Surviving the Fog (32 page)

The Christmas tree was hauled into the Lodge
and set in a five gallon bucket.  During the year, the Social
Committee had made ornaments, and now these were hung from the
tree.  There were more couples than last year, and this led to
more presents being presented.  After they had retired to
their room on Christmas Eve, John handed Desi a box.  Desi had
not been feeling well.  Everyone hoped it was just morning
sickness.

"Told you I would get that Mr. Potato Head
done, Honey," he said with a grin.

"You, moron." She sighed as she opened the
box.  Then she stared at the small ruby encrusted ring.

"John," was all her strangled voice managed.
 Astonished, she looked up at him.

"Will you marry me, Desi?" he asked
gently.

"Yes, oh yes," she said through her tears as
she grabbed him, and they held each other a long time before they
lay back on their small bed.

Christmas Day, Desi showed off her engagement
ring.  The boys made the appropriate noises.  The girls
were ecstatic.

"This is so cool!" Yuie exclaimed, marveling
at the lovely rubies.

"It really is beautiful,"
agreed Kathy wistfully.  She looked over at Hector who was
talking to John and Ahmad.  
I'll be
sixteen in March
.

"Where in the name of Heaven did you find a
ruby ring, John?" Ahmad asked.

"I asked Mrs. Brown if she had a ring to
trade,” said John. “I owe her a month of work.  I'll help
Ralph finish the new barn next year.”

“I don’t suppose she has another ring that
she would like to trade,” said Howard.  He was looking at
Jean.

“Uh, hey, babe, I mean, I like you and
everything, but…” Jean began to back away, panic in her voice.

“I’m thinking that Tyler might have to give
Gabby another gift this winter,” Howard explained.

Jean stopped short.  “Oh.  Oh,”
Jean said with a mixture of understanding, relief, and
disappointment in her voice.  Howard just smiled.

That night, Yuie said to Mike, “Did you see
how flustered Jean got when she thought that Howard meant to get a
ring for her?”

“Howard does mean to get a ring for Jean,”
Mike replied. “I’m not that clueless.”

The engagement lifted everyone's spirits,
which had been depressed since Luis' disappearance.  In
January, they had a memorial service for the missing hunter.
 Maria had known Luis well, and she offered to say some words.
 Luis was remembered.

It was cold in January.  Many of the
girls abandoned their rooms to sleep by the fireplace or by the
central fire.  A few girls snuggled up to the barrels just
outside the boys’ cave.  The problem that Mike and Howard
faced again this year, was that the boys' sleeping areas were
warmer than the girls' sleeping areas.  The loft had turned
out to be a nice warm area, since the heat from the fires rose
towards the ceiling of the Lodge.  Mike and Howard were
getting a lot of complaints from the girls that the sleeping
arrangements were unfair.

"They love having those rooms until it gets
cold," Mike remarked wryly.

"So, what do you think, Chief?" Howard asked.
 "Do we let them share a bunk with a boy?  Some of them
have boyfriends."

Mike looked over at Desi who was chatting
with Lily and Jean.

"Do you think pregnancy is contagious,
Howard?" he asked.

"That is a primitive superstition, Chief,"
Howard answered as he followed Mike gaze. "Okay.  The girls
don't get to share a bunk with their boyfriends.  So then,
what?"

"Ask for volunteers from the boys to sleep in
one of the upstairs rooms.  Tell them that all volunteers go
to the head of the shower line.  If we get enough volunteers,
move all the boys out of the loft, and then put some of the girls
up there.  The rest will have to sleep around the fires and
the barrels."

Howard made the arrangements.  "That was
almost acceptable to everyone," Howard reported.

"Close enough for government work," said
Mike.  "And, after all, I am the government."

"You're the Chief," Howard agreed.

The only real complaint was that the boys in
the upstairs room were spying on the girls in the loft as they were
dressing.  Much to Yuie's disgust when she reported this, Mike
started laughing, and he wouldn't stop.

"Tough," he said finally.

When it got warmer, the sleeping areas were
rearranged again.

