Story Rain, Rain, Rain (Complete)

[Kathy in FL]

I know I had this story started someplace but for the life of me I can't find it. I've looked all over. Well, I finally finished it. I'm going to post it in a couple of big chunks starting tonight and finishing up tomorrow or the day after that. I haven't done any real deep editing so it is possible there will be some bloopers but when have you ever known me not to land some big bloopers. LOL.

Also, this is more sci-fi than my others but nothing too awful ... more of a concept thing than aliens or things like that. (grin) Suspend you disbelief and just use some imagination. Have some fun if you can. I'm really just trying to finish up all this stories hanging over my head. This is one of the older ones and it just jumped into my lap when I found the notebook I had started writing it in.

I'm also not terribly happy with the title but nothing clever jumped out at me.

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Rain, Rain, Rain

It is no use to grumble and complain; It's just as cheap and easy to rejoice; When God sorts out the weather and sends rain - Why, rain's my choice.
--James Whitcomb Riley


Introduction

Too bad a story can’t tell itself. I could sit back and listen instead of getting a cramp in my hand writing it all down. I suppose there are benefits though to being the one to write the story; you are the one that gets to pick and choose what gets saved for posterity. Your side is the one that gets told.

They say the winner is the one that gets to write history. Maybe so but there are a heck of a lot of losers this time around and they all have someone they want to blame, from man to god to God. I guess that posterity will just have to wait and see who the winners turn out to be.

Those that blame their gods say it is just the nature of selfish beings. Or that it is fate or something equally as removed from reality as I understand it. They blame their gods because they don’t want to take any responsibility for their lives, their personal choices. Everything happens to them for some unfathomable reason that they’ll only understand once they get to the next plain of existence or something cosmic like that.

Those that blame God – the big G guy – cry out wondering how He could allow such things to happen. Don’t know that I would personally go around shouting at God like that; or whining at him either for that matter. There’s that little thing called Free Will that we were all blessed with at our Creation. With free will comes responsibility for a lot of what happens to us. What’s been happening has caught a lot of people flat-footed and even though it started happening in slow motion people still didn’t get on the ball. They continued to wait for the problem to just stop and go away on its own or for someone else to come help them. Lost a lot of people that way; some good, some not, most of them a combination of the two.
Those that blame man are much closer to the truth. You mess around with the natural environmental systems – the systems that God designed to work a certain way without man’s interference – and you are looking at a mess full of trouble. And in a nutshell that is exactly what happened; the consequences of which we are still living with today.

It wasn’t pollution or the failure to institute green energy or anything stupid like that. No, this was certain groups of people getting god-complexes – little g this time though they thought they were big G’s – and wanting to rule the world. How much trouble? Try Biblical proportions though certainly not the ones that will eventually kick our rear ends if you believe in the Christian Bible and John’s Revelation in particular. Nope, this mess isn’t God’s fault but the fault of some crazy scientists that were under the direction of even crazier, power hungry people that wanted to own and run the whole ball of wax – ‘cause of course they could do it so much better than everyone else – without really having to go to war to get it.
The US got hit pretty bad and pretty hard but we weren’t the only ones. The long term effects may be even harder for those countries that had a hand in attacking us; not because we hit them back so much as because when they started monkeying around with the ball of rubber bands they eventually caused it to snap back in their own faces.

In a real way God has stood up for those that have taken a beating in this new era in history. One of his natural laws took effect shortly after the first volley of the war though people were slow to realize it, particularly our enemies. There is no action without an equal and opposite reaction. Yeah, I know that is a scientific “truth” but God was the one that put science in motion so it is His truth when you get right down to brass tax.

Now instead of writing history as victors, they are struggling for survival as much as we are. And that’s right where I need to start telling this particular story. Need to start it if I ever plan on finishing it and I’ve just had about all of it running around in my head unchecked as I care to.

Elizabella Kellen Heatherly

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 1: It All Started When …

" The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.”
Mark Twain


“Look around you Brothers and Sisters! It is a judgement by God Almighty! A judgment I say!! It’s the end of days! Whoa be to those that have brought this on our heads! God will smite our enemies! God will smite those who ridiculed us! God will smite the unfaithful, the sinners, the no counts, the blasphemers! God will smite the spiritually unclean, the dopers, the sexually immoral! God will smite …”

I lay under a bench temporarily masquerading as a pew trying to stay out of the way of getting trampled by those enthused by all the smiting that was to come and those that were taken in the Spirit. It gave me a peculiar view of those around me. It also meant I overheard things because no one knew I was there.

For example, it didn’t take long for me to hear some stuff I probably wasn’t meant to. A hissing whisper from behind and above my position asked, “Doesn’t he ever just shut up?”

Another whisper answered the first, “Hasn’t yet. He’s been going at it for three days straight now. Them crazies’ll stop for fifteen or twenty minutes a couple of times a day to allow the so-called faithful to get something to drink or hit the crapper but that’s about it. They’s working themselves up for something big to happen but I have a feeling they’re in for a let down. God don’t seem to be listening to anyone much less this crazy group here.”

A snort that was meant to be an agreement I suspect preceded, “Not like they need to stop for a full meal anyway; the truck is two days overdue and frankly I don’t think it’s coming and it don’t seem like that guy’s god is gonna send manna this time around like the Reverand was pushing up on claiming yesterday.”

“You think that’s why them National Guard guys and gals picked up and left this morning? Think they knew something?”

I could hear a bit of plastic rattling as they pulled their garbage bag ponchos on, preparing to go back outside, away from the sticky atmosphere of depression, hunger, fear, and zealotry. “Don’t know, maybe they just finally got tired of the reverend there forever telling everyone that following their orders wouldn’t do any good anyway since the world was coming to an end and if they followed him they’d all get to Glory.”

“Glory,” the other man said with derision. “Only place this bunch’ll be going like as not is a dead end and a watery grave just like the rest of us if them damn pontoons don’t show up soon.”

As the two men went outside into the ever present rain part of me felt badly for agreeing with them. Reverand Jacob had been going at it pretty hard and heavy. If sheer volume of words was capable of convincing anyone of anything, the Reverand would hands down have the world believing everything he said. The man didn’t know what sparing meant when it came to elocution. But no matter how I tried to be good like I was told, I just couldn’t bring myself to agree with Rev. Jacob and it felt kinda sacreligious if not downright blasphemous.

“Psst. Hey … Ell, got anything to eat?”

Sighing I rolled over and around and looked at my fourteen year old cousin before climbing out from my refuge and drawing him out onto an empty space on the porch of VFW Lodge. “Todd Michael I told you last time you asked – and all the times before that for the past twenty-four hours – that I don’t have anything left. You and Josh Daniel cleaned me all out night before last while I was asleep. If you two would have listened to my warnings we’d still have something but you just stuffed your face with it all and what you didn’t eat you gave to the kitchen ladies and who knows what they did with it … we sure didn’t get any.”

Sounding the next best thing to whiney my cousin said, “That’s not our fault. Dad said we was to shake you down and make sure you weren’t holding back.”

I rolled my eyes. “I wasn’t holding back, I was saving it for us just in case. Now it is just in case time but we don’t have anything saved.”
Josh Daniel picked that moment to stroll up. He was big - easily twice or more my size - and another year older. At seventeen he was on his way to a college football scholarship and an escape from the life his mother’s abandonment and his father’s fanatical religiosity had sentenced him and his brother to; was being the operative word. “Todd Michael, how many times you gotta be told you ain’t gotta listen to Elizabella; she’s just a girl and a pretty useless one at that.”

I set myself to move out of the way of a large fist when I told him, “Useless to this family is the last thing I’ve ever been. If it wasn’t for me coming you’d still be wearing dirty drawers and eating charity dinners.” Sure enough Josh Daniel’s oversized pride tried to take control at the very idea of an uppity girl child telling him an honest fact. Instead he started coughing and hacking like a lung was coming up. I knew I’d broken that cough two days before and I also knew the likely cause of its return. “Oh Lord, what has she dosed you with now?!”

Todd Michael looked at me in fear. “You shouldn’t talk about Sister Jacob that way. She’ll set the spooks on you.”

Ignoring my younger cousin I helped Josh Daniel over to a chair on the porch of the Lodge. “Look at me Josh Daniel. What did that woman give you?”

“She had me … (cough, cough) … had me … (spit a glob of yellow yuck) … had me smoke some Jimson Weed. Said it would clear my lungs.”

My outrage momentarily took my voice away. I nearly screamed in frustration. It isn’t that I thought my family was backwards; no, there’s not a thing wrong with being backwards and old fashioned. What irritated the skin right off my body is the fact that they were ignorant and bound and determined to stay that way. “How many times do I have to tell you not to take anything from that woman? Momma always thought she was more dangerous than the snakes Brother Jacob Sr. liked to play with. Don’t you have any sense?! I swear, Jimson Weed is poisonous!”

Behind me a scratchy female voice intoned, “Harlot. Witch. Just like your mother. You use God’s gifts to blind the eyes of good men.”

Being cooped up a week with people that think next to nothing of you has a way of wearing on your nerves. Having had just about all I could take I turned around and spat, “I said poisonous and I mean poisonous. Just like you. My parents were married and it shouldn’t be a surprise ‘cause your own daddy was the one that said the words over them. You just got your nose out of joint because my daddy didn’t care for your charms. How you can hold a grudge over something like that all these years is something to drive a saint crazy trying to figure out.”

SMACK!

“Are you insane?!” I shouted rubbing my cheek. “Hit me again and see if I stand for it. The only reason you’re getting away with it this time is because my uncle seems to be taken with you. But you listen here, I might only be sixteen to your … your … whatever it is … but even I have sense to know you don’t tell kids to smoke locoweed. This stuff is datura, belladonna … poison! It will kill you right where you stand.”

In a righteous and superior tone she intoned, “They say the same thing about the snakes, but they don’t hurt the faithful.”

“Uh huh … and is that why your daddy died of snake bite? He had a crisis of faith or something?”

She tried to slap me again but I moved and her hand plowed into the porch column that I had been standing in front of, embedding a good sized splinter of wood into the palm of her hand. She commenced to acting like I’d stabbed her in the heart and the women of the flock gathered around her and walked her back inside, every last one of them giving me the evil eye despite the fact I’d never even laid a hand on the skinny ol’ besom.

Since I was pretty well used to it by this point I ignored them with ease now that I knew they’d be leaving me alone which singed a few tail feathers by the smell of their passing. Or maybe that was just all the sweat from some of the charismatic frolicking going on. I turned to Josh Daniel and told him, “I am not bossing you but you need to let me listen to your breathing … so no hitting or I’ll give you reason to start wheezing if you aren’t already. Understand?”

He ignorned me as well as I had ignored the battle ax brigade but he didn’t make a fuss when I opened his shirt collar and listened. What I heard upset me in a way that Sister Jacob never could. “You listen to me Josh Daniel. You cannot go out in the rain anymore. And you need to keep dry socks on your feet.”

“Don’t have no dry socks. And Daddy says I have to help gather up what all is left since I’m so big and can carry more than some of the old folks.”

“I’ll talk to Uncle Jerry.”

An angry voice behind me said, “Talk all you want girl, I ain’t listening to your mouth no more. You done pushed me too far.”

I turned swiftly and caught a backhand that sent me tumbling off the porch into all the standing water below. Before I could stand up my backpack followed me down. “I have put up with you and put up with you and put up with you for near four years now. I tried to get the devilishness out of you but you are turning into a demoness just like your mother’s sister did.”

Wiping the blood off my mouth, knowing he was about to fulfill the threat he’d been making since the first day he picked me up at the courthouse, I finally decided to have my say. “Ever thought that half Aunt Penny Lynn’s problems stemmed from the fact that she loved you and couldn’t understand why you beat on her? Ever wonder why she stayed as long as she did? Ever wonder why she jumped off the Leap instead of just divorcing you and finding a new life? You want the answer to that try looking in a mirror if you can stand it.”

“You whore of …”

“… Babylon. Yeah, you’ve said it enough. But how can I be a whore and still be a virgin? Huh? Even after Sister Jacob convinced you to force me to see that doctor? Plenty of people wondered why that doctor wouldn’t have nothing to do with Sister Jacob after that. I could have told them if anybody would listen.” Well there were certainly a lot of interested listeners now and it was time to give them an ear full. “It was because he wouldn’t lie for her that’s why. I heard ‘em Uncle Jerry. I heard them fighting about it. He refused to say I was loose and that I’d been fooling around because he knew it wasn’t true. That’s why he no longer would come up here to the community and why Rev. Jacob couldn’t find another to replace him. Word got around. You know good and well Lee Ward and I weren’t doing anything but working on a science project. His momma or sisters were right there the whole time. He was a good friend and that’s all. And was only a few months to heading off to school anyway so why all the ruckus and lies I can’t account for. After he left and word got passed around by the gossips no one would be friends with me anymore. Then Lee’s family packed up and moved because of all the persecution and the community lost one of the best families of carpenters this mountain has ever seen. And one of these days Sister Jacob is going to get hers … if not on this earth then on Judgment Day.”

Uncle Jerry had gone pale and I could see the guilt in his eyes. He knew I was telling the truth but he hid from it. He was so in love with Cecily Jacob that he couldn’t even stand to entertain the idea that she was who and what she was. I knew for a fact that Uncle Jerry and Sister Jacob had done more than go walking – and didn’t that nearly blind me for life coming upon them in the old mill offices where I’d been looking for a particular kind of spider for the science project in question that got me and Lee in trouble. I also knew that was why she hated me – or at least was one of the reasons why. She had seen me see her and my uncle doing what the Good Book said unmarried people had no business doing. What her own brother preached against at some point nearly every Sunday straight from the pulpit. I mean for a fact for a bachelor he sure was hung up on sex.

Uncle Jerry also suspected I had seen and for a long while feared what I could do to them. Reverend Jacob could turn on a body near as quick as the snakes he was fond of handling; family or not wouldn’t matter to him any more than it had mattered to his father before him who cut off nearly all of his children when they slid away from the faith. If Uncle Jerry had known me at all he would have known I never would have ratted on them. No one would have believed me anyway. I tried to tell him that in a round about way but that only seemed to make him more fearful … and confused.

“You are …”

“… thrown out of the family. Thrown out like that old murderer Cain. Nothing but a pile of salt like old Lot’s wife. Left without the protection of my menfolk like poor Dinah. Yeah, yeah; I get it. You’ve been threatening to do it since day one. Why on earth you signed them papers to take me on in the first place I don’t know. Was it guilt over driving my mother’s sister to drink and then to suicide? Was it some kind of penance? Did you think that would make her ghost go away and leave you be?”

“Go! Just … just go!! Get thee from my sight!”

Why is it when people are turning family out they have to go all biblical and old-fashioned in their words? I don’t think Uncle Jerry ever used “thee” any other time except when he was threateneing to turn me or someone else out of the family.

I turned to Josh Daniel and Todd Michael and told them, “Couple of words then I’m gone ‘cause you’re my cousins and despite our differences family means something to me. B’ware that you don’t turn out like your daddy. And don’t listen to that mean old witch he is taking up with and her so-called doctoring. She’ll kill you or worse with her cures. And wear your rain coats.” I looked in the crowd and saw June Ellen Darby and told her, “Please look after them. Josh Daniel’s lungs are sounding as wet as my feet are right now.”

June wanted to be a nurse and she knew as well as I did that Sister Jacob was nothing but a quack. She wouldn’t say it but she knew it. She and Josh Daniel had started talking about a month before the rains started when they found out they had scholarships to the same school. If anyone was strong enough to keep the boys out of the clutches of that nasty woman it would be June; her family had left Rev. Jacob’s flock when the church split three years ago when a few in the church thumbed their nose at the local sheriff and tried to bring snake handling back despite the fact that it was about as against the law in these parts as you could get. Only time I’ve ever seen Josh Daniel cross his daddy was concerning June; he wouldn’t give her up even if she did go to a different church.

I turned around and started walking – slogging in my muck boots through the water that reached just above my ankles was more like it – half expecting to feel a stone or soggy hymnal catch me in the back of the head. I walked deliberately toward town until I was out of sight of the rest of them and then when I was sure no one was looking I started hurrying and headed up in to the trees and across a wood lot until I reached a secluded picnic table the highschoolers had put there for their parties away from parental eyes.

The ground was still soggy but the gravel the table sat on – carried in by the pocketful so no one would notice – kept the land from being muddy. I took a hurried look inside my backpack and sighed with relief. Everything was still in there and sealed in ziplock bags and the trash bags I had tripled lined the inside of the pack with had prevented those from getting even a little damp despite the minor dunking the pack had suffered. I knew what I needed to do and I needed to do it quick. If I waited any longer I’d get cut off and then all my planning would be for nothing.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 2: Free At Last

“By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity--another man's I mean.”
Mark Twain


I’d been planning for this day for over a year, not too long after what I call – assuming I can bring myself to mention it at all – “the embarrassing doctor incident.” The older I got the more I understood that there would never be a permanent place for me in Uncle Jerry’s home. I figured at best I had until Todd Michael was out of school but probably not that long the way Sister Jacob was leading my uncle around by his man parts.

Ok, so maybe I hadn’t been planning for this particular day or getting thrown out in the rain exactly, but I’d sure been planning for one something like it. And with the way everyone seemed to think the world was coming to an end it seemed as good a time as any to see if my plan was gonna pay off.

It took almost an hour because I had to detour around deep water where the land swelled and then dipped, capturing and holding the rain in natural gullys and depressions, but I finally got to the house. It was the same as the day we had left with Uncle Jerry to go to the VFW. The way the water was rising he wouldn’t be back before the place was flooded and useless to him and the boys. I let myself in, walked to the kitchen, and then opened the basement door. Sure enough there was plenty of the wet stuff down there already where it was seeping through the walls.

The basement was dark and smelled funny, like old closed up places do when they get wet, but I took a wind up flashlight out of my backpack and headed down. They’d turned the power off to the town a week before to keep people from electrocuting themselves. I went over to the far corner and using a step stool reached up on one of the tops shelves, behind old holiday decorations that hadn’t seen use in over a decade, and pulled out a couple of taped up storage tubs which I carried upstairs. Then I grabbed a couple of laundry baskets and trash bags and gathered my few belongings that remained in the house. It had become my habit not to keep anymore at the house than I had to to keep Uncle Jerry and the boys from being suspicious and that habit paid off. It meant I had much less to move than I might have otherwise.

I looked outside and saw that it had started to rain in earnest and I knew my time was even shorter than I had thought at first. I ran across the lot to the empty house that sat kitty corner to Uncle Jerry’s and then to the barn out back of it. The ground was so soggy that I kicked up mud and who knows what else onto my pants as I splashed along as fast as I could. When I got inside the barn I brushed away old hay and pulled a tarp back and breathed a sigh of relief when the old pick up hidden underneath came to life with just one crank.

I drove back to Uncle Jerry’s, praying every foot that I wouldn’t get stuck, and spent precious moments loading things up and praying for God to forgive me for being an ungrateful niece. Because, despite the awfulness of the situation, I couldn’t stop a bubble of happiness from making me feel like I could just about follow Jesus’ example and walk on the water that had risen higher just in the little bit of time I’d been at my task.

After one last run through Uncle Jerry’s house, stuffing a few other things into pillow cases that had belonged to my grandparents handed down through Aunt Penny Lynn, I jumped in the cab, put it in four-wheel, and took off up the ridge. I took roads when I could but when I couldn’t the truck’s broad tires and strong engine got me through yards or climbing embankments just enough to get around whatever the obstacle was. The higher I went the less standing water and the better the conditions; I’ll take muddy roads over submerged roads any day. Mud bogging was fun when it was an occasional treat but having to do it day in and day out made it the opposite of fun and then some.

Finally I was on what barely qualified as a goat track. I’d been careful to trim back branches without making the road to my destination too visible to the nosey. By the time I got to Daddy’s old hunting camp the rain was coming down so hard I could barely breathe when I was running between the truck and the cave opening.
I knew it was no use waiting for it to let up. Once it started raining like this it didn’t let up for hours, sometimes days. The first few times I’d seen it I wondered that there was enough rain in the sky to rain as long and as hard as it did without let up. Now, weeks later, I no longer wondered. I knew I would need to get all of my stuff in or risk it being blown out of the back of the truck or soaked if the tarp I had tied down over it let the rain in.

I knew no one (or animal either) had found the cave because my early warning system hadn’t been messed with. I opened the entry way and then set to work.
Took me close to thirty minutes to bring it all in and I was shivering like crazy by the time I was finished. Lucky for me the floor of the cave angled up so that any rain that blew in rolled right back out. When I had finally set on using the cave as my bolt hole I had borrowed some stone mason tools from Mr. Harkins and drilled holes on the inside of the narrowest part of the cave opening and then put an aluminum rod up there. I had originally meant it for screening to keep the mosquitos out but clear plastic sheeting worked as well to keep the worst of the rain and damp out.

Even though I knew that there was no one up there except for some deer and other wildlife escaping the flood waters I still went into a little side room to change clothes. It just felt safer to do it that way. After drying off and changing into something that I wouldn’t catch pneumonia in I came out to take care of everything else. I took off the tape that the storage tubs were sealed with and grinned as I hauled an amazing amount of junk food – at least it was to me – to my “pantry” and put it in the old metal supply cabinets that I had hauled up the mountain to my new home. The other tubs had other boxed foods and I put that in another metal cabinet that sat beside the first.

I opened the third set of metal doors and looked at jar upon jar of home preserved foods – my share of various home ec projects in school – as well as stuff that I’d picked up at the grocery store or the scratch-and-dent when I could get it without Uncle Jerry or the boys noticing. The last two metal supply cabinets held large, sealed #10 cans of basic staple foods. How I came to have those cans … not to mention the metal cabinets as well as just about everything else I was looking around at … is one of those quirks that happen in life that let you know that God is looking out for you even when you don’t think so.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 3: Providential Direction

“Prov'dence don't fire no blank ca'tridges, boys.”
- Mark Twain


It was called “Bruno’s Auto Salvage and Storage Center” and I was prepared to beg if I had to. I’d just found out that Uncle Jerry had allowed the storage fees to lapse on the place that all that remained of my family’s worldly goods was stored in. I didn’t have one thin dime to my name, or at least none that I could get at as it was set aside by the probate court for my schooling if I so choosed to get any. The letter I had snitched from the mailbox without anyone catching me said that if it wasn’t paid up but quick the contents of the storage locker would be auctioned off to pay overdue fees and interest.

Determined to save my inheritance any way I could I had gotten off the bus three stops before I was supposed to and walked to the address that had been on the letterhead of the past due notice. Going in I noticed a sign that said “help wanted” and scribbled at the bottom was a note that part of the pay included a rent-free storage space. An idea zinged me right were I stood as ideas sometimes do.

I pushed opened the door and asked, “May I speak to Mr. Bruno please?”

The guy behind the counter barely looked up before pointing me towards one of the biggest, ugliest dogs to have ever been birthed by dog kind.
Blinking for a moment and thinking fast I looked at the dog and started my shpiel. “How do you do sir? I noticed the sign on the door and was wondering if you had filled the advertised position yet. If you haven’t I’d like to apply. I have lots of good qualities that would make me handy to have around. I’m strong and don’t complain … well, at least rarely. I’m a bear for being on time; I’d rather be an hour early than five minutes late. I also note the hours you are looking for; it would be wonderful for me as I go to school in the morning and could come here in the afternoons and then pick up the bus to ride home with my cousins. I …”

A woman came storming into the office, took one look at me talking to the dog, then looked at the man behind the counter and said, “Oh no you don’t. Not another one of your crazy, worthless strays. I absolutely forbid it. I have too much to do as it is. I’m not going to babysit another that can’t answer a phone or add more than single digits together.”

The man fired back just as stormy, “I’ll hire who I please woman, it’s my business. Stop being so dat blasted bossy. Always trying to tell me what to do. You’d think after thirty years of marriage you would have learned what a useless sport that was. ‘Spect the real problem is you want me to hire that ditzy boyfriend of Sophie’s. Well it ain’t happening. Last time I hired one of your sister’s boyfriends he liked to steal me blind every time he came into work … and that wasn’t often as you’ll recall as most of the time he was laid up stoned or drunk.”

They went back and forth like that for a few more minutes and then the woman stormed out after shouting, “Well I wash my hands of the whole mess. Don’t look to me to train her. I told you I’m going back to working at the hair dresser’s and I mean it this time!”

I winced, expecting the door to shatter when she slammed out but the shock absorber on the door caught it just in the knick. The man gave me a disgusted look and said, “You better be worth the trouble.”

