Going Home (47 page)

“What, you can’t climb a tree?” he fired back.

“How in the hell do you expect me to climb that? There isn’t a limb for thirty freaking feet,” Mike said.

“Come on, Junior, follow me.” Sarge headed around behind the cabin. He went over to the big cabinet and opened it up. Inside was an assortment of stuff—tools, hardware, and other junk. He reached down into the bottom and pulled up a small cloth bag and handed it to Mike. “Use these.”

Mike took the bag and opened it. Inside was a bunch of the screw-in tree steps. Mike held one up, looking at it. “Nice. I like ’em.”

“Kind of hard to keep a ladder around here,” Sarge replied.

Mike and Doc took the steps and went back out front. Looking at the tree, Mike found the existing holes from where Sarge had screwed these things in many times before. After screwing in the ones he could from ground level, he took a length of rope and a carabiner from his pack. Looping the rope around the tree, he clipped it to the D ring of his rigger’s belt with the carabiner. Climbing up those first steps, he hitched the rope up the tree with his free hand. Once he was high enough to put the next steps in, he leaned back against the rope. Repeating this process, Mike was up high enough to hang the panels.

The bracket already had the bolts and hardware to secure the panels in the holes. Doc threw him a hank of 550 cord, and he used it as a tag line to haul them up one at a time. Using his Leatherman MUT EOD, he tightened all the bolts as he set the panels in place. With the panels in place, Doc tied the end of the cable on, and Mike pulled it up and connected it to the cables coming off the panels.

“Hey, Doc, see if he has a hammer or something and something to secure the wire to the tree with,” Mike called out.

Doc went out back and found a hammer and some Romex cable nail-in straps and brought them out. He dumped the straps into the bag the steps were in and tied it and the hammer to the cord. Mike pulled it up and secured the cable as he came down. This time, though, he had trouble getting his safety rope around the step. “What a pain in the ass!” he complained as he was trying to free the rope from a step.

Doc fed the cable from the panels into the cabin through a hole that Sarge had made just for the purpose. He and Mike went about setting up the batteries, charge controller, and inverter on one side of the cabin. The location of the panels was not exactly ideal, but Sarge had trimmed away branches in the past to give a decent southerly exposure and enough light to keep the batteries up if they conserved their power consumption. Sarge looked up and realized that all four men were inside the cabin. They had all been so busy with their assigned tasks that no one even realized that there wasn’t a watch posted.

“Hey, you bunch of dickheads! What’s wrong with this picture?” he shouted out. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked around at one another. Doc was the first one to catch on. “I’ll go out and keep an eye on things, Sarge.” He went over to the door and picked his rifle up from where it was leaning against the wall and went out.

“At least one of you has some damn sense,” Sarge replied. “We have to keep someone on watch at all times. I know it’s going to be a pain in the ass with only four of us, but we have to do it. Mike, you sit down now and write up a duty schedule, put watch rotation and mess duty on it,” the old man said.

“Roger that, Sarge,” he replied as he sat down at the table, putting on a set of headphones to listen to the radio while he worked on the schedule.

“You guys hungry?” Sarge asked. Ted nodded to him; even Mike looked up and nodded his head.

Then from outside came a “Yyeesss!” from Doc.

“All right, I’ll rustle some grub up for us,” Sarge said.

Sarge went over to his kitchen and set out his Coleman Dual Fuel stove on what was left of the counter space. Going outside, he rooted around in the cooler he loaded from the kitchen of the house and carried in a bag of taters and onions. After lighting the stove, he set a big cast iron skillet out on it, black as coal, and dropped a big spoon of Crisco in it. Grabbing the little bottle of dish soap on the sink, he washed his hands. He had a cutting board that fit over the sink. Setting it out, he started to cut the spuds. When the spuds were chopped, he dumped them in the skillet and started chopping the onions. After adding them to the taters, he put a lid from the Dutch oven over it and cleaned his cutting board.

Going back out to the cooler, he came back with a dozen eggs. From under the counter, he pulled out three cans of salmon and opened them. Emptying them into a bowl, he cracked in a couple of eggs and added some onions he saved when he chopped them up. Reaching back under the counter, he found a half can of Italian bread crumbs and poured those in till it felt right. With everything in the bowl, he mixed it all together with his hands and formed the mix into cakes.

He lit the other burner on the stove and set another skillet out and dropped in another spoon of shortening. While it melted, he stirred the taters around, making sure nothing was sticking. With the grease melted, he added four of the cakes to the skillet and got down to some serious cooking. The little cabin filled with the aroma of cooking onions; add to that the smell of the salmon, and it was enough to drive you mad. It brought all work inside the cabin to a standstill as the guys looked over his shoulder. Sarge pulled the ever-present dish towel off his shoulder and swatted at them. “You got shit to do; git!” Ted and Mike both went about looking busy while they waited for the food.

Once everything was ready, he served plates heaped with taters and onions and a couple of salmon patties each and handed two of them out to Mike and Ted. Walking over to the door, he picked up his rifle and stepped out. “Doc, go on in there and eat.”

“Hey, thanks. That smells damn good,” he replied.

“Just hurry up; I ain’t eat yet either,” Sarge fired off in reply.

Doc went in and ate with the other two, while Sarge sat in his camp chair on the deck.

