Story Shadows on Crescent Lake

Chapter 11​


The wind tried to blow me all over the road which isn’t exactly in great shape. Even if I missed a known pothole with the UTV, the trailer would find it and then bounce me hard anyway. Didn’t take me too long to get home but the rain hadn’t gotten any lighter, just the opposite. I was already soaked so I figured I’d gone to the trouble salvaging all the stuff on the trailer, I might as well put it in the garage before it got ruined. That was so not fun. Then as I was drying off I remembered the chickens. Oh for pity sake. Pardon my French Gigi from where you are still keeping an eye on me.

I saved the birds from drowning by putting them back in the dog crate which I put on the porch in the back. It opens into the lanai’s screen room. I know this is temporary, but it is just one item on a long list of things I now have to figure out how to do on my own. Gosh, don’t start crying again Rain.

Finally able to come in and dry off and that’s when I well and truly lost it. Everywhere I looked there were pieces of memories of Gigi. And that’s when I opened what Quill had stolen from the Hazmat team. All of Gigi’s ID paperwork was in there … old driver’s license, old passport, her National ID, a copy of her birth certificate, and proof of residency as we were required to carry on us at all times. But there was also something else. A letter from Gigi. Oh gawd.

Dear Rain, I know you won’t understand right now but I hope you come to. I’m sorry I had to dose your tea, but it was necessary. Please don’t hate me for it. It was the only way to make sure I had enough time. You take care of me too well and I’ve decided I can’t be like I used to be. That thing I was for a while until they figured out the brain injury was permanent and that I would need to be on medication for the rest of my life. I think I did pretty well. We both did pretty well even with everything stacked against us. I even tried when my meds ran out. And it worked. For a while. But nothing works anymore. I don’t need to explain it. You’ve seen it. Every day is worse than the last. And the thoughts I’ve been having. Even worse than they’ve ever been even when I was locked up in Chatahoochee. I can’t even find any love for my parents anymore. They refused to help and in fact got in the way, on purpose. But I love you. If I’d ever had a kid, I would have wanted her to be just like you. But because I love you I must do a thing. I’m going to wind up hurting you. I nearly did the other day. I caught myself putting the wrong thing in the switchel. Thank the good Lord I came back to myself and was able to destroy it before you drank it. I’m not safe. I haven’t been safe for a while. You’ll have that scar for the rest of your life. I’m so sorry. And I don’t mean to hurt you this time either. I’m just so tired. Nothing works anymore. With me gone you’ll be able to get across the border with no regrets. Go have a life. I can’t live mine this way anymore. Love you Girly. Your Gigi. I have to go while I’m still your Gigi.

I broke down and I don’t remember much for a while. She hadn’t had the chance to do what she meant to because she got caught in a fly-over by a chemical spraying drone or so explained Quill. They found her floating in the canoe completely covered in the stuff.

I came back to myself puking. It was still storming so I just gathered the mess I’d made and laid it across the line that is strung up in the lanai where we hung our laundry. That’s when I realized I didn’t have any clothes on. I’m telling you I was buck nekked, not even any underwear like I needed and there was another kind of mess because of that. I only realized it because the rain was cold. I ran back in the house and dried off, took care of myself, and got dressed in clean clothes. I’m embarrassed about that but only the chickens saw me, so I’ll just have to live with it.

I knew I needed to eat but it was hard to force myself. There was still some banana bread left from where I’d made it hoping to get Gigi to feel better. It was a little stale, and a small spot of mold growing on one corner, but no big deal. No one with sense lets food go to waste these days.

I didn’t’ know what to do with myself. I kept blanking out or just wanting to sit down and cry. I basically just wandered around in the house for a while thinking thoughts that sometimes stuck and sometimes just floated away. There were memories all over the place and I let myself relive them. Most of them were good, maybe better than I have any right to have given the circumstances. But I know I can’t live in the past. Gigi taught me that. But that means thinking about the future and … right now that’s hard.

I had to take over a lot of stuff that Gigi and I used to do together … the gardening, the gleaning, the foraging, the fishing, the cooking, the cleaning, keeping up with the inventories and the planning, just lots of stuff. Gigi would try and help but she got so disconnected. And when I tried to bring her around, she got to where she would get … mad I guess you would call it. I could see it in her eyes even when she rarely said anything. Maybe “mad” isn’t the right word. Frustrated? Irritated? But there was anger in there too. She only acted on it once. Just the one time. But she’d been holding a paring knife and … yeah. I’ll have a scar for life, but I’ll never blame her for it.

