Story This Is Me Surviving (Complete)

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 30B

I got my rifle off of Lou and walked over to where Rand was standing looking. He pointed off in the distance … maybe three-quarters of a football field away. About six dogs were going at something on the ground. Rand carried one of those kind of pirate glasses in his BOB and when he looked he got a look on his face I’d never seen. Without saying a word he pushed me back towards the mules, looked me straight in the eye and pointed at me and then to the ground. That’s about as close to a “Stay!” command as he’s ever given me. I might have cut up a fuss if I hadn’t seen the look on his face.

He stepped to the other side of the drive way and then started shooting. He got the first five dogs with five shots but the sixth one took two shots as it took off at a fast dash to the bushes. Rand turned to me and said, “You stay right here. You see any more dogs then fire a warning shot for me but don’t you move or come out there.”

He walked out there real slow. He went to the pile that the dogs had been messing with and then walked to the left of it several feet and to the edge of more bushes … ones on the other side where the last dog had run. When he walked back he was pale and his eyes looked strange. “Let’s go home. Can you get up on Lou? You need to practice so you can do it more quickly.”

It wasn’t until we were half way home that he told me. It wasn’t a pile of whatever I thought it might be. It was some guy … probably a gangbanger. “There was lots of fresh blood so I don’t think he was dead until the dogs … until the dogs got at him. The blood on the grass coming out of those bushes was still tacky. I didn’t notice anything when we got there … so it may have happened while we were inside. Don’t think the guy even had anything left to scream with … or he fainted … I don’t know. Mr. Henderson cleaned out that dog pack you told him about all except for three puppies that Cassie is hand raising that are some kind of terrier mix. Once a dog has gotten … I just couldn’t take the chance Kiri.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I got cornered inside a house once by a dog remember? I’m just glad you are such a good shot and took them out mercifully rather than take it out on them for being the animals they are.”

He turned around and looked at me like he hadn’t expected the reaction he got. “What?! Did you expect me to go all tree hugger anti-Bambi killer on you? They were dogs Rand. Big … bad … dogs. It’s a shame they had to be put down but sometimes that happens I guess. Like I said, at least you were merciful. I couldn’t have made those shots for love or money.”

He was quiet all the way home and I thought I’d put my foot wrong. We were coming up the utility easement when riders ahead of us stopped. Rand whistled and they turned and waited for us to meet them. It was Mitch Peters and Hoss and Bradley.

“Was just riding by to check on things, heard some shootin’. Everything OK?”

“Kiri, head on back to the house, I’ll catch up. Just tie Lou off on the ring on the side of the barn.”

As I left I heard him talking to the other three men in a low voice. I pretty much knew I’d stepped in it somehow but I didn’t know how to fix it. I got to the yard and nearly fell getting off of Lou. If he’d been a horse I probably would have gotten hurt. I think I like Lou even better than Hatchet. Lou seems to tolerate the fact that I don’t know a thing about riding. Hatchet always acts like he is laughing at me. And Lou stands still. I found out that Rand wasn’t kidding about him liking to pull on braids though. It took me a couple of minutes to convince him he’d like to chew on grass a whole lot better. I wound up have to rinse out my hair because of mule spit.

Lou let me unload him too. He did laugh at me a little bit when I tripped over a root carrying stuff to the porch but what can you expect from a mule? I had the house open and was holding a bucket of water for Lou when Rand rode in on Bud. He didn’t look like he felt quite so bad so I didn’t say anything. Bud wanted his share of the water and I wound up wearing about half of what they were trying to drink.

Hatchet was happy to see his two friends and Rand picketing them all near enough to gossip but not near enough to get into trouble and followed me inside. I didn’t find a grill so I had to use one of my metal buckets to make coals in and that’s what I did and we had the rest of the can of chili mac and it wasn’t bad. I guess sealing it back up the way I did let it last longer than a week.

Rand was preoccupied so I went to go put the stuff away that we brought in. The last bedroom has a bunch of tubs in it and I’ve been trying to put like stuff with like the best way I can. I need to take the office supplies up to the dormer room to put them away but I haven’t found the right time to tell Rand about it. I was gonna show him after dinner but he’s been so quiet I didn’t want to disturb him. And my foot has been bothering me for some reason. I’m about all wrote out anyway. I think I’m going to make a cake for Rand tomorrow and see if it makes things better.


June 28th – I’m sitting here with my foot propped up and Rand threatened to sit on me if I don’t stay put for the rest of the evening. The only thing he hasn’t growled about is when I asked for my journal so I could have something to do.

I woke up real early with my foot more than just bothering me. It felt like someone was poking it with a hot poker and even wiggling my toes felt bad. What scared me was that my foot was kind of puffy and warm, especially the bottom. I knew I needed to soak it right away. I hobbled to the summer kitchen and was pumping some water by feel when Rand came in with the lamp … he’d gone to sleep after than I had again.

I was caught red handed but we went back and forth over him looking at my foot. I don’t let anyone look at me … feet, legs, the rest of me, nothing. For some reason I hadn’t thought about any of that. All I had thought about is that Rand was my boyfriend. Even when Rand talked about waiting on “benefits” I didn’t think about it. I didn’t want to think about it I guess. My scars. They’re so ugly I still don’t see how …

Anyway I was so upset that I was getting mad but he wouldn’t let up. I wanted to avoid a fight so I tried to walk away only when my foot touched the ground all the way it felt like I’d stepped on a giant needle. I started to fall but Rand caught me and I just reacted and went all stiff trying not to push at him.

“Kiri … trust me.”

“I do. I can do it myself. Just let me go. I’ll be fine.”

He didn’t let go though. He picked me up and carried me over to the counter top and set me down. I tried to jump down but he just caught me and put me back up. “Kiri … I’m not going to hurt you. Are you really … you don’t think … Kiri, dang it stop squirming. Is it because of your scars?”

I could have just died right there. “So that is it. Alicia said … “

“How would Alicia know?! And … and … she didn’t have any right to tell anyone else! Who did she … well … I don’t care … I … “

“Take it easy. It only came up casually and it was only to me. It was when she was telling me about when you two were trying to … I said stop squirming!”

I stopped but I just … if a hole could have opened up I would have jumped in and gladly. “It came up because it was something you two had in common.”

It took a second for it to sink in. What he had said … Alicia … she couldn’t have scars. At least I didn’t think so. I know different now.

“Alicia’s dad was an abuser. Where your aunt and uncle … “

“No! It was the accident.”

“Oh. And it bothers you.”

“Yes. It bothers me. A lot. Because I didn’t think about this part.”

“By ‘this part’ you mean me seeming them.”

“Yes.”

“Kiri, don’t you trust me?”

“You keep asking me that. Of course I trust you. I told you that if I didn’t … “

“Well, it sure doesn’t seem like it. In fact, if you want to know the truth, I’m beginning to think maybe you don’t trust me.”

“That’s not true! It’s just this is different. This is .. this is … “

“Kiri, you either trust me or you don’t. Which is it going to be?”

I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt whatever I did or said was going to be important to me for a long, long time. Maybe forever. So I stopped squirming and let him look.”

“Serves you right if you get grossed out. I haven’t even shaved my legs in over a week.” I know I was being a pain in the butt but I was scared and I was really sure he was going to get grossed out.

But he laughed and said, “Laurabeth hasn’t shaved hers in a couple of months. She calls it going au natural.”

He was poking and it was really starting to hurt. “Kiri what have you done to your feet? They’re all scratched up and it looks like you have something stuck in the bottom here.” When he said “here” he touched a place on my foot that hurt so bad I grabbed his arm.

He carried me out to the sofa and by the light of the lamp dug out two metal shavings that I guess I picked up while I was outside after the storm, barefooted. He said all sorts of pus and dirt came out too. It hurt when he was cleaning it out but not as bad as when he asked, “Kiri, why don’t you trust me?”

“I told you I do. I let you see my ugly legs.”

“Your legs aren’t ugly. The scars aren’t all that bad from what I can tell.”

I told him it was because the light was dim. He finally let me sit up but he was on one end of the sofa and I was on the other. If I wondered about the things I said about the dogs I knew for a fact I’d hurt him this time. We sat there and I felt the hurt getting to be a bigger and bigger thing between us until I felt like screaming. He sighed and was getting up when I knew for sure that I only had one more way to show him that I trusted him.

I grabbed his hand and took him over to the coat closet. “Kiri I’m tired and … “

“Rand, I’m trying to prove to you that I trust you. Open the closet. Now, push those coats to the side. Run you hand down, yeah, you feel the leaver? Push it down.”

I heard the click I always hear and then went passed him grabbing his hand again. “Watch the stairs they’re narrow and steep.”

We got to the top, I pulled him into the room and ahead of me so he was kind of in the center and then flipped the switch. The suddenness of the LED lights caught him completely by surprise and he just stood there gawking. “I kept trying to figure out when to tell you about the dormer room. I was going to tell you the first night but you were so tired and … then last night you were upset with me … “

“OK, first I wasn’t upset with you and we’ll talk about that in a minute but … this … “

“It was Daddy’s.” I hobbled over to the filing cabinets. “These are the rest of Daddy’s files. I wanted to show them to you when you seemed so interested in the stuff in the bonus room but I didn’t know how to bring it up. And here is where I sleep when you aren’t here. When you are here I feel safe enough to sleep downstairs but when you aren’t here … I prefer being up here. And … and this other I wanted to show you but … “

I went over to the gun safe and unlocked it and then went over to the cubby hole door, opened it and pointed. There is stuff for the guns … bullets and stuff … in there. Lots of it. I don’t know how much. And in the second bonus room there is another cubby hole with some big cans of stuff from places like Honeyville, Emergency Essentials, and Provident Pantry. I just … I wanted you to be my friend because I’m me, not because of all this stuff. By the time I figured out you weren’t like that I didn’t know how to tell you. But this is it … this is … “

Rand was just staring and then looked at me and his face was kind of blank and I knew I’d have to do it all. “I was wrong. There is more but … I don’t like this part and you won’t either. The scars on my legs aren’t all. I’ve got scars all over Rand. No one but the drunk walked away from the wreck that killed my family. I was in a coma for over a week and it was a while after that before … before they could even tell for sure that I wasn’t brain damaged. I’ve still got problems. I get sensory overload real easy. I have APD, I’ve told you about that. But … the worst part has been that no matter what I can’t ever forget what they had to do to put me back together. I had rods in my legs for a while. I had all these tubes and wires … I was tore up inside. I had three operations to try and fix things if you don’t count what all they did just to keep me alive that first week. They would have been kinder just to have put a zipper in. I’ve got a scar on my lower back that people used to call a tramp stamp and … “

I had closed my eyes because I didn’t want to see the look on his face. I couldn’t have handled it had he been angrier still, I think I would have died had I seen pity. I didn’t get either. I got hugged. I felt so bad I couldn’t even cry because I knew I owed him all of it. “No. Look. This is what I look like and it’s never going to get any better. I’m never going to be pretty like Julia, not even in the dark. There is no way to pretend this away. I’ve got the wrong kind of skin, they couldn’t … they couldn’t fix any of it. Some of it puckers and some of it has ridges. It’s just … ”

I figured he could think I was a huzzy as well as everything else but I wanted to give him the chance to make a break for it and count himself lucky or at least leave so I wouldn’t have to feel his pity. So I lifted up my shirt and let him see.

I just stood there, not looking at him because I didn’t want to see him looking at me. Then I felt him push my shirt down really gently and lean over and flip the light switch off and then I could open my eyes. We sat on the floor side-by-side. I hurt too bad to cry. Then Rand said, “We’ve really got to work on this trust thing. Both of us.”

That’s the last thing I remember after that until I woke up to something bothering my nose. I was so groggy headed and then when I opened my eyes and saw he was tickling my face with a fern it all came rushing back and I sat up so quick I hit my foot against the floor and was almost sick.

“Whoa! When you finally wake up you wake up fast. Let me see your foot. Kiri, this is really infected. I need to clean it out again.”

I endured it all again only in freaking HD this time. “It gets hot up here during the day.”

“Yeah, and cold in the winter probably.”

“We can swipe the insulation out of some house and that might help.”

“It has insulation. The hot air is getting trapped up here somehow. I don’t think something is working right. I can’t make heads or tails out of Daddy’s schematics.”

“If you want I’ll take a look.”

“Rand, I don’t .. look, just how badly is this all going? I … I just can’t … I don’t know how to say I’m sorry enough and … “

“Shhh. I didn’t realize about … about everything else and … “

“Yeah, about that. Look, it’s OK. I understand. I wasn’t upfront with you and …”

“Kiri … no, look at me … when I pushed you last night … I have my own hang ups. I could blame Julia but I had a choice last night and I … I just pushed. I didn’t know how bad you had been hurt but if you think that I’m going to take off or that you have to bribe me with all of this to get me to still like you … that will make me angry. We … we both messed up. But let’s work on that … I didn’t like the way it made me feel last night when … when … look, I’m not sure how to handle this either but the only thing I saw when I saw your scars was the fact that you are lucky to be alive … and that I’m lucky that you’re alive. We’ll work on the rest of it as we go. OK?”

I couldn’t believe my ears and I still think that maybe, while he means what he says now, one of these days it is all going to be too much. It was passed breakfast and I apologized and told Rand that I’d get something fixed right away and then Rand got upset and asked me if I’m going to keep feeling like I have to bribe him to stay. Then we had another back and forth about I like cooking for him and I had meant to feed him up so that … yeah, so he would want to stay. I hobbled to get dressed and when I came back he was gone.

It was like that off and on until late afternoon. I started a veggie stew with dumpling kind of thing for lunch and then while we were eating he kept saying I felt like I had to bribe him and I said no that I had to eat too but that I liked to see him eat, it made me feel good.

Rand had never cursed at me before but when I asked him if he wanted me to fix him blueberry or blackberry dumplings for dessert he said, “Damn it! Why do you even want me around anyway?! To chop wood? You don’t need me to do anything. It’s your land, your house … hell, you don’t even need me to hunt or anything else. You need a pack mule?”

My heart felt like it was breaking, “You … you … make the world feel like it isn’t flying apart! You make me feel safe! You’re there … right when I don’t think I can go another second you show up and everything is just … just … it’s better! I can breathe when you’re around and I’ve laughed and laughed and half the time I don’t even know what I’m laughing at. It’s never been like that for me. I just wanted all of that. But all I seem to be able to do is hurt you and make you crazy. That’s all I’ve got to give you and it’s not fair!!!”

I was not going to let him see me cry again. I tried to run to the house but it was more like a skip hop sort of thing. I got in the door and slammed it. Slamming the front door felt so good I went to my parents’ room and slammed that one too and I would have slammed their bathroom door only it was a pocket door and there was no way to do it with any amount of satisfaction.

“Well, at least you didn’t lock the door this time.”

“Rand I can’t take any more of this. I know I’m doing it all wrong just … just … just go … “

“No. Don’t want to and I’m thinking you aren’t in any shape to make me right now.”

And he sat down on the floor beside me and put his arm around me and we sat there for a couple of minutes before he said, “You really aren’t holding all this stuff over my head are you.”

“What stuff?”

“This stuff … your house, your land, your food, your … your everything.”

“You said we were together. That we were working things out.”

“And you’re prepared to share all of this just because I said.”

“Yeah. Wasn’t I supposed to? You always share stuff with me.”

Rand just looked at me and then he laughed only it wasn’t a good ha-ha laugh but a laugh that said it was either laugh or cry.

“Kiri, guys … guys like to think they bring something to the table in a relationship. One of the problems … look, I didn’t like it when Mr. Winston used to go on about the fact that I lived on Uncle George’s charity but I also had the sense to know that it was pretty well true. That’s one of the reasons that I always worked so hard … I got to the point I was tired of owing people for every little thing in my life. I’m not sure what to make of all of this now. Maybe I didn’t think things through either.”

“I know it’s a burden Rand but please … give me another chance. I warned you I’m no good at this stuff. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to say most of the time. Things just come out of my mouth and it’s just … “

“Kiri, you still don’t get it. I’m not … I don’t have anything … “

“I don’t understand. Any what?”

“Kiri, a guy has to have some pride. I don’t know … Kiri the sum total of what I can call my own it picketed out there eating all of your grass. What am I supposed to bring when you already have everything?“

“You mean this? All the stuff like in the dormer room and everything? But Rand, I wouldn’t have it if my parents were still alive … this was theirs, their retirement home. I’d give it all up to have them back. Now, now it’s … it’s a place Rand. And it didn’t do what I thought it was going to do for me when I got up here. It was a … a break … a chance but what I do with it from here on out is going to be what is important. You’ve seen me … I can’t even hit a tree with an ax in the same place twice. The only things I know about are what my parents taught me and what’s in the books they left behind… you know lots already … about animals, guns, building things … all that stuff. And you know about people … I know doodly squat about people.”

“Doodly squat huh?”

“Don’t make fun Rand, please. You know what I mean. I just don’t know how to do the people thing. My mouth is always going off at the wrong time or won’t work when I need it to. I don’t understand people. I do when you explain things. Maybe I am brain damaged and … “

“Don’t. Don’t you ever say that again.”

“Well, it’s true. I’ve told you about … “

“Yeah, and I’m beginning to think that you weren’t exaggerating as much as I thought you were and haven’t told me half about others. So it’s not about things to you.”

“Things, things, what things?! Anybody and their mother can go salvage a house and have things. You’re not a thing Rand. I don’t know what all of this is supposed to be called but I want it and I am soooo scared that I’m already losing it and I won’t even be smart enough to understand what I’m missing when it’s gone.”

And then … and then … he kissed me. I mean it wasn’t a big suck your face off kiss like in the movies but it was still a kiss, right on the lips. And it was so nice I almost cried.

“So what you’re really saying is that it isn’t my body you want but my brains.”

And I was still so shook by the kiss that it took me a second to realize he was playing with me and then we both laughed a lot harder and longer than the joke deserved.

This whole “relationship” and “trusting” is so much harder than I thought it was going to be. I thought we’d be able to go on just as we had before but … it feels like the world is speeding up and we aren’t going to get a chance to do things slow and easy.

We are up here in the dormer room and just like I figured he would, Rand has lost himself in Daddy’s files. Fraidy is happy to sprawl across the top of the metal cabinet watching us both. We’re going to sleep up here because we can leave a window open and have fresh air. But Rand said that after everything he couldn’t handle any more temptation so he drug up one of the mattresses and has put it on the opposite side from where I’m sleeping.

We can hear the big engines of some trucks on US90. One of the things that Mitch told Rand yesterday is that the word has gone out to stay away from the highway if a convoy comes through. They have orders to shoot to kill because right now they can’t tell saboteurs from gangbangers from innocents. We’ve heard their guns several times. It makes me jump every time because I know it means that someone has died.

I hope they stop soon. I’m tired and so is Rand … after a day like we’ve had we both need rest.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 31

June 29th – There has been so much to do today and so many people around that I feel like my skin has been rubbed raw with a brillo pad. My stupid foot hasn’t helped. And I’ve been given lots of things to think about too.

I woke up when I heard Rand; he doesn’t seem to need an alarm clock. He doesn’t even seem to need time to wake up. “Rise and shine sleeping beauty!!” I could have chucked a pillow at him and he just laughed. He went downstairs and Fraidy followed him. I got up and hobbled down the stairs and to my parents’ room and got dressed to start the day … but it wasn’t easy. My foot felt like someone had been beating on the bottom of it with a hammer. It wasn’t swollen any more though, just sore. Still feels bruised tonight but not as bad as it did.

I put scuffies on instead of my boots and went outside to fix breakfast. The day was already a scorcher and it was pretty miserable cooking over the coals in the bucket … but the heat didn’t just rise, it radiated out from the sides of the bucket too. I fixed oatmeal with dried apples and raisins, brown sugar and cinnamon. I was carrying the hot pot back inside just as Rand was coming in from taking care of the animals.

I wasn’t very hungry. Between my foot and my nerves that it was going to be another day like yesterday I just couldn’t get it together. Rand noticed and asked me what was wrong. I didn’t want to mess things up but we also promised each other last night that we wouldn’t have what Rand called “sacred cows.” He meant that nothing was off limits to talk about because if we didn’t we’d just wind up in the same place we had before. So I told him and waited for him to get mad.

Only he didn’t. He said that we would likely argue sometimes – we both like having our own way too much – but that we could also talk it out and that he wasn’t worried about another day like yesterday. Yesterday happened because we didn’t know that the other had certain hang ups but now that we do we can work on it. He makes it sound so easy, which I am 99.9% positive it’s not going to be, but he made me feel better about it and that was enough.

He insisted on cleaning my foot again and said there was a lot less infection. I guess all the cleaning and the triple antibiotic cream helped. He put some tape and gauze on it and then helped me to put on my socks and boots. That was embarrassing … especially the sock part because Rand kept giving me looks and smiling. I’m not sure what it was all about but it made my face hot.

We’d gone out the front door and were discussing what we needed to do for the day … I already knew that I needed to start picking the cherries when Fraidy had come out of the orchard with not one blackbird but two … but first thing I needed to get two new firepits dug. Rand told me he’d do it and I had opened my mouth to say something, I forget what, when we heard a wagon coming. “Yo, the house!”

Brendon has an amazingly big mouth. And it wasn’t just Brendon; it was Brendon, Alicia, Mick, Tommy, Laurabeth, Jonathon, and Charlene. And Uncle George, Clyde, and Melly and her little boy which really surprised me. I felt like somebody had dropped a two by four on my head. Rand looked happy but I wasn’t sure what to make of all these people just showing up. I had so much to do but now I was supposed to entertain company?

Rand turned about and said real quick, “Don’t worry. I won’t tell them about your secret room.”

“Ours.”

“Huh?”

“It’s our secret room.”

I must say something right every once in a while because Rand looked pretty happy and I don’t think it was just because his family had come over.

Turns out they hadn’t come just to visit but to help with the tree. I was flabbergasted. I knew Brendon had said he would bring his dad’s cross cut saw over but I didn’t think they’d all show up like they did. Charlene climbed down from the wagon carrying a bag of something and then Alicia came over and said, “Mr. Crenshaw got a deer early this morning but we need to do something with it quick. I’ve got a big tripod and if we can use your Dutch oven we’ll have venison stew for lunch.”

I nodded and went to get it but Rand sent Charlene into the house for it – I use it so much I keep the cast iron stuff hanging on hooks in the summer kitchen – and told me to sit on the porch while he dug the firepits I wanted. Mick and Tommy volunteered to dig the firepits and that left Rand to help unload the wagon and explain to everybody why I was limping so bad. Uncle George looked over at me and winked and said, “We can share my crutch.”

I can’t just sit down while everyone is working so I went over to see what Alicia, Laurabeth, Milly and Charlene were doing. The bag Charlene had been carrying held potatoes, carrots, and onions out of their supplies and I didn’t know what to say but Laurabeth put her hand on my arm and said, “It’s OK. Missy and Bill brought a bunch of stuff with them. They wanted to come but Bill is just now getting back on his feet and someone needed to watch Janet, she had an asthma attack during the night and she’s all washed out again. Seems we no sooner think she has turned a corner than there’s a setback.”

Alicia was quiet and said, “Do you know how to use a pressure canner? Do you have one?” She was browning chunks of what I presumed was venison over the coals that I had used at breakfast while the fire under the tripod burnt down.

I told her I had a couple, they were my mom’s but using a pressure canner over an open fire was different than using a water canner and I wasn’t sure enough of it to actually do it yet.

“That’s true. You ought to have Rand set up that pot belly stove you have out in the barn and … “

Rand came around the corner, “What pot belly stove?” When I told him the one he kept tripping over every time he went in Daddy’s junk room he had to go see for himself. He came out a little while later and popped me on my behind with his hat and told me he’d get it put together in the next day or two. I blushed … I’m not used to people touching much less that kind of thing, certainly not with people around, but no one seemed to think anything wrong with it so I didn’t say anything either.

Alicia was dumping the browned chunks of venison into the Dutch oven and adding onion, garlic, and some other seasonings with some water and she told me they’d need to simmer for at least an hour and a half before adding the potatoes and carrots. The boys finished the holes and wanted to know what I needed them for. I told them I needed two because it was too crazy when I tried to can over just one and I needed to start canning cherries.

Everyone looked at me eagerly and then Rand called the boys and they came back carrying the grates I had used over my old firepits. “Rand said they were able to get these out for you and that you ladies are supposed to stay over here so they can use the cross cut without worrying about you all getting in the way and getting hurt. We have to go back and help the men.” Then the two little turkeys strutted off.

Laurabeth just rolled her eyes and Charlene complained about “chauvinist piglets.” It reminded me a lot of how it was when my family would get together on my grandparents’ farm and it made it hard to talk when I realized that Momma and Daddy would have liked these people. Like Daddy would have said, “They suffer from the same kind of crazy as us.”

With everyone there to take part, it didn’t take near as long to do things. We had one tree picked clean of ripe cherries in no time. Charlene got a kick out of using Momma’s cherry pitter. We used the less than pretty cherries to make juice the same way I made blueberry and blackberry juice. It took a little more sugar to knock the edge off of the bite but that was about it.

The other things we made were cherry preserves, cherry pie filling, spiced sweet cherries, pickled cherries, and cherry butter. As soon as our buckets were emptied we would go back out and pick over the next tree. With both canners going on both fires it wasn’t as hard to stay ahead either. And the boys built us a fourth fire that we could boil the jars over when we wound up needing it.

When we had enough jars, I used that fire to make a Cherry Slump for dessert using my smaller Dutch oven. You take two and a half cups of sour cherries and pit them. Sprinkle half cup of sugar over the cherries and gently toss them to coat. You spread the cherries out evenly in the bottom of your pan. Then you mix another half cup of sugar with three-quarters cup of flour, and a half cup of chopped nuts and spread that out evenly on the cherries. Then you cut up about the equivalent of a stick of butter over the top of that and sprinkle a little cinnamon to finish it off. From there you bake it for about thirty-five minutes at about 400 degrees. While Uncle George was eating his share later on he asked if the girls had written the recipe down and then realized he didn’t have cherry tree and started floundering. I said I made it with fresh this time but they should be able to make it with the canned ones they were taking home.

Everybody looked at me like they were surprised … except for Rand, he understood and knew that I wasn’t just going to let them help with all of the work and not get any of the rewards. I also told them that as soon as the trays of cherries dried that they’d have some of those as well.

Melly was quiet the whole time they were here and so was her little boy. But it was a healing quiet, like she needed to be part of things without being forced into actively participating yet. Clyde came over several times to check on them. I finally got the little boy to smile when I remembered and ran and got one of my brother’s old toys. It was an old dumptruck and he played with it in the sand until he fell asleep for a nap in his momma’s lap. I told Melly to please let him keep it when she told him it was time to give it back when they were leaving. Last I saw he still had the old thing in a death grip where he sat between a couple of hay bales as they rolled down the road.

After they left it suddenly got very quiet again … but it was a relief. I liked having them over but I was wore out from being on my best behavior for Rand’s sake. Rand was wore out period. Earlier when I had walked over to see what they had done I found that they hadn’t just cut up the part of the tree that had fallen, they had also cut down the piece of the tree that had been left standing. Uncle George said the heart of the tree had been burnt out and that it didn’t make any sense to leave up what was just going to fall down eventually any way. The mules were put to good use dragging the big pieces out of the way.

Brendon put some of the wood in their wagon but ninety percent of it is still stacked in different piles on the other side of the barn. I saw it when I saw Uncle George and Rand talking. I asked Brendon what they were so serious about and he laughed, “Dad is probably giving him the talk like he gave me, Jonathon and Bill the other day.”

“What talk?”

Brendon turned about and looked at me and noticed I didn’t get it and then the other Brendon peeked out and said, “Don’t worry about it. If it is important Rand will explain it.” Looking back on it now I bet Brendon thinks I’m completely senile or something.

Rand and I both agreed we weren’t hungry for a big meal but that a couple of the leftover pan biscuits I had made with some cherry preserves would suit us to a T. We were both washing up in the kitchen when I saw his shirt had gotten torn and I told him to go ahead and give it to me. I could do the laundry tomorrow just as well as I could do it on Saturday.

He was moving pretty ginger and that’s when I saw that while he was a lot more healed than he had been last time I saw him after Laurabeth’s wedding he was still messed up. I felt like giving him a little heck over not taking it easier and made him stay put while I started cleaning the scrapes and bruises he still had.

I didn’t notice anything until he cleared his voice a couple of times and told me we needed to talk. I don’t care who says it, I know that tone. I thought I had done something wrong but when I asked him he told me absolutely not and that was kind of what we needed to talk about.

“Kiri, things at Uncle George’s place look like they are going to be a mess for a while longer and … “

“You have to go? So soon?”

“You don’t want me to go?”

“No,” I just barely managed to whisper.

“Well, that’s good. I don’t want you to want me to go. Actually what I was saying was that they are going to be a mess for a while longer. They are trying to figure a way to move a trailer onto the place for Missy and Bill but that’s going to take something only the Hendersons have right now. And even if Uncle George can come up with enough trade to get fuel from him they still need a trailer and a truck to pull it and someone who knows how to drive the truck to pull it. They’re thinking it would actually be easier to build a house from scratch but that won’t get finished for months. And Brendon wants a place for him and Alicia too which has Uncle George in a knot. That means I might need to stay here for a good long while.”

“Why do you have to go back at all? Your stuff is here. Hatchet and Bud and Lou like it here. You’ve got your own space and … and … “

“Are you sure about this Kiri? Because, like we talked about yesterday, a guy has to have some pride.”

“I … I don’t want you to think I’m trying to pressure you or bribe you to stay. I know you said guys need … their own stuff.”

After a deep sigh he walked me over to the sofa and we sat down. “It’s gonna be about more than stuff Kiri. People will talk.”

“About what?”

And that when he barked out a big laugh. “Kiri, I swear … people are going to think we are having sex. OK?”

“Ooooohhh. But … but … but we aren’t.”

“Nope. But I want to … one of these days … when you want to and are ready for that.”

Oh brother. Talk about freaking out. My whole voice did the whole stupid squeaky mouse thing. “You said we … that the ‘benefits” stuff was … I mean … “

“Whoa, I didn’t say it was going to happen today or tomorrow or even next week. I’m saying that I want to, not that we will any time soon. I know it is different for girls and … “

That brought me up short and made me want to throw something at him again. “Rand, I don’t know where you got your information from but even I know that girls feel the same sort of thing. You make my insides go all wiggly and squiggly. Some of the girls that I heard talk about it just do it for different reasons … like it makes them feel powerful and in control and stuff like that.”

I almost laughed at the look he had on his face. “Wiggly and Squiggly huh?”

“Rand … “ I said giving him a warning.

“Yeah, about that … Uncle George decided that I needed a little … advice. He’s not quite sure he likes me living here with you but he honestly doesn’t see a good alternative. You need the help, I need a place to stay … but the temptation is … is to make there be a lot more to it than that.”

I told Rand I could just die. His uncle was talking about … about … Rand and I doing …

“Relax. Don’t be upset. Uncle George was just being a good parental unit. And he’s a guy and knows what it is like. And he likes you and doesn’t want to see you get hurt. I told him that nothing was happening and he believed me and was relieved. If things were normal this wouldn’t ever come up. I never planned to live with Julia until … oh boy, don’t look like that, don’t get your feelings hurt. I just meant in a perfect … or at least more normal … world I hadn’t planned on living with someone until we got married. But this isn’t anywhere near a normal time and it’s not going to be like that for a long time; maybe a long, long time. What? Are you still upset that Uncle George said something?”

How was I supposed to say that he lost me after he said the “M” word? That was just too big … to go from not ever even thinking I’d have a boyfriend to having one like Rand to yesterday’s big scary blow up to now talking about … about sex and then … marriage? I almost couldn’t breathe. I know he wasn’t talking about marriage with me but it was still more than too much.

Rand figured something had upset me though and hugged me until the shakes stopped. “Stop worrying about it Kiri. I said I want to not that I need to or that you have to or I’m going to leave? Is that what you’re upset about?”

I had to tell him something. “Not exactly. It’s just too much Rand. I can’t .. I don’t even know if I’m ready to think about it much less anything else.”

“Well, you’re in luck then because Uncle George was moving things along a little too quick for me too. How’s that for getting along? We’re already thinking alike? Two peas in a pod, that’s us.”

And then he poked me in the ribs and … it was just alright again. Just like that. Sure, it is still floating around in the back of my head but it doesn’t seem like something I have to worry about right now, not if I don’t want to. Which is nice because it seems like we’ve got more than enough to worry about as it is.

Uncle George wasn’t just giving him the you-know-what talk but had also told him that people were just up and disappearing. Sometimes there was a sign of a struggle. Sometimes it looked like they’d been about to sit down for dinner and just walked away. Sometimes you could tell they’d packed up and left.

A few could be put down to leaving the area of their own free will. Apparently two of the families on the county road where the Crenshaws live decided to leave and packed up what they could on horseback and took off about four days ago. They are headed to family they have on the other side of the Georgia line. They just left everything behind. If it didn’t fit on their horses they gave it away. But there have been enough of the other kinds of disappearances that people are getting twitchy.

And animals are going missing too or found drug off into the bushes and slaughtered. The dog packs are getting bolder again as well. So are the gangbangers though apparently some of them hacked the folks in the convoy last night off so much that they took off and burned their camp down to the ground … people and all. Several families were lucky that the fire was stopped by a creek or the loss of life and damage to property could have been even higher.

Rand said from here on out nothing stops my shooting practice but bad weather … and it has to be really bad weather too. Now that he knows about all the ammo in the cubbyhole he says I can’t use the excuse that it will use up all of the bullets. I never made that excuse; I think he was just teasing me. He knows that even having been forced to … well to use deadly force … I’m still not very comfortable with firearms though I’m not afraid of them any more either.

Rand also wants to go around the house and make a list of repairs and projects to make a list of supplies from so we can be on the lookout for them. And he wants to check out some of the houses further away to see if they’ve been completely combed through or not. Clyde and Brendon helped him get the stuff to fix the lanai with today but he says he wants to make the project list and check those other houses before he starts.

Rand is already asleep and snoring. I couldn’t go to sleep without trying to get some of this straight in my head. I wish things … oh, I don’t know what I wish. I just know that my life is suddenly nothing at all what I expected it to be. Guess that is “God’s Timing” thing that Momma O was talking about. I just feel like I need a how-to guide so I don’t mess things up.


June 30th – Tired, sweaty, and hot. That is about the sum total of this day. Oh yeah … add gross, disgusting, sad, uncontrollable heaving and a mild case of hyperventilation. Can’t leave out the hyperventilating, it just wouldn’t be the same without it. I acted so totally like a girl.

Day was nice when we got up, just muggy. It rained a little over night which I was glad for. Carrying buckets of water to the plants is hard work and a soak from a shower usually means I can skip either the morning or afternoon watering. This time I didn’t have to do the morning which left me some time to make a kind of hash brown skillet casserole kind of thing with dry shredded potatoes, freeze dried ham, powdered eggs, onion, and cheese.

While that was cooking I got two canners of cherries going and set a bucket of them aside in the cool of the house to take to Momma O. I opted to only cook two batches so that I could have time to help Rand go over the house after I took a little time to practice my aim. He said there were a few things that needed tending to but overall things looked good. He also made a list of projects that he wanted to talk to me about and I told him … well, I told him I trusted him and all he needed to tell me was what I needed to do for my part. The look on his face was worth saying it that way. He kissed the topped of my head and said we’d talk about it anyway but later, we needed to get ready for what we had planned for the afternoon.

I fixed extra biscuits at breakfast and for lunch I filled them with a kinda of chicken salad that used the freeze dried chicken pieces, some dried apple and some raisins. I had to make my own mayo. We used to do that at the diner if we didn’t want to open a new gallon jar. You take three tablespoons of evaporated milk, one quarter teaspoon of salt, one quarter teaspoon of paprika, one quarter teaspoon of prepared mustard, and a pinch of white pepper and mix it all together. Then you whisk in a half cup of vegetable oil a little bit at a time. Last you add three to four teaspoons of lemon juice. It made about three quarters cup and was just enough to make the chicken salad ingredients stick together.

While Rand saddled the three mounts he asked if I would bring the bags and pillow cases that we used before just in case. I put them in a bag I slung around my neck and Lou stood very still and even seemed to bunch up his muscles in a way to give me an easier time of getting into his saddle. What was even funnier was when he turned his head sideways as if to make sure I was ready before he began to walk. Rand tried to get him to trot but he looked at Rand like, “Are you crazy? You want me to dump her on her head?”

Rand gave up with a shake of his head and said we’d go by Momma O’s first and then work our way back through some areas he had picked out. When we got there Ms. DeLois, Momma O’s daughter, came out and said everyone was down with colds and wasn’t fit for company. I told her I had brought the bucket of cherries as I promised as a down payment on our trade and she took it inside grateful to have something to do besides fetch and carry for her family. Rand had us stop for a moment and he chopped enough wood for me to carry and fill up their wood box on the back porch. We are supposed to go back tomorrow to check and see if they need anything more.

Cutting down one of the nameless private roads off of the highway, Rand took us passed houses that had obviously been ransacked. Then we went down another road and suddenly Lou wouldn’t go any further. Rand, who was riding Hatchet and leading Bud kept going until Bud jerked on his lead. “Rand, Lou won’t … “

“Kiri, hold on!!!”

Lou and Bud suddenly lined up side by side, Lou facing one side of the road and Bud the other. All I could do was hold on. Hatchet had laid his ears back and I could feel that Lou was all tense. Rand had his rifle out and was trying to locate what had set the mules off when out of the bushes charged several large dogs. One leapt and grabbed me by the ankle trying to pull me down and off. Lou spun, lifting the dog off the ground and Bud kicked out at the dog sending it into the roadside ditch.

I re-seated myself and leaned low against the saddle and the mule’s neck and held on for dear life. Lou spun and kicked at the dogs that had come after us. I heard Rand’s rifle bark several times as well as yelps and crunching things as the mules fought. It was over as quickly as it started. Lou was shaking and it took me a minute to open my eyes and realize Rand was say, “Kiri … Kiri … pat Lou’s neck. Tell him it’s OK. He won’t let me near him. Kiri … “

I finally got hold of myself and when I did Lou did too. I love Lou. And Bud too. I would have been dog chow if they weren’t mules. If I had been on Hatchet I never would have made it. He would have dumped me and run off. As it was Rand pulled me out of the saddle and held me while we both shook worse than the animals did. I could tell he was still watchful even while he held me so tight my nose was squashed into the pocket of his shirt but all of our steeds were calm so the dogs that had escaped were long gone.

“We’ll get home in no time. You can ride … “

“No!”

“Kiri, I know you had a scare but you can’t give up on riding, you need … “

“No … I mean no we don’t need to get right home. We came out and I’m not letting crazy, vicious dogs stop me. Unless you mean … oh! … are any of them hurt?! Lou! Bud! Hatchet!”

“Take it easy. They’re fine. Kiri, it’s OK. Look at ‘em. They’re just standing there smelling the wild flowers.”

He hugged me to him again. “If you’re sure, we’ll keep going. The area I’m thinking of isn’t too much further.”

Lou seemed tired so I asked Rand if we could go slow and I kept telling Lou and Bud how good they both had been. They seemed to like it. Their ears kept flicking around like there were really listening to me.

It wasn’t long before I could tell Rand was getting a little upset as we passed house after house, trailer after trailer, all of which were trashed, burned, and/or obviously a waste of time for us to even stop and investigate. “I’m sorry. This looks like it was a fool’s errand. Let’s cut across here and just head back.”

“Head home … “

“Yeah, head home,” he corrected with a tired grin tinged with disappointment.

