The Most Miserable Winter, page 7
part #14 of Alone Series
“Every week they deliver so many dollars to each city in America. The amount varies according to the population of each place on the last census and is considered FEMA relief aid.
“They depend on each city and town to distribute it however they see fit. And once there’s enough blue money in circulation they will crunch their numbers and assign a standard value to it.
“Once that happens, sometime next year, they say, we can all start using banks again because everybody’s blue dollars will be worth the same. Until then it’s worth as much as you can barter it for. A blue dollar might be worth one tomato in Sacramento right now and four tomatoes in Oklahoma City. But once they establish an official value it’ll be the same everywhere.
“The city of Blanco gets eighteen thousand blue dollars every week and it passes it out into circulation. It may use some to buy heating oil for Mrs. Smith and others to order a truck from Mason Mechanical.”
“Who is Mason Mechanical?”
“Not who, but what. Mason Mechanical is a company in Austin which is taking old trucks and fixing them so they run again. Old trucks, you see, didn’t have all the fancy electronic parts that newer trucks had. They had just a few components. Mason Mechanical rebuilds the starters and alternators and a few other things so the older trucks can be used again, and then sells the trucks to cities and counties.
“The problem is it’s a very slow process. There’s a waiting list of about six months for each vehicle. But they’re paid for with blue money, and that helps get more blue money into circulation.”
The light bulb in little Beth’s head was starting to grow brighter.
She was starting to understand the reason the United States had switched to blue money and its plans to restart the economy.
But that still left another of her big questions.
“But what about the chits?”
Chapter 19
“Well, the chits come into play because Blanco only gets eighteen thousand blue dollars per week.
“And that just isn’t enough to run a city, even one as small as Blanco.
“Remember I told you that one of the ways the town council was helping everyone recover was with the block coordinator program?”
“Yes. But you said that wasn’t the only program they set up.”
“Right.
“The Baptist minister’s son, Joey Feeley, went to college several years ago and got a degree in economics. He’s a pretty smart fella.
“He suggested to the city leaders that they let him set up a commercial diner to help feed the people who didn’t have the skills to hunt or fish or raise crops. And the people who ate there could pay for their meals in other ways.
“For example, if one of our residents owned a ranch, he could donate a cow and a pig every month to the diner. He could get so many chits from the city in exchange for his donation.
“It takes labor to run a ranch, so eight other residents each go out to the ranch every day and work for three hours each to help the rancher with his chores.
“In exchange for their work, the rancher gives each of the men two chits, which they can exchange for two meals at the diner.
“If one of those men has children or family at home he needs to feed, he might work extra hours to get additional chits.
“The same works for hunters who donate their game to the co-op. They might need help building a barn or cutting down firewood, or… anything, really. They trade a deer carcass for chits which they pay to someone for helping them with their own projects.
“A farmer might need help planting or bringing in his harvest. Since his tractor and harvester no longer work, all the work has to be done by hand now, remember. The city might need help from the Lucas brothers in moving Mrs. Smith’s furniture. All of it is paid in chits, which are exchanged at Joey’s Co-op Diner for meals.
“And of course, the city has a certain number of folks who are too old or frail to work. They get their chits for free as part of FEMA’s disaster relief program.
“That way everybody gets to eat.”
“So, nobody is really working to make money any more? They’re just working so they can eat?”
“Essentially so.
“Besides Joey’s, Blanco only has one other business in operation, and that’s Mrs. Montgomery’s boarding house.
“Since the blackout she’s accepted gold and silver for boarding and for meals. But she hasn’t operated to make a profit. Every bit of precious metals she’s brought in has gone out to pay for livestock from area ranchers and produce from area farmers.
“And, of course, things she needs to operate like fuel for her generators and heating oil and stuff like that.”
“How does she pay her help?”
“She only has four employees now and two of them are related to her. All four of them work eight hours a day in exchange for room and board.
“One of them is a good friend of mine. Haley Lugo. We went to school together along with Red. They called us the three amigos back then, because we hung out together and because Haley knew how to speak Spanish. She taught Red and me to speak it too, but mine’s pretty rusty now.
“Anyway, Haley says she doesn’t mind working for her keep. They’ve got all the chores divided equally so that she never has to work more than eight hours a day, and she says having a place to live that’s free from marauders and three hot meals a day is worth the hours she puts in.
“She still has her apartment in town, and she can go there whenever she needs new books to read or to change out her spring clothes for summer clothes or whatever. But other than that she’s happy as a pig in mud to live there with Mrs. Montgomery.”
“You said Mrs. Montgomery’s boarding house is safe from marauders?”
“About as safe as any house can be. Most of her boarders are cowboys who work the area ranches. At any given time there are half a dozen or more hanging out on the front porch and another half dozen in the den, watching her collection of John Wayne western movies.
“And these are working cowboys, not show cowboys. These are the kind who know how to wrangle cattle and guard them from poachers.