I started the next day and after a couple of weeks Mr. Harkins actually stopped looming over me and watching my every move like I was going to take the keys and break into every storage locker and cherry pick them … but he still kept his money locked up tighter than a spinster’s diary. I eventually learned the dog was actually Bruno the Fourth and that underneath all the mismatched fur “he” was actually a “she.” I was also given more responsibilities as I proved my value to the boss. Even Mrs. Harkins came down off her high horse after a bit when I didn’t complain about washing windows or cleaning the break room and bathroom over at the auto salvage’s maintenance garage.

Fast forward a few months and Mr. Harkins started getting curious. I never volunteered nothing because I was not, by nature, foolish but it was hard to not answer a direct question.

“You can stop slip sliding around it Kid. You say you needed a way to pay the rent on your locker but you could have gotten a job anywhere for that.”

I looked at him and asked, “Mr. Harkins have you seen what the unemployment numbers are for people my age? I came here looking to see if we could make a deal somehow until I could figure things out but that sign you had out was Providential.”

He snorted as he always did at any mention of religion. “Providential huh?”

“Yes sir. Providential. Not like you hear people say sometimes but a real feeling like God was opening a window when a door got slammed shut in your face.”

He snorted again but this time less cynically. “Had that feeling a time or two myself.”

Another time he caught me reading a book he’d left lying around. “Hey there Kid. That doesn’t belong to you.”

“No sir, I know. But it’s been a slow day and it looked like a good book. Pretty scary stuff though.”

Looking at me like he was weighing something about me he asked, “Don’t like science fiction?”

“Didn’t read like science fiction, more like a history book. I had to read ‘Alas, Babylon’ for English last summer and it got me to thinking but this one … wow. It makes it all seem possible. And then all this stuff going on in the world with all them countries – including ours – beating their chests like a bunch of monkies trying to figure out who’s top banana? That book talks about almost that exact thing happening.”

He chewed his lip a moment then asked, “What did you think about it?”

“That it is probably realer than a lot of people want to believe. Wish I could …” I fell silent.

“Wish you could what? Pretend like all the bad things are going to go away?”

“No sir, ain’t never gonna happen. Bad things happen all the time and there’s no changing that. Just … if I could … I wish I could have me a place sorta like that guy in the story did. It wouldn’t be anything fancy like his – no compound or gates or leventy dozen solar panels – just a place I could go when I don’t have any other place I can go. If that makes sense I mean.”

“It’s called a bolt hole.”

And that’s when Mr. Harkins started to teach me about being a survivalist. Only he said not to ever call it that because “the government has ears” and it was one of the watch words that could get the government over interested in a person in a bad way. When I asked him then what I was supposed to call it he answered, “Don’t call it anything, just do it.”

That was Mr. Harkins’ philosophy of life to a T. He didn’t have a whole lot of respect for people that did more talking than doing. His son Ronnie was like that, always planning or talking about what he was going to do … but he never really seemed to do anything but have his hand stuck up under some hood or other … and that wasn’t just vehicles either; he spent more than a goodly amount of time with the girls if you catch my meaning.

Me? I decided that Mr. Harkins was right; I was living on borrowed time and sitting around wishing I had a place, or even planning to get me one, was never going to make it come true. Life had taught me more than once that it was no fairy tale. And that’s when I come upon the idea of using Daddy’s old hunting camp. We used to go up there all the time when my folks were still around. It was about the only vacation we ever got because between me, the twins Robert Lee and Jeff Davis, and then my two little sisters Lulu and Lurlene there wasn’t exactly a whole lot of money to go around.

And the camp always made me feel closer to them all when I was there too. I don’t like to talk about it but I guess to get folks to understand I’ll mention it just this once. Isn’t it awful that the only reason I’m alive is because I was in the bathroom? We’d stopped at the gas station because the twins had eaten something that didn’t agree with them. Daddy said we needed gas anyway. At the last second my insides gave a watery chuckle and I knew I had to go to the bathroom too. I was in the stall when I heard the crash and barely got out of the facilities with my shorts in place. Some guy driving an RV had had a heart attack and plowed into our van and into the pumps we were parked by and then into the car on the other side of the pumps and just kept going until what was left of the RV wound up in the dumpster off to the side of the Quickie Mart.

I don’t talk about the rest of it and I won’t write about it either. Some things are too private to share. What is done is done and the only satisfaction I have is knowing that it was quick, they all went together, and they are waiting up in Heaven for me when it is my time. But it was a lot of lonely time for a long time. Lee Ward was one bright spot in all the dark but rancid Sister Jacob ruined what might have been if there’d been enough time and afterwards no one else would take a chance on befriending me. So I kept to myself and it suited me fine … or so I kept telling myself so many times I started to believe it more often than not.

But the hunting camp has always had happy memories for me so the idea of living there wasn’t scary or anything like that and it was a natural location for my own personal “bolt hole.”

I think Mr. Harkins enjoyed testing me and teaching me to see if I understood what it meant to be able to get along in this world, be self-sufficient, regardless of the circumstances. Lord knows he didn’t have anyone else in his family to talk to about it. Ronnie was too wrapped up in his own future plans and Mrs. Harkins … she just didn’t get it. She could fathom a time when there might not be money to go to the grocery store with … but not a time when there might not be no grocery stores. She sometimes made fun of Mr. Harkins and poked jabs at his “little hobby” that “wasted good money.” He laughed with her and would say, “Aw, I gave that up a long time ago and you know it. Stop razzing me already.” But then he’d turn to me after she’d left and raise an eyebrow and say, “Sometimes you do things for your family for their own good whether they know it or understand it or not.”

Then came the volcano that blew that they said triggered the big earthquake out on the west coast. And after the earthquake the tsunami that made a mess far out into the Pacific. Man that was bad.

Mr. Harkins started to get itchy. He was worried about the economy mostly and with good reason. Things were getting grim. They predicted the ash was going to hurt the green belt of the Midwest where most of the grains were grown and the plains where the cattle was kept. Folks out there had already suffered through a series of droughts that created another dust bowl. The year was supposed to be the first good one in a long time and then everyone had to give up that dream.

That sent groceries sky high, higher than they already were; and just about everything else too. People stopped paying the rent on their storage lockers and there wasn’t anyone with money to bid on any auctions that Mr. Harkins held to get his money back. So he started to just do his own cherry-picking even though by law he wasn’t supposed to.

If he ran across something that he already had one and a spare of he’d set it aside and tell me to “just get rid of it since no one is gonna claim it.” Then he’d give me a look. That was his signal that whatever happened to that thing I was supposed to be getting rid of he didn’t want to know. In other words, keep my mouth shut and take it for my bolt hole.

I wound up with some nice stuff that way. Old tools, old cast iron cookware to go with what was already in my locker, clothes, an old sewing machine, and many more things besides. Even got some guns that way though the less said about that the better though who on earth is gonna care at this stage of the game I couldn’t guess.

Cash got scarce and Mr. Harkins still kept me on, paying me in locker rent, ammo, and a bit of coinage if he found any in the abandoned storage lockers. Suited me fine because Uncle Jerry always made me put what cash I had into the house funds and I had to account for where it went with receipts and such. The only time he never talked me crosseyed over a purchase is when I told him it was for my feminine needs. After a couple of months of that early on he cringed and told me he didn’t want to hear about it no more and just to mind that I didn’t expose the boys to too much knowledge of the female body and its needs. Like I would. To be honest though they both knew enough that I didn’t need to tell them a thing. All those stupid and embarrassing health classes we had to take at school should have given anybody with half a brain at least a few clues.

And that’s how I got supplies for my bolt hole. The problem was it was next to impossible to move anything from the storage locker to the cave. I had been taking small things – things that could be hidden in my school back pack or lunch box – that I could then transport to the cave on my days off or on Sunday afternoon when Uncle Jerry wanted the boys and I to get scarce so he could “Bible Study” and pray over some problems with Sister Jacob. Uh huh. I’m sure that’s what they were doing.

Then about four months after the quake Mr. Harkins told me, “If you got your place you need to be moving your stuff.”

I told him, “I would if I had a way to get it there.”

“So you do got you a place.”

“I do,” I told him, being careful as he was about his not to reveal its location.

He gave me a look and then rubbed his chin a moment or two before reluctantly saying, “Ronnie bought him a new truck … though why he would do something like that without asking me first I don’t know … and my old truck is just sitting there rusting. I won’t help you and you’ll need to find a way to come up with gas, but should you get the hankering to move things I don’t mind none if you borrow it … just so long as you bring it back and don’t ding it up none.” After a moment he thought to ask, “You do have your license don’t you?”

“Yes sir. I took driver’s ed so that I could do the grocery shopping without having to drag Uncle Jerry or Josh Daniel along. If possible they’re worse than you are about that sort of thing.”

He snorted but didn’t object to my view. He hated shopping with a passion unless it was the online kind. Now auctions he liked, yard sales too, but he said more often than not he got better junk from abandoned lockers. So using Mr. Harkins’ truck was how I moved all of my stuff from the locker to the cave.

Two weeks after we were all shocked and found out the rains weren’t going to stop until those monsters on the other side of the world decided they were tired of playing godlets with the weather I came to work only to find the place dark and empty. Cautiously I walked in the unlocked door being careful to use my shirt sleeves to open it with. My first thought was that there’d been a robbery and I worried that I’d find someone laying in a pool of blood like on a TV show. Instead, in the office, I found an envelope with my name on it stuck to the bulletin board.

“Kid, it is time for me and mine to do what I you told it would one day be time to do. In leiu of a last paycheck here are the keys to the truck. It’s gassed up and left where I always keet it. Broke into a couple of the last past due lockers and found a gold mine. You’ll know what I mean when you see what is in the bed of the truck. I know you got family that you worry after but one day you are going to have to fish or cut line and you are the only one that can make that choice of when. You take care and stay above 4000 feet or so and you should be fine … hopefully.”

That was all there was. Flummoxed more than I wanted to admit I calmly walked out to the garage and went to the truck. Sure enough he had indeed filled both tanks full. I untied the tarp and looked under it and if I’d had dentures I would have surely swallowed them. There were six five gallon gas cans back there that were full and two thirty-pound propane cylinders that normally sat in the salvage yard. This is also when I came to be the proud owner of the #10 cans.

In the front seat of the truck was another note, as brief as the other one: “The Mrs. is packing the whole dang house and we ran out of room in the trailers. Reckon you won’t let this stuff go to waste … better not anyway. You behave Kid and I think we might just be seeing each other on the other side of the Pearly Gates after all.”

The last sentence meant more to me than anything else he could have done for me. See, while he talked to me about being able to live on my own I’d talked to him about God. Seems like we both came away with something.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 4: Running Is Done

"I ran away twice; once at about 13, & once at 17. There is not much satisfaction in it, even as a recollection. It was a couple of disappointments, particularly the first one. The heroics squish out of such things so promptly."
- Mark Twain


And suddenly all my running was over with and there I sat as safe and as sound as I could make me with more time on my hands than I’d ever had to myself before. Boy did it feel strange.

When you are growing up someone is always telling you what to do, how to do it, and when. Momma and Daddy loved me and weren’t the bossy kinds of parents some kids have but neither one of them seemed to know what sitting still meant unless they had something useful in their hands they were doing. They expected the same of their kids and as the oldest I definitely got my share of the chores and looking after my younger sibs; the twins were two years younger than me but the two girls were stair step younger than them. Momma had had enough after the pills failed the second time resulting in little Lurlene and in her words “shut the factory down permanently.”

After I came to live with Uncle Jerry I discovered, for all the chores I had before, Momma still carried the brunt of the load of housework. Sometimes I think the real reason that Uncle Jerry took me in was because he was tired of picking up after him and the boys. He got lucky that I already knew how to cook and for a little while the boys actually liked me for that alone … that and having clean drawers and clothes to wear so they didn’t get laughed at at school. But that didn’t last after they saw the way Uncle Jerry acted towards me and a sad kind of habit fell into place for all of us.

But that’s neither here nor there and to be honest I’m happiest as a person when I’ve got something useful to occupy my time, I’d just never been free up to that point to choose for the most part what that useful thing would be. But now I did and looking around I knew the first thing I would need to do was turn my bolt hole into something besides a rat’s nest. I decided my changing room would be where I would keep all the clothes and other linens and I would build cedar shelves and hang rods to hold what wouldn’t fit on shelves.

But first things first, I was starving. As I turned on the old apartment-sized propane stove that came out of the back of a foreclosed on storage locker to heat up some of my home canned chicken soup I began to tackle what would become my dining room and kitchen. I put the legs back on the old Formica table that I’d grown up eating on but left the extension leaves in what I called the storage annex. That was a side chamber on the cave where I had stuffed just about everything I could to give me elbow room in what would become the living area of the cave. I had the layout drawn out already and even had a little alcove for the necessary. There was an old outhouse my dad built when he was a boy but it needed a new sitter so you wouldn’t fall through when you sat down. It also needed a door but that would have to come later.

After I had eaten I could have thumped myself for forgetting to catch rain water and start it perking through the big sand filter I had built to make my drinking water from. But rather than waste time fussing at myself I went ahead and did that very thing. Suddenly I realized I was tired, very tired.

Now some might think this a silly thing since I had a whole cave over me but I wanted a bedroom. Unfortunately the alcove that I had originally decided on as a bedroom was full of stuff from the storage locker. And I just wasn’t comfortable stringing up a curtain and sleeping behind it. So I decided that I’d put that big ol’ tent that Mr. Harkins had given me to get rid of – wink, wink – and set it up in the back corner of the central cavern. It wasn’t fun to put that big ol’ thing up by myself but I did manage to finally. I swept out the inside and gave it a wipe down and then decided in for a penny, in for a pound.

I pulled a nice fold up bed out of the storage annex and set it up in there. The mattress for it wasn’t new but it was bed bug free of that I was sure as I’d done my own treatment on everything I put in storage before it came to the cave. And it was more comfortable than anything I’d slept on in a long while. That broken down nasty thing that I was forced to sleep on or sleep on the floor at Uncle Jerry’s wouldn’t have even made a good dog bed. Next came a brand new sheet set, a brand new pillow, and a fairly new comforter. It was amazing what people put in storage and then decided to just let go.

At the last second I took the comforter off and put one of my mother’s quilts on the bed and then put the comforter back over it. I also added a couple of needlepointed pillows that Mamaw had started and Momma had finished.

With the bed all prettied up I went in search of a telephone table I had managed to save from being auctioned off … it had been handmade by my great great grandfather though no one seemed to care but me … and I used that as a night stand. I sat a wind up lamp on top of it but it didn’t look all that nice next to everything else so I decided I would decorate the shade when I had a little more time on my hands … probably once it got too cold to be outside too much.

Next came a camp chair and to make it more homey I drapped a crocheted afghan over it and put a little poof of a footstool in front of it. A rag rug that I had made myself went at the “door” of my bedroom and last but not least I put my Bible in my “nightstand” drawer – right where a telephone book would have gone – and hung a picture of my family on one tent wall and on the other the picture of Jesus in the Garden that had been on my wall when I was little.

All nice and cozy. I debated about a dresser and there was one that would do the trick, but it was late and I was beat and I’d had about all the winding of the lamp I was in the mood for. So before I had to do it again I left my bedroom/tent and went down to the cave opening. Sure enough it was still raining. My mind wandered, wondering what the boys, Uncle Jerry, and the rest of the flock were doing as the flood waters were surely rising high and fast where they were at. Then I shook my head and realized that since none of them would listen to me there was nothing I could do for them except have faith that God would do with them what He would. I slid the sheet of plywood in front of the opening and then turned to roll the two buckets of cement on either end to keep the plywood from falling over.

The buckets held concreted in metal pipes that I think someone used to hold up a volleyball net or something like that. Mr. Harkins thought I was a little silly for keeping them but I figured they would come in handy for something; if not a door holder then I’d be able to use them to string a clothes line on or any number of other things.

I’d never stayed the night in the cave by myself. It felt the same as when my family had stayed there when I was growing up yet it also felt different. Haunts and spooks don’t scare me none. Neither do spiders, snakes, storms, or being alone. That first night I wasn’t precisely what you’d call scared but I’d be lying if the enormity of what I was undertaking didn’t have me a little anxious. I went to my bed, read a little from the Good Book, and then feeling safe I finally went to sleep.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 5: Life Starts Anew

The rain is famous for falling on the just and unjust alike, but if I had the management of such affairs I would rain softly and sweetly on the just, but if I caught a sample of the unjust out doors I would drown him. – Mark Twain


“Rain, rain go away, come again some other day.”

I’m not too sure but that might have become the new national anthem by then. I suppose now is as good a time as any to tell what I know – which isn’t much – on why we are getting flooded out. Posterity will have to pardon the gaps; Uncle Jerry didn’t think it proper for women to be involved in politics and the school thought the truth would freak us kids out and create too much work for them as they were already scared enough for us. Mr. Harkins told me what he knew but the honest truth is the powers that be bottled up the truth and was stingy on letting it flow freely.

This is how it started … seems there are those on the earth that don’t think America was paying her fair share of things to keep the world turning for everyone. We have so much while others have so little. They also feel that all that we have we stole from someone else. Granted some of that may be true to a certain extent, but wondering why things are like they are is like wondering why God gives so much to some and so little to others and “deserving” one way or the other seems to have so little to do with it; at least in human standards. So a coalition of mostly foreign forces – though we had a surprisingly large number of traitors on our own soil – got together and basically said that since America wouldn’t give it up willingly, despite some johnny come lately nut jobs running the country almost doing just that, they’d move things along a little faster.

The thing is they knew they couldn’t overcome our military in a traditional war so they picked the cowards way and chose terrorism. But it was a newfangled terrorism … not blowing up buildings or cyber attacks, but using our own environment and dependencies against us.

It started with the volcanic eruption of Mount Rainier and the subsequent cataclysmic earthquake down the West Coast of the US. Or maybe it was the other way around. Kinda like the chicken or the egg question. They happened right on top of one another and from what everyone heard on the radio the scientists were in hot debate on whether they were separate events or parts of a whole.

No one knew which was worse, the volcanic explosion and deadly mudflow the consistency of wet concrete that travelled at 40 mph befores slamming into Tacoma and wiping out thousand upon thousands of people within moments, the ash field that spread across Seattle choking the life out of folks and then flying across the stratosphere causing even more problems for folks hundreds of miles away, the resulting chain reaction down the twelve other volcanoes in the Cascade Mountain Range; or, the chain of earthquakes across multiple land faults that sliced off huge slivers of California sending them into the Pacific Ocean taking a goodly number of people with them and what didn’t fall into the ocean being basically flattened, even the so-called quake-proof buildings.

That little ditty backfired on some members of the coalition. It was a rallying point for the people in our country; real suffering seems to draw the best out in us for some reason.

Then there was the sudden landslide on the Canary Island of La Palma that sent a megatsunami to batter the Eastern Seaboard of the US. DC and Philadelphia, those bastions of American history, were washed clean like rocks in a polishing tumbler. There was time – about 8 hours from the landslide – for the to government and military to evacuate most of the “important people” but tens of thousands of people still died or were injured in those areas alone as a wall of water 150 feet high swept inland for several miles. Added up, the casualties were in the millions all up and down the East coast from Maine to Miami. And still it didn’t break our country the way most would have thought it would. Oh we were hurt, and suffering, but we weren’t broke which really got the giblets irritated for some that thought we would – or should – be.

So the Coalition of Terror tried the last bullet in their arsenal and that was mucking around with our weather patterns. Not too long ago people would have considered everything that has happened science fiction, just like people looked at some of Mr. Harkins’ books that way. But it has proven to be science fact instead. Of course that doesn’t mean that people should exercise that knowledge. And when they started monkeying around with things the initial results were huge storms with rain clouds that seemed to anchor themselves all up and down the Appalachian Mountains.

You’d think that rain would just run off a mountain and flood the coastal plains or the Great Plains instead. Some of that was obviously happening – and added more woe to those caught between the tsunami destruction to the east and the Appalachian Mountain Range to the west – but the problem is that there are lots of places where the water dammed up and “pooled,” lots of valleys that became like the Great Lakes as more and more water poured in before the previous deluge had a time to leak out.

Huge storms battered the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf Coast as well. Storms that didn’t make any sense swept across the Great Plains as the storms on the West Coast washed away what the earthquake hadn’t destroyed or turned the volcanic ash into a plaster of paris like substance that coated everything.

But the US wasn’t the only ones taking a beating. Canada and Mexico also suffered from their proximity. The Caribbean islands were nearly swept clean except for the mountain tops that were like an ant mound surrounded by water as those people with a little warning had climbed high to avoid the tsunami; and when they died of starvation or thirst they were given sea burials. Central America suffered as well. The Panama Canal, that marvel of human enginuity has all but been destroyed. Further away there was obvious backlash as well. So was its competitor, the one built by money that came out of Asia and Eastern Europe.

The volcanic eruptions and near simultaneous earthquakes had set up a tsunami the likes of which had never been noted in human history. It swept out in all directions and unintended consequences occurred to some coalition members. It also destabilized the Ring of Fire and suddenly new volcanic eruptions were a daily occurrence in the news. It is no joke when I report that Reverand Jacob wasn’t the only person that thought the last days of the earth had arrived and that God was about to do some mighty smiting.

Those Coalition of Terror members suffering from their own actions turned on their former allies but by then it was too late; there was no stopping the harm that had been caused; the patterns that had been put in motion. In addition to the ash floating around up in the atmosphere that would have altered earth’s weather for a season or two even without help, the Jet Stream became truly messed up which meant the whole world’s weather got more messed up well beyond the original intent. Lush, tropical rainforests were drying up or freezing over. Deserts, already hot, became giant Death Valleys … or started flooding and turning some areas into pools of quicksand. Snowcaps were melting in some places and forming in others. Water intrusion caused landslides. Droughts caused huge sink holes to form. The oil fields of the Middle East became a toxic swamp full of sludge.

I’m not sure if the idiots are still in charge of the insame asylum or what but the weather is still way out of whack. So-called experts say it will be a year or three before the earth’s rotation and magnetic something or other spins things back to where they are supposed to be and even then it could take decades to get back to something that people remember normal looked like. The radio is brimming with everyone blaming everyone else. No one will admit to belonging to the coalition but it is too late to hide, the bad guys had their black hats on too long. Now they are running for cover as their people turn against them … not for the horrific thing they created but because the cost of winning was more than “losing” would have been.

But even though all of that stuff is obviously affecting me, the cause of it is too far away and too out of my control. All I can do is deal with what I am faced with every day same as I did that first week.

I got my new home as neatened up as I could but was quick to realize that as the water rose, the damp and humidity did as well. Before a rain would make things damp but the altitude would have it evaporating before too long. Not so’s you’d notice now.

The cave is a dry one. Daddy said that in his granddaddy’s day it had been wet but when they dug out huge chunks of the mountains to put in roads they changed the weight of the land against the seeps and springs so that instead of flowing into a cave pool, it burst from the ground and cascaded down into a new waterfall some distance away. During normal times, after the land got used to the changes that had been forced upon it, the fall would slow to barely a trickle during most of the year. But while snowmelt came down or during a wet season the fall could be spectacular.

To give myself some outdoor time and keep from feeling cooped up, at the end of that first week I took a hike. That water fall had gone from trickle to spectacularly scary. I’ve never been to Victoria Falls over in Africa but I’ve seen pictures. That unnamed waterfall was easily its sibling. That first time I saw it I watched as parts of the mountain broke off and tumbled down from erosion. The boulders bounced so hard I could feel the vibration in the pit of my stomach … and it was doing flip flops in response.

My stomach continued to roll as I noticed all the changes going on around me. The rain and resulting erosion were changing things. I wasn’t scared … but some forboding was setting in. My first question was just how high was the water going to go?

My cave was at just over the 4300 foot elevation mark. Not on the tallest mountain in the Appalachians but one of the higher ones. Mr. Harkins had some internet buddies that had run the topographic maps six ways from Sunday and they were almost certain that the water wouldn’t crest any higher than 4000 simply because of how the land lay; if it got that high it would pour over the tops of smaller mountains in the rang … like one of those overflow drains in a bathtub or sink.

So if the science worked out I was safe. However, there were other things to consider. My propane supply wouldn’t last forever. My solar cooker was pretty well useless. I had some charcoal but ain’t no way would I burn that inside the cave unless I wanted to choke to death on fumes. That left wood and I wasn’t seeing too much of the dry around for me to use. And if my mountain became an island I would wind up cutting it bald just to make it through one or two winters.

My cave averaged a fairly constant temp of about sixty degrees give or take a few depending on where in the cave you were standing. It meant wearing a jacket or light pullover year round but that was OK. That temperature also kept the humidity level down, but not always enough to dry things out in a timely manner.

