SCHEDULE CHANGE FOR THIS WEEK

+SCHEDULING ALERT+

There will be no Friday post because I will again be out of town without access to the internet. Funny how lacking a tiny little signal can put so many things on hold, isn't it? That is why, dear friends, I take vacations. This is a short one, though, as it is just for the weekend. Instead of a Friday post, I will post on Wednesday. I am still having trouble with my editor, but hopefully all difficulties can be overcome in time for us to continue with the UFP. Hopefully...

1930, Part 2

The first thing LeeAnn and I had to do was find somewhere to live. The rail yard was completely deserted once the Sheriff and his searchers left it alone. They figured that I had hopped a train and gone somewhere safer. I let them think that. Together with The Girl (I always thought of her as The Girl at that time), I found a forsaken railcar house. There were no cars in it now, which was unfortunate, but there was plenty of lumber around and what had at one time been a loft of sorts. I made sure it was sound and began work. Over time, that loft would become home for her and I. Most of my sweetest memories are there.
With her help, I strengthened the rafters so they would hold our weight and the weight of our things. She would hold up the end of the beam while I secured it. Then we did the other end. I remember doing this about five times. After that, she would hand the planks up to me so I could build the floor. In all, the loft covered the back of the building, twenty feet wide, thirty feet long, and room enough to stand up in. There were stairs against the wall so we could get up there easily. I was never more thankful for my father’s lessons and tools as I was when we looked at the loft complete.
I had a lot of time to think about my father. The work was long and hard. The Girl was too tired at night to talk much, so I let her sleep and brooded on my fate. Pop was dead. It hurt every time that thought crossed my mind. I had been used to him being around for so many years. He was always there. He was always stronger than I was. He always knew what to do and things were done right with him around. I had depended on that more than I had known. Now it was too late to truly appreciate it. So, what was I going to do now that I was alone? Well, not completely alone. There was LeeAnn who, despite the fact that she was young and scrawny, was good help with the work. She did not complain, she did not slow me down. She had proven herself clever with some things, like food. I don’t know where she got it. All I knew was she would disappear for about an hour and return with carrots and bread and sometimes even potatoes. Sometimes I wished she would stay gone, yet she always came back. I had learned the hard way to appreciate what I had, so I was thankful for her, but I increasingly found myself wondering what had possessed me to take her in in the first place. Maybe I had just been afraid to be alone. The thought terrified me even now. Perhaps it had been what my father had taught me about being kind to the less fortunate. He had always told me to “Do Unto Others.” Had I, in a moment of distress, simply adhered to the lessons I had learned as a child? Did Pop have that much control over me even now that he was gone? I took a good long look at LeeAnn one night as she was sleeping, thinking that same thought. It had been Pop. He had taught me good things and good things would happen because of that. If I kept living my life like how Pop had wanted me to, I was sure that everything would be all right. And the right thing was to stick with LeeAnn.
And I needed her. I needed her more than I would ever have admitted to myself back then. I was stubborn because of her. I would keep working every day and breathing every day because I worked and breathed for her. Her needing me made me keep on living. I lived for her. But at first I did not know that.
When the loft was finished, we moved our few things up there where they would be safe. LeeAnn grinned real wide at the top of the stairs as I brought my tools up. She looked so proud of it all. I could not help grinning myself. We celebrated that night. LeeAnn found some beer and we drank it all till we were laughing idiots. That was our first good memory.
I learned everything there was to know about LeeAnn that night. It was a short history. She was one of a lot of children. She could not count then, but she knew it was a lot. She was not the oldest either, so she was ignored quite a bit. She did not know her last name because a lot of men could have been her father. The kids were leaving one by one until it was just the babies left. LeeAnn had left herself, crawling into the boxcar at one point for some sleep. That was how she ended up in Hacktown. Bums in the car had told her about being beaten, which is why she hid herself when the train stopped. Then she had met me.
