America: The Eagle has Fallen

by Gordon Ballantyne

  Mr. Stutz came riding up brandishing an old six-shooter silver Colt revolver with pearl handles. “All done?” he asked me.

  “Looks like it.” I smiled seeing him brandishing his six-shooter like the lone ranger atop Silver his trusty steed. “There are six wounded and six who surrendered.” I gave the sign and my small tractor came down the street from the direction of my neighborhood.

  “You call that a tractor?” asked Mr. Stutz, looking at my garden tractor and whistling loudly. “Now that is a tractor.” An ancient rubber tired backhoe came chugging down the street from Mr. Stutz’s group. “Let’s get these prisoners of war working on getting this cleaned up. Dig a big hole over by the old water mill and let’s get these scum in the ground.” He turned to me and asked. “What do you say we take a look in the grange?”

  I took Adam, Jacob and Marcus and we stacked up on the door in a line. We went carefully through the grange room by room yelling “Clear” as we finished each room but there were no defenders inside the building. There was a stench emanating from the basement and we quickly found the source. There were six women of various ages chained to the wall in various degrees of undress sitting on soiled mattresses crying. Mr. Stutz came in, took one look, turned to his runner and said, “Add the prisoner work detail to the pile after they are done, no prisoners.” We finally calmed the women down and Cindy helped get them cleaned up as best as possible. We found out that one of them was Mr. Jones’ daughter so we elected to take her home to our community. The rest decided to go with Mr. Stutz to his. I looked at the loot pile amassed in the main hall and selected a bottle of twelve-year-old scotch and a box of cigars, giving them to Mr. Stutz. “Even?” I said.

  “The rest?” he asked looking at the pile.

  “Those six women are going to need a lot of help in the coming months. I think a dowry would be appropriate. Let’s divide up the ammunition amongst the fighters and let them trade up firearms if they want. Let’s take the remaining pile and give each of the women and the two wounded an equal share to help with their needs,” I said.

  “And the barricade?” Mr. Stutz asked with a nod outside.

  “I think we both man it with ten men and ask the fishermen to add another ten. One meal per shift of eight hours. We set up a trading area in the grange parking lot at a cost of five meals per stall per day. If we can find a preacher we can probably have services on Sundays. The grange has a large church bell so if it starts ringing other than Sundays then we will all come running. You barricade Ray Nash Street and I’ll barricade Artondale Drive. That will completely isolate us with only three roadblocks,” I said. “It is pretty amazing that these old granges are still standing and were originally set up for this very purpose of being a meeting, trading and spiritual center for the community.”

  “You are a pretty fair minded person there Robertson, especially with the generous dowries. It’s a good thing you are on our side. You know those City carpet baggers will be knocking on our doorsteps seeking the equitable distribution of assets and each according to their needs bulldrivel don’t you?”

  “I’ll be sure to send them your way,” I replied. “Who is running the fishermen?”

  “The Bujacich and Ross crews are running the old coots over there on the island. The downtown Gig Harbor Association tried to impound his boats so he told them to take a flying fuck, grabbed their boats and headed over to Bujacich’s place on Fox Island,” said Mr. Stutz. “Those old bastards haven’t had this much fun in decades. They run the entire Fox Island but are screaming for more diesel and patrol boats for some pirates working up the coast. It’s hard to tell if they are serious because those old fuckers are always yelling about something.”

  “Well geez Mr. Kettle, are you asking about the ebony coating on Mr. Pot?” I asked with a grin.

  “Fuck you Robertson,” said Mr. Stutz, smiling back. “You had better bring your little Tonka toy over here and pick up your livestock although my cows are both bigger than it is. I also better get a few jars of that shine I figure you’re looking to get out of the corn before you feed it to the pigs.”

  I looked at him a little puzzled, then it dawned on me what Ginny wanted the corn for.

  “Aha,” said Mr. Stutz. “Looks like age and treachery has once more triumphed over youth and vigor.”