The night after the hike to what I began calling New Victoria Falls, after looking around and doing some thinking, I knew I didn’t have any choice. My idea of having a real bedroom was going to have to wait for a while, maybe a long while. I moved everything out of there and into the storage annex and turned that area into a drying room.

But I found just sticking the wet wood in there wasn’t working so my next project was to figure out how to get some heat in there. I didn’t have any dry wood so I couldn’t keep a low fire going so the next best thing I figured out was to set up a 100 watt lightbulb.

The trick was setting the 100 watt lightbulb up with no electrical utilities. I fixed that – no, not with solar since the sun was on vacation behind the clouds – but with a bicycle generator. I’d made one for a science fair after I’d been working at Bruno’s for a couple of months and still had all the gadgets and gizmos that I needed like the fuses and wires, and converters all of which I had scavenged from the salvage yard and discarded things at the storage lot. I even had deep cycle batteries on the off chance that one of these days I am able to have solar power.

Basically what I did was use the bicycle generator to create power and then stored that power in batteries. I attached the battery to the inverter and then plugged the lamp in. Of course there is more to it than that.

I started with a 55 amp hour battery. My inverter was about 80% efficient so the total watts coming off the battery was about 120 watts or about 10 amps of current. I did more math and some blah, blah, blah but in the end, after keeping the battery to only 50% discharge so that I got a long shelf life out of each one, one 55 amp hour battery gave me about 2.5 hours of running time for the 100 watt bulb. I had about a dozen batteries in storage so I started using the bike to give them energy to store.

But boy does pedaling that bike take a lot of oomph. After some more math – one of my favorite subjects anyway so it was no skin off my nose – I figured I was spending about 334 calories for every hour of bulb time. The book I was using to find the right formulas for conversion said that I was using about a slice of pizza of calories an hour. Crazy; but boy are my legs toned these days. Now if I could be bothered to shave them I’d look like a Sports Illustrated model … at least from my thighs down. But who the heck is around to notice whether I’m hairy as Sasquatch or not?

And to be honest the bulb didn’t really do a good job; I’d need too many bulbs to really make much of a difference. I didn’t need to heat the air up so much as I needed it to move around. The only floor fan I had used 125 watts which was more than the bulb but I did have an old ceiling fan and it only used 80 watts. It was two weeks before I had everything arranged to my liking and working the way it was supposed to. I spent a lot of time on that bike but then again, I didn’t exactly have much else to do and I was used to staying busy; not to mention being tired helped me to sleep at night.

Ultimately the trick has been to make sure the air can circulate around the wood which I arranged by salvaging some metal shelving from abandoned houses and sheds along the edge of the flooded out areas. I also got a nice flat bottomed bass boat to help get me from area to area without having to get wet. I had to be careful though because the water was really rough in places while in other places it barely moved … at least on the surface. There were … things … floating down in the water and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what they were. There were also snags and eddys that made my life more interesting than I wanted it to be on occasion.

I think the saddest I was during that time was when I took a chance and went back to Uncle Jerry’s. I knew there was trouble when I ran into deep water much sooner than I had expected to. I put my boat in the water and then rowed until I realized the house I was seeing was actually the second floor of the old farm house we had lived in. I looked inside and the place had been ransacked; at least the upstairs had. I don’t know if it was the boys and Uncle Jerry or not but it made me terribly depressed to see it all. It may have been my home in name only but I took pride in keeping it neat and clean. There was about six inches of water above the upstairs floor boards so I didn’t risk going through the window. The floor could give way and then I would be in for a world of hurt.

The thoughts that sprang to my mind are too complicated to put down on paper. There were a lot of “what could have beens” and remembering how things really were for me in that house. There was a smidgen of revenge that I felt really bad about but couldn’t seem to stop feeling. Then there were the worries of “what might be.” Just looking at the place made me sad and depressed for too many reasons to count.

But then the saddest day also turned out to be one of the happiest. As I was paddling away I kept hearing this weak noise that sounded like “rrrrooooooooo”. Curiosity won over caution and I was so glad that it did. I paddled towards the sound I realized it was coming from a barn about a football field away. It was behind the house of some people that Uncle Jerry didn’t have anything to do with because of something that went on way back before I had come to live with him.

As I got closer the noise got frantic but then stopped when I pulled up and tied off. I’d gotten real good at getting in and out of the boat and it wasn’t really hard at all to climb into the hayloft through the open bay door.

Well, long story short the “rrrrroooooing” was a small hound pup that was all ears and feet. He was a sweety despite being weak. The pup was so young he never should have survived on his own but he’d been adopted by the she-cat that nearly had me for dinner when I bent down to pick the pup up. But even that cranky thing let up on her attitude when I realized she’d been scratching at the boxes set up over in a corner. I opened them … and had a hissy fit when I startled some mice that promptly dove into the water and swum away … and found cans of pet food; the wet kind you have to pop the top on.

The mice explained how the cat had survived a month without its people. She’d probably been hunting for the pup as well but I don’t imagine mice are very good fare for dogs. As soon as the cat saw me loading the food into the boat the silly thing shooed the pup into a largish pet carrier, climbed in with it, and then just looked at me like she was daring me to leave them behind.

“Oh for the love of mike,” I sighed and then looked up in submission. “This must be what Noah felt like when you led the animals in two-by-two.”

About the time I was ready to shove off there was a voice calling “Rufus! Rufus!!”

I thought, “Oh no, someone is still around and they are going to think I’m stealing their pets.” But no people ever came. And it was a good thing I hadn’t actually climbed into the boat because I would have surely fallen out.

A large Raven landed right on my head. “Rufus! Rufus!!”

If I was a swearing person I would have been doing some of the fancy kind right then. The blasted bird then hopped off my head and flew off and landed on some metal drums that I hadn’t seen in the gloom. Three drums; one labeled “Rufus T. McGillicutty,” one labeled “Beauregard,” and one labeled “Mischief.” Well it didn’t take a genius to figure out which was which as they each had a different kind of dry feed in them as well as a zip bag of other animal kind of stuff laying on top of the feed. Mischief and Beauregard I could understand but why would anyone call a female cat Rufus is beyond me.

“Well, someone cared about your fate and meant to come back for you. I wonder why they didn’t? Maybe I shouldn’t take you if someone is going to risk life and limb to find you.”

I jumped as I hadn’t expected an answer but the Raven gave me one. “Out! Out!” then “Fly away! Fly away!”

I’ve heard people call their boss bird-brained but I never figured that it could be taken literally. Mischief is just all kinds of bossy but also likes to bring me things … usually shiney things or a snip of greenery. I put the shiney things in a bowl up on the top of a bookcase that he has taken as his roost and make approving noises before laying the greenery in what passes for his nest which is in reality a big box that I cut holes in for him.

Getting the animals back to the cave and settled in was a lot easier than it should have been which leads me to think it was another one of those Providential things. And the fact that all three very different animals got along so well was even more so. Maybe I was the answer to someone’s prayer that their pets be looked after when they couldn’t do it themselves.

I got used to the animals coming and going just as fast as they seemed to train me as their new “master.” During the day Mischief came and went but he was always in before dark. Only one time was he late those first two weeks and that’s because he came back with a lady friend.

“Now listen here you. This is a cave, not the Ark. I suppose you are going to want me to feed and house her as well.”

My only answer was a caw but that is exactly how it turned out. It took about a week but the lady Raven figured out the rules. No baiting Rufus or she’d take a good size swipe at you. No picking on Beau or Rufus would take a swipe at you. Don’t make too much noise or Rufus would take a swipe at you. Don’t snitch the cat or pup’s food or Rufus would do more than take a swipe at you. And no eating out of the dish the human thing was eating in or Rufus wouldn’t be the only being taking a swipe at you.

And that’s how my first couple of months passed without being lonely. At first I was too busy and then the animals came and gave me someone to talk to. Overall a win-win for all concerned … at least for those of us living at the cave. In other places, not so much.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 6: Goobermints

"Everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it." – Mark Twain


In the year 1815 there was this giant volcano that exploded so bad that all the ash that got up into the air was the straw that broke the camel’s back when added to other factors and caused the “Year Without A Summer” the following year. Thousands of people all around the world starved to death as a result even though it only dropped the average temperature by about a single degree. We were already starting to see the same thing happen this go around and what they call a volcanic winter hadn’t even started yet.

Destroying the Midwest was a dumb move on the part of the Coalition of Terror. The US produces – or should I say normally produces – most of the world’s corn supply and corn is used in an amazing number of products, not just foods. With the Midwest toast all of that corn was no longer there to harvest and export. Not only did people not get the corn to eat, they didn’t have it to use in the various industries that it was needed for. It also meant there was a sudden drop in what passed for commercial animal feed. And corn was just one such product significantly depleted for the rest of the world’s consumption; wheat was next in line.

Another way their universal stupidity affected the rest of the world is that the US bought a significant portion of the oil extracted and refined in various countries. With things going caputz in the US there was no longer any need to import all of that overseas oil. Guess what that meant? That meant that countries that relied on selling their oil to the US were all of a sudden hard up. They couldn’t keep their promises to their own people. China might have made up the difference but most of their large population centers and industries also relied on selling products to the US. So basically if the US wasn’t buying then everyone else couldn’t sell very much. Prices dropped … the news said they “plummeted” … and then markets just went stagnant. Stagflation set in at the lowest levels since before World War II and even lower in some areas.

Lots of people around the world lost their jobs. All of those “outsourced” jobs for India and places like that? Gone as the American consumers were no longer consuming. All of those manufacturing jobs based on American consumption? Gone as well. No job gives people a lot of extra time on their hands to be unhappy during. And unhappy, unoccupied people can get up to all sorts of nasty mischief.
Countries and activitist groups went from complaining North America in genereal – and the US in particular – consumed too much of the world’s resources to now we weren’t consuming enough and weren’t supporting the global market as was our duty. Buncha jerks. It is like we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Then again maybe I shouldn’t use that word too lightly. There’s some that will say that the US is getting just what it deserved … God, Allah, karma, or whatever. I’d sat through enough sermons and school rallies to have heard it all more than a few times.

Some complain about the church and state being too separate; some complain about there not being enough separation. Some complain about too much culture diversity; some about lack of diversity. Just about everyone has some form of imagined “guilt” whether it is over the color of their skin, their worldview, the pennies in their pockets (how many or how few). It just all adds to the angst and general lack of focus on personal accountability. I swear … and folks complain about teenagers.

I was real glad to be out of it and relatively safe up in my mountain cave. Or at least safe from some of the things I heard about on the radio. On the other hand, after over two months I realized that the coming dangers for me wouldn’t be much different than for those folks in other areas.

Food. I had a decent amount and so did the animals but eventually I would run out of the stuff I had stored. I’m not what you would call a picky eater – Momma would have fixed that real quick if I had been born that way even if she had to knock it out of me. I also knew how to catch and cook my own thanks to Daddy. And I’m not stupid either which was a blessing from both of them. I needed to be on the look out for ways to replace what I was using.

Up on the mountains it isn’t like it was down in the valleys. I wasn’t going to exactly be able to plant a garden and expect to get anything from it for a while. For one thing there wasn’t what you would call a whole lot of clear space to put in a garden. Then the ground itself was rocky or treed over with big ol’ fir and spruce trees and more trees besides those. And for a while all any seed would do after being planted would be to get washed away. And it isn’t exactly easy to get a decent garden going at these altitutdes either.

But I was determined to plan ahead and as Mr. Harkins always was on about, planning only does so much good if you don’t act on it. So … on my trips down the mountain to do a little salvaging here and there I kept my eyes open for plants and pots and things like that. I also kept my eyes open for wild forage.

Needless to say the cattails that started growing around the edge of what I called the flood zone were pretty abundant in places for a while, at least until the weather changed. I ate a lot of them plus saved the fluffy pollen in large jars to help piece out my flour supply. I collected and ate dandelions whenever I found a decent patch of them that wasn’t covered in slimy mud; then dried and ground the roots and used it to piece out my coffee supply.

I stuffed the fish I caught with wild fennel and I also gathered the seeds and dried them for flavoring and for planting the next spring. I fixed lambs quarter like spinach and couldn’t seem to get enough of it … I think because it is so high in vitamins and my body was craving every bit I could give it. I outgrew my babyfat early and hit puberty before a lot of my friends so I had me some nice padding in the right spots that made me look like a girl. But all the extra work, trekking here and there, and the energy spent on foraging used up a lot of my softness and left me harder and learner. I wasn’t sure if I liked the look, especially as I had to adjust my clothing so much. I even made my own suspenders out of some elastic I had.

I was never vain but honest to pete I still tried to remember I was born a girl … on some days though it wasn’t easy and I decided I needed a lot more than lean fish and foraged greens. I needed some fat to keep my bones from showing to disadvantage … I also needed fats and oils to cook with since my canned butter wasn’t going to last forever and cows were in short to no supply where I was at. That left hunting to make up the difference.

Hunting was not a problem and it is a good thing that I’m a natural born carnivore and have no problem digesting proteins that way. Even after we moved to the city we had a smokehouse though Daddy had to hide it in the shed as he’d made it out of an old refrigerator and some people look down on folks making do with what they have access to. Well I had to make do as well. What I did was to use native rock to make walls under an overhang – looked like a miniature Alum Cave Bluff before I started – and padlocked the door. As soon as the meat was smoked I would bring it back to the cave and put it in an alcove I had set up just for that purpose. I padlocked the door to keep both kinds of animals out; from the sound of the radio it didn’t seem to be much difference between wild beasts and some people.

I wouldn’t say I had a wide variety of animals to hunt but I had more at that elevation than by rights I probably should have. Animals that could escape the rising waters did though many – both wild and domestic – were lost. Many simply sought higher elevations but for a lot of them it was just putting off death and drowning might have been preferable to starving. I had to fight the dogs for the domesticated fowl that I ran across. I thought long and hard about starting me a chicken coop but there was no way I could have taken care of them for very long and it’s cruel to take responsibility for an animal that you can’t treat right.

I smoked and canned about six medium sized wild pigs; not all for me of course as both Rufus and Beau would need to eat something on down the line. I didn’t go near the big ones as they were too stinking mean for words. The big males would tear into each other because there were too many in one location on some days. For a little while there it was as bad as living around a bunch of prides of lions; man, were they vicious. I got treed more than once too.

I was forever trying to shoo them away from my area as whether they were mean or not they would root and turn things over and girdle trees and lots of other stuff to keep themselves fed. Just like with the birds I thought of trying to domesticate some and pen them up somehow once winter thinned them out but then I rethought it after praying; they were a problem I didn’t need.

Deer were just about as bad though I heard on the radio people were paying high prices for venison what with so much of the farming and food industry in disarray. Used to be that people would look down on you for eating things like deer and wild pig … no more; you’d just about have to hand them a bib to catch all the saliva leaking out of their mouths at the thought of getting a bite of meat. You might guess that in addition to the other things I hunted and put up deer meat … and you’d be right.

Even had I tried, alone I couldn’t have thinned the herds of animals that had moved to the higher elevations to get away from the flood waters. But it became apparent that I wasn’t the only one going at it. Ever so often I would hear shotguns and rifles going off some distance away from where I was so I knew other people were populating the upper elevations as well; or at least they were up here hunting.

Strangest thing I saw for a long time was when I was out jigging for frogs. For some reason I just had a hankering for frogs legs. Maybe it was all the rain and I was getting webbed feet or something. Anyway, I was out jigging and I hear this buzzing coming off the water from around a bend created from where a hallow had filled up. Wound up being one of those boats like you see down in the swamps of places like Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana; call ‘em air boats.

I’d never seen one so big. It looked like a giant, flat-bottomed skiff that had a giant fan attached to its butt end. It had room for twenty plus a captain that sat in the back telling the fan which way to send them. It wasn’t full but had about twelve passengers plus a pilot. I grabbed my gear – hiked that day, hadn’t needed my boat – and ran behind a pile of washed up trees on the edge of the water.

The air boat pulled in beside a point of land I’d used myself for the same purpose they were using … getting in and out. All of the men were armed but they weren’t looking around like you’d think they would be if they were so wary they needed to dress like Pancho Villa.

“Ernst!” one man yelled. “There’s a log here to tie off. This way you can take a break if ya need to!”

The captain of the airboat turned off the engine and said, “I’ll do me fine by staying right here. You just bring me back a deer or hog to pay your fee. Gotta watch these goobermint people anyways.”

The guy nodded and gave a half wave. The “goobermint” people gave him an irritated look but didn’t say anything. They took some gear off the boat and set up on shore. After watching them for almost an hour I finally figured out they were taking water samples for testing and doing some shoreline mapping.

I hadn’t realized I was so hungry for another human face. I lay there all morning and watched those people and listened to them talk. The “goobermint people” were generally silent but the few things they did whisper was interesting in an “oh holy mackerel” kind of way. First off the area was being dammed up on purpose … sort of like an unnatural beaver dam where all of the flotsam of the floods was being allowed to build up in the areas that they would normally wash out through. This was primarily to keep more areas from flooding. They were sacrificing one area to “save” another.

Rather than a large inland sea the flooding was more like the land was dotted with large, deep lakes and lots of smaller shallow ponds that filled valleys and deep hollows of the Appalachians. Each “lake” and “pond” had its own elevation and they were surveying them trying to guess how long they’d hold the water back and how long they’d stay flooded once the rains stopped. My cave was surrounded by several of the highest “lakes.” They also said that occasionally lakes would either melt together or the “dam” between lakes would burst with one lake rising and the other lake lowering until both smoothed out.

The flooding was still going on but at least the majority of the water was being held within valleys and held back by major land features giving people time to move away from the areas likely to wash away when the dams gave way. Not all of the moving was voluntary either which was why the “goobermint” wasn’t looked on with a lot of favor. People had moved up to the higher elevations much as I had thinking that the water would soon recede but now it was obvious that it would take quite some time before it did.

Weather, cyber attacks, and destruction of infrastructure has inhibited communication with satellites which would normally do most of the work that was now being done by hand as far as surveying and such goes. The goobermint people didn’t like being out in the field without the military to protect them as they came under attack alot. They didn’t trust the locals but claimed to have no choice this time around and had been told to shut up, do the work, and don’t hassle those they were dependent on to get to into areas that were otherwise inaccessible.

They didn’t expect the higher than normal precipitation to stop until spring which meant that the area around where my cave was would be inaccessible for some months starting after the first snow; and a vicious winter was expected that might last a month longer than normal and possibly have lower than average temperatures all next year. Some were hypothesizing possibly two years of abnormally low temps before the cycle started to correct itself. Another guy mentioned that another Little Ice Age might even be possible.

The southern hemisphere wasn’t suffering near as much as the northern hemisphere but they were suffering with some changes in their weather patterns as well, naturally. The problem is that many countries in the Southern Hemisphere were less prepared to deal with the changes. They were primarily suffering economic pain and political unrest caused by an influx of expats from the northern hemisphere. Coastal regions and Island Nations also were dealing with worse than normal typhoons and tropical cyclones.

Part of me was so tempted to step out and talk to them but something held me back. Mr. Harkins had always impressed on me that as a female I was going to have to take extra precautions and that if I was going to hide that I needed to stay hid and not think I could just pop in and out whenever I felt like it or my age and/or sex would surely get some busybody do-gooder in my business even if I was able to avoid the bad ‘uns of the world. Uncle Jerry and the boys had been rough but I’d never had to worry about anything sexual but I was not nearly so stupid as to believe I would be able to say the same thing about any other group of men. Even if it is just one bad apple in a bunch, that can still lead to some not nice things happening.

About what would have been my lunch time had I been able to jig some frogs – all the noise and mucking around those men were making pretty much scared off what I had been after – the hunters of the party came back and threw a bag at the goobermint men.

“Hope this is all you needed ‘cause I ain’t going back in there to get anymore. And we need to get gone Ben,” he said turning to address the air boat Captain. “Saw not one but two bears. One seemed to get the sent of the offal where we field cleaned these here but that other one may decide to come out of the trees at any minute and he was a big ‘un.”

I’d seen bear sign and been smart enough to avoid them. Most of the prints seemed to be headed west towards unflooded lower elevations. I’d been wondering what kind of winter we were likely to have – doing my own bit of planning – and thought they were wanting to find their natural forage and bulk up.

Two of the goobermint men started complaining about not being able to finish their tests. The other two were scrambling to pack up like they just heard that Satan was about to make an in-person house call. The hunters were loading their harvest. About three-quarters of the way to both parties getting everything loaded the captain says, “decide what you’re leaving boys ‘cause we are real close to overweight already.”

There was a lot of cussing at that; enough that I come close to covering my ears in addition to feeling my face turn ten shades of red. Finally they left and as soon as they were up around the bend I ran over to see what all they’d left. The goobermint men had been forced to leave the most. I opened the packs and saw all sorts of stuff in shiny foil packets. The hunters had left a brace of birds, a few rabbits, a small deer, and a hog bigger than any I would have taken on. I knew if there was indeed a bear in the area all I could do was pray I had enough rope with me to get the meat strung in the trees and then a couple of the packs.

Boy I was fast … and tired and nasty by the time I was finished but then I hightailed it out of there with one of the packs. I got near my cave and then thought better of it and strung the pack I was carrying up in another tree before grabbing the game wagon that I used to move things around in and headed back to the waters edge.

I got there just in time to see a bear’s butt waddling back to the west and away from the water. He’d put a few scratches on the tree where the meat hung but hadn’t bothered to go climbing after it. Guess it was too full and it wasn’t worth the effort.

I started hauling what I’d strung up back to my place. The rest of the goobermint stuff got strung up a ways off until I could go through it but I spent the rest of the next two days and most of that first night processing the meat so that it could be hung in the smokehouse.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 7: When You Least Expect Things

" ...drag your thoughts away from your troubles--by the ears, by the heels, or any other way, so you can manage it; it's the healthiest thing a body can do.”
- Mark Twain


It took me a little over two days to get back to going through those back packs. Something had tried to get into them but hadn’t actually made it; just tried to bat it around a bit like a piñata. Nice collection of odds and ends; pens to add to my collection of writing utensils, paper that went into the cabinet with them, a couple of plastic clip boards, some stuff that looked like I expect MREs look, some back-to-nature soy-based candy bars that nearly had me gagging after one bite. I would have to be some kind of hungry to willingly eat those things that’s for sure. There were a couple of little personal first aid kids, a couple of barely there pocket knives, and lots of other odds and ends.

If it had been me slogging through everything those guys were slogging through … and boy they were sure city folks from somewhere … I wouldn’t have been able to go a quarter mile before those straps were digging into my arms. The packs were too big and too heavy for what they were being used for unless they figured they might get stranded. As heavy as the pack was if the boat went down it was going down with it … as well as anyone that was wearing it at the time. And I would say they weren’t especially well thought out either.

There were matches but they weren’t waterproof. There was a flint – a cheap one – but no dry kindling. The little pocket knife couldn’t have won a battle with an exacto knife. There were hand warmers and but not one of those reflective emergency blanket kind of things; and no tent of any sort either. There was a metal cup for heating water in and a Nalgene bottle to put the water in but no way to purify the water. There was fishing line but no hooks. There were some of those fancy schmancy solid fuel tabs but they were crushed inside the little cardboard box they were stored in. There was a little fold up stove type thing but it was rusted shut despite looking like it had never been taken out of the box it was in.

That last is what made me look even closer and I realized it looked like that whole thing was something that had come out of a box and never been gone through to make sure things worked. Which made me a little leary about the MREs but their date on them said they were still good. I chucked those things in a box and put them in the pantry for just in case but I’d need to be desparate to eat ‘em. I prefer my own chili to something that has been vacuum sealed for who knows how long.

There were no cool government gizmos or gadgets; not even a wind up radio or flashlight. Overall the haul from the packs wasn’t bad, but I got more useful stuff salvaging the flooded out areas.

And since I never wanted to be so hard up that I actually had to use those MREs I started spending even more time foraging. The bears had made me aware of the time of year. The words of those men made me aware just how bad things were likely to get.

I gathered up all the acorns I could find. Sometimes had to fight the pigs over them, but I’d gotten good at climbing around them and then shooing them off by chucking rocks at them. I wished for a sling shot but I started practicing and playing at being David from the Bible and though I’m sure I’m not as good as he was, I usually hit what I’m aiming at these days.

I gathered amaranth heads to help piece out the flour supply. I still had a couple of barrels of wheat berries and dried corn, but it wouldn’t last forever. I was hoping between the cattail fluff and other wild grains I could come up with I would at least piece it out for a year or so … maybe until I was close enough to eighteen that no one would bother me none.