Lately it had been bad, but I thought it was just a cycle like the other times. I thought we could work through it. Maybe find a tea that helped. Obviously Gigi didn’t see it that way. So now I know why I overslept, why the canoe was missing but the life vests weren’t. I might never know all the details of what happened between her taking the canoe and then being told by Quill I wouldn’t need to look for her anymore. I can’t think about that, or I want to cry all over again. Was she scared? Did she suffer? I pray not. That’s all I can do at this point.

What I can think about is that Gigi is now in Heaven and her brain injury issues are fixed. That she’s with my parents and our grandparents and other family and stuff. No tears for sure. In a perfected body and all the rest that God has promised. And I guess I have to leave it at that unless I want to make myself sick and crazy. Same way I had to do when first Mom passed and then Dad. Mom got released from her earthly pain. Dad died a hero. I just have to leave it at that and trust that one day I’ll understand it all.

My body finally picked a direction even if my brain hadn’t. I started trying to clean the mess of stuff that I’d salvaged from Pierson. I’d be doing one thing and then realize I’d finished that job and started another. At some point I must have taken another bowl of water out to the chickens and thrown in some grass and stuff for them to peck at, but I honestly don’t remember doing it. I got myself something to eat and I kinda remember doing that. I know I went to bed because I woke up this morning in my bed with my nightgown on and my personal needs attended to. I’ve been more with it today. Weather looks like it is letting up. I’ve got things to take care of in the yard. A ton of moss is down out of the trees and with the way the wind was blowing at one point I’m sure there are some limbs down in the neighborhood. I need to get those picked up and put in the wood pile so they can dry out and season.

What I wasn’t paying good attention to is the solar batteries. A few things run but not the things that draw a lot of power. Forget running the washing machine or dryer, not that we’ve used the dryer much except in an emergency. Clothes all get dried on the clothesline on the lanai. But I couldn’t even get the induction burner to start. That’s pretty bad. I heated myself up some soup on the little rocket stove type thing we keep on the porch for just in case. I gotta be more careful.
 

Chapter 12​


Two weeks seems forever and no time at the same time. I still catch myself sliding off every once in a while, but not like I was doing. Gawd I miss Gigi. She never allowed me to consider her my mother, she was always careful about that, but she was certainly more than just my older cousin. I stopped bothering to label it a long time ago. Gigi hated labels because she’d had so many hung on her. But, for some reason, I keep trying to figure out what to call it now that I don’t have it anymore. Dumb huh? But even if I do, she’s gone and if I don’t stop thinking about it, I’m going to ball my eyes out again and I don’t have the time to do that and I know Gigi wouldn’t like it.

In her letter to me Gigi seemed to think that I’d just be able to get across the border. Like she’d been the only thing holding me back from doing that. Well, she wasn’t. And for sure I can’t do it now. I’m not too sure that if I could, that I even would. They’d either put me in a refugee and education camp for minors, or they’d try and send me to my aunt and uncle since Mack is still active duty even if he is here in the States. Both seem like a death sentence if you want to know the truth. I’d die in a refugee camp, or I’d wind up killing my aunt and uncle. Or at least I’m pretty sure I would. Maybe not everything is their fault but a lot of it is all the way back to when they set up Gigi to get married to Butthead Bruce. And yes, I know that is a trashy thing to say but they and him both are trashy except he is dead someplace as he took military service over completing his prison sentence and I’m happy to say there is justice in this world and I’m counting on there being justice in the next even if I do need to be careful what I wish for.

I know I sound angry. Maybe I’m not being just. Maybe I am not giving the same grace that I expected to be given. I never knew Bruce and there’s evidence that maybe he really was sorry and tried to atone or whatever you want to call it. And with my aunt and uncle even I can see that they aren’t really responsible for every bad thing that happened. Maybe this time in my life is one of those “stages of grief” the grief counselors talk about. I need to watch getting caught in one stage and not moving along but doggone it, I am allowed to feel my feelings as they used to say and I will. I. Am. Angry. I wish things were different.

Going from wishing to thanking, as in Thanksgiving. I was going to skip it until I realized that it would be blowing off all the things that Gigi did for me that I’m thankful for and that would be a bad way to honor her memory. I need to also be thankful that Thunder is still alive and has been thinking about me all along. I’m thankful for the memories that I have of my parents. Yes, it is awful to be alone and angry about it but … better than some things that could happen.

So for Thanksgiving I took a day off from working … or mostly … and decided to fix a Turkey and Dressing Casserole. The problem was the recipes I had made too much. I was getting discouraged until I decided to experiment. Turned out to be good. Thanksgiving Burrito[1] is what I am going to call it. Wasn’t like we would do for ourselves, even when it was just Gigi and I, or get at church when we did a community dinner kind of thing, but it was better than going hungry and it gave me a chance to use up a box of Stove Top Stuffing that was passed its expiration date and starting to show it.

