Story Threats Within, Threats Without
- Thread starter Kathy in FL
- Start date
larry_minn
Contributing Member
I reread 34. Do I understand she dropped the rock with both brother's blood/DNA. As well as likely her DNA on it. In an area where ground is messed up? It needed to go into River.
It was good improvised plan. But there were at least 4 other people *likely more* who saw her bash in the skulls of the brothers. While a hard rain can clean stuff. Modern forensics likely could find evidence. If one of group caught. Offer info to be last on chopping block.
Must admit I would want *the jab* to inject myself if going to be caught. Worthless to them. I wish I could laugh this story off. I have seen people who would be like this.
It was good improvised plan. But there were at least 4 other people *likely more* who saw her bash in the skulls of the brothers. While a hard rain can clean stuff. Modern forensics likely could find evidence. If one of group caught. Offer info to be last on chopping block.
Must admit I would want *the jab* to inject myself if going to be caught. Worthless to them. I wish I could laugh this story off. I have seen people who would be like this.
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Good point. And had this been a story she could re-write that probably would have come up. However, it was and has been raining. The ground is wet. And in an unpopulated area outside of town. Not that Cherry Log, GA is much of a town. I doubt getting rid of a rock came up on her radar. Still, good point for future stories.
Chapter 36
Good thing I dressed before coming out of the bathroom because Mr. Battles was sitting on the end of my bed.
First thing out of his mouth was, “You haven’t hardly unpacked. All you’ve got is still in bags and boxes.”
That was an exaggeration but maybe not much of one. Most of my life still feels “packed up”. It didn’t matter though because I wasn’t going to fight him over it. “What are you doing in here?” I asked, tired down to my soul.
“Making sure you came out and didn’t just lock the door so we couldn’t talk.”
I was too tired to be irritated but with that statement I was giving it due consideration. “Obviously you do not know me,” I told him.
He sighed almost regretfully. “Mebbe not. Or mebbe it’s you who don’t know me.”
“Out,” I said, catching him off guard.
“What?”
“Out. I’m not having this discussion in here.” I wanted to tell him in the only place I had any privacy but didn’t. Instead I offered, “If you don’t want the kids to hear then we can go downstairs after I make sure the mulberries are put away.”
“Already done it.” He got up and walked out and down the stairs and we went to the walk out. He didn’t round on me exactly, but I could tell he wasn’t happy. “I couldn’t leave the kids to come look for you. What if you’d been hurt?”
I admit to being a little surprised that he’d lead with that. I parried with, “I never asked you to come look for me and what’s more, didn’t expect it. I certainly didn’t expect you to leave your kids to do it.”
“You coulda been hurt,” he repeated.
Shaking my head I said, “I can look after myself. I’ve been walking these slopes on my own since I was Travis’ age and my parents would bring me up to visit my grandparents. When … when I moved up here permanently, I just did more of it and further from the house. Sometimes I went hiking with my grandparents but mostly I went by myself. And I was ten the first time my grandfather let me help with search and rescue.”
“You coulda still been hurt.” Third time didn’t mean any more to me than the first two had.
“So? If I was, that’s on me, not you. I’m responsible for me.”
“And what about the kids?”
“What about them? They were here with you.”
With a snap to his voice he asked, “What if you hadn’t come back? What would I have told them then?”
More tired than I wanted to admit I answered, “The truth. I left. I didn’t come back. There’s nothing you can do about it. Sometimes life happens no matter what you do to try and make things better.”
Angrily he demanded, “And you think that’s good enough? They’re kids!”
I shook my head. I’ve done that a lot lately. Too much. But this time it was part and parcel of what I was feeling. Refusing to back down I said, “You don’t think I know that? I’ve been there, been on the receiving end of it being explained to me. Sometimes nothing is good enough. No matter what you try, how hard you try, things are just never going to be good enough. There is no making something better. There’s only learning to live with it.”
Then he did something that annoyed me. He used that insight of his. “You’re more bitter about things than you let on. Your husband must have been a real ass … had to have been I guess based on what he let them people do while he just stood there.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you heard but Dustin hadn’t just let them, he was helping them do it. He wasn’t being blackmailed no matter what his parents sang so pretty and convincingly to the media; he was doing it because he chose to. Because he wanted to. And he held and bruised my arm, not to pull me away from them, but to hold it still so they could cut a tracker out of my arm so when they kidnapped me there would be no rescue. He did a lot of things that day that it took me weeks to see for what they were because I didn’t want to see what they meant. But eventually you have no choice. The rationalizations and justifications aren’t enough anymore. There is no way to stay willfully blind after the glasses have been slapped off your face so many times. Now enough of High-Drama 101, I need to tell you what happened.”
