Renewal 3 - Your Basic Swiss Family

by Jf Perkins

  “Ok, Bill. I guess I’d better head back into town. We’re supposed to meet the Judge at seven in the morning.”

  “Why don’t you stay for a while? We can give you ride home. We’ve got trucks too.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am,” Terry said, smiling sardonically.

  Bill grinned back at him. “It’ll take a while to get it set up. I’ll be right back. Gotta make the call.”

  Bill went into the house next door to use the phone. He could hear Bill talking, but couldn’t make out the actual words. It sounded like Ellie was more than happy to work the switchboard. Bill was making emphatic tones in a loud voice. After a few minutes, Terry heard the phone clap down, and Bill quickly came out the door with two bottles of cloudy homemade beer, talking as he approached.

  “Ok, Kirk’s on it. Double guards tonight, in case the Judge sends out advance men, and a complete setup by six in the morning.”

  “Everyone talks like Kirk is a scary man. What’s his story? Is he in charge of defense?” Terry asked as Bill took his seat and handed him the second beer.

  Bill took a long pull on the beer and said, “Yeah, he’s in charge of defense and our version of military training. He learned most of it from Arturo.”

  “Arturo made it back?”

  “Are you trying to skip ahead?”

  “No, wouldn’t want to do that, mess up the story.”

  “Damn straight...As for scary, yeah he’s a scary man. I’m scared of him myself. He was always a serious kid. He spent a lot of time getting kicked out of soccer games as a kid.”

  “Soccer?”

  “It’s a sport we used to play, back before the Breakdown. My dad always said it was a dumb game, but everyone played it when we were little.”

  “Ah, I’ve read about sports. Baseball seems pretty good.”

  “Now that’s a sport. I’ll show you how to play sometime.”

  “Thanks, Bill.”

  “Anyway, Kirk got scary in a hurry once everything fell apart. I think he was born angry, and the Breakdown just gave him a good excuse.”

  “Seems like it gave everyone excuses for a whole lot of bad stuff.”

  “That’s about right. I still wonder what the world would be like if it just kept going the way it was going. My dad believed it might be worse. He admitted that he wasn’t surprised when it happened, just caught off guard by the timing. He told us he had prepared for it at our old house in Nashville. He was pissed off for the rest of his life that it happened while we were away from home.”

  “Were lots of people prepared?” Terry asked.

  “By today’s population, yes, there were lots of people who were ready for it, but not many in any one place. If you think about it, people who are still alive today were either prepared, or very lucky, or both. I think my family was very lucky. The fact that all of us survived the Breakdown is remarkable. I can’t think of many other families who made it through intact. By 2012 standards, when there were over six billion people on the planet, there were very few people who were really prepared. This area did fairly well though, because lots of old farm families were prepared without even knowing it. Some people just kept on living the way they always had, and if no one came around causing trouble, they didn’t even need to adjust.”

  “So, when you left off, Arturo had left for Florida, and there was a big covered hole in the ground...” Terry said, trailing off like he couldn’t quite remember.

  “You really like to hear me ramble, don’t you?”

  “Well, let’s just say my grandfather refused to talk about it, and he wasn’t a very good storyteller anyway.”

  “Ok. You asked for it. Let me fortify myself first. I think it’s your turn for the beer run. They’re in the fridge.”

  Chapter 3 - 2

  Arturo was very much on our minds the next morning, and his son, Jimmy, had to be especially upset. He was hanging out with Francine, who still had not moved or eaten. She wouldn’t talk to him, so he occupied himself by drawing outlines around her legs in the dirt. Even Mom wasn’t sure how to handle his weird behavior. She just let him be. Mom was really starting to worry about the shell-shocked old lady, and even more so after Kirk loudly announced that Francine was going to grow roots like the tree she was leaning against.

