Chapter 16

(Fall of Year Four to Late Winter of Year Four)

Now, I'd like you to imagine a bunch of hooting, stinky, yelling cave dudes running around like crazy bastards, dressed like bondage gimps, carrying buckets of sand, and putting out pretend fires everywhere through camp. Got a mental image? Good, now add in both the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers and season with weird religious mania. If you visualize it correctly, you'll end up seeing these goons running around throwing water and sand everywhere, including on each other, smashing into things, including each other, and tripping and falling all over the place, including over each other. And of course, there I am in the middle of it all shouting orders and running around as well, wearing a flashing K-Mart light on my head and getting more and more mad as my wives fall all over each other laughing. Of course, the toddlers get involved in the running around, and pretty soon the only thing missing is the white faced clown make-up to prove it's a circus.

In the end though, after several practice sessions, I choose about fifty men and women to form the corps of fire fighters that I referred to as the ASBRS — Amazing Stinky Bastard Rescue Squad. They trained a half dozen times more, and I issued them with a necklace of smilodon claws. The moment I handed those out, their stock went way up in the world. Before I knew it, these guys were all over the place patrolling for fires and lording it over the peons.

Since I'd already set them up as firefighters, I had Julie train them as sanitation police. What were the sanitation police? Well, they were empowered to watch out for gross misuse of the toilets, lack of bathing, etc. Intrusive and patriarchic government reaching into the lives of the everyman, you might ask? Yes, and damned glad of it. By the time winter was on its way, they were damned near everywhere. It worked for me.

...

As summer closed in towards fall, it was time for me to get serious again about the grinding wheels for the mill. I'd given up on making decent wheels a while back, but this year I had access to better tools and I'd learned a lot. One of the things I'd learned was that there was a stone crafter in the tribe. His name was FireHeaded. FireHeaded was a red-head, sure enough. He'd been rather ostracized his whole life, apparently because of the hair color. In spite of his being mostly shunned, he had managed to retain a kind of quiet self-deprecating humor. I liked him. He was good with his hands in general, but with stone he seemed to come into his own. Julie had shown me some of the work he'd done on the walls, and I recruited him to work with me on the batteries. His work with the soapstone was clean and precise, so I moved him on to working on the grinding stones.

I was shocked by his wit.

"Fire, come over here please." I said to him one day, as we walked to the granite quarry.

"Yes, GreatOne?" He gathered up his tools and came with me.

"You see these stones that I cut before?"

"Yes?"

"I was trying to make two stones that mate."

With a fair amount of effort, I worked to drag one of the old aborted mill stones on top of the other.

"Mate? GreatOne? Stones do not fuck."

"No, they don't. But what would happen to anything that was trapped between these two stones, the male one there and that one, the woman stone?"

"It would be hurt, GreatOne. Small things like a finger would get crushed."

See what I mean? He was a smart one.

"Exactly, Fire. Now look at this. This is a grain mill." I showed him the hand cranked grain mill. As I showed it to him, I took off the retaining nut and the housing.

"Do you see these two metal wheels, Fire?"

"I do, Great One. Hello GrainMill."

It didn't answer as I unfastened the clip holding the grinding wheels in place and took them out for him to see.

"Do you see how these two small wheels mate up, the male part and the female?"

"Yes, GreatOne ... I see that."

"When I put grain in here, at the hole in the wheel, it gets ground between the two wheels. This turns the grain into flour. Here, let me show you."

I reassembled the mill, but I left the housing off.

"See how I put the grain here, in the top?"

"Yes, I see."

"Now I crank the wheel and what happens?"
I turned the grind crank slowly, and he watched, with a great deal of suspicion.

"The woman wheel grinds the grain to bits, great one."

"Exactly, Fire. Exactly."

I reassembled the portable grain mill and set it aside, then led him back to the half finished stones set on the ground.

"Fire. I want big stones, very large stones, for the mill. Like the male and female wheels I just showed you. To grind lots of grain at once, not just a little."

