The Most Miserable Winter, page 10
part #14 of Alone Series
“Luke has always been a very religious person, though his beliefs don’t always jive with the Baptist minister’s.
“Years ago he decided to take the Bible literally, and he came to believe that God never intended for man to wear clothes.
“Luke believes that God meant for man to be as naked and free as every other animal. He read in the Bible that in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve were as naked as jaybirds but they felt no shame. It wasn’t until they ate the forbidden fruit and committed the first sin that they felt shame and made an effort to cover up.
“He decided that they covered themselves as a direct result of sinning, and committed a second slight against God’s plan by covering themselves.
“It was at that moment he decided he would follow God’s original plan and be like every other creature on earth. He stopped wearing clothing completely.
“Well, as you can imagine, that caused a bit of a stir around town.
“The town kept locking him up for running around naked, even after they determined his heart was pure and it wasn’t a sexual thing with him.
“See, in addition to being very strong willed, Luke is also very very stubborn. As he saw it, he was right and everybody else was wrong. He carried his Bible everywhere he went and tried to educate people to his understanding of what it meant.
“I heard he was arrested almost two hundred times. And each time the judge would let him out of jail the next morning and send him home, just as naked as he was when he was locked up.
“Finally the ACLU caught wind of it and came in and interviewed Luke. They had a psychiatrist talk to him too. And they concluded he was perfectly sane and perfectly entitled to his religious beliefs.
“Word got around town that the ACLU offered to represent him in a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the town, and everybody pretty much agreed he’d win.
“Luke didn’t want to sue. He knew that would bankrupt the town and his friends and neighbors would have to pay a lot more in taxes.
“He went to the town council, where he stood in front of them and asked them to work out some kind of compromise.
“Now mind you, Dave, I’ve been to a lot of town council meetings in my time. There are never more than a handful of people there, regardless of the subject on the agenda.
“But the day Luke stood in front of them with his wiener hanging out for all the world to see, it was standing room only. The gallery was full of the self-righteous, the pretentious and the hypocritical. I understand almost every woman in town was there. Because they were interested in the case, they all claimed.
“Yeah. In a pig’s eye.”
Dave chuckled.
“They were interested, all right. But it wasn’t in the case.
“Anyway, Luke stayed until they hammered out a compromise. All he wanted was the freedom to walk around his town, without having to compromise his religious beliefs.
“So they gave him three streets. The one he lives on for a mile each way, and the one on either side of him for the same mile.
“None of his neighbors had any problem with it, because they knew Luke and knew he was a good and Godly man. So they all agreed to it.
“Now, anytime someone new moves to town, they’re told by the town counsel that if they purchase a house on North Main, North Pecan or North Cypress streets, they’ll have to sign an agreement stating they have no problem with a naked man walking up and down their street.”
“Did that fix the problem?”
“Yes, it did. And I’d like for you to meet Luke before you leave town, Dave. You’ll like him. He’s a nice guy. But we’ll do that on a day when Beth isn’t with us.”
“Good idea.”
Chapter 29
At Mrs. Montgomery’s boarding house the trio entered through the kitchen. Lilly greeted the head cook, a man by the name of Riley Most.
She plopped her bag on a prep table and said, “I told Mrs. M I’d trade you these for three meals in the dining room and two to go.”
He peeked inside the bag and said grumpily, “I suppose it would have been too much to pluck the feathers first.”
“And then I suppose you’d want me to cut them up and cook them for you too?”
“Oh, don’t get all bent out of shape. I was just teasin’.”
“I know. If I thought you were serious I’d have slapped you upside the head for being insolent.”
The old cook winked at Dave and said, “She’s a feisty one, she is.”
“So I’m beginning to see.”
“That’s okay, though. It’s good for women these days to be a little feisty and mean. Women who don’t stand up for themselves get taken advantage of.
“House special today is chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes with green beans. If that’ll suit you I’ll start ‘em cookin’ right now. If you want anything else there’s menus on the tables.”
Dave’s mouth started watering as soon as he heard the words “chicken fried steak.” He was getting tired of Ramen noodles and catfish.
“That’ll suit me just fine,” he said. He looked at Beth, who nodded her little head vigorously up and down.
“Make it three,” Lilly said while kissing the cook on the cheek so he knew she wasn’t mad at him.
He blushed and smiled at the same time. He was pushing seventy, and his days of getting kisses from pretty thirty year-old women were pretty much gone now.
“What about the two to go?”
“Might as well make ‘em all the same. We haven’t had steak of any kind in months.”
“You may decide never to leave Blanco after you’ve had Riley’s chicken fried,” Lilly said. “Best cooked steak in Texas, guaranteed.”
Riley smiled and blushed again.
Compliments were all well and good, but he liked the kiss better.
He knew better than to expect another one, though, so he reached inside a refrigerator and threw five chopped steaks onto his batter table.
