A Very Good Man (42 page)

  No one volunteered at all.

  Jake sighed and looked at Nate, who barely glanced up from his plate of food.

  Fine, they could do it this way if they wanted. Mean old Jake to the rescue then. He cleared his throat gruffly and... sneered a bit at the room until everyone looked up.

  “So... Everyone on that side of the room,” he waved to the right, a vague thing that couldn't possibly let anyone know who exactly he meant. “Get with Carl, if you don't have another job worth doing more by his estimation, you're on the hunting team. The other side of the room,” they got a wide wave too. “Charcoal burn for the next few days and then we're going into town scavenging before the weather gets too cold for it. If you don't want to go into town get with me and impress me with how important what you're doing here is instead. Regardless we're doing the logs tomorrow, so you get a day to make something up.” Jake smiled, “I mean you get a whole day to show me how important what you're doing now is. Or, heck, invent something, as long as it's real and useful.”

  He didn't expect much from people but they started grumbling instantly.

  “We should have a vote...” A male voice came from the back.

  “Alright,” Jake said, smiling and pointing at the man. He didn't sound mean, but the guy shrank down, trying to hide suddenly. It was a good point. Since if this didn't work, shooting was probably the next step...

  “We will.” Jake grinned a bit viciously.

  Everyone stared at him for a moment. That really hadn't worked too well last time, since most people voted for their own comfort in the moment, not for what needed to be done. Jake pointed that out gently, his voice firm, as if talking to small misbehaving children.

  “So from now on, you have to earn the right to vote. Head up a work team sometime in the last week, or start a project that actually helps everyone else in some way in the same time. Who's done that, worked on something important or headed a team in the last week, hands up please?” He raised his own, since the forge had to count, right? Plus the scavenging he'd done. He pointed that out, to give everyone the idea.

  They ended up with Carley, Lois, Burt, Julio and Ken, along with Nate, who led everything and a skinny birdlike woman that had only half raised her hand and seemed like she expected to be beaten for it.

  She'd voted him out, he remembered. Softly he asked her name, feeling bad for not knowing it. She was one of the homebodies, not ugly, but so quiet that he'd never paid much attention to her before. She had straight hair that hung to her shoulders, brown and pale skin like his own, only more so, since he still had a tan. Her voice was soft even for this place, and he had to strain to listen.

  “Um, Rita?” She said, looking even more scared.

  Carley nodded though.

  “Making baby blankets and diapers. Some quilts and stuff too, also does the clothing repair.”

  Jake just nodded firmly.

  “That counts for sure then... Anyone else?”

  No one raised a hand so Jake got those people to the front and shifted everyone else around. The vote went fast, with everyone but Ken voting with him, he asked why, but Ken just shrugged and grinned at him.

  “You're pushing people.” He said, a longer sentence than most in the room had ever heard him say. “People don't want to leave. It's easy to vote on stuff like this, but you face your fears all the time, a lot of people here have a harder time with that. So they need someone to stand up for them.”

  Jake nodded. Right. Brilliant in fact.

  “But they have to. We need things done and if people don't find work that's valuable to do, we all pay for it and in a lot of ways. If they don't want to go hunting or into town they need to get on the ball and find something to make themselves useful. Provably so. But I do hear what you're saying.”

  Ken shrugged again. He worked constantly so it didn't affect him and really, a hunting trip actually sounded fun to him. He said all of this softly, but without hesitation. Everyone that thought he was a mute stared. Jake didn't blame them, but just grinned at the kid. After all, someone had to stand up to the group to show that it wasn't a trick, that they really had the right to vote the way they wanted if they earned it. Even if that meant telling Jake to go soak his head. Especially then. It might be a stupid plan, but it seemed to make everyone else happy after a bit. They could have a voice, if they did useful things. They had to want it and earn it though. And keep earning it.

  Kind of cool and it made it harder for the lazy people to take over. Not that working meant they'd suddenly be smart about everything, but at least it gave people a new goal. Want to be in charge? Work. Don't want to work? Too bad, we took a vote...

  It beat the hell out of him shooting someone to make an example which had been the next thing he'd planned to try. Probably the guy that said they should take a vote.

  Moron.

  Jake had to find space to sleep in, his old mattress having been taken the same night he left by Randy and Heather. At least they put it in the second room, so he didn't have to listen to them doing whatever it was they did. His corner was empty, since there was more room now. Killing those people had really opened things back up. He had real bedding, the nice stuff he'd brought with him, instead of rags or a single blanket like he'd had before. This room didn't have a fireplace, but the second room did, which meant all the pregnant women that were left set up in there.

