by Scott Allen
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Nance was at the sink and Dana was hobbling toward her with his crutch under one arm, carrying dishes, when Nance exclaimed, “Damn! Damn damn damn! The water pump motor is out.” She was twisting the handle of the faucet at the sink. Nothing was coming out. “Damn! The electric motor went out when Grandpa was here, and he knew how to fix it. But, I don’t! And, all the repair people have left. That motor pumps all the water for the farm, including the irrigation system!”
“Where is it?” asked Dana. “I know a little bit about electric motors.”
Nance looked at him with a bit of astonishment. “You do? I thought you did home appliance repair?”
Dana said, “I’ve only worked on small electric motors, but I think the principles are all the same. So, tell me where it is and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Here, follow me,” she said. Nance walked into the garage, Dana following. On the back wall of the garage was a panel with several numerical readouts for watts in use, power available from the batteries, and several other things. Nance said, “I’m not sure exactly what all these numbers mean, but I know if this one,” she pointed, gets below 100, I have to cut back on electricity use. We’re not getting any power from the grid at all, only the solar panels.” Dana explained what the numbers meant, and Nance nodded her head, but clearly would need more explanation than they had time for.
She opened a large closet door. “It’s a little tight in there.” She opened the door, and inside was a large upright tank and a large cylindrical metal cover set on top a metal scaffold, with two thick pipes descending from it that disappeared into the concrete floor. Nance pointed to it, and said, “The pump’s in there. Grandpa’s tool box is right there on the floor. I’ll stand by at the sink.”
Dana got down on the floor and examined the metal cylinder. It was obvious how it came off over the top of the pump. He examined the plate on the side and noted the wattage of the pump. Dana found the breaker switch and flipped it to the OFF position, opened the tool box and got to work. He quickly found the problem, which was a short, due to worn insulation on a wire that came down to the pump motor from the electrical distribution box. Dana found some electrical tape and re-insulated the wire. He checked for other problems. He turned the motor by hand and found it turned smoothly. He searched for rust. He examined the shaft that turned the pump. No other problems. He squirted some lubricant into the right places, put the cylinder cover back on, and flipped the breaker switch. The motor hummed. “Try it now, Nance!” he shouted. Nance turned the water on, walked back into the garage, and smiled broadly. Dana felt very proud of himself indeed, and lucky that the problem wasn’t any worse. As he passed by the electrical panel, he noted with satisfaction that the watts in use had gone up by exactly the right number.
He walked over to Nance with his crutch, stood beside her at the kitchen sink, and began rinsing the dishes and putting them into the dishwashing machine. It felt good to stand next to her. She did not stiffen when he approached, as he imagined most women would. She smiled up at him. “Thanks,” she said.
“Nance, you have been so good to me in just a short time. I’m the one who should be thanking you. I would help more if I could,” said Dana.
“Let’s not worry about that now, Dana. Life is too uncertain. When your leg is better, if you want to help more around the farm, we’ll see,” Nance said, but smiled.
They worked together for a few more minutes. Then they watched a movie that was stored in the memory of her viewscreen, an old one, something Nance called a “romantic comedy.” There were a lot of jokes that made Nance laugh, but Dana didn’t get. The cities and the vehicles and everything else in the movie were different from anything Dana had ever seen. But, the movie was about a young man and a young woman falling in and out and then back into love, and Dana had never seen such a thing or imagined it. He was left wondering what life had really been like.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The next morning, before breakfast, Dana tried walking without the crutch. He found that, although it was a bit painful, he could put equal weight on both legs and remain stable. So, he left the crutch in the bedroom.
As they finished cleaning up after breakfast, Dana noticed a mouse scurrying across the floor next to the wall, and drew Nance’s attention to it. He was about to ask if he should kill it for her, but she leaped up and grabbed a long pole with a net on it that was leaning against a corner. She deftly scooped the mouse up into the net, flipped the net over the hoop to trap the mouse, and then slammed it full force into the floor. “I hate to kill a living thing like that, but he was after my cupboard. Him or me,” she said. She walked outside with the dead mouse in the net, and Dana followed. She flipped the net open, and swung the pole forcefully over her head, hurling the mouse about fifteen or twenty meters onto the road. She grinned and said, “I played field hockey for my high school,” handed Dana the pole net, and marched out to start work in the barn.
The work of the day started as a repeat of the previous day, at least until mid-morning, when Dana got up from his chair under the tree and yelled, “Nance! A bus is coming!” A grey bus was throwing up dust on the road below and heading for the drive to the house. Nance came out of the barn with a look of panic.
“I forgot my rifle!” she yelled, and froze when she saw the bus pulling up the drive. Dana showed her his rifle.
Dana could see that perhaps one-third of the seats were occupied. The bus pulled up the driveway to the house, out of his sight. A woman in a dark green uniform, carrying a small tablet viewscreen, came around the corner of the house and walked to within 5 meters of Nance.
“Is your name Nance?” she asked, looking down at the tablet. Her tone was imperious. Dana was on his feet, his rifle at the ready.
