Chapter 18

There were three new RVs in the parking lot when I went outside. There was just enough chill in the air that I put on a light jacket. Della followed me out, then went back inside and got a blanket to wrap around us as she sat on my lap.

We hadn't much more than got settled in when people from the new RVs started wandering over. I got up and shook hands with each of them. I explained to everyone about the interviews and all of them signed the sign-up sheets.

Alex came over while I was talking with the new people, so I sent Della in to tell my wives they could start interviewing. "My family is going to be the first to interview," Alex told me. "We told the next group to be here in two hours, Is that okay?"

"That'll be fine, Alex. You might want to change that to an hour and a half between interviews though. Maybe we can even get five families a day that way."

"Will do. As soon as you finish with us, we'll send the next group over."

"That'll work. After you guys finish your interviews, I'd like to talk with you for a few minutes. We need to work out some logistics."

"Okay. Ut oh. I see Della waving me in. Wish me luck."

"Luck isn't needed, Alex. In your case, this is a formality. Brenda has already vouched for you."

Alex gave me a big smile and then went inside. Della reclaimed her spot on my lap.

"So, is there a long wait before we're interviewed?" Dennis Kippenbrock, from Maine asked.

"It'll probably be two or three days, Dennis. We have a group a few miles from here with fifty-nine people in it that just started their interviews today."

"It's not a problem. We may have to do a little scrounging, but that's not a problem either."

"So, what did you do before IT happened?" I asked.

"I was a surveyor. A damned good one too. I kept all of my tools, so I could do any surveying you need."

"That's great, Dennis. We've been doing everything by guess and by gosh up until now. What have you been doing since IT?"

"Sometimes I feel like I haven't done anything. I was so lost for a couple of weeks that I don't even remember what I did. Then I met Ronnie. I had just been wandering around. I was still driving the pickup truck I'd had for three years. I lived in a small town and I'd gone through it completely. I guess sub-consciously I was looking for other people."

A nice looking woman in her mid-twenties walked up and put her arm around Dennis. "By the way, this is Ronnie," Dennis said.

"You don't look like any Ronnie I ever knew," I said as I extended my hand for her to shake. "I'm Ed James and inside the chrysalis on my lap is Della."

"Veronica Cartwright," she said. "Everyone calls me Ronnie."

"It's nice to meet you, Ronnie. Dennis was just telling me how you guys met."

Ronnie laughed. "Yes, my dear, tell them ALL about it."

Dennis blushed. "Well, I had decided to drive over to a town that was about twenty miles from where I was living. I was driving along, minding my own business. There was a nice stream running along side the road and I was wondering if there were any trout in it. Fresh fish sounded good after eating out of cans for a couple of weeks. Anyway, I was driving slowly when I see this water sprite bathing in the stream."

"I was as naked as the day I was born." Ronnie said. "I started to try to cover up, and then thought 'What the hell?' I turned toward Dennis and gave him a full frontal view."

"I almost swallowed my tongue," Dennis laughed. "Hell, I'd have settled for finding an old hermit by then, just for someone to talk to, and here was the most gorgeous creature I'd ever seen waving for me to stop."

"Well, I certainly didn't want him to drive on by," Ronnie said. "All I could think of was my family and friends whom I had watched die. I cried myself to sleep every night and woke up with an empty, gnawing feeling in my stomach every morning."

"Anyway, I stopped; got out of my truck; and walked down to the stream. This lady plowed through the water like a motorboat. As soon as I reached the stream, she threw her arms around me, soaking my clothes, and started crying on my shoulder. She didn't know it, but if she hadn't have come out of the water, I'd have waded in clothes and all. I needed the physical contact as much as she did."

"When we both stopped crying," Ronnie said with a grin, "I asked Dennis what his plans were and he said his only plan was to stay with me."

"Hell, I wasn't going to let her get away. I know that Ronnie realizes it and I'm sure most people who survived do as well, but the loneliness was almost overpowering. Before I met Ronnie, I was living in the moment. I was surviving. After I met Ronnie, I started thinking about the future. What would WE need to do to survive."

