The Last of the Freemen (11 page)

“Harm called us yesterday, so we knew you were coming,” Hilda said - still holding Hughie - as she led Erin upstairs.  “We got the crib down from the attic.”  At the top of the stairs she turned around and gestured into the first room on her right.  Erin entered and cringed at the sight of old swords and pole arms adorning the walls, along with the skull of a ram with large, curled horns.  A bunk bed was to the right; to the left, the antique crib stood pressed against a bookcase.  The wall opposite the door had a window that viewed the back yard.

“Interesting decor,” Erin said apprehensively, shifting the bags on her shoulder while holding a baby bottle filled with formula.

“The boys’ room, as I'm sure you could guess.”

“They won't mind?  Where will they go?”

“They'll sleep in the attic.  It's not too hot up there yet.”

“I feel bad to take their room.”

“Don't worry, they're tough.  It won't kill them.”

Erin crossed the room, put her bags on a chair against the far wall, and looked out the window; she could see, off to the left near the barn, an old red tractor with a flatbed trailer, onto which the boxes and crates from Harm’s car had been loaded.  Harm stood, Axel now up on his shoulders, talking to Herman and Rudy - the former sitting on the trailer, the latter leaning against it – as they listened intently.

“There they are now.”

Hilda walked over and looked out; with a chuckle she turned and went back to the doorway.

“They love his stories,” she said.  “Harm has always been a good uncle to them.  Even when he was running around with gangsters, back when he wasn't in touch with anyone else in our circle, he always came to teach them.  He has that strong sense of duty.”

“Duty? Even to extended family?”

“Oh, absolutely.  See, by us, maternal uncles have an important part in the raising of a child.  It’s like being a godfather.  So the kids get more know-how from both sides of their family.  And for the boys, that also means they learn to fight from two sides, from their dad, and a brother of their mom.  Which is lucky for them, because Harm never once lost in the
Holzerei
.  They really look up to him for that, because, you know, boys will be boys.”

“Never lost in what?”

“The
Holzerei
.  When we have gatherings, all the boys and young, unmarried men wrestle each other, and fight with sticks. Short sticks, like swords, and long ones, like spears. My boys do pretty well, thanks to Harm teaching them. It gives them bragging rights, you know, they get to show off to the girls. And of course you never know when you need it out there in the world, like what happened to you.”

“That explains why he was ready for the Cull Warriors.”

Hilda nodded her head knowingly.  “We’re not sheep.”

Hughie interrupted with sounds oh his own and grabbed Hilda’s nose.  She smiled and put up her index finger for him to play with.

“Harm was the baby of our family,” she continued wistfully.  “He and our dad were close; dad was slowing down by the time Harm came along, he had more time to pay attention to him than he did with us older kids.  They used to go on walks where dad taught him all about the plants, all the wild ones you can eat, but especially, about the
Erbstauden
, the half-wild plants we grow, that no one else knows are food.  They were really important to him, little fountains of freedom, that was how he used to put it, and Harm remembered it all.  It's funny.  He knows next to nothing about farming cash crops, like my husband does.  But with the
Erbstauden
he’s an old sage.  And those plants that he brought here, that he's probably telling my boys about right now, those are descended from the ones our dad grew. Harm moved a lot of them to those properties after he married Bern’s daughter. It's a nice connection to have.”

“They do seem very important to him.”

“Oh, they are.  And to all of us, really, but the pressure is to grow what you English will buy.  We have to pay the taxman, after all.  Who’s going to buy ground elder or hop shoots?  We still eat them all here, of course.  But with the relocating some families have gone through - and a lot of times it’s happened in such a hurry, places where life has gotten so much more difficult, so quickly - things get forgotten, and left behind.  He's mended that for dozens of families.”

She shifted Hughie to her other arm as he began to fuss.

“Here I am rambling on when you need to get settled.  The bathroom is down the hall.  If you want to take a shower, I’ll be happy to hold him for a while longer.”

