Renewal 6 - Cold (5 page)

“Unless something really amazing happens, we’ll fight,” Bill said. “We knew it would happen eventually. We weren’t counting on a bunch of white-robed crazies from Columbia joining in, though. That’ll make it tough.”

“So, what should I do?”

“As far as we know, the Jenkins, except for the Judge, don’t know where we are. That buys us a little time. I’d like you to use that time to start a quiet campaign against the rich families. Without giving too much away, I want you to find as many people as you can, people who are fed up with living under the boot heel, and may be willing to fight to change it. Let them know their chance is coming.”

“I don’t know if that’ll work,” Dusty said.

“It probably won’t, by itself, but I’ve got an idea that will give the people a taste of the good life. Just get started. You’ll get some help soon.”

“Ok, Bill.”

“Oh, and Dusty? Take a truck back. Might as well start showing off a little. Park it on the square where people can see it during the day,” Bill said.

“Somebody might steal it,” Dusty replied.

“Fuel for the fire. Even if it sits for an hour, that’ll be good enough to get the rumors flying. Dusty, you may have the most important part in all of this. You have lots of friends in town, and the real war is going to be fought in their hearts and minds. They’ll either knuckle under to the fear and intimidation of the families, or they will reach for something better.”

“Yeah, let’s hope they still have dreams.”

 “Thanks for rushing out, Dusty.”

“Yes, sir. I’m on my way.”

Dusty nodded to the men in the room, winked slyly at Terry, and headed out.

Bill wasn’t finished. “Kirk, I’d like you to give the Lieutenant and his men a tour of the neighborhood. Explain our defensive situation, and get their feedback. Then you all figure out the best way to work them into our plan.”

“Ok, Bill. Will do,” Kirk answered.

“Lieutenant, I’m afraid you’re here for the duration. We’re well equipped to deal with the locals, but throwing in another army of bad guys means we’ll need all the help we can get.”

“No problem, Mr. Carter. We owe you, big time. Even my wife would agree.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant. Talk to me after you’re done with Kirk.”

Jackson and the silent Dillon filed out the door after Kirk, leaving Bill alone with Terry.

“Terry, in the morning, you and Seth head back up to Murfreesboro. I need you to make arrangements with Charlie. On the way, talk to Larry and his boys. See if they can drum up some of their neighbors to head out this way. If they look shaky, tell them there’s plenty of food for the duration, which they should know by now. If that doesn’t do it, tell them the best way to guarantee the help they need is if we owe them a favor.”

Chapter 6 - 11

With new winter gear, Dad was able to stay out longer with Arturo and Kirk. They spent the next few days gathering up everything they could lay their hands on, starting with the building supplies. They siphoned the gas out of vehicles scattered around Manchester as they went. By the time they were done, there were materials and gear stacked all over the barn, on top of the firewood, in the drying racks, outside under the lean-to, everywhere except the stalls. New tarps were nailed over the hay bales around the barn, and over any supplies that needed to be outside. Almost as soon as the tarps were in place, they became as hard as glass. There was still no snow, but the rapid changes in temperature and extreme cold were building a permanent layer of frost over everything outside.

I was put in charge of keeping the well pump fire tended during the day. I fed a steady stream of wood into the blaze, and shoveled the ashes away at least once every afternoon. The week before, my every thought was about firewood. This week, it was about that particular fire. The one thing I learned was that our incredible supply of firewood was not nearly enough. Somehow, we would be back out for more. Mom tried to assign Juannie to the woodstove inside. Dad had quickly attached a long piece of flue pipe to both of the stoves. The smoke exhausted into the upper reaches of the barn, and was quickly whisked away on the wind. Juannie neglected the stove, of course, and forced two cold starts in two days. That’s when I was put on double fire duty. It seemed like all I did was walk back and forth with an armful of split wood. In any case, the barn stayed above freezing for the most part, and the water continued to flow.

Mr. Carroll was careful to come out at least a couple of times a day. He would thank me like I was the real hero of the operation, and he would offer to help. I always told him I had it covered, and he always told me I was the first eleven-year-old he had ever met with my determination and responsibility. I thought the job was pure drudgery but still better than running into town for supplies. By then, I understood what kind of danger was in the world.