Lilly led her guests into the dining room to find a place to sit.
While Dave and Beth got comfortable Lilly ran off to find Mrs. Montgomery.
Dave found himself mesmerized by a bit of activity on the far side of the dining room.
A large whiteboard, perhaps two feet by three, hung on a wall next to an exterior doorway.
Dave couldn’t make out what was written on the board.
It wasn’t that his vision was poor, for Dave had excellent eyesight.
No, it was that there were half a dozen other diners and guests gathered around the board, clamoring to read whatever was on it.
Dave’s curiosity was piqued.
“Wait right here, will you, Peanut? I’m gonna go and find out what’s so darned interesting over there.”
But he never got the chance.
Dave was halfway out of his chair when Lilly made it back to the table with the owner of the establishment, Mrs. Montgomery.
She introduced them, and Mrs. Montgomery solved the mystery for him.
“I saw you headed over to read today’s news,” she said. “It’s the highlight of the day around here. It’s only been posted for a few minutes.”
“I see,” Dave said. “I guess Blanco must be an interesting place to have so much news.”
“Oh, it’s not local news, Mr. Spear. It’s the national headlines, and a bit of international news to boot.”
“National news? But how did you…”
Chapter 30
“That’s right, you’ve been out of touch over the last few months, gallivanting all over the country,” Lilly said.
Dave smiled. Gallivanting was a word his father used often. He hadn’t heard the term in many years. From the puzzled look on Beth’s little face, she’d never heard it at all.
He leaned over and whispered, “It means running all over the place doing fun things and goofing off.”
Beth got a bit huffy at the implication they’d been having fun and she told Lilly so.
“Na uh. We haven’t had a lick of fun since we left San Antonio a year and a half ago. It’s been one big pile of horse poop after another.”
Beth had a very odd way of expressing herself, yet never failed to make her point.
“You’re absolutely right,” Lilly said. “Perhaps a better term would have been having adventures.”
Beth smiled. That was much better.
Mrs. Montgomery explained.
“The federal government has furnished each town with a population greater than four hundred people with a ham radio. The purpose is to keep all citizens abreast of the current news, not only in the country but all over the world.”
Dave interrupted her long enough to let out a long, low whistle.
“Sorry. I was just thinking, that’s a heck of a lot of ham radios. I wonder where they got them all.”
“They planned ahead, expecting that eventually the solar storms would happen and we’d have a blackout. They just didn’t know when. But the United States Army stockpiled almost ten thousand of them in protected bunkers at Red River Army Depot in south Texas.
“Anyway, they just showed up in a truck one day and asked to see the mayor, and asked the mayor to give it to somebody reliable. They were to tune in every day at twelve noon and to write down all the headlines broadcast from Armed Forces Network, the military’s radio system.
“I happened to be at city hall that day when the mayor and the city council were talking about hiring someone to come in each day just to listen to the broadcast.
“I told them that’s foolish.
“I told the mayor to let me have the radio. That I could set it up in the study and somebody would be here each and every day to listen to the broadcast and take notes. There was no need to hire somebody for something we could do for free.
“I didn’t tell the mayor I had an ulterior motive, though. You see, for some time I’d been thinking about buying such a radio on the black market for my guests to use. They’re very hard to come by, you see, because only a handful of preppers in the area thought to protect them from the EMPs. Most of them are trashed and don’t work at all. The ones that do work are going for a thousand blue dollars or more.
“So while we’re doing the town a favor and monitoring the news, we’re benefiting as well. Anyone in town can come by here and use the radio to talk to friends and relatives far away. As long as everybody’s off ten minutes prior to the news broadcast.”
“But what kind of news alerts are they broadcasting?”
“Oh, most of it’s routine stuff. The status of various government programs. Information about new plants coming on line and best practices, that kind of stuff.”
“Best practices?”
“Like if a city has a really great idea to fight crime or grow food or purify water… anything, really. If one city is able to solve a problem and it’s working really well, the government will share their plan with everybody else. So that everybody can benefit from their idea.”
“What we do is have anybody who wants to listen in on the newscast.
“Then they take the whiteboard and put the abbreviated notes on the board. So that anybody who comes in throughout the day and the next morning can read about what’s going on in the world.”
Talk turned away from the daily newscast and to local gossip, which didn’t much interest Dave because he only knew six of Blanco’s residents.
He made a mental note to stop and read the whiteboard on the way out.
Mrs. Montgomery left to tend to her other guests right about the same time Riley brought out their plates.
Dave took a bite and thought he’d fallen asleep and woke up in heaven.
“This is, without a doubt, the best steak I’ve ever eaten,” he said.
“Told you,” Lilly shot back with no hesitation at all.
By the end of the meal Dave felt he knew everyone in town.
He’d likely never lay eyes on or shake hands with most of them. But he knew their quirks, their hobbies, their stations in life and their personal situations: which ones had lost loved ones, which were thriving and which were barely hanging on.
