Mack and Susan started storing food long before there was a virus outbreak. Had they told anyone, even friends would have called them “preppers”, by which they would mean that Mack and Susan were somewhere between paranoid and loony. But they kept their plans to themselves. They had heard too many people tell other preppers, neighbors and friends, “Good, when the shit hits the fan, I’m coming to your house.” Intended as a joke, the comment resonated as a threat once the pandemic suffused the country. “You have what I need, and I know where to get it.” So Mack’s family kept quiet. When the virus arrived in the US, there was a rush on rice and beans, paper towels and toilet paper. Mack already had a year’s worth of food and supplies. And he and Susan continued to make regular trips to the grocery store hoping for fresh vegetables and meat. The trips also served to show curious neighbors that they needed to replenish, that they did not have surplus supplies. The stores quickly ran out of chicken. On their final visit, there was one hen. One. They bought it.
Meanwhile, meatpacking plants began to close. Their workers labored shoulder to shoulder processing dead animals. Workers requested, demanded, protective gear, but the corporate overlords refused. “You want to keep your job, you’ll be on time for work no matter how you feel.” Once someone caught the virus, it spread throughout their shift, down the line, until others decided their job was not worth dying for. Production plummeted, further reducing the supply chain.
Part time workers do not have health insurance. They cannot afford to get sick or to need hospital care. Companies that rely heavily on part time employees cannot afford for their staff to get ill and miss work. But with over thirty million people out of work, those companies knew they should be able to replace anyone stricken with the virus. So they demanded the part time workers show up even if they were sick. Never had the country witnessed such a pervasive vacuum of empathy. The slogan among the wealthy seemed to be “Get the servant class back to work. We are tired of making our own meals or buying take-out.” Of course, the truly wealthy had their own cooks and restaurants that would deliver. The inconvenience of which they complained was more theory than real.
As witnesses to the resourcefulness of farmers and fishermen, skin like burned leather from the long summer days in the sun, lean from sweating all the calories they consume, tough due to the vagaries of their livelihoods controlled by the antagonism of arbitrary government rules and unpredictable weather. When government thinks too many of a species of fish have been caught, they close the fishery with less science than feeling behind how long the fishery should remain closed. Similarly, weather provides farmers with too much rain or too much sun, rarely either at the best time or in fruitful measures. A factory can increase or decrease production depending on availability of raw materials and consumer demand. Neither farmers nor fishermen have such luxury. They are vulnerable to the casino rules of the natural world, rules they neither control nor influence. The more they harvest, the greater the supply and usually the lower the price. The less they can harvest, the higher the price, but the demand soon consumes what is available. Like dealing with the government, it is “heads [it] win[s], tails you lose.”
In short, these are a class of survivors who have practiced their skills for generations. Whatever they need to do to care for their own, they will do. In better times, it might be no worse than stealing another man’s catch before he can haul his net or pots, clear his traps before you run your line. But all are predatory and know the ways of the woods, the ways of the wild. Food is always there regardless what season rulemakers decide is or is not legal for harvesting game. Birds fly, fish swim, deer and turkeys wander the forest and graze the fields. Boundaries are invisible in the wild.
Those are the people who most concerned Mack. In good times, they could be the most generous neighbors you know. But their families came first. Period. To survive, Mack would have to embrace a similar ethic. Even sharing with someone who seemed non-threatening could invite a conflict because the act of sharing is an admission that you have more than you need. With a mindset of better times, sharing is sensible unless you have nothing. In the world of shortages, having anything is having more than you need for those who would take it from you.
Mack continued to follow the receding drone of the fisherman’s outboard as the shrinking boat reached the river. Once silence returned to the anchorage, he sipped his coffee. What should each day mean? How should they organize and live the life they had chosen?
“Let’s have some breakfast, cold foods first so we do not have to keep the refrigeration running any longer than we need it.”
“You know the eggs will keep for weeks. We bought them unwashed and unrefrigerated.”
“Yes, but the bacon and sausage will not last as long. Who’s cooking?”
“Mom already started.”
“Susan, you know we can share galley duties.”
“I do, and we will. But today is our first day, and I planned a special breakfast.”