“No, we need to talk this out.”
“No,” I told him. “I need to tell you I killed two more men and I’m sorry to say I’m not sorry. I didn’t even puke this time.
Well that shut him up for all of a minute.
# # # # # # # # # #
“You sure that woman that recognized you was telling the truth and they are leaving the area?”
“How many times are you going to ask that?” I responded from the floor where we were both sitting and leaning against different sections of the wall of boxes, me on mine and him across from me.
“Until I believe it.” He sighed. “But … I guess I don’t have any choice. Uncle Finis spoke about the Underground, I guess this just might be what is left of it in this area. And that woman said the government has already spent their wad around here.
“That’s not exactly what she said, but it sounds about like she meant. My understanding, like I’ve already told you, is that they were supposed to meet up with another group. It’s possible she was either going to travel with the larger group or she was going to hand off her group and then travel on with only her son.”
He sighed again. “I think I know who you are talking about. Rough woman. She worked at the clinic in Blue Ridge. The description matches. She is who would let Uncle Finis know when a Pure Blood came to the clinic or that she’d heard a rumor of a kid being born at home or someplace. She was a PA and sometimes made … house calls for The Community.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know about all that. When I knew her she was nice and just finishing her masters in nursing but that’s been ten, almost twelve years ago. She moved to Athens to live with her parents when she and her husband separated.”
“You hungry?”
The question was unexpected and out of left field. “No. You want me to cook you something?”
“No. I was just asking. You missed supper.”
“My fault. I’ll deal. I ate a handful of mulberries.”
“I was just frustrated.”
I stopped to try and figure out what he was talking about and then thought I knew. “Relax I told you. I hadn’t meant to be so late. I certainly didn’t mean to worry your kids.”
“Not that. Before. When you … er … went to get the mulberries. I was frustrated. Am frustrated. If Uncle Finis was here I don’t know if I could stand to be in the same room with him. And yet … maybe he ain’t wrong. Again. And I ain’t happy about that either.”
“I am too tired to figure out what you are talking about it. Use small words and go slow and maybe my brain will get in gear.”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Instead of popping off and telling me where I can stick my frustration, you … you … I don’t know what the hell to call what you’re doing.”
“Mr. Battles …”
A little desperately he said, “Beau. My name is Beau. I can’t call you Keegan no matter how many times you tell me to if you won’t call me Beau.”
“I call you Mr. Battles so your kids don’t get the wrong idea. Your uncle already planted ideas by telling them that it wouldn’t be hard for Karen to become Keegan … or maybe he meant the other way around … just because our names and initials are similar.”
“He whut? When was this?!”
“You were unconscious but your kids weren’t. It was back at the trailer … before … uh … before your uncle …”
He ran his hand through his hair in aggravation. “Damn. No wonder we’ve been working at cross-purposes. Keegan, I don’t expect you to be Karen, fill her shoes, or anything else. And why Uncle Finis would say something like that … hell, what a mess.”
“Like I said, I get it.”
“I doubt it. I was just a dumb kid when Karen and I got together. All I ever was with her was in lust even though I thought I was in love for a long time. Then it turned to pity … and then anger when I realized all she ever saw me as was an escape from her parents. Even when things started to go wrong, I thought all we’d have to do is work hard enough and eventually it would all smooth out. I thought the kids were proof of that. But turns out it wasn’t both of us working, and Karen’s end was her own fault, not because I didn’t work hard enough to fix things for her.”
I said, “I know. You’ve explained all that.”
“Yeah, well I’m not a dumb kid anymore.”
“Uh …”
“But I might still be dumb about some things, and the fact that you are just about as different from Karen as night from day hasn’t helped at all.”
“Now just a …”
“What I’m trying to say is that despite what Uncle Finis planned and schemed on my behalf, I’d like to do my own planning and scheming. With you. If you’d let me.”
As my grandmother would have said, I just about dropped my teeth.
