Chapter 7

When we went to breakfast, I noticed one of the huge soup pots was in use. “We cooked up rice, carrots, and peas, and added junk meat we’d have fed to the pigs. The dogs loved it,” Aunt Peggy explained. I spent a few quiet minutes and mentally reached out to the dogs as they happily ran and chased each other around the property. Once again, they noted my presence. I sensed that they were exceedingly happy about not being cooped up in the small kennels. Here, they could run and play.

I don’t know if it worked or not, but I tried to give them a sense that our property ended at the fence, and warned them about what alligators and cottonmouth snakes looked like. Then I left them to their exploring and headed for breakfast.

After breakfast, Don shooed the rest of the family off to church. He asked Aunt Peggy to give Bishop Thibodeaux his apologies, explaining that he and I had been up since before midnight helping the law and the military with a problem. He also reminded the older girls and women not to say anything about what we had done, and especially not what we brought home.

The total we counted for the currency was staggering. Even with the continued devaluation of G3 dollars, the cash would last both families for years. With the gold, silver, and platinum we figured how much of each we had and calculated the value from the current market value. The gems we tossed into the safe without an appraisal. Don suggested forgetting about them unless we needed them at some point. I did get him to show me what each of the gems was. The “aura” given off by the gems was different than the auras given off by the precious metals. The gems had a light blue aura with a different colored fringe aura for each type of gem. I thought it was odd because sapphires and rubies are the same mineral but have different auras. They just include different elements that account for the different colors. The clear diamonds had a silverish fringe.

Gems were more valuable than precious metals but were also extremely expensive and time consuming to have appraised just to get an estimated value. They also took a lot more effort to sell as there were fewer buyers. Don made a guesstimate that they were worth at least half as much as the total amount the precious metals were worth.

He marked half of the cases with my name and half with his name. We would go through the currency quickly. A lot we would donate. Some we would now use to extend the island for the houses all the way north and south in one large, elevated complex. Much of the rest would cover the ten percent we tithed to the church.

“That’ll make the Bishop’s year,” I chuckled.

After that, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and then slept. Right before we headed for our separate rooms, Don asked how I was feeling about last night. “Aside from feeling pretty stupid about getting nicked, I’m fine. I haven’t really had a full night’s sleep since dealing with that Stan fellow, but I don’t feel guilty about feeding the Sergeant to the gators, or about anyone we shot last night. I’ll let you know if I do,” I promised.

Waking up in the late afternoon, I was disoriented, wondering briefly why so much light was streaming in through the windows. It was Wendy’s sister, Audrey, waking me up in time for dinner although she woke me early enough that, when we made it to the dining room, the well-satisfied look on her face mirrored the look on Mrs. Clark’s face, who was arriving with Don.

“Feel better?” Aunt Peggy asked us, grinning.

“Almost human,” Don replied.

“Jim definitely felt good,” Audrey quipped, making the women chuckle.

Right after dinner, Don drove the two of us to church. We arrived just in time for Sunday evening mass. I don’t consciously remember half of the service, but not because I fell asleep. Our family has always attended church religiously, if you’ll pardon the pun. Like most pre-teens, I’d come to feel bored, at least before that fateful day when I took the life of the man looking to rape Kristen.

It took a month of nightmares before I worked up the courage to tell Father Marceaux what I’d done. Once the words started flowing in the confessional, there was no stopping them. It was as if my body was vomiting the words trying to expel something poisoning me. When my lengthy soliloquy ended, I was met by nearly a half minute of silence before Father Marceaux responded. I was stunned when he didn’t condemn me outright.

That evening, I learned that Father Marceaux had been a soldier during the MEW. Joining the Priesthood was his personal penance for the things he saw and did during the war. His service finally quieted the demons that had haunted him.

We met daily for two weeks as he asked me about the incident, probing my feelings and the reasoning about why I chose not to let the Sheriff handle it. In the end, his questioning and advice let me begin the healing process that finally ended the nightmares. During our discussions, he quizzed me at great length about my life, making sure that I lived it in accordance with the teachings of the church.

