Protecting Our Home

by Colton Lively

  “Well, sorry to hear it,” said Cabot. “The man was an original, no mistake. Taught a few of us the old ways, you know.”

  “Really?” asked Mary, instantly curious.

  She hadn’t thought of Grover Russell as any kind of teacher. He’d been a good manager, though, and a naturally gifted problem-solver, even if sometimes he decided that his biggest problem was other people.

  “Just you ask around,” Cabot assured her. “You got people up here who still remember learning to ranch from him. Other folks, he taught forestry. And all their kids learned to shoot, too, you’d better believe that.”

  Struggling to visualize the notion, Mary voiced it aloud: “Grover Theodore Russell,” she said, wanting to make sure it was truly the same man, “ran classes up here?”

  “Well, not strictly speaking. Very… um, how do you say? Ad hoc, you know. But this was Grover’s land, all above board and proper. If you’re his kin, I suppose you’ve come to claim it,” Cabot assumed. “Maybe fixing to chop down all this old-growth and make yourself a buck?” If he was sad at this prospect, he hid it well.

  But Cody shook his head immediately. “Actually, we were kinda thinking this could be home for a while, if you’ll have us. Our apartment will probably be okay, but Flannigan burned down even before this crisis was six hours old. I figured my dad’s old land was as good a place as any just to hunker down and wait this out. Like I say,” Cody added, making no assumptions, “only if you’ll have us.”

  “Heck, son,” Cabot laughed, “I figure we’re squatting on your land, and here you are, asking permission!”

  The younger three were more confused than amused; there’d never been any need for discussion as to who owned the land, and they’d always just assumed it was ‘available’ to whosoever might find their way up here.

  “The house is about a thousand yards up,” Cabot reminded Cody. “If you’ll give us a ride back, we’ll show you around.”

  “Sounds like a deal.”

  The four erstwhile guards found places to grab onto the exterior of the truck and thus overloaded, Cody found first gear and made slow, deliberate progress up the forest road. Just behind the driver’s door, Cabot checked that his footing was solid and then leaned in to ask, “Say, uh… Cody, was it?” he asked over the noise of the engine. “This thing, whatever it was, knocked out everyone’s vehicles, right? So, how in the name of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford did you even get a motor to start?”

  Cody decided just to tap the side of his nose and give a knowing smile.

  “Well, I tell ya straight, we got three trucks up by the main house, and it was like some goddamned comic book villain showed up and zapped each of ‘em with a million volts.”

  “That’s not far from what truly happened,” said Cody. “I’ll explain more later.”

  “Sure. The others will hang on every word. There ain’t anyone come up here since, so there’s been no news at all.”

  It took Cody a second to register the word. “Others?”

  “Yeah, of course,” said Cabot. “Did your dad never tell you?”

  20

  The Russell Homestead D-Day + 2 (07:20am, Day Two)

  Cody tried to take it all in. He felt as though he’d been ushered into an old childhood memory, except in this facsimile of home, the furniture had changed, a wall was knocked through, and a smart, new extension had been built out back. “Wow… You guys have been busy.”

  “We gathered on weekends,” Cabot explained, “and sometimes for a few weeks during the summers. Labor Day, that kind of thing. If we ain’t training up here, we’re usually building something. Back in the beginning, your dad had us sawing timber and hammering from dawn to dusk. I can still remember, when we finished up for the day around sunset, we’d have a beer and just sit in the quiet. Absolute silence it was,” Cabot recalled. “Too many kids around now, I guess.”

  “Kids?” asked Mary, Jacob, and Emma together.

  Cabot laughed again; for such a serious-looking man, the gesture came easily to him. “Your dad really left you out of the loop, huh?” Cody was about to bristle and remind Cabot that his family’s business was his own, but the older man said, “Well, it happens. I have two daughters who haven’t spoken to me since just after 9/11,” he reported.

  “That’s awful,” said Mary.

  Cabot shrugged, having long since reached acceptance. “Differences of opinion.”

