She let out a groan. “I wish you would quit saying that to him.”
“Well, he does have a soccer ball head,” Nelson mumbled, grabbing her hand. He saw Gerald walking out of his cabin. “Looks like Devin’s buddy is waiting on him.”
Without being asked, Michelle just held out Devin, who squealed upon seeing Gerald. “We are definitely having another one,” she said after Gerald took Devin and walked off in front of them with his rifle across his back.
They walked in to see Matt, Ashley, and Nancy already in the gym. Mike was sitting in his bouncy chair, chewing his fist as Gerald walked over and put Devin in his walker. Between sets, Gerald would chase Devin down and steer him back to the area they were in.
After the workout, everyone headed to the hot tub. When Nelson picked up Devin, Gerald took him, and Nelson looked up and saw Gerald was holding a bag. “I got him. I’m teaching him to call in artillery on the bubbles,” Gerald said, climbing in.
Nancy came over and took Mike away from Ashley and climbed in. “I’m the one that taught him to battle the evil bubbles,” Nelson mumbled.
Michelle came over and patted his shoulder. “Yes you did, but it seems Gerald really wants to join in this battle.” She smiled seeing Gerald pull out hollow, plastic balls from the bag. “For a minute, I was worried he was going to pull out hand grenades.”
“That would be fun.” Nelson smiled, helping her in.
“You know when we bathe Mike at night, he soaks the entire bathroom trying to kill bubbles,” Ashley said, climbing in as Devin yelled out his challenge. “If he doesn’t have bubbles, he screams till we put them in.”
As Nelson moved over beside Michelle, she laughed. “That won’t stop till he’s about two. Olivia will still yell out in the bathtub that the evil bubbles are attacking.”
Devin watched Gerald toss a ball in a large group of bubbles and laughed, liking this new attack. “Never thought about that,” Nelson said, impressed, as Devin tossed a ball across the Jacuzzi and almost hit Matt.
“You let Gavin put one of those remote controlled boats in our Jacuzzi to battle bubbles, which was too much for me,” Michelle said, leaning back.
Hearing that, Gerald looked up. “What?”
“Yes, that’s how Gavin and Nelson got into R/C cars and planes,” Michelle said.
“Can we use one of your boats? Devin needs to learn how to call in coastal guns,” Gerald asked as he handed Devin another ball.
Nelson looked at the hot tub. “This isn’t big enough for the boats we have now.”
“Just what the hell do you two have? I’ve seen Gavin playing with a remote controlled car out here, but you talk like you have several,” Gerald said as Devin raised his arms with a ball in each hand, yelling for the bubbles to surrender. Devin launched the balls then started slapping the water.
Before Nelson could answer, Michelle covered her eyes as the thrashing baby fist destroyed the bubbles. “They have several dozen boats, and I don’t know how many buggies, cars, or trucks, Gerald. Nelson and Gavin went to competitions all the time. Last year, Nelson went to Kansas and bought out a hobby shop that was going out of business,” Michelle said as Devin raised his hands in triumph. Seeing another cluster of bubbles coming, Devin grabbed a floating ball and squealed out as he tossed it.
“Got my ass chewed out on that one,” Nelson mumbled, handing Devin a ball, and Michelle just cut her eyes at him.
“You have remote planes?” Nancy asked as Mike dropped his face on a cluster of bubbles, trying to bite them. He came up coughing and started to hit them for trying to drown him.
“Shit, Gavin and I have quad copters with video mounts, planes, boats, rock crawlers, dune buggies, trucks, tanks… It’s a nice collection,” Nelson said, grinning at Mike as he tried to bite the bubbles again.
“You brought them here?” Gerald asked, handing another ball to Devin.
Michelle laughed. “What, you think he would leave their toys?”
“I told you I have plans for them if anything went bad,” Nelson said, laughing as Devin almost jumped out of Gerald’s hands to launch himself at a large cluster of bubbles.
“Yes, baby, and it’s a good plan, but you spent a lot of money buying out that store.”
“What plan?” Gerald asked, pulling Devin back to his lap and scooping the bubbles closer.
With an evil grin, Nelson said, “I’m going to put shaped charges on the cars with a small camera and use them as explosive drones.”