Jeepcats27
Senior Member
Nice treat! I've been checking and checking and a nice new chapter! Thank you Kathy!
sssarawolf
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Same here been checking off and on.
feralferret
Veteran Member
Kathy, thank you.
larry_minn
Contributing Member
In reality it’s amazing to get a chapter in under a week. To get one, and more a day. That’s amazing. But part of me wishes I had not found this excellent story until finished.
But then I also realize I go over it while doing other stuff. See, consider more. Maybe I just need more patience. Right NOW.
Chapter 37
Beau said, “I know it is going to take some time. And I need to act like I’ve got some sense so my kids can grow up and don’t make the same mistakes I did with their mother. I regret my marriage, how it started, why it started, the things that went wrong. I even regret how it ended. I don’t regret my kids, and don’t want them to ever think I do, or that I want a do-over without them being a part of my life. What say you? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I wanted to give into what my hormones told me I was needing – a hug at the least – but he was right, that couldn’t happen. And not just because of the morals I had been raised with.
I answered, “I told you I wouldn’t do anything I wouldn’t do in front of a kid.”
With an intensity I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with he continued. “I’m not asking you to. What I’m asking since it appears I still ain’t being clear … and don’t pitch a fit if I sound crude … I would very much like to get to know you better Keegan … a lot better. But I have my kids to behave for and protect. And though I see you are willing to do the same thing – protect my kids – I need to know if there is more there for all of us. We can’t just have sex and fix this frustration issue … and while I wanna fix the frustration it isn’t the only thing I want. What I’m asking is can we be a family … a permanent one … ‘cause I’ve never been a hound dog and the idea of being one never has thrilled me. It's never been in me to be one of many or many of one. Damn nasty. Really damn nasty. So any solution we come up with needs to have forever in there. There’s enough damn problems without going out and breeding them like rabbits. If I’m gonna do this again, all I want it to be is once and not spend a bunch of wasted effort and reap nothing but disappointment. And I sure don’t just want to be a damn ‘turkey baster’. And that was a hell of a thing to say; you musta been saving that one up for a special occasion.”
I shrugged and, in all honesty, told him, “No. It just fell out of my mouth. No forethought needed. It happens that way sometimes. I’m usually just smart enough to keep it on paper with paper characters and not dump my words on real people.” Knowing I needed to respond to his overtures in some way, quietly I told him, “I don’t … don’t want to talk it to death but Dustin made me angry … and hurt me. Hurt me worse than I thought I could be hurt, than I’d already been hurt. And angrier than I think I’ve ever been in my life. I can’t do that again. Maybe … maybe I can do something different, but I can’t … won’t … let myself be hurt like that. Get that angry. Not again. I nearly let it destroy me. And I’m willing to … see where this goes but …”
“But?”
“But I still must be me. I’m not the woman … or women … that helped your uncle be like he was. I’m not Karen. For that matter I’m not sure if I’m even the same Keegan I was before I started driving hell for leather into the Kingdom of Crazy. But I know what and who I’m not … I’m just not sure I know who I am.”
He looked at me then shook his head. “Gawd help me, I almost understood what you just said. And that has to be the most convoluted bit of female logic I’ve ever had to deal with yet.”
I sighed and made to stand up, but he was suddenly just there and pulling me gently back down. “You’re saying you need time … for reasons I might not understand, or you might not be ready to share with me.”
Trying not to make things more “convoluted” I told him, “Got it in one.”
“Well hallelujah. Progress is being made. Now listen, so long as you’re saying that time is what you need, I’ll admit that I need it too. For the same reasons or different really doesn’t matter. But … knowing that we’re working in the same direction … that’d be good.” And revealing that I’d managed to hurt his feelings a bit he said, “You coulda left with that woman and I never would have known what to think.”
Carefully making a choice I told him, “I’m not going to abandon your kids … or you.”
“But?” he asked again.
I looked at him and realized the wind-up lantern needed to be re-wound as it was fading out. “But I can’t keep doing things this way. Pretending this is all I am just so there’s nothing to fight about.”
“Experience talking?” Damn his homegrown insight.
“Some. Mostly I can tell you aren’t comfortable with drama.”
Carefully he asked, “Are you?”
“I handle it differently but no, it isn’t my favorite thing no matter how much I write about it. But I’m not some cardboard cutout either. I’m me. I’m … I’m losing who I am, who I think I want to be.”
“You miss writing?”
