pastor who gave the blessing was smart enough to keep it brief before Carol invited everyone to start eating. Sela had made her way to Carol’s side, and winked at her aunt. “Good strategy, feeding everyone before you start roping them into work.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday,” Carol replied, smirking. She paused. “Or in this century, come to that. And speaking of that, have you seen Olivia, who was born in this century?”
“She’s fine. She’s hanging with her friends.” Sela looked around and caught sight of one of Olivia’s friends, a girl who was easily spotted because of her bright red hair. A quick survey of the group let her locate Olivia. “There she is.” There weren’t any boys in the knot of teenagers, at least not right now.
Carol nodded, then gestured to Sela’s notebook. “Did you get any good stuff?”
“I did. How about Ted Parsons? Were any of his ideas something we could use?” She actually hoped they were, because that would soothe his ego and make him less problematic to deal with . . . she hoped. Not that he was a big problem, but he was certainly going to be an irritant.
Carol rocked her hand. “Maybe, maybe not. I wrote them down. You never can tell how things will work out.”
Sela filled plates for Carol and herself, got glasses of tea, then they sat with their heads together under the tent and tried to brainstorm with the information they had gathered that morning. Carol did have some volunteers, a few of whom she deemed worthless. Zoe Dietrich couldn’t be trusted to check on the elderly because she would likely steal their medications. Patty Stone had good intentions, but she was one of those people who never followed through. And so on, and so on.
“We can’t expect people to routinely donate their time and services,” Sela said as she absently drew circles on the notepad. “In a short-term emergency people will give, but this is going to last a while.”
“You’re thinking a barter system?”
“There isn’t anything else that will work. Well, there is right now, but what about later on when winter is here and food is getting scarce?”
“But what could people offer? If they need someone to hunt for them then they can’t offer food, right? Food’s what they need, not what they have a surplus of.”
“Mending. Babysitting. Cooking. Knowledge. The elderly will be the most in need, but they also have the most knowledge in how to get things done without electricity. Teaching. The kids can’t be left at loose ends, they still need to be in some kind of learning environment, as well as helping out with everything that needs to be done.” Sela sat back, thinking of her own situation. She needed firewood and Trey Foster had offered to keep her supplied, so now she needed to come up with some way to pay him for the wood. Cutting firewood was hard work. The chain saws would work only until they ran out of fuel, then any cutting would be done by hand, with axes.
Damn, this was getting complicated. In one way everything was being stripped down to the basics, but they needed to survive as a community, which meant there were a lot of moving pieces.
Carol took a sip of tea. “I say again, you should be the one doing this. You just came up with several things that never crossed my mind.”
“And I didn’t know about the medication thief,” Sela returned, determined not to be maneuvered into something she didn’t want. “Besides, I wasn’t elected; you were.”
“How could you be elected when you wouldn’t step forward?” Carol demanded, her tone exasperated.
“Going over ground that’s already been plowed,” Sela pointed out, unswayed, which earned her a rude noise from her aunt.
An uproar exploded in the direction of the big grills, and they jumped to their feet. A crowd was already gathering, but through a gap they saw two men rolling on the ground with fists flying.
“Oh shit,” Carol said, and sighed. “This is never gonna work.”
The big cookout was a good idea in that it took care of a lot of food that might otherwise have spoiled, but other than that not a lot was accomplished. Carol had names, they had some ideas, but there was almost no forward movement in organizing anything. The crisis was too new, and the situation wasn’t critical yet. The weather was still good. People still had food. For the most part, the valley inhabitants were adjusting to life