Tempest of Tennessee (Episode 1): Tempest of Tennessee

by McDonald, Terry

  Until I built a more permanent place, my meals would be mostly fried canned meats, along with canned stews and soups. I knew such food was unhealthy, but I had too many pressing needs to complete before beginning hunting and foraging for food.

  I finished disassembling the frames that held the solar panels and then coiled the wiring to place on the trailer with the jumble of pipes.

  A plywood box attached to the backside of his RV held the Lithium battery units. I was able to unbolt the entire array from the box and hand truck it as a unit. I loaded it and the control boxes from inside the RV.

  A back-up generator was part of the system, but because of its weight, I decided to carry what I had and get it on the next load. Besides, it was time for Daddy to come home from work and I’d rather be behind the barn where he couldn’t see me.

  ************

  The days settled into a routine, coffee, sometimes breakfast with the Causley’s to start the day, and then to Billy’s for work. It took three days to disassemble the smaller shed, a ten-by-twelve roofed with galvanized metal over plywood Billy called OSB. The walls were two-by-four studs clad on both sides with the same OSB.

  I had expected taking off the roof, a single slope, to be the hardest part of the job, but proved the easiest. I removed the screws holding down the metal, saving them as I went. Though the slope wasn’t steep, given a slight shove the sheets sailed from the roof to land flat on the ground.

  The same technique worked for the heavier OSB, but it took a greater push to make them sail. My first sheet did a nosedive and damaged a corner.

  The hardest part was removing the outside wall panels because they were off the ground. Working from a ladder, I learned to remove the top-center screw last so the sheet dropped straight to the ground.

  Billy didn’t like building close to the ground. He said raising the floor a foot or more allowed air to flow and keep the floor system dry. That's how he called things concerning construction, floor system, wall system, roof system.

  The sheets of metal roofing were lightweight, but the OSB plywood was heavy and cumbersome. The days were windy and growing cooler. While carrying them, many times the wind would catch the plywood and shove me around, even blew me over a few times.

  The Four-wheeler was my workhorse. Without it to pull the trailer, it would’ve been impossible to move the material of the shed to my permanent campsite a mile back in the WMA.

  I chose a place in a patch of oak and hickory with a small creek flowing through it. From my wanderings, I knew the spring-fed creek, though sometimes diminished to a trickle during dry spells, maintained a year-round flow. Once I had all my material at the site, it was time to put the shed back together.

  This was my second go round with this shed. I have often thought that Billy built it as a teaching lesson because there wasn’t much stored in it.

  Lesson one. Build it square to begin with. He said there many ways to square up the sill boards for the foundation, but he’d show me how to do it without fancy tools.

  Since I was assembling a ten by twelve, I would need two twelve-foot-boards and two ten-footers screwed together at the ends to make the shape. After putting a single screw in each corner, I laid my rectangle on the flattest place I could. Having only one screw in the corners enabled me to adjust the shape. The trick to squaring the frame was to measure corner to corner of both diagonals. The two measurements must match. If they don’t, you have to push or pull a corner until they do.

  I found that working by myself, I needed to secure one side of the frame in place with short wooden-stakes. That allowed me to make adjustments without the entire frame moving.

  For my frame, I found the diagonals matched at very close to fifteen-feet seven and one-half inches. Once square, I put a couple more screws in each corner to keep it from losing the adjustment.

  I’d chosen the flattest place I could, but finding perfectly level ground in West Tennessee is next to impossible. I laid my frame in that spot, drove a stake at the outside point of each corner and then moved the frame away. It had done its job for now.

  The next job was to stack foundation blocks at each corner, in this case heavy concrete blocks Billy called cap-blocks. I started on the high side of the building patch. Estimating that the ground fell about a foot to the opposite side, I stacked three of the blocks at both ends giving a height of twelve inches.

  A twelve-foot plank on them allowed me to check their heights with a level. The level between them was off a couple of inches, so I moved the blocks from the higher end and dug away dirt and rechecked. Working in this manner, I soon had my corner blocks in place. The highest corner was a few inches under two-feet high.

