Reboot

One new arrival that brightened our lives was Mary. Mary was young, pretty, ebullient, fun and friendly, and more importantly she was pregnant. Very pregnant. As she walked around the island, everyone stared and smiled at her, children followed her. She was a symbol of hope. She understood this and put up with it. She’d let them pat her belly. They’d bring cool water for her and tried to make her more comfortable. I saw children come up to her, at first sad, they’d put their heads on her belly, she would play with their hair, and they’d leave a little happier. They made up a song about her.

Lovely, lovely, lovely Mary

Merry mama mama Mary

Happy happy happy baby

Tomorrow, will be with me…

We didn’t have a doctor with us though. Hopefully one would come soon. Giving birth is a pretty simple process, but it’s nice to have someone around with experience.

Mary came in with her boyfriend Rick. They were young, early twenties, Australian hippies travelling around. They were nearby when the news broke out and decided against heading towards major centers. Rick was good with knots. He’d made a pretty good one with his beard. It was one of those skimpy beards with patches of nothing in it, but he’d let a few strands grow longer under his chin and tied it into knots. I think the knots were too tight though because he never smiled. But he was nice. You can have one without the other. He hummed a lot too. Why not.

Then there was Mr. George Mack, or Mack as he insisted on being called. Mack was a builder. He’d been a foreman on construction sites his entire life. A man with no neck, no ass, and a perfectly round belly. His shirts never stayed in his pants. His legs went straight up into his back and he needed suspenders or else he was a walking catastrophe waiting to happen. That’s why he favored overalls. Usually with nothing underneath. He was forty-five years old, looked sixty, a babbler who loved to talk with everyone, especially about muscle cars and country music. Always walked around with a twig in his mouth. Mack and I spent a lot of time together discussing building plans for our little island.

“On stilts a’course. It keeps out bugs, snakes and small critters and it’s good for protection against bad weather. If they get destroyed by a heavy storm, they’re easy to rebuild.”

“If it were up to you, and I suppose it is really, where would you put our camp, Mack?” So far, everyone was either sleeping on their boats or in tents all over the place. We were sitting on our newly built dock on the river. It was about halfway between the beach and the lake where it was safe to moor larger boats. It was so hot that day. Everyone was in the water. Kids were running by us and jumping off the end of the pier into the river. I was wearing a scarf tied around my neck and it was soaked with sweat. Mack was suffering in his overalls.

“I like the lake. Certainly not on or near the sand because it erodes and it’s bad for building, plus the weather should be better inland. Less wind, close to drinkable water, better, more solid base for supports. We’re lucky here, not so many bugs. That’s because of the bats a’course. Stay away from sand. People in these parts have been building the same way for eons. It’d be durned silly to ignore that, don’t you think, Robert?” I smiled. That was good enough for me. “The lake it is then.” Then I gave him a friendly slap in the back and I jumped in to cool off. Mack didn’t. He didn’t like the water. He just stayed on the pier, contented smile on his face, both hands in his pockets and he watched everyone else having a great time sloshing around.

So we took that plan to the others and they agreed with us. Some people asked if they could live a bit further away, and we said they didn’t have to ask. It’s a free, um, island. The eastern shore of the lake would be our home base. Partly because the water was deep enough there to moor some of our boats.

Mack and I scoped the general area and we walked around it with Stan to start marking up where we’d be building. The trees around us blocked out the sun and it was hot and humid.

“We should begin with a large central building, a large hall, something nice where we could huddle up, eat and do things together. What do you think?” Mack asked both of us. Stan looked at me and shrugged. I looked back at Mack, smiled and nodded.

“Makes sense to me. As more people begin to arrive, we’ll need it for a meeting place. It should be solid, strong to create an atmosphere of stability, don’t you think? I asked.

“Makes me think of our Viking villages you know? They spent a lot of time in those halls. Kept themselves warm, partied, ate there, slept there,” said Stan.

“Exactly. Stan’s right. Lets copy the plan on the typical Viking village. Big communal hall, little huts around it. OK?” I asked them.

“Some people think a church should be the first thing we build,” said Mack.

“Yeah, that was bound to happen. Well, we’ll get to it. We’ll build a church when we have a priest. How’s that?” I answered.

“No matter what, we’ll ruffle some feathers,” said Stan.

“Placate them and keep the ruffled in the loop so they don’t get too upset. Promise them we’ll get to it. When we can. It’s on the list,” I said. “They’ll wait.” Then I looked around to see if there would be an argument.

“You are correct. People will want to be together a lot. That is clear. Yes?” asked Stan.

“No reason to think that new residents would feel any different than us I think,” I answered. “This is actually pretty exciting. I’m looking forward to it. We’re building a new community from scratch. I mean come on.”

“Mack, how do we build this thing?”

He thought for a while. Grabbing his chin with the entire palm of his hand, resting his elbow on his knee. He was drawing in the dirt with a stick.

“Well it has to be strong enough to withstand bad weather. We want people to feel safe in it. It often rains heavily at night so we have to take that into account. Monsoons are not to be taken lightly. If all other buildings fall, this one should stay up.”

We dug deep holes for the eight columns that would support the elevated structure. We cut down large trees, made the beams and stuck them in the holes we’d made using ropes and pulleys. The holes were two meters deep and the poles stuck out five meters, so our beams were seven meters high. The floor was going to be about one meter from the ground, so the roof had to start at about four meters. Nice high ceiling.

“Here, Robert, the floor will be like this, then the walls will fit in here like this. Where the hell is my hammer? Anyone see my hammer? Shit. We start the roof here by putting these beams this way. No one saw my hammer? Goddamn it, I left it right here yesterday.”

The walls were made from tightly interwoven bamboo, the roof out of wood and some metal from the boats. Mack was tireless. He worked on his project nonstop. We helped of course, everybody did, but it was his baby. He never left. He slept in it.

And finally we decorated it. A bar, tables, benches, a very nice, very large barbecue just next to it. I could cook for a hundred people at once if I wanted. The building was about twenty meters long and six meters wide.

It took two weeks to build and during that time fifty-five more people showed up. They always asked to meet the man in charge and that was me. I greeted them and showed them around, made them feel as welcome as possible. I organized a welcoming committee to make sure everyone was well taken care of. I didn’t ask for this responsibility. It just sort of landed on me by accident. I was one of the first residents, so when people came, it felt as if they were coming to my house. Also, I changed. I now felt responsible for this place. Tetepare was my home, maybe my first real one, and I felt at ease there. I think that showed.

We chose a bunch of trees to cut down to let in some sunlight on the compound. It would dry things up a bit around our camp. And slowly but surely, people started building their huts all over the place. We began to live again.