Story Broken Yet Rising (Complete)

Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________

Chapter 96​


Most rifles hold three to five rounds. The goober bastard that shot Knox was carrying a Ruger 10/22 which holds ten rounds. One round was used on Knox and a couple more were gone as well. That left seven. I had seven shots I could make between our temporary hiding spot and getting the kiddos to the relative safety of the fence. I knew I had to make them count. Every lesson I’d ever taken at Sheepdog and from Mrs. Shepherd and her Trooper cousin was playing through my head in a fast loop.

“Got the kid stabilized. Time to move it people!”

Three of us took point; two men, one of whom was older than Dad would have been. But, it was me that shot first. A girl that came shrieking at us with something raised in her hand. Didn’t care what it was, it was something she was using as a weapon. Body shot to the chest. It caused our group to stumble. Bull crap on that.

“Move!”

All seven of my shots were either center of chest or close enough that it didn’t make much difference to my target’s ultimate condition. And when that seven were gone, I switched to the rear and used the rifle as a mean club. I took special care to take out any female that came at us. Sometimes when you’re “the girl,” you just gotta do what you gotta do. Let the guys take care of the guys, it was my job to take care of the girls, so they didn’t get a chance to use that gender-card to catch a break or get a lighter sentence.

It seemed to take forever but I’ve since been told that we actually moved faster than was expected. We hadn’t even made it all the way to the fence before two more groups came out. A medic who immediately took over Knox’s care, a woman that came out and grabbed Nat up and Daniel’s hand and pulled them faster, a few who gave the rest of us cover and another group that went to go get more of the wounded who were being surrounded again.

I ran until I caught up with the medic and the kids. “Daniel … I’m coming back. I just have to do this thing. Pay back these people that helped us.”

“Got it covered Mina. I’ll call Uncle Derek.”

I pulled him and Nat to me, kissed their heads, and then turned to the medic who had joined the one working on Knox.

“It’s just shock, I think,” he told me working fast. "But we need to stop this bleeding. We're moving them to a safer location and then to the hospital in Lake City."

I ripped the security bag that I keep around neck that holds our papers and tossed it to him. “Derek Musgrove. Do you know him?”

“Emergency Responder draftee?”

“Yes.”

“Went to school with him. You … oh shit. You’re Muffin Girl and these are the kids he’s always talking about.”

“Yeah. Get them to him.”

“Yeah, sure but … hey! Where are you going?!”

“Explain it Daniel!” I yelled as prayed that God forgive me and to protect Knox and the others and ran up and took a rifle from someone coming through the fence.

“Give me that one and take this one, it’s been reloaded. You take the sluts down.” I was stopped before I could go through the cut in the fence. It was the woman who’d run out and helped to bring in Nat and Daniel. I didn’t stop to give my customary snark-bomb because I was too busying doing just what she said.
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________

Chapter 97​


They say war is hell. Well, yeah. If it wasn’t I have a feeling people would play that same stupid game over and over every day just for the pure adrenalin rush of it. And some would say what we did that day was not war. But I say it was part war, a battle at least, against odds that had been against us, being fought by many people that really had no business being soldiers at their age. Some of them would have been at home sitting in a porch rocker, bouncing great grandbabies on their knees, and maybe wondering when they were going home so they could have a nap to recuperate. Not all of us of course, but none of them were draft bait age either. Most were men that were there because they lived nearby or had family or friends as vendors and customers. Some had simply come as the call went out into the community.

“By God, not this time. This is our home! Our country!” The same hew and cry that had happened during the US Civil War of the 1860s. It hadn’t started out about slavery. The war hadn’t been about slavery at all until Lincoln and his Emancipation. Yes, slavery of any man, woman, or child is wrong but it is just as wrong as what the war had really started out being about … broken promises by the federal government and impunities forced on the Southern People by those participating – or at least agreeing with - the Northern Aggression. There’s too many similarities between what led up to the Civil War and what is going on now. There’s even more similarities between Mao Zedong’s Culture Revolution. I don’t want to get distracted. I need to finish this out so I can bathe my little brother. He’s feverish again. He’d hate it if he was conscious, but he’s sedated. I wish I could join him. I’m not a fighter. Or I wasn’t a fighter. I was bad at it. Now I’m afraid I’m too good at it. I’m no pacifist; furthest thing from it. But, it makes me want to puke bile to remember what I did and God help me I’m afraid I’ll never stop the nightmares. Worse, I think I may have to do it again. And again.