  Like always he got up at first light, which wasn't nearly as early now at all. The charcoal making setup wasn't difficult, all they needed was a pit, the length of the logs, a little over ten feet for the ones he had, then they would roll in a decent pile and bury them after setting the front end on fire really well for a while with dry wood, so that the green would catch and smolder. Then they buried it and waited for several days. If they did it right they'd be able to scrape off charcoal to use in the forge. If they didn't then they'd try again. They'd need a lot, since they had to learn to make rod stock in order to make a lot of the tools. They had a book, but the forge they had was a bit more ambitious than the little home built idea the author had intended. It worked, they'd fired it up with wood, and even heated some metal to glowing. They needed the charcoal to get it hotter though. However already burned wood did that. The book said it did.

  He dug until breakfast, no one else even coming outside, except Jose, Julio, who made himself busy checking his greenhouse. The man waved getting one in return from Jake, who made an effort to be nice. It wasn't easy with all the gloomy folk about, but he smiled and had decided to actually talk to people when he could. Preferably while they all worked. He had a good start on the pit, which they didn't strictly need. What they needed was the dirt to bury the logs about ten inches deep. That meant at least a two foot deep hole in his experience. The measurements told him that should be more than enough, but somehow things always needed just a little extra. Cutting corners almost always meant more work later, if not outright failure. Better to overdo it slightly in general.

  After the meal, which today had bits of reconstituted meat in it, raccoon he thought, probably from the stuff he'd brought back with him from the bland and unsalted taste, along with a drizzle of syrup for flavor. Raspberry today. They hadn't grown those, but the kids had gone and found the bushes at another farm and went out for a week straight to gather them. Dave had gone with them, even though none of them had been allowed weapons then. Lois had managed to can up twenty big pickle containers from what they'd gotten, which had to have been a huge effort on everyone's part. The apples he'd gotten only made about that many containers after being cooked down to a concentrate. Everything that could got concentrated. Even with the extra jars they needed the space in the cellar. Yvonne and Justine had helped with a lot of the work. Carley and the two guys he'd pushed into effort a long time ago helped too, amazingly. He'd have to make a point of learning their names soon, if they were going to actually be useful, he might need them at some point. The woman from back then had been killed while he was gone. Apparently for not servicing one of the guys that thought he should be allowed to just order women into bed. That brought about a second murder the next day when Vickie killed him.

  By beating him to death with her fists.

  That sounded fair to Jake. It also made him wonder why the woman hadn't just taken over. She couldn't have done any worse at that point.

  After the meal no one moved and frankly he couldn't remember who exactly was on the charcoal crew. He was about to try and bluff through it when Carl stood, still obviously in pain from the shoulder wound, holding a list of the people in both groups.

  Jake smiled, organization ruled, he decided.

  “Hunters get with me in the living room please. Jake?” The man sounded calm and polite the whole time, sweet, like Sammi had said. Jake had never noticed before. Probably because the man was freaking intimidating. Even after months of near starvation the guy could have won a bodybuilding contest. It wasn't show muscle either, a few times when no one had been looking he'd loaded large logs by himself onto the carts. Some of those were things Jake couldn't even shift an end on himself.

  They were totally going to have a talk about not slacking off with the super-powers when everything stabilized a bit.

  “Everyone else can come with me, digging first, really, the first bit should be done in a few hours with this many people. Maybe a lot less.” Seventeen not including him. He'd been offered the pregnant women too, which he took, because they needed something to do as well as everyone else, but he wouldn't make them dig. Most looked too far along already. Stupid Holsom. Really, he couldn't have requested someone grab a box of condoms from town or anything?

  If he ever found the bastard Jake decided to punch him in the balls. Hard. After he shot him first of course. He was still pretty sure the jerk had coated his bullets with something to make Jake sick. If not, the rest was still enough to get the man killed.

  And nut punched.

  Instead, once the first group made the seven shovels move, he pulled the baby makers and signaled Justine to come over. She was working on her own windmill, one to turn a generator that Burt had already outfitted. They needed gears, metal ones, to transfer the power and hadn't found any yet, nothing even close, but the large boned woman was working on the rest of it anyway. It wouldn't be any easier when it got colder. The fall air already nipped at him a little, earlier his breath had made clouds of vapor in the air as he worked and stung his lungs just a bit.

  “Alright, pregnant women. Come with me now.” He didn't sound happy with them, but that was his issue not theirs. Not until it endangered the rest of them.

  “Half of you are going to work with Justine here on the windmill, just do what she says for now. The rest are on kitchen duty with Lois. Get with Burt on how to run the smoke house too, since that's going to be your task when the hunting team gets back, hopefully loaded with more meat than we've ever seen. Any questions?”

  He didn't expect any, but Heather stepped forward so that she didn't have to speak too loudly. It was a common move now, especially outdoors.

  “Can I work with you? I think I'll be alright. I want to talk about some things...” She looked hopeful, but as far as he knew they didn't have anything to talk about. She'd made her choice hadn't she? Randy was a good guy and had worked with the cows the whole time things had gone to hell, votes or no. He'd even gone out and found about forty more along with Heather and opened up more pasture land for them. They'd have to slaughter some before winter, since they didn't have feed for them, but until the snows came they had a lot of fenced land to keep them in, since no one cared if they were grazed on the joining properties now.