He pointed out instances in the Bible where good men had to kill someone. He even brought up my namesakes, reminding me that both took the lives of other men who were dangerous to the general population and who preyed on weaker people around them.

He mentioned society’s reaction to the first Lucky Jim after the end of the Civil War, reminding me that historians felt that his actions had short-circuited what would have been a protracted and bloody war and saved tens or possibly even hundreds of thousands of lives. Despite the men they had killed, both of my namesakes were still highly respected. More than a dozen foreign Heads of State and hundreds of other foreign dignitaries had attended the funeral for the recently deceased Lucky Jim II. Most of the sitting Congress at the time had attended as well as the President, two previous Presidents, and most of the top military brass.

“You are a warrior,” he told me, looking me right in the eyes. “Like your uncle, you have a warrior’s heart. Just make sure that you think and pray about the causes you choose to fight for and that you only fight for righteous causes, not for selfish gain,” he admonished.

During the services, I contemplated my previous talks with Father Marceau. I realized that I was no longer worried about nightmares from my actions of the last couple days and felt as if I’d entered a new phase of my life, one that began on my birthday. I don’t mean about sex because Sally and I began that over a year ago, although not completely.

Father Marceaux greeted us after the service and Don asked if we could meet with him privately for a few minutes. “Of course,” he replied. “Bishop Thibodeaux told me that the two of you were helping the army and the FBI for the last two nights. Is everything okay?” he asked, pointedly looking at me.

“Everything’s fine,” Don replied as I added my agreement. Half an hour later, we met in Father Marceaux’ office. Don gave him a quick summary of what we’d done, explaining that we had a lot of cash outside. Part was our tithe, and part was money we hoped the church could distribute to local charities while keeping our name out of it. I smiled as Father Marceaux crossed himself when he saw the cash and stared at it with his mouth agape. When he could finally talk, he called the Bishop and asked him to meet with us. Less than twenty minutes later, the Bishop had the same reaction to the cash and Don repeated the summary of what we did.

“Your gift will help a lot of good people who are struggling,” the Bishop said emotionally.

“We will be starting a large construction project, building extensions onto the hill our house is built on and replacing the other houses on our property. Jim pointed out that I have several sons and daughters who will soon need a home for their family, and I’ve decided to start the work now. I don’t know yet which construction companies will do the work, but I’ll require that they hire a lot of local unskilled labor, and train some of them,” Don promised.

Both the Bishop and Father Marceaux thanked us again as we left.

“After this weekend, I think it’s time to accept the Lucky Jim Heritage,” I commented to Don as he drove us home. He didn’t say anything aloud, but his huge grin said enough.

“I think I should probably tell Mom, Aunt Peggy, and my wives, but I’d like to keep it at that for now until I get more comfortable with it.”

“Aunt Peggy?” Don asked amusedly, since he’d told me we could call them by their first names.

“I don’t know why, but it just seems more respectful to keep calling her Aunt Peggy,” I replied, not entirely sure myself why I did.

When we got home, Don asked Aunt Peggy and Mom to join us in the study. I asked Sally, Kristen, and Wendy to join us.

I was nervous as I explained about being able to sense danger like Lucky Jims I and II. Mom and Aunt Peggy seemed thoughtful. My three wives were excited. “But you’re not a direct descendent of the second Lucky Jim,” Mom reminded us.

“For a long time, that was part of the excuse I used so I didn’t believe that I had the Lucky Jim sense. Besides, I don’t have any older brothers. Still, I am a direct descendent of the first Lucky Jim and his wife Madison. Heck, I even have his red hair,” I laughed.

“So, what does this mean?” Mom asked nobody in particular. Having no idea, I shrugged.

Don, however, replied, “It means hold onto your hats because we’re in for a wild ride,” he chuckled. “It also means that everyone in the family ages ten and older learns to use a handgun and an assault rifle, and that you’ll each get a set of body armor and a combat helmet,” he added much more seriously.

“How do we explain that?” Aunt Peggy asked.

