“Well, it ain’t changed much since,” Mr. Haskel said with a chuckle.
Greer mounted his horse and rode next to him down the dirt road that led through the village. Talk about a time warp. It felt like moving through a reenactment village.
The town had a population of three hundred adults and two hundred children, a number that jibed with the census Remi took and wasn’t far off the last U.S. census. The community was extraordinary, and Greer enjoyed learning about its complexities.
Most of the unwed adult women lived with their parents. There was a long bunkhouse where unwed bachelors lived. Children were schooled from six to thirteen. When a kid showed a special interest in a topic, a resident who was a specialist in that topic furthered his education in the hopes of finding interns to help in his work.
There was a row of shops maintained by a barter system. Furniture for a side of beef. Candles for eggs. Veggies for candles. Ironwork for a horse. Horses for construction assistance. There were pottery shops, a seamstress, and an herbalist.
The community cut ice in the winter and stored it in great ice warehouses for use through the summer. Most cabins had old-time wooden iceboxes. There was a communal greenhouse. Everyone who wasn’t a specialist found work in the fields, raising corn, wheat, and other crops for the community. Others were employed by taking care of the community’s elders.
No one was idle. No one was superfluous. Even with the community growing, it grew in a balanced way. Greer learned there was no gender-based division of labor. If a woman wanted to be a smithy, she could be. If a man wanted to make candles, he could. Town government permitted either gender in its leadership positions.
Mr. Haskel felt their community had survived because, unlike most other utopian societies that originated as theirs did in the nineteenth century, they allowed for variances of individual aptitude and interest. The community had a church and a minister, but was, by mission, a secular institution.
They visited the grain mill, with its storage silo, and the lumber mill, both powered by the river as they had been for close to two centuries. They visited the smithy, the icehouse, and shops for the butcher, cheesemaker, weaver, and apothecary.
Greer learned there was also an infirmary, just over the hill, set a little ways off from the main community. Their long-time doctor had recently passed and now the community was being served by his young intern, who was doing more than a passable job.
Greer asked if the new doctor, or even the former one, had a modern medical degree. Mr. Haskel frowned and said the community was extremely healthy. Most of their elders lived well into their eighties and nineties without medications and with their faculties intact. A community in balance, he reiterated, was naturally healthy.
They paused by the large schoolhouse. The population had grown so much in the last decade that a second one was being built.
“Do most of your children stay here in the community when they’re adults?”
“Most do.”
“What happens when they turn thirteen and their schooling ends?”
“By then, if the children have shown an interest in a specialty, their education is handed over to the experts in their interest area. Those who don’t have a particular leaning toward one thing or another are shown how to work a farm or are brought into one of our other labor trades.”
“Your community is efficient. Do you worry about your success outgrowing your resources?”
“We have five thousand acres up here. There are more we can buy. I think we are well situated now and for the immediate future.”
“I understand from Remi that your youths perform tithes. Could you tell me more about that?” Greer asked.
Mr. Haskel’s gaze flashed his way, his eyes widening briefly. “It is just another of our customs. When a young person decides he or she’s ready to be an adult in our community—with the privileges and responsibilities that brings—he or she is tested with an act of service. If it’s successfully completed, then the young person is regarded as an adult. Tithes come earlier for some and later for others.”
“Are these tithes or services ever rendered outside your community?”
“Tithes are intensely personal, Mr. Dawson. We never speak about the service we were asked to render.”
“Would, say, committing murder be considered a tithe?”
The affability left Mr. Haskel’s face. “I would expect such a question from an outsider. We have a very small population here, sir. Each of us has a specialty. There is little overlap. If someone were to commit murder, his actions would make life much more difficult for all of us.”
“But not if the murder was committed in the outside world.”
“What are you implying?”
“There was a girl from your community who tried to kill my friend.”
“Impossible.”
“I took her to the hospital, where they had to flush the drugs from her system. I met her parents. I saw the buggy they drove when they retrieved her. I saw the bench they left as payment. The closest other communities similar to yours are in Montana and Colorado, nowhere near here. Her name was Sally.”
“Such an act defies everything we stand for. Everything. Describe her to me. I will question her myself.”
“She’s young. Sixteen or seventeen. Tallish. Long blond hair. Blue eyes.”
He made a face, his lips tucked up on one side. “You’ve just described half of all our young girls. None of them are named Sally. When you dine with us for supper tonight, tell me if you see her.”
“Thank you. I will.”
“Was your friend injured by this girl?”