Thinking quickly I admitted, “That’s some of it maybe. But I’m so strung out right now I’m not sure that I can write … or at least write something that I can edit enough to turn it into something I won’t wind up putting through a file shredder.”
“Then tell me what I ain’t understanding.” I sensed he was trying, not pacifying me but really trying.
I asked him, “Isn’t being stuck inside … even if it is inside this really nice playhouse … driving you a little buggy?”
“A little,” he admitted. “But not a lot can be done about that right now. I can’t risk leaving my kids alone and there’s things that still need to be done around here.”
“Fine. Then let me go out.”
“What?” he asked like I’d startled him.
“Like I did today … only without the incident happening because we’ll work something out like changing the time that I go out and …” I heard a rumble in his chest. “Mr. Battles … Beau … I get it. I won’t draw attention and endanger Tess and Travis. I won’t draw anyone back here. I already explained how far I’m willing to take that.”
He shook his head. “You shouldn’t have to. And the kids aren’t all I’m concerned about. You’re a woman in a world that don’t value that too highly right now. You think my uncle was bad? He was all mouth and nothing else compared to some of what we’ve heard on the radio. And they act like it is no frickin’ big deal. And pardon me from more crudeness but the fact that you’re fertile only ups the risks.”
Insisting on being honest with him and myself I said, “Maybe. I’ll even admit even probably. But we are going to have to find some way to compromise on this. Not even in LA was I this constricted and the place would occasionally make me feel like I was suffocating with all the blasted paparazzi out to spy on people and make a buck keeping me from moving around freely.”
“What can I do to make this better? Make it so you don’t need to hare off like you did?!”
“You can’t. This is me. This is a part of me that’s always been this way. My parents and grandparents both learned to trust me. Even Dustin understood that part and didn’t get in the way so long as I didn’t get in the way of the things he needed to do. They learned to watch for the signals that said it wasn’t just I wanted to go walking, but saying I needed to go walking. People used to complain I was so laid back they needed to check me for a pulse, but that was only on the outside. Inside … inside was and can still be like a maelstrom. I had to learn how not to let it eat me up. Between my grandparents dying and meeting Dustin I was hospitalized for an ulcer. I was eighteen and alone with no one to help me figure it out but me. And I did. Frankly it was figure it out or die. Then I met Dustin and not even when the infertility stuff came up did I fall back into it. However, after the divorce it tried to come back. I can’t do that here, not now.”
With real concern he asked, “Are you … I mean do you have this ulcer thing now? Do you need a doctor?”
“No because I meditate and do relaxation exercises at night after everyone has gone to bed. And I’ve started taking my prescription meds again. But I can feel things slipping out of my control. And I can’t let that happen. And not just because I don’t want it to. There are no doctors that I can go to. I only have a limited supply of the meds as well. And I … look, I just can’t.”
He slowly nodded. “Fine,” he said like it is the last thing he wanted to say. “But … but there needs to be some ground rules. I can’t abandon my kids to come look for you if … if something happens. But I can see things from your side. Tess can be a handful.”
“Tess is only a very small part of this. And don’t make with the faces, I’m being honest. Yes, she is intentionally testing me but, I’m the grownup and can find other ways to handle what she tries to dish out. It’s … It’s more about other stuff. I resent … yeah ... yeah I resent what those people out there are doing to us. I resent that I wasn’t more aware of what was going on while I could still do something about it. How could I be so blind?! Even my marriage. I resent what I’ve been forced to do just to survive. I resent that I’m now so … so dependent on someone that is practically a stranger and yet because of this situation my emotions about that person are so out of whack they don’t make any sense. Things like this happen in stories, not in real life. And yet … here we are. And the stress of it all is … is … gah! I hate feeling like this!”
Carefully he asked, “Are you maybe saying that … that you think it is only because of this situation that you might have feelings for me? That you don’t want to … to … er … give things a chance?”
“Beau, quite honestly? This is why this part of it is driving me crazy. You sound like home. To me you’re starting to feel like home, and that is scaring the absolute crap out of me. Not only because I’m pretty sure I’m not the person you really want, but I’m not even sure I’m the person you really need. And you lay that insanity on top of all the other insanity like they’d be happy to capture us like we’re little more than nuisance animals that the only way to get some use out of us is to send us to slaughter. And Tess and Travis too. Little kids. Beau, there was a pregnant woman running for her life, like she was some character in one of those old Escape from Planet of the Apes movies. There’s a boy I babysat, now sixteen years old, trying to be more of a man than those monsters that want to turn Pure Bloods in and get a bounty all so they can go have some fun and get their rocks off in Costa Rica. The world has officially gone insane.”