  The good thing about taking a building apart is the last piece you took apart is the first you need to rebuild. I remember when the wood arrived from the building supply; the lumber for the sill band was at the bottom of the stack.

  The double-planked sill band was heavy, two-by-ten inch pressure treated lumber. I’d left the joist hangers on the two inside boards of the twelve-foot sides of the band.

  Billy believed in framing everything on sixteen-inch centers rather than two-foot. While disassembling I’d taken care to number and mark each board so I could put the building back together exactly as it came apart.

  Taking something apart is easier and faster than rebuilding. The heavy OSB panels were the hardest, especially the ones for the roof. Even with all my preparation and notes, it took six days to finish.

  The final day was the coldest so far. That morning, over coffee, John told me that the high would be thirty-four-degrees and a night low of nineteen. After lunch eaten at my campsite, sitting on a folding chair, holding my numb hands close to the generator’s exhaust to warm them, surveying my new home I knew the workday wasn’t over. I would need heat and I knew just how to get it.

  About a year ago, a woman who built a tiny house on an acre of property checked with Billy to see if he had a vented indoor charcoal heater of the sort used on small sailboats. He didn’t, but curiosity sent him to GOOGLE.

  He found out that wood and charcoal heaters designed for small spaces were available, but at very high prices. That set him on a course to invent a cheap alternative.

  From an old gas water heater, he used a metal cutting blade on his skill saw to remove the top eighteen-inches. He wanted the top because it already had a hole and flange for a flue to attach. He welded a piece to the bottom of the short cylinder and then four short legs to that piece.

  It was fun helping him build things. Billy talked to himself, almost as though he were directing his body from afar, “Let’s see, Billy-boy. You need to make sure to put some stops for the grate before you weld the bottom… Naw, I can do that from the outside. Drill some holes, run in some self-tappers and instant stops. Better use case-hardened.”

  The most difficult solutions were providing a door that sealed and a convenient way to remove ashes. Every step of the way, I knew from hearing him, not only what he was doing, but the reasoning behind it and I absorbed it like a sponge soaking up water.

  Thinking of Billy, the loss his death represented almost brought tears. I’d learned so much from him, but lord, so much more went with him into the trash bin.

  It was nearly dark by the time I finished installing the last outside section of three-inch steel flue pipe. The temperature had fallen and the wind picked up. Inside my new home, my fingers were so numb I had a hard time thumbing the wheel of the lighter to light the tinder beneath the charcoal in the stove.

  Cooking supper, I shivered the entire time, but by the time I finished eating, wow, it was so hot that I had to crack both windows. I had a home. That night, I moved my sleeping pad in from my tent. Tomorrow I’d bring over my furnishings and dig a hole for an outhouse.

  ************

  Billy died over three weeks ago. I felt the clock ticking. There was still much to do before the land went for auction. Mainly I wanted to disassemble the remaining two sheds and his
twenty-by-forty workshop. I’d made a sketch for a two-bedroom house with a kitchen and a small living room. If you counted the room I intended to use for storage, it could be a three bedroom.

  The material from the buildings would be enough to build my home and a shed. If I decided to take my temporary place back apart, I’d have two sheds.

  I wanted at least ten acres of isolated land. I knew I’d need a well and septic system put in but I planned to use solar for my electrical system. Another thing was I’d need more material to build a barn to house all the vehicles and farm equipment.

  Money wouldn’t hold me back. I have no idea how long he had saved, but I’d counted the money in Billy’s ammunition boxes and the amount still seemed unbelievable, one-hundred-seventy-seven-thousand-six-hundred-eighty-dollars. To that, I would probably add another ten grand from the sale of the land and the cash value of the coins.

  That morning, sitting across the table from John, nursing a second cup of coffee, John said, “Bella, look at Tempest. Have you ever seen a healthier glow on anyone in your life?”

  Bella laughed, “She does have a glow, but more than that, she’s muscled up. What are you, Tempest, five-six, five-eight?”

