Read The Slow Road Online

Authors: Jerry D. Young

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic, #Two Hours or More (65-100 Pages)

The Slow Road (3 page)

BOOK: The Slow Road
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It took a few shovel attempts but Jasper soon had the technique of lifting out the cuttings slowly and letting them drain a little before dumping them beside the hole, in a different pile as instructed by Greg. Jasper also adjusted the water flowing into the hole to keep it full, but not running over.

They were on the fifth drill stem, about twenty-two feet down when the discharge from the drill hole changed. Before the cuttings had been pretty much basic dirt. Now there was a significant amount of sand mixed in. Greg had Jasper start a new pile.

During the sixth drill stem the sand became coarse and more predominant. Greg asked Jasper to start yet another pile of the drill cuttings. “See how the water drains out of that, instead of pooling on top like the early stuff?” Jasper nodded. There was a significant difference in the soils.

“We could probably stop here,” Greg said when he had the sixth drill stem all the way into the ground, “but I’d like to go at least another five feet. Perhaps ten.”

“Whatever you think best,” Jasper said.

They went the full ten feet. Jasper saw the cuttings turn back to fine sand. The water wouldn’t drain out of it. “That’s it,” Greg said. “Kill the pump.”

The two began to lift and remove the drill stem a piece at a time. “What’s going to keep the hole open?” Jasper asked, beginning to get worried.

“The water. Or, more accurately,” Greg said, “The sediment and water. It’s why I re-circulate the water rather than use all fresh. Beside it taking way too much water to do using fresh and making a royal mess, fresh water simply doesn’t hold the hole open very well. That’s why regular drillers use a ‘mud’ when they drill. For these shallow wells just the sediment from the surface is enough to keep the hole open. If need be I have some Quickgel in the truck. I’d add a cup or two of it if we were going through all coarse sand. Now we don’t want to wait too long though, before we put in the screen and pipe.”

Jasper nodded and picked up the prepared well screen and lowered it into the drill hole when directed by Greg. “Hold that sucker tight,” Greg warned. He spread solvent cement on the smooth end of one of the twenty-foot pieces of pipe, and the bell end of the screen assembly. Then with a motion that Jasper found amazing, Greg hoisted the pipe to a vertical position and slipped the end of it into the bell of the pipe Jasper was holding. He gave it a slight twist as he seated the pipe in the bell.

He began to lower the pipe down slowly and then gave it to Jasper to hold again, down low. He added the second piece of pipe, which stuck well above the ground when the strainer hit the bottom of the drill hole.

While Jasper steadied it, Greg used a hacksaw to cut the pipe off several inches above the ground. Jasper put the piece of pipe back in Greg’s truck as Greg cleaned the upper end of the well pipe and solvent welded a threaded male adapter to it. Greg took the elbow, detached it from the hose and screwed it onto the well, using Rector Seal #5 pipe dope.

“The other long hose,” Greg said. “Connect it to the valve on the tank and bring it over to the pump.”

Jasper hooked the second long two-inch flexible suction hose to the intake of the pump. “Isn’t this the wrong way?” Jasper asked. “We’ll be pumping out of the tank into the well, won’t we?”

“Yes,” Greg replied with a big grin. “But believe me, this ain’t no well yet. Just a pipe in the ground with a screen. We’re going to make it into a well. Now, fire up the pump at an idle.”

Jasper did so and saw the water slowly boil up out of the ground much as it had when they were using the drill stem. “Start backfilling, using the coarsest sand,” Greg said as he watched the flow. Jasper wasn’t too sure how much of the sand was going back into the hole, but Greg kept him after it until all the sand that had come out of the hole was back in it.

Greg stopped the pump and changed the elbow on the top of the well for a threaded cap. He had Jasper put the next best sand in the drill hole, and then the dirt. Greg began removing hoses from the pump and Jasper got a little worried.

“Okay, that’s good,” Greg said when all the drill cuttings were back in the hole. He put the elbow back on the well and connected it to the intake of the pump, moving the discharge hose away from the pump area.

