Rock Fall
Copyright© 2015 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 5: The Castle Plan
Chris was surprised to find that the bishop had made a stop on his way out — to visit Joanna. Mike shook his head when Chris asked about it. “All I know is there was no shouting and screaming, no gunfire and no explosions. That’s better than I ever would have hoped. It is, in fact, the first time in years that they have ever talked to each longer that a minute without one or both stomping out in a fury.”
A half hour later the bishop and Joanna emerged from their talk and Joanna was bright-eyed, like she’d been crying. “I have something to say to you, Chris. My father and I don’t like each other. It started, to a degree, when I was six. It crawled into the open when I was eleven and peaked the day Mike and I got married.
“He told you about his proposal to move the majority of the stake up here and the provisions he intends to make. He told me, that he would withdraw his proposal if the two of us couldn’t make peace. He didn’t expect everyone to agree with him anymore, but at the same time he didn’t want to work at cross-purposes with a member of his family. That if I said ‘no’ he’d treat that as my final answer and make other arrangements for his flock.
“Chris, I believe you, about what God has in store for us. It’s not a nice vision. I believe my father when he says he wants what’s best for the stake and that he’s prepared to render almost anything to Caesar to see them safe. I know those people, Chris. They are my family and my friends. I can’t turn my back on them. I understand the reason you don’t want Mike and I here and I understand why my father is more acceptable. I think you should permit it, I do.”
“I will ask the others,” Chris said neutrally.
“And all those years?” Mike asked his wife softly.
“My father apologized to me for being wrong. He was pig-headed, stubborn and blinded by his pride far too often. He isn’t a liar and he doesn’t say he’s sorry often and hasn’t ever admitted to error before, so far as I can remember. We won’t be quick to reconcile; there was too much bad blood for too long. But he says he’s willing to try if I am. I am.”
Chris and the four others met later in the main house. “Well, evidently we’re going to go public, sooner rather than later. If people start moving in up here, there isn’t going to be any way that other people aren’t going to notice,” Sydney said, “But that’s water under the bridge — it was going to happen at some point — there’s no reason to be shy about it. It’s late, we’re all tired and we need to make decisions with clear heads.”
“About the bishop ... I think we need to talk about the bishop tonight,” Chris said.
“The biggest problem is going to be the logistics,” Amy told them. “The ground will freeze to a depth of two or three feet, at a minimum. A six foot trench — that would do it.”
Chris grinned. “I can do that.” He laughed again. “Well, not me personally...” He smiled thinking about it. “Gutterman Mining is going to hire two crews to cut two trenches, six feet deep, and three feet wide. We’ll hire plumbers and electricians to put in the utilities, all nice and up to code. The first thing we’ll dig will be a humongous leach field. No shit.”
Lisa cleared her throat. “I don’t think we want to do this just yet, but planning — we should deal with the planning first. There are a lot of good people in town, and if you are going to hire a couple of dozen to work up here we need to make provision for them as well.
“They are going to know — some of them belong to the bishop’s stake. They are human beings, just like us. Stupid, pretty much, but people. They have the same hopes and desires as we do — as the bishop’s people have. I think we should seriously consider opening up the site to any other families that are willing to move here, and obey the same rules as the stake.
“It would be unconscionable to enlist people to build a safe refuge — and not permit them to choose it as well.”
“We could end up inundated,” Brenda countered.
“There aren’t that many former mine employees — and most of them are older,” Lisa countered. “Those men have spent most of their lives being bossed by someone younger than them; someone they acknowledged who knew what he was doing. And they might have a few sons and daughters who’ll come with them — and be so inclined.”
“Those men,” Chris said softly, “are the salt of the earth. They’ve forgotten more about the work ethic than any of our peers will ever learn. Yes. If nothing else, we need the extra space anyway in case we have to take in refugees ... and I’m pretty certain if Pine Valley falls apart, we will have refugees.”
“We’ve come a long way from sitting out the destruction of the stupids while we were up here on the mountain — to helping save them. This isn’t a case of mission creep — this is jet-propelled change. We really do need to think about it,” Sydney spoke.
Chris realized that they were getting dangerously close to losing consensus. “We need to combine Sydney’s and Lisa’s ideas. We need to consider whether or not we want to expand our effort — and start planning for it if we do. We should make this decision in the clear light of day.”