11

“Daddy!” a little voice called out. Thad looked up from his wife and saw his son coming down the stairs of the house. His mother was standing in the open door.

Little Tony ran up to him; Thad knelt down to catch him. The little boy wrapped his arms around his father’s neck. “Where have you been, Daddy? You were supposed to come home a long time ago.”

“I was working on it, buddy; I was working on it,” Thad replied with tears in eyes.

He stood up, picking the boy up with him. Anita came up and took his hand, her little hand disappearing into his. As they walked up the stairs, Thad’s mother was leaning on her cane in the doorway. “’bout time you gots yoself home,” she said. Leaning the cane against the doorframe, she reached out with both hands for his face. He had to stoop down for her to grab it. Tilting his head, she kissed his forehead. “You sho’ need a haircut.” She chuckled.

Thad reached up and rubbed the quarter inch of hair on his head. “Yeah, getting a lil shaggy.” He gave out a little laugh.

They walked into the house, and he fell into his easy chair. He hadn’t even thought of it the whole time he was gone, but now that he was home and sitting in it, it was the most comfortable thing he had ever sat in. Anita left the room as little Tony jumped into his lap, Thad reclined the chair all the way back, and Tony lay down on his chest. Anita came out of the kitchen with a plate, a sandwich on it, along with some okra and rice. Thad’s mother put up her hand. “Let him be, sweetie, look at him. He plumb wore out. Let him be. He home now an’ that’s all that matters.”

Farles Lake was about a four-and-a-half-mile walk as the crow flies from my current location, so it would probably take a little bit longer than that, as I could not simply walk a perfectly straight line out here. Once I hit the other side of the road, I stopped and listened for anyone that may have been around. There wasn’t a sound. It’s funny how paranoid you can get.

Just as I was about to take off again, looking out into the scrub I had to hike through reminded me of the ticks ’n’ chiggers. My clothes were treated, and that should help, but I was going to increase the odds. Dropping the pack, I tucked my shirt in and buttoned the sleeves at the wrists. I bloused my pants inside my boots, buttoned the shirt all the way up, and even dug around in the Devildog until I found my buff and pulled it over my head, tucking the opening under my chin, and put my hat back on. After stuffing the loose end of the buff into my shirt, I was as armored against the damn bugs as I could get.

After hefting the pack and picking up the AK, I started back out on my trek. My plan was to hike to Farles Lake; I can refill my water from a pitcher pump there and then continue on from there. I figure three, maybe three and a half, hours, and I should be there. The hiking wasn’t too bad, a little rough in spots but not difficult. Doing my usual “take a couple of steps and listen” routine demanded a slower pace. No matter, though; it was rather comfortable out tonight, even without a coat, and I was making decent time toward home.

It was about eleven thirty when I hit the northern end of Farles Lake. The picnic area was on the south end. There isn’t a camping area on the lake, just a “day use” area, as the forestry service likes to call it, but it did have that pump. Now I should have known that there isn’t a camping area there in normal times, but these aren’t normal times. So it was about ten minutes till midnight when I reached the south end of the lake.

My trip through the scrub to this point had been completely uneventful, aside from the usual assortment of limb whips to the face and stumbles over deadfalls. After scrambling over the ridge, I was relieved to make it to the lake. The Ocala National Forest was a vast hunk of land, acres and acres of acres and acres. Water, however, was the commodity. So, as was the case all over the world, when you found water you found life. Tonight on the south side of Farles Lake, I found life in the form of more Rainbow people.

How I didn’t smell the bonfire, or see the light from the fire, is a mystery. It wasn’t a big fire, but I surely should have seen it. The half-moon out tonight provided enough light that I had raised the goggles and was walking the trail in ambient light. Being so close to home and on very familiar ground, I was daydreaming of my girls. I was thinking of the girls pumping on the handle of that pump and squealing with pure youthful joy as the water would issue forth from the pump head. It was with this thought in my mind when I came out into the clearing on the lake side. And here was where I came out into the light of the fire, and the eyes of at least a dozen hippies fell on me.

They were seated around their fire—on the ground, in camp chairs, and on logs dragged up to the fire. There were women, men, and children. They were all quiet and peaceful-looking as I appeared before them. Of course, all that changed when they saw me. Here I stood before them with a large pack on, rifle butt sticking out of it, an AK across my chest, the NVGs on my head, and the bloused boots and the buff covering most of my face. As my presence was registered by them, one at a time, they began to react. The children naturally started to cry; one woman screamed, which brought others to the fire—armed others.

Everyone was coming to their feet; the women and children were receding from the fire, and mostly me; many armed men were gathering around it. No one had spoken a word yet—they or me. We were all standing there, waiting for someone to make the first move. I certainly didn’t want trouble with them; sure they’re a bunch of stinking hippies, but they haven’t wronged me yet. A sudden thought popped into my mind; it almost made me laugh out loud at the thought of it. It was so damn ridiculous that it may just work with this crowd.

I rummaged around in the Devildog slung on my waist with my left hand as the grip on the AK was in my right. Finding what I was looking for, I clutched them into my fist.

“Hey, you guys, seen any of those asshole forestry cops?” I called out.

“Naw, man,” came a reserved reply from somewhere on the other side of the fire.

Pulling the two baggies out of the small pack, I said, “Cool. You guys got any papers?” If anything would break the ice with this crowd, this was it.