Chapter 17

Day 163 - October 31

We had two new RVs show up during the night. Evie and I cuddled for quite a while over coffee before anyone else got up. We were just enjoying the closeness when we heard a knock on the door. Evie figured it was Homer and Bell, so she just yelled for them to come on in.

Surprise, surprise, it was Brenda from the Hog Run group. "Oh shit! I'm sorry. I'll come back later," Brenda said as she turned to leave.

"Come on in, Brenda," Evie said. "You're not interrupting anything. We go nude most of the time."

Brenda hesitated, but finally came back in. Evie told her to get herself some coffee, which she did, then she took a seat across from us. Evie explained to her how we felt about prejudice and why we felt nudity would help with those beliefs.

"I must say it is a refreshing attitude. Most of the older generation around this area were prejudiced against blacks and most of the men treated women like they were chattels. Most of my generation are better although I'm sure there is some still there, especially toward women."

"That's a shame, Brenda, although it isn't just around here. Evie was in a situation where the guy treated her and the other two women they were with like he owned them. We've run into that as far east as Virginia and as far west as California."

"Ed, the reason I wanted to come back this morning was to talk to you about the possibility of merging our two groups. It sounds like you have a much better situation where you're living, so I talked with our people last night and told them about some of your resources. The consensus was that we'd like to join you."

"Brenda," I said after a moment's hesitation, "I'm sure we'd like to have all or part of your group join us. I can't give you a blanket okay because we will want to interview each member of your group before deciding on that individual. Would that be acceptable to you?"

"I suppose so," Brenda said hesitantly. "What is your criteria for acceptance?"

"We're just trying to eliminate spouse abusers, bigots, and criminals. It doesn't matter how smart you are or how skilled you are or how you look. We just want good, honest people."

"That makes sense, Ed. I'm sure everyone would consent to an interview. If one member of a family proved to be unsatisfactory, would that exclude the other members of the family?"

"Not at all. In fact, if the person who was excluded was an abuser, we'd try our damnedest to talk the other members of the family into joining us."

"Okay, I can live with that. I'm going to go back over and talk with my people again. I'll tell them what you're looking to exclude. Some of them might want to back out. How do we handle it for the ones who want to join you?"

"Everyone would need to come back over here and sign up on our interview sheet on the front of the building. We'll interview everyone in the order they sign up on the sheet. How many people are in your group?"

"There are thirteen men and forty-six women since the Adkins group left us. Would that many people put a strain on your community?"

"Not too much of one. Our construction manager is telling me we'll have fifty houses up within a month. If everyone in your group is included and we get a dozen or so more here, we'll have nearly 250 people in the village. That's just five people per house. That'll mean a little house sharing, but even that will probably be eliminated by spring."

"Wow! That's amazing."

"Actually, that's cooperation. Everyone works for the good of the community. Everyone is treated the same, no matter what their talents. The only thing we won't tolerate is someone who thinks they are too good to help. After we get everything set up, it's going to be a rather easy life for everyone. Yes, all of us will have to spend some time working in the gardens or with food processing or something, but the hours we spend working each week will be much less than we experienced before IT happened."

"How do you figure that, Ed?"

"Well, for one thing, before IT happened we worked until sometime in May just to pay our taxes. Now there will be no taxes. For another thing, life is a lot simpler now. How many weeks did we work each year to pay for a vacation? How many weeks did we work to pay for a car or a home or for any of the luxuries we no longer have? Although life is simpler, it will also be easier."

"I never thought of it that way, Ed. So far, we've been scrambling just to live. What you're describing is actually a better life than we had before."

"Yes, it is. There's going to be a lot of work right at first, but that's going to improve as time goes by. There are some things we want to do for our children and our children's children. For one thing, after the building is completed, we plan to start retrieving and preserving knowledge. We haven't even figured out how yet, but we know it has to be done."

"I can see that. Okay, let me get over and tell my people what's going on. I'll put my name on your sign up sheet before I take off."

Again I let my wives do the interviews. I don't think I was just being lazy. I had a lot to think about. It was right after they started talking to the male member of the second family that Glen stuck his head out of the RV and beckoned for me to come to him.

"What's up?" I asked.

"They're talking with a guy named Tom Masterson right now. He's going to be a problem. I thought you might want to be there."

I slipped inside just in time to hear Masterson saying, "It's not that I'm prejudiced against black people or Mexicans, it's just that when I've had to work with them I usually haven't liked them. If I don't have to work with them everything will be fine."