Impressed, Gerald nodded. “Damn, that is a good idea. What kind of range?”
“A mile, but with an antenna we made, I can get almost two. I want to use one of the quad copters to fly around to look around if we need to.”
“They only stay up for a few minutes,” Nancy said, scooping an armful of bubbles to Mike.
“Two of them do, but I have one that will stay up for almost an hour,” Nelson said, grinning.
Nancy looked up. “Can I see it?”
“Sure,” Nelson shrugged.
Gerald looked over at Nancy. “After we get the dam in, you can play with his toys.”
“I’m about to pop you,” Nancy warned as Mike raised his hands like Devin, squealing out as he dropped them on a cluster of bubbles.
When Ashley turned off the hot tub, Devin and Mike started screaming for the bubbles to come back. “Your kids,” Michelle said, getting out.
“Hey, Mike is doing it too,” Nelson said as he followed.
“I’m sure Matt and Ashley are thrilled they have a bubble warrior,” Michelle said, handing him a towel.
Matt laughed. “What do you think the president is going to say tonight?”
“They want everyone’s soul for safe keeping,” Nelson said, handing a towel to Gerald. If Gerald played with Devin, he damn sure was going to dry him off.
With her towel over her head, Michelle parted it to look at Nelson. “That’s not funny.”
“Shit, they have all the money and are rounding everyone up; what else could they want?” Nelson snapped, grabbing his vest. “I just wanted them to take a little longer before going crazy.”
“They can’t,” Gerald said, drying Devin off. “With seven states pulling out of the union and people killing any government personnel, they have to push up the time table. What they…” Gerald stopped when Nancy coughed.
They all left in a group, walking around the now covered moat. With an inch of dirt spread out on the panels, it looked like ground all the way to the berm around the house. They had spread out grass seed, and in a few weeks, it would have some grass to break up the fresh dirt. Most of the sides of the moat had been shored up with some of the lumber, but the rest would have to wait.
Heading to their own cabins to change, Nelson and Michelle didn’t even go to Olivia’s room, knowing Bernard had already come and carried her inside. They woke Gavin and got dressed, telling him what he needed to wear for the day.
Matt and Ashley were walking to the back porch when Nelson stepped out with Gavin. They were both wearing shorts and water sandals with their vests on. Michelle was wearing tactical pants, boots, and her vest. “You going to the beach?” Matt asked as Nelson slung his AR over his chest.
“No, I learned in Louisiana when you work in mud and water, don’t wear a lot of clothes or boots,” Nelson said, following them inside.
Matt shook his head. “I can’t stand for the mud to be on my skin; I’ll wear my pants and boots.” When Gerald came over to grab Devin, Matt stopped and noticed Gerald was dressed almost identical to Nelson and Gavin.
“How long you think this will take us, Bernard?” Gerald asked, putting Devin in his highchair.
“We’ll be finished with the dam today. We just have to move dirt. We already have the concrete barriers poured.”
Sitting down and handing Devin his sippy cup, Gerald said, “It’s going to take several hours just to load the shit.” All the women snapped their fingers at him, including Nancy. “Sorry,” Gerald cringed, looking aro
und, and saw Olivia filling glasses with orange juice.
“Did that yesterday,” Bernard said, sitting down and taking a sip of coffee. “The only things we need to grab are those rolls of pipe and fittings.”
“Told you that’s why we needed to have everything put together for this project before we started,” Nelson said, adding creamer to his coffee. “That was the time consuming part.”
“Dad, can I have some coffee?” Gavin asked, seeing Nancy sipping hers.
“Use lots of cream and sugar the first time, son,” Nelson said as Gavin took off to the kitchen.
Bernard jumped up. “Hold on, Gavin; I got you a coffee cup,” he said, walking over to the cabinets, and he pulled out a John Deere coffee mug just like his complete with Gavin’s name on the side.
“That man bleeds John Deere green,” Nelson mumbled.
Mashing up Devin’s food, Gerald asked, “How long do you think it will take to bring everything online?”
“Tomorrow, just have to hook it up,” Nelson said, loading his plate.
