When All The Doors Close

Thank you loved it of course.

Thanks Kathy.

Thanks Kathy, Another great classic in the making. :-)

Dear Diary,

I know it’s selfish. No one needs to give me a lecture on how selfish it is. Part of me has been dreading this day while the other part is so thankful that it actually happened.

Josefina Delores Lowery is officially one year old today. Josefina for my mother (who had a Spanish name but no Spanish blood, she was named after a heroine in a romance novel) and Delores for my grandmother (who had an English name but who was more Cuban than Castro, who was named after the woman that ran the orphanage where she grew up). I hope that when Feena gets older she’ll appreciate the irony of that and not judge people based on names or ethnicity. You are who you are based on your insides and the choices you make, not what you look or sound like.

A good example of that is Dorrie’s Uncle Darryl. He is good looking in a road hard and hung up wet kind of way; had a lot of advantages growing up too. But through his own choices he has turned into a Grade A donkey’s behind; and he’s only slightly mellowed by the tragedy of losing his hand. Although Dorrie has said he is better than I am giving him credit for being; that she thinks he may act that way around me in particular just to get my goat. Well he can’t have my goat or any other part of me. If he thinks showing is … er … attitude is going to get my attention he needs a seriously good knock in the head.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so hard on the man; I’m not exactly the model for unbiased thinking and behavior these days. I fell way older than I ever thought I could. And there are things that just start me down a thought path that is hard to get out of. If I ever had a cat scan you’d probably see ruts in my psyche. I said that once to Cal and he said I had the most vivid imagination. His exact words, I’m not kidding. He tickles me sometimes the odd things he says.

Speaking of Cal, he insisted on taking us to lunch to celebrate Feena’s birthday … a real restaurant … while we were in St. Pete today to celebrate. We went to Munch’s on 6th Street South. I’d never been there but had heard about it for years. It was on that old show … Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives … Or Dives, Diners and … whatever, that show with the guy that had the peroxide spiked ‘do that always made me want to give him a seriously deep conditioning. The burgers were incredible; Cal ordered for me while I was in the ladies’ room and since he was buying I didn’t complain, actually thought it was kind of sweet in a very Cal kind of way. He wouldn’t let me see the check either when it came which says more than it doesn’t. Sigh.

Next year I’ll try and do a cake and all that … or at least a cupcake depending on if flour is still as expensive as it is. This year I am ashamed to admit, it was just all beyond me.

I kept myself as busy as I could throughout the day and I did try and sing Happy Birthday to Feena – try being the operative word since my singing voice is so rusty that I don’t even think WD40 would help. But that fateful day kept coming back to haunt me. So did other things.

One of the things we did while over in Pinellas was to scope out the stores to see what they had versus what we had easy access to. We scored a few things as we stopped at three going out of business sales … all in the same strip center. I heard lots of hushed and worried talk from people wondering how they were going to make ends meet. Heard one woman mention that there was a waiting list so long just to get in the application process for public assistance that it would take at least three years to clear the backlog. Heard another man complaining that he had so many relatives wanting to come down and live with him he’d lost county, and most of them he hadn’t seen or heard from in years. Heard a couple of others say they couldn’t wait to move out of state because cold weather or not they never wanted to have to deal with hurricanes again. Each to his own, I’ll take wind and water over snow and who knows what else any day.

We also took a chance and stopped at a grocery store just to see what they had and while I was walking the aisles I heard a baby crying that sounded so much like the baby in my old nightmare that my brain went on autopilot and I nearly pushed my cart into this old lady; would have if Cal hadn’t grabbed the front of the cart.

He asked, “You OK?”

“Yeah,” I answered. Did … did you hear a baby crying?”

“Crying? Are you kidding? The kid was on his way to breaking glass. The mother never even looked at him while she stared into the meat cooler. Little girl that couldn’t have even been ten years old came running from down another aisle and picked him up out of the carrier. Mother looks messed up or high on something. Store employees are surreptitiously tailing her around the store.”

That was a lot of details but Cal is a very detail oriented kind of guy. Don’t ask him a question unless you are prepared for him to answer it. Rarely does he give a simple yes or no.

Then as we were walking out of the store my knees nearly buckled as a young many in fatigues walked in and I swear he could have been Daniel’s twin right down to the broken nose and dimpled chin. I started to fall and grabbed Cal’s arm so I wouldn’t go down to my knees on the black asphalt of the parking lot. Feena, who was on my hip in the sling, complained bitterly as she got mashed between the two of us.

“Hey, you really …” He never finished what he was going to say. I saw his eyes widen and his head turn and follow the young man into the store. Then he was helping me out to his truck. He took Feena and made me sit down while he buckled her in.

“You … you OK?” he asked.

I looked at him and realized he’d seen the same thing I had so at least it hadn’t been a ghost. I shook myself and tried to act normal. “Sure. We better get over to the nursery or they’re going to think I decided to give up my deposit on those plants.”

“We will but not until you can tell me you’re fine enough for me to actually believe you.”

I closed my eyes briefly then admitted. “I’ll … I’ll be fine. This is just a hard day. One of those milestones that part of me has been dreading but wanting to celebrate at the same time and the day seems to be conspiring against me by sending ghosts.”

I pulled my legs in and started to buckle up. He said, “Yeah, you WILL be fine. But you don’t have to keep it bottled up when you aren’t. You’ve let me vent more than a time or two about Lily. You can talk to me about Daniel if you need or want to.”

I sighed. “All I did was talk to you … and Lily … about Daniel there for a while.”

“So?”

“So … I’ve got to … to keep this craziness that comes over me sometimes in check. If I don’t it might completely take over and I’ll … I’ll wind up completely useless and then what is going to happen to Feena and our plans to keep her safe?”

“Our plans?”

“Uh …”

“Easy Aria … I like the way you say it. Makes me feel like my wheels aren’t as likely to fall off since I’ve got some purpose. If I didn’t have you two to look after I don’t know where I’d be right now. So that’s what I mean … you need or want to talk, I’m here.” After a moment he said, “Look, I’m not saying that you’re necessarily doing anything wrong and I’m probably the last person you should be taking advice from about this sort of stuff, but keeping it in check is one thing, trying to completely bury it is another. You gotta let some steam off sometimes.”

“Steam makes it sound like I’m mad and I’m not … not really … not anymore.”

“If you aren’t mad then what are you?”

“Some days I don’t think I’m anything anymore. I’ve pretty well accepted I can’t change what happened just sometimes … like today when everything is so … so in my face … it just really hits me.”

“What does?” he asked trying to understand.

“All of it. That is wasn’t just some poor girl whose story got splash across the tv with sordid sensationalism, it was me. That is wasn’t someone else’s crazy life, that it was mine. That it wasn’t some other woman whose husband tried … whose husband tried to kill her and their baby, it was me. And the rest of it as well. On some days … most days … it has already become a lifetime ago. But today it seems like it was just yesterday.”

He patted my hands awkwardly where they lay bunched up in my lap and then went around and got in. We were both silent on the way to the nursery but the heat and hard work of moving all of those flower pots into the bed of the truck and into the trailer helped me to find my balance again. Paying the remainder of my bill certainly brought me back to reality.

I spent the rest of the day intentionally playing with Feena but she was a little cranky. She’s teething … again. Anything that gets near her mouth gets chewed on, including other people’s body parts. She bit Cal’s finger when he was giving her a taste of peanut butter from his sandwich and he had a hard time getting her to let go. She’s going to wind up with as many teeth as a shark does if she keeps this up. She certainly has the temperament of one right now.

Cal is home tonight … I can hear his congested snores from here, I have got to find out what that boy is allergic to before he brings the ceiling down … but he leaves early tomorrow for a double shift. I’ve got oatmeal doing its thing in a thermos for our breakfast so I don’t have to cook first thing and heat the house up and his lunch is already packed; cold fried chicken, fresh tropical fruit salad, and a couple of hard boiled eggs. The next couple of days, but especially tomorrow, are going to be busier than normal as I get all of those plants and trees in the ground so they have time to take root before the weather changes and their growth slows down.

Thank you, as you see I keep checking back to see if there is another chapter.

Dear Diary,

First week of October, hard to believe. It has finally cooled off … but only marginally; it takes ten minutes to start sweating instead of two. Real cool weather won’t be here until the end of this month or the beginning of next and then it could decide to leave again until January, but at least it won’t be August and September kind of hot. Hopefully it will also cool people’s tempers off. We can pray it does anyway.

Oh, and I saw another drone flying along the river. They are becoming commonplace; like annoying mosquitoes, you just want to swat them. Makes me feel like I need to go inside and close all the shutters. And I’ve gotten paranoid about making sure I’m out of my nightgown and dressed for the day before I open the shears in the morning. I don’t get undressed until I’m ready to crawl between the sheets because I keep imagining one of those golf ball size drones is outside the window just waiting to take pictures. Dorrie says she swears that some pervert is operating the one that flies around their place every once in a while because it always seems to go by her window right as she is changing her bra and since she is on the ample size well … I don’t blame her for having the wooly boogers. I’d say it was her imagination if not for the fact the news had a story on some college students that had made a mock government drone to do just that up in Virginia. Technically savvy deviants, just what the world needs more of.

Now on to more constructive musings. Let’s see this week I’ve planted beets, burdock, carrots, onions, parsnips, salsify, shallots, turnips, broccoli, cabbage, celtuce, collards, leeks, lettuce, mustard greens, spinach, English peas, strawberries, snap beans, brussel sprouts, Chinese cabbage. I’m not sure what celtuce even is and some of the others I’ve never eaten much less grown, but when it comes to seeds beggars can’t be choosers. I picked them up the end of September at one of the monthly Barter Bizarres that is being sponsored by several local churches. There is a “no cash allowed” rule although vendors still have to issue receipts and keep records per the IRS (yes, bartering is taxable). I know they did it for people that have no or little cash coming in and I admit that it is a neat concept, but you still have the “haves” and “have nots” and those that are able to outbid if two or more people go after the same item.

That particular bizarre was the first one that I had attended so I kind of wandered around trying to get the feel for things before I got my feet wet. Had a guy that tried to invade my personal space but some of the men from the church acting as security spotted what was going on and came over to handle it. There is a zero-tolerance rule for harassing and intimidation. We’ll see how long that lasts. After the creep went away I generally tried not to stand alone too much but stuck in groups of two or three with other women, some with small children just like me.

