|
Post by imahic on May 26, 2022 15:21:14 GMT -6
Prayers for Sandie. Family is most important. Thanks for the update.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 26, 2023 21:06:49 GMT -6
Back to this one. Things are leveling out well enough and I've finally got some cold down-time to devote to this. Sorry for the long lag....
*****************
SEVENTEEN
“Ready to get up? Got a lot of straightening up and picking up to do if that thing’s headed in. Looks like it is, if the wind shiftin’s any indication.” Bo was sitting in the armchair he had put in the corner of their bedroom for when Sandie was resting, so he could visit and keep her company without having to lay on the bed and either dirty it up or doze off, or more likely, both.
“Yeah, well, I guess they are being told something about keeping it mum. I turned the TV on for a few minutes earlier and the Today show was blabbing about Dancing with the Stars and the new season of America’s Got Talent, and when Roker came on he just kept on with the joking and told about the rain in Montana, then when he got to our “neck of the woods” it just went to the “6” logo. Tried your cell phone today?” Sandie asked.
“Nope. Wasn’t working yesterday.” Bo reached in his pocket and flipped his phone open and dialed Sandie’s number, only to hear the fast busy beep. “Not today, either. Oh, well, it’ll keep people from bothering me.”
“Bo, do you think you ought to cut that one branch off that big mesquite in the front yard before it blows down onto the house? I mean, if this is as bad as Polly said it’s gonna be, I’d rather go ahead and cut it down than wish we had done it while we’re looking at it in the front room.”
“Did I hear my name?” Polly started down the hall from the kitchen, coffee in one hand and large chocolate lab nuzzling the other. “No, Woody, go find Brutus and Booger and go play.” Woody looked at her with a puzzled expression, which is typical and about as advanced as a dog can achieve, and padded off in search of a more willing playmate.
“Come on in, Polly”, called Sandie. “Bo’s just fixin’ to help me up, and we can figure out what we’re gonna do today.”
Situated in her chair and ready for a few hours’ worth of seat time, the three made their plan for the morning, deciding what priorities were for the tasks that needed to be done. While things were for the most part prepared for whatever came along, the day-to-day living had tools scattered here and there, things like water hoses and buckets and the like that would either be broken or blown away with hurricane force winds.
Plans made, Bo headed out the back door to do some reinforcing on the chicken coop and goat pen, while Sandie and Polly teamed up to ready the inside for, at the worst, becoming a part of the outside. Starting with the pantry, they removed all the glass jars from the top shelves and stacked them on the floor on a moving blanket. Laying another moving blanket on top of that, Polly laid a sheet of plywood over the blanket. This would keep anything medium size or smaller from falling into the jars of food and ruining it.
Next, they gathered up as many empty jugs as they could find and after rinsing them out, filled them with water from the faucet. Before screwing the lids back on them, an ounce or so of bleach went into each jug, not so much to make it drinkable but to keep it from turning green over time if it wasn’t needed.
Meanwhile, Bo was outside finishing up with the tool shed. He was most worried about its structural strength, as it was built quickly out of cull lumber that was laying around. It had done a fine job in normal weather, but the weather was decidedly making a wild departure from normal. Walking out behind the house in the field, Bo turned slowly to face the wind and found it due north. Definitely had already swung past northeast, it had done that earlier, and was starting to pick up a bit. The sky was still a beautiful blue, not a cloud visible except far off, on the eastern horizon. That particular part of the sky looked ominous, even to an untrained eye. Bo estimated about six hours until the rain bands started to make landfall, and if they were lucky and the storm was compact, about eight to ten for the actual storm.
Hurricanes in and of themselves did not bother Bo terribly. He had lived through three fairly good size ones, riding them out on a house overlooking Corpus Christi Bay. During Celia, in 1970, the bay had come up the 22 foot high bluff in front of their house to within a couple feet of the top. At age six, he didn’t know enough at the time to be scared by that, and couldn’t figure out why his mom couldn’t quit shaking her head and talking quietly to herself after looking at the high-water mark. Only later, when Gilbert came in eighteen years later did he understand what a storm surge could do, when he saw first hand the devastation in Kenedy County, to the south.
No, the storm itself didn’t bother Bo, sitting there almost forty miles from the coast. It was the already shaky infrastructure that hadn’t recovered from whatever had caused the co-op’s power failure, coupled with the still-unexplained and still-ongoing bank holiday, all of which was overlaid with the general attitude emanating from the federal agencies like FEMA and Homeland Security, the gloating that now they have things in place to immediately go into an area and take control and rule over the victims, a choice they did not have when Katrina devastated New Orleans. Bo was very uneasy about the “help” that he feared would be forthcoming after the storm blew itself out. Even with a governor who ever so often displayed an independent streak and who might be of a mind to tell the feds to butt out, there would likely be more of a take-charge-and-sort-it-out-later mentality coming from the feds.
The financial crunch caused by the bank holiday was another big problem with this act of nature headed towards them. Every single thing they had was important. There would be no running to the store to grab another one, either right after or later, unless and until the banks got their stuff all in one sock. It was truly going to be each man to himself after this one, Bo feared. Along with having things, one hits the catch-22 situation of going ahead and using what one has and live comfortably after the blow, or hide for fear that someone else might hear, smell, or see something they shouldn’t have, and decide that since you have one and they don’t, they have every right to come take yours.
Bo commented to his dad one day, “I never could quite get my mind wrapped around the mentality that if I have two of something and you have none, then I’m supposed to give you one of them. Likewise, if I was smart enough to save a bunch of something, I’m supposed to give it out until I have none.”
Pop had replied, “Son, you just gotta understand something. People grow up nowadays with no guidance, no teaching from their parents. Kids who get everything handed to them, everything they could ever want, will never learn that they’ve got to WORK for things. You and your sis and brother never needed for anything, that was my job was to give you what you need. Oh, you may have wanted, but you never needed. Reason you turned out okay is because you listened, and also because you didn’t get conflicting messages from the school, and other kids, and from the dang TV. You never paid much attention to a television set because we didn’t get but one channel until you were in school. Time your brother came along, we had three or four channels spewing that socialist garbage, and it competed with what parents were trying to teach their kids. Some parents gave up. Probably the same parents who believed Walter Cronkite was impartial. Anyways, look at how tough parents have it now. I think your smartest move was to forbid your kids to watch the television until dark, and then for only 30 minutes a day. That kept ‘em away from that source of garbage, but they made up for it at school…” Pop shook his head and made a frustrated face.
“Hope you’re as ready as we are here, Pop,” said Bo out loud as he looked east. Shifting his gaze a few points south of his folks’ bearing, he frowned. Glancing back up at the sun, he revised his estimate of when the bands would start to hit, and when the storm itself would make landfall.
“Bo!” He heard Sandie calling from the back porch. With one last look at the menacing eastern sky, he turned for the house.
“Yeah, hon?” Bo replied as he came near enough to the porch to not have to yell.
“Barometer’s way down since we got up. It’s fallen almost half an inch in the last four hours,” Sandie reported as she held out a glass of iced tea for Bo.
Taking the tea with a grateful smile, he said, “Thanks, hon. Half an inch? Dang. Fits with the sky though. That thing isn’t slowing down; it’s coming right on in at speed. What y’all got to do still? You ran clothes yet? Might have time for a couple loads before it starts raining. I’ve got the generator up under the back porch, it’ll fire up fine where it is, and I’ll just plug in the washer straight to it.”
“Would ya do that darling? I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right. Might as well make use of the machine now, and with this wind and as dry as it is—at least for the next few hours—it’ll give us plenty of dry and clean stuff.
“Ok, I’ll start a load of whites first, and hang them soon’s it's finished spinning.” Bo stepped up on the porch and twisted the knob on the washer. He then unplugged the washer from the wall and fed the power cord through a hole in the wall covered with a rubber flap, designed specifically for that purpose. “I think I’ll put it on the fast cycle, get ‘em on the line sooner. All I have left to do is back the dump truck up to the north wall of the tool shed and back the big tractor up to the east wall. I just don’t want that shed moving. Then, I’ll be in to help with whatever you two need help with.” With that he stepped back down off the porch and, after adjusting the generator a bit, plugged the washer into it and pulled the start rope. As it exploded into life, he walked over to finish his makeshift shed anchors and, his mind already on felling that mesquite branch over the front bedroom, not hearing the honking and yelling coming from the front gate.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 26, 2023 21:17:39 GMT -6
EIGHTEEN
Bo lifted the cutter bar on the front of the chainsaw with one hand while holding the body down with his own body and tightened the two nuts with the other hand, thinking it was dang near impossible to properly service up a chainsaw singlehandedly without getting covered with sawdust and bar oil. Bar tightened up, Bo double checked the chain tension, and seeing that it had just enough slack to sag on the bottom but not enough for the chain guides to drop out of the bar channel when pulled gently, he turned the Poulan Wood Shark on its side and picked up an old screwdriver to use as a lever to start the fuel and bar oil plugs out, then filled the fuel tank three quarters full and the bar oil reservoir full to the top. His dad had taught him that trick, to ensure that the saw ran out of fuel long before it might run out of bar oil. Trick must work, Bo thought, it’s my third year on one chain.
“Whatcha think, Balls?” Bo asked the tomcat lazing on the tailgate next to the chainsaw and staring off into space.
“Rowr,” replied the 22 pound shorthair tom without moving anything but his jaw. He had come up to Bo in the parking lot of the store five miles down the road. Nothing more than a kitten, Balls climbed Bo’s leg, then his shirt, curling up on his shoulder and purring. Definitely not a cat person, Bo was at a loss, but knowing that Sandie would take in any living thing long enough to see if it would earn its keep, he finished up his purchases in the store and, Balls perched proudly on his shoulder, walked back to the truck and drove home with the cat firmly ensconced on his shoulder. Two years later and at least twenty pounds later, Balls was the family watch-cat, and had worked his way completely into his two legged daddy’s heart. He watched everything.
Bo glanced back at Balls, who had not gotten up to stretch and inspect the saw as he normally would do, and it occurred to Bo that Balls was watching something. It was not close by, because the cat would stand up and face anyone within a few yards, but he was intently gazing at something out front. Following the tom’s gaze, Bo saw a flash through the treeline in the direction of the gate, a flash like sunlight off of a bumper or something similar.
Bo grabbed his shorts pocket, and with an Indiana Jones look of dismay on his face, realized that his revolver was inside on the table. Picking up the chainsaw and feigning preoccupation with it, he walked up the side of the truck and into the doorway of the shed. Out of sight of the gate, he set the saw down and reached overhead for the .22 he kept on a couple of nails above the door. It was an old, totally worn out .22 from his youth that had had so many rounds fired through it that the bullets probably came out the muzzle tumbling end over end, but from that particular end of it, one couldn’t tell by looking, so it still served a purpose as a deterrent/bluff gun, as well as a rat shooter in the shed.
Stepping back out of the shed and walking around behind the shed, Bo made his way into the brush behind the building and made for the fence line that cut his property diagonally between the house and gate. About five yards from the edge of the brush Bo slipped into a three sided plywood box. It was no good as cover, only as concealment, but so far it had never been intended for use as any more than an observation post, at most one shot and evade if it ever came to it. Being alone with Sandie, he would be making tracks for the house most times before even one shot, but knowing Polly was there, and what a good shot she was, Bo opted for this instead of heading inside.
The only problem with this as an OP was that big huisache that had come up directly in line of sight to the gate. It was a huge monster, with several dozen ground shoots from its root ball and massive taproot, soaring (at least soaring in south Texas) to a good ten feet or so of height. Bo could move all the way to the side in the box and see around it, but that involved sticking his head and right shoulder into another of the angrily thorny huisaches that hugged the side of the box. This he did, simply to get a view of who was at the gate.
The car looked familiar but he couldn’t place it, and its driver was standing with her back to Bo, looking down at something in her hands. Finally standing up and holding her hand up to the side of her head, he realized it was a phone. When she put her hand on her hip and cocked her head, her body unique body language became visible and it flooded back to Bo who it was; along with that recognition came the realization that it was not his decision to make whether she was welcome at this particular point in time.
Cupping his hand to his mouth, he called out, “JANIE BETH!” When the figure whirled around and looked first this way and that, confused, he knew he had correctly identified her. Taking another breath, he called out again, “THERE’S A WALK-GATE FIFTY STEPS TO YOUR RIGHT. Y’ALL COME ON IN THROUGH THAT AND HEAD BACK FOR THE DRIVE!”
“OKAY!” Bo heard faintly as Janie Beth started walking down the fence line towards the small gate.
As she had her back three quarters to Bo, he scooted back the way he had come to the shed, then across the drive to the house. Sandie was in the kitchen, cleaning up after she and Polly had cooked a plateful of breakfast tacos. “You’re never gonna believe who just showed up at the gate,” Bo challenged Sandie.
“Um, let’s see. Janie Beth and Phil?” Sandie answered with a grin on her face. “They were down in the Valley visiting Phil’s brother. Bet they tried to head home and got hit by the bank closings.”
Bo stared at her. “I didn’t know they were even in the area. Boy, this is gonna be a mess.” He shook his head in wonder. “Betcha they don’t even know what’s in the Gulf.”
Janie Beth was one of Sandie’s high school buddies, from Illinois, and neither had spent much if any time in south Texas, and as far as Bo knew, had never seen a tropical weather system or even a sea breeze front firsthand. With the news blackout of the storm, it was entirely possible that the entire family was stopping by to say hello, not realizing they were smack in the middle of the sights of a hurricane.
“You’re probably right, Bo,” replied Sandie. “By the way, get that tree limb down, will ya? Barometer’s dropped some more, down to twenty nine, three now. Oh, and hey, you think you oughtta get those solar panels down off the roof? How tough are they if stuff starts flying around?”
“You know what, darling?” Bo asked his wife with a grin of respect on his face. “I love you. You just saved something that could quite possibly be irreplaceable. I had my mind on a zillion other things and probably would’ve been up there in seventy mile an hour winds trying to take those things down later.” Bo turned to Polly and pointed at Sandie, saying, “Now you see once again why I married this wonderful lady. Maybe she can’t DO but by goodness she can think! That’s eight hundred dollars of fragile stuff up there, and that ain't even replacement price.” Giving his wife a kiss, he headed towards the back door. “I’m gonna just lop that limb off and let it fall, then go take down the panels. See if someone can come out and take ‘em when I hand ‘em down so these old knees don’t have to make so many ladder trips.”
“I’ll be out there, brother, soon as I hear you shut down the saw”, Polly chimed in. “In fact, give me the tools and I’ll go start taking them off their stands if you like.”
“Cool. Come on, I’ll show you where stuff is.” Bo stepped out the back door, followed by Polly, as Sandie headed for the front door to welcome the unexpected visitors.
******************
Bo swore, inventing several new words, as the chainsaw idled in his hand as he perched on the roof of the front room and held the weight off the bar. He was in a precarious position, leaned out over the roof, steadying himself with one hand against the tree branch under the cut he was attempting, when the wind came up from the north enough to cause the tree to close on the bar just as he was about to pull the saw out of the undercut and start on the top cut to fell the top five feet of the limb. When it put the saw in a bind, he knew that if he turned loose of the saw to push up on the limb and free the bind, the saw would plummet to the ground below and likely break something on the concrete flowerbed edging. If he turned loose with the other hand, not only did he stand a better than even chance of losing his balance, but it wouldn’t give him as good of a grip on the piece of limb and could very well cause it to be him instead of the saw that landed on that edging.
As Bo was pondering which course of action to take, a pair of hands reached over his head and pushed the tree against the freshening wind just enough that the saw slid free. Turning, Bo saw Phil looking down from his position above Bo, grinning and nodding at the tree. Bo steadied himself and started his top cut, easing up just as the saw bit through the remaining wood, and the worst part of the tree was on the ground.
Hitting the kill switch on the saw, Bo rocked back on his haunches, sat on the peak of the roof, and looked up at Phil. “Dang sure didn’t expect help to come all the way from Illinois to top that branch, but thanks, man!” He reached out a hand to Phil, who took it in a firm grip and pulled Bo standing.
“So why you up here cutting down a perfectly good tree? And how come Sandie’s in there zipping around like the sky’s falling?” Phil confirmed Bo’s earlier suspicion that the family had no clue what the meaning of the slate sky and darkening in the east meant. Of course, Bo thought, to them, a storm in the east means it’s not going to bother them, so why worry about it.
“Well, Phil, you’ve walked into a bit of a situation. There’s a decent size hurricane out in the Gulf, and I think my back has a bullseye on it.” Bo looked off to the east, and turned his head to face into the wind, finding that he was looking almost directly off his left shoulder into a 35 mile an hour wind that was gusting to fifty. “My sis showed up last night, said they’re not wanting to cause a panic by ordering an evacuation when its unlikely people have money laying around to evacuate with, so they’ve gagged the media. However, she had a source on the Navy base that cared enough about her to warn her off her beachfront home and she came here.
“I suspect that old-timers are getting a bit of a clue by now, and you’re gonna be stuck if you try to head north, so you’re probably here for the storm at least.”
“Worse than that, Bo. We got caught out down here with only a few hundred dollars cash on us when the banks shut down a few days ago. Mark pitched in and we got the tank full on the Expedition without having to dig into my cash, but with the price of gas up near six bucks, I blew half my money topping off in Alice. That’s when Janie Beth remembered that Sandie had emailed her a map of where your place is a year or so ago, and she found it in the glove box. When you emailed it, she decided to print it out and stick it in the car, just in case. I was coming by to see if you could help me round up enough cash to get the family home, but it looks like that can wait a while.” Phil followed Bo’s line of vision to the east and concern flickered over his face. “Is THAT it?”
“Yuppers,” replied Bo. “It’s about four hours from landfall, I hope. If it’s any further out it’s a heck of a lot bigger than I think people were expecting. Now, far as getting y’all back up north; don’t worry about that right now. I’ll do what I can, you’ll get there, but we got bigger things to worry about before discussing that. C’mon, let’s go over and see if Polly’s got those solar panels loose yet.” With that, Bo turned and headed over the top of the roof to where Polly was working on the south facing roof over the back of the house.
“Got all of ‘em finger tight, Bo,” reported Polly. “You want to go down and catch or stay up here and pitch?”
“Best leave him to watch,” grinned Phil, relieved that his trust that Bo was a true friend was well placed. “I’ll go down and you pass them down to me with that rope Bo should have been using on that tree limb, and he can watch. If he was down there, he’d be so happy he caught the thing he’d do a victory dance and then spike it.”
“Ha. Ha,” retorted Bo, with a mock hurt look on his face. “I have a better idea instead of using a rope in this wind. Why don’t we both go down and I’ll get up on a ladder right at the eave, and we’ll just hand ‘em down so they don’t get away from us.” Since they were Bo’s panels, there were no objections, and Polly studied the sky as Bo and Phil recrossed the roof to the ladder, descending and then taking it with them to the eave beneath the panels.
“There, that’s the last of ‘em,” panted Polly as Bo handed the flat object off to Phil, who then carried it over and stacked it with the rest on the back porch. Bo climbed down the ladder, and then held it for Polly to shinny down, afterwards laying it back into the yard, and shoving it under the house, out of the upcoming wind.
