Patriot Smith, page 7
part #1 of Patriots Series
They had to carry in a good bit of material. Mainly baking goods. Including all the cocoa that the store had on the shelves. It was expensive but not as bad as some of the other things had gotten. Chloe and Hal both came out, to help move things, once they figured out that people were back.
Melissa, looking more than a bit tipsy, just waited for them to get the things into the kitchen, sneering at them. She included Rene in the looks, as well as Hal and Chloe, as if they’d been part of the events. Being involved in the lifting and toting as they were.
“What’s this crap? We already have sugar, morons. Flour, too. Cocoa, coconut, almonds… We can’t make anything with this!” She knocked a thin plastic bag from the table onto the floor, making one of the paper sacks of sugar break open. She at least had enough sense to get that wasn’t a good thing. Things weren’t impossibly tight for them but anyone that had been watching television in the last year would get that it was rougher in a lot of places, for most people. Wasting anything was a poor plan, just about then.
Looking at her, trying not to simply snap back at the chemically impaired woman, Sebastian tilted his head.
“People were wild about the candied fruit and want more sweets, so I thought that we’d try and get something like that going? Making some baked goods and candies. We can wrap it up in wax paper. I mean, if you don’t knock that on the floor, too? It might not turn a profit but I spent my own money on it, not studio funds.” He looked at the mess, then shook his head. Pointing at it he glared at Melissa. “You owe me five bucks for that.”
There was no way he was getting that from her, of course. The woman didn’t earn money. She barely did enough to hold her place there. He would have kicked her out about then, actually, for her current outburst, if it wasn’t against the law. Which she knew. They all did.
Worse, she spoke the words out loud. Almost as if she’d been reading his mind.
“Ha! You have to keep me, so I can do what I want.” She tried to hit at another grocery bag but Chloe pulled it back, hugging it to her chest, protectively. As if the madwoman was going after her baby. That meant Mel followed her for a bit, trying to slap the thing out of her hands.
Sebastian smiled then and shook his head. That got Hal to look scared.
He spoke anyway.
“That’s mainly true. We have to keep you, since you were living here when the orders for that came down. What we don’t have to do is feed you. You can’t get anything out here on your own, either. There are no handouts from the government this far out… So, you can stay, if you want. We don’t owe you anything else. Not food, or booze. Really, even the bed you sleep in isn’t really yours.” He spread his hands. “I think that helping out, not being too rude and not wasting things isn’t too much to ask for. It’s what everyone else is doing, so it isn’t unfair.”
That was probably going to start a two hour long screaming fit. Mainly because she was drunk. It wouldn’t be the first time that she’d done that kind of thing, to be honest. Not directed toward him in particular, in the past. Mainly at whatever guy had been stupid enough to sleep with her that month. On the good side, she didn’t seem to care who she was abusing, so after the new candy and baked good making provisions were secured safely, he bailed, the screaming not slowing down at all.
Karen moved out of the house with him, smiling a bit. She had a jacket on already, since it was a bit chilly out again.
“I’ll help you unpack the van. Did the day go well?”
He nodded.
“Sales wise, things are actually picking up. That isn’t a good thing, over all.”
That got him looked at, as she climbed into the van for the trip up to the barn. It wasn’t far but it still made sense, if he was driving anyway.
As they traveled, she made a face, visible out of the corner of his eye, meaning she was going huge with it.
“Making more money is bad?”
“Yep. Not for us but it means that people are getting a bit more desperate. They can’t find things in the stores. The prices are getting higher for everything, too. I didn’t get it until we went to the store ourselves. I spent two hundred dollars on things that should have cost about a hundred and fifty. Almost everyone that saw the jam got some. A man in a business suit came up to us after we got out of the Safeway, to beg. For food.”
“Oh. I guess I hadn’t… I kind of figured that we were just on hard times here. Being careful, you know, since it’s a start up. Is it that bad everywhere?”
He didn’t know but it really did seem likely.
Things were getting pretty dark.
Chapter four
Mel would eventually calm down, Sebastian was certain. For the time being her antics made for an uncomfortable dinner, since she kept tossing off snide comments. Most of them being about how she was entitled to eat there, since she did all that work. That didn’t go over well, since Hal, smiling the whole time, listed off her normal day.
“You watch television for about six hours, then, if we’re lucky, you take a shower… After that you yell at people for a while, complaining about how little everyone else works around here. Then… you eat and watch more television. Okay, you help out on Marty’s Corner, doing sound set up but that takes what? Ten minutes, twice a week?” He took a bite of food, which was rice again, with fruit this time. “Nope. I’m not seeing that one. You cost us all more by being here than you earn for the group. No one else does that, and trust me, we have some lazy mother fuckers around here.”
It was true but Sebastian didn’t let himself comment on that part. They either got it from context, or they weren’t going to pick up on it at all. There was no need to speak, since the screaming escalated again about then. Melissa did slow down after a while, since almost everyone was nodding along with what Hal had been saying. A few of them were agreeing while looking at their plates, shame filling their body language. They didn’t seem happy about doing it but it was the truth.
