The Last Centurion

by John Ringo

  They have driven down a Mercedes SUV from Atlanta. A gas turbo. The "fuel" they can get, by special delivery to the tanks at the farm, is diesel. Their car sits on the side of the road for a long time.

  There are no diesel vehicles at the farm except a tractor. The diesel F-350 is at the Parrish farm, up on blocks until the "real" farmer can find fuel.

  There are crops growing in the field. They look at them. There's not much else to do. The cable is out and the only channel they can get on the TV is CBS and that's snow-filled and nearly impossible to understand. There are no books in the house.

  The wife runs out of birth control pills. They don't have any money to buy some from the small-town pharmacy that's still struggling along. It's not going to sell them birth control pills on credit. They are extremely polite but firm. The wife makes a scene.

  At this point, some of them get fed up and find some way to get back to being real grasshoppers. The soup lines are better than this.

  But we'll say they hang in there.

  At some point an officious woman turns up at their house. The officious woman is the new rep for the seed company. It is pointed out that all of their crop is owned by the government. But it's genmod seed. So it can't be used. They need to till it under and plant new seed. That will be provided by the government, as well. And when it's harvested, it will be turned over to the government.

  And we get paid . . . ?

  In seed.

  That's the next point where people said "blow this for a game of soldiers" and found any way back to civilization.

  There are lots of such points. I'll skip most of them.

  The husband finds out that driving a tractor over a plowed field is not easy. But he does it. The wife does not. She is attempting to learn how to cook. He also learns that:

  Hooking up a plow is a bitch.

  So is plowing. And it's very fucking boring. And it takes forever, especially if you're in a fucking little 35-horse tractor that the farmer only ever used for minor stuff. But he'd taken one look at the big combine and gone "oh, no fucking way."

  The seed is delivered. He plants it. Despite being an intelligent person he is confused by the concept that the seed he's growing is going to be seed. But if that's what he's doing for a living . . . I wonder if the town needs a lawyer?

  No, as a matter of fact. Ours survived, alas.

  He then finds out.

  Seed bags are very fucking heavy.

  So is a spreader and if you don't know how to hook one up you can kill yourself. Or hook it up wrong and then bad things happen.

  A standard grass spreader is a lousy way to spread wheat seed. He doesn't know that there's a seed planter sitting there. He doesn't know what a seed planter is. And, besides, it's designed for the big tractor he's avoiding.

  And he has to keep filling the spreader with those heavy fucking bags of seed.

  Things break. They always do. Some things you just have to get a repair guy for. Most, farmers can fix. He can't. The tractor stops. He doesn't know why.

  He goes down the road to the next farm. That's no help, that's a young couple who look like they just stepped out of a rock concert and they haven't even bothered to figure out the tractor. They've got a nice crop of ganja out back, though. The crop's like, whoa! It's beans and shit! I think! Dude you have got to try some of this shit! Hey, Stacey's pregnant, man, 'cause we're like out of birth control pills . . .

  His wife has cut him off because she's not going to have a baby, the tractor is stuck in the field because the spreader is on backwards and it's jammed the transmission and he really needs a drink, not a toke.

  Leave point.

  Instead, he goes into town looking for help. There are choices as to what to do.

  There were those who said: "I'm a bigshot and you farmers had better fix this or I'll get the gub'mint on your ass!" Or just were hostile and in people's face.

  In which case they got exactly dick for help. And the crops never got as far as planted. Seed sat in bags until it got rained on and rotted and was lost. This, alas, was common and contributed to the famines of 2020 and 2021.

  We'll give this guy a more optimum situation. He's a dick normally but he also knows when he has to crawl. He's just not sure where to.

  Sometimes he runs into the county agent who is running around like mad and gets some help. Enough to get the crop in the ground.

  Sometimes he ends up on the phone with me. If he's not a dick, I'll do what I can long distance. Because I can see the train wreck on the way. If he's a dick, I figure he's not worth the time.

