Squatters: Farming The Wind

By Jack Underhill

There was too much of everything for some, and too little for most. It’d gone on too long, seven billion barely hanging on.
One day something snapped so loud everyone on earth heard it, and it was the beginning of everyone having nothing, except one another.
Now there was a place to start all over from, as squatters farming the wind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jack Underhill
• Release date: Nov 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9780984872015

Jack Underhill

Jack Underhill lives in Borrego Springs and Minneapolis, whichever is warmer or drier at the time. He's worked as an opal miner, magazine writer and publisher, television news director, and wood cutter and sawyer. When he was younger he ran with the coyotes at night and raised chickens by day. Till he went broke.

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Squatters: Farming the Wind

by Jack Underhill

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 by Jack Underhill

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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All rights reserved. Excerpts of a page or two may be used without permission. For longer excerpts write us at: mailto:[e-mail]

Library of Congress: 1-681450521

ISBN 978-0-9848-720-0-8

Preface

There was too much of everything for some, and too little for most. It’d gone on too long, seven billion barely hanging on.

One day something snapped so loud everyone on earth heard it, and it was the beginning of everyone having nothing, except one another.

Now there was a place to start all over from, as squatters farming the wind.

*

Those first years the Dobervilles ate anything that had a heart, roots, or moved. They ate anything that ate, except others of their kind.

First time they cooked a buzzard their daughter refused it, saying if the buzzard had eaten a corpse it’d make them second-hand cannibals

Tim said then did eating mice make them second-hand seeds? Harry wondered if when they drank from a stream it made them second-hand rain?

*

The family motto came to be Thou Shalt Stay Alive. Tess said it was the new Commandment that replaced the original Ten. They automatically honored God and man by staying alive. That worked for them.

Within settlements, co-ops and fortresses, the Big Ten on rock tablets still stood tall, but in the wilds the only one was Stay Alive, and you could only do it by steering clear of old laws hammered into you.

*

You couldn’t hope for things to work out anymore, or for others to do it for you. If you didn’t do it, it didn’t get done.

***

Squatters: Farming the Wind

Tess longed to do the same things everyday in the same place with her family—not with them working all day, and too bushed and abused to hug when they returned.

Tess longed for a home of her own. She longed to have Harry make her that simple weaving rack Aggie had taught her on.

She longed for Harry and her exploring, just the two of them, how long had it been? And, sitting together alone?

She longed for them running for the pure hell of it, not to evade hunters and dogs. She longed to feel their bodies snap back into that special rhythm that joined them as they almost flew.

When you’re owned, when you’re fed and given rags to sleep on just to keep you working, and then thrown away when you can’t, you have nothing but a dream.

Tess’ dream brought them to Stod.

***

Tess had a throwing rock with a lot of iron in it that fit into her hand so comfortably she carried it on their runs and strolls. She even talked to it when alone, as Harry would talk to the Ford truck. Tess' rock understood woman talk and subtleties. The 49 Ford didn't, didn't care to either. The truck sat mute when the rock traveled on its seat with them and the kids, and wished Tess'd pick it up or something. It was a smart alec rock and sat there as if it owned the Ford and everything in it. The rock didn't know this. It didn't understand those sorts of feelings. It understood flung flight and knocking into something living and bringing it down. Too heavy to use in the sling, it was there when Tess hadn't the time for an overhead wind-up. Tess and the rock equalized a few fights and flights over the years.

The rock flew true, and though limited in distance because of its weight and the limitations of her arm and weight, it flew true along the line of her laser look and knew exactly where the fleeing-whatever intersected with it. Tess thought it even corrected for wind and gravity, but she didn't share this with anyone. It was enough to have this bond between the two, Tess and her rock.

***

The pew closest to the sacristy had canvas thrown over it, enough space to sit a dozen. Harry lifted the cover, Tess moving by him after making the sign of the cross and kneeling. ‘They come here, I can feel them.’ Harry nodded, looked up at the ceiling and steeple with part of the roof torn away, a breeze making a swath of torn copper skin flap like a broken wing. ‘I could fix that.’

‘Why?’ she asks. He says ‘Maybe they’d come out of hiding, not right away, but in time.’ She nods but her eyes are closed and her mind and heart elsewhere right then. Harry gives her the silence she’s sunken into and figures what he needs for the job. Thing is how he’ll get tools and materials up there and fashion a platform to work from. There are no ladders, anything that could burn had, from the lightning or to keep warm. It was hardly ever warm anymore and winter was already in the air.