  “My dad and I… We didn’t fall out,” Cody explained as he helped Emma and Jacob to disembark with some of the family’s gear, “he just became more and more difficult to know.”

  “Old age,” said Cabot. “It always comes at the worst time.” He roped in some people to help bring the Russell’s bags into one of the cabins. When Cody had last been here, probably around the same time that Cabot was falling out with his daughters, a single, rickety cabin had stood in the clearing. Now, the trees on every side were cleared, and four more cabins ringed the original. Another, as yet incomplete, stood roofless and hidden under a tarpaulin. “Number five is looking good, she’ll be ready soon,” Cabot explained. “But even with four cabins, each family can have their own. Come on. I’ll introduce you.”

  The four families were setting up a communal breakfast in the original cabin, an airy space with a tall, vaulted ceiling like an old manor hall. Six benches were squeezed into this shared “dining room,” which doubled as Papa Cabot’s living room the rest of the time. “We like to keep an open house,” said Cabot, “so everyone just piles in here for breakfast.”

  “Food?” said Jacob, his eyes ravenous.

  “As much as you like,” said Cabot. “This ol’ place might not look like much, but this whole area is a natural larder. More food than we’d ever need. Unless, of course, the rest of Flannigan followed you up here, and they’re all hungry at once.”

  “I think it was sorta the point,” Jacob said to Cabot, “that no one knew where we were going.”

  “Good thinking,” said Cabot, patting the teenager on the back. “Grab a plate, young fella, before you starve. Careful, though. This ain’t your McDonalds or Pizza King.”

  “Good!” said Emma, famished and eyeing the big, wooden bowls on the central table; they steamed with unusual scents, so she grabbed a spoon and started filling her bowl. “What’s this, like, um…” she tried to guess, “quinoa?”

  “Amaranth,” said a voice behind her, a woman who added yet another wooden bowl to the table, this one filled with chopped, dried fruits. “It’s good for you. Just add some sweetness. There’s molasses, maple syrup, and honey, right there.”

  “Thanks,” Emma said, reaching first for the fruit.

  “I’m Madison,” she said, busy with her chores but happy to know new people. “Everyone calls me Maddy.”

  “Emma, and that’s Jacob,” she said, pointing to her brother, who was making some kind of epic breakfast burrito with fluffy eggs and spicy ground beef. “This all looks so great, and we’re so starving. Thank you, really.”

  “Maddy is the best chef we ever had,” said Cabot from his position at the center of the room. He seemed already to have eaten. “She’s into health foods, you know, all that good stuff that won’t clog your arteries. Keeps us all trim and limber,” he said, patting his firm belly. “None of your processed crap here, that’s for damned certain.”

  “People never know what they’re gonna get in these places,” Maddy said, “you know, camps and shooting lodges and such. But if someone comes here, we want to show them how easy it is to eat right if you live in harmony with nature.”

  “So far, it tastes as harmonious as it looks,” said Emma, trying the amaranth; after a big glug of maple syrup, it was pretty edible.

  “Amazing what the forest gives us,” Cabot said, and then left her to eat. He stopped by Jacob’s burrito project to encourage him to add more and then went to sit with Cody and Mary. “I don’t know what you were expecting,” he said, pouring coffee for them both, “this being your dad’s place, but I r
eally do hope we exceeded those expectations.”

  “You guys have really achieved something here,” said Cody. “I remember building this very cabin with Dad,” he said of the timber-framed building, “but you’ve raised the ceiling, right? Things are supposed to look smaller when you visit them again as an adult, but now, the cabin feels huge.”

  “Rotten beams, around oh-seven, oh-eight, after the very wet winters,” Cabot said, pouring more coffee for himself. His hands were a storybook, gnarled and lined by events both ancient and recent. “The old ceiling just had to come down, but once it was gone, we kinda liked it. Upstairs, there’d been just two tiny little rooms, anyway.”