I remember she looked at me like I was some sort of angel that night. She kept saying how I had rescued her from certain death. It was all very silly since we were so drunk, but it was not too far from the truth. LeeAnn always maintained that she would not have survived very long except for me. Maybe it was true. She seemed adept enough at finding food. The truth was we needed each other. That was how it would be. That was how it was.
There was a lot of work to be done, now that we had a place to live. I had no idea where to begin. I simply started rummaging through the building, trying to find anything useful. There were odds and ends all over the place. Nails, bolts, the odd hammer or wrench, and one time I found an oil lamp with extra oil next to it. That lamp would become our most prized possession. There was wood everywhere and I gathered it up. Soon I had too much for it to remain in a disorganized pile. I made a shed for it in one corner by the large door they had used to bring the cars into the building. I was proud of that shed. Pop would have liked it, I thought. He had always liked things to be organized.
After that, the work fell into place. I cleaned out the building in stages, making each cleared place into a new space. Near the large door I set up a workshop where I would build anything we might need. I had my bench, my drawers, and my tools lined the wall behind it. I once unearthed a stove under a pile of old oil rags. It was in working order after I cleared the soot out of the stovepipe and we set up the kitchen right there. That was LeeAnn’s domain. I could not cook to save my life. She always said that I could burn water and I do believe she was not too far off the mark with that statement. She would work in the kitchen on one side of the building while I worked in the workshop on the other side. If I stepped even a toe over the middle, she shooed me away with whatever instrument she happened to have in her hand. I soon learned my place.
One day I was clearing away and exceptionally large pile of timber and I found a handcar sitting on the tracks. The tracks came straight through the middle of the large door and had their buffer stop at just about the same place where I had put the end of the loft. I had never thought to find a railcar left abandoned. They were valuable pieces of machinery. But this had been left and with a little oil, then a lot more oil, it seemed in perfect working condition. What a find it was. Before it could be put to any use, however, I had to make sure it was safe to use it.
I had seen neither hide nor tail of anyone in the rail yard since the Sheriff and his gang of searchers had left a few weeks before. But I was not about to be careless, especially since if I was taken in, they would probably hang me without trial. Where would that leave LeeAnn? No, I was going to be very careful. Armed with a hammer and a knife I had found and cleaned, I scouted out every inch of the yard. Every building was deserted except for the colonies of rats. We were far enough from the rail line that we did not have to worry about being found out that way. This only left the edge of town to make sure of. I crept about slowly and as quietly as I could, praying harder than I had ever prayed before that I would not be seen. I was not. From what I could see of Hacktown it was only getting emptier as time went on. I did not see one child playing in the street and only a few women with shawls wrapped around their shoulders walking quickly to their destinations. The way they glanced about, I could tell they were frightened. A few seconds after one woman passed, I saw why. A gang of six men walked straight down the middle of the street, armed to the teeth. The laughed boisterously, hefting their clubs and axes to make sure everyone knew what they were about. I recognized one of them as being one of the boys I had fought off the day Pop had died. From the looks of his face, he was the one whose nose I had broke. But no one spared a look for the abandoned rail yard, so I deemed it was safe to start moving around more. Besides, all the tracks were far enough back that I could use the railcar safely.
When I got back to the loft, a look of obvious worry disappeared from LeeAnn’s face. She was standing at the side of the door when I walked up and a smile immediately broke over her face. She wanted to know everything I had seen and where I had gone. I told her about everything over dinner.
“Lee,” I always called her Lee, “where do you go to get the food? Do you go into Hacktown at all?”
“Of course,” she answered guilelessly. “There’s nowhere else to get it.”
