Tatiana Thibodeaux
I’m Tatiana Thibodeaux. An odd pairing, I know. My ancestors on my dad’s side are from Louisiana and from Russia on my mom’s side, so I’m what you get; a Russo-Cajun mutt living in what used to be northern New Mexico at the edge of the high desert and the Rocky Mountains.
Everyone calls me Tat. Almost everyone, anyway. Sometimes Tat gets turned into Tit by a few of the brattier more immature guys I know. Tit for Tat doesn’t take a big stretch of the imagination when you’re looking for ways to get under the skin of a girl like me with very little to show in that area.
Timmy Stafford even called me Skeeter Bite the day after I foolishly let a boy with a mouth as big as his stick his dirty hand under my shirt. I beaned him on his temple with a clod of hard dry clay while he was still laughing about it with our friends, though. While he was holding the side of his head I told him I’d break his pinky and whatever else he had of a similar size if he ever said anything like that again. I got the bigger laugh.
I get it. I’ve been playing ball, racing, wrestling and just generally been one of the guys since we were little kids. I’m still the best shortstop under eighteen around, but things are getting weird just like everybody said they would.
I get more attention now because I’m cute than because I can out play any other infielder around my age in town. And I am. Cute, I mean. Not being stuck up or anything, but I am. I don’t mean beauty pageant gorgeous or anything like that, but I can hold my own in a crowd.
I also understand all about boys being all awkward about girls and vice versa at our age and how they say the wrong or inappropriate things sometimes without really meaning to. Maybe they’re just not grown up enough to know better or stop themselves from running their mouths. I watched two older brothers figure it out, after all. Plus, between my dad and my mom before she went outside the fence the last time I’ve had at least pieces of “the talk” a hundred times.
***
The Fence
My family and I; me, mom, dad, and two brothers, live inside the fence. It mostly keeps coyotes, foxes, and the occasional cougar away from the chickens and smaller livestock today, but it used to keep worse stuff away. That was a long time ago, though; way back before I came along. It was even before my big brothers were born. George, my oldest brother, is grown up and married. He’s about to have a baby of his own. So when I say it was along time ago you need to understand that I really mean it.
I’m thirteen and have my whole life in front of me, or so my dad likes to tell me. My mom tells me the same when she’s here, but she’s not right now. I guess it’s probably true, but I just know it’s not gonna be spent tending a community garden and beating dirt out of rugs behind the fence.
The day I turn sixteen I plan on signing up to be a scout, just like my mom. Everyone tells me she’s probably the best scout Two Towers has ever had. Two Towers is the name of our town, by the way, on account of the two wooden towers down by the south fence. Folks say they were somehow a part of the mine this place used to be before it was our town. Whatever they were for, they’re about to fall over now and people mostly stay away from them in case they do.
***
The Town
There are about a thousand of us living in Two Towers now. We have two water wells with pumps powered by solar panels. There are hand pumps as backups, but we’ve never had to use them except when they get tested to make sure they’re still working right.
We also have a canal diverting mountain water from a nearby stream inside the fence and into a pretty big pond with lots of fish. It has a lock on it so we can control the flow of water coming into town, especially when the stream floods in springtime. The canal even has a water-wheel powering a mill with a turbine where we channel the flow of water into a strong narrow current.
We grow vegetables in a big community garden and have three greenhouses as well. Two of them are even tall enough to grow trees. We grow hardy varieties of oranges, lemons, bananas and other stuff like that in one of them. The other one has apples, peaches and other stuff in it that can handle cold, just not our kind of cold, and not as soon. The third one isn’t much taller than a regular house. We grow mostly vegetables in it through the winter except for two winters ago when snow caved the roof in and everything froze. We fixed it even stronger than before and have been more careful about letting snow pile up on it in the winter, so it’s been okay since then.
Nearby, but outside the fence, we have almond trees and olive trees too. There’s even a family planning on trying to start a vineyard by the stream so they can irrigate it. Some scouts brought back some grape seeds recently and an old man said his family used to own a vineyard in a place called California a long time ago. He thinks that maybe he could teach the younger members of his family to do it again. I probably shouldn’t say so, but I’m glad that’s not my family.