# # # # # # # # # #

I wasn’t the only female fighting. Far from it. But I was the only female my age fighting on our side. It made a difference. I was younger and in better shape. I didn’t need a break from running. I also didn’t have the natural in-born hesitancies about beating the crap out of the females on the other side. I took that as my job, my mission. It wasn’t payback. It was making a way to get all the wounded to safety. It simply was.

The thing we did have on our side was that only the “leaders” had guns. Most of them had weapons of some type but they were makeshift weapons, the kind found in protests and riots. On our side there were guns. Real ones, not just the kind you plink away with and have to reload after every three shots or so. And not just .22lr either.

We also had shotguns loaded with scatter shot. Those you only had to point and shoot, and stay on your feet depending on the kick they had. Some of those were full of buckshot and some birdshot. The birdshot created more confusion; smaller pains but more of them. The buckshot could be killers depending how close you were when you hit what you were aiming at. And I saw one man who had slugs in his shells. They made a mess and that’s all I’m prepared to remember right now.

It took a couple of hours, and the occasional stalemate, but eventually “the authorities” arrived and stepped in. It was near daybreak so maybe they used curfew as their excuse. We learned fast to get out of their way and we pulled back to the woods that had surrounded the Farmer’s Market staging area. For the most part, so long as we didn’t try to interfere, or get involved, they ignored us. And after a couple more hours it was like they simply swept up those that remained upright up, and the injured were thrown in transport vehicles, none of us knowing where either group was being taken. The dead we were made to clean up and stack like cordwood until a corp of hearse/vans arrived to cart them to the train depot.

“You made the f****** mess, you can damn well clean it up!” One grouchy sergeant snarled loudly to everyone and no one at the same time. They stood around us and made us too. No one was allowed to leave until every body was brought in and tagged. The Nat Guards were busy combing the woods for stragglers but only a few were found. There were a couple of shots where “enemy combatants were shot trying to escape” and that’s when the few remaining started turning themselves in. They were handled even more roughly than the first group had been, not the least of which because it turned out to be that most of them were the “leaders” who hadn’t wanted to face the consequences of their actions.

One man said, “That right there tells me that them a**holes ain’t on top and ain’t walkin’ free this time.” Maybe yes, maybe no. Not sure I care right now. What I do hope is that they all learned a lesson. Commies don’t really give a crap about their cannon fodder when they become an embarrassment or are no longer useful.

Curfew kept us at the Farmer’s Market overnight. The Nat Guards made sure of that. Fine. We were all busy using that time to try and get enough vehicles operable to take everyone home that lived too far away to hike. It kept me busy because the nightmares were already trying to set in for some of us, me included. I couldn’t afford that to happen. I needed to get to the caballeros. I needed to find Derek. I needed to know if I had a life to come back to.

Amazingly enough I only had to change a tire on the van and another on the trailer. Thanks to Junior and Maynard I kept good ones on hand at all times. No crappy donut for me. A crappy donut wouldn’t have worked anyway. And also thank goodness I had a four-ton hydraulic floor jack and some wood to stabilize it on to lift the loaded van and trailer. I also had to tie the driver’s side door so that it would stay closed where they punched the lock and damaged the handle.

I wasn’t the first one out at daylight, but I wasn’t much behind them. I had four people, including a medic, that needed to get to the Emergency Staging Area that had been set up at the Lake City Hospital. I prayed that’s where my family was and that all I focused up to keep myself calm and focused.

There was no speeding. Military vehicles of all sorts were every few miles and on every corner … the Florida National Guard. I had a near run-in once over not having my “papers.” Luckily I always keep a couple of copies of everyone’s in the van. The one I pulled to show the person manning the road block even had a raised seal on it. Hey, I’m a paralegal, covering our butts is what we do.

“Where are your originals?”

“I gave them to the medic that was taking my little brother and other two siblings to the field hospital or wherever they took them. I need to find them.”

“Name?”

I wanted to punch her in the nose but gritted my teeth and answered, “Musgrove. Knox was shot. Nat … Natasha … and Daniel Musgrove should be with him. They’re ten years old.”

At that she blinked and looked at me and called something in on her radio. She handed me the papers back and pointed me through.