When we had met up with Jeff Combs in Utah, Syl had been shocked and hurt by how he felt about blacks. Now, that kind of attitude just made her angry. "So, what you're saying Mr. Masterson, is that you're not prejudiced. You just don't want to have to associate with black people or hispanics. As long as we stay in our place, you're okay with us. You're okay with us as long as you don't have to work with us. Of course, you wouldn't, for God's sake, want to eat with us. How about shitting with us? Do you think we should have separate restrooms? Maybe we should have a separate sewage disposal system. You wouldn't want your shit to get mixed up with ours at some point, would you? Maybe we should have a separate water supply as well. You wouldn't want us to contaminate your water, would you?"

By the time Syl had run down, Masterson was looking a little green. I walked over behind Syl and put my arms around her. When she looked up at me, I kissed her gently then said, "Easy, Sweety. Mr. Masterson, I don't feel that we can ask you to join our community. Glen, would you and Homer escort Mr. Masterson back to the bedroom and keep him there until we have talked to his wives?"

Masterson cursed and sputtered and I thought he was going to threaten until Homer laid his hand on the man's shoulder. Masterson just seemed to melt. Homer and Glen led him out.

"I'm sorry, Ed," Syl said. "I guess I just got carried away. Sometimes these people just make me so mad."

"It's okay, sweetheart. Sometimes they make me mad too. At least you didn't shoot the prick."

Everyone laughed at Syl's embarrassment, but the tension was broken. Masterson had three women with him so we called them in one at a time to see what they were like.

Emmy Lou Hobbs had been a factory worker before IT happened. She had been married but hadn't had any children. "We were waiting until we could afford kids," she told us. "My husband worked in the same factory and between the two of us, we just barely made enough to get by. The first thing we paid every week though was our savings account. We were getting close to having enough saved up for a down payment on a house."

"Did you work with any blacks in the factory you were in?" I asked.

"Sure. Jeana and I worked on the same machine for five years. It stamped oil pans out of sheet metal. One of us would load the sheet metal into the machine and the other would pull the oil pan out. Jeana was my best friend."

"Would it surprise you to hear that Masterson said he didn't want to have to work with blacks?"

"Well, yes, it surprises me and pisses me off. I'd have never thought that about Tom."

"Well, he did, Emmy Lou. Since that is his attitude, I don't feel like we can invite him to join us. I would like to ask you to join us as an individual though."

"Sure, I can see why you wouldn't want him. I guess I don't want him either. Yeah, I'll join you."

"Good. We are holding him in our bedroom until we've talked with you women. Why don't you go to your RV and get out anything you want to keep. Della will show you which RV you can put your stuff in."

Justine Grey had been an electrician in her prior life. She was a serious lady who had been making it in a trade that was predominately male. She didn't seem to have any prejudices and when we asked her if she'd rather join our group or go with Masterson, she didn't even hesitate.

"I want to join your village," she said with conviction. "I was never in love with Tom. I guess you could say we were using each other. We exchanged values equally and we both got what we wanted out of the relationship."

Della had come back from going with Emmy Lou, so I sent her off with Justine.

Theresa Simpson was a little older than most of the women we were seeing. There was also something there that wasn't ringing true. She never really said anything that I could pin down and say was a racist remark, but it was there, under the surface. I looked over at Evie and she shook her head.

"Theresa, I'm sorry, but I'm getting the feeling that you aren't totally comfortable around blacks. If I'm wrong then I apologize, but I have to go with my gut feeling. We are not inviting Tom to join us because of his racist leanings, and I'm afraid we're not going to invite you to join either. The other two women in your group have been asked to join us and they have accepted."

"Well, fuck you, then," She said. "Where's Tom?"

Glen and Homer brought Tom back into the living room. "Tom, Emmy Lou and Justine are going to be joining our group. You and Theresa will not be. Emmy Lou and Justine have removed their belongings from your RV, so I'd ask you and Theresa to please leave the area immediately. I'm not meaning to be disrespectful, but we have been attacked by more than one person who we've not asked to join us. Glen and Homer will be watching the two of you until you leave."

"Come on, Honey. Let's get the hell away from these assholes," Theresa said.

Tom took her hand and they left without another word.

There were two more families to interview so I let my wives get back at it after we all had eaten lunch. Della came over and sat on my lap for a while during the interviews. "Thanks for letting me help out this morning," she said.

"You're very welcome, Della. I expect you'll be helping out a lot once we get back to the village. We'll all be working hard for a year or more."

"Yeah, I know. What happened to my junior prom and senior prom and school dances and basketball games? Sometimes I feel like a kid and I get angry that all of those things were taken away from me. I know that's selfish. I should just be glad I'm alive, but it seems like I've lost so much. I was thinking about going to college to be a veterinarian. I'd even decided that Duke was where I wanted to go to college. Now I'll never have that."

"Ahh, but that's where you're wrong, my lovely young lady. We're going to need vets even more than they were needed before."

"But, how can I study to be a vet? There aren't any colleges any more."