Each picked up one panel and went in through the back door to the pantry, where all the Mason jars were set on the floor with blankets over them. Carefully laying down the first panel on top of the blankets, Bo said, “Let me go get another few of these moving blankets, we’ll sandwich ‘em all together, blanket then panel then another blanket and so on, then put a piece of plywood on top of them just in case.
Finished with that, Bo, Polly and Phil walked into the front of the house and were assaulted by the smells of a fresh pot of coffee warming on the stove and a mostly-covered cast iron skillet that emanated smells of breakfast taco. A flat griddle covered both the other burners of the stove and was being kept warm by the two low fires underneath it. A stack of tortillas sat on the counter next to the stove. Taking in the aromas as an invitation to refuel himself, Bo led the three by picking up a red fast-food type oval basket, lining it with a paper towel, and loading several tacos in it. Snagging a coffee cup off the rack by the sink, he poured a cup from the steel enamel percolator sitting on the stove half over a flame set at its lowest. Following suit, Polly and then Phil did the same, and all three went to sit at the table.
Bo took a bite out of his taco, and looked in to the middle of the rest of it as he rolled it around, tasting what the filling was in this one. Confirming with his sense of smell, he tasted homemade chorizo and duck egg, one of his favorite combinations. Polly took a bite and murmured an approving sound.
Phil, on the other hand, Midwestern native that he was, sniffed and looked, turning the rolled tortilla over several times in his hands before finally asking, “What on earth is this?”
After a glance between the two and a snork from Bo and a snicker from Polly, Bo replied with one word as he took another bite, “Breakfast.”
“Tortillas? For breakfast?” responded Phil, with a doubting look on his face. “What’s in it?”
“You take a bite and tell me”, called Janie Beth as she came through the front door followed by Sandie. An aside from Janie Beth to Sandie had them both snickering. “It’s good, hon. Trust me. I ate two of ‘em.”
Hesitantly, Phil took a very small bite of the end of the tortilla, and managed to get just a taste of the filling. Experimentally chewing, with a thoughtful look on his face, he swallowed, nodded, and took a full size bite. “Is this what they call chorizo?” he asked after swallowing his second bite.
“Sure is,” replied Bo. “I make it every few days. It’s a nice change from pan sausage.”
“It sure is different,” agreed Phil. “Kind of a bold taste. Hmm.” He took another bite and chewed it critically. “Seems like it sort of brings out the flavor in the eggs, too, a bit.”
“Nah, the eggs taste that way all the time,” replied Bo, unable to hide a small grin on his face. Phil was known to be a picky eater, and Bo was really enjoying this.
“Oh, I suppose it’s because they come from your own chickens? I hear farm fresh eggs do taste different,” mused Phil after picking up a second taco.
“Nope”, countered Bo, as he gazed at Phil expectantly, now even less able to hold his poker face. Dryly he added, “It’s ‘cause they’re from our own DUCKS.”
While Phil couldn’t control the expression on his face and in his eyes at the thought of eating a duck egg, he did a masterful job of containing the chewed bite he still had in his mouth, and gamely poked the last little bit of the taco in after swallowing.
When the laughter from the other four adults died down, Phil smiled a small smile and commented, “Well, I sure wasn’t expecting to eat a tortilla stuffed with duck eggs when I rolled up here, but hey, it wasn’t bad at all. I don’t suppose I want to know what you make the chorizo out of, do I?”
Sandie made a snorking sound and shook her head vigorously, which set off another round of laughter, this time with Phil joining in.
The laughter suddenly stopped as a huge gust of wind drove the first raindrops horizontally into the window behind the table.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 26, 2023 21:39:27 GMT -6
A three-fer.... just because....
***************
NINETEEN
The first gust of wind from the outer band drove fat, dusty raindrops into the north facing windows of the house, prompting Janie Beth and Polly to jump up and shut the windows before the entire rooms were drenched. Looking out across Len’s back pasture at the cotton field beyond, Bo couldn’t see the next neighbor a mile away, on the hard road, for the dust and rain.
“Phil, let’s go out and get your car in from the road before it gets to really blowing. I’ll give you a ride out there ‘cause I need to load up all the garbage cans and bring ‘em up to the well shed. That’s if they haven’t blown away yet,” Bo added as another gust of wind shook the windows and doors.
Out at the road, Bo got out and opened the gate. It took both of them pushing to get the gate fully open, but the wind was blowing so hard by then that either one of them leaving the other to go find a stick with which to wedge the gate open resulted in the other being driven back towards the latch post of the gate. Bo’s fallback position in any situation was to find the humor in it, if appropriate and if it didn’t take away from finding a solution. “Reminds me of that old Ace Reid cartoon of the two cowhands up on the windmill deck, forty feet off the ground, and both holding on for dear life, all their legs and arms intertwined,, and one of ‘em says to the other, ‘Looks like we’re gonna hafta git somebody else up here to hand me that wrench outta yer back pocket.’”
Shaking his head, grinning and grimacing at the same time, Phil had an idea. While still using his body to hold the gate, he reached around behind the gate and pulled the T post that the gate normally backstopped against over far enough for the two of them to shove the gate past and swing it further, past the direction of the wind enough to enable one person to hold the gate.
“I got it now,” panted Bo. “Good thinking. Looks like we don’t need that third guy after all. Go pull through the gate and come back and help me shut this so the wind doesn’t take it and bust it all up.”
After getting the gate back closed and locked, Bo looked around for the garbage cans. Too late, he thought. They’re gone. Doesn’t matter anyways, I doubt we’ll be using a garbage service after this blows through, and the other ones had holes in the bottoms so they weren’t even any good for holding water or anything. Besides, there’s a half a dozen more already in the shed, in better shape, and if this is anything like Celia was back when I was a kid, there’s gonna be several new ones here, or new to us. Bo’s folks had lost their garbage cans during that storm, but had found twice as many blown up against their fence.
Phil got the SUV cranked up and drove past Bo into the front pasture, where he got out to come help get the gate back closed. Bo wrapped the chain around the gate and snapped the padlock closed, then started for the walk-in gate down at the southwest corner. Changing his mind after nearly being blown over twice, he turned back for his pickup, deciding that there would be precious few pedestrians for the next few hours, certainly none who would take the time to go inspect a four foot gate that had a chain wrapped around it and actually looked locked.
Driving back up to the house, Bo stopped before driving into the brush. He considered for a while, and elected to park the old truck out in front. Doing this would accomplish two things: First, it would signal that the place was, in fact, occupied, which would discourage looters after the storm had passed. Second, it would provide transportation if it was needed quickly, without having to take the time to cut a path with chainsaws. A third reason, not altogether trivial, was that nothing was around to fall on it.
That did bring up the other side of that coin, that there was nothing around to shelter the truck. However, it was a considered gamble and there were more pluses than minuses to leaving the thing out where it was visible from the road.
Windows up, keys out, toolbox and cab locked, Bo headed for the house. Stepping in the front door, he found Phil wiping the last of the raindrops off his glasses and the girls chattering about their recollections of past storms, ice storms in the case of the two Illinois gals and hurricanes, for Polly.
“I think we’re inside for a while, kiddos,” announced Bo, to a vigorous nod of agreement from Phil. “If this is anything like Celia or Gilbert, it’ll blow for a couple hours, maybe three, then we’ll get some of the eye. If we don’t get the calm eye over us, we’re not in the storm’s direct path, which is good, but also doesn’t give us a few minutes to go look at stuff and maybe catch something before it flies apart.
“Well, I don’t know about y’all but I need to get down for a while and let my chair charge a bit. Speaking of getting down for a while, where we gonna put the new guests?”
Bo considered. “Let’s hold off on that thought for now. See what the storm does. We’ve got the foldout sofa in here, and your power bed. I can get one of the airbeds out from under the back seat of one of the trucks and that’ll take care of everbody, I reckon.”
“Sounds like a plan. Buddy’s got that extra bed in there, too. Remember he stacked a couple mattresses when you came across that good one at that house in Sabinal?” Sandie reminded Bo of an additional bed that was available.
“Forgot about that,” replied Bo. “Good. Nobody needs to sleep on an air mattress. Never have liked the idea of trying to use them in the house with Balls around. Speaking of, where is he?”
Sandie wheeled off down the hall to their bedroom and stopped in the doorway, looking up. Sure enough, there he was, stretched out on top of the gun cabinet Bo had built and set in their bedroom. The top of it was almost seven feet off the floor, and the old tomcat loved to be up on a perch, surveying his domain. Or sleeping, which was his current status. Rolling over to the dresser, Sandie picked up a fuzzy green sphere and bounced it off the floor. In a flash, before she could catch the rebounded ball, the tomcat had pounced. While most people presumed the reason for the tom’s name having to do with the most visible aspect of his posterior, his name actually came from his fanatic obsession with tennis balls. Ever since Bo brought the young kitten home, he had been fascinated with tennis balls. It was hilarious watching him as a two-pound kitten, stalking and pouncing on tennis balls just under half his size, trying to balance on them and rolling over, ultimately mastering the tackle without winding up in a very compromising position with the uncooperative ball on top of him. Now full grown, he would seek out a tennis ball and dig his claws into the fuzz and throw the thing up in the air, then leap after it as it bounced across the room, which he was doing now.
“Okay, I hear him!” called Bo from the front room, then turned to address the group. “Believe I’ll go help Sandie down for a while, since our bedroom is on the south side of the house and she’s got a chance to stretch out. Y’all make yourselves at home. Just remember, we’re on battery power and the solar panels are stacked in the closet, so keep the fridge-openin’ to a minimum.” With a grin, Bo headed back to the bedroom, only to stop and make one more suggestion. “Might also want to stay away from that double window in the living room. It’s the only weak spot on that wall. It’s a cheap window. This one here by the table’s a good one, with lexan in it, but that one in there’s glass. It’ll stand up to wind, but if stuff starts hittin’ the side of the house, something could bust that window. Wanted to get it boarded up, but ran out of time.”
*****************
“It’s been a couple hours, Bo. I think I’ll get back up, that way if the eye does come over you aren’t piddling around with me. I’d sure like it if you could board up the windows on this side if we get an eye.”
Bo looked at his wife. “Sure, hon. That one in the living room isn’t gonna really mess with much if it breaks, but if this one back here does, we’re outta a place to sleep, being as how our bed’s under it. I got some plywood slid under the house on this side, I can get to it if we get an eye and slap it over this window and the one over the bed Polly’s using. If there’s a third sheet, I don’t remember how much is under there, I’ll hit the kitchen window while I’m at it.”
Both fell silent, listening to the howling wind. Looking out the east window of their bedroom, all Bo could see was gray, with some darker smudges fifty feet or so away that should be brush. He didn’t dare think of anything related to the integrity of the house, as he knew that not only mechanical objects but also structures had ears and would employ some corollary of Mr. Murphy’s law at the first opportune moment, in this case failing the instant an observation was made as to sturdiness.
He was sitting in the chair in the corner of the bedroom, to keep Sandie company as well as catching a little rest himself after the morning’s scurrying around. Bo knew he would need a big commitment of energy if the eye happened to pass over them to satisfy the adrenaline rush he’d get upon hearing the winds lay. Heaving himself out of the recliner, he disconnected Sandie’s chair from its dedicated inverter and battery bank and, turning it on, took hold of the joystick and walked it over to her side of the bed. Sitting down on the bed, he hooked his forearm under his wife’s knees and as she rolled her upper half onto her side, he followed with the legs. He then checked all the pressure points for redness, lifting her shorts legs up enough to check where her hips bore her seated weight, then on up he lifted the back of her shirt and glanced at her back to ensure that there was no angry red mark foretelling of a decubitus ulcer, or pressure sore, commonly referred to as a bedsore. These start out as red marks, due to the breakdown of the skin.
It had been explained to Bo thus: Imagine you are on a cross country car ride, and do not shift your weight in the car seat. Never squirm, never lean side to side. Pretty soon there starts to be pain in the rear and back, surface pain. Pain that a spinal injured person is not going to feel. This pain makes the able-bodied shift position, or if bad enough makes one stop the car and get out and walk around. It’s not the walking that eases the pain, it’s the relief of the pressure on the skin that is the most important result. Being that someone with no feeling cannot feel when the bones are causing pressure, which not only physically damages the skin but also has the very bad effect of restricting blood flow to the skin itself, the tissue begins to break down at that pressure point, resulting in a wound the severity of which is determined by how long it goes undetected. Caught as a mild redness, the wound can be stopped at that stage and with rest and staying off of it for a day or so it can be healed by the body with no additional attention required. Left untended, a decubitus can rapidly become an open wound, opening up the door to infection and weeks of remaining off the affected body part. “Bedsores” can be deadly, and can take years to heal. With that in mind, Bo was diligent in taking every opportunity he had to at least glance at Sandie’s weight-bearing points, those being for one in a wheelchair the hip points, the tailbone, and to a lesser extent the back at the point where the chair’s back ends and the backs of the heels, where they ride against the foot rests.
Backside checked, Sandie rolled back over on her back and after Bo stood and leaned over her, she looped her right arm around Bo’s neck. Bo scooped his right arm under the back of her knees and braced himself against the headboard with his left hand. As soon as Sandie picked her upper body up with her arm, Bo pushed off with his left hand to a standing position, holding only his wife’s knees as she held her top half up by her arm which was wrapped around his neck, and walked over to deposit her in her chair. Again bracing himself with his left hand on the headrest of the chair, he leaned over and pushed his right arm away from himself, which had the effect of swinging Sandie’s rear out, pendulum-style, from his body, and with a move perfected over the years, planted her squarely in her seat. After straightening the legs of her shorts out to ensure she wasn’t sitting on a wrinkle (which can cause a sore easily by causing a pressure point) and straightening her shirt for the same reason of getting any wrinkles out from in back of her, he stood up and realized that something was different. The wind had stopped.
“Perfect timing, fella,” grinned Sandie. “Now get your butt out there and board up the windows and check on the chickens and goats.” With that, she reached her arms up to pull him down for a kiss and sent him on his way.
Bo turned and walked out the outside door in the corner of their bedroom and found Polly and Phil picking their way through the branches and assorted flotsam littering the yard. He walked around to the south side of the house and bent down to look under the house. Sure enough, he counted three sheets of half inch plywood laying on top of a couple of treated four by fours. Good thing Buddy does what you tell him once in a while, Bo thought.
Phil bent down next to him and saw what he was looking at and started to reach under the house to drag the plywood out.
“NO!” snapped Bo, slapping Phil’s hand down. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to go off on ya, but let me get a hoe and pull ‘em out with it. No tellin’ what’s living under them.”
Walking over to the chicken shed, Bo came back with a long-handled chopping hoe and hooked it on the far edge of all three pieces, pulling them out sideways from under the house. Looking back at the bare dirt where they had come from, he stuck the hoe back in and with an awkward hacking motion, vigorously worked for a few seconds, then drug out a mutilated diamondback snake which was still squirming ineffectively. Placing the hoe head on the snake’s head, Bo stepped on the snake’s neck just behind the head, then lifted the hoe and brought it down with a resounding whack on the snake’s head, which stilled the writhing body. Pulling out his pocketknife, he cut the head off between the hoe and his boot and picked up the rest of the snake and handed it to Polly. “Dinner”, he announced, glancing out the corner of his eye at Phil, who was making a heroic effort to keep a straight face, and almost succeeding.
“That thing could’ve bit me,” stammered Phil.
“Yep. That’s why Bo stopped you. Now you can turn the tables on him, and bite HIM later”, grinned Polly, rubbing it in just a little.
“Not out of the woods yet. Flip those sheets one by one with the hoe, make sure you don’t grab a scorpion or a black widow. Scorpions’ll hurt like you never had, but black widows won’t bother you unless you corner ‘em. Least that’s what they say. I don’t care, I just don’t like ‘em.” Bo shuddered.
After checking the plywood and killing the three scorpions and the lone black widow they found, Bo sent Phil to the chicken shed with the hoe, and told him where to find a claw hammer and some twelve penny nails, and with three doing the job, the boards were up in no time on the three windows.
Bo walked the hammer and extra nails back over to the chicken shed and put them away, taking the opportunity to peek into the chicken house at the birds, who were cautiously peeking out the doorway to the enclosure and glucking and gurking at him as if he’d landed from Mars. “You girls best get back inside, it’s not over.” Bo circled the back of the chicken shed and peeked into the goat pen, finding the same timid looks peering around the wall of their shelter. After giving them a reassuring word so that they could hear a familiar voice and possibly calm down a bit, he turned towards the house as the winds came back with a vengeance from the south this time. Breaking into a run downwind towards the front door instead of cross wind towards the bedroom door he had come out of, he heard a sharp CR-R-RACK behind him and felt a sharp blow to the back of his legs, knocking him to the ground. Struggling to get back up, he found himself pinned, and twisted around to see that the mesquite that shaded the chicken shed was laying across his calves. As he watched, it continued to settle, and just as he noticed a branch as big as his arm that was in a bind against the big tree’s trunk, the felled tree rolled enough that the small branch cleared the big tree. Bo had time to think “oh, crap!” before that smaller branch whipped free and in its frenetic rush to return to its normal position relative to its trunk, smacked him in the face, at which point everything faded to black.
*************
...just because I had to get to a suitable cliff.... <evil chuckle>
|
|
|
Post by feralferret on Jan 27, 2023 2:22:57 GMT -6
Thanks for the story.
I enjoy the references to Mathis, TX. My mother's sister and her husband used to live there. They owned and operated the Dairy Mart drive-in from the late 50s through the 60s.
He was a lineman who was injured in an accident. Broke his back. He was wheelchair bound the rest of his life. They used the money from the accident to go into business with the Dairy Mart. He cooked and everything else from a wheelchair. His car was modified with hand controls.
|
|
|
Post by gipsy on Jan 27, 2023 8:35:11 GMT -6
Cliffs are not a requirement of a story. That is a false rumor.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 27, 2023 20:45:26 GMT -6
Cliffs are not a requirement of a story. That is a false rumor. Yeah, I know. But I couldn't resist! And hey, look at it this way, you got 3 instead of 2
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 27, 2023 21:00:58 GMT -6
TWENTY
Sandie looked up from the table as Phil blew in through the front door on a gust of wind, struggling to shut the door and finally getting it latched. “Should’ve come in the bedroom door, it faces north, on the lee side of that room,” she commented as Phil shook like a dog then removed his shirt and hung it on the coat hook beside the door.
“You think Bo has a T-shirt I can borrow?”
“Sure. Down the hall, straight ahead is our bedroom door. That cabinet on the right is where the towels are if you want one. His shirts are in the dresser on the right side of the bed”, answered Sandie as Phil started down the hall. “Second from the top is the shirts!” She called out over the howl of the wind as he rooted for a towel. Turning to Janie, spurring her friend back to the catch-up gossip on Will County, Illinois, “Now, what were you saying about Joanie and her boys?”
Phil dried off and, pulling the shirt drawer open, took the top shirt and pulled it on then returned to the living room, passing the closed bathroom door on his way and hoping silently that Bo would hurry up and come out of the only bathroom, as he had not visited that room since arriving. Oh well, he thought, worse come to worst, I’ll just step out that leeward door and water the plants.
