2nd Earth: Shortfall (16 page)

“We followed Zeus because we didn’t want him to get lost, but then we didn’t know where we were and we were getting very cold and didn’t know the way home any more.”

Tina starts explaining, then it’s Tammy’s turn.

“We started to cry, but then Gramma and Grandpa found us and carried us back here. They were right here when Princess came up, but they said they had to leave when they saw you coming. Daddy, Gramma said they will talk to you soon, they both said they are very proud of you and love all their grandchildren very much.”

Tina looks at Tammy and they both nod their agreement. We can see behind the girls and there isn’t even a smudge in the fresh snow, much less footprints. Melissa asks the girls, while we are carrying them home, why there are no tracks in the snow. They both say that Gramma and Grandpa carried them all the way.

“They weren’t even wearing coats, but when they picked us up we felt as warm as if we were sitting in front of the fire. They hugged us both and took turns carrying us so that we all got to know each other. You should have seen them Mommy and Daddy, they didn’t leave until you came up to us.”

Just about everyone in the family is coming to look for the girls when we get close to home. Robin and the children run to meet us with several others before we get out of the woods. The mood changes drastically for the better almost immediately, we have almost had a tragedy, but now we can celebrate the return of our babies. When we get into the house, after everyone hugs and tells us all how happy they are, we finally get the chance to speculate on who the children can be calling their grandparents. When we ask the girls, Kathy, Karen, and Teddy say they have seen them too. They have talked to them and have even gotten hugs from them. Robin asks them why they never said anything about this before. They tell us that Gramma and Grandpa told them not to.

We are starting to worry that there may be people living nearby that are meeting the children secretly. Robin asks the children if they can describe their grandparents for us.

“You know what they look like,” Tammy and Tina are smiling. “You have a picture of them upstairs.”

They run upstairs and come running back before any of us can get up there with them. Tina hands the picture, that I keep next to the bed on the nightstand, to her mommy. Melissa shows us the picture that I keep of Gunny and Ma Horton. The children all say that they love their Gramma and Grampa very much.

“Gramma is funny, she always calls Grampa, Francis, and he rolls his eyes whenever she calls him that. He saw the truck you drive Daddy and told us to tell you that he remembers when both of you rebuilt one just like it. How come Gramma and Grampa can’t come and stay with us?”

I wish I could say something, but the tears are flowing freely down my cheeks right now. Dayna starts to hug me, but the twins along with Kathy, Karen, and Teddy beat her to it. They tell me not to be sad, Tina and Tammy are fine now. I know for sure I could never go back to living the life I was before I came here and became part of this wonderful family. The evening goes by with us reading the children’s favorite stories to them until they all fall asleep. When we can finally go to sleep I have a wonderful dream in which Gunny and Ma Horton meet me in the woods and tell me how proud they are of me and how much they love all their grandchildren and our whole family.

Ma tells me I better take good care of my family or she will come back and tan my hide good. I tease Gunny calling him Francis and he tells me if I keep it up he will haunt me every time I try to make love. Ma smacks him, but he tells me if I don’t think he will, keep calling him Francis. I know better than to test that old war horse, he will do whatever he says he will. I hate to wake up from that dream, but when I do, I tell Dayna, Robin, and Melissa all about the conversation I had with the grandparents. They all laugh when I tell them what Gunny said and tell me I better not get into that kind of trouble or I will answer to them as well. We all agree that we hope the children continue to receive visits from their grandparents, I hope I do as well.

The days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into months and before we know it the weather is turning nice again. It is mid March and Frank says it is time to start planting. The winter wheat is doing great and will be ready to harvest in late spring or early summer. We planted the hard red winter wheat and are planning to plant some of the soft white spring wheat. Don’t ask me what all that means. Frank is the farmer in the group.

Dad and Frank are doing most of the planting except for a comparatively small amount we are planting in the individual gardens around the houses. The greenhouse is an excellent place to start our tomato plants and others that we are planning to put in the small gardens. We will plant a couple acres of tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, green beans, yellow beans, carrots, and corn for eating, and corn for feed and seed. In the smaller individual gardens we will plant some of the same crops, but we will also plant lettuce, a couple different kinds of squash, cucumbers, and a couple varieties of bell peppers. We sure are glad to have Frank and his wife Connie with us to help us learn how to be more self sufficient. Their children are a big help as well. Our whole family is willing to work and do whatever is necessary to survive or just to make life easier for each other. Dayna is definitely pregnant. She looks so cute with her little round belly. Since we are not sure that all the seed we found is going to grow we plant more than we think we will need just in case. Our neighbors are doing the same. Hopefully we will have a good crop so both families can be comfortable this coming winter and even be able to share if we get other neighbors.