  Dad’s solution to all emotional problems was to keep busy, and right after breakfast, he put us to work moving all the food supplies into our new underground pantry. Kirk and I loaded the packages and cans into the wheelbarrow, carted them over to the pit, and ran up and down the dirt stairs, handing armfuls to Dad, who stacked them according to his own arcane sense of order. We had finished up by midmorning, and added the liberated tools from the school to the underground lair. Then, Dad spent some time rearranging the packs and placed all but two of them in the pit as well. Next came the confiscated weapons and ammunition, which Dad placed on top of the stacks. Lastly, he covered everything with unfolded plastic garbage bags to keep our supplies dry.

  “That will do for now,” Dad said. He hadn’t said much else.

  We all climbed out of the pit, and looked at it from the top.

  “It’s like buried treasure,” Kirk said.

  “It is buried treasure,” Dad replied and turned to me. “Bill, how did you get up the tree?”

  I walked over to the trunk and repeated my climbing act on the lowest branch. When I levered myself onto the branch, and Dad saw how it was done, he tried it himself. Instead of hanging underneath the lowest part of the branch and shimmying out to the fork, he just jumped and grabbed the fork directly. He tried to kick his feet up into the crotch between the branched, but never managed to do it. After several attempts, he dropped to the ground.

  “Well, that ain’t easy for your old man. I think it’s fairly secure,” Dad said with a sheepish grin.

  We had no idea what he meant.

  “Ok, men...”

  Here we go, I thought.

  “Time for more saplings, lots more saplings,” Dad said.

  Oh, boy. I looked at the raw blisters on my hands.

  We had five different axes, and two hatchets, after Dad and Arturo had raided the school supply shed. Dad ducked into the pit, and came up with three of them, and a machete. He handed an ax each to Kirk and me, and kept the big double ax and machete for himself. Instead of going back to the place we had cut saplings before, Dad led us over to a place on the slope, just west of our maple tree. The slope had been logged in the not-too-distant past, and the entire hillside was covered in young trees, from three to eight inches in diameter.

  “Ok boys, we’re aiming for the smaller ones first. The big ones are too heavy. Cut as close to the ground as you can without hitting the dirt with your blade. That dulls them really fast. Let’s start cutting.”

  As we scoped out our first trees, we noticed that Dad was breaking the rules. He went straight for an eight-incher and started chopping about eighteen inches off the ground. We had learned by now that he always had a reason, and we turned to our small trees and started whacking away. A remarkably short time later, Dad’s tree fell with the crown hitting downhill from the base. He gave a little whoop of joy. I was thinking that he was just showing off at that point, but I continued chopping and kept an eye out for what he was doing. My first tree fell and I rested for a minute before choosing another one. Kirk had started cutting too low, and had to start over to keep his ax out of the dirt.

  Dad was hitting the stump with his ax for some mysterious reason. Maybe he was just beating on it out of frustration. Soon, he stopped and marched over the crest of the hill. He came back shortly with the bow saw, and used that instead. He cut slantwise into the stump until he was close to the middle. Then he made a mirror of that cut and pulled a diamond-shaped piece - ragged from the ax on top and smooth on the bottom - out of the v-shaped saddle he had cut into the stump. We were still baffled.

  He picked up the ax and stepped down the log about twelve feet until he reached the point where the branches
began. Just short of the lowest branches, he started a new cut, and managed to cut almost all the way through with the ax. He picked up the saw and finished the cut. The log rolled a couple of inches to the side when it was free, and the rest of the tree shuddered and settled.

  “Boys, help me out, please.”

  We set our axes down and walked over to Dad’s log. We could tell that he intended for us to lift it. He was squatting down, waiting for us.

  “Let’s lift it up into the notch.”

  Kirk and I took the opposite side and heaved. The log moved more easily than I was expecting.

  “Watch your fingers!”

  I changed my grip as the end of the log passed over the notched stump. Dad gave it a mighty pull and set the log into the saddle. We let go and panted for a bit. He led us down to the other end and put one of us on each side while he stood on the end, straddling the upper part of the tree.