We had to go through several roadblocks but eventually I nearly jumped out of my skin when Duff jumped up on the driver’s side running board and told me, “Follow the orange line in the road. Keep it slow and let’s get you parked. They've set some up across the highway but with this load we're going to put you on this side. Derek is coming down to walk you in.”

My brain was making way too much noise to comprehend more than Derek was coming to meet me.

Then Duff asked, “You willing to take trade for the strawberries you’re pulling? The hospital doesn’t have a lot of food, and this would make things better. We have several busloads of kids that got messed up in a riot on the other side of Suwannee County. They had to empty the nursing home up in the north of Columbia County where some asshat set it on fire. The Salvation Army and National Guard are supposed to be sending something, but we don’t know how much or when and …”

“Just do it. Try and cover my costs and then consider the remainder a donation. Just get me some paperwork that says what is being donated and to whom. Hopefully Sav-a-lot and Publix will still do business with me but …”

“You don’t worry about that.” The way he said it briefly distracted me and I’ll think about the friends I might have and the places they might be later.

I nearly fell getting out of the van. I was so tired and so shook up and trying not to show it. The only reason I didn’t go down is because someone caught me. I turned sharply to say let go when I realized it was Derek. The world stopped as I looked into his eyes.
 
C

cat killer

Veteran Member
Freebirde said:
Thank you for more!

"three-way between a hammer, a screwdriver, and an ax."

Are you talking about a car safety hammer or an old fashion crate opening tool? I don't think they make the crate tool anymore and it wouldn't cut seatbelts very well.
Click to expand...
I found a crate tool in my father in laws "stuff" and had to look up what it was called and it's use.
I use it quite a bit.
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________

Chapter 98​


“Derek …”

“Do you need to sit down?”

“Just tell me.” I hated the tone of my voice; demanding, needy, rough, and nearly weepy. I didn’t like showing my emotions in public and the parking lot with everyone standing around staring was about as public as it gets.

“They took him to surgery. The bullet was a .22 half-ass reload. It didn’t have the power it could have but it wasn’t a BB either. It hung up in a rib and broke two others. He lost a lot of blood, but someone put a compression bandage on him using your shirt and a belt.”

“That someone would be me. Please God tell me your lessons stuck the right way.”

He hugged me and said, “You did the right thing Mina though I could shake you for staying in that mess.”

“Shake me later. I might even stand still and let you catch me. Just tell me about Knox and the other two caballeros.”

I got another hug for trying to hold it together. “They are keeping him sedated. The hospital is low on pain meds. Nat got hysterical and demanded they take some of her blood and give it to Knox.” As he talked everyone else except for Duff stumbled away to wherever they were going.

I told him, “Won’t work. They’re fraternal. Knox is O- and Nat is A+. It caused some complications for mom. But I told you this right? They didn’t try to …”

“No,” he told me with a comforting pat as we too finally started walking towards our destination, the hospital entrance. I stopped and looked back at Duff.

“I gotta trust someone. Tag, you’re it,” I said as I tossed him the van’s keys.

As Derek and I turned to start walking again he hesitantly asked, “Er … what was that about?”

One of these days I’ll find the girl that cut Derek’s manly self-esteem off at the knees and I’ll do the same to her but I didn’t have the energy for it right then. “The berries will spoil.” I explained the donation and he relaxed and even gave me kudos. We were about to go onto the pediatric ward where Knox was, and he stopped me.

“You need to stay calm. He looks bad but things could have been a lot worse. Don’t try and wake him.”

“The not-enough-painkillers thing.”

Derek nodded. “That and he needs to heal, and sleep is the best time and way for him to do it. Too much stress and it will give an infection an opportunity to take hold. We’re going to need to watch for that. Closely. And as soon as possible we need to move him out of the hospital and back home. MRSA is running rampant on the ward where they have the prisoners.”

“So soon?”

“Huh?” I finally saw just how tired he was before his brain kicked in gear and he explained, “Not from the riots. Some older teens broke out of the regional juvenile detention center in Alachua County. Lake City was the only open beds with enough security to put them in once they were brought in. Turned themselves in I mean. They were nearly trafficked down to some island in the Caribbean. They got beat on pretty badly … and maybe a few got what you would expect given such a situation. Staying hush-hush so I don’t have any more details than that and probably shouldn’t have those … or told you since I do.”

“Don’t worry. I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

“I hope not,” he said right before I got momentarily pinned to the wall and kissed like you don’t read in the nicer romance books.