That night it was Amy’s turn — she and Brenda were alternating. She was more aggressive than normal. “That was simply brilliant tonight — throwing Sydney and Lisa together even if they wanted the opposite things.”
“We have to work together, and not be at odds.”
“And I’m thinking those odds are getting better all the time.”
“It’s all there in my great grandfather Barnaby’s journals. For best results put people together who work well together — even if they don’t agree with each other — or you — at the moment.”
School the next day was a Friday, and was as close to a school-wide ditch day that Chris had ever seen.
About four out of five students skipped, heavily weighted to the upper grades.
Principal Dewitt was on the loudspeaker during homeroom.
“I can’t tell you how to face this. We have been assured that everything is fine. Nonetheless, most of us have serious doubts.
“You need to make up your minds. You, the students and you, the faculty. You can shirk your responsibilities because you think disaster is right around the corner. I can’t avoid reinstating students who come back in a few weeks, chagrinned that they made a misjudgment. I surely can avoid hiring teachers back who cut and run.
“I have been assured by the district, and the district has been assured by the state Department of Education who was assured by Washington, that money will be available to continue classes. We will maintain a morning and evening meal program, as well as the school lunch program. The library will remain open, and Mr. Finton has said it will take more than a Rock to move him out of his physics class. We will run classes with the teachers we have, and if we need to, we will improvise. Classes at this school will be dismissed as usual the Friday ahead of the Rock’s arrival, and will start up again the following Monday as usual. Period.
“Now, I’m speaking to you students. I am not your parents. I can’t command what you do — but I can serve as your conscience. Have a care what you do here and now. This is a make or break time for you — do you have what it takes to function like an adult or are you really still a child? Can you accept the responsibility for your own actions? Or are you going to look around and say, ‘everyone else is absent. I’m not going to bother either.’
“One of three things is going to happen when the Rock falls. Either it will be the end of things or it will be like we’ve been told — not a very significant thing. The third possibility is the one that is most likely — events fall someplace between the extremes. Honestly, if we join the dinosaurs you might as well have your fun now — there never will be a later. But most likely, things are going to come back together — fast or slow depending on how we meet the challenges that present themselves.
“I’m betting that things will come back together again. I don’t know how long it will take — there’s no telling. But I’m sure of this: odds are you will regret every bit of schooling you missed before things are back to normal. For heaven’s sake! Take what is so freely on offer!”
There were a greater percentage of teachers present than students, and those that were there struggled to pretend nothing unusual had happened.
Chris, however was in the computer lab, ordering supplies and materials. He doubted that he personally could have ordered a hundredth of what he managed as “Gutterman Mining.” Still, by the end of the day, he had done the next best thing to filling an entire train, even if a third of his money was gone.
The majority of the cargo was sixty prefab “factory houses” and each of those occupied a flat car. They were slightly wider than normally permitted on a car, but it was a matter of a foot on either side, and that was still a foot more of clearance. He’d gotten a deal on the homes, and Chris was pretty sure the manufacturer would come to regret it — while it might not seem such structures were going to be in great demand, he was sure it was just a matter of time.
Thinking about that was his first warning that there were things he wasn’t thinking about enough. Mobile homes, trailers, were famous for windstorms wrecking havoc with. He called up the company shipping them and found that they used thick canvas straps hooked to simple lever-turnbuckles to tie them down to rail cars. If you weren’t interested in aesthetics, but more interested in speed and simplicity, it could be a simple thing to cement in steel piping, laid on the ground that would be easy to hook to the turnbuckles.
A little after eleven he looked around. There was no one in the computer lab but himself. He pulled out his normally forbidden cell phone and called Bishop Flake.
“The answer, sir, is yes.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wallace.”
“As of today I’m returning to the family name. I’m Chris Gutterman.”
“This hasn’t anything to do what I said about your great grandfather being my godfather?”
Chris suppressed a smile. “Sir, I’ve been meaning to do this the first moment that my mother could no longer interfere with my access to my trust funds. Little did I know that the magic key to them wasn’t ‘Open sesame!’ but ‘My name is Chris Gutterman.’”
“We should meet again and do more detailed planning,” the bishop said.
“We should,” Chris agreed. “However, come what may, today I contracted for sixty pre-fab houses, twelve feet wide and eighty feet long. They are from a manufacturer who gave up when Oregon got too business unfriendly. Sir, he moved his factory to Wenden, next to the Arizona-California railroad right of way.”