At the lower elevations that weren’t flooded or where the water had receded but the people hadn’t made it back yet I gathered black walnuts, butternuts, chinquapins, hickory nuts, and even found a small grove of pecans that were surrounded by water that the squirrels and other rodents hadn’t gotten to first. The wild grapes were really nice but the domesticated ones I found all had some kind of mildew on them and were wilting fast.

Raspberries and blackberries were my favorites; favorites for the bears too. And I had to fight to beat the bears to the huckleberries. It was like a race … black haws, ground cherries, pawpaws, persimmons, black cherries, and wild plums … if there were any at all left by the time I found a patch I was happy and then some; felt like I had found gold.

Surprisingly I didn’t have to fight with too many animals for the prickly pears, but then again maybe not. I remembered after one painful experience why Momma had always worn her rose gloves to pick them. I fought the birds over the elderberries and the wild rose hips. It wasn’t until Mischief and Molly, the two ravens that lived with me, started coming that I got any peace at all. The jays were nasty birds that would go for my eyes but M & M would mob them and drive them off. Of course their reward was a cup of berries but for the company and the help I wasn’t going to complain.

The day lilies were all kinds of pretty but that didn’t stop me from harvesting their buds. Same with the violet blooms. If I knew it to be edible it was fair game. Other things that I harvested were bee blam, chickweed, chicory, dandelions, dittany, wild garlic, lamb’s quarter, mustard seed, purslane, sassafrass, sumac berries, water cress, wild ginger, and wood sorrel.

I ran into a few problems here and there. More than once I reached down to take something and put it in my baskets and pulled up a mouse. Some areas were getting overrun with rodent type vermin. All of the empty houses were perfect breeding grounds for mice and rats. I did note that the owl population had increased to take on the expanding rodent population, also smelled some evidence of male cats, but it was a battle that was barely staying balanced.

I found a bunch of different patches of mints, some of which I transplanted around the cave area. I don’t know if they’ll take off or not but I am determined to try. I managed to harvest a goodly bunch of wild rice that must have survived the original floods but I made sure at least as much went back into the water as what went into the boat so that it would propogate for the following year.

What I had no trouble finding were mushrooms and nearly every meal I ate had some in it. The ones that were good that time of year were chanterelles, Judas’ ears, oyster mushrooms, shaggy manes, and sulphur shelfs. The mushroom I missed was the meadow mushroom but that one I kinda figured. There weren’t exactly a lot of meadows to be had; they’d all gotten flooded.

The chanterelles are the shape of a cap and you find them under conifers and hardwood trees. They are pretty versatile as far as mushrooms go. You can eat them fresh, raw or cooked; dried, canned or pickled. Now Judas’ ear mushrooms are just plain ugly. You find them in the fall and winter on dead or dying wood and use them fresh or dried like you would a vegetable. My brothers used to call them “tree ears” and would eat them by the pound after Momma or Daddy had pointed them out.

Oyster mushrooms are kinda pretty in their own way. They get their name from the way they look growing on a dead or dying hardwood tree – they are fan shaped sorta like an oyster shell – and their color which might remind you of a oyster without the slimy texture. Shaggy manes are funny looking things with a club shaped cap. You cook them before you eat them. Then comes the sulphur shelf and they are pretty easy to spot because they are the fall colors of yellow or orange. You cook and eat them like a vegetable after harvesting the tender outer edge of the shelfs from dead deciduous tree wood.

The only other thing that I harvested almost as regularly as I did mushrooms were Jerusalem artichokes. Mamaw also called them sunchokes and she grew them in her garden and said they were more reliable than potatoes but couldn’t be stored as long so she’d leave them in the ground, cover them with hay, and then harvest them until they got too tough or they were putting off babies for the next year. I replanted half of what I harvested; I was the Johnny Appleseed of sunchokes. I was hoping that by planting them all over the place that at least some of them would take and I’d have forage closer to the cave.

Then I got to thinking, what if there really wasn’t a summer? I don’t mean that summer was cooler than normal but what if there wasn’t a summer at all? What if winter just kept going on and on for a bit? That wasn’t likely but then again I never would have figured that people would ever build a machine that would let them make earthquakes and volcanoes happen, or that would let them play around with the weather. How would I survive?

I was already working on wood and had a pretty good supply. Since it was still raining relatively clean water to put through my filter, potable water wasn’t a problem either. But food? Now that was a different kettle and one I was working on but when all my stored food ran out, and there wasn’t anything to hunt or forage, what would I do?

Some would say the natural answer to that was grow my food but what if the weather got in the way of that? Then I thought greenhouse. That’s when I had another one of those ideas that struck me on occasion.

I needed a fireplace. I had found an endless supply of sandbags around the flooded area and had been bringing them back with me when I had room in the boat. I was building what looked like half an igloo onto the front of the cave where the entrance was. Putting a door in was going to be challenging but I had salvaged an attic window to let a little light in. I also managed a fairly decent mud and dob fireplace using fieldstones and a vein of clay that I had found. As my walls went up so did fireplace and chimney. The roof was going to be a challenge but I figured if worse came to worse I could hammer together small tree trunks and then cover them with an old canvas tarp and then put fir branches on top of that to shed the rain and snow.

But it was the greenhouse that concerned me now. The glass would be no problem. Most of the house windows in the area were broken from the storms but enough car windows had survived that I’d have my pick of sizes and shapes. I hadn’t figured out how to get them to hold together. But the glass sounded like a good idea so while I was out foraging I started bringing home glass from broken down cars. I’d learned my lessons well working with Mr. Harkins and I knew how to remove windows fairly easily. It was just a matter of getting to the things I needed to undo that cost me time.

Turns out that transporting the glass from the car to the cave without breaking it was more difficult than I had anticipated. I cracked, chipped, or broke about a quarter of the windows that I tried to bring back. That meant gathering more glass than I had originally planned on needing. I had also foraged about all I could from the areas that I normally travelled. Before I got stuck for the winter I decided to go a little further afield.

I got lucky and found the mother load. A bunch of cars were left stranded on a bridge over a short, but what I remembered to be, deep gully. Being the cautious girl I was I started on the far side of the bridge where it disappeared into the water then moved back towards the shore. I’d remove two cars worth of glass and then head back to the cave to store them and forage on my way home. Hard and merciless rain showers continued to slow me down and the rain had turned cold, another sign that winter was on its way. I knew my time grew short.

There wasn’t much worth anything left in the cars though I did cut out the the seat belts as they were nice strong straps. I’d been so very lucky for so long. Perhaps I should have been paying attention but sometimes I think things are just meant to happen for a reason.

I was on the last car, the very last one, and on the very last thing I wanted from it. All the glass lay in the boat wrapped in blankets. I had climbed into the car to cut the seat belts out when I heard something. I looked around from the back seat but since I didn’t see anything I figured it was just a tree falling in the water. That happened a lot. So I went back to cutting.

Then all of a sudden there was this jerk, hard enough to bounce me and I hit my head on the roof of the car. I froze just one moment and then started scrambling out to get to safer ground. I didn’t know what was going on but I was sure as heck needing to get out of that car. But the single frozen moment was a moment too many. Without warning I felt the way you do when you don’t travel in elevators very often and you get on a fast one going down … you go down but your stomach takes a while to catch up; free fall.

The bridge settled but wasn’t down too deep. Water poured in through the openings the windows used to be in and disoriented me as I tried to figure which way to move. The water was dark but I could see the light of the late afternoon above me through the water so I knew which way I needed to go. I took off for the surface then nearly had a heart attack as something jerked me hard.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 8: Drowning

"I was drowned seven times...before I learned to swim--once in Bear Creek and six times in the Mississippi. I do not know who the people were who interfered with the intentions of a Providence wiser than themselves but I hold a grudge against them yet.” – Mark Twain


Looking down into the dark I could see nothing. I reached down and felt my foot entangled by a seatbelt that had followed me out of the car’s window. The more I jerked the tighter it got tangled. I tried to cut it off but my hands were numb and I was running out of oxygen. Then all the fight just went out of me as I gave up a losing battle.

I don’t remember drowning exactly. I remember the feel of involuntarily inhaling water. I remember how cold I was. There were little sparkles of light all around that fascinated me for some strange reason. Then there was this huge splash from above me and I blacked out.

I came to on the banks beside where my boat was tied up. I wasn’t really conscious though and part of me realized I wasn’t really breathing. I knew I wanted to breathe but it was like I had forgotten how.

Then someone bellowed in my ear, “Breathe! I did not come all this way to see you drown Bella. You’ll breathe or I’ll hang onto you and turn you into a haunt so you have to stay with me! Now BREATHE!!!”

I think it was more interest in finding out who was calling my name more than anything else that got my brain working and my lungs going. Not too many call me Bella as most people called me El; and no one calls me Eliza if they want me to answer.

But breathing and thinking sensible aren’t the same thing. My eyes finally focused and all I saw was a bunch of blonde hair, including all over his face, and what I thought was white clothes. I was thinking that I’d figured out that I really had drowned and the angel above me just didn’t want to cart the extra weight of the water in me on up to Heaven. Then my stomach spasmed and I threw up what felt like a ton of water.

Laying on my side after it was over I managed to groan and say, “Oh no! I puked on my angel. They don’t kick you out for that do they?”

I heard a snort but not his reply as I must have been more close to dead than I thought as everything went black once again. I woke just once more and it was very disturbing. I was upside down and my nose kept banging into a man’s leather belt threaded through a pair of Levi’s. I heard some words that I didn’t think an angel would use and began to wonder if I had somehow gotten things mixed and I was heading in the wrong direction. Either way I was glad whoever was carrying me didn’t have plumber’s crack or I was likely to be in some serious trouble … at the very least more trouble than what I was currently in. So thinking I drifted off again thinking that there was something mighty familiar about them jeans.

I come to all the way and found I was in my bed. The first thing I thought was that it was all a dream until I realized my throat felt like I’d had a week’s long bought with acid reflux. My ankle felt pretty awful too and I moved the covers to find it red, raw, and on the way to some ugly bruising.

The other thing I noticed though was that I didn’t have any clothes on. Now boy howdy I might have been able to put most everything else down to a dream but that ankle and my lack of clothes pretty much clinched that it wasn’t. There was some soft noise coming from my kitchen area and I threw my legs over the edge of my bed, the noise of which drew Beau who came through with his normal hangdog face but wagging his tail. That was strange … maybe it was Rufus getting into stuff. Or worse yet Mischief and Molly.

I stood up and got dizzy real fast. Before I could hit the floor the tent door was pulled back and my angel stepped in just in time for me to fall nekked as the day I was born straight into his arms.

“Whoa. You OK?”

I’m standing there nekked and the angel asks me if I’m OK? Twilight Zone time folks. I croaked, “Where’s my clothes?”

“They were wet,” he tells me stating the obvious.

“Uh huh. My gown is right on the end of the bed. Why I ain’t I wearing it?”

“Oh … Well …” My angel stopped and I could see, despite the dim light, a grin trying to form underneath all the facial hair.

I growled and my brain finally caught up and I grabbed for the quilt and tried to back up at the same time. My coordination was still shot so down I went because no way was I going to fall back into the arms of a stranger.

I finally managed to wrap the quilt around me and when I looked up the big guy was holding out my gown to me. I swiped it from him and said, “You … you just turn around. If you knew where it was to begin with why didn’t you … I mean … grrrrr.”

He turned around but said over his shoulder, “I don’t have a good excuse for why I didn’t Bella. Forgive me?”

OK, that was beyond enough. Who was this stranger that knew my name? I pulled the gown down over my head and my eyes come up through the neck hole facing the strangers jean clad bottom. There was something mighty familiar about that area and it didn’t have nothing to do with the fact that my nose had been banging into it while he’d carried me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

Then I almost fell down again when I realized what it was. “Lee Ward? Lee Ward Thompson is that you?!”

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 9: Ghost from the Past

" No one is sane, straight along, year in and year out, and we all know it. Our insanities are of varying sorts, and express themselves in varying forms--fortunately harmless forms as a rule." – Mark Twain


“Of course it’s me. Who else would it be? You don’t have some other fella up here do you?”

I sat down in a puddle and started crying with real tears and everything. “Oh no. I’ve gone and lost my mind somehow. Did I eat a bad mushroom? Am I lying in my bed wracked with fever and don’t know it? Oh Lord, you aren’t dead are you? You haven’t come because you feel sorry for me and think I need company rather than you going on to your Reward?”

Lee turned around cautiously and then bent down and gathered me up and put me back on the bed. “You’re out of your head all right but it is more from that near drowning than because you’re crazy. And what’s the big idea giving me a heart attack like that? Did you lose all sense somewhere along the way?”

It was definitely Lee Ward; he’s the only one that would treat me like I meant something … or meant enough to worry him. “Lee? Are you really here?”

He gave me a relieved smile and said, “Of course I am. Where else would I be after taking so long to track you down?”

“Track me down? Why on earth would you want to?”

A little bashful all of a sudden he said, “Well, about that, we can talk about it when you get over your shock. I hadn’t meant to come up on you like this. I need to get over my shock too you know. I’m serious. What possessed you to be climbing in and out of a car with that bridge in the shape it was in?”

Sitting on the bed still not quite sure what was real and what wasn’t I replied, “Well, it seemed a good idea at the time. Oh no!”

“What?!”

“My boat! I’ve gotta go get …”

“Relax, it’s where you normally moor it.”

I looked at him suspiciously. “And exactly how would you know that?”

“’Cause you aren’t exactly trying to hide it. I’ve been tracking you for a week. I kept missing you. You leave sign all over the place but every time you’d hit the rocks about a quarter mile south of here I’d lose you. I’ve tracked you back and forth all over the place but never could find your base camp.”

“And just how did you know it was me?”

“I don’t know anyone else that has natural auburn hair like yours is. How you can lose as much hair as you do and still have any on your head …”

He reached out and pulled at a still damp curl by my ear and it made me feel like someone was sitting on my chest.

Softlly he said, “Look at you. You’re eyes are as big as silver dollars and as green or greener as I ever remember them being.”

I swallowed and said, “Lee … what’s … what’s that smell?”

“Huh?” Then he shot up. “Dang it … the soup.”

When he left the tent I zipped it shut real fast and climbed into proper clothes from the skin out including some felt slippers for my feet.
Lee called, “You through in there or you need a few more minutes? Saved the soup … you should get some down you to hold off a chill.”

Slowly I unzipped the tent and poked my head out then just stared. “Where’d all this mess come from?”

“It’s not a mess Bella, it’s all the gear I brung.”

“Brought. Gear you brought, not brung. And don’t talk silly ‘cause I know good and well you managed to get you at least some college before all of this stuff started happening. And what do you mean your gear?”

“Come on out and I’ll show you. After you eat.” When I still hesitated he said, “I won’t bite.”

I sighed. “Don’t get funny Lee. I’m still frozen and three quarters turned around and don’t know what to believe and what not to.”

“Then come sit down,” he cajoled. “This soup’ll thaw you out and I’ll explain a little more.”

My stomach gave a gurgle of hunger and we both laughed when his answered mine. He said, “Just like lunch time in the cafeteria.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. Slowly I edged over to the table to find he’d poured me a mug of thick chicken soup. “Where’s yours?” I asked looking around.

“Well, you need to eat and …”

I crossed my arms and I know my face must have looked a lot like Todd Michael when I tried to get him to eat something new. “Where’s yours?” I asked again.

“I’m not going to take your food Bella,” Lee said gently. “I won’t do that to you. Tomorrow I’m going hunting.”

I got up from the table and realized he’d only looked in the cabinet beside where I sat the camp stove. I looked at Lee, looked hard and when he stared back questioningly I asked him, “You up here alone?”

“Uh … yeah. Why? You wanting more company than me?” That question was followed by a scowl.

“Don’t get silly and confuse the issue. I’m asking for a reason.”

His face cleared. Lee always had understood what I meant without me having to go into an infernal amount of backstory. “Why did you come up here?” I asked him.

“Looking for you.”

“Why?”

“I’ll explain that …”

“… when I’m over my shock. You said that. Consider me over my shock.”

He saw I wasn’t budging so he sighed and said, “It’s a long story Bella. I never meant it to take this long.”

“Long to what?”

“Come for you. My parents said you were way too young and that your uncle could cause us a world of trouble even if we could ignore the church ladies and their talking. They also said you wouldn’t want to be cut off from your family.” Then he got a ferocious look on his bearded face, “But then I find out from Josh Daniel that his daddy had … had … and I swear if he hadn’t been just getting over being so sick I would have punched his lights out right there for letting it happen.”

My breath caught and I hadn’t realized I’d been hiding my worry from myself. “You’ve … you’ve seen them? The boys? Are they OK?”

He snorted and came over and gently pushed me back into the chair in front of the mug of soup before pulling a camp stool over and sitting beside me. “As good as can be expected having Cecily Jacob for a stepmom.”

I nearly strangled on broth. When I was done coughing I asked, “He actually went and married her?”

He snorted. “The way my Gram heard it, it was a shotgun wedding and her brother has both of them under his thumb tight. Your uncle is happier than she is as he seems to thrive on all that church work and working in the soup kitchen. Sister Cici as she is now called, not so much as she is kept back in the kitchen and is persona non grata right now ‘cause of giving into the devil.”

“Well, I guess she’s getting some of what she dished out over the years.”

“Your puns still ain’t funny,” he said with a smile that denied the very words he’d just said.

I rolled my eyes and asked, “But you said Josh Daniel had been sick.”

His smile slipped and he nodded. “Yeah. Pneumonia. He and Todd Michael are doing OK ‘cause that girl he’s took up with looks after them when she isn’t working in the outdoor clinic.”

When I was done with the mug he put more soup in it but I made him eat it instead. Before he could make a fuss I said, “We’ll get to why you need to trust me soon as you finish telling me your tale of why I should trust you.”

He got fidgety and said, “I’m … I never meant … Gosh darn it Bella, I never meant to cause you so much trouble. I thought it would blow over as soon as they figured out nothing happened. I went off to school and my folks didn’t let on what all was still being said. We had a real argument over it.”

“Oh you did not sass your parents over me. Tell me you didn’t.”

“Well I did. That’s when they figured out I was serious.”

“Serious about what?”

“About you.”

I just sat there looking at him my mouth hanging open where I’d forgotten the question I was about to ask him.

He looked at me and asked, “Aren’t you … you going to say anything?”

I blinked a couple of times and then said, “I will as soon as I figure out if I’m for sure hearing that you said you were serious about me.”

“I did … I am.”

“I haven’t seen you in two years and a piece. Haven’t even heard from you or about you in all that time. Now you show up and tell me you were serious about me all that time?!”

“Don’t yell Bella. I told you I didn’t mean for it to take this long. I was going to save up money and get a degree so I could prove that I could provide for you only I kept getting laid off and things were a lot more expensive than I thought they would be living on my own, even with a partial scholarship to help out. Dad said that there was no way your uncle would even listen to me unless I could prove that I could take care of you.”

Outraged I asked, “And just where did I fit into things? Did you just expect me to sit around and wait, not knowing how you felt?!”

Looking uncomfortable he said, “I hadn’t thought of it like that until you started working at Bruno’s. I started wondering if maybe it wasn’t meant to be no matter how I felt. You could keep a job and I couldn’t. I was upset and … and not able to figure a way around things.”

“And just how did you know I worked at Bruno’s?” I asked, further outraged.

“I watched you whenever I could.”

“You watched me.”

“Yeah,” he said defiantly. “But, you never seemed to be interested in no one in particular. Not even that crack brained son of Mr. Harkins.”

“His name was Ronnie and he was worse than crack brained so I ought to feel insulted that you would even consider it. There were only three things he thought about … cars, food, and having as many girls as he could. And in that order too.” I sniffed my opinion of Ronnie’s priorities.

Lee gave a slow, satisfied smile. “So I was right, there wasn’t anyone.”

“Yeah, well don’t get all fired up over it. After what happened with you there was no way I was going to get into that mess. It wasn’t worth the trouble.”

Concerned he said, “It was really that bad? Mom hinted at something but … but I … I don’t want to ask if it isn’t true.”

Blushing I looked away. He whispered, “Oh Lord, it is true. Oh Bella … I … I never … never would have let anything like that happen. I …”

I sighed and though I still blushed I turned back towards him. “It’s over and I learned a hard lesson. But I also come away knowing that not everyone would buckle to that woman and do as she told them to and that gave me strength to try and find my own way out instead of waiting around for someone to rescue me.”

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 10: Unexpected Roundaboutation

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but that is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t."
- Mark Twain


“I would have had I known what was going on. Why didn’t you go to my parents? They would have helped you.”

I didn’t want to say anything against his parents but I really wasn’t sure they would have. He’d already admitted that they hadn’t understood his feelings – not that I was too sure I understood them either – and it might have been too much to ask him to understand anything else. All I would say is, “They had their own troubles with being shunned. You know how things could get.”

“Yeah. I guess I do.” He sighed. “I know it is a lot to ask you to believe me Bella but there hasn’t been a day gone by that I haven’t been working towards coming to get you.”

Feeling uncomfortable I cautiously asked, “Do … do you mean to ask me to come back with you now?”

He got a thoughtful look on his face. “To be honest all I could think about when I found out what your uncle had done was coming to find you.” He chewed the end of his mustache then said, “I’ve known in my heart all along that you were still up here some where. I remember you telling me stories of your daddy’s hunting camp and how you all used to use it even after you moved to the city. I just … well … I don’t think you ever told me exactly where it was, just the general area. I knew I just needed to find you. My plans … well my plans after that were kinda … kinda vague. Not that my family wouldn’t welcome us if we needed a place to stay but they’re already stacked like cordwood at Gram’s place. You know what it is like … you were there that time they had the revival meeting on the front twenty. My parents would never say it but I think it was a relief to have me set out on my own, at least for a while. I’m the youngest of ten after all. And all my brothers and sisters and their kids are there and so are all my aunts and uncles and most of their kids and grandkids.”

My mouth fell open. “Good brown gravy. You must have to hang the littles from the barn rafters just so you can take turns to catch a breath.”

He chuckled and said, “Pretty close to it. Anyway I’ve been … er … collecting stuff along the way as I came and well … I thought I could make us a place to stay for a while but … but you’ve already got this place.”

He sounded so hesitant that I didn’t know what to say so I said the first thing that fell out of my mouth. “Like I’m gonna throw you back in the river after you got me out of it? Think again.” More cautiously I added, “But … but we’re gonna have to … er … talk some more on … well … on all this stuff you’ve been thinking about.”

He reached across the table and put his hand on mine and I startled. “Easy Bella. I don’t mean to jump you like you don’t have any say in things. No way do I want that kind of thing with you. Mom talked to me about all that stuff, how hard it is for women and girls when they don’t have a choice about anything. She explained what it was like after the brand new wore off between her and Dad and how hard things can get.”

My eyeballs wanted to fall back in my head. “Your daddy is not like that. He’s real sweet and easy going.”

Lee shrugged. “Now that he has some age on him but my older brothers said he used to be alot … different … with Mom than he’s been since I was born. She almost died with me and … and it kinda woke him up to what he’d lose if he lost her and what kinda trouble he’d be left with. Kinda knocked all his hard edges off. He and I still go at it some but not so bad as he and my brothers always went at it. What was it like for your parents?”

“Different. Daddy and Momma had been sweethearts since Momma was thirteen. They were silly in love and just … well, playful and silly with each other. It was awful,” I said meaning just the opposite. “They’d chase each other all over the house and just about embarrass us kids until we crawled off under the porch. Thing is Daddy could be hard but never with Momma. To Daddy no one was worth as much as Momma was. Same for her to him. I don’t think either one of them knew how to live without the other. I think that is why God took ‘em and the other littles at the same time to spare them the misery.”

I stopped, shocked that I’d let something like that out. But then again that is always how it had been with Lee, why we’d been such good friends. Then I realized he was staring at me. “What?”

“I can’t get enough of looking at you. Talking to you. I swear I’ll go slow Bella but I’m just dying to hold you right now.”

I licked my lips and he groaned. I told him, “Cut that out. You ain’t gonna die. And since you … you rescued me like some kinda hero I guess you deserve some kind of reward but don’t go letting it give you ideas. You hear?”

He sighed, “I’ve already got ideas so I think maybe I’ll take a rain check on that reward. Maybe we should talk some more. Maybe you should tell me whether I get to stay.”

A little grateful and a little disappointed at the same time that he had put off his reward I said, “I already told you, you can stay.” Mischief and Molly chose that moment to set up to cawing something fierce. “Oh Glory, they can’t get in. Hang on a sec.”

“Who can’t get in?”

Rather than explain I pulled the plywood back and they flew in but then did a loopty-loop when they noticed Lee. “Easy you couple of loonies,” I told them. “This is Lee. He’s a new addition to our Ark.”