When the supply runs were complete, Dad switched to construction mode. He had a quiet talk with Mom, and made some changes in the roster. Juannie was put on daycare, and responded in a way that made us wonder if she even liked children. Lucy got my fire duty after we spent a morning working the fires together. Mom was still organizing the new supplies, and almost cried for joy when she found a new pile of food underneath some plywood that had been hastily leaned against one of the barn poles.

“David, where did you find this?” she asked.

“There was a little grocery store out on the Woodbury Highway. Bars on the windows and no one in sight. We yanked the bars with the station wagon and dumped everything out the window. We got everything. There’s another pile over there,” Dad said, pointing to the dark area behind the stalls.

“That’s terrific! I didn’t expect you to find any food.”

“We didn’t either, but we figured it was worth a look. One less possum for supper...” Dad said wryly.

Dad, Arturo, and George went to work on the shelters outside while Kirk and I got a job that made me miss fire patrol. We got to dig. Dad told us to start at the front stall, and to dig each stall at least five feet deep. We were to use the wheelbarrow to pack the excess dirt between the round bales outside. Mr. Carroll had pushed the bales tightly together, but there were still plenty of gaps for the cold to seep through. Dad also made sure that we understood not to undermine the stall supports, and showed us where he thought it would be safe to dig. Before we could even begin, we had to move a great deal of firewood and salvage to make paths to the stalls wide enough for the wheel barrow. In the case of the first stall, the path started right by the area where we sat in the barn. We were destined to spend hours trying to back a loaded wheelbarrow around the wood stove.

Kirk and I stood in the first stall, looking at each other in the dim light and wearing a pair of where-to-start expressions. Finally, I shrugged and took my first shovelful of about twenty thousand, and tossed it in the wheelbarrow. I stayed near the middle and Kirk started cutting the edges where Dad had shown us. When he had a start on the edges, he joined me in the middle. An hour later, we were pretty sure that the whole job was just a sneaky prank that Dad was playing on us. What could be the possible purpose for digging out the stalls? Oh, well. It’s not like we were missing anything good on TV. We dug.

Kirk did most of the wheelbarrow work, but once the hole was too deep, I had the clever idea of digging a ramp into the pit, so that Kirk could roll the thing down to our level. This is one of those tricks that I only learned after trying to throw soil up to a wheelbarrow I couldn’t see. The ramp was too steep to call it a great idea, but it was an improvement. To our surprise, we had a four-foot hole before the men came in to warm up. Dad checked our progress and declared it to be excellent work.  We climbed out and parked our dirty bodies near the woodstove for a while.

“How’s it going out there, Dad?” I asked.

“Pretty good. I think we’ll finish the outhouse by dark. Figured we should do that first, since you’ve been doing fine on the well pump. Plus, we don’t want a cold women rebellion on our hands.”

Dad caught Mom’s dirty look, but for me, it was another sign of my slow entry in the brotherhood of men. Ten minutes later, the men bundled up and stamped out the barn door. Kirk and I went back to work. We were tired, but the six-foot mark came and went fairly quickly. We were forced to use buckets to lift the dirt out by then. Not sure of our depth, we kept going. The strange part was that the deeper we went, the warmer we felt. I shed my coat somewhere around six feet and broke into a sweat. At first, I thought it was just hard work and stacking fatigue, but when we were as deep as we could go and still escape, I climbed out on Kirk’s shoulders and realized that it was much colder on the edge than it was in the pit. Maybe it was just the wind.

I chose a square edged shovel from the lineup on the barn wall, and dropped back into the hole to scrape the ragged walls into something I thought would pass Dad’s standards. When I began, I thought it meant that we were almost done. The amount of dirt I scraped off the walls turned into another ten wheelbarrow loads, and Kirk was eyeing me with open disgust before we lifted the last of the loose soil out of the pit. In another show of cleverness, I built a simple ladder out of some weathered two-by-fours, and Kirk helped me lower the heavy thing into the pit.

