Le changement sera fort difficile,
Cite, prouince au change gain fera:
Coeur haut, prudent mis, chasse luy habile,
Mer, terre, peuple son estat changera.
The change will be very difficult:
City and province will gain by the change:
Heart high, prudent established, chased out one cunning,
Sea, land, people will change their state.
Two years later, life had settled into a kind of routine. Amber, Ken, Cindy, Debra, Megan, Zach, and I had turned Amber’s little goat ranch into more of a fortress by hiding caches of supplies and weapons in various places around the property. We were actually beginning to adapt to our new lifestyle, and I sometimes wondered how I had ever coped with the frantic pace of pre-D life.
“Debra? We’re heading into town. Anything in particular I should look for?”
She came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a shabby dishtowel before draping it over her shoulder. “See if you can find a hydrometer. Cindy says she thinks a couple of the car batteries are going bad.” She paused, thinking a second. “Oh, and see if Sarah has any more cans of that condensed milk that she found. Maybe we can make some ice cream and get a little relief from this heat.”
I gaped for a moment. “Is the freezer working?”
“Yep. Cindy hooked the invertor into the circuit so we’d have enough power to run a couple of appliances. I thought we could celebrate with some ice cream.”
“Sounds amazing. I think I’m drooling a little.” I tried to remember what else we needed for homemade ice cream. “What about rock salt?”
“I’ll break up a piece of the salt lick.”
“All right. The kids’ll be tickled. Hell, I’m tickled.” I kissed her and started to pull away, but she grabbed my shirt and extended the kiss for several seconds longer.
“Come on, Dad!” Zach shouted impatiently from outside. “Let’s go already!”
I scowled as Debra giggled at me.
“How about we pick this back up later?” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
I grinned. “Sounds like a date.”
“Daaaaddd!”
“How old are you, Zachary?” I yelled.
He hesitated. “Ten.”
“If you ever want to make it to eleven, you’d better quit yelling at your dad when he’s trying to smooch your mom!”
“Ewww!”
“Go on.” Debra pushed me back and turned me toward the open door. “I’ll see you when you get back.” As I stepped away, she popped me with the damp dishtowel.
“Hey!” I jumped and grabbed my hindquarters, rubbing briskly to take the sting out.
I turned to find her already turning away. “Hurry back,” she shot over her shoulder, “and I’ll be happy to take a look at that injury for you.”
I smiled at the implied promise and walked out the door.
Five minutes later, I had the cart hitched to the back of the motorcycle. I tossed a few bundles of trade goods in it, and Zach clambered aboard to sit in on top of them. Megan climbed on the motorcycle seat behind me and, as we pulled slowly down the street, she yelled in my ear, “You think she knows what we’re up to?”
I twitched my shoulder in a lazy shrug. “She probably knows something’s up, but there’s no way she could know exactly what.”
“Um, have you met Mom?”
“Yeah,” I conceded. “You’ve got a point.” But there was nothing I could do about what she might or might not know, so I didn’t worry too much about it.
Twenty minutes later, we were winding our way through the foot traffic at the edge of the market square. I parked the motorbike in front of an abandoned convenience store and killed the engine. Slinging one of the trade bundles over my shoulder, I tossed the second to Megan, took Zachary’s hand, and the three of us waded into the crowd.
The market had started as a simple enough thing. With little to no electricity to run internal lighting or air conditioning, shopkeepers had taken to setting tables outside their doors. The practice had grown, spawning more tables and stalls, quickly spilling out into the streets until the town council simply barricaded off a four-block area of town and allowed it to grow into what everyone now referred to as the market.
We wandered through the makeshift stalls, looking at some items, avoiding others, winding our way through the buzzing and shouting of the ever-present dickering. At the outskirts, we saw the normal handcrafted items: candles, soaps, woodcarvings, pottery. As we burrowed deeper into the crowd, we also came across plenty of scavenged goods such as canned foods, car parts, and some small electronics like CD players or flashlights still in the original plastic. We had found that many of the less complex, basic electronics that hadn’t been plugged in or connected to batteries on D-day still worked, and those still in the original packaging were almost guaranteed to work. The more intricate items that depended on delicate circuitry had a lesser chance of working. And of course, all of them still required some sort of power source.