“When you do, I want you to keep an eye and an ear out for anything about a gang. I saw a gang of men going around like they owned the place. They seemed to have everybody pretty buffaloed. I want to know everything you know.”
“Okay, William.” She always called me by my full name. “I’ll be careful.”
“I don’t want you to be careful,” I snapped. “I want you to be as invisible to them as possible. Do you understand me?” She nodded her head, not even looking abashed by my gruffness. She was a trooper, always. LeeAnn was very strong in every way.
After I had found the railcar, I started going around to the other buildings. LeeAnn went along with me sometimes, since she needed things I often did not think of. She found the bed. She could always find things that turned out to be worth their weight in gold. She was lucky. Shithouse lucky.
We were at one of the buildings farthest away from our loft. I was inside, seeing what there was that could be useful. I found a box of odds and ends that seemed to hold promise. LeeAnn was scouting around back when I heard her call to me. Not too loud, so as not to alert anyone to where we were, but loud enough to get my attention. I came round to where she was and stared. There she was, standing triumphantly next to a metal bed frame, one hand resting on a bed post. She smiled so brightly at me that I was almost more taken aback by the look on her face. Not thirty feet behind her lay the mattress. Who had tossed them there or why, I could never guess. But we, actually I hauled them home. It took an act of God to get them both up in the loft, but we got it eventually. We both stood next to each other, just staring, still disbelieving of our own good fortune. Let me assure you that we slept very well from then on.
One of our most practical finds was an old water barrel. It was perfect for catching rainwater, which was the only thing we could not beg, borrow or steal. Luckily, We had survived the summer and autumn was setting in. It made its first appearance in a seven-day stint that kept us indoors most of the time. That was a rough time. Unable to venture outside like we were used to, both of us became a bit stir crazy. Of course, then the roof began to leak and I had to slither my way up through a hole to fix another hole, which led to another hole, which kept LeeAnn in spasms of worry down below. It was very slippery up there, but I managed to make the roof waterproof without killing myself. Thankfully, we discovered the leak towards the start of the rain, which left plenty of time for other chores to get done inside.
I have always had a streak for homesteading in me. I like my home to be proper and ordered and compact. I had always lived that way with Pop and despite the rough conditions, I was determined to remain that way. While other people were sinking lower into incivility, I was struggling to maintain a semi-civilized way of life. LeeAnn, who had rarely experienced such a mode of living, followed me as though I were a religious leader. She learned to keep a house to my specifications and eventually surpassed me in most tasks. She was pickier than I was in many ways. We found some cans of whitewash that had been used on the boxcars at some point. She took those cans and a brush and whitewashed much of the inside of our building, especially around the kitchen and the loft. It made the place look clean and bright. Once she got over her fear of the rats, she began killing every one that came into her sight. Eventually, the rats began avoiding us as much as possible, which greatly improved the cleanliness of our habitation.
I meanwhile, was working in my workshop most of the time. There had been some excellent lumber lying around the rail yard and I had salvaged most of it. Using my father’s tools, I began to furnish our dwelling. The first thing LeeAnn asked for was a table we could eat at. So, I made her a table. It was large enough for six people, though there was only the two of us to use it. I then made chairs for us. They were rough chairs, but I intended to make better ones at some point. I never did. As long as we lived there, we used the two original chairs that wobbled and were uncomfortable. I suppose we just became set in our ways. LeeAnn wanted bins so she could store food. I protested this, saying that there was not enough food to go around, let alone store. But she insisted. Later on, I was glad she did. I made her three bins - two feet long, one foot wide, and one foot deep. They were made to stack on top of each other with enough room at the front to reach a hand in and grab what was needed. I shook my head when she set them together in their place. I was sure we would never have enough food to fill even one of them. After that it was a wood box for the stove. Just as I thought we had everything we needed, the rain stopped and we went back to our regular routine.

