Chapter Twelve
Ben got up at first light, took the dog out, then back in where he made his coffee and fed both of them, human and dog. The
morning sky was cloudless, and the air was chillier than it had been for the past few days. Frost glistened on the ground,
on the bushes, and on the fallen leaves.
He had a specific mission for the day.
Yesterday afternoon he’d examined his woodpile and decided that, while he almost assuredly had enough wood to last him through
the winter, having some surplus would be a good idea and cutting the wood now would give it a chance to dry out in case winter
hung on longer than usual. Almost wasn’t good enough. He wasn’t assuming the power would come on within the next few months, or even in the next year. It would
come on when it came on, and until that moment he’d keep preparing as if it never would. Cutting firewood was going to be
a constant.
He put some of his supply of gasoline into his chain saw, and kitted up with a jacket, gloves, safety glasses, chaps, and
boots. He never took chances while cutting wood, but shit happened even to careful people. Living alone meant he had to be
extra alert and careful, because if he slipped up and got hurt, getting medical help was a roll of the dice—and that was before
the grid went down. Now there was no medical help to get.
In particular, he wanted a hickory tree for his additional firewood, for the density and extended burn; the density was why
hickories were more difficult to cut and split. Maple and oak were his go-to varieties, with hickory added in for when he
wanted to grill or smoke some meat. Nothing beat slow-smoldering hickory chips for adding flavor to meat.
Finding a hickory wasn’t hard; finding a hickory that was the right size and was in a good location to cut took some walking.
He didn’t want the felled tree getting hung up in another tree when it went down, because that was an accident waiting to
happen. After almost half a mile he found what he was looking for, a good-sized tree that wasn’t too big for his chain saw,
and with a clear fall line with the correct cuts.
Before he started cutting he took off the jacket and tossed it aside, because loose clothing and chain saws didn’t play well
together. He made his guiding cut, then the notch, then moved around to the other side to make the felling cut.
He was almost ready to stop cutting when the universal law of “shit happens” kicked in.
For whatever reason, the tree began toppling before he was ready for it to, twisting as it went down, and the broken base
of the trunk kicked out toward him. His reflexes saved him. He threw the chain saw in one direction and he went in the other,
twisting so the tree caught him a glancing blow on the back of his shoulder instead of hitting the center of his chest and
perhaps crushing his sternum. The chain saw brakes engaged as soon as he released it, of course, but he still didn’t want
to fall on the jagged teeth. Instead he crashed on the forest floor and rolled a few yards downslope, until he fetched up
against a good-sized rock.
“Son of a fucking bitch!” he ground out as he climbed to his feet, shaking off the leaves and sticks and dirt that had stuck
to his clothes and skin. He moved and rotated, checking that all his parts were in working order. They were, though the back
of his shoulder felt as if he’d been kicked by a mule. That still wasn’t as bad as taking a round to the chest while wearing
ballistic plates, but bad enough. He went over to the chain saw and picked it up, checked it. It had landed half-propped against
a bush; he didn’t have to clean dirt out of the chain. When he pulled the starter cord, it roared to life.
He turned it off, and assessed the situation. The tree might have kicked the shit out of him, but at least the son of a bitch
had fallen clean and he could get back to work. He could feel a hot trickle down his back where the tree had broken skin when
it hit him; nothing bad, though. He’d kept going in combat with worse injuries. Besides, he was pissed, both at the tree and
at himself. If he’d done something wrong he wanted to know what it was, so he didn’t do it again. Mentally reviewing every
step, though, he couldn’t see a damn thing he should have done differently.
He began methodically removing the limbs—limbing—and worked steadily through the morning. His shoulder ached, and blood made
his shirt stick to his back. He ignored both. When he was finished with the limbs his stomach told him it was time to put
some food in it, and his head told him he needed to let the dog out. Maybe he’d come back later this afternoon to begin cutting
up the trunk.
When he got back to the house he let the dog out to do its business, which it did, then came running back to the house and
barked to be let in. Hunting dog or not, the pup liked being inside, liked company. Ben ate some stew, then stripped off to
take a shower. Not only was he sweaty from the morning’s work, but his back was still leaking red. Standing with his back
turned to the bathroom mirror, he looked over his shoulder at the injury.