The heavy sky made it difficult to notice that night was falling. We had been working in near darkness for longer than I could remember. I guess my brain was trying hard to forget the experience. We tested the ladder and climbed out for the last time that day. With no digging to keep my internal furnace stoked, I got cold almost immediately and put on my coat. Even so, I still found myself huddling by the woodstove to stay warm against the drying sweat and icy wind.

Chapter 6 – 12

Terry carried a strong proprietary feeling for Big Bertha, even though he understood that she belonged to the community. He pulled the keys from his pocket with satisfaction, unlocking the doors with an unnecessary flourish. Luckily, Seth was on the far side of the truck, waiting for the locks to pop, or he would have made fun of Terry for the entire trip. Terry had spent twenty years without ever leaving central Coffee County. Now he was trusted with a huge and valuable armored machine to travel all the way to Murfreesboro, and the weird part was, it already felt normal. He guessed that Bill was right. People can adjust to anything.

He climbed up into the driver’s seat and carefully clipped the seat belt. He read the dashboard laboriously, since he had not driven enough to make the process automatic yet. He inserted the key, turned it, and broke into a toothy grin when the big diesel clattered and caught, rumbling to life. The truck was big enough that getting out of the barn was the biggest challenge yet. Once he passed through the doors, he felt home free. The gate guard was doubled in light of the new threats, and they had the gate opened long before he passed through and turned left onto the pavement. Terry couldn’t resist honking the horn when he passed the gatehouses on the main road, and he settled into the routine of driving as he turned onto Highway 41, heading northwest.

Twenty minutes later, Big Bertha was approaching the now-familiar farm truck in Beech Grove.  Terry took it slow. He didn’t want Larry and his sons to get too nervous at the approaching truck. Terry needn’t have worried. One of Larry’s sons was moving the flatbed off the highway before Big Bertha reached the highly unofficial roadblock. Terry pulled off on the side of the road, and shut down the  engine. He and Seth, armed only with handguns in holsters, dropped onto the gravel shoulder and held up their hands in greeting.

“Hey, Larry. You probably don’t remember us...” Terry began.

“Sure I do. You’re Terry and that’s Big Seth.” Larry finished.

Seth folded his massive arms across his chest and flexed. “How’d you guess?”

“You’re one to remember, Big Seth.” Larry grinned. “You know, this highway has had more traffic in the last week than it has all spring. What brings you fellows out this way? Did Bill send you to check out my place?”

“Well, not really...” Terry said, until Larry interrupted him again.

“Oh, before I forget... A convoy of six big trucks full of armed men went that way yesterday afternoon.” Larry jerked his thumb to the east. “They were on the interstate, thank goodness. We saw them go by on the overpass.”

“Well, Larry, that’s kinda why we’re here. Bill sent me to ask you if you remember the terms of our potential deal.”

“Sure I do, but I thought we were a long way from having a deal,” Larry said.

“That’s true, but he wanted me to remind you about the part where if we call for help, you come running. We need the manpower.”

“Don’t you think that’s a lot to ask, seeing as how we have no deal yet?”

“Yeah, honestly I do, but personally, I’m new to Bill’s community. Seth here was born and raised under Bill’s protection. I think both of us will tell you the same thing. If there’s a good risk in this messed up world, it’s betting on Bill.” Terry said, while Seth nodded in support.

“He seems like a good guy.” Larry agreed, hesitantly.

“He is a good guy. He’s a builder. The lights went out when he was eleven years old, and he has spent his entire life making a place that looks a lot like the old America. He believes in that place, and not the way the Manchester families do. They want to own everything and keep everyone working for them. He believes that the product of the work should be shared with everyone who helps make it happen. If he went far enough to make you any kind of promise, then he believes you are one of those people, too.”

“I’m not arguing. I’m just trying to look out for my family,” Larry said.

“I think that’s entirely fair, Larry. The thing is, we have trouble coming, and if you are looking for help from Bill’s promise, then it makes sense that Bill needs to come through this trouble with the ability to help. I don’t know all the details, but I’ve seen what we’re up against, and I’d say there’s a fair risk to the community.” Terry spoke, and Seth nodded as he felt appropriate. The end result was Seth looking like a giant bobble head, but an earnest one.