We also have a pen full of pigs that really stinks with a shed they can get in when it’s too hot or cold. The chicken coops really stink too, but the smell is worth putting up with when it’s weighed against bacon and eggs. We also have twelve dairy cows, a bunch of sheep and even some goats.
If I’m going to tell the truth, and this wouldn’t be a story worth telling if I didn’t, it doesn’t really matter what kind of farming it is, I don’t like it. I guess I could tolerate shepherding the sheep outside the fence. But even then, you’re just showing stupid sheep where to eat and trying to keep them from getting eaten. How could anyone think that could compete with scouting?
We’ve had a cannery for as long as I can remember. It keeps getting bigger to preserve more food as we take in more people. Mr. Cotton, the old man who runs it, grumbles and says it can’t be done every time they tell him he needs to produce more, but then he makes it happen.
We just finished a distillery a few months ago to replace the old still. Some really bad stuff happened at the old still and pretty much everybody was in favor of replacing it. That’s what Miss Dobbs, the teacher in the school Two Towers started a few years back, calls “a teaser,” by the way. It’s suppose to give whoever’s reading this a “foreshadowing” of what’s to come and make you keep on reading even if it’s long.
Some of the alcohol the new distillery produces is made for drinking, of course, but It produces enough for sterilizing stuff, cleaning wounds and even running some kinds of engines, if we had any. Those kinds of engines are high on the scouts bring-back list. They’re even making enough alcohol now to use in lanterns that keep some areas outside lit up all night long.
The Johnson family has been delivering meals to folks who either don’t want to cook or don’t have the time to for a while now. After enough prodding they’ve finally decided to open up a real sit down restaurant in a few weeks, if you can believe that. I think every chair is spoken for for the next two months though, and my dad was too stingy to reserve us a spot.
I’ll be cooking most every night, I guess, while the rest of the town takes turns sitting at new tables and chairs while others cook for them, bring the food right to the table so they don’t even have to get up, and then clean up for them after their done. All they have to do is sit down and say nice things to each other while they eat food they didn’t have to cook, then leave.
***
Scouts
I’ll tell more about Two Towers later, but I want to say more about my mom and scouting first. Like I was saying, or at least getting ready to say, my mom’s probably the best scout Two Towers has ever had. It’s not just me that says it either. That’s what most everybody says. She’s been gone longer than she’s suppose to, but I’m sure it’s because she’s found something important, or maybe some more folks needing help, and it’s making it take longer for her to get back.
Scouts are the people who leave Two Towers and look for anything useful on the outside. They usually go in teams of two, but sometimes in threes or fours. Considering that scouts have been doing this for twenty-five years, they usually don’t come back with much of anything anymore. It’s not very often, but there’ve been a few times when they’ve come back with nothing at all. There have even been some times when the scouts themselves have failed to return.
I think sometimes they just decide they want to get away, to find somewhere new, and decide its worth it to take their chances in the barrens. Maybe some of them find a trail left by other people and are too far away when they finely catch up to come back before winter sets in even if the people are really good folks. Maybe they go with those people and are planning on coming back to let us know about them when they can.
I’m not stupid. I know that some of the scouts that haven’t come home are just dead. It’s dangerous enough outside the fence even if they don’t come across bad people or wilders.
Wilders are people who live outside the fence, sometimes alone and sometimes in packs. They don’t have much of anything, sometimes not even clothes. There aren’t many of them, and they usually run away when they see other people, especially people from Two Towers. When they don’t run they can be dangerous, though. I don’t think I have to tell you what bad people are. Everybody’s crossed paths with a few of those.
There are also cliffs to fall off of or landslides that can kill you outside the fence. There are rattlers, scorpions, cougars and occasional bears that come down from the highlands. There are even flash floods that come down out of the mountains to the north when there’s not a cloud to be seen. You could get a hole in your water bladder, varmints could eat your food, or any of a thousand other things could happen leaving you dead outside the fence.
