2nd Earth: Shortfall (7 page)

Tom says these two tried to sneak up while the others kept us busy. We figure we better get out of here before any more show up. We make it to Maryland before dark and find another place similar to the one we found last night. Everyone is in high spirits, although I think we are all a little scared now that we are getting so close to our destination. My fear is not getting there, but of being able to keep this family of ours alive and safe in a world that is so uncertain. Again we take turns standing guard to make sure our vehicles are safe all night. Morning comes, and with it much anticipation, because we all feel that we will find our new home today. We find another gas station where we can fill the trucks just before we cross into the state of Virginia. We are driving through mostly farm land, and since we know we will probably not find what we are looking for on the main road, we get off onto some smaller roads that we can find on the map. It is early afternoon when we see what we are looking for.

The place has the look of total desolation about it, which tells us no one has been here in quite a while. The mountains are visible in the background, but here it is at least twenty or thirty degrees warmer than it was up in New York. What we have found is a farm, with what looks like eight houses, along with several barns in what looks like a small town, right here on the farm. Gunny and Ma Horton explained to me that it wasn’t uncommon in rural communities to have an entire family of several generations living on a single farm. Often, they would just build another house when the children grew up and got married, so they could stay on and help farm the land. Everyone is excited as we get out of the vehicles and go exploring to see if this is somewhere we can stop and live.

We go through the houses one at a time, checking for any signs of recent life, and there is nothing to indicate that anyone had ever lived here before, except for the skeletons we have to remove from them. The houses are in various stages of decay, but are actually much better than the places most of these people lived in where we just came from. We find out there are actually nine houses in the little community. One was kind of blocked by two others. Either way, there is plenty of room for all of us to live here. Once we determine that we can stay here if we want to, we put it to a vote. The newest members don’t feel that they have a right to vote, but we assure them they are part of the family now, and have as much say as any of us do. Not that it matters, because it is unanimous to stay. We get to work in crews cleaning the houses to make them livable. We men go to work putting doors back in place where hinges had broken, and we open stuck windows to air out rooms that have been sitting closed in for decades.

By dark, although not as good as we would like, the houses are ready for us to spend our first night in our new home. We are so used to staying together that everyone wants to try to stay in one house. That doesn’t work very well, so we divide up and sleep in four of the houses tonight. Again we stand guard since there hasn’t been a whole lot in any of our lives to make us feel comfortable yet. Dayna and I stay up talking most of the night. She is so excited about living in the country, because all she has ever known is the city. She makes sure she tells me every day how much she loves me and how she doesn’t feel like her life began until the day we met. I feel the same way about her. It is getting harder to remember what life was like before we came to this, well whatever this is. I just want to take care of her the way she deserves to be.

7

In the morning, while the others continue cleaning, Tim, Billy, and I go exploring to see what else is on this place we are claiming as our home. We did not have time to check out the barns yesterday so we are doing that now. There are more skeletons in all four barns as well as a lot of great farm equipment in the form of tractors and a bunch of other equipment that I have no idea what it is used for. I am sure we will find out and maybe even be able to use it to farm the land. There are two small skeletons in one of the barns that look like they were probably children who died there. We decide to dig graves for the people who lived here before and give them a proper burial. While cleaning the houses the women find papers telling the names of the people who lived here, so we make a headstone with all the names we found in the houses. We feel that it is the least we can do for them.

We take one of the trucks and drive around the farm just to see what there is to see. There are some vegetables growing wild in large garden patches behind all of the houses, and we see cattle grazing on the long grass not far from the main yard. There are also deer and signs of other game in the woods that are not far from the houses as well. All the houses have wood burning stoves in them for heat, as well as gas furnaces. A quick check of the woods shows us that there is plenty of deadfall to keep us all in firewood for at least this winter and probably many more to come. When we get back to the houses we are given the chore to get the stoves working in the kitchens. They are all propane and there is still propane in the tanks that they are hooked to so it shouldn’t be too hard to get them working.

Actually just cleaning the gas lines on the stoves gets them working in time to fix lunch. While looking around the yard we find a windmill that has blown down and is lying on the ground. That is our project for the afternoon, because if we can get that working we won’t need gas or propane to keep the generators running. We manage to get it standing up again and the wind vanes turning. We have to use some of the parts we brought with us to build a windmill, but being as far along as we are this quickly, puts us way ahead. In each of the houses the women find hundreds of jars and cans of food that the former inhabitants had put up for food storage. Not all of it is still good, but most of it is. That will come in handy and help the supplies we brought with us last longer. Our second evening in our new home is spent deciding who will live in which house and with which members of the family. Each house has at least four bedrooms, three of them have six bedrooms, and three have five. Since our family now numbers sixty-four members, we know we can have seven in eight of the houses, and eight in one.

