Renewal 3 - Your Basic Swiss Family (3 page)

“Hey, that works ok,” he said, sounding surprised. “Good job, men.”

We looked at the log, balanced on the stump. What was the point in that? A bit less than half the log was hanging in space, and the upper end was sitting on the ground, near the crest of the slope. Dad sent us back to our work, and starting cutting on his log with the saw. He pulled a tape measure out of his pocket, and found the middle of the log. He cut the log in half, which made it light enough for him to handle by himself. He set each log in turn so that the rough end was resting in the notch, and cut that end with the saw. When he was done, he had two perfect six-foot logs, and although we were impressed, we still had no clue where he was going with this.

I was on my sixth sapling when Dad disappeared over the hill again, and came back with a sledge hammer and several rusty old wedges. He set a wedge on one of his logs and hammered it a few times into the wood. A second wedge was driven in behind it, on the centerline of the log. When the third wedge went in, we could see a split extending well past the wedges. The first wedge was resting loosely in the crack. Dad lifted it out, placed it in line past the third wedge, and hammered it back in. The log was making continuous cracking noises. He pulled the second wedge, and drove it in even further down the log. He gave hit one final hard whack and the log fell open into two clean halves.

“Poplar splits easy,” Dad said with satisfaction.

He repeated the split on the second log, and dragged the four halves up the slope and over the crest. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but it sounded like he was pulling them over to the campsite. As I was watching my eighth sapling fall, Dad returned to work on his tree. He used the axe to lop off the lower branches and switched to the machete for the smaller upper branches. He dragged the pile of loose branches up to the big maple, and came back to start cutting three-foot sections from the main bole with the saw. The sections, Dad split using two of the wedges, and carried the halves off to wherever the longer sections had gone.

When he returned, he stood at the top of the slope and checked our progress. He nodded with satisfaction. Between Kirk and me, we had another twenty saplings felled. Dad spent the next ten minutes dragging our  trees up to a clear space near the maple. I could hear him shearing the limbs from the little trees and stacking them in piles. We kept chopping.

Dad joined us again and used the big ax to help us with the smaller trees. With his powerful three-chop method, we had quickly littered the slope with dozens of fallen trees. Dad finally stopped us, saying, “I think that’s enough for now. Good work, boys. Let’s get them up to the big tree.” We spent what felt like an hour clearing our work from the steep slope. Up top, we could see that Dad had a system in place. He had freshly cut saplings in one pile, the limbed trees in another, and the cut limb in three more stacks, sorted roughly by size. Dad took the job of lopping the limbs, while Kirk and I rested from hiking up and down the hill.

When he had cleared the little trunks, Dad retrieved the bow saw and cut four lengths from one of them. He laid the four pieces side by side on the ground, and notched them with the small ax. He pulled out his knife and flattened the bottoms of the notches, squaring the sides while he was at it. He grabbed a hammer and a bag of nails out of the pit and fit the pieces into x-shapes, with the notches fitting together. He drove a long nail into each joint, and flipped each “X” over. He used the hammer to bend the protruding ends of the nail flat against the wood, then hammered the nail ends sharply to embed them in the wood.

“Wouldn’t want anyone to snag on a nail.” He said, mostly to himself.

He cut another length from the tree, and carved the ends to fit into the top of the x-structures. He had us hold the thing; that’s all it was at that point. With us as human clamps, he drove nails to fix the new piece to both x-shapes. So, we had a big four-foot stick with a X on each end. Great. He cut some straight-ish sections from one of the branch piles and attached four of them as diagonal braces with smaller nails. The braces went from near the center of the connecting piece to near the bottom of each leg of the X end pieces.

“Ok, now we have saw horses.” Dad announced, with no small amount of pride.

Oh...

Kirk and I looked at each other like we should have figured it out long before, but it looked for all the world like Dad was losing his marbles until he told us what it was.

“Cool, Dad,” Kirk said, for lack of anything better to say.

“Ok, now we need a ladder,” Dad said.

“Is there a ladder at the school?” Kirk asked.

“Probably, but it wasn’t in the tool shed. It was too small in there,” Dad replied.

“Oh. So we’re going to make one?”