Heard some local gossip while I was there. There was an outbreak of measles at the Brandon campus of HCC. It didn’t really go far in the student population since they are required to show proof of MMR prior to admission – those that can still afford to go anyway – but it has really hit the staff pretty hard. They made me get an MMR booster when I was still in the hospital after Feena was born because when they pulled my blood work it showed that I had a negative resistance to almost all of the childhood diseases that I hadn’t had growing up. I asked Cal when the last time he’d had any boosters was and he said that two years ago there was a department wide push to get all the deputies in the county up to date on their immunization boosters because there was a chicken pox epidemic in the Orient Road jail.

“And then there were three cases of hepatitis in one of the juvie facilities. So, I’m all up to date. My parents were not real fond of vaccines when I was a kid but since I was homeschooled it was never an issue.”

“Wait … you were homeschooled?” I reached across the table and slapped his arm.

I’d knocked a meatball off of his fork and he glared. You never get between a hungry man and his food. “What was that for?”

“You never told me you all were homeschooled.”

He shrugged. “My brothers weren’t but I was. That’s how I finished my BS at nineteen. I dual enrolled at HCC and then entered USF right as I was turning eighteen only a couple of credits shy of being a Senior. I had to take some additional credits that didn’t carry over to my degree in Criminology and … uh … too much information?”

“No,” I sniffed in response. “I’m jealous. I always wanted to be homeschooled but Momma got sick the first time right as I was to start kindergarten. Then Daddy thought I needed … I don’t know … what he called structure or something like that while she was sick and then didn’t get better. She died when I was going into middle school. Daddy died within a couple months of her which left everything at sixes and sevens. Papa was seriously considering it when he saw what high school was like but was worried that I wouldn’t have any friends and then he died and I got shoved into the foster care system. You know the rest. Edgewater was the only constant there for a while except for …”

I stuck a forkful of pasta in my mouth to keep from finishing the sentence. Wisely Cal got the message and didn’t mention Daniel’s name. Instead he asked, “Would you want to homeschool Feena?”

“I’m considering it. A lot depends on what she needs and if they change the laws by the time she gets school age. They keep making all this noise about making homeschooling illegal. I’m sure you’ve heard all of that junk coming out of the UN about international educational standards and well as standardize curriculum for everyone worldwide. And some whack job up in DC actually had the nerve to say that homeschooling creates militants.”

Thoughtfully Cal said, “He’s got a point, just not for the reason he thinks.”

“What?!”

Cal shrugged and after consuming the last meatball on his plate in one bite said, “Think about it. Homeschoolers are usually grounded in free will and critical thinking. They’ve got boundaries and consequences that a lot of kids don’t and usually wind up being internally motivated to succeed for whatever reason you want to pick. Most of them are also grounded in their parents’ worldview yet are still encouraged to be individuals rather than crowd followers. All of that is very dangerous to groups that espouse socialism or communism. They want cogs for their wheels, fodder for their cannons, not leaders that will wrest power away from them and show people there is a different way that being indoctrinated from birth to be an automaton.”

My mouth had fallen open and then I felt a giggle gurgle out.

He shrugged grumpily and said, “Look. You asked.”

“Aw, don’t get your feelings hurt. I was just imaging how well you would have gotten along with Daddy and Papa. They ate that kind of stuff up and talked about it all the time.”

He looked at me but his mouth was full of pasta and garlic toast which he almost choked on in laughter of his own when Feena chose that moment to peg me with a long string of spaghetti.

And speaking of food, I learned something else today at that bizarre that I’d never even thought of … dollar weed is edible. And no I’m not kidding although it sounds like a bad joke. Some people are down to looking in their lawns for something to eat. I mean I know you can eat some flowers and I know herbs get eaten and technically I guess I know that there are a lot of things out there that are edible that you wouldn’t normally think of in that way. But it has given me pause. What if our garden doesn’t work out the way I hope? What if all the produce stands close? What if there are no u-pick farms next year? Worst of all, what if the benefit checks stop coming in and I don’t have anything to go to the grocery store with?

I haven’t said anything to Cal about that. I know he has his own worries. Lily’s lawyer called and started making some noise, trying to rework their agreement. Lily hasn’t lost her job but she’s at half pay and hasn’t seen a commission since the divorce proceedings started. Personally I think she is more interested in her social life than her professional life and it has had its consequences. She’s going into arrears in the house payments.

Luckily Cal didn’t wait around for Lily to take care of things and notified the lender of the divorce proceedings and they quit claimed his name off of the deed. His name hadn’t been on the loan docs to begin with because basically the down payment had been a gift from Lily’s parents (they’d also picked out the house) … kinda like saying they didn’t trust Cal to look after their daughter appropriately. But the lawyer was trying to say that Lily’s change in economic standing was solely a direct result of Cal leaving her. Cal called his lawyer who was not happy that the other lawyer was trying to take his legal counsel out of the loop and told him to leave it to her. I guess we will have to see where it goes; hopefully nowhere.

Cal has enough on his mind with the way things are out in the public now. When he comes home it looks like he’s been figuratively worked over. Morale is suffering. No one likes to be viewed as the bad guy all the time. When he is feeling low he will sometimes tell me about various cases and then ask rhetorically if people hate the cops so much why do they call them anytime they need help? I’m not sure what to tell him. I know there are bad cops but they are only one or two bad apples; that really isn’t how the majority of cops are. They hired on to do a job which is to do their best to enforce the laws on the books. If the public wants to blame someone how about blaming the people that created the laws … the politicians … or suggested the laws … such as group that sent in petition after petition to get something done? But people never want to take personal responsibility; they have to have a bad guy to blame to make themselves look better.

All of it is sitting heavy on my chest; my problems, Cal’s problems, and the problems we both have that overlap. I can’t dump one more on him; I’ve got to pull my weight. I’m starting to tally up how dependent we are on various things. Cal gives me money every paycheck to add to the household funds but I am NOT going to turn into a charity case. Even if I didn’t have my pride no way am I going to watch Cal go from supporting Lily to supporting me and Feena anymore than he already does. Actually that sounds kind of … never mind. I’m just not going to have it. Period. I’ve got to start thinking outside the box even more than I already try to do.

Dear Diary,

OK, I felt like a dork but I did it. I gave into temptation and ate a piece of dollar weed just to see what it tasted like. Well, it sure didn’t taste like lettuce and I wouldn’t want to eat a bowlful by itself but … well … it wasn’t all that terrible. I made sure to do it when Cal was at work because no way was I going to have him thinking that I’d finally lost what little bit of mind I have left. Bad enough I had a dream last night were we were all out in the yard, grazing like the goats and scratching around in the sand like the chickens. But it has got me thinking about what I can do to piece out what we have.

First off I know I need a green house, a real one. Might not happen any time soon but I do need one. I think that I can maybe afford some PVC pipes and some visqueen sheeting with which I could build something sorta like some of the organic and hydroponic farms use. It wouldn’t be big and I’d be afraid it would blow over in a storm but at least I could start seeds early and have someplace besides the Florida room to put the potted trees like the cocoa that I bought from the nursery. The deep south tropical are outside right now but as soon as the weather starts dropping below forty-five at night I’m going to have to move them into some kind of protected structure.

Second off, dang but there are a lot of wild plants you can eat. I’ve been looking at some of the books I picked up from the library sale. I used “Florida’s Best Herbs and Spices” to decide what to order from the nursery that time so I know that when something is growing it doesn’t always look exactly how you are used to seeing it in a bottle on the grocery store shelf. Still … I mean, I never imagined you could eat cattails. Come on, cattails … those fuzzy things that grow in ditches … but apparently they are like gourmet in the world of wild edibles. From roots to shoots to pollen there are a bunch of different ways to use them.

And that’s not all. You can make a lemonade like drink from dried sumac berries … I thought those things were poisonous but apparently the poisonous kind isn’t what grows around here. There are a whole bunch of sumac growing up in the palmetto stand area; they stick out like a sort thumb. I’ll test it out on myself first and if I don’t croak then I’ll give some to Cal and maybe a tiny bit to Feena just to see her make a face the way she does with lemons.

And I finally know what fiddleheads are … I thought they were a fish … they are actually baby ferns, the kind that are still curled up like snail shells. People pay big bucks to eat them in fancy restaurants. Who knew?! Heck, we have enough ferns growing in the wood lot to supply every fancy restaurant in Miami, Tallahassee, and Jacksonville combined.

I went looking around the property with a guide book that had both drawings and real photographs – blasted rattler nearly had me climbing a tree until I saw a hawk or something had already killed it – and found a few things, then realized I’d never remember where I saw them and went back to the house and got some awful colored yarn that I had bought a couple of years ago to crochet a bed cover with until Daniel had emphatically nixed sleeping under fluorescent pink poofs. In hindsight I can’t say I blame him but I’m glad I can finally put the stuff to some use. It is so bright it gives you a headache just looking at it for long.

There is a freak ton of wild anise on the property but I already knew that. Papa and Daddy swore it was their fishing secret … they’d rub it on their lures and never failed to catch something when they did. The thing is I just didn’t know you could eat it. I mean you can really get anise from the seeds just like at the grocery but apparently the leaves are edible too … like you can add it to a salad or make a tea out of them. I love anise tea with honey when I have that gassy bloated feeling at a certain time of the month. Papa used to love Anise Tea if he’d eaten too many garbanzo beans and they had upset his stomach.

There’s a big ol’ achiote bush near the barn – annatto for you Yankee talkers – that is the same plant that you get the stuff like you buy in the store from. If I had known that you know good and well I wouldn’t have spent any money on it in the store even though I was getting it deep discount. Why spend any money if you can get something just as good for free or barter. I bet it was something that either Abuela or Momma planted. They both were really into growing things and loved plants and flowers. Both of them grew up very poor and had to make do a lot. I think that is why they were such kindred spirits and that my grandparents were so happy with Daddy’s choice of bride. She wasn’t Spanish – which I guess makes me a bit of a mutt – but that’s not the first time that’s happened in the family. Papa said our family tree had more diversity in it than the UN … and we still managed to make a lot more sense. Daddy always said that that wasn’t that much of an accomplishment since the UN made so little sense. Then Papa would laugh. It was an old joke between them. I hadn’t thought about that in years.