"No, but the knowledge still exists. We are going to have a project going to preserve knowledge. We'll go to a good college and find out what courses were required for becoming a vet. Then we'll find out what was taught in each of those classes. When you've studied everything you need to study from the books they would have used in the classes, you'll be just as much of a vet as if you had actually gone to the schools. Chris and Sheila can help you a lot with what you are studying and with the lab work, because they had to take a lot of the same courses to become doctors."

I could see Della brighten up. "You'd actually do that for me?"

"Honey, I'd do it for you, but I'll actually be doing it for all of us. We'll all benefit if you become a vet."

"Yeah, I guess you will. Thanks, Ed. For some reason that makes me feel lots better."

Della snuggled back into me and I put my arms around her. That's the way Brenda found us a short time later. Brenda pulled up a chair and smiled at us. "You guys seem like a loving bunch," she said.

"We try to be, Brenda. Della went through a real bad time and she needs a little TLC," I said. I went on to explain about the Reverend Blackstone and what all he'd done to the women who had been under his control. To say she was shocked would have been a major understatement.

"My God! We have been so lucky. We've still been thinking the way we thought before IT happened. I never even considered there might be people like Blackstone out there."

"They're out there Brenda. There are also some very good people out there. The dogs that attacked Tina that I saved her from when we met made us wary of animals. Then when we started back this way from California, we met a guy on the highway. We were headed east and he was headed west. Syl and I got out of the RV to meet him. He decided he was going to take Syl for a sex toy and kill me. When he pulled a gun on us, Tina was watching from the RV. She shot him. That made us wary of people."

"Do you really think there's that many bad people out there?"

"There was a man in the group Sandy was in before she joined us who was trying to force her to mate with him. The man Tiffany was with before she joined us was beating her and the other woman who was with them. The man Evie was with before us nearly beat her to death. The man Chris was traveling with was trying to force her to join his family. The man Belinda Ferguson was with was abusing her. I could go on and on, Brenda. There's a lot of it going on."

"So how can we be safe?"

"We can't be 100% safe. We can do things to try to insure we're as safe as possible. Part of that is interviewing everyone who wants to join us. We've put a chain link fence around our village, but that only protects against animals. A man can shoot you from half a mile away. There's no way you can protect yourself against that."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. It just makes me realize just how unsafe we are where we are now."

"We can take precautions but we have to try to not become so paranoid that we are afraid to live. In some ways IT happening has been a blessing to us. We no longer have to worry about taxes or paying the mortgage or making a car payment. We don't have to worry about the politicians passing laws to control our every action. We do have to worry about the more important things like food and shelter. I feel like we've traded an artificial world for a real world."

"Were you a philosopher before IT happened, Ed?"

"No, I was a virologist with a broken marriage whose self confidence was at an all time low. My wife had filed for divorce saying I wasn't exciting enough for her. I burned with a desire to work on something important, like a cure for AIDS, but instead was working on a vaccination for the common cold."

"Yet now, you're a dynamic leader. How did that come about?"

"I don't know about dynamic. I think that pretty much everything I am today can be attributed to Tina and Syl. I told you about rescuing Tina from the dogs. That did something to me. I knew I had to take care of Tina as well as myself. Then, Tina fell in love with me. My God! This young, beautiful woman fell in love with me. My self-esteem went through the roof. Then we met Syl. I don't know what it is about Syl. At first she was completely vulnerable. She couldn't even shoot a gun, but even then I drew strength from her. Now, whenever I'm down about anything, all I have to do is cuddle up with Syl and I feel whole again."

"God! I wish I had a relationship like that. I've been trying to organize things in our group, but it has been tough going. I don't have the knowledge of how to do things that you have. No one else seemed to want to be in charge, so it was just kind of thrust upon me."

"What did you do before IT happened?"

Brenda snorted. "I was a legal secretary. Shit, the guy I worked for was a shyster. If you looked up ambulance chaser in the dictionary, you'd have seen his picture."

I laughed and asked, "So how did you get involved in starting a new community?"

"I was scavenging for food over in Ashland when I met two other women doing the same thing. None of us had a clue as to how we were going to survive in the long run. We did decide we should stay together since there was security in numbers. I moved into the house they were living in and right from the first, they started asking me what they should do about this or that. We talked it over and decided to do a little exploring."

"Yeah, I think everyone has done the same thing. There's always the hope in everyone's mind that they'll run into someone else."

"Well, we did that. We drove around Ashland and Huntington for a couple of days and didn't see anyone. Then we came over on this side of the river. We met Alex Gibbons and his first wife the first day we were over here. Now, Alex isn't a survivalist, and he certainly isn't a take charge person. Hell, he was an accountant before. He does have a lot of knowledge though. We talked about survival and what we'd need to do."