by David Nees
“So’s selling moonshine to city folk.”
“Maybe, but moonshine’s like waving gold bars in front of desperate people. Our grain and flour supplies are a lot less like gold bars. Food’s a longer process. You have to grow it. And moonshine is easy to steal.” Jason sighed. “No making moonshine. Not from this valley, and certainly not from the fields I work.”
“Well then, from the fields I’m working. They’re my fields now that my pa’s passed.”
Jason paused, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “They are your fields now. The Turner farm is yours, no question about that.” He looked directly at Billy. “But I can’t let you start up the still. The risk to the group is too great. Maybe after another year, if things settle down, but not now.”
Billy started to protest, but Jason went on, talking over him. “I know it doesn’t seem fair…and maybe it isn’t, but it’s the wise path, the cautious path to take right now. Maybe later, but not now, Billy.”
“It ain’t fair. It’s what I want to do and you won’t let me do it.”
“I’ll support you in whatever you want to do, even moonshining, if it’s not in this valley.”
“You know it ain’t safe to do it outside of the valley. You never know who’s going to raid you if you’re down in the flatland.”
“That’s why I don’t want it here. It could bring trouble for us.”
Billy stood up, frustrated. “I’m not sure I want to stay. I ain’t saying I’m giving up my farm, but it seems like there ain’t much for me here. Catherine and Sarah don’t want me around and there’s no one else…and I don’t think I like farming all that much.”
Billy saw Jason shrug as he started off the porch. “What you do is up to you as long as it isn’t moonshining here. I’ll help any way I can.”
Billy didn’t look back as he headed down the drive towards the road.
Lieutenant Cameron certainly took his reports seriously, Captain Larry Roper thought. The man had been standing in Captain Roper’s office for the past ten minutes, talking without a break the whole time. There were only thirty men left in Hillsboro from the half-battalion that had arrived a year earlier. Colonel Stillman had moved on with the main body of his troops, leaving a platoon with Captain Roper, Lieutenant Cameron and Sergeant Rodney Gibbs behind. Being left behind galled Captain Roper. Otherwise some other officer could have been the one pretending to listen to this.
“It looks like the first visit from the farms could be in three or four weeks. They have an early grain crop coming in, along with some vegetables,” Lieutenant Cameron went on. “The group in the valley has added some other farms to form a co-op of sorts, so they’ll be bringing their crops together. We should have a good summer of produce.”
Roper looked up from his paperwork. He was tired of being stuck here in Hillsboro and didn’t share Cameron’s enthusiasm in all this rebuilding work, the farmers and barter fairs. Increasingly the only thing that interested him was how to enlarge his cut of the loot Joe Stansky was pulling from the stripped houses and from other towns he raided. Roper could see that Joe’s games couldn’t go on forever, but in the meantime they were fattening Roper’s personal stash of valuable goods—gold and gems from stolen jewelry, stores of gasoline, food and ammunition. The trick, thought Roper, was to get out before it all came crashing down.
“You should know that Frank Mason is considering levying a tax on transactions with the farmers,” he said.
Cameron’s eyes widened in surprise. “You’re kidding,” he said.
“Not kidding,” Roper replied, turning back to the papers on his desk.
“Why the hell would he do that? These are transactions between the farmers and the city government. How the hell do they justify taxing that? It’s not like it’s between the farmers and private parties here in town.”
“Doesn’t make sense to me either, but there it is. I gave you the go ahead on this project and you did a good job. Now the city seems to want to get greedy, even before they’ve gotten together with the farmers.”
“I wonder if it’s a control issue.”
Roper looked up from his work, wondering where his lieutenant was going.
“You know, the officials asserting they have the authority to tax everyone, even people outside the city.”
He shrugged. “Who knows?”
He studied his lieutenant. Cameron was enthusiastic and a by-the-book officer. He trusted his captain and Roper needed to make sure that trust continued. If Cameron thought of him as diligent but bored, that would do fine. He just needed to keep Cameron busy and focused on things outside of the town.