And the fruit of our bilimbi tree is edible! I know I keep saying who knew but … who knew? I thought it was just some strange ornamental Abuela had planted before I was born. It has these freaky fruits that grow from the trunk and because of the way they look I always called it the cucumber tree. That fruit is actually edible. I think Papa brought it back from one of his early missionary trips to southeast Asia. He used to do stuff like that before customs got so picky.

There’s chicory all up and down the road. I thought the stuff was just a stupid weed with cute little flowers. Young leaves can be used in salads but what most people go after are the roots. You dry those suckers and grind them up and you have coffee. Now that I’ve read it I remember hearing about chicory coffee being a Louisiana delicacy. I swear, the things you learn when you bother to read and listen. It’s like understanding that two plus two equals four for the first time.

And all that lemon grass that I replanted around the house like it was when I was growing up because it keeps away the mosquitos? Yeah, that’s edible too. And let me tell you it is good. I sliced some up when I was broiling some fish and also put some in the rice and tried it on Cal and Josh (Cal picked him up to get him out of the house for a while and I think they were doing some guy talking) and they raved about it. Hah! I’m almost tempted to not tell Cal what the secret ingredient was.

And for sure I’m not going to tell Josh … he makes funny faces about nearly everything but French fries, hot dogs, and mac-n-cheese. He’s a spoiled mess … I’ve tried to tell him what actually goes in hot dogs and what the casings are made out of and he just sticks his fingers in his ears and goes la-la-la-la like some kid. Dorrie said he was the pickiest eater imaginable until he was forced to eat what she gave him or go hungry before he could get out of bed for more than a couple of minutes at a time. At least now he will actually eat something green without closing his eyes.

Those little orange things that are left on the heirloom rose bushes after the blooms are done are called “hips” – I know, silly name – but they are edible too. I only remember Papa telling me that Abuela used to make perfume out of the rose petals. The sunny parts of the fence rows used to be covered with the wild roses but the renters didn’t take care of them. I’ve started cutting the dead parts out but it is not a job to do when it is hot. It also isn’t a job to do without chain mail and armor … those thorns are nasty.

All of the plants have given me ideas of for the Barter Bizarre. I’m thinking that if I could gather enough I might even open my own booth … but it would have to be worth my while and there would have to be people out there willing to try something new. Maybe if they get hungry enough. But what a thought that is, that people here in the US of A might get hungry enough that they’d be willing to eat weeds.

I could go on and on; you should see the pages of notes that I’ve made while going through the books. But the one thing that I think makes this hard – adding wild stuff to my food inventory – is that it takes so much time to locate and harvest enough to be worth anything. That is one of the reasons why I used the pink yarn; I was lucky to find them the first time around, I don’t want to be stumbling and wasting more time trying to find them again.

And speaking of stumbling, sounds like Cal is home. He must have tripped over something on the porch.

Dear Diary,

It wasn’t Cal. I know it happened last night and all is well but I’m still shaking. I caught it just in time. There’s damage but it is fixable.

I better back up because I’m not making much sense when I just read what I wrote.

I got up last night when I thought it was Cal coming home early. I thought he must have dropped his keys or something because usually he is quiet as a cat, first because he can and second so he doesn’t wake up Feena. As I was going down the stairs my phone buzzed and I looked down and indeed it was Cal calling. Rather than answer I flipped on the outside light and then I hear what sounded like a heard of elephants leaving the porch. When I couldn’t see anything through the peep hole I started wondering if Cal was pulling some kind of security test on me so I used my phone to access the little pinhole camera Cal installed out there. That’s when I see flames.

I grabbed the kitchen fire extinguisher – thank you Cal for insisting I get a big one and then teaching me how to use it – and got out through the door and shutter as quick as I could. If I had waited a minute more it might have been too far gone for me to stop. The guy from the fire department said they used some kind of accelerant that busted right through the fire retardant capabilities in the house paint.

While I’m spraying the extinguisher and wondering if I should just give up, run upstairs and grab Feena I heard a horrible crash. The first thought through my head was that whoever took off must have clipped the tree trunk that still hangs out in the road a bit. I was too busy coughing and trying to put out the flames to use too many brain cells on it. Then I heard all sorts of noise from down at the drive and then someone was running around the house.

I look up, my eyes tearing up because while the fire is out everything is still smoking, and see a couple of people with a rifles. I squeal like a blasted old lady, and accidentally shoot one of them in the face with the extinguisher until it snorts empty. For some unknown reason I then throw the extinguisher at the head of the other one, practically fall back into the house slamming the shutters and door shut behind me. I’m up the stairs, grabbing Feena and we’re both half way out the bedroom window before I recognize Cal’s bellow from below telling me it’s OK that the guys – the guys I just blinded and tried to decapitate – are the good guys.

I hope no one thinks badly of me but once I got back inside I slid down the wall and cried doing a pretty good imitation of Feena who was horribly upset at being jerked out of a sound sleep. My heart nearly stopped when something big swooped down on me. Then I smelled Cal’s aftershave and cried even harder.

Anxiously he asked, “Did they hurt you or Feena?”

“What?”

“Look at me Aria, did they hurt you or Feena?”

I shook my head and let him help me stand up. Completely ignoring the fact that I had also just been close to howling I said, “I need to get Fenna a cup or she’s not going to stop fussing.”

He held her for me while I washed my face that had tear streaks through the soot that covered me from head to toe. When we got downstairs there were strangers out in the yard and I was finally calm enough to pray they wouldn’t go off into the garden and trample anything.

“Dang it Cal, someone tried to set the porch on fire!” I told him as I took care of my hot tempered daughter. I didn’t want to put her down but she wanted her bed and her blankey. I put her back down and then came downstairs and asked Cal, “How did you get here so fast?”

He put his hand on my shoulder and I realized it was to stop me from nervously rocking myself. “Here, let me see that rag; you still have soot in the corners of your eyes.” As he was getting the last of it out he told me, “I was on my way home when the calls started coming in.”

I said, “What calls? I didn’t make any calls.”

Law enforcement officers all over the county, including in the city limits where TPD is in charge, were targeted and hit nearly simultaneously. Last night they thought it was one large organization but this morning, after thoroughly questioning some of those that had been caught in the act, they discovered that it was actually more like a flash mob. If you wanted to play you replied with a txt and you were sent an address. Most thought it was just a prank, never realizing they were hitting the homes and families of cops.

A group claiming to be Constitutional patriots quickly claimed responsibility and they say that this is only the first “volley” of the New American Revolution. The broadcast media is having a field day with it and eating it up but a lot of cops, including Cal, aren’t buying it. Cal says he is pretty sure it is what he calls a false flag event. False flags are meant to deceive and while everyone is pretty sure last night’s terror is a false flag, without proof the investigators are not ruling anything out. And the feds are involved making things into an even bigger Chinese fire drill and getting in the way of the local investigation. Not just the FBI but the DOJ, NSA, and a few other alphabet groups I can’t remember. MacDill is also on lock down as is all other military facilities here in the state.

Cal wanted to stay home – I wanted him to stay home but more because he was exhausted than because I was still scared – but it is all hands on deck. All leaves have been indefinitely cancelled, everyone is to go out and about in body armor (regardless of temperature I might add), everyone rides with a partner, emergency management has been triggered for some reason, and much more. Hillsborough County is under strict martial law. So is Pinellas and Pasco that also saw some of the same violence. All other counties in the state are on different levels of curfew and it is spreading to other states.

Not too many stores were open today. I got through to Dorrie but only after several tries and the line sounded funny, like it had an echo. Josh and her Uncle Darryl are keeping watching the house. It took me a few minutes to calm her down, she was crying because it had scared her when she heard how close the fire had come to getting out of hand.

“Haven’t you been through enough?! It’s not ..”

“Don’t you dare use that four letter word with me; you know how I feel about it.”

She hiccupped a gasp of a laugh the asked, “How can you be so calm?”

“Well,” I said still feeling embarrassed. “I wasn’t at the time. I sprayed the uniform of some poor national guard boy with extinguisher fluff and then threw the actual extinguisher at another one.”

“You … you did what?!”

“It was dark. All I saw was their guns.”

She tried to choke back a laugh and then we were both giggling worse than when we were in middle school. “I could have just died of embarrassment but they were really nice about it.”

“What did Cal say?”

“Don’t even remind me. He is such a big brother and you know what big brothers are like when they get a scare.” What I didn’t tell her was that there were now several hidden guns throughout the house. They are all out of Feena’s reach – she’d rather walk than be carried these days – and a couple of them are even out of my reach as they are specifically there for Cal who is tall enough to palm a basketball and barely make any effort to put in in the hoop. The boy is broad as well as tall; for me to see around him I actually have to walk around him. He never uses his size against me but it can be irritating nonetheless when he stands between me and something else like a constipated guard dog.

For instance last night, different people kept wanting to ask me to repeat what had happened but that last time Cal put his foot down. I told him that no, it was OK, anything to help catch who did it but he just turned his back and started whoever it was down while I got to stare at his back. You’d think I was made of cotton candy or something and would melt if someone looked at me too hard.

But suddenly not having to answer questions gave me time to think and suddenly I was trying to run outside only instead I ran into – literally – Cal and bounced off hard enough to lose my balance.

In a worried tone he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t think about the animals … or the garden … or my trees … or … oh not … the panels! I’ve got to go check …”

He shoo’d me back in the house and said quietly, “Easy, I’ve already checked. And I threw a tarp over the panels before most of the people out there arrived. No need to explain if they can’t see them to ask about them.”

I relaxed. “Thank you. I don’t know where my head is at.”

That’s when he tried not to snicker and instead said, “If you’d had more time to aim I know a national guardsman that would be asking that same question.”

“Oh you!” I tried to throw the wet dish rag at him but for a big guy he can move fast. Instead of hitting Cal it caught Det. McLeod in the side of the head.

“Oh Lord, I’m so sorry!”

Det. McLeod tried to look stern but then cracked a smile. “It’s all right. It’s good to see you are recovering from your shock.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been through worse.” I blanched and then shook the memory away as fast as I could. Once I was back in the room mentally Cal was standing beside me and Det. McLeod was looking at me in concern.

I shook my head. “Stop it Cal. I’m fine. Or I’ll be fine. I’m not made of glass.”

He said, “I know you’re not but humor me and take it easy for a little bit.”

“I will after everyone leaves.”