“Yes, it is.” Nance spoke firmly and quietly, and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Time for you to get on the bus and get back to America,” said the woman.
“Sorry, I’m staying here,” said Nance, again firmly and quietly.
“There are roving bands of men that will get here eventually. They’ll rob and rape you,” said the woman with some irritation.
“I’m staying,” said Nance.
“Don’t make us drag you,” said the woman.
At that point, Dana moved in Nance’s direction. The woman from the bus noticed him for the first time. A free man, and armed! He pointed the rifle directly at her left eye. The color drained from her face.
Dana said, keeping his voice even but menacing, “Get back on your bus and leave.”
The woman looked again at Nance, and saw that she would not budge. Apparently, this situation was new to her, but she quickly made up her mind, turned with a huff, and climbed back on the bus. It started, backed out, and left. Dana looked down at the rifle. The safety was still on. He switched it to continuous fire with a trembling hand.
Nance and Dana, now standing close together, jointly heaved a sigh of relief. Apparently, the evacuation teams were indeed, unarmed. Dana found himself still a little shaky. It had happened pretty fast. Nance leaned against a corner of the barn, as if exhausted. “Thanks, Dana,” she said. Her voice was a bit weak, and it took her a few minutes to collect herself, then go into the house for her rifle, and return to her work with the pigs. Before she did, she said, “I guess they might return. You’ll keep an eye out, won’t you?” She was smiling at him.
Dana went back to the book. He was up to the panic of 1893, and had to re-read those parts of the chapter concerned with the gold standard, international trade in currency and property, and their connections to the resulting depression. He made a mental note to ask Nance about the current monetary policy of the United States, and what she knew about Mexico’s monetary policy. He could feel his brain expanding with new ideas.
Nance finished her farm work in the early afternoon, cleaned up, and brought out lunch, again in a light summer dress. As she sat on the grass and handed Dana a sandwich, she sa
id, “Thank you again, Dana. It was stupid of me to forget my rifle. If you hadn’t been here, they probably would have carried me onto the bus. That was a close call.”
Dana said, “It’s not even a fraction of everything you’ve done for me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The next two weeks went by with mostly routine farm work. Dana’s leg healed, and Nance removed the stitches. Dana began taking on some of the heavier tasks, like hauling corn to feed the pigs, lawn mowing, weeding, repairing irrigation pipes and other broken things, and finally, helping Nance to butcher a pig. They lured the pig over to a corner of the pen, shot it between the eyes, washed it, used an overhead crane to haul it up by its hind legs, bled it into a drain, gutted it, skinned it, and cut it into pieces. Dana had to steel himself for all these unfamiliar and highly unpleasant tasks. He did not want to show weakness in front of Nance. Pulling off the skin took a lot of tugging, and he wondered how Nance had ever done it by herself. The large steel tub into which the skin, guts, feet, and head fell was very heavy, but Dana managed to lift it onto a wagon, and pull it, breathing heavily, some distance down the hill to a pit he had dug earlier with a shovel, covering up the revolting mess.
When he returned, Nance said, “I understand that the government slaughterhouses used every part of the pig, including the head and feet, but I never saw those parts in the store.”
Dana said, making a joke, “Maybe they put those parts in our nutrition bars.”
Nance looked thoughtful for a minute, and said, quite seriously, “I never thought about that before, but you know what? I’ll bet they did. I’ll bet you got all kinds of agricultural waste products, like cow brains and chicken feet. Stuff no one else would eat. I’ll bet they ground it up and put some preservatives and beet sugar in it. Blech!” Then she saw Dana was looking nauseated, and said, “Sorry! Sorry! I shouldn’t have said that.”
The physical work was more than Dana had ever experienced, and he was sore every night. But, he could feel himself getting stronger. The shirts were getting a bit tight across the shoulders. He looked at himself naked in the mirror one night after a shower, and noticed that he was getting muscles in his shoulders, arms, legs, abdomen, and chest. He liked what he saw, and flexed his arms. He supposed this was what men looked like before they were weakened by the Rules.
Nance was grateful for his help, and said so. They cooked and cleaned together, with Dana learning every variety of way to cook pork and corn, and occasionally vegetables from her garden. Nance had stopped going to neighboring farms to trade for fruits and other items, because there was probably no one there, and she didn’t want to get approached by an evacuation team. But, the apple tree next to her garden began to have ripe fruit, and she proudly handed Dana the first juicy and tart apple it produced. Dana noticed that she was making an effort to look nice at dinner, wearing earrings and sometimes a necklace, using small amounts of make-up, and flowing dresses that emphasized her curves and exposed a little of her cleavage. He noticed the pleasant aroma of perfume, something he had occasionally noticed in the homes of women for whom he had repaired appliances. Dana made sure he was presentable, as well.
In the evenings, if they were not too tired, she and Dana would discuss what he had been able to read that day. He was finished with the history textbook, which stopped in the early years of the twenty-first century. She told him that he was asking challenging questions about American history, particularly when it came to economics, and the reasons why the US had changed from a republican form of democracy to the radical feminist totalitarian state it had become. Nance was very well-read, and Dana felt both ashamed of his own ignorance and grateful for someone to help with the education he had missed. They both agreed that it would be good for Dana to begin learning Spanish, and for Nance to brush up on hers.
