Chapter 11
I’d just taken a bite of the sausage biscuit I’d made for my breakfast when my cell phone rang. It was a local area code, but I didn’t recognize the number and almost didn’t answer it until I realized how similar it was to the law office’s number.
“Hello?”
“Is this Mina Musgrove?”
After a short hesitation I answered. “Speaking. Who is this?”
“Derek Musgrove.”
“Mr. Barnes’ nephew?” And who was currently the “Musgrove” part of the law firm. I’d yet to meet him though there was a picture of him hanging on the wall in the office. He had a distinct eye patch and scar that spread above and below it from a training accident during his basic training.
“Got it in one. I need some files and the ol’ man is down sick, and I’m locked out of the office. He said you had a set of keys and could let me in. He said to tell you that … oh Lord Uncle James and his crazies … he said to tell you that whistling hens aren’t healthy to be around.”
Putting the information in order I said, “Sorry about that. He’s kinda protective and wanted there to be a way that I could know for sure that a request was legit. Is he okay?”
“Asthma attack, worse than normal.”
“Had to be that woman from Savannah that came to give her deposition. The air was practically blue from all the perfume she had on. I made that sign to ask people not to … anyway … are you there or on your way? I need ten minutes to get dressed and then about twenty to get to the office after that … so say thirty if they don’t have a roadblock at US 90 and CR49.”
He replied, “Nothing there but they’ve got an observer sitting at 129 and 90.”
“Lovely. Let me guess, he’s all dressed up with an automatic weapon to be even spiffier. I’ll go the long way around and still get there faster by avoiding the lookie lou’s.”
I was glad that I had other errands that I had planned so it wasn’t like my day was shot, I simply rearranged the schedule.
# # # # #
I was sitting in the minivan, pulling myself together and getting the keys ready, when I noticed the car in the parking lot a few spots over is rocking and the guy in the driver’s seat doesn’t look like he is as happy as that phrase would seem it should indicate. Carefully I step out and then he gets out and the back door on his car flies open and a kid jumps out and makes a run for it. Habit. That’s all I’m going to admit to. But I grab the kid I know to be an eight-year-old dynamo as he comes running at me full tilt and I toss him up on my shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“Yo! Doober! What’s with the ‘tude so early in the morning?”
“Uncle Derek and Mom,” he answers, caught between anger and laughing because I know exactly how to tickle the mean-angries out of eight-year-olds. Or at least this eight-year-old that reminded me way too much of Knox before we figured out his food allergies.
“Yeah, well. Whatever. Someone wouldn’t happen to have given you anything with red dye in it would they?”
The man was just looking at me in a kind of stunned reaction until that moment then he said, “Someone, not naming names, thought it was okay for him to have a red Mountain Dew for breakfast.”
I made an appropriate face and then said to the Tasmanian Devil named Daniel Lee Musgrove, “Er … you do know that stuff is going to make you sick as a dog, right?
“It was good!”
“Listen Doober, you are going to crash and burn and get sick to your stomach fairly soon. You are going to feel miserable.” I sighed and put him down but drapped my arm across his shoulders to keep him grounded. “You are too old to not take that seriously. Even if someone accidentally offers you that poison you need to learn to politely decline and pick something that is better for you.”
“Why?”
Walking with him towards the door to unlock it I said, “Because you aren’t stupid. I’ve watched you and Knox MOC up some amazing Lego designs at church. Right now, you are so jittery I doubt you could even get bricks to clip together much less use your noggin’ to be creative enough to build something that doesn’t fall apart in under thirty seconds.”
I kept him virtually tied to me while I got the office open and then the file room unlocked for Mr. Musgrove who looked like he was about two seconds from a meltdown. Then I all but pinned Daniel to the wall while I made him some hot Ginger Milk
[1] to try and deal with the pukes I knew would be coming if something wasn’t done and create enough of a carb crash that he would settle down. I had the milk in the frig and the powdered ginger and monk fruit sweetener in my purse because I always keep it on hand for the twins.