Using the hand pump, Greg primed the well and then started the engine driven pump. He had Jasper move over to it and when Greg gave him the signal, Jasper killed the engine and Greg turned a ball valve mounted on a tee in the intake line of the pump. Jasper could easily hear the air whoosh as the water drained back down into the well.

“Thankfully,” Greg explained. “We pumped clean water in slowly while we put the coarse sand back. That filtered any fine stuff out of the screen and up while the largest particles of sand kept falling. We have the coarsest sand available around the screen for best water flow. I capped it while you refilled the hole so it wouldn’t drive the dirty water back into the screen.”

Greg closed the valve and had Jasper start the pump again. It took a few seconds to prime since Greg hadn’t used the hand pump to prime it. They did the same thing several times and Greg said, “This is making a well out of a hole in the ground. Some of the guys around here just punch the hole, put the screen and pipe in and backfill. They don’t flush it or prep it in any way. Maybe you have a well and maybe you don’t. I don’t walk away until she’s pumping the best I think she can. This pump and release surges the formation kind of like a frac process does on an oil well. Okay. Let’s see what this thing can do.”

This time when Jasper started the pump Greg walked over to the discharge hose. A full two-inch diameter stream was coming out of the hose for an inch or so before falling to the ground.

“The bucket,” Greg said, nodding toward the bucket in the back of his truck. Greg filled and emptied the bucket a few times, running a stop watch each time. The bucket was filling in six to seven seconds. “Over twenty-five-hundred gallons an hour,” Greg said. “Not the best I ever got… That was a full thirty-six-hundred gallons. But this is a good well.” Greg brought the hose up to his lips and took a sip of the water. “Not too bad tasting.”

Jasper tried it and agreed.

“Have Millie make some sun tea with it. If it’s nice and clear it’s really good water. If it’s dark, well, I’d have it tested, but I doubt you’ll want to treat it for irrigation use. If you ever want it for drinking water, I’d see what the tests say and act accordingly.”

“Thanks, Greg,” Jasper said, shaking his hand.

“Let’s get this cleaned up. I’ll be ready for that barbeque by the time we’re done.”

It took a little while to get everything loaded back on Greg’s truck and the holes filled up. “You say you have a pump to use?” Greg asked after he closed and latched the tailgate of his truck.

“Yep. In the shed.” Jasper showed Greg the three-horsepower gas engine Sears’s lawn pump he’d picked up at a garage sale and rebuilt. “It pumped out of a tank after I fixed it,” Jasper said.

“Should work fine, if you got the seal in properly. You want to hook it up now?”

“Don’t have the stuff. I’ll get it next week and hook it up next weekend. I like that flexible suction hose you use. Where’d you get it?”

“TSC. I use it for both suction and discharge, because I use the hoses interchangeably. You don’t really need it for discharge, though I would suggest you get it for the intake.”

Jasper nodded. “I’ll make a manifold and run a bunch of water hoses.”

“You need plenty of discharge. Run the pump at slow speed if you’ve only got a couple of hoses going. If the pump housing starts getting even warm, you aren’t getting enough flow to keep the pump cool. Really have to watch this kind of pump using garden hoses.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Here’s the money for the materials.” Jasper took out his wallet and gave Greg the cash he’d promised for Greg’s out of pocket expenses. “Come grab a beer, Greg. I’ll get the steaks on the grill.”

“Steaks! I was expecting brats or chicken. Not steak.”

“Means a lot to us to get this well in,” Jasper said quietly.

“Aw! No big deal. I punch these in all the time.”

Millie took out a bottle of Greg’s favorite beer from the cooler, opened it, and handed it to Greg when he walked up to their small patio at the back of the trailer.

“Thanks, Millie,” Greg said shyly.

“That is quite a process you’ve come up with,” she said, fussing a little over the food set out on the picnic table.

“Once I figured it out, it is pretty easy. There’re lots of guys doing it. But I think I do it better than anyone else.” There was no false modesty there. Greg had a point. He did have a good system. He’d never had a failure. At least, not when he’d been allowed to dowse.