  Sometimes he walks into the feed store.

  There are a bunch of guys sitting around not doing much. There are rocking chairs. None of them are available. Some other guys are standing up.

  He doesn't know it, but there's a defined pecking order to those chairs. If a guy gets up and leaves, a specific guy is going to get his chair.

  The hayseeds in the feedstore kind of nod and go back to talking about the weather. He waits around for someone to walk up and ask him what he needs. No one does. He's not sure who works there and who is just hanging around. Everyone is in the same clothes.

  He is, more or less, ignored.

  One of the guys makes mention that it's gonna be a cold winter. The woolies are already getting wooly already. (And the old farmer knows where to look for real long-term predictions.)

  The lawyer contends that predictions are for a mild winter. Yeah, it's been a cold spring but it's warming up and what with global warming . . .

  They look at him as if he's a Martian. One of them finally says:

  "Can I help you?"

  He pours out his tale of woe. Little does he know that the guy he displaced, whose truck garden he is eating off of, is sitting in one of the rocking chairs. Everybody knows who the newcomer is. Everyone knows his "tale of woe." Everyone knows that the harvest is going to be fucked and famine is on the way. What they're discussing in quiet voices is how to survive.

  "Put the spreader on backwards," one of the hayseeds contends. "Reverse and take it off. Put it on right ways round. That'll do ya."

  "Why you usin' the spreader? There's a perfectly good planter."

  "What's a planter?"

  If, at this point, he just says "Look, I know this is fucked up. I didn't think we'd be taking someone's farm. I thought I'd be working on one. Helping out or something. I don't have the slightest clue what I'm doing. The only thing I know about farming is from watching reruns of Green Acres. But I've got to get this right or . . . it's going to be bad . . ."

  Well, then sometimes they'd help out.

  We'll continue this in two directions.

  The first is the optimal result. It wasn't common, but it happened enough that it's probably why any of us survived 2020. And, remember, we're back in summer of 2019 when I was over in Iran.

  The guy whose farm he took, the guy with the Browning ballcap on his head and the Winston dangling from his lip (in violation of the universal smoking ban in indoor public areas) pushes the ball cap up.

  "Got a deal fer ya."

  The guy in the Browning ballcap will teach him how to farm. The lawyer and his wife now work for him. The lawyer does what he tells him to do and he's not going to enjoy it. But the guy even knows where there's some furniture up for grabs and he knows there ain't none in the house. Do what I tell you to do and we'll make it through.

  "Why? I mean, why would you do that?"

  "I get a cut of the pay. An' cause that's mah John Deere you done fucked up. An' ah don't want it fucked up again."

  There was, thank God, a lot of that. The two "good" farmers on my farms. They found out about Bob quick and told him they had no clue what they were doing. Teaching people who have no clue what they're doing, and are mentally and physically unsuited to farming, how to farm is ten times the trouble of professionals. And it was a very fucked up planting season. But Bob did it. And they didn't totally screw up.

  The other five? They wer
e . . . suboptimal results in various ways. I had to replace a lot of equipment over time. But the government paid for it eventually. Why not? It was the Bitch's fuck up in the first place. And the Congress let her get away with it.

  But we'll go to the less optimal result. The farmers and store owner tell him the minimum he needs to know and suggest he call the USDA help-line. He points out it's overwelmed. The feed store owner finds a number for another help line. It's Army. See if they can help you.

  So now we're back to the seed farmer.

  He was not, in fact, in Blackjack. I won't say where he was except that it was "southern" and in prime farm country.

  I never would have noticed if I hadn't been bored and listening to the techs answering questions. I always kept half an ear on that in case things were getting out of hand, as they frequently did.

  This wasn't out of hand, it was the tone of confusion. That was nearly as good. So I hooked into the circuit.

  ". . . don't have any information on how to fix equipment, sir. We can give advice on crops and weather and pests but we don't have anything on equipment, I'm sorry. Have you tried contacting the manufacturer?"