Even a badly twisted ankle or knee could prove deadly if you’re too far out. Deadly for your partner too if they won’t leave you, and a good partner won’t. Scouts take vows to the rest of their party, kinda like a wedding only sometimes with three or four people. They promise to each other that they’ll all come back unless somebody’s dead and it’s impossible to bring home their body.
***
The Singer
Remember how I was talking about how some scouts might find people too far away and just go with them until they get a chance to come back and tell us about them and where they live? Well, more often the scouts find people closer by that are alone, in pairs, or small groups. They even find married folks or small families sometimes. If the scouts think their okay they bring them back to Two Towers and they find a place among us and settle in. The scouts almost always get it right.
There have only been two times that I know about where bad people were brought in by mistake. One was when a new man tried to do bad things to Mrs Bales who was newly widowed. Mrs. Bales grownup son, Heath, heard the commotion from next door and hit the man so hard on his head with a broom handle that he died two days later.
The other time was when a new man was put to work at the still. He would go back at night and drink straight from the still until he’d start singing songs nobody could understand. The first two times sheriff Gomez went and got him without any trouble. Sheriff Gomez would just walk him to his bunk while he cried. He’d go to sleep as soon as he laid down.
The third time the man started yelling at the sheriff. When the sheriff stumbled, probably out of surprise as much as anything else, the new man shoved his head and shoulders into the hot coals under the still and then held him there while they both screamed.
There were several people nearby even though it was nighttime on account of the singing and then the yelling. Six men were close enough to see what was happening. They ran and knocked the man off of Sheriff Gomez and then pulled the sheriff out of the fire. People say you couldn’t even tell it was the sheriff. Some say you couldn’t even tell he was a person from the shoulders up.
They tied up the new man and then had what was called a trial the next day. Twelve of the grownups, I don’t remember how they decided which twelve, made what they called a jury. Each of the six men who ran up and tried to save Sheriff Gomez stood in front of the jury and told what they saw.
The singer was then put in front of the jury and told that this was his chance to tell his side of what happened before the jury passed judgment and decided what to do with him. The man just started crying and said he couldn’t remember nothing about what they were saying. He said how sorry he was even while he said he couldn’t possibly have done what they were saying. He begged them to just put him outside the fence, promising to leave and never come back.
After Mrs. Dugger, who seemed like the leader of the jury, asked if he was through and the man nodded, still sobbing, she asked four of the biggest men in town to take the singer to the smoke house and keep him there until she sent for them. She also asked that they get him something to eat and drink, even shine if he wanted it, while they waited.
The jury, I heard later, all decided he did it and what to do about it in the first five minutes. They decided to wait a hour and a half to call the man back so he could eat and get drunk again if he wanted to, though. He did want to and couldn’t walk back in front of the jury without two men holding him up.
Mrs. Dugger told him that all twelve jurors found him guilty of murder and that he was to be hanged within the hour. When asked if he had anything to say the singer threw up on Mr. Dugger, who was one of the men holding him up. Mr. Dugger didn’t even seem mad. He just kept holding the singer up and looked very sad.
My dad told me to go inside our house and not to come out until he came to get me. He told me to go to the far side of the house by the fireplace and not to look out the window. He was very serious.
I went in the front door and straight out the back, of course. I wasn’t twenty-five feet away, about ten feet behind my dad, when Mr. Dugger and the other man let go of the singer. He fell forward, his feet slipping off the chair, even before they could pull it away.
Mr. Dugger did pull it away though before the singer could try to regain his footing. He looked surprised and then scared as the rope tightened and cut into his thick neck. As it did so his tongue stuck out and his face swole up and turned purple. His feet and legs kicked hard and wildly at first, but then slowed to twitches pretty fast. I gasped, then started crying.
My dad turned to me and walked to where I stood. He turned me around, put his arm around my shoulder, and walked me slowly back to our house. The singers legs were barely twitching when I was turned. Neither one of us said anything as we walked home. What was there to say?
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Copyright:
All rights reserved. Nobody can use, redistribute, reiterate, reproduce, copy, or in any other way incorporate what I have written or I might get really mad. I may even sue you. I live smack-dab in the middle of a town filled with starving lawyers. And not just that — I have a lot of time on my hands and could really use some of your money.
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