Soon the aromas of a hot southern breakfast billowed from the galley into the cockpit. Topside, scanning the woods that lined the river, Mack suspected there were raccoons and foxes ashore that were salivating as all of his family were. Onions, sausage, grits, eggs, and biscuits mingled with the steam of roasted coffee held below their faces as all waited hungrily for the final dish. Stomachs twisted and grumbled with desire. Not exactly ideal OpSec, but they welcomed the tastes and smells of normalcy knowing that there might be times ahead when such a meal was not possible due to lack of resources, a need for discretion, or an absence of fire for any number of reasons. On the other hand, they would adjust to preparing such meals when the wind was fresh and blowing away from land, or when they were too far from shore for the smells to expose them.
Susan called for assistance and passed up the companionway a casserole dish and basket of biscuits to Andrew who set them on the small folding cockpit table alongside the plates and forks, knives and spoons. A family breakfast table or dinner table, the locus of the communal family meal. Although not likely their last, it might easily be the last they could predict. Every anchorage would produce its own situational concerns and limitations. Positioning the entire family as a clustered target grouped in a small exposed space like the cockpit would rarely be safe and never wise. Nonetheless, for this morning, the first day of living fully in their new world, the four ate together in the lightly damp dawn air encircled by the serenity of forest and river. Each of them settled at a corner. Mack scanned the surroundings once more, and they passed plates to Susan who served everyone. The morning might have been a vacation, relaxing in the solitude of a quiet cove.
Andrew spoke first, “This is really nice, a quiet morning at anchor, a scrumptious breakfast. It makes it hard for me to wrap my head around fear of others.”
“Not fear, son. Caution and defensive analysis. All we know is that anyone we encounter may be desperate. We cannot immediately know their minds or their intentions. They may be just like us, good people in a wretched situation. We may need to worry more about how much they fear us than whether we see reason to fear them. The most difficult decision we will face is whether to trust. Or not. ”
“Mack, Andrew, let’s leave this for later. Enjoy your breakfast. In this moment in this place, we have no immediate concerns. Let’s appreciate that while we can. There is plenty of day ahead of us and many days to come.” Susan was the wise and even-tempered one who kept the family in balance.
“Right. Well, this coffee hits the spot. Hot and strong on a cool morning on the leading edge of autumn. By the way, I’ve been thinking about how we make a garden. We need everyone’s ideas from what we want to grow to how we grow it and preserve what we do not eat fresh off the vine.”
Everyone had ideas about the entire process. The conversation soon erupted into a cacophony of suggestions and desires, what would work and would not. They were four people talking over each other like a bunch of adolescents playing Twister, all knees and elbows and no logic. Mack quickly noted that one of them better take notes lest they forget their assorted thoughts when time came to begin planting.
“Of course, Dad wants to take notes. He always wants to take notes.” The three of them laughed at Mack with clear affection. He just smiled as he slurped the last of his coffee and spread his own pocket notebook beside his plate, pen in hand.
“Okay, one by one. Top three plants.”
Andrew proposed his gambit, “Corn…” smirking subtly as he suggested the plant least likely to be effectively grown on the boat.
“C’mon, seriously, top three that we might realistically grow.” All three laughed at Andrew’s humor.
In short order, they worked through a list that easily maximized the potential planting space and identified vegetables as well as herbs, both savory and medicinal. The breadth of the family’s collective knowledge astonished each of them. Each knew something entirely new to the others. The family made a fine team, a solid crew, a strong seminal community.
A key problem remained unsolved: in what would they grow the larger plants such as cabbage and tomatoes, squash and potatoes? Pots would work for some, buckets for others. Still, they would need a complete plan to create the most efficient use of their available space without inhibiting their ability to sail the boat. Mack suspected that they would need to reorganize the deck, move the spinnaker boom and relocate the life raft from its cradle on the forward coach roof for starters. The boom could be hung vertically on the mast, a position many preferred anyway because of the ease of deployment with minimal physical effort. The life raft could be mounted on the aft railing on the starboard side, an arrangement that many also preferred due to its proximity to the cockpit. Mack never had liked the idea that, in the event of abandoning ship, someone would have to go forward, possibly in dangerously heaving seas, to release the raft from its cradle. (Once released, it would inflate on its own when the static line pulled the valve to deploy the CO2 canister.)