Today is a beautiful spring day with the sun shining brightly and the thermometer on the barn says the temperature is 75 degrees in the shade. We have spent just about the whole day planting potatoes. We were very lucky to find a field that was full of potatoes growing wild. We dug up all that we could and now we have enough seed potatoes to plant almost three acres of potatoes. It wasn’t all that bad with the tractor doing most of the work, but we did follow along with a hoe to make sure all the seed got covered properly. We didn’t plant all three acres today, Frank says it is better to stagger the planting of the crops so that they are not all ready to harvest at the same time. Dayna says she wishes we had a swimming pool. She saw them in the books we have been reading and thinks it would be great. Personally I am thinking about that pond that we have in the back. There are some indications that tell us that the people who once lived here used it for swimming in.

We decide to take a walk back, so naturally we are joined by our entire household along with seven puppies and their mom plus several other interested parties. I am wearing shorts and a tee shirt so when we get to the pond I decide to see how deep it is and I just go ahead and jump in. If I had thought this through I would have realized that the temperatures have only gotten above fifty in the past week so the water in the pond is still pretty cold. In fact it’s down right freezing. When I finally scramble back on shore everyone is smiling, well some of them are laughing almost uncontrollably. Even the puppies look like they are smiling, but they look like that all the time anyway. The twins come over and ask me if they can go swimming with me. They remind me that they can’t swim yet so I will have to hold them. Melissa their mother tells them, between fits of laughter, that the water may be a degree or twenty too cold for swimming yet.

Tim along with Charity who is pregnant as well comes up and asks me how the water is. Naturally I tell him the truth. After all he is my brother-in-law. I tell him it’s fantastic and that I am just getting ready to go for another dip. Dayna smacks me for lying to her sisters’ husband. He tells her it’s okay, he figured out how cold that water would be still and came up mainly to rub it in that I am so dumb. Ken comes along with Dayna’s other sister, they are now married and I wish he would have stayed in the other dimension or whatever it is. Between him, Tim, Billy, and Rod I get harassed as bad as I did by those nurses back at the hospital. We all decide to head back to the houses for the evening, now that everyone is cheerful at my expense. I have a tendency to cheer up our family’s days by doing something, let’s say somewhat less than intelligent, sometimes.

I get the last laugh tonight though, when we get home I have four lovely young ladies who are more than willing to sit on my lap and help me get warm. Okay, it’s the girls, but so what if they are young, they still love their daddy, which makes me about the luckiest man alive. Between the children and the puppies that join us I am warm in no time. I mentioned that Ken married Dayna’s other sister Carrie. I forgot to mention that dad found a book with several wedding ceremonies, in a church we were looking around in one day when we were in town. Now we actually have a ceremony when people want to get married. Dayna, Robin, and Melissa have started keeping a journal, actually they started before we came down here, that chronicles everything we have done here and all of our experiences.

They also went around to everyone in the family and wrote down everything they could remember about themselves. We are keeping the same information on all of us. I think they call studying family trees, genealogy. This way we will at least leave a record of at least one small group, who is trying to get civilization back where it was, only this time maybe we can eliminate the wars and the poverty. So far we are doing well with everyone being equal, and everyone doing what they can for each other. I joke around, but I am very glad that Ken has joined us, he helps out in so many ways, and is a heck of a nice guy as well. I only have to read three stories tonight to get all the little ones to sleep. Dayna always teases me and tells me if I would tell the girls some of my war stories, they would probably fall asleep much quicker.

17

We are getting a very nice herd of dairy cows. We all take turns milking them, which can be a real adventure when you haven’t done it before. We always have plenty of butter and cream for ice cream, plus milk for anyone who wants to drink it. We have even learned to pasteurize the milk by heating it in some large vat like kettles that we also found in the barn. The pasteurizing, although somewhat primitive, helps kill the bacteria and other things that could hurt us that may be in the milk, in its raw state. Our neighbors are also starting to put together a herd, for now though we have plenty of milk and other milk products to share. Our chicken experts, Jenny, Samantha, Rachel, and Jessica went over to the neighbors back in January and helped them get their chicken coop full, and have helped them learn pretty much everything they have.

Dan, Don, and Andrew, our bee and honey experts, have really taken over that chore. During the winter they took it upon themselves to build several dozen bee hives that look like wooden boxes with lids on them. Then they set them up near where the old ones were and in a couple other places around the farm, mostly near the edge of the woods. The book they have told them if they could find the queen bee in an existing hive, and transfer her to the new hives, the rest of the hive would follow. Actually, even the ones that they didn’t transfer a queen to are now full of bees making honey all the time. They are also our best hunters and keep the freezers full pretty much all the time.