The houses had thinned out to one every eighty acres or so if that when Rand stopped and stood up in his stirrups and then took us off into a densely treed area. In the middle was a clearing and in the clearing was a house with several outbuildings and a heavily fenced area attached to the old barn … we had found where Pretty Boy came from. There were a couple of hens sitting in the branches of the tree inside the fenced off area. There were a lot more dead ones all over the ground.

“Helllooooo the house!” No answer. You get to recognize the feeling of empty but Rand refused to take chances. I wasn’t allowed off Lou until he’d checked the house, barn, and shed.

When he finally let me go in the house he said, “It smells like old people.”

“Rand Joiner!”

“Well, it does. Like the nursing home over in Branford where the youth choir used to go sing a couple of times a year.”

To be honest he was right but it just sounded so disrespectful to say so out loud. There wasn’t a sign of anyone except for a plate with some maggots on it sitting in the kitchen sink. There was a good layer of dust on everything too and the ashes in the fire place were days old according to Rand … how he could tell I have no idea. You could also see where it had rained in one of the back windows that had been left open.

“I’d say at least a week, maybe a day or two more, maybe a day or two less.”

“But … do you think this is one of those houses were people are just disappearing from?”

“Babe, if I knew I’d tell you. But given the state of things I’m going to count this abandoned property. If someone shows up … well, we’ll deal with it then. Start in the back of the house and work your way forward. Absolutely anything that could be useful, you bag up and pile in the front room. I’m going to look in the barn.”

I tried not to let it get to me but with pictures of people staring down from almost every wall of the house it was hard not to feel like an intruder. Mostly it was just odds and ends until I got to the kitchen. There was quite a bit of cast iron cookware and speckleware. One kitchen drawer held enough old butcher knives it would have made my Daddy envious. And someone went a little wild buying Tupperware because there was a lot of the really old orange, yellow, brown, and green “burping” canister sets to stock a yard sale with. I took every piece and used it to hold everything I could.

When I opened a closet I couldn’t believe what I saw. There was a slew of half pints and pints of all sorts of vegetables, fruits, and homemade condiments, all lined up like I wanted to have my own looking some day. Most of the jars were dated only a couple of months ago, none more than a year. Rand came in when I called him and asked what he thought we should do with it.

He kissed me on the top of the head again … I think he likes to remind me how short I am … and said, “Pay dirt. There’s a small wagon and harness in the barn. It isn’t in real good shape but I think it will get us home so long as we aren’t rough or try to take it through ditches. Bud has been trained to pull single and we’ll load Lou and Hatchet and we’ll walk ‘em back. You bring that screwdriver and those wire cutters of yours?”

I handed them over and started moving stuff to the front porch. Even trying to be judicious it was a pile of stuff and I wasn’t sure we’d get it all in one load, especially if we were going to have to be careful. Well, it wasn’t long after that that nature started calling and I told Rand not to look or I’d wish chiggers on him while I went out back of the house … the bathroom was just too gross for me to feel comfortable using; there were flies and cigarette butts down in the bowl.

Once out there I noticed a little building and realized it was an old-fashioned out house. I thought, “Why not?” I walked over to it and remembered that sometimes wasps would build their nests in the camp latrines at Girl Scout camp. Sure enough I heard something and used the barrel end of my rifle to gingerly open the door.

I slammed the door back shut so scared that I squeezed the trigger of the rifle making it go off and I turned and ran. Rand came running from the barn and caught me. I was in a panic and barely realized it. I pushed him out of the way and then upchucked in the gladiolas and when I was finished I started hyperventilating.

Rand sat me on the porch and put my head between my knees and gradually the hyperventilating turned into hiccupping cries. Rand told me he’d be right back even though I kept shaking my head for him not to go.

Even now, miles distant from what I saw and cuddled up against Rand’s leg while I write this I have a hard time not shaking. The old lady had apparently gone to the outhouse and had a heart attack, stroke or something. She’d been sitting there a while. I had attributed the smell to the ripeness of a latrine in summer and the sound I thought was wasps was … was … rats.

Rand came back looking as green as I felt and sat down on the porch and held me while I continued to cry.

“Yo, Joiner … we heard a shot. She crying ‘cause she missed?”

“Shut up Chase,” Mr. Henderson grumped. “You OK girl?”

“Rats … rats … “ was all I could get out before I leaned over and started crying again.

Chase Peters laughed, “Rats? I knew there had to be something that would finally scare your girl but who would have thought it would be little bitty … “

Chase yelped as Rand dragged him off his horse and around the back of the house. Mitch, who had gone to make sure that Rand didn’t do a permanent type of injury to Chase said that Rand opened the outhouse door and practically through him in. It took Chase nearly twenty minutes before he stopped puking and could get back up on his horse. I don’t remember hearing a sound from him after that.

I was embarrassed and felt so cold despite the heat of the day that Rand made me lay down on the porch with an old chenille bedspread over me. Mitch, Hoss, and Mr. Henderson helped Rand to harness Bud to the wagon and load things up.

“Child, look a here at me. Rand! You need to get this girl home. Her eyes are near about as big as her face. Boys, finish loading them animals down and anything left push it back inside the front door. Rand you can come back for it tomorrow. The girl’s shocky and needs to be put to bed. We’ll ride back to your place and tomorrow we’ll come back and give that old woman a decent Christian burial. One more day won’t make a difference to her now.”

I remember being lifted up and put on the wagon bench and told to hold on but I don’t remember much of the ride back home. It was getting late and Mr. Henderson and the others had to head out quickly as they were already late for a rendezvous. Rand opened the house back up and took me inside and put me on the sofa and made me drink some water. I must have zoned out for a long time because suddenly it was later and Rand was trying to feed me some broth. I blinked and blinked and blinked trying to clear the fog from my brain. After I drank the cup of broth Rand went back outside took care of the animals, putting them in the barn for the night.

I realized while he was outside that everything was in the house and all over the place. I was trying to make some order out of the chaos and not having much luck when Rand came in and locked the house down. “Leave that ‘til tomorrow. It’ll keep. Let’s get comfortable and go upstairs.”

“Get comfortable” is what we say when we mean let’s get ready for bed; we kind of talk around the fact that we are sleeping in the same room. I was starting to feel embarrassed. Not about going up to the dormer room but about the way I had acted. But Rand wouldn’t let me. He said people just get to a point and then their brain is gonna do what it is gonna do. He said it doesn’t mean you’re weak, it just means that your all full up until your brain processes some stuff and gives you room to work with.

I was going to look through Momma’s cookbooks but I haven’t had the inclination. All I’ve wanted to do was write this stuff out of my system. Put it in some semblance of order and … hopefully find room in my brain to work with.

Rand reaches down every few minutes and pats me or touches my face. I don’t even think he realizes he is doing it half the time. I don’t mind. We’re supposed to go back tomorrow and get the rest of the stuff and it is going to take the best part of me and lots of hard work to make myself go.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 32

July 1st – Another new month. I used to hear Momma and Daddy say things about how fast time was moving and when I said – I don’t know how they put up with my mouth sometimes – that time moved the same speed that it always had they’d just tell me that I’d understand when I was older. Well, I’m not that much older and I understand. Not only is it moving faster, there isn’t enough of it.

I was just putting Rand’s breakfast on the table (I had a hard time bringing myself to eat) when a wagon and a buggy pulled in. The wagon held Uncle George, Brendon … and shock of all shocks … Bill Sawyer. The buggy was Pastor Ken’s. I ran to make sure there was enough coffee to go around. Or I would have run if I hadn’t felt like I was moving in molasses.

I was bringing the coffee pot to the front porch with some mugs when Uncle George hobbled over and tilted my chin back and said, “Sugar, you don’t look so good. Sit over here and we’ll fetch our own coffee.”

I guess my brain wasn’t firing too well because I couldn’t figure out how he knew or if he was talking about something else. Pastor Ken came over and was checking my blood pressure and pulse and doing all sorts of things before I could even protest. While he was doing that I heard the other men talking about how Mr. Henderson’s man Hoss had family out on Big Tick Road which ran crossways from the Crenshaw’s place and he stopped by on his way to visit them on his day off last night. Pastor Ken had heard from Mr. Henderson himself while he was checking on Momma O and her family and who had asked him to come back and have a look at me. The buggy and the wagon had met at our front gate and come back together.

When Pastor Ken was finished he and the others started talking quietly amongst themselves. Part of me felt like I should say, “Hey, I’m right here! Don’t talk about me like that!!” But I was also intimidated and didn’t want to embarrass Rand in front of his family. Keeping Rand’s approval won out and I went inside and started moving stuff around again.

“There you are. Look Uncle George wants to go over to that house and we’re going to use his wagon since it is bigger and in better shape. Pastor Ken has to go too to collect information on who lived there so there’s really no reason for you to go. Kiri? Babe? Do you need to go lay down?”

“Rand, I’m not sick. And I’m not weak. I’m sorry I lost control yesterday but that doesn’t mean you have to … to … to act like I’ll fall apart all over again.”

“I didn’t say you … oh …” Then he cleared his voice and started over. “Kiri, you had a very bad reaction to what happened. Pastor Ken said it might not be a good idea … “

“Well, good for Pastor Ken and good for you. If you don’t want me to go just say so. Don’t whisper about it behind my back.”

“Don’t be like this.”

“OK. How would you like it if you were standing right there and people started talking about you and making all of the decisions ‘for your own good’?”

“You’re right. I wouldn’t. But … you asked me to say it and I will. I don’t want you to go. I didn’t like that you saw that to begin with. It scared me to see how bad you were shook up. I don’t want you to go back there today because we’re going to bury that woman and it is going to be a horrible job. I don’t want you to see it.”

Well, at least he was honest. I had to give him credit for that. “Fine. I’ll stay here but it will be because I choose to and not because you all think I should. And here’s another thing for you to think on. I was on my own a long time before you and your family came along. I saw things Rand. That woman wasn’t the first dead body I’ve seen. She may have been the worst but trust me, not by much. Rats, roaches, flies … there isn’t a whole lot of difference in the gross factor. I freaked out yesterday. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I could because I knew you were there, maybe not. Whatever. But I got up and kept going after all the times before and I’ve dumped more than one dead body and I did it without anyone’s help. I don’t need to be babied like I’m incapable of dealing with things.”

I turned around and grabbed a laundry basket full of cans and jars to take them to the summer kitchen to put away. Before I got two steps he took the basket away and set it back down turned me around and hugged me. “I don’t want to think about all the things you’ve had to do Kiri. Just let me do this so you don’t have to and don’t make me take you with me back there just to prove I don’t think you’re a weakling.”

“Is this one of those guy things you were talking about?”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

“Fine. So long as you know that I’m only staying home for you and not because I need to.”

“Fine. So long as you know that I know you are staying home because … aw crap. Forget it.” And then he kissed me … even harder than the first time. “Stay near the house and we probably won’t be back until after lunch but if you could have maybe something for when we do come back … I just don’t know how much we’re going to feel like eating.”

After they left I got to thinking and realized it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing that I was staying home. The house was a mess and there was a bunch of stuff to put away. I’d missed cleaning day yesterday. The sheets needed changing on the beds. I had laundry to do. The cherries needed picking again. I needed to change out the trays in the dehydrator. And when I went out to the orchard what do I find? The raspberries are coming in.

First I dumped the dirtiest load of clothes into the tub and dumped water and detergent on them to soak. Then I ran outside and picked a bunch of cherries, pitted them, and dumped them in a pot to cook for juice very glad that I hadn’t completely put the coals of the fire out yet. While that was going I ran back inside grape-stomped the laundry and then drained the water off of them and put more water on top. I got back outside just in time to keep the cherries from boiling over. I dumped those into the colander to drain on the counter in the summer kitchen to keep the flies out then pitted a bunch more and traded out the drying trays splitting the dried cherries between the two houses with a small bag to give to Pastor Ken in case he came back by the house. I also put some cherries on to make preserves with and started some jars boiling.

After sliding the trays back into the dehydrator I ran inside and found I’d need to give the dirty clothes a second rinse and took care of that and then had to rush back outside to save the preserves. Got the preserves jarred up and sealing and realized I hadn’t gotten any kind of lunch started. I made up two skillets of pan biscuits and while those browned I decided to sneak up and get another can of the Mountain House stuff – spicy oriental chicken and vegetables. I dumped a load of Ramen noodles to cook in there at the same time. The Ramen absorbed the liquid that the Mountain House stuff didn’t and I dumped some soy and a can of pineapple tidbits in there too. It made my eyes water but I knew guys usually like spicy stuff so figured it would be OK.

I left it in the Dutch oven to keep it warm and then picked a bunch of raspberries. I cleaned them and put them in a bowl in the kitchen and put a little sugar over them. By the time the guys came back I figured they would be sweet and juicy. I had to cover everything with cheesecloth because all my going in and out was letting flies in. I wish I had had time to make whipped topping but I didn’t. You can make it using powdered milk but it would have to wait for another time, the cherry preserves were ready to come out of the canner and the juice was ready to go in.

The first load of laundry was finally finished so I got them out and hung up while the next load … this one of jeans … was on a first soak. Thank goodness Rand isn’t the type that has to have a brand new pair of jeans every day. And he is good about picking up his own clothes. He said college taught him that when suddenly there wasn’t a clothes fairy to come along and do it for him. It was house rules at Aunt Wilma’s that everyone was responsible for their own laundry, guess it amounts to the same thing.

After that and getting the juice out of the canner I decided it was just too doggone hot to work over the fire any more. Lunch was passed and I decided to “check” on the raspberry short cake to see if it was any good before I gave it to the men. It was. I spent the next hour putting stuff away around the house though it didn’t look like it. Mostly looked like I was making a bigger mess than I had before. That’s one of the reasons why I preferred to leave stuff in the barn and bring it in a bit at a time.

I was just starting to get a little worried when I heard Rand and the others return. I ran outside and saw Pastor Ken come around real quick and he had blood on his shirt. He saw me and my face and said quickly, “Everyone is fine but if you could get some water boiling so we can clean up it’d be appreciated.”

Then over the hedge I heard, “I’m fine Kiri, none of the blood is ours.” I didn’t trust that overly-innocent announcement but let it go while I got buckets full of water and set them on the front porch. One look at Rand’s face and I was hacked. “I thought you said none of the blood was yours!”

He’d been in a fight and I could tell he was likely to have another black eye. He’s nose had certainly played fountain all down the front of his shirt. “Uh, well, the real blood isn’t ours. I forgot about this.”

Yeah, right. Brendon started snickering until I slapped him in the face with a wet rag and then Uncle George started up, “Never try and hide anything boys. The truth will always come out.”

Mr. Henderson, Mitch (no Chase), and Bradley were also there. Mr. Henderson added insult to injury by saying, “Especially not from a short little thing with a hot temper. How you feeling girl?”

Well, I had enough clean plates thank goodness but I had to split the biscuits in half for the short cake but no one seemed to mind. They told me their story while they ate.

They took care of the old woman’s body first thing and then started loading what was left to bring back into the wagon. It would have been a full load for the little wagon we used yesterday but it barely filled up half of Uncle George’s … until they found a bunch of old canning jars out in the barn. Some of them are the really old blue-green color so they can’t be used for canning but they’ll come in handy for storage according to Mr. Henderson. When I looked at him he said, “According to my housekeeper anyway. You remember Silvo? Hortencia is his mother’s aunt. She’s been with me … oh, bought twenty years now and helped raise Cassie. That woman has forgotten more stuff than most have ever learned in the first place.”

It was while Brendon was trying to catch the three hens left alive and the others were putting some hay in the wagon box to try and keep the jars from clanking together that they were snuck up on by a group of armed people. “These weren’t bangers. But they weren’t from around here as far as I could tell either.” Pastor Ken, who knew most of the people left if not by name by face said he hadn’t recognized any of them either.

“Six men and two women and they all look like they’d been road hard and hung up wet. I didn’t have an axe to grind with ‘em until they started shooting with no cause. Rand here even offered to split stuff with ‘em if they were as desperate as they claimed. People get what they dish out and since they were dishing out lead they got it in return.” And that is all Mr. Henderson had to say on the subject. He may be as rough as an old corncob but he won’t stand for some behaviors and this put a permanent end to the problem in his mind.

It took us the better part of an hour to unload the wagon and say goodbye to everyone. I sent all three groups off with some cherries (they would have been overripe by tomorrow anyway) and tucked the dried cherries in the wagon and in Pastor Ken’s buggy. Rand still wouldn’t let me fuss over his eye and nose; he said there was too much work to do. We put the three little banty hens in the dog run and gave them some feed and fruit and a little bit of the hay to scratch around in. Pretty Boy was fascinated. He strutted back and forth along on the sides of the run and kept looking in to see what those feathery things were. The hens had been nervous but settled down after an hour out of the crate they had been transported in. They certainly seemed taken with the feed and fruit and having some place new and interesting to scratch around in.

I asked Rand, “Besides the obvious of just being nice, what did they get out of helping load that stuff and bring it back?”

“Huh? Oh, you are a suspicious little thing aren’t you,” he said with a wink. But after he shook his head he said, “Actually yeah, I’m going to go back tomorrow and help Uncle George to take some stuff off of the house so that it can be stored at their place and used to build Bill and Missy’s place and to enlarge the main house even more. Instead of a separate house for Brendon and Alicia they’ve decided to build a separate but connected ‘house’ on the back. I’m still not seeing it but whatever, it’s their place. Henderson is just happy to see some of the vacant buildings getting taken care of. He’s having a hard time with rats in his … in his fields and barns. As we get some wet weather he plans on burning the most dilapidated buildings first and then going from there.”

The jeans were still damp when I brought them in so I hung them on the inside line but at least I didn’t have to cook. Rand popped some popcorn that he had found in a jar and that was our dinner. He didn’t even finish his bowl. He was snoring like a lawnmower. He’d already taken care of the animals but I went out and checked on the chickens one more time and I watched as Pretty Boy shooed them into the barn and I shut and locked the door.

I’ve been working on my lists and journal for the last hour but I think we could both do with an early night. Tomorrow promises to be another busy day even if it is supposed to be the Sabbath.


July 2nd – Glug, glug, glug, glug … that’s me drowning in work. When it was just me I could do things or not do things at my own pace but now there is Rand and the animals and the constant visitors that make doing things that way impossible. True, today Uncle George and the rest only stayed long enough to fill their canteens and to drink a glass of tea but it still meant stopping what I was in the middle of.

On top of that I felt guilty about breaking the Sabbath. But, Rand did make me laugh … or rather something he brought home did. They found a couple of more hens that had been hiding in the barn but these you wouldn’t believe. My goodness! They look like they have mops on their feet and on their heads and are funniest looking chickens I’ve ever seen … they look like a brown dust bunny without ears. If Pretty Boy and his new girlfriends do make chicks I can’t imagine what they are going to look like. Pretty Boy looks like a small Rhode Island Red rooster like my grandmother used to have. One of the hens looks like Pretty Boy. Two of the hens look like they are wearing prison gear … they have like these black and white stripes all over them. The two new ones … well, like I said they are kind of camel colored brown (they hid in the hay very easily) and they have puffs of feathers on their heads and on their legs and feet.

I finished the clothes and the bed linens not too long after Rand left and before starting on more canning. I got quite a bit done actually. I think I’m going to have to just stick to one type of job at a time. Yesterday when I was running back and forth trying to do too many things at once I was wasting time. This time by finishing the laundry and then starting to can I felt more in control of what I was doing because I could focus.

Today I’d do a batch of cherry stuff and then a batch of raspberry stuff then back to the cherries then to the raspberries. I made some raspberry vinegar, raspberry syrup, raspberry relish, pickled raspberries, and raspberry preserves; small batches of each but it gives me a variety. Tomorrow I’m going to make more of the same until the berries are used up. Tomorrow I also think I’ll be able to switch out the cherries that are in the dryer for a batch of raspberries. I leaned up against the Plexiglas on the dryer today and burnt my arm; I couldn’t believe how hot it was. Guess these hot days are just what I need to get the drying down from three days to two. I could actually use a couple of more trays but I’m not going to complain, especially with how tired Rand is.

Rand is asleep again. I made hamburger helper with beef TVP and he almost went to sleep in his plate. I made raspberry corn muffins for dessert but he was so tired he fell asleep on the sofa in the middle of a sentence again so I put them in a tin and we’ll have them for breakfast with some raspberry and granola cereal.

The way we eat granola I’m going to need to make more before too much longer. I saw an easy recipe but it’ll have to wait for a less busy day. And that won’t be any time soon because I just realized that the red plum trees are going to be ripe in a couple of days.

I put away more of the stuff and I’ve managed to whittle the pile down by about half. It makes me cranky to see everything just lying all over the place like that but I now understand why Momma used to stand around shaking her head going, “There are only so many hours in the day.”

One thing I wished I had remembered to tell Rand was that I could swear that it felt like someone was watching me a couple of times today. It was probably my imagination after getting so used to him being around all the time. Or maybe Mr. Henderson had someone watch our place. It’s not important enough to wake him up over. But we’ve got to do something about his snoring I can hear him from all the way down the stair case.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 33

July 4th – For a long time I thought my life was perfect – Mom, Dad, little brother and all things good, at least as a kid would see it. Then I thought my life was over and all bad – lost my idyllic family, pains and scars and emotional battles. Then it managed to get even worse than I could have imagined when the pandemic went from manageable to horrific. But I struggled through all of that and survived and slowly my life has gotten … better. I still can’t say it perfect but I don’t know if anyone but little kids ever really experience that. As you grow up you see things and begin to be aware of things. But my life has definitely been getting better … lots better … and in ways that I never expected. But yesterday, just one word out of turn, and I could have lost that. It could have totally been gone and regardless of Momma O’s words about His will and His timing, people still are in control of their own choices and the consequences of those choices and what He wants for us may not be what we get because of our own actions or omissions.

Rand left really early in the morning to go straight over and meet his family. He didn’t even sit down for breakfast so I gave him the muffins to eat when he got a chance and I munched on dried granola and fresh fruit. The only thing that Rand asked me to do was stay around the house and that he would be back but not too late because they had done all of the prep work for dismantling things already.

My morning was full. The red plums were in and I was happy to have them. I was a canning fool and was really happy for some reason. I don’t know why. There was no real reason for it. I just felt good and everything seemed to be going good; really, really good. A guy, a girl, a horse, two mules, chickens and a cat and a home for all of them to share … it just felt good. I know I keep saying that but, when it has been so long since a person has felt that way, good is the same thing as great, wonderful, awesome … but more deep and grounded, like when the preacher used to say “God is good” and the congregation would say back “Good all the time.” It had been a while since I thought about that. A lot of the time it was just something I mouthed because all the grownups around me were saying it. But yesterday morning was different, I understood what they meant.

I was even hungry at lunch so I fried up a little bannock bread and dipped it in the half boiled syrup that I was making from the left over cherries, raspberries, and plums before I went inside and started reorganizing the remaining mess in the house. I had planned to give it my best shot to get it finished that night.

After I was finished eating I realized I needed three more jars before I could seal the syrup so I put a lid on the pot and pulled it off to the side so that it would stay hot but not turn into candy or burn. I turned around and ..

“Hi Kiri.”

“Chase! You scared me to death. What are you doing here? Is Rand back?”

“No. I … I came by to apologize … for the other day.”

I had been in a totally different zone and it took me a while to figure out what he was talking about. I didn’t really know Chase and just didn’t think about him that much. He’d been an annoying pain and honestly Rand took up most of my thoughts when it came to people of the male persuasion.

“Don’t worry about it Chase. You didn’t have to come all the way out here for that.”

“Well, I didn’t … not just for that. I wanted to warn you.”

I didn’t like the sparkle in his eyes. It didn’t match the expression on his face. “Warn me?”

“Yeah. About Rand.”

“Chase, I think you need to go.”

He kept on just like I hadn’t spoken and that made me itchy. I knew something was going on. “See Rand isn’t the good boy that he tries to make himself out to be. I could tell you some stories, oh yes I could. I could tell you some things about him and Julia both. Going to church on Sundays and every other day making it like …”

“That’s enough Chase. I want you to go. Now.”

“They always thought they were so good. Hypocrites, that’s all they were. And then Rand acted like he really did ‘get religion’ and started changing. No more drag racing ‘cause someone could get hurt and it was ‘wrong.’ No more going to the quarry for the parties because there was liquor and drugs and other stuff. But I knew deep down he and Julia both were still just the same as the rest of us. They couldn’t fool me.”

Every time I tried to edge away from him he would cut me off so I stood still and waited to see what he was after.

“And then he even got to be too good for Julia. Went off to Gainesville with that big scholarship like he was going to be somebody. Turned his back on the rest of us that’d been his friends. Broke Julia’s heart. And I knew, I knew that it wouldn’t take much to console her and I was the man for the job. And I did, and she liked it. But every time Rand came home she’d run to him and she’d be little Miss Goody Two-Shoes again.”

Once we’d gotten away from the fire I realized what I smelled wasn’t the fruit. Chase had been drinking and from the look of his eyes a bottle wasn’t the only thing he’d been sucking on. I knew those eyes and if he didn’t have a pipe of something close by I hadn’t spent the last few years of my life in a foster home with troubled teens.

“And then she finally saw him for what he was. A loser with nothing, not special, not anything. But instead of coming to me like she was supposed to she went with that freak Harbinger. Rand has totally ruined her.”

“Chase, you aren’t making any sense. You keep contradicting yourself. And what Julia chose to do is her responsibility, don’t try and make it different by blaming someone else. You got a problem with her you go tell her, not me. But for now why don’t you go on home and sleep it off. Better yet, find Mitch, talk to him.”

“My holier than thou brother? The one who didn’t give me any backup and let Rand throw me in with that … with that … No, I apologized for what I said but it is more important that I’m here to warn you. See Rand will get to you too. He’ll break your heart. But I can save you. I will save you.” And suddenly I was in a lot of very bad trouble because I was staring down the barrel of a really big gun. “You’re coming with me. Now.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you Chase Peters. You’re drunk and you’re high and you need to go someplace and sleep it off so you can find your brain.”

“You either come with me or I’ll tell Rand you aren’t the little innocent you play at being. And I’ll be convincing, just as convincing as I was every time he called begging me to tell him whether Julia was cheating on him or not. He believed me then. He’ll believe me now. Better yet … better yet … why don’t we just take care of that ‘innocent’ problem right now? Rand won’t want you any more after that and you’ll have to let me save you.”

Chase had completely lost his mind if he thought that I was going to simply give in to his lunatic demands. I might not always get what people are talking about the first time around but I’m not stupid either. I also knew that I wouldn’t have too many chances to get this right.

It was a fight but something told me that Chase had fought with girls before because he seemed to know all the dirty tricks that usually worked. I wasn’t going to give in, I just wasn’t … but Chase was a lot bigger and stronger than me and I knew without a doubt that unless I was lucky eventually I was going down. Going down though isn’t giving in.

“Turn her loose Chase!”

And then I was pinned up against him and I could feel the barrel of his gun jabbing me in the ribs.

“She isn’t worth it Rand. You never would have known if you hadn’t come back early would you? Man she’s a freak, the things she does,” and he said it with a dirty little laugh that left no one doubting what he meant.

I hadn’t been scared until then. It never occurred to me that Chase would actually follow through on his threat to tell Rand that … that I was that type of girl. And I could see something dark and nasty on Rand’s face. It felt like I was losing everything.

“Boy, turn her loose.” That was Mr. Henderson.

“Chase, what would your mother say?” That was Pastor Ken.

“Chase, my God … have you lost your mind?!” That was Mitch and you could see the pain written across his face as clearly as the anger on Rand’s.

Chase was getting agitated. He was very into his fantasy of the moment. He kept saying all these things to egg Rand on but also trying to blame me for what was happening. But no amount of pleading or ordering by the men he faced made him do anything but hold on tighter to whatever crazy he had going on.

The standoff was coming to an end, I knew it. I could feel it. Mr. Henderson did too. And Mitch was reaching for his gun but stopped when Chase shoved the gun even harder into me, nearly making me holler. Rand looked like he just wanted to barrel in and rip Chase apart but no one dared do anything.

Then I looked to my left and we were right by the fire again. And the pot was right there. And I knew, this was my last chance. Mitch was still pleading with his brother but stopped, confused when I said, “I’m sorry Mitch.”

It confused Chase and everyone else too. That gave me the one second advantage. And God is good … good all the time. I twisted left, grabbed the handle of the pot. The lid went askew as I jerked it up and flung it straight at Chase’s face. He could have used me as a shield. As it was my aim was off and the near boiling syrup caught him on the lower half of his face, the arm he’d thrown up to protect himself, and ran down the front of his shirt. He was screaming as soon as the first drop touched his skin. I got a few splatters on me too but it wasn’t the splatters that have me laid up.

I’d swung myself free when he brought his arm up but the gun still went off. I didn’t feel anything at first. Don’t feel much now given the pills that Pastor Ken made me take. What’s another scar? All I can say is thank goodness for metal underwires. Apparently that is what deflected the bullet and I only have a small furrow and a huge bruise under my arm where the bottom of my bra normally sits. That and the fact that Chase was using a reload that didn’t fire with the full force it was supposed to, the only reload in the whole gun. God is good.

They had to haul Chase off to the clinic. I could have gone but Pastor Ken recommended against it as some stomach bug was running rampant and the clinic was a major point of infection it seemed no matter how many times they disinfected everything.

The pastor patched me up before he would leave. I wanted Rand there but I didn’t know how to ask so I sat and tried not to think about the scars I already had while the pastor tended to what would become my newest one. Only Mitch seemed to be anxious to get his brother some help … but even he said he wasn’t leaving until he made sure I was going to be OK.

After everyone left Rand took care of the animals and brought in my canning stuff. I was pretty groggy and lying on the sofa. Every time I thought I had found a thought to think it would slip away from me. Every few minutes I felt Rand touch me and I’d try and open my eyes but they didn’t want to work. Rand didn’t say much and I didn’t seem to be able to put sounds together, every time I tried my mouth would forget what I was supposed to be saying.

Eventually I could keep my eyes open for than a few seconds at a time and Rand came in and locked everything down. When he looked at me … I knew what was wrong, or thought I did. And suddenly I wanted to cry so bad but couldn’t abide the idea that he would see me cry yet again. I got up and moved to go to the bathroom but the room tilted and I wound up walking into the wall and not the hall like I had meant to. I hit where I hurt and I nearly upchucked right there.

“Kiri! Geez. Here let me … Kiri? Come on … come on … that’s right. Let me … there were go. Now where were you headed? “

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? OK … how about we go wash your face? Hmmm?”

Rand carried me and then set me on the edge of the tub in the bathroom and took a washcloth and washed my face and hands and then bent to take my shoes off. “What are you doing?”

“Kiri, the stuff Pastor Ken gave you is pretty strong. You aren’t feeling too much, thank You God, and I don’t think you’re going to be doing much tonight. Why don’t we get you comfortable and we’ll go upstairs and …”

“You … you … you still want to stay … with me I mean?”

“Boy are you flying. Let’s get you situated and upstairs so you can lay down and sleep.”

“No, I mean yes, I mean … Rand … “

“Hey, look at me … Kiri?”

“Please don’t … please don’t … “

“Kiri, I promise I won’t … push you … but you are going to need some help getting undressed and upstairs.”

“Rand … please don’t …”

“Kiri, it’s OK I …”

“Listen to me! Please don’t … don’t think I’m like her.”

All the sound went out of the universe.

“Is that what you’ve been … Kiri, look at me. I’ve known Chase Peters since we were in middle school. He used to be my best friend and I know exactly how big a liar he can be. Even if I didn’t know that the fact that you were fighting him tooth and nail would have clued me in. And even if I didn’t know either one of those two things … Kiri, are you hearing me? …Look at me sweetheart. Even if I didn’t know those two things, I know you. You may be a lot of things but a flirt and a … hmmm … loose … isn’t one of them.”

I don’t remember but Rand said that tears were running down my face and all I seemed to do was want to lay my head down on his shoulder. I guess Rand did “help me get comfortable” and got me upstairs though I don’t remember more than bits and pieces.

This morning I only woke up when I did because nature doesn’t wait. They don’t talk about that in any of those romance books, how real that “real life” can be. I made it downstairs and to the bathroom pulling the sweaty t-shirt away from myself. I knew for it to already be that hot it had to be way passed breakfast. I was trying to decide what I could wear that wouldn’t make me want to scream when I heard the front door open. I didn’t hear him go up the stairs but I sure heard him come down, sounded like a herd of elephants.

“Kiri?!”

I mean to say “in here” but all I could manage was a croak. “Whew. I didn’t expect you to be awake yet. You feeling OK?”

I told him probably like he did after Laurabeth’s wedding. “That good huh?”

I smiled but all I wanted to do was lean against him and make sure he was there and was really staying.

“We’re taking a day off. Or at least a day off from work. Besides, I have presents.”

I didn’t have the foggiest idea what he was talking about. But before he would tell me he wanted me to take the other pill that Pastor Ken had left. After an argument that neither one of us was going to win we compromised and I took half the pill. My head still felt like it was barely attached but the room didn’t move around without my permission.

I wanted to clean up but Rand wanted me to come into the other room and sit first. I looked at the pile of stuff and realized it looked like it had grown again somehow. “Wha … ?”

“I told you … presents. Missy came with Uncle George and them yesterday and she took Mick and Tommy and went back over a couple of those trailers we passed by. She actually found one or two things in most of them except for one where she found a bunch of clothes and kid’s stuff. She took everything to divide up with the families over by them but she sent this stuff to you because she said it looked your size. And yeah, I know you are trying to be polite about other people picking out clothes for you but surely you can wear shorts and these things Missy called sundresses when it’s just me. And … I um … thought you might feel too uncomfortable and the dresses are the kind that …”

So I ended up wearing a sundress with a stretchy top part rather than the full armor that I normally wear. When I came out of the bedroom Rand wolf whistled and I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or throw something at him.

He … it’s hard to explain. For a couple of hours I was pretty out of it again. We went back up to the dormer room but we opened the windows and shutters all the way. Rand had found a very small fan that he plugged into some gizmo that he had wired into the solar panel thingies. He explained it to me but my brain was pretty toasted. All I know is that it worked and that little ten inch fan kept us cooler than we would have been otherwise. I’d kinda dozed and then find he’d done something else. There was a new pillow on my bed. A picture I’d never seen before suddenly appeared on the wall over Rand’s mattress. A small glass with some wildflowers in it was on a small table that I had been using as a nightstand.

Gradually the pain pill wore off and I sat up. The clock showed that it was lunch time but no Rand was in sight. I rolled offf the bed and decided I wouldn’t say no to a couple of ibuprofens and started down the stairs. I heard him in the summer kitchen and when I went in there he said, “I told you I could cook if I had to.”

It was fried rice and he had a bowl of fruit. “Come on, we’ll go back upstairs. It’s a few hours yet before the animals need any attention.”

He wouldn’t let me carry anything so it took him two trips. We had a picnic lunch and then … we’ll we cuddled. Not to do anything just to be close.

“Kiri, I know Pastor Ken said … look … did Chase … hurt you or ….”

“No. He clocked me once but he’s a woos and I barely felt it.”

“I swear girl, you are going to kill me. You know what I mean. Did he .. “

“No Rand. I didn’t like him touching me but he didn’t do any more than that and mostly that happened because we were fighting.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there and … “

“Rand, don’t you dare make this to be any of your fault. I don’t know what Chase’s problem is but … Rand … how … how mad is Mitch at me? And I didn’t even know there was anyone else until Pastor Ken mentioned their mother.”

“His mother. Mitch and Chase have the same dad, different moms. Mitch lived with their dad and Chase lives with his mom and the kids from her second marriage after the divorce. She lives way on the other side of Hwy129. Her parents had money and built her this nice house. They’re friends with the same crowd the Harbinger family is, what’s left of ‘em anyway.”

“But what about Mitch?”

“Mitch will deal with it. Don’t worry about it. Chase has had problems before. He’ll clean up and then fall off the wagon. Before his grandparents would always pay to have him to go to rehab … don’t know what they’ll do this time.”

“Rand, I need to know the truth … did you ever … I mean … did you believe any of the things he said?”

“No. Kiri, look at me, I mean it … no. Not even for a second. I was just so … furious … at Chase … at myself for leaving you here alone to deal with him when I know how dangerous it is … I’m still not feeling real good about what happened and if you need to talk about it we will but Kiri … I can’t promise I won’t get upset. I’m trying real hard right now because Pastor Ken said this plus everything else … that you need some peace and quiet. But it does hurt Kiri and … I’m not sure what to do with those feelings right now. Julia would flirt and it never bothered me near as much as seeing Chase touching you even though I know you weren’t asking to be touched. I’m just … “

And I could feel him getting upset so I just scooted closer to him and whispered stuff to him that I’m not going to repeat here about how he was the only one that I ever wanted to touch me. That seemed to settle him down some.

After a bit somehow or other we started talking about what needed doing and why as far as the projects around the place went … our place. He wants to get the lanai fixed first but the next project after that needs to be a corral for our mounts. And after that he wants to build a smokehouse. Both projects will require getting some materials from the salvage houses and he’ll need my help. That makes me feel better, knowing that we will work on things together. I told him I needed to get to work on turning a garden. He said Lou could probably be trained to plow … assuming we had a plow. He said let him think on it and we’d do what we could do until something better came along.

Then we worked our way back around to how people were changing and how our lives were changing. Was it because of what was going on? Or were the changes not changes but parts of the people that were there to begin with and simply revealed by the current circumstances. Rand talked a little bit about Julia and I finally … well I finally told him about finding Uncle Charlie’s remains when I first got here. I told him part of me wanted to know why he would have just left me to rot in Tampa while he came up here and part of me didn’t. He admitted that he’d been blind to the changes going on in Julia’s life but he also said that he could never have imagined her ever turning to a guy like Freddie Harbinger.

He’s still sensitive to the whole situation. When I tried to ask him what he had heard as far as what was going to happen to her … not gloating, just wanting to know … he said that he’d been trying not to find out. Uncle George tried to get him to talk about it a couple of times but he said he wasn’t going there any time soon. She made her choices and he didn’t want to get drawn into the drama again. He said he wants people to know he is through with her and that he and I are together and that nothing is going to change that. We were both ready to just let everybody talk and not worry about it. Or at least that is what we said. I have a feeling it is going to matter, especially to Rand because some of the people are the ones he cares about enough to care about what they think of him. And I’ll care because Rand will care.

It was embarrassing but Rand cleaned and redressed my ouch. The ibuprofen wore off real quick and Rand didn’t have to work too hard to get me to take the other half of the pill I had turned down earlier.

We talked for a while longer but I dozed off again. When I woke up he was coming in from putting the animals up for the night. He had a list and a mission and was going through Daddy’s files with a vengeance and I finally felt coherent enough to write everything in this journal.

Some fourth of July … but one without any fireworks or explosions was nice under the circumstances. Except maybe I spoke too soon. We’ve just heard the next promised convoy rattling along US90. I hope everyone has the sense to stay away this time.


July 5th – I was very sore when I woke up this morning. Too sore for anything but the sundress but then I nearly died of embarrassment when Brendon showed up with Major Sawyer, Alicia and Missy in tow. Laurabeth and Jonathon had stayed home to help make some decisions on the new additions. Brendon was picking up the last few odds and ends and Major Sawyer (he asked me to call him Bill but that’s going take me a while) was riding shotgun.

I tried to go in and change but the most I could manage was to put a pair of jeans on under the sundress. I couldn’t stand to have anything pressed against my ouch. Alicia was the one that told me I was being silly, that it was just “us girls” since the guys wouldn’t be staying. I gave in but left the jeans on and excused that by saying I didn’t want to drop any hot fruit on bare skin.