  Our triumphant crew walked down the street together knowing that our neighborhood and town were much more secure albeit teetering on the edge of starvation. I dropped off the piglets and corn to Ginny at the cul-de-sac and announced that I would cater a party for the entire community down by the roadblock if the food preparers would help set it up. I took our two cows and three goats over to Mr. Black’s and helped fence an area of pasture for them and in exchange for rent and pasture space I would give him ten percent of the milk output. Mr. Jones’ daughter moved back into her old house along with the nurse who had recently moved in who could keep a professional eye on her. That night we ate spaghetti with ground venison sauce and I even broke out a couple of bottles of scotch to celebrate our victory. The entire town was in a good mood as we planned on consolidating the rest of the town around the nucleus of our community. Anyone could join who wanted so long as they were willing to contribute and trade fairly. I announced our plan for the grange and had the soccer moms post signs regarding an election that was to be held at the end of the month after the harvest was brought in. Harvest time was always a busy time in any farming community as everyone banded together in the fall to get the produce properly preserved for winter use, seeds harvested, cleaned in screens and dried for future use. Our coop chicks were growing quickly and hopefully would begin producing eggs soon and our rabbit hutch was almost ready to harvest the first offspring of our original captures. Our greenhouse was already producing hot weather vegetables like peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers. Our field hands asked what they were supposed to do once the crops were in and I explained how we would have to tend the greenhouse, tan all the hides we had taken, till under the remains of the fields, milk the cows and goats, build a proper hutch for the rabbits…In other words the work on a farm is never done, there is always more to do and accomplish. We would see how our stores fared in the winter months and adjust our following year’s planting accordingly.

  The grange was a huge success after we had cleared out all the toll takers’ garbage. It was used for meetings, classes, worship and as a trading post. We used Cindy’s truck with a flatbed attached to drive the five miles of the main road as a taxi service bringing people to and from the grange. We cleared the road of all obstacles and cars so bicycles, horses, walkers and the taxi could all easily use the thoroughfare. We even found a non-denominational preacher for the grange who set up services there and provided a ministry for the community. I had been unanimously elected to be the town mayor with two exceptions, me and my wife’s vote. I didn’t want anything to do with government. I had selected Adam to be the sheriff and his guards were all deputized. I also selected an old lawyer from up the street to be the judge. There were only five punishments allowed: The stocks; hard labor in our new community garden to be planted at the nine hole Gig Harbor Golf Course; banishment; pay a fine or death. Our town was fertile with some cleared arable land but lots of untouched contiguous wooded areas that were rife with wild game. Our town lands could adequately support its population density but lacked large swaths of pasture land for grazing livestock. Mr. Stutz’s Arletta area was flat and full of fertile pasture land. His town had a lot of livestock and farms as a result. What he did not have is enough woodland to keep his people warm during the winter. Mr. Bujacich’s Fox Island fishing operation had some farm land, limited pasture but very little fuel since there was only one gas station on the island. The three of us “Mayors” sat down after every Sunday’s service at the grange to work out how to keep our towns safe and fed over the winter months. The relative value of resources and medium of exchange for goods and services became the hot topic. Our town had been using bullets as the lowest common denomin
ator for trade. Bujacich was using a pound of fish and Stutz was using silver and gold. We all decided to go to the base metal standard of silver and gold and the three of us would keep track of how much silver was in circulation to keep its relative value steady. A silver pre-1964 quarter became the universal standard for a meal, five bullets or a pound of fish. Currency would make barter and trade easier but a currency only has value if everyone has faith that the currency’s value is true. One of our first acts was to set up a local jeweler at the grange who would, for a small fee, meltdown silver and gold and strike coins of a set weight with the stamp AAF signifying Artondale, Arletta and Fox Island. Suddenly grandma’s silver flatware and tea set had more value than as a dust collector and semi-annual family polish-a-thon. There is .18 troy ounces of silver in a pre 1965 quarter. We made any struck coins a full .25 troy ounces versus US Mint coins and valued them both the same. A quarter was a quarter again. We struck gold coins at the same weight and used 10X as the value versus silver.

  We were sat down at the third post-church service when the pastor came into the meeting room and announced that the Mayor, City Council and Police Chief from the City of Gig Harbor were demanding entrance and wished to speak to us. Mr. Stutz, of course, told the pastor to tell them to “Fuck the Hell off.” The Pastor blushed a little red and diplomatically suggested that perhaps the Mayor and Police Chief might be able to provide some insight as to what was happening in the Harbor, on the bridges spanning the narrows and the peninsula gangs rumored to be out by Key Peninsula. Stutz relented and asked the pastor to send the City of Gig Harbor delegation back. The Mayor and Police Chief came into the room. Mr. Stutz and Bujacich were legends in Gig Harbor so they needed no introduction. I was an evil developer so have had some dealings with the Mayor over the years. Many of the politicians backed slowly up to developers and took their campaign contributions while publically railing against them. It was a two-faced system but worked for everyone involved. The Mayor started off with the usual pleasantries.