Jasper and Millie were surprised and pleased when Greg limited himself to four beers while he was there. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy the steaks, baked potatoes, and boiled corn, helping himself a little sheepishly to a second steak.”

“That’s fine, Greg,” Millie assured him. “I got two for you.”

Jasper yawned about that time and Greg finished up his meal. “Thanks for having me over, guys,” Greg said, turning to the couple. They’d carried the leftovers and the rest of the beer out to the truck. Jasper was standing with his left arm around Millie.

“No,” Jasper said. “You’re a good friend. Thank you for helping us out.” Jasper grinned then. “We’ll save a bean or two from the garden for you.”

Greg laughed and climbed into the truck. Jasper closed and locked the alley gate when Greg pulled out. He yawned again as he and Millie walked back to the trailer to begin that cleanup. Jasper marked off one more project on his mental list. “Getting that well was a key element to our continuing preparations.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

-

 

Jasper got the pump connected and running on Thursday. Alvin had called and scheduled a wood cutting run for Saturday. The barn raising was put off until the next week. Jasper smiled when a disappointed Alvin said he just couldn’t depend on his family. Jasper got a pickup and trailer load of cut and split wood for helping Alvin, whose son, who should be doing it, lazed around the house.

Alvin met Jasper at the trailer, Jasper having stopped coming in from work just long enough to pick up the food that Millie had prepared for him for the day. Jasper took a quick nap at lunchtime and was able to work safely until they quit just prior to sunset. They had been cutting up the trees they’d downed and trimmed out early that spring. The day had been spent cutting the wood to length and splitting it with Alvin’s portable hydraulic splitter.

When they climbed wearily into their respective trucks, both men were tired but satisfied with the day’s work. Jasper had his pickup and pickup trailer loaded to the gills. Alvin’s one-ton dump bed was loaded to overflowing, with the heavy duty tandem axle mesh sided trailer almost full to the top of the sides. There was another load for Alvin to pick up on Sunday, but he would do that alone, knowing Jasper really didn’t like to work on Sundays.

Millie had picked up a ride to work since the truck wasn’t available, but waited and did some additional work at the Consignment shop while she waited for Jasper to pick her up. They stopped and had dinner at a café, Jasper barely able to stay awake during the meal. Millie drove the truck and trailer home when she insisted Jasper was too tired and she needed the practice with the trailer.

Jasper unloaded and stacked the wood Monday morning before he turned in again to get his afternoon sleep for the graveyard shift. He and Millie didn’t have a wood burner yet, but they fully intended to get one at some point and wanted plenty of seasoned wood for it. The wood was stacked on a metal rack Jasper had built and covered with scraps of tarps that he’d salvaged.

The following Saturday Alvin’s relatives showed up and he called Jasper early Saturday morning to ask him to help with the barn. Jasper and Millie packed lunches and headed for Alvin’s. They were a bit amused at the confusion of the group and Alvin’s exasperation with them. Alvin took Jasper and Millie aside and quietly apologized.

“There is no need, Alvin,” Jasper said. “We’ll do what we can to help. If we can’t get finished, I’ll come next Saturday and help you finish up. Millie works next Saturday.”

“I feel like I owe you for coming out into this mess.”

“Oh, no,” Millie replied. “You’ve been good to us. We owe you a great deal and want to help here. We’ll be doing some construction ourselves one day and need the experience.”

“Well, that’s a switch. Half my family thinks I should just hire this done. But I really want my family to learn to work together. There are some bad times ahead of us and I don’t know if my family will be able to live through them without my help. I need them to be able to help themselves as much as possible.”

Jasper had never heard Alvin speak about bad times ahead. He seemed to have plenty going for himself and his immediate family. Alvin and his wife both had good jobs. They had the place in the country where they kept the horses for the girls and a very loud motorcycle for their son.

Millie and Jasper exchanged glances when Alvin wasn’t looking. Was Alvin a closet prepper?

One of Alvin’s relatives came over and Alvin turned to Jasper and Millie again. “If you’re still willing to help, I guess the rest are ready now.”

