299 Days: The Visitors (23 page)

She stopped him and told him about Judge Petersen who used to live out there. He died in the 1980s. She said he was a wonderful man, a model of fairness and wisdom.

“I expect the same from you,” she said. Then she softened up her grandmotherly firmness. “I’m so glad we have a judge again. It reminds me of when things were better. Thank you, Judge Matson.”
So that was, indeed, it. Having a judge was a link to the past when things were decent. Having a judge wasn’t just about having a person preside over the community’s sanctions against people breaking their rules. It was a symbol, like all the other symbols Grant would present to the crowd in a few minutes.

It was time to start the meeting. Mrs. Otting said to Grant, “Get to work, your Honor.”

Grant smiled and then got to work.

Chapter 159

“Free To Go”

(July 1)

Rich called the meeting to order. The Grange hall was packed. Every seat was taken and people were standing on the edges of the room. A few were even in the doorway with a short line behind them. There hadn’t been many Grange meetings since the trial. People were busy getting things done before fall and many were burned out from the long debates about the trial. However, tonight was a big planning meeting for the upcoming months.

Rich started off by reporting on the situation at the gate. Things were going well. They had plenty of guards and they were cross-training each other on firearms and first aid. They were working up squad-level verbal commands. They had good communications with the Grange and the Team wherever they might be at any given time.

Paul Colson gave the report on the beach patrol. He was putting his years of experience on the inlet to use, serving as the Chief’s second in command. He had lost a lot of weight, was tan and looked happier than he’d been in years. He spoke confidently, like he’d found his purpose in life. Paul reported that the beach patrol was operating twenty-four hours a day and had plenty of men and women. They had chased off a few suspicious vessels each week. So far, no pirate landings. People speculated that Pierce Point had a reputation as being a bad place to try to loot.

Lisa gave the medical report. It was the first time she’d made a presentation at the Grange. People were glued to her every word. She was wearing her best “cabin outfit,” meaning the clothes she had out there. She even had a white lab coat Cindy gave her which made her look like an ER doctor on TV.

Lisa reported that there were three people in the last twenty-four hours who had apparently died from a lack of medication. Lisa didn’t describe their conditions out of respect for their privacy, but Grant later found out that two people had extremely high blood pressure and the third had a rare pituitary condition.

Lisa reported that two more people seemed to have gone insane from a lack of mental health medications. They had been restrained by family members. Grant would need to do a hearing for them to have them committed to the mental ward. Maybe the family members could keep them restrained, which would be preferable.

A volunteer was coordinating the funerals. Like with Mrs. Roth, the burials needed to occur quickly because there was no embalming fluid. Burials would occur without any fanfare. Funeral services would take place once a week, on Sundays after the church service. That way there would be just one service for all the people who died that week. That was a grim thought.

There hadn’t been a massive die off. Yet. There was no plague decimating the population. During peacetime, there was about one death every few months out at Pierce Point. Now, there were about a dozen a month. Almost all of them were people who would have never lived this long without all the modern medicines.

The next report was from Ralph Ramirez, who everyone started calling the “Ag Director” as in the Department of Agriculture. Ralph was in his early sixties with gray hair. He had a bit of a hippie look to him; more of a Birkenstock look than a full-on hippie look.

Ralph was a recently retired extension employee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture who owned a small farm. He was an agronomist, a crop scientist. On his farm, he experimented with various crops and raising livestock. He was coordinating the other dozen or so small farms at Pierce Point. It was kind of what he did for the former government. Ralph was a farmer first and a retired government employee as a distant second.

At first, Grant thought Ralph might be a Loyalist since he had worked in government his whole life. He was theoretically getting a retirement check from the government, although those checks had stopped coming weeks ago. However, Ralph was a scientist, which meant he couldn’t stand all the illogical shenanigans of politics. Besides, he and his wife had all they wanted there on the farm, so he didn’t care about politics. He was a solid Undecided, but Grant was glad to have him out there.

Ralph gave an overview of the little farms and what they were growing and would be growing. Garden crops of all varieties. He had many of them switching from specialty crops to potatoes; lots and lots of potatoes. He was getting seed potatoes to anyone who wanted them for their own small gardens. A few of the small farms out there had cows and horses. There were a few milk cows, but without modern milking machines, hand milking was required and that was very labor intensive. It was hard to get volunteers to come all the way out to the farms and milk the cows and then go back to their own homes. Therefore, the farmers did the milking, but it was only on a few cows. This yielded relatively little milk. Most of the cows were meat cows.

The horses would come in handy for transportation. There were still plenty of vehicles and a little bit of gasoline and diesel, so horses would be a secondary mode of transportation. Grant dreaded the thought of using the horses for meat in the winter if it came to that.

A former computer guy, Steve Otto, was a beekeeper out at Pierce Point and produced amazing honey. One hobby farm had llamas. They were basically pets, but could, in dire circumstances, become food.

About half the farms were community farms, meaning they donated their food to the Grange. For this, they were “contributors” in Drew’s books and got all the associated benefits, like meals at the Grange and free medical care. The most important thing the community farms got in return was Grange-supplied guards. This was a big deal. Everyone expected the farms to be hit by theft.

The other half was “for-profit” farms. They sold—actually, bartered—their crops and hired all their workers and guards. Grant knew that when winter came, and things got scarce, there would be pressure on the for-profit farms to give away their food. There would be accusations of “greedy” farmers living well while others were hungry. Grant tried to inoculate against this as much as possible by supporting the for-profit farms. He would make little comments like, “Free enterprise is alive and well in Pierce Point. People have a right to their property, and that includes the right to keep the things that grow on their property.” Besides, the for-profit farms were getting people things like fresh beef that they couldn’t get anywhere else. Grant knew from history that the quickest way to cause a famine was to take farmers’ food by force. Even the Soviets eventually allowed farmers to sell food.

