The Last Tribe (66 page)

“I love those things.”  Meredith
laughed.  “It will be just like Toy Story 2.”

 “We have a pilot, a plane, fuel,
and a clear runway.”  Emily ceded the return driving to Paul.  Antonio assumed
shotgun.  Peter was curled up in the backseat for a nap.  Meredith sat next to
Emily and listened.

“Check.” she responded.

“It’s supposed to snow tomorrow.” 
Gray clouds hung low over the area and the air felt heavy.  Rebecca’s
prediction was going to come true.

“Check.”

Emily enjoyed the ‘check’
responses.  “We have to move supplies and what we want to take.  We have to
move the animals.  And we leave.”

“Check.”  Meredith nodded with
finality.

Emily pulled a notebook from the
pocket in front of her seat.  She made a list of supply items.  There were
three lists; Wants, Needs, Haves. 

“Peter?”  She asked, knowing he was
still awake.  “If we can get into a warehouse and find food, how much weight
can the jet handle?”

“With no people?  Unless you’re
putting the entire warehouse in, I don’t see a problem.  If we get a herd of
cattle, then we have another conversation.”

“Thank you.”  Emily made notes. 
She wanted rice, beans, pasta, and canned food.  Similar lists were being made
by everyone in the tribe.  It helped them pass the time. 

Meredith read the list from the
next seat.  “We need seeds.”

Emily looked at her.  “I’m sorry,
honey, what was that?”

“Most of what you are writing
should be in the ‘wants’ category.  We need seeds more than anything else.  We
have to grow things, lots of things.  Cans are heavy and will go bad.  We need
to learn how to live off the land.”

“We have to survive once we get
there.”  Emily told her.  “We need to take as much food as we can.”

“Sure, but not so much that we need
a warehouse.  There is going to be food there.  Craig can catch fish for us.” 
She giggled, Craig had the reputation of being the best angler.  “We should
take livestock and food, but not so much food that we raid a warehouse.  We
can’t live like the past, we need to look at the future.  We need to grow,
hunt, harvest, fish.”  The young girl stopped talking.  She felt uncomfortable
speaking to an adult so candidly. 

Emily looked at the young woman. 
There was silence in a car.  Paul and Antonio glanced at each other with a look
men have when they are uncomfortable, particularly when the situation involves
two women.

“You’re right.  You’re absolutely
right.”  Emily balled up her piece of paper.  “We need seeds and livestock.  We
probably need a month of food to take, and maybe a little more to help us on
days we don’t catch fish, but Meredith is right.  I need to start thinking like
it is, not how I want it to be, or how I’ve been living for the last few
months.”  She winked at Meredith.  “You keep telling me when I’m wrong, when
I’m living in the past.”

Meredith gave her a simple “check,”
in reply.

“You gonna tell her the other
problem?”  Antonio spoke over his shoulder to Meredith.  “About the talk we all
had?”

Emily looked up from her pad and
faced her young friend.  “What is it?”

“Some of us don’t want to go.” 
Meredith admitted.

“What?”  Paul responded from the
driver’s seat.  “We have to go.  Our lives depend on going.”

“Dude, it’s not like we don’t want
to go to Hawaii.  I want to lie in the sun and catch fish and crap, but you’re
old.  You’re goin’ there to retire.  I’m seventeen.  Who I gonna be with?  How
am I gonna live my life once the old are a lot older?  We don’t have enough
people.”

“Who doesn’t want to go?”  Emily
asked Meredith.

“Avery, Antonio, and I have talked
about it.  It’s like he just said.  I want to stay with the group, but my
prospects are rotten if we don’t find other survivors.  I’m not sure Bernie
wants to go either.  Kelly is getting the cows healthy in hopes it will
convince people to stay here.  I don’t know Dan and Karen well enough yet.”

 “Tell you what we can do.”  Peter
yelled from the back.  “We can go over, and if we think it makes sense, I can
fly back to San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Tokyo for that matter.  We aren’t
just considering Americans, right?”

Antonio yelled back.  “What do you
mean we can come back?”

Emily turned around in her seat to
see Peter.  “Would it be possible to drop paper from a 777 flying over cities?”

“Possible or advisable?”  Was his
response.

“Maybe we can fly over cities and
drop paper, notes to have people meet us in San Francisco or Los Angeles to get
picked up in a month.” 

“Let me think about it.  We might
be able to find Antonio some women yet.”  Peter worked the problem in his
head.  Maybe they could put leaflets in the landing gear and fly low over
Chicago, opening the landing gear to release the notes.  He smiled as he formed
the plan in his head.  “We need to decide what cities.  I’ll make it work.”  He
said to Emily and Meredith.

 “I wouldn’t mind finding some
additional women.”  Antonio cracked a smile.  “I always want to increase my
odds.”  He may have matured, but he still relied on occasional swagger.  “You
know what I mean, Paul?”  He gave the driver a punch on his upper arm.

“I think we all know what you mean,
Tony.”  Paul did not comment beyond the acknowledgement.

