THE GOOD EARTH • SAGA #1 OF THE PLANETARY ROUNDTABLE
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Before the Next Day
Rebecca rang the supper bell.
The sound rolled across the settlement.
It passed over the sawmill.
Across the brickworks.
Past the dairy barn and creamery.
Through the orchard and along the rows of new cabins.
For a few moments the village seemed to hold its breath.
Then the hammers stopped.
The saws became quiet.
The blacksmith laid down his hammer.
The spinning wheel slowed.
The loom stopped answering.
Someone closed the door of the barber shop.
Another worker covered the soap kettle.
At the furniture shop an apprentice brushed the last curls of oak from his bench.
One by one, people began walking toward Rebecca's kitchen and the great dining barn.
Samuel stood beside the bell and watched them come.
He had spent days walking from shop to shop.
At each one he had seen another piece of the settlement taking shape.
A wheelwright making wheels.
A cooper shaping barrels.
Rusty tending bees.
Women saving seed.
Shepherds shearing wool.
Gerty spinning yarn.
Jenny weaving cloth.
Eli teaching boys to build furniture that might last longer than they would.
Amos cutting hair.
Martha making soap.
Sarah dipping candles.
Each shop had seemed small when standing inside it.
But now Samuel watched all those people walking toward the same supper table.
He finally understood what they had built.
Rebecca touched his arm.
"You planning to stand there all evening?"
Samuel smiled.
"Just looking."
"You can look with a plate in your hand."
She turned toward the barn.
"Come on."
Inside, the long tables were already filling.
Children squeezed together on benches.
Men hung their hats from pegs along the wall.
Women carried bowls and platters from the kitchen.
Fresh bread filled baskets down the center of every table.
There were bowls of potatoes, green beans, corn, sliced tomatoes, cabbage, cheese, butter, pickles, applesauce, and thick gravy.
Platters of roast beef and chicken moved from hand to hand.
Pitchers of cold milk stood beside stoneware jugs of water.
And at the far end of the room Rebecca had somehow found enough pies to make every child certain there would be one left for them.
Buck Rogers entered carrying his clipboard.
Rebecca caught him before he reached the table.
"No."
Buck stopped.
"No what?"
She pointed toward the clipboard.
"Not at supper."
Buck looked down at it.
"I was only going to make one note."
Rebecca held out her hand.
"Give it here."
Buck reluctantly surrendered the clipboard.
She placed it on a shelf beside the door.
"There. Now you're a human being again."
The nearest table erupted in laughter.
Buck shook his head.
"I believe you've become the most powerful person in the settlement."
Rebecca smiled.
"Sit down before I prove it."
Buck sat.
Galileo Maestro arrived with flour still dusting one sleeve.
Elias Hawking followed him.
Jacob Yoder came in smelling faintly of pipe tobacco and fresh clay.
Frank Cooper sat beside John Miller.
Jake joined them after washing glass putty from his hands.
Rusty entered with a small jar of honey tucked beneath one arm.
Anna and several milkmaids arrived together, laughing about something that had happened in the barn.
The room grew louder.
Not disorderly.
Alive.
Samuel found himself near the center table with Rebecca beside him.
For several minutes nobody attempted to speak to the whole gathering.
There was too much eating to do.
Bread traveled down the tables.
Butter followed.
A boy asked for potatoes and somehow received potatoes, chicken, two biscuits, and a warning from his mother to leave room for pie.
Near the other end of the barn, Rusty passed his jar of honey to Rebecca.
"For tomorrow's breakfast."
Rebecca held it toward the light.
"Your bees have been busy."
Rusty nodded.
"Everybody's been busy."
Samuel heard that.
He looked around.
Everybody had been busy.
That was the strange beauty of the place.
No one person had built it.
No council had designed every detail.
No order had gone out telling each person where to stand.
Someone saw a need.
Someone else knew how to meet it.
And before long another shop had opened its door.
Buck leaned toward Samuel.
"Do you remember the first morning?"
Samuel smiled.
"I remember wondering how we were going to feed everybody."
Buck looked down the crowded tables.
"Now I'm wondering where Rebecca found enough pie."
Rebecca heard him.
"That information is above your pay grade."
Buck stared at her.
"We don't have pay grades."
"Exactly."
The table dissolved into laughter again.
When the meal finally began to slow, the room settled into dozens of smaller conversations.
Someone discussed tomorrow's work at the orchard.
Another man needed a new wagon tongue.
The dairy wanted more buckets.
The creamery needed another shelf.
Two women were planning curtains for the schoolhouse.
There was always another job.
Always another need.
Always another tomorrow.
Samuel slowly stood.
The nearby conversations faded.
Then the rest of the barn grew quiet.
Samuel looked around at the faces.
"When we first came here, I think most of us were wondering what we had lost."
"Homes."
"Farms."
"Towns."
"Jobs."
"A world we understood."
He glanced toward Galileo.
"For that matter, we lost the sky we understood."
Several people smiled.
Samuel continued.
"But somewhere along the way we stopped spending every day looking backward."
"We started building."
"Not because anyone promised us things would be easy."
"Not because we knew exactly where Earth was going."
"We built because morning was coming."
He looked toward the young apprentices.
"And because children would need something when they woke up."
Samuel looked around the barn.
"We did not save ourselves by escaping the old world."
"We saved ourselves by learning how to live again."
Galileo smiled.
"Then we'd better be ready for tomorrow."
Rebecca rose and began gathering empty plates.
"Tomorrow can wait until the dishes are washed."
That earned the loudest laugh of the evening.
Soon benches scraped back.
Children carried cups toward the wash tables.
Men stacked plates.
Women covered the leftover bread.
Nobody had assigned the work.
It simply happened.
Outside, lanterns glowed along the paths between the cabins.
Samuel stepped from the barn into the cool evening.
Buck joined him.
Above them stretched a sky their grandparents could never have imagined.
Saturn hung beyond the Glove, immense and silent.
Behind Samuel came the sounds of dishes being washed.
Someone laughed.
A fiddle began playing somewhere near the cabins.
A baby cried and was quickly comforted.
A cow complained from the dairy barn.
Buck smiled.
"Sounds almost ordinary."
Samuel listened.
"That's what makes it extraordinary."
The two men stood beneath the strange sky while Earth continued her impossible journey.
No one in the settlement knew exactly what the next day would bring.
They only knew what they would do when it arrived.
Milk the cows.
Feed the horses.
Light the ovens.
Turn the millstones.
Shape the wood.
Plant the fields.
Teach the children.
Feed one another.
And build whatever tomorrow required.
Samuel looked once more toward the glowing windows of the settlement.
Then he smiled.
Before the next day...
they already had a home.
THE STORY CONTINUES IN
THE GOOD EARTH
SAGA #2
THE PLANETARY ROUNDTABLE