But still, allowing and even encouraging for-profit farms would be a political challenge for Grant. When people at Pierce Point got hungry—for the first time in their lives—they would want to take from those who had food. The best way to prevent this was to encourage the for-profit farms to become community farms. Encourage, not force. The free guards would be the way to do that.

Ralph’s Ag report was encouraging. “We’ll have quite a bit of food out here,” he said. “Not enough to totally feed everyone, but a decent amount. We’ll be eating more basic foods than you’re probably used to; a lot of potatoes, but fresh potatoes you grow yourself taste way better than all that processed stuff you used to eat.”

Ralph had earlier talked to Rich about how the existence of the Grange kitchen and lots of people eating there was actually a plus for the farms. This was because, with gas being so scarce, it would be hard for individuals to get to farms, pick up a household-size amount of food, go back home, and cook it. It was easier to bring one big batch of food from the farm and have it cooked in one big kitchen and then eaten in one big sitting. This way, it could be eaten right away, when the crop came in, rather than needing to be canned, dried, or frozen. There would be canning, drying, and freezing of the food that wasn’t immediately eaten, but the Grange kitchen was getting lots of fresh produce to hungry people quickly and efficiently. In fact, the farm-fresh food served at the Grange was becoming some of the best at Pierce Point.

Ralph loved the opportunity to teach people about farming. At Pierce Point, he could do far more of the actual teaching than he could at his former government job, which was largely about filling out paperwork and endless documentation for the zillions of grant programs. Now he was doing what he loved.

Given Ralph’s good news about how the community was assisting people with things like growing food, Grant thought this was a good time to bring up his ideas on strengthening community even more.

“Any other topics?” Rich asked.

Grant raised his hand.

“I have some ideas for a few community things out here and wanted to see what everyone thought,” he said. People were paying attention.

“Ralph is doing great things for everyone,” Grant said. He turned to Ralph and said, “Thank you.” Grant went on. “You know, the community is organizing some things that will make our lives better. Things that are still voluntary, but are helpful. Well, I have a few more ideas for voluntary things.”

“How about a library?” Grant asked. “Lots of people have some time on their hands now that their old jobs don’t exist anymore. The internet is spotty and the power might go out, so I’m thinking of a library full of real books. Hard copies. Something you can hold in your hand and take with you. You might have books lying around that you don’t read anymore, but your neighbor hasn’t read them. People could donate their books and we’d put them in a building. Depending on how many we get, and how much space it takes up, we could put them here,” Grant said motioning to the main room of the Grange. People appeared to like that idea.

A woman raised her hand. “I was a librarian,” she said. She was thrilled at the prospect of getting to be a librarian again.

“Great. Talk to me after the meeting,” Grant said.

“How does everyone get their books here when gas is so scarce?” Grant asked. No one offered an answer, but Grant had one.

“What if we had a postal service?” he asked. Of course the mail had not been delivered after the Collapse. The government was using precious fuel on getting food delivered, not on sending out junk mail.

“Well,” Grant said, “actually, more of a parcel service. Someone who made a regular route around Pierce Point picking up and dropping things off. You know how I feel about too much government,” Grant said, making another one of his not-so-subtle Patriot points, “so it wouldn’t be a ‘government’ thing like the U.S. mail. It would be a business, I’m guessing, more like UPS or FedEx. Participation would be voluntary, of course.”

Doug Smithson, the trucker who helped with the semi load of food, raised his hand. “I could do that,” he said. He didn’t say it at the meeting, but he had a 500 gallon underground tank of diesel at his place. He had a little diesel pickup truck. It would be great to be driving again. The boredom of sitting around was making him crazy. When Grant told Rich about this idea right before the meeting, Rich suggested that the parcel driver could keep his or her eyes out for things while out on the route. Doug could use his CB to report anything. It would be like having an extra patrolman. And Doug would be very well armed out there. It would be a two-fer: a “postman” and an extra patrolman. And it wouldn’t cost them any fuel. On top of all that, Doug would make some money for his services and people would get parcels delivered. Free enterprise was alive and well.

“Great,” Grant said. “You’d get paid something. You’re using valuable fuel. We’ll figure all that out.”

Someone said, “Like the Postman, that movie with Kevin Costner.” Grant had forgotten about that movie. He had never seen it or read the book, but he vaguely remembered that the story was about a guy after a nuclear war who grabs a mailman’s uniform and starts delivering mail to wiped out communities as a way to restore their hope in normalcy. There was something enormously hopeful about having a postal service when there wasn’t any other functioning government. That’s exactly what Doug the mailman would be doing. Along with moving items around, he would be restoring some sense of normalcy. There was a lot to be said for that. Grant loved the political significance of Pierce Point having a parcel service when the former government couldn’t provide it.

“Don’t worry,” Doug said, “I won’t make you wait in line while I take a break or ‘go postal’ and shoot people like the old mailmen.” That got a good laugh.

“Another idea,” Grant said, “is to get a school going. We have lots of teachers out here, like my neighbor, Mary Anne Morrell. I know some of the teachers have been talking about getting a school together, but we’ve been busy with so many things. I just encourage the teachers to get together and maybe get a school planned for the fall. I’m no educator, but I like the idea, and I bet Ralph would agree. He could plan on having the kids out of school in the summer to work on the farms.” Ralph nodded.