“Is there anything I can do?” the lieutenant asked. “Should I talk with Mason?”
“I doubt it will help. I’ve argued the point already. I know you feel responsible, you helped set all this up, but it’s a civilian government matter. Let’s just hope he can make this work with the farms. It won’t be good to have the situation blow up in our faces.”
Chapter 5
One morning, as Jason was leaving to inspect his fields, he stepped out on the front porch and stopped in his tracks. There, standing in the yard, were six men. They were dressed in a mix of mismatched clothing. Two wore full buckskin breeches, while the other four wore patched jeans or wool pants; all but one had on deerskin tunics either alone or over ragged cloth shirts, with the last wearing an oversized sweatshirt. They all wore tattered caps, some woolen and some baseball. They had long hair and most had beards. The men were armed with rifles, either slung over their shoulders or resting with the butts on the ground.
“Who are you? What do you want?” he asked the group.
One man took a step forward. He was tall and lanky with a sinewy strength showing in his movements. He had light brown hair and bright, sharp hazel eyes. “We from up north, near Linville Falls. You Jason?”
Jason nodded, watching the man.
“We come to talk. Heard you was gonna trade with Hillsboro,” the man said.
“That’s right. You want to come up and sit down?”
“We be fine here,” the man replied.
Jason nodded, thought about the reply, and carefully sat down on the porch steps. Strangers always presented a tense moment. The men in the yard sat or squatted on the ground and cradled their rifles in their laps.
Suddenly the front door opened behind him. “Jason, what is going on?” Anne exclaimed, starting to come out. Jason got back up. He wasn’t sure what effect a woman would have on these men.
“Excuse me,” he said to the men in the yard and turned to go into the house. The strangers didn’t move, but he was aware of some of them tensing up and shifting their rifles.
As Jason stepped inside the door, Anne looked at him. “Who are those men? Are they dangerous?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. They know who I am and they want to talk. Something about our trading with Hillsboro.”
“Should we get our rifles?” Anne asked, not with alarm. She had been through enough with Jason to know what to do.
“You and Sarah go up to the shooting positions on the second floor…quietly. If anything goes wrong, you can cover me. I think I’ll be fine, but—”
“I know. We always err on the side of caution. Be careful out there.” She kissed him and headed for the stairs.
Jason went back out to the porch and sat down again on the steps. The men in the yard still looked tense. “My wife is understandably nervous about strangers. We’ve had our share of bandits coming around.”
Catherine saw the men on her way back from her hidden spot up on the slope. She stopped at the edge of the old apple orchard. She crouched down with her rifle at ready. She couldn’t hear the conversation, but Jason didn’t look alarmed. Her instinct was to stay and watch. If the situation got worse, she would be a surprise counter to even up the odds for Jason.
The leader nodded. “We ain’t bandits. If we was, we wouldn’t be a-talkin’.” He had a very old-fashioned, Appalachian M
ountain accent.
Jason cracked a slight smile in agreement. “So what do you want to talk about?”
“Talk about trading with Hillsboro.”
Jason stared at the man. “You know my name, what’s yours?”
The man stared back at Jason, looking him solidly in the eye, never wavering, his face opaque, unreadable. “We’uns Jessup and Early clans. I’m Clayton Jessup.”
“You’ve come a ways. How did you hear about me…and how did you find me?”
“We heard about the gang you whupped at the bridge. We know this valley, some of us related to Turners…you go back couple of generations.”
Jason was surprised. “You heard about the fight clear up there?”
“Word gets out,” Clayton replied.
“So you live in Linville Falls?”
“In the area. We don’t live in a town. Ain’t safe there. Where we live, ain’t no roads or towns.”
“Well, I’m glad to meet you, Clayton. So what do you want to know about the trading?”
“We wanna join in. We got skins, meat, and herbs. We lookin’ to trade for ammunition, boots, some soap, tobacco.”