Det. McLeod said, “That’s going to be some time. We need daylight to take some of the pictures we need.”

He walked out and I turned to Cal and asked quietly, “Should I make coffee or something? I think we have enough left without having to open a new can.”

“Not the coffee,” he said guarding our supplies jealously. “If they want coffee they can get it from home or at the station. If you want to maybe use that big orange igloo cooler we take fishing and get some ice water fixed up I’ll haul it outside and put it on a bench.”

“What will people use for cups?”

“Everyone carries canteens or water bottles these days. But I mean it, after that I want you to go upstairs and stay with Feena for a while. Underneath that soot you are as white as a ghost.”

Which is just what I did though I didn’t do much but pace around until the wee hours of the morning.

All’s well that end’s well … at least for us personally … at least this time. The only thing we have to do is replace some wood on the porch and throw some geraniums in the compost heap. Not all of those attacked got off so lightly.

But what does this all mean? How is this going to affect our future?

sssarawolf said:

Thank you, as you see I keep checking back to see if there is another chapter.

Click to expand...

yep, me too sara.

even though Kathy said this story is all written, I'm glad she's been putting it up a little at a time and stretching it out.

Otherwise, I'd have read the whole thing by now and be back on the Geek story thread bugging her about Lydie.

Kathy's words are addictive and she always surprises us!
So I always check just in case!!!!

Jeepcats3

Thanks Kathy.

juco said:

yep, me too sara.

even though Kathy said this story is all written, I'm glad she's been putting it up a little at a time and stretching it out.

Otherwise, I'd have read the whole thing by now and be back on the Geek story thread bugging her about Lydie.

Click to expand...

I'm still wating on Gurl !!!

Where is this Gurl you speak of nancy?

Wait, maybe you shouldn't tell me. I spend all my free time chasing stories around as it is.

It is really a treat to get so many chapters all in a row. I was a kid in S. Fla. but I'm still having to google a lot of the plants mentioned in the story.

I keep waiting to see if Kathy will come up with the real name of some kind of tropical cherry that our neighbor had growing in her yard. I don't even know if it really was a cherry, but that's where all of us neighborhood kids would end up at some point in the day. They were probably some kind of a berry. They were red but were ridged like a pumpkin. I've been all over google trying to find out what they are.

I also want to know more about celtuce, it sounds like something I'd like to grow. Kathy does it taste enough like celery to be used as a substitute?

Rabbit said:

It is really a treat to get so many chapters all in a row. I was a kid in S. Fla. but I'm still having to google a lot of the plants mentioned in the story.

I keep waiting to see if Kathy will come up with the real name of some kind of tropical cherry that our neighbor had growing in her yard. I don't even know if it really was a cherry, but that's where all of us neighborhood kids would end up at some point in the day. They were probably some kind of a berry. They were red but were ridged like a pumpkin. I've been all over google trying to find out what they are.

I also want to know more about celtuce, it sounds like something I'd like to grow. Kathy does it taste enough like celery to be used as a substitute?

Click to expand...

That's easy. It is called a suriname cherry. LOL!

Celtuce is "celery" plus "letuce"

Mostly you use the central stalk which is crunch but the leaves can be used like a lettuce in salads and such. I like the taste but prefer it done like marinated cucumbers ... you know that vinegar, oil, onions, and black pepper toss up kind of thing.

Kathy in FL said:

That's easy. It is called a suriname cherry. LOL!

Click to expand...

Oh my gosh, thank you so much. My sisters will also be glad to finally know the real name of those things. We used to just call them Chinese cherries. If every kid in the neighborhood ran home for snacks we'd all still meet around the cherry bush to eat them. lol

Thank you kind lady.

Rabbit said:

Oh my gosh, thank you so much. My sisters will also be glad to finally know the real name of those things. We used to just call them Chinese cherries. If every kid in the neighborhood ran home for snacks we'd all still meet around the cherry bush to eat them. lol

Click to expand...

When we first moved to Florida in '75 we lived right off of MacDill in a rented house. The lady we lived next to had a whole hedge of these things.

I like having the direct tap into the police in this story. That's probably an aspect we don't talk about enough in a positive way.

Oh and did somebody say Gurl?

Kathy in FL said:

That's easy. It is called a suriname cherry. LOL!

Click to expand...

Very interesting. It's a good thing I don't have any acrage.
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/surinam_cherry.html#Food Uses

Kathy--I am really enjoying this story.

I have little more to add.....

But I know from my own writing, how much pro--or even contra comments mean to a writer; so I wrack my Brain--such as it is.

Aria's comments about about Uncle Darryl.....

She's a bit hard on him.

Do people have the right to be open minded and to embrace all Races of people with equal fervour?

Caution: If you say, "Yes";

Then by implication, the converse most hold true.

Other people have just as much right to be Racist, Prejudiced and to Voice their feelings in Public--so long as it is done without Cursing, and with No Incitement to Violence.

If Rastus Alphonso can't say anything Negative about Green People;

Then Logically, Rastus Gonzales shouldn't be allowed to say anything Positive about Green People.

And quite aside from this.....

Nowadays if someone tells you that they're from Japan or Germany.....

And you say, "I hear that y'all eat a lot of Rice in Japan";

Or,

"Germany is noted for its many fine Beers":

And you're likely to get:

"You Evil, Reptilian, Prejudiced, Stereotyping Bassett!!!"

Personally, I have a lot of Phun mismatching Stereotypes.

I might tell the German:

"If I ever get to Germany, I want to try Fugu; see a Sumo Match, and Kiss the Blarney Stone."

That will set the Politikally Korrect back on their Heels!

.....RVM45

Those cherries sound good. Unfortunately my zone is too cold for them. Otherwise I think they'd be great to replace part of my hedge.

RVM45 said:

Kathy--I am really enjoying this story.

I have little more to add.....

But I know from my own writing, how much pro--or even contra comments mean to a writer; so I wrack my Brain--such as it is.

Aria's comments about about Uncle Darryl.....

She's a bit hard on him.

Do people have the right to be open minded and to embrace all Races of people with equal fervour?

Caution: If you say, "Yes";

Then by implication, the converse most hold true.

Other people have just as much right to be Racist, Prejudiced and to Voice their feelings in Public--so long as it is done without Cursing, and with No Incitement to Violence.

If Rastus Alphonso can't say anything Negative about Green People;

Then Logically, Rastus Gonzales shouldn't be allowed to say anything Positive about Green People.

And quite aside from this.....

Nowadays if someone tells you that they're from Japan or Germany.....

And you say, "I hear that y'all eat a lot of Rice in Japan";

Or,

"Germany is noted for its many fine Beers":

And you're likely to get:

"You Evil, Reptilian, Prejudiced, Stereotyping Bassett!!!"

Personally, I have a lot of Phun mismatching Stereotypes.

I might tell the German:

"If I ever get to Germany, I want to try Fugu; see a Sumo Match, and Kiss the Blarney Stone."

That will set the Politikally Korrect back on their Heels!

.....RVM45

Click to expand...

RVM45 you are a hoot. Seriously. LOL!

Actually I think what you are saying comes with life experience and broad acquaintanceship. Most people however are a product of their raising as the saying goes.

Aria is Spanish ... though not 100% Hispanic. Her mother was non-Hispanic. She was raised in a very diverse family and yet has suffered from the prejudice of others being called "wet back" and "late comer Cuban" even though her background is anything but. Hispanics in both Texas and Florida have suffered from this prejudice from decades despite the fact that they've bee in the US for generations. In Florida it is even worse because of the diversity of the Spanish culture ... Spaniards, Cubans, Mexicans, Hondurans, San Salvadorans, etc.

Aria is a product of her father's and grandfather's prejudices and pride in their origins ... that they saw the beginning of this country and are just as entitled to be called "pioneer", if in some respects not more so, than the anglo-Europeans that came after them.

She is also a product of being wrenched from the worldview she was raised in through no fault of her own and put into a difficult living situation for someone who had had a stable home ... foster care. Remember, seven homes in three years. Her reaction, like many kids in foster care, was to hold onto where she came from even more tightly.

Now she isn't narrow minded ... she enjoyed the wide range of personalities and people that she was exposed to when she lived near Ybor City. Ybor City is in Tampa and is about as ethnically (not to mention in just about all ways) as you can imagine. Read up on it, you might decide you'd like to visit. But there is still that protective shell about her ideals.

And while I haven't stated it outright because I don't think it is quite appropriate to a private journal, her occasional "zoning out" when smacked in the face with memories of Daniel - both the good and the bad - is almost a borderline PTSD though not clinical in nature. She is still processing all that she has been through in her life ... losing her mother, then her father, then her grandfather, lack of a stable home life for her highschool years, the "ideal" of her relationship with Daniel in the very beginning, a late term miscarriage, then another pregnancy, Daniel's deteroriation, etc. Now she is literally in a type of fight for survival for the "family group" she has formed. It is almost an attempt at replicating what she had as a child and living in the same house only encourages this.

All of these things gives her a particular worldview and I think she is willing to soften towards Dorrie's Uncle Darryl - the loss of part of his hand makes her sympathetic because she too has experienced physical trauma - but the man seems to enjoy making her fur stand up as it were. They are not really adversarial ... Uncle Darryl just enjoys getting her goat because it entertains him and Aria for her part hasn't learned not to walk into it every time yet.

Aria is one of those odd personality combinations where she is worldly wise yet at the same time she seems sheltered. As I was "getting to know" Aria I realized that in some respects it is intentional on her part and one facet of her sense of self preservation.

As I remember, and it was a long time ago, they were sort of tart. Then we didn't always wait for things to be totally ripe either.

Our neighborhood was a virtual smorgasbord, and none of the neighbors seemed to mind the kids taking a few samples along the way, but like most city kids we all knew our food came from the grocery store.

I don't mean to hijack Kathy's thread, but when she starts talking about all the edibles in Fla. it brings back pleasant memories of my childhood.

I remember one time we were having a neighborhood kid fight, the sides were drawn and we were throwing green oranges at each other until somebody tasted one. Fight over, we all sat down together and ate oranges. lol

kyrsyan said:

Those cherries sound good. Unfortunately my zone is too cold for them. Otherwise I think they'd be great to replace part of my hedge.

Click to expand...

I looked into them also for my home! too cold here also. boo hoo, they do sound yummy!