But here in the market, that too was available. Generator kits were prevalent, based on everything from bicycle generators, to automobile parts and current inverters. They were fairly common at the moment, but I feared the day would soon come when we would no longer be able to find the parts necessary to make them. Windmill and waterwheel kits to turn the generators were also a valued commodity and, when I heard some of the haggling being done for them, I was thankful we already had ours.
I saw my goal ahead and shouldered my way through the crowd to Wayne Kelley’s booth. Wayne had been Rejas High School’s chemistry teacher, and had put his education to good use. He had everything from fuel preservatives to perfumes available at his booth. If you wanted something that required a knowledge of practical chemistry, Wayne was your man.
“Hey Wayne, how’s business?”
“Leeland!” He smiled. “Business is good. You here to make it better?”
“I hope so.” I gestured. “Hand Mr. Kelley that bundle, would you, Megan?”
She hefted the bundle off her shoulder and slung it to an empty spot on his table. Wayne untied the knot and unrolled half a dozen uncured goatskins. He thumbed through them, checking the thickness and quality of the skin. “Still no kids?”
“Nope. We still don’t have enough stock to warrant slaughtering any of the kids. We need to let them breed another year or so. Maybe then.”
Wayne sighed. “Well, Connie will be happy to get these. Same arrangement?”
I nodded. “You process them and keep half.”
Wayne stuck out his hand. “Deal. You want the skins from the last batch?”
“If they’re ready.”
“Just give me a second.” Wayne stepped back into his shop.
A moment later, his wife came out to greet us. “Hi, Leeland, Megan.” She turned a special smile to Zachary. “My goodness, Zachary, you get bigger every time I see you. What are you doing in town?”
Zach loved the attention. “We’re shoppin’ for Mom’s birthday.”
Connie turned to me. “It’s Deb’s birthday?”
“Day after tomorrow. But there’s no need waiting to the last minute.”
“Two days before her birthday isn’t last minute?”
I raised my hands. “This one’s just a matter of timing.”
Wayne came out and saved me from further explanation as he handed a smaller bundle back to Megan. “Here you go. Four skins of the eight you brought in last month. Want to examine them?”
“No need.” I leaned in close. “I know where you live.”
He and his wife both chuckled.
“Thanks Wayne, Connie. See you in class tomorrow?”
“We’ll be there.”
As we headed toward our next stop, Megan tugged my sleeve. “Dad, you mind if I stop by the library?”
“I don’t see why not. What are you after?”
“Nothing really. I just kinda wanted to look around.” Her voice trailed off as she looked away evasively.
“She wants ta go see An-drew!” Zach squealed. Megan flipped a quick kick at the seat of his pants. “Ow! Dad, Megan kicked-”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“But she-”
I pointed a finger in his face. “Not a word, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t pick fights, and you won’t get hurt.” I took the bundle from Megan and handed it to Zachary, while pretending not to notice the glare he shot at his older sister. “All right, Megan, meet us at Sarah’s shop in an hour.”
She bounced up on her tiptoes and kissed my cheek. “Thanks Dad.” And she threaded her way into the crowd.
I watched her fade into the mass of market-goers for a moment before taking my son by the hand. “Okay Zach, now tell me about this Andrew kid.”
Zachary grinned conspiratorially. “He’s not a kid, Dad. He’s the same age as Megan.”
I smiled. “That old, huh?”
“Uh huh. He’s Mr. Eric’s son.”
“Eric Petry? From the morning classes?”
“Yes, sir. I think that’s where they met.” He leaned close to me. “I caught ‘em kissin’ in the woods last week.”
I was definitely surprised. Megan had never let on that she had a boyfriend. But I knew Eric and recalled meeting his son a few times. He had seemed a likeable enough young man. And Eric was a good friend. He was one of the town’s police officers, and a third-degree black belt in Shotokan karate. We had met him through the self-defense classes I had volunteered to Jim Kelland.
Most mornings, we taught a growing number of Bruce Lee wannabes in the clearing behind Amber’s house at sunrise. Lessons usually lasted two to three hours, depending on the number of people who attended and how difficult the day’s activities were.
When we had first begun the classes after the last of the burials, it had been just Megan and me teaching. Four of Kelland’s men had come by for training. We taught them exercises to stretch the tendons and ligaments in their arms and legs, and showed them the proper way to do some basic katas, or forms, to strengthen their legs and improve their balance.
