"...the requirements" (Cumberland Saga)

Samson and Heddy almost missed the drive into Copperhead Cove. It looked different with the dead brush stacked up around it, almost hiding its existence.

Putting the pickup into reverse, Samson backed the truck and trailer 25 feet and then swung into the drive. It never paid to lock-up the brakes when pulling a trailer. Samson’s truck had been built in 2017 and had most of the bells-and-whistles (no turbo, though) but Samson still drove as if he didn’t have technology for a safety-net.

Pulling into the drive, Samson saw Lliam urgently flagging them down. He clearly did not want them to continue up the drive.

Shutting down the rig, the two adults got out of the truck to see what was going down.

“Mom just had her new cows delivered” Lliam told them. “She is walking them up the drive and they are as skittish as all get-out.”

Heddy gave it some consideration. “How long you think it is gonna take?”

“Hard to tell” Lliam said with a sigh of resignation. “None of them is halter-broke so Mom brought along Bossie who IS halter-broke. She is leading Bossie and the three new cows are following Bossie and Blain is up ahead and shaking a bucket with a little bit of corn in it.”

“You could always walk up the foot-path” Lliam offered.

Samson’s vision of a triumphant return died with a whimper. The gifts and gee-gaws in the trailer would just have to wait.

The new cows didn’t settle down until sunset. They had never been outside before. In their feeble minds, it was as if they had teleported to an alien universe filled with weird noises and smells and food.

Sarah had staked out four picket lines with Bossie’s in the middle. Bossie was the rock, the anchor. Bossie was the key to making it all work.

Heddy got Agnes, their two-year-old, settled into Roger and Alice’s house. It was the house Heddy had grown up in. Alice fussed like an old hen as she pulled linens out of wooden chests and dusted and made beds and filled vases and… Samson twiddled his thumbs. Just like the military; hurry up and wait.

Samson accepted Roger’s invitation to the nightly “planning meeting” that took place on Sig’s patio.

Samson was a firm believer in the axiom that one should gather intelligence before taking action, so he was content to watch the interplay between Sig and Amira.

He remembered Sig from previous visits to Copperhead Cove. In fact, one of the hurdles to proposing to Heddy was to pass inspection from both Heddy’s father (Roger) and by Sig.

Samson was properly nervous, a fact which spoke well of him in Sig’s mind as did the fact that Samson was not intimidated by complicated familial relationships or idiosyncratic religious practices.

Samson came from western Virginia. He played ball with kids whose parents handled snakes, drank muddy river water or walked across burning coals (which Samson had seen with his very own eyes). Summer tent revivals where people stayed awake for days were a yearly feature. Catholic Mass sung in Latin still happened. Yeah, Copperhead Cove just barely made the needle twitch into the "Quaint" region of the dial although he was not fond of outdoor toilets.

It was an article of faith among the matrons of Copperhead Cove that the young women who left CC repelled men who were not Godly. God cast a veil over them and their beauty was apparent only to those men who had been called to enter through the narrow gate.

The fact that Heddy brought him home for “inspection” meant that her hand was his to lose.

He did not fail. When he was unsure of the relationship, he defaulted to addressing the speaker as Aunt or Uncle until he was told “Just call me Sarah” or the equivalent.

Samson recognized “Amira” as a traditional, Muslim name, something he had picked up during his deployments. He could hardly wait to hear THAT story.

Amira, who he had never met or even heard of, was asking Sig where she could plant some chestnut trees.

“I think they should be at the edge of the new pasture where it is just starting to get too steep for pasture” Amira proposed.

Sig rolled his eyes. Samson could tell that Sig found Amira to be vexing. Never the less, Sig had enough respect for her to give her a full hearing.

“I don’t know why you insist on planting nut trees” Sig grumbled. “It will be twenty years before they produce a single nut. Besides, we are leaving lots of MATURE nut trees in the pastures.”

“It might be true that it takes twenty years for walnut trees to start bearing, but these are chestnut trees. They can have nuts in five years if they are cared for” Amira replied.