I took out some homemade acorn tortillas[2] and warmed them up. I can keep them in the little fridge for a few days in an airtight container before they start to get nasty. Saves me from work by only having to make them every so many days. I opened a jar of shredded turkey Gigi and I did last turkey hunting season before she started spiraling down. Won’t be long before I need to go catch another two birds and get them processed. That’s going to be some nasty work but at least Gigi won’t be bothered by me plucking the feathers. She hated the smell. Me? Well, it isn’t pleasant but no choice if you want the end results.

I mashed up a potato that was attempting to get long in the tooth. I have to be so doggone careful with fresh potatoes. I was trying to save it for the eyes but it wasn’t cooperating. Fewer and fewer of my potatoes last from one planting to the next anymore. I don’t know if it is quality or how I’m storing them. I need to figure it out though.

The stuffing was from the box and I guess I’m just lucky it didn’t go rancid or the seasoning get weevils given how old it was. The weevil issue is why I no longer hesitate to use some of the old stuff; what Gigi called the “commercially processed” foods. I just can’t freeze things to kill the bugs like I could before. I only keep one, small portable freezer going because of how much power it pulls. Just enough for ice or space to try and save meat until I can get it processed if the weather and other things don’t cooperate.

The gravy I made using the juice in the jar of turkey. Close enough for turkey broth and I just used it in the Chestnut Gravy[3] recipe that I have. I opened a little jar of highbush cranberry sauce[4]. Highbush cranberries are almost like regular cranberries in flavor but they are different in other ways. Cranberries (I’ll call them regular cranberries) have to grow in a boggy environment and they also grow way up north, not here in Florida. They are bigger and fatter as well. There color is dark red. Highbush cranberries are small like wild blueberries except they are bright red. They don’t need a bog. And they’ll grow around here but not all the way down in south Florida. They are also super juicy compared to regular cranberries and their color when you go to make something bleeds into anything they touch and makes it bright red instead of dark red. Whew.

My last act, maybe of defiance, was to use some of my precious salt and pepper. As a matter of fact, I used some of the weird black lava salt Gigi and I picked up one time at an estate sale where someone had bought some as a souvenir and it just sat, unopened, in their kitchen cabinets. Or maybe they got it as a gift, and they never thought enough about it to use it. Whatever. It was just as salty as regular salt and made the taste better. I miss being able to just pick up the saltshaker and not have to worry about where the next shake might come from. I have the salt that I found at Mr. Peppers, but most of that will probably go to preserving foods, not for just flavor.

It is freaky being the only person around. Every few days I see a drone along the river, but I can’t tell who it belongs to. At least it isn’t an ag sprayer type drone so that’s one less worry. I heard on the radio – weather and other conditions were right, so I had a clearer than normal signal – that California got hit really bad by some ag sprayer type drones and it took out a lot of fields and groves. That’s rough. And scares me more than a little because we … I … am really reliant on the garden, trees, and bushes. Even if most of it is what people would have once considered forage or poor man’s food.

I did manage to save 99% of what I brought back from Pierson, but one box of dried meat sticks had gone over. I could tell because there was mold growing in the corner of the plastic shoebox the strips were in. I’m glad I didn’t decide to mix everything into one big tub to save room. I guess I’m going to have to keep that stuff quarantined in a way to keep it from spoiling in big batches. Luckily the weather has cooled off. Just a bit anyway. It still gets into the 80s, but only the low 80s, during the day. And the breeze is pretty constant and not stagnant like it can get when you get away from the lakeshore.

The peacocks that moved over here from Prospect don’t like the chickens. I reinforced their little garden they are going to live in. No dogs or peacocks or ospreys are going to get in. No eggs yet but I think it is because they’ve been moved around a lot and upset and because I need to figure out what is best to feed them. Cracked corn would probably be the best, but I don’t have any to spare right now. Garden scraps would be my next guess, but I need most of the scraps for the compost piles to keep the garden boxes from getting tired out. I may have to start collecting forage for them the same as I collect it for myself. They like worms and grubs when they find them scratching around. Maybe I’ll have to start collecting those (crickets too maybe), so long as I still have enough to go fishing with. Or maybe I’ll give the chickens the garden scraps and throw the fallen fruit and forage into the compost bins. Maybe I’ll just mix it all up and split it between the chickens and the compost bins. Ugh. So much to figure out for myself, all by myself.