"I know what you mean," I said. "Until I met my first wife, Tina, I wasn't even sure I wanted to survive."

"Yeah, I was kind of feeling that way too," Dennis said. "Anyway, we decided we needed to continue looking for people. Ronnie got dressed and we talked for a while about how to survive. It was Ronnie who thought of an RV. Neither of us had anything holding us to where we had been living, so we drove on into Bangor and found an RV dealer. We picked out a good one and hit a grocery store to stock it with food."

"By then it was getting late, so we decided to call it a night. Dennis had some weird idea that we were going to sleep in separate beds, but I quickly set him straight on that. We didn't make love that first night, but we did cuddle naked together. That was the first night since IT happened that I fell asleep without crying."

"We were looking through the grocery store again the next morning when Letty White and Jenny Toliver came in. They were as surprised and excited to see someone else as we were. After the hugging and crying was over, Letty and Jenny decided they'd like to travel with us, looking for other people," Dennis said.

"That was the night Dennis and I made love for the first time," Ronnie said. "We decided the next day to start a systematic search of the state for survivors. It wasn't very productive."

"I think we went through every town in Maine," Dennis said. "We actually drove around for months. I was beginning to think we were the last people on earth. It was in Augusta that we met Sally, Georgette, Cindy and Sue. It was also in Augusta that we just missed you guys. We had just gone passed this one intersection and had driven up a side street for maybe twenty blocks. We turned around and headed back and when we got to the intersection, your sign was there. It hadn't been there when we turned up the side street."

"Anyway," Ronnie took over, "We had no idea which direction you were going, so we just read your flyer and decided immediately that we wanted to join your group. We were standing there reading when another RV pulled up with Sally, Georgette, Cindy and Sue in it. They had been doing the same thing we were. They were completely shocked when they saw Dennis. He was the first man they'd seen since IT happened."

"We talked for a while and they were very interested in joining your group as well. Especially after they read the part about prejudice, since Georgette is black. They told us about another group they'd run into about a month before who said they were going to Lewiston. It seems like one of the women in that group had grown up on a farm around Lewiston and they were going to see about getting it going again," Dennis said.

"It took us nearly two weeks to find them," Ronnie said. "When we did, we showed them one of your flyers and they started packing. One of the RVs broke down on the way here and we had to exchange it for another one."

"So, that's what we've been doing," Dennis said. "We started having trouble with dogs, so we armed ourselves. Then we realized we could kill some of the cattle and hogs we saw and have fresh meat. None of us knew how to butcher anything so we went to a library and learned. We've learned a lot over the last few months. Mainly it was learning to survive. Now we'd like to start learning to rebuild."

"Rebuilding is harder than surviving at first, but the rewards are really great," I said. "You guys will do fine."

When my wives finished interviewing Alex's group, Chris came out and sat on my lap for a while. I told her I'd been talking to the new groups that had come in. "There are three groups," I said. "Only one of them has a man in it and he seems okay. One man and ten women. The man to woman ratio is getting bigger every day."

"You know, it makes you wonder if this isn't Mother Nature's plan. In the animal kingdom there are always more females than males. One bull can service dozens of cows. One rooster can service many chickens. Now, it's going to be one man servicing many women."

"For some reason I don't want to think of myself as a rooster," I said.

"Then think of yourself as a stallion," Chris laughed.

I pulled her close and kissed her. "I'd rather think of myself as a man in love."

Homer came back with Brenda and Bell. All three of them were holding hands. Brenda and Bell sat down while Homer went to take over his bodyguard duties.

"So, how are things going?" I asked either or both of them.

"Things are going just fine," Brenda said.

"Better than fine, I think," Bell said. "You know, Ed, I told you I'd share Homer with the right woman? Well, I think I've found the right woman."

"That's great, Bell. When you're all sure and when you've all talked it over and agreed, talk to my wives. I think we all have a great relationship. They might be able to give you guys some pointers."

"We're going to do that, Ed," Brenda told me. "I know Bell and I are all for it, I just don't know how Homer feels about it yet."