Dayna finally corralled me into painting the house. I don’t feel too bad though, because all the other husbands got drafted to do the same thing. We are painting each house a slightly different color. There was quite a bit of minor repair work to be done before we could paint them, but they are really starting to look nice. We have also done quite a bit of landscaping and the yards all look great, or at least show signs of looking great, when the grass is fully grown in and the weeds are totally gone. We changed the carpeting in all of our houses and in our neighbor’s houses as well. We found a warehouse full of carpeting that is still in very good shape. Our wives picked out what kind they wanted and we put it in for them.

The puppies are starting to sleep in some of the others houses as well. They are big enough to be separated from their mommy, but they still like to be with at least one of their brothers or sisters, so they kind of make their rounds with the children. The mother, Princess, follows the children everywhere they go. It’s a good thing, because those twins along with six year old Karen, can wander off quicker than anyone I have ever seen. Princess keeps them around the house so that they can be found quickly. If they are not in sight, she will bark when one of the women call them to let them know where they are. Usually all you have to do is look for the largest concentration of puppies and they will be there.

All in all we are about as happy as we can be. No one regrets leaving the city and no one has ever complained about the work we have to do here. Actually, with as many of us as there are, no one has to do a tremendous amount of work. There are at least two or three friends that do every job and we always take turns doing the harder jobs. Today I am painting the peaks on the house when I see a military type jeep coming down the main road and turn onto the smaller road leading to our homes. There are three men riding in the open jeep, and they are wearing what they are apparently trying to pass off as military uniforms. The only ones in the yard are some of the women and children playing, but from up here I can see our men getting into defensive position.

The women gather the children and take them to the houses while I get down and walk across the yard to meet the men before they can come too far into the yard. They pull up when I am standing in the driveway between them and the yard and the driver gets out smiling. He tells me today is our lucky day.

“Lucky for you we were just driving by this fine farm and noticed that you are living here. How many people are living on the farm by the way?”

I tell him our whole family, but don’t mention any numbers.

“Well sir I can see that you have a lot of women and younguns running around. Have you ever given thought that someone may try to take all this away from you, or may abduct some of the ladies? That’s why we’re here, the Colonel is a security specialist and we are his deputies. For a fee we could move in here and protect you from that sort of thing happening.”

For one thing his Colonel is wearing an army master sergeants shirt with blue jeans for pants. Not exactly regulation uniform, he acts like he is gracing us with his presence when he gets out of the jeep. He is looking around like he is sizing up the place. I tell them we don’t need any one to protect us, so they can be on their way.

“Don’t be hasty friend, my associates and I can give you that feeling of comfort that comes from knowing you are safe.”

He pats the revolver he has in a holster on his hip, and starts to say something about people coming that are not as nice as him. He doesn’t get to finish what he is saying. Our guys think he may be going for that gun and step into view with their weapons trained on the three men. Now seeing twenty-five men staring at you over the sights of a rifle aimed at you can give you religion real quick. The funniest part is when Ryan and Ken come tearing into the yard in the military jeep that they fixed up with an M60 mounted in the back like an old TV show that Ken used to watch the reruns of. Those three raised their hands so quick I am afraid they may hyperextend their elbows.

They all say they meant no harm and will be on their way. First I ask them if they have found many settlements or groups like ours in their travels. They say not really, in fact ours is the best looking and most prosperous looking they have seen and they have been through several states. The ones they have seen, which are not very many, are generally small groups and most of them still living close to the cities. We tell them there are other farms if they are willing to work, but they prefer to move around so they leave. I think Ryan’s disappointed that he didn’t get to shoot them with his M60. With all the excitement over for a while anyway we go back to work painting or whatever we were doing. At supper we all get a good laugh over the Colonel and his men, we hope they find what they are looking for.

The days go by and I finally do get our house painted to the ladies approval. I have to admit that no one would ever think this is the same place we came to back in October. Our next project is to paint the barns as well as finish putting in the crops we can, as we can.

I am painting the peaks on the biggest barn we have, when Dayna comes out and tells me she has a group on the CB radio in the house who wants to know where we are located. I have been so intent on what I am doing that I haven’t been looking around, but when she tells me that I look toward the road and see several cars coming toward the road that leads to our farm. Dayna rings the bell, to alert everyone that company is coming. The cars pull into the yard and we can see that it is a mixture of men, women and children in the cars. I climb down from the ladder and meet them. I have to admit they are polite. No one gets out of the cars yet. I come up to the open window on the drivers’ side of the first car.

It is a neat looking man, about ten years older than dad and Frank. In the passenger seat is a woman, who looks like she could be his wife, and in the backseat are three adults and two children. The adults, or young adults may be more accurate, are two women and one man. The children look to be between four and six. I’m not a very good judge of ages whether it be adults or children. I can see they are not very comfortable so I tell them they can get out and stretch their legs if they would like. Dayna, Robin, and Melissa come out to meet them, which violates every rule we have about strangers. The look they give me tells me they know they are breaking the rules and to go ahead and stop them, if I think I am big enough. I would rather get shot than get into an argument with all three of them.