  “Ok, we’re going to lift this end and try to push the log as far as we can.”

  We grabbed and pulled the log off the ground. When it was at Dad’s belt buckle he pushed it uphill, sliding the log through the notch until it hit the slope on the other side.

  “Hey, that works ok,” he said, sounding surprised. “Good job, men.”

  We looked at the log, balanced on the stump. What was the point in that? A bit less than half the log was hanging in space, and the upper end was sitting on the ground, near the crest of the slope. Dad sent us back to our work, and starting cutting on his log with the saw. He pulled a tape measure out of his pocket, and found the middle of the log. He cut the log in half, which made it light enough for him to handle by himself. He set each log in turn so that the rough end was resting in the notch, and cut that end with the saw. When he was done, he had two perfect six-foot logs, and although we were impressed, we still had no clue where he was going with this.

  I was on my sixth sapling when Dad disappeared over the hill again, and came back with a sledge hammer and several rusty old wedges. He set a wedge on one of his logs and hammered it a few times into the wood. A second wedge was driven in behind it, on the centerline of the log. When the third wedge went in, we could see a split extending well past the wedges. The first wedge was resting loosely in the crack. Dad lifted it out, placed it in line past the third wedge, and hammered it back in. The log was making continuous cracking noises. He pulled the second wedge, and drove it in even further down the log. He gave hit one final hard whack and the log fell open into two clean halves.

  “Poplar splits easy,” Dad said with satisfaction.

  He repeated the split on the second log, and dragged the four halves up the slope and over the crest. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but it sounded like he was pulling them over to the campsite. As I was watching my eighth sapling fall, Dad returned to work on his tree. He used the axe to lop off the lower branches and switched to the machete for the smaller upper branches. He dragged the pile of loose branches up to the big maple, and came back to start cutting three-foot sections from the main bole with the saw. The sections, Dad split using two of the wedges, and carried the halves off to wherever the longer sections had gone.

  When he returned, he stood at the top of the slope and checked our progress. He nodded with satisfaction. Between Kirk and me, we had another twenty saplings felled. Dad spent the next ten minutes dragging our trees up to a clear space near the maple. I could hear him shearing the limbs from the little trees and stacking them in piles. We kept chopping.

  Dad joined us again and used the big ax to help us with the smaller trees. With his powerful three-chop method, we had quickly littered the slope with dozens of fallen trees. Dad finally stopped us, saying, “I think that’s enough for now. Good work, boys. Let’s get them up to the big tree.” We spent what felt like an hour clearing our work from the steep slope. Up top, we could see that Dad had a system in place. He had freshly cut saplings in one pile, the limbed trees in another, and the cut limb in three more stacks, sorted roughly by size. Dad took the job of lopping the limbs, while Kirk and I rested from hiking up and down the hill.

  When he had cleared the little trunks, Dad retrieved the bow saw and cut four lengths from one of them. He laid the four pieces side by side on the ground, and notched them with the small ax. He pulled out his knife and flattened the bottoms of the notches, squaring the sides while he was at it. He grabbed a hammer and a bag of nails out of the pit and fit the pieces into x-shapes, with the notches fitting together. He drove a long nail into each joint, and flipped each “X” over. He used the hammer to bend the protruding ends of the nail flat against the wood, then hammered the nail ends sharply to embed them in the wood.

  “Wouldn’t want anyone to snag on a nail.” He said, mostly to himself.

  He cut another length from the tree, and carved the ends to fit into the top of the x-structures. He had us hold the thing; that’s all it was at that point. With us as human clamps, he drove nails to fix the new piece to both x-shapes. So, we had a big four-foot stick with a X on each end. Great. He cut some straight-ish sections from one of the branch piles and attached four of them as diagonal braces with smaller nails. The braces went from near the center of the connecting piece to near the bottom of each leg of the X end pieces.

  “Ok, now we have saw horses.” Dad announced, with no small amount of pride.

  Oh...