“Since I was already considering it in light of what happened the last few days, we tell them it’s precautionary. Many women in town already carry a pistol,” Don replied.

Mom hugged me when we finished. “Make us proud,” she said emotionally. “Prouder,” she corrected herself a second later.

“Feel better now?” Don asked once the women left.

“Yeah, but I suddenly feel as nervous as if I was swimming in a pond full of hungry gators,” I replied.

After laughing at me, Don spent an hour teaching me how to expand my consciousness while I had my eyes open and was doing something besides meditating. I could only reach out about twenty meters with my eyes open, but it was better than having to stop and close my eyes to concentrate each time. “Twenty meters is better than I could do at your age,” Don told me.

I spent a few minutes with Juana’s four children before she decreed that it was their bedtime. Tonight, she kissed me right in front of the kids, and based on the grins I saw on their faces, it made them happy.

Monday

Feeling well rested, I was up and out of the house well before dawn. Eleven-year-old Joe only grumbled a little about getting up so early to go with me. Since I hadn’t hunted for three days, I took my old and new grav sleds with me to carry home the game and had Joe fly the old one. The four dogs bounded over to greet us when we exited the house. After scratching their ears, we climbed aboard the grav sleds and headed for the swamp and then the Gulf beyond it.

With the expanded capabilities of my previous grav sled, I had ranged far and wide to bring game home. I now had a detailed map of public lands and wilderness areas within a thousand klicks of home and always marked areas where I spotted game. I rarely hunted in the same area twice in any year. Don made sure that I had registered and was licensed to hunt in every state within a thousand km radius of home.

Aside from game animals, there are thousands of wild horses, as well as feral cattle and pigs that escaped from damaged and destroyed farms during the Welfare War, and that have continued to reproduce. One benefit of being a registered hunter is that I receive weekly electronic updates from each state where I’m registered that show currently registered brands for farm animals. Unbranded livestock on public property are fair game. I use a tranquilizer rifle on the young horses and young cows, transporting them home in a sling beneath the grav sled. Bulls and older cows are killed and brought home for beef. On my map, I note areas with herds of wild horses and return each year to collect any decent looking ones that appear to be one to three years old.

If I find horses and cattle with a registered brand, I look up the com number of the person who owns the brand and give them the location of their missing livestock. The weekly updates also update which areas are private property, especially large farms and ranches so I know where not to hunt.

Most ranchers eagerly give me permission to eradicate the feral pigs on their property. Many have shared my com number, and I’m sure the com numbers of other hunters in the area, with other nearby ranchers and farmers. Farmers usually beg me to hunt feral pigs on their property. I have a key advantage over the other hunters since the grav sled’s sensors are able to locate almost any animal seven kilograms or bigger, and the sled’s targeting system makes eradicating the adults and most of the juvenile feral pigs a relatively simple task.

The farmers usually contact me when their crops are harvested and give me one hundred to two hundred kilograms of produce to thank me. Some give me even more if I left some of the pig carcasses with them, which provided free meat for their table.

Today, I’m not exactly hunting game. Instead, I have a string of crab traps and another of crawfish traps that should have been emptied two days ago. My old grav sled was carrying the two-meter-cubed wire crate I used to dump the crabs into as I emptied the traps. Setting the crate in the shallow water of my favorite tiny uninhabited island, I sent Joe to collect four traps and I set out to collect my four. Both sleds have the locations of the traps programmed. All we had to do was punch in the trap numbers and the order we wanted to visit them.

Joe’s task was to use the winch on the back of my old sled to raise the traps. Then he’d hook each trap to one of the hooks hanging beneath the sled. Today the traps are in the Delta locations, so we’ll empty them and reset them in the Epsilon locations to ensure that we don’t over trap any one area. We cycle through twenty-five different sets of locations before we start over with the first set again so it’s about six months before we’ll trap the same areas again.