  "Major Bandit Six, cutting in. I've got it, Smedlap. Say problem again, over. Start at the beginning, go to the end and I'll see if I can help."

  Tractor broken. Information I got doesn't work. Lawyer. Didn't know I was taking over someone's farm. Out of my depth. Army knows about farming?

  Army knows everything. What kind of tractor?

  I don't know.

  What kind of spreader?

  I don't know.

  Get pen and paper. Go find out. Here's a number you can get through to me.

  While he was gone, I considered the voice. The guy was clearly over his head and just a touch angry.

  But it was also the middle of the damned night. And he was still working the problem. If he could get over the anger, there might be some worth to him.

  He called me back.

  "Bandit Six, if you've got the time, I've got the dime."

  He had all sorts of information about the tractor and the spreader. All I needed was the model numbers.

  "Oh, hell, yeah you've got the spreader on backwards. When they said 'reverse it' what they meant was just pop it in reverse then back out. You can't back it up. I hope you didn't break the spay arm. Okay, get ready to write this down. Memorize it. You won't be able to read it in the dark and do it at the same time. Do you have the lifting tines hooked up? Okay, I'll walk you through how to bring it back with the lifting tines, too. Get ready to write . . ."

  It took about two hours to get through a fifteen-minute evolution. The guy wasn't getting much sleep that night. But we got the spreader back to the equipment shed.

  "What were you using it for? It's not time to spread grass seed. Wheat? Why were you using a spreader to lay down wheat? Don't you have a planter . . . ?

  . . .

  . . . . . .

  . . . .

  . . .

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  "Okay, calm down." Grin. "You're what I class as a C. That means there's some promise. You can get your back up and wroth and decide you're the expert here and then you're going to go to D and you'll be talking to my call center guys until you get tired of it and go back to the soup lines as an F. Or you might work your way up to A. But I'll give you the chance. It's late and it's about time for you to actually go to work. If you're willing, though, I'll walk you through a lot of shit and you might make a barely functional farmer . . . Yes, I grew up on a farm and I've got a degree in the shit. I'm about the only guy working this place who does so for anything farming beyond C-A-T equals cat, you're going to have to talk to me . . . I work nights. But that's not a problem. Because you're going to be getting up around . . . an hour ago. And you'll be going to bed around sunset . . . Yes, there's a reason. Are you listening? Is this actually sinking in? Because I'm not going to waste my time if it's not . . . You're welcome."

  He'd been a lawyer in Memphis specializing in "environmental agricultural issues." He was, in fact, every farmer's worst nightmare. The kind of guy who environmental groups hired to sue farmers for drying out a plot of land that they considered "wetlands."

  His wife started out the complete bitch.

  We'd gotten beyond C-A-T equals cat by then. We were talking as he was getting ready for another hard day's work. He was fixing what he could find for breakfast. I asked him where his wife was. Asleep.

  "Farming is team work. You're supposed to still be asleep. She's supposed to be cooking breakfast. Who's cleaning? Who's taking care of the garden?"

  Getting his wife to sit down and talk to me was, I take it, not easy. But it happened.

  "Bandit Six, this number is permanently connected to a nuclear tipped missile aimed at you, keep that in mind . . . Oh, Hi Roger. Mrs. Roger? Oh, that would be Miz Roger. Miss Roger-Not-Roger? We're going to have such a nice time. Hello, ma'am. My name is Bandit Six. Here is the deal . . ."

  You and your husband are in deep cacky.

  This winter things are going to be a nightmare.

  The nightmare will continue into next year.

  I don't care what the President and her ministers say, trust in me, I'm with the High Command.

  You are an expert in whatever your field used to be.

  You know nothing about farming or being a farm wife.

  If you do not listen to me, you and your husband are going to die.

  Did you hear me? Do you believe me? D-I-E.

  Okay, here is lesson one. There will be many more. And you'll like them less.

