by T J Reeder
I needed to put out the word for a long goose necked flat bed trailer so I got that done and within a mater of hours the call came in from Fort Navajo that they had one located and could bring it up to us.
But the girls decided they wanted to go visit the folks at the Fort and see what goodies they might run off with. So now we were going West and North before we went South and East. Makes perfect sense. Another thing is that we can get logs for the beams closer, but no, not Oak or cedar, why it matters I’ve no idea except the builder and the wives have decided so there it is.
I’m just the driver. Just driving Miz Sandy and Miz beth and Miz May, could be a movie, maybe I can learn to shuffle along saying “Yazum” missie. Yea, that sounds racist? No, sounds like truth. I loved that movie! But I’m old.
So we loaded the great white Whale with all the stuff a family needs for an extended road trip.
Weapons…check
Ammo…check
More ammo…check
Grenades…check
Food…check
Extra fuel… check
Camping gear…check
I think we had it, our BOB’s had clothing and other personal stuff.
But we would be stopping back here before we headed out to pack better for a more extended trip.
Truck loaded, girls high carding for the front seat, Beth wins, I wonder how they stacked the deck to get that done. Sandy and May have become very protective of Beth which is understandable but they carry it too far.
I swear they wanna hold her hand in the bathroom. She just smiles and lets them do as they will, she’s the most patient and calm of the three.
We haven’t been to the Fort in a while and all want to see what goodies the hunters have rounded up, they send out armed groups of salvagers who gather whatever might be useful and not likely to be produced again for a good while. So much stuff will spoil as time goes by so they just gather it and store it away for later use, even if it’s something not needed at the moment.
We made good time and got there before dinner where we found they had killed the fatted calf so to speak and put on a feast in our honor, or at least that’s the excuse. All’s well in the prison, everything running as it should be, there are now cargo containers neatly laid out and numbered to correspond to a list.
They are doing an outstanding job! I seldom hear from any of them since they are busy and don’t feel the need to make reports, they did at first but I stopped that. Just do what you do and all will be well.
We rolled thru the gate into the court yard, ours was the only vehicle inside the prison, the rest were in a motor pool area behind a tall fence and under the guns of the guard towers which remain manned 24/7 motion sensor lights everywhere outside. Plus a roving patrol with guard dogs. They take their salvaging very serious and don’t plan to get salvaged themselves. After we unloaded we were greeted by, well everybody. Hell I didn’t know 90 percent of them but they all knew me and the girls knew most of them. After the hand shaking and such we were lead to the chow hall where the cafeteria style serving was laid on. I won’t even go into the whole thing, there was plenty of everything.
I grabbed a slab of beef that was charred on the outside and bleeding from the inside, a baked spud with butter and some hot rolls and headed for a table. The girls took some of everything in small servings.
My steak was perfect, except for the forks that kept stabbing bites on my tray. I finally said why? With an entire cow over there aren’t you moochs eating your own steaks? Can you by now guess their answer?
“Well, because your’s looks so good”
“And you cut it into perfect bites”
“Plus we want you to know we like how you take care of us”
All delivered with sweet smiles…what bullshit.
They aren’t even acting embarrassed,, nope just laughing and chattering among themselves. I look up and see one of the cooks heading our way and he’s got a large tray with cut up steak on it which he places in front of them. They give him a big smile and dig in, when I reach for a bite one of them growled at me I swear. But then they all laughed and piled a bunch on my trey. God it’s like living on a strange planet and not knowing the rules of the native species.
All in all it was a great meal, what I got of mine, desert was pie and cake and god love them real ice cream, I needed to know how they pulled that off. I knew from their reaction that the girls would have the head cook backed into a corner getting all the facts, they do love ice cream. And it is hard to come by.
We settled down and just visited with everybody who came by, all wanted to hear about the chase and end of the so called El Gato, so I told it as it was then the girls got into it telling it from their perspective which sounded way more wild then mine.
They were all thrilled to hear Beth’s with child as they called it, I guess “knocked up” went out of style. I just got glared at by the two she cats who guard the future ruler of all things large and small. They argue over it, May wants a boy, Sandy wants a girl, I just want a healthy baby, Beth just wants us all happy. She smiles at me.
When we told about the ambush and my one point landing on my head and Beth’s wounds the women all clucked over her, the guys were agast about the STI being ruined! I laughed at that and got glared at by every female in the room but Beth. She agreed with me!.
Finally we headed off to our bed room which the folks here keep just for us and that’s just damn nice but then there are a lot of small bed rooms here. I think they call them studio apartments, the former tenants referred to them as cells.
We passed a very peaceful night, I know I slept like a log. I woke up to Beth and May gone and Sandy laying beside me smiling, I held her close and told her I missed her lately. She said her and May were just giving Beth time to really settle into the strange arrangement. I said I understood that but I didn’t like missing my number one wife, that got a really nice response and we almost missed breakfast.