The birds were still unsure of Lee and Mischief had started to act territorial and I didn’t want Lee to get mobbed. I said, “Hold on. If you feed him he’ll likely calm down.”

“Feed him what?”

“I’ve got some seed for him back here.”

“Oh, well he’ll like this better than bird seed.” He went over to one of his packs, careful not to startle the birds more than they already were, and pulled out an old butter tub and then took the lid off before sitting it down in the floor. Molly was holding back but Mischief was firmly interested. He’s got to be the nosiest bird that every lived. Personally I thought the container was just full of dirt until Lee dug around and pulled out a wiggler. He laid it over the edge of the tub and then stepped away.

Mischief was wary but no fool. He knew food when he saw it and was fond of catching moths that accidentally flew into the cave on occasion. He ate one and then called Molly down and they dined on live worms. “Lee, they’re pigs, they’ll eat them all if you let them.”

He snorted. “I’m not gonna take them away and risk that beak going through my hand. Besides, there’s more where that tub came from. If it gets your pets to like me then I’m fine with it.”

“They aren’t my pets exactly. They sorta adopted me.”

I told him the story and he said, “Well … there’s that providential you were always talking about.”

I shrugged and said, “I thought so at the time and still do on most days when they aren’t driving me to distraction.” Then we moved some of his gear out of the middle of the floor and kind of talked around where he would be sleeping when I finally just threw my hands up in the air. “I’m not gonna be able to sleep thinking of you out here on this stone floor.”

“Well,” he said a little downcast. “I can pitch a tent nearby and …”

“Not that you … you furry thing you. It is so hard to get used to talking to you through all that mess you have all over your face.” He just raised an eyebrow until I finished my thought. “Look, I’ve got another fold up bed around here some place. I don’t know what shape the mattress is in though. We can pitch it in the tent and you can sleep along the wall … just no … no funny business. I’m … I’m still not …”

He came over and stood in front of me closer than I was used to anyone standing and asked, “You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I’m not ready for any … any funny business.”

He smiled, “Not that. I mean me … sleeping so close.”

“Oh. Well. I … I … well something tells me I can trust you. I always have you know. And … and you didn’t take advantage of me when … well … when you could have. Just … just don’t … don’t disappoint me about it. OK?”

“Ok. But if you wake up and I’m not … you know in there? It’s because I’ve moved out here for a bit so I don’t disappoint you or the ones that raised me. Understand?”

Quietly I said, “I’m not a tease.”

“I know. But I’m a guy and … sometimes … let’s just say I’ve been wanting you a long time and it’s gonna be work to do the right thing and give you some time.” He stepped back and sighed. “This isn’t at all like I was thinking it was going to be.”

“How did you think it was gonna be?”

“I thought … I thought you just had to know how I felt and that … well … Mom said was I being silly and romantic and likely you’d show me the door if I acted like I felt. I’m trying to …” He stopped shrugging his own confusion.

Thinking that guys were both simpler and more complicated than I had always been led to believe I said, “I’m not purely against it Lee but I am purely surprised. And you haven’t really had anything to do with me since you left to go to college. How do you know I haven’t turned into someone that you can’t really feel those feelings for? Maybe they’re just habit and the reality of things will be sort of blah or even bleck for you.”

“Dad said roughly the same thing but I couldn’t very well tell him that I’d been watching you. He’d think his son was some kind of stalker pervert.”

“You just better hope I don’t think you are some stalker pervert. I still don’t understand why you couldn’t at least have said hi or something.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t want to deal with that kind of temptation. I promised my folks that I would use common sense and I saw the way Dad was when my sisters started with some guy going after them serious. Your uncle already didn’t like me and thought the worst of me; I wanted to be in the best place and do everything right so he’d have the least amount of reasons to tell me to get lost. And like I said, Mom kept telling me you were too young.”

I just shook my head. “You’re crazy. And what would have happened if I had started to like some guy.”

He got an awful look on his face and then said, “You didn’t.”

“No I didn’t. But that’s not answering the question of what if I had.”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know. I just know you didn’t and that’s all I’m gonna think about.”

“Well, I suppose you’re right but in the future here’s a clue … when I’m part of your plan? Let me in on it. It’s the only way you’ll know whether I’ll go along with it or not.”

He looked at me peculiarly and asked, “Well, will you be a part of the one I’ve been talking to you about?”

Cautiously I gave his words serious consideration. “Lee, I’m not saying I won’t.” When his face fell I put my hand on his arm, “Just listen OK?” At his nod I continued. “I’m not saying I won’t but … but … it’s kinda got me freaked out. I don’t know what to think. This really nice guy I never dared to admit I wanted for more than a friend disappears from my life, I go through all this hard stuff, then blam I’m drowning and he shows up like some kind of romantic hero from one of those crazy movies, and then on top of that tells me he’s been thinking about me every day since he left and that he always meant to come for me like I’m some silly princess up in a tower some place. It’s … you know … a lot to wrap my head around. Heck, I’m still trying to figure out if this is all real or if I’m going to wake up and it was just a dream … or maybe this is what happens to your brain when you drown.”

“So you aren’t opposed or anything?”

I sighed. “No, I’m … I’m not opposed. It’s just … a lot to take in all of a sudden.”

Then he grinned and I remembered just why I recognized the seat of his jeans. “OK, you can turn down the wattage Lee. I don’t want to be dazzled and taken for a ride.”

That just made him grin more and suddenly he picked me up and spun me around. “I’ve missed your sass, you know that?”

“Put me down or I’m gonna hurl. And if you’ve missed my mouth you had to have been really hard up for company.” When he put me down I said, “Well c’mon, I want to show you something.”

I took him back to the area I had marked off for a pantry and then stood back and let him look after turning on the wind up lantern I had hung in there. He swallowed a couple of times and then swiped his hand across his mouth and I realized something. “Lee,” I asked quietly. “When … when was the last time you really had a decent meal?”

He turned to look at me and I could see it in his eyes before he answered. “It’s been … a while. I’ve been eating better on the road but back at Gram’s … there were just so many of us and so little at the stores. And what was there was so expensive. And we had to work so hard to get set for the winter … we just got all used up and the soup had to be thinned out so all the corners never got filled up.”

“Oh Lee.”

He sighed. “For all that our family has had it better because Gram and Papa T never did modernize so everything was set up to work the way things are now. The only reason I went to Gram’s is because they closed the university when they couldn’t keep things running for the students … that and they were starting to draft people to help.”

“Draft? They were putting people in the military?”

“No … a civilian draft. They cleared the colleges of medicine and nursing first and then grabbed people from the college of engineering for things. They got people out of social and behavioral sciences to help at the clinics that were set up for those that got mentally traumatized by what all is going on. Thing is, you just didn’t get a choice. And they said if you didn’t go along that the IRS would fine your family.”

“Did … did they try and take you?”

“Hadn’t gotten around to it but I expect they would have eventually. I expect they’ll need some architects to design and rebuild all the places that have gotten washed away; that is if the water ever goes down and they let people move back.”

Confidently I said, “The water will go down, just maybe not for a year or two.”

“You sound sure.”

“It’s already dropped from the high it was at and has stayed steady ever since. All it would take to empty some areas would be to bust up all the debris that has packed into what should be the spill ways.

He shook his head. “They won’t let that happen.”

I shrugged. “They may not have a choice. Weather gets cold. Things freeze and expands. Could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for some places. And if the higher lakes suddenly dump into the lower elevation lakes, could break the dams … natural and artificial.”

“You may be right at that though I can guarantee there are some nuts that will fight it ‘til it happens. They are trying to hold back the water so that other areas won’t get flooded.”

Grabbing a jar of venison stew I closed the curtain I had hung up as a “door” and then shooed him to the table while I heated it up. He said, “You don’t have to do that.”

“Yes I do. You saved my life, the least I can do is feed you.”

Quietly he said, “I don’t want your gratitude … I …” He stopped and shrugged.

I bumped him with my shoulder. “Don’t you know an excuse when you hear one? I’m really just testing my cooking out on someone unsuspecting. Beau is not what you would call discriminating … that dog will eat anything, and what he won’t eat he’ll chew to pieces so keep your stuff picked up and put away. He’s still mostly puppy.”

“I know what your cooking tastes like or maybe you didn’t figure out why all of us guys would hang out in the Home Ec room when you girls were working on projects.”

I snorted. “Some of them guys you hung with weren’t exactly discriminating either. One time I saw Boone Johnson eat a whole plate of burnt brownies and the only face he ever made was a happy one. That boy was messed up.”

Lee laughed. “Boone …” Then he stopped and he sobered up real quick. “I guess you didn’t hear.”

“Hear what?” I asked not too sure from the look on Lee’s face whether I wanted to or not.

“Uncle Virgil told me that Boone and his dad were killed by some looters that ransacked the gun shop where they were working. Said it was like they got flashmobbed. The whole block the store was on got hit and then in ten minutes the looters were just gone with the only evidence they’d ever been there the broken windows and doors, the empty store shelves in all the businesses, and the dead and injured they left behind.”

I moved the stew off the burner with shaking hands. “I’ve heard things on the radio. I … I guess I didn’t want to think about who it could be happening to. Puts things in perspective.”

“Yeah it does. But I’m glad you’ve been out of it … I was kinda going crazy for a little bit not knowing where you were. I know you don’t believe me …”

“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you. I said it was hard to believe.”

I brought the stew over and ladled it into the mug we’d shared. He asked, “Are you … are you sure about this? I kinda expected to need to hunt to feed us.”

“Any excuse for you to go out and shoot things,” I told him with a grin.

He remained serious. “I have my guns and I brought plenty of ammo and reloading supplies. My brothers tried to give me a hard time but Dad reminded them that I had paid for it and they had their own. Mom and Dad and Gram didn’t have a problem with me leaving but some of the others didn’t want me to leave with anything.”

“But they’re family,” I said, shocked.

He shrugged, “Some of my nieces and nephews are older than I am, you know that. And you know how it was … some of them didn’t like that I’d had it easier growing up than they had.”

“But I thought you always said you got along with all of them.”

He shrugged again. “I do but living with them is another matter. Frank and Shirley were already married and out of the house before I came along. And Shirley was always so embarrassed that she had a little brother younger than her oldest kids. She hated explaining it to people; she said it made her feel like crazy trailer trash.”

I had never cared for Lee’s sister Shirley all that much. She and her husband made good money – or had before her husband lost his job – and it had all gone to her head. She wasn’t a bad person just snobby and too interested in knowing everyone’s business. I liked her husband though. He and Daddy had known each other growing up and he always made a point of saying something nice about my parents when we ran across each other. That being said I wasn’t going to have a loose mouth about it to Lee. My opinion of his sister was just that, my opinion, and I wasn’t going to share it.

I didn’t have to apparently because he grinned at me. “I don’t think Shirley really meant to hurt your feelings over that skirt you sewed for the county fair.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course not. She just didn’t think a quilted peacock was … how did she put it … age appropriate or very seemly.”

“Ouched a little?”

It was my turn to shrug. “Did at the time but if I listened to all the words that said I wasn’t good enough or was off somehow I would still be curled up in a ball someplace waiting for the world to end.”

Lee put his spoon down and reached out for me as I passed by to put the pot back on the stove. “Bella …”

“Oh don’t Lee. Eat.”

“I will … and this is really good. Gram and Mom would want the recipe.” That was the highest praise he could have given me. “Look … did … did I ever …”

“Of course not. You were my best friend ever. When I did something strange or off you laughed … but never at me.”

“Wanna keep being your best friend,” he mumbled around a hot mouthful stew. “Just wanna be more than a friend too.” I sighed but didn’t say anything. When Lee got something in his head he could be like a scent hound.

I gave him the rest of the stew, cleaned up the pot and then cleaned up the mug and spoon he’d used. It was dark outside and raining again and it was time to move the plywood for the night. Lee was all but asleep at the table and it wasn’t like I hadn’t been doing it for months so I walked over then stopped as I noticed how cold the air outside was getting.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 11: First Night

"We think boys are rude, unsensitive animals but it is not so in all cases. Each boy has one or two sensitive spots, and if you can find out where they are located you have only to touch them and you can scorch him as with fire." – Mark Twain


I looked down and saw Beau giving me those big pitiful eyes and I thought, “Oh no, he’s gotta go.” Why he hadn’t asked to go earlier I don’t know; or maybe I just hadn’t noticed. Stupid me, I know he needed to go out before bed time every night. I sighed and reached for my rain slicker that I kept hung by the cave door just in case and looked at Rufus.

About that time I saw Rufus coming back in the cave with the most disgusted look on his face, shaking a different paw after every step. “Sorry Kitty.” He didn’t appreciate my snicker and took a half hearted swipe at my leg as he passed by. He didn’t mean to do any damage, he just wanted to make a point.

I heard from back in the cave, “Whoa that is one wet cat.” Then, “Hey! I was just stating a fact you crazy feline!”

I snickered again, but it turned into a laugh when I heard Mischief mimic a slow laugh. “Ha … ha … ha … ha.”

“Bella, you’re animals are crazy!”

“No they aren’t!” I called back. “Just a little eccentric. I gotta take the pup out for his business. Be right back.”

I heard him start to say something but the rain pounding on my rain hood and on the umbrella I was holding for Beau drowned him out. Yeah, I was so dorky I held an umbrella over a dog so he could do his business in the rain. How lame does that make me?

It didn’t take Beau long and we were both slipping and sliding to get back in the cave. Lee met us with funky orange, felt towels and took charge of Beau while I shed the coat and dried myself off. Then he helped me to slide the plywood in place.

“Think it is cold enough that it’s gonna sleet or freeze?”

I thought about it then said, “Close but no cigar. Unless we get a late Indian summer we’ll get some ice soon though. I’ve heard they’ve already got several feet of snow over on Mount Mitchell.”

“Always have snow on Mount Mitchell by now.” I nodded and stepped inside the cave to find a tent heater going and Rufus and Beau acting like they’d died and gone to Heaven, all splayed out in front of it.

“Hey! Where’d that come from?”

“From my gear. I started out with a boatload … literally … after Dad dropped me off as close in as he could. I’ve been moving it closer and adding stuff that I could find as time has gone by. When I figured out this was the place I got all my caches and brought them thisaway.”

“How on earth did you carry all this stuff?”

“Didn’t. Put it in the skiff and pulled it along in the rain.”

“In the …?! Boy, are you three parts crazy?! You coulda got hurt or worse!”

He looked entirely too gratified at my concern and I bent down to scratch Rufus where he liked it and pull Beau’s backside a little further away from the heat to keep him from getting singed when he wagged his tail.

As I was standing up Lee asked me, “Any particular reason you use plywood instead of a door?”

I shrugged, “Hadn’t figured out how to make one yet. Daddy was a stone mason not a carpenter or joiner.”

“Well my dad is a carpenter, so are about half my brothers and brother in laws, both my grandfathers and most of my uncles.”

I chuckled knowing he wasn’t exaggerating. “Well it’s a good thing you liked it then because you would have had to learn if for no other reason than self defense.”

“You know that’s right,” he said nodding his head. “And the only thing we need to do to put a door here is to build a frame and then custom fit a door. I can probably make a bolt out of some rebar and a bar for the door out of more of it and a good, stout piece of post. You want me to?”

“I would if you want to. But maybe hold off on it. I’m trying to figure out a way to add an entry way at the front of the cave so I can finish the fireplace out there.”

“Yeah, I noticed what you were doing. I just about broke my neck on it when I stumbled across this place. If it hadn’t been there I wouldn’t have found exactly where you were at. What’s the trouble? Got it as high as you can lift things?”

“No, not yet. It’s more I’m worried about building it and then having to unbuild it.”

“Why would you have to do that?”

“I haven’t figured out how to put a roof on yet … or a door … or set the window properly,” I said in extreme grievance.

“How about we look at it tomorrow. It is probably just a matter of framing just like this was. You’d be surprise what can be fixed or messed up just from the framing.”

I was starting to feel washed out but I didn’t want to go to sleep. Lee noticed my quandary and understood it. “Hey, I’ve found you so we’ve got all the time in the world but you had a scare today and a good sized soaking. And you’re starting to limp too. Why don’t you sit here and let me take a look at it and then we can both grab a little shut eye before the beasties get up in the morning and have to get taken care of.”

I groaned but it was only because he was telling the truth. I sat on a stump of wood that I’d brought in to use as a stool and then stopped when I realized what my legs looked like. Lee just rolled his eyes, once again reading my mind.

“Bella, I’ve got a mother, too many sisters and aunts to count, and eleventy dozen assorted other female relatives. Ain’t much that is gonna shock me. And in case you haven’t thought it through, the reason why I ain’t shaved in a month of Sundays is because the razors are all gone and Gram threatened great bodily harm if anyone of us snitched her sewing scissors again. Your hairy legs are not going to turn me cross eyed.”

I reached over and pulled a Rufus and swatted him. “It would have been more polite if you had pretended not to notice.”

“Why pretend? It’s the truth.”

“Well … no teasing. I just haven’t had company in a long time so I haven’t bothered.”

“You’ve got razors up here?”

“A couple of straight razors. Uncle Jerry was a cheap ol’ skinflint and didn’t believe in girls shaving their legs until they got married. Claimed he thought those that did it were loose, especially the higher they shaved. All your women kin are blonde so have hair that hardly shows. I look like Bigfoot’s half sister on his mother’s side.”

Lee laughed at that but said, “Hush, it really ain’t that bad after a guy gets used to it. Them magazine women always shaved off too much to suit me anyway.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

He wheezed like he’d got strangled on his own spit and then ignored the question leaving me to wonder what he’d let slip that went over my head. When he started messing with my foot I jerked it away involuntarily when he made it twinge. “Did that hurt?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes but said, “Not much, just stop turning it.”

He put my sock back on and said, “I think it’s just bruised. How sore is it and be honest.”

“Wasn’t bad but now that I’m off of it it is starting to get sore. If it is any worse in the morning I’ll soak it in water and some tincture of arnica.” After thinking a minute I asked, “I never even thought … did you get any bumps or bruises untangling me today?”

He shuddered. “No. And don’t bring that up. My heart still starts racing every time I think on it.” He stood up and then gave me a hand up so I did have to put too much pressure on my foot. “Think you can sleep now? Better turn this heater off.”

Beau made a soft, disappointed doggie sigh and then got up and followed Rufus into the tent. Lee just shook his head. “Do they sleep in the bed with you?”

“No. They have their own spots on one of the rugs.” Hesitantly I added, “Let me change before coming in.”

Lee reached out and gently pulled a lock of hair that had fallen out of my hair bob. “I said I ain’t gonna jump on you Bella and I mean it.”

“I … I trust you Lee but I’m not just gonna turn all floozy all of a sudden you know.”

“I’m not asking you to. I brought a ring … it belonged to my Aunt Pet. She willed it to me ‘cause I spent every summer helping her out when her own grandkids didn’t think to. Got some other things that belonged to her in here too that Gram said you’d likely appreciate. She said this way you’d know that the family approved of it and I wasn’t just haring off and doing something crazy.”

Knowing how his grandmother could be I appreciated her thoughtfulness but I wasn’t going to be pushed into anything. I told him, “You’re crazy all right, I’m still deciding which kind is all.”

Lee seemed to understand and just smiled that smile that used to make the girls mad at me for being his friend and likely is part of the reason that the rumors started and then got back to Uncle Jerry. I always figured it was some silly jealous girl that had started it all.

I was changed and sitting on the edge of the bed in a fresh flannel gown and robe when Lee called, “You in bed yet? Can I turn out the light?”
“Might as well though I ain’t in bed yet.”

I flipped on the lamp by my bed so he wouldn’t break something coming in and then picked up my Bible and picked back up where I’d left off and then groaned realizing it was the first chapter of the Song of Solomon.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Then why are you moaning?”

“It wasn’t a moan, it was a groan. And don’t laugh. I just realized what my next chapter was.” I flipped of the book to show him the place and he busted out. “I told you not to laugh.”

“It feels good to laugh. And maybe that’s another one of them providential signs you talk about.”

“Oh hush.”

He gave a few more chuckles and sat down to start easing off his boots. To deal with the quiet I asked, “You got enough covers? Is the mattress all right?”

“Stop worrying at it. I’m fine. This is the Biltmore compared to the way I have been sleeping since I left the dorms. I had a corner in the hayloft and had to share with most of the unmarried men in the family and not a few of the boys. We all wound up with fleas when one of the kids brought their dog up there and the biters got into the hay beds we’d made.”

“Ew. How awful.”

“Yeah it was.”

I turned to try and not look, though my traitorous eyes kept peeking out of the corner under my lids, as he started taking off some of his layers. I heard him flop down all the way on the bed and sigh in comfort. “Now this is more like it. Say, do me a favor?”

“What?” I asked cautiously.

“Read out loud?”

“What? My Bible?”

“Yeah. Mom used to read to Dad at the end of the day and I always imagined you doing the same. Sometimes it was some magazine story or the newspaper or something out of the Daily Bread but most of the time it was straight out of the Bible.”

Surprised but willing I said, “Well OK. I usually try and get a chapter in a night.”

He laid his forearm over his eyes and I started reading. I debated whether to go another chapter when I looked over and could tell from his breathing that Lee was asleep. It made me smile and I decided a chapter a night was probably his limit as well.

I slipped the Bible into its drawer and turned off the lamp and laid down myself. Then before I could help it, I smiled in the dark and hugged myself. It was a little bit too much like a fairy story – I shouldn’t be so happy as something was bound to happen at some point – but I thought, “God just has to have a hand in this and mean for it to be; that’s the only way it could have come about the way it did. But if He’s not, please don’t let me get hurt too bad to teach me whatever lesson I’m supposed to come away with this time.”

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 12: Of Bears and Hams

"Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in." – Mark Twain


I woke up when I heard a quiet woof out in the living area of the cave. “Hush dog,” responded the quiet whisper. “I’ll take you out.”

“Lee?” I croaked over a soar throat.

The light turned brighter and he stuck his head in. “Oh oh, that don’t sound good.”

“It’ll be fine after I gargle. Just give me a sec and I’ll take Beau and Rufus …”

“Get up if you want to but Rufus already went out with those crazy Ravens that were marching back and forth waiting on me to move the plywood. The dog wouldn’t go out in the dark.”

“He doesn’t like to,” I answered still croaking. “It must be close to dawn.”

“Close to.” It sounded like he was shuffling his feet a bit. “Bella, I hope you don’t mind but I broke into your coffee. I haven’t had any in so long. Gram fixed up parched acorns once they started coming in and dandelion root before that but it’s just not the same.”

“If you’re using the can that is above and to the right of the stove you’re gonna find out that ain’t full coffee either. It’s half and half with chicory.”

“Serious?! It tastes really good. I thought it was just some type of fancy brand or something.”

I laughed and then gasped. “I need to gargle. This smarts.”

While Lee took Beau out I stood up and tested my ankle and then got dressed. I was pulling a sweater over my head when Rufus jumped up in my covers and curled up. “That cold is it? Well stay in here then and cat nap for a while. I gotta go gargle with some vinegar and sage tea.”

I was wondering what was taking Lee so long when he came in with a concerned look on his face. “There’s bear sign not a hundred feet from the cave. I can’t believe I let you go out last night with just that pup there.”

“Ease back Lee, people don’t let me. You know better than that. I do what I have to and what I want to.”

He opened his mouth and then looked at my face. “That came out wrong. I just mean I was being lazy. I’ve seen bear sign all over the place. I should have figured they’d be up this way too.”

“They have, but I have to admit never so close to the cave that I know of; certainly not marking their territory.” Then I winced.

“What’s wrong? You’re ankle?”

I sighed. “No. I’m just hoping they didn’t find my smoke house.”

“Your smokehouse? Where? I was all over this place yesterday looking for you before I guessed at where you’d gone and didn’t see one.”

“Not too far off. There’s a trail that leads to a bluff with an overhang – kinda like a miniature Alum Cave – and I blocked part of it in to smoke the hams and shoulders and some sausages. I block the entrance back up when I leave it but a hungry bear could probably knock it all over if it got determined. I’ve gotta go check it.”

“I’ll go. You need to stay inside with that throat.”

I shook my head. “You’ll never find it. Most if not all the meat is probably ready to be brought back here anyway. I’ll show you all the nooks and corners in the cave today but I’ve gotta go check the smokehouse first.”

Lee knew me well enough not to argue about it but said, “No sense doing it on an empty stomach. I’ve got some of that cardboard you like.”

It took me a moment to figure out what he meant. “Granola?!” I laughed. “That’s not cardboard you dork, that’s good stuff. But I know you don’t like it so how about grits and sliced ham instead?”

“For real?”

“Well I wouldn’t tease you if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No … no I mean … heck yeah I’ll take grits and ham,” he said smiling.