Where I had gotten a few splatters of the fruit syrup had blistered and itched like crazy. I tried really hard not to think of Chase but I couldn’t seem to help myself.

Alicia and Missy stayed and helped me can and change out the dehydrator trays while Brendon and … Bill … went to pick up the last bit of stuff that hadn’t fit in their wagon yesterday. I hadn’t known that they’d been working yesterday. Rand didn’t go with them today either. I asked him about it later and he said they were family but they didn’t live in each other’s pockets all the time. They knew he wanted and needed to stay home with me. I also tried to find out about Chase but everyone would change the subject when I did so I have a feeling it is bad and maybe I’ll give it a few more days; I’m thinking maybe I don’t want to know after all.

We fixed rice and beans for lunch by boiling them rather than soaking them before setting them to cook in the Dutch oven. Brendon and Bill were back for that and I wasn’t comfortable sitting anywhere except beside and behind Rand. I think they thought it was because of what happened with Chase. The truth is I just felt exposed. Other girls might not have problems wearing loose and breezy sundresses but it was new experience for me and one I’m not sure I’ll repeat in company. I like my armor thank you very much.

After lunch I was just too tired to do any more canning. Rand was working on the lanai and I asked him if he wanted any help. He turned me down saying what he was doing was a one person job and why didn’t I go lay down for a little bit. I honestly thought about it and that’s when I realized maybe I was more hurt than I had thought. If there are any lessons to be learned in all of this, I’m learning I’m not an island and that there are some things and sometimes that I need to accept help … and to do it willingly and graciously. I’m still working on the willingly and graciously part.

I didn’t go lay down though. I went to the summer kitchen to start putting away the cooled jars of stuff from the last couple of days. Missy wouldn’t take anything that was made today. Apparently what Bill brought with him included some regular groceries besides the bulk staple goods. In fact they left some of that with us but told me to keep it to ourselves and not use it for trade. Flour, cornmeal, sugar, and salt are already impossible to find and people are down to little or nothing. Pastor Ken said people are killing their livestock and eating acorns and stuff like that to get by until their garden starts coming in.

After I finished putting the jars in the pantry I took a good look at it. To me it was beautiful but it wasn’t even a quarter full. What had looked like a lot at the little house didn’t look like nearly as much once it was sitting on the shelves my Daddy built. And I’m sore as all get out from tugging and pulling at my muscles while dumping the dry bulk staples into the big gallon jars that were found. Using the Tupperware would have been easier I guess but I’m afraid that mice or rats would get into things. I’ll use the Tupperware for temporary storage or for stuff that isn’t food. I’ll just need to remember to label it the right way. I’d hate to mistake soap powder for sugar.

After I put the jars away I got this journal and sat down for a while. I doubt I’ll feel much like writing tonight. Every minute that passes my muscles stiffen up even more.


July 6th – No company today. Good thing, I wasn’t in the mood for any. I’m tired and so is Rand. How did pioneer men and women do all of this work?! Corral is three quarters finished and made out of these metal panels Rand found at the old place. Rand said he’ll make a more permanent one when he finds one that he can dismantle and put back together. I asked him why he couldn’t use barbed wire and he said because Hatchet, Bud, and Lou would get all cut up when they lean over it. That’s good enough for me.


July 7th – Rand finished the corral today and the animals are getting used to it. They like being off their pickets that’s for sure. Hatchet kicked it once and won’t go near the walls now except when it is time to go into the barn at night. I think the noise scared him.

Rand started on the smokehouse but just barely. Took him a while to find a refrigerator that could be used and drag it back to the house. It was the first time he’d left me at home by myself and I’ll admit I was jumpy the whole time. I’m glad Mr. Henderson didn’t come by until after Rand got back. No Mitch today, Hoss and Bradley were with him. I saw Rand get angry for a minute when the men were talking to him but Hoss said something that calmed him right back down. I’ve been waiting and waiting for him to tell me what it was but he hasn’t. I’ll give him until tonight and then I’ll ask tomorrow.

I used up the last of the cherries and sent a bucket home with Mr. Henderson since he was heading that way. I asked Rand how Mr. Henderson ever got any work done with all the running around he does. Rand looked at me then laughed and said, “Honey, Mr. Henderson has over fifty people that work for him. You’ve only met a couple. And he has two foremen – one for the animals and one for everything else and both of them cousins of some type – that handle things while he’s out making deals and taking care of organizing the security patrols and such.”

I had no idea that Mr. Henderson was such a big deal in that way. I mean I knew he was a big deal for us but not a big deal throughout the community even before things went crazy. Apparently he owns a lot of acreage outright but is also using some fallow land and abandoned hay fields to keep his operation running and his people and their families fed. My little bucket of cherries didn’t seem like so much after that but Rand told me not to think like that because I might be surprised.

Tomorrow Rand said we’d also try turning the garden area too. That should be interesting. Hope to goodness I can actually do it with as sore as I still am. Rand said he expected me to be more healed up by now. Pastor Ken, who came by in time to share an early dinner with us (I guess that extra biscuit was meant to happen for a reason), said that it’s probably from me being wore out more than usual. He is seeing it a lot at the clinic and out in the community. People not getting the food they are used to, not getting the rest they are used to, the stress, the lack of medicine. He said he knew he didn’t have to worry about clean water here but a lot of people had to use stale water out of whatever containers they could catch rain in, or they’re boiling river and pond water. Lots of people getting sick from that too.

I wanted to ask about Chase but every time I tried to steer the conversation in that direction the men would change the subject. Something is up and I have a feeling I’m not going to like it. There’s going to be a fellowship this Sunday, if I can’t get my answers before then hopefully I’ll be able to hear some gossip or just flat out ask Momma O, I know she’ll tell me.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 34

July 9th – Didn’t have a chance to write yesterday. I was just exhausted. I wasn’t just right about how much work trying to turn a garden without a rototiller or plow was going to be I had way underestimated it. I thought Rand was going to laugh at me or tell me I was being stupid for keeping at it but he knows what the garden is going to mean. It could be the difference between tightening our belts up one notch and tightening them up three, four or more.

So we worked, and even with leather gloves we both got blisters. And we both got exhausted. And I forgot to ask Rand what he’d been talking about with Mr. Henderson … I should have. It wouldn’t have made things any better this morning but at least I would have had more time to prepare for it.

I was actually interested in going to the fellowship but Rand seemed … determined. That’s how it seemed anyway. I just put it down to wanting to do the right thing and go to church even though we were both sore. He asked me to wear the jean skirt I made again – I guess he likes it – so I did but I wore it with a blouse-y jewel-colored shirt that was in the pile that Missy had sent to me. It wasn’t very practical but it was a heck of a lot better than pink, especially since the pink one wasn’t really fit for much anymore. It had been torn in several places that pulled it all out of whack when I sewed it back together.

We rode Hatchet again; and I had a bucket of fruit in my lap just like last time. There was also a pile of biscuits in a bag hung over the saddle horn. Rand tries to ride Hatchet more than Bud or Lou because one, he gets his feelings hurt if he is ignored and two, he gets frisky if he isn’t ridden regular. The mules have more sense. Rand was holding me even tighter than he needed to and I began to suspect something was really bothering him. I knew so when he started talking as we turned onto CR49.

“Kiri … “

“Just spit it out. Are you worried about me being out in public and causing a scene or something? I promise I’ll try real hard not to embar … “

“It’s not that at all. Don’t think that. Don’t ever think that. I probably should have said something before now. Kiri honey … Chase Peters died.”

I don’t know what I had been expecting but it hadn’t been that.

“It’s not your fault. You were defending yourself. He was twice your size and he had a gun and from what’s been found out since, you aren’t the first girl he’s … I don’t even know what you want to call it. Gotten obsessed with or tried to intimidate or stalked or … “

“I’m sorry Rand. I … I didn’t mean to. I knew he’d get burned but … but I didn’t … “

“Not … your … fault. And I don’t want to hear you apologizing for it again. No matter what Kiri.”

“What do you mean no matter what?”

“Chase’s mom … she’s … people have been talking. Chase didn’t die right away. Pastor Ken knew it was bound to happen, that’s why he didn’t rush him to the clinic. Shock, infection … he said it was inevitable. He would have been triaged anyway. They don’t have the medical facilities to take care of that kind of injury anymore. But he didn’t die quick. And his mother, who works at the clinic, only heard the details she wanted to hear and she’s refused to listen to anyone with sense.”

“How … how bad is this? Is she … can she … what happens … will I … is there still jail?”

“No! You’re not going anywhere. I dare anyone to try and take you from me. And if there was still a way to prosecute people we probably wouldn’t be going through this in the first place because someone would have complained about Chase before it got this far. Like I said, some things have come out. But … “

“But what?”

“His mom has been talking. And been talking to people who have done their own talking. And … Pastor Ken says that he is going to try and do what he can but he has to be careful. He can’t use the pulpit to … to try and … “

“Maybe he shouldn’t say anything at all. I don’t want him to get in trouble.”

“He won’t. Mr. Henderson has … well, he’s got a lot of pull and he’s given people a lot to think about too.”

“Has it been hard on your family?”

“Why would you ask that?”

“You said that Chase’s mom was friends with the Harbingers. Julia’s parents are friends with the Harbingers. And the situation with Julia and all … “

“Ha! Julia’s mother has been … well, from what I heard Mr. Winston laid down the law so to speak. He isn’t too happy that his wife knew about Julia and even aided and abetted her in some ways. Plus, they don’t dare say too much because of Julia. They don’t want her to be the center of attention any more than she is going to be eventually when everything comes out. They don’t even plan to be at the fellowship from what I understand. As far as the Harbingers go … what I hear is Ron Harbinger has had some kind of epiphany and hardly anyone recognizes the man. With Fred and Rick both gone that only leaves Old Jared … and he’s … off. No one is quite sure what has happened but the Pastor thinks it might have been a mini-stroke or series of them. He’s got the symptoms, or so they say. I don’t think we’ll see any of them at the fellowship to be honest. I just want you to stay close.”

It was a lot to digest in a short period of time. The fellowship was being held at Hale Park and Community Center on Duval Street which meant we had to go back through downtown. We saw the horrible fire damage for the first time. It depressed me; it tore Rand all to pieces. We were both very quiet when we got to the park. He got down, took the bucket from me and had me half off the saddle when someone bumped into him. It hurt to get joggled like that because today was the first day I’d gone by to wearing my armor. It took my breath away but I couldn’t let Rand see or he would have taken off after the guy who had barely said “excuse me” in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

As clueless as I can be about people I knew that it might have been better if I had stayed at home. It was highschool all over again. They were targeting Rand – I guess as punishment or something – rather than me and I was getting angry. “I should have just stayed home.”

“No. You have as much right to be here as …”

“Rand, rights don’t have anything to do with it. There’s going to be trouble if they don’t stop picking on you because of me. I’m gonna lose it and just make everything worse.”

“No you’re not. “

“Oh yes I am. The next jerk that acts like a snot is going to get kicked in the … “

“Girl, you something else.”

Mr. Henderson was laughing. I hadn’t a clue how he could be laughing at a time like this. He slapped Rand on the back and asked me – louder than I thought was strictly necessary – how I was feeling and said it must have been God looking out for me that kept that bullet that that crazy Chase Peters had tried to kill me with from doing any more damage than it did. Not that I didn’t agree with him, but suddenly everybody and their sweetheart was looking our way.

“Fine Mr. Henderson, thank you.”

“You holding anything against his family?”

“Huh?”

“You holding anything against Chase Peters’ family? I’ve got Mitch working for me and I like to keep on top of these things.”

“Of course not. Why would I?”

“Well … he hurt you pretty bad. You were fighting him off but … well … if we hadn’t come along no telling what would have happened.”

I felt like running away and hiding. It’s bad enough to talk about that sort of stuff in private with Rand but to have it being discussed with megaphones in public was near my worst nightmare.

“No! I don’t hold anything against Chase’s family. He was drunk and he was high. He made a choice to be that way and it had messed him up in the head. Why would I blame his family for something that Chase chose to do? Mr. Henderson I really don’t want to talk about this … please … “

I looked at Rand but he was growling at some people that were getting a little too close in their listening.

“Well, then I guess we won’t … but Mitch is bad upset and worried that you think he’s like that brother of his. If you could see your way to maybe … “

“I’d never blame Mitch for … “

“Thank you. I was wondering if you might, considering I was the one that introduced Chase and vouched for him,” Mitch said in a quiet voice coming up behind us.

“Don’t even think it. Chase made his own choices. I heard he had … problems. I’m not happy with what I had to do. It didn’t end well for either of us but I’ve thought and thought about it and I don’t know what else I could have done. Chase wasn’t listening to you … any of you … and I could feel his finger tightening … “ I had to take a big swallow and turned to Rand ‘cause I had started to shake. “None of us are happy about it Mitch. It happened. Drugs and drinking … His mom must be having an awful hard time of it. Rand can we take this stuff to Momma O. I see her over at the tables.”

I’d had about all I could take and Rand was happy to let me escape. Momma O wasn’t much better though. Had to rehash the whole story all over again in just about the same tones and words as Mr. Henderson only this time in front of a bunch of women. I was shaking so bad by the time the service started that Rand actually asked if I wanted to go home. But Missy who had arrived by then said, “She may want to but she won’t. These people need to see her and get to know her. That can’t happen if she is forever running away.”

Missy was right but I didn’t like it. And I didn’t like her little jab at the fact that I had left from her dad’s house to escape the pressure I’d felt there either but I didn’t say anything. It took me a while to pay attention to what Pastor Ken was saying. He was going on about how there was a significant problem within the community with drinking and drugs as a means of dealing with depression, anxiety, and other stuff. He said folks were allowing themselves to go down a dark path that changed them and had them doing things that they wouldn’t do if they hadn’t been under the influence. He urged folks to find strength and support in the Good Book and in fellowship and not in the fleeting courage that the other stuff provides. He spoke of other things that were making inroads into the community, including complacency and apathy. I haven’t got it all down, I had a hard time hearing every time someone close by would start whispering, but those were the highlights.

I stuck close to Rand the whole time and throughout the fellowship that came after the service. A few people seemed to go out of their way to come up and say hello but it would be a fairytale to say that the support of a few important community members suddenly made things all better. Most people decided to just wait and see which story they’d heard was the truer one but there were still a couple of people that were really hostile. Luckily they kept their distance for a time, most of them anyway.

I was helping to clean up … Rand was off with the men but Missy was close by … when Momma O (I think she is a little hard of hearing) wanted to know who taught me to make biscuits. “I don’t know. I think it was Momma but it could have been my Memaw or my Granny … I was real little. All of us girls got to play kitchen when we were little. Memaw even had a little fruit juice can biscuit cutter that was all ours to use.”

“Well, if that don’t beat all. DeLois … you hear that?”

“Yes Momma. I think the whole county heard you.”

“Don’t get smart with me. You just mad because Paulie said the biscuits reminded him of mine.”

Ms. DeLois just rolled her eyes and patted me on the shoulder and said, “Watch out. She’s full of vinegar this afternoon. Her arthritis is acting up.”

Momma O looked like she was going to swat her daughter with her fan but just humph’d instead and leaned on her cane a little heavier than I’d seen her do before.

“Girl, I been getting those buckets of fruit you been sending. I’ll have your seeds directly.”

“Yes, ma’am. I know. You said you would.”

“Just like that.”

“Ma’am?”

“Just like that. You send them buckets and you believe I’ll give you some seeds.”

“Well, ye ma’am. You said you would.”

“Well a day … and so I shall child, so I shall. Help me up and let’s get these plates over to the dishpans. The sooner we get things cleaned up the sooner we can get on home. I feel rain comin’.”

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky but as soon as Momma O said rain was coming everyone started to clean up and load up to head home. I was looking around for Missy to see if there was anything else we needed to do when I spotted a knot of men way on the other side of the playground. There was a fight and I knew just as sure as I stood there who was in the middle of it.

I went walking over there just as fast as my skirt would let me and banging guys out of my way with my bucket. I finally got to the center where there was a regular brawl going on between Rand and one of the guys that had tripped him while we were walking. I was just in time to see the guy who had banged into Rand while he was helping me down off of Hatchet step up and try and pull a dirty trick.

“WHAM!” Plastic bucket hit him square in the face and his nose started bleeding. But I wasn’t done. I was so mad I kept swinging at him but kept missing.

“Stop moving when I’m trying to hit you doggone it!”

That made a couple of the guys standing around start to laugh, including Paulie, Momma O’s grandson. I asked him, “What are you looking at?!”

“A little spitfire that’s gonna be the end of Joiner’s pretty hair that all the girls liked so much.”

“I don’t know what in the world hair has got to do with this but real women don’t like men that do more primping than they do. And besides, I don’t think Rand is the type to be vain. Why are you laughing now?!”

I suddenly realized Rand and the guy weren’t fighting anymore but were both on the ground and looking up at me. They were a mess. Rand was smiling though and the other guy looks like he can’t believe something then looks over at Rand and asks, “Is she crazy?”

And he says, “Don’t know, don’t care, whatever it is I like it. Come here darling and help me up and let me introduce you to Jake.”

“I’ll help you up!” And I did but I felt like shoving him down again when it seemed like the fight had cleared the air and everyone was best buds again.

“I swear Rand Joiner! Every one of y’all suffers from terminal testosterone poisoning!” And I stomped off leaving the guys to laugh even harder. I was in a huff but glad no one was fighting any more. I swear, if I manage to live to be a 116 I’ll never understand guys.

I was going over to Hatchet to wait when Missy came over to me before the Crenshaws all left. “I know you don’t understand this honey but this is actually a good thing. Guys work things out differently. Rand stood up for himself and stood up for you and the rest of them respected that. The thing is Rand is going to be in a really good mood. A really, really good mood. A good fight always leaves them in the mood for a good tussle. Take advantage of it Sugar and have a little fun.”

She laughed and took off and all I could do is lean my head against Hatchet and pray the ground would open up and swallow me. Did everyone think Rand and I were … ?!

Sure enough, Missy was right. Rand was in a very good mood despite another bloody nose and a bruised chin and scraped knuckles. He put me up on the horse and away we went. People were smiling and waving and I tried to nod but all I could think of was what Missy had said. I didn’t want to spoil Rand’s mood. I can understand now why some girls just give in because they’re afraid of messing things up if they don’t. But on the other hand … I’m not some girls, I’m me and I did not want to wind up like Julia.

Rand’s mood was so good he didn’t notice that my smile and hmmm’s to answer his questions were about as genuine as a three dollar bill. I really was happy for him. He was talking about how he grew up with those guys but had lost touch with them and now everything hunky dory blah, blah, blah.

Then he noticed that I was being quiet, more quiet than usual. “Hey Babe, did the fight really bother you that much?”

“It’s not that. I didn’t like it but I’ve been around enough guys to know y’all are different animals and like to handle things your own ways.”

That made him laugh, “OK, then what is it?”

“I just don’t like how everyone keeps thinking … and rushing me … and …”

“Thinking what and rushing what?”

“Oh well … Missy said … “

“Uh oh, what’d she say now?”

“Rand, it’s not … well … bad or anything. It’s just …. I know you’d say people would talk and think what they’d want to think but I didn’t think your family would. Missy said something that made me think and I don’t know what to say about it.”

“Hey, no sacred cows remember? Can’t fix it or deal with it if I don’t know what it is.”

“Well, she basically said that you were going to be feeling good and … frisky … and that it was fun and I should take advantage of it.”

He started having a coughing fit and asked, “She said what?!”

“I told you she said … “

“Honey that was rhetorical, I heard what you said. I thought we had this all talked out. You know I’d never push you.”

“I know that. I just didn’t know how to tell her that. The problem is … well … I understand the feelings I’m just not ready for the responsibility yet. I’m already feeling rushed about so many things and now here people I thought would get it are rushing me about this too.”

“Sugar … look we’re almost home, let me take care of Hatchet and we can talk …”

“It’s OK Rand. I don’t want to spoil your mood. I feel like I already have.”

“Kiri, you haven’t spoiled my mood.

We got back to the house and he helped me off the horse and instead of letting me down all the way gave me a kiss first … a real kiss. I went into the house and changed gratefully back into the sundress. I was a lot more sore than I had thought I would be.

Rand came in and said, “Next time, don’t listen to Missy. Don’t listen to anyone else but me. Didn’t we have an agreement? I like Missy but she’s always giving out advice. Just because she does things a certain way or thinks things run certain ways doesn’t mean that its … What did she say anyway?”

“She said that when guys have a good fight they um …”

“Um?”

“They get in the mood for a good … tussle.”

“A tussle? OH … a … “

“Yeah. And Rand I really …. I mean I know one of these days you’re going to get tired of waiting but … I’m just not … I mean part of me wants to … but at the same time … I don’t want to be like … “

“Be like?”

“What happens when we, you know, do it? And then some time after that maybe you don’t want to you know, be more than my friend anymore? What do I do then Rand? What if something, you know, happens? I don’t want to wind up like Julia.”

There. I said it.

“Kiri, I think Paul is right. I’m going to be bald before I get too much older. I’m going to sit beside you so don’t freak out. I’m going to say this one more time. I’m not leaving. I want you on whatever terms we work out together. Yes, I want to. And sometimes I want to really bad. And yes, last year after a fight I might have … expected … a certain outcome. But it isn’t last year. And things have changed … a lot. You are you and not Julia. We don’t have to make the same mistakes that Julia and I made together. We can do things our own way.”

“That’s great Rand but for how long? No. Don’t say anything you’ll regret later. I just mean … things are just … I’m not ready Rand and even if I was I’m not so sure that … that … This isn’t gonna come out right but here goes. I was raised a certain way and even though people thought that I was kind of … weird … having everyone going around thinking that we’re, you know, doing it … it is making me feel … like I’m … “

“Kiri, I can’t stop people thinking whatever they want to think. Do you want me to leave? Would that help?”

“Rand I can’t even stand to think about the day you’re gonna leave. I know you have to … that guy stuff and all … but knowing it and wanting it are two different … I just know I can’t keep asking you to … Oh Rand, I am so messing this up.”

“You’ve got some kind of complex about that don’t you? You are not messing things up. Every time we get around people you get … Is that it Kiri? Are you ashamed of being with me?”

“No! I want to go around doing stupid stuff like singing it to the sky that you like me enough to stay with me.”

“Then if you feel that way why is it so hard for you to believe I feel the same way? You said you trust me.”

“I do! I told you, I’m just not …”

“Kiri, I haven’t said more because I don’t want to scare you. I know we’ve talked about this before but you are young and I understand that. And if you think that it doesn’t bother me that people would think that I would jump on you then you’re wrong. But … look at me please … but Kiri don’t you think I wonder if one of these days you’re not going to feel the same way about me as you say you do right now? I’ve been burnt once. I don’t want it to happen again.”

I hadn’t thought about it like that.

“And here is something else for you to think about. I’m feeling rushed too. But at the same time I feel like I have to hurry. Something just feels … I feel like time is slipping away from me Kiri. Like every minute that passes is a missed opportunity. This fall and winter … it’s gonna get bad. Henderson has talked to some of us. He feels like there is a good possibility that people from up north are going to start making their way south. If they don’t a lot of them are going to die of starvation or exposure. They’re going to land on our doorstep and there is going to be so many of them that we’ll be overrun, just like we were when people from the cities started looking for food and fuel. Not everybody thinks like that, some of them even complain that Henderson is trying to scare them for some reason. Even after everything that has happened some people still believe the government is going to step in and fix things. According to Bill they were beginning to have trouble keeping their own troops fed, how are they going to feed thousands, probably millions of people, who are going to be on the move? Think of it, possibly millions of hungry and angry people. It’s going to be a disaster.”

I couldn’t help but shiver. I missed all of that when I was locked away with the other kids in the warehouse but I’d heard the stories from Uncle George and the rest of them. I can’t imagine what that must have been like.

“And I want us to be fixed for it Kiri. I want us to be together. When we’re together anything seems possible. I want … I want us to build something together, here, and not ever think about it not being the two of us together. From the very beginning it’s been … amazing and crazy and … words, man I used to have all the right words. Kiri do you understand what I’m trying to say? Is it too much? Am I asking too much?”

“Do you mean that … that … you won’t get tired of being more than my friend?” I was afraid to step outside of the words and phrases we’ve always used. I was afraid to be wrong.

“I’m saying that I don’t want there to ever be anyone else and whatever that takes I’m prepared for it. If that means that we wait on … some stuff … a lot of stuff … I’m prepared to accept it being like that. Are you prepared to let me … feel like I feel? Are you going to get scared and shut me out?”

“I don’t mean to shut you out.”

“I hope not Kiri. You’re going to have to trust me. That’s all I can say. When we sleep upstairs in the same room and you don’t act all scared … that means something to me. Maybe it’s a guy thing. I don’t know. But the fact that you trust me to be that close and not hurt you, to wait, it makes me feel … it makes me feel like I never felt with Julia. OK?”

Well, I trusted him enough to have talked about all that stuff still give him a great big hug. He hugged me back but let up a little when he felt me wince from my ouch.

“Now listen, I can’t stop people from thinking and talking. They’re going to Kiri. That’s people being human. If I tried I’d be in fights constantly and I don’t want that any more than you do. But I don’t want you to stop talking to me about it if it bothers you. Stop worrying it to death. It’s our business and most likely things would have been different if we had met before this … but we didn’t and it isn’t. We have to deal with the way things are right now. You want to talk about embarrassed? I had to explain things to Mick and Tommy while Uncle George, Bill, Brendon, and a few guys from Mr. Henderson’s crew looked on. I wasn’t ashamed … but it definitely wasn’t the easiest I felt talking in public.”

“Oh Rand … “ I didn’t know whether to laugh or be embarrassed in hindsight.

“Mick thinks you’re something special you know and wanted to make sure that I was ‘treating you right.’ And Uncle George was enjoying himself way too much. But … it didn’t kill me and the boys seemed satisfied and that’s just life Honey. “

Sometimes you just have stop, draw a breath, and say thank You for stuff, you know? But the other stuff he said, about feeling and needing to hurry … that put into words some of what I’ve been feeling. I didn’t know all of it … the stuff that Mr. Henderson had been talking about … but it helped me to understand why I kept feeling the need to get everything lined up. Fill up all the spaces and holes in my life … the physical ones and the emotional ones. And Rand filled … he fills something, some part of me, that I don’t have a name for.


July 10th – Rand and I have been going back over that feeling of being in a hurry. He worked on the smokehouse near where I was canning and there was enough brain space left that we could talk while we worked.

He’s been looking at my big calendar and wanted to know why I’d made it so big so I tried to explain to him that I needed to keep track of things so I didn’t get so stressed out and forget to do things or have something come up unexpectedly. It also helped me to remember when things happened so that if I was tracking something I could work forward. He understood after I explained it to him and it was a relief for him not to make fun of me. More than that he asked if we could put some other stuff on the calendar like the projects we wanted to do and how long we figured they would take. I said of course and it made it feel like there was yet another thing that we were doing together.

He talked to me about his worry that this area was going to get overhunted pretty soon, if not in the next couple of months then this winter when people got even hungrier … and that was assuming the hordes from up north didn’t run all the game off first. We talked about our options … the vegetable garden, the fruit I was putting up, the chickens if we can kept them fed, the shares that Uncle George had promised Rand on a cow and a pig. “I used to give Uncle George money that would help raise a beef cow and a hog then he’d sell the meat and I’d get a percentage of the profit from that. This year we talked about it and I’m just going to get the meat if I can get a couple of these smokehouses built.”

I told him I could pressure can some of the meat if he wanted me to so he asked me what that would take and I explained the process as I remembered it and tonight we’ve looked at Momma’s preserving books and recipes. And Alicia knows how too so if there is a problem I can ask her. Her father had this huge thing against buying food at the grocery store because he was paranoid the government was poisoning the certain types of men with salt peter and other “emasculating” chemicals for population control. Rand said, “I told you her family was weird. From what Brendon has let slip, Alicia’s dad was the problem and not her mom … you notice there is a few years between Alicia and Tommy. He had to blame somebody ‘cause he was mostly shooting blanks … uh … you know what I mean.”

I did but that led me to wonder, and there was no way I was going to ask Rand after the talk we’d had just yesterday, what Missy and Laurabeth were doing … to not get caught I mean. I figured it wasn’t like they could go out and take birth control pills … there weren’t any pharmacies around anymore and Pastor Ken had mentioned more than once how there was a shortage of everything. And I guess everything means everything.

Getting back to the canning I asked him when Uncle George thought he’d be slaughtering and when I’d need to be prepared to … to do whatever it was I had to do to help. “Maybe sooner than we normally would. Uncle George usually slaughters inl October or November when it cools off but he may have to save some feed this year and do it in September or worse maybe in August. I hope not. I’ve had to slaughter in August and the heat makes everything about a hundred times worse and that’s with having refrigeration too. A 250 pound hog will yield about 130 pounds of meat … but that’s bone in and freezer ready. If we take the bone out of a lot of it you’re probably talking about a hundred to a hundred fifteen pounds. A single hog won’t feed us for a year that’s for sure.”

I just kind of blinked ‘cause he was talking about things that I’d never really thought about.

“A market weight beef cow is about twelve hundred pounds. Someone who knows what they are doing – and Uncle George does – will get between 450 and 500 pounds from a decently muscled beef cow. But different breeds will get you different amounts. For instance a Holstein steer with a good processor will only net you between 375 and 400 pounds. A lean and heavily muscled beef breed might net you as much as 625 pounds. Only planning on the 450 to 500 is a good place to start for us to estimate how much we can count on. Uncle George doesn’t raise Holsteins. His milk cows are Brown Swiss … the ones that look all gray that he keeps in that back paddock. Did you see it? The beef cattle are a combination of Pineywoods and Brahmans.”

I asked him how on earth he knew all of this and he laughed, “FFA, 4H, Uncle George … you live in a place like this you pick it up. And I was seriously considering going into Ag Business, there are – or were – a lot of dairies in the area. To make sure a farm was paying for itself you have to count every penny; where it is going out, where it is coming in. But … I guess that’s over with for a while. Now it’s how much you can put on your family’s table that is going to matter … unless the government gets even screwier and keeps trying to collect taxes. What they are going to collect taxes on though I don’t know.”

That led us to talk about how I owned the land and house free and clear and I told him the lawyer had set up some kind of secure trust that paid the taxes every year and even if it hadn’t been making any interest it would be a lot of years before I have had to worry about how the taxes were gonna get paid. He wanted to know if I knew which bank and the account number and a bunch of other stuff and I said, “Whoa Rand. The lawyer took care of all of that. There’s some papers in Daddy’s closet but I just … “

Then I got a bit of a lecture … sounded like the same kind of thing Mr. Barnes was always hammering into me when I had to sit and listen to him talk to me every year about what the expenses were and the money that had come in and gone out. I told him Aunt Wilma had been a bear for making sure there were copies of everything here and in Tampa so more than likely all the answers to his questions would be in that file. “Kiri, they should be your questions, not mine. Girl I know you weren’t … look, having a lawyer and all of that is fine but you still need to know what is going on or people are going to cheat you or one day they aren’t going to be there and you’re going to need to figure this stuff out on your own. What happens when all of this stuff starts clearing up? What if someone suddenly lies and tries to take your land from you? Or says you haven’t paid the taxes so they’re going to auction it off?”

That scared me so I pulled out those papers and I promised myself I’m going to read them a little bit each night. I wouldn’t know what to do if someone suddenly came along and tried to take Sparkleberry Ranch from me. This is all I have. Well … the land and Rand but you know what I mean.


July 11th – Got so hot today that I got sick. Stupid. Rand told me to give up the canning for the afternoon but I just feel nervous, twitchy and itchy. I canned the last of the raspberries I think. All the rest of it that comes in will get eaten fresh or will get dried. I told Rand again that I love the solar dehydrator he built and I made a big deal about the smoke “house” too. I’ve noticed he likes to be appreciated out loud.

It’s so hot that I have to water my containers three times a day; morning, early afternoon, and late afternoon. Everything is real pretty especially after I started using that Miracle Gro stuff from the second salvage house, you dissolve it in water. I let the water get warmed up outside before I put it on the plants too. Rand said that way the plants won’t go into shock from the extra cold water getting dumped on their extra hot roots.

We haven’t seen any people. Guess it is too hot for visiting. I honestly don’t mind but I think Rand is getting a little lonesome. He’s a people person and it would be selfish of me not to notice that. Tomorrow he is going to go check on his family. He’ll leave early in the morning to try and beat some of the heat and then will be back late afternoon.

He doesn’t like leaving me here at the house by myself but I’m not comfortable leaving things all out and about and it is too hot to keep the animals pinned up in the barn all day. Although there is one of the hens that has taken up residence way back behind a pile of stuff in the corner in one of Daddy’s old tool boxes and she won’t come out for nothing. I tried to get her out a couple of times and she pecked the heck out of my hand. I told Rand I thought she was sick and he laughed and said that she was just being broody and to leave her alone. I thought chickens had to have nests and stuff to get broody. She must be a little confused by the new surroundings if she thinks she’s going to be able to hatch a hammer or a wrench.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 35

July 12th – Never, ever eat more than one green apple at a time. And just as soon as I don’t feel like I’m dying I’m so gonna kill Rand for laughing.


July 13th – Rand survived, but just barely and only because he apologized so sweetly and gave me the two real eggs he swiped from the broody chicken. They were small but I fried them up anyway with the bit of bacon he had brought back from Uncle George’s place. Rand wouldn’t take both of them and said we should share. He also said we’d let the next one go and see if she could hatch them … after we put nesting boxes together. There were some at the place they came from and he wants to get another load of hay too. But that will have to wait until he finishes the repairs to the little wagon.

And the repairs to the little wagon will have to wait until he gets some wood … which is what he did today. The old shed at the third salvage house had thick walls and the wood was still in pretty good shape, straight, and didn’t have many knots. He took most of it apart and it’s lying piled up for him to work on tomorrow. After he recovers from his wasp stings; we were lucky it wasn’t any worse and he had on long sleeves, they were yellow jackets.

I didn’t mind him being gone today like I did yesterday. I could still hear him every once in a while banging away with the mallet. I sure heard him when he found the wasps, people probably heard him in the next county.

Yesterday was different, lonesome. I used the time wisely and stayed busy to keep my mind occupied or I could have gotten depressed which was just plain silly; he was only gone for the day. In the morning I canned and after lunch I managed to finally finish finding places for everything in the house. Those tubs are overflowing and I’ve had to tape a piece of paper to each one to remind myself what is in them; numbering them just didn’t work.

In the late afternoon I went out to the orchard and just couldn’t resist the little apples on the tree … they only have a couple of days left to ripen and I thought, why not try just one. The one I bit into bit right back but it was so good, so crisp, so fresh … but small. I didn’t think, I mean it was just so good. So I ate another … then another. I knew I should stop so I went back inside and started working on hemming some pretty curtains for the dormer room.

The blackout curtains serve a purpose but … they’re just so guy-ish. I’ve never really had the chance to decorate before but when Rand put that other stuff up there it kind of inspired me to add something too. It was while I was sitting at the sewing machine that I started not feeling so hot. By the time Rand got home I was really miserable. I knew what it was … too many little green apples … but Rand didn’t have to rub salt in the wound. I couldn’t even sleep upstairs; I just slept on the floor outside my parents’ bathroom, at least until about three in the morning. Rand came down to check on me, found me on the floor and we slept on top of the covers for what was left of the night. I will never, never, ever eat little green apples again.


July 14th – Figs … never had much to do with them and processing them is a learning experience. The fig tree is a big one and is really loaded even after I took off what I did today. Rand said he will run a bucket of them over to Momma O tomorrow so there will be that many fewer I have to worry about spoiling.

Today I made spiced figs, pickled figs, fig preserves, and fig conserve. I also started two trays of dried figs. Tomorrow I’m going to try and make some dried candied figs. First you wash the fruit and cut it into thin strips. Then you simmer it in a medium syrup made from two cups of water and two cups of sugar for two hours, or until the fruit is clear and tender. Next you drain the fruit but I’ll saved whatever syrup is left to dump into the next batch. Finally you have to place the fruit on the drying trays. These are supposed to be dried until pliable like leather or soft dried apples. When they come out you have to cool them down before putting them into an air tight container. These ought to be good in fruit cake but I won’t tell Rand. It will be a surprise if I can ever get around to it.

I was working on the inventory again and while stuff is going up hand over fist in some categories it is coming down in others. While Rand worked on the wagon I asked him what all grew around here. He said the same vegetables that would grow any place else, we would just need to plant them at different times than they do up north and down south. I told him Momma said there were two planting seasons for almost everything further south and he says a bunch of stuff had two seasons here too, the second one just doesn’t have much of a window of opportunity to take advantage of, mostly it is cool weather crops vs. warm weather crops.

I knew about all the fruit in the orchard but they can’t really grow citrus fruit up here. They might in a hot house and Rand talked about a tangerine kind of orange called a Satsuma, but he said a bad frost a few years back got all the ones he knew of.

Then I got to asking him about sugar and cornmeal and wheat. That made him jump a little and ask if we are getting low and I said not yet because in addition to the bit I had leftover that had been found, there is the stuff that I had earned, what I got at the last ration book day … hard to believe that was over a month ago … then what Missy and Bill just gave us there is some whole wheat in #10 cans in the cubbyhole that I can grind for bread. He “mmmm’d” that sound you make when you are thinking and then said, “Do you have any clue how long it will last?” I told him probably over a year because of what Momma and Daddy have in those cans but I asked him what were other people likely to be doing.

“Well, forget wheat. I don’t think it grows around here though there might be a variety that does. I know they grow some for forage but I don’t know about it going to seed heads for people food. We might be able to do some oats … maybe. What I know we can do is grow grain sorghum. It’s grown for cows and pigs these days but I know people can eat it. Mr. Henry – Momma O’s husband – used to talk about eating it when he was a boy because his family was so poor they had to eat the same thing their animals did. Might be in one of your mother’s books or you could ask Momma O about it. Corn is something else you can grow around here but it’s got to be the right kind of corn for grinding. You can dry field corn or dent corn – I normally feed it to the animals – but if we could figure out a way to grind it we could get by on that. The old timers did.”

I told him I had Momma’s hand grinder but that I’d never ground anything myself and Momma had only done it a couple of times that I remember because she was playing with the thing. Daddy gave it to her for her birthday one year.

So, we have options but I need to know how to get seeds for everything. It is nice to trade with Momma O but I can’t count on it being like that for everything. Rand laughed and said we had almost a thousand pounds of the stuff in the barn and I choked so hard the tea I was drinking went up my nose. It was his feed for his animals … or part of it. He told me if I wanted to crack some and feed it to the hens they’d probably start laying more. There was also oats and other stuff like millet. I asked him was that what was under those tarps and he said yes and then all I could think of were mice and rats and … Rand told me to calm down because it was in metal cans. He can be such a tease some times. He knows I don’t like those nasty creatures.

But after that came us talking about when to plant and where and how. Sparkleberry Ranch is all treed over. The only places that it aren’t completely shaded is around the inside of the home site, the road that runs in and out, the three acres we call the hay field, where I want to put the vegetable garden, and the area underneath the utility easement. The problem is the utility easement runs from sugar sand on one end to on the damp side on the other end. Rand has already marked off the best patch of ground and said for a while he’s going to split the horse and mule manure between the garden patch we are trying to build up and the other place and then we’ll see about planting sweet or grain sorghum in the easement and then fight the deer over it most likely.