Then, we showed them some of what they really wanted to learn: the actual self-defense aspect of the arts-the innumerable joint locks of small circle jujitsu, basic grappling techniques, and the first twelve variations of Kali’s angles of attack. They had been impressed enough to convince others to join.
Word of the Kindley Massacre-their name, not mine-had spread quickly after the article in the Chronicle and, as other attacks occurred, people began trickling in by twos and threes. Eric had shown up the second week to volunteer his skills, and we were soon teaching anywhere from fifteen to fifty people each day.
While I considered the local police officers to be the core of the classes, there were also housewives, grocers, shop owners, and mechanics-to use a common cliche, people from all walks of life. I wished my school in Houston had been so full.
And sometime during all that, Andrew had evidently gone from being one of the students to being my daughter’s boyfriend. It had happened under my very nose, and I’d been completely oblivious.
I sighed and rubbed Zach’s head affectionately. “Well, your sister’s growing up. You’ll be better off staying out of her business.”
He furrowed his brows and turned to look up at me. “Is she gonna get married and move away?”
“I’m sure she will, eventually. But probably not for a while yet.”
He grinned. “When she does, can I have her room?”
I laughed aloud. “We’ll see about that later.”
“When?”
“Later.”
“Later when?”
“When she moves out. For now, though, we have more shopping to do.”
We shouldered through the crowd and eventually made our way to a darkened shop with an open front door. Walking in, I heard the methodical sharp tinging of metal on metal from the back room, and I shouted, “Travis, you here?” The tinging stopped, and a shuffling took its place. Seconds later, a white-haired, bespectacled head peered around the doorframe.
“That you, Leeland?”
“Yep.”
“Gimme a sec, an’ I’ll get your order.”
I heard more shuffling, and Travis came limping out of the back carrying several items. He casually tossed me a pair of hand-tooled goatskin boots. They were loosely cut, and gusseted to adapt for wear under or over pants. I looked at the bottom and laughed aloud. “Tire treads? Really?”
Travis nodded. “Plenty of it around, and it’s made to last with two tons of metal ridin’ on it. Figured it’d last with yer ornery ass walkin’ on it for a while.”
I held one boot to the bottom of my foot to check the size. “Looks perfect.”
“Well, that ain’t no way to check it. Put th’ damn thangs on. I wanna see how they fit, too.”
I wasted no time skinning off my worn out tennis shoes. I was embarrassed by the condition of my socks, but didn’t let it stop me as I slid my legs into the calf-high leather boots. I wove the leather thong through the grommets on either side of the folded gusset and tied it over my pant legs. Standing tentatively, I took a few steps.
“Well? How do they fit?”
After walking around the room, I finally turned back to him. “They’re a little stiff, but they’ll wear in soon enough. I think they’ll do, Travis.”
He harrumphed at me. “’Course they’ll do. I don’t make crap. That’s why you come to me.”
“That’s true enough. You have the rest of it?”
He pointed to the bench, and I walked my new boots over to see the other items. Travis glanced over at Zachary. “Yer daddy made you a knife yet, son?”
Zachary mumbled something.
“Sorry, son, but ah couldn’t hear ya.”
“Yes sir, but I lost it.” He hung his head as he said it.
Travis looked at me, and I nodded.
“Well, mebbe this’ll help ya keep track better.” He tossed something to Zachary. The boy caught it and yelped in delight when he realized what he held. I had made him a pair of throwing knives that Travis had fitted with arm sheaths.
“Whoa!” He immediately began strapping the left sheath on his forearm.
“Zach, what do you say?”
The boy never even paused. “Thanks, Mr. Travis. This is wicked cool!”
Travis smiled. “Yer welcome. ’Course it was yer daddy what made them knives fer ya.”
Zach grinned at me. “Thanks, Dad.”
“You’re welcome. But I need you to listen to me a second.” He stopped and turned his attention to me. “You leave those blades in their sheaths while we’re at market. You only take them out when you’re completely alone and practicing, or if Megan or I are teaching you. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir!”
“All right. And you know what happens if you disobey?”
“You’ll spank me?”
“And you’ll lose the knives. Those aren’t kid’s toys. You can’t treat them like it.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
I held his eye for a minute to make sure he understood how serious I was, then turned back to Travis and winked. He stifled a smile. “I’ll wrap Megan’s set in with the rest of the stuff.”
