To Juneau, With Love

Eating wild garlic was considered an act of treason.

By the laws of the Manzanato Order, and the Universal Constitution of Submission to Live, the harshest of punishment would be enforced for any person, family, colony, or stratum who produced, consumed, or harvested an unregulated food source. And everything in the world’s seven sectors was regulated—from the edge of the Americas to the Yukonian Islands and the Africonga. Even the barren Arctic Islands were regulated.

Nothing was planted, grown, or eaten without the approval of the Militia or congressional leaders from the Manzanato Order. All flora and fauna, edible or not, legally belonged to the Manzanato Order, as it had been for the last 123 years. Even the dandelion weeds carried hefty fines, with their buttered tops that sometimes grew rebelliously at the corners of rickety old buildings. The price was a sacrificial ear or digit—a decision made at the behest of the tribal executioner. But getting caught with wild garlic—a currency far beyond any gold or jewel—meant certain death. Most often a swift and public slaughtering.

It took Abraham Monkfish all of ten seconds to decide the risk was worth it. Had it been burdock or a patch of strawberries, he would have walked on. Burdock was just too hard to cook without boiling everything down and strawberry seeds were an annoyance to anyone who still had their real teeth. But garlic? That was more than just an ingredient to delight the palate, it was a premium pharma that their colony needed. Its medicinal properties would help many of the younglings and the sickly—not that half of them even knew what garlic was. But Abraham—Hammo, if you were kin or friend—had grown up with Chuley, the wise keeper of flora and fauna.

Hammo skinned a garlic clove and mashed it between his teeth, letting the spicy taste linger on his tongue before he swallowed. He had no intention of getting sick this winter. The chill of the coming frost would likely bring deep-chested coughs, which would lead to pneumonia. Anyone with pneumonia was a health hazard—that meant 30-day quarantine for the youths and execution-style death for the elders. Hammo intended to bring the cloves to Chuley to create healing extracts, tinctures, and tea for the colony. He just hoped he didn’t get caught.

He picked every bulb he could find in the overgrown meadow and wrapped them in cheesecloth, tucking them into his sheepskin bag. But the trouble with garlic was that it didn’t discriminate amongst those that possessed it, for its aroma was a pungent explosion of sulphuric molecules—not an easy thing to hide.

He walked through the tall patches of weeds and heavy brush until he spotted some Western Skunk Cabbage. If he crushed the leaves and rubbed them on his body and clothes, the noxious odor would hopefully mask the garlic scent.

Garlic was considered gold, literally. Chuley called it the golden onion. And he couldn’t return without it. It would help to treat bronchitis before it gave birth to pneumonia. It would lower blood pressure for some of the elders. It would even help those who were getting Old Timer’s disease. Plus, it would make for a delicious deviation from the bland cornmeal and overripe tomatoes that was typical stratum fare for the Northwest. Hammo not only borne witness to the pharma power of garlic, he’d had the pleasure of tasting it before. Fire-roasted with nemo tomatoes and a real poached egg.

NMOs—non-modified organisms, or nemos as the tribes called them—were the wild fruits, vegetables, and herbs that still grew in the feral unoccupied lands between strata. Those lands were mostly infertile, torched every four years to prevent new growth. Many parcels had been partitioned off with a high fence and barbed wiring to prevent colonies from seeking unlawful food sources. Some areas even had patrolmen with pointy guns hanging on their shoulders like swords. But if you were lucky, those patrolmen were moles. Either that or you could keep them in your pocket for a good barter or a moon’s worth of spirits. And in the dead of winter, almost anyone could be bought with a jar of moonshine. People tended to do strange and illegal things for just a small taste of something delightful on the tongue.

Which is exactly why Hammo ended up covered in skunk musk as he walked back to the boundary line for check-in. He stood a ways back from the others in line, waiting patiently for his pat down and trade inventory. He could see the patrolmen sniffing the air.

When it was Hammo’s turn, he sent up a silent invocation to the gods that the patsies wouldn’t smell the garlic over the stench of skunk. After a small fuss with his trading papers, they waved Hammo through, foregoing the usual frisking.

The stratum itself was a small community, population 224, surrounded by a twenty-foot high fence. The housing areas were made up of tents, cabins, buildings, and various sized huts. They were divided into four sections—east, west, north, and south—and each had a cookery, bathing station, laundry area, and common area for gatherings. Then each section was further divided into family huts, tents, or cabins. Most of the hunting men lived in the tents, smaller families and elderly lived in huts, and multi-generational families lived in the cabins. The stone buildings were common areas for the entire stratum’s use and were guarded by armed patsies. There was a general store that doubled as a trading post, two food markets—one inside and one outside, a postal station, a medic station, a patrol station where the patsies and governor lived, and a city hall, which was also a courthouse, execution site, and documentation records facility.

