“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
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
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
“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
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.