He looked at the stones for a while, and at the bad carving I'd done on them. He looked back at the small mill, then at the big stones.

"GreatOne?" He looked up at me. "You want me to make grain crushers out of stone for you? A man stone and a woman stone?"

"Yes, Fire. That's exactly what I want."

"What are these lines on the stone, GreatOne?"

"Fire, when the grain comes in through the hole in the woman stone, the carved lines here, near the ... middle of the stone ... they must be big enough for the grain to fall into. Then, as the stone turns ... the grain will slide down the lines in the stone, and then get crushed into flour as the lines get smaller."

He ran his hands over the lines I'd carved in the stones for a long time. I was about to give up on him when he looked up at me again and smiled.

"GreatOne. It is like when the women take a smooth stone and make flour from the grain by crushing it. Except this will be better. The seeds of the grain will slide down and be crushed. Each stone is heavy, so the face of the stone between the lines must be smooth. Yes?"

The smile on my face must have been huge. "Yes! Exactly, Fire."

We talked for a while more, and I left him happily working away. The abortive stones that I had started on would serve as a rough pattern for him.

A few days later there was a bit of a commotion in the inner compound as FireHeaded came in. He was rolling a huge mill stone on its edge, followed by a pair of helpers rolling a second stone. The first thing I noticed was that the stone was damned near perfectly circular, and the second thing I noticed was that it was exquisitely carved with grooves and lands, just like I had described to him. When he rolled the second stone in and both were laid flat and mated up, I could hardly contain my excitement. He'd done an amazing job. The carving was neat, clean, and almost artistic in its execution.

"FireHeaded!" I shouted. "These are perfect stones!"

A small crowd gathered around us, and my wives came out to see what was happening.

"Are these stones useful, GreatOne?"

"They look just right, Fire!" I grinned. "Let's roll them down to the mill and see!"

So, a passel of us rolled the two big stones down to the mill house. Once there, I cleaned out the stone bed that I'd built for the grain mill and then stopped the power gear up above. The mill went nearly quiet, the only sound being the creak of the water wheels themselves.

"Let's lift the male stone into place, boys." I gestured to the closest group of men, and they helped us lift it into the round raceway and set it flat. Amazingly, the stone was almost perfectly flat on the backside. I had to wonder to myself where he'd learned that trick.

Once it was in place, we loosely set the guide pole in place in the hole in the center of the male stone, and it fit really closely. He'd used my old stones as a guide I guessed. When the pole was loosely set, we flipped the female stone over and carefully set it into place.

Here's the cool part. It fit on the male stone just perfectly. Once it was lined up right, it fit just perfectly on top of the male stone and over the guide pole. I was really shocked. I'd never gotten anywhere near this close to a working mill. Out of a spontaneous happiness, I just reached out and hugged him. He looked surprised as hell.

Then, looking over my shoulder ... what did I see but SmilingFace looking at FireHeaded with a grin on her cute little face, but it was a shy grin. When she saw me notice her, she blushed. And in that moment, I had it all sussed out.

Over the next couple of hours, we loose-set the upper stone and marked where the turning pole would have to fit. The turning pole is the rotating crank that actually turns the upper stone over the bottom stone. When the pole was marked out, FireHeaded set to making a hole in the upper wheel where the pole would go. I was terrified that he'd break or crack the upper stone, but he worked with precision, and cut out a damned near perfectly clean hole. When he was done, we tightened the race guides up and set the pole in place correctly.

Crossing my fingers, I set the power wheel back in gear. With a creaking groan, the upper wheel started turning. At first, it shrieked as the small highs and lows of the two stones met and dug into each other, but after just a couple of minutes, and after using some sand as an abrasive, the wheels began to turn with a kiss of friction.

We had a working grain mill. Sure, there was work to be done on polishing the stones, but everything worked. I hugged FireHeaded again, and raised his hands for everyone to see him.

"You see this man?" I asked the crowd of observers.