Kathy--Is it true that a climate warm enough to grow Oranges, or other Citrus Fruits.....

Will be too warm to grow anything but mealy, stunted Apples?

My father told me that, but I've never seen it confirmed.

Enjoyed the three pictures of Fruit.....

Well, two Fruit and a Mutant Vegetable.

I look forward to looking up some of the others, and seeing them.

Have you ever heard of a "Pomelo"?

Supposedly, Grapefruits don't really exist, but are a Hybrid of Oranges and Pomelos--first bred in the 1700s.....

I hated Grapefruits as a kid.....

Still don't care to incise and autopsy one with a Spoon....

But peeled and eaten like an Orange, they aren't Half Bad.....

Three-Quarters maybe, but not Half.

Actually, I enjoy them peeled.


.....RVM45

To find Gurl, go to Kathy's blog. There is a link in her tag line. It's really good! But so are all of her stories.

I need me a kathy fix this evening. I am on 27 3/4 hour out of 33 hour of working in the past 48 hours. Only 5 and some change hours left. I need something to make the awake brain cells work a little more

Dear Diary,

I’m trying not to be upset. I’m trying not to panic. There really isn’t a need to panic, none at all, at least that’s what I keep telling myself. But how did things go downhill so fast?! I’m not ready!

OK, anxiety attack under control and over with. At least until the next flutter gets away from me and turns into a screaming osprey in my chest.

Martial law is completely getting in the way of my plans. No travel but essential travel. They say they will let up on that in a few days, that this is basically just a calming down period for everyone. Yeah right, I’ll believe it when I see it. When people take power it is very hard for them to turn loose of it.

And by people I don’t mean the cops or even the state government … I mean the feds that seem to have invaded the land. DHS is particularly snobby about sharing their plans. Cal says it is making it very difficult for their department to do their job because there are feds all over the place looming like hungry vultures. They’ve got the 911 phone system so disrupted that you might as well be calling the non-emergency phone line. Response times are way down because DHS wants to clear every call, send observers on certain types of calls, and even cop cars get stopped at the check points, even if they are running with lights and siren blasting.

The FBI, DHS, and some of the other alphabet agencies have been making arrests on their own authority and then the people just kind of disappear and then reappear in odd locations like out of state with no formal notification to their family or area law enforcement. As a matter of fact local law enforcement is slowly being cut completely out of the information loop on the off chance that “dissidents and/or activists fill the ranks of the various law enforcement agencies in the state.” And yes, that was a direct quote from an interview some DHS honcho did on a talk show. But something keeps niggling in the back of my mind that martial law is a military thing; it’s not supposed to be the way they are running it.

But seriously, could they paint the bull’s eye on the backs of our guys and gals just a little bigger and brighter?! At first people were so thankful that the administration had acted decisively and quickly – for the first time in who knows how long – but now that reality is setting in they aren’t quite so happy. And who do they blame? Themselves for voting in those yahoos that sit in power? Of course not. No, they blame the cops for “being such babies and running crying to the feds that someone was picking on them which everyone seems to know they deserved.” And yeah, I’ve really heard a few people say it like that on network news as well out in the streets … when I get out at all. The few people that still remain in the gated community there at the mouth of the river that haven’t barricaded themselves inside like agoraphobics are getting on my nerves more than a little with the way they act.

Doesn’t matter how many times or ways they are told that the feds came in uninvited and against states’ rights, they want to blame who and what is closest at hand because it gives them a handy target and makes them feel better. Doesn’t seem to matter that if someone will beat down on the cops they won’t even hesitate at beating on regular ol’ Joe Schmoe on the street. Hardly anyone cackles when the feds haul someone away under cloak of darkness and silence but let the cops pull someone over for speeding or bust them during a domestic call and the rocks and bottles start.

The National Guard is also getting targeted but to a lesser degree. The fatigues, or maybe it is the large automatic rifles, make them a less desirable target apparently. It could also be if you interfere with a National Guardsman’s ability to do his or her job it is a federal/military crime. You can kill a cop and you’ll still only be prosecuted at the local and state level. It is just really freaky to seeing this stuff going on in the 21st century in the USA; Daddy and Papa would be horrified.

There is zero traffic on my little private road but I see the Coast Guard, boats from MacDill, and a couple that even say Department of Homeland Security emblazoned on them patrolling the bay and mouth of the river. The Port Authority boats are also out in force. I hear on the news that they are also out in the Gulf on the other side of Pinellas and further south along the coast.

The foreign boats that dock at the Port of Tampa are subject to search and seizure. Their crews are not allowed to leave their boats at all, not even when the Seaman’s Ministry said that they would house a few at a time to allow them to use their communications facility to call or email home to let their families know how they fare. I have a feeling the powers that be would close the Port completely if it could be done without creating even more economic chaos for the unions. Or maybe they are just afraid of looking like what they are - fascists.

I think they are intentionally making Tampa, and to a lesser extent the entire state of Florida, into an example they can hold up to others. Either play by our rules, do what we say, or we’ll bankrupt you into obedience. I don’t want to think about that part too much because I start having trouble breathing. I’ve read about this sort of stuff in history books but I never thought I would ever live to experience it. Kings would travel their lands giving fiefs and land owners the “privilege” of hosting the monarch and his entire entourage. The cost of the privilege could empty a family’s coffers and starve them making them dependent on the charity of the king. I know it isn’t exactly the same thing going on here but it sure seems like some of the same tactics.

Oh and don’t get the bickering going between the classes and ethnic groups; you’ll start world war III without even trying. The blacks blame the whites, the whites blame a lot of the minorities. The Hispanics blame the blacks and the rich whites. The rich of all colors blame the poor of all colors and vice versa. Everyone blames the illegal immigrants and the illegal immigrants are doing the best they can to escape but finding it difficult to travel with martial law in place. In other words, everyone is nuts; and, they all want a piece of local law enforcement because they believe that’s who started this mess.

Then in comes politics and it’s the democrats blaming the republicans, the republicans blaming the democrats, the conservatives blaming the liberal progressives and the liberal progressives blaming everyone – including their parents – for their financial and psychological misery … everyone but themselves naturally.

On a more micro level things are just as bad. Even if I was free to travel I can’t justify using the gas. They’ve cut the amount of fuel you can buy at the pump to twenty dollars and even with price controls in place that isn’t much and for some people that means going to the pump every day just to have enough fuel to get to and from work. Despite the price controls, or maybe because of them, the feds have levied a surcharge on the gas to pay for our own occupation.

And yes, it feels like an occupation. I can’t remember why Daddy and Papa were discussing it … and I can’t even remember what “it” was … but I remember the feel of the conversation. I also remember the following statement: “You can’t enjoy your freedoms if you are dead but you can’t enjoy living if you aren’t free. The Constitution is supposed to provide a balanced solution to that conundrum by stating the explicit rights and laws of the land but men will manage to destroy that one of these days.”

It makes me wonder if those days have arrived.

Dear Diary,

I’ve given up waiting for Cal to have time. I’ve also given up the idea of being able to afford the lumber to fix the porch much less being able to get to the store to buy it.

It isn’t Cal’s fault. All area LEOs are working double shifts. Sometimes he is so tired he can’t risk driving home and he just collapses where ever there is space at the department or substation depending on where he ends his second shift.

This might have gone off much more easily for the feds if they’d picked some nice Yankee city that didn’t mind putting up with more new laws and heavier application of existing laws. But they aren’t up north where the weather is cooling rapidly and people don’t mind staying inside. They are here in the Deep South where it is still warm enough that people don’t mind being outside and creating a mess.

Rather than quiet things down martial law is making things worse. And trouble is starting to pop up in other cities now too. Some of the mainstream and cable media outlets just can’t seem to bring themselves to understand it. The government is just here to help us after all. Yeah right.

And for those media outlets and bloggers that dare to raise a dissenting opinion, a few have mysteriously gone dark. Some pulled their own plug but not all of them. I stopped trying to keep up with it all after a cameraman accidentally on purpose panned back from a news desk on one of the cable networks normally considered conservative by most people and low and behold there were some uniformed men standing there with some serious fire power backing them up … the DHS insignia clearly visible.

The whole incident was spun so much it is a wonder the cream didn’t turn to butter. Apparently they were just there for an interview … no wait … they were there for an inspection … oh, it was all just a misunderstanding, see they were there to protect the media personality because he’d been threatened. Uh huh. And I’m going to believe that this side of Heaven’s Gate. Not likely. And now the Department of Justice is involved and the cameraman, media personality (who refused to play ball with the spun story), and the owners of the network are all under investigation. How convenient.

I get so flustered when I think about it that sometimes all I can do is put it away, put it out of my mind, and focus on my personal problems and try and find some creative solution.

Dear Diary,

The porch was a lot easier than I thought it would be and it was all thanks to the hurricane that seems nearly a life time ago. When they were rehabbing the coast they didn’t bother cleaning up beforehand. If something was in their way they would just throw it up into the bushes that lined the area. A lot of rich people complained about it but they were basically given the finger and told if they wanted it done to organize their own cleanup crews. Some did, most didn’t, or all they did was clean up in front of their own property.

Well I hadn’t. I kept meaning to but it isn’t like I’ve got a lot of spare daylight hours and no way am I digging around in stuff at night when I can’t see if there is a snake, scorpion, river rat or some other biting or stinging member of the varmint population. Well, needs must when the devil drives. With a less than cooperative Feena strapped to my back in her old sling riding me like a bareback bronco I went along the road and collected the straightest pieces of scrap lumber I could find. Couldn’t have ants or termites either and if it was pressure treated that was even better. It took four or five wheel barrow trips but I managed to scavenge enough wood to make most of the repairs.

I couldn’t replace the main column that was at the head of the porch steps so scrapped out as much of the burnt wood as I could, sanded what was left and then filled the resulting cavity with wood putty that I had bought in preparation of doing the rest of the insulation on the outside walls. Well, that’s unlikely to happen until Juvember at this rate so I put the putty to a different use.

It took me a couple of pieces to figure out what I was doing despite having a “Mr. Fix-It” book opened as I was working; but soon I had a rhythm down. And lucky for me the property management company had left the remainder of the paint behind after they had finished and there was enough porch paint to hide the repair … well mostly hide the repair. The paint had aged out in the heat of the barn and wasn’t a perfect match but I figured I could crochet a big rag rug and hide it completely. All that matters is that no one is going to break a leg stepping through the wood that was there before.

