The World Without Flags

About five or six years ago, we started building log houses because the farmhouse got too small for everyone. We built them on the hill above the farm so we could have a good look toward the south. Over the years we’ve built ten houses and one lodge. We call it the Village. We should probably have a better name for it than that, but we don't have much time to sit around and wonder what to call a few houses on a hill.

We had to completely rebuild the first few houses we tried, but the new ones aren’t nearly as bad. We’ve learned a lot about how to build log houses, how to fill in the chinks, how to build on stone foundations, how to build so that when the cabin shrinks over time, which it will, the doors don’t get stuck. We still have a lot to learn though. Franky calls it “relearning” because people had this all figured out once, how to live without electricity, directly from the land. Franky likes that term, “relearning,” and he uses it whenever he can.

There’s 43 people in the Homestead, and I could name each one of them and tell you their stories. They come from all over this area, Boston, Portland, Quebec. A few of the children were born here. We even have a little cemetery, but there’s no bodies buried there, only ashes and a big boulder where we carve people’s names. After the Worm, we always burn our dead. We put all the ashes of our dead in the cemetery and the flowers that grow there are strong and bright and beautiful. We have a library. We have music and dances when we can. We play games. We ski in the winter, swim in the summer. We have guns and knives. We try to keep people safe. We try to keep each other alive.

I know I’m lucky to have a place I can call home. A lot of people don’t have that. They live wandering the world, scrambling to survive, scavenging for whatever the old world left behind like dogs in the garbage pile. They come sometimes to the Homestead to trade. They have metal and tools and toothpaste. A lot of plastic trash that we trade for anyway. Their eyes are hollow. They’d kill you just as soon as be your friend. You can tell by looking at them that they’ve lost something important. You have to learn how to see that in this world. You have to be smart with people.

Sometimes someone comes and we trust them and let them stay. We watch them very carefully, but usually they’re okay. They start working like everyone else, and they bring whatever skills they have to help us. These are the lucky ones, like me. I know I’m lucky to be here, to have these people at the Homestead who trust me with their lives and I trust them with mine, even the ones I don’t like much.

I’ve lived here most of my life. I could say I’ve lived here all my life because I don’t remember much before we came here, before the Worm. Sometimes I dream of a woman with long, wiry dark hair, hair that I loved to feel in my hand. In my dream, she’s singing, but I can’t hear her voice. It’s more like a feeling that she’s singing. And she’s holding me but I can’t feel her arms around me. All I can feel is her hair in my hands. And I have a feeling in my dream, a feeling I never have in life. It’s like being in warm water, suspended, floating, and everything is outside of me, beyond my grasp. I’m pretty sure the woman singing is my mother. That’s pretty much what’s left of my life before the Worm.

The Homestead has changed a lot over the years. It used to be just the farm and the fields around it. Then more people came, and over time we grew and began to build the Village. We’re still building it. From the Village, we have a pretty good idea of what’s around us. I remember there used to be trees on the hill, but not anymore. We used those trees for houses or to burn during the long Maine winter. Now we have to drag trees uphill from the forests to get wood. But it’s worth it for the view.