Project Reunion

by Ginger Booth

  “Huh! Scrawny.” Liddy clucked pretend disapproval, then gave it up for a warm smile. “Just teasing you, child. Emmett talks about his Dee all the time. So nice to finally meet you. She is a pretty little thing, Emmett! We still miss you in New Haven, though.”

  Clearly this was a long-standing issue between these two. Emmett had lived in New Haven for a year before settling in Totoket after Zack died.

  Emmett just smiled at her, and took his turn shaking hands with the orchard owner. “Any limits today, Mike? Beyond windfalls,” he asked.

  “Nah. All you can pick up and sort,” the owner replied. “You’re welcome to it.”

  I silently cursed Mel for planting an ugly seed in my mind. This orchard owner had little choice but to agree to whatever Emmett suggested. My little vegetable operation bore the standard 30% taxes to support the military and public services, because it was ‘subsistence’ level – less than 3 acres. Pine Ridge Orchards didn't have that problem. They could pad their payroll to hundreds of people, and probably did, to shield as much as possible from higher taxes. Regardless, Emmett's organization would essentially confiscate over half his harvests, one way or another.

  Mike gave a good impression of not minding in the slightest, though.

  “So we can glean the whole orchard?” Emmett pressed.

  Mike grinned. “I've got over a hundred acres in apples, Emmett.”

  “I might have some friends on the way,” Emmett suggested.

  “Now how are we going to make that much applesauce, Emmett?” Liddy complained.

  Mike sighed. “Alright. I'll press them into cider for you, too.”

  “Bless you, Mike!” Liddy replied, with a beatific smile.

  The deal was concluded before Emmett’s ‘other friends’ started rolling in, trucks full of professional farm workers, mostly Hispanic. Emmett saluted their leader, who wore properly complete Army camouflage uniform. Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Mora, Emmett’s commanding officer, had brought his friends from Middlesex county next door. Mora’s elder brother was still in the fruit picking business, as a farm labor organizer.

  “You tricked me,” Mike commented.

  “You underestimated me,” Emmett countered. “Now what kind of resource coordinator would I be, if I couldn’t get an orchard gleaned?” He smiled in challenge, and then relented. “You still OK with this deal, Mike? It’s for a good cause.”

  “Yeah,” said Mike. He sighed. “Can’t let all these windfalls go to waste. You’re doing me a favor. I’d just have to hire those guys anyway.” He shook his head and waved to the crew bosses. He wandered over to them, to set up logistics with the pros.

  “It doesn’t matter how many apples the kids glean, does it?” I said.

  “It matters that they helped,” said Emmett.

  “They’ll be proud of themselves,” Liddy agreed. “Let’s get them started, Emmett!”

  “I’ll find you later, darlin’,” Emmett assured me.

  I lost sight of the massive operation around me, as I settled into picking through my assigned row of Macoun apples with the Amenoids. Alex wisely stuck with the other suburban teenagers he’d found, and vanished up the hillside. He’d find his way back to the car eventually.

  Gleaning apples is fun at first, then hard work as the sun beats down on you doing stoop labor. I was used to it, and conveyed a steady stream of apple bags to the nearest collection crate. The Amenoids quickly progressed to spending more time on break than working.

  “Do you have to talk politics all day?” I complained, after Mel concluded a particularly academic diatribe against the food taxes. “Mel, your theory could be impeccable, and still completely irrelevant. We need to eat. The guys with the guns need to eat. The apples need picking. We have peace and protection so we can pick them. The weather’s gorgeous for once. How about you get off your high horse and pick up some apples?”

  “When does it end, Dee? No, tell me. When do we escape martial law and restore free government and free trade?”

  “When does it start, Mel? I’ve been producing food all year. You’re still on your ass. Yet you’re still eating.”

  Dave pulled Mel to his feet and got the trio working again.

  I probably should have shut up, but I wasn’t done. “You know, before the borders, this orchard probably paid just as much in taxes as it does now. Income taxes, payroll taxes. The property taxes would have been murder. Most farms didn’t survive here on the shoreline. The taxes were too high. Developers offered too much money to just give in and sell off housing parcels. Now we need peace and order to pursue agriculture. People like me who produce food, we want predictable taxes and protection, instead of random violence and looters. The Cocos aren’t out raping and pillaging. They’re trying to rebuild a collapsed economy, so we can have a good life.”