I almost said it again. About how much I miss Gigi. I keep telling myself I need to get started on what I decided to do. I decided to go back to the beginning and write it all out at night after I put the day’s entries into the garden journal (I’ve added a section for the chickens, so long as they last). I gotta do something to keep myself from going crazy when the dark and quiet really set in and I have the house closed up.

There weren’t a lot of people left around here but there were enough that we’d see several every day even after the cholera epidemic. Now? No one except the birds, the gators, and me. And speaking of gators. I’m about to have a new alligator hide to prepare if Junior Dinosaur eats one more of my egg laying ducks. How the heck it gets up on our dock I haven’t got a clue, I just know that I saw him again today and if those feathers stuck to his cheeks weren’t duck, they were a good facsimile of them. Do gators climb?! There’s another question to try and find the answer to, yet no one to ask.

In the old days I would get in lots of hot water if I was to shoot a gator, especially one out of season. The old rule was mid-August to the first week of November was gator hunting season; you had to win a tag in the lottery; and, it was for just one gator that had to be of a specific length. Nowadays, if you are hungry and think you are smart enough and strong enough to catch a gator, you can do it because there is no one around to say otherwise. At least none in this Evac Zone. I’ve shot my fair share of them because with no human control in the lake they are getting pretty populous. Even before what happened in Pierson, there were more gators than people. These days I am a population of one, and I do not want the gators to think I’m low enough on the food chain that I qualify for dinner.

It is deer hunting season and even though I have the dried and cured meat from the Slaughterhouse, it just makes good sense to stay in practice and to keep the beasties out of the garden. All my hard work is NOT to grow a buffet for them. There were still enough people until recently to keep the deer from taking over town. I found one bold as brass getting into my moringa patch so it met its doom by arrow … luckily, I have taken to carrying my bow with me everywhere these days … but I’m still looking at trying to fence in yet one more area. I know where I can get more fencing but that’s going to be a job and a half to do by myself. The things I do to keep us … now me … fed a nutritious diet.

Speaking of keeping myself fed, I’m just going to list out here what I’m already starting to harvest in December. From the garden boxes I’m getting bell peppers, cabbage, cucumbers, all the different kinds of lettuce from head to leaf varieties, radishes, snap beans (both pole and bush), all sorts of squash, sweet corn, and a bunch of different types of tomatoes. The strawberry towers are doing their thing but aren’t at the height of their harvest yet. The citrus grove always keeps me busy … calamondin, ruby red grapefruit, white grapefruit, bearss lemons, meyer lemons, the giant ponderosa lemons, finger limes, limequats, cara cara oranges, navel oranges, pineapple oranges, sugarbelle oranges, temple oranges, pomelos, tangerines, clementines, Glory Orri Mandarin oranges, Satsumas (a kind of tangerine), sunshine tangerines, and tangelos.

Over in the exotic groves we’ve got Ambarella coming in as well as avocados, Blimibis (aka Cucumber Tree), starfruit, canistels, and cattley guava, as well as all of the other native fruits and other ecetera. In the flower beds there is ginger, passionfruit, roses, sunchokes, garlic, marigolds and other edible flowers, and turmeric. The olive trees are doing better than I’ve ever seen them do. That means I need to get over to the old Evanston farm and see if those trees are ready for harvest. And just to get away from the house so I wouldn’t give into being a scaredy cat, I went mushroom gathering though I haven’t done more than one basket since I already have so many dried. After reading that chickens can eat mushrooms so long as they are the same ones that people can eat, and it is only a part of their diet, I gave them a few. They weren’t sure what to make of the mushrooms at first, but they gave them a few pecks and then just considered them part of their daily salad bowl.

I’m going to note my exact daily hauls in the garden journal and then I’m going to sit down and start my autobiography. That sounds pretentious (used my thesaurus for that one). No, it sounds kinda stupid, but what the heck. It isn’t just my story but will be proof that Gigi was a much better person than my aunt and uncle gave her credit for being. They ragged on her so much when they were around, treated her like damaged goods without actually saying it, and I want it to go down in history that she might have been damaged, but she conquered it … until she couldn’t … and she gave me the life that would have otherwise been denied to me.

[1] Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey Burrito | Happily Unprocessed
[2] Tony Montoyas (Acorn Meal Tortillas) – Mother Earth News
[3] Jamie Oliver Chestnut Gravy Recipe
[4] Highbush Cranberry Sauce
 

Chapter 13​


I was born naturally fifteen years ago. Kinda weird to have to start things off like that but it is the truth. I was born naturally, not hatched as some kids were in the artificial wombs that were in common use around the time I came into the world. The generations that went through the covid pandemic of the 20s didn’t have trouble catching preggers if they started young, they had trouble carrying the pregnancy to term. Not everyone of course, not even a majority, but enough that it was noticeable. Between that and a lot of women waiting until they were older to try to have kids, it kinda wrecked up the population balance here in the States and most of Europe. It happened in less developed countries too, but it wasn’t as noticeable because of the already lower infant survival and chronic diseases in those places.