We looked it up and we hope what he has is sweet sorghum because that would give us more than grain and silage for the animals. The seed bags he has say “tall sorghum” so we are pretty sure that is sweet sorghum. The seed heads would be the grain for us and feed for the chickens. The stripped off leaves would make decent cow or pig feed if we can get a place set up to keep them.

“I’m pretty sure that Uncle George will let me work for a couple of gilts and Jake … you remember him from the fellowship … he and I and Julia’s brother JR used to trap feral boars for the Fish and Wildlife guys when we were in highschool. If I can get us one we’ll wind up with crossbreeds but it’s not like it would be the first time in history. The cows … I don’t know, Uncle George is going to need all he’s got right now and unless he gets a bull from someplace he’s going to be in trouble. All but one of his milk cows have dried up and she needs to be freshened. Man, I was going to college to get out from under all this work and worry.”

I didn’t know what else to do but hug him. His check was all scruffy and scratchy but it didn’t bother me much. I knew he was under a lot of strain so I did my own lookinged through Momma’s stuff but didn’t find anything. I did find something in Daddy’s filing cabinet. It was a print off from UF and it mentioned that oats, soft red wheat, rye, and some stuff called triticale could grow in Florida if you used the recommended varieties. Well goody … but where was I supposed to come up with the seeds for the recommended varieties? I wonder what is in Mr. Henderson’s feed and how loud he would laugh if I asked him?


July 15th – Apples, apples, apples. I am so happy I could dance. I made Rand eat one to see if they were ripe first though and he said the yellow ones were. The name on the tag of this apple was “Pristine” but they weren’t … I mean they didn’t look it. But they sure did taste it. Yum, yum!

I’m a little worried though because they seem to be getting ripe all at once. I don’t know how I’m going to keep up. Rand finished tightening the last bolt on the new wagon bottom and sides right after breakfast this morning so as a test drive he took figs and apples to Momma O. Rand said he laughed nearly the whole way home. “Honey, the look on her face when I showed up with the figs and the apples was so funny. Ms. DeLois said this is one of the few times in her life she has seen her mother speechless.

I made fried apples, corn bread, and white beans for dinner and Rand and I both nearly licked our plates clean. The only thing that would have made it better was if I had a ham hock to cook in the white beans instead of just ham bouillon and had also had fresh potatoes to stew. That was one of our favorite meals when my parents were alive and we had it at least three times a month, usually four or five.

I also made one of my Daddy’s favorites … Apple-Gingerbread Cobbler. I can made gingerbread from scratch but I had a box on the shelf so I figured I might as well go ahead and use it. Basically you take four medium sized apples, peel and slice them into a pan, add a half cup of water, some brown sugar and spices and then boil it for abou five minutes. Add a tablespoon of cornstarch and then boil that until it is thick and bubbly. Dump that mess into your baking dish (or into a Dutch oven) and then top it with glops of the gingerbread dough mix. It’s not a hard crusted cobbler but a soft one. Mmm mmm good. Rand saved just enough and asked if he could have it for breakfast. I used to think Momma was being silly when she would say she loved to watch Daddy eat but I understand her now. It makes me feel all happy and useful and special and stuff like that.

The canning I did today was part figs and part apple. I have so many apple canning recipes that I want to try that I probably won’t make the same thing twice for several days. Today I made pickled apples, apple pie filling, apple maple jam, apple cinnamon syrup, and apple-blueberry conserve after reconstituting some dried blueberries out of a can.

And Rand is a rotten stinker. He didn’t tell me except on accident that tomorrow is his birthday! It was when he was telling me he wanted to save some of the cobbler for his breakfast. I don’t know what to give him but I know what I made him; a Blackberry Jam Cake with Caramel Frosting from my grandmother’s recipes. That and the coconut cake my great grandmother used to make were my Daddy’s favorites. I don’t have enough coconut to make a whole cake so it had to be the other. The thing weighs a ton and I just managed to fit it into a big cake tin. You sit the cake on the lid of the tin which then becomes the bottom and put the bottom of the tin over the cake like a cake cover. The cake keeps a really long time like that.

I asked Rand what he wanted for his birthday and he said he wanted to go hunting. I hope he has fun but I worry about him getting lonely. He is such a people person and I would be fine if I only saw him for long stretches of time. I wonder if any of his family are going to come by. Tomorrow is Sunday, maybe they will.


July 16th – I don’t know if I’ll ever understand people. Or maybe something is going on. No one came to tell Rand happy birthday. I know you can’t pick up a phone or anything but even if they could have apparently they wouldn’t have.

Rand seemed to have a pretty good day. I made sure he had exactly what he wanted for breakfast and then he went hunting. I never heard a shot so I think maybe hunting really meant “hunting” in that he was thinking private stuff and didn’t want to hurt my feelings by saying he needed some time to himself. But he came back in good spirits.

It gave me just enough time to finish lining an old jean jacket I had found while salvaging. No way will he need it now, but it should be nice and warm when he has to take care of the animals this winter. The jacket was way big so I first sewed one of these quilted vests into it and then I took a flannel shirt and fitted that as the lining. I’ve got just enough of the shirt left that I think I can use it to line a hat or to use making a scarf; I haven’t got that far in my thinking yet.

I’ve never seen him so surprised. The jacket is still a little too big but Rand liked it anyway. And he really liked his cake too. He kept saying, “You didn’t need to do all of this.”

I waited and waited for the Crenshaws to show up or even one of them to send their wishes by someone else but no one ever came. I finally got up the nerve to ask Rand if his uncle didn’t believe in celebrating birthdays or something. I didn’t want to offend anybody by guessing or goofing.

“Oh it’s not that. Aunt Rachel and I had the same birthday. This is a sad day for them now.”

My jaw almost hit the floor. Here was a man, a real Bible –learned man I thought, and he was celebrating death?

“Rand, are you telling me no one has said anything to you for your birthday since … “

“It’s OK Kiri. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

“Well I am making a big deal out of it. Look at me. I’m a prime example of having a hard time grieving but I never had a problem just because someone shared the same birthday as one of my dead parents or little brother! I grieved every day. I didn’t just save it up for remembering on one particular day of the year. And I sure as heck didn’t … “

“Kiri! Ok Babe … simmer down. If I had been a little kid maybe it would have … “

“Little kid or not, that’s just plain wrong.”

“Don’t say anything to them Kiri. Uncle George still isn’t over it and the rest of them … “

“I won’t go out of my way to say anything but if it comes up …”

“At all Kiri. I mean it. For me … just don’t. OK?”

“Oh fine! But it makes no sense. Your Aunt Rachel is dead just like my parents. I can’t imagine my parents wanting me to go around ….”

“Kiri! “

“What?”

“I want a piece of my birthday cake.”

“Huh? Oh. OK but you aren’t going to change my mind by changing the subject. And they don’t get any of your birthday cake. Not a single crumb. It’s all for you.”

“Girl, you are too much.”

Rand may have been laughing at it but I still don’t see how people that normally have so much sense can just be so hard headed on this one thing. When I die I don’t want people to celebrate my death … I want them to celebrate my life. Of course that is supposing I have a life worth celebrating I suppose but still. I just can’t see the logic in what they’re doing. And whether he laughs or not it seems to me it has to have hurt him at some point even if he has come to terms with it. Just no sense at all.


July 19th – Just haven’t had time to write. Probably shouldn’t be doing that now but rain has shut down my canning for the day. I’ve been crazy busy and Rand has too. Right after the Pristine apples came in the Flavortop nectarines came in and then Rand found the patch of Rabbiteye blueberries just in time to save them from the deer with some chicken wire cages. Then another plum tree was ripe and today I picked the first black eyed peas. We’re going to eat half of them fresh and let the rest dry on the vine and I’ll put them away like dried beans and saving at least as many as I started with for next year’s seeds.

Saw both Pastor Ken and Mr. Henderson yesterday but I didn’t have time to visit, they mostly had come to see Rand anyway. Something’s up, I’m not sure what. Didn’t have time to ask Rand last night because we were both so tired but I think I’m going to try and corner him tonight after I feed him. He’s easier to talk to after he’s eaten.


July 20th – Preserving everything I can out of the orchard. The fruit closet isn’t anywhere near full but some of the shelves nearly are and that sure is satisfying knowing that my hard work is what did that. Guess here is another truth I used to hear my parents talk about, “There’s satisfaction in a job well done.”

Rand has been working on his own projects. He got the nesting boxes and has them all set up nice in a chicken coop and run he built and wouldn’t you know that silly hen has picked the tool box again? I think she has drain bamage or something. I tried to send Pretty Boy in there to get her to come out and he just looked at me as if to say, “If you think I’m going in there then you don’t have the sense I gave you credit for.” I guess there is certain types of female cranky that not even studly roosters want to deal with.

Rand is also trying out a gizmo he built for the mules to drag. It’s kind of a bar thing that he has bolted the curved teeth pieces from an old cultivator that was sitting rusting in a field. To keep it from sinking too deep he used an axle and wheel rims from a little truck that was overturned off of US90. It’s heavy for him to move by hand but Bud doesn’t have any problems with it at all. He’s using Bud more than Lou for this type of stuff because Bud is already trained to pull single like that. Lou is more of a riding or hauling temperament kind of mule. Oh, he’ll pull he just doesn’t pull straight like Bud does who likes to pull strong and straight. Lou likes to dance and smell the flowers … and pull braids. Silly mule.

The reason why this works is the utility easement was already root raked by the electric co-op when it was put through the land to make sure nothing would grow under the lines. The same thing can’t be said of where we want to put the regular garden. Rand thinks he might be able to build a disc attachment that Bud can pull but we may still be looking at a lot of hand turning and raking in the beginning to kill off all the matted up roots and stuff.

I finally cornered Rand and asked him what Mr. Henderson and Pastor Ken had said that upset him so much. He got mad all over again and told me not to worry about it but I told him that if it bothered him that much then at the least he needed to blow of some steam and I was just the person to understand that.

After a minute of him growling and cranking a bit and deciding whether he was going to talk or not I got a kiss and we went to sit on the shade in the lanai to talk and get away from the bugs. He said we might as well be comfortable because it was going to take a while to explain.

Mr. Henderson has heard that there are going to be what they are calling some “on-going relocation projects” beginning next month to try and get people out of some of the cities up north. It will be a voluntary relocation, they aren’t going to force anyone – so they say – and while that might sound like a humane thing to do at first glance, it’s how they are going to go about it that is the problem.

First they are preparing temporary “camps” to put people into just to get them moved before it gets cold. Then they are going to survey areas for abandoned houses and land and then do a kind of imminent domain thing where the government will take the house or property.

Then in dribs and drabs the relocated people – after they earn points somehow to get them in some prioritized line – will be allocated the properties based on need and family size. These families will have a two year grace period before they have to prove they have made qualifying improvements to the property at which time they‘ll be issued a mortgage payable to the government.

They are picking primarily rural locations because beyond the relocation the government is not offering any kind of support or assistance. They expect the people to figure out how they are going to support themselves including food and clothing and whatever else they would need.

Rand was really upset when he was telling me. He said, “Aside from all of the legal questions this creates I have to wonder what idiot thought this stuff up?! If these are city folks, people who’ve never had to grow their own food or take care of anything bigger than a yard with a riding lawn mower, who’s going to teach the skills they need? Some of the people may not even know how to operate a fireplace … I can see house fires, starvation, all kinds of illnesses because of hygiene issues. And what about water? Where do they think these people are going to get water from? This is insane!”

I was still stuck on the idea of the government just walking in and taking away someone’s home or property.

Rand was still rolling. “Someone just hasn’t thought this through at all! And while this area may be a great place during the winter compared to New York City, Boston, Chicago, and places like that, what happens in the summer. I doubt too many of them people will last out the first summer before they’re crying to be sent home. The upheaval is going to be unimaginable if they actually get this off the ground.”

“Rand, not that I don’t believe you, but how does Mr. Henderson know all this?”

“Radio. He’s always had this huge setup because of his ranch. Cell phone coverage over his way was always bad so CB and Ham is what he has operated with for years. And he’s got the generators and fuel to pull it off. I kind of get the idea that he is even making his own fuel now too.”

“How can he do that?”

“You’ve heard of bio-diesel plants that make ethanol, it’s a scaled down version for personal production. I suspect that’s why he’s been salvaging all of those fields. I don’t know for sure what his setup is though, he and everyone that works for him keep their lips sealed tight. I’d sure like to have a small set up for us even if we only make enough to run a rototiller and maybe a log splitter. That would save me some hard labor right there just on those two things.”

Rand gave me a lot to think about before I went to go fix our dinner. I wanted to ask him about taxes but I was about full up with stuff to worry about.

For dinner I made a kind of rice thing by adding chopped apples, raisins, and freeze dried chicken to cooked rice and then simmered it some more with a little chicken broth. Rand like it but I’m worried about him too now. No matter how much he eats he seems like he is getting thinner.

I’ve been looking at some of the books on the shelves and it seems to me that it isn’t just the number of calories you eat that is important but the kind as well. I don’t think Rand is getting enough fat for the kind of work he is doing and in the kind of heat we are dealing with. Everything I have is “lean,” “fat free,” “low fat,” “no carbs,” etc. On top of that is that we need the right balance of vitamins and minerals. This is getting a lot more complicated than I thought it would.


July 21st – I can’t seem to get that stuff Mr. Henderson said out of my head. I don’t understand how the government can just take something away like that. I’m really upset.

Rand said to take it easy, they are only supposed to be taking land and homes that are abandoned and have no claims on them. But I wonder how far will they take that? Will they take land if they think you have too much to take care of or more than you need? Will they take stuff from people they don’t think deserve it?

What about me? I won’t be eighteen for a year and two weeks. Can they say because I’m underage and don’t have a family to provide for, can they take the house and land away and give it to someone they think needs or deserves it more? This is just worrying me to pieces.

If I lose the house and the land will I lose Rand? Maybe I shouldn’t wonder about that but I do. He said trust him … and I do, more than anything … but I don’t really get why he is with me. He says I make him feel like a big deal, important, like he can do stuff. He says that I appreciate what he does and that I talk to him and let him talk to me. But what about all that guy stuff he was talking about? I know it is important to him. And because it is important to him it is important to me.

I don’t want it to be my fault that all the hard work he is putting in around here suddenly goes up in smoke. I can’t let that happen but I don’t know what to do to make sure that it doesn’t.

And we haven’t seen the Crenshaws since before Rand’s birthday. It makes me wonder if something is going on. I mean he says it isn’t any big deal but there was always this back and forth before and now there isn’t. Rand says it is because they have a lot going on trying to expand the house and get a place built for Missy and Bill and trying to help the Winstons get their house back in order assuming they haven’t finished that. I haven’t cared so much what other people are thinking or doing in a long time and I’m not sure I like it very much. It gives me a headache and an upset stomach.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 36

July 22nd – OK, so maybe I was making a mountain out of a mole hill. Uncle George came by today to check on Rand and nothing appears out of whack. Maybe it is just the way things work in their family. The Crenshaw clan has been busy. And they’ve had a few … hmmm … shocks.

First off, Missy is going to have a baby. Uncle George is very happy about that. He says that it is about time she settled down, blah, blah, blah, lots of chauvinistic stuff. Apparently Bill is flying high. He was married once before when he was very young … as in still in barely in college young … and he and his wife had a little boy but he died of some kind of birth defect when he was only a couple of hours old. It put such a strain on the marriage that things didn’t work out after that and when she left him for someone else he never expected to get married again or have children. Surprise.

The second is … Alicia and Brendon are pretty sure that Alicia is pregnant too. Uncle George isn’t so happy about that because Uncle George caught them in the hayloft a couple of weeks back and Brendon had promised him that they would lay off the … ummm … interpersonal stuff until after things settled down, worked out, and they were married. Guess once you start down that path it is a hard thing to stop. Temptation got the better of them and … whoops, there you go. Not that I think it is right or anything but if they’re not just willing but wanting to do the right thing and have been all along I guess you have to just deal with it. I’d be scared to death to be in their shoes, either one of them. It’s not like there are hospitals, drugs, and an abundance of doctors around here. I know there is Pastor Ken but I think I’d rather die than think about him seeing … well, seeing everything and losing what little dignity I have. That’s another thing guys don’t have to put up with. So totally not far.

And there sure are a lot of making of babies. There’s Julia, Missy, Alicia and Uncle George said he could name another half dozen without even thinking hard. What upset me was that Uncle George tried to tell Rand and I that under the circumstances either Rand should move back with them or we had to stop what we were doing. I asked him what we were supposed to be doing before I really thought it through and he acted like I was being stupid on purpose. When I did finally figure it out I just blurted out, “I wish people would stop thinking we are making like bunnies around here! ‘Cause it isn’t our fault if people have dirty minds!!”

Uncle George has seen me pop off – I think – but he’d never been on the receiving end of it and to be honest I was embarrassed that my temper got away from me before I could grab it. But I am so tired of people doing that. Rand has told me and told me people talk but every time I run into it it feels like the first time and I get made all over again.

I was so mad I walked … stomped actually … down to the hayfield and worked on some target practice. Was so mad I couldn’t see straight to hit the cans and wasted bullets.

“You through missing those cans yet?”

“Don’t Rand. It’s not funny. It might be easier coming from other people but from your family it is different. And I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

“You didn’t embarrass me. It’s not often I get to see Uncle George left with his mouth hanging open. Come on back to the house. It’s too hot out here to be terrorizing the trees.”

“Rand …” I warned again.

“What? “ He’s way too innocent when he’s having fun.

“It really isn’t funny to me. How can you stand it when people, people you know you care what they think of you, act like we are … you know … doing stuff?”

“Because I know we’re not. And if I let what other people think bother me I’d have an ulcer and be a nervous wreck … just like you’re acting now.”

“Is it that bad? I mean you see more people than I do … do they bother you because of me?”

“Kiri, stop worrying it to death. Yes, people make assumptions. No, I don’t think they have the right to make those assumptions but I’m not the thought police. They’ll think what they think at this point no matter what we do. As far as Uncle George goes I think he’s figured out he might have spoke out of turn.”

“Might have?”

“Cut him some slack Kiri. He’s having to make a lot of adjustments awful quick. Uncle George has always lived for his kids only now they are suddenly growing up so fast on him, it’s hard on him. And Janet is having a hard time in this heat. Add with both Missy and Alicia puking in the mornings they’re back to eating Laurabeth and Charlene’s hit-or-miss cooking.”

“Fine. And I’ll even apologize to try and smooth things over.”

“Don’t apologize Babe. Uncle George is a grown man and if he wants to dish it out he better be prepared to take it when he is wrong. “

“But he’s your uncle.”

“Just because he is my uncle doesn’t mean I want you to have to change who you are and take away your right to have your own say. That’s one of the first things that attracted me to you. I remember looking and seeing this girl staring at me upside down and telling me to be still or she’d dump me and I could walk. I wanted to get to know the person who belonged to the mouth so bad I decided to live after all.”

He’d never said anything like that to me. It was romantic … in a kind of backwards way, but I still liked it.

Uncle George and I did smooth things over but regardless of what Rand says I think he still believes that Rand and I are … carrying on. But to do that he has to believe we are lying to him and that I don’t like at all. That truly does bother me.


July 23rd – Was so hot today I couldn’t stand it. About all Rand and I have done today is lay around, eat fruit, and drink water and Gatorade that I made up by the pitcher full. Rand picketed Hatchet and the mules deep in some shade trees and we refilled their water trough three times. They didn’t play at all and saved all their energy for swishing their tails.

The chickens scratched out some sand on the shady side of the barn and sat down in there until the sun got considerably closer to evening. And Fraidy lay splayed legged on the lanai.

In fact it was so hot that … well … I’m embarrassed to admit it but Rand talked me into just wearing a sundress and bathing suit bottom and letting him mist me with some fresh, cold well water every once in a while. The thermometer registered 98 degrees and the humidity was so high that it was like breathing steam and walking through molasses. He was in shorts and a tank top and took even the tank top off after a while. I liked looking but it makes me feel dangerous things so I had to stop. Made me feel like a hypocrite after the way I’d snapped at Uncle George. Rand seems to like being all hot and bothered – he kept winking when he’d catch me looking – but I’m not sure how I quite feel about it yet.


July 25th – Heat finally broke. Took nearly three days but we had a powerful rain storm that started this afternoon and has lasted until it got dark. Rand and I got tired of sitting in the dark so we used the wind up lamp up here in the dormer. Can’t have the window open because it is still raining but at least the fan should work for a while yet, at least until we can get to sleep.

Sunday all we ate was fruit, mostly the same for yesterday which was OK because it was too hot to work. Today though I cooked breakfast and then baked cornbread. I got so hot while I was watching the cornbread fry that I started seeing spots. Rand saw me start acting wobbly and got a bucket of water and made me sit with my feet in it until I could catch my breath. But it was good to have something more solid in our stomachs.

Too tired after the heat to do much even though it has cooled down. I’m just taking a break from reading some of Daddy’s notes to write notes of my own. Rand is nodding off though so I’m going to stop and see if I can’t convince him to give it up and just lay down.


July 26th – Saw Pastor Ken today. He doesn’t look good at all. Rand was down at the county road gate checking on the yucca plants that grow there for me. I was in the middle of canning some apple marmalade and couldn’t leave it and I wanted to see how many of the plants there were down there and see about maybe transplanting some of the yucca and agave down to the area where the palmettos are. I’m trying to find “wild” foods to take advantage of.

Anyway, Rand said he saw Pastor Ken rolling by and saw how awful he looked and basically just scooted him over, took the buggy reins out of his hands, and drove him back here. We got him on the lanai and I made up some raspberry shrub … I remember the pastor saying he was fond of raspberries … and then after it looked like he was reviving a little I fixed a plate of the yellow rice and chicken that I had cooked up using canned chicken and dried peas. When he finished that I made Rand talk him into eating a couple of the baked apple doughnuts left over from breakfast.

He looked some better after that and was able to say that there have been nearly a dozen heat-related deaths over the last couple of days. Momma O was nearly one of them until Paulie was able to convince her to sit in the horse trough and pretend she was vacationing at the beach like when she was a girl. That would have been a sight to see that’s for sure though I don’t mean to make fun. It must have been pretty scary for her family.

“It’s lack of water and the ability to cool down. People don’t have the sense or the experience. When it is hot like this people shouldn’t be moving around in the heat of the day.”

I mumbled, “Said the pot to the kettle.”

I didn’t think I was saying it that loud but there had been a sudden lull in the conversation. Rand started choking on the water he was drinking and Pastor Ken started laughing outright once he’d gotten passed being surprised. “You’re right of course. I just don’t feel I have much choice. So many people are coming down sick and there is little enough I can do at the clinic these days. A minor injury can be handled by the regular staff and anything major gets triaged and they can handle that kind of care as well. Often enough it is end of life and easing their fears. We don’t have any more pain medication, antibiotics, steroids, nothing. We are even out of gauze and bandaids and have been reduced to sterilizing sheets and tearing them into strips. They have to use sewing thread and fishing line for stitches.

I looked at Rand and he just looked back. I guess he couldn’t read my mind and I hated to say anything to him in front of the preacher. We have a bunch of bottles, I didn’t see the harm in giving him one. Thankfully Rand understood after I showed him the bottle behind Pastor Ken’s back.

“Pastor Ken, I know this isn’t much but here’s a bottle of ibuprofen and another of acetaminophen. And here is a bottle of honey. Momma always put it on our small ouches when we were little. She said it was to keep the germs out and sweeten us up.” I remembered that last bit with a smile. My Momma could dish out her own silliness when in the mood. “And maybe you can talk to some of the older ladies still living … I mean the lots older ladies that would remember what they had to use way back when there wasn’t any money for doctors. And while I’m thinking of it, ask Alicia too. Her Daddy was … well anyway; her family was into all natural stuff so she might know something that could help.”

Both Rand and Pastor Ken looked at me weird and then Rand got silly and grabbed me and pulled me behind him and he said real dramatic like, “You can’t have her, she’s mine!”

Pastor Ken cracked up and I tried to swat Rand but he moved too quickly. It was too hot to chase him so I let it go but I did tell him to behave or I wasn’t going to give him the last biscuit like he asked for. That made Pastor Ken laugh even harder. I’m not sure what is up. I guess all real men are chauvinists at heart and letting them just let it out in the open every so often keeps them healthy and happy. I didn’t always agree with Aunt Wilma but I will say this for her, she left boys be boys instead of trying to knock it out of them.

The other thing that Pastor Ken had to say scares me and I’m not sure what to make of it. He said there was a man in town looking for me. I thought for a second maybe the man I buried wasn’t Uncle Charlie after all but when I asked Pastor Ken to describe him to me I knew it couldn’t be him. Different height, older, talked very proper … I haven’t got a clue who it could be.

He’s going to bring him to the gate tomorrow morning and I’ll guess I’ll know then … and know what this might mean for me.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 37

July 27th – I am angry. I am so angry I can’t stand myself. Angry like I haven’t been in a long, long time. Angry enough that I could hurt someone and do it on purpose and not give a rat’s tail about it.

This morning I woke up from a very restless and almost non-existent sleep. Rand tried to comfort me but it didn’t help. It didn’t make things worse, but I remained weirded out and scared silly. Turns out with good reason. We walked to the gate and not even five minutes later Pastor Ken shows up with “the man.” I barely recognized him.

“Young lady I am very pleased to see that you have survived the ordeal that has befallen us all recently. I’ve had a rather difficult time tracking your whereabouts until I gained access to the population census for this area. Official documentation allowed me to obtain a travel pass. And here I am.”

He had changed. He’s aged and lost a lot of weight, and it doesn’t look good on him. But as soon as he opened his mouth I knew. I had to listen to him lecture me ad nauseum a couple of times a year so I ought to be familiar with his soulful Southern gentleman drawl.

“Mr. Barnes.”

“Yes my dear, it is I. Some what changed as I’m sure you’ve noticed but still the same man on the inside.”

And still fond of the sound of his own voice. That’s not as mean as it sounds, he really does like the sound of his own voice. He told me so during one of his “what do you want to do when you grow up” talks. His voice is one of the reasons he went into law. It was either law or the stage. He said since there wasn’t all that much difference between most criminals and most actors he chose law since it paid better with fewer risks.

“Mr. Barnes, not that I’m not … oh this is ridiculous. Why are you here?”

“Still the same direct young damsel I see. And thank goodness. We do not have much time my dear and you have some very, very serious decisions to make.”

Decisions?! Try I’m being backed into a corner and given no choice except to endanger the one thing that means more to me than all the rest.

Introductions were made and we went back to the property to discuss things more privately. Mr. Barnes took quite a while to line up the way things are happening, where he stood as a matter of opinion and where we stood as a matter of law.

See, this is how it goes. Check the tax rolls. In arrears prior to the fourth wave of the pandemic? Second home? Investment property? Forfeit. Being held in trust? No forwarding address? A farm gone fallow? Forfeit. Known death but no executable will? Owe child support/alimony? Property in extreme disrepair? Criminal history? Forfeit. Forfeit. Forfeit. Forfeit.

I fell into the “being held in trust” category. Mr. Barnes said that he only knew the issue had come up because he, as a well-known estate lawyer, had been called upon by an advocacy group to try and help people that were being railroaded by the government. He regularly checked the property logs as they were issued and I was his last client unaccounted for.

They had issued the 30-Day Notice to his office the following day that the property appeared and he had been working for three weeks to try and find me. He said, “I do detest what is going on my dear but our options are limited.” Basically because I’m a minor I’m in big trouble because I have no court appointed guardian living here with me proving the property is viable and homesteadable.

I do have some things on my side. There is legal documentation that the taxes are current (“We really need to sit down young lady and have a talk about this aspect of the situation.”) The house is in good repair. The lad is currently being farmed (“As the season permits of course, but we have no need to give them those details.”) There is “documentary and dispositional evidence” of my residence on the property in excess of two months. I am not a drain on local social services, not that there is any. I am not a criminal.

But the points against me outweigh all of the above. I am under age. My court-appointed legal guardians are dead or returned me to state custody. There are a couple of people in the community who could make trouble for me if they put their minds to it. My own history of “personal issues.”

“You see my dear, while I never did agree with the assessment that you were not ready for your emancipation – it would only have required a bit of restructuring with your trust – we only have so much to work with to refute their claim against your property.”

“This is not fair! And this isn’t just my home any more, it’s Rand’s too!! How can they do this?!!”

“We’ve had this discussion about the word ‘fair’ before. Life is not fair; we do try and find some justice however. They shouldn’t be able to do this my dear. Under normal circumstances, even removing the issue of constitutionality, I would be able to delay this in the courts until it was moot when you turned 18, 21, or whatever arbitrary age they set. But these are not normal times. The President has enacted his executive powers and due process has been thrown out the window and they are seeking to not only blind justice but silence her as well. They are using administrative actions outside of the judicial system. The legal steps will be taken after people have been forced into submission and the denial of rights is a fait accompli.” He sighed deeply and continued, “I found record of your aunt’s passing but had honestly hoped to find you and your uncle in residence here. We could have skirted the issue of his remanding you to state custody as a clerical error of which there are not a few in this fiasco already.”

I was getting so upset it was hard to concentrate on what they were saying. It made me angrier to know that they kept on talking without my input after I grew silent. It was almost as if I was unnecessary to the decision making process.

“How old did you say you were young man?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Hmmm. Just old enough for it to look good on paper but not so old as to raise any hackles. Yes, let’s see, one of the local judges appears to be a rather fire-and-brimstone fellow. Met him yesterday while paying a courtesy call to say I was in the area on business. I’m sure he will issue a writ authorizing a license. You’ll need to talk her around of course. I’d do it from a good arm’s length away. She’s rather fond of her ideals no matter how strange they may appear to you or I.”

They left quickly after that and I was seething so bad I was shaking and my teeth were locked together. Rand had learned it was better to give me time to pull myself together and eventually I was able to say, “Rand I am not stupid. I may appear slow on the uptake some times and the words don’t always come out the way I mean them to but it sounds to me that he was seriously saying that we should … “

“Whoa! Don’t go nuclear on me. Let’s talk this through now that they’re gone. I’d like to know what you really think of this man. I don’t know anything about him.”

Gathering my wits I tried to tell him the best way I could. “He’s a do-gooder. Had a wife and child killed a long time ago by a drunk driver and it became his reason for living to help people that were similarly devastated. He does … did … a lot of pro-bono work. Nice just … serious about managing things the way he thinks they should go. I don’t know too many adults period, must less lawyers, that would have taken the time he did with me especially after the attitude I gave him in the beginning. I used to call it ‘blood money’ and didn’t want to have anything to do with it. He is tough and honest though, even Aunt Wilma and Uncle Charlie stepped careful around him.”

“So basically you’re saying that he can be trusted, at least as far as your business affairs go.”

“Yeah. And he was pretty cool about helping me try and get my emancipation. We just drew a short straw with the judge we got.”

“Ok, so let’s discuss the rest of it.”

“What’s there to discuss? Mr. Barnes is saying you’re gonna be forced to … to … marry me … so we can keep our home!”

“First, no one is forcing anyone. That’s why you and I are talking. Second … he’s right Kiri. As much as I hate to say it, he’s right. This is our only legal recourse.”

“This is just not … yeah, I know … nothing in life is fair but this is different. How can they do this?! There has to be thousands … maybe tens of thousands … of really and truly abandoned properties out there. Why this one?! Why now?!”

“Questions I intend to get answers for but we have to prioritize the emergencies here. First we need to secure ownership. Second, we need to disarm any other outstanding threats. Third, you need to talk to Mr. Barnes about the rest of your trust.”

“What rest? This is it Rand. I’m sure the little bit of any money there was is gone.”

“Don’t assume anything. Once we get things squared away we can set up some kind of contract that states that any money is yours and … “

“Rand, I can’t let you do this! You’d be giving up … “

“Would marrying me really be such a hard thing Kiri? I need to know because if it is we can scrap this whole discussion and start on plan B.”

“Of course not. You just don’t understand.”

He got a little upset himself finally and said, “So explain it to me. Explain to me why you are so dead set against getting married.”

“I’m not dead set against getting married.”

“Then it must be me.”

“No! Of course not. You’re like perfect and everything. You fit in one of those blasted fairy tale stories … the kind I never thought I would get.”

That knocked the wind out of his sails. He got quiet and asked, “Then Kiri what is it? I don’t understand.”

“You’re being forced into it. I hate it when people force me into things. I wanted … I mean if it ever … this isn’t the way I imagined it Rand. I not even seventeen. You’re barely twenty-one. I don’t think either one of us are babies but look at me. I’m a mess. I never know if I’m going to be walking with my feet or unsticking them from my mouth. You’re a people person with lots of friends … People make me ill and I’d be happy if you were the only other person on the planet. You got all mad when you thought I was trying to bribe you to be my friend. What can you be thinking about this?”

We’d made our way around this house talking and we had walked into the barn for a change of scenery. “I’m thinking that I wish I would have told you how I felt sooner and we might not be going through this.”

“Huh?”

“Kiri, I told you before I want to be with you. I want to be only with you … now and however many years we have down the road. I just thought like you’re thinking; we are young, we have time to take things slow and enjoy things, have some fun. I wanted you to see that Julia is the past and that I was more than happy to spend not just now but the future with you. Most of all though I wanted you to be sure.”

“Oh Rand.”

“Kiri, yeah, this house, this land it has already started meaning something to me. But it isn’t everything. I wouldn’t want to go live with Uncle George … I don’t know if I even could anymore and it would probably drive you nuts … but we could figure something out. As in us, we, you and me, together. I just don’t want those peckerwoods to win. What they are doing is wrong. For it to be happening to you makes it even more wrong in my eyes.” He brushed a lock of hair out of my eyes. “A marriage license is just a piece of paper. It has its uses. But what is most important is the public commitment … saying that these two people are absolutely and totally for each other. They’ve got the same goals. They’re promising to work on those goals as partners. They are promising to be exclusive. And that there isn’t anyone here on earth that has the power to change that but each other. I don’t have a problem saying those things with you. Can you say the same thing? Look at me please. I really do need to know.”

“I thought I was too young to feel this stuff. Yes, I can say that and I don’t care who knows it. I just hate that you are being forced … “

“I … am … not … being … forced. Period. End of discussion.”

“Rand I already do feel those things. I don’t say them as pretty as you do but I do feel them. I wouldn’t know what to … I wouldn’t know what I’d be right now if you hadn’t decided to be curious about me. It’s not just about not being able to do all this stuff by myself, I could probably figure out a way to get by maybe. It’s … it’s … you make it worth getting up in the morning and you make doing all of this stuff fun when by rights it should be nothing but work, work, and then some more work.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t say it pretty.”

“Rand, don’t push your luck. I’m still madder than you even want to know. I’m going to have to go walk this off some or it’s going to make me upchuck nothing but acid.”

“Tell you what, just as soon as you tell me if you’re going to let me marry you we’ll take Bud and Lou for a ride. How’s that sound?”

So I said yes and he spun me around enough that I got sick to my stomach for real and then he saddled the mules … Hatchet was still hacked off at Rand because he’d gotten some burrs in his mane and tail and they’d taken a long time to comb out. Rand had had to tie Hatchet between two posts and it had hurt his feelings.

While we rode I told Rand, “Your uncle is going to have kittens of every shade of the rainbow.”

“Maybe not. He’s more likely to be able to accept a ‘marriage of convenience’ than one in haste for any other reason. And I’m older than Brendon by three years. Besides, even if he has a hard time it isn’t going to stop us. I love my uncle Kiri … but I’m not a little kid any more. My self-respect comes from what I chose or don’t chose to do, not from anything he says to me these days.”

I hope he is right. We saw the very man we were talking about as we rode across the fields to see how much hay remained in the barn at the little house …even a lazy ride has a purpose these days. But there wasn’t much of a house left.

“Hey boy, don’t you know just when to show up? Give us a hand loading these joists and Kiri if you can help the boys get those bricks it would be appreciated.”

“I will Uncle George but do you have a second?”

Rand walked with his uncle and as they got off in the trees I heard, “WHAT IN THE SAM HILL DID YOU SAY?!”

Brendon and Jonathon looked at me. “I am not! Don’t even think it. Couldn’t be unless you believe in another immaculate conception so close your mouths; it … it’s …,” and I could feel myself tuning up and getting upset again.

“Hey! Knock it off you two!! Kiri, look at me did they say … “

“No. I’m just still mad … no, not at you … just in general and specific and …”

Uncle George came out of the trees a lot calmer than he had sounded just a moment before. “Boys, leave her be. They’re getting married within the week if it can be arranged. Some of what Henderson has been predicting is coming to pass. It’s the only way to keep the land out of the government’s greedy hands. “

So the whole story had to be told all over again. I was mad so I went to kick some of the old hay around in the barn. It was really flying. Mick and Tommy had come over to watch me. I was working up a good steam. I liked the way the last batch of hay flew so much that I hauled off and kicked the next one twice has hard … only there wasn’t hay under the hay.

I kicked something so hard my teeth rattled and I nearly said a cuss word, the only thing that stopped me to be honest was the boys standing there. Tommy helped me up off of the floor where I fell and Mick ran to get Rand who came running.

“Absolutely no lectures about my temper just see whatever it was I kicked please … so I can kick it some more.”

“Honestly Kiri what did you … it looks like a … Uncle George?”

“Well, will you lookee there.”

There were a bunch of antique farm implements buried under the old hay. The old paint canvasses that had protected them at some point were rotting and letting all sorts of pointy shapes stick out. The wood was split and rotting but there was enough there that Rand thought it would get a pattern off of. A lot of the steel was pitted and rusted but Uncle George thought with a little spit and polish most of them should still work. There was a chiseled-shaped plow … that was in the worst condition, likely because it was the oldest. A wing shovel plow that Uncle George said was used for hilling potatoes. There was an old wooden harrow eat up with wood rot and carpenter ants but the pattern still showed and Rand pulled out some paper, pencil and a tape measure from Bob. There were a couple of old cultivators but Daddy had a new one hung up in the barn so Rand told Uncle George to take those if he wanted them.

But the two things that Rand was most excited about was a disc/harrower/seeder combination thing - it was pulled by horse or mule but it had a seat for the operator with a lever for adjusting the seed spacing – and something he called a sulky plow. “They need some repair and I have to figure out a hitch but if Clyde could help me bang out some of these bent pieces they should work without a problem. Girl, you are a good luck charm. With these and the mules we’ll get that garden you want, I can help Uncle George plant, and we might even be able to trade out some work that would net us a little less work by going in shares at harvest time. If we can find an old hay rake and a sickle mower we’ll be in some business.

I haven’t the foggiest what those things are even after Rand tried to describe them to me. They sound like torture devices. But seeing that he was happy and still thinking of the house and land as “ours” made me determined to make the best of things.

Marriage is a big deal. We’ve been living under the same roof and doing stuff for each other like a couple … but there was still some stuff we hadn’t talked about and that left me nervous on the ride home. I stayed there to fix dinner since we hadn’t had lunch and Rand took the little wagon to start bringing the pieces he could home.

He’s gone back and forth a couple of times and it’s given me time to sort through all of this. I was much angrier when I started writing. I’m calmer now though I’m not sure how to bring up to Rand the stuff we didn’t talk about. Just because we are getting married doesn’t mean I feel any more ready for the responsibility of that stuff.


July 28th – Mr. Barnes came back with license in hand and he was happy with the results. “I’ve never felt so in tune with a judge in all my forty years of practicing law,” were his exact words. “I shall endeavor to assist Judge Walker by keeping him informed of what is occurring in Tallahassee these days.”

“I thought you came up from Tampa?”

