This is the eleventh installment of an exploration of some
of the possible futures discussed on this blog, using the toolkit of narrative
fiction. Our narrator ventures out of Toledo into a tier one rural county and
sees one of the alternative cultures taking shape in the Lakeland
Republic.
***********
We changed trains in Defiance. The station wasn’t much more
than a raised platform running along each side of the tracks, with a shelter of
cast iron and glass overhead to keep off any rain that might happen along. The
day was shaping up clear and cool; the town looked like old county seats I’d
seen in parts of upstate New York that hadn’t been flattened during the endgame
of the Second Civil War, a patchwork of clapboard and brick with the county
courthouse rising above the nearby roofs. I could see only two obvious
differences—first, that the only vehicles on the streets were pulled by horses,
and second, that all the houses looked lived in and all the businesses I could see
seemed to be open.
The train west to Hicksville came after we’d waited about
fifteen minutes. Colonel Pappas and I weren’t the only people waiting for it,
either. Something close to a hundred people got off the train from Toledo with
us, some in olive drab Lakeland Army uniforms, some in civilian clothing, all
of them with luggage and most with long flat cases that I guessed held guns.
Once Pappas rolled up the ramp onto one of the cars and I followed him, I found
that the train was already more than half full, and it was the same mix, some
soldiers, some civilians, plenty of firepower.
I sat down next to Pappas, who gestured expansively at the
train. “Not what you’d usually see going to Hicksville,” he said. “Every other
time of the year this is a twice a day milk run that hits every farm town
between Bowling Green and Warsaw. This weekend it’s six or eight runs this size
every day.”
The train jolted into motion, and I watched Defiance slide
past. After maybe a mile, we were rolling through farmland dotted with houses
and barns. Some of the houses had wind turbines rising up above them and solar
water heaters on the roofs, while others didn’t; tall antennas I guessed were
meant for radio rose above most of them, but not all. The dirt roads looked well
tended and the bridges were in good repair. I shook my head, trying to make
sense of it.
“Checking out tier one?” Pappas asked me.
I glanced at him. “Pretty much. I wasn’t expecting to see
the wind and solar gear.”
“You’re thinking it’s tier one, how come they have tech that
wasn’t around in 1830, right?” When I nodded, he laughed. “Outsiders always get
hung up on that. Tier level just says what infrastructure gets paid for by
county taxes. You can get whatever tech you want if it’s your own money.”
“What about a veepad?”
“Sure, as long as you don’t expect somebody else to pay for
a metanet to make it work.”
I nodded again, conceding the point. “I get the sense that a
lot of people here wouldn’t buy modern technology even if they could.”
“True enough. Some of that’s religious—we’ve got a lot of
Amish and Mennonites here, and there’re also some newer sects along the same
lines, Keelyites, New Shakers, that sort of thing. Some of it’s political—most
of the people in the full-on Resto parties are just as much into low-tech in
their own lives as they are in their politics. They learned that lesson from
the environmentalists before the war—you know about those?”
It was my turn to laugh. “Yeah. I had some of them in my
family when I was a kid. ‘I want to save the Earth, but not enough to stop
driving my SUV.’”
“Bingo—and you know how much good that did. The Restos
aren’t into that sort of hypocrisy, so a lot of them end up in low-tier
counties and stick to simple tech.”
“What do you think of that?”
“Me? I’m a city kid. I like nightlife, public transit—” He
slapped one of the tires of his wheelchair.
“—smooth sidewalks. Tier one’s fun to visit but I’d rather live tier
four or five.”
The train rattled through farmland for an hour or so,
stopping once at a little place named Sherwood, before we reached Hicksville.
The station there was even more rudimentary than the one at Defiance, just a
raised platform and a long single-story building with a peaked roof alongside
the track, but Pappas had no trouble maneuvering his wheelchair on the platform
once we got off the train. “We’ll wait here,” he told me. “Once the crowd
clears someone’ll meet us.”