This is sort of a long one, but I really like where it is heading. Let me know what you think. Not bad for a dream, eh?

Independence Day

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to wish you a very happy Independence Day! We owe so much to this great country of ours and even on its own holiday, America gives back to us. While we take three day weekends, it works 24/7. While we go to sleep at night trusting ourselves to God's care, it is always watchful of our safety. America is God's instrument for our well-being. We must remain ever proud and ever loyal to the United States of America.

Generally, you would expect to see a new part of the UFP (Untitled Fiction Piece) here in this spot, but the UFP is taking a day off. I'm having trouble with my editor. UFP will be back on Teusday, I promise. In the meantime, I shall be doing nothing in particular and suffering from the 75 degree byproduct of global warming. Be safe and have fun.

1930

Hacktown, U.S.A., was a terrible place to live. It did not have just one area you could call the slums and one area you could not. The whole town was the slums. The only people who lived there were working class and below. They were mostly laborers who could not afford to live anywhere else. Carpenters, mechanics, railway workers, the men who worked on the assembly lines in Ariville, these were the upstanding members of Hacktown’s community. My father was one of these and so was I.
My father was a great man in Hacktown. He was a handful of only a few men who were masters in more than one thing. He was a carpenter and a mechanic and a magician in both. There was nothing he could not build. There was no motor he could not fix. Because of this, he worked in the rail yard where the Hacktown trolley was laid to rest every night. My mother had died so long ago I could not remember what she looked like, so Pop and I lived alone in one of the tenements not very far from the rail yard because he was the man who worked on the trolley.
The Hacktown trolley was famous. It was how the assembly line workers got to work every day. In 1840, Hacktown had started using the trolley and became one of the foremost technological towns in the United States. The trolley had never been vandalized, never stopped working and was always on time. People in Hacktown were proud of their trolley. Men who worked on it, like my father, were respected because of their association with it. The trolley ran to the Ariville station about three miles away. Ariville was where the rich people lived and no one from Hacktown went there unless they worked there. Neither I nor my father had ever been there.
I grew up in the tenements. I can not say it was the best place to live. Before I was twelve, my best friend had already been killed in a knife fight. I had been in two myself- won one, lost the other. Some days it was a miracle I survived. After twelve, I began working with my father all the time. He had taught me how to work before, but now my training began in earnest. I became his apprentice. It only took a few years before I was his journeyman. The work was in my blood. I thought that eventually, I would take my father’s place or start out on my own somewhere else. I was young. I wanted to see the world and there had never been a place where a man with two skilled hands could not work. The Great Depression came in 1929 when I was fifteen. It killed many people’s dreams.
Later that year, the Hacktown trolley ceased to run. The people who owned came and carted it away. They carted it away using Clydesdale horses from some farm. The trolley had always run on its motor. It had never been so broke that horses were needed. Now, with its motor still in good order, it was taken away by a pair of nags who would be turned into glue in less than two years. Every man who worked in the rail yard, every man’s wife, every man’s child stood staring as the trolley, the backbone of Hacktown’s life, was taken away. Most people lost hope then.
It took less than a year for most of the people we had known for years to pack up and leave. The ones who were left only drifted away like dead leaves. More people came in from other parts of the country, but they never stayed long. Hacktown was as dead for them as it was for the people who had left. The population varied with the day, always hovering on a number less than half of what it had been. Food was scarce and expensive. Anything you could not produce yourself could not be bought either. My father and I lived a very lean lifestyle. I was younger and felt better most of the time, but Pop was getting old. I worried about him. I did not have long to worry.
One day, the wife of the owner of the assembly lines in Ariville came riding through Haktown. It was a foolish thing to do. Her name was Elizabeth Richardson. There she sat on her thoroughbred horse, with her fashionable clothes and the blood in her round cheeks. People stared. To them, she was a picture of wealth and privilege and a full belly. As she rode through the streets, crowds gathered around her. The people were angry. To their minds, all their hardship was her fault. Her husband had shut down the assembly line robbing them of their jobs, their wages and everything they needed. Here and there an angry shout came from the crowd from some unidentifiable mouth. She was scared.
Pop and I watched from the midst of the crowd. We had not had work in awhile, so we had started to wander around town offering encouragement to our friends. It was different for us. Pop and I were both men without families, so we could afford to have a more optimistic view of all the trouble. Most of our friends were not so lucky. A few of the husbands had disappeared, leaving wives and children behind. We would help them as best we could. Those husbands who stayed were depressed and angry. They were the ones who started the trouble.
Mrs. Richardson could feel the crowd’s animosity. Her horse was spooked as well, so with only the thought of going home in her mind, she turned around to leave. The crowd closed in, getting angrier by the minute. People were shouting. She kept spinning around, keeping them all at bay, but they would have her. They needed something to hate, something to blame for their misfortune, and she had become that for them.