That didn’t make the drunk woman pleased at all. He really got that, when a plate of warm rice and fruit sailed across the table. It was probably aimed at Hal but managed to spread across Karen, Chloe and Sebastian. Poor Karen, being short, caught half of the food across her face. Interestingly, there was a nearly aggressive response to that one. From Chloe.
“What the hell, Mel? Stop!” Then she moved around the table, seeming ready to fight, for real. It started a wrestling match even though it was clear that Chloe was just trying to move the older woman away from the good people that didn’t throw expensive food away like she kept doing. Thankfully neither of them was really trying to hurt the other one. They bashed around for a bit, and hit the rolling counter twice, with none of the men doing anything about it. That was down to the fact that touching an angry woman was a good way to get a false domestic abuse charge filed against you. Men all sort of knew that it happened.
The secret trick there was that the police weren’t going to come and control her either. It kind of meant that the women had to step up and police themselves, given the situation. Which wasn’t really going to happen. He didn’t think so anyway. Interestingly, he was wrong on that one. When Mel slapped Chloe in the face, Rene jumped in and tried to tackle her from the side. That had Karen moving as well, grabbing the woman by the right leg.
Which was dangerous.
Two of them were on screen talent at the moment and they kind of needed to use the other two in the next season, if at all possible.
“All right. That’s enough. Everyone back up, now. Stop fighting. We aren’t going to have needless violence here. Trust me, there is no need for this. Mel, we need you to back away now. Everyone else, let go and step back on three. One, two… Three!”
They did it, which managed to drop Melissa on her ass. Hard enough that Sebastian felt himself wince. A bruised tail bone wasn’t a fun thing in life, and the floor was a concrete slab. Painted to look nice but it was just as hard as you could want, compared to her flesh and bones.
“God!” The word was mushy sounding and almost not intelligible. Cutely enough, the adult woman rolled to the side and grabbed her own behind with both hands. Rubbing a bit. It looked a little like she’d just gotten a well-deserved spanking for being a massive bitch. Which wasn’t the case. Not that hurting people taught them anything. It just made them feel like a victim and fight harder, most of the time.
Even if they were the one that had been doing the wrong thing in the first place. No one liked, or listened to, the jailor or the cop. They were the stand in for daddy, taking his belt off. Ready to beat you into submission. It just wasn’t effective. It didn’t make dad evil but there really did need to be a better way. Especially since they weren’t allowed to just beat Melissa until she was too afraid to act up anymore.
The problem was that in this case he couldn’t see what would work.
Melissa was an adult. They couldn’t legally do the sensible thing and kick her out of the house or anything, either. They could, honestly, pull back everything else, and make her earn her own way but starving her out wasn’t exactly a good thing. Which meant that he didn’t know what he could even say to have her fix herself.
Locking her in the cellar was illegal, for instance. It was still tempting but false imprisonment wasn’t allowed, and would be making a bad situation worse. Beatings were out, for both the same reason and because it wouldn’t work.
Shaking his head, he noticed that everyone in the room was looking at him.
“Let’s clean up. I have some work to do. Making candy? Anyone that wants to help, meet me in the kitchen in fifteen minutes. Mel… We don’t need this here. If you do it again, we’re going to have to call the police and have you arrested.” That wouldn’t really work, since they’d just let her go if anyone tried it but he had nothing else at all.
She hiccupped, still holding her behind.
“I’ll tell them you were all beating me… And… And… Raping me!”
The room went silent then but Sebastian slowly sighed, then nodded.
“Right. Well, get out. Right now. I’d rather pay a fine than put up with blackmail. Pack your things and get out. You have ten minutes to be out of here.” It wouldn’t hold but they couldn’t let her think that abusing them with lies was going to work.
It was just as wrong to use the police as bullies to enforce your will by lying as it was to pay street thugs to do the same thing. Worse, she was planning to use the money that he’d paid in on taxes to falsely accuse him and presumably have him dispossessed, if not beaten, by the cops. At least hiring thugs off the street would have required her using her own money.
Then, a bit angrily, he left, so that he didn’t have to listen to any more of whatever she was going to come up with. Yes, he understood that she wasn’t really going to be leaving, or if she took a bag and walked out, it wouldn’t last for long. He still had to do something.
The problem with that was the fact that he needed to not be involving himself in foolish drama and instead needed to learn to make candy. Perfectly. Hopefully on the first or at least second, try. Luckily, he’d done a little bit of that kind of thing before. Mainly as a hobby, trying to make sculptures out of hard sugar candy. That meant he’d known to get some flavorings, and cream of tartar. It didn’t mean he was perfect at it or anything. He had a clue but most of the time that and being careful were enough to make things work. Information helped. Which meant that looking some things up online was going to be in order for the evening.
That took a computer.
Which was inside the house. Where Mel was probably holding them all at the point of her vile threats already. The thing there was that if she called the police and claimed that someone had raped her, even with nine others saying it wasn’t real, that person was going to jail. If she claimed that any of the men had hit her at any point, then that guy was probably going away for a while as well. The women were safer of course.