  “My dad built it that way,” explained Cody, “for his grandkids. Reckoned it’d be fun to give them a kind of warren to play in, you know, on the rainy days. Guess that didn’t pan out,” he said, saddened by how many memories would have to remain unmade. On the opposite table, Emma was finding herself the center of attention, even as she tried to finish breakfast, with the majority of the camp’s under-twenties visiting her table or sitting down to talk.

  “The other cabins, though, we included a first floor,” Cabot said of their more recent building projects. “Means we can sleep about twenty-six people, all told. Right now, with our four esteemed new arrivals, we’re at twenty-one.”

  “So, who is everybody?” asked Cody. “How did they all find out about this place?”

  “All walks of life, all kinds of folks,” he said. “Some come up here and then leave after a week. Others claim they’ll never live anywhere else. But if a family is serious about committing to the life we’re building here, we ask them to sign the covenant.”

  “What’s it say?” asked Mary. Someone had brought her a bowl of steaming scrambled eggs and something that looked like tofu but tasted far better than anticipated.

  “It’s an agreement,” explained Cabot. “A promise, some would say, or a commitment to something greater than yourself. It simply says that everyone who lives here will devote most of their waking time to improving the community however they can. And that we will all stand in defense of our neighbors and fight if necessary to protect their constitutional rights.” As Cabot recited this basic credo, murmurs of confirmation could be heard around him. “That’s what people are doing up here. Finding a place where their rights are protected. Somewhere the government can’t reach in and steal from them.”

  “Not a lot of IRS fans in the community, then,” Mary assumed.

  This brought a genuine laugh from Cabot and the loitering Maddy. “Nope. And not a lot of cheerleading for the department of education, either. We homeschool all the kids, and you know what? They turn out great every time!”

  “Academic superstars,” said a check-shirted lady at the back. Her hands were busy knitting some kind of woolen vest.

  “You got that right,” Maddy agreed.

  Mary asked, “You ever get visited up here? By the government or the local cops?”

  “Oh, sure, every now and then,” said Cabot.

  “Not for a while,” said Maddy.

  “The EPA wanted to stick its nose into our business a few years back,” said the vest-knitter. “Didn’t get very far, though.”

  “We met them at the gate,” recalled Cabot, “just like we did with you. Difference was, you proved you owned the place. They just acted like they did.”

  “So, what happened?” asked Cody. He had no idea what substance was pretending to be bacon, alongside his excellent eggs, but it was surprisingly edible.

  “One shot fired in the air, and they skedaddled like they were trying for a record.”

  “You threatened public officials?” Mary asked, concerned. “Fired a warning shot?”

  Cabot addressed her individually, in that way of his that made someone feel as though they had his complete focus. “You want to know the last thing that pencil-neck said before I loosed off a round?” He wasn’t angry with the EPA officials, seemingly, just absolutely certain of his rights. “He said something about a ‘mandatory search and seizure order,’ that the police would be coming up here, in force, to either turf us out or take us all to jail, or some such nonsense. I told him, I said, ‘What we got here is a fully functional, happy, diverse and healthy community. We don’t need more rules, don’t need outside agencies with their investigations and reports. We take care of the forest, and it returns the favor in the form of limitless bounty,’” he said, still amazed at the fecundity of this remote place. “When the power company came up here and chopped down God-knows-how-many-trees to make clearings for their butt-ugly towers, we visited with them. No trouble, no cursing, just a straightforward negotiation: ‘Stay on your patch and keep clear of ours, and we won’t interfere with whatever high-technology nonsense you’re doing out here.’ From that day to this, it’s worked out fine. The last thing we need right now is some goddamned pen-pusher coming up here next week, accusing us of burning down their precious windmills.”

  “You saw it yourself?” asked Maddy, tossing her apron on the back of the empty chair next to Cabot and joining him to sit with Cody and Mary. “The windmills are all gone? Really, truly?”

  “Every one that we saw. It was pretty dark out, still, but those things were toast. Insurance companies are gonna be just as toasted when this all gets sorted out.” There hadn’t yet been time to explain the bigger picture, and Cody urgently needed to. “Sir, is there a way we can gather everyone so that we can update them on the situation?”