Back in the great room, with the urgency on his mind preventing him from relaxing, he prowled, looking at the photos hung on the walls, and wandering over to where the television was playing one of the many movies Bo and Sandie had in their collection. After watching for a few minutes, he recognized the movie as True Grit, and the movie was at the point where Rooster Cogburn, slightly inebriated, had fallen off his horse after taking a nip. Chuckling at that did it. Phil headed back down the hall and, seeing that the door was still closed, turned past the master bedroom and into the front bedroom, letting himself out the door onto the relatively wind-free stoop to answer nature’s call.
Finishing that task, he looked around at the action taking place in the front yard, awed by the destructive force of the wind. Branches were blowing past horizontally, coming to a stop only when they tangled with the few trees strong enough to still be standing. Looking down the north wall of that front room, he noticed that the big mesquite had stopped a rather large branch from somewhere, as there were branches and brush whipping in the wind at ground level, but not moving past. Sheltered as he was from the wind, he studied the scene for a few minutes and shuddered at the thought of anyone unlucky enough to wind up out there, unprotected.
Phil paused to give a short prayer of thanks that they had been able to drive straight to Bo and Sandie’s even though they’d never been there, and for Bo’s generous good nature in emailing them a map years ago, with an open invitation to show up any time, and the serendipity of Janie printing it out and keeping it in their glove box for so long—“You never know, hon. Rather have it in there and not need it….” To which Phil had replied, “Yep, …than to need it and not have it.” Well, we sure took them up on that one, didn’t we, he chuckled to himself as he turned to go back inside and see if Bo had fallen asleep in the little room, not seeing the straw hat go flying by on the wind just as he turned his back.
++++++++++
“Dang, lost my hat,” muttered Bo. Even though just a simple straw hat, it had kept the waving and blowing mesquite branches from raking his face and neck with the young thorns which, though not long, were certainly sharp enough and stiff enough to get his attention now that his hat was probably the next county over.
He had woken up face down in the sandy mud, disoriented, and upon remembering where he was and why he was running, scrambled to get up, only to realize his right leg was trapped under something. It was not pinched, he could move the ankle, but couldn’t pull his foot out of the crack it seemed to be in. Realizing he was trapped but not pinned, Bo calmed down and took stock of his situation.
Arms both working, both hands make a fist. Okay, he thought, top half works. Looking around, he realized neck worked okay, no pains, just his face felt funny. Oh, yeah, he thought, that branch smacked the snot out of me. Must be what put me out.
Next he flexed his left, free, leg. Then his right, much as he could, stopping as a the movement sent flashes of fire up his leg. Gingerly he tried moving it a lot less aggressively than he had earlier, and found that while it was sore, he could move it. Must’ve kissed it with that branch. Looking down the log towards what used to be the top, he saw that it was resting on several smaller branches jutting out into the ground. That’s what happened, he thought: It bounced down and smacked the ankle, then sprung back up to where it is now. It’s also acting like a tripod, sitting on those two branches and the brick over there, that’s why it’s not moving around in all this wind. Satisfied that there wasn’t anything broken, he rolled over and looked up to see the branch that had smacked him about a foot from his face, waving back and forth as if daring him to sit up.
“This is gonna make it fun,” he said to nobody in particular, as there was nobody available to hear him over the howl of the wind. The wrist-sized branch was just about two inches above his shoulders, too far down for him to be able to duck around it and sit up.
Bo laid back and stared up at the sky for a few minutes, letting his mind slow back down, swallowing and forcing his panic at being pinned down. He thought to himself that it was a good thing it was only a branch that kept him from sitting up, as Bo was claustrophobic. He hated crawling into tight spots, and had to fight down panic every time he slithered under his pickup to change the oil. He forced himself to do it each time, and while it never completely went away, it was easier to push down the irrational urge to GET OUT with each oil change.
Now, how to get out of this, he thought. Thinking about it, Bo rolled over onto his right side and was able to bend at the waist enough that his head would clear that branch, then pushed himself upright, and wound up in a reclined position, with the branch behind his back at shoulder height. Finally, he could study how his foot was caught.
His ankle was, well, between a rock and a hard place. The rock, actually, appeared to be a tree root that was on the surface of the ground, and the hard place was the trunk sized log that was laying across the top of his ankle, but not actually on his ankle, because the splintered end of the trunk had come to rest on a retaining block wall around one of the flowerbeds he had put in for Sandie at the front of the house. Never again, he thought, will I grump about building her raised flowerbeds. That saved me a smashed ankle for sure. Now, how to get out of here. Couldn’t dig out, that root is under it. Dang tree’s too big to lift it off, too awkward. Don’t dare pry it off, it’ll roll off that block and finish its job.
Bo figured his foot would fit through that hole if he hadn’t put on his mid-height lace up boots to go out and monkey with the windows. If he’d only left his sneakers on, he grimaced, but no, he’d rather get those goofy boots wet and waterlogged than have to wind up padding around the house barefoot or wearing them all over until his sneakers dried. Of course he hadn’t just slipped ‘em on, not that time! He’d actually taken the time to lace ‘em up and tie the dang things since he might be going up on the roof. Now, how to get the sucker untied when it’s on the other side of an eight inch green log!
Rolling to his right side again, Bo scrunched up and tried to reach past the log to the shoelace. No luck. He couldn’t get his hand in far enough; his arm kept binding on his knee. Stretching back out, he decided to try going in the other way, so rolling on his left side, he doubled himself over and found that his left arm went down beside his knee instead of wanting to come down on top of it. Good. Now, reaching under the log, he found his foot and, fighting spasms in his lower back and bottom ribs, followed the laces up to the ankle, where he grabbed a wild end and pulled.
Wiggling his ankle around, he felt with relief that the shoe was loosening. After that, it was fairly anticlimactic as he continued to squirm his ankle around to further loosen the laces, then finally slip his wet foot out of the boot and through the crack between the log and the root beneath. Reaching over the log, he retrieved his boot and slipped it back on his foot, and made his way the last ten feet to the door into the front bedroom.
Looking at the closed bathroom door, Bo presumed someone was in there, and headed for the kitchen sink to wash his hands and face. As he limped down the hall he grabbed a rag off the shelf over the washer and, holding it to his face to blot the mud coming down his face and into his eye, he made his way into the kitchen.
“There you are…. What happened to you?” asked Sandie with growing concern, seeing her soaked, limping husband heading towards the sink.
“Tree. Fell on me. Grab me your little mirror outta the bedroom, will ya? I’ve gotta wash this mud off of my face. Gettin’ in my eyes, stingin’. Might be scratched up too, so let me wash this up and I’ll come sit down so you can see if you need to doctor on it,” Bo replied as he groped for a mixing bowl and set it in the sink, then turned on the faucet to run some water into the bowl. As he pulled the rag away from his face and looked at it, he called out down the hall for Sandie to bring more rags and the first aid tub. What had been a white terrycloth rag was now solid red.
Not wanting to wait on Sandie to get back, he bent over and stuck his head under the running faucet. Letting the water run over the side of his face and down into the sink. Being already soaked from the pelting of rainwater while he was stuck under the tree, it actually felt warm to him, and he just relaxed as best as he could and let it flush, watching the water mixed with dirt, sand, and red streaks of blood as it chased down the drain.
Looking at his hand, he made a face and reached awkwardly for the hand soap, washing his hands as he kept his head under the faucet until ready to rinse his hands, then he stood up and rinsed them. By that time Sandie was back with a sackcloth towel from the rag shelf, and he took that and, sticking his head back under the running water, gently wiped the ‘tree rash’ area with the rag, dislodging more dirt and leaves.
Finally, when clear water mixed with clean-looking blood was all that was running into the sink, he stood up and, taking a stack of 4x4 gauze sponges, about a half inch stack of them, from Sandie’s outstretched hand, he held them to his forehead and shut off the water with his other hand and went to sit at the table for Sandie, Polly, and Janie to cluck and fuss over him.
Bo insisted on taking a look at it himself before they mummified his head, as he called it later, and saw a nice goose egg forming across his forehead, with an ugly raw scraped area about an inch and a half wide from above the bridge of his nose to his temple.
“Could be a concussion too, hon. How’s your vision?” Sandie asked.
“Vision’s fine, now that I got the sludge out of my eyes. At least, it’s as good as it was before this. I’ll let you know if there’s anything strange happening. Don’t think I’ll be sleeping anytime soon anyways, so we’ll just watch it. Don’t worry about it. I’m not gonna do anything foolish,” he grinned at her. “Thanks for patching me up, it’s not often a guy gets the most beautiful nurse in the world to treat him.”
Embarrassed with the mushiness, Sandie grumped back good naturedly, “Yeah, well, if you screw up, you’re gonna get Nurse Ratched on your hands next, bud.”
“Ouch.”
“Just sayin’.”
“Hey, look out back. Is the wind slacking up already?” Bo was looking past Sandie, out the back windows of the house at the trees that were standing markedly straighter, and swaying much less.
“I think so. Yippee, I’ve survived my first hurricane!” cheered Sandie with relief that the worst was apparently over.
“Yeah, but you gotta remember what was going on before the storm,” reminded Bo. “This storm is just the beginning. That smelly stuff was already hitting the fan before this, and now I’m really wondering what kind of changed world we’re gonna venture out into when we finally do leave this place.”
Sobered by the thought, Sandie looked at Bo. “You’re right. If things weren’t such a mess, we’d have been here by ourselves through this. Polly’s only here because she couldn’t call us on the phone, and Phil and Janie Beth are only here because the stinkin’ banks are shut down and they couldn’t get gas to get home.” She looked at Bo with her spirits dampened just a bit, but full of pride and appreciation for her man, and a little contrite as well. “Still doesn’t take away from the fact that we passed this test of nature with flying colors. I should say you passed this test. I’m sorry I gave you such fits for your nitpicking when framing the house. I didn’t realize just what a lot of wind you were preparing for. It won’t happen again, darling.”
Bo reassured her, “You didn’t know. And you weren’t giving me fits. Don’t worry about it. You were concerned with costs, and I told you then that I hoped you never found out why I was using so many nails, screws and straps, but if you ever did find out you’d appreciate it. I’m just glad I did what I had to do instead of going along with you. Now you see why I go along with you when you have the experience with something and I don’t.”
Sandie nodded. “Wind’s down to a stiff breeze. Let’s go see what all happened out there.”
****************
The seven of them stood in the front pasture, jaws slack. Absolutely nothing man-made was in evidence except for a few parts of Len’s house, and Bo’s old red truck, which was nosed into a pile of brush a hundred yards from where he’d left it. Mickey’s house was gone. Bo and Phil had spent an hour with machetes, hacking a path through the brush that had built up against the treeline, finally clearing a pathway wide enough for Sandie’s chair. Amazingly enough, this storm had been a dry one, with less than two inches of rain falling throughout the entire storm.
Some hurricanes, like Beulah in 1967 and Fern in 1971, brought flooding rains, where others like Claudette in 2003 brought only a few showers, depending on which side of the storm you found yourself. Bo and Sandie would later discover from talking to people that the storm had apparently come inland thirty or so miles and hung a right, to race along the line of an approaching early cold front, which spared them most of the rainfall and any of the really nasty eastern quadrant of the storm. They had experienced the dry western side of the storm, and after it turned, the next-driest southern edge of the cyclone as it turned north.
In the unstable air mass preceding the front, numerous tornadoes had been spawned, and it was becoming more and more apparent that Bo and Sandie had lucked into a very near miss.
“Notice anything missing, Bo?” asked Polly, as she came to stand next to the couple.
Bo looked around. “Besides everything, no, not really,” he replied with a grim humor.
“The windmill.” Sandie pointed at the clean, bare pumpjack with absolutely no tower or mill anywhere in evidence.
Bo walked over to the wellhead and peered into the brushline. Grinning, he turned to the assembled group. “Well, we still have water. The cistern’s still whole and full. Whatever took the papalote left the tank alone.
“We’re not that bad off, folks. We’ve got ten thousand gallons of water to last us ‘til I can rig something to run that pumpjack. I can get water from it into the overhead tank with the gasoline transfer pump, like we’ve been doing the last few days. So we have water. Soon’s we get the solar panels back out and stand the wind generator back up we’ll have electricity. ‘Til then, the batteries oughtta last another few hours, and we can charge them with the big generator and the roll-around charger if we don’t get the other stuff back up right away.”
“Then that stuff can wait a while?” Sandie asked. “I’m sure the first thing to do is going to be to cut through the brushline and get the driveway cleared so that people can get out. Polly’s gonna want to go see how her house made out.”
“Yeah, that’s if and when they let me in”, Polly replied. I do want to go see what’s what, and I definitely want to go see how Lee Roy and Mom and Dad made out. If that thing turned like you were speculating, Bo, they didn’t see an eye, but they got beat on by the north and then the east sides with no letup.”
“I know both of you want to go see your folks, Bo, but Phil and Janie are probably going to want to take off pretty soon. One of you is going to have to stay here. We are NOT leaving this place empty for looters. On that one, I’m gonna have to put my foot down” Sandie reached down, grabbed her right thigh and lifted it a few inches, then let her leg drop back to where it was. “There. See? But seriously, somebody’s gotta stay here. It might be a two or three day trip to get there, hack your way in through their jungle, and get back.”
Janie looked at her husband, who nodded, then she spoke up, “Hey, you two want to go, we’ll stay here with Sandie and hold down the fort. Low as we are on gas, and as unlikely as it is we’ll find a working gas station even if we had cash, we have nowhere to go for a while. Besides, I don’t think we’d have much luck with our out of state plates and ID’s, trying to pass through small towns to get out of the area. So… we’re here for the cleanup if you’ll have us.”
“Of course you’re welcome. Lots of things to do, too few hands to do it. One thing we’ve got plenty of is work to do, now.”
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 27, 2023 21:23:48 GMT -6
TWENTY ONE
“—TAKE A BREAK NOW!!”
Bo caught the last half of Polly’s hollered statement as he shut down the chainsaw. “Didn’t realize you could holler that loud did you?” Bo laughed as he ducked a handful of leaves and fluff Polly flung his way.
“You don’t remember when we were kids, then, do you? I could out-holler you and Lee Roy any day. ‘Cept, of course, when Dad reached up and cut a switch.” Polly grinned back as Bo started turning red. “Yeah, you were squirming and hollering even before he got all the leaves stripped off of it.”
“It worked, didn’t it, though? Most of the time he’d talk for ten minutes, slowly slicing off one leaf at a time, and by the time he was through, he was convinced I was punished enough and just toss the switch in the bushes. The bawling sure saved me some stripes!”
“I’m tellin’! An’ Daddy’s gonna spank you for real!” Polly giggled and kept teasing.
They had just spent the last few hours with Phil and Janie Beth, cutting up a fair sized mesquite that had fallen across the driveway. They had one more to go to have the drive opened enough to squeeze a car through, and Bo had just cut the trunk loose from the root ball.
“I’m gonna go get the tractor and hook onto this one and just drag it out of the way. I’m beat after dragging all that brush away from the house and now this tree. We can cut the other one up when we have time. Besides, it won’t hurt just to leave it that way to season. We’ve dang sure got enough for this winter as it is.”
Sandie arrived from the house with a gallon jug of cool water in time to hear Bo’s plan for the tree, and as Polly, then Bo, took drinks from the jug, suggested taking it all the way around back, then stripping the brush from it back in the pasture.
“You did notice we must’ve had some sort of little tornado or something come through. Look at Len’s house. Now go back behind the toolshed and look towards Len’s, and you’ll see a stripped path. There’s a hole in the brush that you can see the house from the side road.”
“Sounds like a place to put all this brush for now,” nodded Bo. “I don’t like the idea of someone seeing the house from the road. Might just come see what all is around for the taking, and with half of us leaving for Mom and Dad’s shortly, I’d rather be a little better hidden.”
+++++++++++
Three hours and six trips later, Bo and Phil had drug all the downed trees from the front pasture and brushline into new gaps in the trees and brush still standing between the house and the roads.
Since they had the tractor out and idling, Bo walked over to where his pickup had been slid, over next to Len’s house. Luckily, his neighbors had, at Lenny's wife's insistence, packed up and headed for town last night, since what was left of the house looked pretty beat up. I’m gonna have to go poke through it when we get back, thought Bo. If they don't show up today, I might oughtta go see if there’s anything I can do to secure that house. Hate to have someone liberate something while we’re gone, and we can’t see the front of it from our house.
With that, Bo walked over, hopped the fence and approached the house. The back door was ajar, and he stepped in and looked around. Amazingly, it did not look bad from the inside. The whole house was off level by about ten degrees, and it gave Bo the impression of walking on a listing boat. Walking through the kitchen, he saw that things were on the floor and the hutch against the west wall was laying face down across the table, but structurally it was amazingly intact, at least in the kitchen and dining area. Reaching into his pocket for his little 2-AA maglite, he flipped it on and ventured into the living room and was met with the shock of another room that was slid over and tilted, but otherwise intact. All the furniture was slid over to the low end of the room, but everything was for the most part dry and undamaged.
Bo walked over to the front door and the door to the stairway next to it, half expecting the door to be jammed tightly. While not freeswinging, he was able to open the door to the stairway, and was greeted with the mess he had been expecting at the beginning. There was no stairway, and no far wall to the stairwell. Looking up the remnants of the treads and past, he saw nothing but blue sky.
Closing the door as well as he could, he tried the front door with no results. It was out of plumb enough to be completely wedged. Satisfied that the part of the house he was in would need to be secured, he backtracked to the back door where he heard his name being called. Stepping out of the house, he was met by a tirade from a furious wife.
Eventually as Sandie wound down, he realized he had ventured into a cockeyed house that had apparently been hit by a tornado during a hurricane, without telling anyone where he was going, not a day after disappearing for a few hours when he impulsively went to check on the animals during the eye of a hurricane. No wonder she was wound up tight!
Contritely, he climbed back over the fence and knelt down beside her chair to hug her and apologize, and was rewarded with a fierce hug and a calmer wife who sobbed into his shoulder, “I’m sorry I yelled at you honey, but can you imagine what went through my mind after you and the tree earlier, and now I turn around and you’re not there, the chainsaw’s sitting in the grass, and there’s footprints leading off towards that house that looks like it could fall over at any second and—”
“Sandie, I’m sorry too. I should have told someone, but even then it wouldn’t have helped. I was coming this way to get the truck, and decided to check out Len’s house to see if there’s anything salvageable in it. Turns out the whole downstairs is not only intact, but dry! All it needs is to be drug back over onto his side of the property line and leveled, and the living room, kitchen, and bathroom are all still in good shape. The tilt, along with I bet the linoleum he put on the floor upstairs, kept the rain out of the downstairs.
“Still, though, I should’ve said something. It’s me that needs to apologize,” finished Bo, as he kissed his wife and stood up. “Now, I’m gonna see if ol’ Red’s gonna start.”
