“Then stay here and stop fighting. Wait for it to all blow over,” Jake suggested. “It’s not the end of the world. At least I don’t think it is…” He pushed his bike further up the driveway, hoping to get away. The last thing Jake needed was more drama.
Kenny, his annoying next-door neighbor, waved a hand at the crowd behind him. “Wait. You live here too. Before you leave, can you vote or something? We need to settle this now.”
“Vote on what?”
Kenny, normally a passive, but at times whiny guy, glanced at Tucker worriedly before answering. “The swimming pools. There’s a lot of us nearly out of water, but there’s two pools in the subdivision. Curt says these people should share it with everyone else.”
The crowd came alive with comments, and mumblings, soon erupting into outbursts. At this rate, they’d be swinging fists again.
It was all too much. He couldn’t care less about the damn water. His head was throbbing, and in spite of the beautiful weather, he was breaking out in a cold sweat. “Hey!” he screamed. “Y’all shut up!”
That shocked the crowd. No one had ever heard or seen Jake get riled up, which was why they sent Kenny to get him at the first sign of trouble. He was always one of the most level-headed in the neighborhood—not to mention he didn’t really belong to either side of the constantly-fighting divisions. Jake had earned everyone’s respect with his normally quiet demeanor and willingness to always help out a neighbor, and not pick a side.
“It doesn’t make a difference to me. I’m not taking sides, if that’s what y’all are asking me to do. Work it out.”
Tucker stepped up to speak quietly to Jake. “Hey, Jake, wait a minute. Look, we need you man. These people here don’t have a clue what to do in a situation like this and tempers are flaring. We need to work together, but you know Curt’s not going to listen to a word I have to say. I don’t mind sharing our water, but not like this. I’m not having him in charge. He’s clueless. You’ve been doing this prepping stuff with your family—we’ve talked about it. So, you know more than probably anyone. Can you spare a few minutes to just get us started? People will listen to you.”
Jake sighed. Tucker rarely asked Jake for anything. As far as Jake knew, Tucker and his family had nowhere else to go, they were transplants here. Their family was out of state. If the power didn’t come back on—if this truly was a shit hit the fan event—he’d feel awful leaving Tucker and Katie and the kids behind anyway. The least he could do was give them his two cents.
Still, he didn’t want to get involved. He needed to run his errands and get on the road to the farm. The longer he waited, the worse his leg was going to be hurting him, and it was going to be a long ride. He slowly shook his head. He wasn’t sticking around.
Tucker put his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Look, I saw you limping. You really going to ride that bike all the way to town to get your part? You’ll be miserable. You won’t make it there and back before dark tonight.”
Jake nodded miserably. “I know.”
“I’ll make you a deal. If you stick around a little while—an hour at the most—and help me herd these cats, I’ll let you borrow my four-wheeler ATV to go get your part.”
Oh hell yeah.
Jake was in. He needed more than a part, but both stops were near each other. He really didn’t want to pedal that far. “You talked me into it.”
He stepped off his bike and faced the crowd, crossing his arms. “Okay, what all have y’all done so far? Assuming the power isn’t coming on for a while. Have you stocked up the water and cooked all your food?”
Nothing but blank stares answered him.
He nodded and did some quick thinking through the waves of his worsening headache. He wasn’t up for a nasty debate, as their neighborhood meetings usually devolved into. He’d give them the quick and dirty version and then be on his way.
“First thing, leave Tucker’s pool alone. Y’all got more water than you think you do at your own houses. Maybe even enough to last until the power comes back on. So, if you haven’t already done it, drain your pipes. Use any pot or pan or container you have and fill them up. There’s somewhere around sixty houses in Tullymore, right? With sixty, having at least one water heater each that can be drained, that’s a fifty-gallon heater x 60 houses = 3,000 gallons of available drinking water. The city has already treated it with chemicals in their process, so it should stay good for a pretty long while. The main supply lines from under the houses can also be taken loose and all the water sitting in the lines throughout the house could be caught in buckets, jars, bottles or anything that will hold it. I would have to think that there would be at least four or five more gallons in a typical house in just the pipes alone. Be careful with it. If the power doesn’t come back on, you’re going to need every drop. When you’re done with all that, turn off the main water and sewer connections at the street.”
Paul, the neighborhood lawyer, yelled over the crowd, “Why would we do that? We won’t know when it’s on then, and we’ll just have to turn it back on again when the power comes back on.”
Jake could see no one else knew where he was going with this. He gave an internal sigh—at least he hoped it was internal—at the lack of basic understanding of how city waste and water worked. “If you don’t turn it off at the road, when the pipes at the water plant clog up because the shit-choppers stop chopping, all that shitty water is gonna reverse and come back this way. Your toilets, your sinks, your tubs… will all be overflowing with sewage. Soon, you won’t be able to live with the stink, assuming you could stop the waves of waste flowing across your floors. Just turn them off.”
He looked back over the crowd for any further arguments. That’s what he thought. Everyone was a big man until faced with shit. Literally.
“Once your lines are shut down, you can’t use your toilets, not even if you add your own water. So, you’ll need to dig your own hole in the ground and make an outhouse. Get a five-gallon bucket and cut the bottom out, put it over the hole. You can probably take your toilet seat off and use it on the bucket rim for comfort. Or you could also use cut-down pool noodles, the Styrofoam floatie-kind, if you have them.
But if the power stays out too long, I’d suggest a community latrine—actually two. One for the ladies, and one for the men. Dig a long, narrow, ditch-like pit, maybe twenty feet long. If you want to make it comfortable for those that aren’t used to squatting, then find some two by four lumber and build a sturdy narrow bench over it. Hang a coffee can on a tree or a post to keep your toilet paper dry and bugs out of it. Lots of people around here probably have lime for their yards; you can sprinkle that over the sh—er—waste, when it gets too smelly. You can nail or staple some sheets or something up for a privacy screen. If you don’t have lime, you can sprinkle the ashes from a fireplace, or fire pit on it to help with the smell—and the flies.”
Curt, the HOA president, nudged the HOA secretary, Christie. “You getting all this?”
She nodded as she continued to furiously scribble on a notepad.
Jake had their full attention now. Most of this was common sense and he felt sure there was someone in this community who knew all this and much more. They just hadn’t spoke up yet.
“I’m not saying this is gonna last a long while, but like my brother-in-law says, better to be prepared. With that in mind, don’t put your latrines near any gardens anyone might have, or might put in the future. Make sure the latrine is downhill from the gardens, or potential garden spots, and especially from any water source, if you find one.”