Occasionally, they would watch a movie stored on her viewscreen. Nance would pause the action to explain why people were behaving the way they were. From this Dana learned much about how life had been before. Free. Men and women chose each other out of attraction, and had children because they wanted them. People chose jobs they wanted. They were responsible for their own lives, and there were no guarantees of help if they made bad choices.
One midday, while working in the barn, they heard the sound of multiple footsteps coming up the drive, and of several men talking. They unslung their rifles and moved stealthily towards the drive, keeping behind the house until they got close. They stepped out from behind the corner of the house as they heard one man say, “It looks like someone is still living here.”
With their rifles pointed at the men, Dana and Nance came in sight. There were five men of younger and middle ages, two in black, three in other colors, all a bit dusty and bedraggled. All carried rifles. Each had a backpack, or a large sack slung over his shoulder. Dana said loudly, “Please drop your rifles, gentlemen, and back away from them.” There was shock on their faces, but they complied.
One of them said, “Please don’t shoot. We mean no harm. We’re just looking for a place to settle.”
Nance said, “My name is Nance and this is Dana. We live here. You’d better tell us what’s up.”
The speaker replied, “Just as I said, we are freed men. We were forced to work as planting, weeding, and picking crews for vegetables and fruit down to the south. We’ve decided to look for a piece of land to settle on, someplace we could work. We just want to live peacefully as good citizens for the rest of our lives. We’ve checked out farms south of here, but the unoccupied ones seemed to be too small to support all five of us. So, we have kept looking. We usually find things to eat and a place to sleep in abandoned farms.” The look on his face was one of worry and yet hopefulness.
Dana asked, “Where did you get the rifles?”
The speaker replied, “We were part of the rebellion for a while, and the rebellion gave us the rifles when they freed us from our hardware. We fought as guerrillas, although the Mexican army had the American army on the run nearly all the time. Once peace was declared, we left and started north.”
Nance said, “If what you say is true, I think you’ll find a good place about a kilometer and a half to the west down that road,” she pointed with her rifle. “It’s big, with a lot of different crops and animals, and was worked by six women. They’re gone.”
“Does it have a good water supply?” asked the speaker.
“Yes,” said Nance, “and a powerful electricity supply from solar panels.”
“We’ll certainly check it out, then,” said the speaker.
“We’d better have your names and photos,” said Nance. She went in the house while Dana covered the men, and came back with her wristband. She pointed it at each man, asked his name, and scanned him. “Four of you can head down the road, leave your rifles here. When you reach that intersection, the fifth man can pick up your rifles and follow. OK? We would value having good neighbors. If you are, you can expect us to be good neighbors to you.”
“That sounds fair. Thanks for the suggestion.” said the speaker.
Dana and Nance watched as the men followed her instructions, and kept an eye on them until they were out of sight down the western road. Dana said, “I suppose this means there will be more roving bands of freed men. I don’t think all of them will be peaceful. We’ll need a plan to protect ourselves. I’m most concerned about nighttime. We’ll have to stand watches.”
“That will slow down our farm work, won’t it?” said Nance. “I suppose there’s no other solution. It occurs to me, Dana, that if you weren’t here, I would have had to get on the bus. There’s no way I could have managed the farm and protected myself alone.”
Dana looked down, shuffled his feet, and said, “Aw, gee, shucks, ma’am,” which was a line from an old western movie they had watched together. Nance laughed, with her head tilted back, showing her pretty neck. Dana was growing to feel warm and protective toward Nance, as well as almost painfully attracted to her, but he kept those things to himself.
He heard her locking her bedroom door at night.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The farm work did, indeed, slow down. They were taking four-hour watches at night, sitting up on the roof, with an alarm button in hand that would wake up the one who was sleeping, fully clothed, rifle at hand, in the house below. Nothing happened for a week, except that they were sleep-deprived. Their nightly conversations over dinner about the role of government, economics, and how things used to be between men and women were brief. Nightly movies were fewer. The days were getting shorter as summer drew to a close. Nance worried that her corn would rot in the field in a few weeks without a government harvesting machine.
Dana was on the roof at about two o’clock in the morning, in between the solar panels, an hour into his shift, eyes well-adjusted to the thin moonlight, when he saw something moving in the neighbor’s abandoned cornfield to the west. Several rows of the weedy, stunted corn were being disturbed by someone walking through them, stealthily. He pressed the button to wake up Nance, and then saw a face emerge from the end of a corn row. Then, three more faces from nearby rows. They were peering carefully around, and were taking a particular interest in Nance’s house. Two of them looked at each other and appeared to nod.
Finally, the first one motioned to the others to move forward. He could see that two of them were armed with rifles, and the other two had crowbars. It was what he had feared. Dana yelled as loudly as he could, “Put down your weapons or we’ll shoot!” The four men froze, and the first one motioned them back into the cornfield. Dana opened up with continuous fire into the field. He heard two men scream. Nance appeared next to the ladder behind him.