I was outside cleaning up when I heard Cal’s truck; being diesel it has a distinct sound. Instead of stopping where he normally does he drove on around the house to where I was standing. He looked in the first good mood he’d had sense … well, for quite a while now. He looked at the porch then at me then back at the porch and said, “I’ll ask how you managed that in a little bit. Help me get this stuff in the house before that stupid drone makes its way here. Oh good, you’ve already covered the panels.”

“Drone? They don’t usually come until later in the day.”

“Uh, well, this one might … I’ll tell you in a minute, let’s just get this stuff in real quick.”

I so did not like the sound of that. “This” turned out to be several card board boxes, some of them heavy. As soon as the boxes were on the rear porch he moved his truck and then came back to help me finish moving the boxes inside.

“Let’s just go ahead and close the shutters.”

“Most of them are already shut,” I told him suspiciously. “Someone was burning something and the wind was blowing a rank smell this way. And don’t get me off topic. Cal … you gonna tell me what gives?”

“In a minute,” he answered. Then he ripped a sheet off of pad of paper I keep in the junk drawer and clicked the pen from his pocket and wrote, “Call me paranoid but I think PP is tailing me.”

I looked at him and it felt like my eyes were going to roll out of their sockets. I opened my mouth and shut it and then opened and shut it again. I must have looked like a beached fish … I certainly felt like one.

OK, I am so not going to go word for word the rest of our “conversation” as it would be too irritating. It was hard enough to do it the first time around.

The boxes contained groceries. I nearly flipped when I saw them. I wanted to be happy but the way Cal was acting just didn’t ring right. We put them away quickly and as we did I realized that most of it was something that we would have normally need a ration card for – another new rule meant to control the flow of things in the county.

The purported reason for the rationing was fairness. Yeah, there’s the F word again. With ration cards no one got too much while someone else got too little or nothing. Everyone got treated equally and fairly. Yeah right. Of course they didn’t. I’d already heard reports on the radio that people had been caught selling their ration cards for things like drugs or other things just as illegal.

So the question became where did these groceries come from. When I found out I was really upset. He wasn’t doing a thing illegal … that just is not who Cal is. He was moonlighting and doing some security work at a food distributor’s warehouse. On those nights I thought he was sleeping at work he was actually standing guard while food trucks came in and went out. Before I had a chance to absorb that he went on to explain to me through notes and hand motions that Percival Perfect was now working for DHS … and they’d had a bit of a tiff.

“What do you mean he is working for DHS?”

“I mean he’s working for DHS, don’t ask me how or why. I don’t know and could care less.”

“Then why the tiff?” At the look on his face I added, “I mean besides the fact that he is a jerk.”

He sighed and wrote, “He was complaining at me that I was holding up the divorce papers.” I gave him a questioning look. “I know, I told him the hold up wasn’t on my end. Her lawyer keeps coming back threatening to ask for alimony. I told him she is the one that keeps changing things, not me. Every time she tries to take it before a judge the judge throws it back because she had already signed the original agreement and the judge had approved it.”

“What did he say to that?”

“Called me a liar. I told him if he didn’t believe me to check the court records because I knew he had access to them even though they are technically supposed to be hidden from the public.”

“And?”

“And I think he did because he was really angry about an hour later. Then I get a call from Lily screaming at me and I finally shouted her down and said that it wasn’t my fault that she’d been lying to her lover and stringing him along while she tried to get a better financial settlement out of me.”

“Whoops.”

“Yeah. I hadn’t really meant anyone to overhear it but …” He shrugged after I read his sentence and raised my eyebrows.

Then I wrote, “Did he actually threaten you?”

He shook his head and wrote, “Of course not. He may be stupid but he is still clever and wily enough not to show his hand to anyone else. He buzzed me with the drone during a demonstration and tried to play it off as a joke and then explained how it was possible for someone to be specifically targeted, tailed, and observed all without their knowing it. He said it pointedly enough that he made some of the guys uncomfortable. And Josh completely understood where he was going with the implied threat and he and I have had a long talk.”

“Did you report him?!”

“PP? To who?” he shrugged. “And with what kind of evidence?”

“So are we supposed to spend the rest of our lives with the shutters closed and locked and passing notes back and forth like mutes?!!” And yes, I included the exclamation points in my note.

He shrugged again and then his stomach growled. I got up and flipped on the TV, not loud enough to disturb Feena who was upstairs playing in the room we had emptied just so she would have some place kid proof to cut up in, but louder than we normally had it. “I made pinto beans and rice for dinner. You might as well eat so you can get some rest.”

After a pause he said quietly, “I didn’t mean to bring trouble.”

I rolled my eyes. “I could give a rip about what PP thinks, wants, or anything else. Let him buzz around like the little German cockroach he is. What I am upset about is that you worked what had to be a lot of extra hours, making yourself so tired you’re nearly sick, and you didn’t even bother telling me.”

After raising his eyebrows like he’d just heard a kitten roar he tried to rationalize it by saying, “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

“You in a hospital bed or a coffin is not the kind of surprise I want or need Cal.”

He blinked at me. “You’re exaggerating.”

“No I’m not. Have you taken a good look in the mirror lately? I’ve taken your uniform pants in twice. You’re going to need a new belt if you lose any more weight. You are putting yourself at risk when you didn’t need to. And now you tell me it was for a surprise. How do you think that makes me feel to know that you are killing yourself like that to give me something nice?!”

I had to calm myself down before I picked up the glass for his tea or I would have shattered it. He came over and put his hand on my arm forcing me to stop what I was doing. “Hey … I’m OK.” I made a face but he continued on. “I’m tired and need some sleep. Everyone does. I’ve lost some weight. We all have … even you. I would not have done it except it was a chance to get a step ahead Aria. You haven’t said anything but I can tell you’re worried. You look at the stuff in the pantry and you see that more is going out than is coming in right now. I had a chance to alleviate some of that worry and I took it.”

I closed my eyes and knowing that he just was not going to get it I tried to let it go. But not before I gave it one last shot. “Cal … I don’t need someone to take care of me and be my Keeper. I need a friend, someone I can trust and talk to. I need YOU. I know we bicker worse than real brother and sister do sometimes but … I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you. And if it was somehow my fault …” All I could do was shake my head because my voice was starting to crack.

Cal shook his head. “Hey you. We’ll get through this and nothing is going to happen to either one of us. I didn’t mean to worry you but it was a chance I might not get again and I took it … and I’d do it again. You need to understand that and accept it.”

Sighing and throwing the dish rag in the sink I said, “I know you would and I’m done beating a dead horse; you are who you are and I shouldn’t complain because most of the time it’s cool. Just next time … if there is a next time … tell me. OK?”

He nodded and then ate his dinner, took a shower, and finally crashed for some much needed and well-deserved sleep.

RVM45 said:

Personally, I have a lot of Phun mismatching Stereotypes.

I might tell the German:

"If I ever get to Germany, I want to try Fugu; see a Sumo Match, and Kiss the Blarney Stone."

That will set the Politikally Korrect back on their Heels!

.....RVM45

Click to expand...

Don't forget to go run with the bulls in the Outback while you're there, but leave the gorillas alone.

Mother Hen thank you for your lovely story.

Thanks for the update,
It feels like the calm before the storm!

Jeepcats3

Thank you.

ACK! I finally got caught up. Fantastic story, but now I'm going to join in the MOAR chorus.

Tomorrow being father's day I may be scarce so I'm going to up load tomorrow's bits tonight. I hope everyone is able to enjoy a wonderful father's day with the the men in their lives.

Dear Diary,

I had to look it up, it’s just been bugging the tar out of me. Daddy and Papa would probably be upset that I had to; on the other hand they always told me to never be too proud to ask or search for answers when you had questions, even if you thought they sounded stupid.

I needed to know what martial law is supposed to be. After looking into it I figured out what had been bothering me so much. According to the encyclopedia, dictionary, and a couple of other sources … martial law is the temporary imposition of military rule by military authorities over designated regions whereby civilians can be prosecuted by military authorities under both civilian and military law. But I look around and I don’t see that it is the military who is enforcing the majority of the martial law around here, it is the alphabet groups out of DC which means that it isn’t a military authority running the show but a federal one. Even the military seems to be under some duress in this situation. Something is very wrong with this.

There was a brief mention that the pentagon closed itself off from the Executive Branch … basically the President and the Whitehouse and that some members of Congress (the Legislative Branch) were acting as go betweens, trying to smooth things over. There hasn’t been much mention of it since but I get the feeling by reading between the lines of what legitimate news we do manage to get that the situation isn’t improving. Someone thinks that the President is overstepping his Constitutional authority and they are trying to assure that the country doesn’t devolve into civil war … or so thinks Cal.

I mean there hasn’t been a real set of checks and balances in years, at least not like there is supposed to be. Executive Orders issued by the President have usurped power from both the Judicial and Legislative branches since before I was born. If I hadn’t been brought up to know that this was bad then I probably wouldn’t recognize it. I know a lot of the kids I grew up with didn’t – probably still don’t – understand just how bad it is when checks and balances are gone. Without it, and with a less than ethical person heading the Executive Branch, we wind up with something that is looking more and more like a dictatorship … or at least less and less like the Republic we are supposed to be.

For now there is nothing that I can do about it. I say for now because I don’t know what the future holds. I’m not even sure what I’m prepared to do if an opportunity does present itself. I’m the only one that Feena has … besides Cal. And God help me for saying so but I wonder at how eager Cal is sometimes for something to happen. It isn’t that he is exactly looking forward to it; he’s just looks forward to what we have now remaining in place even less.

If, God forbid, a revolution of some type does happen I am fairly certain that he’ll want to be in the thick of it. I don’t know why I am so certain of that. He’s never said it. But to be honest I’m too … too scared to ask. I’m too afraid to hear what his answer would be to the question. So I put it off and I try my best on one hand not to think of it and on the other to learn to live with it and try and plan for the day he might not be here.

