Chapter 2

You know? The thing I miss the most is grits. I sure wish I knew how to make them. I know, we don't have corn, so we can't make an exact copy of grits, but maybe I could make an acceptable substitute if I just knew how to make the original stuff. At least, I'm getting all of the pussy that I can handle! All four of my wives have gone out of their way to make sex enjoyable for me, and I love them for it.

Don't get me wrong. I would love them even if they were not such sex hounds, but it sure is fun to try to keep up with them. As it is, all four are pregnant, but that does not seem to have slowed any of them down. Nobody has a big bulge in the belly, yet, but all of them have confidently announced that they are knocked up, and I see no reason to doubt them. They sure know more about it than I do.

The house is comfortable with the Franklin stove and the double outside wall. The women all say that this is the first winter that they have lived in a truly warm house. I get all of the credit, and I make no effort to dodge the nice things they say about the warmth and about me. Ah, it is truly nice to be appreciated.

It sure is nice, too, not to have to go out in that damned cold weather to hunt. All of the dead horses provided us with enough smoked and salted meat so that all I have to do is go to the house next door to fetch whatever the women want to cook next. Actually, it is the house that is across the street that we have converted into a storehouse. We have put in there all of our meat and vegetables. Without heating, that house stays below freezing most of the time, even during the middle of the day, so we have as effective a refrigeration system as we could ask for. Our only problem with it is that the local wolves have also discovered it.

I don't dare go after something from the storehouse without taking my gun with me. The wolves are getting more and more assertive as the winter runs along. I have had to shoot one on occasion, and I won't be surprised if I have a full scale battle with them before the winter is over. It looks like the pack has 16 to 18 adults, though I have never seen more than four or five at one time, so far. I am sure that I could kill all of them without much difficulty, but I am reluctant to do that. The women say that it is just part of my sweet nature, but the wolves do scare me. I worry about what might happen in a few years when the children start playing outside in the warmer weather. I do know that if any of my family gets hurt by a wolf, that will be the end of them in the neighborhood!

Insa is the shortest of my wives, barely 1.4 m (4'-7") tall. But she is the one with the worst temper. Sometimes during her pregnancy, she has had a very short fuse. She is starting to bulge quite a bit in her belly, and I can't keep from laughing when she gets so mad she stomps her foot and waves her arms. If she catches me laughing, I am suddenly the full target of her ire. I don't mind because she is so loving when she finally calms down. Anyway, all of the women agree that she will give birth first. Of course, she says that she wants a boy, but I keep telling her that I don't care, and I will love it just as much no matter which it turns out to be. That generally is all it takes for Insa to melt into a little puddle of love.

I think that Insa's height, or lack thereof, is amusing because I am so much taller, 1.9 m (6'-3"). As one would expect, I am much taller than any of my wives, simply because I had a much better diet in my early years, but Insa does exaggerate the difference.

As usually happens, Insa's son was born in the middle of the night, but we all rejoiced with her despite the hour. She insisted that she wanted to name him John, and I could not argue. Neither did the other wives, so John he was. I knew absolutely nothing about newborn infants, but the other women insisted that he was a fine example of a baby boy and sure to grow into a fine man. I don't know about any of that, but I did have to agree that he had an excellent set of lungs and vocal cords.

Willer had the next baby, and it was a girl. She was sorely disappointed until I took on over how wonderful she looked. Actually, I really did think that she looked very good for a baby, and I had no doubt of how much I loved her. Her lungs and vocal cords were also well developed, and it was really trying when John and Iona started singing a duet. That was usually when I found something that needed doing among the stored food.

We had a bit of a respite before Eilee had her child, also a boy. She named him Herakles and said that it was because he looked like me. I admit it—I cried over that statement. Herakles also had excellent lung development, and the occasional trios could be heard outside of the house.

Helgor's son did not arrive until almost all of the snow had melted, and I was glad. Apollo's lungs were in as good a condition as his siblings, and the quartet was more than my ears could take. I spent a lot of time outside that early spring, and never regretted a minute of it. I now had four children which I loved dearly to go with the four women whom I also loved more than I could ever have believed possible.

Unfortunately, nine people just would not fit well into that one-room house. Another house was quite close to us on our left, so I decided to incorporate it into our existing structure by simply adding a room between the two houses. My wives were truly enthralled by the idea of having such a large house—no one in the history of their town had ever lived in such a large dwelling. I started construction immediately. The noise level in our current house was all the incentive that I needed. This construction took all summer, even with the help of my wives. I had several other jobs I had to do, as well as return to hunting, but I worked diligently and managed to finish the complete structure before the weather got cold again.

Hunting was something of a problem. My first efforts involved using my assault weapon as a hunting weapon, but I soon gave that up for most game. Imagine what happens to a moderate-size rabbit when it is hit with a .45 caliber slug at supersonic speed. The mass of mangled meat is simply not worth trying to salvage. On the other hand, the gun was excellent for killing aurochs, but that was a hell of a lot of meat to transport back home. We'd had to kill and eat all of our horses the past winter because there was no way to feed them. Therefore, there was no horsepower to use to transport the mass of meat home. I did use a travois, but even that did not help cut the work load very far. I desperately needed a solution to the transportation problem, but I did not yet know what it could be. I hated the thought of catching a horse in the spring and training it, only to have to slaughter it when the snow came. There had to be a better way, but I was at a loss to find it.

I solved the rabbit problem with the atlatl. I had used one early in life before I had been allowed to have my first rifle. Except for range, I found it to be no less of a weapon than my first .22 caliber rifle. I made the throwing stick and several of the darts and got a rabbit on the first day I tried it. After that, I stripped my gun of its folding stock and some of the other unneeded accessories and carried it on a sling so that I had it if I needed it for protection from animals, no matter how many legs they might have, but could also easily use my atlatl.

Then, one day, I had a stroke of brilliance! I remembered a story of Daniel Boone "barking" a squirrel. Imagine shooting a squirrel with a .75 caliber lead ball, which was the caliber of the musket normally used by Boone. If he did, he would have had the same result as I did with my .45 and the rabbits. The idea behind "barking" was to have the bullet strike the tree under the squirrel's head or belly. The shock of the impact of the lead against the wood would stun the squirrel and cause it to fall to the ground where the hunter could easily recover it. Well, I could do the same by switching to explosive rounds and hitting the ground under the animal, stunning it so that I could cut its throat. I tried it and it worked, so I was able to temporarily retire the atlatl.