One day, two boys got into a fist fight.
 Mike had the Spears drag them into Council.  They stood
dejectedly in front of the Council, one with a bloody nose, and the
other having a bloody lip.

“So what’s your problem?” asked their very
annoyed Chief.

“He started it!” yelled the boy with the
bloody lip.  “He keeps telling people that Makayla likes him
better than me.”

“No, Chief, he started it by telling people
that Makayla likes him,” the other boy countered.

“Get Makayla.” Mike gave this order to Kathy.
 Moments later, Makayla entered the room, eyes downcast and
wringing her hands.

“All right, Makayla, which one of these bozos
do you like?” Mike asked sternly.

Makayla’s face reddened.  “I don’t like
either one of them, Chief,” she answered angrily.  “They are
both dumb a’s.  I don’t know why they are saying things about
me.  Make them leave me alone.”

Mike asked Makayla a few more questions, and
then he excused her.  He turned to the two boys.

“Makayla doesn’t like either one of you,
see?” he said.  The two fighters gave each other puzzled
glances, and then they turned back to Mike.

“What’s your point?” bloody lip asked.

John guffawed and Eric snickered.  Some
of the other Council members shook their heads in disgust or
disbelief.

Mike was about to explode when Howard hastily
said, “You guys go outside and let us talk about this.”  The
two fighters left the room.

“I say we have the Spears give them a
beating,” Mike grumbled.

“No we can’t have the Spears give them a
beating,” said Desi.  “Besides, they are already dying.”

“What?” Mike asked, startled at her
statement.

“They’re already dying of terminal
stupidity,” said Desi.  “It’s no use beating up stupid guys
like that.  It won’t make anybody feel better.”

“It might make me feel better,” Mike
mumbled.

“I don’t think those guys have a very good
chance of getting a girlfriend,” said Yuie.  “So they probably
won’t have any children, thank goodness.”

“Yeah, they won’t pass their stupidity genes
along,” Jean added.

“Think of it as evolution in action,” Eric
said.

John looked at Eric.  “Scifi writer?” he
asked.

“Yes,” Eric replied. “But I forget who.”

Mike separated the two fighters.  For
three days, one was forced to remain in the loft, coming down only
to eat, and the other stayed in the boys’ cave for the same period.
 Makayla noisily made it clear that she considered them to be
the village idiots.  Insulted by her attitude, the boys agreed
to fight over a different girl.

So January passed.  In February, the
villagers experienced another cold snap.  This time, the
fireplace and the barrels were not enough to make any of the rooms
comfortable.  Once again, the tribe moved into the small cave,
but this time they were not frightened, just annoyed by the
inconvenience.  Everyone doubled up, and once again, Mike
shared a double sleeping bag with Yuie.

Jacob offered his sub-zero mummy sleeping bag
to Desi who was showing by now.  John was very grateful.
 Jacob took Desi's regular sleeping bag, and now he needed to
double up with someone.  It was at that point when he realized
what a quandary he had made for himself.  Everyone else had
someone they were used to doubling with, and the only one not with
a partner was their newest addition, Lily.  The intrepid
hunter was extremely nervous when he asked Lily to double with him.
 He hoped she wouldn't think the worst of him.

He needn't have worried, for Lily was
gracious when he made his offer.  She thanked him and
accepted.  Jacob found that sharing a double sleeping bag with
Lily was quite comfortable.  They didn't need to make a lot of
small talk, and they both enjoyed listening to Hector play his
harmonica.

This snowy cold snap was a short one, and
after two days the sun came out, the barrels got hot, and most of
the tribe left the small cave, although many still kept to the
central area instead of moving back into the rooms.  Over the
next week, the Lodge warmed enough to allow the rooms to be used
again.

The winter was passing with
much less trauma than last year.  Mike kept waiting for
trouble to develop between Tyler and Gabby, but although there was
some bickering between them, there was never a major blow up.
 
Tyler seems to be growing up,
Mike thought one day, and then he laughed at the
thought.  He, himself, was only fifteen, and Tyler and Gabby
were only a year younger than he.  Having Howard to help him,
allowed Mike to concentrate on planning for the year ahead, and
their resident carpenter was always someone he liked to talk to
when considering those plans.