“No my dear. Tampa is a death trap for such as I. My great niece and her sons offered me a place in their home and it has proven beneficial for all of us. To which, I must return to them shortly. I have secured transport home on Monday which will give me time to have the papers recorded and then forwarded to the proper authorities no later than Wednesday which is the deadline. Would it be possible for you to arrange an official ceremony before then?”

Uncle George, Brendon, Clyde, and Bill had come to help Rand move the rest of the farm equipment that wouldn’t fit in the little wagon. Between Rand and them and in consultation with Pastor Ken who was providing Mr. Barnes with his mobility for now it was settled that this Sunday’s church service would be a good time … it would actually be a double wedding. Brendon speaking for Alicia said that by having all of us get married together it would take some of the heat off.

“Or give them more to talk about,” I couldn’t resist adding.

I have exactly one more day to freak out about this. And I still haven’t managed to talk to Rand about … about the rest of it. Rand and I are getting married on July 30th whether I’m ready or not.


July 29th – I woke up in the middle of last night realizing that I didn’t have any idea what I was going to wear to get married. I cried, “Oh no!”

Rand jumped awake and wanted to know what was wrong. I said, “I don’t have a thing to wear.”

I thought he was going to laugh himself sick. “You pick the strangest times to go all girly. You are NOT getting out of marrying me. Just wear the skirt you made. I like … “

“Yes, I know you like it. No, I’m not going to wear it to get married in. I’m trying not to embarrass you or myself.”

“Honey, you could go as Lady Godiva and I’d be happy.”

“Oh go to sleep. You just don’t understand!”

And he did, the rat. Brendon had said that Alicia was going to wear a prom dress Missy had found someplace. It was off-white and floor length, she was just taking the brightly colored ribbons off of it. There was no way I was going to show up in a prom dress even if I had one to show up in. But, there was a sun dress I thought I could do something with.

I washed the dress first thing in the morning. Rand’s breakfast was a little late … more like brunch … but he just laughed and said not to worry about it. I think he is getting a little nervous too. We have to be at the park early for a little practicing and then Alicia and I will change in the community building. Brendon has seen Alicia’s dress but I’m not going to let Rand see the dress I fixed until as late as possible. I even covered it up in a garment bag after I was through with it.

The dress is a green so light it looks white unless you have it next to something that really is white. It is made of cotton and for someone a lot taller than I am. It was long to begin with but since I’m short I was tripping all over it. I took the bottom ruffle off and it now falls from an empire waist line just to the top of my feet. The waist line is gathered with a string and has these little cap sleeves that are also tied with a string. I had embroidery thread that was the exact color of the dress … or at least so close you can’t tell the difference … and crocheted a wide lace edge on the sleeves and around the deep neckline in front. I’ve never showed so much cleavage in public in my life as I’m gonna be showing tomorrow. The lace makes the simple dress pretty. There was no way I was going to have a veil. Momma had some netting but it was the wrong color and then some. But, I did find some silk flowers in light green and white and I sewed them to a plastic head band. I’ll wear Momma’s pearl ear studs and Memaw’s pearl choker and that’s about all I can do.

Rand said he was going to sleep on the sofa tonight but he’s already snoring, half on and half off his mattress. I missed my last chance to talk to Rand about the other stuff. He tossed hay after they got the antique farm things stowed under tarps and was so tired I don’t want to wake him even though his snoring is so bad it even made Fraidy come sleep on my bed for a change. I wish I could sleep like that – without the snoring of course. And I really hope I don’t puke in the middle of the ceremony tomorrow.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 38

July 30th – I am now Mrs. Rand Joiner. How cool is that?!

August 2nd – Haven’t had a lot of time for writing in my journal and frankly I didn’t know what to write that wouldn’t embarrass myself when I’m old and gray and reading this all again to remember things the way they really happened.

Rand and I were both awake earlier than usual on Sunday. We were so nervous we didn’t know where to look. We managed to get up, tend the animals, and put what we needed in the wagon but Rand told me not to worry about breakfast. I t was already turning hot and neither one of us could have eaten anyway.

Before we left I said, “This is your last chance. I won’t be hurt if … “

“Forget it Kiri. My last chance came before the first time I heard your voice. God already knew about Julia and sent me something so much better that I’m glad I was smart enough to grab with both hands and hang on to. I suppose I should give you the same chance but I’m not going to. I’m not letting you get away. This may not be how I planned it but it gets us where I wanted to go and a whole lot faster than I could have hoped. I intend on spending a lot of time over the years making sure you don’t have any regrets. I know that this is a little out of order from how things have being going but …. ,” and then he bent on one knee and asked, “will you marry me?”

He had this little box in his hand. “I looked at my Mom’s rings and they are way too big but they’re yours now too. This was my Dad’s mother’s ring. I know it isn’t fancy but it came with her all the way from Spain and belonged to her mother before her. It’s small and it’s old … but there is a lot of history to it and it’s been in my family for a bunch of generations. Now I want you to have it, no matter what Kiri.”

No one has ever given me jewelry before, not even my parents. Jewelry was for “grown ups” and inheriting jewelry didn’t count in my eyes. We took the time for a kiss and all it did was make my stomach flutter even more. I told Rand I hadn’t even thought about rings and then got upset that I hadn’t figured out something as meaningful for him.

“Girl, are you crazy? This place, this house, your dad’s files and guns … besides, I never even wore my class ring in highschool because I worked on machinery so much. As long as I have your hand, I don’t need a ring.”

I closed my mouth and I prayed that everything would be all right and that I don’t keep making mistakes like that even if Rand doesn’t think of it as a mistake. I should have been praying all along but I hadn’t. Now I just hope that praying in hindsight helps just as well.

We got to the park the same time as Pastor Ken. The Crenshaw clan showed up a few minutes after that. There wasn’t going to be music this time. Something had eaten a hole in the organ bellows and it had been such short notice that no one had thought to load a piano in a wagon.

There were three other couples that wanted to make public commitments at the same time once they found out that Mr. Barnes and Judge Walker were there to witness and make it official. Mr. Barnes laughed, “Well, it does appear to be contagious does it not?”

One couple was older, Mr. Barnes and Judge Walker’s age. Apparently they were a widow and widower whose attachment was an open secret around town for years. The next couple was the young woman with the two small children that I met at Laurabeth’s wedding and a man who looked older who was carrying a baby still in diapers. The last couple shocked me. Ron Harbinger eased over to Rand while we were waiting for Pastor Ken to finish speaking with the other two couples. “Joiner, I’m not here to spoil things. I don’t want to cause problems.”

Julia Winston and Ron Harbinger. Rand’s face was completely blank. “If Kiri doesn’t object I don’t, “ was all he said after Ron wanted to know if we objected to he and Julia taking advantage of the opportunity that was presenting itself. Rand’s face may have been blank but his hand in mine was stiff as a board and clammy.

For the first time I felt some sympathy for Julia. It was wasted on her though because she would hate me even more if she knew. We had all gone to freshen up and change except for Julia who was only wearing a dress already too tight for her as the whole getting married thing was a surprise. I overheard her mother saying, “Frankly Julia I don’t care what you want. You made your bed, now you can lie in it.”

“But you’re the one that told me to have some fun before I got married and my life was over!”

“I didn’t tell you to make a complete fool of yourself. How many did you sleep with anyway?! Ron admits the baby could be his. Could be. Then there is poor Freddie and that crazy drugged out Chase Peters. Have I gotten them all are there are few more? What people must think of me I can only imagine. And your father has been impossible to live with. Just be thankful you’re moving in with the Harbingers. You’ll have to put up with Ron’s grandmother and two spinster aunts but that’s fitting punishment and no concern of mine. I did my best and this is how you repay me. With you out from under foot hopefully your father will calm down and get off my back.” Nice mom. I wonder if she ate the rest of her young and only kept Julia and JR by accident.

Momma O patted my arm making me jump at getting cause eaves dropping, “Don’t waste your time worrying about Julia, she’ll land on her feet. Jared’s sisters are terrors but his mother is a good woman. And Ron has had a change of heart like at an old-time Revival. She’d be a fool not to jump on his offer and make the best of it. Now let me look at you. You clean up pretty well. Here, let’s straighten those flowers. Well, for Heaven’s sake child, you aren’t wearing those old boots are you?”

I’d figured out a dress with only a day to do it. I’d remembered to do something with my hair and to get something old, something new, and I even tied a piece of light blue string on my finger but I had forgotten all about shoes. I know I blushed because my face was hot. It was Alicia who came to my rescue. “All I have are the flat patent leathers Daddy would make me wear but … look, I’ll go barefoot if you will. I don’t want any reminders of my old life today.”

I was the youngest so I was the last in line right after Alicia who came out after Julia. Brendon had to poke Rand twice before he moved. “Old son, I know she looks different in a dress but the rest of us wanna get this show on the road, so close your mouth and move.” On Brendon’s tombstone it is going to read, “My mouth got me where I am today.”

Each couple got their turn saying the words. It was short but still felt like the words were being etched on a place inside me I thought had died with my family. I was crying and didn’t know why. I had to squeeze Rand’s hand to let him know I was OK.

Then it was over and Pastor Ken said to kiss the bride and pronounced each couple man and wife. Momma O laughed when she told me where to sit while a plate of food was brought over. “Girl your face woulda lit up a Christmas tree.” I couldn’t stop blushing and Rand couldn’t stop grinning which only made me blush that much more.

All of us brides got passed around for hugging and kissing. I avoided what I could and endured the rest. The grooms got their share too. The food was more like a banquet. An old man, rarely in town, had roasted a whole pig. “Aw well, I need to cull her anyway. Feed’s low and she had a bum leg.”

Brides aren’t supposed to worry about bringing food to their own reception, or so I had been told, but I had fixed a large bowl of fruit salad. I had also fixed three baskets; one for Pastor Ken, one for Mr. Barnes, and one for Judge Walker. Each basket had a couple jars of preserves, a tin of cookies I had baked the previous day, and fresh fruit. When we gave the judge’s to his wife she was really very sweet about it and made a nice fuss even though you could tell she was used to the finer things in life. The pastor and Mr. Barnes were appreciative as well.

“My dear, unfortunately we have run out of time, my transportation is leaving in but an hour rather than tomorrow and I must not be late. In this envelope are the details of what has occurred over the last year and some months since last we spoke. A copy of my personal notes are also in there as well as directions for contacting me if you have need. God’s Blessings on you young lady. I know your life has been … challenging … but you are being presented an opportunity here. Do not squander it wishing for what might have been.”

His words were accompanied by distant thunder. The old thespian grinned like he’d timed it himself and then left to catch a military transport from at the 129 and I10 on ramp. I hope he got home OK. It’s still hard to believe that if he hadn’t worked so hard, not even knowing whether I was alive or dead, I would be sitting on the side of the road wondering what to do with no home and a very uncertain future.

The thunder moved everyone to action. Momma O sent all of us newlyweds home so “the rest of us can stop playing and start cleaning. Now get.”

Rand helped me into the wagon seat and then was called over by his uncle and Mr. Henderson. I was holding the reins when Missy and Laurabeth came over for a quick goodbye and to put a box in the wagon. “No cooking tonight or tomorrow. We’ve put some goodies in here that should help with that. And no I didn’t cook it, Missy did.”

Missy had a look in her eyes that should have warned me, “I’ve tucked a few things in there as well. My only advice is to relax and enjoy yourself.” Uh huh. It has to be Uncle George’s genes for both Missy and Brendon to have got whatever it is they’ve got. There was also a box from Momma O in there.

Rand was back and everyone waved and then we were off. Rand had a happy looked on his face and said, “Guess what Mr. Henderson said. Never mind, you’ll never guess. Four of those cows that he took off that eighty that sits beside us are already gonna have calves. He said he’ll pick the best of the heifers and once it was weaned he’d bring it and its mother over as a wedding present. That’ll give us a head start and time to get an area fenced off properly. And Uncle George said in addition to the pig and beef that he plans on butchering once it cools off, he’ll give us two gilts and the use of a boar if I haven’t managed to get one before then. If your little hens get busy and if I can get enough hay and forage to keep us all fed we’ll be good for a long while!”

“That’s good right?”

“Oh yeah Babe, that’s very good. It’ll be more work but it’ll also mean bigger rewards. I can’t wait to try the plow and disc on that garden patch we have been breaking our backs on. Just don’t get your hopes up too high about getting much this first year. But think of it. Next year after adding a year of manure from the animals … and cow and pig manure are gonna be great for that … discing in the old hay bedding from the chickens … that sand should start learning to be dirt. The orchard will like the manure tea I’ll show you how to fix and … “

“Manure tea?!”

“Trust me, the plants will love it. And a milk cow will be good too. And the cows, chickens, and pigs are all free range. I know somebody that has goats too. They can be wicked silly and up to all kinds of mischief but they’re living lawn mowers and will clear a piece of land and keep it cleared nearly as well as a bush hog can, and they don’t have to worry about stumps. And that box from Momma O? Paul said it has all sorts of seeds and bulbs in there, and not just vegetable seeds. He said to tell you his grandmother said that if you followed her directions on each envelope you could have flowers too.”

I listened to him go on like that the rest of the way home. Home. Our home. Before it was an idea, now it was suddenly a reality.

We finally arrived in our yard and Rand jumped down and tied the mules to the ring and then handed me his rifle while he got the box. He opened the house up and then set the box inside the door but when I tried to go in he turned around and lifted me up and carried me over the threshold. “Old fashioned or not Kiri, I’m starting as I mean to go on. You deserve the same kind of stuff that other girls … women … expect. Just because you don’t think of them doesn’t mean that I don’t mean to see that you have them at some point. If you want to change, I’m gonna go unhitch Bud and Lou.” He keeps saying things like that and the sweetness of it makes my toes curl.

He went out and I went upstairs. It was very warm up there but not as bad as it use to be. Rand found where the vent fans had never been hooked up. I guess that was one of Daddy’s projects he had been working on. I put on a sun dress just because I knew I wouldn’t have to cook later and because it would make Rand happy. Then I looked at his bed and then at mine.

I had a choice to make. Nothing had been said and I knew that Rand wouldn’t push me but … something about making the promises in public and what they felt like when he and I said them … I can’t put it into words. It was a promise and a sacred trust. If I could say those words in front of God and everyone then I realized I could trust him with this last thing. I peeked out the window and he was still messing with the mules, probably giving me extra “girl time.” I tore the bedding off the mattress and slid it over to and down the stairs. It was a bit of a pain but I was able to hide it in the storage room and throw the covers in with the dirty laundry before he came back in.

“You look flustered. You OK? You don’t need to be so nervous. We’re married now … I don’t have to worry about you getting away … so we can slow down as much as you need.”

I blushed and hugged him and I guess Rand figured he’d said the right thing. I was just hugging him because what he had said proved my own thoughts and made me even gladder I did what I did. I turned to take stuff out of the box. There was a loaf of bread and several MREs. I guess that was Missy’s way of saying don’t cook. There were also two packages in there; one said “to Rand from Bill” and the other said “to Kiri from Missy.” On the back of each note it said, “take your time and don’t get caught.”

Well, I didn’t have the sense to be careful and I upended my bag in my hand. Out falls this silky piece of material that wasn’t much longer than a camisole and it took me a while to realize it was supposed to be a nightgown.

“Well, what’s yours?” I asked determined not to be the only one embarrassed.

Rand was red in the face. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s just say that Missy doesn’t have a subtle bone in her body. I’m gonna run upstairs and change real quick and when I come down we can talk.”

There is sound proofing in the floor but with the door open I could hear him run up fast and then sort of just stop in his tracks. A few minutes later after he changed he came down slower. I was putting things away that I had left undone in the morning. Rand came up behind me as asked, “Are you sure?” All I could do was nod and I did wear that little piece of silliness from Missy, but only for a little while.

It’s been nice … very nice. But I can’t begin to imagine how anyone could call this “casual.” My goodness, talk about interpersonal communicating. God has quite some imagination to have created this.

The next day we worked as usual but it was kind of different too. Neither one of us could seem to get the grin off of our face, not even when it turned blistering hot again. More apples and nectarines were coming in and I couldn’t let them go to waste. The animals needed taking care of because, well, they’re animals and ours to take care of. We did take a couple of long walks. And of course there was the daily target practice that Rand continues to be a bear about me keeping up with. I have to admit I’m getting better. Nothing fancy, but at least most of the time I now hit where I’m aiming.

Rand also managed to get the garden well and truly broken in. First the plow since the area hadn’t really been planted in anything except the rye grass that Daddy would put on it in the winter and then rototill into it in the spring before it turned brown. The plow also finished the deep trenching we had started by hand. Next he ran a harrow over it to even the dirt back up. After that he ran the disc to break up the rest of the clods that the harrow hadn’t dealt with.

“Your Momma knew how to pick ground. This is good dirt for these parts … hardly any clay in it at all except for that corner over there and I can probably dig it out next season. We’ll need to add more manure and some of that compost when it finishes making but tomorrow, if you’re ready, I’ll help put the seeds in.” We also finished setting the posts and hanging the fence to keep the deer out of the garden. Rand said, “I want some more venison but not bad enough to go to all the trouble of planting a garden to attract them.”

Yesterday, on top of everything else in the orchard that is coming in, the pears were ready but I had to do the canning in the afternoon after we got some of the seeds in the ground. Rand had studied the square foot gardening method when he was in 4H. “It’s convenient for small gardens but for commercial size stuff it is a pain. We’ll try it your way but you’ll need to leave me room to work the cultivator. And don’t make your squares too big or you won’t be able to reach the stuff in the middle since you’re so short.”

I laid off the grids the way the book said and then went to town planting some of what Momma O had sent me in trade for the fruit. First the beans; some were bush and some were pole which required Rand cutting me some bamboo poles. We tried a patch of corn where it wouldn’t shade out anything. Cucumbers and watermelons were given room to spread. There were a couple of different patches of peppers; some hot and some not. The winter and summer squash were planted in their own areas. I planted onions by the row, bunching and multipliers. We also got a row of collards and a row of turnips planted. Next month we’ll get more of the leafy green plants going, it’s too hot for them right now.

I was beat after all that bending up and down but if Rand could toss hay I could can fruit. The dehydrator runs nonstop although I don’t really have to do anything to it except to make sure I’m drying the fruit and not cooking it. Today the first sweet peaches were ready and when I put them on the table for dessert Rand blinked his eyes like he was seeing things. I don’t know what the big deal was, we’d had nectarines for over a week. He peeled and sliced one for me as the fuzz just freezes me to death.

“I saw Uncle George today while I was getting that hay. How would you feel about some company tomorrow?”

“Company?”

“Help too. It turns out Alicia and Melly and the boys are coming over while Brendon and Clyde help me see about breaking in a little more space in the utility easement. Uncle George wants to know if we’ll grow some for him and if I can get the help I don’t see what we shouldn’t try. And they’re going to help cut up some more of that wood and take some with them as well. Uncle George cleared most of his land years ago for the cattle and they go through more wood than we do. There’s a couple of dead trees around here that need dealing with and we’re going to mark off and cut them down over the next couple of days and we’ll split it between the four households. Bill is helping Uncle George get the new addition plumbed out and get the floor leveled. I hate that they undid all that work we did to the new kitchen but they just couldn’t work around it.”

The days are just as long as they ever were but the nights are a little shorter and I’ve noticed Rand isn’t jumping up and out of bed quite so quick in the mornings. As tired as I am I’m not sure I’m going to be able to keep up the pace much longer. I haven’t even looked at the papers that Mr. Barnes left for me. Rand is looking over them now because the way Mr. Barnes writes things out gives me a headache; legalease is his second language but thank goodness he doesn’t talk that way. And thank goodness Rand was getting a business degree; at least he’ll half way understand what all the gobbled-gook is that Mr. Barnes was forever going on about.
 

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 39

August 3rd – I wonder if what happened last night counts as our first fight? Rand really had a royal snit fit over those papers and ledgers from Mr. Barnes. It wasn’t all at me but I still felt like … oh, like I was on trial or something. I didn’t cry or nothing, not in front of him anyway, but I’ve wanted to off and on all day today.

I just never paid any attention to the money; it always felt like blood money. All I know is that it paid off all of my parents outstanding debts, took care of my medical bills, and was going to pay for me to go to college. And that a salary was paid to Aunt Wilma and Uncle Charlie for taking care of me and they would apply for any extra expenses. That’s all I knew, that’s honestly all I cared about knowing. That’s why I put up with Mr. Barnes’ lectures and stuff … so he could care about all the rest of it.

It wasn’t a giant sum of money. A lot of the accrued interest got lost in the recession, but none of the principle. By the time I got out of college the only thing I would have been able to claim is that I didn’t have to resort to student loans and there would have still been just enough left over to pay the property taxes for a couple of years. No luxuries or anything like that, not even a car unless I had opted for community college or local public university. Considering I’ve never learned to drive that never bothered me, I liked pedaling my way around since it helped me work off my feelings. But I guess when you look at it before that it was a good sized wad of money … was being the operative word.

The recession ate up the interest that Mr. Barnes had been able to get on the money at the beginning. When that happened he transferred it to “conservative” and “long term” type investments. I still have the stocks but they aren’t worth much anymore. He’d taken the money out of gold and silver certificates and transferred them to real metal back when the stuff had spiked but when things got so bad that the dollar didn’t mean much … neither did the pound, euro, yen, or anything else for that matter these days … the government, in an effort to try and do some type of inflation/deflation control … changed the law to where private citizens could no longer personally own precious metals for currency or investment; they also said that things like ETFs and certificates had no value at all since they were nothing but paper and claimed they were unbacked by actual metal. They gave people a grace period to have their precious metals willingly exchanged – including vintage coins and jewelry – “dollar for dollar” at whatever the going rate the metal was on that date. Anyone who failed to turn their metals in during that period was subject to confiscation and they could fight it out in the courts.

Mr. Barnes wrote that so few people were taking the government up on their “offer” in the beginning that a search and seizure practice went into effect. It started with safety deposit boxes and warehouses and went down as far as private homes. Many other countries followed suit and even the rich and famous found their normal “off shore” hideaways were no longer safe … if it wasn’t the US then it was the governments of other countries, often backed by their military. He’d been warned by some friends and did the exchange almost immediately. He beat the sudden pop of the gold bubble and I actually managed to break even despite the heavy losses on stocks.

Federal taxes ate up a good chunk of it too last year, but because of the attacks on Washington DC that happened and such a high loss of personnel and access to records, federal income tax is on hold since there. Things are a real mess in the financial sectors. Wall Street crashed worse than it ever has but it has come back some for now due to foreigners looking for a safe haven for their remaining money. When China and Russia got into it things started popping in China so bad that their financial control in so many countries has faltered badly. On top of that when people lost confidence in the Asian markets countries started defaulting on their loans from China and that house of cards collapsed.

I could probably go on and on about all the awful things that have happened, Mr. Barnes certainly did. All I know is that what I used to have barely exists these days. It might amount to something many years down the road but that is just conjecture. Florida, needing cash money so badly to continue operating and paying their national guard, took an unprecedented step of issuing bonds on future property taxes. You bought the bond and rather than cashing the bond in for currency you earn “credits” for paying off county and state property taxes … local taxes were not covered by the bond. “My dear, I’ve had many tell me that I was insane for buying these bonds on my clients’ behalves but I feel in my bones that they are worth the investment. The value of this investment will be determined by the change in value of the local currencies that we must deal with.”

Another note was included hastily scrawled in Mr. Barnes chicken scratch handwriting. I have no idea how a person who can talk so beautifully can have a handwriting that is so terrible. “My dear, I was just able to convert the last of your riskiest investments into these ridiculous ‘sand dollars.’ I was rather impressed with your young man. Judge Walker also spoke rather highly of his family. With your permission I will take these monies and invest them in hard goods as they become available. My nephews are rather resourceful young men who work in shipping. With luck you will meet them in the not too distant future. Goodbye my dear. May God Bless your union and keep you safe.”

Rand was so upset because he thought I was being careless about it all when I should have been grateful. I tried to tell him again and it only made it worse. Then I got mad and asked him if he had been so on top of things when he was my age and younger and he yelled he hadn’t been given a chance, there hadn’t been anyone looking out for his interest like Mr. Barnes had been looking out for mine. And I asked, a little louder than necessary, if this was one of the guy things he had been talking about because if it was the money he could have since I had never wanted it. He stomped off then I stomped off and didn’t want anything to do with anyone I was so miserable. I sure didn’t want him to see that he’d made me cry.

Then when I came back to the house he was really angry at me for going off in the dark and worrying him. And I snapped back at him that he’d taken a walk so I could too. A few other nasty things were said by both of us that I’d prefer not to record for posterity. I stayed downstairs to clean the last few dishes and he went upstairs, neither of us talking. It was only maybe ten minutes but by the time I got upstairs he had fallen asleep. I know he didn’t mean to now … I would have then if I hadn’t been nursing my hurts. He was still dressed and laying on the bed and one of Daddy’s books was on his chest.

I picked the book up and got in bed but it felt like hours before I could go to sleep. It felt like I had just shut my eyes when he started banging around asking me why I hadn’t woke him up last night. And it started all over again. Only this time we had to stop before his family arrived. The words stopped but my hurt didn’t.

I hate being fake. I absolutely hate it. I always break down after a while and wind up exploding in picture perfect HD and surround sound. But I managed to hold it in well passed lunch. There wasn’t time to pout. In the morning the guys were cutting wood and we prepped everything and started canning. In the afternoon the guys started working the mules in the easement and the gals finished up everything they had prepped.

We had five fires going because Alicia had Melly had brought their equipment and some jars. We made huge pots of applesauce and apple butter; apple juice, apple jelly and spiced apple jelly; apple chutney and apple catsup; apple cordial and a gallon of what Melly swears will be apple wine. We made a couple of apple pies for lunch and to drink I made apple lemonade by taking apple juice from tart green apples and mixing in a little powdered lemonade mix; had lots of pucker power so I added a little honey to sweeten it up.

Then we went at the pears. We started with an Apple-Pear Preserves mix and then went on to pear sauce and pear butter. Then we went on to plain canned pears and then since we had so many we doctored up about four different batches: cinnamon pears, mint pears, orange pears, and pineapple pears that I used a big can of pineapple juice that I hadn’t known what to do with. We also made pear relish, pear honey, pear preserves, pickled pears, brandied pears (this was Alicia’s idea), pear chutney, gingered pears, pear mincemeat (this was Melly’s mother’s recipe), and caramel spice pear butter.

But we weren’t through; with five fires going and all the helping hands we had you can really move some canning jars. The peaches and nectarines all got used interchangeably in recipes. If we had peach butter we also had nectarine butter. If we had pickled peaches we also had pickled nectarines. We canned them whole, in halves, in slices. We made conserve, preserves, jam, spiced butter, pie filling, and chutney.

Everyone got some of everything to take home but the majority went into the summer kitchen for Rand and I since they were our trees. After everyone packed up and left I was so tired I was shaking and I was hoping like crazy that Rand wouldn’t mind leftovers for dinner because I was just about at my limit.

I walked out to the barn and I was so tired I didn’t look before I walked in. I got a face full of hay where he’d been pitching some out that had gotten wet and was trying to sour in the heat. Then suddenly it wasn’t just hay; Rand had me and was brushing hay off me and hollering my name to ask me if I was OK.

“Rand! It was just hay! Why are you doing that? Rand, there went a button! How am I going to find it in all this mess?!”

“Kiri! Are you OK?!”

“I’m fine. What’s wrong? What did I do?”

“Do? You?! I had a pitchfork!! If I hadn’t seen you … inches … pulled my arm just in time … inches … don’t ever … inches …”

I was so smushed up against his sweaty chest I couldn’t even tell him I was fine. Hay was all in my hair and down my shirt and I even had to dig it out of my nose and ears. Well, I’m not going to write the rest but I was digging hay out of other places too by the time we’d made up.

“Kiri, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go to sleep last night. I was just so tired. I don’t want to go to sleep angry ever again.”

“You probably will you know. I’ve tried to warn you about my temper.”

“Likely we’ll both get angry but no matter what from here on out we don’t go to bed that way. And about the money thing, I knew better. I listened to my parents fight about money almost to the day my mother died and my Dad was cussing about some bill he had gotten from the hospital when he had his heart attack and died. Moved over here and had to listen to Uncle George and Aunt Rachel do the same thing. It’s not a good way to live.”

“Rand, I never meant to be irresponsible. I just have never had much use for what Mr. Barnes took care of beyond what it could get me. If it took care of this house then good. If it could put me through college then good. Beyond that, I just didn’t care about it. Maybe I would have at some point but up to now I just haven’t. Maybe there is something wrong with me.”

“Nothing’s wrong with you. Don’t say that. I hate for you to think that that is what I think, ‘cause it isn’t. But from here on out, you do need to care. Do you have any idea what he was talking about as far as that last note he wrote?”

“Count me clueless. What Mr. Barnes thought important and what I thought important didn’t always match. He won’t … well, he won’t squander it. He’ll think he has invested in something that makes sense and more than likely it will … up to a point. But what it could be is anyone’s guess.”

“Well, I’ll guess we’ll just have to see and be careful to stay on top of the rest of it. Your Mr. Barnes isn’t a young many Kiri. We both know how fast things can change. You need to start making independent verification of what he is telling you.”

“Can’t you do that?”

“I’ll help but this is your money Kiri.”

“It’s ours.”

“Yours.”

“Ours.”

“Kiri, it’s yours.”

“In the old days the guys always got a dowry and stuff to marry a girl.”

“Well this isn’t the old days and … no … don’t start that again.”

“Then stop fighting me on this.”

Rand thinks it has been settled his way and I know it has been settled mine; the money or whatever it is will be ours and that’s final.


August 4th – Nearly put my foot wrong again. I honestly didn’t think much of it. Rand didn’t celebrate his so I figured what was the since in celebrating mine. It wasn’t a marker to getting me what I wanted anymore; I already had everything I wanted.

When I told Rand that right when he was starting to tune up his mouth just kind of fell open; all of the guys’ mouths did. What’s the big deal anyway? Eighteen used to be important. Seventeen would have meant only one year more to go. I don’t need to worry about eighteen because I got things squared away early. It’s just another day now.

The day started out well enough. I was so happy that we fixed things yesterday that I really wasn’t paying much attention to what today was. I mean I knew but it wouldn’t have been the first time that things were too busy for it to get noticed by anyone else.

Clyde, Brendon, and this time Bill came with the boys and the first thing out of Bill’s mouth was, “Found you something your uncle calls a horse drawn hay tedder.” Rand asked, “You serious?!”

A hay tedder apparently moves freshly cut hay around until it has dried enough to be baled or stacked.

“Got word by way of Ron Harbinger if you can believe that. That old tractor dealership … the one that went to selling Kabotas several years back … well, the guy that used to own it is dead for sure now and his wife wants help moving into her parents’ house out on River Road but she don’t have anything to trade. Most people are wanting cash or groceries and she doesn’t have either. Harbinger talked her into letting them pick over the old equipment out back and she was more than happy to have the trade for that. Harbinger said there were a few pieces in there too heavy for his father’s horses so he’ll take the light ones and if your mules can pull then you’re welcome to the other ones.”

“What’s the catch?”

“We gotta go now and move that lady’s stuff. She wants it done as quick as possible because there’s been trouble out that way and she wants to go where her brothers are for protection.”

So Rand hitched up the mules and headed out with everyone. I wasn’t for sure whether they’d be back for lunch so I made apple beans that could go for our dinner in case they didn’t show up in time. Basically the dish is white beans backed with chopped apples, brown sugar, and the other stuff you put in baked beans. I also put a little bit of freeze dried ham dices in there and then made up two pans of corn bread. It wasn’t fancy but beans are filling if you doctor them up a bit and the bean broth is really good for spooning over cornbread.

While the beans were baking there were two recipes that I hadn’t been able to get to yesterday that I really wanted to try. The first one was Dutch Apple Pie Jam. My Momma had made this and given it as a gift in the holiday baskets she always made. First you need a pound of green apples. Just so happened I knew just where to find some as the Granny Smith wannabe in the orchard was putting them off by the bucketful. You had to peel and chop the pound of apples to make two cups of fruit and then you put it in your kettle with one-half cup of raisins, one cup of water, one-third cup of lemon juice, one teaspoon of ground cinnamon and one-quarter teaspoon of ground allspice. To this mess you need to add four and one-half cups of white sugar, one cup of firmly packed brown sugar, and one-half teaspoon of butter. Place the kettle over high heat and sitr all of that mess until it comes to a full boil and boil it hard for one minute, stirring constantly. Now at this point in recipe you are supposed to remove the kettle from the heat and immediately stir in a package of liquid fruit pectin but I didn’t have any. What I did have was Alicia’s recipe for homemade pectin so I stirred it in and removed the pan from the heat. Then I stirred and skimmed foam for five minutes to prevent floating fruit. After that it was just pour and seal as usual.

Homemade pectin is pretty easy and Alicia said she hadn’t even realized that you could buy it in the grocery until she took Home Ec in middle school. She told me, “Since I had never seen the inside of a grocery store except on TV you can imagine how much fun the other girls had with me that semester. That was one of the first time my parents had the county called on them. It was so embarrassing but because of it the school district wouldn’t approve my parents homeschooling Tommy and I. I would almost preferred if they had. We dressed different, talked different, acted different; pour Tommy had it worse than I did. Little boys can be cruel and it is worse because he is small for his age.”

She showed me how to start the pectin before she left yesterday and now I’ll be able to make some of the recipes I couldn’t before. You take two pounds of under ripe Granny Smith apples that you’ve washed and cut into eighths, peels and cores too. Then you put them in a pan with four cups of water bringing it all to a boil. You need to cut the heat back to medium (all I could do was move the pan back from the heat) and simmer for twenty minutes. Then you let it all cool. While it is cooling you line a bowl with dampened cheesecloth. When the mess in your pot is cool you pour the pulp and juice into the cheesecloth and then lift it up by the corners, tie a knot and then figure out a way to suspend the cheesecloth bundle over the bowl and allow it to drip into the bowl overnight. The next day, measure the apple juice and it pour into a large pot. Bring the liquid to a boil over high heat and cook until reduced by half. You should wind up with about one and a half cups of liquid and you need to use it right away. If we had refrigeration I could keep it up to four days or it would keep in a freezer for six months … I didn’t have either so I used it up finishing the batches of Apple Pie Jam.

What’s more, looking it up in some of my Momma’s notes … now that I had something to look for … I found out that you can do it with any kind of unripe apples (and crabapples too) and you can can it and seal it in jars for using out of apple season. I started several batches of it this afternoon. The summer kitchen looks just horrible but it is for a good cause and I’ll get it cleaned back up tomorrow.

The guys came back a little after lunch and they had all sweated through their shirts and pants but boy were they in high spirits. “Kiri! You won’t believe it! There was a hay tedder, a horse drawn mower, and some odds and ends you might be interested in. I got a block and tackle for the barn so I don’t have to keep moving those square bales up to the loft by hand. There was a box of burlap bags and we’re splitting them with Uncle George and we’re also giving him the most of the barrels since they need more water storage than we do. “

I’m not sure about me being interested in block and tackle or in a hay tedder, although if they make Rand that happy then I’m all for them, but the burlap bags sound interesting though I don’t know what I’ll use them for yet and there was a bunch of Watkins brand stuff that I guess they were selling as a side line like Avon or something. Watkins brand stuff is all sorts of natural and organic stuff like for cooking and cleaning and things like that. Since I knew that Alicia would be bent at Brendon for not bringing any home I split everything between us.

It was while we were all sitting around eating that the subject of my birthday came up. Clyde is worried that he is too old for Melly – he’ll be thirty on his next birthday – and somehow or other they started talking about the ages and age difference in all of the recent marriages and those of their parents. “Well, Kiri is still the youngest I’ve heard of at 16.”

“Seventeen.”

“Sixteen.”

“I was sixteen when we got married but I’m seventeen today.”

“When did you …?”

“I told you. I’m seventeen today.”

Gee whiz. I don’t know what all the fuss and bother was about. After everyone left Rand and I worked it out but I keep running into these things I need to remember to do or not do to keep the peace. I told Rand I was sorry and that I didn’t mean to start a fight and he hugged me and told me I hadn’t started another fight but he was upset that he hadn’t done anything special. I told him we just got married a few days ago and what could be more special than that? Then he got all mushy and I barely got a chance to finish cleaning things up.

He’s snoring now and I don’t have the heart to wake him up. He only does it loud when he is really, really tired but I couldn’t sleep so I decided to sit down and finish this. I really like the new arrangement but his snoring gives me the giggles so bad sometimes my stomach hurts.


August 5th – When it rains it pours and that’s just about what it has been doing all day today. I haven’t been able to get a thing done, the house is damp, and now I’m going to be behind on my laundry. I’m also getting cranky from my monthlies. I was embarrassed to death trying to figure out how to tell Rand no … well … none of that stuff … but he was actually very understanding. He’s one surprise after another though I suppose I should know that by now I can talk to him about anything.


August 6th – Clear morning. Nice services but no marriages this time. What we did find out was who was causing problems for us and I can tell you that I am upset. Things always seem to come back around and bite you right when you think they are all taken care of. I’m just exhausted from worrying and dealing with it today and Rand has told me let’s just go to bed. There isn’t anything to be done and we are both in need of some sleep.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 40

August 7th – What an awful two days. On Sunday we were running late and had just gotten up to US90 when we ran into Mitch Peters. We could both tell right away that something was up as he wasn’t exactly walking his horse and it looked like he was heading back towards the Henderson place.

“Please. Y’all need to know I didn’t have a thing to do with what’s been going on. Mr. Henderson and Judge Walker have tore some people up one side and down the other and it’s taken care of most of the fence sitters but there are still some hardcore … “

Rand stopped him saying, “Yo, Mitch … little back story needed.”

“Sorry Rand. I’m just … well, it ain’t polite to say what I am at the moment. That trouble you and Kiri had, it started with my stepmom and her family. Jared Harbinger took part in it but Ron’s coming all unglued about it, screaming at them when he found out this morning. He’s actually the one that told Pastor Ken and Mr. Henderson. He saw the danger of it to the rest of us right away.”

I looked at them and asked, “What danger?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know but considering the circumstances I had to stiffen my spine and climb out of my shell.

As we rode the rest of the way to the park, Mitch returning with us, they explained, “It opens a whole can of worms, them bringing the notice of the government to this area. A lot of people, based on what your lawyer friend said, are going to be in trouble. Anybody that has fallow ground could lose everything. No fuel to even turn the ground to make it look like it is being worked. No money to buy seed to plant even if you could turn the ground. Bringing that point up got is what most of the fence sitters and some of the others on the other side to rethink their opinions. They’ve already started building one of those relocation centers out at the old supply depot because the airstrip is still useable. They’ll branch out from there, looking for places to move people out into the community.”

“It’s all because of what I did to Chase isn’t it?! Oh Rand I’m so sorry, look at what I’ve caused and … “

I didn’t get any further, wasn’t allowed to go any further. Neither of them would listen to a thing I said which was a little upsetting on top of everything else. “Kiri, he was my little brother and I loved him despite his faults but he made his choice. He loved the drugs more than he loved his family. I knew as sure as I talking to you right now that if he didn’t get done with the drugs permanently they were gonna kill him or something he did while he was drugged up was gonna get him killed. I’m thankful that he didn’t take anyone with him and it hurts to say that like you don’t wanna know.”

All the rest of the way there they were discussing how we should handle things, but I knew I needed to take responsibility somehow and draw the heat off of the people that didn’t deserve it. How I was going to manage that without making Rand angry was actually my main concern at that time.