  " 'A man he works from sun to sun but a woman's work is never done.' That's not a complaint. That's reality. Your husband, in case you hadn't noticed, is now going out all day just about every day working his tail off. It's hard, brutal, necessary work. He's probably losing weight. He'll gain it back as he gets better at things and if there's food. But he will always be expending more calories in a day than you do. He will be working harder physically. You will be working constantly physically but at a lower level.

  "Farm work is team work. You are part of the team. The part you have to do, not sort of have to do, not can ignore, is vitally important. You're going to think it's demeaning. It's not. You are a critical member of the team. Your job, accept it or not, is support for you husband and hands . . . Well, you're going to need them eventually. If you stick this. Here's your job list . . ."

  Fix heartiest breakfast you can fix before your husband is awake. Cereal, if available, is insufficient. Carbo-load but add any available protein. There's a reason that bacon, eggs, hash browns and toast is called "A Farmer's Breakfast" on menus.

  Wash kitchen thoroughly after each meal. Foodstuffs available to you have no preservatives. Flies carry bacteria. Flies are endemic to farms. The combination means any foodstuffs left out become bacteria magnets. You will suffer from food poisoning, sooner rather than later, if you don't keep the kitchen area spotless . . . If you don't have soap make it or trade for it in town.

  Next chore is pick eggs. Get your kids to help you . . . Then I'm sorry. Hands are hands. Kids learn, early, they've got chores on farms . . . Go see if there are any orphans available . . . No, I'm not joking. If we chat some time I'll tell you about how my great-grandpappy started in the farming business. Short answer: he was an orphan from Baltimore who was sent out as slave labor. No, I'm not joking.

  Then you're working in the garden . . .

  Lunch for you, husband, family and hands. Heavy carbo load again.

  Clean house. More garden work.

  Dinner. Make it light. He'll be asleep in an hour.

  Clean from dinner. Make sure everything is locked down and correct. Go to bed. Get up before husband and do again and again and again.

  Canning.

  Household maintenance.

  Laundry.

  Clothing maintenance. What do you mean, you don't know how to sew . . . ?

  "There's a hole i
n the bucket dear Liza dear Liza there's a hole in the bucket dear Liza a hole . . ."

  She eventually made a decent farmer's wife. She's a lobbyist for farmers now. Leopard can't change its spots, much.

  There were about fifteen like that. "A"s that is. People who were out of their depth but willing to admit it and somehow got on the line with me.

  There were way more that I tried to help and fell by the wayside. Farming is not easy.

  One of the "A"s, sort of, that I tried to help was funny. I say "sort of" because there wasn't anything I needed to tell the guy about farming.

  He'd been a farmer. He'd moved to Arizona when he retired. Sold the farm (big farms plural) to ADM. Didn't want to live in a retirement community. "Liked some space around him." Didn't like people much, that's for sure. Crotchety didn't cover it. Talked to his wife, once. Nice old lady. Didn't have to tell her about being a farmer's wife, either. She was glad he was back working since "he'd been a handful" retired. Given what he was like when I dealt with him, I cannot imagine what he was like retired.

  Anyway, he'd bought a pretty big spread of fuckall. Think that desert I went through in Iraq. He wanted land around him, but he didn't want to actually have to work it.

  Come spring of 2020, he's looking at what his internal computer is saying is prime farmland.

  Huh?

  Cli-mate Was Chang-ing. And not always for the worse.

  Back in pre-Columbian days there was this race of "Native Americans" called the Anasazi. Had something sort of approaching civilization in the Southwest. Up and disappeared. Some indication of violence. Pueblo builders are thought to have been Anastazi "in retreat." But in retreat from what?

  Probably each other. And surrounding tribes. See, in the mini-ice age back in the Middle Ages, the rains shifted. The "desert southwest" was about like, oh, Kansas. Prime farming country. As things started to warm up, it slowly dried out to the desert we know and love today.

  Same thing was happening. The arid belt around the world was shifting south and contracting. Positive effect of global cooling. Thank God there was at least that.