“Thanks. So, you want to see what I brought you?” I pushed the bundle of tanned goatskins across the counter, then started rummaging through the leather goods Travis had made. There were three leather aprons with various pouches and loops, designed for working the forges, and another pair of throwing knives in arm sheaths for Megan.
Travis ran his hands over the cured goat skins. “Kelley tanned ’em?”
“He did.”
Travis harrumphed. “Man does good work.”
“Yep. He doesn’t make crap, either.” I unrolled a sewn cloth bundle on the counter. “And here are the tools you wanted.” I laid out several punches of various sizes, a half-moon shaped blade, and two small curved knives made to his specifications for working leather. He turned to me grinning from ear to ear.
“Lordy, lordy. These look like they’ll fit th’ bill jus’ fine.” At that moment, I was struck by how much the leatherworker’s expression resembled Zachary’s from just a few minutes earlier. “You ain’t got no idea how much easier you jus’ made my work.”
“Glad to hear it. So we’re square?”
“Ah believe so.” He stuck out his hand, and we closed the transaction with a handshake.
“Good. Then we’ll see you next time we’re in town. I know Ken will probably want a pair of boots like these when he sees mine.”
“Well, send ’im on over, an’ I’ll give ’im a good deal.”
“I’ll do that.” I saw Zachary trying to strap the right-hand sheath on his arm. “Here, Zach.” I helped him lock it in place. “Now, let’s go. There’s more to do.”
The next few stops were pretty straightforward. At the first, I traded a pair of razor-sharp eight-inch combat knives with staghorn handles for four automobile leaf springs and made arrangements to pick them up on my way out. Each spring was nearly four feet long, and they would be too heavy to lug around the market. At the second stop, a meat cleaver got me two solid walnut table legs. I figured each leg would yield enough wood to make at least five or six knife handles, maybe more if I could split them straight enough. Without a power saw, that was never guaranteed.
Finally, we got to Sarah’s shop. She greeted me as we walked in. “Heya, Sensei, what can I do for you?”
Sarah was another one of my students. A tiny slip of a girl, she moved like a tiger on amphetamines in a fight. She was also head of the scavenging committee and, as such, was often able to find items that others couldn’t.
“Debra wanted me to see if you have any more of that condensed milk.”
“Yessiree. I have three cans left. Four, if you don’t mind going past the expiration date.”
“How far past?”
She pulled the fourth can out and checked the label. “What is this, March?”
“April.”
She thought for a second. “Looks like four months over then. You feeling lucky?”
“What do you want for them?”
“What do you have?”
“Need any nails?”
She shook her head. “Sorry, no use for them.”
“Goat jerky?”
“No thanks.”
I opened my backpack and dug through it, looking for something she might have use for.
“What about that?” I looked up to find her pointing at the PRD dangling from my neck.
“The radiation detector?”
“Yeah. I could use something like that.”
“I don’t know, Sarah. I only have a few left.” That was true enough. Between the ones I’d given Ken, Cindy, Amber, and the trucking crews, plus the ones I’d already bartered away, I only had six left. Those last six were still in the wrappers, though, and they weren’t doing anyone any good there. “All right, but you’re going to have to sweeten the deal for one of these.”
I got the four cans of condensed milk, as well as two bags of macaroni, a can of aerosol cheese, three cans of corn, a jar of local honey, and a hydrometer. Megan wandered in while we were dickering and helped me load the items in my backpack.
“Dad? This one’s swollen.”
Sure enough, the top of the can bulged outward with the pressure of growing bacteria. Obviously embarrassed, Sarah grabbed the corn from Megan. “Shit. Sorry about that. I try to check them all before I bring them in. That one must’ve gotten by me.” She grabbed another one from the shelf. “Here you go.”
“No harm done.” I handed her my PRD. “Wear it in good health.”
Slipping it over her head, the girl nodded. “That’s the idea.” She stuck out her hand. “Pleasure doin’ business with you.”
I handed the backpack to Megan, and she “whuffed” as she slid it over her shoulder. I slung the other bundles over one shoulder and hefted the table legs. “All right, guys, one more stop and we can head back.”
Zachary and Megan both grinned. We were all looking forward to the next stop. We tromped back down the street, making our way to a quiet little side alley, then knocked on the door of a house on the outskirts of the market.