We will be growing by five within the next couple weeks, but the babies won’t take up too much room. Actually some of the individual families have gotten to be quite close so they want to live in the same house, which works out perfectly. We just want to make sure that each house has at least one married man and his wife in it with the others. Again it works out well. Dayna and I will be sharing a house with two of the mothers and their children. Melissa has two darling four year old twin daughters that I told you about earlier and the other is Robin, a mother and her three children who are ages six, eight and ten. The ten year old is a young man who wants to grow up way too fast. He is really a great kid who would defend his family without any regard for his own safety. We all get along great so it will be a good mix. We all agree that if anyone gets tired of the living arrangements, we can switch with someone else.

The third day finds us working on the windmill some more. With the parts we have, we are able to get it fixed and producing electricity by early afternoon. When we get everything ready and finally flip the switch, starting the houses running on the electricity generated by the windmill, we find that only three of the houses are powered by the windmill. A careful search shows us that some of the wiring rotted away that would allow at least one other house on this one circuit. Billy and Tim find a second windmill behind one of the other houses. We start on that one and it is in much better shape than the first one, and we actually have electricity in the rest of the homes by dark. Everyone is in extremely high spirits with all of our success so far.

On the fourth day Tim and I are exploring one of the barns when we open a door in the loft of the largest barn and find a short wave radio hookup. The antenna needs reset, but after climbing out onto the roof of the barn and reattaching it to the roof mount Tim is actually able to get static on the radio. This radio is better quality than the one we found in the city and there is a much more open area to receive signals in. Tim decides to come back up this evening to see if he can raise someone. There is apt to be more traffic at night than in the middle of the day. Dayna and her sister were going through the basements of the houses that we live in when they found a wheat mill. The only reason I recognize it is because Ma Horton used to grind her own wheat flour sometimes and I was lucky enough to help her. I didn’t think it was so lucky at the time, but right now I am very happy that I helped her. I am even happier that I remember at least some of what she taught me.

We found some jars of wheat in with their food storage in the basement that seems to be fine. Of course none of us know enough about wheat to know the difference. The jars are still sealed so no air has gotten to it. When we open some, it is still dry as it can get so we decide to grind enough to make some bread with. We find some cakes of yeast that are sealed in foil with an expiration date of like twenty years ago, but we have nothing to lose by trying it. At first it doesn’t do much, but when we add just a little bit of sugar, it seems to work fine. At least the dough rises pretty well. This little experiment has everyone’s attention. The only ones of us who have ever tasted bread are the older ones, and it was so long ago that they don’t remember what it tasted like. Dayna and Charity say that is probably a good thing because they are not too sure how this is going to come out.

It actually comes out very good and being able to put some preserves on the hot, fresh made bread is a treat for everyone. We all agree that our first crop is going to be winter wheat. According to the almanac we can plant that right now to harvest in late spring, early summer. In the evening, Tim tries the radio again with no luck. One of the ladies who is expecting goes into labor and just before midnight our family has grown by one baby boy. He and his mom are healthy and are able to rest comfortably after the ordeal. As excited as everyone is there will be no shortage of babysitters. The mom whose name is Eve told us tonight that back at the city she was regretting having this baby, but now she is happy about it. Apparently the father went out to gather food one day about three months ago and never came back. That happened a lot in the city. Hopefully we can make our home here safe and a good place for the children to grow up.

We are just sleeping soundly when Teddy, the ten year old young man who lives with us, comes in to our room and wakes me up. He says he hears someone in the front yard and it could be more than one. This is not good news. I grab my gun and go to investigate. I can’t see anything out the window so I decide I am probably going to have to go out and see if we are in danger. Dayna doesn’t want me to go, but if this is trouble we should stop it before it gets started. Once out the back door I can hear noises in the front yard. It sounds like someone walking around, but they are making enough noise they can’t be worried about being seen. I go quietly around the side of the house and I can see who our intruder is. Silhouetted against a fairly bright three quarters moon is a horse. It looks around at me when I come around the building and then walks over to me and nuzzles my hand.

I call to Dayna to turn on the porch light and come out to meet our new neighbor. She is afraid of her at first. In the light I can see this is a lady horse. She is a pretty brown almost red, or at least she will be when she gets the burrs and knots out of her coat. We all finally say goodnight and go back to bed. There is plenty of grass in the yard for the horse to eat, but I won’t be too surprised if she is gone in the morning. Actually we are informed by the children, who live with us, that their horse is still in the yard and she brought some friends back with her. When we get to check this information out we find that she has been joined by three cows that look to be quite full of milk. Milk is another thing that very few of us have ever had, it takes a while, but we do manage to fill a bucket with milk. It doesn’t taste like what we were used to drinking, but it is not bad. The others agree. We found a butter churn in the barn, so now looks like a good time to clean it up and figure out how to use it.