After breakfast, Nancy stayed at the house with the kids to work on wiring up the monitors, and everyone else headed out. Nelson and Matt drove their trucks to the barn as Gerald drove Bernard’s truck. At the back of the barn, they found four trailers loaded.
The first held an eight-foot-wide, eight-foot-tall, and sixteen-foot-long steel box. Nelson had built it over a year. Using quarter-inch cold rolled steel four by eight-foot sheets, he had welded the box together, making an airtight room for the Pelton wheel generators. It couldn’t be seen, but the entrance was a hatch on the top. On each end pipes were sticking out.
On the other three trailers were huge slabs of concrete. One held four, twelve by five-foot-wide slabs lying on their sides. Two more of the large ones were on another trailer with three more smaller slabs. These were six feet tall and six feet long and looked like oversized Jersey barriers used on highway construction sites. The last trailer held seven of the smaller barriers.
Nelson backed his truck up to the trailer carrying the powerhouse as Gerald backed Bernard’s truck up to the trailer with the mix of barriers, and Matt took the last trailer with smaller barriers. Hooking up the trailers, everyone looked up upon hearing the excavator fire up.
From the around the corner of the barn, Nellie drove up in the dump truck and backed up to the last trailer with the big concrete barriers. They were all wide at the base and tapered down at the top. The tall ones were five feet at the base and tapered down to eight inches at the top, so they were heavy as hell.
Bernard drove the excavator to the work site, where the creek met the Jacks Fork River. The others loaded rolls of pipe and other stuff in the back of the trucks. With stacks of rolled up pipe in each truck, they pulled out straps and tied them down.
Gerald walked over as Nelson finished strapping his load down. “I think it’s going to take longer than one day,” Gerald said, tightening his gloves. “Just unloading this stuff down there is going to take several hours.”
“If it does, so be it,” Nelson said as Michelle walked over. “You okay to drive this down?”
“I’ve driven a heavy transport hauling an M1 Abrams; I think I can handle this.” She smiled.
He smiled back. “Ashley, will you drive my UTV down, and I’ll drive the backhoe,” Nelson said, turning to look at Ashley, who smiled and ran over to jump in the UTV. “Nellie, you have the lead.”
With Nellie leading the way, the others followed her to the back side of the farm. The creek ran along the south side but curved back north, following a ravine to the river. When they left the fields and entered into the woods on a small dirt tract Bernard had made, everyone slowed, keeping a lot of distance between each vehicle.
The site they were using wasn’t on Bernard’s property; it was inside the National Forest just over a mile away from the farm. As they drove slowly down the dirt tract, the rolling hills of Missouri started taking on new meaning as they left the valley the farm sat in.
They found Bernard at the site already digging a diversionary route for the creek. Parking their vehicles, Nelson was really happy they had marked out all this two years before. Everyone had talked about solar and wind for viable energy, but Nelson convinced them hydro was twenty-four seven with a steady flow of water. The creek was several yards wide and averaged three feet deep. When they measured its flow one summer when it was at its lowest, it was still over three hundred gallons a minute.
Using the backhoe, Nelson unloaded the smaller barriers. He was under no illusions; only the excavator could unload the bigger barriers and the powerhouse. When the smaller barriers were unloaded, Nellie came over and opened the cab of the backhoe.
“Ashley is taking Matt’s truck and empty trailer back as soon as the pipe is unloaded out of the back. She’ll bring back another UTV. I’m taking the backhoe to the gravel pit, and she will bring the dump truck to the gravel pit when she gets back,” Nellie said.
Realizing Nellie was waiting on him to move his ass, Nelson grabbed his rifle and climbed out. “Does she know how to drive the dump truck?”
“If she doesn’t, she’ll learn,” Nellie said, closing the cab door as Nelson jumped off.
Slinging his rifle, Nelson grinned. “Tough love.” He walked over, putting his AR on the UTV and went to help unload Matt’s truck.
When Ashley drove off, Matt turned to look at the small pool that formed before the creek emptied into the river seventy feet below. “Is it really necessary to dig out a holding area?” he asked, looking at the pool of water.
“Yep,” Nelson said, hauling a roll of pipe over. “Matt, that pool is only like five feet deep. We need to hold more water for several reasons besides power.”
