Free Renewal 9 - Delay Tactics by Jf Perkins Page A

three generations, they had borrowed so much. The big thing we don’t know is whether Wyatt Jenkins has enough money stashed to finance the whole deal. He sure can’t feed an army off his own land anymore.”
    “So you think the Coxes may be in the fight. What about the Talleys?” Terry asked.
    “I think we won’t have to worry about the Talleys anymore. George was never a bad guy. He just happened to have a bunch of jerks in his class of people, and you know how it is. You do what it takes to get along.” Bill rolled down his window to spit, and left it open for the breeze.
    “We may be facing three families worth of fighters and who knows how much Jenkins money. Do we know what that means in numbers?”
    “Pretty much. The money doesn’t matter unless a whole lot of Coffee County folks are greedy enough to sign up for the fight in exchange for a few bucks. It’ll be over before they can do anything really dangerous with the money. In terms of manpower, we outnumber the families since the Jenkins raid so that’s not a worry. The worry is what the Junior Dragon brings. He may show up with ten times what the families can field, or he may not show up at all.”
    “You think Bedford County can do that much damage?”
    “I’ll say one thing. I’ll bend over backwards to keep Tam Rogers as a friend.” Bill said.
    Terry looked at the blank clock display on his dashboard and asked, “How far do we have to go?”
    Bill watched the cones of the headlights until he recognized the gutted and blackened machine shop ahead. “Fifteen... Twenty minutes, and after that it depends on what Tam’s people tell us.”
    “So, plenty of time to tell me what happened next, then.” Terry said, leading Bill to his favorite subject.
    Bill laughed, rearranged the chaw in his mouth and started talking.
    Chapter 9 – 12
    Every day that went by without the bottom dropping out of the thermometer was a more hopeful day. August came and went with nothing worse than a New England summer to show for it. The weather was still wetter than Tennessee is supposed to be in late summer, but Dad kept saying that was a good thing. The more rain, the more the dirt fell out of the sky and the faster we could get back to normal. That didn’t stop us from another frantic firewood effort to prepare for the cold. “Better safe than sorry” was almost a mantra every morning as we stretched sore muscles and prepared for another round of daily chores. There was always plenty to do before we could even begin to cut wood.
    Joe Miller was our constant companion, now that he had literally given away the farm. He figured it was our problem, and he was free to spend his time doing whatever he wanted. After his solitary battle with nuclear winter, what he wanted most was the company of other people, Not just any people. Men. At least once a day, he would say, “Spend too much time around women, and they start expecting you to keep spending time. Right, men?” Kirk and I agreed, and then went back to what we were doing, since we actually had no idea what he was talking about. I mean, ninety-nine percent of our lives consisted of Mom and Lucy, and they were both happy to get rid of us.
    Aside from speaking wisdom over my head, Joe was a good guy to have around. He even taught Dad hundreds of methods for getting the most out of green timber. How to cut it, how to split it, dry it, cure it for lumber, and even carve it with an old pocket knife that never left old Joe’s side. We used George Carroll’s tractor and fuel to haul the wood in from way out behind the creek. Dad hadn’t decided what to do closer to the house yet, and deliberately left that timber alone. Joe’s... Well, our farm across the road looked like it had enough trees on the hillside to burn for a thousand years, but Joe told us, “Only if you treat it right,” and proceeded to give us a masters course in Tennessee forestry for the next five days.
    By the end of September, the weather was