“You aren’t trading up north?”
“Only small villages near us up north and they all empty. Johnson City be the biggest town. It’s run by a crazy man. We don’t go near it.”
“You live in the woods. Why don’t you farm?”
“Can’t farm much where we live, but we grow a bit, we get along.”
“How many of you are there?” Jason wondered out loud.
Clayton didn’t answer, just stared at Jason with an unfathomable look. “We enough,” he finally said.
“Didn’t mean to pry. If it was up to me, I’d be glad to have you come along with us. But I have to ask the others. We’ve formed a group to work together.”
“We ain’t interested in no group. We just want to trade. Looks like you got that set up, from what we hear.”
“You’ve come a ways. I guess you want an answer now.”
“We can wait a day. If you can get an answer, we come back tomorrow.”
“I can do that,” Jason said.
“We be back tomorrow morning,” Clayton said, getting up. The others rose with him, and the group turned and headed off into the woods, quickly disappearing through the trees.
As Jason watched them go, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Someone was coming down the slope and through the orchard. It was Catherine. She walked up to the porch, carrying her rifle at the ready, to join Jason. Just then her mother and Sarah came out.
“That was very strange,” Anne said.
“Very strange,” Jason replied. “It was like talking to colonial frontiersmen.”
“Or Indians,” Anne said.
“And what do you know about talking to colonial frontiersmen?” Catherine asked with a mischievous look in her eyes.
“Just guessing. But these families go way back. They have a long history here in the mountains. It seems like they just shifted gears a couple of hundred years and carried on.”
“What did they want?” Catherine asked. Jason filled her in although there wasn’t much to say.
“What was that he said about Johnson City? Did he say whoever was in charge was crazy?” Anne asked.
“Yeah, that’s what he said. It doesn’t surprise me. I’ll bet there’s a lot of communities out there with crazy people running them. They probably run the gamut from religious zealots to paranoid schizophrenics.”
“What does gamut mean?” Sarah asked.
Jason looked at the sixteen-year-old. “Young lady, we have got to get you back to school. I don’t want you to grow up ignorant.”
Sarah smiled her most beguiling smile. “You mean I can’t get by on my looks?”
Catherine gave a derisive snort.
Anne shook her head and looked at Jason, her face serious. “So you better get around to the neighbors to let them know about our visitors.”
“You’re right. I’ll take the pickup. Don’t want to use the fuel, but this is important. I suggest staying out of the woods today.”
Chapter 6
Charlie had been troubled all through the day. The possibility that Jim, the engineer who had wired up the station, could be the man that Joe had kidnapped was eating at him. He couldn’t make himself believe that it was a coincidence.
He brought it up again at dinner. Charlie and Mary didn’t have to go to the food centers. They enjoyed the perks of Charlie’s position and had their own rations, even if they had to do the cooking on a wood stove.
“Did you talk with Donna today?” he asked.
“No, I was going to mention it to you. She didn’t show up for her shift for the last two days. I asked around and no one had seen her. I know where she lives, so I took the liberty of walking over there to see if she or her son were sick and might need some help. No one was at the apartment. There was a padlock bolted to the door from the outside, like the apartment was vacant.” Charlie felt his stomach tighten again and put down his fork.
“I knocked on some doors up and down the hall and finally found someone home. I asked her if she knew what had happened to Donna. It was weird, Charlie. She seemed scared. Asked me who I was and why I wanted to know. She kept looking up and down the corridor. I told her I knew Donna from working with her in the kitchens. I didn’t mention you since she seemed so nervous. She said she didn’t know anything and I shouldn’t ask around if I knew what was good for me. Then she closed her door in my face. Can you believe it? Why was she so scared?”
Charlie didn’t answer.
“Charlie, what’s happening? Why would Jim not come home and where did Donna and her son go? People don’t just move away nowadays. There’s no place to go and no support outside of town.”