  Kirk and I looked at each other like we should have figured it out long before, but it looked for all the world like Dad was losing his marbles until he told us what it was.

  “Cool, Dad,” Kirk said, for lack of anything better to say.

  “Ok, now we need a ladder,” Dad said.

  “Is there a ladder at the school?” Kirk asked.

  “Probably, but it wasn’t in the tool shed. It was too small in there,” Dad replied.

  “Oh. So we’re going to make one?”

  “Yep. The saw horse will make it much easier.”

  “Ok,” Kirk said, waiting for the next step to be revealed.

  Dad dug through the limbed saplings and picked out two of the heavier ones. He set one on the new saw horse and measured from the bottom. He cut it off at fifteen feet, then set the other one right on top of it. He checked to make sure the bottoms were evenly lined up, and then went to the other end to cut the second one at the same length as the first. He pulled them off and arranged them on the ground side by side. We could see what he had in mind then.

  “Ok, boys. Your job is to cut the rungs. Find the smaller saplings and cut two-foot sections with the saw. We’ll need twelve or thirteen of them. Toss them to me, and I’ll fit and attach them.”

  Kirk and I went to work, taking turns holding and sawing until Dad had laid them our along the ladder about a foot apart. Our arms were getting very tired and sore. We were happy to flop on the ground and watch Dad cutting two notches on the backside each rung before he nailed it in place. After a half hour or so, he picked up the finished ladder and tugged on it to check for wobbles. Satisfied, he leaned it against the big maple, climbed up and back down, and declared it complete.

  “Works just fine,” he said, happily. “Let’s get some lunch.”

  Kirk and I were ravenous, but we could have just as easily taken a nap, we were so tired. Over by the tents, Mom stood up as we approached. She had been trying to get Francine to drink some water. Lucy was taking her watch duties seriously and barely stopped scanning the countryside to look in our direction as we approached. I think she was struggling into the new Breakdown reality, herself, and needed the time to think. Tommy and Jimmy had already eaten and were sound asleep on an unzipped sleeping bag laid out in the shade.

  Mom gave us hugs, even though we were sweaty and dirty, and getting pretty ripe from our days in the woods. When Dad got his hug, she leaned back and made a face, waving her hand wildly in front of her nose. We all laughed at Dad’s expense, but the morning’s hard work had restored his good nature, and he laughed right along with us.

  Mom dug some crack
ers and peanut butter out of one of the packs, along with a net bag of small apples. She spread the peanut butter while the three of us munched on the soft, mealy apples. A week before, we would have snuck them into the trash while she wasn’t looking. On this day, they were delicious. Hunger makes the best sauce. She dealt out crackers like cards as she prepared them, and we were eating as fast as we could get our dirty fingers on them. Only the apples kept us from gumming up our mouths with peanut butter. She handed us a water bottle each, and we drank them in two long pulls.

  “We’re going to have to do something about the water soon. We’re almost out,” she said to Dad.

  “That’s ok. The Carrolls, our landowners, have an old hand-pumped well. We can refill there. That’s why we’re saving all the bottles and cans. Later, we’ll try to find a bigger container,” he answered.

  “Ok, I was getting worried.”

  “No, we’re ok. The Carrolls are a lucky break, but we also have the filter we bought. We can pull water out of a creek if we have to. And there’s always boiling to purify it.”

  “Ok, good,” Mom said, sighing with relief. Then she looked worried again. “What are we going to do about Francine? She still doesn’t respond to anything.”

  “Well, I don’t know what we can do. Either she snaps out of it, or she doesn’t.”

  I spoke up. “She pointed out the men.”

  “She did?” Dad asked, not entirely accepting what I said.

  “Yeah. I just happened to be looking that way, and she raised her arm and pointed. She didn’t say anything. That’s how I saw them. I showed Kirk and he told you.”

  “Well, I’ll take that as a hopeful sign, I guess.” Dad scratched his head and looked over at the old woman still leaning on the tree.