In my history lessons it explained that some countries started taking children out of the refugee camps – against parental consent – and basically selling them. First, they offered the kids to their own countrymen/women that were in better economic positions. After that they were sold on the open market to “organizations” that were sometimes questionable and often took advantage of people on both ends of the transaction.

Even the minorities, regardless of where they were and historically more “fruitful”, were having troubles. They tried to put it down to the vaccines that were used for covid, but while that proved to be some of it, the infection itself caused more long-term damage than was suspected at first. What I remember one of my pediatricians telling my parents was one of those six of one, half dozen of another kind of things that had consequences that wound up in the same place. I was pretty young, but I remember they were offering to broker some of her eggs since she’d proven fertile. The fertility facilities had some pretty well-to-do backers at the time.

Most of those fertility facilities are currently defunct because of the war and all the shortages for the parts of the fancy schmancy medical equipment and the stuff getting repurposed and things like that. They are also defunct because a decent percentage of the babies born that way wound up having some kind of problems; health or behavioral. Between that and insurance not covering the procedures, it went out of fashion or got reserved for those wealthy enough to afford it … or desperate enough.

My brother Mack wasn’t a surprise. Well, I mean maybe kinda. My parents had just gotten married and expected to wait a couple of years to start trying to have kids the natural way. With my Dad being in the military they’d had to go through the whole are you fertile-schmertle thing. Dad always complained that the military needed to know everything about you right down to the color of the lint in your belly button but since he chose the life, and Mom chose him, it was just one of those things they accepted. So they knew they could have kids the regular way and didn’t get put on a list so they could be fruitful and multiply. And wow, brain bleach needed, they kinda got a fruit basket right off the bat. My parents hadn’t even been married a year before they wound up with fraternal twins … Mack and his twin Dana. But ….

Yeah, turns out Dana had some issues when she came out a lot smaller than Mack. Dana was the unexpected one and hadn’t even shown up on the normal sonograms that Mom got halfway through the pregnancy. By the way, my mother’s name was Majorie Dana Storm nee Martindale (never have understood the whole “nee” thing for maiden names but whatever) and my dad was Mack “no middle name thank gawd” Storm Sr. He’s “Sr” because my brother is Mack “also no middle name” Storm Jr. Only these days instead of Jr. he gets to put MD or something like that.

Anyway, the issues Dana was born with were more physical than mental. Her body was just weak. Any “slow” she had was due to her health and physical well-being holding her back. She never really was able to walk much more than a few feet, so she had a wheelchair. She eventually had trouble sitting so wound up in a body brace. She also wound up in a neck brace to keep her head from just lolling to the side and injuring her spine. On top of that she wore braces to protect her mouth from her teeth when she chewed, then wound up on a feeding tube due to swallowing issues. Her muscles became atrophied because whatever the syndrome was that she had caused her nerves to deteriorate. I’ve seen pictures of her. She was physically weak and frail, except for her eyes which could look pretty fierce. Her body’s limitations caused her a lot of pain and frustration as you can imagine. She was a normal kid on the inside with normal kid needs and reactions. Her issues made her act out and sometimes difficult for other people to deal with.

Dana was too young to really understand or to really deal with things and no matter how hard they tried, getting Dana counseling only came in limited bursts because her health would interrupt things and then her doctors would change. Mom and my brother are really the only two people that could deal with her most of the time. Dad was always afraid of hurting her, which I heard stories that she used to her advantage. She wasn’t rotten, not really, she just had a body that was betraying her and people gave way to her because they felt bad for her. She could be sweet, but she could be a bucket of vinegar too. Just because you are special needs doesn’t mean you aren’t accountable. That’s hard for a lot of people to understand. I could write a book on that I guess, or maybe I’ll leave that to my brother Mack at some point. He’d be able to say it so people could hear the meaning. When I talk I don’t always take that kind of stuff into consideration. Gigi understood and helped me create personal boundaries and accountability but that’s not part of the story yet.

When Mack and Dana were nine my parents really did get a surprise … Mom got pregnant with me. Lots of tests and everything else and they discovered that I was fine. The genetic issues that had affected Dana, did not appear in my DNA. It made Dana … depressed or angry or something. I read that in Mom’s diary when I found it. I learned to read early just to tick off the people that were always testing me and expecting me to have some issue or other so they could put me in a program. Mack told me to forget what I had read because it was just Mom in one of her low moments but I’m pretty sure it is the truth because Mack’s eyes slid away when he told me that.

