“No, I unfriended them when Grant left the Auditor’s Office,” she said. “Menlow didn’t want us to have any links to WAB. And, yes, I know about Facebook and how we are using it.”
“We” are using it. Jim noted that Jeanie had said, “we.” Oh God. Jeanie and him were spying on their friends, all to secure a steady paycheck.
Oh shit. Shit. He remembered that he was a Facebook friend of Grant’s and, he thought, maybe Brian Jenkins, Tom Foster, and Ben Trenton. Jim couldn’t remember because he didn’t use Facebook much and hadn’t logged on in quite a while. If Jim were a Facebook friend of some POIs, he’d lose his security clearance, or maybe worse. Or they’d try to use him to lure the POIs into custody. He felt sick. He felt like someone had kicked him in the stomach. He felt the adrenaline running through him like a poison. He couldn’t talk. He tried to tell Jeanie he had to go, but his words were mush. He had to check Facebook.
“Are you OK?” Jeanie asked when Jim was mumbling.
“I gotta go,” Jim finally said. He hung up.
Jeanie could tell that Jim was terrified about something, but she didn’t know what.
She went back into the conference room. Jason was still talking about the polling and how great things were going, but Jeanie didn’t believe him anymore. There was no way all these wonderful things were really happening. She was trapped in Camp Murray—there were literally machine guns and barbed wire surrounding her—so she couldn’t get out and see what was going on out there. She started to wonder: what was really happening? She suddenly had the worst feeling that she was on the wrong side.
Chapter 104
Meanwhile, Back at the Farm
(May 10)
What was that sound? It was like a chicken or something. Tom Foster hated waking up, but this was even worse. He was being forced awake by a “cock-a-doodle-doo” sound, like from a movie. He opened his eyes. He was in a strange bedroom. It was a rooster. Shit, they really do crow at the break of dawn.
Tom was not a morning person, and was not a country person. He liked late nights and the city. But, he didn’t like people burning down his office and trying to kill him and his family, even more than he disliked waking up at the crack of dawn in the country. So a chicken waking him up on a farm where he was safe was just fine with him.
His wife, Joyce, was stirring. She had been going non-stop out there. The house was brimming with kids and adults. Lots and lots of activity. There were all kinds of farm things to learn out there. Plus, she needed to stay busy to take her mind off of all that was happening. Their house had probably been burned down, and people were likely looking for her family. She constantly worried that someone at WAB would tell the authorities they were hiding out at the Prosser farm. These were the worst days of her life. She was constantly afraid. She tried to busy herself with work at the farm to take her mind off of all of her terrifying thoughts.
Others started stirring with the rooster crowing. Joyce wanted to be the first one up to help Molly with breakfast. She was getting ready, but it was weird getting dressed in someone else’s house. It wasn’t like a hotel. It was her house now. Well, her room, at least. She didn’t have most of her things. She didn’t have any makeup. Oh well. No one else was wearing makeup out here. No one cared. And there was no one to see her out of her makeup.
Tom was still in bed, trying in vain to go back to sleep. Joyce kissed his forehead and said, “I’m so glad we’re all out here together.” Tom smiled. Maybe it wasn’t so bad out there.
People started shuffling into the kitchen for breakfast. Some of the kids were running around. Where did they get all that energy?
Jeff Prosser was thinking about all the work they had to do. All this work would be even harder given the fact that all his “farm hands” were city people who didn’t know how to do anything. That was OK. They were friends, who were in desperate need. This is what friends do. Even when they’re only the mailroom guy. Yep, Jeff felt with pride, he was the mailroom guy who had saved the day.
The families talked about the chores they needed to do. It was May, so they had a garden to tend. Joyce and Karen made the point that all of this would be over soon, so maybe they didn’t need to have a garden to get them through the winter; Jeff politely said that they should plant one “just in case.”
The garden was a big one; half an acre. They grew just about everything that would grow in western Washington State. Lots of hoeing and weeding. After Joyce and Karen accepted that they should plant the garden “just in case,” they really enjoyed turning it into a huge source of healthy food for their families. They had enjoyed gardening in their beautiful yards back in Olympia and decided to make the food garden at the farm into a masterpiece.
Molly really appreciated the help in the garden. When the crops came in, she would have plenty of help canning and drying all the produce. They’d eat the best food of their lives, Molly thought. No preservatives, no chemicals, no ripening in trucks on the drive up from Mexico. Just fresh, non-genetically modified fruits and vegetables.
The Prossers had a few dairy cows. Jeff’s kids would show the city kids how to milk a cow. It was a completely foreign experience for the city kids, but they caught on. Molly was glad for the help with the dairy cows. They had to milk them by hand since they didn’t have a milking machine for just the three cows they had.
The Prossers getting those three dairy cows had been a big decision a year ago. Back then, Molly thought that some milk cows would be good to have “just in case.” Right about that time, WAB was cutting back the hours of employees, including Jeff, so saving money on milk and dairy products made sense. Besides, the price of “store bought” dairy products had been creeping up faster and faster. With the value of the dollar tanking as the government created trillions of dollars to buy its own debt, investors looked for something “real” to put their money into instead of the U.S. dollar. They found commodities like gold, oil, and agricultural products. Pretty soon, speculators were buying dairy products and other food commodities. The price kept increasing. Right before the price of dairy cows went way up, Jeff and Molly got some and were very glad they did.
Now, the Prossers and their guests had fresh milk and lots of it. They even churned the cream to make butter with an electric churn Molly’s mom left them years ago that Molly dug out of the attic.
Kids were invaluable little laborers out on the farm. In addition to milking the cows, they were in charge of gathering the eggs from the hens. They had planned on selling the extra eggs, but now, with all the guests, they used the extra eggs for breakfasts. They had beef cows, too; about thirty. Beef cows were one investment that outperformed the stock market enormously. They had more beef than they knew what to do with. Even with the guests eating lots of it, they still had enough to sell.
The Prossers sold the extra beef to neighbors. Now, with cash not having any real value, Jeff figured they could trade the beef for gasoline, chainsaw oil, fence posts; whatever they might need out there, which wasn’t much. That was the beauty of the farm: it didn’t produce a lot in economic terms, but didn’t take a lot to keep it running. They were largely self-sufficient. Not completely; they still needed electricity and running water and would need to go to town for things like tractor parts.
They had electric heat in the house, but Jeff was too cheap to run it. Besides, electricity prices had quadrupled in the past few years. A ton of “greenhouse” gas regulations had kicked in and utilities were not allowed to use the great and nearly free electricity source in the Pacific Northwest: hydroelectric dams. The utilities shut down the nearly free electricity of the dams and had to buy power on the open market, competing with California utilities for a limited amount of electricity and bidding up the price. With the cut in hours at WAB, that electric bill became a big deal.