplacement (14 page)

I tell him that’s one of the biggest mysteries of life. Why some people think that they deserve everything other people work for. I’m just about the luckiest man alive to have the wonderful family that Heavenly Father has blessed me with. We are all blessed to have a man like him to call my son. We can only pray that we don’t have to take any more lives in defense of our own. Gary stops in and tells me that the last guy that tried to get away was the guy he knew from when he first came to this world. That was one evil man. It’s a good thing that he will not get to hurt anyone else.

Each group takes care of burying the attackers that didn’t get away. It’s such a shame that strong men will use their lives trying to destroy, rather than to build this world. Those who could not see any reason to build the tunnels, have all come to the council and apologized for doubting the need for it. We truly pray there will never be another need to use it for defense, but experience has shown us otherwise. At least so far we have only had to bury the attackers, and none of our own. We also pray that our lives continue in that respect as well.

14

All the crops are in for the winter, and it is a good time to work on the insides of the houses. Our wives all have long lists of things that they say they can’t survive unless we do them. I remind them that they were living in a basement and moving from place to place when we met. The houses we are living in now are palatial compared to then. All that logic got me smacked, and pointed in the direction of the largest chore at the moment. None of us really mind working on the houses, actually, we are very proud of how far we have come in just a couple of years. The chore on the agenda for this week is to fix any shelves that need repair in the pantry or in the basement. Then we have a place marked off in the basement to build more shelves for storing food and other supplies.

This is not a spur of the moment project. I, actually we, have been planning it for several months now and have just been waiting for the right time. All the lumber we will need has already been cut and has been seasoning all summer. Teddy has been looking forward to this project, because we don’t get to work together, anywhere near as much as we would like to. At his age he is almost always asked to work on projects with the younger people. He doesn’t mind, but we do enjoy working together, and having the opportunity to talk together like men. Today he obviously wants to ask me something, and is not quite sure how to start. I am pretty sure it has something to do with Nickie, Mickie, Paige, Mandy, Collette, or Hope. That is unless there are more thirteen year old young ladies that I do not know.

When he does start talking it is a lot more advanced than I ever thought it would be.

“Dad, you know that Nickie and I like each other a lot. How old do we have to be before we can get married?”

I am not really ready for this conversation, he starts to say something else, but I interrupt to try to explain how important a decision like getting married is. Actually I have no idea what I should be telling him. Heck, I knew Dayna all of about four hours when we got married, but that was a totally different situation.

“T, getting married is a very big step in any mans or woman’s life, and is not something that should be rushed into. I know that girls are so pretty and they smell so nice, but sharing your life is a huge responsibility. Before you get married you have to have a good job, and you and your wife to be have to decide if you want to rent a house or buy one.”

Teddy interrupts me when I get to this point in my ramblings.

“Dad, we all have jobs that we do around the farm, and I figure when we get married we will build a house. Anyway, what I started to tell you, is that Nickie and I are thinking about getting married when we are eighteen. We asked mom if she thought that is too young, and she said I should ask you. Everyone tells us that we are too young to know whether or not we are in love, but we know we are. I know that when we are apart, we both feel like mom says she feels when you are gone for a while, like we are not a complete person without each other. Do you think eighteen is a good age?”

I tell him that I think eighteen is an excellent age. He asks if I mind if he runs to tell Nickie the good news. He doesn’t have to go very far, because she is upstairs in the kitchen helping the moms make spaghetti sauce for tonight’s dinner. She comes down to the basement to give me a hug. The hug she gives Teddy is so long that Robin tells them she is going to throw cold water on them if they keep it up. The project and the day fly by. Naturally our friends drop by to see how our shelves are coming, and all have suggestions on how to make them better. Teddy and I just tell them they can build their shelves the way they want to, and we will build ours. Tim tells Teddy that he used to be a nice guy until he started hanging around with me. He says that he is just too much like me now. Nickie lives with Tim and Charity, so Tim has to harass Ted about her as well.