While we are doing that, three calves that must have followed the cows into the yard show up. They are full of mischief and act like they want to play with the children who are a little afraid at first, but warm up to the little calves quickly. They all seem content to walk through the largest barn and out into the area behind it which has plenty of grass for them to eat. Everyone is excited by how much our family is growing lately. Today Tim, Billy, and I decide to try to figure out how to plow the ground for planting. Getting the tractor started is easy, figuring out how to hook up the plow is somewhat harder, but trying to keep the rows even close to straight is an endeavor that brings a lot of laughter out of our family. Getting the right depth is a trick as well and then getting the rocks out or at least the big ones. By the end of the day we can proudly say we have a little over two acres plowed.

I am beginning to see why farmers go to bed early, this type of work is hard if you are used to it. When you are just learning like we are it is backbreaking even though we are in pretty good shape. Up early again and we start right where we left off only today we have a better idea of what we are doing and actually do about three or four times what we did yesterday. The girls got the butter churn cleaned out good and with the help of one of the books we got they make butter today. It definitely makes the vegetables that we have for dinner taste better. Everyone is so excited that we are doing so well. The books we got from the library are a big help, but in some cases we realize we are just going to have to try until we get it right.

In the morning we finish our plowing at least for the time being, but we still have to disk the plowed ground to break up the clumps of dirt and smooth out the field. The women want to help with this part as well as most of the other men who have been cleaning the barns and making the homes more comfortable. Winter is just starting, so we need to get in a large supply of firewood from the woods around us. The windmills are supplying all of our electricity so far. We have been seeing herds of large deer and cattle not far from the house every day. We decide to let everybody taste fresh meat for the first time tonight. Tim and I intentionally go about a mile from the houses before we look for deer to shoot. We figure one good sized deer or two medium sized should feed everyone.

It is a shame to shoot the beautiful bucks that we do, they are not even afraid of us. We can pick the best looking ones from a herd of about forty. They are white tails and both go well over two hundred pounds. We field dress them where we shot them, then pick them up with the truck to take them back to the houses. Gunny showed me how to dress a deer, Ma always joked with him when he said he had a deer to dress. She always told him to make sure the clothes are in style and don’t clash. He would always give her one of those looks he had that was a mixture of confusion and disbelief, then they would both laugh and hug. I sure do miss them both. They would have loved to be here now. They were both pioneer stock and loved an adventure and a challenge. I had a dream shortly after they were killed that they both came to me and we were talking about how much I miss them. Ma told me that as long as they are alive in my memories, they will never be gone completely. If that’s the case, then they will live inside me forever.

This is the first time that most of our family has seen raw meat. They have had canned meats, but they are always cooked. When the meat is cut up and ready to eat, we fry up some small pieces to make sure that people even like it. Everyone agrees that it is different, but they seem to like it, so we cook enough for everyone and open some canned vegetables to go with it. The others finished disking the fields where we want to plant the winter wheat so we check out the bags of seed that we found in the barn that was marked winter wheat. We have no idea whether or not it will grow, but we have nothing to lose so why not at least try. The bags tell us how close to plant it and how to take care of it. While we are looking around we find a planter for the wheat. That will save a lot of backbreaking work trying to plant by hand. We will plant tomorrow unless we have rain that will keep us out of the fields.

The cows need milked again and this time most of the family is ready for it. Personally I have never been a big milk drinker, but a glass every now and again is okay. Tonight we deliver our second new family member, she comes into this world screaming and complaining about pretty much everything. Mommy and the baby are both fine, and we can finally get some sleep about halfway through the night. Dayna and I sleep late because of the late hour when we went to bed. Naturally we get teased about being lazy good for nothings by everyone else. It’s all in fun and shows us that we are truly becoming a family. The planting is almost complete already and the cows have been milked. In fact, our little herd has grown now to seven head of adult cows and three more calves which makes six all together.

Each of the houses has a pantry for food storage and they also used the basements a lot. Dayna was going through the pantry in our house and found a box that shows ice cream being made on the front of the box. She has seen signs about ice cream and she once asked me about it while we were in the city. I told her it is delicious and that I hope to be able get some for her. She is so excited when she brings it to me and asks what we need to make some. When the others see the box and what the ice cream maker looks like they go looking for the same thing in their pantries. Everyone finds one just as we thought they would. We have plenty of rich milk and cream from the cows, and we have rock salt, and we even have some freezers that actually work well enough to give us ice. We have learned that we have to strain the milk to get all the gunk out of it. We follow the recipe except we use canned fruit instead of fresh. We have nine ice cream makers going at once for supper tonight as well as a very nice venison stew that the ladies got together and made for the family.