Our knocking set off the dog alarm, and loud barking underscored our arrival. From further back in the house came a sharp command, “Blackie, Cricket-quiet!” Several seconds later, the front door opened, and an elderly woman squinted out at us. She smiled in recognition. “Hello, Leeland. Hi, Megan, Zachary. Ain’t you two growin’ up!”
The kids returned the smile and replied in unison. “Hi, Miss Phillips.”
By this time, the dogs had also recognized us, and the barking gave way to wagging tails and whining. Judith Phillips pushed open the screen door and stepped back in invitation. “Well, don’t just stand out there in the heat. Come on in and sit a spell.”
We slipped past her and into the darker confines of her home. All the windows were open, but the temperature inside was only a little cooler than out.
“Sorry, Judith, but we can’t stay. I have some goods I need to pick up on the way out and, if we don’t get back pretty soon, Debra’s gonna wonder what we’re up to.”
When I saw the disappointment written briefly on her face, I felt more than a small twinge of guilt. But she covered it gracefully with a smile and ruffled Zachary’s hair. “Well, then, let’s head out back and look at some puppies.”
Both of the kids scrambled for the back door. Seconds after the door opened, I heard excited barking, the yipping of puppies, and the giggles of a happy ten-year-old. I smiled and offered my arm to Judith. “Shall we?”
She took my arm, and I paced myself to her gait as we walked through her den to follow the kids. Judith was a sweet old lady, a bit too frail to walk very far, and always seemed so lonely. She was in her late seventies, and her health was questionable at best. I had met her three months ago when I’d been asking around for some kind of dog to help manage the goats. Word of mouth led me to her door, and her Catahoulas.
Catahoula leopard dogs were reputed to be ideal herding and hunting dogs. They were supposed to be very smart, and fiercely loyal to their packmates. The trick, I was told, was to make sure they recognized their two-legged packmates as dominant. They sounded like exactly what I wanted. Better yet, Judith had let me know that one of her bitches had puppies on the way. Now two months old, those pups were weaned and ready to leave their mother. We had visited more than a few times in the last several weeks so the dogs would get used to us, and we were ready to take one home.
When I opened the back screen, Judith and I found Zachary sitting on the ground giggling, while six puppies crawled all over him, tails wagging so hard their entire bodies swayed with the activity. Each one whined with pleasure as they tried to climb his body, licking any exposed skin in a frantic competition for his attention.
Megan stood to the side, cooing over another pup she cuddled to her cheek. “All right, guys. We need to pick one and get home.”
Zachary latched on to a particularly energetic black and white speckled puppy. He and Megan replied at the same time, “This one!” And each of them had a different dog.
“Sorry, guys. Pick one or the other.”
Judith patted my arm and shushed me. “Take them both. You’ll be doing me a favor. I can’t afford to feed all these little mouths, and the kids will take good care of them.” She turned to the two of them. “Won’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Four pairs of puppy dog eyes looked my direction, and only two pairs actually belonged to the puppies. I knew when I was beaten. “All right. Let’s get home.”
August, Year 3
“Leeland, the dogs are in the garden again!”
At the sound of Cindy’s complaint, Mark and Brad looked at me and grinned. “Go on,” Brad told me. “We’ll finish up here.”
“You sure you got it?”
“Go! You don’t want to get Cindy mad at you.”
“Thanks.” I stripped off the leather apron and hung it on a peg beside the forge, then trotted to the garden. Sure enough, two gangly, six-month-old speckled pups were chasing each other around the well-tended rows of garden vegetables, scattering cucumbers and winter squash as they ran. Cindy chased them around, trying to shoo them out of the garden, but it appeared they thought it was all part of the game, and they chased around her as well.
Cindy saw me and threw up her hands. “They’re going to ruin the garden!”
“Ginger! Oreo! No!” The pair immediately stopped and looked at me. “Sit.” They hadn’t learned too many commands yet, but they knew no and sit well enough, and my tone told them they were in trouble. They plopped their tails in the dirt immediately and, as I advanced, they cowered, half-rolling into a submissive pose. I approached the gate and opened it, giving them the only other command they had learned well-“Out!”
Tail tucked between her legs, the black and white Oreo came through first, obviously fearful of my tone, but more afraid of disobeying. The red and white Ginger was less afraid, but seemed eager to please. Both of them came directly to my side and sat panting. “Good girls.” I didn’t think they would understand if I fussed at them for the damage their rampage through the garden had caused, and I didn’t want to confuse them by scolding them after they had followed my commands so well. Cindy didn’t see it that way, though.