“You know what we need to do?  We
don’t want to land, we just want people to figure out how to join us.  Right? 
We should drop leaflets or something, and tell people where we’re going.” 
Antonio paused.  “If you can’t figure out how to get to us, I’m not sure I want
you joining the tribe, right?  You got to earn your spot on Team Antonio.”

“We’re not calling it Team
Antonio.”  Paul said to him immediately.  “There aren’t any proposed tribe
names, but if there are, Team Antonio would not make it on the list.”

“You know it would.”  Antonio
backed up his comment.

“No, it wouldn’t.  I’d vote for The
Lollipop Guild before Team Antonio.”

“You’d rather be the Lollipop
Guild?  Some Wizard of Oz crap before Team Antonio?  That’s cold, damn cold,
Paul.”

Paul drove quickly towards
Hanover.  Small flakes of snow fell, melting on the windshield.

“I miss NPR.”  Paul said, as the
conversation paused for a few minutes.  “It was great to drive and listen to
stories about beavers or religion.”

“I liked “All Things Considered”,
but their weekend shows were horrible.  Who could listen to that “Wait, Wait,
Don’t Tell Me” crap?”  Antonio shook his head as he mentioned the show.

“You liked NPR?”  Paul looked over
at him.

“I’m supposed to be ignorant on
national and world topics just because I’m in a gang?  Some of those stories
were good.”

“Tony, you are a man of surprising
depth and intelligence.”  Paul complimented him. 

“Yes I am.”  He told Paul.  “Yes I
am.”

They rolled into Hanover at 2pm
during a driving snowstorm.  It hit early, a day before Rebecca forecast.  She
saw potential for an early storm, but the models presented a low probability
for Tuesday and higher for Wednesday. 

“Weather is an imperfect science.” 
She told them, her hands upturned and out to her side.

“Snow in April.  Why did you bring
us here Todd?”  Melanie was not happy.  Neither was Solange.  The temperature was
back in the low 30’s.

“It will all be gone by Thursday,
don’t worry.  It should warm up.”  Rebecca assured everyone.  “Until then, we
can hunker down.  Cozy up next to the fires.” 

During the scouting trip to the
airport, the Hanover group made plans for the spring snowstorm.  They acquired
and set up two ping pong tables in the basement of the Choate Road house. 

Teams were drawn at random, and a
tournament bracket was put on the wall.  The games ran all day Wednesday. 
There were singles and doubles divisions, and an under twelve age group.

It was not a fair tournament. 
Avery dominated the singles side of the competition, and carried her partner,
Jamie, through the doubles.  There was outcry throughout the house, accusations
of sandbagging the event, withholding information, but in the end, Avery was
declared the singles and doubles ping pong champion. 

“Next time you have to play
left-handed or something like that.”  Dan said to her after his drubbing in the
semifinals. 

“I could use my backhand exclusively,
but wouldn’t it humiliate you more when I still win?”  She had her paddle
facing down, making a sweeping motion towards him, shoeing him away.

“You just made an enemy.”  He put
two fingers pointed towards his eyes, then pointed them back at her.  “Watch
your back next tournament.”

Dan was her most competitive match,
which Avery still won 21-11.  Regardless of the domination by one player, the
event was successful and fun.  The twelve and under bracket used a smaller
table.  Jacob and Brian played a thriller in the final match, with Brian
winning 21-19.

“We have to get a pool table.” 
Paul told John as they sat and watched Rebecca play Matt.  “We need a pool
table, maybe a dart board, some backgammon.   We should make a true rec room.”

“We’re not staying here that long,
remember?  Maybe you can find a pool table and use it at that location.  It
would be a lot easier than hauling one in here.”  John’s head bobbed back and
forth with the ball.

“We’re so busy too, would be hard
to find time to help me.”  Paul replied sarcastically.  “Did you know the young
people are reluctant to move?  Meredith, of all people, talked to us about it
in the car.  It’s not that they don’t want to move to Hawaii, it’s the finality
of their numbers.  They want more of an effort put into finding survivors
before we isolate the tribe.”

“What did you tell her?”  John
asked him before yelling.  “Oh!  Nice point Matt.”  It was not a close match.  Matt
was better than Rebecca.

“I did not answer.  Emily suggested
a plan on our way to Hawaii.  We will fly over large cities and drop fliers
from the landing gear.”

John nodded, still watching the
game.  Paul was surprised his brother was blasé about the idea of losing half
of the tribe, particularly the younger half.

“I completely agree with them.  We
need more people, but we are up against a clock.  I have no idea how long the
plane will work.  I don’t know how long the cars will work.  We have to get to
Hawaii before the end of summer.  We’ve travelled up and down the east coast. 
I’ve made a specific trip to Boston.  If they still want to leave, we can’t
stop them.”  John turned away from the match.  “But I’ll do everything I
possibly can to appease their concerns,  help them find additional survivors,
and convince them that we are executing the best and only option for survival
by going.”

Paul nodded.  “Hey, did you know we
were taking the cows with us?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t we take the
cows?  What did you think Kelly was doing over there the last five days?” 

“Apparently she is one of the
dissenters with regards to leaving and is possibly creating a food source for
the people who stay here, but, I also just assumed she is a vet and vets heal
animals.”