It took nearly thirty minutes, but the milk did what I wanted it to, and Mr. Musgrove kept looking at him like the boy – that I had learned through office gossip was his nephew – had been body switched with an alien. I told Daniel that I would answer his questions between phone calls if he could be polite while I was on the phone.
“Where are Knox and Nat?”
“I’ve got another two weeks before it is my turn to have them.”
“Aw, I’m going to be at camp.”
“Camp sounds cool.”
“It isn’t. No one likes me.”
I gave him a look and asked, “Is it
you they don’t like or is it they don’t like how you can
act?”
He shrugged.
“See, this is where you need to activate that smart brain I know you have. Try and stick to a good diet that doesn’t make you act like a manic mud puppy. Then learn to enjoy being at camp regardless how other people feel about it. Then people might see the
real you and not the food allergies. And when that happens …”
“People will like me?” he asked like it didn’t compute.
“Let’s put it this way. I will never do something just to make someone else like me. I think that is bogus. However, doing stuff just to drive other people buggy doesn’t exactly make my life easier and …” The phone went off again.
I held up a finger and picked up the phone. “Barnes and Musgrove.”
It was like listening to the teacher on the Charlie Brown cartoons. Mwaa, Mwaa, Mwaa.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Barnes isn’t available … No, Mr. Musgrove is on another case
[said Mr. Musgrove gave me a grateful look and reburied his head in the table full of files he had out] … No sir, I’m sorry I don’t have the authority to do that but if it is just a matter of sending you a copy of the current filing, I can zip that over to you and you should have it before lunch … Of course … Yes Sir … And I’ll make sure that I note it on Mr. Barnes’ calendar as well though I know it is already on his personal calendar as he mentioned it to me already … Yes sir … Have a good day!”
I looked at Daniel and I said, “See? I could have pulled a cranky but decided to offer up some grace instead since I’ve needed some in the past. It chilled the client out and I got it worked out so your uncle and Mr. Barnes don’t have to hear about me being a terrible employee or whatever they would have come up with to pay me back for not behaving as I ought.”
Daniel sighed but I knew he knew what I was talking about and would maybe think about it for next time. Maybe. Eight-year-olds aren’t known for an excess of just in case thinking. Forty-five minutes later I was hoping to get away when in through the door came Junior and when he saw Daniel he started to offer him a red tootsie pop.
I told him, “Do it and your mother will not find all your parts to stow in the family crypt.”
“What? I wasn’t going to do anything,” he said with a stupid look on his face that told me he got off on creating problems with Daniel way too much as a way to distract from his own behavior.
“Seriously Junior, the office is closed, and Mr. Barnes isn’t here so what do you need?”
“Derek texted me.”
“Mr. Musgrove?”
“I call him Derek.”
“Well I don’t, this is a professional setting. Try and act like you can make a spark with your braincells.”
“Touchy, touchy.”
We both heard a forbidding, “Junior!”
Turns out the family regularly uses Junior for muscle and other odd jobs. When Junior left I saw him shoving something into his pants pocket and he took off with a spring in his step without saying goodbye. Well good riddance is what I was thinking and unfortunately it must have shown on my face because I heard a coughing chuckle behind me.
I turned with a jerk and then said, “Um …”
“Don’t worry about it. Junior has that effect on people. And … thank you for keeping Daniel busy so I could get this done without it taking all day.”
Daniel was slowly melting into the sofa chair he’d been sitting on because the heavy carb drink had done its job though he still looked a little green. Mr. Musgrove noticed and asked, “What was that you gave him?”
I explained about the ginger milk and how it was something my mother had come up with for the twins.
“Twins?”
I noted the cautious look on his face and knew why. Instead of making a big deal I told him, “Mrs. Padfield mentioned something at church so I’m aware. Knox and Nat also know. They’re the same age and … sympathetic.”