"Yes, GreatOne." They chanted back, already knowing that I was in 'ceremonial' mode.

"I recognize this man!" The crowd made ooohing noises.

"This man is a NEW thing for the people!"

I paraded him around, and as I did so, his face turned brighter and brighter red.

"This man is a mason! A mason!"

"Mason!" They chanted back.

"He is a worker of stone magic! A stone shaman!" I held up his tools. "He will be gifted with a sacred mark like the other workers of magic, the readers, the scouts, the smiths!"

I held his arms up high. "Praise him!" I shouted. "Praise FireHeaded the Mason!"

They all shouted his name.

I'd prepared for the possibility that he might pass the test, so out of my back-bag, I pulled a felted hat. It was made in the shape of a truncated cone, and had a tassel hanging from it. It'd been rubbed with red ochre.

"Kneel, FireHeaded!" I pressed down on his shoulders, and he knelt down in the mill.

I held the red fez up above his head.

"I hereby, with the power vested in me by the sacred seals of Solomon and the People of the Emerald City ... by the sacred order of BellyDancingPaintedFaces ... By the authority of the Indianapolis Junior Womens Auxiliary Sewing League ... I hereby officially elevate you to the sacred and august position of Fourth Degree Mason of the Inner Lodge!"

I waved my hands around a bit and fired off a couple of shots from the .40 cal. "Ipso Facto! Via Con Dios! Quenta est Dos Cervesas?!"

"All hail the mason!"

They all cheered and we had a big party.

Late that night, when I caught SmilingFace watching from the edge of the crowd, I suddenly stood up and gestured for silence. "What?" I said, looking at the sky.

"What's that, GreatSpirit?" I paused. "Okay, I'll check."

The whole crowd got a lot quieter, and I could hear people talking softly about me chatting with the GreatSpirit. I dragged my kit bag over and lo and behold ... white flour mating powder was inside. I wandered through the crowd and picked a few women out. Then I grabbed FireHeaded and sat him down on a bench and blew the powder into his face. I held the magic flashing light up over his head, and AMAZINGLY enough, it lit up! I could see Julie from the edge of the circle watching me, her eyes were dancing with mirth as I walked around the poor women I'd selected, blowing powder in their faces.

"Everyone! The GreatSpirit has told me that FireHeaded The Mason is to be mated!"

Excited whispers went through the crowd.

I held the light over each woman, but it didn't light up! I was perplexed.

"Where is the woman that is to be this man's mate?" I asked the crowd.

Quiet murmuring was heard. Then, and how I loved her for her wit, Ashes looked around and said. "She is here at the fire, GreatOne!"

Then Shining said. "She is one of the women of the first cave, GreatOne!"

There was suddenly a scuffling at the edge of the fire, and Luscious dragged SmilingFace into the circle. The little thing was beet red and alternating between crying with embarrassment and grinning this feral sexual grin.

I blew the powder in her face. As I did so, I looked over at Fire, and he was blushing also. Then I held up the magic light, and it lit up! The gods be praised.

"She is the ONE. This is his true mate! ShiningFace of the First-Cave is to be the mate of FireHeaded the Mason!" Everyone cheered, and I led her over to him. They both could hardly stand it. They were both blushing and grinning and acting like fools. I knew it was love. After all, that's the way I feel about my wives. It shows.

So that was that. We all got drunk, I gave the new couple some presents, and my women dragged me off to be screwed into submission. It wasn't a bad evening at all.

...

Once the fall harvest did arrive, there was a lot of work to be done suddenly. We harvested bushel after bushel of late summer corn, white and pinto beans, peas, carrots, and lots of other vegetables. The late wheat came in, and there was plenty of it. With the new grain mill in operation, we ground dozens of big leather sacks full of beautiful brown wheat flour. The mill itself ground the flour so fine it was amazing. The granary was filled up with sealed bags, sealed pots, and loads of dried veggies. Hundreds of pounds of salt lined the floors and sat out in open pots to desiccate the air.