“Do you not want to take the animals?”

“I do, it just seems funny, very
Noah’s ark.  We have a dog, chickens, goats, cows, pigs, and people, and we’re
all flying to paradise.”

“So we hope.”  John told him.  “So
we hope.” 

Matt won match point.  John
screamed, “yes!”

It was early in the tournament,
Paul turned to his brother.  “Have you seen Avery play?”

“No.”  John said, standing up to
congratulate his son.  “Why?  She as good as Matt?”

“Save me a seat if they play each
other.  I want to make sure I’m next to you for that one.”  Paul put his hand
on John’s back and gave him a pat.

John looked at the board. 
“Actually, I’m playing her next.  Maybe you want to stick around and watch me?”

Paul smiled.  “I wouldn’t miss it,
John, wouldn’t miss it for the world.”  Paul sat back down and watched the
match.  It lasted less than ten minutes, 21 – 3.  John’s three points came on
Avery’s double faults.

The temperature rose in the late
afternoon.  The snow became a drizzling rain.  Fog and mist enveloped the roads
and landscape.  A pot of moose chili bubbled on the sun porch woodstove and
cornbread baked quickly in a cast iron skillet.. 

“Do you have any idea how tired of
moose meat we are going to be in another few days.”  Hank ate his chili next to
Kelly.

“Well, it’s food, it’s good food,
and there aren’t any moose in Hawaii, so realize this is the last time in your
life you will ever have moose meat.  I’m upset we wasted the smell of cornbread
and chili on a screened porch.”  She took another bite.  The chili was
delicious, regardless of it being the sixth meal in a row of red meat.  “It
might be the last red meat you have in a long time too.  There are pigs, fish,
and fowl in Hawaii.  I know there are cows, but cows don’t go feral as well as
the other animals.  I’ll try to breed, but, you know.”

“So you’re telling me to eat up.” 
Hank pushed another spoonful into his mouth.

“More telling you to stop
complaining.”  Kelly laughed as she watched a fake smile spread across Hank’s
face while he ate.  They worked together at the dairy farm over the last few
days, getting to know each other better.  She was fast friends with the older
man.  They both enjoyed punk music in its many versions.  Double Nickels on the
Dime by The Minutemen was Kelly’s favorite album.  Hank had nothing but respect
for her after she told him.

“When do you think we’ll leave?  I
heard the plane works and is full of fuel.”  Kelly switched topics.

“I don’t know.  You and I have to
get those cows healthy.  Probably another week or two, right?”  He ate some of
his cornbread.

“Yeah, I’d say.  They don’t have to
be 100%, but I want them a little stronger before we move them.  The pigs are
probably fine, they’ll sleep like Hubba.  No worries.”  She paused.  “So I’m
the hold up, or do you think people still want to stay and relax?”

“A little of both.  Don’t rush, we
have nothing but time.  Did you hear the latest plan?”  Hank tore into his
second triangle of bread.  “To eject pamphlets from the plane, fly over most of
the major cities?”

“I’ve heard pieces.  If we can make
it happen, sounds good to me.  I’m one of the people voicing concerns about the
small size of our tribe, and how we need more young people.  Once I get to
Hawaii, I don’t plan on coming back.  If this helps us ease our conscience,
possibly rescue some people by setting them on a path towards us, I’m all for
it.” 

“Yeah, I agree on all fronts.” 
Hank finished his meal.  “There’s cake tonight, want me to grab you a piece?” 
Pockets of people ate and spoke in groups around the Choate Road mansion.

“Who doesn’t like cake?”  Kelly
asked rhetorically.

Todd watched the rain wash away the
snow.  Emily came up behind him and slipped her arm around his back.  He looked
through a window in the den converted into Hank and Paul’s bedroom.  The fire
smoldered behind them.

“Whatcha thinkin’?”  She asked him.

“That this is the last snowfall I
will ever see.  I always thought, or dreamed at least, that you and I would
spend some of our retirement in New England, that we would enjoy the leaves
changing color, that our grandchildren would go sledding on the same hill I
used as a boy.”  He turned to look at her, kissing her.  “But I will have
grandchildren, so I’m not sad.  I’m just enjoying the last snow.”

She put her other arm around his
front, hugging him from the side.  She watched the rain with her husband.  “You
know, I was never going to retire to New England, right?”

“Yes.”  He said back.

“I hate the cold.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”  Emily squeezed him
tightly, “I love you so much.  It was a great idea for us to come up here.  We
found family and new friends.  You saved us.”

“I know.”  He said jokingly and
without modesty.  “I did it for selfish reasons too.  I didn’t know at the time
why I was sending us here. It was a bad idea, believing we could live in
Hanover forever, but it has let me say goodbye to my town.  It’s brought us
friends and a path to our new life.  I can leave Hanover in a few weeks
remembering my childhood, my boyhood home fondly.  I’ll always remember it like
this, beautiful.”  He turned and kissed her again.  “And I’ll always remember
our last snowfall.” 

Todd smiled as he turned and looked
back out the window.