Pop and I muscled our way to the front of the crowd, very close to her. We both tried to talk sense to our friends, to hold them back. They kept crowding in on us and we were weak from lack of nourishment. They beat us back, right into the side of her horse. I looked up at her as the crowd grew louder and more violent, starting to pick up stones from the ground. She looked straight into my eyes, her eyes wide with fear. “Help me!” she said desperately. Pop heard it, too. He used the last of his strength to hoist me onto the back of the horse and slapped it hard in the rump, making it rear up angrily. We shot away.
I had never been on the back of a horse before. It was very high up and felt very powerful between my knees. Luckily, Mrs. Richardson was an accomplished rider and she was able to bring the horse to a stop after we were out of reach of the crowd.
“Are you alright?” she asked. She asked me if I was alright.
“Fine,” I said, breathing heavily. I dropped off the back of the horse eagerly. “Sorry about that.”
She looked back the way we had come. “I didn’t believe the stories. I wanted to make sure for myself.” She turned a gentle eye on me. “Thank you for helping me.”
“I would have done it for anyone,” I said with a nod of the head. I was not expressly sure that I would have done it for anyone, but it seemed like a good thing to say. I was very young then.
“Please, let me repay you in some small way.” She held a silver dollar out to me, the only money that was really worth anything those days. “It doesn’t compare to what I owe you, but its all I have at the moment.” I hesitated. “Please take it.”
I took it. “You had better go,” I said. “Its not safe here.”
“Thank you.” She rode off with a friendly wave.
I went back home, sure that I would find Pop there. He was not. I went looking for him, thinking only that he had stopped to help someone else. As I walked down the stairs to the ground floor, the women in the doorways cast strange looks after me. I was friendly as I always was, but they closed their doors against me. It was no better out in the street. Growing less and less sure about where my father was, I went back to the street where the mob had been. He was lying in the road. I went to him, thinking maybe he had just fainted, but he was not breathing. The mob had killed my father.
As I sat there crying over him, a gang of four boys my age came over to me to rough me up. They said I was a traitor, that Pop had deserved to die. They hit me and kicked me, till I was only a ball on the ground. It was a pair of women who saved me. They came forward with their brooms to bat the boys away. The beating stopped and that was all I needed to get on my feet and run away.
I ran toward the deserted rail yard, to my father’s workshop. I could hear the boys running behind me, shouting profanities and directions to each other. I knew the rail yard well, but they were faster than I was. They cornered me in one of the workshops. We fought. Grief and anger had taken me over and I fought with no thought to my own safety. I punched one in the nose, causing him to fall to the ground howling in pain. Two of them tried to grab me so the third could have an easy shot, but I kicked one in the balls, sending him down to the ground. The other two jumped me together, pushing me down against a workbench. I grabbed a wrench and swung. I hit something hard and felt one body slide down me to the ground. The last one ran away.
I watched him go, hefting the wrench menacingly. Two of them got up and ran after him, but the third just lay there. The blood was pooling around his head. I bent over him,, shaking him. He was dead. The blood was on the wrench, too. I dropped it as if it had been on fire.
They would be after me. The boys would go to the police and they would come after me. They would put in me in jail. They would hang me. Afraid now, I went to my father’s workshop and grabbed his tools. They were all I could think of that would be useful. I could not go home, so I tried to find a place where I could stay. Then it occurred to me that I would never be safe in Hacktown again. I decided to go the train depot and hop on a boxcar. I would leave this place forever.
It was twilight when I got there. There was only one train to choose from, so I walked along it, trying to find an open car. Unluckily, the conductor and the engineer saw me and chased me off. They were hot on me when I ducked into a cubby-hole below a squeeze chute for loading cattle. Much to my surprise, I sat down on a girl. Her cry of amazement nearly got us both caught, but I quickly covered her mouth with my hand. The conductor and the engineer passed us by. I let go of the girl’s mouth when I felt tears touch my hand. I told her it would be alright and popped my head out to look. There was no one in sight.
I stepped out all the way and dragged her out with me. We could not stay there. I took her hand and went back into the abandoned workshops of the rail yard. There was one that had not been in use since before the Depression and I chose that one. It had an upper story where lumber had once been stored. We climbed up there and sat on a cluster of two-by-fours in the dark. The girl sat next to me.
She was not much younger than I was and very thin. I had never seen her before, so she could not have been one of the kids from the tenements. I knew every one of them. Her hair was dirty, but it looked blonde. Her face was streaked by tears. All in all she was a pitiful sight.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“LeeAnn,” she sniffed. “You have blood on your shirt.
I looked down. I did indeed have blood on me. It had to have been from my father. I remembered I had held him in my arms. I also had blood on my hands, but that was not his. That was from the boy. I started taking off my shirt, wiping my hands on it. “Are you alright?” I asked
“I didn’t want them to find me.”
“Who?”
“The engineer. I fell asleep on a boxcar and I woke up here. If they find you, they beat you. I’ve been told that. I didn’t want to be beaten.” She was starting to cry again.
I tried to calm her. I handed her my handkerchief. “You safe now. I won’t let them get you.”
“Where am I?”
“You’re in Hacktown. This is the rail yard. You’ll be fine here.”
“What is your name?”
“I’m William.” I was always called Will. I can not figure out even now why I told her my full name. “I’ll take care of you.”
“Really?” she asked, wiping her face with her sleeve.
I nodded earnestly. “We’re both alone. All we have is each other.”
She moved over next to me. I put my arms around her. That was how it would have to be from then on. Pop was dead. I was hunted by the police. I was alone in the world. So was she. We needed each other. We would be there for each other.