“Don’t do that again Mina.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“Mina …”

“Hey, I work with lawyers remember? If I’ve learned nothing it is to always leave yourself some wiggle room.”

He just shook his head and then we quietly entered the room.

# # # # #

I think at that point all my “perkiness” unperked. Knox was waxy pale and … I still can’t cop to the feelings I was having. Maybe some day but not right now.

He’s better, but still sleeps a lot. We’d hoped to take him home sooner but he keeps trying to run a fever. There aren’t enough nurses to go around so most of his daily type care is my responsibility. I’m fine with that.

The first night Nat and Daniel stayed in the room with us, but two more pediatric patients wound up being moved into what would normally have been a private room. They went home with Derek and he brings them here during visiting hours. They’re quiet, know they have to be if they want to stay. Derek works in the emergency aid station that is set up in the primary parking lot. The law offices are closed. Dayton tried to throw a snit until his office was trashed during a student protest in downtown Tallahassee. Dayton has suddenly seen the light and as good a lawyer as he is, I really don’t want ot bet against him bringing cases against several of the protestors. Taylor’s attention is split between our office and doing some work for locals who were damaged by the protestors or whatever they ultimately call them. I haven’t been able to put my mind to that yet. I see too many faces that no longer belong to living people.

In Knox’s room, the hospital beds are so close together, if you were oversized you weren’t fitting between them. I’ve helped with all three kids when the parental unit stand-ins of the other two aren’t around. Sometimes Nat and Daniel help, more often they stick close to the side of Knox’s bed, or sometimes organize some Lego games in the play room with patients or siblings of patients that need distracting.

I’ve also definitely decided I am not nurse material, certainly not pediatric nurse material. Those people are freaking angels. I don’t know how they do it. My patience runs thin with the ones that you can tell are acting more pathetic than they are. And my heart breaks for the ones that are too sick or hurt to even pretend to be a brat. The two-year-old that came in covered in bruises and lash marks nearly broke me. They put him in with me simply because he rarely makes noise except to cry silently and they didn’t think he’d wake Knox.

I had run to the bathroom and to wash my face. I came back in and Knox had reached over to hold the little guy’s hand.

When he saw me he whispered, “Tell us a story Mina. Tell us a story so we can think about something else.”

God, there are some people walking this world that I’d gladly take out and live with whatever nightmares it gave me.
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________

Chapter 99​


“Knox,” I growled. “I love you and every other embarrassing, mushy thing you can think of. But if I come around this side of the house one more time to find you off that lounger you are not going to find the consequences pleasant. I’ll start by posting every cutesy baby picture you ever took all over church, including that one where Mom dressed you and Nat up in little, matching sailor suits. Then I’ll …”

“Okay! Okay!”

“Okay what?” I asked him.

Sullenly he answered, “I’ll stay in the stupid lounge chair.”

“You better or baby pictures are most definitely in your future. And I’ll get every old lady at the church to …”

“I said okay already. Geez. Cut a guy a break. I’m not dead you know.”

He knew immediately he’d gone a little too far with that bit of smart aleck when he heard Derek snap, “Boy. I thought Daniel was hardheaded but you take the cake. Your sister has been running herself ragged for weeks now. Worried herself sick. Faced down some federal investigators that wanted to take you three into protective custody until they and I quote, ‘Got to the bottom of Protest Day’ and who shot you … including trying to say she did it. She spent three nights in lock up with …”

In a bit of a panic he finally caved completely, “Stop! I’m sorry! I’m just …”

I had mercy on him but only a little. “You better not say the ‘B’ word. You say it and I’ll find something to keep you busy. Maybe sorting Mom’s sewing box or …”

“Geez Mina. I’ll never be that bored.”

“Better not. It’s only been two days since the last fever you ran.”

Just then Nat and Daniel came back outside. “Look Knox. You were right. We just had the gizmos backwards. Now the gears go the right way and the loom works.”

Knox got distracted despite himself. I gave Daniel a wink behind his back and a silent “thank you.” The boy has been a Godsend. He really has. I don’t know what we would do if he hadn’t been willing to step up. In a sense he’s better with Nat than Knox is. Knox is all about protecting her. Daniel insists she participates in her own protection and healing, but he isn’t obvious about it. He’s grown so much in just two months; all three of them have.

The reason why they were working on gears is because they were studying the Industrial Revolution.