"Oh, Homer won't be a problem," Bell said. "You should have seen him this morning when you went to the bathroom naked. I thought he was going to jump my bones right in front of you."

"Men just don't stand a chance, do they?" I asked.

"Not unless they're into other men," Brenda said with a laugh. "You know there's a gay male couple in my old group, don't you?"

"I didn't know it, but it won't be a problem," I said. "We really aren't prejudiced here. There may be some jealousy from some of the unattached women though."

"I don't think so," Brenda said. "When the women see that these guys aren't attracted to them, they'll give up quickly."

"Is that what happened in your group?"

"Yeah, we had one woman who kind of threw herself at these guys. She kept thinking if she could seduce them they'd want her instead of each other. Finally she got it through her head it wasn't going to work."

"I really think that will happen in our group too. At least I hope it will. I was telling Chris earlier that the woman to man ratio is getting worse all of the time. I think we have over two hundred women now and around fifty men. I'm wondering if that isn't going to be a problem in the long run."

""I don't think so," Belinda said. "If it were the other way around, it probably would. Men aren't as willing to share as women are."

"Bell, how the hell did you ever let Fouts convince you the he knew more about anything than you do?" I asked.

"It's just another trait that women have, Ed. Women, at least in this part of the country, defer to men. Since men are physically stronger, they have always been the hunters, the providers of food. So, if a woman wanted to eat regularly, she had to let the man think he was smarter as well. She did this by seeming to defer to his judgement on everything, while secretly controlling him without his knowing it. I guess I had bought into the deferring part without learning the controlling part."

My wives interviewed Sam Delany and his two wives, Anne Riesling and Tina Tolliver that morning. All of them seemed like nice people. We asked them to join us and they accepted.

After lunch, I helped out with the interviews and we talked with Josh Frazier who had been a butcher and his three wives. Millie Winslow had been a factory worker; Carolyn Roach was a former nurse; and Paula Smith had been a secretary. All were nice people and all accepted our invitation to join our group.

We also talked to Kevin Cline and Bill Self that afternoon. Kevin had been a high school teacher Bill had been a travel agent. Kevin was a take charge extrovert. Bill was a little more reserved, but both were personable and both agreed they'd work at anything.

When we didn't show any signs of prejudice against their relationship, they opened up about it. I think the fact that we were so accepting made us their friends for life.

We invited Homer, Belinda and Brenda over for dinner that evening and we all had a great time, mainly teasing Homer. I'll have to give him credit; he can take teasing.

After dinner, Homer asked me if I'd take a walk with him. I agreed, and we put on jackets before going out. When we had gotten away from the RV he said, "Ed, I need some advice. I love Bell with all of my heart. She's the kind of girl I've been looking for all of my life. She's so pretty I'd have never even thought of asking her out before IT happened. Then, when she moved into my RV she made it very clear that she felt the same way about me."

"Yeah, I could see that, Homer. I think she had a thing for you anyway, then when you stepped in and took up for her against Fouts, she fell for you in a big way."

"We married each other the way you and your wives married each other. We made a lifelong commitment to love and protect each other. I was happy with that and I'd have been happy living with just Bell until I died. Now, Brenda has come into our lives and I don't know what to do."

"Homer, women get together and talk about their relationships all of the time. I think it's time guys started doing the same thing. First off, the reason I introduced you to Brenda was that she had been describing to me what her perfect man would be like. It was like she was describing you. When you went back to work, I asked her what she thought of you. She said you seemed perfect and that you made her panties wet."

"Oh my God!"

I had to laugh. "Yep. Then I introduced her to Bell. Bell and I had already talked a time or two about how there were so many more women than there are men. She said she knew she'd have to share you and that if you guys could find the right woman, she wouldn't mind sharing. After she had met Brenda, she told me she thought she had found the right woman to share with."

It was dark enough I couldn't see Homer's face, but I knew it had to be as red as a stoplight.

"I guess the main thing is, how do you feel about Brenda?"

"That's where I've been confused, Ed. I've only known her for two days, but I think I love her. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to fall in love with someone that quickly. I was always taught that you could only love one person at a time, but I love two women. How is that possible?"