“And yet you want to go out there and just … walk around or something because you have the fidgets.”
Trying to get him to understand I said, “No. Or at least not completely. I want … need … to prove that I’m not completely captive to the insanity we are being forced to live with.”
sssarawolf
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Thank you Kathy.
Chapter 38
Ground rules. Yeah, we have them. But I can see Beau’s side at least as much as he claims to be trying to see mine. He has his children to think of. They are absolutely, without a doubt, in danger without him to protect them. It isn’t just the threats out in the world, the monsters, that could get them. They are far too young to survive on their own even with all the stuff in the walk out. I get that. I agree with that. And I’m willing to be part of the solution to that problem. It doesn’t change the fact that I still need to go out or risk my own health and sanity.
I’ve gone out nearly every day and I’m not too proud to admit that yes, it has helped some of the feelings that I have. Not all of them, but it has made my reaction to what is going on more manageable. I cannot believe how stupid I’ve been. Instead of doing what the marriage counselor had suggested with Dustin, I fell back on the same old, personally-destructive habits. And I cannot tell you how weird it feels for Beau to seem to know this without me having to explain it to him.
Beau sounds like a good ol’ boy with a minimal education at best. And I don’t mean that disrespectfully either. Dad and my grandfather could sling the Southern drawl with the best of them. I know a lot of the tourists underestimated them. And sometimes that was intentional. For instance, my father may have sounded like he came from so far back in the sticks they had to pump sunshine in just to see what they were saying, but he could do math in his head that even my college professors used calculators for. He claimed the only reason he did it was because it was just faster and easier so he could provide estimates to potential customers. And so he didn’t get cheated on supplies.
My grandfather had the entire Bible memorized and could make the KJV sound like today’s conversational English just by how it said it. I was sixteen before I realized my grandfather was functionally illiterate because he had a learning disability of some type that never got diagnosed. I thought my grandmother reading things to him a couple of times was just their way. It was, but it was their way for my grandfather to memorize something so he could recall it when he needed to. When he really needed something, he had a computer program he could scan a document into so it would read it to him. And he could use the same program to write something for him. He still preferred my grandmother to read something to him because he could ask her questions if he didn’t understand what was being read to him.
The thing that really gets me about Beau is that he is insightful. Not an unusual trait for “mountain folk” to have. It just is eerie when it catches me off guard. People used to tell my parents and grandparents, “That child is just so insightful. It’s nearly scary.” I thought I was putting that to use in my writing. But maybe I was just the appearance of being insightful. Beau is the real thing. And patient. Good brown gravy, he knows how to outwait me even better than my mother had, and she could put a statue to shame for being able to outwait someone. Maybe it is just that I’ve never seen it to the extent he has it … at least in a man. Maybe I have my own gender prejudices that I need to work on. Or maybe it is just that my cynicism after Dustin has been working overtime and gets in the way.
Whatever it is, recognizing it seems to have made me more comfortable in his company. Not that I’m completely comfortable with him at all times, but certainly more comfortable than I was. And I guess he is learning to be more comfortable with me as well. Including that I’m more capable than he expected a “city girl from LA” to be. I may not be the characters in my books, but as Beau has said, he now knows where some of those characters got their traits and abilities from.
Even on the days that it has rained, and it has done a lot of that, I go forage or sneak up to some other cabin to see if it is occupied and if it isn’t – and thus far none of them have been – I break in and see if there is anything inside worth taking. Beau doesn’t like that much, and nearly turned cross-eyed when he learned I not only knew what a bump key was but had several in my possession.
It took a few times for him to get over my breaking-and-entering activities, but he now gives me ideas of what we could use from other places. I bring back any paper goods and condiments that I find. All batteries and flashlights and lanterns as well. Charcoal, propane tanks, lighters, and matches. I never leave without something and that includes pillows after I found out Beau couldn’t stand the ones on his bed. “They were too soft,” he said with embarrassed gratitude when I bought brand new firm ones back. Soap and detergent are something else I take when I can find it. Garbage bags, dish soap, and dishwasher tabs are also on the list. Sometimes Beau finds a hole in the repair parts he and his uncle had purchased, and I put that on my list as well. I don’t often find that stuff, or at least I hadn’t until I hit the mother load.