  “Thank you for seeing us gentlemen,” started the Mayor. “It seems you folks have done well for us in securing this area. As you may or may not know both the Governor and President have declared martial law and as such the Police Chief, Mr. Andrews here, has been appointed the head of disaster relief and is the acting military governor of this district. I would like to turn the meeting over to him at this time.”

  Police Chief Andrews stood up. “Thank you Mr. Mayor. Now, here is how this is going to work. Martial Law has been declared and, as acting Governor responsible for this district, my word is final and carries the full extent of the law. First, all food production and stores are hereby nationalized. That means we will be sending crews through the district to collect any food and search all the residences. Food hoarding is now a capital crime. Everyone will be issued a ration card to draw rations at a community run soup kitchen. Second, all firearms need to be surrendered immediately so that our police and militia forces can do their jobs and enforce the laws safely. Third, all fishing is now nationalized so all fishing boats have now become the property of the government. The three edicts go into effect as of this moment. Does everyone understand?”

  The room was silent for almost a minute, the oppressive kind of silence like when someone breaks wind in an elevator or a prostitute walks into church. The pin-drop silence was finally broken by a deep belly laugh from Mr. Stutz.

  “What are you?” he asked. “Some kind of idjut? Did you just walk in here telling me I had to give you the food off my table, the gun from my hand and row old Bujacich’s boats over to you for you to use? Tell me one thing Barney Fife. You and what army?”

  “Mr. Stutz, I assure you everything is legal and you are committing a serious crime, punishable by death, for refusing my legal orders,” said Andrews who was now red in the face.

  “Tell me Mr. Andrews,” I asked, “I guess I’m a little slow. I see a few problems with your argument and rationale. That beloved document called the Constitution, that you swore an oath to uphold by the way, says that the privilege of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended unless in cases of Rebellion or Invasion. You are also looking at eliminating the Second Amendment of the Constitution by infringing on my right to bear arms and if Harry Truman couldn’t nationalize the steel industry during the Second World War then I don’t think you can seize jack shit. Now, onto other matters, you may have been granted extraordinary powers for the jurisdiction from where you were elected or appointed. We both know that the Gig Harbor City limits are about five miles up the road, you sir, are way out of your jurisdiction. We live in the County and are in no way, shape or form accountable to you. I strongly suggest that you turn back around before Stutz here shoots you between the eyes or Bujacich keel hauls your sorry ass. Now run along, you are dismissed.”

  The Mayor and Police Chief stood there with their mouths agape like someone had found a turd in the punchbowl. Finally the Mayor gave the Police Chief the nod and the Chief stormed out of the hall. The Mayor turned to us with open arms and said, “Gentlemen, we are starving and need your help.”

  I growled back at him. “Then get rid of Barney Fife and get someone in here who can give us an accurate status report. Is the Fire Chief out there? He probably has a handle on the situation.”

  The Mayor nodded, left the room and came back with the Fire Chief. I had dealt with him in the past on building fire suppression systems and knew he was a reasonable though slightly stuffy guy.

  “Welcome Chief Winters,” I said as the Chief entered the room. “What is happening in the City?”

  The Chief sat down and longingly looked at the coffee service on the table. I told him to grab a cup. He poured a coffee, sat back, took a long pull of coffee and began.

  “Oh my lord that coffee is good. Thank you. In a nutshell, the City of Gig Harbor is a shit show. The Police Chief managed to stop the food store looting in the five grocery stores and the Costco and we have been using the stores to set up soup kitchens. We issued ration cards to anyone that agreed to have their homes searched for food. The hospital was a disaster area and we lost ninety percent of the patients in the first week. The head doctor was a saint and offered many of the patients that he knew could not be saved a choice, an overloaded syringe and a peaceful death, home hospice if they had local family to care for them or limited care and a lot of pain. Many chose the needle. Pharmacies were all looted since the Police could not secure both the food and the drugs but all the grocery stores have pharmacies so we do have stocks of drugs. There are four geriatric facilities and order broke down there, we ended up with a lot of elderly patients walking the streets with nowhere to put them. Almost all of them died for lack of care. We do have three emergency shelters at the High School, City Hall and have finally got the women’s prison guards to let us use the facility as a shelter. They fell for the martial law crap. The Police Chief made anyone entering one of the shelters or receiving a ration card to give up their firearms but that was a disaster as it made the shelters big juicy targets for some of the gangs that now operate in the City. There is a large group holed up at Rosedale gardens and they are using slave labor to grow food in the greenhouses and as a human shield in case of attack. The City has no water except at City Hall and we have been attacked numerous times from gangs from Tacoma. The City of Gig Harbor used to have twenty thousand residents but now there are only two thousand active users of ration cards. We do have communication with the Governor who is located at the State Emergency Shelter in Olympia and the large FEMA camp located at Fort Lewis. City Hall is fully functional since it was built in 2005 and fully compliant with Federal guidelines for hardening against EMP. The City government has been using emergency stores and have housed their extended families in the police station compound. The City does not have running water or natural gas but we bypassed the sewage treatment plant and are back to flushing into the deep water of the bay for sanitation. We have a cholera outbreak brewing and other contagious diseases starting to crop up due
to poor diet, sanitation and basic personal hygiene. Some of the older homes with wood stoves are still inhabited but eighty percent of the population lives in one of the three camps. We can only provide one meal and snack per day to the population and we will run out in thirty days. Basically, the City of Gig Harbor is dying. The County, State and Federal Governments have flat out told us that there is no help on the way. The people are on the edge of starvation and ready to revolt. That gentlemen, is the status report.”