“Sure just about the time that Nickie gets to be a really good cook she will marry T here and probably move in with you so you can get even fatter eating all the good food the ladies in this house cook all the time.”

Charity hears him talking, and yells into the basement that if he doesn’t like her cooking, then he can take over that little chore any time. He sure does backpedal fast. He tells her that he is just thinking about her.

“If Nickie becomes as good a cook as you, or even close, because you do everything so perfectly, then you can rest and not have to cook so many meals.”

Charity yells down that we must be drowning down here because it’s getting pretty deep up there. Nickie comes downstairs laughing and tells Teddy that she can’t wait until they can get married. Until then she says she will learn all she can from all the great examples she has to learn from. That gets a lot of comments from the husbands downstairs and the wives upstairs. The wives finally call her upstairs and set her straight about who should be in charge, when they get married. Hunger finally drives us married men back upstairs, where we get harassed unmercifully, but it’s worth it. The girls have fixed a dinner fit for a king.

We rest on Sunday, and then finish the shelves on Monday, with only a few major modifications that Dayna, Robin, Melissa, and Becky decided were necessary. They really aren’t that bad, and I can see the benefit to making the changes they requested. We want some hams for Thanksgiving, which is still a few weeks away, but we figure now is as good a time as any to increase our stores of pork. We have started smoking a lot more of the meat. Our families have learned that they love smoked pork chops, plus we have some great recipes for smoked sausages that we make out of pork and beef.

Teddy and I enjoy hunting together as well. He is really very good at it for being so young. I mentioned that to Robin, Dayna, Melissa, and Becky after the young people went to bed, and as usual they set me straight. They reminded me that in the books we read about the old west, many young men and women were making their own way in the world because their parents died or simply disappeared. Even in our families we have teens that were living on their own for months or even years before we met them. They also tell me that he is so much like his dad, what else would I expect. I’m just proud that he thinks of me as his father, and hope that I can continue to be a reasonably good example to him.

We have been hunting farther from home to allow the game fairly close to stay here, so that if we ever have to we can stay close to home for supplies. We found a truck in the building materials place that has a hoist on it and a large flatbed. When we go hunting for beef or for pork we take that truck so that we can load the large animals on it after we field dress it. It works great for getting the meat onto and off of the truck. Plus it makes it much easier to deliver it to one of the other groups, if they are in need of meat. Each group has their own smoke house to smoke small quantities of meats, but we found with the large number of people combined in all the groups, we needed a much larger smoke house to accommodate all the meat we smoke.

We have become very efficient at curing our meat that way, and have done some experimenting with different woods to give us different flavors. One of the most successful experiments, at least to me is the one where we injected maple flavor into the bacon and the breakfast sausage. Melissa, Becky, Ramona, George, and Kyle kind of supervise the smoke house. We found several books on smoking and curing meats, so they have plenty of new things to try and so far I can’t think of any that I consider failures. They found a book on different sausages, most of the time the entire area around our houses reminds those of us from the other world of some of the great delicatessens we used to go to. We even found a recipe for making hot dogs, but we don’t make them exactly like the recipe. We use the good cuts of meat, but there are always lots of good small pieces of meat left when we butcher an animal, and we don’t want to waste anything that is good.

The hot dogs were a huge surprise to Dr. McEvoy. When he was a boy his family used to cook out in the backyard a lot and hot dogs were always his favorite. When we invited him and his group over for a cookout he got pretty emotional. He thanks us every time he eats a hot dog now, which is pretty often. One of the people we brought back from Rochester has a book with lots of recipes for different sauces to eat on hot dogs and hamburgers. They made a small batch to see if we would even like it and everyone wished they had made a much larger batch. They have since then and we always have some around for the burgers, hot dogs, and the sausages we like to eat.