It was hard to tell with all the blood smeared around, but he thought the injury looked more as if the impact had broken the
skin open, rather than an actual cut. For sure the area was swollen and bruised, and still trickling blood. Maybe it needed
a stitch or two but he didn’t think so, and in any event he wasn’t going to hike around the valley looking for someone willing
to sew him up. It might heal ugly on its own, but it would heal.
He showered, keeping it brief but enjoying the warm water. The bleeding got worse, of course. He got some gauze out of the
bathroom cabinet and folded a thick pad, put some antibiotic salve on it, and with several tries managed to get it placed
just right over the wound. Then he leaned his back against the door frame to put pressure on the pad until it stuck. There.
Good. First aid taken care of. Now he wouldn’t drip blood all through the house.
He put on a flannel shirt and some clean jeans, put his bloody clothes in the bathtub and ran cold water for them to soak.
Then he made some coffee and sat down for a while to read, pleased with the morning’s work despite the injury.
Sela took a deep breath; there were sixty or seventy people gathered in her store—some she knew, some she didn’t—and from
what she could tell all of the community patrol was there, which was good. She’d never been good at public speaking; school
presentations had been agony for her. But this wasn’t performance, it wasn’t showing her stuff, it was communication. People
needed to know what was going on.
“Some of you may already know, but Carol fell down the stairs and broke her leg yesterday, and I’m in her place until she
can get on her feet—”
“Wait a minute.” Predictably, it was Ted who interrupted. “You weren’t elected. You weren’t even in the running. Why are you
taking her place instead of someone who was interested in doing the job?”
“For crying out loud, Teddy, give it a rest,” Trey muttered, earning himself a glare from Ted and a titter from a few others,
because the Teddy Roosevelt look hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“Ted,” Ted snapped.
Her heart started pounding hard and her cheeks burned. Sela wanted to just walk out and leave them to it, but she mentally
bolstered herself and said, “Because Carol asked me to. And because I talk to her several times a day, every day.”
“That still doesn’t make you the logical—”
“It does to me.” Mike frowned at Ted. “Maybe you weren’t standing close enough to hear that night at the school, but most
of the ideas Carol presented were ones Sela whispered to her. Sela was the one who handled things early this morning when
the Livingstons had that break-in.”
There was an immediate buzz of comments from people asking what had happened, exactly, how were the Livingstons, had the sheriff
been contacted, etc., which set Ted off in another direction. “I didn’t hear about the Livingstons until just before I got
here. Why didn’t someone make the effort to notify me last night?”
“Maybe because no one wanted to walk halfway up Cove Mountain,” Mike said irritably. “For God’s sake, Ted, we didn’t roust
out everyone on community patrol. We let people get their sleep. There was nothing you could have done.”
A flurry of comments and questions, about both Carol and the Livingstons, drowned out and deflected anything else Ted might
have said. He subsided, but he looked sulky about it.
Sela held up her hand, and wonder of wonders, the noise subsided. “Carol will be fine, it was a simple break, but she has
to stay off her feet for about eight weeks. The Livingstons aren’t hurt. We have no way of notifying the sheriff, so we did
what we could. It looks like a clear case of self-defense. The intruder was armed and shot at them, and Jim was a better shot.
The intruder was from the Nashville area. We have his driver’s license, he was photographed and fingerprinted, and Jim gave
a signed statement. The man has been buried. That’s the best we can do.”
There was another half hour of basically the same questions asked over and over, just framed slightly differently, and a couple
of people who for some reason fixated on minor details that they wanted explained, such as what Jim heard that woke him up.
She caught Mike’s eye, gave him a look that combined “help me” and exasperation, to which he responded with a small smile
and a thumbs-up, which wasn’t at all helpful.
As firmly as she could, she said, “Moving on, I have a couple of other things on the list. First, is there a potter in the
valley? And a kiln, too. I know there’s a pottery over Townsend way, but I’d prefer one that’s more convenient. There are
a lot of people here in the valley who don’t have fireplaces, and they need a heat source. A clay brazier with an oven rack
over it would provide both heat and a way to cook.”
That provoked some thought, scratched jaws, and conversation as they worked through the problem set before them. A woman said,