War and revolution. Revolution and war. They aren’t just historical eras to study. We’re living through them. Shear necessity has brought back manufacturing to this country after most of it going overseas – mainly to Asia – for so many decades. There’s been no choice. Of course, the environmentalists are squealing like stuck pigs but even that is sorta being addressed by the new machinery used and processes that have developed. New inventions, all the way down to the personal level, are about the only thing that lightens the load the times have brought. The caballeros have come up with some for around here though I wouldn’t say they are always practical. But anything that keeps them busy, happy, and focused on a constructive future that being afraid of a repeat of Protest Days.

After the protests the communists, some domestic and some radicalized by foreign interests, took it to the next level and damaged a lot of this country’s infrastructure using terrorism techniques and practices. One of the first things they did was a massive cyber-attack. It affected our currency system and we’re all but in a new Great Depression. The problem is that it isn’t really deflation driving the depression so much as stagflation. Despite the return of some manufacturing, there is still high unemployment and serious inflation on necessities and not just luxuries.

Because of the cyber-attack a lot of “normal” work has contracted or is no longer possible. Many in tech fields simply have nothing to work with these days … or don’t know how to get work done without the internet. Good thing I learned to do bookkeeping the old-fashioned way or the Law Offices would be in trouble; this includes Dayton’s offices that were completely automated. These days everything has to be done by hand, written down, tracked, etc. physically rather than with a computer program. Our bookkeeping system comprises actual ledger books rather than risk them being infected on a computer. Even if that computer isn’t online, moving memory devices from computer to computer could transfer malware and other nasties like that.

Taxes were so not fun for everyone though there has been a two month extension to the deadline. The credit markets are just about gone. If you have a home loan you better be glad because no new loans are being written for the foreseeable future. Same for car loans. Insurance is nearly as bad. A lot of banks are failing. The digital currency makes that less painful because those digi-dollars are out there, they just don’t mean a whole lot to people right now.

And due to infrastructure damage, the government is being forced to issue physical tokens to represent digi-dollars. They call them digi-coins. They remind me of poker chips. A lot. And in more than just appearance. But they are recognized by the federal government, all state governments, and all municipalities as legitimate and legal currency. They have chips embedded in them to prove their authenticity. I’m sure eventually the counterfeiters will figure out how to get around that but for now they haven’t.

There was a motion working its way through Congress to take the gold and silver in private hands and try to use it to shore up the economy, but so far it is failing. However, you don’t get caught trying to use them for anything including barter. You get caught holding precious metals and trying to use them as other than a “hobby possession” and the feds have SWAT IRS teams at the ready. And there is a reward if you turn someone in like that. They’ll do it even faster if you have any outstanding debts regardless of what those debts are. There are no debtor prisons in this country, but they can have a Sheriff Sale of your possessions quicker than trying to say “Peter Piper Picked a Peck” five times fast. Even in states declaring a temporary moratorium on home foreclosures, you can still have the PMs held against whatever debts you aren’t paying.

Derek and I agree that we are keeping our “coin collections” in the safe and basically just not going to think about them for now. We can’t spend them and we’re doing okay without them. I don’t even wear jewelry, not even the studs I used to wear to keep my pierced holes open. Too many stories of people (both men and women) having their ear(s) badly ripped by someone running by and yanking off any jewelry they might be wearing. I have some clip-ons that I wear when we have a client in the office but for the most part my ears are as bare as my face. Not that I used to wear much makeup, but I’ve run out of what little I had and I’m just not the type to spend that kind of money on something frivolous. I make my own lip balm and I’ve – don’t laugh – used shoe polish for mascara a couple of times. Derek doesn’t mind my bare face – prefers it to be honest. Says he doesn’t have to wonder what I really look like under the war paint. Ha. Ha. He’s definitely showing his male genes lately. Not that I mind.

The garden and orchard have been a blessing. Nearly everyone has something growing in a pot these days. You must if you plan on eating and feeding your family. Things are crazy expensive at the grocery and most everything is a local product rather than an import. And import could mean from just across the straight line or from the other side of the state. But the summer is coming and that means that only the very hot weather crops are going to produce. I have high hopes for the blueberries and blackberries this year. And Mom’s tropicals in the hoop houses are going to be absolutely essential. I doubt I’ll even trade any. We certainly won’t have the Farmer’s Market again. The feds have shut them all down. Some of it is because of security, but just as much it is because of health. Lots of what used to be considered third-world nasties are going around.