Occasionally, ladies and gentlemen, I dream some great dreams and those dreams find there way onto the paper. This is one of those times. Last night, I dreamed this dream and, because I feel guilty that my last post was late, I decided to put it up for you. Enjoy!

COOLEST WEEK EVER 2009

Yes, last week was the highlight of every single one of my years: St. David's Youth Retreat 2009! This is the week where I get to see all my friends, work out like I have never worked out before, and growing in my Faith. Alas, it ends too soon, but the joy it gives may never end.

To include you guys in said Joy, this post is going to be about camp with regularly scheduled programming to return on Friday. I am sorry that you did not get this post on time. That was due to an especially annoying Accounting test, which I will probably blog about later since it was especially odious. Anyway, I give you an insider's look at Youth Retreat 2009!!!

This is the view I woke up to every morning. Yes, we sleep in bunk beds. I wish I could say that they were exceptionally comfortable, but I cannot lie. They are slightly padded, much to their credit, but it does not do much for pampered bodies such as mine. Next year, I'm considering throwing a hammock up between two trees. Its just a thought...

But what is this! Much to my surprise, there seems to be a gift waiting just above my head. As a curious person, I do actually remove the gift from its hiding place and take a gander at its contents. I was just getting interested when AHHHHH!!

Oops, sorry. I accidentally fell out of bed. It is early in the morning after all. They wake us up early at camp. There are showers to take, which, of course is quite an ordeal with eight girls to one cabin. After that, at about eight of the clock are the devotions for the day, consisting of Morning Prayer and Holy Communion from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. It is quite beautiful in the early morning air with the combined voices of about twenty youth raised in song.

Anyway, back to the message. I right myself in the bed again as Megan, my neighbor to the right peers at me from under her covers. I guess I made quite a din falling out of bed because most of the other girls are also rousing themselves from peaceful slumbers. All except for Emily. She seems to be able to sleep through anything, Lord love her. I ignore the noises of waking and unfold the gift. It seems to be a postcard of Donner Summit, of all things. Keep in mind that Donner Summit is 75 miles away from the camp. So how did our lonely little postcard end up here?

Thinking that perhaps the other side of the card might tell its story, I quickly turned it over, anticipating some great revelation! I was severely disappointed, however, for its message gave no clues. "The trail has gone cold, Scooby-Doo!"

It was a hard note to decipher, let me tell you. This coming from a girl who has worse handwriting than most. As best as I could make out, the note said: "Hi Erik! You're bark [I suppose that has to be "back"] at CGC, you lucky guy! I'll bet this camp experience will be better than the last. Your church family books [looks] forward to hearing all about this special week in your life. See you soon! (smily face)" For the life of me, I can't read the signature.

Upon reading the greeting, my first thought was, Erik the Red attended Church Camp? *gasp* No, no, that could not be right. Of course, Erik the Red had been dead for thousands of years, unfortunately. He would have been an excellent addition to any camp. I hear he was a most excellent clog-dancer-dude (No, I did not make this up.). What other Erik could it have been? Of course, we have our own Eric, but he spells his name with a C, E-R-I-C. So it couldn't be him. And our Eric bears no resemblance to Erik the Red. Which of course made me wonder if Eric could dance in clogs. This is a theory that has yet to be tested.

Short of dusting for fingerprints, I could make out nothing else about our mysterious postcard. It seemed to be on a mission, but what could that mission be? Encouragement? To fund the U. S. Postal Service with 44 cents? Boy, they really over paid on postage. To puzzle unsuspecting girls with big imaginations? To inform the world that more than one Erik, no matter what spelling attended church camp? *gasp* Or were they really Vikings come to conquer the CGC? I just could not stop thinking about it!
As for me, I have my own theories. But you will just have to wait to find out what they are.