“They are not good girls. Just look at what they did!” She indicated the damage to the vegetables.
“I’m sorry, Cindy. How’d they get in?”
“They jumped the fence again.”
I sighed. Ken and I had originally built a four-foot-high chain-link fence around the garden to keep out the goats. The dogs had learned to jump that a month ago, so we’d replaced it with a six-footer. We had assumed that would be tall enough to keep them out. So much for assumptions.
“I’m really sorry, Cindy.” I entered the gate to help her salvage what we could from the damage.
“No.” She stopped me as I approached. “I’ll take care of this; just get those dogs away from here!”
I’d never seen Cindy so angry. “All right. I’m really sorry-”
She cut me off with a raised hand. “Just go.”
I hurried away. Some days, I regretted bringing the puppies home. Ostensibly, they had been Debra’s birthday present, and she had loved them. But we soon found that two gangly, four-legged furry balls of youthful energy were sometimes more than we’d bargained for. “Ginger. Oreo. Come.” I took them back to the house to look for Zachary.
I found him in the barn, milking the nanny goats. “Zach, are you about done there?”
“Yes, sir, this is the last one.”
Grabbing a length of rope from a hook on the wall, I tied the makeshift leash to their collars and watched as he moved the pail and released the nanny from the milking stanchion. When he stood up, I stuck out my hand for the bucket of goat’s milk. “Here, then, let me take that.” I traded him the bucket for the dogs. “Would you please take the girls out to the woods and wear them out? They got in the garden, and I think Cindy’s about ready to fix Catahoula stew for dinner.”
His eyes lit up as he handed me the bucket. “Sure, Dad.”
“I know how much you hate playing in the woods.”
Mouth upturned, he shrugged. “Yeah, but if you’re gonna insist.”
“Just make sure you keep them away from Cindy and the garden.”
“Yes, sir.” And with that, he became a fading blur, running with the pups toward the tree line at the edge of the property. I turned to take the milk to the house and reflected again on how much life had changed for us-how it had slowed down, allowing us time to realize what was really important, things like allowing a young boy to enjoy time with his dogs.
I frowned, remembering other things were important, too. Just a few years ago, we would have been shopping to get him ready for his next year of school. Now, there was no school. We were still too busy with day-to-day survival. I mulled that over on my walk to the house and, the more I thought about it, the more dour my mood became.
Debra interrupted my musing as I arrived at the back door. “What’s got you looking so down in the dumps?”
“Just thinking about how much everything’s changed. I mean, Zach should be in school. Megan should be getting ready for college. I would be back at the shop…” That, of course, made me think of my parents, and though my grief had lessened considerably in the last two years, my chest still tightened with emotion, further darkening my mood.
“Yeah, maybe.” Debra took the milk pail from me. “But we’re alive.” She raised her eyebrows, and I had to concede the point. “And every day above ground’s a good day, right?”
“I suppose.”
“So yeah, we’ve lost some things. But it’s not all gloom and doom. We’re regaining a lot of lost ground, and we’ll get the school going next fall. It’s not like we’re going to let civilization completely fall apart. We just need time to regroup.”
I took a deep breath and got my emotions back in check. I could always count on Debra to snap me out of it whenever my temperament took a dark turn.
Nodding, I smiled at her. “Thanks for the pep talk, coach.”
“Any time, kid. Now, go get back in the game.”
I kissed her lightly and headed back to the forge, where I could hear the whoosh of a bellows forcing air across the coals and the steady pounding of Mark’s hammer on hot iron as he and Brad continued to work. I rounded the corner of the barn and watched the two of them for a moment. Debra was right. Things weren’t all gloom and doom.
Mark, while still a quiet man, was no longer the solemn, taciturn giant who never spoke to anyone. After a year with us, he had finally opened up enough to begin to mingle and had married Jennifer Yarley, a young Mormon girl. They moved into the old Kindley house down the road and had recently announced that Jenny was pregnant. Brad had moved into another nearby home and built himself a smaller forge that he used to pound out more intricate projects in his spare time. I had taught him about making knives, and he showed a particular interest in Damascus steel. Because of my own interest in knife-making, I had always kept several books and articles on the subject as part of my “survival library,” and I let him read everything I had. Making Damascus required time and finesse, folding and layering different types of steel into patterns that both strengthened the blade and pleased the eye. It was something I had never had the patience for. He began to experiment on his own and was soon producing blades that were works of art I would never be able to match.