That night I came back slower than normal. My stamina is going up, but carrying nearly forty pounds on my back going uphill on a steep, washed out road in the dark was still more effort than I had to make in quite some time. I was slipping through the gate when someone met me. “What are you doing out here?! You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“Miss me?” he asked. “I missed you.”
“Er … why does your hair look …? Beau?!”
“I’ll tell you, just let’s get inside and … damn what is in this pack? You bringing home rocks now?”
“Funny. Ha. Ha.”
When we got inside, I took a good look and then made him sit down and let me get an ice pack. “Want to explain why you look like a satyr Mr. Battles?”
“A satyr is one of them goat men that are always drunk. I ain’t drunk.”
“Close enough,” I said while just looking at him. And he was worth a look. He had not one but two knots on his head. They were like nubbin horns … and obviously sore because he jerked back when I reached to touch them.
He finally explained. “Tess tried to help when I was fixing their sink drain. She … er … pulled my tools off the vanity top … while I was under them.”
I had to bite my lips and cover my mouth with my hand to keep from laughing even though I knew it wasn’t funny and couldn’t have been funny to him. I’ve had a few similar Tess-related accidents. The little toe on my right foot is still in the process of losing the nail so I have to keep it wrapped up.
“Want some ibuprofen?” I asked.
“Took some. Er … I had to go digging under your sink because … look I just didn’t feel like going downstairs to the storage room. I … didn’t think. Just did it. Uh … sorry.”
“Under my …” I was embarrassed for a moment then told myself not to be stupid, the man had been married and had two kids. “I take it you found the bag of pill bottles.”
“Yeah. When they call them bottle tops childproof what they really mean is you just near about need a damn jackhammer to get in them.”
After a moment he was less manic and more relaxed. I asked, “Feel better?”
He reached out and took my hand in his and said, “Yeah.” I didn’t jerk back or jump or anything. A first. I just let him hold my hand and then I carefully held his back. I saw him smile in the dark. Then he sighed and stood up. “I fixed some of that chai tea stuff you’ve been drinking. If you don’t want it, I’ll pour it in a thermos for in the morning.
“No. Actually … um … a cup of chai sounds perfect. But I’ll get it. You look at what I brought back this time. And I’m going to take my de-bugger with me when I go out again in a few minutes.”
“Go out again?” When he looked at what I had he gave a quiet whistle. “Where’d this come from?”
“From a truck that looks like it was used for property maintenance maybe. It is in the garage of a cabin that looks like it wasn’t completely finished, or maybe it was being rewired or renovated or something. Everything is covered with dust … drywall dust or where they were doing the floors. There’s tiles and bags of thin set and grout but there’s also piles of broken tiles like maybe they were taking the floors up and redoing them.”
“Footprints?”
“In the dust?” When he nodded his sore head I answered, “Only the mousy kind and not many of them. There are sticky pads with … bodily remains … in nearly all the rooms.”
He sighed. “I wish I could go with you, but Travis has started wandering at night again.”
“When did this start?” I asked, concerned because I hadn’t noticed.
“I caught him at it the last two nights running.”
“Is … is it me going out?” I was worried that I’d have to stop the one thing that was helping me cope.
“You want the truth? I don’t think so. He seems pretty damn happy that you bring stuff back all the time. Like the more you bring back the less chance we’ll have to go be around other people and what that could mean.”
Confused I said, “Then I don’t understand. Do you know why he’s not sleeping again?”
“When I put him back to bed last night, I found a wind up radio under his pillow. He’s been listening to the news. He wanted to know what I stopped telling him.”
It took me a moment to remember that Beau said he used to tell Travis everything in case something happened to him. Then I sighed. “I’m getting in the way. Now that you talk to me, he … I don’t know … he feels …”
“Don’t take off down that road. It ain’t that. He just thought maybe I thought he was a baby or something along those lines. But his imagination is filling in the blanks that only halfway understanding what he is hearing are creating. It is scaring him, but he doesn’t want to admit it.” Beau sighed. “I don’t want to, but it looks like I’m going to have to at least explain some things to him. I wanted to protect him from all that stuff … or at least as much as I could.”