  John said, “She’s five-eight if she’s an inch… five-foot-eight and right beautiful to boot.”

  “She’s a pretty one,” Bella agreed.

  Knowing I was blushing, I said, “I don’t know about the pretty part, but moving lumber and plywood did build some muscles. I remember how I could barely lift a sheet of OSB, but now I hardly feel it.”

  John said, “Oh, the pretty part is there. I’ve been meaning to ask, are you going to put Billy’s still to work?”

  “Billy has a still?”

  They both chuckled. John said, “You can forget the innocence act. Remember the time I stopped by to see if Billy had a belt for my riding mower. I smelled it on both of your breath.”

  Caught, I gave an honest answer. “I’ve thought about it. I took a shine to Billy’s brew.”

  Bella said, “The reason we ask is John and I ‘took a shine’ to it as well. All that time you spent at his place, I’m sure you helped him cook. Keep us in mind if you decide to brew a batch.”

  I promised I would. I didn’t tell them I already had corn in the sprouting barrel. A batch of moon aged for a few months would make a great Christmas gift to them.

  ************

  The days seemed to flow into one another as the stacks of lumber and plywood grew inside the Causley’s barn. Thirty days passed and then some before a letter came from my lawyer setting a date for the auction. I officially had twenty more days to complete my work there.

  I finished in ten days, stood beside the four-wheeler with the trailer loaded for the last time and surveyed what used to be Billy’s place. Every structure but the outhouse and his run-down RV was now stacked in the barn. Taking up the most room in the barn was the fiberglass insulation from the walls. New, the stuff was thin, but once it expanded, the batts took up three times the volume of a compressed roll.

  The RV was empty of anything useful and it had a gaping hole in the roof from where I took away the AC unit. Billy was a believer in the prepper lifestyle. He’d stuffed every available space inside the RV with canned goods, Stews, Chilly, and canned ham mostly but he also had gallon cans of dehydrated meats, vegetables, powdered milk, eggs, cheese and butter.

  That was only the tip of his stored disaster food. In the back corner of his workshop he’d built what amounted to a giant cupboard, two-feet deep, four-foot wide and eight-feet high, stacked from bottom to top with the same sort of foods but with a preponderance of canned dried beans, rice, flour and spices.

  Billy, a man who gifted me so much in life continued to give after his death. I closed my eyes and made a picture of him waving me up his drive. If somehow I could use his money and buy him back, I’d be broke fast as I could say, “Give him to me.”

  The day of the auction came. I didn’t go, but John did. He said now that I’d cleaned the property he might buy it himself if the price didn’t go too high. The auction started at ten a.m., but John returned after two that afternoon. I was at the barn sorting tools when I heard his loud truck pull into the driveway.

  I went to the front of the barn and waved to let him know I was there. Stepping from his truck, instead of going into his house, he diverted his path and came to the barn.

  Standing inside the opening out of the chill wind, he said, “There were eleven pieces of property up for sale. Your land was next to the last. There were some out-of-staters there and the bidding on everything went higher than I thought it would. Yours went for ninety-five-hundred.”

  “That’s two-thousand more than I’d hoped for.”

  John nodded, “Ought to be enough for a down payment on the land you want to buy.”

  He didn’t know about Billy’s ‘real’ money’. I needed to start looking for land. If I found what I wanted before I turned eighteen I might could put a payment to hold it until I turned of age.

  I was about to speak, but Bella came out onto their porch and bellowed, I mean a shout that sent us both running. “Get up here! Get up here right now!” is what she shouted.

  I realized John’s old legs wouldn’t get him there at a sprint, so I slowed down. At the porch, Bella speaking while waving us into the house said, “The damn fool did it. He lit off a nuclear bomb over a bunch of Chinese and Russian ships doing joint maneuvers near Guam. He called it an act of aggression against a United States Territory. Sank em all and took over twenty thousand sailors down with them.