It took the rest of the morning and all afternoon and evening before the new horse barn framework was up and secured, and the roof and external sheathing applied. There had been a break for lunch, but it had been a short one. But Alvin did take everyone that helped out to dinner.

Tired, but full of good food, Millie and Jasper went home, wondering if they might have not only a friend in Alvin, but a fellow prepper that might be an ally in the future if the future brought some of the things Millie and Jasper thought it might.

That winter Jasper was finally able to conclude a deal he had been working on for several months. A small factory near the outskirts of town had been shut down for years and ownership of the property had been in dispute ever since. Jasper had no intention of trying to start the factory back up. What he wanted were the materials that made up the building.

The ownership had been established and the owner wanted the property, without the old building. Jasper got the salvage rights and eight months to clear anything he wanted from the building before it was destroyed and the remains taken to a landfill.

Every spare moment Jasper had for those eight months was spent stripping the building of copper wire and copper plumbing to pay for the laborers he hired to carefully dismantle a portion of the structure itself. He took truck load after load of masonry block and brick to the property. He had to hire a high lift, long reach forklift to get some of the structural steel from the roof system.

A self-contained high lift work platform, also rented for a couple of weeks, allowed Jasper’s workers to take out almost all of the metal framed glazed windows that went around the building just below the eaves.

The only breaks he took during that time, other than observing the Sabbath and Christmas, were three hunting trips with Alvin, each one a quick one. Alvin would have loaned Jasper a rifle and a shotgun for the trips, but Jasper and Millie decided it was time to arm themselves for future hunting trips they would do on their own.

Jasper researched defensive guns as well as hunting guns on the internet. He and Millie ruled out the high dollar semi-auto main battle rifles because of expense, and the lightweight combat carbines because of their less versatile cartridges. Jasper wanted something in a versatile, powerful cartridge that would do for hunting, but had at least moderately good defensive capability. Alvin suggested a military surplus bolt action, but Jasper found an alternative on his own.

He narrowed the rifle choice down to either a used Savage 99 lever action in .308 Winchester or a used Marlin 1895 Cowboy lever action rifle in .45-70. As much as he liked the old west appeal of the Marlin, and the short and medium range power of the .45-70, he decided on the Savage 99. The .308 was more versatile, and according to some of the preparedness forum entries on the internet, it could use an adapter to shoot .32 ACP pistol rounds for small game that the .308 was too powerful for.

He paid a bit more for the gun than he wanted to, with Millie’s approval, but there just weren’t that many around that were for sale. People with Savage 99’s seemed to really like them and didn’t want to sell.

Jasper didn’t know how lucky he was to find the rifle with an original Pachmayr Low-Swing side mount scope mount. The original scope was fogged and would have cost more to repair than the used Bushnell scope Jasper got in another deal. Again, due to his research on the internet, Jasper had a receiver sight added to the rear of the action to use with the existing front sight when he wasn’t using the scope.

For the two duck and goose hunting trips, Jasper, with Millie’s help, picked out a twenty gauge Stoeger side-by-side coach gun. It would be Millie’s last ditch defensive arm and she wasn’t too sure she could learn to use a pump and a semi-auto was out of the question.

Having talked to their Minister, Millie and Jasper decided that recreational shooting was okay on the Sabbath, so they took a couple of Sundays in a row to learn to shoot both weapons, in plenty of time for Jasper to go on the hunts.

Though they went hunting fairly close to where they lived, it was easier and cheaper to stay overnight two nights to get in two full days and one partial day of hunting. It was well that they had the time, for it wasn’t until the Monday of the deer hunt that Jasper got his doe.

Alvin helped him dress it out, and it was with some pride that Jasper took the dressed meat home to Millie for her to finish cutting up and freeze. She had studied up on the internet while Jasper was gone, just in case. Jasper would prefer to have jerked most of the meat, but they just weren’t in a position to do it, so it went into their small freezer.

The duck and goose hunting went great. Jasper was able to get his limits each day. They were able to keep the field dressed birds in Alvin’s ice chest until they got them home. The birds, too, went into the freezer, which was full by Christmas. Jasper had gained a great deal of confidence about being able to supplement their food supplies by hunting. The following year Alvin had invited Jasper to go rabbit and squirrel hunting with him.