Speaking from my own experiences when my family had gotten sick I told him, “Sometimes knowing too little is as bad as knowing too much.”
“Mebbe so, but it still don’t make me relish the telling.” Having made up his mind he asked, “Any way you can minimize leaving footprints?”
“I’m not going to go back into that area unless I must. Instead, I’m going to have to find a way to get everything out of that truck in as few loads as possible. I’m not sure I can bring back more than one, two at the most, bags of thin set and grout at a time. The tiles are going to be all kinds of interesting. Those blasted things are heavy.”
“As a suggestion, start with the trailer, heavy on the list we been making. Move on to the bags of mix. Leave the tiles where they are for now. Not sure where we’re going to put things as it is. I’d say the garage but we need more wood. And I don’t want it to be obvious that we are stacking it high and deep in case they send drones up thisaway.”
“I found a couple of small wood piles. I’ll start trying to add a piece or two at least depending on what else I find.”
He sighed. “You’re going to wear yourself out. There’s already a lot in the fridge and freezer we need to work on getting done.”
“Were …,” I stopped on a yawn. “Were you able to get the freeze dryer and dehydrator set up?”
“Yeah. And Ms. Busby, I might could be bribed into a kiss if you are so inclined.”
“Behave or we’ll both have your frustration issue,” I warned with a small smile.
“Share and share alike,” he said with a grin.
feralferret
Veteran Member
Kathy, thank you.
RememberGoliad
Veteran Member
I'm more like a dog. I gobble it all up, sometimes too fast, and we all know what happens when THAT happens! Then I'll pick through and re-consume the interesting parts, then go back over the whole thing and take it ALL back in!
sssarawolf
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Very good. Thank you.
Griz3752
Retired, practising Curmudgeon
I'm sure there's a club of us in that mode Ms Moldy.
I do the same.
Chapter 39
Beau might have been playing at being silly, but he wasn’t just telling stories either. There was a lot in the fridge and freezer that I need to find the time to do something about. There was no way, even with their appetite, that the kids were going to be able to eat all the mulberries I picked and brought back. I also brought back chicken of the woods mushrooms as well as the other mushrooms that my grandfather taught me about … reishi being the only other one that I found in June. The fruit I’ve brought back includes wild strawberries, serviceberries[1][2], feral cherries[3],[4] and blackberries[5]. It will actually work out better to have one or two large loads, than a bunch of small ones if I tried to preserve everything as I found it.
It hasn’t been all rainbows and Skittles. I found a patch of wild asparagus and cut all that was ready, only to go back the next morning to find the patch destroyed by the feral hogs that I occasionally see sign of.
“You don’t go out of your way to track those things do ya?” Beau asked worriedly.
“Not hardly,” I told him with a snort, no longer quite as invested in the elocution lessons I’d taken in California. “I’m thinking about a trap for when colder weather comes. That’s only going to work though if I can field dress what I catch and bring it back in pieces. For that to happen …”
“Just no.”
“Excuse me?”
Wanting me to understand he backtracked a bit on his tone and then said, “Keegan you might be capable, but I’d rather not find out how capable until we have to. Or do you want me to catch your ulcer?”
I’ve let the idea go for now. It does lack feasibility for the moment. Not to mention Beau and I are trying to practice compromise and are getting pretty good at it. I mean he didn’t come too unglued when I found the bee tree and the smudge pot I had rigged up didn’t work quite as well as I had hoped. The only stings that really bothered me for more than an hour were the ones where they got me on the back of my neck. Those made me feel like I had a crick for a few days just from the swelling. But I’ll say I’m pretty proud of myself though it left him and the kids quite a bit of work straining the honey and pouring it into sterilized jars while I gathered the honey and brought it back by the bucket to get it all before a bear found it.
It is almost July and there will be more to harvest and that’s why I asked for help setting up the freeze dryer and dehydrator. We set them up in the other garage bay but that meant sound proofing – but still adequate ventilation – as well as electric supply for those commercial appliances to pull from. We’ve removed the bulbs from all the light fixtures when taping the switches didn’t stop the kids (Tess) from using them. We’ve pulled the plug on everything we can and are even using the old-fashioned wind up clocks my grandparents used. The propane generator is nearly silent when in operation, but we still limit its use as much as possible; but with the constantly cloudy weather we haven’t gotten optimal use from the solar system despite adding what batteries that I’ve found at other cabins and brought back. Having to keep the shutters and black out drapes closed means having to use some type of light source but instead of fixtures, we use the wind up lanterns. And those projects aren’t the only ones that Beau has been working on.
