Renewal 10 - Blind Force (6 page)

Starting at the end of April, she would declare a certain type of plant ready to be moved outside, and would proceed to supervise us in planting them in her locations, in her order. It wasn’t really hard work, compared to caring for livestock, but she wanted to make sure that all of us knew something about growing crops, and she worked everyone through her work rotation a few times per week.

For Joe and Arturo, the time was spent in preparation for departure from our safe haven. Joe was intent on doing what he wanted, but Arturo was determined that Jones should learn as much as possible about growing food before they were out to fend for themselves. She worked in the greenhouse every day, and Sally Bean was diligent in focusing her efforts on Jones. Meanwhile, Dad and Arturo were spending many hours working on the station wagon, tweaking and tuning, packing and repacking, until finally they decided that Arturo was as well prepared as possible.

At first, there were many attempts to leave the back seat open for Joe, but he settled the argument when he loudly declared that he would walk. He wanted nothing to worry about except the pack on his back and the food in his belly. Most of us secretly considered Joe to be committing an elaborate form of suicide, and my dad spent long hours trying to change the old man’s mind. It didn’t work. Joe’s fifth and final supper table speech about why he was planning to walk out in the world finally stopped the attempts to dissuade him. Even Sally gave up after that.

The one distraction to our all-out effort was on Saturday, the 17th. Dad had spent several evenings preparing his words by lantern light, and on that afternoon, everyone put on their best clothing. No one would say we were well-dressed, but we were clean and that meant something after days in the dirt. Dad stood in the center of a hastily built, arched trellis laced with flowers from the greenhouse. Joe turned out to be very good at fine carpentry for the trellis, and Sally clearly had put her heart into the flower arrangements. Dad was facing the house with Arturo and Joe on his left, and Mom and the other women on his right. Aggie served as Jones’s flower girl, which she did well, and her dress helper, which didn’t work out so well in the muddy yard. She walked twice down the aisle, which was a gap between two garden beds. Once to scatter yellow blossoms on the ground, and then again to help Jones with the homemade dress.

Arturo beamed as his new love stepped from the front porch into the sunlight, but his smile was made weak by the sheer radiance of the smile on his bride’s face. There was no music, but Jones marched to a beat in her own head, creating an aura of beauty and grace that outpaced anything we had seen for a long time. Kirk, Tommy and I sat on the edge of a garden bed, watching her walk. The sight was mystifying enough that I forgot to look at Aggie. She called me on it later. Aside from staring at the bride, my job was to hold onto Jimmy until he was called for his role as ring bearer. He was to deliver the rings that had come from somewhere deep in Sally’s old jewelry chest. I didn’t know the history of those rings, but I knew they meant something special just from the tears that flowed when Sally had offered them to the couple.

After what felt like long minutes, Jones arrived at Arturo’s side. He took her trembling hand and tucked it under his arm. The way she looked at him was completely different from any facial expression I had ever seen. It ignored the pain and the suffering, the risk and the struggles, and the specter of the unknown world. It was, near as I could tell, a pure thing. A pure expression of love.

Kirk and I had talked about whether Dad could pull off a marriage. It just wasn’t like him. When he began to speak, we knew that he could. “Dear friends and family. No, that’s wrong. We all remember when there was a difference between those words, but here today, I say dear family. We have gathered here to join two of our beloved family members into a new family, one that is theirs alone, but still part of ours at the same time.  Today, this union is even more important than family. To me, it represents the hope that defies all that has happened, all that we see, and all that we don’t see. It represents the simple truth that the world can change, the world we knew can fall asleep, but love lives on in the hearts of Arturo and Jones, and it is for that reason we are here to take part in this blessed union.”

After that, the women began to cry in a cascade. Lucy was quiet and Jackie was the loudest. Even I was a little misty-eyed, but I wasn’t sure why. Dad waited for Jackie to regain some control over her wailing. Then, Dad took Arturo and Jones through the simplest version of vows he could recall. He called for the rings. I sent Jimmy up to his new family with a gentle shove. Arturo put the ring on Jones’s finger, and she returned the favor.