We gotto the mess hall and were greeted with two wives bouncing like balls, I worried about Beth getting too excited but was told to zip it. Beth slid a box to me and I saw the STI logo on it, in the box was a beautiful handgun, An STI Legend in 40 S&W, not a 10mm but close since a 40 is a sawed off 10mm.
The hunters had found a bunch of top dollar weapons in a gun safe in a burned out store but the safe was fine. They heard about Beth’s 10mm stopping a bullet and saving her life and of course that the gun was trashed so they had dug thru the piles of gun looking for something to give her, this was at least a $3000.00 gun before the lights went out, now it was a $10,000 gun because when would somebody be making them again? But then I remembered STI was in Texas!
I figured they might just be in business still. But in the meantime Beth has an almost 10 mm which is cool because it comes with mags that hold from between 15 up to 23 rounds and that’s not to be sneezed at. They had a stack of mags to go with it and several thousand rounds of ammo which included everything from FMJ to Flying Ashtrays ( big hollow points) And it fit her shoulder holster just fine, maybe a bit snug but we can wet it down and let it dry around the gun. She was thrilled and asked them if they had any Barretts which got a sad no. She smiled and said you do now!! I swear those ol boys were doing the happy feet dance over a damn gun.
But since Beth had five of them I figured that left one for each of us so god save anybody trying to get at us from across the lake!! Or anywhere else since we could see for miles up there on top of the new house or would be able to when it had the roof on it.
Beth wanted to shoot her new toy so we all headed out to the Fort range where she spent a few minutes sighting it in and then went to work on the Silhouette targets and was really ripping them up, after the first magazine full she smiled really big and said “ I’m faster because of less recoil”! and more accurate.
We all agreed with that. Of course “they” had to get in on it so pretty soon they were all piling up the empty brass but the range boss said not to worry because they were
set up with the best of Dillon’s wonder machines. Also they said before we left they would put some ammo in the truck for the 40. I figured we probably had more then they did but they were gifting Beth so why say anything.
Even the girls can get tired of shooting, it takes a while but they managed to realize they were starving, I reminded them we ate just before coming to the range, the reply in triplicate was “ And your point would be???” We went to eat.
When we were done we took a tour of the “Vaults” Meaning the isolation cells, where the good stuff was piled. I still get a laugh walking past cells stacked with gold then silver and on and on, doors not locked and nobody gives a shit. There are cells filled with works of art, books by the many thousands, these are in some order and you could find what your looking for but it might be in a box under five more boxes.
There was a cell just for dvd’s loaded with all mans knowledge or at least a great deal of it, as well as machines to use to study them, all checked out and working. Nothing frivolous down here, this was the stuff that would be of the most use in rebuilding if and when we started. If and when somebody really wanted to. Right now it would be damned hard to find anybody in our area interested in going back to the “good old days”.
After the tour of as sandy calls it “ king Sillymons mines” we headed up and out to the sunshine. We met with the head “accountant” he who knows where all the skeletons are stashed. He knew we wanted to use a large gooseneck trailer, when he asked what we were doing I explained about the big house and the builders wanting beams so the trip to Texas to get big Oak or Cedar logs.
With the happy smile of a man who loves his work he clapped his hands and headed for his log books and after swishing pages and pages he let out a loud “ AH HA!! And follow me!!
We headed out to a golf cart and piled into two of them, Sandy and May of course fighting over who got to drive, Beth and I got in with Mr. Inventory as I think of him and off we went, it wasn’t long before the other cart passed us with May driving and both laughing manically, I swear they had repressed childhoods, Beth was kind of squirming so I asked Mr. Inventory to toot his horn which got their attention, we pulled up and I said ok baby there ya go, and with a laugh Beth was gone over to the dark side, I yelled “BABY!!” and got a one finger wave from two of them and a smile from one.
Wilber the gate keeper which sounds better then Mr. Inventory said “ my they sure are frisky” I had to laugh at the understatement of the century. Being a book worm he didn’t really know much of what we were doing out in the world and I think didn’t want to.
He did ask if it was true that we took a walk thru the Museum of Natural History before we blew it up? Hmm did I detect something testy in that?
So I told him all about the whole thing and he was relieved that we didn’t blow it up. I asked where he heard that, he said two of the ladies with me were talking about it at breakfast, I shook my head.
Sandy and May torturing the poor geek, I would have a talk with them later, wasted air but one has to try to reel in ones rowdy children, shit what did I need a baby for? I can’t keep two small ladies under control, at least they were almost house broke. Maybe the baby would bring them to heel ( laughter??)
We finally got to the container with the right number on the door ( all at 2 mph I might add, lucky girls) ( Sucker I hear in my head) sigh.