And then when Mom was about six months along Dana got sick. It was some virus that turned into pneumonia and she never got better. And mom caught it while she was taking care of Dana and they both wound up in the hospital. The day Dana passed away – Mom was at least allowed to be there for that – we were in the middle of a bad hurricane. The barometric pressure dropped pretty low during the storm and between that and the shock of Dana passing (even though it was expected by that point) Mom went into labor with me. She was just shy of 8 months along and everyone has always said it wasn’t the coincidence the doctors tried to say it was.

When I was born, I had some lung problems. And from the lung problems I started having colic and tantrums and stuff similar to Dana. Mom never said a word because she acted like a part of me was Dana come back to her. I remember one of my pediatricians telling Mom once that part of Dana’s issues had been people tried to overcompensate because they felt bad for her and that part of my issues were that my parents expected me to be like Dana, only I wasn’t, and that I was only rising to the lowest bar they set for me. Mom didn’t take kindly to that doctor’s words, but they must have stuck with her to some extent.

It got better as I got older and they found out I needed tubes in my ears because the canals were too narrow and I couldn’t hear. It delayed my speech and all the rest which is what the pediatricians put my outbursts down to when they were all but saying that I was more than just a little spoiled. Such is life I suppose. I was definitely too young to control my destiny and even if I could have, life just kept throwing curve balls. The story goes that as I got better Mom got depressed, like she was losing Dana all over again. Dad took Mom to see a doctor. They expected one thing and ended with another.

Mom had cancer. A fast-moving female cancer. It was already Stage 3 by the time they discovered it. Mom seemed … at peace. Dad, not so much. I looked for a word for a long time to describe how she was; sublime was about as close as I could get.

She passed away when I was five years old. My brother was fifteen. Dad was still active duty. We had a part-time home health care person that came in to help with Dana a couple of times a week. After I was born one of my Dad’s sisters came to live with us full time after she got a divorce. It helped her and it helped us. Problem was Mrs. Rodriguez and Dad’s sister … well, they didn’t always see eye-to-eye. Mrs. Rodriguez stopped coming around and Aunt Diane stayed with us and even helped when Mom got sick. And she stayed after Mom passed away. The problem is that it turns out Mrs. Rodriguez might have had a point in her concerns.

Around the time I was six I eavesdropped on Aunt Diane talking to someone and she said she felt trapped. That she was raising her brother’s kids when what she wanted was a chance to have her own. And some other stuff. Being six years old and not understanding, I blabbed at the dinner table one night. It wasn’t until later that I understood the silence at the dinner table that night. I thought at the time that it was just another one of my goof ups. I said I was sorry, but Dad said that we’d talk about it later and finish my dinner and go to my room for a while.

The next morning Aunt Diane was gone.
 
Chapter 14


Aunt Diane wasn’t just gone, the suite she’d been living in (a former mother-in-law suite) was completely empty with the only thing left behind being the photo hangers stuck to the wall and a broken folding chair. I just stood there staring – I was in charge of making sure the coffee pot came on so she’d come in human (Dad’s exact words when he’d assigned me the chore). It was supposed to teach me responsibility, but I considered it a survival strategy. Aunt Diane needed her caffeine. She preferred it from coffee, but she was known to drink hot Coca Cola on some days when she got desperate.

I was still staring when my brother found me and took me to Dad. Dad sat me down and had a long talk with me and told me that Aunt Diane had decided she needed a different living arrangement. There were other things that would be changing as well. I got scared and sorry that my mouth, had yet again, created a problem.

Dad refused to blame me for things being the way they were. He said Dana and Mom being gone wasn’t something I created in any way, shape, or form. Apparently he’d been worried that she might have said something like that. He also said Aunt Diane choosing not to communicate her feelings to him wasn’t my fault either, but her choice. But that me choosing to air it out at the dinner table rather than having a private conversation with him after hearing something I didn’t understand was something that I needed to work on. Being six I could be excused, but that by sixteen I needed to have that particular trait conquered. That truth and honesty were good and moral, but they could also be used as a weapon and that it should be done sparingly, not thoughtlessly. Took me a while to understand that bit of wisdom but I’m still working on my mouth in other ways for other reasons.

The plan as I had it explained to me – what little could be explained to a six-year-old - was that Dad was getting sent to a duty station overseas in about four months and that Thunder (what my brother was called by the family) had been given an opportunity to start college a year early. Neither one could take me with them. That left a great big ol’ question mark where I was concerned.