  He saw the urgency but laughed anyway. “Been a while since anyone gave half a crap about an ‘update’ around here, but,” he said, “sure, you can address the whole crowd tonight before dinner, if you’d like. We often have a little meeting, just for fifteen or twenty minutes before we eat. By five-thirty, everyone’s getting pretty hungry, so the meeting never drones on too long. And Cody,” he said, “I tell ya, the last guys ever to call me ‘sir’ were green-as-grass eighteen-year-old infantry recruits at Fort Benning, and you sure don’t look much like one o’ them!”

  “You were in the service?” asked Cody, finishing the bowl of breakfast he’d decided to call “eggs’n’whatever.”

  “Sixteen years, infantry to then airborne. Volunteered in sixty-four like a goddamned fool,” he recalled wistfully. “Got myself sent over there, you know. They had us patrolling a valley that was just so terrible; I still can’t say its name out loud, even now.”

  “I guess it’s been a while since anyone thanked you for your service,” said Cody.

  “Sure has, but don’t worry about it,” Cabot replied. “I got a lot more out of the army than I ever put in. They trained me to do all kinds of things, and I still remember most of it. Taught us to jump outta planes, even at night, and then we were on alert for that business in Iran, you know, the hostage malarkey in the desert that went completely to hell. When that was over, I took a hard look at the goddamned mess we’d made. That’s when I started making other plans. A friend of a friend was drinking buddies with Sharpshooter, and all I did was make a phone call. Started coming up here a year after I got out. Been back every year since ‘cept when Marcy died.”

  He poured more coffee, but Mary refused. “We were kinda up all night. Better if I get some sleep, or I’ll be a zombie all day.”

  “Yeah, I’d guess you’re all beat. C’mon, I’ll show you to your place.”

  Flanking the entry road were Cabot’s cabin, doubling as the kitchen and dining room, and another almost identical building with a built-out first floor. Both were painted dark green, with black window surrounds but a bright red front porch. The other cabins were unpainted and more recent; Mary saw a young family in one of them, doing their morning chores. Cabot pushed open the heavy door of the fourth cabin and sniffed the air. “Not too bad. I don’t think anyone’s slept in here since the Scottish guy and his family left, back in February.”

  “Scottish?” Cody remarked.

  “Yeah, he was a good dude, I guess. Worked hard, and his kids were
great, mixed it up with the others pretty well. But Hamish, or whatever, he got this idea into his head. He brought a movie camera up here, saying he was gonna make a BBC documentary about groups of people who were, you know, doing things differently. Living out in the woods, foraging, hunting, all of that. He said the TV execs were interested, but I told him I wasn’t.”

  Mary looked around the surprisingly spacious cabin while Cody said, “I’m surprised, Mr. Cabot, the way you so obviously court publicity.”

  Cabot laughed and handed Cody the key. “Some people, they think if they can just find the right place, it’ll all be okay. They dream about it, maybe an uninhabited island, or a desert oasis, or an old homestead by some lake in the wilderness. People don’t realize most of their problems come with them. They’re always looking for that ideal place to “get away,” you know?”

  “I know that we were!” Cody joked.

  “Yeah, but you have good reason to come here. Your dad built the place, and you have your own connection to this land, to this building, and to the food we’re eating. Besides, you were protecting your family in a nationwide emergency, right?”

  “Sure felt that way to us,” said Cody.

  “But these bozos, they’d see us on TV and decide, ‘Hey, those folks have found a little piece of heaven! Look at them. They’re not worried about a thing! Where do I sign up?’ And by the time you can blink, a hundred people, not an ounce of skill or outdoor experience between them, become a hundred new students that we ain’t got time to teach! I mean,” he continued, having given this a great deal of thought. “What would happen to his documentary if someone does something dumb and shoots their foot off? Or one of their idiot kids drowns in the river? We’re not interested in any kind of legal exposure, or bad press.”