He walked over to the old Diesel F250 and pulled a tree limb out of the way of the driver’s door. As he did so, he noticed that the broken off end of the limb was poking through the hole where the little vent window should be, and thought to himself that sometimes procrastination does pay off. With a grin, he opened the door and slid in, looking around at the cab and other windows. There was no other damage, and aside from the truck being nosed into a thorny mesquite bush that covered the hood and brushed against the windshield, all the rest of the windows were okay. If he’d have put that new vent window in like he almost did a few days ago, he’d be replacing it again, he thought. Fishing in his pocket he found the key and, hoping it was warm enough to not need a shot of ether, twisted the key to start.
After twenty seconds of cranking, the engine loped a round, which encouraged Bo. Cooling the starter for a minute, he reckoned he had about a minute of cranking left—a couple or three twenty second bursts—before they’d have to pull the truck out with the tractor and jump it off. About halfway through the second cranking, the engine caught and roughly loped and smoked like a smothered grassfire. “YES!” Bo burst out with a fist pump and a grin. In a few seconds the engine smoothed down and settled into the familiar lope he was used to.
Dropping it into reverse and gently feathering the throttle, the truck began to move backwards, then he felt the rear tires lose traction and start to spin. Oh well, in for a penny in for a pound, he thought. If I bury it the tractor’s still running. With that, he fed some throttle. Since it had only been a few hours since the rain, it had only penetrated a few inches into the black gumbo, and once he was through the slimy top layer, the tires bit into the drier dirt and made shallow ruts a couple of inches deep, with steady rearward progress.
Bo kept going backwards into the pasture until he could easily turn towards the driveway. Letting off the throttle, he dropped the transmission into DRIVE as soon as the engine returned to idle, and waited the split second for the transmission to catch in the forward gear. Gunning it and cutting the wheel hard right, he looked back to see double rooster tails shooting about twenty feet behind him as the truck shoved its front end through the soft top layer. Remembering to lay off at the last minute, he looked back again just as the roostertails disappeared a split second before they would have painted Sandie and her chair.
Parking the red gorilla in the side yard and leaving it to idle and charge the batteries, he grabbed a shovel and walked back out to the front and sure enough, he had cut a trench in the hay crust that prevented Sandie from following. Using the shovel, he filled it back in and spread some matted grass cuttings on the soft dirt, and Sandie drove across with a grateful “Thanks, hon.” As they continued towards the driveway beside Bo’s truck tracks, she continued, “I probably could’ve gotten through that rut, but it would’ve been a mess if I’d tried and not made it. Speaking of mess, do you realize just how CLOSE you came to me with that roostertail? You almost had a mudpuppy for a wife!”
Laughing, Bo retorted, “Yeah, I guess I let up a bit too soon.”
As he ducked away from her swat at him, he heard a shout and a bunch of yelling from inside the yard, with one female voice yelling loudly, “Quick, go get a gun!”
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 27, 2023 21:36:58 GMT -6
TWENTY TWO
“What on earth you want a gun for?” responded Phil to his wife's frantic cry.
“Just GET ONE!” repeated the panicked voice, as Bo burst into the clearing from where he had heard the first command.
“Whassamatter?” panted Bo, as he pulled up next to Janie, who was standing near the center of the front yard looking off past the side of the house, next to the chicken coop, nearing hyperventilation.
“S.... Sn.... Snake! A...an'.... and it's got LEGS!” stuttered the panicked woman, as she pointed at the woodpile beyond the coop.
“Oh, betcha I know what you saw,” grinned Bo as Phil sprinted down Sandie's ramp, twelve gauge at port arms. “Phil, false alarm. No big hurry.”
Bo walked over to the woodpile and gently poked around the edge of it, using a long branch just in case his hunch was wrong and there in fact was a snake in the woodpile. Sure enough, a poke brought a rustling of leaves and grass and a scurrying critter erupted from the stack of firewood and made a beeline for the house, heading for the only other dark, covered shelter within sprinting distance. A shriek and little dance from Janie Beth had the immediate effect of Polly and Sandie doubling over with laughter and the slightly delayed effect of the Texas Alligator Lizard skidding to an abrupt halt halfway to the house from the woodpile, warily glancing back and forth between the squeaking, wiggling biped, the two snorting and giggling pink hairless creatures, and back at the woodpile next to the other two-legged critter with the stick. With one last, wistful looking glance at the woodpile, the two foot long lizard darted for the corner of the house and dove underneath.
“What? What'd I miss?” asked Phil, who was blocked by the corner of the house from seeing the lizard's antics in response to the aural stimulation from all the humans in the yard.
“Oh, your wife's just meetin' the pets”, giggled Sandie, which brought a renewed round of snickering and snorting from everyone except Janie Beth, who still hadn't caught her breath.
“It.... it... it was HUGE!” Janie looked at Bo, who was beginning to regain his composure somewhat. “You tell me YOU wouldn't have freaked out if that thing had stuck its head out and looked right at you from ten feet away!” She glared at Bo in an amazing confluence of indignation, adrenaline, and defensiveness.
“Yeah, I can see where that would cause some concern for someone who wasn't expecting Henry to show himself,” allowed Bo, who couldn't keep from grinning nevertheless. “Just calm down a bit. Believe me, he was just as scared of you as you were of him.”
“Yeah, well, at least he doesn't have pants that almost needed changing!” Janie retorted, her adrenaline finally dissipated and her sense of humor returning.
*****
Finally settled back down after the lizard furor, the five adults sat around a fire that had been put together in the front yard to serve the dual purpose of providing a bit of light and burning some of the dead branches that had been shaken loose from the trees the day before.
“When should we head east?” Polly asked in the general direction of Bo and Sandie.
“I expect we could leave tomorrow morning, if nothing else jumps out at us,” replied Bo, with a stifled snicker and a veiled glance at Janie Beth. Turning to Sandie, he continued, “What do you think? You okay with Polly and me heading to my folks' house to see how they made out?”
“I guess, if Janie's comfortable with helping me out with personal stuff. She's done it before, but it's been years.” Sandie looked across at Janie Beth inquiringly.
“Hey, girlfriend, I told you way back then, right after your accident, you don't need to do anything but ask, and I'm there for you. Nothing's changed as far as what I'd need to know, has it?”
“Nope, except my hair's got some gray and I'm about twenty pounds heavier,” grimaced Sandie.
“Beats the alternative, though, doesn't it?” asked Janie rhetorically. “Sure, then, Bo, you and your sister go check on your parents. There's nothing your wife will need that I haven't already helped her with. I may not remember everything right off, but we'll get through it.”
Polly looked at Bo. “What are we gonna take, my truck or yours?”
“Mine,” replied Bo. “For one thing, I've got almost a hundred gallons of Diesel in it, and you have twenty gallons of gasoline, tops, in yours. Best save that, no telling how long before stations are gonna be open so you can refill. Besides, we get over to Dad's he's got two thousand gallons at the farm, and a hand pump on the tank. I can get more. You can't. He hasn't been keeping gasoline there since he retired, it tends to grow legs and go leap into the tenant's gas tank. And he only has five hundred gallons at his house. Let's not go over there expecting to take his fuel. Besides, that gasoline at the house is in an above ground tank, and they might have had enough wind to cause a problem either with blowing the tank around or knocking a tree down on it.”
“I'm sold. Let's load your truck up. What do you want to take? Should we pack a lunch?”
“Heh, I'm packing what we'll need for a week, sis. Everything we need. Food, water, shelter, protection. That's for starters. We may be several days getting there, depending on how things look up near San Patricio, and if we can't cross the Nueces there, we can either toss a coin and either go to Tilden or down to Corpus. Calallen and Three Rivers are out, because both of those have that huge vega that the highway crosses beside the river. It's not likely to either have washed out the road or the bridge supports, but there are a whole lot of trees lining the road at both of those bridges. Three Rivers would be better than Calallen, but that's only because I don't want to be stopped, hacking my way through a tree, obviously prepared for whatever, in an urban setting. City's gonna be more interested in getting the main part of town cleaned up, and the state never bothers with the Corpus area until last, even something like this won't bring 'em out.”
“That long?” Polly looked at Bo like he'd grown a third ear on his forehead. “Surely they've got the main roads cleared by now?”
“Polly, two things. First, it's only been a day. They'll be fighting their way in, not out working yet, and second--”
Bo grinned as Polly joined him to finish the line from the movie Airplane: “--Don't call me Shirley.”
“Well, if we're going to do it, let's get some sleep and see what tomorrow brings.” Sandie suggested to the group. “You two be thinking tonight about what needs to go with you, and write it down, then compare lists tomorrow morning and load up. That way you'll both independently come up with your own lists, and might think of something the other leaves out, and when you compare lists, you'll be able to add to each other, since the stuff on the other's list will trigger thoughts of your own.”
Both nodded at that wisdom, then Bo turned to Phil. “Clearly you saw the small collection of noisemakers I've got in the cabinet. What would you be most comfortable with keeping here, and I'll try to accommodate that when I'm picking my traveling 'companions'?”
“Got my own favorites in the car, Bo. I just grabbed your 12 gauge because it was closer. I'll be plenty set defensively with whatever you leave behind, if anything”, Phil assured Bo.
“Cool. I want to take my 500 and Little Brother,” Bo replied, referring to his Mossberg twelve gauge that had almost seen lizard duty and his model 85 Taurus, in .38 Special. “I think I can get away with that, with some slugs and some number six shot. That'll leave y'all the .30-30, and Buddy's model 600, plus that 1100 that nobody claims.”
With that discussion out of the way, Polly excused herself to go root through her pickup for things that they might need the next day, and transferred those items over to Bo's truck.
Bo walked out to the chickens and goats, peeking in by the dim moonlight at the critters that might just have a much more pivotal role in their survival than he could imagine at that time. Satisfied that the animals were safely bedded down for the night, he gazed off to the north, then looked up and said a silent prayer asking for a watch on his scattered family, which he was going to scatter a bit more in the morning in an attempt to bring some of it closer together. Now, he thought to himself, more than ever, we're going to need each other, either physically or for wisdom to draw on, thanking his Creator again that He had seen fit to continue smiling on Bo's parents' lives thus far, asking once again for them to be found safe and healthy.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 27, 2023 21:42:47 GMT -6
TWENTY THREE
If they weren't all awake before, they are now, thought Bo as the 7.3 liter Diesel exploded to life not ten yards from the side of the house. Bo watched the oil pressure gauge as it climbed into the safe zone, then, satisfied with the reading, climbed back out and went back in the house to carry out the last load of trip stuff, as he called it.
Sandie had in the past ribbed him about his apparent over preparedness when he would go out of town to work on a house, asking why he needed a couple changes of clothes, a hammock, a tent, a bedroll and pillow, food, a case of water bottles, and pots and pans all for a simple two hundred mile turnaround trip to mow grass. Occasionally when she'd go with him for a change of scenery, he'd add to the food, double the pillows, and blankets, plus throw in an inflatable mattress for her, all over her objections that it wasn't necessary.
One trip up into the rougher end of the Texas hill country, near Rocksprings, Sandie had gone with Bo and Buddy on an overnighter, cleaning up a location that was “a little remote” according to the property manager. “A little remote” turned out to be nineteen miles off the pavement, through a pass and two low-water crossings and even one stretch where the road followed the riverbed down the center of the stream for a few hundred yards. The further they got away from civilization, the quieter Sandie became. After six miles of dirt and rock track road and the short jaunt down the creek bed through four inches of running water, without seeing another house or even any signs of human existence, she allowed as to how Bo's preparations for the trip might have been worthwhile.
“I never know when they're going to phone me and give me something like this on a verbal work order,” reasoned Bo when she voiced her thoughts. “I'd rather have what I need than be able to close my eyes and see it on a shelf in the shed.”
“Yep, and from the look of the sky, you might just be one of the smartest guys I've ever come across,” replied Sandie as she looked off to the northwest at a thin but menacing line of dark gray just above the horizon.
Nine days later, the creek had gone down enough for them to extricate themselves and their supplies from the remote cabin. Since that time, Sandie had been completely on board with Bo's trip planning, and even participated in helping him plan for eventualities.
For this trip fifty miles east, across flat ground but having to cross one major river somewhere, Bo had packed his whole 'camp' into the bed of the pickup, along with enough food and drinking water to get not only him and Polly there and back, but also their parents, and brother and sister-in-law home from the coast.
Polly had opined that the other four should have stuff they could bring and questioned the need to take a bunch of supplies joyriding, to which Bo responded, “Look, I know we have the stuff here. I do not know what, if anything, they have there. Hurricanes can lose a lot of punch over fifty miles, and so what we rode through here cannot be used to even estimate what might have happened right on the Intracoastal. I'd rather expect that they're camping in the chicken coop with nothing but their own wits, and wind up hauling this stuff for nothing, than get there with nothing and wish we had it.”
“I see your point, Bo. What else do we need to bring out?”
“I think that does it. I did bring out a lantern, didn't I?”
“Didn't see it...No, there it is, in the back seat. Did you bring another set of mantles? They're pretty fragile.”
Bo thought a bit and replied, “Yep, there's a package of 'em in the glove box, but might want to grab another pack, it's not like they're going to take up lots of room, and I've got plenty so we're not going to be depriving the rest of 'em. OH! Glad you brought up lantern! Duh.... my truck's Diesel. Gonna need some gasoline for the lantern if we want to use it.” He grimaced and went to the tool shed where he fished around and brought out a gallon gas can which he carried around to the drum beside the shed and filled. Carrying it back to the truck, he grinned, “Thanks, sis!”
“Don't thank me, I didn't think of it.”
“No, but you kept the conversation going until it hit one of our brains that we need fuel for the lantern. That's why I never mind anyone double checking and all questions are welcome,” explained Bo.
Looking to the east as they walked toward the house to say goodbye, Bo saw it was starting to get just a little light in the sky. Inside, Polly fed her dogs and scratched them behind the ears, then came into the kitchen where Bo was filling two travel mugs with the rest of the first pot of coffee while Sandie was double checking their travel packing.
Satisfied that her husband and her sister in law had thought of everything she could think of, Sandie held out her arms for a hug. “How long do you figure?” she asked as Bo bent down to her open arms.
“At the earliest tomorrow night; Worst case, a week, or ten days. Depends on how much we have to do to get there, and how much help Mom and Dad need to get the storm's residue and damage tended to well enough to where they're not any worse off than they have to be. Fifty miles is a long way for a CB, but I won't plan on being more than a week without getting word to you somehow. Can probably relay through someone in Corpus if I've gotta get a hold of you. In fact, I'll keep the radio on and see if I can talk to someone on the way through who can listen for me and relay to you somehow. No matter what, we'll be back within a week, though. If it takes longer than three or four days to get them straightened out, I'll come back and let you know that, and if I have to, I'll go back. But I won't just stay until I'm through.”
“Good. It was bad enough when you'd get away and we had working cell phones, but this complete isolation could drive me nuts. Be safe, and be smart,” she instructed as she planted a kiss right on Bo's lips.
Returning the buss, Bo promised he'd be smart and be back. Grabbing his shotgun and turning to his sister, he asked, “Ready to head out?”
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 28, 2023 19:48:22 GMT -6
TWENTY FOUR
“Well, that wasn't bad, sis.” Bo complimented Polly on her tacos. “I wasn't expecting a real meal but I suppose you had plenty of time since we wound up stopping early.”
Apparently they were the first to travel the old county road from San Patricio to Edroy, and it was slow going. Power lines down were the most recent worry, and the biggest as far as safety. It had not rained enough to flood things, but was muddy enough in the black dirt to prevent off-roading. Even a four wheel drive would have bogged down in the sticky clay gumbo of San Patricio County, so that left the driving to Caliche or better.
Only three roads crossed the western end of the county, and two went through fair sized towns. Bo intended to bypass as much population as he could, not only to lessen the interaction with local police, who can get rather parochial during a disaster, but also to minimize the chances of having to part with some of the supplies that were intended to go to his folks or those that were intended to make their travel possible. Bo expected that he could wind through the county with only one town, population 125 or so, to pass directly through.
That had been uneventful, as Edroy was a farming community and most, if not all, of the residents there had either prepared themselves or had gotten on the interstate and headed out as soon as the winds started to pick up. Being a farming community, they all, whether hired hands or farmers, had access to fuel somewhere, and clearly had taken advantage of that availability, as there were only a half a dozen people to see in town. All were armed openly, some with a sidearm, others had a rifle or shotgun in easy reach. All responded in kind to a friendly wave, but neither Bo nor Polly was inclined to stop and visit, both having their parents' welfare and condition on their minds.
They had gotten around Odem and were about halfway through their trip, making decent time, when their schedule went out the window. Coming around a curve, Bo had had to hit the brakes hard when he saw a wind turbine tower laying across the road.
The aluminum tower was intact, and had fallen across the road about midway up the tower. At that point the four hundred foot tall pole was about twelve feet in diameter.
“Not gonna move that by pulling it off the road,” commented Polly as she gawked at the monstrosity blocking their way.
“Nope, we're probably going to have to backtrack a bit and see if one of these county roads goes through, and what's more find one that doesn't have one of these towers laying across it,” grimaced Bo as he thought of the size of the wind farm they were at the beginning edge of.
Covering some fifty thousand acres in the first phase, there were a couple hundred of the 1.5 megawatt generators scattered out to catch the steady wind coming off of Nueces Bay. Remembering that when they built the wind farm, the erectors had had to build roads from each base to another, simply because the rental of the huge crane required to stand the towers up and fit the generator heads on them added up to being cheaper to just drive it from one to the next instead of breaking it back down for transport. This meant that there was an extensive network of roadbeds through the area, so any road he could make out, he could use to weave through the wind farm.
After several bad turns and dead ends up against horizontal towers, they had made it a little more than halfway through the maze by sundown. Finding an equipment shed that was empty and dry, they chose to pull up about an hour before complete darkness and take advantage of the shelter. Bo backed in about halfway, and using the tailgate as their kitchen counter, Polly drug out the gasoline stove and then went to dig in the back seat of the cab for something to cook.
Bo, meanwhile, grabbed a pencil and a pad of paper and climbed the thirty foot tall water windmill next to the shed to get a bird's eye view of the rest of the 'minefield' of downed towers and plot a course for the next morning. Pulling the stenographer’s pad out of his waistband and the pencil out of his shirt pocket, he sat down on the service platform of the defunct, prop-less mill to sketch a map. Looking down, he noticed that his pencil was broken off, probably from the climb up the tower. Even with the necessity of sharpening, which he was completing with his pocketknife, Bo preferred a pencil to a pen for this type of task. For one thing, an ink pen wouldn't have merely broken, it would've left a huge reminder all over both his shirt and his chest. Second, a pencil will write almost anywhere but a pen will skip or run or just flat give up on a wet or greasy surface. Too many times, even body oil will cause a pen to skip a portion of a page when trying to make notes out 'in the field'.
Map sketched out, Bo was starting back down the tower when a movement caught his attention. In the corner of his eye he saw something scurry behind a cistern about fifty feet from the shed where they were camped. Bo continued down the tower as if he had seen nothing, fully realizing how vulnerable he was up there if there were people in the area who were willing to contest him for their gear. Glancing around as he descended, he saw another shed about a quarter mile to the south, but with its opening facing south or east, he couldn't tell what was in it, if anything. It was getting too dark to tell even if he could have seen into it, anyway.