At home I’m taking as much advantage of the ration cards as I can although I can’t use Cal’s, you have to show picture ID and it has to match the name on the ration EBT card. On top of that there is a regional ID in the works, perhaps a national one. I’m not quite sure what to make of it because they are talking amnesty for all illegal aliens at the same time. The idea is for them to accept amnesty or to get out. If they accept it they will owe the government “x” amount of dollars for every year they’ve been in the country illegally. If they don’t accept amnesty and don’t get out (at their expense) and are caught … well the implied threat was greater than I remember it ever being to enforce the existing immigration laws. I guess now that it is their idea it becomes important. And it also means that with amnesty they may think they have a lot of new voters that can … oh whatever. I hate this kind of politicking, it always gives me a rancid headache.

I have to tell you that down at the carneceria there is a lot of hushed talk; hushed so that even I can’t hear it. This makes me sad because it says that I’ve become an outsider. Whether it is because of Cal being a cop or something inherent in me that they were willing to overlook before and cannot now, I don’t know. I’ve lived here longer than most of them, I’ve given them my trade just like my father and grandfather before me … and still I’m not “inside.”

In turn it has made me leery. Who do I trust? Dorrie is even quieter than before. She avoids some of my questions before I even ask them. Even Cal asked the other day what was up with her, if she was sick or something. I want to ask until I get a straight answer, but just like with Cal, I’m stuck because I’m afraid of knowing what the answer is.

I know that some of this is actually going back to the old way I used to think when things with Daniel were just starting to go wrong. I remember all the things that Pastor used to tell me, that I had to stop always thinking everything was my fault for two reasons. One because that was disregarding God’s authority; and two, because it was taking on too much authority for myself, in essence making myself the center of the universe and the cause of everything. I pulled out the old counseling pamphlets that I got during Celebrate Recovery and I’m rereading them. A refresher is helping. I think I’ve caught it early enough that I can avoid most of the self-made misery that I invested in before. But it is so hard not to get discouraged and not to feel like people are going to leave me again.

Maybe they need to leave. Maybe something in me is driving them; I’m not always easy to get along with. Maybe I’m not providing something they need. I would if I just knew what it was. Or maybe I’m just incapable of …

That’s enough. Deep, calming breath. Refocus that thought train Aria. Find the positives even when things are beyond your control. What constructive things are you doing? What are you doing to help yourself?

OK, here goes; it may not exactly seem like a positive but it is to me because it says that I’ve still got options. I’m trying to max out my debit card use every day but on non-food items. I don’t like using my debit card because all of my transactions can be traced but there are limits on cash withdrawals on a weekly and monthly basis. And it is next to impossible to cash a check these days because the IRS wants all paychecks to go direct deposit. But I’m getting creative and am trying to overcome the new additional rules.

This situation has been a big problem for the under the table workers and the immigrants that rarely have bank accounts. It is also a problem for people that have been blacklisted from getting a bank account due to bad credit. If I think Cal and I are in a world of hurt, that’s nothing compared to a lot of other people. At least he and I have separate bank accounts at different financial institutions; this helps us get around the new rules a bit. It is a positive that our strategy has started to pay off. Our buying power as a team is greater.

Hard cash is being squeezed out of the local economy. I don’t know for sure what it is like in other places but it would seem to be the same way based on news reports. The government keeps issuing reports of how much money we are all saving by going “cash less” but in truth we’d save more money if the government would stop doing its ridiculous studies and wasting time on reports that aren’t much more than reprints of what the people in power want them to say.

Dear Diary,

I have to record what happened today and it was all thanks to Percival “Pucker up” Perfect. That guy has such a brown nose he’s practically one solid color from head to toe.

Cal and I shop together in one vehicle for several reasons which should be obvious to anyone with half a brain, but more on that as I go along. We locked everything down tight and left early this morning to try and get the shopping done quickly before the nasties rolled out of bed and hit the streets. They stay up half the night making trouble despite the curfew and then like to sleep in late so they can do it again the next night.

We took my car because compared to Cal’s truck it sips gas. It is also easier to hide things in the trunk; no one goes around showing what they have these days, you never know who you are going to set off.

Of course Cal has to use a shoe horn to get in and out of my car but that’s just the way it is and he doesn’t laugh at the situation too hard though the passenger seat of the car is practically in the back seat so his knees aren’t up in his chest. We stopped at the produce market – a sad affair with so many of the booths gone or empty. I got a little bit of everything that I could afford but it was mostly just the local tropicals as usual: soursop, sweetsop, atemoya, velvet apple, pineapple guava, governor’s plum, acerola, mango, avocado, canistel, pomegranate, ambarella, jicama, pecan, calamondin, lemon, ambersweet oranges, cara cara navel oranges, navel oranges, and passionfruit. Oranges were coming in which I was happy to see and even though I had a bunch of trees already, ours wouldn’t be ripe for another month and they’d need a cold spell to sweeten them up.

Actually I shouldn’t say just tropicals as there were a few other things starting to show up. I got a few avocados and eggplants. Cal didn’t say anything but he wasn’t exactly jumping for joy either. I’ll teach him, avocado sandwiches are to die for and I know how to bake eggplant so that it isn’t the least bit mushy or slimy. They had cucumbers and I picked up a small bag of them in case my vines don’t bear. Right now I have a lot of blooms but that is about it. I could have gotten bell peppers too but I’ve already gotten the first few from the plants that I set; they are smaller than what was at the produce stands but beggars can’t be choosers. What I got a bunch of was mushrooms and onions. Cal loves onions anyway he can get them but even he looked a little scandalized at me buying a fifty pound bag of onions.

“Are you sure Aria?”

“Trust me. If you want salsa, spaghetti sauce, chili, onion soup, fried onion rings …”

“Ok, ok,” he finally laughed. “Just so long as you’re sure.”

“I’m sure, plus it is cheaper to buy them in bulk like this.” Actually I wish I could have bought more onions but maybe the next time I go … if there is a next time.

From there we went to the Barter Bizarre. Cal stayed with the car – too many people appear to know he is a police officer – because he didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable or cause trouble for the churches. He was also willing to keep Feena but then Josh pulled up with Dorrie and her mother and I said it would be silly to try and have a guy talk with Feena doing her best to get their attention.

There were a lot of artisans and craft people at the bizarre and I grabbed a few bars of homemade soap, some candles, and I also picked up some yarn and some needle and thread. I found some more seeds but I had to be careful because not all of them looked like they had been stored very well … some of the packages were faded and some were obviously water damaged. Dorrie and I didn’t talk much; we were both being treated differently as word got around that we had cops in the family. She also seemed to have a lot on her mind. It was actually a relief to leave.

As we went back to the cars Dorrie’s mother said, “Well, I’ve never been insulted so completely. People I’ve known my whole life act like I’m a stranger just because we rent space to a police officer.”

It was upsetting but I wouldn’t tell Cal until we were back on the road heading to wally world.

‘They did what?!”

“Don’t snap Cal; there’s nothing you could have done.”

“This is getting ridiculous.”

I shrugged as I carefully crossed an intersection. “It’s been ridiculous and is now heading into absurd. People are just scared and they express it in stupid ways. These same people are the ones that will call in the middle of the night that someone is trying to break in their house and expect you to be there before they’ve even hung up, and no apology or embarrassment when it turns out to be an old tom cat in the garbage cans. I refuse to let that kind of idiocy get in my way. Dorrie’s mom may not go back to the bizarre but no one is going to scare me off. If they have something they want to sell that I’m willing to buy then we’ll work around their irrational prejudices.”

“Irrational prejudices. Is that what they call it these days?”

I snorted a giggle at the look on his face. “Actually they call it something much ruder but with Feena in the car and turning into a Class A mimic I’m being careful what she hears.” Since we’d already had one such incident where she’d overheard a particular word Cal had used when he’d busted a couple of knuckles while he was under the hood of his truck changing the oil filter he knew exactly what I meant.

We finally pulled into the parking lot of wally world. There were a lot of people wandering the parking lot but most of them only had one or two bags in their hands as they came out.

That’s when Cal says, “Aria, maybe we should split the list and shop separately.”

“Why? What if I can’t reach something on a shelf?”

He snorted, “You aren’t that short.”

“I know but they keep pushing things to the back of the top shelf like they don’t want anyone to reach them.”

“Then we’ll hook up and I’ll go back around. I just think it might be better if we don’t pile everything in the same cart.”

That’s when I began to understand what he meant. “Oh. You want us to look like everyone else.”

“See, I knew you were smart.”

I gave him a look that would have burnt toast and told him, “You’ll find out just how smart I am if you miss a single item on your half of the list. And don’t go picking up any junk either, especially not for Feena. I cannot believe you have her hooked on marshmallows. What happens when all the marshmallows run out?”

From the back seat her majesty demanded, “I sum mushmells. I sum mushmells. I sum mushmells.”

I glared at Cal but he just grinned. “Don’t look at me; you’re the one that said the M word.”

It just so happened I’d made the brilliant decision to stick a few miniature marshmallows in a Ziploc so I could give her a couple like a Scooby Snack and we finally grabbed a buggy and started to head into the store. Started being the operative word.

We walked through the first two double doors and as I was passing into the store and Cal was grabbing a buggy for himself we hear, “Deputy Lowery, what a surprise to see you here.”

I turned and looked for who would be lame-brained enough to shout out like that. I was right on the first guess … ol’ Percival Perfect, only he wasn’t alone. A number of other DHS personnel stood with him. In a voice full of sorrow he said, “I just wanted you to know that there are no hard feelings.”

I looked at Cal who was looking at PP with a carefully blank expression. I wanted to ask what it was about but Cal had gone granite and was holding himself very still. PP noticed and said in a falsely contrite tone, “Oh … Oh I apologize, you … you obviously haven’t gotten the call from your lawyer yet. I’m really surprised. Lily couldn’t wait to call me; the judge signed the papers this morning, she’s finally free.”

God help my mouth. Out popped, “Yeah, she could have been free a lot sooner if she hadn’t kept irritating the judge trying to change the paperwork.”

I don’t think he thought I was dumb enough to insert myself into the conversation. He underestimated the fact that I as completely able to be stupid at the drop of a hat.

He gave me superior look and said, “That was merely a misunderstanding.”

Num num. My foot tasted so good the first time I decided for another taste. I said, “No. That was the judge getting tired of her wasting the court’s time with supercilious motions. Lily was an adulterous wife trying to take her husband to the cleaners and the judge saw through it. The fact that you were the one she had her last affair with just has made it more complicated for Cal because of your father using his interdepartmental influence.”

Cal said sharply, “That’s enough Aria. Lily … Lily didn’t want to be married to me. She made it obvious in a hundred different ways; I just fought the obvious for too many years.”