He was right, of course. After a couple of minutes, as the
train rolled westwards out of the station and the crowd started to thin, a
young man in army uniform with corporal’s stripes on his sleeves wove his way
toward us and saluted Pappas. “Colonel, sir,” he said, “good to see you.” To
me: “You’re Mr. Carr, right? Pleased to
meet you. The jeep’s this way.”
He wasn’t kidding. Sitting on the street next to the
station, incongruous amid a press of horsedrawn carts and wagons, was what
looked like a jeep straight out of a World War Two history vid. Pappas saw the
expression on my face, and laughed. “The army’s got a lot of those,” he told
me. “Good, cheap, sturdy, and it handles unpaved roads just fine.”
“What fuel does it use?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s diesel. Everything we use runs on vegetable oil if
it doesn’t eat corned beef or hay.”
Pappas hauled himself into the jeep’s front passenger seat
while I tried to parse that. The corporal helped him get his wheelchair folded
and stowed, then waved me to a seat in back and went to the driver’s seat. I
got in next to the wheelchair, found a place for my suitcase, and got a firm
grip on the grab bar as the engine roared to life.
Six blocks later we were on the edge of Hicksville.
“Tomorrow’s action is twelve miles north of town,” Pappas told me. “We’ll be
staying right near there—all the farmhouses around here rent out rooms to
visitors. Melanie told me you want to see how people live in tier one; you’ll
get an eyeful.”
It took us half an hour to get to the farm Pappas had in
mind, driving on what pretty clearly wasn’t the main road—now and then I could
see dust rising off to the east, and a couple of times spotted what had to be a
line of wagons and carts carrying people and luggage toward whatever was going
to happen the next day. I speculated about why I wasn’t part of that
line—Pappas’ rank, maybe? Or a courtesy toward a guest from outside who wasn’t
used to horsedrawn travel? That latter irked me a bit, even though I was
grateful for the quick trip.
Finally the jeep swerved off the road, rattled along a rough
driveway maybe a half mile long, and clattered to a stop in front of a
sprawling clapboard-sided building three stories tall. Two others and a huge
barn stood nearby, and fields, pastures, and gardens spread out in all
directions around them.
“Welcome to Harmony Gathering,” Pappas said, turning half
around in his seat. “I mentioned the New Shakers earlier, remember? You’re
about to meet some of ‘em.”
By the time he finished speaking the front door of the
building swung open and a big gray-bearded man in overalls and a plain blue
short-sleeved shirt came out. “Good day, Tom,” he called out. “And—Mr. Carr, I
believe.”
I got out of the jeep. “Peter Carr,” I said, shaking his
hand.
“I’m Brother Orren. Be welcome to our Gathering.” He turned
to the corporal. “Joe, do you need help with any of that?”
“Nah, I’ve got it.” The corporal came around, got the
wheelchair unfolded, and Pappas slid into it. I got my suitcase; the
gray-bearded man turned back to the door and nodded once, and a boy of ten or
so dressed the same way he was came out at a trot, took the suitcase from me,
gave me a big smile, and vanished back into the building with it.
“Things hopping yet, Orren?” Pappas asked him.
“Oh, very much so. You have plenty of company.” He motioned
toward the door. “Shall we?”
Inside the walls were bare and white, the furniture plain
and sturdy, the air thick with the smell of baking bread. “Tom tells me that
you’re from the Atlantic Republic,” the bearded man said to me. “I don’t
believe our church has put down roots there yet. If you have questions—why, ask
me, or anyone.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll take you up on that once I figure
out what to ask.”
He beamed. “I’ll welcome that. Of course you’ll want to get
the dust off first, and lunch will be ready shortly.” He turned and called
out: “Sister Susannah? Could you show
our guests to their rooms?”
An old woman with improbably green eyes, dressed in a plain
blue dress, came into the room from a corridor I hadn’t noticed. “Of course.
Come with me, please.”
“Don’t worry about me, Sue,” Pappas said. “I know the way.”
That got a quiet laugh and a nod. Pappas rolled away down a
different corridor, and the old woman led me up a nearby stair and down a long
hall lined with doors. “This is yours,” she said, opening one. “Give me just a
moment.” She smiled, went on further
down the hall.