  The Mayor stood up with arms spread, looked us each in the eye and said, “We surrender. What should we do?”

  I looked around the room, both Mr. Stutz and Bujacich gave me the nod.

  “OK,” I began with a deep sigh. “Our towns trade with one another and your current population is about equal to each of ours. We are managing to feed our current people but another twenty-five percent added to the number would kill us all. So we need to figure out how to double our current food production. The City does have some resources that we can trade to help put your population to work. It will be hard work and the Kael eating, Art History Majors and Eco-terrorist crowd need not apply. I think you need to reorganize. Twenty percent will be your food growers. We are too late in the season for outdoor farming but you have access to the two large greenhouse operations, one is under occupation so clearing that out will be a priority. Twenty percent will need to be militia. We need to set up roadblocks and quarantines for both bridges, the Purdy spit and Hwy 16. You also need to rig the bridges and spit to blow in case of emergency. Twenty percent will need to be fishermen and a navy to protect the boats, blockade the two bays and the main harbor entrance to the City. Twenty percent are probably elderly and children, the former will need to educate the latter at one of the schools in the mornings and work at manufacturing products in the afternoons. The final twenty percent will be focused on scrounging, resources and infrastructure. Your main short term resources for trade will be fossil fuels, communication equipment, pharmaceutical drugs, silver, gold and labor. I would strongly suggest working with Mr. Bujacich since there are a few old seiners in the harbor that he can probably crew up but they do call it fishing instead of catching so you need to know where the fish are and not just driving around burning critical fuel. I also noticed there were a few old tugs out there that could pull some barges and act as processing and restocking platforms so the seiners don’t have to keep coming back to port, keeping them on station catching fish longer. The only source of food big enough to feed your population is the sea, fortunately the salmon are running right now so everyone needs to pray for a good catch. All four towns will need to make equal donations in food for the militia. The militia will be supplying the defense of all so it is only right that we feed them, it also frees up the manpower currently at our roadblocks to be better utilized producing food. You can redistribute your seized firearms to the militia. The infrastructure crews will need to prioritize getting some of the six local water systems up and running. The large working generator at City Hall will have to be mobilized and stop at each pumping station to fill the water towers. The large water tower centrifuge pumps from the city wells take too much electricity for anything else to run. Turn off every meter supplying unoccupied homes. Large tent city refugee centers won’t work. The scroungers need to find every wood stove in the city and get them installed in the biggest unoccupied houses and businesses nearest where they will be working and find every solar panel and inverter they can. If there are any water turbine generators in the City we need to get them installed in the storm sewer main lines so that when it rains we can generate electrical power. The bottom line is everyone has to work for their daily bread and you have a lot of ground to catch up and not a lot of time to get it done. It is not the government’s job to tell people what to do, it is the government’s job to provide the opportunity to survive. The decision and responsibility to survive lies with each individual. We will trade fairly with you and your people and each of us has pledged to provide one hundred meals daily for the militia. People will starve this winter but if we work hard and pull together we can get through this. We will keep this barricade manned with a skeleton crew to make sure there is no mass migration from the City. You will also have to distribute your emergency government rations to your soup kitchens. We will not support a government that gilds their own lilies while people starve. You guys will have one properly elected official designated to this council, I suggest you hold another election. We will help where we can but each district has to stand on its own two feet. I suggest you distribute some working radios to the three of us and leave one at the grange. Questions?”