Reaching the ground, Bo walked the twenty or so feet to 'their' shed to find Polly rolling out tortillas she had made to go with the canned ground beef, seasoned with whole comino and coarse ground oregano and a generous helping of chili powder, that was sizzling in the skillet. As Bo reached into the tool box of the truck for a rag, he quietly related to Polly what he'd seen while shinnying down the windmill. Taking the rag and pouring a couple of ounces of water on a corner of it, he wet his hands and with the bar of soap in the tray of the tool box he cleaned off what he could of the day's grime, then dried his hands with the remainder of the towel.
“Looks like I was a bit late coming back down,” he observed as she rolled out the last of the tortillas.
“Why's that?”
“Well, didn't do too good of a job of getting the dirt out from under my fingernails. If I'd have been back down in time to knead the tortilla dough, I could'a gotten 'em real clean.”
Dodging a swing from his sister put him back next to the cab of the truck, from where he could see the cistern and, beyond it, the other shed in the distance. Standing there, it dawned on him that most likely there were transients in the other shed, and that they knew there was company close by. They couldn't help but know: The wind was blowing directly from Polly's taco meat at the other tin shed.
“Think I know why we have lurkers,” Bo commented, explaining his revelation to Polly. “Probably someone traveling. Betcha also they weren't prepared to have to weave their way through this maze for so long, could be they don't have dinner.”
Figuring that the other people were either idiots with sinus problems, or they already knew Bo and Polly were there, Bo decided on a course of action. Walking out to the corner of the shed opening, he cupped his hands and hollered, “COME ON OUT! I KNOW YOU'RE THERE!”
After a few seconds pass, a voice comes back, “THERE'S ONLY TWO OF US, WE'RE HUNGRY AND OUT OF GAS!” With that, a man steps out from behind the cistern, his hands halfway raised in a clear indication that he meant no harm. Seeing that Bo wasn't pointing a weapon in his direction, he motioned to his companion who was still behind the concrete cistern, who ventured out warily, with an old single shot .22 at port arms.
Polly's business voice carried from the shadows inside the shed, “Break that rifle open, please. You don't need to unload it, but just break it open for me. I'd sure feel a lot less vulnerable and twitchy in the fingers.” The woman, or young boy, too far away to tell in the waning light, complied then they both walked toward the siblings.
“Mister, we don't mean any harm, but we got turned around in this maze and ran out of gas trying to get to Portland. Coming from Beeville, and got turned away in Sinton 'cause we weren't residents. Same in Taft. Split the middle to go into Portland the back way, and got tangled up in this,” he gestured vaguely at the surroundings. “Anyway, I work out of Beeville, live in Portland, and had my daughter with me when the storm hit. She was home from school that day, teacher's workday or some such, and so I took her and the wife's got our son.
“Wind kept coming up, and coming up, out of a funny direction, and I figured out what it was about the same time a few others of us in the office did, so we burrowed down there and rode out the edge of it there.
“Took us a day to scavenge a tank full of gas, I'd been out on my rounds all day, just made it in as the wind took the canvas off of the awning in front of the office, and when we went back out the next morning, the overhead tank of gasoline we were drawing from was laying on the ground, empty. With no electricity, no gas from pumps, the co-op was closed—they've been running their pumps off a generator and selling their gas—so we had to find some. Got several cans out of an old company truck that was parked out back, and lit out for home.” At this point the man's voice broke, and his daughter hugged him around the waist. “Neither of us has seen Mama or Bubba in three days.” He turned and directed his gaze towards Portland, about fifteen miles distant.
Polly spoke up, “Tortillas are ready. Would you two like a taco?”
The man looked down at his daughter and nodded in Polly's direction.
“Hon, come here and get one. Don't have but two plates with us but go ahead and take one.”
“Thank you, ma'am,” said the girl softly, and crossed over to the tailgate to roll a taco.
Bo looked at the man and extended his hand. “Name's Bo. You're welcome to share dinner with us if you like.”
“Ernest Torres. I will, and thank you for your hospitality. We carried some sandwiches with us that we made for the trip that was supposed to be only a day of work but finished them at noontime today, before we ran into this mess.” Ernest shook hands, then looked at the plate his daughter had put together. “Baby, go easy on the food, they weren't expecting to feed a couple more mouths,” he admonished his daughter.
“That's ok, I made some for you too. She said to,” replied the girl, indicating Polly with a nod of her head.
“My bad,” Bo said with a start. “Polly, Ernest; Ernest, Polly. And you are...?” Bo asked, looking at the taco-munching teen.
“Phrree,” she said, grinning and swallowing hurriedly. “Sorry, Sheree. This is GOOD!” she exclaimed, turning to Polly, who beamed at the compliment.
“Now that we all know each other's name, let's finish this up. Sheree passed the plate to her dad, and Polly handed Bo a taco she had rolled for him while he was dealing with the introductions, then rolled one for herself.
After eating, Sheree pitched in and helped Polly clean up and put things back up, while Bo and Ernest talked about the current events.
“Your truck's a gas-burner, you said?”
Ernest nodded. “You're running Diesel. Too big of a tailpipe for gasoline, plus the black fan on the fender behind your pipe. Leaving that wash like that, straight pipes?”
Bo grinned affirmatively. “You know your stuff, Ernest. And no, all we have with us is a gallon of gasoline, for the cook stove. Tell you what do. We're gonna go in past the high school and skirt the edge of town on our way to Ingleside. Going to check on my folks. Them and my brother rode out this storm there because my folks didn't want to leave. Brother went there for them, Polly came out to warn us about the storm and wound up staying in Bluntzer with us. She lives right on the Oso in Corpus and was watching the tide come up too far to be normal and, seeing the weird sky, put two and two together.”
“Upshot of my offer is, we can take you and Sheree to that side of town, but I would rather not fight my way through the whole town and whatever mess it's still in.”
“No problem, Bo. We only live about six blocks from the school, we can walk from there. I suppose the truck'll be okay where it is for a few days. I'll have to come get it once things get kinda normal. I'll just leave a note on the dashboard where it can be seen through the windshield and lock it up.”
“Good idea. Hey, if you'll excuse me a moment, I need to try to check in with my wife. It's about time, and I'm not sure if I can raise her on the radio, but I told her I'd try every night at the same time.”
Coming back and shaking his head to Polly, he announced, “Too far away. I thought I heard her once, but it wasn't clear enough to be sure. Hate to leave her worrying, but she knew when we left that it was iffy at best with one radio being a mobile.”
“C.B.?” Ernest asked.
“Yep, why?”
“I've got a base station at the house, and you're in luck. Unless a tree fell on the mast, it'll be in good shape. I had just bought a new antenna for it, and had it laying on the ground to replace it. Didn't get through before I had to go back to work, so it was laying alongside the back of the house when I left. Since you didn't get ahold of her tonight, just tell me what channel and when, and I'll try to raise her tomorrow night.”
Bo related the necessary information to Ernest, and asked him to call on channel 27 when he got the thing up, so he might pass along any news on the family, which Ernest eagerly agreed to do.
Plans made, the father and daughter got up and repeated their thanks for a meal, and headed towards the other shed, with plans to return at first light for a ride home.
After they left, sister and brother got out their nighttime gear, and by the light of the hurricane lantern set up their cots and chose watches. With Bo drawing the first one, Polly turned in and Bo turned the light down to extinguish it, and took up his position on a three-legged folding stool beside the front of the pickup.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 28, 2023 19:56:13 GMT -6
TWENTY FIVE
The drive in to Portland at dawn was uneventful. Since it was only a few blocks into the edge of town, Bo offered to drive Ernest and his daughter to their house. His reason for this was to know where the man lived. He wouldn't bother Ernest unless absolutely necessary, and if Ernest thought the same of Bo, and was on the level, he would take Bo up on the offer, which he did.
Pulling up in front of the ranch-style home midway down a city block, Polly scanned the neighborhood and, keeping her head on a swivel, stepped out of the back seat and stood aside while Sheree extricated herself. Polly had ridden in the back seat not only as a gesture of respect for Ernest, but to be sure she could keep an eye on him unobtrusively. She didn't like the idea of both her and Bo having their backs to a recent acquaintance at the same time; even though this man appeared genuine, there are some good actors in the world. She'd rather have given him the seat of honor in the truck and been able to watch him than sit up front and have to wonder what, if anything was going on behind her.
The front door of the house flew open and a boy of about five years raced out, making a beeline for Ernest. “Daddy! Daddy! We were worried about you!” With that, he grabbed his dad's leg in a ferocious hug and looked over. “Oh. Hi sis.”
Bo and Polly looked at each other and suppressed grins. Normal brother and sister, both were thinking. Next out the door was a striking woman of about an age with Ernest. Obviously his wife, and equally obvious they were a close couple, Ernest skip-hopped stiff legged across the yard towards her, with his son still hanging from his leg. Sheree joined in a family moment, and then everyone started talking at one time.
After this had gone on for a few minutes, Bo motioned to his sister to get back in, and she did, giving her door a decent but not overbearing slam, but enough to get the attention of the reunited family, who looked over as one and all started to talk in the direction of Bo and Polly.
Ernest and his wife looked at each other, laughed, and walked over to the window on Polly's side.
“I want to thank you both for bringing my husband and daughter home,” said the woman, extending her hand towards the open window. “I'm Tina. Nice to meet you.”
“My name's Polly, that's my brother, he goes by Bo.”
Bo gave a wave and returned the greeting, “Nice to meet you. Very well-mannered young lady you've raised there. She helped out after dinner last night without anyone even having to ask her, and that's rare at that age.”
“They fed you dinner?” exclaimed Tina, looking at her husband who nodded and started to say something but was cut off by Tina's turning back to the truck. “You don't go anywhere. I'll be right back,” she ordered as she turned and briskly headed for the house, returning with a brown paper sack folded over at the top.
“Here's some jerky I made from Ernie's last deer. Oh, and there's a dried sausage in there too. He had a bit of luck last winter when he went out to his uncle's place across the river. Got a nice buck and a pretty good size hog too. I jerked the venison, but I didn't make the sausage, some friend of his uncle's did, so don't blame me if it's a little too peppery. I like it, but it may be too much for a gringo. Anyways, I want you to have something to replace what they ate, and what you ate too, considering you gave them a ride in and all. What? Did I do something wrong?” asked Tina, as Bo stared at Ernest, squinting a bit. “I didn't mean anything by that gringo comment”.
Bo cut her off, “Don't worry, no offense taken. But Ernest, tell me, who's your uncle?” Bo asked, in a tone that indicated he already knew the answer.
“Aw, he's a cop over in Nueces. Name's Julio. Goes by J.B. Why?”
“Because I already know what that sausage is going to taste like,” Bo said, with a grin spreading across his face.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I made it. I must've missed you by an hour or two that day; you left the deer and hog hanging when you got called. You were on call that weekend weren't you?”
Ernest laughed, “I sure was. J.B. really had me going when I got back. Told me coyotes had hauled the hog off. It was hanging a bit lower than the deer in that tree and I believed him. Then a week later he showed up with a whole cooler full of dried sausage!”
Bo joined in the laughter, “Yeah, I got a six pointer that afternoon, and told J.B. that I'd have to get me a hog and make some sausage. Told me I could have a shoulder off this one if I'd make the rest of it into dried sausage as a Christmas present for his nephew.
“I should've put two and two together, but Torres is kinda a common name, it just never occurred to me.”
“Wait. What's your last name, Bo?”
Bo told him and Ernest slapped his thigh. “No wonder. I've never met you but my uncle talks about you all the time. Says you're the one who helped him get his place back into shape when they moved back from Laredo years ago. He speaks very highly of you. I can see why.”
Humbled by the compliment, Bo looked away for a moment, and then turned back. “Well, y'all are as good as family then, because J.B. speaks pretty highly of you too, Ernie. You're welcome to the ride, and y'all need anything just holler at me or Dad. My dad knew your grandpa, I'd bet. You ever hear your granddad talk about 'Huicho'?”
“El patrón? My granddaddy was born on y'all's farm, then, about eight miles north of here! I guess we are family, then!”
“No, el patrón was my granddaddy. His son, my dad, everybody called Huicho. He's the guy we're going to go check on in Ingleside. He and Mom have lived there since 1956, and we couldn't get 'em to leave for this storm, so my brother went to stay with them, and we haven't heard from 'em, so we're taking a drive to see what's up. And we need to get going, if we're gonna have any daylight to do anything today.”
“Well then, git. Call me if you need anything, any help. I've got my own truck here, that was the company truck that Sheree and I were in. I can be over to help if you need anything. Got chainsaw, even got a little 9N over at my dad's place in Gregory I can go pick up. If it's still there, that is... Ever since Pop passed away last year, we've been worried about stuff walking off from his land, but between brother and me, we get over there every day in normal times.”
“Thanks for the offer, Ernest, and I might wind up having to take you up on it. What channel do you keep your base on?”
“Fourteen. Why don't you just monitor 14 while you're over here, if you need me holler. I'll check in with you either there or on 27 when I get the tower back up.”
Plans made, Bo and Polly headed east for the last ten miles of their trip, both wondering what was ahead, and both somewhat more secure knowing that someone was a short drive away. As it turned out, it wasn't much help when Bo rounded the last curve on the road into Ingleside and had a split second decision to make.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 29, 2023 21:58:58 GMT -6
TWENTY SIX
“What the h--” exclaimed Bo as he came around the first bend of an S-curve and jumped for the brake pedal. What he saw was an old International dump truck at an angle, blocking the left hand lane of the two eastbound on the four-lane highway, with its nose a good four feet into the slow lane, forcing traffic onto the shoulder and then back onto the road in a tight turn, as there was a backhoe sitting on its trailer just up the shoulder past the truck. From this point, due to the curves in the road, town was still out of sight.
That thought hit Bo's mind almost simultaneously with the visual, which just looked wrong. His immediate decision was, this doesn't look natural. It is definitely not car trouble. I cannot see what's past that dump truck, and I can't blow through it with the heavy stuff and the tight turns. Almost before his foot had applied any pressure to the brakes, he had made his decision. “Get down!” he barked at his sister, who screwed herself down onto the floorboard as if kneeling to say a prayer before bedtime, and poked the 12 gauge, which she had been holding butt on the floor and muzzle up between her right knee and the door, out the window.
Bo feathered the brakes just enough to keep from locking them up, and dove for the center ditch, coming out on the other side in a spray of mud and grass, going the wrong way in the oncoming fast lane. Polly got her bearings and settled herself in, ready to do business if needed as they passed the angled dump truck as Bo firewalled the old Diesel, which did little more than increase the amount of black smoke and horrendous noise coming out the tailpipes, but at least he felt like he was doing something.
Polly saw a figure with a rifle crouched down beside the rear wheels of the parked International, facing towards where they had been expected to go. Shifting her glance to the backhoe parked on the shoulder ahead, she could make out a head and shoulders over the front bucket, also facing the gauntlet. This one was looking directly at the old red Ford, and as soon as Polly saw the movement of the rifle, or shotgun, she sent a load of BB shot at the backhoe. Cranking the pump, knowing she had chambered a shell filled with 00 buck, she glanced at dump truck dude while keeping the shotgun pointed in the direction of the backhoe.
By this time, Bo had the truck back up to enough speed where they'd be out of sight of this particular trap in seconds, as the second sweep of the S-curve was approaching rapidly. Centered in the set of curves was an intersection, which afforded them a nice wide crossover, eliminating the need to dive back into the ditch to get back to the eastbound lanes. All terrain tires squalling in protest, he dog-legged the truck across the crossover and fought the drift that was trying to carry the rear end around. Finally getting the not-so-nimble twenty-two year old stock truck under control, he looked over, where Polly was returning to a more normal seating position.
“Did that just happen?” she asked as she crouched and looked through the passenger side door mirror at...nothing, but a wall of bay brush and scrub mesquite. They were out of sight of the roadblock/trap.
“Yeah, it did. Quick thinking, thanks,” Bo replied. “I guess things are not normal over here. Bad sign. I'm betting town's not looking too—oh, my goodness—” Bo said quietly as he hit the brakes again, not caring if he locked them up this time.
Polly took her gaze off their back trail and looked out the windshield in reaction to Bo's words and her jaw dropped. There wasn't an intact building to be seen.
In the fashion of contemporary building, the edge of town through which they were approaching had been built up in the last decade by bulldozing the land flat, removing all the native trees, then building whatever is to be built, and returning landscaping to the premises. As a result, the area had no natural windbreaks: They had all been cut up, bulldozed, and pushed into a pile and dealt with. Older subdivisions and commercial development had been built around and between the trees, leaving the sturdy live oaks and mesquite growth. In doing this, the older buildings were sheltered from the brutal winds of a hurricane, and were able to withstand the hundred-plus mile an hour winds much more handily than a building with a few young trees which was, in effect, sitting on a prairie with nothing to break the force of the wind.
The results were disastrous, and scattered everywhere. Whole roofs were gone from some buildings, and apparently were laying in zillions of pieces across the road. Driving down the highway into town was not going to happen until the road was cleared by something with a bucket or blade. The apartment complex on the north side of the road was reduced to a few one-story-tall walls, with no roof and very little evidence of a second floor above those walls. Next door to that, the Motel 6 was only a concrete slab, littered with lumber and scraps of plywood. Equal destruction across the road, where another motel had stood, and a strip mall/truck stop was still standing but on closer inspection, the roof was gone, and all that remained were the block walls.
“Let's try the old Main Street,” suggested Polly. “Nothing's been built over there in this craze.” Both sides of that road were owned by Humble Oil, and nothing had happened on that land in Bo's or Polly's lifetime. From that point all the way to their parents was “old” Ingleside, meaning it had lived through Hurricane Celia in 1970 with very little damage, and was probably not as heavily damaged as the north part of town was.
“I guess that explains why we haven't seen anybody heading west on the highway,” mused Bo. “Could also be a pretty good reason why that trap was set up there. Nobody to bother 'em from town. Not too many people know about the track that used to be old Main, and even fewer knew it was passable and even still paved in most places, under the grass growing through it.
Bo swung wide towards the shoulder and cut the wheel to make a sweeping U turn, back to the crossover he had just used to get back on the correct side of the road, and used it again to make a left turn onto what looked like an abandoned railroad right of way, which although an abandoned right of way, was actually an abandoned state highway.
A half mile of creeping down what Bo and Polly remembered as “Party Lane” from high school, they emerged at the football stadium onto a relatively clear city street on the southwest edge of town.
“Let's skirt town for now,” Bo suggested in a tone that made it an announcement of his intentions rather than a proposal open for debate. He followed the road down between the stadium and the high school and turned up the service drive between the high school and junior high, curving around behind the cafeteria and onto another city street which would come out on the farm-to-market road going past their childhood home.
Driving through the parts of town they did have to enter, they were both awestruck at the damage. While not as complete as out on the highway, the apparent power of the storm was nevertheless impressive. Not a single structure had escaped some sort of visible damage, with a part of a roof off here, a tree down across a corner of a house there, windows broken in other places. Strangely, though, they had not come across a single living soul since the encounter with the two manning the roadblock. No drives were cleared, doorways looked unused. Bo offered to his sister that it looked eerie.