“With the exchange of vows as an affirmation of Arturo and Jones’s commitment to each other, and the exchange of rings a visible symbol of that commitment and love for each other, I pronounce Arturo and Jones, husband and wife.” Dad was smiling his biggest, dumbest smile. He gave Arturo a jerk of his head and Arturo failed to catch the hint. “You may now kiss the bride.” Yep. That solved the problem. Arturo was about the same height as Jones. It was a simple matter to lean in for a kiss, which triggered a round of applause from the entire family. In fact, my hands were beginning to hurt before the kiss ended.

The unspoken wedding gift was the car and the supplies, but we were able to give them one other surprise. That night, everyone except for the newlyweds spent the night in the barn. We had a barn party in the hayloft. I didn’t know what they were doing in the house. I did notice when Aggie fell asleep next to me with her hand nestled in mine.

Chapter 10 – 11

Seth interrupted the story before Bill got to the end. Terry found it more frustrating than he expected. Even with his close cropped hair, Seth had a mess tucked under his cap. He also had a look that any boy knows can only come from being rousted out of bed by his mother. He stepped up on Bill’s porch with an automatic ducking motion and straightened his spine when his head failed to connect with a low ceiling. “Hey, Boss. Hey, Terry.”

“Hello, Big Seth,” Bill answered.

Terry just slapped him on the thigh.

“What’s next?” Seth asked.

“Well, I figure you boys ought to head over to Hickerson Station. Pick up some food from Sam on the way out, and you can use the guns we collected from Cox if anybody needs one,” Bill said. “Make sure you both have plenty of personal weapons and ammo.”

“What do we do with them?” Terry asked “Bring them over here?”

“It’s your army. You raised it. You lead it.”

“Come on, Bill. You gotta have a plan,” Terry said, almost whining.

Bill laughed. “Ok, I’ll give you some hints. First, get them out of sight. I’d suggest you take a look at the old Carroll barn. If that’s not big enough, there’s a good slope behind it. I don’t want you to do anything until you see a good opportunity.”

Terry looked exasperated. “What opportunity?”

“Well, I can’t really say without knowing how many men you have. I have complete faith in your ability to pick your moment. Good luck, men.” With that, Bill got to his feet and walked inside. Terry and Seth spent the next thirty seconds staring at the front door.

Finally, Terry said, “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to figure it out.”

Seth grunted. “Sometimes, I hate that guy.” Then he threw back his head and laughed.

“Look on the bright side, Seth. At least you won’t spend the night manning a machine gun on the barn roof.”

“Yeah, instead I get to sleep in a barn and charge into battle with a bunch of ignorant townies,” Seth said, still smiling.

“Hey, those are my people,” Terry said with false offense. “Besides, it could be worse.”

“Yeah. It could be zombies.”

They were still laughing when they backed Big Bertha up to the cooking tents behind the tavern. Sam gave them enough food for half of Manchester, it seemed when the cargo bay was two thirds full. “You can bring back whatever you don’t need, boys.” Sam slapped the locking bolt on the steel truck doors and waved them away with a shooing motion.

Terry took his usual exit through the western gate, with Seth handing out mock salutes left and right. Five minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of the old elementary school. Terry was shocked. There were at least fifty men shuffling through the charred ruins of the school just to alleviate the boredom. The playground looked to hold over two hundred more. The scattered men made a token move for cover when the truck come down the road, but recognized Terry as he pulled into the weedy schoolyard. Terry saw the large man in overalls from Jared’s house and pulled over to him. Rolling the window down as he spoke, Terry greeted the man over the idling truck. “You brought a lot.”

“Yeah, I’m kind of surprised too,” the man said.

“Any more coming?”

The man shrugged. “We got here early. There could be more behind us.”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“I’m Dale Ferrell.”

“Pleased to meet you Dale. Sorry I didn’t catch your name earlier.”

Dale held his hand flat at belly button height. “No problem, Terry. Last time I saw you, you were about this high.”

“You know my folks?”

“I know your mother mostly. Long story,” Dale said with a teasing grin.

“Uh... ok. Listen Dale. Which way did you take to get out here?”

“We came out Powers Bridge Road. It’s a straight shot.”

“Right. We’re going to take a quick run up the road to see if any more folks are coming. Would you mind taking charge until we get back?”