  “Don’t you think you’re a little biased, Dee? You’re sleeping with the oppressor,” Mel retorted. “Collaborator.”

  “Maybe I’m sleeping with him because I believe in him,” I hissed at Mel. “Maybe I was in on this whole food taxation scheme from the beginning, because I thought we needed it. Maybe I created Amenac to support them in the first place.”

  “Paddy paws, gang,” Dave cut in calmly. “Mel, I was there. Dee’s telling the truth. Dee, we do live under martial law. The Rescos like Emmett, and the Cocos under him, dictate our lives. He’s a benign dictator, and doing a bang-up job of it. But Mel has a point. Emmett’s still a military dictator.” He paused and added more softly, compassionately, “It can’t be much fun for you. Working like this all day, every day, for nothing but enough food to eat and a little protection.”

  I stood up to ease my aching back and stretch my neck. Mel’s intellectual criticism was easy to reject. Dave’s compassion was not. He’d caught a chink in my resolve, and I swallowed uneasily. “It’s not easy,” I allowed. “It’s not fun.”

  I usually refused to look at it, but I didn’t love life as a subsistence farmer. I used to love gardening. I needed security. I feared survivalists and looters. I thought I loved Emmett. But this life was a grind.

  But I didn’t have to look at it that way. I had goals, things I was working toward. I was presenting Amenac to a regional summit meeting in just over a week. I had good weather and good apples, a gorgeous day. Kids were safe and playing and laughing in the next row. “It’s good enough,” I breathed.

  In sudden decision, I yanked up my picking bag. “You people aren’t much fun. See you back at the car.”

  I switched over a row and walked up-hill along the Macoun trees until the guys were out of sight and earshot, if not out of mind. I picked through windfall apples alone. It took me a quarter hour to realize it wasn’t the Amenoids I kept arguing with in my head, it was myself. I didn’t win that argument either. But I picked up a lot of apples to feed people who couldn’t. Eventually the monotony of the job and the beauty of the setting allowed me to just give it a rest and enjoy the day. The glory days of Indian summer were nearly gone. I wanted to savor this one.

  “Heya, darlin’,” Emmett said. I startled, and coming up, knocked my head on an apple bough. “Watch your head,” he commented. He flopped down in the tall grass between the rows, after kicking a few rotten windfalls out of his way. I crouched my way out of the tree, to flop down beside him.

  He gazed at my stormy face, and thoughtfully chewed on the end of a sprig of grass he had sticking out of his teeth. “Wanna talk about it?” he offered.

  “No.”

  He scratched his jaw. “Dave seemed to think they pissed you off.”

  “They did.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I think I lost it when they called you a benign dictator.”

  The grass seed-head bobbed. “Uh-huh.”

  That wasn’t honest. “I really lost it when Dave said I was doing hard work without end, for nothing.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I sighed. I’d long suspected that ‘uh-huh’ meant Emmett heard me, but didn’t buy it. H
e said it a lot – to everyone, not just me, though especially to me. He waited me out. I hugged my knees and put my face down on them, looking at him, watching the seed head bob.

  “You’re done?” he inquired. At my nod, he continued, “The difference between heaven and hell is the company we keep here, darlin’. These are hard times. It’s a lot of work. I sure do like the company I’m keeping, though.” He smiled and laid a hand on the small of my back, just where I liked it.

  “Lots of work,” I breathed.

  He nodded, and took a deep breath. “I’m just a convenient target, Dee. The real problem is productivity. We need to farm more efficiently. Until we manage that, yeah, it’s one hell of a lot of work just to keep us fed.”

  I frowned at him.

  He laughed. “OK. No more politics.”

  “I don’t like people calling you a benign dictator.”

  He shrugged. “They’ll call me a lot worse than that, if I try to fix this instead of letting people work it out for themselves. Just imagine if I tried to reform land use top-down. Get rid of all the little scraps, and put together effective farms.”

  I sat up in alarm. “You mean, take my farm away?”