Just groaning, Matt helped drag the rolls of pipe over to where Nelson wanted them. As they pulled another roll over, Michelle came up with her AR across her chest. “I’m moving to the top of that ridge to keep a look out. Gerald is sending Duke with me since our dogs stayed at the house,” she said, leaning down and patting Duke. She looked to the west at the steep ridge overlooking the area.
“Okay, baby, remember, if someone comes, they are coming here first because Bernard’s big ass excavator is really loud,” Nelson said, kissing her cheek.
“You and Gavin be careful,” she said, kissing his cheek and hugging Gavin. “Don’t let Daddy get hurt being stupid,” she said, rubbing Gavin’s hair.
“I won’t, Mom.” Gavin grinned as Michelle took off with Duke following her up the steep rise.
“Okay, farmer boy, what do you want to do?” Gerald asked, walking over.
“I’m going to tie the hose to the back of the UTV, and Gavin is going to drive it behind me as I lead him along the creek bottom. You and Matt will hook up the hose as Gavin pulls it out,” Nelson said, moving over to cut the ties off the rolls of two-inch hose.
Gavin jumped in the UTV as Nelson tied the ends of two rolls to the back of the UTV. Slinging his AR across his chest, Nelson took a deep breath and started walking up the creek. The rolls unwound as Gavin slowly followed, and Gerald pulled out a drill with a screwdriver bit as Matt grabbed bags of male to male fittings and hose clamps.
“Hope this works with all the trouble we are going through,” Matt said as Gerald called over the radio for Gavin to stop when the two-hundred-foot rolls reached the end.
“It worked small scale, so it damn well better work large scale,” Gerald said, cutting more rolls open and connecting them to the hoses Gavin was pulling.
Gavin had to drive the UTV in and out of the rocky creek bottom and along some very steep slopes beside the creek. At one point, he had to hold on to keep from sliding out the UTV when it tilted so far over.
When Nelson reached a metal post driven beside the creek, he motioned for Gavin to pull up and stop. Nelson looked down to see he was soaked and covered in mud with scratches covering his legs. “This is where we stop,” he said as Gavin pulled up beside a small pool that was fed by a small, two-foot wat
erfall.
Behind him, Gavin could still hear the excavator, but it sounded far off. “How far are we from the others?” he asked as his dad untied the hoses and took them off the UTV then tied them to the metal post.
“Just over four hundred yards away,” Nelson said, walking back over and pulling out a bottle of water.
“Why here?”
Nelson drained the bottle. “There is a sixty-foot drop from here to where the powerhouse is going to be. That will give us the pressure we need to make electricity,” Nelson said, tossing the bottle back in the UTV.
Not understanding but knowing his dad was beyond cool, Gavin just nodded. “So are we going back to help?”
“Yep, it’s time to get dirty,” Nelson said, climbing in beside Gavin. “Don’t run over the pipe we just laid; I don’t want to have to repair it.”
When they got back, they found only Bernard’s truck and trailer at the site. The trailer now had eight, two-foot-wide, twenty-foot-long, corrugated metal culverts on it. All the concrete barriers were stacked beside a pile of gravel. “Guess Ashley figured out how to drive the dump truck,” Nelson said as he got out.
Gavin ran over to the diversionary ditch Bernard had dug for the creek as Nelson walked over to Gerald and Matt, who were using a large gasoline pump to empty the pool of water. Seeing Bernard working on the powerhouse hole, Nelson walked over to see Bernard was almost done. The hole sat in the ridge with the river seventy feet down. Bernard was now digging the trench for the water lines they had laid out that would run to the powerhouse.
Walking back to Matt and Gerald, he saw Gavin chasing fish in the fast-draining pool of water. “That’s a good way to catch fish,” Nelson said, walking over in the pool.
“I’m sure there are a dozen laws against it,” Gerald said, laughing as Gavin lifted a trout.
Hearing the dump truck, Nelson looked up to see Ashley backing up to the pile of gravel. Seeing the front grill, Nelson laughed at the small tree stuck in the front bumper. “Glad the ground is dry; I would hate to have to get that big ass dump truck unstuck.”
Forgotten Forbidden America:: Patriots Reborn Page 4