“Sure, I suppose. What should I do?”

“There should be a gap in the back corner of the fence. Just get everybody to hike out that way. Skirt to the north of the trees until you see an old barn. That’s where we’ll set up and work out a plan. We’ll bring food.”

“Will do. See you there.”

“Ok, Dale. Thanks.”

“No problem. Hey, go slow. The bridge is out.”

Terry smiled and said, “Will do.”

Forty minutes later, Terry and Seth had found two more groups of Manchester men walking to the school. He had given them directions to the barn and apologized for having no room to offer a ride. Like the first gathering of men, they seemed to be in good spirits. Terry understood. In Manchester, there were two aspects to life. Work and hunger. Anything new would be seen as entertainment, at least until the reality of battle set in.

“We may need more food,” Terry told Seth on the way back to the barn.

“Don’t think so. That’s a lot of food back there.”

“You’d know better, Big Guy.”

Terry drove the truck through the Carroll’s old gate, and swung around behind the barn.  The sun was still blazing hot on the south side of the barn, but was beginning to soften to orange in the west. Terry was wondering what he would do during the night. More importantly, he didn’t know where Sally would be after dark, and he found that disturbed him a great deal. He hoped she would be on one of the Teeny Town barns, a long way from the fight. Of course, the fight could reach the town easily enough, but he wouldn’t let himself think about that.

Terry killed the engine and waited for Seth to exit before he locked the passenger side door and dropped to the ground. He used the key on his door. No one would steal Big Bertha, he hoped. Men were milling around with their motley collection of guns, knives, and few other odd excuses for weapons. Terry’s favorite was the man who had carried a scythe all the way from Manchester.

“Seth, how about you see about the food distribution, and I’ll work on the weapons.”

“Sounds good.” Seth opened the back doors of the truck and called for a few helpers. He directed them to carry the food bags over to the lean-to shelter on the west side of the barn. Soon after, he had convinced the men to line up so that he could hand out the packaged meals wrapped in rough paper.

 Terry knew that most of the men would be eating a better meal out here on an abandoned farm than they usually did in their own homes. He hoped it would help him keep control over the group. The line was still flowing as the last two groups trickled into the barnyard. Terry kept a count, and realized that he had over four hundred men under his command. Then he laughed to himself. He had no idea how to command anyone.

Terry closed the truck and took a walk into the barn. He was curious to see the place where Bill’s family had weathered that first hard winter. He saw the tobacco drying beams and the watch posts. He looked into the pits Bill and Kirk had dug. The dirt was still hard packed at the bottom, but it looked like no footsteps had touched that floor in many years. Terry stuck his head into the tack room where a few empty boxes were still stacked in front of the door. It was a powerful reminder of what the Carter’s had survived, and how everyone to this day lived so close to the edge of chaos and death.

When he walked outside, Terry snagged the closest man and told him to pass the word that anyone without a working gun should come to the truck. Terry circled around to the back. Seth was working on his eighth bag of food, but the end of the chow line was in sight. There would be enough for another meal. Terry opened the truck and climbed over the remaining food to reach the weapons stacked in the front. A new line was formed, led by scythe guy. Terry was glad the man knew it was a bad idea to fight a battle with a farm implement. He asked questions of each of the men and tried to give each man a suitable weapon. He couldn’t avoid the fact that most of these weapons were supplied with only a few rounds of ammo. He made sure to remind the men of that fact as he handed out the guns. He came up far short. At least thirty of his army would join the fight with only a knife or a machete. It took some fast talking to shuffle some of the better bladed weapons to the men without guns. In the end, he managed the feat by reminding those who did not want to loan their blades that the end of the battle would most likely yield a new batch of weapons. Plunder has always been a strong motivator.

After the field dinner was eaten, Terry rounded everyone into a group and gave the world’s shortest speech. “Thank you men for coming. Your help will turn the tide on the Dragon army. Our mission is to stay out of sight until the right moment. Odds are, we will miss most of the fight, but I don’t think we mind too much. When we do come out of hiding, I have two rules. First rule, nobody shoots until I say ‘shoot’. Second rule, no matter what we are doing, cover first, shoot second. Understand?”