“Whatever we decide to use as growing containers, we need to acquire or build them over the winter. We have a few pots, a few buckets, but not enough for what we just brainstormed.”
“Scavenging. I love it!” Andrew had been a scrounger from youth. One of the times his father had disappointed him was when Mack asked if he wanted to join him on a run to the county landfill. Excited by the possibilities of what people were discarding, Andrew enthusiastically enlisted. The two drove north out of town along the river and turned into the refuse complex, land committed to a mountain of garbage of all sorts. They crossed the scales, paid a fee and wound their way to the top of the rotting heap. On the way up, signs declared that retrieving anything from the dump was prohibited. Andrew expressed his dissatisfaction immediately, and when they reached the plateau where bulldozers pushed the newest refuse off the edge of the nascent summit, he spotted a “perfectly good” drum set.
“Dad, I want the drums.”
“Sorry son, I didn’t know that they don’t permit scavenging, but you read the sign.”
“Yeah, but those are in perfectly good condition.”
“I doubt that. They look fine from a distance, but there’s a reason the owner tossed them.”
“Maybe it’s a guy whose parents just tired of hearing him bang the drums all day.”
“Maybe…but the rules….”
Another gargantuan trash truck emptied its collection of rotting food and garbage while seagulls circled above, some landing amidst the broken bags to snack on spoiled food.
“If I had known that I could not pick up something neat if I found it, I wouldn’t have come.”
“Sorry, son.” Andrew pouted briefly as they retreated from the mother lode of unwanted detritus.
On the boat, with the need to find whatever materials required, Andrew began to see enticing possibilities for his skills. “This’ll be fun.”
“Yes, and it’ll require some creativity. But never forget there is a limit to what we can gather. We have limited space inside the boat most of which is devoted to our personal needs, food stores, critical tools, etc. We can scavenge materials that enhance our living situation so long as we do not sacrifice space for living and space for handling the boat under way.”
“Oh yeah. I get it.” Andrew continued to smile as did his sister and mother. They could see the wheels turning in Andrew’s brain. “What about towing a barge so that we have an inventory of potential supplies?”
“Great idea…but No,” chuckling, Mack replied. “That would certainly inhibit our speed and the maneuverability of the boat.”
“Sure, but we could easily cut it loose if we needed to.”
“True enough. We’ll think about it.” Andrew’s concept impressed Mack. He had been too fixated on the burden of a barge, the image and preconceived notion of what a barge is, to find a similar solution. As he had said to the family, “creativity” was required. Andrew understood perhaps the best of all.
“So, what next?” Matty inquired.
“Too soon for specific plans. Let’s all take it easy and be sure we have our personal gear stowed as well as anything that escaped us during our departure yesterday. We’ll take as much of a break as we can on this first day.”
Matty replied, “I want to be sure I am doing anything that needs to be done. I don’t want you or Mommy to scold me later for failing to see a need and tackle it.”
“Neither your mother nor I want boat life to feel that way. It will be a while before all of us settle into the appropriate routine. In the meantime, if in doubt, ask. What we consider downtime will be good for reading and learning as well as planting, fishing or trapping. We have a lot to learn about horticulture and even more about acquiring animal protein. Then again, for the near term, we should reserve distractions for pleasure to nighttime after dinner. But the main thing is communication.”
“Pleasure? You mean like social media? Internet? Contact with friends? Daddy, you know none of that is available to us.”
“Not my fault. We have the equipment if we can locate a signal, but you’re right, we are unlikely to find a signal. At least not now. And who knows about the future? In the meantime, we should explore the Single Side Band radio reception and learn what is happening around the world.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to sound as if I blame you. It just seemed like a hollow option.”
“And it is. Now. But this is our life for who knows how long. We need to accept the limits and get comfortable. We will find ways to establish normalcy in our ship life even though it will be different from what we knew before.”
A buzzing noise floated downriver. They all heard it as one.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know. Andrew, the shotgun. And load the pistol too.” He dropped through the companionway in a blink and handed his father the shotgun, a full bandolier of shells hanging from the barrel.