The wire collection cage sinks until only half a meter remains above the surface. When we bring back the traps, nearly full of blue crabs, we open the door on top of the collection cage and dump the trap into it. The wire mesh of the collection cage is wide enough that undersized crabs can escape. Two hours later, I dumped the last trap into the collection cage and secured the wire grate across the top. Once we reset our traps in Epsilon locations, I lifted the cage beneath my tender’s sled, and we headed for home in time to enjoy a late breakfast.

The women in the family already knew that I intended to empty the crab traps today and the big kettle was already set up in the kitchen. There were also about twenty other women from town sitting outside on the covered porch.

“Did you leave any for next time?” Aunt Peggy teased when she saw how full the crate was. Usually, the crate is only about half full, but today it was two-thirds full. She knows that I am very careful about not overhunting or over trapping an area.

“We still have to empty the crawfish traps,” I warned.

“How long will that take?” Mom asked.

“Less than two hours. Those traps are a lot closer together than the crab traps are. That crate will probably be nearly full, too,” I warned. Mom took Dana and Annette with her to start comming women who had asked her on Saturday to com the next time I brought crawfish home.

Normally the family would have sold the extra crabs and crawfish at the farmer’s market on Saturday, but I had been busy and didn’t get the traps emptied. I guess that the ladies had collected names at the farmer’s market of any women interested in crabs and crawfish.

Don and Sally saw me and waved me over. Four men were standing with them when I arrived, and Don introduced me to the potential contractors. Don was going to have each of them bid on replacing his old house, as well as the next house to the south. He included the cost of building the islands.

“Do any of you have much experience building levees?” I asked.

“About half of our work is building and maintaining levees. Unfortunately, the state already spent their budget for the year repairing the worst of the damage from Hurricane Delores. They won’t authorize any new work until the new fiscal year starts in six months,” Henri replied.

Don looked at me expectantly when I took him and Sally aside. “I’d use all of them. Let Henri oversee building the hills. Have one of the contractors build the house to the south, one the house to the north, and one the part of the houses that will be underground connecting everything. With them working together, they should have the hills finished in time for Henri to go back to working on levees in July. Between building the underground part and the extensions and homes on top of the hills, the other three contractors will be busy for at least a year.

“Tell Henri that, if we like his work and his price, we intend to do the same with the other properties on this block. He can do that work between jobs for the state since we won’t need it finished for a few years,” I suggested.

“You seem to have inherited your father’s business sense,” Don said looking at me appraisingly. “With four crews and the extra unskilled labor we want them to hire, that’s going to be a lot of people working here,” he warned.

“Yeah, it will be,” I replied. “You should also insist that they hire as many vets and war widows as possible who want to learn construction. If they don’t want to learn construction, I know that each crew uses several unskilled laborers doing scut work. They can drive trucks to deliver supplies, clean up small pieces of wood around the saws, and stuff like that. We might need to hire a couple of them to watch kids at one of the empty houses so the other women can work.”

“Good ideas, all of them,” Don said. Sally was beaming proudly as they returned to the contractors, and I headed back to my grav sled.

The crate used for the crawfish is also a two-meter-cube, but the openings in the wire mesh are much smaller. Otherwise, it’s filled just like the crab’s crate except that it has sturdy, one-meter-long legs to hold it up out of the mud and muck because I set it in the shallow water of a lake or swamp. Ninety minutes later, the traps were empty and reset at their next locations. Like the crab traps, I programmed the locations into the memory of the sled to make them easier to find next time.

I set the buoys so they are at least two meters below the surface of the water at all times. That way, I don’t have poachers emptying my traps. I’ve had to discourage several poachers over the years, usually by shooting a few holes in the bottom of their boats.

Joe and I ate a quick lunch while amusedly watching Don’s and my women dealing with more than a dozen women who had been waiting for us to arrive with the crawfish. “We should be back by 1600, and we’ll probably have several extra feral pigs,” I told Sally as we prepped six of the new grav sleds. Then we headed northwest.

The farmer we were headed for had called earlier today while we were emptying crab traps. I know farmers are up at the crack of dawn and I’ve told them that they can com me any time after 6 a.m. I specify Central Time for farmers in Georgia and Florida. The farmer was happy to see me come so promptly. Two years ago, I eliminated the feral pigs that were rooting up his recently planted crops.

