Naturally I have to ask what Bibles they are talking about. Sara and Jenna come into the living room and tell me how sorry they are to hear that I have lost my memory now as well.
“Look at the bright side Jon, now you won’t remember what the first thing that you lost was.”
I tell them that I have not lost my memory or anything else, at least not permanently. Dayna, Robin, and Melissa all say that I couldn’t prove that by asking them. All of the women laugh, even Timmy laughs, but that’s only because his mommy is laughing. Dayna comes over and tells me she is only kidding, she has always wondered what it would be like to be a nun since she started reading about them. She says she will never survive if she has to live like this much longer. Now that I am bright red from embarrassment, they are all happy. I change the topic and ask which Bibles they are talking about. Sara finally tells me about it.
“Oh, that’s right Jon, you were not yourself when you came back to the garage that night in Rochester. Well Gary and I got nervous about what might be taking you guys so long, so we decided to look around the neighborhood we were in. We found a church that was really beautiful, so we went in to see what it looked like on the inside. There were several rooms, so we checked those out to see if anyone might be living there. In one of the rooms we found several cases of Bibles that were still in the boxes. They all had pages in the front for people to put their family tree in. We also found cases of large Bibles that have room in the front for a very large family to keep their records in. We thought it would be a good idea, and the others agreed, that we should bring some of them back with us to keep a record of our family here. Even if it does look like your family isn’t going to get any bigger anytime soon.”
I think that’s a great idea, many of our family members still remember their families even though it has been quite a while for many since they have seen them. Some of the younger ones like Josh, Isaac, Ben, and Hank had their moms tell them about their families before the war. Those that can write are going to work with those who can’t, at least until they can. There are enough of the smaller Bibles for each family to have one and enough large Bibles for each group to have one. One evening in early April, I am sitting with the children in the living room while the moms are busy putting names in their Bibles. Dayna has been busy all day getting all the information that she could squeeze out of her father. She has been putting all that information in the Bible tonight.
Robin is doing the same except she doesn’t have a father to ask so she has to rely on what her mother told her. Teddy and Kathy, her two oldest children ask her why she doesn’t put their last name in the Bible too. They continue to say that their name is Gorman, just like daddies. She looks at me like she is asking me to help with an answer. I tell her if she would like to put Gorman in the Bible, I would be honored for everyone to know that they are my children. Tammy and Tina tell Melissa that they are my children too. They look at each other and nod their heads in the affirmative. Jerry, Lisa, and Christy go out to the kitchen to watch their mom working on their family Bible. Becky says she is just planning to put her last name in for the children. She says she never did know the children’s fathers last name. It just didn’t seem important at the time. Most of the time you couldn’t be sure that you would even see the sun rise tomorrow. Karen tells them that they are my ‘dopted children, just like her, Kathy, Teddy, Tammy, and Tina so they should just use the same name. That way they would all be sisters and brothers. Becky smiles and says that makes perfect sense to her, if the rest of us don’t mind.
I am back in the living room when Dayna calls in to me asking what my real mothers name was. I am trying to remember when Tina runs in and tells her that their grammas’ name is Diane, and Tammy says grandpas’ name is Jon, just like daddies. Melissa asks them how they know that. They laugh and say they told them their name when they come and play with them. They point to the older children and say that they have seen them too. The older children all admit to seeing them and talking to them, but they think it was in dreams. Tina and Tammy say they weren’t dreaming, we can ask Zeus, he was there every time. Zeus agrees by wagging his tail and barking. Of course, he does that whenever his name is mentioned.
I tell Dayna that makes it unanimous, their names are Jon and Diane Gorman. I also tell her that now that I heard them, I remember that is their names. Dayna is laughing as she writes them down, she asks if I remember the Horton’s names, or should she just call them Gunny and Ma. Again before I can answer, Tina says that is Gramma Anne, Tammy says Grampa Francis, but he doesn’t like gramma to call him that. Dayna is laughing when she writes the names in the Bible. She puts the given names, then in parentheses puts Ma and Gunny. She tells the others what he told me he would do if I ever called him Francis again. Robin, Melissa, and Becky all look up and say it was Dayna who called him Francis, not them. At least the women are having a good time keeping our family trees.
When we go to bed for the night I dream about Gunny and Ma again. This time that other couple who was with them before, is here again. This time they come forward to where I can see them and it is my mom and dad. I am able to hug them and tell them how much I have missed them. They tell me how proud they are of all my children. Gunny tells me I finally did something right, then laughs and tells me how much he enjoys getting to see the children. He and my dad seem to get along well, they argue about nearly everything, but wind up agreeing on just about everything as well. My ma’s just roll their eyes and tell them they will never grow up. They just laugh and ask them what’s wrong with that. When I dream like this I never want to wake up, but I am always glad that I do.