Bishop Flake laughed. “And the man’s name is John Snow. We will have to work out payment details, but I’m sure that we Snows and Flakes will have common ground.”
Nothing like having your nose rubbed in history! Two of the most famous names in the Mormon history of Arizona were the Snows and Flakes. Most tourists thought the town of Snowflake, Arizona was named after those little ice crystals, instead of the town’s founders.
“Sir, I don’t want to sound like your contribution isn’t important — it is very important.” He stopped, remembering the thumb drive in the back of the PC. “Sir, come as soon as you can after school lets out. This is not the time to be spreading the good news of your stake’s new digs. In fact, we should carefully go over the details before you say anything to anyone.”
He heard the puzzled voice on the other end. “As you wish, Mr. Gutterman.”
“God says that he who waits patiently has things made clear in the fullness of time,” a woman’s voice said.
“God never...” the bishop stopped. “This is on the speaker phone in my kitchen, Mr. Gutterman. Not one, but two of my wives expressed their pleasure at the direction things are going. They expressed it quite forcefully and now I’m in agreement with their enthusiasm for this project. Is it alright, Mr. Gutterman, if my wives come this evening?”
“Of course, sir. But I have to say, we men are going to be heavily outnumbered.”
“If Sister Sydney is going to be there, I was already outnumbered. If my daughter is there — I wish her mother was here to see her now.”
“Tonight, sir,” he told the man and turned off his phone. Had he said too much? There wasn’t much he could do about the bill of ladings for the materials he’d ordered. The price of construction supplies, had, if anything, declined slightly. That would, he was sure, change very shortly when businesses realized that transportation disruptions would cause shortages in practically everything. And if there was one thing Chris was sure of, it was coming transportation shortages.
He checked his spreadsheet, amazed as he’d been all day at the numbers. Six rail cars of rice, beans and other non-perishable staples. Nearly half a million pounds! And as mind-boggling as that number was, it was when he put it over the divisor — how many people would be on the mountain. A hundred, at the least, maybe two hundred. There were nearly a thousand people in town. If he cut rations to a bare minimum, he could feed the people at the mine for four years. The whole town? A fifth of that — less than a year.
He checked his list of seed. Enough for ten thousand acres of corn, wheat and oats and another thousand acres of mixed vegetables. He made a note to ask Bishop Flake how many of his flock were into animal husbandry. There were a lot of ranchers around Pine Valley and a lot of beef. How much of that would survive a hard winter? Sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and the rest of the barnyard flocks? Horses? He didn’t ride and never had. Some of the hands at the mine had had horses, but they’d all left long since. He made another note “Fix up barn!” — and then hastily added an “S” after the last word.
He picked up his phone again and dialed a number from memory. “Keith, this is Chris. I’m going to want a number of things done at the mine. I talked to you the other day about it. It’s time to call back a couple of crews. Two at first, including some powdermen.
“Could you come up this evening and we’ll discuss it?”
The old man sounded defeated. “As you wish, sir. I wish I could do more than watch, sir.”
“Keith, we’ll talk about it. When the crews come back to work at the mine, you’ll be first.”
“Not if, Chris?”
“No. I’m going to want to talk this over with you. I suppose Dwayne as well.”
“The union rep? Are you going to bring back that many, sir?”
“For a couple of weeks. We’ll talk about it tonight at the mine.”
“I’ll be there, sir. I think this will get Dwayne out of his bottle as well.”
“Keith, my Great Grandmother Fiona was fond of him because he flattered her. My great grandmother is dead. Give him some incentive: if he doesn’t show up tonight, or if he’s not sober — one or the other of his union brothers will sadly, reluctantly, with great sorrow and not a few tears — call for his immediate ouster. Tomorrow.”
“He’ll be there, sir.”
“I’m having a small party tonight, but this won’t interfere with that.”
“Of course, sir.”
Amy slid into the seat next to him and he told her, “I’ve been a bad boy. I don’t think I’ve broken security, but I’ve skated close to the edge.”
“I had a chat with Joanna and Mike this morning before we left for school. They are now with the program for Gloria’s party.”
“I’ve invited some company for this evening. The bishop and others. The party metaphor might get a little strained.”
“So long as no one uses ‘Rock Fall’ and ‘birthday party’ interchangeably. I’ll go over it with everyone tonight, and what to do if you if you do screw up.”
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