“Not borrow. It’s yours to keep. I don’t need the damn thing. I was going to trade it off for something else, and I’m glad to see it go to someone who can use it. Just keep it clean and it’ll last a long time. Ruskie guns are butt-ugly but hell-for-strong.”
Eddie thanked him awkwardly but profusely, then headed off through the brush, leaving Santee alone with his thoughts.
* * *
He lit a fire in the wood stove and found a pan to heat up some canned stew. He normally tried to cook dinner, but tonight was a night for thinking, not cooking. He had moved to this small cabin in 1990, and hardly ever left it. It had a spring on the hill above, so it had running cold water, and a septic system, but no power. The power company would have been happy to bring him power at two dollars a foot from the road, but he didn’t have the five thousand or so dollars that would take, nor really need the power. But he did have a friend with the phone company who’d made a “mistake” and got him telephone installation for sixty bucks. A generator provided power when he needed it—mostly to run power tools and check his E-mail daily—and his jeep took him on monthly trips into Fairmont or Wheeling or Charlottesville to get supplies. He had a garden, his hunting, his pension, his collection of old guns, and plenty of time. Most of his old friends were dead or had gone all domesticated, and most of his new friends he’d never met except online. He’d been fairly happy, semi-retired, living the life every ex-sergeant says he dreams of…
He’d rarely been to Grantville. It had been out of his way from the roads he could reach, and too small a town for good prices, but now it was the only town he could get to. And from what Eddie had told him, it was at war, for chrissake. He’d left the war back in Vietnam, and it had taken him quite a few years to get it out of his mind and sleep soundly again. Ever since then, he’d tried hard to never let any of that mindset back into his life. That kind of thinking, war thinking, really fucked you up for living in the real world.
But the real world had just changed, hadn’t it? Snap to, he told himself. Good survivors don’t waste time trying to play the old game when all bets are off. If he’d been dealt a new hand, he’d better take a close look at the cards.
Eddie had said that Mike Stearns, the head honcho, wanted to meet him. Like I’m going to go take tea with the fucking governor! Who I need to talk to is—what was his name, Frank Jackson?—the guy who’s running the army.
* * *
The next morning, Santee walked into Grantville. There was no real path, just some game trails, so it had taken him two hours to go down the hill and into the town and would probably take him three hours to get back. Far from the sleepy town he vaguely remembered, the town seemed to be buzzing with activity. No cars, though; people were walking everywhere. Smart, save the gasoline for the army. The thought came to him with surprising ease, worrying him a bit. Damn it, I’m a civilian now. Have been for twenty years. No need to examine everything as if he was still a platoon sergeant. But he couldn’t help noticing that lots of the men were wearing pistols, perhaps even most of them. The .45 on his own hip fit in nicely.
Asking around, he found out that the new army commander, Frank Jackson, was big in the Mine Workers union. Eddie had said he was a ‘Nam vet; if he hadn’t been just a desk jockey, he might do. Santee headed for the cafeteria where people said Jackson usually had lunch. Lunch sounded good after his long walk, and he was pleasantly surprised to find the food abundant and free. After eating, he found Jackson surrounded by a dozen miners, deep in a spirited discussion. No time like the present.