“Creepin' me out, Bo,” came her reply. “Nobody, I mean nobody, is out dealing with their stuff, and it's been two days, two full days. And these houses aren't destroyed. I mean, everybody couldn't have evacuated, look at all the cars in the driveways.”
Bo nodded, and frowned. “Yeah, it's like they were beamed up or something. Wonder if they did force an evacuation, being as it's on the coast here?”
“No, Bo, that doesn't jive with them keeping the whole storm story quiet. Remember, they had somehow gagged the radio stations,” countered Polly.
“I suppose you're right, but if I crank my tinfoil hat down a bit tighter, I'd suggest that there were enough Navy personnel in town who knew what was coming, they just declared some sort of disaster and forced an evacuation. Could've even acknowledged the storm and, remember, the phones went down as well, so even if they did announce a coming hurricane here in town and immediately transported everyone out, they couldn't get the warning out. Think about it: Do we even know if Mom and Dad are at home? They couldn't have called us, phones were down.”
Sobered by that thought, Polly turned to look out the windshield at what looked eerily like a movie set, prepared for shooting a disaster movie. Turning to look out the side window, she furtively reached a hand up to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye.
Grimly lost in his own thoughts, Bo continued on the way, turning onto the state road leading out the south end of the town and, dodging debris scattered here and there, picked his way towards his parents' place.
Slowing at the oyster shell driveway he had traveled every day so many years ago as he drove to school, he pulled in and nosed up to the gate.
“Well, sis, we've got things to do,” he declared over the clacking of the idling engine, as the two of them gazed at a fifteen foot tall wall of undisturbed debris.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 29, 2023 22:05:06 GMT -6
An aside here: This was written in 2011, if I recall correctly. Hurricane Harvey made initial landfall a few miles north of Ingleside in 2017. The destruction that I describe here is fairly accurate, especially in the contrast between the new and old construction methods. Harvey was kinda hard on Ingletucky, especially the newer, exposed-with-no-established-trees buildings. No, nobody set up an armed roadblock in the S-curve...and no, the wall of debris was only about 8 ft. tall at Mom's gate, glad I wasn't right about it ALL!
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 29, 2023 22:10:40 GMT -6
TWENTY SEVEN
Six hundred feet away, a walkie talkie was keyed twice. This was in response to hearing a Diesel engine slow down and stop on the highway. Confirmation came from an orange bicycle pennant flag whipping straight up and smacking into the front porch screen wall, making a muffled but distinct sound that drew the young man’s attention and caused him to double click the little FRS radio he had in his pocket. A series of three quiet bursts of static replied. This meant that whoever was upstairs understood that there was an unknown sitting at the gate on the road, and had clearly driven over the twine that had been laid.
Work had been going on ever since the wind laid. A path had been cleared in from the side, actually a tunnel through the bottom six feet of brush, using only a pair of loppers, winding around the larger downed trees and branches and leaving a canopy overhead.
Down that path pounded two sets of feet clad in tennis shoes, only to stop halfway to neighbor’s house and turn north down another cleared path that headed towards the road, about fifty feet from the driveway entrance. Quietly, the owners of those feet approached the thin veneer of brush left at the end of the path, left there to camouflage the fact that there were indeed people still in Ingleside. Silently, the lead figure raised a hand and signaled a stop. A whispered plan was laid out. “You stick here. I’m gonna go up and see who it is, just like we planned. Something happens to me, get your butt back and let’s hope they think I’m alone here.”
The younger one didn’t like it, but this is what they had planned. They knew there was plenty of firepower at the house to take out whoever was in one vehicle at the gate, but neither of them wanted to advertise their presence to the wrong people.
Neither of these two had any formal (or even informal) training in sneaking with any degree of stealth, but necessity can do strange things to a person, and the desire to not climb into the school buses that were accompanied by FEMA personnel in Homeland Security border patrol Blazers brought out the best they’d learned from their dad when he’d take them hunting.
Step by step, easing one foot down at a time, the end of the cleared path, and also the road, came closer. Hardly daring to breathe, down on the ground, inching forward to get a glimpse of what was out in the highway right of way. Scooching forward, sand in every imaginable orifice, a view was finally afforded of a rather decrepit-looking, faded, old red pickup with two heads visible in the side window. It looked right, but there were a zillion of those older Fords running around south Texas. Time to just hang out and watch until there was a definite identification.
***************
Polly kept looking at the wall of brush and wondering why nobody had tried to cut out yet. “You suppose anyone’s in there, bro?”
“Sure doesn’t look like it, Pol. If Lee Roy was here, seems he’d have cut the driveway out like Dad did in ‘70. They’d at least be working on it, middle of the day like it is now. It’s dead quiet. Come to think of it, you hear anything?”
Polly cocked her head to listen, but the fresh silence of the engine being shut off less than two minutes before was overwhelming. “No, I can’t hear a thing after a ride with that noisy monstrosity under your hood. I oughtta be able to hear a chainsaw, or some whacking from an axe, or something though.”
Bo was nearing a breaking point. He had expected to come get his folks and brother, and bring them home. He had definitely not expected to find the place appearing uninhabited and no clue where they might have gone. Imagination started to run on him, from looters after the storm coming in from the bay side, which he hadn’t been able to see yet, all the way to a forced evacuation and with the horror stories of the Superdome and other borderline retarded antics of the Feds, Bo was definitely not as cool and collected as he knew he needed to be. If I’m this close to losing it, Pol’s closer, he thought to himself. Best not let her see that, or else we’ll both be useless, and right now we gotta figure out what happened and who and where. Need to get to the house. That’ll maybe tell us if they’re evacuated or … or something worse.
Bo had to get out. The thought of something worse was just giving him a real claustrophobic time, sitting in the cab of that truck. He opened the door and stepped out, head on a swivel for anything strange or out-of-place.
************
“Dammit,” came softly from the ground just inside the brush. There was just enough foliage still on the few feet of shield in front, just enough to keep from getting a good look at the driver, who had stepped out first, on the wrong side of the truck from the observation point.
Scope, thought the watcher. I might can see who it is through the scope. Carefully and soundlessly, the .243 slid into position and an eyeball acquired a sight pattern.
************
“Bo. Something’s in the brush, about fifteen yards out my door. I just saw something,” Polly whispered urgently to her brother.
“What’d you see?”
“Not sure. Caught some movement out of the corner of my eye, and when I turned to look, I couldn’t see anything. I’m getting spooked big time, though.”
“Could be just a critter of some sort maybe?” mused Bo.
“No, it was more like a twinkle, a flash of light, I don’t know how to describe it. I didn’t really see it, it was more like I sensed it somehow.”
This was creeping Bo out too, and he kept the door post of the truck between his head and where he was pretty sure his sister was talking about, and warned her to do the same. “Lean back just a bit, where you’re kind of hidden behind the door pillar, sis. What you just described was a pair of binoculars or a scope you’re catching a reflection off of.” Bo quietly continued, “If you can’t pinpoint exactly where you saw it, its best if we keep a bit of metal between us and it, whatever ‘it’ is.”
***************
Damn, I can’t see anything through the scope either. They’re hidden behind truck parts. The prone observer pondered options, none of them appearing to be a good end to this Mexican standoff.
*************
“BREAK 27. BO, GOTCHER EARS ON? GOT THE ANTENNA UP, TALKED TO YER WIFE, ALL’S OK THERE.” The metallic sounding voice boomed from under the hood of the pickup. Bo had his CB set up to feed to an external speaker under the hood when the key was off, and had forgotten to turn the volume down when he shut the truck off, and the extra loud voice had him scrambling for the radio to turn it down.
**********
Grinning, the watcher in the brush drew a deep breath. “Dad? Aunt Polly?” and rose up to go greet them as she saw them both turn with a start towards the voice with confused but happy looks dawning on their faces.
“Renee? What on earth you doing over there in the bay bushes scaring the pants full on us?” cried Bo as he came around the front of the truck to see his daughter step out into the highway right-of-way. “What are you doing out here with Pawpaw’s .243 all by yourself?”
From behind Bo came another voice, not that of Polly. “She’s not alone.”
Whirling around, he saw his other daughter step out of the brush not ten feet from the driver’s door of the pickup, holding a Ithaca model 37 pump twelve gauge pointed at the ground, and holding a big grin on her face.
Just then another voice piped up. “Yep, Pop. You might say you’re surrounded.” Looking up, Bo saw Buddy in the top branches of a partially toppled hackberry tree, finding him only by following his voice, as Buddy stood up on a six inch branch and stretched, grinning down at his dad. “Man, that was tough, getting up here without you hearing me, and then staying down. Couldn’t tell who it was, looked like your truck, but if I’d of stood up to get a good look and it wasn’t you, I’d been exposed.”
“Me too,” piped up Renee, “I couldn’t move around to see around the leaves, and I knew you’d gotten another old truck, but didn’t know for sure what it looked like.”
“Well, why don’t one of you show us how to get to the house, and we can have our group hug there, instead of out here in plain view.” Bo was getting a bit nervous, being out in the open like they were, as it dawned on him that his kids were so suspicious of people stopping out front. Motioning to the truck, he asked, “Where can I get this thing out of sight and safe?”
With Buddy’s help, and Bo’s utter disregard for the finish on the old truck, after several tries they managed to jam it backwards into the brush far enough to drag a few branches out in front of it and do an adequate job of concealing it from casual lookers.
“Oh, one last thing before we go towards the house. Won’t be a second,” said Bo as he reached back into the truck and keyed the mike on the CB. “Hey, Ernest, I’m here, holler back out west and tell ‘em we got here and I’ll have more to report tonight about dark.”
Ernest’s voice crackled back through the speaker, “Ok, bud, will do.”
Bo hung the mike back up, turned away from the truck, and said, “Okay, let’s go get that reunion over with.”
|
|
|
Post by gipsy on Jan 30, 2023 11:12:50 GMT -6
Cool beans
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 30, 2023 21:39:35 GMT -6
TWENTY EIGHT
“Um, Dad, about that reunion,” began Buddy after they had gotten out of sight of the highway, not quite sure where to go from there.
“What?”
“We got here yesterday afternoon. There’s nobody here. Papaw, Granny, Lee Roy, nobody.”
Bo thought about that, and as the four walked down the path through the piled brush, Renee asked the obvious to her siblings: “Did either of y’all check in the garage to see if one of the cars is missing?”
After a couple of Homer Simpson-style “DOH!” reactions, Bo went straight to the side door of the three car garage, finding it locked from the outside with the combination padlock. Opening the door revealed a pair of Crown Victorias, one black, the other white. Looking beyond those into the far bay of the three car garage he saw the nose of his dad’s pickup.
“Nope, all the cars are here. Reckon Lee Roy got ‘em to leave, is about all I can think of,” observed Polly to the others as her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the interior of the garage. “Now, the sixty four dollar question is, where to?”
“Y’all go look for some answers. I’ll hang loose outside and make sure nobody sneaks up on us,” piped up Renee. “Somebody best stay outside and keep an eye out, I’ll do it now.”
“Good idea, Renee,” complimented Polly. “I’ll go around behind the garage and keep an eye out towards the bay.”
Thinking there might be a clue as to where and under what circumstances the four might have removed themselves, Bo walked over behind the white car and pulled the rope to release the garage door from its opener, and lifted the door to let some light into the windowless garage. It wasn’t windowless, strictly speaking, but the windows had been painted over for privacy’s sake. Bo’s dad didn’t like the idea of a stranger being able to glance in the garage and notice whether there was a vacant space, and finding one develop some unsavory plans. The downside to this security measure resulted in the tomb-like atmosphere in the garage when the doors were closed.
Bo heard the click and the noise of the rollers as Buddy did the same to the door behind the pickup at the far end, and in the now well-lit garage, the four poked around for clues.
“Strange they didn’t leave a note or something,” commented Bo. “Doesn’t look like they took anything from inside here, either. There’s no bare spots, you know, where there’s no dust, like something was sitting there a few days ago.”
“Same thing in the house,” piped up Annette. “That’s what has had me wondering, and kinda worrying about them. You’d think they’d at least have taken some food or something, and I didn’t even see any empty holes in the pantry.”
“Stranger and stranger,” murmured Bo, as he poked around in the odds and ends on his dad’s workbench. “Makes me wonder if Lee Roy even made it over here. Cordless drills are still pulled apart, plugged into their chargers, which are plugged into the wall. Means they haven’t been used since the power went out. Lookit, the freezers are all plugged into the generator, but the chargers for the cordless drills are still plugged into the wall.” Bo motioned to the generator sitting by the garage door, with its exhaust pointed towards the door opening, and two twelve gauge extension cords connected to the face and running off in separate directions to various appliances. One of the cords was probably the one that snaked under the side entry door of the detached garage and made its way across the drive to the house, where the kitchen fridge would be supplied by the same generator, a 7500 watt Sears unit with electric start and recoil backup.
Bo walked over to the chest deep freezer and lifted the two five gallon water jugs off the top of it. The jugs kept the seal closed tightly on the twenty year old freezer, which amounted to it running about two thirds as much as it otherwise would. Lifting the lid, he poked around inside. Finding a bucket of ice cream, he lifted it and pushed the sides together with his hands to find it soft, but still cold enough to be frosting instead of sweating out in the humid eighty degree garage air. Putting it back in the chest, he felt a few meat packages and found them still hard.
“Did y’all run the generator since you’ve been here?” Bo asked nobody in particular, and was rewarded with a chorus of nos. “Well then I’d say they’ve been gone less than a day,” he continued. “Stuff is starting to warm up but nothing is thawing yet. Haven’t lost any of it yet.”
“Want me to fire up the generator and chill it all back down, Dad?” asked Renee from the doorway, as she scanned the clearing and into the knocked down brush.
“No, I’d rather not, it’s not crucial to get it cold right this instant, and I’d like to get a better guess what happened before making so much noise,” came the reply. Bo didn’t want anything to hinder any of their senses. Things were just not adding up right. “Did y’all go inside?”
“Nope. Side door is padlocked, and none of us know the combination. That’s how we knew they weren’t here,” answered Renee from the doorway.
Bo nodded, and left the garage, walking toward the side door of the house. His folks’ house actually had two front doors and no back door. The “old front door” faced the bay and the closed, abandoned, and re-claimed Ocean Drive which used to run along the shore. When Bo was a toddler and Polly was still in diapers, his parents had built an addition on the house which included a new entry facing the new highway, "behind" the house. The old back door to the house wound up in the middle of the building, and a hallway down the old back wall of the house led to the laundry room and then to the outside. This side door was the most used access to the house.
“So what’d y’all do last night?” asked Polly, walking towards the group at the door.
“Pitched a tent in the yard,” grinned Annette as she pointed at a pile of bags and backpacks stashed behind the compressor unit of the central air conditioner near the corner of the house. “Hoofed it in from about a half mile down the beach, parked at the edge of the city park and walked down the water’s edge. Didn’t see a soul all the way here from the park. Didn’t want to, really, but it didn’t matter because nobody was there to see.”
Snapping the lock open after rolling the tumblers to the appropriate setting, Bo opened the door and looked into the darkened hallway. Although satisfied that the house was unoccupied simply from the presence of the padlock on the outside of the door, he nevertheless drew his revolver and, followed by Polly with her twelve gauge and Buddy with his, they entered and fanned out to secure the house.
After a thorough sweep of the house, four of the five met in the kitchen, Renee having stayed outside to continue her watch.
“Polly, you go root --gently!-- through their bedroom and see if you can find anything out of place or missing that might give us some idea what’s happened. Buddy, you and Annette start with Polly’s and Lee Roy’s old bedrooms, do the same as Polly. I’m going to go check out Dad’s office and see what’s out of place. Knowing Dad, it’ll be easier to find what’s in its place,” grinned Bo as he tried to take a bit of the edge off the dread they were all feeling.
Bo headed towards the corner of the house where his dad had his office, where for years the farm’s books and records were kept. Stopping in the hallway under the stairs leading up to his old room, he pulled a chair out from the wall and positioned it under the upstairs stair landing. In the face of that protrusion was an air conditioning vent. Bo stood up on the chair and reached up and pulled the diffuser off the vent and reached inside as far as his arm could reach and felt the wall of the air duct. At the far end of his reach was a steel band of the sort that sheet metal installers used to suspend the ducts. The fact that it was inside the duct work was not surprising, as sometimes cramped quarters dictate suspending the things in strange ways. However, neither this duct nor the steel support band had anything to do with handling conditioned air. This diffuser and accompanying duct were cosmetic only. When Bo grabbed and pulled on the strap, it gave just a bit and when released, it returned to its original position. Bo withdrew his arm, replaced the diffuser, and after climbing down he returned the chair to its resting spot by the wall. He then went into the office and opened the closet door and parted the coats and such that hung in there to reveal a small door precision built into the back wall of the closet, slightly ajar. Opening the door, he was relieved to find the coin bags full of Mercury dimes still where they belonged, and closed the semi-hidden door.
The combination of the weight of the boxes of dimes and the closing of the hidden door tripped a latch on the other side of the room. Bo walked over to the wall panel to the right of his dad’s desk and, hooking his fingers behind the trim of the window, pulled. The wall came soundlessly towards him, revealing a four foot wide floor to ceiling hidey hole. It was not very deep, only the depth of a two by six stud wall and the two layers of brick veneer inside and out, but it was completely hidden from a casual glance. The foot-deep recess was a hollowed out section of the outside wall of the house, with the brick faces of the hidey hole being half-inch faux bricks stuck to a quarter inch steel plate. Both sides of the cabinet were the ¼ inch steel as well, with hinges welded to the plate to soundlessly swing the four hundred pound door into the room, revealing a secure and very well hidden gun cabinet. The only problem with this was that there were no empty spaces in the cabinet, thus offering Bo not a single clue as to the whereabouts of his folks.
Now what, thought Bo to himself. This is SO unlike them. He couldn’t fathom what would make his folks calmly abandon all their fifty-plus years’ worth of belongings. With nothing missing and no signs of a struggle of any sort, it was as if they had just gotten up and walked out.
Deciding that all he can do is all he can do, Bo concluded that until he knew more, they were just going to have to hope that the folks were someplace safe. Unless or until he found something to point him to where they, and possibly Lee Roy and his wife, had gone, more worry and dwelling on it would do nothing but hinder Polly, the kids, and him.
Latching the cabinet with a firm push, Bo turned to go see what, if anything, his sister might have uncovered in their parents' bedroom.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 30, 2023 21:47:11 GMT -6
TWENTY NINE
Sandie closed the oven door after sliding a half-sheet laden with coated chicken parts onto the top rack. Twisting the thermostat on the old propane stove to 350 degrees, she thanked Bo silently yet again. Thanked him not for having a thirty year old stove, rather, she was thinking of the ability to use the oven without any electricity for the igniter. The old stove had standing pilots on the cook top as well as inside the oven. Newer, "energy efficient", ranges had a glow plug in the oven which required electricity to heat up, and only when it heated sufficiently would the safety mechanism in the thermostat open up and allow gas to pass to the burner. When Bo had brought the appliance home she had made fun of it as a prop from “That 70’s Show,” but it hadn’t taken but one power outage to change her attitude towards the butt-ugly baby-poo yellow(ish) range. Patting its ‘forehead’ right above the oven controls, she smiled at Bo’s doggedness in preparing their home in ways she didn’t understand at the time.