Even though they were one of the “free” stratums, the Militia still commandeered everything and the rules were rigid. So rigid, executions occurred at least 5 times a day in the middle of the courthouse square. They were prisoners, no matter how “free” they were.

For years, there’d been rumors of a vault that had 30 years’ worth of food, electricity, hot water, and heirloom seeds from every genus of plant, edible or otherwise. No one knew for sure where it was, but some believed there was one close by. One day, Hammo swore he would find the vault and take as many of his tribe as he could.

As he walked through the compound, he noticed there were a few new arrivals waiting at city hall. One girl caught his eye and wrinkled her nose as he walked by. He kept walking, heading straight for the cookery where he knew Chuley would be. Before he made it past the front door, Chuley was on him, shooing him out the door.

“Eh, you stink. Go shower,” she said, holding her nose with one hand and waving him away with her other. The rotten skunk smell had already numbed his olfactory. He could barely smell a thing.

“I have gold.” he said, knowing she’d understand. Holding her nose still, she grabbed his arm and pulled him back in so hard, he almost fell. She checked to make sure no one was outside before shutting the door behind him.

Chuleta Maria Solo was a broad-shouldered Spanish widow who had been both nanny to the children and cook to the whole colony for all nineteen years of Hammo’s life. She hadn’t aged since he was a young boy, so he could only guess how old she really was—forty, fifty, seventy, he had no clue. But he loved her as much as he’d loved his own parents. Most of the colony did. And more than once she’d saved his life.

“Well, where is it?” she asked, pronouncing it like eet. Her accent was heaviest when she was impatient.

Hammo handed her the bulbs, and she squealed, the sound echoing in the small room. They shushed each other and looked around before heading to the large metal basin.

As Chuley peeled and chopped the garlic cloves to put into jars of oil, Hammo went to the bath house and stripped to his underwear, rubbing himself with soft, squishy tomatoes to eliminate the noxious odor. He repeated the process two times, just to be sure no residual stink clung to him. Then he dressed in civilian clothing and went back to the scullery in search of Chuley.

He found her still chopping garlic, several jars of herbs steeped in oil on the counter next to her. There was a smudge stick burning near a window to hide the smell of the garlic. As she worked, she hummed a familiar song, something she used to sing to him to get him to sleep after his uncle died.

He joined her at the sink, rinsing rosemary stems and stripping the needle-like leaves off the way Chuley had taught him

“How you do with barters?” she asked, nudging him with her meaty elbow.

“I got three salt rocks, tea leaves, a magnifying glass, two bottles of moonshine, rice sack, and a book.” He grabbed his trading sack and started pulling out his trades. Chuley put the salt rocks and moonshine in the big ice box, and the rice sack and tea leaves in the pantry. The magnifying glass was old, with an ornate handle made of mother of pearl. It was beautiful, but he knew that its value was really in the ability to make fire out in the fields. The smolder from the embers helped them find their way on night runs looking for an escape.

As Chuley handed him the book to put in their library, something fell from inside the book. In the back, taped inside the spine, was a heart-shaped locket. He peeled off the tape and turned the locket over.

The inscription read: To Juneau, With Love. You can replant the world from within your heart.

“Open it,” Chuley urged.

Inside was a small piece of paper folded many times. Its edges were brown and frayed, softened with age.

Something about this felt momentous. Whatever the paper held, Hammo knew in his gut it was going to alter his life, and maybe even the world.

Delicately, he unfolded the paper. It looked like an old drawing of the Pacific Sector, except it wasn’t sectioned off and it included some of the Dakotas, the Canadian Territories, and the Yukonian Islands.

“It’s a map,” Chuley whispered.

“A map? To what?” At the top left corner of the drawing, there was a small heart, sketched in the center of a parcel of land called Alaska. He’d never heard of it before.

“What’s an Alaska?” Hammo asked.

Neither of them noticed that someone had come into the scullery.

“It’s an old state from the union. Before the wars and the Burning Times. It’s where the vault is,” a voice said. They turned to find a girl standing at the door. It was the same one he’d noticed at the check-in point.

“Who are you?” Hammo asked. No one, especially newbies, could be trusted. Only those deep in the resistance knew the right answer.

“I’m a friend of flora and fauna. I hunt the truth, and slay the lies. I do no harm, and live for all. Together, we rise!”

Recognizing the call of the resistance, Hammo held up three fingers in peace — a sign that meant, “One for me, one for you, and one for all.”

“I’m Abraham. This is Chuley. How do you know so much about the vault?”

“My father’s ancestors were from the Yukon Islands. Even before the wars. Back when it was Alaska and Canada. They’ve passed down stories of the vault for years. I’ve made my way across the sector, from the Eastern shores. I’m going to find the vault. My name is Juneau. And that’s my locket.”