Grits and ham it was and I even managed a couple of small biscuits for him though they weren’t the best I’d ever made. He was quiet all through the meal and I was wondering if it tasted ok when all of a sudden he gets up and bends me over backwards and kisses me before sitting back down and continuing to shovel food in his mouth.

“Ok, that was … strange.”

He mumbled something around a mouthful that I didn’t understand and then he swallowed and said, “No. That was good. I haven’t eaten …” He stopped and shook his head. “Food got pieced out the best the women could do so we mostly had small bits of ham in a bowl of grits for breakfast. Or oatmeal with ground nuts or dried apple bits but hardly any sweetener as it is real hard to come by after the cane fields down in Florida got hit by the tsunami and the same things with the maples up in New England. All the rain is making it hard for bees to make honey … it’s a mess. The food we had filled the hollow places but … but wasn’t about enjoying a meal if you catch me. This though … this is food. And Dad said always show your appreciation to the cook.”

“Oh. Well so long as you like it,” I said still blushing from my first kiss whether he realized it or not.

He just mumbled around another mouthful and kept shoveling.

We bundled up to go out but we left the animals closed up … well except for Mischief and Molly, that would not have been a good thing. I tried to do that once … once. Never again. Ravens are way too clever.

“We’re gonna need the game cart to bring back as much as we can.”

Lee nodded his understanding. “If bears are around the last thing you want to do is be out advertising lunch, dinner, breakfast or anything else so the fewer trips the better. Got a tarp to wrap it in?”

I pointed and he grabbed that while I pulled the wagon to the cave opening and then we were off. “It gets steep the last little bit.”

“Should warm us up. Dang it is cold this morning. Glad I wasn’t camping out in this last night.”

“Me too,” I admitted quietly.

He looked at me and grinned and then we were only moderately noisy from that point on. Just enough so we wouldn’t startle a bear but not so noisy that we’d make them curious, neither state being anything we wanted. He offered to pull the wagon but I told him, “You take the rifle. You’re a better shot. I’ve yet to take down a pig without having to shoot it twice.”

He gave me a concerned look, “You’re not bad but I’ve seen how mean the hogs are getting after running wild for so long on the mountains. I’ve seen when they’ve killed a man; it ain’t pretty. They tore him to pieces. What were you using to hunt with?”

“The only rifle shot I have is .22,” I told him.

He turned around and I just about ran into him. “You did not just say you were hunting hogs with only a .22.”

“Yes I did. I told you it took two to make ‘em go down. But don’t think I’m stupid, I know to make it a neck shot or nothing. And I also didn’t go after big pigs, just the medium sized ones. I’m not sure I could have field dressed a big one by myself anyway.”

He sighed and shook his head and mumbled, “We gotta have a talk about how free and loose you are with your personal safety. First you’re scrambling in cars on a broken down bridge and now I find out you’ve been hog hunting with a dinky ol’ .22. That just won’t do.”

Rolling my eyes I asked, “Well what’s in that rifle you’re carrying?”

“I’ve got it loaded with .308 because when I shoot at something I mean for it to go down and stay that way, not get annoyed and come after me,” he said a little on the gumpy side.

“Well, getting treed isn’t so bad after the first time it happens. You know what kind of tree to look for to climb.”

He kept walking but I could tell he was mumbling to himself and I knew for a fact I didn’t want to hear what he was grumbling about. We settled back down when the trail got steep. I could only take the game wagon half way up so we blocked the wheels and started to walk the rest of the way.

All of a sudden Lee swept me behind him with a long arm. I could hear something on the trail ahead of us. I tapped Lee’s shoulder and pointed. He nodded when he saw it too; bear scat. I could see in Lee’s eyes he thought for a moment or two about sending me back down the trail but common sense won out over caution. If I went down trail he wouldn’t be able to know exactly where I was if he had to start shooting.

Instead of the bear coming back down the trail however we heard it leaving what to us would have been the hard way; down through the greenery on the slope side and away from us. We waited it out a few more minutes and then slowly edged our way up the rest of the trail.

I was dismayed at first at what I saw. A corner of my smoke house rock wall had been caved in taking much of the rest of the structure with it. Many of the rocks had obvious claw marks on them where the bear had been scratching to get in. It had taken me a lot of time and prying to move many of those stones into place.

“If I had only had some mortar this wouldn’t have happened!” I growled thinking about bear meat and bear skin rugs.

“Maybe. Maybe not. When a bear is after something it does what it has to. You know how bears can get into cars, even if it means peeling the fiberglass panels off.”

I knew Lee was trying to console me and take it in stride but I had worked hard on what had been destroyed. I started digging through the rubble to see if there was anything that could be saved and slowly lost my anger and depression as I realized the bear couldn’t have gotten much at all as it was so well buried.

“You didn’t say nothing about digging a pit,” Lee said after we moved enough rocks to find that most of the meat was salvageable.

“I didn’t dig it. It is a natural crevice. I just cleaned it out and chiseled it into more of a deep bowl-shape then lined it with clay. Should have used that clay like mortar. I’ll know better next time.”

He nodded while he was looking around. “Fine. But right now let’s get the ash off of this and then get going. I don’t fancy hanging around for that bear to come back … and you know it will. This weather being like it is it’s gonna want to finish filling its belly and then find a den to sleep in.”

“You mean hibernate.”

He shook his head. “No, I mean sleep. You know bears are out and about in winter around here.”

“I just figured that’s cause either their weather radar was messed up or they got hungry.”

Lee snorted. “You’ve been listening to Mr. Dunkirk. Well forget most everything he said in biology class. He may have an Appalachian name but the man is from southern California and knows squat about the natural law of things around these parts. The bears around here sleep more in the winter but they never go into a true hibernation. Haven’t you ever wondered why bears in most zoos don’t hibernate?”

“Uh … I guess I never thought about it.”

“I guess it wouldn’t be the first thing on a girl’s mind at that,” he said hefting two hams out at once that were only a little dust covered. “Mostly it’s because they don’t need to. They have a regular and constant food supply that isn’t dictated by the weather. Now come on. I have a feeling that bear hasn’t gone all that far and I want to be gone in case it decides to take another crack at this pile of rocks.”

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 13: Getting To Know You All Over Again

"A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.” – Mark Twain


Lee and I spent the next couple of days getting reacquainted. We were both the same yet different. I found his grown manliness a bit intimidating and frankly a little frightening to have him so focused on me. He was surprised at my independence. It startled him at first but it was really weird, it was like he was tasting a new food and discovering he liked it after all.

“You … you really did a good job setting yourself up Bella.”

“You sound surprised,” I told him in a half joke.

“Yeah. I mean no.” When I looked at him and smiled to show I wasn’t offended he sheepishly admitted, “Ok, yeah I am some. Not that you could do it exactly but that you would … did … have. You know what I mean.”

I nodded, understanding what his words couldn’t seem to put together. “The girl I used to be might have dream about doing it, but I doubt she would have actually done it. She only thought about surviving day to day. It was like thinking of the future was just another way of saying the next bad thing was on its way.”

“What changed?”

“Realizing my days under Uncle Jerry’s roof might not last until my inheritance came in.”

He gnawed on the edge of his mustache before asking, “Things were really that bad?”

I shrugged. “Depends on how you look at it I guess. Some people would say it was awful. Daddy would have whooped Uncle Jerry a hundred fold for every hand he ever laid on me … and the boys too for that matter. At the same time therewas never any drinking or drugs. I had food to eat and a roof over my head. No boys were trying to proposition me. Uncle Jerry isn’t really a bad man, just weak and scared cause deep down he knows he’s weak. People like that … they’re just not healthy to be around cause they can act on that fear to make themselves bigger than they are.”

“I never knew he hit you Bella. You never said a word.”

I shrugged again. “I didn’t know how. And didn’t really want to.”

“Why forever not?!” he asked confused. “Even if you didn’t know how I felt you knew we were friends … good friends. You had to have known I would have at least tried to protect you.”

Thinking about how to say it I finally answered, “Pennance I guess.”

“Huh?”

“Pennance. For living.”

Lee opened his mouth then shut it. I thought he’d gotten angry or uncomfortable with the subject and stopped talking but then he asked, “Did you ever hear about my brother Job?”

“Job’s one of the older ones … super quiet, has that great long scar from his chin to his ear. He … something about the military right?”

Lee nodded. “Yeah … well the National Guard anyway. He was driving a transport and drover up over and IED. He was the only man in the vehicle to survive. He was OK at first but then he did some crazy stuff … took chances he didn’t need to take, always getting into fights with bullies, drove like a maniac as long as no one else was with him … played hero like his life meant nothing. His wife didn’t know what to do with him. Mom and Dad did want to see it. Anyway it was Brother Jacob that finally got him to go to the VA and join up with some support group for PTSD. It was after that everyone figured out he had survivor’s guilt.”

“Oh,” I said quietly. “I … I never did anything like that Lee. You know I hated any kind of ruckus or attention.”

“You sure? ‘Cause I may not know how it feels but you can still talk to me.”

“I’m sure,” I told him confidently. “I kinda climbed that wall when I realized I had to decide whether I was gonna do for myself or not. I hat to let go to grow up so I could deal with things. I accepted that just because I didn’t like what happened didn’t mean it somehow wasn’t meant to happen. I just … it’s still hard to talk about it. I guess whether you realize it or not I’ve talked about it more to you than to anyone else.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I just don’t wanna talk about it right now.”

Softly he said, “Sure. OK. Just so long as you know you can.”

“I know it.”

“Good.” Then with a sigh he said, “I still wish I’d known. And I wish more than ever I’d just gone ahead and let you know how I felt … feel”

I shrugged. “It might have been nice. Then again if I had found out too soon maybe I wouldn’t have had as much incentive to do the growing up that I did … might not have felt the need to creat this bolt hole. The we would be in a fix. Or do you wish you were back home?”

“Oh I miss my family, but not the way we were living. Wish I could send them some of these hogs that are rooting everything up.”

“You and me both. I got a bad feeling a lot of trees are gonna come down this winter when they get top heavy with snow or ice. Ground around the roots is already soft from the rain. Them hogs making it worse isn’t gonna help.”

“Go ahead and tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“The silver lining. You always seem to be able to find one.”

After thinking a moment I answered his challenge with, “More mushrooms next year.”

I popped a wire hanger full of mushrooms off the rotisserie and put them on his plate. He laughed and said, “That’s my Bella.”

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 14: Saying Yes

"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.” – Mark Twain


His Bella. I suppose I was. Likely always had been whether I wanted to admit it or not at first.

It was purely novel to have someone who wanted to be with me all the time. Even when we weren’t together, ‘cause we were doing separate chores, I no longer felt lonely for human company. But we did do most things together.

For four days straight during the longest stretch of half way decent weather either one of us had seen in a while we fished ‘til we couldn’t stand to gut another one. We did it out on a little “island” where there weren’t any bears to worry about … or pigs. Mischief and Molly came with us every day each time bringing a few more friends with them. By the fourth and final day the few trees on the little knob of land literally dripped with black feathers as they waited for us to clean the fish and throw them what we didn’t want.

We had worried that the stink of the fish guts would draw a big predator but the Ravens – and the smaller birds after them – cleaned up our mess so well we didn’t even have to worry about where to step each day; if you didn’t include the bird poop that is.

Then the next day all the birds seemed to leave en mass. Lee said, “Reckon we knows what comes next.”

“I’m surprised that the birds hadn’t headed south before now. Even the turkeys are laying low.”

“Turkeys aren’t nearly as dumb as their reputation says they are. Lotta hunters on the other sides of the lakes sending game this way – which is good because it makes hunting easier for us – but they’ll follow the game eventually then we’ll need to lay low like every other woodland creature.

I nodded. “The fish are all salted, smoked, or canned. Thanks for helping with that by the way. If you can get another hog and another deer, even with the two of us, we should be set for a year.”

Lee chewed thoughtfully on a long blade of still green grass. “Dad likes his fish he does and with at least one someone in the house always pregnant and heaving at the sight or smell he just started doing all the fish preserving himself; and then taught all us boys. His brothers tried to rib him about it until Papa T reminded them he’d done the same thing for Gram and that their wives might have a few things to say on it too.”

I snorted. “That musta gone over well.”

Lee laughed. “Don’t know but I’ve heard stories. Either way, by the time I was born it was established family tradition. One week out of the year we’d caravan dow to the Gulf and we’d come back with fish of all kinds … scallops, oysters, shrimp, conche … whatever was in season when we were there, including gator a couple of times. Gram always got a special twinkle in her eye for Papa T if he managed to bring back crab or shrimp.”

“Oh glory, that must have been like a sack full of puppies. It’s a wonder you men didn’t blow yourselves up or burn the house down.”

Lee tried to swat me with his hat but missed. “Now give us some credit will ya? We were all serious as a heart attack about it. And Dad and Papa T have their own secret recipes that they passed down to me and one of these days I hope to fix some for ya.”

The look he gave me conjured up the kind of pictures that didn’t have nothing to do with fish and when I blushed that seemed to give Lee some pictures for his own. Rather than swatting me with his hat this time he grabbed my hand and pulled me down to sit beside him on the throw rug.

He was happy with that so I got back to our conversation and said, “Serious huh? Food on the table serious?”

“Exactly. And speaking of, I think I’ve figured out a way to get you that green house.”

“Really?! Hurray!!”

He chuckled. “Easy Bella, that’s my ear drums your bustin’. You might not be so happy when I say that first we need to get that room you were building on the front of the entrance finished over the next couple of holes between rain storms. I’ll frame a window and door opening so we can get the walls up. I’m also gonna frame a small connecting door so we can attach the greenhouse to the cave. Thing is we’re also going to have to dig out a decent floor with good drainage then I’ll build the rest of it A-frame.”

“But how do we get the glass to stay? That’s the part that I was getting frustrated with.”

“Patience Bella; I’m getting to that. On the wood frame I’ll build ledges for the glass to rest in. I’ll try and trim the glass up with my glass cutting tools and then lean the pieces into the ledges and against the support frame. This next part is tricky and we’ll probably have use most if not all those cans of spray insulation you found and then use that bucket of plaster of Paris to weatherize the rest of it and make it water proof since plaster of Paris will harden under water. The spray insulation should be just flexible enough to keep the glass from breaking as the frame expands and contracts.”

He’d been drawing pictures in the dirt on the cave floor as he explained. I loved the idea and told him so. “But, before we get too much further we’ve got to clean this place up.”

“Bella … it’s a cave. There’s gonna be dirt.”

“Yeah, but there doesn’t have to be buckets of the stuff. Most of it tracked in. I’m tired of the mud.”

“You sound like Gram … she has a hate on for tracked in dirt. Besides, you know what you’re really tired of is Beau rolling in it.”

I huffed, “That too. And if we can’t get rid of the dirt we at least need to get things organized before the weather locks us in. We never did find a place for your stuff, we’ve just sort of piled it around. Not to mention I need to get way back in the storage annex and pull out the wood head board and frame. I hope to high heavens I didn’t halt that blasted feather tick up here for nothing.”

“Huh? What do you need all that for?”

“Boy, are you dense? No way are we gonna be able to fit together on either of the ones we’re using now.”

“To … together?”

I scowled. “Unless you’ve rethought … SQUAWK!!!!”

He just about smothered me with that kiss. It felt like he was trying to braid our souls together. After he turned me loose I still needed to clear something up. “Just one thing Lee.”

“What?”

“Don’t be trifling with my affections. I only plan on ever being with one person and I’ve decided that you’re it. I don’t know if I could stand for this to just be some game in your head.”

He got up real quick and I nearly fell backwards into a stump of wood we normally used for a chair. “Hang onto that thought. I’ll be right back.”

I was cold where he’d turned loose of me but he wasn’t gone long. After digging around in the pack he kept under his bed he came out with a smaller bag. “Here, give me your hand.” I did as he asked and he slipped a gold band with an antique ruby set in the top onto my left ring finger. “It was Aunt Pet’s. She willed it to me to give to my bride. Well, you’re it. Will you wear it Elizabella Kellen Heatherly?”

I looked at him and smiled, a knot loosening that I hadn’t realized was there. “Yes I will Lee Ward Thompson.”

“Will you take my name too?”

“That’s the way the women in my family have always done it.”

We kissed again but this time I shivered, a little in fear.

As Lee had a tendency of doing he read my mind and said, “I’ve waited this long Bella, it can wait a while longer. Why don’t we finish this fall cleaning you seem to be set on first? And we’ll finish the green house too. This we’ll be snug for the winter with nothing to interrupt us.”

I smiled in gratitude for his understand and then something sticking out of the bag made me yelp, “Lee Ward! Those are … those are … Did you come up here just to get me in bed?!!”

Grinning as only a guy could he said, “Well I didn’t come up here to be made a gelding. And don’t get all huffy; Mom put in all this other stuff.”

“What?!”

Casually like it wasn’t a big deal he said, “C’mon. I’m the youngest of ten, you’re the oldest of five; you can’t think either one of us are blind to the facts of life.”

“Of course not but that’s not the point …”

“Sure it is.” He saw I was still upset and drew me to sit back down beside him. “Bella in my house Dad just told all us boys the facts of life by using farm animals as examples. But see for me, it was Mom that explained what the facts meant. I hated being the youngest and when I asked why I had to be Dad would just say ‘Cause yer are. Now stop shilly shallying and get to work.’ But Mom explained why. When they said you were too young Dad meant because of school and money but Mom put it in terms of love and sex and babies.”

“Geez,” I muttered embarrassed.

“Bella,” he said grabbing my hand and holding it with both of his. “She almost died having me. I have nine older living brothers and sisters and a couple buried on the farm that never drew breath. She was fifteen when she had her first and thirty-five when she had me. She never wanted that life for her kids she said though all of the older kids repeated it and some of the younger ones too. I’m the only one that doesn’t have a kid to worry about. She’s just look out for me, for both of us. We don’t know what’s coming for the next little bit. I’m not sure I wouldn’t go crazy if you were to get pregnant right away. There’s no woman up here to tell you what’s coming. There’s no man to commiserate with when I can’t make things easier for you. And I … well, just want it to be us for a while longer. Do you think less of me for it?”

“Of course not. My mom told my dad that it was him or her that was getting fixed after … after the second surprise sister or he could sleep on the porch from there on out. It’s just that the idea that your momma was talking about us … you know … before I even thought about us … you know … that is turning my brain inside out. Makes me kinda … wanna … eewwww.”

He relaxed and then chuckled. “You’d be surprised what Mom talks about when the church ladies aren’t around. She can be pretty earthy.”

“You mean like when Rose Lattimer got married at her new in-law’s church in that dress she sewed herself?”

Lee burst out laughing and nodded. “Mom said Rose looked like she was trying to hide ten pounds of potatoes in a five pound sake.”

While he kept laughing I told him, “She was doggone close to the truth. The zipper split on it twice. It was a near disaster until her sister Cheryl and I found some fishing twine and sewed her into the dress and then used white duct tape to make sure her boosum didn’t pop out and give her and her groom a couple of black eyes. I swear it was like trying to make two ostrich eggs fit into a carton meant for quail eggs.”

Lee spent the next thirty minutes laughing off and on while he cleaned his guns at the table and I fixed a supper of ham croquettes, pan gravy, wild greens, and a couple of baked apples.

“Bella? Do you have a list of all the food you’ve got tucked away?”

“I did have but it got too hard to keep up with it before you found me. I’ve got a general idea of how much we’ve got and how long it’ll last but I’m not sure I could do the math for you on a piece of paper.”

Chewing the ends of his mustache again – and didn’t I hand him a pair of scissor the next morning so he could trim it properly – he asked me, “You have a problem if as we do the fall cleaning we do an inventory at the same time?”

“O’ course not. Makes sense even.”

He nodded and said, “Good. And while we’re at it, I’m gonna get some hunting done while we salvage for wood for the green house other things.”

“Can’t you use logs for the entry room roof?”

“Yeah, and probably will because I need something thick and strong to resist the weather we’re liable to have. But we need some other furniture – shelves, cupboards, and storage chests mostly – and I hope to fulfill your wanting of a real bedroom. You said there’s a natural chimney in that alcove. If I build a wall with a door, you think you could figure a chimney and fireplace?”

“Better than that,” I told him while I flipped the croquettes so they’d brown on the other side. “I’ve got the old Franklin stove Daddy would bring when he came up here in the winter. There’s enough stove pipe to run all the way out to the outside. We just need to take the capstone off that he put on the hole to keep the varmints out.”

It didn’t take me long to finish cooking and get it plated up. Lee cleaned his gun cleaning mess and put it away so I could move the plates and utensils to the table. While we ate we made a list of plans for the next little while, and though we’d done it several times before this time it felt different. This time I felt like we weren’t just two people trying to work together and get by but were a couple securing a future that would last a lifetime.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 15: The Evil Men Do

"It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.” – Mark Twain


It was two days before we could work outside because one of the worst storms to date struck and must have dumped quitea bit of water as our fishing nob was only a couple of tree sticking above the water line.

“It’ll take days for this to droop back down,” I complained. “If the nob is under water those two buildings are going to be too.”

Lee nodded. “Probably. We’ll just have to try and different area.

“Well I’m glad you’re so calm. Those two shacks were the highest I knew of. If they’re under water everything else is too.”

Lee nodded again, “On this side of the lakes.”

Stopping to think I said, “You’re talking about that old CCC camp.”

“That and I know there were some private vacation cottages over that way.”

“The hunting parties are over that way too,” I reminded him.

“Maybe. If we can get in and out today we might beat them coming back up. The recent rain is probably going to make most of them too worried about snags and stuff to risk their boats until the waters settle. We can skirt the worst of it by staying close to the the shoreline. What do you say? Wanna see what’s over that way?”

What was there to say? We headed out at full sun up and took both boats. Mischief and Molly flew back and forth between us and cawed encouragingly to keep us moving.

Twice we saw herds of deer picking their way through the trees. Once we saw a bear fishing on the thin strip of land between two “lakes.” Lucky for us we didn’t need to cross right there so all of us went our own way in peace.

We came to shore at a relatively easy disembark point. We hid the boats in the branches of a partially submerged tree, tyingthem securely, then hoisted our packs to walk the three hundred yards to the area Lee wanted to look over.

We were halfway there when the sweet stench of death met our nose. “That’s either fresh, or big, or both,” I said from behind my hand.”

Lee grimaced in agreement then told me, “Wait here.”

I wanted to argue but we weren’t just friends anymore. I agree to him being the head of my house and some authority came with the job. Instead I nodded. He reached out a gloved hand and brushed at a strand of hair blowing across my face in the cold wind. “I’ll be right back.”

I just nodded again.

Five minutes later I heard him coming back at a stumbling gate and then saw him stop at me bushes and puke. “Lee?!” I called running forward.

He stopped puking though he kept gagging as he hustled me back the way we’d come. “Gah,” he said hawking up a glob of yuck and spitting. “I hate puking.”

“Most guys do. What set you off? What’s over there?”

The question was almost too much for him. He shuddered before saying, “You don’t need to see that.”

“You gonna leave me to guess at it then?”

He shuddered again then finally said, “Small hunting party, I saw four … bodies … but there was too much gear for just four men. Saw a splintered leg, don’t know which one it belonged to.”

“Don’t know … it … it ain’t … attached?”

“Something got ahold of them. Two of the tents are still standing though there isn’t anyone in them. Three other tents are partially collapsed and ripped open. Some of their gear is wet, but neat; some is scattered all over the place.”

“Bear?” I asked. Lee shrugged. “Hogs?” I asked again.

He shrugged again before saying, “Maybe both. But it started with guns I think.”

I stepped closer to Lee and then looked around. He didn’t object to giving me some comfort. “Easy Bella. I’ve seen dead bodies before with the VFW. After the floods … and before when someone would die alone and not get missed for a few days. These just caught me off guard with how messed up they were.”

“Ew.”

“Ew is right but it is the way God made us. This is bad but I puked more because I had been expecting maybe an animal pile up in a stream and instead got … what I got.” He hawked up a little more nasty and then spit it out. “Two days, not less than twenty-four hours. Mostly it was the shredding by the carrion eaters and the rain that is making it worse. You wait here and I’m going to see what all is left that could be useful.”

Shocked I yelped, “Lee!”

“Don’t Lee me. You’ve picked through houses, how’s that any different?”

“Those places didn’t have dead bodies in them.”

“How do you know? You said yourself the water was too deep to see the first floors in most of them.”

He had me there and before I could object further he left and then came back with two filled packs and a garbage bag of odds and ends. We took those back to the boats and then went back for the ammo and the bear proof container hanging in a tree near the camp.

“What do we do with the bodies?” I asked.

“Nothing we can do. You really aren’t wanting to bury them are you? You know that isn’t feasible.”