Each morning shortly after sunrise, he and Mark came to stoke the forge, or both forges if we needed them on that particular day, and prepared for the day’s projects, while I taught the morning’s self-defense classes.
Everyone kept us pretty busy repairing hand tools and pounding out nails. Nails! I got so tired of making nails! Everyone had to have nails by the hundreds. We spent nearly half of each working day with some aspect of making nails, melting scrap iron into billets, roughing out various sizes, driving roughed nails through sizing holes in the homemade anvils, then trimming and tipping them into finished product.
I would be the first to admit that much of the problem stemmed from the fact that I really didn’t have the slightest idea what I was doing. I had made the forge with the idea that knives would soon become a much sought after item. I figured that with a little help, I could soon be producing viable barter goods. But I soon found that though a smith was definitely in demand, knives alone wouldn’t keep me going.
George Winstedt, the local carpenter, came to me as soon as he heard about my forge and requested five hundred nails. No big deal, I thought. I worked out a method for making nails from scrap metal and had his nails in a few days.
Until that time, I simply hadn’t realized how much we needed nails. Anyone making repairs on a house or barn, anyone building… well, anything, soon discovered how much they needed them. It wasn’t long before they found out where to get them. Therefore, Mark, Brad, and I stayed very busy making them.
We repaired or reshaped garden tools. We made more nails. I actually learned to shoe a horse, and that wasn’t nearly as easy as they made it seem on those old westerns. We made still more nails. We also made meat cleavers, rotisserie skewers, horseshoes, axe heads, and other items for trading at the local market.
And of course, we made more nails.
But it wasn’t all like that. Some of the projects were enjoyable. The work I truly enjoyed came gradually. It derived from the attrition of brass cartridges for bullets. As they disappeared, more and more people began inquiring about knives, skinning knives for the hunters, as well as simple utility and butcher knives for the populace in general. Then the real fun began.
My students were the first to begin ordering combat knives and daggers. It was only logical, as the Kali that I taught was a molding of empty-handed, knife, and stick combat techniques, and I constantly surprised them with impromptu demonstrations of what I called iai knife techniques. Iai was the Japanese art of the sword quick draw. When I cocked my leg back for a side kick and magically had a knife in hand from a hidden sheath on my leg, they were usually quite impressed. I used these tricks to stress some of my personal philosophies.
“Never let yourself be taken by surprise,” I told them on one particular occasion. “Just because an opponent appears to be unarmed does not mean he is unarmed.”
I scanned their faces. “If you go into a situation expecting that the worst will happen, and you prepare yourself beforehand, then you deny your opponent the split-second of surprise he may be counting on. This, in turn, may give you the advantage since, when you don’t react the way he expects, he’ll have to readjust his actions to the new situation, which takes approximately half a second. Plan your attack with this in mind, and you might walk away from a fight that would ordinarily kill you.”
A week after that particular class, a group of bandits attacked one of the outlying homes. They were fought off, but at the cost of one Rejas citizen and nearly three hundred rounds of ammunition.
Seeing the possible end of the ammunition supply in sight, everyone wanted throwing knives and hideaways for backups. Then came the natural progression to swords and machetes. Finally, we were making arrowheads and crossbow bolts, spears, pole arms, and nearly any other hand-held weapon imaginable. My kind of toys.
They were crude at first, but functional. As our skills at the forge got better, so too did the quality of the products we made.
There were several more encounters with wandering bands of raiders in the next few months, and no one downplayed the necessity of self-defense. Firearms hadn’t disappeared, but bullets became increasingly valuable as more casings were lost in the field, damaged in accidents, or otherwise rendered unusable. Many people in town had presses and dies for reloading, but they had long since run out of extra casings and required the spent brass to be brought to them.
No one had access to the machinery necessary to manufacture precision parts, such as bullets. Even if we had, we didn’t have a reliable power source with which to run said machinery. Until we got the power station up and running, precision machining was a pipedream.
I had mixed feelings on that. As an experienced machinist, I yearned for precision manufacturing to reenter our lives. Automotive parts, gun parts, parts for wells and gas pumps, hundreds of little things that everyone had once taken for granted, all required tighter tolerances than we could presently hold. So I longed for the old conveniences along with everyone else. On the other hand, I was certain that once the call went out for machinists, I would end up drafted into wearing yet another hat, and there weren’t nearly enough hours in the day as it was.