The steeple was wood, if there were a way up there it wouldn’t still be there, it’d be ashes in someone’s fireplace or stove. Why did he want to fix it anyway? He knelt beside Tess and tried holding her clasped hands but she shook his hand off.

The boy was looking for mice, their droppings were everywhere, and maybe they’d gotten the hymnals. There was a children’s story Harry’s grandmother read him as a kid about church mice eating prayer books and hymnals. What was that one?

Eurydice was in the back of the church curled up with a book in the pew by the door. It was her outpost. Any building they went into one stayed by the door to listen and watch. Harry thought to call to her but didn’t want to break in on Tess’s silence.

He wondered if they came here on Sundays. Who knew Sunday anyway, there were no calendars. He liked that part of it, not knowing what day it was or what time or having to be someplace. They were where they were until they were somewhere else. He’d always dreamed of that, being free of hours and days and minutes. He glanced at his left wrist where there had been a watch for years. There were seasons, that was all they needed to keep track of. And those were coming apart.

Tess made a sound and Harry saw tears leaking from her closed eyes, followed them down to her jaw and watched them drop onto the inside of her elbow. He touched her shoulder, wrapped a big hand around it when she didn’t lean away. He was thinking there was a metal ladder on one of the silos on the outskirts he could unbolt and get some wheels for and drag over here. Thirty feet, two fifteen foot sections, wire them together once here. He wanted to talk about it but hung onto it. They had plenty of time. Now was Tess’s time. He got up quietly and moved into the aisle and back toward Eurydice, who glanced up and turned to look out the church door. ‘Any varmints?’ he asked. She shook her head and returned to the book as if he had come to take over the watch.

He wanted to say something in way of instruction, and would of in the old days, in fact did, often. He was too critical, he’d gotten better and wanted to keep it that way. They were all tuned into any change of sounds and light and shadow, they were good as the animals, and knew it. That’s why they were still alive. She didn’t need to point her face in any other direction than into the book, the rest of her was out there like radar. ‘I was thinking of fixing the roof of this place’ he said quietly, as if it was their secret. ‘Howcome?’ not looking up. ‘Stop the racket of that copper flapping around, keep the rain out.’ ‘Howcome?’ She glanced up at the bell tower. ‘I just said,’ he said. She shook her head and dropped her eyes back into the text. ‘No way,’ she mumbled.

Tim came over holding the lid on the pan, smiling. Harry asked if he’d caught one. He shook his head. ‘Wanta see?’ Harry nodded. There was a spider in the bottom, a black widow. Eurydice screamed and ran out the door, Tess came up off the pew in front as if scalded and the boy laughed so hard he had to hold himself to keep from peeing. The black widow got as far as his cuff before Harry flattened it.

***

The house they settled in was not the one Tess chose. She wanted a good ones but Harry wanted something no one would think anyone would be living in, ideally a partly burned house with lots of fallen trees in front and back lying over one another, and a blown off roof. He wanted a house no one else wanted, that no one else would check for livestock. That’s what all non-militia people were, food for the soldiers protecting the country and its people. The Survivalists were like ranchers chasing down maverick longhorn and driving them to market. No one ate real cows anymore, they were too valuable as breeding stock, horses to pull wagons, milkers, and as water dowsers, the ones that found seeps and springs.

***

The boy says on the walk home, ‘I think I understand God. We’re His sketchpad and he gets the basics down, and I work with that and add some detail.’

Tess looks at him as if he is the 2nd coming, but only for an instant, after all he is her child and if he is the 2nd coming then that puts her on a pedestal she’s not ready for. She’d need to find a better outfit and do something with her hair. So she says ‘That’s as good a description of God that I’ve ever heard. How ‘bout you Harold?

‘Now I’m Harold? What did I do wrong?’

‘Did you hear what our boy just said?’

‘That he’s made a sketch of God?’

‘No, it’s better than that. He said God sketches us like doodling on a sketchpad and we detail the doodle.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘Harry! Listen! Tim, tell your dad.’

‘God dreams us up like an idea and he makes a doodle that we fool around with. Like making a paper airplane out of a sheet of paper and then inventing the