  “Darlin’, you don’t have a farm. You barely have a subsistence lot.” I bristled. “Dee, my step-dad has a subsistence farm. It’s back-breaking work, with no end in sight. You never get ahead, never get it done. Even with me as free labor, we didn’t earn half as much as Momma. And he’s got ten, twenty times the land you do. I’m not criticizing you at all. I’m amazed at what you get out of that suburban scrap of land. But darlin’, it doesn’t have to be that way. You see these trees? The grass? That sunlight? The rain? They can do most of the work, Dee, if you leverage them right. This is a good farm.”

  “This is a dozen good farms.”

  Emmett shook his head. “One family runs this operation, and they know how. They give a lot of people jobs, sure. But it’s one farm. But. I’m not going to take your farm away. I’m not about to chop up this successful orchard and give the pieces to amateurs, either. So you break your heart and back feeding us all, on less than an acre, while Pine Ridge Orchard’s got apples to burn.”

  “We don’t have enough margin to relieve New York, do we?” I asked sadly.

  He considered that. “Shoreline Connecticut was a bedroom area. We don’t have any margin at all. That’s not true of the Northeast as a whole. There are plenty of real farms. Just not here.” He suddenly chuckled. “Is that what’s bothering you? You’re already hacked off that you’re breaking your back, while these Amen1 yahoos get a free ride? And then you picture feeding a bunch of city idiots, too?”

  I pursed my lips to stifle a grin.

  “Well, damn, Dee. That’s so unfair.”

  I gave up and giggled into my knees.

  “Oh, I know. They’re probably good at asphalt, those city types. We could put them to hard labor. They could jack-hammer up your street and driveways. That could give you, oh, another half-acre. You could plant a couple apple trees. Have to wait five years for the first harvest, though.”

  “Stop!” I said, laughing.

  He grabbed me into a hug and rolled us down into the grass. I finally relaxed into him, and just enjoyed the comfort of his body, insects singing, the people’s voices far away. Increasingly far away, in fact – it sounded like this party was drawing to a close. Only the real farm workers were left gleaning in earnest. The volunteers were worn out.

  “Congratulations on your gleaning, Emmett. It was a good day.”

  “Yeah, it was. Dee... I’m not coming back to Totoket tonight. I’ll be gone a few days.”

  “Oh?”

  “I need to do my research for this New York proposal.”

  “Oh.” I assumed he meant to visit the border garrisons.

  He kissed me slowly and tenderly, then pulled us both back to our feet, to walk down the cidery hill to the mad-house of laughing children by the little red shack. It was a good day.

  He came back from his research sick as a dog, and closeted himself in his house. When the vomiting and fever subsided and he could think straight again, he had a lot of proposal left to write and precious little time left to do it in.

  Chapter 5

  Interesting fact: The Greater New York City borders were closed two weeks ahead of schedule on an emergency basis, due to the Ebola outbreak. The New York–New England border closed at the same time, a month early. Their share of the U.S. strategic reserves – food, fuel, and ammunition, among other things – was not delivered before the borders closed early.

  “Darlin’, remember you’re not here as my girlfriend.” Emmett waited until we were parked at the Coast Guard Academy to drop this little bombshell. He casually proceeded to unbuckle his seatbelt and hop out of the car.

  I sat gaping at him. That was the second time in two weeks I’d been informed that he wouldn’t consider me his girlfriend for the next bit. The first time hadn’t gone so well. For a moment I was just stunned. Then I started getting mad.

  Maybe he felt the vibe. Maybe he just noticed that I wasn’t moving as he wanted me to. He bent down to peer in through the door. His familiar bushy brown hair was gone. Somehow he’d managed to get a precise military haircut after we’d quit work last night at midnight, and before he picked me up this morning for the trip to New London. His cropped hair was topped with proper red beret over cammies, the trousers bloused into combat boots. That look hid his tight wiry body even better than the dress blues. He looked padded. Why he wasn’t wearing dress blues, I hadn’t a clue. I was certainly wearing navy blue blazer and chinos, my old corporate standard. Suspicion dawned that I didn’t know who this man was, or what he’d done with my lover.

  “Dee,” he said. “We’re both presenters here? Colleagues.” He sighed. “Just trust me on this? We cannot have a scene right now. We’ll talk later in our room.”