We also found out why it has been raining so much. It isn’t a system that is parked over the top of us, it is that there has been storm after storm after storm after storm coming up through the Gulf or off the Atlantic. Not all of them have been hurricanes, not even most, but there have been a lot of tropical storms and depressions, to cause some serious problems. This is the worst year on record, even worse than 2005 and 2020 which had 28 and 30 named storms respectively. Predictions are that we’ll far surpass that this year in named storms alone. Storm season started even before June 1st and there is a long way to go. Even the systems that don’t get names are really messing up the weather.
Atlanta is becoming perpetually flooded in areas. They are having brown outs that make perpetually running pumps impossible. Parts of Atlanta have been under five feet of water at any given time. They no sooner drain and dry out than it the weather hits again. The interstate is closed in multiple locations due to the pilons holding up overpasses being damaged. Chatooga and Floyd counties in northwest Georgia have also been pretty hard hit with unusual amounts of rain. We can’t pick up any pictures of course, but just the verbal description sounds horrible.
We know that around here things are rough. Allen Lake is many feet above flood level. Rock Creek and Little Rock Creek are eroding their banks and bringing down trees and other debris. We suspect that when the rains stop some of the creeks will back up where debris is in the water, possibly changing shape unless they are cleaned out and that’s unlikely to happen any time soon.
Ellijay is in rough shape with the river over its banks in multiple locations. Downtown Ellijay has flooded multiple times. Old Hwy 5 is washed out in multiple locations as are the roads to a lot of the vacation rental cabins. The vineyards in the area, as well as the apple groves are struggling. They say that the apple season may be nonexistent this year and there will be tree damage to deal with for next year. I’ve found some crabapple trees that are looking okay, but none of the apple trees that I’ve found have healthy looking fruit on them. In fact, the trees themselves don’t look that great. I’m glad that I picked up what I did at Panorama’s because I’m not sure if there will be many to forage.
How did we find all of this out? Because Beau finally figured out one of his uncle’s “schemes.” The antenna for the radio already existed but was disguised as a power pole. I’m not getting into the antics Beau got up to – first in major irritation and then in glee – when he figured out what was in plain sight. Needless to say it took him less than a day to finish building the radio set up. We had to move his furniture around in his room and he set up the radio near the window that faces the valley. He says it gives him something to do while I am out at night or early in the morning. He isn’t complaining, it is more simply that he accepts the facts and to keep himself from worrying so we can keep to the ground rules, he keeps himself busy.
# # # # # # # # # #
“Keegan, let this be the last one for tonight. Even in the dark I can see you’re too tired to be safe.”
I sighed and agreed. “Not to mention the hogs were in the area.”
He stilled for a moment then asked, “How sure are you?”
“Let’s just say we didn’t know who was more surprised, me or the sow with piglets.”
“Dammit Keegan.”
I put my hand on his chest and he stopped breathing for a moment. Taking advantage I said, “Relax. I understand. I’ve gotten almost anything that could be useful out of the truck, so I’ll just let them churn up the ground and hide any possible tracks I made.”
‘Hmph,” he said, letting me know he wasn’t happy but wasn’t going to push it.
Giving him a look of gratitude to let him know that he was “compromising” for both our sakes, I returned the favor and asked, “How about I stick around tomorrow and load the freeze dryer and make some fruit leather on the dehydrator.”
Giving me a look he asked, “Are you trying to make me a happy man Ms. Busby?”
I tried to laugh but was just too tired. “Turn about is fair play,” I said before taking off for the hall that led to my bathroom and then my bed. I was halfway through the door when I heard him give a surprised whisper.
“Hot damn. Progress is being made.”
[1] Serviceberries.
[2] Foraging and Harvesting Wild Serviceberries: A Comprehensive Guide
[3] The Ultimate Guide to Foraging and Harvesting Wild Cherries
[4] How to Forage for Wild Cherries | Wild + Whole
[5] 16+ Ways to Preserve Blackberries
sssarawolf
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Very nice, thank you.
We got half of the inside of the enclosed porch painted, yippee. But had to move around book cases etc.
We got half of the inside of the enclosed porch painted, yippee. But had to move around book cases etc.