Regardless of what people might have thought then, or possibly think now, my father and brother were awfully worried that I be taken care of properly, also recognizing that I needed a female to guide me. Aunt Diane was out. My brother offered to delay his university start date, but Dad nixed that bigly with only a small part of that being his age. There were a few options, but where most of those options were just people willing to take me in, my mother’s sister made it out like they actually wanted me.

Aunt Anne and Uncle Beau. Miller is their last name. Aunt Anne had definitely loved her sister. She didn’t have a lot of use for my father but still treated him decent because he obviously loved my mother and took his responsibility to her seriously. She resented that he was dealing with his grief more constructively than she thought he should have but she let it slide because he had my brother and me to take care of.

What I didn’t know at the time was that my mother had received an inheritance when her grandparents passed away. My parents, due to some financial advice from his military counsel, had put it into a Trust for safekeeping because Mom could be a soft touch about that sort of thing. She was always wanting to help people at her own security’s expense. It was also in a Trust to prevent Dana’s medical bills getting attached to it. More had been dumped in there when Mom’s and Aunt Anne’s father passed away, money that had come from his first wife’s estate. Then they’d had a life insurance policy on Dana and then my own mother’s life insurance, all of which got dumped into that Trust. Dad had gotten money distributed from that Trust for my brother for his education and living expenses, most of which were already covered by academic scholarships he’d earned, but that money was put into an account that my brother could access while in school. The remainder was set aside for me since I was so young and I was going to need other people to take care of me.

I know I didn’t really understand everything that was going on. I didn’t realize Dad being sent overseas was because of the special training that he had with “non-traditional war strategies”. I didn’t understand he wasn’t just going TDY like usual, but that I wouldn’t really see him in the same way I had. At the time it wasn’t supposed to be forever, just a year or two at most. But obviously things didn’t happen that way or I wouldn’t be were I am today.

I also didn’t really understand what it meant for my brother to be going away to college. Thunder (Mack Jr.) had run interference between me and the world outside our home. Bullies at the “special” school I went to found out real fast that I had a big brother that wasn’t afraid to take things to the next level regardless of the bully’s age or who his/her parents were. He’d grown up doing it for Dana and simply continued it for me. I let him do the heavy-lifting about stuff and didn’t do what I should have done, which was prove I didn’t really belong in the “special” school. Since they couldn’t get me academically (I was advanced for my age apparently) but they were constantly going on about my behavior and wanting to medicate me. And when my father wouldn’t sign off on that I was penalized for every little infraction since they couldn’t spoon feed me pills for the purposes of behavioral modification.

As bizarre as it might sound, none of it was knowingly malicious on either side, but it wasn’t exactly the best for me either because I got a little mentally lazy about learning to get along socially. I stayed “young” longer than I should have. I was “delayed” in some areas. All that other blah, blah, blah they pack into your permanent folder because your square peg didn’t fit into their round holes.

During the four months we had left together as a family we packed a lot in. We went through the house together and most decisions were made together, or at least with everyone having some input. I was just a little kid after all.

Most of Mom’s and Dana’s things were finally dealt with. Only some things were left, and those were crated up and put into a storage facility outside of Jacksonville that my brother was going to be in charge of keeping up with. Same thing happened to just about everything else in the house. The really old photo albums, my brother’s keepsakes and awards, some of the “inherited antiques and heirlooms” and family flotsam and stuff from Dad’s side also went into that storage place. A lot of Dad’s personal stuff was either sold, minimized, or donated because his duty station meant he would only be in a barrack, not an apartment or house where he would need it. The family vehicle was sold and that money was put into a good, used economy car for my brother to be able to afford while he was in school. Dad’s vintage clunker was sold much to my brother’s regret as he’d expected it to be his one day.

“Son, sometimes you just need to let things go. That ‘Stang was starting to turn into a money pit, and parts are getting more than just difficult to find for it. Better for it to go to someone that will probably make their money back stripping it for parts. I’ve been wanting a truck, but it just wasn’t practical. When I get back, I’ll be in a better place to get something that makes more sense.”

I don’t know why I remember that conversation, but I do. For whatever reason that memory has actually helped me make decisions multiple times since.