We finally arrived and if I hadn’t known ahead of time that there had been trouble I never would have realized it. There was a small knot of people hanging together and I recognized Mr. Jared Harbinger among them but none of the others. Everyone else was staring a little bit but no more than usual. What was strange was that Ron Harbinger came up and shook Rand’s hand and made a point of talking pretty loud about the work they had done together the day before and making some plans to maybe do some mowing and plowing together in the near future. Julia stood off to the side and was looking embarrassed and sulky but Ron didn’t let her get too far away from him. And if it wasn’t Ron leashing her, it was these two other women that looked to be about Mrs. Winston’s age boxing her in and not letting her wander off and talk to whomever she was trying to get off to see. I assumed those were Ron’s two unmarried aunts.

Momma O called me over and she and Judge Walker’s wife made a point of asking me how things were going and then asking for my recipe for different types of pears. Apparently Alicia, Laurabeth, and Missy had already been out and talking me up. Once Momma O and Mrs. Walker started talking to me about that sort of stuff several other ladies came over and started talking and they wanted to know how I was managing it without electric or gas and I told them over an open fire and then we all really took off with the older ladies giving some other tips.

I said I wished we could all get together and share this stuff or that everyone would slow down so I could write it down and Momma O laughed said that was a fine idea and that she’d discuss it with a few of the other ladies she knew and that maybe we could get together and have an idea exchange, sort of like a ladies’ social or a quilting bee or something.

No sooner had I gotten excited about that than it was time for us to get back to our families so that the Pastor could start the sermon. I was surprised but I actually remembered the words to over half the songs that were sung; well the first verses anyway. They were the old songs … Amazing Grace, Rock of Ages, I Love To Tell the Story, In The Garden, and a couple of others I recognized from when I was little. Pastor Ken was on a role, talking about the need to be a community and support one another and to behave in Christ-like fashion. He warned against vices such as gossip-mongering, jealousy, envy, revenge, stealing, lying, cheating … drinking and immoderate living too … wasn’t too many he didn’t seem to cover to be honest.

He was hitting home with some folks. There were a lot of nodding and innocent looking faces but there was just as many squirming backsides and feet and hands that didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves. I know the revenge warning made me rethink some of my own actions and the gossip-mongering made me squirm like a worm in hot ashes. I could have put it down to necessary information gathering but if I did I sure would be cutting it a fine line.

I was happy to be heading back home after the service because I had a lot of thinking to do but that’s right when the trouble started. Chase’s mother … who I found out was a tall blonde woman named Lurlene Houchins since she’d retaken her maiden name after her second marriage also failed … started twisting some of the things that Pastor Ken had said and making a lot of statements that were supposed to be innuendo but that were pretty plain who she was talking about and why.

Rand grabbed my hand and we were just going to leave. Neither one of us were wanting trouble, certainly not at what amounted to church. We were trying to cut her some slack as she was grieving her son and looking for something tangible to blame for his death. Then Jared Harbinger started up and brought up all that old stuff wondering aloud about his son Fred’s death and how it was some kind of conspiracy or something equally crazy.

“Dad, Fred got Fred killed by messing around with that girl after her dad and brothers had told him that the next time they caught him around what they were going to do to him. He thought he was too big and too bad and he was just flat out wrong. It could have been me just as easily but it wasn’t … and I aim to try and do better from here on out. I married Julia and whether the baby is mine, Fred’s , or Chase’s we’ll raise it like mine and it won’t grow up doing the things that I got away with doing. You and the things you do were part of the problem … I’m not going to let them interfere with me no more so give it up. He was my little brother and my best friend … and the person I led into trouble more often than not … but he is dead. Let him rest in peace.”

I could see Julia was horrified at what Ron was saying but was even more upset that no one came to her defense.

Then it was Mitch’s turn. “Lurlene, you know that Chase had problems. How many times did you pay to send him to rehab? I know Dad paid for it three times and when he just went right back to doing what he wanted to do he wouldn’t pay no more. Your parents sent him at least twice that I know of. Face it, Chase could act pretty … “

“You weren’t a brother to my Chase! I heard what you did … letting that lunatic over there throw him in with that dead woman!! How dare you pass judgment on him like that. What have you done since he’s been dead?! Nothing … you stick up for his murderer is all!! I wonder what other of our men that little (blipped out in the interest of my own piece of mind) has led astray. Chase was just an innocent with a few problems he would have grown out of if he had had the chance. She took that from him … and from me! I will not be denied. I will have justice for my son!!”

Life had suddenly turned into a horrible cowboy movie where everyone always seems determined to settle things with a gun. Thankfully Ms. Houchins is a worse shot than me and couldn’t hit the side of a barn if it jumped right out in front of her. Unfortunately what she did hit was our little wagon, the wagon I had just ducked down on the bench of when I saw her aim at me. I wasn’t holding on to anything and Bud rear up joggling the wagon pretty bad. Rand grabbed his head quickly but I lost my balance and went head first over the side.

I couldn’t breathe and all the screaming and carrying on didn’t help my concentration any. I landed on a stump with my chest. It was high enough to trip over but not so high that he stabbed me; it was about eight inches across, it felt like that time in school when a baseball had taken a bad bounce and caught me in the one place a girl really hates to get hit. I was up on all fours trying to crawl away from the wagon in case Bud decided to run when I felt Rand pulling me up and into his arms. Everyone thought I’d been shot.

It was a while before I was able to take a full breath and I have a horrible rainbow bruise on my right … on the right side and I it hurts to carry anything with my right arm. I’d seen angry people before but I’d never seen an angry mob. These same people who’d just been sitting down calmly listening to a church service had suddenly become … scary. They looked like they were going to lynch Ms. Houchins and Jared Harbinger and maybe a couple of the others too right there in the park.

It took me a couple of tries but I made Rand help to stand me up and I said, “Stop it! … I said STOP IT!!!! Please don’t do this. I did killer her son … I don’t see how I could have done any different unless I was to let him kill me first but that doesn’t mean that I’m not sorry for it. And she’s half crazy with grief. I’ve been there myself when I found out my family had been killed. Just … just stop it … please. This isn’t … this isn’t going to help anything and you won’t like what you have to live with afterwards.”

I was running out of breath again but I was also to the point of tears. It seemed every time I thought I had something good and that everything was going to be OK something came along to try and destroy it.

Thankfully Rand understood and with me in his arms he said, “Haven’t we got enough problems people? You think they’re going to stop with Kiri and I now that they’ve noticed our community? If you do you’re crazy. Listen to Mr. Henderson. They’re already setting up one of those relocation centers up in Lake City. They’re going to spread out from there in the coming weeks and months. Stop wasting time and spend it cultivating a garden, keeping your house in good repair and lived in, securing your winter supplies somehow. And if you have somebody come up and say ‘We’re from the government and we’re here to help’ I suggest you be real careful about accepting anything they’re offering.”

Uncle George hobbled up without his crutch for the first time in a while and said, “Me and mine are working to save what we’ve got. There’s other in the community doing the same. There is no time to waste. No one is coming to the rescue. No more work days. No more ration books. No more handouts. The only thing you are going to get is what your own back and hands can provide for your family. I suggest you all think on that and remember what it was like in the old days … ‘cause that is all we have and that is all there is. To think anything else is foolish and dangerous to yourself and the rest of us.”

I can’t say that we really influenced anyone but it didn’t feel like a bunch of hyenas were loose in the park any more either. We left at that point. Ms. Houchins was having some kind of hysterical fit and the older folks Rand said were her parents along with Mitch were talking to the Judge. I guess they were trying to figure out what was to be done that would satisfy enough in the community that people would let it go. Eventually Rand and I got home, escorted by some of Mr. Henderson’s men. When Rand saw how bruised I was I thought he was going to go off again and I literally begged him not to, that I just wanted to shut the gates and us take care of us.

I couldn’t do much work and Rand was wound too tight to do much more than stick close to me. When I tried to practice with the pistol it hurt but was bearable but when I tried to practice with the rifle one shot nearly had me puking my lunch up. After that Rand wanted me to go back to the house and lie down for a while but I told him I needed to pick the dried black eyed pea pods first.

Rand helped me to do that and then he tossed the bushes into the compost pile. I’m going to have to start another pile pretty soon but Rand also found a design for taking a barrel and making a rotating compost container that works scraps into compost a lot faster than it gets done in a regular compost heap. Dad wrote on the page that it came from the website http://www.solidwastedistrict.com/projects/bin_barrel.htm but it was just like the one in an old Rodale gardening book I was reading. Rand promises that when he is done I’ll be able to turn it even when it is full. If I can believe everything Momma wrote in her notes – and I have no reason to believe I can’t – Rand and I are going to need lots and lots of compost to keep the garden going, especially since we’re not going to have all those fancy fertilizers when what we do have runs out.

After that Rand really did pull the guy card and made me lay down for a while. He laid down beside me and we both wound up sleeping nearly an hour and a half. Rand didn’t want me to get up but I couldn’t just lay there no matter how good it would have felt because I knew he was going to go downstairs and work.

When the guys had been by that last day they had helped Rand set seven twelve-inch cypress posts in the ground outside of the summer kitchen. Today he added some rafters and trusses and as he gets the materials and the chance he will deck in a small roof and then cover the decking over with cypress shingles that he “liberated” from the scrap yard of the old log cabin company between our place and Lake City on US90. As a matter of fact, he and the guys had “liberated” quite a bit of cypress in logs, siding, shingles, and other stuff like that to help build the additions and houses at the Crenshaw farm and Rand had taken some for a few projects he had in mind as well. Rand also brought back four little wagons full of cypress sawdust for animal bedding. He says there is a lot more where that came from and that we can compost it separately when we clean the barn; the sawdust will make clean up in the barn easier … especially the wet stuff. One of the many projects on Rand’s list is a dirt floored barn but that is a cooler weather project that will take lots of hands.

While he scrambled around like a monkey messing with the porch he is building me so that I can preserve food out of the sun, I sat and worked on our calendar trying to figure out what was coming in the near future, whether I had enough jars, where I was going to put everything and what I would like to stock up on if we ever have the chance.

Rand wouldn’t let me cook last night and we ate a couple of the MREs that Missy had sent in our “honeymoon box.” They aren’t bad but I wouldn’t call them good either. They remind me a lot of cafeteria food.

I spent a restless and uncomfortable night and was grateful for the nap I took. I can’t imagine how tired I would have been tonight if I hadn’t gotten that little extra bit of sleep. We woke up to the smell of smoke … not the good kind from a cooking fire but the kind you get from something burning out of control.

Rand and I ran until we found the fire at the first salvage house, thank goodness the house is in a good sized clearing and not right up against a bunch of trees. We dug the best fire break we could under the circumstances and then did our best to put out any embers that flew away from the house. Mr. Henderson, Mitch, Bradley, Hoss, and a couple of other men I didn’t recognize came galloping up and helped us. A patrol group has seen the black smoke and called for back up Someone had set it on purpose is the only thing we can think of. To scare us or who knows what maybe or just as likely just to set a fire; some people are like that. There had been a few reports of building fires in other places in the county.

It didn’t take long for there to be nothing left of the little house. Rand and I thought of the other houses at the same time and we took off to check on them. Rand wanted to send me back to the house but he didn’t want me going by myself so I got to tag along. The second house had been gotten into by someone. The back door had been busted in and it was more wanton destruction than salvaging. The messy house was the same way but the fourth house hadn’t been touched, probably because if this all happened at night it sits way back out of sight behind some overgrown hedges.

Rand was fit to be tied and frankly so was Mr. Henderson but we couldn’t say for sure that any of it was a direct result of what had happened at the church service. The wanton destruction though spoke of someone with too much time on their hands in my opinion but Rand and the other men gave it a more sinister slant. Maybe it was my age but it sure seemed like something some of the dumber kids I had gone to school with would have gotten a kick out of doing.

By the time we got back to our own yard Brendon and the others had shown up. They were supposed to work on the easement fields but instead they took the wagons, horses, and mules and started taking the remaining three salvage houses apart. We’ve got piles and piles of stuff just laying all over the yard. It’s bothering the heck out of me. Tomorrow Missy is supposed to come and help go through everything. What any of our family doesn’t want she is going to take to the storage house that has been set up on their farm road. Families can come and pick out whatever it is that they need but they can’t make a mess and they are expected to donate to the supplies when they run across something they can’t use. I think it is a fine idea; I’m just not sure how long that is going to work. It’s like group projects we had to do in school, someone always wound up doing the bulk of the work while everyone got equal credit.

Rand plans on staying up and guarding things. He is already so tired I don’t know how he expects to be able to do that too.


August 8th – Rand is exhausted and living on coffee and that really bothers me. I woke up a couple of times and tried to get him to let me take a turn but he only got testy. I hate this.

Had some help from people I didn’t expect. Ron Harbinger, Mr. Winston, and his son JR met the Crenshaws, Clyde, and Rand up at the salvage houses today and they finished dismantling things and hauling stuff away in different directions. I kept them supplied with water and tea and apples since they are still abundant which gave me a chance to keep an eye on Rand and have a word with Brendon who told his dad.

Missy is one heck of an organizer. You could really tell she and Bill used to work in supply and requisition as they know just how to organize things and what is likely to be the most useful and what can be bundled up together and put into a “miscellaneous” or “junk” pile. There were tarps laid out and she went over everything that was left in the houses. I didn’t see anything Rand or I needed or wanted but she insisted on bringing a few things over to our place anyway. Some of it was good jewelry and stuff like that and she said if I didn’t want it then to bury it and forget about it like treasure, there might come a day when it would come in handy. I can’t imagine it but I asked Rand to do just that. It is wrapped up and in an empty can and it is sitting in the back side of the ammo cubbyhole. It bothers me a little knowing it is there so I hope I can forget about it like she suggested.

In the afternoon Rand asked me to stay home and keep an eye on things while the boys ran water back and forth for me. Some other people, including some of Momma O’s family and some of the men from Mr. Henderson’s ranch, came and the job went even faster. By late afternoon there wasn’t anything left of those houses but their foundations. After everyone left to go home but before full dark Rand took me up there and it was so eerie that I shivered.

We don’t have any more houses close enough to worry about new neighbor problems anymore, not unless the relocation teams have people set up in tents or put some type of trailer on the various pieces of land for them. Mr. Henderson wants to organize more of these work days, maybe one or two a week for those that need building supplies or what have you.

Our yard is driving me crazy. The piles didn’t go away they’ve only gotten worse and more of them. Rand promises that he’ll put things to good use as quickly as he can but I have my doubts. He has a bunch of windows that he told me he wants to build cold frames out of. I had to look that up but basically they are mini green houses where you can grow things in the cold off seasons or get plants started early to get a leg up on planting cycles. He also wants to build a greenhouse and at least two more drying contraptions and a solar cooker as well. I don’t know when we are supposed to have all the time for these projects. I’m so busy I can barely breathe.

I’m canning and drying, trying to clean around all the mess, trying to catch up with laundry (I don’t have that many spare work clothes), I’m watching the chickens to see if they are going to hatch the eggs they are sitting on, Lou gets lonesome if I don’t pay some attention to him every day … and so does Rand for that matter, I cook two and three meals a day, working in the garden, and the list could go on and on. I feel like I need a vacation just to catch up on the things I need to do but a vacation wouldn’t do anything but put me more behind.


August 9th -- Today Rand put together the potbellied cook stove and if things work out then tomorrow I’m going to try canning whatever Rand brings back from hunting. This couldn’t come at a worse time. I have so much to do. I know he wants to get some meat in before things get hunted over. I understand that, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do everything.

Mr. Henderson came by to check on us and asked if we’d had any trouble overnight. We hadn’t noticed anything new but he said he’d seen signs in some of the other abandoned houses in the area that the vandal(s) had been at work. We can’t afford too many more fires like the one we had. It wouldn’t take much for one to get out of control if it happens in the right place at the wrong time. I try and not think of that too much.

I’m so tired I can’t even see straight to write anything else. All I can say is work, work, work.


August 10th – Alicia with Melly and her little boy (everyone calls him Roo but I don’t know what his real name is) came over and brought two portable wood stoves that Bill scavenged from someplace and we pressure canned like crazy. Roo doesn’t call me Kiri but “truck lady” which I think is just too cute although I don’t know about the lady part. I’m glad that Alicia was there to go over the how-to’s. Now that I’ve done it a couple of times with Alicia who’s been doing it most of her life I feel much better and for sure I’m going to be able to can vegetables when they start coming in.

It wasn’t even daylight when they showed up but I was up and had coffee for those that wanted it … Rand says it isn’t half bad and it is strong enough to keep him awake for two days if he needs to. I’m not sure that was the effect that I was going for but at least he said it was drinkable.

The guys went off while we put the portable stoves together. The tops of them were bigger than the potbellied stove. I like not having to bend over with the pot belly but it doesn’t have much surface space so I don’t think I’ll be giving up my fire pits any time soon.

The guys bagged two deer, they could have gotten more but we were barely able to keep up with the two. If it was cooler maybe but in the heat we had it was really difficult. Thank goodness for the extra stove top and pressure canners. We were able to have four going at a time and one of them was this really mammoth thing that was Alicia’s and it held 32 pints or 19 quarts at a time. We got about seventy-five pounds of meat from each deer. The good meat we cut into stewing chunks and raw packed … that’s putting cubed meat and a teaspoon of salt per quart jar and then pressure canning it from there … no extra liquid necessary as it makes its own. The less nice pieces Alicia showed us how to grind up and make “ground venison” which we then browned and canned that way. She said when it was cooler that we would grind some up to make sausage from but it required cold weather since the meat was going to have to set up for a while.

We got forty quarts of meat off of those two deer. I couldn’t believe it. The meat cooked down in the pressure cooking but one quart is still way more than enough for Rand and I to make one or two meals out of a quart. We also canned fifteen pints of squirrel. The guys cleared out some of the local population to keep them out of our garden. The squirrel had to soak in salt water for an hour before we could can it but that’s OK, it gave us time to finish the venison. We split the meat in fourths as we are canning for Missy and Bill as well.

I am so proud of those jars it is silly. I wish I had a camera to take pictures with but then how would I develop them? I guess this journal will have to make do for all my memories. As much canning as we did, ten quarts of venison and five quarts of squirrel isn’t much meat. Rand says that we’ll get two shoulders and two hams, sausage, ribs, and some other stuff from the hog at butchering time and then we’ll also have all of that beef to take care of too. That makes me worried that I won’t have enough jars but Rand reminded me of all those jars we found in that barn but then I reminded him that jars without lids aren’t much good. We then got on the subject of how many jars and how many lids we have left. I told him hundreds of jars between what Momma had and what we’ve found. I’ll use the antique jars for storing dried food and I can re-use lids for that, I’ll just need to mark the lids in some way … like scratch an “X” on them on something. But unused lids are another matter.

We’ve found a few boxes of twelve here in there in our salvaging; I think it was a dozen boxes of them off the top of my head. That’s 144 lids some of which are regular and some are wide-mouth. We can add that to the case of regular and case of wide-mouth lids my parents had stored here … a case lot is 720 lids. I know that sounds like an awful lot and I thought it would last forever but trying to preserve all of our food that way is changing my mind real fast especially when you think about all the pounds of meat that Rand wants to preserve. Alicia’s parents also had jars and lids by the case full so between the two of us we should be able to have two years worth of canning jar lids if we don’t get silly. Alicia and I had already worked the numbers out between us and it is going to be a stretch but we might be able to get them to last three years and don’t have to cover any more families and do a whole lot more drying.

We might not have any choice but to start drying the fruit and such if we can’t find a source for sugar and honey. I think you can preserve food using cane syrup but I wouldn’t even begin to guess how except to experiment and we can’t afford to waste the food right now.

Then Rand and I got back to trying to figure out how many jars we would need to can all the pork and beef he figured we’d get and when I turned to ask him to remind me about pounds and stuff he was dead hard asleep. I pulled a sheet over him and went around checking the house before shutting everything down for the night. Rand had already take care of the animals so I didn’t have to do that. I had two pots that I had to finish drying and putting away where we had browned the ground venison and then I came upstairs and started writing in my journal.

I’ll be honest, I don’t think I’ll be eating meat for a few days. Pour Alicia had to keep going off in the bushes and puking. Having a baby doesn’t seem all that great though Alicia insists that it is wonderful. Brendon is a little freaked out now that reality has set in but I think they’ll be OK. I was reading something in one of my mom’s natural health books about using a calendar and keeping track of dates to trying and not get pregnant. Sounds like it could get a little complicated and a whole lot easy to mess up but I’m not ready for babies, not at all. I’ve left the book open and the page marked on top of the stack of books that Rand usually looks through every night. Maybe he’ll see it and say something and we can talk about it.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 41

August 16th – I’ve been so busy during the day and so tired at night I haven’t had time to do much more than add stuff to the inventory and then fall asleep. The only reason I have time to write now is that I stepped in some type of animal hole and wrenched the heck out of my ankle. Rand won’t be home for hours yet and I don’t know what he is going to say. He asked me to stay near the house but I was looking for Fraidy after hearing some dogs close enough that they had to be on our property.

Well they were and I got treed. Lucky for me I hadn’t left the house unarmed and after I shot the most vicious of the pack they ran off. The three I shot are still out there; I just didn’t feel able to dig a hole to bury them. I was shaky and walking home I wasn’t paying too much attention where I was going and that’s all it took. Man, I finally start to get rid of the nasty bruise from that stump and I get wrecked up from a hole. I think the land might be out for blood at this point.

By the time I hobbled home everything from my kneed down was throbbing. I took the shoe off and my foot has swollen up like a balloon. I’m soaking it now and it looks and feels a little better. Fraidy and Woofer are sitting here looking at me like, “You humans are only about halfway smart. We hid in the barn and there you are going out and getting hurt.”

Woofer … he’s a dog that just sort of showed up this past Sunday morning. I was cooking breakfast and going over what we planned to work on … planning, not manual labor, and there was no church … when I hear this whine from over towards the orchard. I thought maybe I was hearing things when it didn’t happen again and then the grass out there moved. Two eyes and ears popped out of the bushes and then pulled back in once it saw I had seen it.

The next time two eyes, two ears and a nose came out but as soon as I would turn my head it would hide again. It became a game for me to see how close the dog … turned out he is practically just a puppy … would come before taking off into the bushes again. It came within ten feet of where I was but wouldn’t come any closer and just laid there and looked at me. His ears are huge and stand straight up and it has this long face with these eyes that seem to say what the poor thing is feeling.

Rand came out the door suddenly and you could tell the poor thing wanted to run away but all of a sudden it got between me and Rand and leaned against me with its face turned towards Rand. But I could feel it pushing me. It was either take a step back or fall backwards and he kept doing that.

Rand said, “Tell him it’s OK and calm him down. That some puppy power he’s got.”

Rand is so cool. It didn’t take long for Rand to have Woofer eating out of his hand … literally. Fraidy was pretty cool too. So long as Woofer vacates any place that Fraidy calls hers then she doesn’t mind. She does mind the tongue baths that Woofer tries to give her and will only put up with it for a few minutes. All she really did in the beginning after making sure Woofer knew who was boss around here was looking at me as if to say, “I suppose if you have to adopt it go ahead.”

Woofer is skittish when he hears other dogs or coyotes … Rand said he was probably put on the menu a few times because of his size and age … loves Fraidy, but is scared absolutely to death of Pretty Boy and the hens. He’ll go all the way around the other side of the yard to avoid getting near them. We watched him try and climb the ladder to the loft when Pretty Boy started strutting towards him on Monday. I hope some of that wears off.

He’s name really is Woofer, it says so on his tag. We worked it out and he has his rabies shots which is really good and is probably about six months old. Doesn’t looked fixed which is probably why some of the bigger dogs thought he was a threat. He’s house broken which is really good; and he knows how to fetch, sit, lay, shake hands, and roll over too. Rand thinks with proper feeding he’ll probably get to be a fifty pound dog and at the rate he goes he’ll be all muscle. Sometimes he just likes to run. You should see him light out after a squirrel … and catch the thing before it can skinny up a tree. This morning he and Fraidy tag teamed a squirrel and I watched them carry it off into the bushes and eat it. I would have been grossed out by that not too long ago, now I’m just grateful that they can feed themselves which means less work for me.

Rand built a second solar dehydrator with help from Mick and Tommy only this one has two more trays that the other one and they are bigger too. I still managed to keep twelve trays (five from the first and seven from the second) going every day.

Rand is over at his uncle’s place now helping to break ground on what is hopefully going to be a good sized garden. Yesterday he went over to Momma O’s and he and Paul enlarged their garden. Hatchet is getting bent out of shape that Rand isn’t riding him more but he isn’t so nasty with me as he used to be. Used to be that I could only be around him if Rand was right there but I’ve been giving him a slice of apple if he lets me brush him; we’ve come to an agreement that he doesn’t try and bite and Rand won’t make dog food out of him.

I don’t know if I’ve said it right out loud but I like being married. I don’t think I would if it wasn’t to Rand but since it is him I really like being married. But there is a lot of work to it that I’m only figuring out in bits and pieces. For instance, I never realized you could be angry and worried at the same time and still like someone so much you just want to hit them for doing something stupid. Rand made me feel like that when he was installing the block and tackle thingy onto the barn so that he could life stuff up to the loft instead of having to take it up the ladder.

Yesterday I heard a bang out in the barn. I thought one of the animals had kicked the wall again expcept all three of them were in the corral. I walked in real careful and saw the ladder on the floor. “Uh, Babe … could you put that ladder back up here?” Rand was swinging from the rafters like a monkey. And when he got down is was ha, ha, ha … almost fell that time. That time?! Apparently the ladder that he was using wasn’t quite as long as he needed and he’d already kicked it over a couple of times and had to climb down and put it back up. Ooooooo I could have just … well, I don’t know what I could have done but for sure I was upset. Guys … I’m convinced that sometimes they just don’t get it. If anything had happens to him I don’t know what I would do. It’s bad enough that we have a bunch of crazies going around setting things on fire as some kind of stupid initiation to a new gang that has formed.

Some kids got caught; they are not from Suwannee County but from Columbia where Lake City is. Mr. Henderson packed them into a wagon and then turned them over to the military at the relocation camp. This was for more than one reason. In addition to getting the kids (when I called them that Mr. Henderson wanted to know when I had suddenly gotten so old) off his hands and it gave him a legitimate reason for being able to check the place out.

First off he says it looks like an old WW2 era internment camp only with canvas sided tents. I remember seeing pictures of those in my American History textbook. Mr. Henderson said they are set up in row upon row behind tall fences and razor wire. There were lines of people all over the place but they were all inside the fence and the gates of the fence was closed and guarded by some pretty heavy duty looking guns. He spit out the names and numbers of the guns but that didn’t make any difference to me, all I needed to know is that for some reason they find it important to keep those people inside and are willing to shoot to do it. And these are the people they want to spread out around here? People that they think need to be locked up? If I think that you know other people are going to think the same thing.

Mr. Henderson went on to say the people looked pretty bad … sick or starved or something along those lines. He said he won’t be making any trips back any time soon. They weren’t quite set up and he’s worried if they had been they might have “requisitioned” his horses and wagon … possible him and his men too … for work in and around the camp.

Rand and Mr. Henderson have been talking and they’re concerned that the power poles and lines will lead people back to places that they might not otherwise find. Rand is also worried that the power poles will get in the way of him being able to plow and work the field he is creating in the easement. Tomorrow they are going to start taking down the poles. They’re wooden so it shouldn’t be any more hard than chopping down a tree, but problem is going to come in figuring how or even if the part of the pole that is stuck down in the ground will come up.

For some reason this bothers me and I said so to Rand. He said that it was probably because it was a sign that things aren’t going to be getting better any time in the near future. The lines are down in lots of places because of that storm that took down Fraidy’s tree. Taking down the lines does seem kind of final. When they come down I have to accept that it will be a long while before we see electricity again – those little switches won’t work, the light won’t come on in the frig, the microwave won’t beep, the washer and dryer won’t work. Acceptance. That is what we are doing day in and day out but this seems like a whole bunch of it to do at once.

Guess I need to put my pen down or Rand is going to come home hungry and there won’t be anything to eat. He’s always hungry. Thank goodness I seem to have a talent for making things grow and then cooking them … hey, maybe I inherited something from Momma after all.


August 17th – Rand wasn’t near as upset as I was worried he was going to be. He says he knows he can’t keep me locked up like he’d like to so that I would be safe but he said he was very proud of me for not “running off unarmed.” I guess that is something to feel good about, that he trusts me to use sense. I think I’m getting used to him spelling everything out … it’s just his way of making sure he gets things right and covers everything he means to, not necessarily that he thinks I don’t know anything or don’t know how to use commonsense.

About the only constructive thing I can claim to have done today is plant a couple of rows of soybeans. After that my ankle was swollen again and I had to get off of it. I’ve had to do most of my canning today from a chair. Thank goodness that Alicia and Charlene came over while the guys sawed the down the power poles.

First they did them on the other side of US90, back to where the lines run into a junction. By starting at that point they can make the fact that we’ve cut the poles down less obvious. Lots of people are helping but few of them for no reason. They want the wood … for fire wood for building materials for whatever. Rand and others have tried to warn them not to burn the wood inside since it is treated but I have a feeling most people weren’t listening to them. The real “country folk” did but the “new country” people don’t seem to want to believe it and instead think people are just trying to keep the wood for themselves.

The reason I mention “real country” and “new country” is because I heard Uncle George and Momma O talking about it. It seems back in the late ‘00s a lot of people moved out of south Florida and into the “country” to get away from the cost of living down there and to get away from the memories of the bad hurricane seasons that had driven up insurance costs and things like that. They were playing at being “country” but were still very much city people in their skills … or lack of … and expectations and attitudes. The “new country” people also include the children of the “real country” people that live here but never learned the skills that their parents took for granted. The “real country” people are adjusting a lot better by and large, according to Uncle George, than the “new country” people are.

I don’t know if I consider myself “real country” or not. My parents were even though we lived in the city. I learned a lot from them and I’m learning more every day from their legacy of notes and stuff. Rand who was trying to get out of being “real country” has returned to what he learned when he came to live with his uncle. Every once in a while I catch him wishing for the way things might have been but then he looks at me and grins and says, “Nah! I think I like things the way they are turning out even better.” When he says that it always tickles my stomach and makes it go all fluttery. I’m not sure I know how to even think of things being any different any more. I sure won’t give up Rand just to go back and make things a little easier. I think my parents would have liked Rand … I’m not so sure they would approve of how fast we’ve had to move, I’m absolutely sure Daddy would have had a thing or three to say about it. But things are the way they are … and I’m finding myself happier about that every day.


August 18th – Oh my gosh! We just got the worst news about an hour and a half ago. I hadn’t planned on doing anything but going to be early since tomorrow is a full day of laundry (Rand can seriously stink up some clothes) but Hoss galloped up and was spreading the news to be on the lookout for people maybe heading this way or even for fires.

When the wind blows just right you can hear the sounds of some kind of fighting going on and we’ve heard helicopters passing overhead following US90 towards Lake City. You know it must be bad if we can hear it all the way from Lake City, either that or its already moved out into the country side and if that’s the case we really are in trouble.

Mr. Henderson heard on the radio that the relocation camp erupted in some kind of violence after cases of some type of sickness began killing people. That’s all we know right now. We are double checking everything and locking down tight. Fraidy is up with me in the dormer room and Rand won’t let me come downstairs. He and Woofer are down there prowling around the house to make sure nothing looks or sounds out of place. We locked all the animals in the barn and put the roll downs on them which is something we rarely do lately.


August 20th – I told Rand I was going stir crazy and that if he didn’t let me get out of the house I was going to go nuts. He followed me around while I checked on the garden and watered what needed watering and while I pulled the ripe fruit and brought it into the summer kitchen to try and do something with. The apples will keep as long as they don’t get too hot and most of the rest of the fruit has already been picked clean except for what we can eat fresh every day.

The house is just nasty from being so muggy and closed up. Rand finally laughed after being so stressed for over twenty-four hours when I strung line all over the place and tried to dry out the under things and t-shirts that I’d finally had to wash because I couldn’t stand them anymore.

Mitch came by late in the afternoon and said there was still fighting in and around Lake City and that news of the riot there had sparked trouble at the Jacksonville and Tallahassee RCs (relocation centers). Not apparently as bad as what has happened at the Lake City RC but bad enough. I hope this makes them reconsider their stupid resettlement plans. That would be a load off of everyone’s mind I think.


August 22nd – Got word from Pastor Ken that Jared Harbinger had a fatal stroke. After the incident at the church service Ron had moved him and Julia into the apartment over the garage which was where he had lived before things went crazy. He realized that his aunts were just too much for Julia to deal with. She was sick constantly … really sick, not just sick trying to get sympathy and attention … and Pastor Ken said it was probably from the stress. Ol’ Jared had started acted even odder after that and then had started losing his balance and lost the strength on one side of his body. Pastor Ken diagnosed another stroke or series of them. But what capped it off was when he went after Julia and his own mother with a butcher knife. Julia actually saved Mrs. Harbinger by being brave enough to lock Jared in a downstairs bathroom after she had seen the woman come out of her house screaming for help. After she did that she ran to get Ron. Julia collapsed while she was in the middle of telling him what had happened. She’s OK but she’s on bed rest for at least another week just to be on the safe side. Ron found his father collapsed in the bathroom and his grandmother only mildly better off and being tended by his aunts. Long and the sort of it is that Jared suffered a fatal stroke during the night and even his own mother says that it was a blessing.

Also got word that Janet is sick again with some kind of fever. They had some beggars come around and come straight up to the house where she was sitting on the porch shelling beans. Uncle George is convinced that the beggars had something contagious and that she caught it because of her weakened immune system. I sent over some blackberry shrub that I hope she’ll be able to drink while she has a fever. Dear Lord, please don’t let anything happen to Janet because that will destroy Uncle George.


August 25th – There was a man in the orchard when I went out there a little while ago. I’m going to have a horrible black eye but nothing worse I don’t think. Mitch Peters had come by and was drinking coffee with Rand on the porch when they heard me scream. The man hit me in the side of his head with his fist and I haven’t felt very good since. I thought maybe writing it down would help but it hasn’t. I think I’m just going to lie down for a little while.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 42

August 27th – Complacency. That’s what Rand is calling it. I think maybe it is more like wishful thinking. When really big things happen you kind of want to think that you’ve taken care of the worst of the worst problems and that you can take it easier for a while. The problem with that sort of thinking these days is that it will get you hurt, dead, or worse. And trust me, from a female’s point of view this is “worse.” Being dead is easy, living through some of the things I hear Mitch telling Rand that he’s heard on the radio would definitely fit into the “worse” category.

Getting married was such a huge event in my life. In a couple of days we will have been married a whole month. It seems like it can’t be but at the same time it feels like forever in a good way. Rand likes it when I say that last part. We both thought that getting married would fix the worst of our problems … that the land would be ours and we could then focus all of our time and energies fixing it up and just being together with no one to get in the way.

But that isn’t true. That is so totally not true. Every day things seem to get a little worse and a little worse. Oh, not between Rand and I, if anything that just keeps getting better in lots of different ways. It’s the outside world that keeps trying to get in the way of our happily ever after.

The riot at the RC was just the start, or the latest part of the start. Rand said that what is occurring now is actually a result of stuff that started long before the pandemic began, the pandemic just kind was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The beggars that came by Uncle George’s is a symptom of “the sickness.” That’s what Rand and I have started calling it … a sickness, decay, something like that. Rand lets his college education show every once in a while and calls it “the breaking down of social order and modern society as a whole.”

Rand will also go off on a tear when he talks about something he calls the entitlement mentality. People are starving and they’ll steal rather than ask for honest work for honest pay. They think they are somehow entitled to what they are stealing because it’s “that or death.” Being hard up or even close to death doesn’t give you the right to steal … it just means you have more reason to work harder and smarter.

Mr. Henderson is relaying news from abroad … anything out of our general area is “abroad” these days. Lots of real sicknesses from lack of hygiene and poor nutrition. Lots of fighting. Gang violence was very bad for a while but with the fuel and food shortages it isn’t just the traditional gangs anymore, it’s people just banding together to go after other people or groups they think have something more than they do and that’s the only justification they seem to need.

The guy in the orchard was the last straw for Rand. He says that we’ve both been trying to live what he calls an “idyll” but we are going to have to go back to the way things were before. He was pretty upset and was ranting while he was cleaning up my face from where the guy hit me. I was discombobulated and I thought he was talking about leaving because I had done something wrong. That’s when he and Mitch realized something was wrong with me. I don’t remember much but feeling woozy and being confused and upset and being scared that Rand was leaving. I kind of remember crying and begging him not to but it’s real fuzzy. Mitch rode off to find Pastor Ken and Rand said I was talking but not much of it was making any kind of sense.

Rand got me calmed down before Pastor Ken arrived and when he checked me over he diagnosed a concussion from where the guy punched me in the side of the head. I had a hematoma and he had to lance it a little because it was causing so much pressure and pain. I was lucky it was between my scalp and my skull and not between my skull and my brain. Things were a mess for a day or so but I’m feeling much better now, just still feeling pretty tired and stressed.

The only good news we’ve gotten is that Janet is on the mend except now Tommy has it and if Tommy gets it you can pretty well guarantee that Mick is going to come down with it. Uncle George and the rest of them are adding some height to their existing fence that faces the main road and they are adding a more heavy duty gate that will remain closed and locked from now on even though that will be a big inconvenience. Rand is talking about putting deer fencing … that tall stuff that is about eight feet high … around our home site. I don’t know where he plans on getting that but he says he has a source and then shuts up and won’t say any more about it. He and Mitch have been talking about it and how it could be pulled off without any more work than necessary.

I told Rand I didn’t want to live behind gates like in a prison but he’s still pretty upset that someone got that close to the house. Woofer had even been acting weird but Rand didn’t catch the signals until I screamed. He and Mitch said Woofer took off so fast he was like greased lightning. I don’t remember anything but something knocking the man off of me but Rand said Woofer had the guy by the back of the neck and was shaking him like a rag doll. Woofer is barely much more than a puppy but he broke the guy’s neck. Rand had to make him let go and then the dog wouldn’t let anyone but Rand near me. I remember telling Woofer Mitch was a friend several times before he would stop raising his hackles whenever Mitch tried to help Rand get me into the house.

Thank goodness by the time Pastor Ken came Woofer had calmed all the way back down. Woofer may be afraid of hens and roosters but he makes one heck of an attack dog. Lucky for me that Mitch stays in radio contact with the other patrols in the area and they had just seen Pastor Ken leaving Momma O’s place. Ms. DeLois had a fainting spell the other day because of the heat and trying to do too much. She’s fine now but that on top of everything else is making Rand try and rap me up in a gilded cage … or something like that, I can’t remember how the old saying goes and I’m too tired to try and work it out. I can’t get any work done.

We heard from Pastor Ken that I’m not the only person around here that has had a run-in with strangers. People are locking everything down at night … and during the day too … as stuff is being stolen left and right. People are having their smokehouses broken into, theie barns broken into, more animals are disappearing, fruit trees are getting stripped, if they leave their houses they are coming back to find their house has been ransacked. Scary stuff. There have also been two rapes reported and one family was found shot to death in their beds.

It could be stragglers from the riot at the RC or it could be the gangbangers … though no motorcycles have been seen or heard in quite a while … or it could even be locals gone bad. Until the person (or persons) doing this stuff get caught we won’t know for sure so we have to guard against everything.