“We only saw a few last year, and we shot them all. There aren’t many this year, but I’d rather be shut of them again than let their numbers increase for another year. We saw about ten this morning out in the fields we just plowed over the weekend,” he explained, pointing to the fields he was worried about.

With the grav sleds, shooting the feral pigs is child’s play. Scanning the area with IR imaging and identifying each of the targets was second nature to me. Once a target has been identified, the targeting system tracks it as long as it stays within two kilometers. Satisfied that I’d identified all of them, I transferred the data to Joe’s nav computer. Then, I had him make a strafing run, letting his targeting system make the shots. I could do the same thing with my scoped rifle, but it took a lot longer. Ninety minutes later, we had twenty-eight porkers hanging from the grav sleds, as well as six coyotes.

“Sweet,” the farmer commented when he saw the coyotes. “I kept hearing them and worried that they’d eventually come after the chickens or the calves.” I had him sign an affidavit that I had shot the coyotes here in Texas, and then I cut off the ears to turn in for the small bounty on coyotes. We’d feed the coyote carcasses to our pigs or use them as bait for crabs and crawfish.

We left the six pigs the farmer requested. Half of his property was planted in apricot and peach trees, and he told me he’d call when the fruit was ready to be picked.

The women groaned when I got home, and they saw what I had. Fortunately, they had already called six women who each wanted one of the pigs and they were waiting when I arrived. Once they chose the ones they wanted, Joe carried the pigs home for them. The women of our family set about butchering the ones we unloaded.

I took eight pigs to the VFW building in Houma. They had a cooler big enough to store them and several of the veterans and military widows knew how to butcher. I was exhausted by the time we got home, but we’d replaced what we sold, ate, or donated over the last three days. Once home, I made a note in the logbook Aunt Peggy has me keep. I noted the farmer’s name, his com number, that he had peaches and apricots, and would probably give us one hundred to two hundred kilograms when they were ripe in late August or early September.

That way, she had an idea of what was coming in, when, and how much. As much as the family appreciates the extra food I bring in that way, they don’t like surprises that require lots of unplanned work. It throws everything off until they get caught up. With everything required to run the household, they definitely need to plan ahead. Just dealing with schedule changes caused by storms is a nuisance. They also need to know what we will have coming in to determine what they need to trade for or buy, as well as how much extra help they’ll need to freeze, can, or dehydrate what I bring home.

We skinned the six coyotes and tossed four of them in with the pig slop. I know, why do we raise pigs when I get so many hunting? We don’t raise many, and the pigs are wonderful scavengers and eat damn near anything organic that we can’t compost, especially what’s left after we butcher an animal. We don’t like to compost meat because it attracts scavengers. Pig manure composts just fine. The remaining two coyotes we cut up and tossed into the bait cooler for another day. Then we headed for the showers.

“That was quite a haul today,” Aunt Peggy said proudly when I stuck my head in the kitchen later.

By the time dinner was ready, everyone was hungry. The pig carcasses had been broken down and were hanging in the meat room cooler. They’d finish butchering them tomorrow and would smoke the hams and cure the bacon.

Don told me that the four contractors liked my suggestion and would have estimates ready tomorrow evening.

“I heard today that shrimp season in the coastal waters opens next week,” Don commented during dinner. “We should plan a three-day trip. I talked to the company the research center buys refrigeration units from. The owner agreed to give us a three-meter-by six-meter walk-in refrigerator and the same size freezer and install both in the mound we’re building if we “donate” eight tonnes of shrimp to his company. That way, neither of us has to pay taxes on the sale, and we don’t have to use any of our cash to buy the units. Also, the construction contractors will build your vault and install the first vault door that should arrive here tomorrow. They’ve already measured the doors, including the frames. The other two doors won’t be here for a few more days.

“The Sheriff says the clinic was very surprised by an anonymous donation of medicines, supplies, and equipment. They asked if he knew who donated it. He assured them that he didn’t know who donated it and didn’t offer any informed guesses. Sometime in the next week or so, once the construction is underway, I want to take you to Fort Polk for training with the mortars. General Conklin says they don’t have any scheduling conflicts that would impact us using the range,” Don said.