Since I’d been clued in by Zachary, I began to notice how much time Megan spent with Eric’s son. Apart from occasional smiles and lingering touches in class, she and Andrew kept their romance pretty subdued. I noticed that the two of them often disappeared together after classes, though, and Megan often didn’t show up at home for a few hours afterward. I knew it was getting serious when she started referring to Eric as “Pops.” Andrew seemed a nice enough young man, and a fair student, but it bothered me that I had barely even noticed him until my ten-year-old son pointed out his relationship to my daughter. Then, one morning, Andrew asked to see me privately.
“Mr. Dawcett?” He seemed nervous as he pulled me aside after class. “Could I speak to you for a minute?”
“Sure, what can I do for you?”
“Well, um, I was wondering if I could… I mean…” He took a deep breath and held it a second before he practically exploded. “Mr. Dawcett, I’d like to ask your permission to court your daughter with the intention of marrying her and the assurance that my intentions are fully honorable, and I’d like you to know I would always treat her right, and I’d never do anything to hurt her, of course, I probably couldn’t hurt her even if I wanted to, but I’d never want to, sir, and I’d do my best to make sure she always had whatever she needed as long as it’s within my power, and I’d never do anything to disrespect you or her, and I swear I’d treat her right. Did I already say that? Oh, yeah, but it’s true, and I’d be truly grateful if you could see your way clear to give me your consent to court her.”
By the time Andrew blurted all that out, I was out of breath. I didn’t know whether to laugh at his nervousness, thank him for respecting me enough to ask my permission, or to try to get him to loosen up a little. For a few seconds, I simply stared at him in surprise.
He licked his lips nervously, shifting from foot to foot, and I finally realized that if I didn’t say something soon, the poor boy was likely to implode.
“You want my permission to date, er, court Megan?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if I understood all that, you intend to marry her if she’ll have you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What would you do if I said no?”
The poor boy’s mouth fell open. “Sir?”
“What if I tell you I don’t want you to see my daughter, and I forbid you from ever coming around here again?”
“But… you can’t, I mea… you wouldn’t, would you? Sir?”
I simply stared at him.
“But we love each other!”
Still, I remained silent.
Finally, Andrew straightened his shoulders. “Mr. Dawcett, Megan and I have spoken about this a few times. We know how we feel about each other, and we both know that we want to continue seeing each other, and we felt you and Mrs. Dawcett deserved to know. But with all due respect, sir, if you were to tell me I couldn’t see her anymore,” he paused and swallowed nervously, “well, I guess I’d end up sneaking around behind your back. I ain’t saying it’s right, but I don’t think I can just stop seeing her. It’s like I said, I love her.”
I raised my hand to rub my chin, and nearly laughed aloud when he flinched at my movement. “Well, Andrew, if you’re determined to see her no matter what I say, then I guess I’d better not forbid you, huh?” I grinned at his dumbfounded expression.
“Hell, son! You don’t think I’m going to try and tell that girl she can’t see you, do you? She’d probably hurt the both of us!”
Andrew shook his head as he finally realized he’d been had. “Yes, sir, I guess she probably would.”
“Just one thing, Andrew.”
“Yes, sir?”
“If you’re planning to marry Megan, I think you’d better learn to stand a little stronger for what you believe in.”
“Pardon me?”
“If you never planned to stop seeing my daughter, you didn’t have to pretend you needed my permission to see her. You’re both adults. I appreciate you wanting to let me and Mrs. Dawcett know, and I definitely approve of your motives, but it would have been just as good if you’d simply told me your intentions as a matter of respect, rather than go through all the rigmarole of pretending that anything I had to say would make a bit of difference in the matter.”
Embarrassed, the young man nodded. “Yes, sir. I see what you mean.”
“And you’re really going to have to learn to stand on your own two feet if you plan on marrying a headstrong woman like my daughter. It’s one thing to love her; it’s another to let her walk all over you. She’ll never respect you if you do that.”
“Yes, sir. It’s just that it’s a little different talking to you, sir.”
I grinned. “Why don’t you drop all the ’sir’ stuff?” I stuck out my hand. “Just call me Leeland. If you’re planning to marry my daughter, we’re going to be seeing a lot more of each other.”