Mr. Musgrove didn’t know what to say but thanked me like he wasn’t sure what else to say and then I was finally able to lock the office and head off to do my errands only I was thinking about Daniel. His father had been drunk and they’d been in the backseat, buckled up but not in car seats like they should have been given their size. Daniel had lost his twin sister when his father had crossed the line and clipped a lumber truck. The father had also died but hadn’t been that much of a loss if town gossip was true. Daniel and his twin had also been micro-preemies and well, there was a lot of commonalities between Knox, Nat, and Daniel and they seemed to naturally be drawn together the times they were at church at the same time. And when they weren’t there, Daniel seemed to decide I was a more than adequate substitute.
More gossip that I wish I didn’t know is that Daniel’s mother was more relieved than grief-stricken at the loss of her husband and daughter and wouldn’t have really minded had Daniel been taken as well. She never said it, from my understanding, but she wasn’t a real demonstrative mother except when it got her something. She’d been very young when they were born – fifteen – and she had regretted it from the start but hadn’t been strong enough to give them up for adoption like she should have. She’d tried to turn everything into a fairytale or something like that and Daniel is paying the price for it even though people in his life try to mitigate it. Today had apparently been his uncle’s turn or similar.
I made it to Aldi’s in Lake City before I was through thinking about Daniel’s situation. I’d started to pick up flats of canned foods as a way to soothe my worry over rising prices and threats of rationing and stuff like that. I also purchased all I could of all-purpose and self-rising flour, several different kinds of cake and muffin mixes, a flat of Vienna sausages, a flat of Beanee Weenees, a freakton of cans of tuna, some pre-cooked bacon that didn’t need to be refrigerated until opened, and a few other convenience items that were cheaper to buy than I could make. It was a little embarrassing loading the van (I eventually got over that problem) and I hurried home to put things away.
The house was about as bug free as I could make it and I no longer caused a roach stampede when I brought groceries home. I still had some food that Mom and Memaw had home canned/preserved and that was good, but I wasn’t going to have a garden this year as it was just too much work on top of everything else I had going on. And being gone a week every month with the twins also meant that I really couldn’t take care of one the right way just yet. I knew how because Mom and Memaw used Mitch and I like draft mules every year but that just meant I knew where my limits were, and it was going to be next year before I could plant one of my own. That doesn’t mean that I was going to play Captain Oblivious.
I’d finally managed to get the solar power hooked up and working properly. It took a while to get all the batteries charged so even though I was tempted to use it when the brown outs happened I didn’t. I used regular electricity most of the time, but I was ready to test things out for just in case. And the first thing I was going to try out was Mom’s freeze dryer. Dad had grumped that it never got used for what it was supposed to get used for. Instead Memaw mostly dried candy, bananas, strawberries, and apples with it. And mostly on top of that, they were for gifts. A couple of times she freeze-dried ham and turkey and leftovers from holiday meals and cookouts, but not often, and Mitch and I used it all up because until the insurance money had come in, we were having to get creative and use what we had around the house when we wised up to the fact that fast food was going to bankrupt us. Since then, I’ve gone through almost all the home canned soups. So, I took my life in my hands and planned out how to do all of the home preserving that Mom and Memaw had meant for me to carry on.
I couldn’t count on the freezers because of the brown outs. That meant I could really only buy enough fresh stuff that I could prepare or eat fresh before it spoiled. The store flyers showed that there was a BOGO sell on asparagus, broccoli, English peas, and mushrooms. I could handle all of that. I planned to can the asparagus and English peas, and freeze dry the broccoli and mushrooms. I had all the bags and the sealing gizmo that Mom and Memaw used but I also ordered an in-store delivery of the oxygen absorbers and more bags, and I’d gotten a call they were ready for pick up at the farm co-op. I also picked up some bell peppers when I was at the store and decided to freeze dry them as well.
What I hadn’t told Daniel is that the twins probably wouldn’t make it to the Homeplace in March because I planned on adventuring closer to Tampa again.
[1] Hot Ginger Milk