“Yep. The saw horse will make it much easier.”

“Ok,” Kirk said, waiting for the next step to be revealed.

Dad  dug through the limbed saplings and picked out two of the heavier ones. He set one on the new saw horse and measured from the bottom. He cut it off at fifteen feet, then set the other one right on top of it. He checked to make sure the bottoms were evenly lined up, and then went to the other end to cut the second one at the same length as the first. He pulled them off and arranged them on the ground side by side. We could see what he had in mind then.

“Ok, boys. Your job is to cut the rungs. Find the smaller saplings and cut two-foot sections with the saw. We’ll need twelve or thirteen of them. Toss them to me, and I’ll fit and attach them.”

Kirk and I went to work, taking turns holding and sawing until Dad had laid them our along the ladder about a foot apart. Our arms were getting very tired and sore. We were happy to flop on the ground and watch Dad cutting two notches on the backside each rung before he nailed it in place. After a half hour or so, he picked up the finished ladder and tugged on it to check for wobbles. Satisfied, he leaned it against the big maple, climbed up and back down, and declared it complete.

“Works just fine,” he said, happily. “Let’s get some lunch.”

Kirk and I were ravenous, but we could have just as easily taken a nap, we were so tired. Over by the tents, Mom stood up as we approached. She had been trying to get Francine to drink some water. Lucy was taking her watch duties seriously and barely stopped scanning the countryside to look in our direction as we approached. I think she was struggling into the new Breakdown reality, herself, and needed the time to think. Tommy and Jimmy had already eaten and were sound asleep on an unzipped sleeping bag laid out in the shade.

Mom gave us hugs, even though we were sweaty and dirty, and getting pretty ripe from our days in the woods. When Dad got his hug, she leaned back and made a face, waving her hand wildly in front of her nose. We all laughed at Dad’s expense, but the morning’s hard work had restored his good nature, and he laughed right along with us.

Mom dug some crackers and peanut butter out of one of the packs, along with a net bag of small apples. She spread the peanut butter while the three of us munched on the soft, mealy apples. A week before, we would have snuck them into the trash while she wasn’t looking. On this day, they were delicious. Hunger makes the best sauce. She dealt out crackers like cards as she prepared them, and we were eating as fast as we could get our dirty fingers on them. Only the apples kept us from gumming up our mouths with peanut butter. She handed us a water bottle each, and we drank them in two long pulls.

“We’re going to have to do something about the water soon. We’re almost out,” she said to Dad.

“That’s ok. The Carrolls, our landowners, have an old hand-pumped well. We can refill there. That’s why we’re saving all the bottles and cans. Later, we’ll try to find a bigger container,” he answered.

“Ok, I was getting worried.”

“No, we’re ok. The Carrolls are a lucky break, but we also have the filter we bought. We can pull water out of a creek if we have to. And there’s always boiling to purify it.”

“Ok, good,” Mom said, sighing with relief. Then she looked worried again. “What are we going to do about Francine? She still doesn’t respond to anything.”

“Well, I don’t know what we
can
do. Either she snaps out of it, or she doesn’t.”

I spoke up. “She pointed out the men.”

“She did?” Dad asked, not entirely accepting what I said.

“Yeah. I just happened to be looking that way, and she raised her arm and pointed. She didn’t say anything. That’s how I saw them. I showed Kirk and he told you.”

“Well, I’ll take that as a hopeful sign, I guess.” Dad scratched his head and looked over at the old woman still leaning on the tree.

“Maybe I can try a little harder to get her to talk,” Mom said, seeming doubtful.

“Do what you can, Honey. That’s all you can do.”

“Ok, David. I’ll try.”

“Ok... Here’s my plan. I want to move us up into that tree. That’ll make us safer, until cold weather at least. We’ll have to find something else before winter. If we can build a shelter over there, we can use this as our campfire and kitchen, since the fire won’t draw people right to our tents. I don’t know about you guys, but I could really use a good campfire.”

“I don’t know about living in a tree, David,” Mom said.

“Well, I can’t think of a better option right now. We need to stay close by, so Arturo can find us when he gets back, and it might be good to keep an eye on the school, and the Carrolls are ok with us being here. That’s a lot better than wandering around, looking for a better place, at least until we know the deal out there.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” Mom answered slowly.

