Renewal by Jf Perkins Page B

face.
     
    “Sir, uh… well, you see…” Terry stammered, trying to get the Earth to settle under him.
     
    Dusty and Bill both broke up into raucous laughter. It took long seconds for Terry to understand that he was not actually in trouble, and full minutes before the other men stopped laughing and snorting.
     
    Finally, Bill said, “Relax, Terry. This is one of the surprises I was talking about.”
     
    “It’s a surprise, all right.” Terry was angry now. “Does someone want to tell me what’s going on here?”
     
    Dusty took his turn. “Terry, calm down. I’ve known Bill here for… well, since before you were born, and I’ve been a part of his group since before there were houses here. I sent you out here for a reason.”
     
    “What reason?” Terry took a deep breath to calm himself. “What reason?”
     
    Bill said, “Dusty here keeps the county out of our hair.”
     
    Dusty added, “And I do it because, despite all they teach you about honor and duty in the county school, rebuilding works better this way. By the end of the day, you’ll know that too.”
     
    “What do you mean?” Terry looked back and forth at the two men, who were sliding back into the booth opposite him.
     
    Dusty replied, “I could answer that for you, but you’re here because the other thing I do is find smart young people in town, and send them to learn for themselves. I bet you could sit here right now and tell me what’s wrong with what’s going on in town.”
     
    Terry thought for a minute and said, “I know already that these people live much better than we do in town, except for a very few people…”
     
    “Exactly,” Dusty said, “There are a few rich landowners who were smart enough to see how to grab as much for themselves as they could. For everyone else, it’s the minimum it takes to get by, just enough to work for those landowners, so about five families can keep getting richer.”
     
    Bill added, “I know they don’t teach history anymore, but the basic idea is that before the Breakdown, this was a country of opportunity. People could come from all over the world to work hard and make a life for themselves here. Without boring you to tears, the reason the Breakdown happened in the first place was that we lost that idea. We were living to make a few people really rich, and they were working to make it so that all we could do any more was make them rich. They took away our ability to do for ourselves, and when the breakdown happened, we were not prepared.”
     
    Dusty picked up the thread. “I know my family was not prepared for anything. Bill’s brother, Kirk, found me in the woods west of here, eating bark and leaves to survive. Kirk was a scary man at that point, but even he couldn’t stand the pathetic situation I was living in. I knew nothing. My parents knew nothing, and because of it, they and my sister were dead.”
     
    “Dusty came here when we were camping down at the creek, and we could barely feed ourselves, so we sent him to some contacts in town. They raised him, made sure he went to school, and we had him during the summer so that he could get our kind of education too. In exchange, we made sure they had fresh meat from time to time. Now he’s family. He’s my nephew, in fact, married to Lucy’s oldest daughter.”
     
    “So, Bill,” Terry said. “Your entire family survived the Breakdown?”
     
    “Yes. I think you know from my story that I have my dad’s smarts to thank for it. He spent the rest of his years teaching us, and anyone else who would listen, everything he knew about how things worked, and how they were supposed to work. He was serious about the idea of America, how it was meant to be, and because of him, we all grew up to think that way. We believe that anyone who works hard should share in the rewards, and be able to make the best life he can.”
     
    “So, if I agree with what you are telling me, I have to file a false report to keep the county away