  Our room, yes. How exactly weren’t we here as lovers, when we were sharing a hotel room? Oh, yes, there would be a talk. I pulled his messenger bag out of the back seat and thrust it at him. Then I flashed him my sunniest steel-edged smile. “I look forward to that, Major MacLaren!”

  He grinned crookedly. “Shit. I’ll see you in the meeting, Ms. Baker.”

  By the time I’d clambered out of the car with my own laptop case, and straightened my clothes, he’d been swallowed into a small flock of a half-dozen cammie-clad men of similar 30-something age. They clapped each other on the shoulders, shook hands, sometimes combined with half-hugs, and other close physical male bonding. At a guess, they were the Connecticut Rescos, minus their commanding officer, Lt. Colonel Mora, the only other Resco I’d ever met. The Cocos were civilians, or at least reservists. But the next tier up, the Rescos, retained their commissions as Army officers.

  I sighed, affixed another false smile on my face, and looked around for anyone else I knew cluttering up the little campus green in front of the entrance. Finding none, I headed for the door. Just inside, I met an armed security screening checkpoint, yet another thing I didn’t miss from life before the borders.

  “Corporal Tibbs!” I cried, with a sincere smile this time. “So good to see you again! Thank you for your help last winter.” The stolid young marine had been my jailer the last time I’d visited New London harbor, on an aircraft carrier converted to an ark. He’d been dutiful enough as a jailer. He’d also surreptitiously gotten word of my incarceration to the right people. That probably saved me from death at the hands of Homeland Security. I was glad to see it didn’t get Tibbs fired.

  “Ms. Baker. Good to see you well.” A certain sharp glance suggested that Tibbs would prefer I not get too specific, in this context, about the incident last winter. He inspected my laptop bag thoroughly. He ran me through the stand-up X-ray. He photographed me and took a retina print. From all this, he produced a very high-tech version of a ‘Hi! My Name Is Dee!’ name tag. It proclaimed my affiliation as ‘Presenter, Amenac Resource, New Haven County.’

 
I slung its lanyard around my neck, and tried not to dwell on how many trillions the Defense Department had added to the national debt with toys like this. It was all moot now.

  I re-affixed earrings and shoes, and gazed around the sea of cammie-clad men, as the after-images from the retina scan abated. They were all men. The different color berets and camouflage probably meant something. But not to me.

  “Dee,” Tibbs said softly, “Lieutenant Commander Lacey is over there. He’s standing with Captain Niedermeyer.”

  “Thank you, Corporal,” I breathed. And I hesitated. These military types seemed very big on protocol. I knew nothing about military protocol. With them all wearing cammies, I couldn’t even tell Navy from Army from Coast Guard or Marine, without getting close enough to inspect the labels.

  “Captain Niedermeyer is your host, ma’am,” Tibbs further prompted. “It is always appropriate to greet your host first. Or anyone else you already know.”

  “Right. Thank you!” I hazarded a smile at him this time. But he blandly gazed out the door, in relaxed readiness, and pretended not to know me. Right. I couldn’t blame him. Ex-prisoner, ex-jailer was such an awkward social tie. I steeled my courage, and strode to my ex-fiancé Adam Lacey as though this were a cocktail party. “Adam!” I cried.

  “Dee! Great to see you!” Adam, at least, didn’t have a flagpole up his back. He broke into a broad grin, folded me into a warm hug, and kissed my cheek. He turned to his companion. “John, I’ve told you about Dee Baker, my once fiancée. Dee, meet Captain John Niedermeyer. Ah, Dee, a Coast Guard captain is two ranks up from an Army major,” he added for clarification. “In contrast to an Army captain, who is one rank below major.” Adam understood my haziness on such matters.

  “Well, that’s confusing,” I said with a laugh. I held out a hand to shake, hoping for the best. “Pleased to meet you at last, Captain Niedermeyer. And thank you for inviting me to present.”

  Niedermeyer grasped my hand for a robust two-handed shake, so apparently I got that right enough. “Pleased to meet you, Dee. You saved our posteriors on the New Year’s hurricane. Looking forward to your presentation!”