When it came to my stuff a lot of it got donated. Certain kinds of toys – like lots of stuffed animals and stuff that wasn’t washable – had never been allowed in the house because of germs. Mom just kept up those rules even after Dana escaped her painful mortal coil. I had a couple of what used to be called Beanie Babies but they stayed in a special place which I will explain in a minute. There just wasn’t a lot of money so I didn’t have the computers, phones, and electronics that a lot of kids did, even younger kids like me. I did have the mandatory tablet for school but the parental controls on it made it like the parental controls on the tv look like training wheels on a tricycle. Like most kids, I learned early how to get around the PCs by avoiding the keywords and site addresses that would lock the tablet and send an alert to both Dad and the school but I wasn’t interested in losing privileges or getting Dad mad or disappointed so kept such activities to a bare minimum and mostly just to remind myself I wasn’t the label the school had hung on me even if I couldn’t verbalize it that way back then.

I didn’t like school. At. All. None of it. Not even playground time that they allowed us once a week on some baby play set under a canopy … that was assuming the weather cooperated and no one had a meltdown. I didn’t say I didn’t like learning because I did (and do). In the extreme. But I didn’t like school or too many of my teachers or the school administrators or security wardens that walked the halls. I especially didn’t like the Guidance Counselor because if she thought I was getting above myself and what my abilities were supposed to be according to my file, she just made my life harder. She’s actually what had given me the motivation to figure out my way around the PCs. She’d cut me off when I was at a good part in a book I was reading and kept me from being able to check it out from the school library as she’d restricted me there too.

I learned how to learn in spite of what was in that stupid file, but it wasn’t always easy. Sometimes the lesson was simply how to get around roadblocks. And getting around roadblocks is kinda where the special place I could keep things in that no one knew about comes in.

Dad was in the military. He carried a gun. Well duh. But we had people in and out of the house because of Dana, including home inspections because of the private healthcare she had to receive in addition to what the military provided directly. That meant that we had to be careful what they saw, and they were nosey people.
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Dad had discovered that a chest that Mom’s great great grandfather had built and which they were using for a bedside table, had a secret compartment and that’s where he stored his official sidearm. Well, when he was going through everything, he gave me the chest to use for my immediately important to me stuff so long as I promised to keep the secret compartment to myself. That’s where I put “Bonkey” and “Poo”, my two beanie babies. It is also where a few other things have wound up since then. Not even Gigi ever learned of it. Or she never let on that she knew.

In addition to all of the work we did going through everything, we spent just about every weekend doing something special … we would go to the beach, a park, fishing from a pier, have a movie night at home, cook our meals together, just lots of stuff that cemented that we were a family even if we would be living apart. Sometimes Dad would have to work shifts on the weekend but even then, we tried to do something.

The last couple of weeks things changed. Dad spent some time with lawyers, most of them military, making arrangements for me and contingency plans for my brother to have for just in case. I didn’t know what just-in-case was, but my brother took it serious and told me not to worry about it because everything would work out the way it is supposed to. Hmph. Maybe it was a good thing I didn’t understand just-in-case back then.

One of the many things we did was have like an early Christmas and my birthday and Brother’s and Dad’s all rolled into one. We went on shopping sprees. Dad got things for himself that he needed for the new duty station … you know, man stuff that was all military approved. My brother got “kitted out” for his dorm room and all his school supplies for the college level. He also got some adult guy clothes for like job interviews, a blazer and a few pairs of dress slacks for other things he might need like meeting a girl’s parents (didn’t that put his hair on fire), and Dad and he set up his banking stuff and Dad’s paycheck would be going in there and then a bunch would get shifted to a special savings account.

For me? I got my first Barbie and some “modest” accessories. I also got a couple of things that Dad told me to keep in my secret compartment until I was older. He gave me, after making me make a heavy duty promise, a knife his grandfather had made. He said it was a “buck knife” and it took me a while to learn what that meant. He bought me my own Swiss Pocket Knife with a gazillion different doodads on it. And he gave me a little kit he’d made himself out of a mint tin that was like a little survival tool box. He gave me a real live leatherman multitool. And he also gave me six books. The first one was a brand new Bible. That one didn’t need to be secret. The next one was a devotional for girls, that one shouldn’t have needed to be a secret either. The other four books were a series … the Daring Books for Girls. It was a long time before I got to read those books but that’s another part of the story.

The last two things I received were a digital photo frame with lots of family pictures on it, but nothing too silly. Which maybe tells me that Dad knew more than he was letting on, or maybe he was just playing it safe. That other was a digital memory cube with copies of all the family pictures and digital files of all the important paperwork I might need. But that stayed in the secret compartment too.

Then all of a sudden, two weeks before we were supposed to, Dad was called and told he was deploying early. In the middle of dinner we had to stop, throw the last of everything into the car and we were off. I would be dropped off with my aunt and uncle first – they weren’t happy about being woken up (they went to bed early so they could get up early and have quiet devotional time) and told that we’d be there first thing.
 
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