She was looking right at him, and he knew his face had given him away. “Did something bad happen to them?” She kept staring at him. “Charlie, I know you. Something’s not right, I can see it.”
“It just pains me when I hear of anything going wrong, that’s all.”
“But they just disappeared. How could that happen?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll try to find out, like I said two days ago. But you have to leave these things to me. Don’t start becoming an amateur detective. You’ve never done that before and now’s not the time to start.”
She threw her napkin down on the table and got up to take the plates away, “I’m not trying to play detective, I just wanted to find out if Donna was all right when she didn’t show up. Now you’ve got me even more worried.”
“There is nothing to worry about,” Charlie said. He shoved his chair back from the table. “I told you I’ll check into this. Just don’t go around asking questions. Leave things to me.”
His wife of twenty-five years just looked at him but didn’t say anything.
The next day, the mimeograph sheet that passed for a newspaper was posted on bulletin boards at the food centers. The new edition contained a headline article written by Frank Mason, the Director of Safety and Civil Order. In the article, Director Mason extolled the contributions of Joe Stansky, longtime citizen of the town, restaurateur, and major benefactor of the city in this time of crisis. In recognition of Mr. Stansky’s contributions and work, the director was appointing him Director of Resources for Hillsboro. At the bottom of the article were two badly reproduced signatures of the chief of police and Director Mason, giving it the official approval of the Safety Committee. Immediately below the article was another, shorter piece bearing Mr. Stansky’s name, in which he declared his intention to keep providing Hillsboro with all the necessities they needed to survive and move forward. The new Director of Resources pledged to work to improve civic life, to restore electrical power, and to stabilize and increase the flow of food and medicines. In return for everyone’s commitment to work together harmoniously, Joe Stansky would take the lead in making Hillsboro thrive again.
Lieutenant Cameron lowered the bullet
in, snorted, and handed it to Sergeant Rodney Gibbs sitting at a desk across from him. “Get a load of this crap.”
He reached for his cup of coffee, leaned back in his chair and took a few sips while waiting. A sour smile grew slowly on Gibbs’s deep brown face.
“What do you think of it?” Cameron asked.
“Sounds like Stansky’s coming out of the shadows. We pretty much have known he controls the resources in town.”
“Yeah, but to make him Director of Resources. What the hell is that?
“It’s what he is. If he controls the resources, he gets to be the director.” Gibbs handed the bulletin back.
“Place seems more crooked every day,” Cameron said, scowling.
“We should just concentrate on this upcoming farmer’s market. The idea that the city should impose a tax on an exchange after the negotiations are completed sounds like double-dipping. They won’t be happy. I can just imagine Jason’s reaction.”
“I’m going to try to get that tax waived, at least for this first round. Hell, it would be more palatable if the city just negotiated an exchange that incorporated their damn tax and be done with it. That’d be easier for the farmers to swallow.
“Maybe they just want to establish their authority over the farms. Making them submit to taxation would be a way to do that.”
“Aren’t you the political philosopher,” Cameron said with a smile.
“Just the realist. You want to go over to Mason’s office to talk with him? I know Captain Roper said he covered that ground already, but maybe it’s worth a try to talk to him again.”
Cameron nodded and Gibbs got up.
Charlie paced back and forth in Frank’s office. “Joe’s getting too powerful. You know it. Now that we’ve made him Director of Resources, how are we going to control him?”
“How did we ever control him?” Frank’s tone was dry, without emotion, but Charlie noticed that he appeared to slump a little behind his desk. “From the start he had a jump on me…on both of us. He started commandeering resources faster than we did. If we didn’t want to have ourselves a little civil war, with everything smashed and no order established and the refugees overwhelming us, we had to work with him. Charlie, all we’ve been able to do is keep Joe from doing stupid things, things that would upset everyone. It hasn’t been so bad. We keep a smooth face on things for the public, and we all get along. Things go well for Hillsboro.”