  “We’re at war… They attacked in response! Bombs took out the Pentagon and most of our missile bases. Washington DC, most of Maryland, New York City, Galveston and Los Angles are gone. The screen went blank in the middle of the broadcast and none of the other stations comes in. The radio has nothing but static, Am and Fm.”

  As she spoke, she led us to the living room. Bella wasn’t a heavy woman, but she dropped dead weight onto the couch and made it bounce slightly from the floor. “What a mess, John. What’s to become of us? Are we going to be invaded?”

  Bella, always so calm was panicking. John said, “Tempest, get Bella some water.” He went to sit beside her and I scurried to the kitchen for a glass of water.

  As I did, I heard him trying to soothe her fear. Returning with the water, she did seem calmer. Handing it to her, I said, “Drinking coffee in your kitchen when I first began coming over, you all said this was going to happen.”

  Bella said, “Thinking something’s going to happen and then it actually happening is two different things. This is real and I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what we should be doing.” Then speaking to John, she asked, “Should we go to the basement?”

  John shook his head. “No. I don’t think there’s anything near us that would warrant an expensive nuclear bomb. It might behoove us to wear masks if we start to see ash fall from the sky.”

  I had a feeling that John was as much at a loss as Bella but wanted to stay strong and calm for her. I wasn’t an expert on nuclear war, but I’d read enough about it to know a little.

  To them I said, “Right now we’re not in immediate danger. Depending on wind patterns, it’ll take days or weeks for fallout to reach us. If fallout does come, unless the bomb exploded very close by, the radioactive particles disperse and weaken as it travels.”

  “Then you think we’ll be safe here?” John asked.

  If World-War-Three was on, safe was a hard word to define. I didn’t say that because my ignorance wouldn’t help them. “We’re safe for now. I wish we had a Geiger counter.”

  “Do they sell them in town?” John asked.

  Thinking about that small town having an outlet for Geiger counters almost made me laugh, but then I remembered that Amazon had opened a distribution center in Lexington Tennessee only twenty miles of so from where we were.

  “Henderson won’t have any, but I’m willing to bet there are some at the Ama
zon center in Lexington. We should go there right away.”

  “I know where it is. Do you mean right now?” John asked.

  “Yes, right this second.”

  John stood, pulling Bella with him. “We’ll take my truck.”

  I said, “You’ll have to drive across your lawn. Pick me up at the barn.”

  Dashing from the house, I was already moving bales of hay before I heard John’s truck crank. I was so nervous that I twice fumbled the combination to the gun safe. Fast as I could, I gathered the AR and three magazines.

  On a whim, I removed a wad of money and stuffed it into the huge pocket of my camouflage work pants before haphazardly tossing the bales back in place.

  I shrugged into my jacket, grabbed two blankets from a box and raced to the truck just outside the barn. Going to John’s side, he rolled down the window for me to speak.

  “We don’t know what we’ll run into. “ I’ll ride shotgun in the back. Don’t stop for anything unless you have to.”

  “You’ll freeze to death back there,” Bella called past John.

  “Yep, it’ll be cold, but don’t drive slow worrying about me. Get us there as fast as you can.” I slapped home a magazine into the AR’s receiver before climbing into the bed of his truck.

  John and I had different ideas about fast. For him fast maxed out at fifty-mile-per-hour. Yep it was cold. All I could do was wrap myself in the blankets, and use part to fashion a hood to seal my face to the rear windshield of the truck cab.

  What amazed me was the dearth of traffic on the road, even after we gained the main road to Lexington. I thought it was possible that people were at their screens until I remembered Bella said the cable as well as radio was off the air.

  I remember reading that an EMP, ‘Electromagnetic Pulse’ from a nuclear bomb detonated in the air would render inoperative nearly anything that depended on computer components and that included most cars. Perhaps John’s truck was too old to have a computer. An EMP would explain the lack of road traffic.

  Indeed, now that it came to mind, we’d had to go around a couple of cars stranded in the road with their hoods up and in one case a man was actively working on something under his hood. I paid attention to the farms we passed by. Most of the houses were set back from the road, but in the driveways of some, I did see cars and trucks with their hoods up.