Read Against the Grain for Free Online Page B

Megan talking.  Pausing a few steps down the hall, I was unsure if I should continue on or wait, as it sounded like they were in the middle of a conversation. It took me a minute to realize I was the one being talked about.
    “… you aren’t the only one. I guess you could say he did the same for us too, saved all of us really. He brought us all together and set this all up. I mean, my parents and brother had their houses, and my grandparent’s was already empty, but he came into the city when things were at their worst and brought us and the others out here. We never would have made it here ourselves. He jump started us on the food and heat and living here, and… everything,” I could hear Breanne telling Megan.
    “But he doesn’t stay here too?”
    “Not really, he comes and goes, mostly keeps to himself a lot. In the beginning he stayed for a while and was always really adamant that we got to know the neighbors better. He wanted everyone to be able to work together instead of just having one or two families on their own. We’ve offered a permanent place, but he doesn’t stay for more than a week or so at most,” Breanne answered her.
    “And what does he do when he’s not here?”
    I could tell Megan was being respectful while still trying to get a better feel for how I fit in to the picture.
    “Well, he doesn’t really say… but he’ll show up with supplies or stuff we need out of nowhere sometimes. So I guess he’s out finding that type of stuff.”  
    “So does he like, loot and steal stuff then?” I heard Meagan ask.
    It was a fair question I guess, but one I didn’t really like. Probably a little too close to the truth.
    “I don’t know for sure… I don’t think so though. I mean, I don’t think he would take something that someone else needed anyway. A lot of people left this area right away before last winter, so I’d guessing the stuff comes from their abandoned places,” Breanne’s voice speculated.   
    “And around here, he farms and helps with that stuff too?”
    “Not exactly… he helps out with some of that, but my dad was a maintenance guy at the college so we had the tools and ability, we just didn’t really know what we needed to do. He is the one that set up the radio stuff and got us learning and hunting and that type of thing. He helps around here by helping us just live.”  
    “I tried to ask him, but did he join the military or something before, and that’s how he knows all the gun and security stuff?”
    “Well no,” Breanne said. “We kind of don’t know the whole deal really. My husband says he did work with the Sheriffs office once. My brother Andrew thinks he was like a private contractor or bodyguard or something. My other brother Paul thinks he was some survivalist militia nut. From what I know, he never did any of that. I guess he might have, but he’s never told us anything like that before anyway.”
    “I know he was into guns and taught kids how to shoot in a class once. Ours were too young at the time of course… and he did teach a women’s self defense type class I remember, but we kind of don’t talk about any of it. He didn’t meet Nick until a few years out of high school and was in college when we started hanging out, so I don’t know what he did before then. Before Nick and I got married we wouldn’t see him for months at a time sometimes, that was just the kind of friends we were so we didn’t think anything of it.”  
    “Militia nut?” I thought. Yeah well Paul was kind of a wussy little pain in the ass anyway, so it shouldn’t have surprised me to hear it.
    “And now, now I don’t know,” Breanne continued on. “He knows what he knows and he does what he does and it only helps us, so we don’t really ask a whole lot about it. It sounds selfish hearing myself actually say it, but he doesn’t exactly volunteer a lot of information either.”  
    “I’ll tell you this though, he came to my brother Andrew’s house one