“And you and everybody else will be gone in five years” Sig shot back. “So what is the point?”

“I hesitate to bring this up” Amira countered “because I know how everybody reacts when they hear “Well, we did it this way in California” or “We never did that in New York City”, but when my mother and I moved in with my aunt back in Bosnia, the chestnuts that grew up in the hills are what fed us through the winter.”

“Some of the chestnut trees in those old orchards were over two-hundred years old.”

“Sarah told me that there is a crisis every ten years: 1987, 2000, 2009 and now. And they keep getting worse” Amira continued.

“So what is the downside? If this is another false-alarm, there will be a ten-year-old chestnut orchard churning out thousands of pounds of nuts the next time there is a crisis. The worst that can happen is that you will fatten the hogs on them.”

“We don’t have the manpower to plant them” Sig said, his objections weakening.

“I didn’t ask for help. I asked you where I could plant them. Walter said he would help” Amira pressed. "It is something he can do, planting seed nuts."

“How far apart do they have to be planted and how many seed nuts do you have” Sig wanted to know.

“My plan is to plant them in a grid with seven paces between each tree in both directions and then thin them out based on nut quality so they are roughly fifteen paces apart” Amira said. “ and I have three-hundred seed nuts.”

“Center your planting down-slope from your house and plant in both directions. You can use the sixty feet closest to the tree-line for your trees” Sig said.

And that was the end of THAT discussion.

It was a demonstration in relentless, but respectful, grinding down of objection-after-objection. Relentless.

Sig looked over at Samson and said “Welcome.”

Samson nodded in acknowledgement of the greeting.

“I had been communicating with Gregor. He told me that you need upgrades in your weapons. I brought some gifts that I want to give you.”

Everybody’s ears perked up at the word “gifts”.

“I brought 4 AR and ample magazines and ammunition” Samson said.

Then, looking over at Sig “And I brought you a bolt action rifle that uses the same ammunition as the AR rifles.”

Samson had indelible memories of Sig’s reaction to the AR platform. “Too many tiny springs and itty-bitty parts. Thin, wire springs rust and break. I prefer Mausers.”

To Samson’s amazement, Sig shook his head in the negative. “I am a shotgun man. Give the bolt action rifle to Blain. He has nothing.”

Samson would learn later that Sig’s eyesight was failing. That, and the fact that Sig could run his shotgun without thinking and didn’t want the complication of another firearm to confuse things.

Amira piped up without being asked “What did you bring for the women?”

“Oh, Heddy brought all kinds of clothing” Samson misunderstanding her question.

“No. What kinds of weapons did you bring for the women?” Amira asked.

Samson shrugged. He hadn’t given it any thought. “I didn’t bring them anything. They can use what the men don’t need any more after they trade-up to the AR rifles.”

“That’s not good enough” Amira said, catching Samson off-guard.

“What do you mean?” Samson asked.

“Cast-offs don’t meet the requirements” Amira said.

Samson’s eyebrows furrowed in consternation. “Don’t meet the requirements?” He was uncertain. He had never heard of “...the requirements”. “What are the requirements?” he asked.

“Every woman in Copperhead Cove needs to have her own, personal weapon” Amira started out, ticking off the requirements on her fingers.

“For the record, every girl who has seen her eleventh birthday is a woman.”

“The weapon must be accurate enough so that she can shoot the man raping her mother from a distance of fifty paces.”

“It must have enough firepower so that it can stop the rapist’s two wing-men when they attack her from that same distance.”

“It must have low recoil. Not all eleven-year-old girls can take a lot of recoil.”

“Ammunition must be cheap so that we can practice” Amira concluded.

Samson pondered the VERY specific nature of the requirements. He had been in the sandbox. He could easily imagine why Amira saw a need for that kind of weapon. If not her...then somebody very close to her had needed that weapon.

Samson did not argue about the impossibility of finding such a weapon, much less finding fifteen or twenty of them. All he did was respond “I will work on it.”