I sighed. “I know. Ground is too hard; and where it isn’t too hard, it’s too wet.”

“I think there is a trailhead over that way. We’ll leave a note and that’s the best we can do.”

I nodded but remained depressed. “You still want to hit those buildings?”

“Yeah. I know you ain’t in the mood but we’ve come all this way. We’ll just go quiet and careful and leave if nothing presents itself real quick.”

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 16: Letters Home

"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” – Mark Twain


We heard them before we saw them. “Sheriff this is useless. Kingston admitted killing his men so he wouldn’t have to share the gold with them.”

Another man, not the sheriff said, “Get off the Sheriff’s back Lern. If you hadn’t shot him dead before, he could finish telling us where he’d left the bodies.”

Another man said, “Stop your own whining Nick, Lern saved my life. Kingston had a knife to my throat.”

A voice deep with authority said, “Enough you three.”

Lee and I had edged forward to see six men standing near a building that had collapsed under the weight of a fallen tree. Suddenly Lee all but made me pass out when he made a bird whistle he had no business making.

The Sheriff and the two men that hadn’t spoken looked at each other casually. The Sheriff told the three others, “Come with me, we’ll check down this trail a short way.” Looking at the other men he added, “You two go that way.”

“That way” just happened to be in our general direction.

The older of the two just stood there a moment and then asked, “You aren’t really going to make me do that stupid whistle are you? You know these dentures make it a pain.”

Lee grinned and got up but motioned for me to stay put. He whistled a bit before pushing through the bushes to be pulled into a bear hug. “Damn Boy, couldn’t believe when your father told me. Found what you came looking for?”

“Yes sir.”

The other man – over sized boy once I got a good look at him – asked, “What did you come looking for? Dad won’t say.”

Lee grinned and then answered, “He must have his reasons.”

Turning back to the older man he said, “There’s parts of some bodies about a hundred yards down that trail and twenty or so yards in.”

“Parts?”

“Something has been at them.”

“Hmmm. We’ll tell the sheriff. You want me to tell your folks you’re amongst the land of the living?”

“Yes sir, if you would. Is everything OK at the farm?”

“Louellen had her baby. Another boy. She’s already told your brother the next one better be a girl or else; said five boys is enough for anyone sane. Sam and Jed started their own hunting outfit and some of the rest them will process it when they come back and down off the mountain. You know Israel Waterstone? He runs the pontoon boat they use for those that want to come this side … meat, metal, or ammo is what they’ll accept. They also bring government people up here for their water and air samples.”

“Sounds like a good deal.”

“Nearly as good as East Coast salvaging” After a thoughtful moment the man said, “Lee you best play least in sight for a couple of hours.”

“Why?”

“The Sheriff see you he might have to bring you in as a witness. With the way the weather has been turning, you might not get back ‘til Spring … maybe longer if Kingston’s family lawyers get involved. He was a rich man that did a stupid thing … but that only means he’s got family to try and buy his reputation back. He was claiming self-defense but Sheriff didn’t buy it.”

“I won’t tell you all your business, but I’d say the Sheriff is right. You get a look at a couple of things, you’ll see what I mean.”

There was another back pounding hug and then Lee faded into the woods opposite from where I was at.

“Dad, why’d you let him go? You know Jed and Sam have been hunting for him to make him come home and help take care of things.”

“Cause a man has the right to make his own way and his nephews only want him back so’s they can leave more often with a clear conscience. They figure if ol’ reliable Uncle Lee is around their mothers and grandmother will stop harping on ‘em.”

“They’re older than Lee is, they can boss him.”

The father chuckled. “Maybe he tolerated it once upon a time, but I’m thinking that time has come and gone. Now let’s go mark that spot for the Sheriff.”

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 17: Sparklies

"Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.” – Mark Twain


Two hours later the interlopers were gone after a lot of gagging, puking, and complaining by some of them. Lee had finally worked his way back around and we had watched the whole thing.

“They left everything in the camp. I want to go over it one more time.”

“Do I get to come this time?” I asked him.

“I’d rather you didn’t. It’s still gonna be a mess.”

“Fine, I said with as much grace as I could muster. “But I’m not gonna just stand around being useless. I’m gonna go look at the building.”

Lee opened his mouth but then shook his head. “Just be careful.”

I didn’t envy Lee combing through the mess but I did want to help. He on the other hand wanted to protect me from something that was awful. It was up to me to keep us from being at loggerheads so I backed down and let him be the man which he would be whether I “let” him or not. It wasn’t an easy thing for me to do, not because I didn’t trust Lee, but because I’d gotten used to being “in charge” of myself.

I wandered thoughtfully to my destination thinking this whole being a real grown woman was going to be harder than I thought it was going to be. I was practically on top of the tree before I realized what I was seeing … persimmons.

“Yeehaw,” I said with quiet awe.

All the fruit on the bottom branches was gone but there was plenty up in the top branches. No way was I going to leave such an unexpected bounty. I had a bag out of my pack and a booted foot in the first crook of the tree when Mischief landed on my head and cawed, “Purty thang.”

That was his phrase for sparklies and sure enough Molly, who had landed on a nearby stump, had something shiney in her beak.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked. I didn’t try and take it from her or they wouldn’t share.

After thinking it over Mischief hopped over to the door of the cabin that had been popped over when the tree fell on the corner of the structure. Cautiously I followed him inside only to lose a year off my life when Molly swooped down on me from behind, dropped the sparklie she’d been holding in her beak into my front shirt pocket and then diving at a pile of stuff on the floor.

“Bella?!”

I stuck my head out and called, “In here.” When he came over I told him, “M & M found sparklies.”

“Those two could find sparklies on the dark side of the moon. What are they into this time?”

I pointed and said, “I think it was a wall safe. When the tree fell it popped out and open the same as the door did.”

“What the heck?” he said shining a flashlight at the twisted metal box half hanging upside down. “Looks like it was up in the loft. That tree must have really packed a wollop; it knocked everything out of the loft looks like.”

“Everything but those built-in shelves along the stairs, and that oil lamp on a chain.”

Lee chuckled then asked, “Anyone ever call you Mizz Literal?”

“Huh? Oh.” Blushing I admitted, “If they didn’t say it I’m sure some have thought it.”

Still grinning Lee says, “It has its charm.”

I rolled my eyes. “Find anything else in that camp?”

“Nothing worth fighting a bear over.”

“A bear?!”

“Yeah. A yearling from the look of it. On the small and skittish side. I don’t know if it’s on its own or not so I let out after checking on the boats.”

“So can we take any of this?”

“There’s a canoe hung up under a lean to in the back. We’ll put gear in it and tie it to my skiff. Load wood in the skill itself. Miscellaneous whatever can go in your bass boat. But we need to hurry.”

“I know,” I said then brushed tail feathers out of my face as M & M dropped two more sparklies in my pocket. “Mischief! Doggone it! Do I look like you pack mule?!”

Lee just shook his head and said, “You spoil them birds.”

“They’re company and fun when they aren’t being ornery.”

Lee and I went in different directions trying to pick out what would be the most useful to haul back. I started with the linen closet and after finding that the people must have brought their linens with them when they came I headed into the kitchen. I thought I’d hit the jack pot with the persimmons but that kitchen gave us some really nice things.

I brought back the utensils some of which was good quality and some was cheap knock off stuff that would rust if it wasn’t dried before it was put away. Rather than take the time to sort them before hand I just dump everything together into one box. I also found some new and unopened local jams, jellies, and honeys … probably came from either a stand along the Blue Ridge Parkway, Gatlinburg, or maybe Cherokee.

There was a closet off the kitchen that had a locked metal door and I had to take the knob off with a hammer. I thought it was going to be a gun closet but it wound up being a food pantry. Got some more of them #10 cans like Mr. Harkins had left for me. Wasn’t a huge number of them but I sure wasn’t about to leave them behind. And I figure a woman must have been amongst the vacationers because there was a drawer full of spices and seasonings all done up in this cute, glass containers and all labeled in calligraphy.

There were a couple of cast iron trivets hanging on the wall for decoration where they did no good at all and a couple of cast iron skillets being used as decoration too. The things people do to make stuff useless. The skillets would need to be seasoned but otherwise seemed like someone’s flea market find.

Lee called from a back storage room, “Got some lamp oil here. It is that weird colored stuff but it’s the same brand that Gram prefers.”

I asked, “Where you able to save the lamp?”

He came out covered in dust and said, “Yeah I … whoa. Where’d that come from?”

I showed him and then we quickly finished getting as much as we could. Two hours later and we were as loaded as we could get and still paddle home. By the time we did get everything loaded and on our way I would have given a whole lot to have a trolling motor to help out.

If it had been just me I would have cleaned up and gone to bed but there was Lee and the animals to thing about. While I cooked some egg noodles and heating a jar of venison stew to go over them, Lee took Rufus and Beau out while he finished framing out the two hobbit-sized doors that would keep the heat out in summer and the cold out during winter.

I stepped out of the cave, nearly tripping on Rufus as he came in and asked Lee, “You hungry yet?”

“I’m always hungry. Here, hold this cord so I can measure for the beams.”

“Can you add a little more onto the eaves?”

“Why?”

“I was thinking of putting a slate skin on the outside of the sand bags so they would shed water better … kinda like cedar shakes. Make sense?”

“Can you do that?”

“Think so. I watched Daddy rehab a slate roof on some historic building and he always let me match sizes and color for him when he was doing part of a job off-site. The … the twins and I were going to be part of Daddy’s business.”

“No reason you can’t start your own business one of these days.”

That snapped me out of my sadness with a laugh. “Me?! Who would want a female stone mason?”

“You might be surprised.” After a thoughtful moment he said, “You know, we could start our own business one of these days. There’s gonna be a lot of rebuilding – or renovating – and we could get in on it. I’ve got designs like crazy in my head and I know carpentry. You’ve got a good eye for how to make space work and how to make it look nice with what materials are available, including salvage. We could do it all … shell, interior, exterior.”

“You’d want me for a partner?”

“Always have … a family business is just more of the same.”

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 18: Toiling and Trouble

"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.” – Mark Twain


For the next three weeks – from before sun up ‘til well after sundown – we were working hard, trying to beat winter. The walls were finished and the fireplace and chimney as well. I put in a stone floor in the entry room while Lee cut timber for roof beams and found a fallen tree just begging to be turned into shakes.

Then, after finding a likely stand of small diameter trees he cut them and split them lengthwise then brought them in to dry to make a puncheon floor at least in the bedroom after I laid a hearth of granite for the wood stove to sit on.

The hanging oil lamp brightened things in the living area better than the wind up lamps ever had and when Lee found some mirrors as we cleaned and reorganized the storage annex we could just about double the candle power from reflection alone.

As Lee hammered in roof shakes, I attached slate to the exterior wall, sealing the seam where the room met the side of the mountain with clay and a coating of plaster of Paris. After the room was finished Lee started on the greenhouse. It went up in just three days just like he envisioned.

“Bella, until you actually start using the green house for more than these tree seedlings, how about we screw those Lexan panels to the frame to protect the glass.”

“The ones we swiped from those trail lean to’s?”

“The same.”

“Guess we better ‘cause tempered glass or not, we don’t know what kind of weather winter is gonna bring.”

A couple of days after that I was out by myself gathering stone to use to even up the floor where the dining table sat when all of a sudden M & M flew at my face to mob me. They did it three times driving me backwards.

“You lunatic birds! What’s your problem?!”

They came in for a fourth try when a horrendous wind came out of the northeast, so cold it felt like a blade to the back of my neck. The wind knocked both birds tip over tail and they were in a panic, unable to stand or get airborne.

I grabbed them up and put them inside my jacket where they huddled, shivering. I’d finally gotten the message, it was time to hurry home. Then the rain started. I’d never gotten caught in a storm so bad; the rain came down so hard it hurt and I could barely see in front of me Then something hit me. Then again. The third time I fell on my butt and slid half way down the steep trail. I was getting pounded and I realized it was hail. The sack of stones was the only thing protecting my back. I had to use one arm to protect the bird sand hold them still and the other for balance so I didn’t fall again. The trail leveled out finally and I knew I was almost home but it would mean leaving the relative protection of the trees and dealing with the full fury of the hail and rain.

As soon as I made a break for it a good chunk of ice caught me above my eye, then one hit my ear, then another, and another. I kept slipping and stumbling, knew I was going down again as I could see due to the rain and blood running into my eyes. Then a strong arm was there and a hand to guide me the rest of the way.

“Bella! Geez look at you. I was coming to look for you and saw … where’s all this blood? OK, split eyebrow and you ear looks nicked. Jumping …! Get out of the way birds! Go play with your sparklies or something.”

Lee had taken off my jacket only to find the two traumatized ravens. Despite his yell of irritation he moved them gently until he was sure they weren’t injured.

“Th … th … they came shrieking at me. They could have flown home ahead of the storm but they stopped to try and tell me something bad was coming.”

“Yeah, bad enough to make a bear run.”

“Wha … what?”

“I was chopping wood to fill the lean to when a bear just barreled right passed me like I wasn’t even there. The only thing I could think of was fire, then a wind came through that was strong enough to try and rip the ax out of my hands. I threw everything inside, closed the shutters on the window and was looking for you to come when the hail started. I knew which trail you took and was just coming after you when I saw you.” He took the compress off my eye but sighed. “Bella, this needs a couple of stitches.”

I shuddered. Uncle Jerry had stitched my finger where I’d sliced it open peeling potatoes. “Can’t you just tape it?”

“I wouldn’t put you through it if I didn’t think it was necessary.”

It was as unpleasant as I thought it was going to be; from cleaning to sewing. By the time Lee was finished we were both shaking. My whole face felt sore radiating out from my eyebrow and my eye was swelling shut.

“Bella …”

“I’m fine Lee. You just did what had to be done. I just hope the scar isn’t too bad.”

“I was as careful as I could be.”

“I know. A two-inch gash is a two-inch gash Give me a sec and I’ll figure out something for dinner.”

“No way. We’re getting you in a tub of hot water and then you’re going to bed.”

“No, it’s OK. Better to be busy to take my mind off of it.”

“Better for you to listen. Bath then bed when a pain pill to knock you out.”

“Tylenol isn’t going to touch this.”

“I didn’t say Tylenol. I’ve got a small stash of stuff I should have put in the first aid kit tub; just never got around to taking it out of my pack.”

“Lee …”

“Bella …”

So without further ado … though a little fuss when he insisted on undressing me so I could get into the storage tub I used as a bath tub, and then helping me out, drying me off, and sliding my night gown over my head … I was off to bed.

“You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of Bella,” he said in a voice he was trying to keep the huskiness out of.

“I’m not ashamed. You gave me a ring already, it’s just … I don’t know … new I guess. And you look so hard I could almost feel it.”

“You’re beautiful Bella – inside and out – and now I get to look my fill without feeling like a pervert.”

“I guess,” I told him. But my eyes were getting heavy.

“Still hurt?”

“In … in a … (yawn) … far off way.”

“OK, pill has hit. Now rest. I won’t burn the cave down fixing a ham sandwich. And the animals won’t go hungry either. The birds are as close to norm as they ever get. It’s still storming so no work outside anyway. Have I dealt with all of your objections?”

I can’t remember whether I answered or not.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Last one for the night. I'll get more posted tomorrow. I'm having to reformat more than I expected as I cut and paste. I hope I caught most of the weird looking jogs in the typing but I'm sure there is still some boobers.

 

[naturallysweet]

Thanks for the surprise story. It's nice to find so many chapters in a row.

 

[kittyluvr]

Kathy, Thank you for posting this story. I look forward to reading more of it.

 

[Whirlwind]

Good stuff, moar please.

 

[sssarawolf]

great story thank you .

 

[Hickory7]

Thanks for sharing with us, Kathy. Sure do appreciate it.

 

[kaijafon]

IT'S TOMORROW!!! IT'S TOMORROW!!!! MOAR MOAR MOAR PLEASE!!

thanks!

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 19: Courtship and Chocolates

“Courtship lifts a young fellow far and away above his common earthly self and by an impulse natural to those lofty regions he puts on his halo and his heavenly war paint and plays archangel as if he were born to it. He is working a deception, but is not aware of it.” – Mark Twain

The next couple of days were difficult in ways I’d rather they hadn’t been. The gash turned nasty and did its level best to get infected even with keeping it clean and putting triple antibiotic ointment on it. My eye and the side of my head thumped for three days before it finally let up and the swelling started to go down.

I’m not above admitting I wasn’t real pleasant to be around. I triedbut after about a day of constant pain I got snappish and then weepy. It didn’t help that my monthlies decided to come early and aggravate me even more. Then Lee did something that made me even more weepy and irritated on top of it – and grateful too – all at the same time.

“Lee, where did you get it?” I asked, not quite believing what he had snuck onto my saucer when I got up to get another cup of mint tea.

“Uh …,” he hesitated, trying not to look guilty.

“Spit it out. Was it that cabin?” I asked still flabbergasted.

“Well … no. It was Dad.”

“Huh?! You’ve … you’ve seen your dad up here?”

“Uh uh.” Lee scrubbed his mouth that was still hidden under the bushy mustache and beared he barely kept trimmed. “See, it’s like this … Dad said if I was going to go crazy and come hunt you up that it probably wouldn’t hurt to come with something that would sweeten the deal for you. Only I got here and you haven’t needed – or wanted – anything like that so I thought to hang on to it for a present. Only … well … I thought …”

“You think I need some sweetening up now.” I was made for about a half second then the weeps caught me off guard and I ran off to the storage annex to feel sorry for myself and have a good cry in private.

Only Lee don’t apparently believe in a girl having a cry in private. After catching up with me he said, “Aw Bella,” like he was sorry he’d put the little box of Whitman’s chocolates out. “Guess it doesn’t work for every female. Mom and all the other girls used to go nuts for ‘em. I just thought you would too. Dad kept the freezer stocked with Hershey’s kisses and would get as nervous as he did at tax time if the supply started to get low.”

I sniffed and gave him a half-hearted push. “He did not.”

“Did so,” Lee swore but I could tell he was trying to get me to smile. “I’m telling you he just about tore a patch off us boys if we got into any of it. He was sweating bullets there for a while until Papa T pulled out those four five gallon buckets of chocolate chips he’d won in an auction and never done nothing with.”

The way he was telling it and me trying to imagine his daddy in a panic with all those girls running around with hteir monthlies turned my weeps into a giggle. “You’re just awful … and so are your tall tales.”

He shuddered dramatically. “Ain’t no story Bella. When you got that many females – pregnant or not – running around in your family chocolates and sweets become a matter of life and death. It was worse than when coffee got scarce. If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’ and that’s a fact.”

I swatted at him again causing him to ask seriously, “If it ain’t chocolate, then what fixes you when you feel like this?”

Feeling a little silly I told him, “Chocolates are fine for most I suppose but for me it used to be a bottle of RC or Cheerwine when I could get it. Uncle Jerry wasn’t partial to the name of that one no matter that it wasn’t anywhere near alcoholic. Either way, I’ve learned to do without so get that funny look off your face. I’m just … just … it’s the … you know … and my face looking like Frankenstein that has me acting like a cranky badger.”

Genly brushing the hair out of my eyes he asked, “Does it really hurt?”

“It don’t feel good,” I conceded. “But I’ll live. I’m sorry I’m being foul about it though. I’ll try and stop but it just keeps sneaking out on me.”

“I’m not … sorry I mean. Makes me feel like you need me some.” Then he gave a grin and asked, “What if I told you I could make you some pop?”

“Are you hiding more treasures in your supplies I ain’t seen?”

“Nope. And we’ll have to go back to that cabin and grab them empty beer bottles we left behind. But if you don’t mind me snitching some of the yeast and sugar, you’ll have you some soda pop next time this rolls around.”

“And how do you figure on that miracle? You ain’t talkin’ about ‘shine are you?”

“Do I look like I’d risk the family’s wrath on something like that? I’ll show you when it’s time. For now why don’t you go lay down.”

Shaking my head slowly so as not to start it thumping worse I told him, “I’m not an invalid Lee.”

“Not saying you are but I’ve got to do some hammering and you probably aren’t gonna like it.”

I didn’t but I wasn’t going to lay around being puny and pathetic either; a girl has to have some pride after all. I did go to the other side of the cave to work however. And put ear plugs in.

We’d made a lot of headway in our inventoryand had found food wasn’t going to be a problem for a while though we wanted to take another deer if the weather allowed for it and turn as much as we could to jerky. It was the stuff I’d never given much thought to that was gonna be trouble.

We didn’t have enough salt though at one time I could have sworn I’d have enough to never run out in two lifetimes. Sweetening was also gonna run out before next fall. Other things like powdered milk, toilet paper, shoe strings, matches, gauze bandages, mouthwash, cheese, some of my seasonings, plastic wrap, rope, dish soap, and deodorant were all on my want list. I needed some way to keep feeding the ark as well since winter meant there would be less forage for them. Rufus and Beau had gotten into the habit of getting squirrel or three … or a rabbit if they could catch it … but during the winter I’d have to bring the provender.

And then there was the fact that there wouldn’t be anything fresh for people diets either, at least nothing green and fresh. Which reminded me I’d run through the big bottle of vitamins that I had picked up even before Lee found me which meant I needed to think about making sure the food we did have gave us all our vitamins and minerals so we wouldn’t get sick.

Needless to say a swollen up eye wasn’t the only thing giving me a headache.

 

[seraphima]

What a welcome, wonderful surprise to find this story! Thanks so much, Kathy!

 

[Kathy in FL]

Sorry it is taking me so long to post each chapter. The formatting issue is time consuming to fix. It just copies over as a great big block of words so I have to go in and put in all the returns, etc.

-----------------------------

Chapter 20: Wandering Society

“All the territorial possessions of all the political establishments in the earth--including America, of course--consist of pilferings from other people's wash. No tribe, howsoever insignificant, and no nation, howsoever mighty occupies a foot of land that was not stolen.” – Mark Twain


“What a mess,” Lee griped in disgust.

As irritated as him I said, “I thought most people would normally have better sense.”

Lee shook his head. “Now see, that’s your mistake right there. People with sense are rarities, not the norm.”

Since I couldn’t argue with that given the evidence in front of me I simply looked around, trying to be careful where I put my feet. “Where do you think they’re going?”

“Back down the mountain to stay if they’ve smartened up at all. From there who knows. I just can’t believe they’re leaving all this behind.” Suddenly Lee nearly threw a hissy. “Crap! Look at these frozen cans; they look ready to explode.”

Pulling back a wind-tattered tarp to find several buckets labeled beans and several others labeled things like rice, pasta, and potato flakes I just shook my head. “They’ve got a king’s ransom in supplies right here alone – despite it looking like something packaged up at the commodities store – and even though they lost most of their tents there’s gotta be more that can be salvaged from this mess. I mean, Lord help, look at all that flotsam piled over there. Who’s so rich around here they can just walk away like this?”

Looking around thoughtfully Lee answered, “Didn’t seem like the Richie rich types to me; I bet they were salvagers looking for a place to hole up for a while.”

“Dumb place to do it,” I muttered. To Lee I said, “Whoever or whatever they were, they sure expected them goobermint types to give ‘em a lift on their fancy air boat.”

Lee nodded, “Sure did. And leaving us with this mess ‘cause you know we can’t have this kind of sign so close to the cave.” I agreed and started moving what was salvageable into one pile and what was not into another.

The storm that brought the hail lasted almost four days. Then came a three day break before a stretch of bad weather that lasted twice as long as the other storm had. It blew so hard that what snow tried to come down got chased off before it had time to stick to anything. It was so bad we had to wrap mufflers around our face to bring wood in; if we didn’t our face would get cut to ribbon by the ice particles in the air.

We both wanted out as soon as the second storm let up and so did the animals. It was too cold for them to be out for long but we gave them the full run of cave and entry room while we went to find fallen limbs for the wood pile. We weren’t on the trail long when we had heard arguing.

“Jack, I’m going down. Come or don’t, it’s your choice. But if you don’t, don’t expect me to be waiting on you when you finally get around to it. I miss the kids and I’m going to get them from your mother before the rest of what we worked for gets destroyed, just like this cache has.”

“But Linda …”

Another man said, “She’s right Jack. Let’s just write this one off; it isn’t as good as the other ones anyway. We can go collect all the others and head back home. Weather charts are all off and undependable. It’s safer just to finish early and get back and settled in before things get worse.”

A third man said, “At least let’s take what we can haul out. I didn’t survive that storm to walk out empty handed.”

A second woman said, “You survived, that’s not empty handed. Besides they already told us nothing bigger than a fanny pack and no more than ten pounds. If it is they’ll drop it overboard rather than risk being hung up on a snag or run up on some underwater object. I don’t believe they’re blowing smoke about that either. You know the kind of trouble we had getting here.”