Derek is adamant that we wash our hands with soap and water after coming into contact with anything that comes from someplace other than the Homeplace. He even had me help him build a decontamination station where he changes his clothes and showers well away from the house before coming home after an EMS shift. He even decontaminates his Jeep and insists that I do it to the Sienna when we’ve been in town. And the room where the caballeros stay when we are at the Law Office gets sanitized often. In fact, the entire upstairs does because that is where Mr. Barnes and Mrs. Padfield now live full-time. Mrs. Padfield helps to keep an eye on the kids, and they help her to keep Mr. Barnes entertained and out of trouble. His mental acuity is slipping. We aren’t sure what that means but there are days he’s more like an inquisitive kid than he is a trained and experienced lawyer. When Mrs. Padfield needs to cry, I’m the one she does it with. I could kick Taylor’s wife and kids for being so clueless but at least he no longer takes his mother for granted.

And Derek and I are no longer “hiding” our relationship. I’m not saying we are friends with a certain type of benefit, but everyone knows we aren’t just friends. So far no one is making anything of it. It’s like the old days when single parents threw in together to survive rather than tough it out on their own less successfully. We haven’t decided what we are going to do about that just yet. I mean we know, it’s the timing that is still in question. For now, we are both too tired at the end of the day for it to be a problem. And having three active … or two active and one who would prefer to be that way … kids around kinda puts the kibosh on any hanky panky. I mean every once in a while there’s the temptation but not so much that we can’t withstand it. Then again here’s how in part my day went:


“Mina? Where did you go? Why are you in the bathroom?”

“Really Nat?! Why do you think I’m in the bathroom. I don’t just come in here and wander around to count the flowers on the wall!”



“Mina? How many days till I can get up off this stupid lounger?!”

“I’ll staple you to it until next Juvember if you don’t stop pestering me about that. Do we need to count the days since your last fever when you got too active?”



“Mina? I think I might have ate something red. My head doesn’t feel so good.”

“Daniel how many times do I have to remind you …”



“Mina? Knox is up again. And it wasn’t just to go to the bathroom like you said he could.”

“Knox!”



“Hey Babe. Man, it has been a long day. Uh … sorry but I used all the hot water. You didn’t really mean to wash your hair tonight did you?”

“That’s it! I’m going to go peck poop with the chickens, and no one better bother me while I’m at it.”

“Babe? What’d I say? Babe?!”



I swear I think I’ve already found my first white hair. I’m not even twenty yet. And all Mrs. Padfield and The Girls do is laugh and commiserate and tell me welcome to world of real women.
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________

Chapter 100​


Wow. What a change the years have made. I’m not sure what bug bit me but I decided it was time to clean out the antique filing cabinets that I’d moved to the third floor after the twins were born. The first set. O.M.G. as I used to say.

My last few posts in this file don’t even deserve a repeat so I’ll simply start a new entry. Most of them are just repetitive and then shorter and shorter as I had less and less time to snark. My last real entry had enough of that, and I still cringe looking back at my younger self.

Let’s see, May turned into June that year, the way it has since the beginning of time and the way it will until time comes to an end. The Caballeros – and I still call them that when they are home and all together – graduated from elementary school and entered Middle School. I continued to home school them and I’m glad. It has given them a leg up in almost all areas. I’m not so glad that they learned to run their mouths just about as well as I could back then. The tweens and teens were not what you would call always calm and peaceful and not just because it took until they were Freshmen in high school before the world was finished with the high colonic the war caused.

June of that year was also when Derek and I said to heck with things, including his problem with our age difference, threw caution to the wind, and made it official. Obviously a few people thought we “had” to get married but that was far from our reality. The caballeros were finishing Middle School before we whoops’d and I caught preggers. And boy did I catch. Fraternal twins. Might be some justice in that I suppose. Certainly I imagined a few people laughing from Heaven. The first set had a double dose of Musgrove in them, that’s for sure.

Derek and I coped because, despite the economic turmoil and life being so crazy, we were happy. The kids were growing up and levelheaded enough to make your teeth hurt, even Nat who for the most part has outgrown the issues that reminded me of Mom too much for comfort. She took a few college classes then surprised us all by deciding she preferred working to going to class and she now manages a dress boutique in Lake City. She could live at home but has chosen to share an apartment with a couple of girlfriends that are going to college. I think it is more about proving stuff to herself than it is about proving things to us. It’s the first time she hasn’t had Knox or Daniel to run interference for her. Her self-confidence is amazing to see.