Just to give you an example, last week when I finally finished painting the house I called the ladies out to have them inspect it. They walked around the whole house like they are seeing it for the first time, then decide they want the shutters a dark brown instead of white, which by the way, is the color they told me they wanted them first. I told them I would paint them brown the very next time they need painting. The look they gave me sent chills down my back, but I stuck to my guns and told them I was definitely not going to paint the shutters brown now. They quietly walked up on to the porch and when they got just inside the door Dayna asked me, very politely, if I would set up the ladder so she could go up and start painting the shutters again. The children were playing on the porch with two of the puppies, but stopped playing long enough to comment to each other.

“Daddy’s in trouble,” that was Tammy, “Again,” that was Tina. Karen and Kathy agreed with them, then went back to playing. I tell Dayna she can’t climb a ladder being five months pregnant. She told me she doesn’t have a choice, because the shutters don’t look like they thought they would and now they need to be painted brown. I give up. I tell her I will paint the shutters brown if that’s what will make them happy. They all kissed me and went back in the house smiling. I sure wish they would have noticed that the white didn’t look right before I finished painting them all though.

Well back to our company, I have to quit daydreaming like that. The people get out of the cars and we can see the relief in their faces. The cars are all crowded, there appears to be about thirty people in the group. I warn them not to make any threatening gestures because we have men stationed around to shoot first and ask questions later. Some of the young men smile and ask me if I really think that old bluff will work. With that, I whistle and six men step out from beside the buildings, where they have been watching everything that is going on. They are all heavily armed and believe me they know how to use those guns they are carrying. The smiles leave the young men’s faces and the older gentleman assures us they have no intentions of harming anyone. He says they heard what they think was messages we gave to other groups by way of the short wave radio.

He says they would have answered and talked to us, but their radio would only receive signals, they couldn’t send any out. They did take our advice about using generators and changing tires on vehicles so that they could use them. He is looking at all the trucks and other vehicles we have in the yards and along the barns. He is not missing much. He is looking at the freshly painted houses and the barns, which are in the process of being painted if the women don’t change their minds about the colors again. Between you and me I do have to admit that the shutters look much better brown than they did white. Don’t you dare tell the girls that, now they think they owe me a favor and if they find out I agree with them, I will never hear the end of it.

He asks if we have some water we may be able to spare for the children. Now the girls are embarrassed because they have been talking to the women from the cars and haven’t offered them a drink yet. All discipline and order just goes out the window, all the women and children have to come over and meet our guests. With the weather turning warmer, we have started using five gallon water jugs that we keep full of cold water and ice in case anyone wants a cool drink. The ladies ask our guests if they would like a flavored drink, the children drink quite a bit of the flavored drinks. We found about fifty tons of different flavors sealed in plastic containers, we tried it and it tastes great. It is a big hit with our guests as well, I tell all the men to stand down, they already have, but I think I should at least make it official.

While the women and children are talking or playing, the puppies are a big hit and love the attention as much as the children love them. I take the apparent leader along with dad, Frank, Tim, and Billy and show him and some other interested people around the farm. The leader introduces himself as Doctor Donald McEvoy, he says he was a practicing physician when the war happened that changed everything. They lived in Erie, Pennsylvania until they heard our message and took our advice. They rounded up everyone they could find and came down looking for somewhere to live. It was by pure dumb luck that they found us, they knew we weren’t really in South Carolina because of some conversations they overheard on the short wave, but they didn’t have any idea that we were here either until they heard a CB conversation and recognized Tim’s voice, not more than fifteen minutes ago.

Tim says he is guilty. He was talking to Ryan and mentioned the main road name that runs up to the small road that we live off of. The doctor says they were coming up to that road when they heard that and decided to follow it to see where it would take them. They are not very religious people, although Dr. McEvoy says he thinks Heavenly Father led them to us so that we can help each other. We are not going to argue with them because we have discussed why Tim, Ken, and I were chosen to come to this time and place, wherever it may be. Even though we have no way of knowing for sure, we do feel that we were led here by some divine hand, perhaps to do exactly what we are doing now.

We show our guests pretty much everything we have done since we came here. They are impressed to say the least. They just shake their heads when we tell them about using the windmills to generate electricity and converting our houses over to use electricity for just about everything. Primarily because it is free and we will never run out as long as the windmills function properly, and our storage batteries last. The fields of wheat and the other crops starting to sprout are very impressive as well. They ask if it is too late this year to plant crops and still get them harvested in time before winter. They are like us, used to the snow and cold of the northeast, if anything being from Erie they are used to much more snow than we are.