“Besides, you know me. I’ll make it nice, just like Swiss Family Robinson!”

Kirk and I perked up at that. We loved that movie, and the glorious treehouse they had.

“Ok, David. Knock yourself out,” Mom said, with a smile.

“Hey, Dad. Can we make some coconut grenades?” Kirk asked in all seriousness.

“Kirk, show me a coconut, and we’ll give it a try,” Dad replied.

Kirk’s face fell. He obviously hadn’t thought it through.

Chapter 3 - 3

That afternoon, Dad managed to construct a platform twelve feet up the tree, made out of the saplings we had cut, and some wild grapevine he showed us how to gather and split into strong strapping that he used as corner bracing. It wobbled too much when all three of us were standing on it, so Dad cut some braces that stretched from the corners of the platform to the trunk of the massive tree. After they were in place, the platform was stable and sturdy. The ladder stuck up through a hole Dad had left next to the trunk.

“Ok, good. Time for another ladder.”

We were about to climb down when we heard a chugging motor approaching from the west.

“Stay here!” Dad snapped as he scrambled down the ladder and ran over to the campsite. He was gesturing emphatically.

Lucy came running with the younger boys, and soon all of us kids were sitting up in the tree, watching Mom gather her shotgun. Kirk climbed down the ladder and disappeared into the pit. He scrambled back out with the hunting rifle and handed it up to me, before he climbed back up. When he was back on the platform, he took the rifle back and stood against the tree, waiting to see what would happen.

The chugging got louder, and circled around towards the school, before it changed direction to head for us. We saw a red and yellow tractor appear in glimpses through the trees; an ancient tractor with a mower on the back, crawling towards out camp. It was driven by a hefty old man, wearing overalls and a tall green baseball cap. Dad waved at the man, and we relaxed, thinking it must be the landowner Dad had met. The tractor squealed to a stop on old brakes, and the man shut the diesel engine down.

We saw Mom walk over to shake hands with the old man, who stepped stiffly down from the tractor and pulled out a wooden walking cane from somewhere next to the seat. We couldn’t hear the words, but we knew they were talking. Dad picked up an empty water bottle and showed it to the man. The man gestured and smiled back at Dad. He hoisted himself back up on the tractor and started the engine. Our parents were waving and smiling as the tractor chugged away.

Dad waved us over, and we helped the little boys down from the tree, which offended them, of course. We walked back the campsite, and started asking questions, tripping verbally all over each other.

Dad held up his hands to get us to shut up. “That was Mr. Carroll. He’s a friend. He’s going to get something. He’ll be back in a little while.”

Someone came to our camp, and wasn’t trying to kill us for our stuff. That was a first. It’s hard to express how much time, how much human experience was stuffed into those several days since we had left the interstate. Already, each minute of the day had expanded into more thought, more texture, and more freaking work than I thought possible. The endless busyness of modern life, with its TV and phones, and video games, and school, and soccer practice, had been yanked away to reveal long moments filled with an unexpected gift of silence.

Of course, even the best silence can be filled with the chattering of siblings. Lucy, in particular, was speculating out loud about how much we could expect from the Carrolls. Maybe she was expecting to ride home on an old diesel tractor, or to borrow a much missed hair dryer for Mrs. Carrolls no doubt huge collection of appropriate pretty-products for teenage girls.

My Dad let her go for a minute or two before he appeared to have some kind of daughter-at-the-mall flashback and threw a figurative bucket of cold water on my sister. “Lucy, Mrs. Carroll may have the best blow dryer on the planet, but I can guarantee you that without electricity, it won’t do anyone any good, not for a very long time, so cool your jets girl. We’re here because they are kindly allowing us to be here, and we should be thankful for that, because very soon, this entire country is going to be crawling with poor folks with no place to live, no place to go, and no food to eat. We’re not going to ask the Carrolls for anything that we don’t absolutely need. Understand?” Dad was clearly serious without leaving any room for coddling. “Every one of you is going to absolutely polite, respectful, and friendly to Mr. and Mrs. Carroll, and if they ask for any help from any of us, we’ll give it – cheerfully.”