There was some grumbling and cursing but in the end walking out empty-handed is exactly what they did. We’d waited until the air boat had gone out of sight before returning to the ill-conceived campsite to start salvaging.

I asked Lee after he came back with the sled, “I don’t want to cause trouble or draw attention so you reckon they’ll come back for their stuff?”

“Naw. Must a cost a pretty penny to haul all this stuff up here to begin with, can’t see them going to the expense of hauling it back down again so soon.”

“Wonder why they came up here to begin with.”

“If I had to guess, and this is all it is mind you, I bet they expected to find a vacation lodge or cabin to set up in; maybe for the whole winter.”

“Up here on this side? Then they can’t be locals ‘cause they definitely picked a fool’s errand in that.”

“I don’t recognize ‘em that’s for sure, not to mention they don’t sound like they are from around here neither. But with the cabins on the other side of the lake … it wouldn’t exactly be an unreasonable guess by most folks’ standards.”

“I suppose not,” I admitted while I tried to decide whether a bag of clothes was going to be worth the trouble of salvaging. I finally threw it on the “NO” pileand snapped, “What in the blue blazes are we going to do with this mess?! Some of this stuff wasn’t much more than rags before the storm got it.”

“You ain’t gonna like my answer.”

Figuring that out from the look on his face I said, “Tell me anyway.”

“We haul it to a cabin on the other side of the lake. One I’m thinking of has an unfinished basement. If we’re lucky the cabin will finish collapsing in on itself and take our problem with it.”

“Wouldn’t have to be that way if people would just clean up after themselves. I feel like I’m back picking up after a big dinner on the grounds at the park and Reverand Jacob said we had to leave it cleaner than when we found it to set an example for the heathens that weren’t good stewards of God’s world.” Lee snorted because he knew exactly what I was talking about because the adults always seemed to scatter while the young people did the “exampling.”

After a few more minutes and ever increasing frustration I threw another hissy. “God what a lot of work and time wasted just ‘cause some folks ain’t got sense to stay out of the rain!”

Lee was just as irritated but having experienced similar as he worked with the VFW to clean up after the floods at the lower elevations he was more prosaic about it. “Generally how it is Bella. Generally how it is. But if those folks were out-of-towners we may have just dodged a bullet. We’d either wind up having to dig them out of trouble or dig ourselves out of worse. I mean to tell you. Just look here, a plastic bin full of .22lr casings but not a sign of shot or equipement to do any reloading with. And I ain’t got no idea what’s in those two ammo boxes cause the latches are rusted in the locked position.”

“Yeah, well I ain’t no expert but something tells me it would be foolish to try and fire any of those guns you found in that crate; most of them have rust spots on ‘em.”

Lee nodded in disgust. “I’ll break ‘em down and clean the parts but if I can get two decent shotguns out of the eight in there I’ll be surprised. Same for the rifles. God only knows where this stuff started out. I’d lay odds it’s salvage if it sat underwater or just around damp. Somebody looks to have made a pretense of wiping ‘em down to keep the rust at bay but I doubt any of them had a thorough cleaning and going over.”

Angry at finding another case of cans that had been spoiled by freezing I snapped, “This makes me so angry I could just spit. Look at all this waste.”

“Mom and Gram would be burned up about it too and they ain’t the only women you’d have in that choir. It might not be much in the scheme of things but it could have made it a lot easier on my family for a bit.”

Something in his voice made me look up. “You worried about them?”

“Not worried exactly. Just wish I knew how they were doing.” He glanced at me and away quickly before admitting, “I’ve never been away so long before. Just wish …”

I put down the tub I had been dragging to the sled and went over to give him a hug. “We can keep an eye out for your nephews or one of the other boats.”

“And do what? Tell everyone where we are? No,” he sighed. “That’s just asking for trouble; at least right now it is. And until I can find some way to power it the radio I found while I was searching for you isn’t going to do a lick a good either. And there’d have to be a powered up radio on the other end as well and the power was down as much as it was up when I left. Who knows what it’s like now. They said it would be months before they could re-route all the lines out of the flooded areas approach anything like full time power.”

That was true and unlikely to have changed. I still felt bad for Lee though. If anyone knew what it was like to miss family it’d be me.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 21: Boring Ain't Always Bad

“Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen to death.” – Mark Twain


Winter can get boring but that ain’t always bad, especially when you go something new you’re practicing at. Lee and I finished the bedroom, found the bed, put it together, and then made use of it … good use. There were times it was hard to get out of it to take care of our responsibilities. I’d always heard other girls say it was about like riding a bicycle, it just took practice to make it more than a job. Well I think waiting must have done the truck for me and Lee ‘cause if that’s work a vacation would probably be the death of me.

Lee was so happy when I told him that he tripped over Beau, ran into the door frame and spilt the hot coffee he’d been carrying and still didn’t stop smiling with the goofy grin he tended to get when a certain subject came up.

Not to say fooling around is all we did. When you plan on a future together you tend to start wondering about what that future is going to look like. For Lee and I that meant a family and with that comes figuring out how to support one.

“Still say a family business is the best.”

I nodded. “The problem isn’t the what Lee but the where and the how. These lakes won’t last forever, they can’t no matter the rumors about just damming all the water up where they can and keeping it that way. But I can’t see even trying to come down until at least some of the lakes bleed off.”

“Yeah, I know Bella. But staying here is only temporary. You understand that don’t you?”

“I know. If for no other reason than because of supplies. But where would we live? You already admitted it can’t be the farm.”

“Well I sure as heck ain’t gonna go begging for a place from your uncle.”

I scooted over in the bed and draped my arm across his chest. “Not what I want either. Guess we can’t make plans yet but we can’t put it off forever.”

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 22: Sprung Spring

" ....as far as being on the verge of being a sick man I don't take any stock in that. I have been on the verge of being an angel all of my life, but it's never happened yet." – Mark Twain


Holidays came and went quietly in the cave. Winter days rolled one to the next too. Lee got a cold after taking a dunking when some ice gave way over a frozen spring and we passed it back and forth twice before we were finally rid of it.

“That spring wasn’t there before,” I said while we both sipped a strong broth laced with poultry seasoning and garlic.

“The one I fell in?” At my nod he said, “No it wasn’t. Why bring that up?”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Uh oh.”

“You want to drink that broth or wear it?” Lee just grinned but he did settle to hear my thoughts. “According to what I remember my dad saying this cave used to have a spring fed pool in it way back in the back, back before they shifted so much dirt and rock putting highways through and communities getting built up. The pool dried up and a new seasonal waterfall popped up that’s now what I call New Victoria Falls.”

“And? ‘Cause I know you’re going some place with this.”

“Well, I am. I’m just not sure where yet. It just seems strange the New Victoria has owed down and nearly frozen solid. And then that new sprrring pops up out of the blue. It wouldn’t bother me if it wasn’t so close to the cave. What if the pressure that used to send the spring up into the cave – the pressure that went away when so much earth was moved – is returning? And with things being like they are, that the cave won’t fill up and we’ll be left in a world of hurt?”

“Whoa, you have been thinking.”

“Yeah. How stupid does it sound?”

“Welllll, probably not as much as you were hoping I would say.”

“Great. I was hoping you’d tell me I was nuts and I could forget about it.”

“You ain’t nuts Bella, but … personally I don’t think your worst case scenario is something you need to get gray hair over.”

“Why?”

“Well, for starters this cave sets a good 500 feet above that fall yours and it’s a good 300 feet above the new spring. And between us and the spring is a good size crevice and another steep incline. You said yourself you had to take the truck up and over the ridge – and that’s enough of a good track I wouldn’t wanna take a horse on much less a truck – to get it here. If the spring does spit out someplace new it’d be that crevice and unless it can build a bridge, that’s as far as I see it going.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure. But you got me willing to talk about something that’s been on my mind.”

“What?”

“Well, you know them people we think were salvagers?”

“Yeah.”

“They talked like they had other caches of stuff.”

“Yeah, but we ain’t salvagers. I mean we’ve done some outta necessity but I’ll be honest Lee, I’m not real partial to the idea of making a living doing it.”

“Me neither Sweetheart. I’m not talking about salvaging so much as the idea of caches.”

“OK, you lost me.”

“What happens if we get caught out in a storm and we can’t get back home … or something else that catches out at night away from the cave. Maybe one or the other of us gets hurt and can’t move too far in a day. Anything like that. Seems to me having a place we can ge some supplies in an emergency wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

“Actually sounds like a good idea. Dry clothes at least,” I told him. “But it’d have to be bear proof.”

“Not just bears but waterproof, rot proof, rust proof, squirrel proof … and human proof. Most of that can be addressed with PVC and burying.”

We talked about it some more. Lee said he could likely get the PVC by hacking up some plumbing pipes and I offered to donate the MREs we still had to the cause.

Lee laughed. “you really got a hate on for those things. Why?”

“That’s all there was when we were forced to evacuate. Bad taste, bad memories … but they’ll do in a pinch and they last a long time.”

He nodded in understanding but then shrugged. “We’ll have to wait for the ground to thaw before we dig. Things may change by then so who knows?”

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 23: Disappointments

"One cannot have everything the way he would like it. A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even." – Mark Twain


Eventually it did stop snowing but the weather still remained weird. One it was colder than usual by several degrees. Two it was drier as far as what the weather people would have called precipitation. It was still wet all around us but it was from existing water rather than from anything new coming down.

“Count me grateful that the trails are drying up,” I told Lee while we were hunting up dry wood to bring back for the wood pile. “I’m tired of mud on the floors.”

“Tired of mud in and on my boots,” added Lee in a tone that said he wasn’t complaining exactly but was full up to the top with some of the challenges we faced every day. “It’s like walking around with weights on.”

“That too,” I said with a smile. Only Lee didn’t smile back. “What’s on your mind?” I asked him.

“Nuthin’”

“Lee Ward Thompson you’ve never lied to me so don’t start now.”

He jerked like he’d been wasp-bit then looked at me and snapped, “Don’t start Bella. It’s nuthin’. Leave it alone.”

Well I figured he deserved some slack after all he’d graciously given me so I let it go. But his “nothing” was definitely something and got so big over the next two weeks it was getting between us … even in bed. He wasn’t even interested in me reading to him at night no more. And whether I should have or not, I caught it hurting my feelings that he wouldn’t talk to me. Eventually his not talking led me to conclusions that nothing he said afterwards told me I was wrong.

Then one morning out of the blue Lee said “Bella …”

And I knew. “It’s OK Lee, I get it.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh …”

“I won’t make a fuss.”

“Er … you won’t?”

“No.”

He sagged in relief. “Whew. I thought you’d be upset.”

I was but obviously he wasn’t once he figured out I was letting him off the hook.

He gave me a pleading look and said, “I just need to go.”

“Like I said, I understand.” I was standing at the counter setting beans to soak and tried to pay attention to it so hard he couldn’t see how he was making me feel. “When do you plan on leaving?”

Eagerly he answered, “No time like the present.”

I was truly caught off guard. “You’ve been preparing for this? With … without saying … well … anything?”

“Don’t get upset Bella, please. I just gotta go. It’s driving me crazy. I ain’t got any peace.” He ran off eager to get ready.

Well talk about a slap in the face. But I should have figured. Reality is a lot different than he could have imagined He built me up to be some person – some dream – and then found out it was all just a fairy tale For me it was the opposite I’d never even had the courage to dreamin that direction so reality was so much better than I’d ever imagined.

I put together some supplies for him and then while he was out of the room I wrote out a quick letter:

Lee, thanks for caring enough to come find me but I understand I wasn’t what you imagined. I don’t hold it against you and this time with you will always be special in my heart. But I’m begging you not to tell people that I lived in sin with you. I know we weren’t thinking of it like that but I’ve felt you pulling away and now it’s driving you so crazy you admit you just gotta get away. So even though I haven’t got much reputation leftI could stand for people to think less of me than they already do … especially your family who might be upset that I kept you away so long.

Another thing, I don’t want any hard feelings between us. I don’t believe you set out to lose your feelings for me so much as I simply maybe wasn’t who or what you needed or wanted after reality set in for you. We’ve been thrown together so much that we’ve hardly had time to do much more than get through the days. I think we did good but there comes a time when I guess that isn’t enough. I also don’t think it is right that I keep this ring since its an heirloom but I don’t think I’d be very good about facing you for you to ask for it back so here it is. I ain’t throwing it back at you so don’t think that; I’m just trying to do the right thing

I’m also asking you not to tell no one where I am. If I wasn’t ready to go down and face everyone before, I’m sure not ready to do it now and have them ask all sorts of questions. Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna go crazy or do anything stupid … I’ve got some pride and I’ve got the animals to take care of if nothing ee.

And I also want you to know I won’t embarrass you by making a claim on you at any point down the road. I only want the best for you ‘cause you deserve it.

Now you take care and have a good life and find all the silver linings you could ever need. God bless you and whoever you take up with in the future.

Elizabella

I was trying to figure out a way to sneak it into his stuff when he ran back to the storage room to get something which gave me time to put the letter and ring in a Ziploc bag and shove it way down in his pack inside a pocket.

He came back, said a quick goodbye to Rufus and Beau, took the birds off his shoulders where they were preening his hair then said, “I hate to rush. I feel like there’s things I ain’t done. That I missing something or … I …”

“Oh for heaven’s sake just go … daylight’s wasting and those windstorms can be bad.”

“Aw don’t cry Bella.”

“Don’t get stupid Lee. Of course I’m gonna cry. Just be careful andtell your family I said hello … maybe … maybe Uncle Jerry and the boys too if you think they’d care to hear.”

He surprised me with a hard kiss good bye and said, “Things’ll be OK Bella and I’ll be careful.”

“I know. Now stop dilly dallying and do what you need to do.”

He grinned in relief and then practically ran down the trail.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 24: Storms of Life

"Pretty soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale under-side of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was justabout the bluest and blackest--fst! it was as bright as glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs--where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know. - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)


I gotta say that I was pretty much useless for the next week or so. I couldn’t even sleep until I pulled out the old folding cot and set it up in an unused alcove and even then I didn’t sleep much. I didn’t eat much either and nearly made myself sick until I noticed how my mood was affecting the ark. It was at that point I decided I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and deal with reality.

But accepting being alone again and dealing with the consequences of it were two different things. For one there was only me to chop the wood … or find it and carry it back. There was only me to carry the water. There seemed to overall be as many chores for one as there was for two, just no one to share the workload with.

Then my monthlies came and I cried and then was ashamed of myself for the reason. In some secret place in my heart I wouldn’t have minded having a piece of Lee to keep for my own and love forever. But when I really sat down and thought about how crazy that was, thought about the girls I’d gone to school with that had babies for the wrong reasons and how it usually turned out, I forced myself to admit I was being selfish and that I might one day have a baby but is sure shouldn’t be right then or for those reasons.

I guess it was at that point that I finished picking myself up and kept moving forward. I’d always love Lee, might never love anyone else the same way, but I survived losing my family, I survived Uncle Jerry throwing me out, and I knew I was choosing to survive Lee leaving. Surviving didn’t make me a better person but it did spark my determination. Survival is like any other habit in life … eventually you get fairely decent at it.

Spring came late and summer barely came at all but I didn’t let that stop me. I picked greens when and where I found them, hunted when the opportunity presented itself, foraged for what little did survive the quirky weather, and in general covered it all with a lot of praying. M&M surprised me with a chick … the other eggs in the nest never hatched … and I worried for a bit until I saw Rufus was as uninterested and unimpressed by the chick as she had been its parents. In fact Rufus was noticeably uninterested in just about everything but laying in front of the fireplace. Then she got to where she didn’t even want me to pick her up; she’d tolerate a brushing but that was about it. I checked her stem to stern looking for something wrong but never could find anything. Then one morning in July I woke up to Beau’s howling. Rufus had passed on.

My heart broke a little more but, as had become my habit, I survived. We all did though I surely did miss my curmudgeonly queen of the cave. I put one foot in front of the other and just kept going. I wasn’t sure why anymore but it seemed the thing to do so I did it.

Beau wasn’t a puppy any longer and I realized he needed to be a dog and all that came with it. I finally started taking him with me on my foraging and hunting runs and he turned into a pretty good example of his species and breed. He trained about as well as any dog I’d ever had and after only a couple of weeks I stopped having to be so careful of him to make sure he didn’t leave me or get lost.

The one thing I didn’t do under any circumstances was go anywhere near other people to get their attention, not that I saw that many. I had worried that the ware would be hunted over but not a chance. It was down right eerie how few people I saw and then ones I did see all seemed to be goobermint types or something so similar they could have passed for each other.

A few times I tried to get close enough to hear what they talked about amongst themselves but I never could. They were jumpy and well-armed and the combination didn’t seem to healthy for me. I wondered for a while why I didn’t see no one else then decided either the government had closed off the area or what seemed more likely, fuel just wasn’t available.

A bad cold snap hit in early September, a snow storm of all things. It was so bad I worried for my greenhouse plants. I decided to take the canoe and check around the lake but the birds, all three of them, mobbed me every time I tried to go outside. There had only been a few such times like that and there’d been a good reason for each so I listened despite feeling more than a bit foolish.

Then Beau started acting weird and I thought he was picking up the birds’ bad behavior. Despite the likelihood of something bad, I was just about to show them who was boss when all four animals hightailed it into the cave proper squawking and carrying on, leaving me in the entry. Then I felt it, some vibration through my feet.

I felt whatever it was off and on for the rest of the night. The animals wouldn’t or couldn’t settle. I couldn’t either. Around about dawn I couldn’t stand it anymore.

 

[mawmaw]

Great story THANK YOU

 

[Mysty]

Enjoying this story very much! Thanks Kathy

 

[Hickory7]

Thank You for more. I wonder what is keeping Lee away... I feel so bad for her.

 

[methos]

I always like hearing your stories from the female perspective. Always makes me feel like I'm not very observant in life with my own wife. As always, excellent work.

 

[Bunkerdown]

Thanks for another fabulous story.

My unfounded guess is there is a communications breakdown. She assumed the worst. Lee assumed she knew he just needed to check on his family, and they both assumed they were clear to each other and voila!!! a ready made mess. We all know what happens when you assume.... ass...u...me...

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 25: Changes

"Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with." – Mark Twain


In all the time I’d been on the mountain, other lakes would do strange things but as one of the highest and smallest “my” lake hadn’t fluctuated more than a few feet on either side of what I considered normal. But that morning, that unbelievable morning, I went down to the shore line to find there was no shore line … because there was no lake. It had drained down to the next lower lake which while still there was also a good twenty feet lower than it had been. The natural dam between the two had given way.

But I wondered if my lake had flowed into the other one and it was still twenty feet lower, where had all the water in that lake gone? I hurried back to the cave to check on the animals. They were tired but acting closer to normal so I secured things, grabbed a better pack, and then took a hike to New Victoria Falls which overlooked a wider area.

Only there were no falls. The lakes that had fed the falls had also dropped considerably. Those lakes were still there – well sorta – but none were high enough to cause an overflow and drier weather wasn’t going to refill them any time soon. Below the high water lines there was nothing but debris, dead tress, and drying mud for about fifty to a hundred feet or more until you got to the new water line.

All around I could tell the mountain animals were confused, just as confused and out of sorts as they had been when the floods first created the lakes. I spied a bear pacing back and forth. I saw an old ornery razor back wallowing in the mud for just a moment before rushing out and back into higher ground for undergrowth. I heard birds and squirrels but they seemed to have an anxious tone to their twittering and barking.

I remembered the words I had heard so long ago, that since the lakes weren’t natural they’d eventually dry up one way or the other. But, I hadn’t considered how dramatic a process it might be. I felt as discombobulated as the animals. It seemed I couldn’t count on anything remaining the same long enough for me to count on it being there tomorrow.

It was with considerable relief that I went back to the cave by way of what I called New Spring to find its output unchanged. At least I still had a source of water relatively close but as I got to the cave and petted the animals I worried that might change too. And if the snow was coming so early there was no time to lose. I needed to prepare for winter and the inevitable changes that seemed to finally arrive.

That night, for the first time in a long time, I pulled out the inventory that Lee and I had made and kept so meticulously. It hurt to see our handwriting intertwined and as I read it over I kept getting lost in memories and distracted from what I meant to do.

Finally I forced the memories to stop tormenting me with their blasted what if’s. I needed to take a realistic look to see if I could survive another winter on the mountain.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 26: Bear Bait

"It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions." – Mark Twain


My conclusion? By the skin of my teeth and only if I started preparing right away and was willing to do without the variety that I’d had the winter before.

The problem first on the roster was what would I prepare with. More out of habit than need I had continued to collect wild foods … some to eat and some to save. But I hadn’t really put sufficient thought into it as my appetite was no longer what it was. Now I was faced with a quickly shrinking set of resources to pull from. The snow had gotten a lot of the plants at the cave’s elevation so I prayed hard that it hadn’t at the lower elevations I could safely reach.

Unlike the previous season I decided to take all the wild rice, what there was of it. There was no water for it to propagate in so I didn’t feel guilty. I also didn’t feel guilty about taking all of the cattails from around the no longer existing shorelines. I did transplant a few cattails in some of the shallow water ways that remained but I wasn’t sure whether they would prosper or not.

I didn’t hesitate to take the deer and hogs I needed either. I worked from before sun up and often until well into the night. It didn’t bother me, it filled the hours and kept me from noticing I was only prepping for one; kept me from thinking about just how lonely those long winter days stuck in the cave were going to be and how stir crazy I just might get.

Time sped by. September turned to October and October to a bitterly cold November. The only reason I stopped hunting was that I couldn’t get the animals bled out before they froze.

Eventually I recognized that it was a good thing they froze because my salt supply was low and I held back what I thought was wise though not nearly what I knew that I needed and thoughts of how to get more worried the edges of my consciousness. I save what salt I could for curing the pork or I canned the pork the best I could. I would grind the meat, season it, fry it up, and then layer them in jars covered with fresh lard that came from the same pig. I canned the fresh loin only lightly seasoned. I also tried to make the salt go further by honey curing the hams, shoulders, jowls, and bacon.

Eventually I stuck to venison as much as I could as it can be preserved by smoking alone, the same as the fish I sometimes netted out of the newly shallow lakes. Unfortunately fishing brought up painful memories and I usually had to give it up or fall into depression despite the need to create as much variety in my diet as possible.

When I wasn’t foraging, hunting, preserving, or messing around in the greenhouse I was chopping wood. In fact it seemed I did more of that than all the others combined. I didn’t have anyone to help me but the job wasn’t as hard as it could have been because I wasn’t having to fell trees to get to the wood. All those trees that had been under the lakes for so many months were finally dried out or getting there due to the horrible wind that seemed to blow so much of the day. It was like collecting driftwood. I had my pick of branches. The one danger I was running into is that the trees were shifting and falling as the ground dried up around them. The windstorms battered the giant toothpicks and knocked them over as well. I stayed out of the former lake basins for that reason.

But then there came a day …

Isn’t there always a “but” right before you catch yourself doing something that winds up being a double helping of stupid?

I’d been tracking a bear to make sure that it left what I considered “my” territory. But then suddenly I realized I wasn’t tracking it anymore but that it was tracking me. And what was worse I recognized the bear as a cranky male that had moved into the area after apparently losing its former territory when the lakes shifted. He’d been fighting and marking the trees up hard all summer. And he was hungry and apparently unafraid of humans. It put me on the run.

I cut across some still muddy lake bed and even crossed small streams as I tried to get Beau and I away from the large bear. But dang my luck; not only was the bear cranky, he was persistent. I was in an area I didn’t know real well, down in the basin lands, when the bear spotted us and started moving at a trot. There was no help for it as I only had a .22lr with me since I had run out of the ammo for anything bigger.

I’d been forced to do it before to get Beau and I away from a couple of particularly ornery hogs. First time was a nightmare so I devised a dog sling. What I did was train a reluctant Beau to get in a homemade sling and I’d climb a tree. Lucky for me Beau was a mixed breed and not as large as your average hound dog could get.

Beau wasn’t real happy with the way things were going. He knew what he smelled and he knew it was dangerous but he was also a different animal from the scaredy cat pup that he used to be. He sensed the threat and acted like he wasn’t averse to protecting me. It made him wiggly. At least he was trained to be quiet. These days he only called when he treed something. Problem for his sensibilities was this time it was use that was treed.

The tree I’d picked to go up was large and sturdy. It was more ladder than tree though as the only thing left of its gray structure were the huge trunk and broken limbs that I used as hand and foot holds. The bear was at the base of the tree before I was as high as I wanted to get. He prowled a couple of circles before trying to follow me.