“Great. You know, we can spend more time shrimping and less time traveling back and forth this time. We can sling five hundred kilograms of frozen shrimp beneath both the sled and tender so I can deliver a tonne at a time. If you take two of the boys with us, they can learn how we catch shrimp and can stay to help you while I make the deliveries. It will probably take an hour to ninety minutes for each delivery.”

“It might take a little longer, but not much. The company is in Dallas so it’s about eight hundred to a thousand klicks one way,” Don replied. “Oh, that reminds me, we won’t need another tractor. Jesse Arceneaux managed to get leave so he could be here for the funeral. He told his uncle that he didn’t want to farm, but he’d like to keep the house so his mom and siblings don’t have to move.

“We should buy the land,” I suggested. “I know that we don’t have enough help to do anything with it right now, but I just have this feeling that we’ll want it. We should buy the entire property and include a rider that the Arceneaux family can stay in the house for free until Mrs. Arceneaux wants to move or passes away, or when the youngest daughter moves out, whichever is last.

“If they don’t want to stay in that house, we could buy one of the houses on the small lots along Stinson Road that they sold to the developer and let them live there. Those are all still empty.”

“Good idea,” Don agreed.

Don laughed at me when I reached for another serving of crab. Everyone was laughing at Zoe as she was stuffing crab into her face with both hands.

“Jim used to eat crab just like that when he was her age,” Mom laughed.

“I can’t believe how much food you brought back today,” Juana commented.

“I should have brought the crabs and crawfish home Saturday, so they were available at the farmer’s market, but we were busy. The pigs were available because a farmer I deal with called and asked me to get rid of the feral pigs tearing up his fields. It needs to be done every two or three years, so the same farmers keep calling me back. Those farmers refer me to other farmers. They usually give us one or two hundred kilograms of whatever they grow to thank me once their crop ripens,” I explained to her.

“Peggy showed me the record you keep for her so she knows what’s going to be available. That’s a lot of extra food,” she replied.

“It also gives us contacts to buy food from if we don’t grow it, although we usually trade crab and fresh fish like tuna or shark since most people don’t have the time or ability to catch it themselves,” I explained further.

“There’s so much about you that most people don’t realize,” she sighed happily. “I thought you traipsed about in the woods every day and shot something. I had no idea that you fly off to places several hundred kilometers away to hunt, helping farmers and ranchers in the process. I also didn’t know that you were so good at martial arts. What can’t you do?” she asked teasingly.

“Cook,” I replied, laughing. “Sally explained that I almost get trampled when I go into the kitchen because I have no idea what the women are doing and can’t anticipate where they will move to or what they will do next.”

Juana laughed at that.

When it was time for bed, I went upstairs to tell Juana and the kids good night. Juana insisted on a second kiss. “You should go. I’m sure your harem is waiting,” she giggled.

“You’re part of that harem, too,” I teased. “I wanted to see how you were doing after today. It was pretty hectic,” I said and gave her another quick kiss.

“I’m doing better than I expected, and so are the kids. They loved playing with the dogs,” she replied. “Thank you,” she said emotionally, hugged me, and stepped back into her room.

“Come find me if you just need someone to hold you tonight,” I said.

“I will,” she said quietly as she looked at me right before closing the door. I could see unshed tears in her eyes.

Tuesday

All the talk about seafood yesterday had my mind on seafood again this morning. Grabbing my new and old grav sleds, I also grabbed the fishing gear out of my closet. My fishing gear was in a waterproof case one-meter square and four-meters long. Since most of the fish I went after without a net were large ones, I even had a harpoon rifle I sometimes used for sharks. Loading my new grav sled, I added one of the cut-up coyotes. Once I had the two sleds set up for fishing, I left the remainder of my fishing gear in the barn. Today was Josh’s turn to go with me and he and I were quickly out over the relatively warm waters of the Gulf.