One look at Cal’s face was enough to make me mentally cringe. He hurriedly ushered me into the store. I wanted to apologize but Cal separated from me as soon as we’d gotten passed the “hello – buy me” stuff they put right at the entrance. I wasn’t feeling very good; in fact I was nauseous. I’d blurted out instead of thought first. I was too old to be acting that way. I wanted to find Cal but knew it was a bad idea. I would have to hurry if I didn’t want to make things worse. At the rate that Cal was moving he’d have everything on his list before I got half way through with mine.

And in fact I was half way through with mine when a female DHS agent walked up beside me and said, “Mrs. Lowery, would you come with me please.”

Since the please was actually just rhetorical I followed her lead but was scared, nearly as scared as I’d ever been. I was wondering why I couldn’t have just kept my mouth closed. I pushed my buggy to the old layaway area and was asked to sit down in a chair stationed in front of a table.

“Mrs. Lowery …”

“Can I ask how you know my name?” I asked hesitantly.

She obviously didn’t appreciate questions but she arched an eyebrow. Then it clicked. “Oh … Percy.”

She twitched her nose and then continued. “Now as I was saying, Mrs. Lowery that is quite an accusation you made against one of our agents.”

I sighed. “If you want me to apologize I will. I’m … I’m a little hypersensitive where family is concerned.”

“Family?”

“Cal. He’s been hurt enough.”

With a carefully blank face she said, “I understand that you and Deputy Lowery have a relationship of long standing.”

When the innuendo clicked I sat up straighter but determined that I wasn’t going to cause any more trouble than I already had. Carefully I told her, “Our relationship is one of family and mutual support.”

“Could you explain that please.” Again, the please was only rhetorical.

I sighed. “Lily and Cal were a huge support to me when my husband … when he … look, I suppose you know what my husband did.”

She said, “He was a drug addict and killed his parents.”

I winced. “He was a severally brain damaged drug addict. And before he killed his parents he tried to … tried to kill me. In addition to the … to the physical injuries I suffered, it caused me to go into premature labor with Feena.” I nodded to my daughter who was chowing on the last of the mushmells to keep her quiet. “Both she and I were in critical care for almost two months. During that time Daniel – my husband – was confined by the state but he escaped and you know the rest from there. Lily and Cal provided my primary emotional and mental support during that time. They were also my primary contact with the outside world as the doctor’s didn’t deem it very good for my health to have a lot of visitors.”

“Were you aware of the stress their marriage was under?”

Quietly I said, “I knew something was going on because Lily was pulling away. I thought maybe it was me or maybe Feena … she didn’t want kids and once upon a time the family had given her a hard time about it but she and Cal had worked things out between them. He wanted her more than kids.”

“When did you become aware of the storminess of the marriage.”

“It wasn’t stormy; a couple of times Lily said that Cal just didn’t know how to fight and was boring. I thought she was playing at the time but maybe not. They were in counseling and I as well as my sister in laws thought things were getting better. At least until Lily pulled out of their second honeymoon at the last second and told Cal to take someone else on the cruise.”

“You’re very … free … with details Mrs. Lowery.”

I shrugged, resigned to the interview and determined to tell the truth. “It’s common knowledge. Plus it is probably in Cal and Lily’s divorce papers to prove that the marriage was irretrievably. It isn’t rocket science to know you guys can look it up any time you want to and verify what I’m saying.”

She didn’t say anything to that for a moment then looking at some notes she asked, “When did Deputy Lowery move in with you?”

“Actually he didn’t really move in with me at first. He’d lent me his travel trailer to live in while the house I live in now was under repair to bring it up to code. When he came home and caught Lily in bed with yet another man everything just fell apart and Cal couldn’t take it one more time. He packed up and moved out.”

“Another man?” she asked like I’d caught her off guard.

“Yeah. When Cal caught your agent in bed with his wife that was the third time that I know of that Lily was unfaithful to Cal.”

He … he caught them … in the act?”

“Yeah. That’s how your agent wound up buck naked on the lawn outside while Lily and Cal had a real verbal blow up that the whole neighborhood could hear. You probably know that Lily’s dad is kinda rich – some hobnobber in the construction industry with some funky connections – and he sent a lawyer after Cal. Your agent’s father is … well he has his own connections and I guess as a father he just wanted to protect his son so I’m guessing he called in some favors, or at least that is what was said. Cal got stationed out here in Ruskin as a result. It just made the only sense possible at the time for him to move into his trailer since it was already parked and set up out here.”

She was silent for a moment like she was digesting something. Then she asked, “But he now sleeps with you.”

I made a face. “Not the way you’re thinking. It was a matter of economics. The price of gas made it hard for Cal to keep the generator going in his trailer and it got to be like an oven in there. When some guy was willing to buy it Cal jumped at the chance. The only reason he didn’t go find an apartment some place is because … well … I guess you can see I’m occasionally still a pretty big mess. He hangs around to help me keep up with things. Not to mention with prices and stuff … aw, you know what I mean. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it but if Cal wasn’t around I don’t know if I could afford to stay in the house I grew up in. He and some of his buddies from work help with the heavy lifting when something gets broken … it was a mess after the hurricane … and all they ask is to have a dock to fish off of. They haven’t been able to do much of that lately but … I don’t know … I feel safer too. You know what it’s like for most women that are alone and I don’t know, some guys just don’t get that I’m not ready to … er … fish. I don’t know if I ever will again. Cal understands because of what he’s been going through with Lily. We just kind of … protect each other, just in different ways. Like brother and sister.”

“You are very free with details Mrs. Lowery.”

I nodded. “You’ve already said that once. And like I said, I’m not saying anything you couldn’t confirm through public records or just by asking around. It is what it is, kinda stupid to try and make it something it isn’t.”

She made some notes, occasionally stopping to look at me. It made me so nervous I finally asked, “How much trouble am I in? For mouthing off I mean?”

She raised her eyebrows and said, “You aren’t in any trouble Mrs. Lowery that I’m aware of. Of course if anything you’ve said doesn’t check out …”

“Despite the way I acted back there, I’m not stupid. I’ve got my daughter to think of and it would be a pretty poor payback to embarrass Cal any more than I already have.”

“Wait here please.”

So I waited. She wasn’t gone five minutes before coming back with an envelope. “Just sign here and you are good to go.”

“Sign what?”

“Sign for your additional ration cards.”

I gave her a suspicious look. “I didn’t ask for ration cards, I’ve already got one per the new rules.”

“I’m well aware of that Mrs. Lowery. These are additional ration cards. You use them like gift cards.” When I still didn’t seem to understand she seemed to think she was dealing with someone mentally deficient. “Mrs. Lowery, we provide our community contacts with ration cards as a matter of policy.”

“Why? And when did I become a community contact? Don’t take this the wrong way but this is the last contact I want to have on this.”

She closed her eyes briefly like she was looking for patience. “Mrs. Lowery it is policy.”

“Policy for what?”

“For our community contacts.”

We looked at each other and then since she still wasn’t talking any language I understood I asked, “Can I go? If Cal has noticed that I’m missing his going to get worried.”

“After you sign for these ration cards.”

“But I didn’t ask for any ration cards.”

From behind me a voice said, “Take the cards Aria.”

I jumped up and turned around. “Cal! I am sooo sorry that I put my big fat food in my mouth and …”

He cracked a small smile. “It’s ok.”

“No it’s not because I talked and answered questions but I swear I never asked for anything Cal … I didn’t … only I think she thinks I did because …”

Cal said, “Aria, take the cards. If you don’t they get in trouble.”

“In trouble? Why?”

“Because it’s policy.”

“Policy for what?”

The female agent sighed and said to Cal, “This is where I lost her every time.”

Cal looked at me and gave a small smile. “That’s because she doesn’t get the routine.” To me he said, “The agents have a policy and procedure they have to follow. When they conduct an interview and the facts check, then they issue ration cards.”

I made a face. “For telling the truth?”

“Essentially,” he answered.

“That makes no sense. Why pay someone for telling the truth?”

“Don’t think of it as payment, think of it as a reward.”

“You shouldn’t get a reward for doing what you’re supposed to do. Doing what you are supposed to should be reward in and of itself.”

The female agent and the male agent that had accompanied Cal looked at me like I was suffering some form of dementia.

“Aria.”

“What?”

“Sign for the cards so the nice agents don’t lose their jobs. The longer you stand there arguing the longer it is going to take us to get out of here.”

“Oh.”

So I signed for the cards not really looking at them. I stuck them in my purse and then we went out, finished our shopping, and then left the store.”

After we had loaded everything into the car and pulled out I looked at Cal and said, “That was sooo strange.”

Cal burst out laughing and laughed nearly a whole mile before finally catching his breath. “Oh Aria … you are something else.”

“No I’m not, I’m me. And I still don’t understand those ration cards. I didn’t do anything but tell the truth. And I’m not sure I like being called a community contact.”

He continued to chortle. “Don’t worry about it, it doesn’t mean anything; just a way for them to justify their screwy policies and procedures. We’ll spend the ration cards and we’ll spend them on something we need. How much did they give you?”

I answered, “I don’t know; they’re in my purse.”

When he pulled them out and told me how much I nearly punched the breaks. “What?! That’s almost a whole month’s worth of points!! Oh my gosh, we have to go back, there’s been some kind of mistake or they are testing me or something! Cal …”

“Relax Aria before you get us in an accident; it’s the same amount they gave me.”

“Same amount they gave you? Oh no … I got you in trouble too.”

Cal shook his head. “Aria, why are you being such a ding bat over this? Neither of us is in trouble. It’s the same amount they give other people they interview. It is supposed to build good will.”

Not happy at being called a ding bat I grumped a little. “I’m not being a ding bat. I just don’t understand it.”

“I’m sure you don’t … at least not the way your average person would.”

“Well geez, thanks so much.”

“Don’t get upset. I just mean that you don’t expect things for doing what you are supposed to. In this case you told the truth and likely confirmed some stuff that they were already looking into or were aware of. For the most part those agents expect everyone to lie or that everyone is going to expect something for doing what they are supposed to. You aren’t like that.”

After a while even I get tired of going over the same old tracks so we agreed that it was silly for DHS to do what they did but that we’d have to disagree on why. All I know is that we now have almost two months extra ration points to use and it is all because of Percival Perfect.