Chapter 5

(Spring to Summer Year Two)

By that point, spring of my second year in-country was coming to an end. Early summer was on the way, and I had so much to do that my head was swimming. As things happened, it was an extremely busy summer, and I'll have to cover it all in pieces. You're probably wondering about the domestic issues. I'll start there. Bountiful, Ashes, and Shining had settled the six new women into a lean-to we'd set up after the cave massacre. The remaining women and kids had been taken by Seeks and WrinkledEvil to the old cave, and we didn't see much of them after that, they were busy working. I felt kind of bad for the kids, but I didn't have time right then to become a full time dad, so I let them be raised with the family group. In the end that didn't turn out so badly. The old family needed new people and the 'invader' family group was broken apart, so the new women all looked to WrinkledEvil and the family to guide them. The kids got fed okay though, I made sure of that. For the time being, that settled the hash of both the old family and the invaders. I knew I'd be dealing with that whole situation again, but I decided not to stir things up until winter or even later.

By mid-spring I knew that both Ashes and Shining were pregnant. Their morning sickness wasn't as pronounced as Bountiful's had been, so neither really noticed. I was the one that noticed that their periods had stopped. When you live on top of each other the way we did, it's hard for a man not to notice these things. It's even more the case when sanitation for menstruation isn't a nearly invisible tampon that goes out in the trash, but instead is a cloth pad that has to be washed and cleaned and dried down at the river. I figured that Ashes was probably a week or two behind Shining, and that by the time I'd noticed it in late April, they were both probably a month gone. That meant that I'd be dealing with very pregnant women by September, and births due in November. The women would need a warm, dry shelter before then. As soon as I figured out that they were pregnant, I made sure to start them on a semi-regular supply of vitamins. I had a good supply of the vitamins, but not unlimited and I had decided to limit its use to pregnancy. In doing some reading on miscarriage after Bountiful had lost the first child, I discovered that a very meat heavy diet could be low in vitamin C and how that could promote iron deficiency. That might have contributed to the miscarriage. I'd decided that these two pregnancies weren't going to go that way.

The new women ... for the first several days, I didn't have a lot to do with them. I'd let the girls manage things. This was probably a pretty big mistake, because by the time that I got around to meeting them and getting to know them, the girls had almost completely indoctrinated them in the cult of Josh. When I went into the lean-to one evening, having decided to spend some time with them, they greeted me with fear and worshipful noises. I talked with them a while, and calmed them down. The girls and I set them specific chores around the compound. And, although I'm not very proud of it, over the next week, I had sex with them all. My girls were right though, they all calmed down.

My priorities were getting more of the wall up, getting a garden in, and getting the water wheel built. There were some additional things I wanted to make progress on as well. Some of them were finding limestone and working on making cement to build a concrete manufacturing capability, finding a good source of clay and making some ceramics, both for use around the camp, and building a big kiln. Once I had a kiln I could start brick-making and maybe I could make a couple of iron crucibles. Finding a source of salt was going to be important also.

With DeadAndBack making a good recovery and his strength returning I was making good progress with the wall. By using a couple of the new women to haul the logs and do the lighter work, I was able to process and place more pilings each day, some times as many as six in a day. Ashes took to bow hunting for small game with a passion, and when she went out, she almost always brought back several small prizes. As much as I didn't like the girls being outside the safety of the compound all that much, I did know that they were actually better out there than I was, so I let it go.

When the wall extended to the river, I drove a series of pilings into the river bed, and spaced them with a series of eight inch gaps between them. This caused the river to back up some, and spread back toward what I had decided would eventually become a bathing pool, once I dredged it out and lined it. When the pilings were in place, I used steel reinforcing stock I welded up out of angle iron to make a crude grate in the river flow, and above the grating at the water line and higher, I drove in split logs to seal the gaps. As a result, below the water line the river flowed pretty freely through the logged in grating, but above the waterline the wall was solid again. I had some concern as I built it of smaller vermin like rats being able to swim in from under water, but anything I put in place as a grating was likely to either rot or rust. The chromium steel stock I had used wasn't like to last very long, perhaps only a year or two. I would either need to replace them every so often, or find a better solution. But at the time, it was the best I could do. Once the wall reached its farthest planned extent to the east, we stopped and dragged the piling frame north to where we'd be extending the current eastern side of our north-south wall. The river was farther to the east on this side, and just south of the wall would be where the new vegetable garden was going in. We made better than planned progress, since DeadAndBack was soon able to take over the entire pile driving operation with the help of one of the women. I became the main lumberjack. By late June and way ahead of schedule, we completed the extension of the wall by crossing the river, piling it in as we had done on the south side, and then making a massive effort involving all of the women and even getting some help from Seeks and the hunters.

That night I threw one of my parties. I let Seeks and the women know that I wanted to celebrate, and that I would provide the chemical enhancement. The entire extended family came out. I hung up a few of the white gas lanterns and lit them as dusk was falling. Then I broke out a couple of bottles of my vodka stash and mixed it up with some Kool-Aid packs from the MREs that I'd saved. I made the punch pretty weak because they were all used to drinking stuff that was lightly fermented, usually just a few percent. This stuff was more like ten percent. I got plenty drunk. I sat on a log surrounded by my three adoring women, by another six that worshiped and feared me, and by another family of nearly twenty members who all feared and respected me and my 'wisdom'. Naah ... mostly, they feared the ThunderThatBlowsHunksOfCavemanOut I carried around with me. So yeah, I got drunk and told stories about my world of flying planes and machines that talk. They all listened in rapt storyteller fashion, but they all also seemed to be waiting for something.

When I was done, and sat back feeling a tiny bit sorry for myself and my lost life, DeadAndBack stood up on his crutch. From behind his back he produced one of the smilodon skulls. He held it up over his head, and then slowly lowered it over the top of his head. Someone had modified it to fit on the head like a cap, and from behind, someone had rawhide laced a flap of smilodon skin to it that looked like a small cape. He bent over toward the ground and held out his hands like a plane taking off. In the background I could see SeeksWisdom looking all kinds of proud, like a happy parent. I guessed that one legged DeadAndBack had recently graduated Shaman school.

"I was there." He said, in a rhythmic chanting voice.

"I was there!" all the folks chanted back. I sat up and listened.

"I saw it.

I saw it.

The Sun saw it

The Sun saw it

The GreatSpirit saw it

The GreatSpirit saw it

The GreatOne came to us

The GreatOne came to us

EarthMother felt it

EarthMother felt it

He came from the sky

He came from the sky

Great shining birds from the sky came

Great shining birds from the sky came

They held his cave of shining stone in their talons

They held his cave of shining stone in their talons

The birds came down in fire!