“You’re just a walking talking encyclopedia of knowledge,” he said to Lilly.
It wasn’t a slam. It was a compliment. She had a mind like a steel trap which captured and held on tightly to any bit of information which happened along.
Just in case she might need it someday.
Most of it was worthless knowledge, sure.
But some of it had come in very handy.
“When Red’s house blew up she was hurt bad, and I was the first one there. All of a sudden I was performing CPR on her, then applying splints and pushing on pressure points. I had no idea how I knew those things.
“Then later I remembered I had taken a Red Cross first aid class in high school, many years ago. I thought I’d forgotten it all, and it came back to me when I needed it.”
“The mind is a wonderful and amazing thing.”
“Yes indeed. Hey Dave, would you guys mind walking back yourselves? I see an old friend I haven’t seen in years and I’d like to do some catching up with her.”
“Sure, that’s not a problem at all.”
“Think you can find your way back?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you back at the house.”
Chapter 31
Riley, the cook, had been in the business for a very long time. Not only were his culinary talents superb, so was his timing. He knew just when to start prepping Dave’s to-go orders to have them ready about the same time Dave and Beth finished devouring their own meals.
Beth, though just a squirt of a girl only a quarter of Dave’s size, was able to finish the same sized proportions.
“I was hoping you’d have some of it left over,” he said as he stuck out his lower lip and pretended to pout.
“Sorry, Dad. I was gonna save you some, but it was just too good. Maybe Lindsey won’t finish all of hers.”
“Are you kidding? Have you been watching how much Lindsey eats these days? A horse and two large hogs have nothing on your sister.”
Beth giggled.
“You got that right. I don’t know where she puts it all.”
“Honey… don’t tell her I said that. About the horse and the hogs, I mean.”
“Don’t worry, Dad. Even though I get mad enough to rip her hair out sometimes, I still don’t want to hurt her feelings.”
“Atta girl. Wanna go see what’s going on in the world before we head home?”
“Sure. But let’s not take too long. I know Mom and Lind are getting hungry too.”
Dave hugged his youngest.
Once upon a time she only thought of one person in the world: herself.
Her dog Shadow got second and last priority until he passed away not long before the blackout.
He saw her concern for her sister as a good thing.
It meant she was growing up.
And as much as he’d have loved to have finished her dinner for her, he was even more glad she was thinking of others first.
As it turned out, the information on the white board was fascinating indeed.
Like print newspapers, back when cities had such things, each bullet statement on the board started with the city where the news originated.
And it was all over the place.
The top item was easy to understand.
OKLAHOMA CITY, OK – Second battery plant now in full operation. Expects output of 800 batteries per day by end of month.
Word had gotten around that mechanics were pulling the alternators, generators and ignitions from older models of cars and pickups, ripping out the fried copper guts and rebuilding them in massive numbers.
Then they were reinstalling them in the same vehicles, replacing all the fuses with intact fuses which were in boxes on auto parts shelves and therefore not damaged by the EMPs.
Once done, the vehicles merely needed a working battery to operate as good as new.
The batteries were the missing pieces of the puzzle, and were now rolling off the assembly line.
A man standing next to Dave remarked, “I’ve got my ’63 Ford Galaxie and my ’67 Chevy Impala raring to go. Once we start getting some batteries in here we’ll be on wheels again.”
Another man said, “The streets will look like they did back in the 1960s with all the older cars. But heck, I liked those days better anyway. They were simpler and everybody got along.”
That comment drew the agreement of several others in the room. One called out, “Amen, brother. Amen to that.”
The second item on the news brief was puzzling to Dave.
WASHINGTON D.C. – FEMA agronomists to visit each city/town in Texas by end of month. If your city gets missed contact FEMA on the first day of November.
Dave had to ask the “Amen brother” man what it meant.
“FEMA’s been sending agronomists around every ninety days or so to determine what our planting needs are.”
“What in heck is an agronomist?”
“An agricultural guy. A plant specialist. See, somebody in government got it right this time. Somebody saw the blackout coming far ahead of time and started making plans early.
“They started putting stuff aside. Not just vehicles and ham radios and dried foods by the millions of tons.
“But also seeds. Millions of packets of seeds.
“Every three months they come around to find out what plants we’re growing and which ones are succeeding and which ones are failing.
“They give us new packets of seeds to try for the ones which failed, and give us instructions on how to plant and care for them. That way we can grow all the crops which are suitable for the area in big enough quantities to feed everybody in town as well as Blanco County.”
“But winter’s coming up. Nobody’s gonna do any planting anytime soon.”
“I reckon they’ll do what they did last year. They’ll give us the starter kits and tell us how to plant them, but they’ll tell us not to plant them until we get the word on the newscast that it’s warm enough.”
“Starter kits?”