When it was opened there was a shiny new something , it looked very complicated and heavy, I said ok, very nice!! What is it. Mr. whipple said well it’s supposed to be a portable saw mill! Now I took a big interest and crawled in and over and sure as shit there was a big saw blade thingie, I crawled out and said “I want it!!” How do we move it?
The girls come sliding up in a cloud of dust and they were covered with it and laughing like crazy, how anybody could get a golf cart to move fast enough to raise dust is beyond me, after it cleared I see Mrs. Delicate mommy to be is driving and grinning biggest. Mr. Whipple was saying “Oh my, Oh my over and over and wringing his hands.
They saw bright shiny colors and were all over the saw for a few minutes until they realized it wasn’t something to shoot or blow shit up with and came out asking why we needed it, I said well how would you square 20 foot trees into beams? That got some interest but not as much as if it would blow the trees down. I went wrong with them someplace. How can I raise a baby when I can’t raise my wives? They all hugged me and said it’s ok daddy we will be good. Bullshit.
Mr. Whipple said we could load the whole container on the trailer and haul it that way, cool, how do we pick it up? He did his “ AH HA!!” thing and said come along and we made a slow trip to the main storage center where he found two guys and said we needed the big gooseneck trailer and container number something on it, they said “yes sir!! We will jump right on it!!
Mr. Whipple said he needed to get back to his office and since we seemed to have our own cart he would leave us to our business, as he rolled away I looked at the two and said “ yes sir? Right away sir?”
They laughed and said he’s really a lost person, he was a bean counter for a Forbes 500 company and was never suited to survive, but we found him in one of the places we were mining and brought him home, he needed a job so he undertook handling inventory of all this shit and really had done a great job, so we just give him a moral boost every chance we get, now we all laughed but I was glad we had these kind of people in our huge extended family.
They said they could mount a gooseneck ball in the truck and load the container and we could leave tomorrow if we wanted to. But in the meantime we were welcome to look around and see what else we might need or want. So I gave them the Dodge keys then remembered Walker who was tied up so Sandy took off with the cart and returned with the mutt…oh yes, the mutt that saved our lives.
So I scratched his ears which worried him since I was being good to him but he decided I was his newest bestest friend who needed a lick in in the face, gonna be a short friendship at this rate.
The girls poked me and said be good he loves you!! I pointed out that they loved me but didn’t lick my face. Wrong thing to say when sitting in a golf cart.
When they got done I was all slobbers. And they were laughing their asses off.
We took off on an unguided tour of the place and I swear they had at least 10 of everything ever built! I guess once they got into hauling stuff off they couldn’t stop. There was a vehicle parking area that looked like a giant car dealership.
All diesels it looked like but buried in the mess was a Jeep, a forest green Jeep, now that was strange so I said stop and after almost being tossed thru the non windshield I got out and walked over to it and saw it was new but what was it doing here?
I popped the hood and low and behold there was a diesel engine! Now I never seen a Jeep with a diesel, I know they had made them but they didn’t seem to go over or something. At any rate here was one and it said Turbo on it. I think it may have been a special order, complete with roll cage and racing harness and was looking wild, I want it! I looked to see if the keys were in it and they were, I checked the fluids, all good and hit the starter but of course it didn’t start, I looked and saw the battery was disconnected.
We headed back to the place where we found the two guys and they were already at work on the truck, I asked about the jeep and they only knew it was brought in about a month ago and parked, I said I wanted it and who did I need to talk to? They said shit John, you’re the boss, the General, take it. I said oh bullshit, I’m one of the working stiffs, they both laughed and said if you say so boss. The girls laughed.
I asked for some jumpers and headed back to get it running and it fired up right away, after it ran for a bit I backed the golf cart out of the way and watched my new toy heading off with three wild cats in it screaming like kids.
I drove the cart back to the two guys who laughed and said shit John didn’t you see that coming? I had to admit I didn’t and should have. One of the men said they would be along shortly because the jeep only ha
d a couple of gallons of fuel in it and sure nuff here they come like bats out of hell with my pregnant wife number three in the damn thing, and of course guess who was driving?.. shit.
But I had to smile they are so much fun and I had such high hopes in Beth to be a shining example of lady hood. But I think she’s having fun now because in a short while she will be forced to slow down a lot. I guess we will all be slowing down ( I hear laughter)
Beth scooted over when May got in back with Sandy so I could drive. And wouldn’t you know it, the damn seat won’t go back anymore and my knees are in danger of bashing the dash, but it is fun to drive! And I hear from the rear two low talking voices planning on how to mount a machinegun on the roll bar. I know I should have tried harder to raise them right, but I failed someplace.
By the time I got back to the shop I knew one thing for sure, the girls had a new toy. And from the back I hear high fives and giggles, beat again. They all leaned over and hugged me and said thank you daddy for the new shiny!!..
To make things worse one of the ol boys said, well did you find out why you seen soccer moms driving these things? Big men don’t fit well huh? I flipped them off to loud laughter.