She wheeled out onto the porch and down the front ramp and brushed the crumbs from the leather welder’s apron onto the ground. Working around hot things in the kitchen, and having no feeling in her lap, she had taken to wearing the heavy leather apron ever since a pan of spaghetti sauce had burped on her and scalded her thighs in a few small spots. Knowing how far from town they were, she did not want to have to disrupt everything for a preventable trip to the emergency room if something more serious were to happen.
“What’s for dinner?” came the voice from behind her. Turning, she saw Phil and Janie Beth walking towards her from the garden.
“Chicken,” she replied. “What’d you find out there to go with it?”
“Oh, a few scraggly green beans left on the plants after the wind and rain beat ‘em up, and some squash.” Phil gestured at the north end of the garden. “Those turnips got beaten up pretty bad but they’re trying to perk back up, I think they’ll go ahead and plump out. Greens are gone but only hicks and hillbillies eat the greens.”
Sandie gazed at him intently for a long moment. “Which are you calling me, Phil? Bo’s gotten me to eating them and they’re pretty darn tasty with bacon and onions cooked in with ‘em.”
Phil couldn’t hold his straight face any longer and started to snicker. “I like ‘em too, it’s just that we don’t grow greens ourselves and you can’t get ‘em in the store in Illinois. Too many rabbits in our neighborhood. I just trap the rabbits,” Phil grinned.
“And he makes me skin ‘em and cook ‘em,” Janie Beth chimed in with a mock complaint. Grinning, she continued, “With what they live on in our yard and our neighbors’ yards, they sure taste good, too. And a lot cheaper than going to the store.”
“You got that right,” replied Sandie. “You seen even hamburger meat lately? Three something a pound for the cheap stuff!” She shook her head. “Just a couple years ago it was a buck and a half a pound on regular price, and easy to find at 99 cents on sale! That’s when Bo got Larry, Curly, and Moe. Figured it’d be cheaper to raise our own meat and butcher the fellas when they get big enough, even if we had to buy food through a drouth for ‘em, which we have had to do. Still, they’ve only gone through eight of the ten round bales we bought, and at six hundred and fifty dollars for three steers’ worth of beef, I don’t know what it is per pound, but it’s sure less than three bucks.”
Janie Beth nodded, “Yeah, a lot less. You guys are lucky to have all this room to do what you’re doing. Is that why you moved here, where you did?”
“No, not really. Not me, anyway. I was still pretty much a mushroom when it comes to self-sufficiency when we bought this place. Tell you the truth, I was kinda worried about it being so far from town. I mean, what if I had an accident of some sort? I worried about that, and also about Bo getting hurt and me not being able to do anything about it.
“I never was much of a prepper before a few years ago. I thought Bo had lost it when he started dragging in beans and rice back in 1999, but he insisted and even though I don’t care much for the thought of beans and rice as regulars in my diet, they kind of grew on me when he showed me how many different ways they could be used. I mean, I was thinking of boiled beans and white rice, and didn’t stop to think how many different ways you can spice a pot of beans or cook a pan of rice. I honestly do not mind him showing up with another huge sack of each any more.”
“Well, we’re sure lucky Bo sent us that map of where you live when he did last year. We were going to call you when we left Phil’s brother’s in the valley, but the phones were down. By the time we realized how bad things were, I sure was glad to have that printout with the map and directions to here.” Janie looked around and continued, “It was a pretty good map. How many people have it?”
Sandie frowned. “I think he drew that one up just for you. He might have sent it to my mom and dad, and maybe my brothers, but he’s pretty close-mouthed about where exactly we are. And for good reason. Look what we have that can be gone in an instant.”
Phil looked at Sandie. “Are you sure you guys are okay with us being here? I mean, four more mouths to feed, and stores closed for the time being, maybe a long time if Bo's right. I don’t want to sound nosy, but you’ve taken us in, and Bo’s sister, and they went to get his parents and brother and sister in-law, I mean, is there going to be enough? I don’t want to take from someone else or put you in a pickle.”
Sandie looked at Phil earnestly, “Look, we’ve been friends for what? Almost forty years? What all did you two do for me after I got in that wreck? You didn’t have to do that, and I certainly hadn’t earned it from you. I appreciate your friendship deeper than you’ll ever know, and I knew that one day I’d be able to start repaying you for all that you did for me--" then shifted and fixed Janie with an equally serious expression, "--all the helping with personal stuff, Janie, and all that, that you did out of the goodness of your heart. Look at it this way: I don’t care what it means we’ll have to do, you and Phil are here, and don’t even think you’ll put anyone out. We’ve got a good supply in the pantry, and a fairly decent crop of vegetables out there that didn’t get damaged by the storm, and three steers along with a gaggle of chickens and a herd of goats. We can grow more by the time all of us eat it up.
“Besides, you’re earning it with you here so Bo can go off and do what needs doing, and Phil here to help with things while Bo’s gone.” Sandie reasoned warmly to Janie Beth.
Somewhat relieved that they were not going to be a burden, Janie Beth smiled at Sandie. “We’ll do what it takes. I’m afraid we’ll be here for a while. When we were out in the garden, I couldn’t see a single thing moving out on the roads, and you’d expect at least the power company would be out looking at the damage and assessing the repairs by now, maybe moving the downed lines off the roadways, but no, you can still see the poles laying across the roads.
“Changing the subject, you want me to go get some of those green beans and squash I saw earlier, to go with the chicken?”
“Sure,” replied Sandie. “While you’re out there, go around behind the greenhouse and grab some rosemary leaves, I want to sprinkle them on the chicken about fifteen minutes before it’s done. Phil, think you can start the generator so we can refill the water tank and let the freezer chill back down? That way we can run the vent fan in the kitchen too while the oven’s on, keep it from heating up the whole house.”
“Okay, I’ll go fire it up now. Plug in the yellow and orange plugs, right?”
“No, the blue and orange. Yellow goes to the kitchen plugs, we only run that one in the mornings to make coffee. Orange is the fridge and freezer, blue goes to the well pump.”
“Gotcha. I’ll get it straight before long,” grinned Phil.
All three turned towards the open front door of the house when the citizens’ band radio barked out “BREAK 27. SANDIE, YOU THERE?”
Wondering whose voice that was, Sandie headed back inside to answer as Janie and Phil went other directions to their tasks.
“Go ahead,” replied Sandie after keying the mike.
“Got word from your husband. They’d made it to his folks. Long story short, he helped me and my daughter out of a bind and I told him I’d relay messages so you didn’t have to strain your radio.”
Sandie laughed out loud at that, and keyed her mike while still laughing, “Okay, tell him everything’s okay here, and wish he was here to eat my oven fried chicken. Do you monitor this channel or another one, or do you just get on when you need to transmit?”
“Since the power's out, I’m only getting on to transmit. Are you staying on standby?”
“Only right at dark and dawn. Two hours before, until sunset, and from sunrise for a couple hours.”
“All right, I’ll check in with you and see if you have anything for me to pass on to your man at those times. He keeping the same schedule?”
“No, he’s got his ears on 24/7 but might get out of earshot from the truck. Just try him anytime.”
“Will do. Talk to you tomorrow morning.”
“Thanks, and have a good night,” replied Sandie, setting the mike down and going into the kitchen to find Janie Beth, twelve gauge in hand, peering out the back door.
Before Sandie could say a word, Janie Beth held out her hand, palm towards her, for silence. Before the thought could form in her mind wondering where Phil was, a shot rang out, followed by the distinctive “WHUMP” of bullet smacking into muscle.
|
|
|
Post by bluefox2 on Jan 30, 2023 22:08:49 GMT -6
OH LORDY, LORDY, Brother Cliff done showed up
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 31, 2023 22:13:22 GMT -6
THIRTY
“Bo! Can you come in here?”
Bo left his dad's office and crossed the foyer, sliding open the door at the foot of the stairs to reveal the master bathroom. The door was a shortcut installed to give Bo’s folks easy access not only from the bedroom to the office, but also from the office to a bathroom. His mom had insisted on the door, telling the three kids that was about the only way to ‘box train’ their dad, as he preferred stepping out the convenient front door to check the weather when the urge hit him. The fact that he exited there and faced northeast, where any significant weather rarely came from, added to the value of the inside joke.
Walking through the bathroom into the bedroom, Bo called out, “Marco?” and waited.
“Polo!” came the appropriate response, and Bo turned to face the direction of the reply and walked into his parents’ closet. “Look what I found. Or rather, look what I didn’t find.” Polly gestured at the peg just inside the closet door. “Mom wouldn’t go to the bathroom without her purse, remember?”
“This is getting curiouser and curiouser,” murmured Bo as he gazed at his mom’s purse, hanging from the peg. “I sure wish there was some way to tell what went on here, but there’s no way any tracks or footprints are left outside, and dang sure nothing inside to tell us what the stuffin’s going on. Is her purse full of the usual suspects?”
Lifting the purse off the hook and setting it on the dresser, Polly reached for the zipper and slid it back. “Last time I did this, I got a long, severe lecture about respecting privacy,” commented Polly. “Mom really drove that home. I haven’t even thought about going in her purse since that day when I was six! This feels so weird…” Polly’s voice trailed off as she hesitantly spread the top of the purse open, as if expecting it to shriek with an alarm or grow teeth and bite her.
Peering over his sister’s shoulder, Bo could see a billfold, a key ring, and an old, worn, but clean, revolver, and beneath those three items a sea of female flotsam. “Well, she didn’t switch purses, I don’t think. Billfold and her best friend are still in this one.”
“Yeah, this is making no sense whatsoever.” Polly turned to her brother. “Anything learned from your nosing?”
Bo shook his head. “Let’s go check on the kids. Doubt they’ll find anything if we didn’t.” The two walked out the bedroom door into the hall, down to the living room, and up the old hallway to the bedrooms, circling the kitchen. They met Buddy and Annette in the end of the hall. “Anything?”
“Well, I think Lee Roy got here. There’s a couple of bags of clothes that won’t fit Granny or Pawpaw in Polly’s room, and the bed’s wrinkled, like somebody laid down on it. You know Missy and her back. That’s a dead giveaway they were here.” Buddy answered, clearly proud of his deductive abilities.
Annette, of course, couldn’t help but jump in and one-up her brother. “Actually, Pop, it tells us much more than that. Tells us that they got here plenty early enough to where they had time to unload their belongings without getting ‘em wet, for one. Long enough for Missy to feel like she had time to lay down for a bit after the drive over. Bags are dry, I checked.
“Next, if you look at the window over there, that’s the only one where the curtains aren’t absolutely perfect in their keepers. Someone, probably both of them, were looking out that window. Now, I bet they were watching something going on outside and saw something that made ‘em jump and boogie out of here in a hurry. Yeah, told ya,” continued Annette as she walked across Polly’s bedroom and looked at the windowsill. Mimicking setting her elbows on the window frame, she looked back at the other three. “See, there’s clean spots where there’s no dust. Now, Lee Roy’s a bit taller than I am, and if I set my elbows down in the clean spots and rest my chin on my hands, I can just about comfortably watch the driveway all the way to the road. Well, I could if there weren't eleventy-seven trees in the way.” Annette had a sudden thought, and whirled around, wide-eyed. “Did anyone check the kitchen table?”
Sheepish looks from each to the others were followed by a semi-stampede to the kitchen, long known as the nerve center and command post of the house. The family had always congregated in the kitchen, and all four felt foolish for not making the kitchen the first place to look for a clue of any sort.
Reaching the kitchen first, Polly shone her flashlight on the table. “Gee, we’re all a buncha dipsticks!” she groaned as her light reflected off a yellow legal tablet with bold magic marker writing on it. As she started towards the pad, they all froze when they heard Renee shout, in her ‘big sister’ voice, “GIT! Y’all git offa that RIGHT THIS INSTANT!”
Bo broke into a sprint for the old front door, on the far side of the house from where they had heard Renee’s commands, where he forced himself to slow down and quietly unbolt the door and, after sneaking a peek out the living room window nearest the door, he stealthily opened the door and slipped out to face a wall of brush. Hm, he thought to himself, nobody gonna see me, but if I don’t watch it they’ll hear me getting to Renee.
Trading quiet for time, he moved as fast as he dared towards a gnarled old mesquite on the side of the house. Unlike most mesquites, this particular one was a hybrid thornless mesquite. Due to its proximity to the side of the house as well as its location diagonally opposite his folks’ bedroom, the old tree was almost worn from Bo’s childhood use of it as a ladder to get from his upstairs bedroom to the ground and then back after the unauthorized adventure of whatever sort was on for that night.
Reaching his ladder tree, four large steps and he was on the roof. Crouching in the valley between the old and new peaks, he made his way over towards Renee, who was prone and sighting down the barrel of her rifle at two boys who couldn’t have been over the age of fifteen. The boys were looking around like cornered rats, unable to find the source of that voice that had caused them to jump a foot as they fiddled with the padlock on the back garage door. Almost on an unspoken signal between the two of them, they bolted. Renee’s finger tightened a fraction more and the sound spurred the boys into overdrive as the bullet obliterated a prickly pear pad near where they had been standing.
Sliding up next to his daughter, Bo commented, “Doubt they’ll come back anytime soon.”
Chuckling, Renee nodded. “Yeah, I recognized ‘em. Least one of ‘em. Belongs to that worthless neighbor down the road a couple houses. Kid’s so useless he’ll probably hide under his bed for the next month, and only then will he come out to scrape out his boxers. Dunno who the other one was, but he was runnin’ faster than that one I recognized.”
“Good choice, that shot to reinforce their decision to leave. Now they don’t have to wonder if someone’s gonna back up their words here.” Bo patted his daughter on the shoulder. “Want me to watch a spell?”
“Nah. What’d y’all find in the house?” After Bo caught her up on what had gone on inside, leaving out the gun safe in the den, as Bo wasn’t even certain his own sister knew of it, and was fairly certain his daughter did not know of it.
Ten minutes later, he was through with his narrative and listened as Renee told hers. It was uneventful except for the two boys, although she did mention that there were plenty of tree rats to be had if it came down to making a meal or two. With that, Bo left her on her perch and retraced his steps back to the kitchen, locking the bolt and knob on the house’s back door as he retreated inside to find Polly and the other two poking around in the living room.
“Well, what’d the note say?” asked Bo.
Polly rolled her eyes and frowned, “I don’t think it was recent. It was in Dad’s handwriting and it said ‘Bo, I’m sorry. At least it didn’t hurt your car.’ Now, what on earth would he be talking about your car for? You haven’t had anything but a pickup since you and Sandie got married. Think Dad’s losing it?”
“Nope. He just didn’t want the note to fall into the wrong hands. Come with me.” Bo turned and headed for the garage, having an exact idea of where he was going and a general idea of what he might be looking for.
When Bo was about eight years old, he was playing in his mom’s car, a 1969 Galaxie station wagon. He pulled it out of park and it rolled into the garage, knocking the door track and a few of the hollow concrete blocks out of line. He came in to tell his dad what he had done, and tried to soften the blow with “Hey, Dad, at least it didn’t hurt the car any.”
No, it hadn’t hurt the car, but ever since, the corner of the garage had had a concrete patch applied by an eight year old, which made a nice little conversation piece next to the door opening, and a terrible scream in that garage door every time it was opened or closed.
Going to that corner of the garage, Bo took out his flashlight and started looking. After a few minutes’ search he reached into a jagged hole on the inside face of one of the concrete blocks and fished out a note, written with a magic marker on a piece of yellow legal pad paper.
He took the paper and walked out to the patio and, looking around, found a suitable tree trunk and sat on it to read the note. As he finished, Polly walked up and asked, “Well, what’d the note say?”
Handing it to her as he stood, he replied, “Says we got our work cut out for us. I’m gonna go get word to Sandie that I’m gonna be a bit longer than we thought.”
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 31, 2023 22:26:07 GMT -6
THIRTY ONE
Bo,
I presume you and at least one other (I hope that your ‘party’ at least includes Polly, I must believe that she did make it to warn you) are here in the aftermath of the storm that your sister warned us about. Your brother made it here just as the storm was making landfall. He was in full-panic mode, spurred by you-know-who, and before I could calm things down he had convinced your mom that the sky is truly about to fall. (Had I gotten up and into the conversation even a few minutes before I did, we would likely have not gone anywhere.) It took almost no time for the two of them to hype your mother into hysteria and convince her that we were not safe here. Of course, rattling her was the most counterproductive thing that could have happened at this particular time.
I managed to get your mom settled back down and get your brother and his wife to hush, and then it came out that one of the two of them had called 211 (to inquire only, they say, and I will give them the benefit of the doubt, as it does no good to be angry with those two right now, I'll explain.) Turns out, she used the land line to call with her inquiry, and it brought us onto their radar. Seems they are determined to use whatever 'persuasion' they can muster to protect us. A little worm I've known for years, who couldn't find his butt with both hands and a mirror in the real world, wangled himself a job as a ‘facilitator’ from the county LEPC. He arrived a few moments ago with an adviser from FEMA, who presented me with a short list of what we may and a long list of what we may not bring with us to the shelter. It took me quite a time to pry from the officious little thing just where we were being ‘sheltered’, and finally found that they intend to take us to San Antonio. In response to my declining their invitation rather heatedly, the young FEMA thing (female, but definitely not a lady) inquired whether I was attempting to ‘coerce my wife into putting herself in danger’. This, along with the hysteria that resumed flowing from Missy, reduced your mom to near tears, and when the FEMA twinkie saw that, she suggested that I might be dangerously close to a kidnapping charge. LR and M have your mom convinced that the unicorns are crapping skittles constantly at the shelter, so she has decided to go, and I will not leave her, even if it kills me. They left, for now, to go "protect" the neighbors.
One of the yellow dogs will be arriving shortly to pick us up. I suppose we’re lucky to be in such a well run school district, as I would be reluctant to get on any of the neighboring districts’ school buses. Ours may be old here, but they’re well kept. I cannot pry the location of the shelter out of the ‘rescuers’. I suspect either the Alamodome or the new basketball arena will be our destination. I am sure that after a few days your mother will be regretting her decision, as will LR for listening to M. It is hard for me to ask another for help, but I cannot see any way out of the situation we are in other than to bide my time and go with the flow. It is my hope that your brother will come around to reason and help me implement the plan I must write down now. Thinking ahead, I expect you’ll be a week getting here, then another one getting to SA. With that in mind, in eighteen days I will attempt to have your brother be available to meet you about 30 miles outside of San Antonio, at my friend Bill’s place. In fact, go there first. Best case, we’ll all be there. Worst case, you’ll have to look for us in San Antonio. They said an hour for the bus to get here, it’s been 40 minutes. Going to go hide this.
I wish you the fortitude and strength of heart and mind you will need for these times. God bless you and yours.
Love, Dad
Polly looked up, eyes moist, and swallowed. “I see what you mean. Looks like we're headed for Stockdale.”
“Yep, and we need to leave pretty soon. Call the kids in here. Better yet, let’s go outside, it’s getting hot and stuffy in here, we can go up on the roof and talk, where Renee can join in and we can still keep a watch.”