"I need to oversee the barn at Mary's place,"
Hector said, when they discussed the coming year.  "There will
be some work to be done on the Lodge. Kat and I will try to
insulate the outer walls. What I really want to do is build a
sawmill."

"A sawmill?" Mike asked.  "How can you
do that?  Do you think you can use the electricity from the
wind turbine?  It barely generates enough electricity for the
lights in the dining hall and in Chief’s Headquarters."

"I was thinking of water power," Hector
replied. "I was thinking of trying to build a water wheel to
generate power.  Two centuries ago, that's how they built
sawmills."

"The river," said Mike, understanding at
last.

"Right, Chief.  I just have to figure
out how.  Eric might be able to help.  And if I could
just turn out planks, well, there are a lot of uses for planks.
 I'm thinking that they could be used to build more A-frames.
 We know where we can get our hands on some engines.
 There are a lot of parts we may be able to use like
camshafts, crankshafts, flywheels and gears.  It's just a
matter of adapting the stuff to turn a blade sharp enough to cut
through a pine."

February became March.  The snow still
fell, but there was a lot of sunshine, too.  Some days, there
were eight hours or more of usable sunlight on the solar panels, so
more than half of the tribe could take a ten minute shower.
 The ambience in the Lodge was noticeably better this year
than last.

One evening in late March, the tribe was
hailed from outside.  It was Ralph, and he was delivering a
load of fresh food.  The horses had made it through the
drifts.

"Didn't have as much buildup this year as
last.  And last week’s rain melted more of it," he explained.
 "So I thought I would see if I could get through.  It
wasn't hard at all.  Mary wanted to do it, but I talked her
into letting me try.  I'm a fair rider these days."

His face grew grim when he heard the news of
Luis.  "I suppose that something was bound to happen, but that
doesn't make it any easier to accept," was all he said.

There was not much news from the farm to
report.

"We made it through the winter fairly well.
 We lost some chickens and some rabbits to the cold, but most
of them survived.  We all caught colds, but we all got better
in a few days.  Paige and Nathan hooked up for about a month,
and then they broke up.  Kevin and Kylie got mad at each
other, and that made rough on all of us.  They made up, thank
goodness.  We made some progress on the barn.  Mary said
to tell John that she is looking forward to getting a lot of hard
work out of him.  What's up with that?"

Ralph laughed when he saw Desi’s expanding
belly.  "I should have known it would be something like that."
 He left the next day, promising to tell Mary the good
news.

On the first day of April, Jacob and Jean
left to look for Luis. Fearing the worst, Mike had them take a
large strip of black plastic. The scouts knew that Luis had gone
upriver.  Lily and Howard were anxious, but they understood
that the scouts needed to search for a clue to the whereabouts of
the lost villager.

Mary and her clan came for a visit while they
were gone.  The kids in the tribe oohed and aahed over how
much Star and Comet had grown.  Comet asked why Desi had
gotten so fat.  Star was allowed to stay in the Lodge with the
older girls again.

Nathan had been allowed to drive the wagon.
 Mary brought the plow, and the fields in the meadow were
prepared to receive seed, which the villagers sowed by hand.
 After a few days, Mary and her clan returned to their farm,
taking with them John and another pair of teens.

Tyler liked it when the
Brown clan came.  He liked Mrs. Brown and her kids, and he had
enjoyed working at the farm the previous year.  When he was at
the Brown farm, there was no chance of being called on the carpet
in Petersburg.  
Being called on the
carpet now
, he thought gloomily.  And
he didn't even know why.  All he knew was that someone had
been sent to tell him that the Chief wanted to see him.  They
hadn't said why.  He wondered.  
Did the Chief find out about...?
 
Nah
,
that was too long ago.  The
Chief can’t hold that against me now.  Can he?
He knocked on the door at Chief’s
Headquarters.

"It's open," he heard Mike say, so he went
in.

"You wanted to see me, Chief?" he asked, try
hard to project politeness.

"Oh.  Tyler.  Come in," Mike
said.

Tyler entered and sat down on the plastic
chair that was for visitors.