“I doubt that will work with the Franklins,” Tom said, shaking his head. “At least with them and all my men being alive once we got the meat. Up in these hills we have more than a few of the old survivalist types, the kind that were real disappointed that the world didn’t go to hell with Y2K. They’re just waiting for us to come up and try.”
“Let it go for now,” John said. “If we start turning into Stalinist commissars hunting out every stalk of grain and ounce of meat for the collective, you know the fragile balance we have right now will break down and it will be every man for himself.
“And like any collectivization, whether true or not the rumors will explode that we took the food, but now some animals are more equal than others.”
“What?” Tom asked.
“You slept through Mr. Quincy’s ninth-grade English class, Tom,” Kate said. “Orwell,
“Besides,” John continued, “even if we looted the Franklins clean, that would be enough food to maybe give six hundred people one meal. It isn’t worth the blowback, and in my opinion is a dangerous political and legal precedent. We don’t want to be turning on each other at a time like this. Hell, if anything we want people like that Franklin clan working alongside of us. If they’re survivalists like you say and we don’t threaten them, maybe they got skills they’ll teach to us.”
Tom breathed a sigh of relief.
“I think it’s fair that food we salvaged from the stores now belongs to the community. But what people have in their homes, whether it’s one day left or six months’ worth, that’s theirs.”
John looked around the table and there were nods of agreement.
He only wished that Charlie had acted faster, or for that matter that he had thought about it and pushed him to seize control of all food in the town on Day One. If they had done so and it was rationed out correctly, it might have been enough to stretch at half rations for two months or more. But that was too late now.
“What about farms, though?” Kate said.
“I can tell you right now, Kate,” Tom said, “and you grew up here, too, and should realize it, the old farms are nearly all gone. When something like this hits, everyone seems to think people living in rural areas are up to their ears in food ready to be given away. But even the farmers now are dependent on the supermarkets at least until harvesttime. Up in the North Fork we have half a dozen small farms, one with about sixty head of cattle on it. Maybe a couple of hundred pigs. The usual mix of chickens, turkeys, some geese.”
“Still,” Kate said. “Stretched, that could be another month or so of food.”
“I think we have to take that,” Charlie said. “It’s different from what’s in people’s basements.”
John sighed and realized he had to agree even though it wasn’t much different from his commissar imagery of a few moments ago.
Sixty cattle, two or three a day turned into soup, stew, could stretch things. But far more pragmatic, how to keep control, to prevent someone else from rustling them, from raiding the farm one night, killing the owners, and then just slaughtering what they could drag away quickly, leaving the rest to rot?
Again a film image, from
“Charlie, we have to make a deal with the few farmers in this valley. We just can’t go marching up there, take their cattle, and ride off. A deal. We protect their food, they get more than a fair cut because they are sharing with the rest of the community. In exchange we protect them, their herd and crops. And Charlie, we have to keep some stock alive.”
“What do you mean?”
“For next year. A couple of males, enough females. We might be looking at next year and we’re still in the same boat. We got to keep breeding stock alive even if it means we go hungry now. In the old days, eating your breeding stock was the final act of desperation.”
“John,” Kate said. “I don’t need to hear this now. Are you saying this will still be going on a year from now?”
“Maybe. And if we don’t plan now, there won’t be a next year for any of us.”
“Ok, John,” Charlie said. “We’ll go up the North Fork later today and start talking.”
“And suppose someone up there, shotgun in hand, tells us to go to hell and get off his land?” Kate asked. “You said I grew up here. I did and I know some of these folks. They’re good people, but they don’t hold much truck with someone telling them what to do.”
“Then maybe you should be the one to go talk with them,” John said quietly.
“Me?”
“Exactly. Everyone in town knows you, Kate, even more than they know Charlie or Tom here. You going first would be nonthreatening.”
“Because I’m mayor or because I’m a woman?” she asked sharply.
“Frankly, Kate, it’s both. Tom shows up, gun on his hip, it’s commissar time. You show up, sit down with the family, have a chat, I think you can help folks with these small farms to see reason. They have to strike a deal because if they stay on their own, sooner or later someone will go for them and take what they have. We promise to post twenty-four-hour guards on their places, we offer protection, they trade some food back to the commu- nity.
“Sounds a bit like where you come from originally up in New Jersey,” Charlie said with a trace of a smile. “Protection racket.”
John tried to smile in spite of his light-headedness.
“Like it or not, that’s the way it is now. I’m dead set against people’s homes being cleaned out, but I think we can agree that farms have to be protected but something given back in return to help the entire coramu- nity.
She nodded in agreement. “Ok, I’ll go.” Charlie looked down at his notepad. “Transportation. Anything new?”
“We got three more cars running,” Tom said. “Actually I should say that Jim Bartlett down in that Volkswagen junkyard of his did. Beetles, another van.”
“He’s become a regular friend of yours,” Kate said, and there was, at least for a moment, a touch of a smile.
“Yeah, damn old hippie. Though I’m not buying his line that we should be using pot for medicine.”
“I might agree with him now,” Kellor said.
“It’s breaking the law,” Tom replied sharply.
“The cars, Tom,” Kate interjected. “Let’s stick with that.”
“All right, other garages say they can get ten or fifteen more old junkers up and going, including an old tractor trailer down at Younger’s.”
“We’ll have forty or fifty within the week,” the policeman from Swan-nanoa said quietly.
No one spoke, looking at him.
“You folks up here in Black Mountain always kind of looked down on us in Swannanoa. Maybe because we was poorer, but that poorness makes us worth more now.”
John smiled at that and knew it was true. He could remember Tyler calling Swannanoa a “poor white trash” town with its trailer parks, auto junkyards, a town that had essentially gone to hell ever since the big woolen and blanket mill closed down years ago. What had once been a thriving small downtown area in Swannanoa was all but abandoned, especially after the big mill burned several years ago. Route 70, which went straight through Swannanoa, was lined with aging strip malls, thrift shops, and repair shops. It was finally starting to turn around, at least until last week, as more and more “outsiders” came in looking for land with the spectacular views the region offered. The area north of the town was developing, with high-priced homes, but that was now a tragic loss; half a dozen old farms had been chopped up into “McMansion estates” over the last few years.
In the old trailer parks there were a lot of cars that a week before anyone in a Beemer or new SUV would have given a wide berth to on the interstate. Some of those rolling heaps were now worth a hundred Beemers.
“Folks, this is Carl Erwin,” Tom interjected. “Chief of police for Swannanoa. I invited him here today to talk