Daniel and Knox are both still in college, but they also work. Daniel is following Derek into the medical field. He does the weekend shift with the local VFD. Knox is getting his law degree, partly through college coursework and partly through an apprenticeship with Taylor and Derek. He plans to specialize in business law. Eventually they’ll probably change the sign to say Barnes, Musgrove, and Musgrove.

Mr. Barnes is still around but he has two full-time caregivers these days. It just got to be too much for Mrs. Padfield and Charles needed to finish his nursing degree and couldn’t be 24 hours on all the time. There are days when he recognizes people and days Mr. Barnes just sits there silently watching whatever is going on outside the window. He doesn’t have a bad life, we’ve all taken time to make sure of that, but we all miss the vivacious and eccentric man he once was. He’s very frail and bruises easily. They think the cancer has come back and this time they will abide by his wishes and just let him fade away, or however God chooses to take him.

Derek’s father and stepmom still remain part of our lives, but not a huge part. Mr. David comes to visit or we meet him in the middle some place and he relaxes and enjoys himself. Until Lorena calls him home because one of their grandkids on that side need him for something. Lorena isn’t cold or awful, but the fact that our lives are different than she predicted or could have ever expected makes her … uncomfortable is as close a word as I can find to describe it. I suspect part of her will always remain jealous of Derek’s mother but how do you fight with a dead woman and not look foolish?

Me? After the twins arrived there was no way I could give the time to the Law Office it needed. They brought in someone from the church that needed work to act as a receptionist. She’s still there and happy as a clam. They eventually brought in a law clerk as well, the first one from a one of the local offices that closed. They come and go, staying just long enough to get whatever training they need and then they move on to a larger office in Lake City, Jacksonville, or Tallahassee. A few have even moved to Orlando. One young woman move to Miami.

Once the twins were sleeping through the night I wondered what I wanted to do with my life. I juggled everything at home as well as I ever had but I still wanted to do something outside of the home. I may have been my mother’s daughter, but I wasn’t my mother. I had a good dose of Dad in me and that called for more … or maybe different is what I mean.

Mrs. Padfield came to me with a proposition. Their little genealogical library was about to join forces with the local history reenactors’ guild, and the County Historical Society at the old train depot just off Main Street. They needed someone to do the bookkeeping and help set up a professional filing system and get as much as possible digitized. I could bring the twins and caballeros in with me. It was a perfect fit because it wasn’t full time and left me with energy and opportunities to devote to projects at the Homeplace. About a year into that gig Mr. Barnes donated his entire library – law books to local lore – and I cleaned out a storage room to expand the CHS library. The county’s library system donated a bunch of old maps as did the high school, rather than see them rot away or get shredded. We have so many family trees on file proving how all the local families fit together that it is a wonder there isn’t a population of six-toed and three-eared people running around necked in the woods outside of town. I keep a special file on twisted branches and knotholes from the various trees that only the membership has access to. Some local people helped to set up an audio-visual room where people could leave videos and audio files of people telling stories of their parents, grandparents, and of the war years, so that nothing important gets forgotten. University of Florida and Florida State send history students to us every once in a while. Mrs. Padfield and The Girls get a real kick out of it I tell you.

The caballeros were at the point of graduating high school when I caught preggers again and it was another set of fraternal twins. Derek and I looked at each other, nodded, and shook on it. After the twins popped out hale and hearty I was cut and had those tubes burned closed forever. And just because we know God has a sense of humor, Derek took care of his own part of that equation. The people that heard the story laughed. We were just taking care of our responsibilities. No way were we going to risk a fourth set of Musgrove twins; three were more than sufficient thank you very much. I hadn’t just found one white hair by that point; you could have called me skunk … assuming of course you wanted to take your life in your hands. I was a little sensitive about it until Derek said it was a relief I no longer looked like I could have been a playmate for the caballeros.

So, life kept rolling along. The twins were older than I was when I got custody of them. Derek and I had added four more to the Musgrove Clan. Mom’s trees, orchards, and plants eventually fully became mine when I no longer needed them to tie me to the past, or tie me up in the past. I’d grown to be at peace with the way life had happened. Derek was living his dream where he worked in the law office and was able to give some of his time to Emergency Services. And even I had figured out what I wanted to do when I grew up. The pain of the past was gone. Until …
 
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