Rand is all over me about knowing how to use all the guns we have. I had gotten used to the Hi-Point because I carried it before Rand knew about the other guns but after I showed him I started using the Mark III because it used the same bullets as the Jr. Rifle I carry and because I just liked it better. Now he is on me about carrying the Smith & Wesson one and I don’t like it at all … it has more kick that the stinking Hi-Point did and feels even bigger in my hand. I’m trying not to be crabby but I’m a better shot with the Mark III. Rand said that I might be a better shot with the Mark III but even if I only get a body shot the Smith & Wesson will do more damage. I asked him then why didn’t he carry it and he gave me “the” look. That’s the thing about being married, we may be partners but sometimes there can only be one cook.

Of course he likes his Ruger P95 and when I asked him why one time he said it was because he could always hit what he was aiming at multiple times. Uh huh … so he can pick a gun because he can hit what he is aiming at but I have to carry a gun because it makes a big hole no matter where it hits. To keep the peace I’ll carry what he wants me to carry and I’ll practice with it but I don’t think he is going to be able to make me like it any better. And yes, I’m feeling crabby. I’ve got a headache.


August 28th – I reread what I wrote yesterday and I sure was whining. My head really did hurt. Today is the first day it hasn’t since the guy hit me. My eye looks horrible though. I’m so tired of looking trashy. As much trouble as I could get into before it never resulted in actual fights. I’m getting pretty tired of being on the short end of the stick.

Bill and Brendon came by and Missy was with them which lifted my spirits. She said she needed a breather from Uncle George and his fussing. She said, “I love my Daddy but he and I don’t always get on. Bill and I are building a little place for ourselves on the vacant lot right next to his but that isn’t good enough; he wants us right next to his house. I can’t live like that and he just doesn’t understand.” I can see both sides of it which is kind of strange. I guess it is hypocritical to see both sides of it for Missy and only want my own way when it is me. I better watch that or it is going to get me in hot water.

It was nice having some help and company. I know she is older than I am but we understand each other. She can be a little bossy but I think she just enjoyed being out from under everyone over at the Crenshaws. I understand her need to be her own person and I don’t try and tell her how she should be … and she does the same for me. She gets a little more personal that I’m comfortable with but just because she wants Rand and I to get along. I guess she’s sown some wild oats of her own but she seems content to be with Bill forever now.

The only oats I want to sow are the kind that will grow more that we can eat. Sometimes I worry … but I’ll never tell him … that one of these days Rand is going to wake up and rethink the whole marrying me thing. I don’t like to think about it but sometimes I’ll wake up in the night and I want so bad to wake him up and ask him but I never will. I have to learn to be satisfied. We get along really good and we have fun and he cares about me … the rest of that stuff only happens in fairytales and in those silly bodice-ripper paperbacks.


August 29th – Crabapples are in as are the dessert pears. The dessert pears are a whole lot easier to eat fresh than the “sand pears” like the Hood pears that came in like gang busters. Florida pioneers named the canning pears “sand pears” because they had a gritty texture to them. Momma wrote that there is a way to avoid the grittiness but I’ll have to find it again. The “grit” goes away after cooking so I’m not going to worry about it and since the dessert pears need to have something done with them now, I really don’t have time to worry about it.

The crabapples are mostly being made into pectin, that’s what Missy helped me with yesterday … at least when she wasn’t eating them. I can’t believe she would just eat them like that. They were so tart they nearly broke my pucker. You are supposed to be able to make jelly and crabapple butter with them but from the recipes that I looked at it takes more sugar than crabapple and I just don’t have the luxury for that so they are all being made into pectin. The chickens like them too and I heard today by way of Clyde that the hogs got into a fight over the crabapple mush that I sent home by the bucketful with Missy yesterday. Well, at least someone likes them. I get a shiver every time I think of the one that I tried to eat.

Rand is still keeping me close to the house. This Thursday the first of the lady’s get togethers is planned to be held up at that place where Laurabeth and Jonathon got married. I had to to talk him around to letting me go but he is really grumpy about it. He says that we ought to have more sense than to be trying something like that right now when things are getting out of hand and I told him it’s because of that that this will be the best time to do it since we don’t know if we’ll be able to have any more. I told him if he let me I would just ride Lou over there and he said no that he’d take me. But I reminded him that if he went there wouldn’t be anyone looking after the place and then he asked, “Are you trying to get rid of me or something?” I thought that was a really strange thing to ask and told him so. Then he asked if there were going to be any guys around and I asked him how should I know.

Later on I went back and told him that if it really bothered him so much I wouldn’t go that I didn’t want to upset him or ruin our peace. He looked at me funny and asked, “You really won’t go if I ask you not to?” I told him that was what I had just said and then went back into the house to finish putting away jars of cooled pectin. Then he comes in and tells me, “I don’t want you to not go just because I said something Kiri. If you want to go fine, but you aren’t riding Lou up there by yourself, I’ll take you.”

Guys are sooo complicated. I still don’t get … OK, maybe I do get that he worries that something could happen but the rest of it got all confusing. And what the heck did he mean by asking was I trying to get rid of him? I’d ask him but I’m afraid of starting things up again.


August 30th – Wow! I don’t know how he pulled it off but Rand didn’t wake me up when he got up and I got breakfast in bed. The only time I got breakfast in bed was when I was in the hospital or sick when I was a little girl and those times don’t count. He said it was a belated birthday present and to celebrate our one month anniversary.

I used to not understand how girls could get all gooshy about a guy and say “how romantic” in that sickeningly sweet tone of voice … but I sure do now. There was even a flower in a little vase on the tray. And my favorite granola and dried fruit was in a bowl and a glass of juice. It was all so sweet I want to remember this day forever.


September 1st – I had such a good time yesterday but I sure am glad it was yesterday and not today. Someone set fire to the building during the night and Rand said its nothing but a collapsed ruin now. It makes me so mad. Why did someone have to do something so mean? What possible good could come out of something like that? And we had such high hopes of having another meeting sometime in October when the weather had cooled off some.

Well, even if the building did go up in flames the things I learned didn’t. We all brought pencil and paper with us … Alicia was real smart and brought index cards. I wish I would have thought of that. On the other hand the paper let me scribble notes every which way and draw arrows and lines and diagrams of things.

One of the big things I learned is that there are other ways to preserve food rather than just by canning or drying. You can preserve things by lactic fermentation, in oil, in vinegar, with salt, with sugar, and in alcohol. Not all foods can be preserved by every method and I’ve got all these notes that I’m going to try and condense down into a chart of some kind.

I showed how I turned blue jeans into a skirt and how I’m cutting up really worn out blue jeans and sewing them together to make a blue jean quilt. I was also asked to explain exactly how I’m canning over an open fire and Alicia explained how to pressure can over a flame.

We did a big recipe exchange and I’ve got some really neat ideas to try out. I might even try sourdough bread if I can get the starter to make. If that fails I can make the easy Amish bread starter though that is mostly for sweet breads.

Julia came with Ron’s two aunts and grandmother. She didn’t look like herself at all. She tried to go be with her friends at first but the two aunts were right on top of her the whole time so her friends kind of drifted away. I feel sorry for her in spite of myself. I mentioned to Rand that I don’t think she is very happy at all but he said she got what she was asking for … a man with land, money, and all the other stuff she thought was important. The way he said it though makes me wonder if maybe he still does care but is still hurt by what she did. I wonder what would have happened if Rand hadn’t found out she had been cheating on him.

Oh boy am I tired. I had planned on writing more but it’s going to have to wait for another day. I’m sore from planting more in the garden.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 43

September 2nd – There … was … a … roach … in … my …. Kitchen!!!!! Argh! I am not a bug-o-phobe. I don’t want to carry on a conversation with them but they don’t scare me. But I sure don’t want them in the house and so way on the other side of not when it comes to having them in my cooking space. Rand thinks I’m overreacting. He says, “It’s Florida, there are going to be bugs.” I know that … that doesn’t mean I want bugs in my kitchen. I’ve been so irritated today but I haven’t had the time or energy to do a blessed thing about it.

Yesterday I planted the next round of things into the garden. Let’s see, I planted beets, broccoli, brussel sprouts (don’t ask me why … yuck), cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, lettuce, mustard greens, more onions, parsley, parsnips, radishes, and some weird things called burdock, arugula, chicory, and amaranth. Next month I’m going to plant some strawberries and an herb garden. Rand rolled his eyes when I asked him if he would help me create two new garden spaces but only in a kidding way … I think. I hate to ask for so much. Maybe I shouldn’t have, I just did it before thinking. I planned on doing all of this by myself when I first made it up here. Maybe I should go back to being more independent. I’m still not exactly sure how all of this marriage stuff is supposed to work.

Today I didn’t need much help. When I was planting I took a break and just happened to go by the dreaded grape arbor. It’s so stupid to be scared of a snake that is probably more scared of me than I am of it but I don’t care. I don’t like snakes and I had been avoiding the grape arbor. In her notes Momma said she’d never gotten a single grape off of the grape vines so I wasn’t thinking too much about it but low and behold … there were a whole bunch of grape clusters. I didn’t see any nasty ones so they must have just started ripening but you can’t fool around with grapes are what I canned today.

I made spiced grapes, grape conserve, grape catsup, spiced grape jelly, grape preserves, grape butter, and canned grapes like you get in fruit cocktail. I also put two trays of grapes to dry so that I could have more raisins. If I had to pick I would say that I liked the grape preserves best followed by the grape conserve. I had a little bit of conserve left over that wasn’t enough to fill a jar so I saved it and we had it on some vanilla wafers for dessert tonight.

Speaking of baked goods (the vanilla wafers were the tail end of some that I had gotten way back at the work day when I first met Missy) I think I’m going to set aside one of my “days” for baking. I think I’m going to change cleaning day to Thursday and make Friday baking day. I’ve been going over the notes I made at the ladies’ social and I think I’ve got all of the different suggested ways of making yeast into four basic recipes:

1.Starter Yeast. In the evening boil enough potatoes to make one pint when mashed very fine. Save potato water and add enough more water to make three pints, then add 1 tablespoonful salt and 1/2 cup sugar and 1 cake compressed yeast, put in the potatoes and stir well, cover and let rise over night. In the morning save 1 pint for the next baking or make fresh each time, as desired; mix stiffer with flour than with other yeast.

2.Potato Yeast. In the morning, boil and mash three potatoes. Add 1/4 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 tablespoonful of salt; stir well together. Pour over this mixture 1/2 pint of boiling water and stir it; then add 1/2 pint of cold water and stir that; then 1/2 cup of yeast and keep it in a warm place. When it is risen well and rounds up to the top of the dish stir it down. Do so several times during the day. Then it may be strained and put into a jar or jug, and kept in a cool place. The bread made with this may be made with milk.

3.Beer Yeast. For 1 Gallon of yeast, take 12 medium-size potatoes, pare and boil them until done. With the water off these, scald 3 heaping tablespoonfuls of flour, 3 tablespoonfuls of sugar, and 3 scant tablespoonfuls of salt. Mix the potatoes, mashed, with this,, then fill gallon with cold water. When cold enough, add 1 cake of magic yeast. Let stand in cool place. Take 1 pint of mixture for 1 loaf of bread.

4.Hop Yeast. Take 1 quart of hops, boiled, and strained, 1 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup of salt, 1/2 cup of lard, 2 large tablespoonfuls of ginger, 4 potatoes boiled and mashed and enough yeast to raise it. Let stand over night, then mix enough flour and corn meal to make crumbly.

That doesn’t include something called a Herman starter (which sounds very strange to call a food by a person’s name) or the Amish bread starter. The Herman starter is more like a regular sourdough and the Amish starter is a starter but mostly for sweet breads. I’d like to try them all but that would be irresponsible since I don’t know how much flour I’m going to have. Oh, I have loads of unground wheat so I suppose I could try them all but flour that I don’t have to go to the trouble of me grinding myself I have less than a hundred pounds left. It seems like that would go a long way but it won’t. I’m using bread to try and give Rand more carbs while he is working so hard and it seems to have helped a little bit. He is still a lot thinner than he was when I first met him and he gets really tired by the end of the day, but I don’t think he is losing as much weight as he was.

I know Uncle George is fretting about this some from Alicia. Not just specifically about Rand but in general about all of his chicks. And now that both Alicia and Missy are gonna have babies he is really fretting. He doesn’t want to have cull too many from his animals but he’ll butcher every one of them before he sees any of his kids go hungry no matter the consequences later. I said something to Rand today and he got a little snappy saying that he knew and that he was going as fast as he could prepping the fields for the oats they want to plant this month. I sure didn’t mean to come off like I was complaining; I just wanted someone to talk to about it. It feels like I’m always doing something wrong lately. Rand doesn’t say anything but it just feels that way.

Sometimes I wonder … I guess there is no sense in wondering if I’m not going to ask him. I do wonder though if maybe he isn’t sorry he married me sometimes. I made really good grades in school and all of my classes were college level because of the IB program but still, I can’t seem to get my mouth and brain working together so that I sound like I’m halfway as smart as they used to claim I was. On some days it just doesn’t seem like I can find anything that we can talk about. It used to not be this hard. I wonder what I’m doing so wrong?


September 3rd – I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong. The day started out pretty good. We got up and I fixed doctored up grits with sausage TVP and cheese mixed in. We made it to the church service on time and I went to say hello to Momma O and take her our contribution to the “Stone Soup” that was today’s fellowship theme. I had a bunch bouillon so I took a cupful and some mixed dried veggies to toss in there.

Then we went and sat with the Crenshaws who were all there except for Bill and Missy who had volunteered to stay home and watch the place. Everyone was a little uncomfortable because a couple of soldiers from the RC had asked if it was alright if they came to services since their Chaplain had died during the riot and hadn’t been replaced yet. I didn’t pay them too much attention.

After the service Rand just left and went to talk to Mitch, Mr. Henderson and some other men and I was at loose ends. The rest of the Crenshaws seem to be talking to people they knew and I didn’t want to intrude. I was about to go see if Momma O needed some help when I heard from behind me, “Kiri?”

I turned around and it took me a second to recognize him with his hair cut so short and in uniform. “Ram?”

“I thought I was seeing things but then I remembered you guys had a place up this way. Are you aunt and uncle here?”

Ram was several years older than me and had been one of the foster boys that lived with Aunt Wilma and Uncle Charlie when I first came to live with them. He was one of the few that didn’t have problems … he was there because he couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble. It didn’t take us long to get caught up.

“Did you go to live with your grandmother?”

“Yeah, but Abuela died and my uncle didn’t really want to support me. He thought I was leading his sons into trouble and to be honest I was. I got caught driving for some guys that were real trouble and the judge gave me the choice of jail time or joining the military. I picked the military and despite everything it has been the best thing for me. But, I can’t believe you said you are married. You’re only … what … sixteen?”

“Seventeen. Things are … different from the way I expected them to be but like you, I’m not sorry I made the decision I did. Rand is like the best friend I’ve ever had. I don’t know where I’d be without him.”

“Friend? What happened to the spitfire that threatened Cal Erickson with a baseball bat if she ever caught him peeking into your bedroom again?”

“You would remember that. Ram, I like who I am now better than who I was then. Some of it is just life but some of it is Rand. I don’t know how to explain it or what to call it. It just is.”

“Yeah. I wish you could meet Sherri, same thing for me. I don’t know what she sees in me most of the time.”

“Sherri?”

“Yeah, look … for old time sake, could you introduce me to the Pastor? He was nice enough to not mind us just showing up and I’d like to say thank you but don’t want him to feel like we’re all pouncing on him. We’re not allowed to go anywhere not in uniform and I don’t want to set people off around here thinking we’re bothering the preacher.”

“Sure. Pastor Ken is pretty cool. And I don’t think you could intimidate him. He’s seen a lot. And if you are going to be around for any amount of time you’ll want to meet Mr. Henderson and Judge Walker too. Oh yeah, and Momma O … you’ll definitely need to be introduced to Momma O.”

“Uh … “

Before he could go all shy boy on me I drug him over to Pastor Ken who called over the Judge and Mr. Henderson.

“Y’all, this is Ram Diaz …Ramiro Diaz actually, but we always called him Ram. Ram why don’t you introduce your friends around and I’ll go see if Momma O needs anything.”

“Wha … ?!”

“Paybacks Ram, paybacks. As I recall Cal wasn’t the only one I was upset with that particular day.”

I left Ram standing there with his mouth hanging open and his friends laughing. The Live Oak men joined in as soon as they had the joke explained to him. I went over to Momma O to fill her in. She couldn’t get around as well as she used to and I know she hates not knowing what is going on. She asked me all I knew about Ram and I told her; no reason not to. I didn’t have a clue about Ram’s friends but I figured she’d pin someone else down for the information later.

I looked around for Rand and saw him over by the wagon so I went over to see if we needed to leave but when I got there I wish I hadn’t.

“Rand do we … “

“Who was that?”

“Who was … ? Oh, Ram Diaz. Crazy meeting someone I haven’t thought about in a long time. I introduced him to Pastor Ken, Mr. Hender …”

“Yeah, I saw. What did he want?”

“Huh? Just to say hello and ask for an introduction to Pastor Ken. Where did you go? I wanted you to meet … “

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Stop answering my questions with a question.”

“I’m … I’m sorry. I just …”

“Yeah, whatever. Are you ready to go or do you want to hang out with your friend?”

“Rand … “

“Yes or no.”

“I’m ready if you are, just let me go tell Alicia … “

“I already told everyone goodbye. If you’re going just get in the wagon.”

I still don’t know what I did. I tried to ask Rand a couple of times what was wrong and he just said, “Nothing.” But the way he said nothing meant that it was something and that I must be blind not to see it. I think maybe he is embarrassed of me.


September 4th – I am so sick of plums I can’t stand it. If I wasn’t afraid that the one plum that I didn’t can was the one plum that we needed I’d give every last one of them to the chickens.

I’d give these stupid chestnuts to the chickens too if they would eat them. Instead I sent them by the bucketful back with Uncle George for the pigs. The only way Momma talked about preserving chestnuts is in the refrigerator or freezer. I found in one of Daddy’s files though how to can them. I hadn’t to roast them on a sheet pan and then while they were still hot put them in pint jars and pressure can them and it was different from how you usually do other stuff … only five pounds of pressure for ten minutes. I did two canner loads and then just didn’t feel like doing any more. Maybe tomorrow.

Or maybe not. Right now I don’t feel like doing much of anything. Rand seemed to get better after he saw Uncle George and Mr. Henderson after lunch but I just don’t care very much for some reason. I’m tired and I’ve got a headache again and I’m going to be and maybe I’ll get up tomorrow and maybe I won’t.


September 5th – I feel lousy. I was only grouching when I said I might not get up but I can’t seem to …

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 44

September 8th – I’m finally getting back on my feet and feeling human only now Rand is sick. Mr. Henderson came by today and said about half his men and their families are still down or going down. I was glad that Mr. Henderson came by because I could finally tell someone that not only was Rand sick but I had Pastor Ken here and sick as well.

When I told him that Mr. Henderson looked relieved, “Well thank God we know where he is at. Everyone had started to believe the worst.” He showed me what I needed to do for Hatchet and the mules and moved a feed sack where I could get to it more easily. I worried about him being sick with it but he said that he’d been a little off for about twenty-four hours but that’s all. He’s pretty sure that it was the church service where we all picked it up at. Grouching in his usual fashion, “Probably those blasted, snotty-nosed Bradford kids sneezing on everything. Allergies my Aunt Fanny’s fanny. Martha Bradford just didn’t want to have to stay home by herself with ‘em again while that next to useless husband of hers got into who knows what.”

I started feeling bad on Monday night but didn’t really realize what it was. I put it down to being upset and my monthlies being late - stress does that to me real easy - but by Tuesday morning though I just didn’t feel good at all. I tried to get around but at lunch time I had trouble even getting out to the barn to tell Rand that his food was ready. Whatever this is it isn’t the flu. I’ve had the flu twice and this doesn’t have the aches and pains like the flu did.

Pastor Ken is on the mend, just really tired, and when he is awake he likes to talk. One of the things he has said is that this is just some kind of fast moving virus and it has hit everyone so hard because of the physical stress we are all under. Poor nutrition, skimping on the personal hygiene, all the extra physical labor … you name it and we were sitting ducks.

I told Rand I was going to sit down for a while and didn’t get anything but a, “Yeah, OK.” That kind of hurt my feelings but he looked pretty hang dog, like he was feeling bad about something. I just didn’t really feel like talking so I went back inside and was going to write a little bit in my journal but I don’t know what happened, The next thing I remember Rand was lifting me up and taking off my clothes and I was upset by that because it made me cold. I know he was talking to me but I was so tired I couldn’t figure it out so I gave up and went back to sleep.

I woke up again the next day … that would have been Wednesday … with Rand still dressed but asleep and laying across the bed all funny. I had to get up for nature’s reasons but nothing wanted to work right. I had to wrap myself in the sheet because I couldn’t find my clothes and didn’t know where my nightgown had got to. I was coming out of the bathroom after working my way downstairs and Rand was standing so close the pocket door when it opened that he scared me to pieces and I just started to cry for some stupid reason. He was talking at me again but all I remember is wanting to lie down and go back to sleep.

I woke during the night to hear two people talking and coughing. I was in my parents’ bed and Rand must have put a nightgown on me. The house was dark and I stubbed my toe on the door frame trying to find my way out. Finally I saw the glow of one of the lamps in the great room and it was Pastor Ken and Rand. Both of them wobbled when they stood up when they saw me and it took a couple of minutes for my brain cells to connect but I finally realized they were getting sick too.

Rand kept on asking me if I was all right and touching my face and saying that he had some broth in the carafe if I was hungry. I kept telling him I was fine but he didn’t seem to want to listen to that. Finally everyone just turned in for the rest of the night.

When I woke the next morning … yesterday … both of them were burning up with fever. I wasn’t feeling so hot myself but I couldn’t just do nothing so I managed to force a couple of acetaminophen tablets down their throats with some water without choking them to death; dealing with the sick kids at the warehouse gave me skills I hope I don’t have to use too often in this life. That took most of my energy but then I realized that the animals hadn’t been taken care of.

Woofer and Fraidy were both on the porch when I finally managed to get the doors opened and nearly knocked me down they were so happy to see me. Woofer did his silly chasing his tail thing and Fraidy twined between my legs and if I hadn’t grabbed the front porch pillar I would have flat out hit the ground. I got lucky and the barn doors were closed but the roll downs weren’t. I don’t think I could have wound them up enough to get anyone of them out except the birds maybe. I finally got the doors unbolted and open and Pretty Boy came out and then the hens came out … and the broody hen must have finally managed to hatch what she was sitting on because there were two little chicks. Mother Hen is so funny … she strutted around worse that Pretty Boy ever had she was so proud of what she had done. I made sure their run was open in case they felt like going in there and tossed some millet and some cracked corn in there for good measure since I didn’t know how long since they had been fed.

Hatchet obeyed me for once and let me lead him and the mules out to the corral. I think it was when I told him that if he wanted some water he would need to go to the corral. Pumping water and bringing it around by the bucketful from the summer kitchen was too much for me so I cracked into one of the rain barrels to water all of the animals. It’s amazing how much they will drink on a hot day. Frankly I wanted to stand there and slurp from the trough too by the time I got it filled.

I went back inside and checked on Rand and Pastor Ken and they were sleeping. I forced some more water down their throats … I don’t think they appreciated it too much at the time as they wore as much as they drank … and then went in search of the broth that I remembered Rand telling me about last night. It was lukewarm but frankly I didn’t care because suddenly I was very hungry. I took a pot of water and set it on the pot belly and got a fire going. And then I spotted the garden and nearly had a panic attack. I limped out there and sure enough, some of the plants looked like if they didn’t get a drink of water quick they were done for.

I couldn’t carry as much water as I was normally able to so it took twice as long to get everything watered but the plants perked up real fast so I knew they hadn’t been as bad off as I had feared. Then I had to limp back to the stove to save the pot from boiling dry. I added more water and sat for a moment trying to think what else I needed to do. The water had just boiled and I was trying to work through my fuzzy brain when Rand stumbled out of the house. He looked bad enough to scare me and it took what little bit of energy I had left to get him back inside and tucked in bed.

Pastor Ken had woke up too so I gave him more water, more pills and practically begged him to stay put because I couldn’t manage him and Rand wandering loose at the same time. “I think I’ll take you up on that if you don’t mind,” is all he said and went back to sleep.

I sat on the front porch swing and dozed. I woke up when Woofer growled at something but I never could figure out what it was. The rest of the day pretty much went like that and I was very grateful for the sun to start lowering. I put the animals up with Woofer’s help. Hatchet was in a mood. I expect whatever had made Woofer growl set him off too. Something had spooked me and I dropped the rolldowns on the barn doors just to be on the safe side and locked them too with the hasp locks that get used even less that the rolldowns do.

I woke up the next morning to find that one of the rain barrels had had a hole punched in it and a couple of the other ones had been deliberately turned over. I was glad whoever it was hadn’t done more damage or hadn’t been able to get to any more of our stuff. When I bothered to look I saw several sets of funny looking shoe prints. They had tracks that looked like tire prints.

It wasn’t long after that that Mr. Henderson showed up. When I showed him the tracks before he left he said, “Gotcha!” like an old time TV detective. I hope he has figured out who the trouble maker is because as little loss as it seems we’ve taken compared to others putting a hole in one of our barrels was just meanness and emptying the water could be a serious problem if we don’t get some rain pretty soon.

I managed to get Rand and Pastor Ken to eat something today … I fixed scrambled eggs and biscuits. They slept most of the time and that seems to be what helped me the most so I left them to it. We all did have a treat for dinner. The cantaloupes that I planted are finally ready for harvest, well some of them are anyway. If I’m right, a bunch of them are going to be ripe tomorrow and I want to can a couple of things.

I didn’t do much today but I’m so tired I feel like I must have weeded the garden and canned all day long too. I’m going to sleep out on the sofa tonight with Woofer in case something or someone comes around again.


September 9th – Rand is up and around … sort of … and Mr. Henderson has taken Pastor Ken to his place. I spent a nice “relaxing” day cleaning all of the sheets and stuff that have been used and scrubbing bathrooms and anything else I could think of. Everywhere I went Rand kind of followed me around looking like a lost puppy. I guess he isn’t used to being sick.

I tried to get him to stay put on the sofa with a book or on the porch swing but that lasted all of about two seconds each time. I finally got him to stay put long enough that he went to sleep when I started canning the cantaloupe and gave him a bowl of the chunks I had cut up to eat.

I have several pounds of cantaloupe sitting in bowls in the summer kitchen soaking in sugar and tomorrow I’ll convert it to Cantaloupe Preserves. I’m also going to make a cantaloupe pie tomorrow since we got word from Mr. Henderson that one or more of the Crenshaws plan on dropping by. They had the virus run through their house too but mostly as a twenty-four hour bug and not quite as bad as Rand and I seem to have had it.

We need a name for this new communication system we have. Maybe the Henderson Phone or something. So long as word gets to Mr. Henderson or one of his patrols the word will eventually get where it is supposed to go. I don’t mind precisely and I do appreciate it, it just feels weird having someone know so much of my business.

Today I managed to can a couple of batches of Spicy Melon Pickles. First combine three cups of vinegar, two cups of water with the following spices in a large sauce pot and bring it to a boil: 2 sticks cinnamon, 2 t. whole cloves, 1 t. whole allspice, and 1 t. ground nutmeg. Reduce the heat and simmer for five minutes. Remove from heat; add thirteen cups of cubed melon; and let stand 1½ to 2 hours. Add four and a half cups of sugar to sauce pot and bring everything to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar. Reduce the heat and simmer for forty-five minutes or until the cantaloupe chunks becomes slightly transparent. Pack the melon into hot jars, leaving a quarter inch headspace. Pour hot syrup left in the pan over the chunks, leaving a quarter inch headspace this time too. Remove air bubbles. Adjust caps then process for ten minutes in boiling water bath. Each batch only makes five jars but I think the two batches will be enough to last. Not everyone likes them but I grew up eating them.

Momma used to make a relish tray up when we had company over and it would be full of things she canned during the year. If I knew when people were gonna just drop by I’d try and do the same thing. The pie is going to have to do for tomorrow though. I’m just not up for much else.


September 10th – Count me knocked over with a feather. It was Brendon who came by to check on things. I could tell he’d lost weight and like Rand, it didn’t look good on him. Maybe I just don’t like skinny guys or something. He, Alicia and Tommy had been the main caretakers out their way. It wasn’t just the Crenshaws that came down sick. Just about everybody on their farm road had people down with this bug; most are doing better but there are some people that just can’t seem to recover.

Mrs. Winston isn’t doing well at all and Brendon said she isn’t fooling around about it. She looks like she’s had some kind of attack. Her color is off and her breathing is funny. She is sitting up on the front porch now but she can’t seem to be bothered to even do her hair which isn’t like her at all. Mr. Winston and JR don’t seem to know what to do for her. I sent a basket of plums and some grapes and a cantaloupe and a jar of blackberry shrub. Brendon and Rand gave me a funny look but I’m just trying to do what Momma would have done. She was just like that and I figure there might be some things that I can do to be like her without endangering the rest of who I am. Besides, I’m not talking about becoming best buds with the woman, I just don’t like to see people suffer. I’ve been through it enough in my life myself and it isn’t anything to gloat over.

Brendon and Rand each ate a good sized slice of the pie I made. It’s pretty easy to make but Momma only made it when we had fresh cantaloupes from our own garden. She said the ones in the store were too expensive and were never ripe enough to suit her. You start by mixing two tablespoons of flour with one cup sugar and then cream it with a quarter cup butter and two eggs. I used real eggs since not all the hens seem inclined to be mommas and walk away from their nests long enough for me to snag the egg or two I find every couple of days. Next you stir in two cups of cooked and mashed cantaloupe and add a pinch of salt. Next you are supposed to line a pie pan with plain pastry and bake until half done in moderate oven. I made a pat-in-the-pan crust since I haven’t got the hang of making a pie crust yet that doesn’t taste like beat up cardboard. While the crust is getting a little brown on it, you cook the sugar, butter, and egg mixture until it begins to thicken. Add one teaspoon of vanilla extract to that and then pour into half-baked shell and bake in moderate oven until everything is golden brown on top.

I was glad that Brendon came over because Rand still had that hang dog look on his face. I was hoping that maybe Brendon could cheer him up … or irritate him … something to make him not depressed. I asked Brendon to check on him because he wasn’t talking to me much. While I made up the cantaloupe preserves that were calling my name they went for a walk to check on the easement field and then when they got back Rand went to the barn just long enough for Brendon to say to me, “He’s all right. But, if he gets up the nerve to talk to you just hear him out. I think he’s being an idiot myself but since I’m not in y’alls shoes what do I know?”

Of course that just confused the heck out of me even more. So after Brendon left I waited and waited and waited for Rand to talk to me about whatever is bothering him. But he wouldn’t. Finally after dinner he just went out to the barn again. It was getting late and I was worried when he hadn’t come in so I went out only he was just sitting there on the hay bales. I know sometimes I just need alone time and I thought I would walk away and leave him to it but then when I was half way back to the house I had to turn around. The whole “woe is me” thing was starting to bother me a lot. I had to know if he was really sorry we had gotten married or not.

I may not have mentioned it before but I don’t like heights but I didn’t have any choice but to climb that stupid ladder because I wasn’t going to shout up to him.

“What?”

“It’s getting late. Are you coming in?”

“In a little while.”

I almost turned tail and gave up but I figured it was better to know now rather than later.

“Look, I have to ask you something and I really want a true answer, not just what you figure I want to hear OK?”

All I got was a grunt.

“Rand, are you sorry you married me?”

“No. Are you sorry you married me?”

“No, but … look, I know I don’t know much about all this relationship stuff but it seems like every time I turn around the last little bit I’m doing something wrong. Wait. Let me finish ‘cause I’m running out of courage and I don’t know if I’m going to like the answer I get or not. I mad you made somehow last Sunday and I’m pretty sure I embarrassed you and I really didn’t mean to do whatever it was I did and now you are acting all depressed and stuff and I just don’t know what to do. You say you’re not sorry you married me but I can’t think what else it could be.”

He just looked at me, not saying anything, and I finally did run out of courage and I started climbing down the ladder.

“Kiri. Kiri, don’t. Come back.”

But I couldn’t just sit there anymore. I’m not very good at waiting for the other shoe to drop or whatever you call it. Rand started coming down the ladder but he is still weak from being sick. I’m not one hundred percent but I can move faster than he can. I ran to the orchard to hide and I thought he’d gotten the message that I just couldn’t handle anymore for a while but then Woofer came to lick my face and then run off again. Traitor. He led Rand right to me.

“Kiri, I know you heard me calling you.”

“Yeah? So? I just … leave me alone Rand. I got my answer and now I’m trying to deal with it.”

“I never answered you.”

“Yes you did. You didn’t have to spell it out any louder. I’m sorry you feel that way. If you just give me a little time I’ll try and figure out how to fix this. I never meant to make you miserable.”

“You don’t make me miserable,” he said while he tried to put his arm around me.

“Don’t Rand. Just don’t. I’ve seen how you’ve been. You weren’t like that before so that means that either I’ve done something or you’ve changed your mind. Either way it isn’t fair to you to make that kind of sacrifice and …”

“Kiri would you shut up and let me get a word in? Come here. I’m too tired to chase you and you don’t need to be running around either. You scared me to death. I couldn’t … you wouldn’t wake up.”

“Well, that’s not my fault.”

“Kiri, please … just let me try and … I’ve made a mess of things. No! I mean it Kiri, no running off. Just sit here with me please. Thank you. Look, first I need to apologize. I should have on Monday but I just wasn’t ready for you to see why I was upset.”

“I still don’t understand what I did that was so wrong. I mean I know I can be embarrassing and … “

“Kiri you didn’t embarrass me. I just … I was … look … “

I sat there and tried really hard to wait and listen to him but I was getting the squirms so bad I could sit still.

“Look, I thought you were flirting with that guy … Ram or whatever his name is.”

“What?! One, why would I do something so totally stupid as that and two, what have I ever done to make you think I’d ever do something so totally stupid?!!! And don’t you dare compare me to Julia or I swear Rand I’ll hit you or something.”

But the look on his face was enough to tell me that is exactly what he had been doing. It didn’t make me mad like I expected, instead it did something worse. It made me feel like my heart was breaking.

“Kiri, please … please … I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what Rand? For think I’m a cheating … well, a not nice girl? I promised that I would be loyal to you forever. I promised I would. I gave my word. What kind of person do you think I am that I would break my word like that? And to you of all people?!”

“What do you mean to me of all people?”

“What do you think I mean Rand?! I trusted you enough to marry you!! And do all that stuff we do!!! Now to find out that you don’t … that you think … “

If he hadn’t wrapped both arms around me I would have run off. And if he hadn’t been sick I would have done something to make him let go of me but even then I couldn’t , not to him.

“Why did you marry me Kiri?”

“What do you mean why did I … Rand I told you before. I trusted you more than anyone else since my parents. I wanted us to keep our home and be able to stay here without people taking it away from us.”

“Taking it away from you. This is all yours and … Ow! Dang it, that hurt! I don’t have my boots on girl. You probably broke my toes!”

“I hope I did you big dope! I’m getting so sick of this stupid fight. I am done with it. If you tell me this place is just mine one more time it won’t just be your toes I stomp on!! Just like with the stupid money. It’s ours and if you say one word otherwise you are going to like me even less than you already do.”

“Kiri …”

“Don’t Rand, I’m warning you. The way I feel right now I could just explode all over you and everyone else for miles and miles and miles around. I don’t know what I keep doing wrong but that part I know isn’t wrong. Sometimes it feels like that is the only thing I’m doing right. This … is … ours … and I’m not arguing about it anymore!!!!”

“OK … OK … come here. Come on … come here.”

There wasn’t really enough room for both of us on the little bench so I wound up having to half sit on his lap which made me uncomfortably aware of just how close he was.

“Kiri, I wasn’t really thinking about how you would feel to think that I thought … this is getting ridiculous. Kiri, look at me please. I was jealous. I was jealous of your friend Ram. Then the next day I found out that he was married and that the only way he talked about you to anyone else was like an annoying little sister … he was fond of you but that was it. Then … but … Kiri I didn’t want you to know I was jealous.”

“Well I don’t know why you would even think anybody would want me … you see the kind of trouble I’ve been for you … but I understand even less why you would think I that like Ram enough to mess up our friendship and stuff.”

“It’s about that ‘friendship and stuff’ that you keep saying.”

That hurt my feelings some more. “You mean you … you … you don’t want … to be my friend?”

“Yes, I want to be your friend.”

“Rand this is just confusing. I wish you would just come out and say what you mean because I’ve told you and told you I don’t know how to play these games!”

Then he grabbed my face, turned it me towards him, looked me straight in the eye and said, “I was jealous because … because … I love you Kiri. That’s it. I’m an idiot and I don’t want to scare you off but there it is. I love you.”

I remember feeling like the Grinch in the cartoon by Dr. Seuss … a heart several sizes too small suddenly growing so much my chest could barely hold it all in. I turned around in Rand’s arms and hugged him with so much enthusiasm the bench went toppling backwards but I didn’t care. He wasn’t mad at me. He wasn’t leaving me. He LOVED me!!!! I couldn’t stop laughing, only I was crying at the same time which was dorky but I didn’t care.

But unlike those silly romance books rolling around in the grass is not without consequences. The skitters found us real fast and we had to get up which was a little embarrassing for me ‘cause I’d come all undone somehow. We hurried and locked up the barn and got into the house before we completely got drunk dry by the flying devils. And despite it all, even with the best of intentions, all we could do was cuddle since we’d both just got over been so sick.

“Are you sure you don’t … I mean … I know you are pretty young and you could change your … “

“Rand … I really, really, really don’t want to have to move and stomp your toes again. And in case you haven’t figured it out yet I love you too. I just didn’t think you wanted anything like that from me.”

“Kiri I swear we must both be crazy. Whatever the future holds let’s go on being crazy as long as it is for each other.”

And within a few minutes he was snoring again. I didn’t know whether to giggle or hit him with a pillow. But this is … this is even bigger than getting married was. I thought I was going to have to keep my love quiet and to myself and be careful not even to write it down on paper so I wouldn’t run him off or embarrass him. He didn’t think he had anything to offer me … as if. Geez, Rand just doesn’t get it sometimes. I have a feeling I have my work cut out for me with him. In a lot of ways he is really great, he makes me feel great, but it makes me mad at Julia all over again to think about why he thinks he doesn’t have much to offer me. I’m just going to prove her wrong. She was dumb enough to do what she did but I’m not going to be that dumb … ever. Rand and I are married and we aren’t just best friends we love each other too.


September 11th – Patriot Day. Pretty ironic if you think about it. Mitch came by this morning early enough that the coffee was still hot but I could tell something was bad wrong right away by how white his face was. I screamed for Rand and he came running from the barn. Sometimes you just … know. I can’t explain it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it.

The sitting president of the USA has been assassinated as have several of the remaining ranking officials. Some group of foreigners tried to take over the US but they’ve mostly been killed off by the military forces. They are trying to gather all of the remaining people eligible to take over as president and hide them away some place. There have also been large explosions around the world. Nothing nuclear yet but who knows what will be coming next?

No continent has been spared and given their timing they had to be from the same group … bombs went off in strategic plances all over Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt on the African continent, there were several in France, Saudi Arabia, and a bunch of other places. England no, but one went off in Belfast for some reason. They found one set to go off in the London underground by accident and it was disarmed right before the others went off all over the world. Here in the US there was one in NY, one in Sacramento, Portland and Tampa; that’s all we know of for sure though several big dams were supposed to have suddenly disintegrated too which would be an awful big coincidence to swallow. Mexico City got two and someone was hacked off at Venezuela for some reason because they got four in the capital alone.