It was a huge double standard but one that existed pretty much everywhere. It was such a powerful thing that a lot of people couldn’t see it. Being totally honest about things, or even trying to, meant that Sebastian had faced that one a long time before. Women were the privileged class in the world, over all. As hard as things were in some places, it was almost always worse for the men that lived there. It was just that people ignored that, not caring.
His thought was that it was actually part of human biology, rather than a huge conspiracy theory. Other animals did similar things. Even male dogs would let the girl dogs win when they were play fighting. It came as a shock to the female canines as often as not when they really got into it with a male dog, given that. They weren’t prepared for the reality of the situation, because everything was always easier for them than that. Right up until they did real damage and they got to see what the big dogs could really do.
Not that humans were animals on that level. Except, of course, they were. Which meant that, if the police came, there was a huge chance that they’d side with Mel. Which would probably end up with him or Hal going to jail. Even though neither of them had touched her in the slightest. Him, because he’d dared to not give in to her blackmail. Hal… Well, he was the ex. Even if he hadn’t done anything wrong and that part was on her, she’d probably hate him now. It was what most people did.
After five minutes, he sucked it up and went back inside. He had work to do and wasn’t going to spend the whole night with an angry drunk woman keeping things from being done. To that end he went right over to the computer and started looking what was needed up. They had a printer but he used an old ink pen and some plain paper that had a script of Happy Little Puppets on the other side. It was an old one, hence being in the scrap box. They could still get paper but ink cartridges had been harder to find in the last few months. He wanted to save what was left for their real work, if he could.
There was crying and sobbing in the background but only from one person, so he focused on what he wanted to try, and figured that doing two things that night would be the best plan. Then two more the next night. By working in smaller batches and not going too fast, they’d have a chance to do a good job. The first plan was for hard candies, though he really wanted some baked goods as well. If they could be made with the ingredients on hand. They didn’t have fresh eggs, or milk for instance. He had some milk powder but that didn’t taste very good, in most things. There were tricks that could work to fix that but it took extra work and he wasn’t certain it would translate to making candy very well.
When he got into the kitchen, Chloe was there, along with Paul. That was interesting, since the man, who normally did their editing full time, had a camera set up. He had a nice full beard and was thinning on top of his head. He’d been a bit round to start with but had lost about forty pounds in the last year, eating Chloe’s low fat and healthy diet. Now he looked skinny enough that no one would mind him being on the screen. He had glasses, wire rimmed in gold, which was interesting, in its own right. The rest of them didn’t have anything like that going on, except Vina.
He put out his right hand.
“I was thinking we could put up a show about how to make money in hard times? We can start with this? I mean, it won’t help most people but even giving people ideas might… I don’t know.” There was an abstract expression on his face, mostly hidden by his bushy face covering.
Sebastian looked at Chloe, then sighed.
“Fine. That’s a good idea, even. Especially if we’re doing the work anyway. We need makeup and sound. If we’re doing it, we need to have it all done right. That means dishes first. We can’t have a messy on-screen work space. Um…” He couldn’t do all of it on his own, and they weren’t scripting anything. That meant he needed to make up things to say ahead of time. In his head.
Thankfully, Paul got that.
“Right…” Then he yelled, calling out as if people would actually rather work than get their drink on. “We need another camera in here. Sound, lights and a work crew. Makeup and wardrobe. Dancing ladies and trumpeters!”
People actually came out for that and they got everyone, except Mel, who was still crying, somewhere off in the distance. That had gotten softer anyway. The other man, who was in his late twenties and dressed for a night at home, took command. Then, it was literally his show idea, so if he wanted to direct, or even star in it, that was totally fair.
“I want to start in half an hour. Sebastian and Chloe are the stars here. Come up with a plan. You don’t have to have fancy clothing for this. Something functional. Like what you have on, for both of you. I want three mic placements. Also, can we set the mini-bar up as a work table? Then we can see your faces. We can do the work on the stove over the shoulder.”
There was more, of course but the man took to scrubbing things down himself, while Karen did the dishes. Then she helped with the cameras, actually taking one of them over. That was interesting, since she hadn’t done a lot of that kind of thing so far. Apparently, she knew how, at least to Paul’s satisfaction.
The man checked her out on the thing, like she was a noob.
Still, you had to make certain of everything, or else it was going to fail.
The candy making did not go perfectly. The first batch, made small, was overcooked and tasted burnt. They’d done a very small batch, just for that reason. Then they lowered the cooking temperature, using a candy thermometer for that part, and got it right on the next one. Also, a pretty small batch. Sebastian spoke through the whole thing, attempting to sound like he knew what he was talking about.
“The trick is to find out what resources you have and to increase the value. Find out what people need in hard times and then deliver it, or something as close to what they need as possible. Everyone eats. They love sweets, too. So hard candies, peanut brittle, brownies, cookies, almost anything that people can’t make easily for themselves they’ll be willing to pay a premium for. This isn’t the only thing that can be done either. Repair work, making and fixing clothing, shoes, auto repair, even fixing bicycles can really be in demand. If you don’t have a resource to exploit, look into what skills you can pick up or teach yourself. The biggest trick is to try and keep trying. Sure, sometimes it won’t work but if you do your best and keep going, you will find something that does.” He was pleased enough with his little speech, since it was just him making things up as he went.
