“Go clean her up, Sarah. I’ll be back.”
Tucker hurried through the door, on Grayson and Jake’s heels.
The three men—scared by a bit of baby poop—rushed across the lawns to Tucker’s house, shoulder to shoulder. A tremor ran through Grayson and he shook it off. “That baby was shitting like a cow pissing on a flat-rock,” he mumbled under his breath.
Tucker unholstered his sidearm. “Shut up, Grayson.”
Grayson scoffed at the threat. “Pfft. I was just sayin’. Put your pea-shooter away, cowboy.”
Jake sighed. “Hey guys… enough.”
“This ain’t for him,” Tucker snapped, as he checked his gun and then re-holstered it. “I’m going to talk to Curt again. I think he’s lying. He’s got some formula. I could see it on his face. He’s going to give it to me, so help me God.”
41
Tucker loudly beat on Curt’s door again, any presence of niceties now gone. They’d been standing there for ten minutes waiting for Curt to come to the door.
Grayson looked at Jake, standing beside him at the bottom of the stoop, and shook his head. He turned to go. “Hey man, he’s not here. We’ve got to get back to the farm. The ladies are all alone.”
Stubbornly, Tucker ignored him, and waited for the door to be answered.
Grayson meandered through the yard, looking at the rough new stumps sticking out like sore thumbs from what must have previously been manicured landscaping. “This fool does know these trees won’t burn, right? They’re too green. They need to season.”
Tucker shrugged, and finally gave up on knocking. “Let’s check the backyard.”
Jake and Grayson followed him as he stomped behind the house.
Tucker pointed to a neighbor’s back yard three houses away. “There he is.”
Curt stood over a group of people, watching as they dipped water from the only other swimming pool in the neighborhood. A line of folks stood waiting for their turn holding old milk jugs, tea pitchers and buckets, waiting to fill up their containers. His sidekick, Joe, stood on the steps of the pool, in water past his knees, nearly getting his gun wet where it hung on his side.
Tucker made his way over, with Jake and Grayson beside him. They stepped up to the edge of the pool and looked down into a nasty brew of green, stagnant water.
Grayson wrinkled his nose. The water was filthy. A film of algae covered the pool, and the number of sticks, leaves and other debris made it difficult to scoop up just water. It was obvious the water had basically been standing since the power went out. No one had done a thing to it. And worse, there were no pots hanging over fires anywhere around, and no filter system to be seen. “Y’all doing the filtering and boiling somewhere, I hope?” Grayson asked.
Curt looked over his shoulder at the guys, then dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “Don’t listen to him. That guy doesn’t even live here. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Tucker staggered back a bit at Curt’s rudeness to a stranger—he had never even met Grayson—and shook his head at Curt’s dismissal of Grayson’s advice. His snub to Jake—whom he did know—didn’t go unnoticed either.
He bit his tongue. Not my circus. Not my monkeys.
Grayson shrugged. “Okay. But mark my words… y’all drink that water and you’ll probably be running like a scalded dog and shitting through a screen door from thirty paces, without hitting a wire.”
For once, Tucker was in agreement with Grayson. He’d already talked to the entire neighborhood as a whole—before they’d voted for a leader—about the dangers of drinking the pool water. It was the most controversial subject they’d discussed… many thinking the chlorine and chemicals had made it safe to drink.
He had no idea if they were right or wrong, but Curt and his crowd were there for that conversation.
A few of the guys, who supposedly had first-hand knowledge of the chemicals that went into pools, disagreed, saying first the water needed to be filtered, and then boiled, before using it for drinking or cooking. These folks said boiling it first would just concentrate any chemicals, making it toxic.
Yet others argued for boiling it first, and then filtering.
No one knew the answer for sure… so majority ruled that the safest route was to filter it first—several ways—and then boil it. He agreed with that plan. He didn’t want the responsibility of people getting sick.
In addition, they’d assigned teams of older kids and teenagers the chore of keeping the pool clean and moving the water around as much as possible.
They took turns with paddles and nets, every hour on the hour during daylight. First they skimmed the pool for bugs and debris, then spent the rest of their assigned time walking around the edge of the pool with their paddles in the water, creating movement.
He had no clue if keeping the water moving helped anything, but it sure didn’t hurt, and it kept the kids busy too.
They’d also assigned a water-filter team that rotated every hour. At one end of his swimming pool, they had a filter station set up.
The first filter was home-made, and it was huge. Several people had extra bags of sand they hadn’t used for their kids’ small sandboxes or play areas. Using the sand and wood that they made into charcoal, they created a five-layer gravity-fed filter system.
The filter worked by pouring water through a layer of gravel-sized rocks, then a layer of small pebbles. After that, it went through a layer of sand and a layer of the home-made charcoal. Finally, it dripped through an extra-large white cotton T-shirt.
It was a slow process, but they kept it going most of their waking hours.
Once the water had filtered through their home-made system, it was then carried over to a Big Berkey filter system that a neighbor had donated to the group—temporarily at least. It was nearly brand new, and it sat up on the corner of a table along with a clean bucket for moving the water.
After passing through the Berkey, the water was taken to the third station.
The third station was a Sawyer Mini filter attached with tubing that was drilled into the bottom of one bucket, that then filtered into a new clean bucket beneath it. This one took quite a bit longer than the Big Berkey, and would wear out faster. Luckily, several people had these, so they had back-ups.
Finally, after running through the three filter systems, the water was carried over to be boiled in a cauldron over a fire. It looked like overkill, but better safe than sorry.
Several people had duplicated their huge home-made filter with smaller versions that were made from empty two-liter drink bottles, to keep at their own house. They cut the ends off the bottles and turned them upside down, thus the clean water dripped out the small opening in what was the top, and they were able to hang it and refill small water bottles for drinking, and then cap it when it wasn’t in use.
Tucker allowed any family that had already ran out of water at home to take one five-gallon bucket of his pool water each day for drinking, bathing or whatever they needed it for. But soon, if the power didn’t come back on, he’d have to tighten the water rations. It was amazing how fast the water-line in the pool was going down.
Yeah, not his circus, but some of these folks following Curt were still his friends—at least he thought they were. But regardless, they were still his neighbors. Tucker couldn’t hold his tongue anymore. “Look, Curt. Grayson’s right. If y’all are using that water for drinking and cooking without treating it first, you’re going to get sick.”