Getting back to Teddy and me hunting and working on projects together, it took us two days to get meat enough in for all the groups that had room for fresh meat. The girls are excited because they have some new recipes they want to try. Teddy and I both agree that we will be more than willing to be the quality control specialists on this job. There is never any shortage of people to try new foods. The teens and those just younger than them are always hungry and willing to risk their stomachs in the interest of the family. Teddy and I are just putting the truck up after delivering the last of the meat to Ryan and Carol’s group. They wanted venison so we got four nice bucks. We kept two and gave them two, that’s all the room they have in their freezers. We park the truck and are walking up to the house when we see a jeep pulling onto the road to our farm from the main road.

Teddy and I both have our rifles in our hands from hunting. I don’t say a word, but I notice that he shifts his to bear on the jeep coming toward us. It is not in a threatening manner, but is ready just in case it is necessary. In this case it isn’t, we recognize the colonel and his two assistants in the jeep. They pull up a safe distance from us and ask permission to get out of the jeep. The colonel is smiling and saying that he is happy to see that some things never change. At first I think he is talking about Teddy and me carrying our rifles, but he points behind us and we turn to see at least ten men and women with guns watching every move they make. I wave and tell everybody that there is no need for concern. I add “at least not yet” and the three men in the jeep laugh.

This time we actually introduce ourselves and invite them to dinner. The colonel, whose name is Bob, compliments us on the amount of progress we have made fixing up the farm. While we are waiting for dinner, he and his assistants, Trevor and Blake, ask if we would mind showing them around the place. We take them to the largest barn we have because we can see almost a mile in all directions. Naturally we have to move from loft to loft, but the view is pretty spectacular. We explain that when the crops are growing it is much nicer. As we take a tour of the farm, everyone wants to show them the area that they are personally responsible for. Jessica, Jenny, Samantha, and several other young ladies, show them the chicken coops, which now hold several hundred chickens. We use the eggs and have fresh chicken fairly regularly.

On their tour Bob and the guys get to meet several of the people he sent to join us. They all tell them that moving here is the best thing they have ever done. Here they feel like part of something, before they were never sure if they would wake up when they went to sleep. We finally get back to the house and the girls really put on a feast tonight. It is nothing fancy, but it is all foods that none of our groups ever tried before moving here. Bob, Trevor, and Blake are definitely impressed with their cooking. That is if quantity consumed is any indicator. They are also impressed with the sweet cider we have to go with the meal. We made a couple hundred gallons this year, and there is not much left. After dinner while we are eating a bowl of ice cream, the inevitable question comes up.

“Jon, you can’t be over thirty. How is it that you have been able to turn this run down old farm into the thriving operation that we see here today? The first time we came through here it was impressive to say the least, but now it looks like there was never a war. We took the time to drive around a little before coming here and as near as we can count there are at least four other farms doing equally well. We take it they are part of the family as you all call yourselves? We have been all over this country and have not seen anything like this. We did meet some folks doing well in Texas, but they told us they had no idea about using windmills to generate power, until your group explained how to do it. They are very grateful for that information, and for all the other survival information your family has provided. How do you explain having all this knowledge that no one else I have talked to has?”

Just about the time he gets through talking, the rest of the group that has come to this world the way Tim and I did comes in. James and Jenna tell me that if I expect them to come over the least I could do is invite them to dinner. Sara and Gary say the same thing. Dayna laughs and tells them there are some leftovers in the fridge. Tim, Ken, and Doc Betty come in with their husbands or wives whichever the case may be. I start the conversation and ask Bob if he will believe that we were all Boy Scouts, and learned all of this earning merit badges. He says he might, but he was a Boy Scout before the war and never got to go camping with anyone as attractive as Jenna, Sara, and Betty, not to mention the other wives.

The girls all like that answer, but since Tim and I were the first ones to come to this world that we know of, we tell them how we got here. The others relate their stories and we all tell them what we have brought to this world that has helped us all live better lives. They all give Tim and me credit for getting the first group out of the city and starting the settlement that we all enjoy. We don’t feel that we have done any more than any of the others. In fact if it wasn’t for all of them we would be better off than in the city, but nowhere near as advanced as we are. Bob and his team are not as surprised as we thought they would be. That in itself is confusing to us, he explains.