The Stoeger shotgun would have been adequate for the rabbits and squirrels, but Jasper wanted Millie to have something besides it with more firepower. He found a well used Ruger 10/22 through the newspaper ads and picked it up cheap. The stock had been broken, and the barrel was rusty. Millie and Jasper invested in a new barrel and stock, along with a few factory ten-round factory magazines.

The rifle had come with an even dozen high-capacity magazines. Jasper checked the prices on the internet and smiled when he got the price down to less than a third of what everything would have been new, even considering the new barrel, stock, and magazines. The guy was craving a new Bushmaster M-4 and was selling everything else he could to get the money for it. Jasper picked up a couple of nice field knives and a very good compass in the deal.

Jasper and Millie put back a couple of boxes of the .32 ACP for use in the Savage, as well as an initial purchase of ammunition for each of the weapons. They then began to buy a box of twenty-two rim fire, .308, and twenty-gauge ammunition every month.

The garden was a moderate success that first year. Millie and Jasper were still learning. But they were intent on growing as much as they could in the space they had using the least amount of commercial fertilizer and pesticide. They were using the companion growing method they’d learned about on the internet. The strawberries did so well that the pair put in another five level tower of them in the front yard.

And Jasper began hauling dirt. He kept the trailer hooked to the truck all the time, much to Millie’s unvoiced dismay, so he could stop any time he had time at the local sand and gravel pit. As long as he loaded it himself, which he usually did, he got the dirt for free. The sand and gravel he was going to need he had to pay for. But they loaded it into the truck and trailer for him.

As time rolled around the following fall for the garden to get another layer of manure, there were piles of dirt, sand, and gravel here and there on the property. Stacks of cleaned used brick and block were along each hedge along the sides of the property. They had recovered lumber piled on top. The windows from the salvaged building were stacked, layer by layer separated with lumber, in an out of the way area and covered to protect them.

Millie found a canner and more jars in time to fill up all available storage space with home canned vegetables from the garden and jar after jar of strawberry preserves. They still gave away the majority of the produce from the garden for lack of a way to process and store it.

While the weather was still nice that fall Jasper dug away the sod from the area where they were going to build the double wall shelter shown in the MP-15 pamphlet Jasper had down loaded. The design was for the shelter to be set down in the ground a couple of feet, but with the high water table and possibilities for floods, Jasper used some of the dirt to fill in where he’d dug the sod away, and build the level up over four feet high.

He used plenty of water to keep the soil moist as he layered it in place. It was going to take a long time to finish, so instead of renting a one man tamper, Jasper bought a well used one from the rental agency and worked on it until he got it running. That let him tamp each four inch lift of soil as he built up the area for the shelter.

Realizing that it might be a good idea to have some of the other projects he and Millie were planning raised higher than the surrounding ground, he expanded the area he was building up. It took double the amount of dirt he’d planned on, and two months of extra time, but he had a large area of compacted soil four feet higher than the rest of the property, the edges protected by interlocking retaining wall blocks.

He thought about digging the footings for the shelter that fall, but Millie talked him out of it. He didn’t dig primarily for fear the edges of the trenches would slough away in case of bad weather. Millie didn’t want him doing it because he had lost so much weight that summer and was always so tired. She just wanted him to slow down some.

But she worried as much as he did about what they were seeing on the news nearly every day. If there wasn’t a major natural disaster going on somewhere, there was a new battle between old foes happening. And the weather was so unpredictable.

There were times that summer when the rain had just poured down and others when the irrigation well saved the garden from total loss. Since the shelter was some months from being completed, Millie and Jasper headed for the shelter in city hall when tornadoes threatened that summer. They simply rode out the one minor earthquake shock they felt three days before Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was quite a celebration. The two had much to celebrate. Most of the food for the meal was from their garden and Jasper’s hunting trips. Things were even relatively peaceful and there were no major weather problems or natural disasters to worry them.

BOOK: The Slow Road
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