“Every one of them is carrying a pistol and has a rifle in his room where he can easily get it.
“So far, Mrs. Montgomery’s is one of the few residences between here and Austin which has never been attacked, never been overrun, never been burglarized.
“Would you like to go meet Mrs. Montgomery?”
“Yes. But can we eat first? I’m starving.”
Lilly laughed.
“Of course, silly girl. We’ll eat and make sure your mom and your sister have everything they need for an hour or two.
“That way if your father wants to come with us he can. I’m sure he’ll want to meet Mrs. Montgomery too. He said something about wanting to earn his keep while he’s here. Maybe he can do some hunting or fishing and donate his haul to Mrs. Montgomery’s or to Joey’s.”
“Oh, my daddy is an excellent hunter.
“He’s a great fisherman too. I always tell him he’s not quite as good as me, but he really is. Don’t tell him I told you that, because I don’t think he knows it.
“I’d be even better except I hate to bait my own hooks.”
“Oh, I don’t blame you, girlfriend. I’ve been fishing for years and I still hate baiting my hooks.”
“I’ve only been doing it for a little while. Maybe six months before the blackout I made a deal with Daddy. I told him I’d start baiting my own hooks if he didn’t make me help him clean the fish anymore.”
“I don’t blame you for that either. I’ve never enjoyed cleaning fish. Would you like to go fishing with me sometime?”
“Sure I would.”
“It’s a date then. Now, go and tell everybody to wash their hands and come eat. Everybody except your mom and Lindsey. Tell them to stay put and we’ll bring their plates to them.”
Chapter 20
After everyone had their fill, Lilly went to the back yard and checked her smoker.
Beth tagged along.
“It smells good out here. What’s in there?”
“A couple of squirrels, but mostly rabbit.”
“Oh. We had rabbits too. In San Antonio. Dad said not to view them as pets because we might have to eat them someday. But we named them and played with them anyway.”
A sad look came over her face.
“What’s the matter, honey?”
“I haven’t thought about them in a long time. Now that Dad left San Antonio too, I suppose they’ve all died by now.”
“Well, maybe, maybe not. Rabbits are critters that’ll eat pretty much anything green. And in the winter they can survive on browned plants and grasses that grow dormant in the cold but which still contain most of the nutrients they need. And they burrow underground and eat live roots all year round. They get most of the water they need from the roots if there’s no rainwater around.
“So they might just surprise you. They might be doing well and waiting for you to come back so they can give you a hard time about leaving them.”
“We were only supposed to be gone for a week. We went up there for a wedding, and then we were supposed to come right back.”
“Even the best laid plans sometimes go awry.”
“Okay, but… huh?”
“It’s an old saying. It means that we never know what fate might bring us. Sometimes even the simplest things change our lives forever.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“That’s one example. Another is when your father chose this town to visit when he needed a part for his vehicle.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when he chose this town he met up with John Savage and his band of thugs.
“They were very bad men, and they beat him with baseball bats. They hurt him very badly.
“Red happened to see them and made them stop. Then she took your father to a safe place and treated his wounds, and they became good friends.
“Now that you’ve all come to Blanco to stay while your mom and sister heal, it’s giving all of us a chance to become friends as well.
“But if he’d chosen another town to look for his part it never would have happened, because he never would have stumbled across John Savage and gotten assaulted.
“Also, if Red hadn’t been there, she wouldn’t have stopped Savage’s men and they likely would have kept beating your daddy until they killed him.
“Also, if Red hadn’t known a lot about nursing and wounds, even if your daddy got away from Savage he probably would have died from his injuries.
“So I guess you could say that fate brought you and me together so we could become good friends and fishing buddies.”
“So fate made Dad choose this town instead of another one? And made sure that Red was close by so she could stop his beating? Fate did all that so you and I could become friends?”
“Yes, little one. I’m convinced of it, and no one will ever change my mind.”
“I like you a lot, Lilly. You’re very nice.”
“Well, thank you, sweetie. I feel the same way.”
“Do you grow the rabbits or hunt them?”
“I grow them. Do you want to see their pen?”
“Sure.”
“You’ll have to hold your nose. They smell pretty bad.”
Beth giggled.
“I know. I remember.”
Lilly took her new friend around the barn, between two corrals.
She opened the gate on a very high fence and went inside to see a chicken coop, a rabbit pen and a pig pen.
The smell was… well, like every barnyard everywhere.
“I forgot how much farm animals smell,” Beth said. “Yucko.”
“Yep. My feelings exactly.”
“I didn’t know you had chickens and pigs too.”
“Well, right now we only have two pigs. Fred and Wilma. Wilma’s pregnant now, though, so pretty soon we’ll have a whole mess of piglets running around.”
“What will you do with them?”