“Thank you,” she said, panicked at the thought of being separated from Hughie, “but I think I’d just like to feed him and then, maybe, lie down for a while. Would it be okay if, maybe, you could watch him a little later?”

“It will be a pleasure,” she said, and carefully passed Hughie into Erin’s arms. “If there’s anything you need, just let me know.”

She closed the door behind her as she left. Erin took a deep breath, kissed Hughie on the forehead, and held the bottle up for him to feed. She again looked out the window and watched as the older boys returned to the barn; Harm drove slowly away on the tractor with a glance over his shoulder to check on Axel, who stood balancing himself - arms outstretched - on the trailer. Though they soon disappeared behind the wood shed, her gaze remained fixed there until Hughie had finished his bottle; she then pulled the crib closer to the bed, placed him in it, and lay down wearily.

Late in the afternoon Erin came downstairs with Hughie, her wet hair pulled back in a ponytail; she wore a light blue, knee-length dress with short sleeves. Hughie had been changed from his one-piece pajama into jeans and an orange polo shirt. She rounded the corner and entered the kitchen to find Hilda stirring a pot on the stove; the old woman was nowhere to be seen.

“You showered?” Hilda asked with a raised eyebrow as she glanced over her shoulder.  “You should have let me know. I would have been happy to keep an eye on the little one.”

“That's okay.  But thank you. I didn’t want to trouble you, so I brought him into the shower with me.”

Hilda shrugged her shoulders. “Well, I'm glad you didn't drop him.”

Erin laughed nervously and looked around. “Is there anything I can do to help out?”

“Don't worry about it.  Thanks for offering, though. If you end up staying here for a while, we’ll break you in on some chores before too long. But for today, you’re our guest.”

Erin sat at the table and held Hughie in a standing position on her lap.

“You look nice,” Hilda said.  “And Hughie is adorable in that outfit.”

“Thank you. Is that ham I smell in the oven?”

“It is.  It's a special occasion. Harm is here, and we have you as a guest.”

“It smells wonderful. I haven't had anything like that in such a long time.  Is it... legal?”

“Why?” Hilde asked with a wry grin.  “Are you going to report us?”

“No, of course not.”

“It’s black market, that's true.”

“My husband loved ham, and bacon too, for breakfast, even though it wasn't healthy for him. But those were getting hard to find even a year ago. Is it so hard to raise pigs?”

“No. But it's hard to make a profit now.  We have the price controls, the carbon taxes, and then the government takes its ‘crisis share’ for ‘the people’. But when they came up with the cholesterol tax, the Healthy Food Act as they call it, that killed pig farming. The fact is, you just can't make money with a lot of things, because of all the rules and fees. So people give it up.  Or go black market.

“So Harm and some of his associates keep hogs, unofficially you might say, in some deep, wooded ravines, where even the flying drones can't find them. Or at least they haven't yet.”

“They check on you, even out here?”

“Oh, they certainly do. Department of this or that... There are so many of them that claim jurisdiction, it's hard to keep track. They come in here, they swagger around with their big bellies, they try to scare you, and they take things.  It’s really obnoxious. One of them took fifty pounds of our honey, he said it was for testing, but you know it was for himself.  What can we do?  They have the power.  Now we hide the big jars in hollow trees, secret root cellars, and places like that.”

Erin shook her head.  “Just a few days ago, I would have thought you should file a complaint or go to the press.  But I see things differently now.  You all seem to have it figured out pretty well.  You play along, and hide what you can, as Bern put it.”

“Our history has taught us.  There was a time, not so long ago, it would have seemed worth fighting, but that time has passed.  They're all so corrupt now.  Speak up and you become a target.  And sure, we hide things.  But that's time and effort lost, so it makes us poorer, on account of that.  Everything they do just makes everybody poorer.  I don't know where it will all go.  There are never any guarantees, and we can't know what tomorrow will bring.  But at least we’ll have ham tonight.”

The front door opened and closed; footsteps could be heard coming down the hall.