The room was a simple cubicle with a bed on one side, a
dresser and desk on the other, and a window on the far end. The bare white
walls and the plain sturdy furniture were scrupulously clean, and the bed had a
thick colorful quilt on it. My suitcase had been set down neatly beside the
dresser.
A moment later the old woman was back with two pitchers and
a bowl. “Here you are,” she said, setting them on the desk. “If you need
anything else, please ring the bell and someone will be up to help you right
away.” She smiled again and left, closing the door behind her.
The pitchers turned out to contain hot and cold water.
Towels and a washcloth hung on a rack near the door, and a little shelf next to
it had a bar of soap on it that didn’t look as though it had ever seen the
inside of a factory. Two bags hanging from the back of the door had
hand-embroidered labels on them, towels and linen and guest clothing;
over to one side was an oddly shaped chair that turned out on inspection to be some
sort of portable toilet, with a big porcelain pot underneath that sealed with a
tightly fitting lid when it wasn’t in use. Tier one, I thought, and decided to
make the best of it.
The funny thing was that the primitive accommodations
weren’t actually that much more awkward or difficult to use than the facilities
you’d find in a good hotel in Philadelphia. I wasn’t sure what I would be in
for if I decided to take a bath, but I managed to get cleaned up and
presentable in short order, and went out into the hall feeling distinctly ready
for the lunch the old man had mentioned. I wondered for a moment if I should
ring the bell, but that didn’t turn out to be necessary; as soon as I stepped
out into the hall, the same boy who’d taken my suitcase up to the room came
down the hall and gave me directions. As
I left, he was hauling away the water pitchers.
Lunch—sandwiches on homebaked whole-grain bread and big
bowls of hearty chicken soup—was served in a big plain room in back, where big
wooden tables and benches ran in long
rows, and the benches were full of men in Lakeland Republic uniforms; the only
people who wore New Shaker blue were a couple of young men who brought out the
food. “The people who live here eat in
their own dining hall,” Pappas told me when I asked him about that. “You’re
welcome to join them, if you don’t mind eating in perfect silence while
somebody reads out loud from the Bible.”
“I’ll pass,” I said.
He laughed. “Me too.
Sundays at Holy Trinity is enough religion for me, but I guess it works
for them. They start a new Gathering somewhere every few years, they’re growing
that fast.”
I racked my brains for the little I knew about the original
Shakers. “Do they swear off sex?”
“No, that was the old Shakers. The New Shakers marry, or
some of them do—Orren and Sue are a couple, for example. The brothers and
sisters don’t own anything, not even a toothbrush, and live together like the
old Shakers did.”
“And the other sect you mentioned?”
“The Keelyites? They’re like the Amish, they own their own
homes and farms, but they’ve got their own beliefs and their prophet Eleanor
Keely put a third testament into their Bibles. They’ll tell you that when God
said we have to live by the sweat of our brows, He meant that anything that’s
not powered by human muscles is sinful.”
“We’ve got Third Order Amish back home who say that,” I told
him.
Pappas considered that. “I don’t think we have them here
yet,” he said. “Now that the border’s opened, who knows? I bet they talk
theology with the Keelyites. God knows what they’ll come up with.”
About the time I’d polished off lunch, Brother Orren came in
and asked if I’d be interested in a tour of the Gathering—I gathered he’d been
briefed by somebody—and I spent the afternoon trotting around the place with a
soft-spoken guy in his early twenties named Micah, who had brown skin and a
mane of frizzy red-brown hair. “My parents got killed in an air raid during the
war of ‘49,” he told me as we walked toward the barn, “and the Gathering took
me in. Any child who comes to us finds a home.”
“Did you ever consider leaving?” I asked.
“I left when I was nineteen,” he told me. “Spent three years
out in the world, two of them in the army. It was a learning experience. But I
came back once I realized that this was where I belong.”
“Do you miss anything from outside the Gathering?”
“Oh, now and again. Still, there’s a song we inherited from
the old Shakers; the first line is ‘Tis a gift to be simple’—and that’s true,
at least for me. It’s a gift, and as we say, a grace, and I’m happier here than
I ever was out there in the world.”