“We’ll let them grow a bit and then we’ll fatten them up. We’ll butcher one for us and one for Mrs. Montgomery and one for Joey’s Co-op Diner. For the hogs we’ll get forty meal chits at each place. They come in handy for lunches, when neither of us typically come home to eat, and for dinners when we don’t feel like cooking.
“You may not remember this, because it seems so very long ago now. But once upon a time in this country people ate most of their dinners at home.
“Sometimes, though, they were too busy to cook or just didn’t feel like it. So they jumped in the family car and went out to a favorite restaurant.”
“I remember. At our house we always went to Jose’s Mexican Restaurant for Taco Tuesdays. And we always went out on Friday nights too. But not to Jose’s. Mom always said she could only stomach Mexican food once a week. On Fridays we went to different places.
“I miss those days.”
“Me too. You’re a lot younger than I am, so maybe you’ll live long enough to see those times again.
“I don’t expect to. I think that for the rest of my life going out to restaurants will be replaced by walking up to Joey’s or to Mrs. Montgomery’s.
“Speaking of that, are you very squeamish?”
“It depends on what you’re talking about. If you pull a live snake out of your pocket I’ll scream.”
“No. I told Mrs. Montgomery I’d bring her two chickens today. Will it freak you out when I kill them?”
Beth breathed a sigh of relief.
There would be no live snakes. Not today, anyway.
“No, I’ll be okay. I saw Mom and Aunt Karen kill plenty of them.”
“That’s good. They’re a lot easier to carry after they’re dead.”
With the deftness of an expert Lilly twisted the necks of two hens. Once they settled she tossed the birds into a backpack and said, “Okay. Go tell your father we’re ready to head out.”
Chapter 21
In San Antonio, Kristy decided she was living on borrowed time.
Or, more to the point, she’d been darned lucky, in that no one had robbed or assaulted her as she went on her daily rounds to gather food.
She thought it was perhaps that they misjudged her.
Grown men and women, after all, struggled to find enough food for their families to eat.
Maybe they just assumed this little spit of a teenaged girl couldn’t possibly outdo them, and couldn’t possibly be carrying anything worth stealing.
Every time she left her house in the morning her backpack was empty, save a couple of bottles of boiled rainwater to last her through the day.
Every afternoon, though, as she made her way home, the same backpack was considerably heavier.
She was always careful not to stuff the bag.
To do so would have placed a huge target upon her back.
She tried to take only enough food to feed herself and Angela for one or two days.
They lost nothing by leaving food behind. She was pretty confident no one would enter a house she’d just come out of to see if she’d missed anything.
Especially when the house reeked of rotting corpses.
Just to be safe, though, she typically hid whatever food she left behind in one of the children’s bedrooms. That was usually the last place a looter would expect to find food.
Her method of hiding the extra food until she came back for it was simple, yet very effective.
In a child’s bedroom she took the mattress off the bed, and then flipped the box spring upside down in its frame.
She ripped off the felt covering from the bottom of the box spring, wadding the felt up into a bundle and stuffing it inside.
A box spring has plenty of empty spaces, between the spring coils and the wooden frame, for canned goods, boxes of food or other valuables.
Packed right, she could store an entire cupboard full of food in one upside-down box spring. Then it was just a matter of placing the mattress on top of it and making the bed.
She was careful to drape the bedspread or comforter far enough to cover the box spring. She typically lowered it to within four inches or so from the floor.
A curious looter might peek under the bed to see if there was anything hiding beneath it.
But they would never tear apart a made bed to inspect the mattresses or box spring.
Kristy learned that particular trick by watching her mother bring home several sets of clothing from her shoplifting trips.
She shoplifted to support her drug habit.
But one of the ways the drugs affected her mind was to make her extremely paranoid.
Police seldom break down the door of a shoplifting suspect looking for the clothing they’ve pilfered.
But Kristy’s mom was convinced they would do exactly that. Any loot she brought home from the shopping mall was stuffed into Angela’s box spring and sat there for several days until she was convinced the heat was off.
Only then would she pull the clothing out a piece or two at a time and sell them on the streets for pennies on the dollar.
Kristy always had an uneasy feeling when leaving a death house with a partially filled backpack.
Had she packed too much?
Would somebody watch her walk into a death house, perhaps wonder why in the world she’d choose that house when there were so many others available?
Would they be so curious that they’d wait until she came out again?
Would they notice her bag held considerably more than it did when she went in?
Would they be curious enough about what was in the bag that they’d chat her up? Or even worse, try to take the bag from her?
Since she was a little girl Kristy considered her father to be about as worthwhile as teats on a bull. That is to say, not worth anything at all.
He seldom let her down in proving her right.
He was a petty thief all his life, you see. Too lazy to find honest work, he flitted like a butterfly from one get-rich scheme to the next.
He lost the only decent job he ever had for stealing tools from his employer.
He pawned them to buy dope, not smart enough to consider that maybe his employer kept records of the tools’ serial numbers.