“Oheim!”
called the happy voice of a young lady approaching the kitchen; a pretty and statuesque sixteen-year-old entered, her tawny hair braided over her left shoulder.  She wore jeans and a denim shirt, with a soiled beige apron tied around her waist; she looked around in disappointment.

“Wo ist Oheim?”
she asked, and glanced in confusion at Erin and Hughie.

“Say hello to our guests,” Hilda said, “Erin and her son Hughie.  They're neighbors of Uncle Harm’s.  Erin, this is my daughter Frieda.”

“Oh. Hi,” the girl said.  “Dad said we had guests, but he didn't explain.”

“Your uncle is out back somewhere with Axel,” Hilda continued, “setting out the plants he brought.”

“Can I go find him?”

“No, I need your help here.”

Frieda nodded and hung her apron on a hook in the hallway.

“How did it go out there today?” Hilde asked.  “No thieves or weirdos, I hope.”

“No, everything went smooth,” she said, rolling up her sleeves as she went to the kitchen sink.  “Seems like we made a lot. Three hundred, at least, and a lot in silver.  And they're still buying. Dad says he’ll close up soon.”

“You have to worry about thieves?” Erin asked.

“Oh, sure,” Frieda said.  “They'll put vegetables or jars in their jackets when they think I'm not looking. Sometimes they pay when I say something, other times they take off. When I recognize a return thief, I signal my dad on the two-way and he comes out.”

“And you said... weirdos?”

Frieda looked at her mother.

“It's okay,” Hilda said. “You can tell Erin about it.”

“Three weeks ago,” Frieda said, “some strange man tried to pull me into his car.”

“Oh my God!” Erin exclaimed, leaning forward.  “What did you do?”

Frieda smiled, went back to the hallway, and retrieved something from her apron pocket; then, with a flick of her wrist, the stiletto-like blade of a telescoping knife appeared at her fingertips.

“I sliced his face open, to the bone,” she said with a wide grin, “and he ran off screaming like a little girl.”

“Wow.  I'm impressed.  And that's quite a knife.”

“Illegal, of course.  Like all the good things are.  It was a gift from Uncle Harm.  He's also the one who taught me how to use it.  The weirdo never saw it coming, he even dropped his revolver.  My dad says it's a piece of junk, though.”

“So did you call the police?  Did they catch him?”

Again, Frieda looked to her mother.

“We like to deal with these things ourselves,” Hilda said.  “We don't need government people snooping around, if we can help it.  They're so mixed up, they would probably arrest Frieda for owning an illegal knife.  But she has a natural right to carry it, to protect herself, whatever their stupid laws say.  We answer to laws older and truer than theirs.  But they're like soldiers, they don't think, they just march around and follow orders.”

“And they probably would have let him out in no time,” Frieda said.

“That seems true, too much of the time,” Erin agreed.

“Government laws are for protecting the government, not us,” Hilda added.

“So then, what happened?”

With a nod of approval from her mother, Frieda continued.

“I wrote down his license plate number, and my dad got it to Uncle Harm.  Then, Uncle had one of his... colleagues... find him.  That weirdo won't come back again, or grab any other girls.  Ever.”

She returned the knife to her apron and went to work setting the table; as she did so, her grandmother and little sister entered from the hallway.

“Did you have good naps?” Hilda asked.

“
Ja
” said Bertie.  The old woman grumbled inaudibly and sat at the end of the table, casting an unpleasant look at Erin.

Frieda, having finished setting the table, took a large bowl under her arm and started for the back door.

“Should I go pick the salad now?” she asked.

“Go on,” Hilda said, “but don't lose too much time looking for Oheim.”

Frieda started out but paused at the threshold to wait for her little sister, who came running to join her.

“Would you like to come, too, Erin?” Frieda asked.

“Oh, I'd love to!  I haven't seen much of the farm out there.”

Happily escaping the unfriendly glances of the old woman, she hoisted Hughie onto her arm and followed Frieda out the door.