Gathering everyone and heading up to the flat part of the roof, Bo gave a thumbnail sketch of the letter his dad had left, and as soon as he was finished everyone jumped in at once.
“Whoa, whoa, hang on everybody!” cried Annette. “One at a time. Now since Renee is the oldest and always gets to go first, it’s my turn.” She looked around the faces and continued, “I think that Renee and I should make our way home--to your house, Dad. It sounds like Grannie and Papaw aren’t gonna come back here before they meet up with Dad and Aunt Polly, and even if they do….”
“….they’ll find the note gone and realize we’ve been here, and head for Dad’s,” finished Buddy. “Now, you two girls are absolutely not going to go wandering off on your own, that’s the last thing we need is for you two to get lost. How’s about I go with y’all, and you two go find everyone else and bring ‘em home?” He turned to his dad questioningly.
Bo nodded, “That sounds about like what I was going to suggest. One difference, though. Y’all don’t know but Phil and Janie Beth showed up right before the storm, so there is someone there with a bit better than basic first aid training with Janie Beth there. I’d like for Annette to go with us, since she’s had almost two years of nursing school under her belt, and you and Renee head home.”
Nods around the group indicated that the decision was agreeable to all present. With that, they arose and, with Annette relieving her sister so she could do what she needed to do to get ready, the rest of the family went back downstairs.
Buddy and his sisters had taken turns driving on the way down, but that was before the second blow to the coast of the hurricane, and its resultant probable curfews. With that in mind, Bo suggested that Buddy and Renee outfit themselves out of the hunting gear in the garage with enough to camp out successfully for one or two nights. While Bo had what he needed in his truck, he doubted very seriously that the girls were as well prepared.
It turns out he was right. While each of them had their BOB and a sleeping bag, none of the three had given thought to bringing much extra food, instead leaving all the weight of Annette’s small pantry inventory with Sandie’s mom. The girls kept enough stuff to get them home and not much else, which in most situations would be sufficient.
Between Polly and Bo, they scrounged up a small tabletop gas grill, several one pound bottles of propane for it, a lantern and spare mantles, a gallon of laundry bleach, with verbal instructions to the two regarding how much and to be sure to boil the water prior to and then again after using the bleach in it. Opening a closet in his parents’ garage, Bo found a couple of the Zebco “Take Me Fishing” complete kits with rudimentary tackle, a lightweight rod and a 202 reel, and stuck them in Annette’s car.
“What’s that for?” asked an amused Renee as she came down from the roof, being relieved by Buddy. “We’re not going out to goof off for the weekend.”
“Darling, you have room, they don’t weigh much, and would you rather have it and not need it….”
“….or need it and not have it. Got it Dad. Now I know why I picked you out of all the dads in the world,” grinned Renee as she hugged her dad. “Most kids just say it, but my daddy really is better than the rest.”
Bo reddened at the praise and the reveled in the affection of his now-grown daughter long enough to trust himself to speak. “Well, I don’t know that I deserve all this talk, all I’ve done is try to see to it that there is nothing I could have done and didn’t.”
Squeezing Bo again, Renee replied, “Dad, you’re the reason I’m who I am, like it or not. Time you accepted my gratitude…. Like it or not.”
“Oh, I like it all right,” responded Bo, “but let’s wait until we all get home before deciding if it’s earned or not. Now, enough of this, let’s see what Polly and Annette have got going on.”
Back in the house, Bo and his daughter heard the two long before they reached the kitchen, engaged in an intense but civil debate.
“But Aunt Polly, if we clean out the pantry and Grannie and Papaw come back home on their own, they’ll be without,” Renee was pointing out.
“True, but the likelihood of that is far less than your dad and me finding them and taking them to his house,” countered Polly. “In that instance, this extra food and supplies will be a great big help, and if its left here who knows how long before any of us might get back this way to get it. Got to look at it this way, hon, if we leave it in an empty, unoccupied, house we best not expect it to be here when we get back. I’m sure your granny and papaw were thinking the same thing when they wound up leaving.” Polly looked up to see her brother and other niece walk into the kitchen. "I bet that, if they come back, they expect to find: Nothing."
“Deciding whether to clean out the folks?” asked Bo in mock humor as he entered the kitchen.
“I guess you could put it like that,” laughed Polly, before returning to her earlier seriousness. “It’s kind of a rock and hard place situation. Do we leave food and stuff we’ll need, and count on hooking up with them and taking them to your house? Or do we leave it here, just in the off chance that we miss each other up in San Antonio and they wind up coming home? And if we do that, it’s still not a sure thing that it’ll be here, since the house will be empty for a while and anyone could come help themselves. And even if we do leave their pantry alone and so does everyone else, it’s pretty darn likely we’ll have to come get it, and that means another trip over here.” Polly threw up her hands in exasperation, as there was no easy answer.
“Sis, you always did think in black and white, all or nothing. Let me toss something at you. We take all but some beans and some of the canned meat and veggies. If we miss them, they’ll still have something to eat here, long enough for us to come back and get them, because they’re surely not going to want to stay here, now that they’re probably on a list as pliable sheeple and the self-appointed shepherd knows where they are.” Bo thought ahead, going a mile a minute. We’re definitely cleaning out the hidey-hole between the wall I found earlier, and Dad will go straight to that if he winds up here. I know that’ll hold plenty of food to last them a few weeks or even a month or two, and it’ll be secure there for them even if someone sacks the house. He continued to his sister, “I have an even better idea. Bear with me while I do some packing, and bring in a couple buckets of the beans, one of the rice, and several dozen pints of the brisket Sandie and I canned for them last winter. Bring it into Dad’s den, I’ve got an idea of where to put it where it’ll be there for them.”
Bo went out into the garage and found the wheelbarrow. Pushing it into the house, he stopped at the linen closet and lined the wheel barrow with a blanket, then went through the process of opening the hidey-hole, carefully loading its contents into the wheelbarrow, leaving back enough defense in the form of throw-away pieces so that his folks wouldn't be totally without. As he loaded the three bank bags, one each of dimes, quarters, and half dollars, he thought of how much of his folks’ estate these three bags might represent if the banking situation didn’t resolve soon. It could be up to the entire liquid portion of his parents’ net worth, if the system had crashed and burned completely enough to cause the dollar’s value to disappear. With that thought, he handled those three bags with the reverence and care that a conscientious handler of the specie at Fort Knox would possess.
Covering the bags, as now wasn’t the appropriate time or place to get into a long story with his children about their grandparents’ foresight, he wheeled his load out the front door and quickly, but without obvious haste, transferred the contents of the wheelbarrow to the back seat floor of the pickup, throwing the blanket over the top of the pile. He would explain to his sister when they were alone, probably that night, when Annette slept her famous dead-to-the-world sleep.
“Bo! C’mere…. Help me with this,” grunted Polly as she staggered towards the truck with…. a canvas bank bag in each hand!
Plucking the heavy weights from her hands, Bo asked, “What the….?”
“There’s four more in their closet, up under the clothes, in the end of the return air for the air conditioning,” panted Polly. “Mom told me about them several years ago—oh, more than that, back when I was in high school. About the time Granddad died. Two each, of dimes, quarters, and halves, all minted before we were born. She said you knew where others were, so now’s the time to get ‘em,” she finished, as she leaned on the truck to catch her breath. “I sent Annette and Buddy on a goose chase around back while we get these out; I’m not so sure they need to know just yet about all this.”
“Good eye, sis. If Mom and Dad were discreet enough about it to not even tell both of us where it all was, I dang sure think they’d appreciate us keeping this quiet.” While Bo trusted his children with his life, he also realized it was not his place to go taking liberties with his parents’ trust they had placed in him. At the same time, he also figured that his mom and dad would understand about him and his sister sharing knowledge considering the current state of events.
“Do ya think Lee Roy has his own stash somewhere that neither of us knows about?” mused Polly, answering herself in the next breath: “No, I doubt it. Lee Roy has always been impulsive enough that I wouldn’t have, if I was them.”
“Probably not,” agreed Bo, pulling back the blanket and indicating the three bags already in the truck. “Notice, your ‘stash’ was exactly twice the size of the one I was privy to. Yours was probably his and yours combined. Wasn’t room where mine was hidden to put any more.”
Polly nodded. “At any rate, if it’s still here, it’s very well hidden, and Mom or Dad can send us for it later, if there is more. I’ve helped Mom with spring cleaning and the only place she didn’t let me mess with was Dad’s den, so if it was anywhere else in the house I’d know.”
“And if it was in there, I’d know, because Dad has me help him clean up in there.” Bo replied, looking past Polly at the front of the house, where his three children were each lugging out an armload of pantry supplies.
“Put as many of those as we can fit in the back of my truck,” Bo instructed the three. “Can’t get much in Annette’s car with your portable motel room. We’ll find a place to cache it, and come back for it later. Tell Mom we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. She’ll know where it is.”
As the older siblings did a final walk through and closed the house back up, locking doors and windows, making sure there wasn’t any mess left out to attract vermin, and that nothing appealing or valuable was left laying around, they both proceeded to the garage and after the same routine, locked it up and walked out the path through the brush to the highway.
Everybody loaded and ready, it was time to put some miles behind them before dark. For one group it was good they did, for the other, it was the worst thing they could’ve done.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 31, 2023 22:32:25 GMT -6
THIRTY TWO
"Smart move, putting the food in Dad's hiding spot," commented Polly as they pulled away. "That way they know it was us, or at least someone with their best interests in mind, who cleaned 'em out."
"Might be, sis, but I have a sneakin' suspicion they won't be back there. At least, not before we see 'em." Bo was worried that there was more to the evacuation than simply a measure of precaution against a storm. Looking in the center mirror, he caught Annette's eye and asked, "So what did y'all see on the way down here? Anything out of the ordinary?"
Annette gave a short chuckle. "Be faster to tell you the one or two things that WERE normal, Dad. Really the only normal thing was the drive between cities. We were okay in Illinois all the way to Cairo and across the Mississippi. Soon as we got into Missouri we started getting the 'we don't want outsiders taking our stuff, we don't know when we'll get another shipment' comments from people when we'd stop for snacks and bathroom breaks.
"Then when we got to Arkansas, it went downhill fast. We'd pull into a store parking lot, and the sign would change from 'OPEN' to 'CLOSED' before we could get up to the door. After about three stops, Buddy had an idea. We pulled off the road and he got a screwdriver and took the front license plate off the car. That way, as long as we drove in nose first, they couldn't see anything that made us look like outsiders."
Bo thought about that and nodded. "Yep, Arkansas and Tennessee both have rear plate only. Having a front plate would definitely be a huge advertisement that you're not from the area. Smart thinking on Buddy's part. When'd he put it back on?"
Annette laughed, "About two miles before Texarkana! My old Illinois plates look almost sort of like the stupid looking new Texas plates. What ever possessed Texas to go to ANYTHING besides black letters on white background, with a flag in the corner?"
Bo and Polly both grunted and shook their heads. Neither cared for either of the last two issues of Texas plates. "Guess people just like change for the sake of change. Never did understand it," replied Bo as they crossed the county line northbound into Refugio County.
*************
"Well, sis, this looks like where Dad was telling me they stayed last night," Buddy said as he looked around the little equipment shed. Sure enough, as Bo had described, a short distance away was a second shed that did not sport a topless windmill tower.
"We should check out that other shed before it gets dark, don't ya think?" asked Renee from inside their night's shelter, where she was pulling out preparations in the remaining sunlight.
"You haven't been outside, have ya, Renee?"
"No, why?"
"Well, I suspect that if someone's over there, they don't know if I'm alone or not. Look, there is absolutely no concealment of any type in this plowed ground, between here and there. If they didn't look closely when we pulled into here, they won't know if I've got any backup. Let's do this: I'll walk over there alone. Way the sun's shining, I can probably see if anyone's in there long before they can see me, with no window in the back of that shed. You cover me, but try not to silhouette yourself, that way if you stay real still, they won't be able to pick you out."
Renee countered, "Little brother, I ought to go. You're a better shot at distances, you stay and cover me," she reasoned.
Buddy thought for a second, and defended his suggestion: "Sis, I've already been out here. If someone's there, they've gotten a good look at a skinny six footer with a beard, not a chunky five-foot-nothing with big boobs. They see you walking that way, they'll know for sure there's two of us, and we'll lose whatever surprise we might have.
"I'll wander out to the left, past the windmill, where I can see down that side of the other shed, and you stay here, where you can see if someone is creeping up the right side," Buddy offered as a start of a plan.
Renee nodded after thinking about the vastly different body shapes the two possessed, and while wanting to spare her baby brother from harm, she also recognized that if the other building was occupied, and if the occupant or occupants had not seen her, then the brother and sister had an advantage that she couldn't summarily dismiss. "Remember Dad told us that's the shelter that his friends used when they were on the way home? Lesson there is, if someone's there, it doesn't necessarily mean they're the bad guys. Keep your hand away from your belt, and try to appear as unintimidating as possible. I'll be the one ready to inflict bodily harm, since they can't see me and get spooked by how I look."
Buddy nodded, and set off to appear to wander around. Finally approaching within fifteen yards or so of the backside of the shed, he sprinted the last few steps to the back left corner.
Ok, now what, he thought to himself as he tried to remember the details of his dad's telling of meeting the Torres father and daughter just the night before. Hmm, he said that Mr. Torres left his company truck here. Now, the road comes in from the right. I'm on the left. I bet this shed is built just like the one we're in, which has a post in the center of the open side. Now, I know from experience, it's easier to pull into a space to hug the inside, instead of trying to pull up close to an outside wall. So... if I'm turning left to pull into the building, and I want to leave as much open space inside as possible, I'll pull up close to the wall on my left, and hug it as I pull in. So.... that means that this side of the shed is most likely the empty side, and if someone is in here, they'll be on this side. With that, Buddy turned and walked silently to the other side of the shed, and examined the surface for any way to see inside. There. Nail hole. About knee high. Sun's not shining on it, so shadow won't be as noticeable if I cover the hole. Testing, he held his hand out over the hole and counted to fifty. Still having his hand intact, he kept the hole covered, and moved his head closer, then thought better of it, remembering the stories about icepicks through peepholes, instead settling for the fact that he heard no noise, and more, sensed nothing, from inside.
Buddy continued up the side of the barn and peeked around the corner of the barn, diving back behind the tin wall and grabbing at his holstered .38, visibly startled at what was peeking back at him.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 31, 2023 22:41:11 GMT -6
THIRTY THREE
"Crap," muttered Phil as he surveyed the damage caused by the most recent band of mooches they'd had to send packing without a handout. Shaking his head, he turned back towards Sandie, who had stayed several yards back, by the treeline.
"They didn't have to cut the damn fence," groused Sandie. "See the 'kids'?"
"You mean those steers? Not only no but hell no. And they didn't just cut the fence, they chopped it in five places and then ran over the gate. That's probably what got my attention. They were lucky, I was around back, walking the back fence when they drug down the gate," replied Phil.
"We need to have a powwow," declared Janie Beth as she walked up to the two. "There's only three of us here, and with three, we can't defend this place. Lenny is a help, but even with four...." Her voice trailed off, a worried frown on her face.
"When can you get ahold of that guy in Portland again, Sandie?" asked Phil. "I think we need to get out of this place. I know, I know, you and Bo have poured your life's sweat into it, and in normal times, it'd be the place to be. But, with things like they are, and with nobody but thugs and welfare leeches for miles around, this kind of crap is going to get worse, not better. Let's try to get in touch with Bo and see what his thoughts are."
Later that night, digesting the news that Bo was on his way to meet up with Lee Roy at an old family friend's ranch a hundred or so miles north and then go liberate their folks from the FEMA camp, and also news of Renee and Lee Roy making their way west, Sandie opined that one course of action would be to take the only other running vehicle out at their place and try to meet up with the kids, then try to make their way up to Stockdale. "I've been there, and it is eight miles out a washboarded gravel road to the gate, then another six miles to the ranch house. It's old, old enough that it was built before electricity was run out there, and even now there's backups for everything since they're the only ones on a ten mile branch line, and most of the time, the place is triaged down to absolute last when the electric goes out since nobody lives there full time. Bill drives out occasionally to check on the cows, but other than that, nobody ever really goes out there. Not even sure if his kids know where it is. It could make a decent rendezvous place for us, and a good place to hole up while Bo and Lee Roy go on their search for the folks."
After a few minutes of thought, Phil replied, "That might just work. You know how to get there without taking the main roads?"
"Not off the top of my head, but Bo hand wrote out a map one time when he took a hay rake up there and had to stay out of sight of the highway patrol. I'll dig it out of his desk. Saw it when I was cleaning a few months ago."
"That old truck out back run?" asked Janie Beth, leaning back and making a face as she eyed the forty-year-old supercab Ford F350 sitting behind the tool shed.
"Did last time Bo had a load going to the scrap yard," replied Sandie. "That was about three months ago. Plates are out on it now, but nobody's gonna be looking at the windshield sticker, and even if they do, it's insured until next month, and the county is probably still closed so no way to get a sticker even if we wanted to. Besides, I'm not worried about a thirty-two dollar fine; I'd rather keep my skin from getting any extra holes or becoming too big for me."
Phil stood. "I'll go see if it'll start, then pull it around to the side door. What's that? Does it have a topper on it? And what's with the extra antennas?"
"Yes, it's got a dry shell on it but that's gonna have to come off to hook the trailer on the ball in the middle of the bed. It's only held on by four C clamps at the corners. Oh, dang, I forgot til just now, it's got an old Midland CB in it and a quarter wave whip. It's a 23 channel, but it does work, better than this cheapo in the house. Speaking of that, I want to try to get ahold of the kids. Hate to depend on just, well, running into them on the road." Sandie wheeled over to the base station CB and started trying to make contact with Renee or Buddy, figuring to go out to the old truck if needed.
*******************
Renee wiped the tears from her eyes yet again as she watched her little brother bobbing and weaving on the other side of the car, trying to modestly change his shorts. As he lost his balance yet again and almost toppled into the dust, she dissolved yet again into another round of mirth.
"I get cleaned up I'm'a come straighten YOUR ass out, sister," growled Buddy as he stifled his own grin, ultimately unsuccessfully, breaking into sniggles and finally full-blown laughter along with his sis. He was as much relieved as he was finding humor in the situation. "Sis, you just don't understand. It's not the best thing in the world for your health when you round a corner and come kissing distance from a feral sow...WHILE SHE'S BEING ROMANCED!"
With a snork and a giggle, Renee asked in an innocent tone, "Well, if they were in the middle of doing it, why didn't you just slip away while they was locked up?"
"They're PIGS, not DOGS, sis! Pigs don't 'lock up', for crying out loud! They get ---"
"Disgruntled?" inquired the sister as she collapsed into another fit of laughter.
"YES!" howled Buddy, "It's NOT funny! Them boogers have TEETH!"
"They also run pretty fast, bro. They was moving away from here as fast as you was moving towards here, last time I saw 'em." Both were coming down off their adrenaline boost and catching their breath when they heard faintly from the car: "Buddy? Renee? Got yer ears on?"
|
|
|
Post by feralferret on Jan 31, 2023 22:53:00 GMT -6
Very interesting!
Thanks for the chapters!
|
|