When I get up everyone else is already up, the women are hard at work filling in more of the family trees. Dayna says she had a dream last night where my moms came to her and told her all about our ancestors. She is trying to write it all down before she forgets it. The others had the same dream and are doing the same thing. They keep reminding each other of small things that one or another forgets. It’s a nice spring day so I decide to go out and limp around seeing what kind of mischief I can get into. Everyone I see is working hard. They are pleased to see me walking without the crutch. I couldn’t use two crutches because of the broken arm. I walk to the wheat mill and see that the people working here are from the group we picked up in Rochester. They tell me how much they enjoy living here and how grateful they are to be here. Naturally we are happy to have them living here.
When I get back to the yard, Tim, Gary, Ken, and Billy are watching me come toward them. They tell me it’s about time I get off my butt and do something. We are bantering insults back and forth when Charity comes up with baby Jon, who is one month younger than little Timmy. Tim and Charity refuse to call him Little Jon because of the Robin Hood books. He has a big smile for his uncles and manages to be held by each of us in turn. Charity asks Tim if he mentioned the idea they discussed the other night. Gary and Ken tell her that if it has anything to do with sex, Carrie and Sara have enough ideas of their own. Charity tells them she heard all about that. It’s just a shame that their husbands don’t have any imaginations. Ken and Gary take out a handkerchief and wave it telling her they surrender. Charity takes Jon and heads to our house to visit with Dayna and the other women. She tells Tim to mention the idea they had.
Now we are expecting something bigger than life. Tim says that they were discussing the fact that our families are growing much faster and much larger than anyone expected. So far it is not big news, but none of us can argue with the logic.
“How many houses do you think there are in town where we get most of our supplies, and in the towns and cities that are within say sixty miles of here? I’m not looking for an answer, but we all agree there are probably several thousand, if we count all the towns and cities right? Of course you all remember how much food and other supplies we found in some of the homes we have gone into. Charity and I were talking and we figure there is a whole lot of food sitting in pantries and basements that is only going to go t
o waste, because no one is using it and eventually it will all spoil. Of course there is probably already a large percentage that is spoiled, but if it is in jars we could use them as well.”
We are not saying anything, so Tim throws up his arms and asks us what is wrong with us. Even a bunch of dumb military types should be able to figure out that we could use that food and other things. Billy says he resents that, he has never been in the military. We tell Tim that we think it is a great idea, and that we will thank Charity when we see her, because he is nowhere near smart enough to think of that by himself. We decide to call a family council meeting with the representatives of each group present, and decide how we will accomplish this task. We all agree it should be done and we all agree that we could put our teens to work helping with this project. When we present it to them they are all happy to do it. Naturally there will be adult supervision. We decide to start with the town closest to us and then do the others working outward.
When we brought the last group of forty-five back we didn’t have room for everyone so we went to the next closest farm and cleaned that up for people to live in. There were many volunteers to move there and let the new people live in the more established groups. This all happened when I was out of it, but it’s nice to see our people are willing to help others. We are still in good shape for food supplies, but why let good food go bad when we can use it, especially as we continue growing. The people from up north say that up there this would be a waste of time, because everything froze during the winters unless it was in a well insulated room. We are lucky that is not the case here. It gets cold, but it doesn’t bottom out the thermometer and stay there for weeks at a time.
We start the project on Friday morning. The teens are all upset about having to miss their school time for this project. Yeah right, for some reason when they were all studying at home they loved it, but when we started holding classes in the meeting house, they look for excuses to get out of it. Not all of them, but some, I guess some things will never change. We decide to start on the far side of town and work our way toward home. We are driving through town when Teddy points and tells me there are people at two o’clock. I know he means that he sees them off to our right, but I have to be a smart aleck and tell him that’s impossible, it’s only 8:30. The people are trying to hide, but they are not able to avoid us. When they see the size of the group we have with us they ask if we are the ones with the settlement near here.
We admit that we are, but are curious how they know about us. The leader of the group, if there is one, tells us that they ran into three men driving an open car. The men had on military uniforms. They say they have been praying that it is true because the little ones are about done in from all the walking. One of the girls in the group says they walked from a place called Tennessee. At least that’s what the signs said. They were living in a town over there and were just about out of food and darn near froze to death this past winter. There are ten people in the group, three of those are adults, four are teens, and the other three look to be between six and eight. We tell them they are welcome to join us if they don’t mind working and contributing. They say they are more than willing, in fact they volunteer to help with the project we are on today.
