Chapter 16

Rebecca and I spent the next part of the morning taking down my tent and moving everything but the big tent and its sleeping occupant down to the hut.

It was nice and very domestic putting things away and Rebecca and I talked about cutting spaces for shelves and cubby holes in various places around the inside of the hut. I wanted a place easy to get to, but out of sight, for the guns and ammunition and a place to put the tools so they wouldn't just be laying around everywhere. For right now we had just put most of it in the bunk where Rebecca had been going to sleep in my mind but that wasn't the right place for forever. I was thinking a hole under our mattress lined in wood boards with a board or two on top would be good for a lot of the things we wanted to keep out of sight like the ammunition and probably the guns. Fast to get to and a defensive position as well. The tools could go on thick branches hammered into the wall. Easy enough to do later and lots of rainy day projects.

We also had the two half logs that we had cut to try and make a flat roof. It had been too much work to do that and we had given up on the idea but it would make a great, if rustic table and benches. The two pieces were just over 12 feet long and Rebecca and I cut them both in half to give us four pieces just over 6 feet long each and right about 20 inches across.

Two of them would be a table top and two would be the benches on either side. Not having nails made things hard and on one hand I was annoyed with the rusticness of anything I was going to have to do, but at the same time just being able to do it no matter how crude the end result may be felt great. I decided to use the wall to our advantage, while I held the logs/boards at one end, Rebecca traced out where they hit into the wall on the other. She started to hollow out the wall, aiming to go about a foot deep for all four pieces.

"And yes Jack, I'll make sure the holes stay level and don't get too big ... We don't want crooked or wobbly tables!" Teased Rebecca, her tongue firmly stuck out of her mouth.

I went to go get good, straight branches from what we had already cut and would use the chisel to notch in legs at the end for the table and at the end and half way down for the benches.

The table would be too big for the three of us but it would be nice to have some space to sit and work on things. And a place to sit period! Rebecca and Hanna had two folding chairs that they had "packed" but I hadn't had the foresight. Most nights I got stuck with the ground or sitting on a log while we were eating or sitting around the fire. Being able to sit side by side and eat at a table instead of off your lap was amazing in its simplicity as well as its decadence. Sometimes it really is the little things!

When I got back with the branches Rebecca was pretty well done with carving out the holes in the wall. We test fit the logs and while I held them in place she marked where I needed to cut the branches. I would get on that after lunch and we might be able to actually eat at a table in our new house tonight!

We made our way up to the remaining tent and our cooking fire and found Hanna up and gingerly walking around with something that looked like ratatouille in the pot. Eat your veggies while we could I guess! It was still only mid-late summer and while there were lots of vegetables right now, that wouldn't last. The farm had a row of onions and garlic and what were rapidly looking like squash or pumpkins of some sort, those were things we could save in some sand and sawdust for at least part of the winter.

Thinking about it, it would be good to go on some expeditions to at least source out some other fall vegetables that we could save for use through the winter. There were lots of tomatoes in many people's old back gardens as well. I had never made sun dried tomatoes, but it was certainly worth a try! Same went for apples and any peppers we came across.

We would have to start thinking about nuts and food for the animals as well. We didn't have hay and the winters weren't too hard around here but it would be prudent to cut as much grass as possible and dry it in the hut. I didn't know what we would do with the chickens, hopefully we would come across more corn than I had found. There had been a dozen or so corn plants at the garden I had first found by my old house and there was a row here at the farm as well. I didn't know if "people" corn dried as well as "feed" corn but we were going to have to find out. We should start looking out for sun flowers as well and anything else that would produce seeds for the animals and us to eat. I wanted to make sure they would get through the winter! We should start thinking about drying seeds for next year as well. I wasn't a gardener in my past life but it looked like I had shot right past that to farmer level. I was seriously in over my head but we would do the best we could.

I could have killed for some jars and vinegar for canning and pickling. Maybe we could try and make apple cider vinegar. Cut up apples and press them in a shirt then try and make vinegar out of it. I wasn't convinced and we didn't have a whole lot of containers as it was. My kingdom for a few dozen jars!

After lunch Rebecca and I took Hanna down to see the hut. Rebecca was giddy and excited. Sometimes she made me feel old but her enthusiasm was infectious. Hanna, while not giddy per say, was pretty pleased with our new home. She unlike her daughter had a woman's touch and started to tidy my half hazard dumping of equipment, demanding my hatchet to use as a hammer to start banging in stout sticks into the back wall of the hut so we could hang things up and get them off the floor.

By later in the afternoon we were mostly done. Most things were put away and I was almost finished the table and benches, just needing to do some last fitting and then bang the pieces all together when Hanna told me she was going to go up to take down the tent with Rebecca and move the last things down here.

As the two of them walked out the door, Hanna called over her shoulder; "I think we can cook down here as well tonight, we can finish of the tomato stew and I'll do something else as well."

I grunted in response and went back to the bench, soon lost in the world of dry fitting, whittling just enough to get a tight fit without squeaks. The Kukri was a bit ponderous for the work and the angle of the blade created a bit of difficulty with small whittles but it was better than the hatchet. Still it was times like this that I looked back on the old days and how easy things had been.

I was so absorbed with my work that I don't think I even registered the first scream. The next one, it sounded like Rebecca, had me quickly getting to my feet and starting for the door, my mind instantly thinking that Hanna had burnt herself picking up the hot pot or had broken an ankle. The last scream was unnaturally cut short and my jog turned into a dead run, my heart racing, my fingertips, scalp and ears buzzing with adrenaline. I couldn't see Rebecca but all my attention was on Hanna who was laying in-front of their tent, blood oozing from the corner of her forehead, a filthy man on his knees between her legs holding a large, stubby, chromed revolver in his left hand while trying to finish pulling down his torn and dirty pants with his right. His ass crack was hairy, black and soiled, and despite being a bit swarthy, he had a farmers tan along his waistline.