The teens stay and help, as does the one man with the group, the two women and the little children we take back to the farm to rest and get something to eat. We bring sandwiches back for the young people who are working today. Even with as large of a work party as we have we only get about ten percent of the houses checked and emptied of all food and supplies that we can use like jars, lids, rings, pressure cookers, and things like that. Those ten percent filled four large trucks as full as we could get them. We did not take time to check them to make sure all the food is good yet. We will do that as we put it away and distribute it to the groups. I find out when I get home what a bad judge of age I am. Two of the little children in the new group are four and the other is five. One of the women, Shirley, and the man whose name is Mike have one four year old and one five year old, both girls. The other woman, Kim, is the mother of the four year old boy. The teen’s parents passed away so they have been living with the others.
We continue with the process of emptying the houses for the next two weeks. There is now enough food supplies to last our whole group at least a full year even if we don’t get the crops that we have planted and are planning to get into the ground yet. We have continued to look for people who may need the safety of living in a group like ours. There is no shortage of places to look and we have been finding a few every trip. The new farm that was established when we brought the group back from Rochester is catching up with the others quickly. That is as far as getting the buildings painted and yards cleaned up from the deep grass and weeds that have a tendency to overtake any patch of ground that is left unattended for even a short time.
James and Jenna are still amazed at the lack of deterioration on most of the houses, especially anything made of metal. They say the same thing that Tim and I surmised when we first came here. It appears that the radiation from the neutron blasts permeated the surface of the metal and even the wood changing the molecular structure and making it stronger or at least better able to withstand rust and rotting. We have tested the areas we go with a Geiger counter and have found no levels of radiation that would be harmful to us. James says that is consistent with the neutron technology that he studied back where we came from. The radiation from those blasts are extremely powerful and will kill anyone within a fairly large radius depending on the size of the bomb, but unlike the atomic or nuclear radiation it dissipated much quicker, leaving the area habitable much sooner.
That was the whole idea behind that technology, wipe out your enemy, but leave the cities and the usable items virtually undamaged. That way the victor could move in without having to rebuild everything as they did in the wars up to this point. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, everyone had the same idea at the same time. I know Ma and Gunny used to talk about how the Bible says that the world would be cleansed by fire when Jesus comes back for the second time. They as well as many other people I know felt that it might be talking about nuclear war, where all the countries on earth with that technology use them at the same time. All that we have read about that type of war would leave the world uninhabitable for thousands of years. At least for the type of organisms we know, like human beings and the animals that now inhabit the earth. It doesn’t change our lives in any way, but it is nice to try to understand what brought this world to the state that it is now in.
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Our families are growing, not only in size, but in self sufficiency. We are very fortunate that everyone who has joined our groups wants very much to learn everything they can. Thanks to the efforts of Frank, Eric, and Tom, we now have at least a dozen men and young men who can plow the fields, and are good enough with the equipment to cultivate the crops while they are growing. Teddy loves to drive the big plows, and according to Frank, is one of the best even though he is still young. He still hunts with the others when we need meat. We have started canning a lot of the meat when we have excess. That is not often with the size groups that we now have. The topic of being able to replace some of the things we count on is discussed often, with no real solutions. One of the biggest items is the lids we use on every jar of food that we can.
We have been able to find thousands of the lids, rings, and jars, but we know eventually we will run out. It may not be for several years, or even in some of our lifetimes, but we are thinking about what will happen as our civilization grows. In many ways we are like the pioneers that started this country. But what scares those of us that have seen the technology that the world had, is how we will ever get back to even the level of the 1960’s, much less the level we knew back in our world. I guess we will just have to have faith that people will rise to the occasion and actually make the world better than it was. Perhaps all the new technology made people lazy, and caused them to forget what is important in life, each oth
er. I’ll get off my soap box for now, it’s just that I can’t help but wonder sometimes.
We are continuing to build homes and to setup the prefab homes. Now that I have been declared fit to work again by Doc Betty, I am spending my days either working at the mill cutting lumber, or helping build or setup homes at the different groups. Apparently, while I was injured and unable to travel the others found several locations where the prefabricated homes were being stored. We have a crew of about 30 men and women who are getting very efficient at putting these in place and getting everything hooked up. There is an abundance of building materials in pretty much every town or city we have ever gone to.
Between Ken, Gary, Sara, James, and Jenna, they have taught our team how to do the electrical and plumbing hookups required to get the homes functional. When we first started putting the homes in place, it took us close to a month to get it ready to be lived in. Now they can get one of the homes ready to be lived in, in just about a week. We run all of our electrical wires underground, so that we are less vulnerable to attack. We have continued to put the system of tunnels between the homes as well. I had a dream the other night that we were attacked, and the only thing that saved us, was being able to get behind our attackers by having a tunnel that ran out into the woods. We all feel that the perfect place to have a tunnel come out in the woods is into a shed we built out there by the orchards, to keep the tools we use out there.
2nd Earth 2: Emplacement Page 12