Information is still coming in but they aren’t sure how this is going to affect things. Everybody keeps saying they are “localized” events. They’ve said too many times that none of them were nuclear for everyone not to think that maybe some of them were, but we don’t know for sure.

Rand and I haven’t taken any chances we’ve been moving things around but who knows what is going to happen. It is hard to believe that a little place like Live Oak could be a target but there is lots of noise about it being Islamic extremist or anarchist or … well, there have been too many or’s to be honest. Rand said as hard as it is going to be we are just going to have to wait and see. There is no polite way to say how much I hate that being true.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 45

September 12th – No news is not good news. It was Hoss who came by this time to let us know that all official chatter on the radio has gone silent. A lot of the civilian stuff is so crazy it is hard to know what is the truth and what isn’t. Some of the more reliable signals or speakers or radio operators or whatever you call them are off the air with no reason given. Even the mainstream media outlets still using regular radio to broadcast are silent and went that way about four in the morning our time. I think shutting down the regular news organizations is just about the scariest part of it. That means that someone with enough juice to tell ‘em to shut up just did. That can’t possibly be good. And why would they say shut up? Maybe that’s the scariest thing of all instead of the other.

To be honest, if I think too hard about any of it I start itching all over like I’ve got hives. I don’t like being scared. I don’t like it at all. It feels like how out of control my life was right after my family was killed. Rand and I have promised each other that we’ll talk to each other more … not just about the love stuff but about other things that are on our mind. Keeping it bottled up inside us is something we both have issues with. He’s a “protector” type and tries to shield me from too much stuff. I don’t like being a “burden” because of my quirks. In a way we both need to get over ourselves but all of this stuff going on in the world isn’t helping.

Rand suggested that maybe trying to keep what he calls some “normalcy” will help, give us a focus, a constant, a structure so that we don’t go tearing off into bad habits that turned destructive on us. Good grief, I sound like Dr. Kramer. How weird is that?

I’ve been trying to get things done the best I can, trying to do stuff constructive that has to be done one way or the other. I harvested a full basket from my yellow crookneck squash today. I think my squash tastes better than the stuff that Aunt Wilma used to put on the table … even better than the stuff we used to serve at the diner and that was pretty decent. Maybe it is because it is my blood, sweat, and tears that went into growing it.

Rand said if I keep things harvested rather than just letting them sit and get bigger on the plants, the plant will actually make more in the long run. You can either get a handful of really big fruits or veggies off of a plant or you can get a lot more small and medium ones. The small and medium ones generally taste better. Sometimes if you let something get big it gets overripe or tough. I remember that from Momma’s garden.

For lunch today I pan fried some squash slices the way you do fried okra; sliced them like silver dollars and then breaded them. We also had cornbread, fried apples and I … ew! … fried my first squirrel all by myself. I caught a squirrel in the garden digging at my plants and it made me so mad that I threw the metal bucket I sit on when I’m weeding by hand. Well I didn’t really expect to hit it … the squirrel didn’t either apparently … but I did. I picked it up by its fuzzy tail after I figured out it wasn’t faking and took it to Rand who laughed so hard at my expression that he started coughing again.

He took it and cleaned it and then I fried it up just like fried chicken. It’s a lot harder to eat something when you know what the inside of one looks like up close and personal but I figure if I can handle chicken I can handle other stuff. It’s just going to take some getting used to.

If I could have figured out how to make gravy from the pan drippings I would have. Rand needs more fat in his diet. I don’t mind being thinner but I can’t seem to lose where I feel like I should lose. I feel like a mushroom. When I’m in the garden Woofer likes to get right up under me and sit in the shade I make. Blasted dog. I never thought I could be embarrassed by the affection of an animal but he’s a kisser and if you don’t let him he gets dejected.

But Rand’s cough was making me concerned. He’s not the only one I’ve heard barking. Hoss was doing it, Mitch was doing it yesterday, and Hoss said that Pastor Ken can’t seem to kick the cough either. I kind of remember Brendon wheezing a bit too. Normally I would do the honey and lemon thing but I’m running out of lemon. There are so many things that I need lemon for, especially canning, that I am too worried about running out. If what I did doesn’t help then I’ll break down and use the lemon next.

I made horehound cough drops. You make a half cup of very strong tea from dried horehound and water. First you mix two cups of sugar and one cup of honey or corn syrup. Since I had the honey I used it. It made the drops extra dark but that doesn’t matter. You need to boil the sugar mixture really hard until it reaches 290 degrees F. Lucky me I have a couple of candy thermometers but you can also do the hard ball stage test by dropping a drop of the candy into cold water. If the drop can be snapped it’s at the hard ball stage. Then you stir in the strong tea. You pour this onto a buttered cookie sheet and then after it has cooled for just a minute or so but is still very pliable you want to run a buttered knife through the candy to “score” it into the size pieces you are going for. After the candy has cooled to the point that it cracks or breaks you need to go ahead and break the pieces apart then spread these pieces out to let them cool completely. Once that happens you shake them up in some powdered sugar to keep the pieces from sticking back together and then store them in airtight containers and keep it out of the sun the same way you would any kind of hard candy.

Horehound was Momma’s favorite hard candy flavor – my personal faves are green apple or Rootbeer – so I knew all about horehound making good cough drops. I’d eaten enough of them as a kid. I also know how to make them and even Aunt Wilma had sworn by it because her “herbalist” recommended them. There was a good sized can of dried horehound from the health food store left over from the last time we had come up. I thought I was going to save it to make Christmas candy with but it was better to use it for this.

I’m thankful to say that Rand isn’t coughing nearly as much anymore. When Mitch came by I made him pop one in his mouth and then take a little bag of them to Pastor Ken who is still convalescing at Mr. Henderson’s ranch. Not an hour later Mr. Henderson shows up with this woman I’d never met. She has really dark hair and eyes but you can tell she is older, not as old as Mr. Henderson but somewhere near there.

“Ola chica. You must be the little senora that mi gallo speaks of.”

It was a while before I could look at Mr. Henderson with a straight face. Gallo is Spanish for rooster and I’m not sure that he isn’t a little too proud of the nickname.

Basically she wanted me to show her what I had done and I explained about the horehound. She is very nice and told me to call her Tia Cia as all of the men that work for Mr. Henderson do. Tia in Spanish means “Aunt” and Cia is short for Hortencia. I like her. I had assumed she was Mexican but now that I’ve met her I know she isn’t. If I had to guess I would say Cuban or maybe a Spaniard but more than likely a Cuban. She said she was a little girl when her family immigrated and her father had been a doctor before that but became a shoe salesman once he came to this country.

I explained that I didn’t have any more horehound and she said, “Not to worry muchacha dulce. I have more than enough for all of us. It grows like a weed in my herb garden. As soon as I get enough dried I will make sure you get some more. Gallo I need to get back to my kitchen and make some of these candy drops. I grow weary of all of the cough-cough-cough all day and all night.”

I found someone else that has Mr. Henderson wrapped around their little finger. Rand said that more than one person has said that Mr. Henderson and Tia Cia should get married since they seem to get along so well but they never have. “Aunt Rachel said one time it was because of Cassie. Apparently Cassie wanted Mr. Henderson all to herself when she was little and was constantly jealous of anyone else in his life. He spoiled her pretty badly. She could be pretty obnoxious when we were younger and she and Julia were real close, maybe still are; I don’t know.”

Every so often Rand will let his mask slip when he talks about Julia and I can tell he is still hurt and confused by what happened. I try really hard not to let it bother me. Julia is with Ron Harbinger now … and dealing with whatever she has going on in her life … and Rand is with me. I trust him and I promise if it is the last thing I do I will make him forget all those nasty things her parents said to make him feel like he didn’t have a lot to offer a girl. Their stupid is my gain … and I intend on keeping it that way.


September 13th – Today we had a spoonful of sugar with the medicine … but the medicine was very, very bitter and the sweet didn’t make up for it.

Rand had gone to the main gate to see what he could do about camouflaging it or making it stronger or something. We aren’t sure what we are going to do. I was about to walk up and see if he needed any water when he came back leading what looked like the back end of a bread truck being pulled by a team of six mules. For a second all I could think of was Santa and his sleigh only without Rudolph. I was a lot closer than I could have possibly expected.

There were two really big men sitting on a makeshift wagon seat. Rand just stepped beside me but didn’t say anything. The first one hopped down and came towards me. He was about as big as Bill is. He handed me a letter. Rand still didn’t say anything, just put his arm around me so I opened the envelope and a piece of fancy writing paper fell out.

My Dear, Dear Girl,

By the time you read this letter I will have gone on to be with my wife and son. While my days on Earth have been fewer in number than I expected, I can say in all honesty that they have been quite satisfying.

Illness has swept Tallahassee, cholera to be more precise. My age is not a help, nor is my already frail health from a persistent cold I suffered for several weeks prior to my contracting this dreadful disease. Loss of life has been quite high as the hygiene of this city’s inhabitants is not what it should be. I was certain I was on the mend but I continue to have set back after set back and have come to the realization that the Lord is merely giving me to clear my desk so that I may rest with no regrets.

Do not mourn me child for I go to a much, much better place. My only concern is that you still do not seem inclined to care very much for your financial security. I am confident your young man will help in that regard so it pleases me greatly to hand all of your case files over to him. While I hope you do not become upset by this rather chauvinistic appearing move I truly do feel it is for the best until such a time as he can hopefully have more luck convincing you of the necessity than I have.

My nephews will deliver what I have been able to acquire for your benefit. It is not nearly as much as I had hoped but relying on my cherished niece’s suggestions I think it will be more beneficial than perhaps some other investments that I had considered until recently.

I have taken the liberty of paying my nephews a goodly sum for delivering this to you directly themselves rather than risking it to anyone else. This is for your security as much as for their benefit. The recent news we are hearing leads me to believe that things will soon deteriorate further and I hope that my nephews and their mother can find a better place to reside that will suit their talents away from the constant bureaucracy handicapping them here.

Blessings to you my dear girl and to your young man. Remember Psalm 27:4-6 my dear. It has been a comfort to me many times over the years.

Your friend and mentor,

Barabbas Barnes, Esq.


September 14th – I didn’t feel like writing any more yesterday for a lot of reasons. Sadness is some of it. No time was also in the list. And fear … the news keeps getting worse. There was another round of explosions, this time in retaliation perhaps. Word – more like gossip and assumption - has it that the ground in the Middle East looks like Swiss cheese about now. Every country capable decided that it would be tit for tat. I’ll explain how we found that out later.

All I could do was walk into Rand’s arms yesterday and hold on. I complained about Mr. Barnes but at the same time he has been a constant in my life ever since my family died. I never wondered, not once, if he was on my side or not. He asked more from me that I felt I could give but he never gave up trying to change my mind, never gave up on me period. That’s a lot more than I can say for other people. And now he is gone, my last tangible living link to that part of my life. I still can’t think of it without crying and I hate that. Rand put me to bed early last night. That sounds so stupid but I was just to the point that I was so overwhelmed and I couldn’t take in anything else.

“Uncle Barry, he thought you were something special. He told us to make sure that no matter what it took to get this stuff to you to do it, but we really can’t stay though we appreciate your offer. Our pass expires in less than twenty-four hours and it’s going to take that long to get back where we left Mom and get our own gear and get out of town while we still can. Where can we unload this stuff? Some of this is heavy.”

“This” filled up about half of the enclosed wagon. There were barrels, a couple of large boxes, and plastic tubs of all sorts of things. “Mom told Uncle Barry that instead of sending cardboard boxes and bags to pack things in containers that could be reused. She helped pack most of this stuff so nothing should be broken. Those barrels over there have seed grain in them. Mom wanted to send more groceries but there just aren’t that many to be had. Got you a small barrel of rice but had to pay an arm and a leg for it. Instead of groceries Mom had Uncle Barry send out seasonings and stuff like that. You’ll have to look through the rest of this stuff to see what it is. Mom took care of most of it after Uncle Barry got really sick but he dictated some notes that are stuck in some of the containers. But this thing here, this was the biggie. He wanted you to get this especially. He got one for Mom as well and we’ve already set it up in our new place.”

The biggest box held something that nearly floored Rand. You would have thought he would be the one cooking on it the way he made a fuss over it. I tried to as well but all I could do was sniff and then start crying again. It was a wood cook stove, something called a Pioneer Princess. Rand helped them maneuver the box over to the summer kitchen and they just slid it inside. Today Mitch came by and he helped Rand take out the old stove and stick it in the barn and move the princess into the newly vacant space, it barely fit. It isn’t one of those really fancy looking cook stoves like you see in museums but I like it. It has a 20 gallon water reservoir … no more cold showers unless we want one … and has a warming oven above the cooking surface. It’s boxy compared to the one that Alicia brought with her when she married Brendon but … well, it suits where we put it and I’m thankful to have it.

I can’t use it yet because Rand has to run the exhaust pipe stuff but it is still pretty hot so cooking outside is better anyway. Rand said, “We’re lucky that your parents had the electric oven on an outside wall. That’s going to make my job a lot easier and I’m double lucky that it won’t interfere with the bonus rooms right above.”

I’m glad he knows what he is doing. I really am blessed to have Rand. Even if I didn’t have all of this stuff from Momma and Daddy or any of this stuff that Mr. Barnes had sent out to me I think between the two of us we could still make out OK … but I’m no fool, I’m grateful and not ashamed to say so. His knowledge and experience are worth a lot more than he gives it credit.

Mitch told me a lot of people around here have a wood burning stove for heating their homes after heating oil went so high a few years back. Some people only have heat because they have stoves during the winters, especially the older houses. Living in Tampa for so long I have a hard time imagining houses without central heat and air but I guess you can get used to anything; I’ve actually gotten used to not having AC although if I didn’t have the well pump full of cold water that would probably be a different story.

Mitch also told us people that don’t have good house set ups are pulling stuff from vacant houses or are moving lock, stock, and barrel to some place better. The older homes that have been kept in good repair are especially attractive to folks. I asked him but what about the government taking it away from them and that’s when he shared some of the news that they’ve been getting.

“Now, this isn’t gospel. Mr. Henderson hasn’t confirmed any of it yet. That relocation stuff they were doing? It’s been put on indefinite hold. Too many things went wrong. The riots, the sicknesses, the cost of moving the people and trying to feed them … it just all went bad.”

Rand wanted to know, “Where did you hear that? I thought the radio had quieted way down.”

“It has, it surely has. It’s actually that friend of Kiri’s … Ram Diaz. His commander is a smart man. He knows that the only way they are going to be able to stay around here comfortably is if they create some goodwill with local residents. He’s also been over to see Bill Sawyer.”

I wanted to know, “What’s Ram been up to now? Not that I don’t consider him honest, but he can be a stinker.”

“Yeah, he said you are pretty suspicious of people so if you trusted Mr. Henderson and the others that you introduced him to that he could pretty well take that as they’d been tried and found worthy … or something like that anyway. Made the Judge laugh and made the Pastor blush. Mr. Henderson just rolled his eyes but you could tell … well, as much as you ever can with him … that he appreciated what Ram was saying.”

“So? Come on man, was that all that guy said?”

Rand still calls Ram “that guy” so I step easy when I talk about him. I hope eventually Rand isn’t so sensitive about it. Ram was one of the better of the foster boys. I was still in the wheel chair for a couple of months when he was there and he was one of the few that never tried to prank me with it.

“Well … look, this really can’t go any further Rand, not even to your family. Your uncle is a good man but if he thinks he can help his neighbors by saying something he will and Mr. Henderson really doesn’t want this going further until we get some independent verification. He may be inclined to trust Ram but that doesn’t mean he trusts him all the way yet.”

We sat there just waiting for Mitch to decide whether he was actually going to say something or not.

“Things are a lot worse than the government is letting on. You might as well say there is a kind of world war going on but it is so … I guess you could say it is a very disorganized kind of war … it’s happening everywhere, no country is being spared. Everybody has a grudge they’ve been holding. It is like lots of wars within a big war … individual grudges plus battles within coalitions with their own agenda and purpose. Oil and other natural resources have a lot to do with it. China is fighting multiple fronts … Africa, Australia, and they are even rumored to be supporting some of the terrorism that occurred trying to bring the US down several notches so that they’ll be easier to draw into their new “empire.” But the ones that they originally supported are doing their own empire pushing. Some of the Middle Eastern countries believe it is time for a new world order based on Islam. Everything is crazy. The bad guys and good guys change on a daily basis. Your friends of today are your enemies of tomorrow and vice versa.”

“What about nukes? Were there any?”

“Ram says not to his knowledge but that isn’t a definitive yes or no. It just means that the information hasn’t made it down to his level yet. A lot more US cities saw explosions than were reported. If there was a major university with a significant Middle Eastern student body then there was an explosion. Doesn’t mean the students did it but maybe people trying to blend in with university students did it. The locations that we know about were multiple explosions in NYC and several in NJ too; LA is so bad off that you can’t tell the difference between what was damaged by riots, what was damaged by the explosions, and what is from the two recent earthquakes out that way; the DC area couldn’t get much worse but they tried; Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia all went bonkers too … but whether that is Islamic extremist or work of extreme members of the Nation of Islam is anyone’s guess. Additional reports are trickling down to his commander every day but he isn’t privy to them all. What he has said is that we better prepare for things to be very bad this winter. And next spring might just be even worse.”

“How can things possibly get any worse?!” I wanted to know.

“No electric, no fuel, no food … the winter is going to keep people focused on personal survival but folks that do survive the winter are going to be angry. The fewer people the farther the resources will stretch and that will pacify a few but that isn’t going to stop a lot of people from being angry. As soon as they thaw out enough to figure the cavalry isn’t coming no matter how much they bought into all that hope and change crap they are going to want to take their disillusionment out on someone. That could mean widespread rioting … or even civil war.”

Rand and Mitch went on about that last possibility and all I could do was pray that we didn’t see it. They were talking about citizen fighting citizen … friend fighting friend … families being torn apart … lives changing forever … and lots of death. I was both fascinated and repulsed by the stories of what happened during the US Civil War in school. I must have watched that Ken Burns documentary enough times to have it memorized. There was no way that I wanted to live through a repeat of that. Too many women lost sons … too many women lost brothers … too many lost husbands. I could feel my chest tighten up at the very thought of Rand going off to fight a war, especially that type of war. I couldn’t even listen to them talk about it.

After Mitch left Rand and I finished what chores we could for the day and then we sat on the porch swing and just cuddled. I want to hold him here, to me, not let him go off to fight some crazy war that someone else started because of their own stupidity. I think I’m beginning to understand how Momma must have felt when Daddy went off to places that she knew weren’t safe for a US soldier whether he was there to fight or there to train. You are so proud on the one hand and on the other you are terrified that like the Spartans they’ll come back “with their shields or on them.”

Maybe I am getting hysterical or exaggerating or something. For now all we can do is sit and wait to see what else happens; or see if anything happens.


September 17th – Been a busy few days. We were supposed to have church services today but Pastor Ken wasn’t up for it and too many people are still sick or they are in the process of recovering.

Friday I tried baking in the cook stove for the first time. It really is nice; it even has a temperature gauge you can set. But boy does it heat up a room, even with just a small fire in the fire box. I had the doors and windows open just trying to breathe. It is a good thing that it isn’t anywhere near the wood cabinets and that Daddy ran the granite backsplash all the way down behind the stove to the floor with the scraps left over from the countertops; the slate floor helps too according to Rand.

I’m reading the booklet that came with the stove … it is actually a second hand one that was refurbished or whatever you want to call a second hand appliance … and you are supposed to be able to cook eight loaves of bread in the oven at a time. The diagram shows that you have to fit them in there like a puzzle but I only cooked two loaves, some biscuits, and some cookies for the cookie jar that Rand can empty faster than I can fill it up.

Rand and Brendon spent the early morning hours seeding the field they had set aside for oats. It’s not a big area, only an acre, and it took three bushels of what Mr. Barnes had sent in one of the barrels. Rand was glad not to have to use what was in his feed supplies. It didn’t take but a couple of hours and it wasn’t even lunch time when Brendon left. I wish he had stayed a little longer, I think he would have gotten a kick out of what happened next.

We had a visitor today that I recognized from our wedding. He was the man that brought the roasted pig. Our place tickled him. He said he’s lived in Live Oak his whole life and it had been “many a year” since he’d gotten lost trying to find someone’s house. “That dang road’ll fool you all right. You start out knowing you are getting some place and then you start to wonder if it isn’t a road to nowhere. Then you hit that gate right at your forty and you think you’ve found where you need to be and then you get half way back here and start wondering if you are heading the right direction all over again. I like it. Good location. The only thing you’re missing is a year-round pond and I see ya got ya one on that eighty next to yer.”

His name is Mr. Coffey … Thaddeus Coffey. When I write down what he says there is no way I can make up his deep southern drawl. I thought Momma had a southern accent when she would say things like “warsh” instead of “wash” but Mr. Coffey goes way beyond anything that Momma used to sound like.

I like him. I’m not just saying that because he said he liked us, “I says to myself, Thaddeus, them two done good by each other. They ain’t biggety a tall like some folks is these days.”

Seems Mr. Coffey was looking for the “right feller to hep him out.” He’s a bit like a smaller version of Mr. Henderson, “I ain’t laid up but I ain’t no spring chicken neither no how. So’s, I say gots ta get some hep to get that sorghum in or it’s gonna rot in the field. Who do I know what’s wants some pay but will aktully work for it and take it in sumpin other than cash on the barrel? Well, you and that crazy cousin o’ yorn’s comes ta mind. I like to have thrashed that Brendon some kinda good a couple o’ years ago when him and that cornsobbin Roberts boy went a hot roddin’ through my corn but when Brendon dried out the next day I didn’t have to hunt him up. He came all on his ownsome and apologized and then worked off the damage ever day after school and on the weekends without a word o’ complaint and brought his own fixins to eat too, not expecting nothing. I recall hearing tell how you wusn’t no saint neither ‘til recently but I won’t get into it as your missus is standing right here.”

Rand looked like a deer in the headlights and it took everything I had not to laugh right out loud. I had to run in the house to get my face straight and brought out some bread and preserves as an excuse with some fresh cold tea. “Well, if I ain’t gobsmacked. Boy, you better hold on ta this ‘un. Better ‘an that old ‘un ya had. And keep her close. I hear tell of men of all ages looking to trade in what they got on a better model and if word gets out she can cook like this you’ll be fightin’ ‘em off with a shotgun.”

After Mr. Coffey left Rand went to go catch up with Brendon and work out where they would meet up in the morning. Rand will be using Bud and Lou and probably Hatchet too. He hopes to get a decent amount of grain and sorghum out of the work deal.

I baked apples for dinner – the red ones are coming in now on three different trees – and made cornbread patties that we ate with the leftover beans from lunch. For some reason I got the giggles all over again and Rand only made it worse when he asked, “Yer needin’ hep with the dishes woman?”

We must have laughed off and on for the rest of the evening. It felt so good, almost as good as the cuddle before Rand fell asleep. I know there are bad things still happening out there but in here, in our home, this is our safe place. It seems like if we can keep a corner of this world set aside so that we can live and worship as we see fit then no matter how bad it gets out there we’ll still be OK.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 46

September 18th -- Sure was quiet around here today. Even after Rand got home it was quiet because he was so tired. I actually didn’t mind it but I wouldn’t want to go back to living by myself all the time. Something reminded me today of watching Momma when it was time for Daddy to come home from work. She’d be working away but you could tell she would get a little excited and then we’d hear his car pull up and we’d go, “Daddy’s home!” Gosh we were so “Leave It to Beaver.” My friends didn’t know whether to laugh at us or be jealous.

But Momma … her eyes always looked different when Daddy got home like … oh, I don’t know how to explain it exactly but you could tell it made her happy to see him. After a certain point in the afternoon I caught myself listening for the sound of the wagon coming down the road and when I finally did … it was … it was like something missing had been found. If I had to explain this to anyone else I probably wouldn’t be able to but here in my journal I can say what I feel without worrying that someone else won’t understand or would make fun. It was nice when Rand came home … I like him coming home … it completes the picture in my heart.

As a surprise I had a bath ready for him; the water had time to lose that colder than cold feeling it has when it first comes out of the pump. I had a couple of buckets of warm water to pour in there too. He soaked until he was a prune. I had to hang his clothes outside they were so dirty and stinky. Harvesting the sorghum was hard work.

First you harvest the grain off of the sorghum. Rand said they went down the rows and cut the seed heads off with about a foot of stalk attached. You bundle a bunch of them together, tie them off, and then hang them in the barn to finish drying. That was the hardest work. “Babe, you should see it. Mr. Coffey has twenty acres of sorghum. He’s giving us six for our own leaving him fourteen. He says that each acre should get us around seventy-five bushels of grain. Seventy-five … per … acre. Brendon and I are splitting it equal shares. We’ll keep our three and he’ll split his three amongst the rest of the family. That means that we’ll get 225 bushels of sorghum grain. That’s five of those big barrels. Mr. Coffey says that you can stretch wheat flour by using two cups of sorghum flour for every one of wheat flour to get a total of three cups of flour you can use for bread. And that doesn’t include the rest of it.”

The “rest of it” comes with more work. He told me first you have to strip all the leaves off of the stalk. This can be used for silage and Brendon took a whole wagon load home to his dad for the cows and pigs and what they won’t use they have some neighbors that will take it for their goats and rabbits.

“I wish we had some more animals Babe, but it won’t be much longer. Uncle George wants to thin the hogs out a little and Brendon said he’s got his eyes on two gilts for us and JR says he knows where we can get a couple of boars with no problem. I just need to find the time to finish the fencing. And Mr. Henderson will be bringing that heifer and calf around before you know it too.”

After you have the leaves stripped off you cut the stalks off close to the ground. “We’d cut stalks until our arms couldn’t hold any more and then drop them in a bundle. Once we would get a section of the acre finished we’d gather up all of the bundles, put them in the wagon and then take them to Mr. Henderson who had Lou harnessed to the sorghum press. It’s like one of those old-fashioned clothes wringers and as Lou walked around in circles he turned the gears that turned the press and squeezed the juice from the stalks.”

Rand said the juice that is squeezed out is a cloudy green color. Sounds disgusting. It goes through a couple of strainers before it gets put into a barrel. From the barrel it goes to a series of evaporator pans. This juice gets boiled and as it boils the non-sugar solids float to the surface and are skimmed off. There is a particular degree that you have to boil the juice to for it to qualify as syrup but I wasn’t paying attention like I should when Rand told me, I’ll ask him again tomorrow. Basically by the time it gets from the first evaporator pan to the last one it is sorghum molasses.

“It takes about ten gallons of juice to make one gallon of syrup. According to Mr. Coffey syrup production varies from year to year. You get anywhere from between 100 gallons and 250 gallons of syrup per acre depending on variety and how the crop did for the season. From what we are seeing we should get about 150 gallons of syrup per acre this year.” Rand laughed at the expression on my face.

“I hate to ask Honey but I need as many of those big old jars as you can spare with lids. Brendon and Clyde are going to scrounge around and see if they can’t come up with some casks or barrels. We’re going to struggle to find enough containers to put 450 gallons of syrup in. Mr. Coffey has these big barrels that he stores the syrup in but even he doesn’t know what he is going to do with it all. He’s thinking that if we ever get the farmer’s market going again he could trade it by the pint, quart, gallon, or even bucketful if someone had something worth trading for.”

Personally I don’t have a clue what we are going to do with over four hundred gallons of sorghum. I found the following in Momma’s notes so I know you can replace regular sugar for sorghum, but I still don’t know what affect it will have if I use it for canning. And how are we going to keep from attracting ants and other bugs?

Substitution of Sorghum for Honey - Sorghum can be used in place of honey in almost any recipe on a simple one for one basis. The only exceptions are those recipes for cookies and cakes that use baking powder, where the change may prove troublesome (recipes calling for baking soda will not cause any trouble).

Substitution of Sorghum for Molasses - In non-baking applications (such as meat sauces, barbecue sauces, baked beans, etc.) sorghum can be substituted for molasses on a one-for-one basis. In baking recipes (such as cookies and cakes), sorghum should be substituted for molasses one-for-one, but it is necessary to cut the amount of sugar used in the recipe by 1/3 of the amount specified. This is because sorghum is sweeter than molasses.

Substitution of Sorghum for Sugar - In replacing ordinary sugar with sorghum, increase the amount of sorghum by 1/3 over the amount of sugar called for in the recipe. At the same time, decrease the amount of liquid (milk and/or water) by this same amount. This is to keep the amount of total liquids and sugars in balance.

Tomorrow I’m going to experiment with the gallon of sorghum that he brought home today. I also need to figure out a way to hang the seed heads in the barn that he brought home too without losing them all to the birds that fly in and out of the barn when the doors are open. I have a suspicion that this is going to be even harder than it looks.


September 19th – Another quiet day. Up way before daylight and Rand nearly had to take the lantern with him so he could see to get out but he promised he would drive the team very slow until the sun came up more. He met Brendon … and he said that Mick and Tommy came as well … up at CR49 to go to Mr. Coffey’s together.

I felt at loose ends even though I had a ton of work to do. The zucchini started making yesterday so that meant that today I needed to get some of them canned. First I made eight pints of crisp zucchini pickles. I had to use dried veggies for some of the ingredients so I hope it comes out OK. The next thing I made, dilled zucchini sticks, was easier because all I needed was zucchini, seasonings, and onion all of which I got by the barrel full thanks to Mr. Barnes’ niece. I have a feeling that I will continue saying a prayer for this woman I never met for many years to come. I also made zucchini relish, zucchini in tomato sauce (I used commercially canned tomato sauce for this), and zucchini-pineapple.

Tomorrow I’m going to make a zucchini chocolate cake but after shredding four quarts of zucchini for the zucchini-pineapple I’d had enough of the zucchini squash for a while. Next came canning the crookneck squash. I pickled four pints of them and it wasn’t much different than pickling zucchini.

Just to make sure I was really sick of looking at squash today I made Zucchini and Yellow Squash Soup for dinner. I sautéed onion, shallots, and garlic that I had rehydrated from my dried supplies in olive oil. Then I added about a quarter cup of flour and stirred that for about three minutes. Then I added one and a half cup of sliced zucchini and a matching amount in yellow crookneck squash and cook all of that until the squash is soft which takes about 5 minutes if your slices are a quarter inch thick. Then I added three cups of chicken stock that I made up from chicken bouillon, three cups of evaporated milk with a little butter mixed in to substitute for the cream the recipe actually called for, and some basil and oregano to taste. I reduced the heat to a simmer which meant pulling it back from the hot spot on the pot belly stove top and simmered it for twenty minutes. I had some for lunch and saved the rest for Rand’s dinner. It needed something and when Rand asked if I minded if he added salt and pepper I realized that is what was missing.

In between canning batches I watered the garden, refilled the water barrels from the pump … Rand is praying the rain holds off until they can get the sorghum in although the oats need it … and experimented with the sorghum syrup or molasses or whatever you want to call it.

I made a pretty doggone good gingerbread with that sorghum if I do say so myself. Rand sure did eat a good slab of it with no complaints. I only substituted some of the sugar with the sorghum rather than all of what Momma’s recipe called for and I could tell the difference in flavor. I think with dark, spicy cakes the sorghum will be really good; like pumpkin bread or tavern bread … yum yum. I don’t think it will be a good substitute in a white or yellow cake that I need to taste light but I’ll probably wind up giving it a try at some point. I bet it is good with chewy cookies too. And pies … wow, I imagine that I’ll really be able to make some good pies with sorghum.

Good grief, I’ve got the munchies all the time lately. Good thing I finally got my monthly or I’d be worrying that Rand and I had miscounted and whoopsied. I’m not as worried about that as I once was. It’s kind of … well … it sounds nice to have Rand’s baby. But on the other hand I wouldn’t mind putting it off for a while either.

Rand asked me the other night, before my system straightened out, if I would be really upset if … well if I was to be pregnant and I didn’t know how to answer him exactly. I’d be scared but not upset like he was thinking I’d be upset. I’m glad though that is a worry I don’t have right now and I think, secretly, Rand is too. He’s under a lot of stress trying to get everything lined up while we still can.

Tomorrow Rand is going to get Clyde or Bill to come with them to Mr. Coffey’s place and ride shotgun back. When they got there this morning Mr. Coffey had already had trouble and if it hadn’t been for the fact that his grandson and his family had shown up overnight the trouble might have gotten out of hand. Some people demanded that Mr. Coffey “share” his crop.

“I wouldn’t a minded hepping ‘em but they jist were bound to take rather than work for it. I tol ‘em that they could hep bring the grain in and I’d cut ‘em in shares but that weren’t good enough. My grandson and his boy wound up coming out o’ the house both of ‘em with both barrels loaded and the varmints rethought their ways … at least for now.”

With the extra hands they hope to get most of the rest of grain and stalks out of the field before the end of the week. It’ll take longer for the canes to be squeezed and the juice boiled down but if they keep the boiler going around the clock they should be done with it a few days after that. Mr. Coffey wants them to get the rest of their due tomorrow and bring it home and if they can trust him to do their syrup he figures he can count on them to show up the next day and help him get the rest of his portion in. Maybe the days of making agreements on a handshake are coming back.

I’m glad we have the extra work gloves for Rand to take and that my Dad was particular about the gloves he spent his money on. As tough as the gloves are the seam has already ripped out of the pair he was using and it took me a good twenty minutes tonight trying to find a needle and thread strong enough to fix them. I wound up having to use an upholstery needle with denim thread.


September 23rd – Today should be the last day that Rand has to work at Mr. Coffey’s and a good thing too. Mr. Henderson says that Momma O is predicting a late season tropical storm with lots of rain but it won’t be here for another day or two. In a way I’m glad because the garden needs a good deep watering and I can’t really do that with the watering can. I’d still like to know how she can tell but I guess some things in life are just meant to be a mystery.

I wound up having to put mulch down between the vegetable rows and squares to try and keep the weeds down and the moisture in. The only thing that I really had was the cypress saw dust or some type of tree debris. It was a big “no” on the sawdust. Aside from the fact that it would be too acidic for the plants it would also attract carpenter ants which is something I definitely did not want. Besides, I think the sawdust will be better used as animal bedding that we can then compost.

Of all the tree debris I have to use it looks like pine needles are going to make the best sense but only if I use the completely brown and dried ones. I know Uncle Charlie used to pay and arm and a leg … willingly … to use pine straw in his landscaping. I’ve got a bunch for free and I’ve been laying it down for a couple of wheelbarrow loads at a time. Rand said he’ll get me a whole wagon full tomorrow or the day after.

The other thing that I’ve been doing is tying the bundles of sorghum to some metal fence posts … the kind you use to put of rabbit fencing … and then laying the fence posts between two exposed steel beams in the barn so that the sorghum bundles hang down from them like I remember tobacco hanging in my grandfather’s barn.

Rand had a fit when he found out I was up on the tall fiberglass ladder doing that but then we talked it out and the reality is Rand can’t do everything himself. We can’t afford a hired hand … Rand wouldn’t be comfortable with that at this stage anyway. He wouldn’t trust them enough to leave me alone with them. Maybe if it was a kid but that could turn into more of a responsibility than a benefit.

So, he has to accept my help and I try and make sure he doesn’t feel guilty about it, like he is doing me a favor by letting me help because it makes me feel good. It does, but you have to be careful how far you take that or you can get your relationship all out of whack. If I did have to climb that ladder I sure wouldn’t be doing it, I hate being up that high and trying to balance everything, but reality is it has to be done.

I experimented with another sorghum recipe. This one was for apple sorghum bread. First you cream a stick of soft butter (I had to use the powdered stuff since we don’t have a cow yet) with a half cup of white sugar until it is light and fluffy. Add three eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Combine two cups of flour, half a teaspoon of cinnamon and a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg and set it aside. Mix one cup of applesauce and a quarter cup of sorghum syrup. Add dry ingredients alternately with applesauce mixture to egg mixture. Next fold in one cup of raisins and a half cup of chopped nuts if you have them. Pour this batter into a greased loaf pan a bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes somewhere the flies can’t get at it and then remove from the pan and continue cooling it the rest of the way on a wire rack.

Gosh it was so good. I slathered a slice with apple butter and just about made me a meal out of that alone. I guess I’m at the bottom of losing weight that doesn’t hurt me just like Rand now. It seems I’m hungry a lot now that I’m working hard outside every day. I can’t wait for Rand to get home to try a slice of this.


September 23rd – Rand didn’t have to leave today!!! We even let Pretty Boy crow to wake us up instead of getting up before the chickens. That was nice. Rand said he was awake just glad to be able to lay in bed a few minutes before having to fly up and out.

I can tell he is very tired but he isn’t letting that stop him from getting work done. As soon as the grain is finished drying we are going to thresh about half of it and put it in a metal barrel. The other half we are going to try and leave on the stalks until we need it and use most of that for the animals.

And I couldn’t believe it but Rand brought home two nanny goats and a billie yesterday too. The people over on Uncle George’s road that kept goats have left. They just threw what they could into backpacks and set out on bikes. They’ve got family out in Texas and that is where they are heading. They are in their thirties with no children so they figure they’ll just keep moving as quick as they can to get there. I feel like calling them crazy but at the same time I basically did the same thing. Which one of us is crazier?

As far as the goats go well, that billie isn’t going to be on this Earth much longer if he doesn’t stop being such a rat finking stinker! I can’t turn my back on him without him taking aim. The first time I put it down to an accident but the second time I know … I absolutely for sure know … that goat was laughing at me. And Rand did too which added insult to injury. He wasn’t laughing after that goat tried doing the same thing to him … only it wasn’t his rear bumper that was the middle of the bull’s eye. Try the other side, and Rand turned an interesting shade of green.

The nanny goats are just sweet but nosy. And my goodness those three can eat. I thought Rand was being a little mean to put them over in a corner of the home site that was full of oak sprouts and sawbrier vines but they’ve mowed just about the whole area down already. It’s amazing. As soon as they are finished with the patches inside the homesite that Rand wants mowed he said he is going to put them in an area on the other side of the garden and let them clean up around several of the big oaks over in that direction.

Where the goats are currently mowing things down Rand is going to build a … pig pen is I guess what you’d call it. It is going to have a little house and a sturdy fence so nothing can get at them. They’ll get some sun but they’ll have plenty of shade from the spreading oaks and will enjoy the acorns that fall into their pen. I didn’t know it but apparently pigs and hogs can get sunburned pretty bad just like people do. You learn something new every day.

The only major problem I had today is that my clothes line snapped and two whole loads of wet laundry went down in the sand. I had to rewash them but it only took a rinse thank goodness to get the sand out. All but the blue jeans were completely dry before night started falling and they’ll dry overnight in the summer kitchen.

There was a dampness to the wind last time I was outside before we locked down for the night. I guess we’ll see how right Momma O is in her prediction.


September 24th – Rain, rain, and more rain. It hasn’t been bad but it has been steady all day long. We’ve re-filled all the water barrels and I’m glad we managed to make room for all the animals in the barn, it’s not a day just to leave them out in the weather. We’ve had a few lightning storms.

And something is wrong with the plumbing. We had to set up a sawdust bucket out on the lanai and tomorrow Rand said he’ll try and figure out what it is. It isn’t a clog inside the house. Rand went outside and checked the main line at the clean out which is just outside my parents’ bedroom between the house and the septic tank and it was full. He pulled the concrete plug on the septic tank and it was full too. He says that means that either the filter is clogged, the leach pipe is plugged, or the leach field is bad. When he told me that if it was the filter or the pipe he could more than likely fix it but if it was the leach field that was a different problem and that it would wind up just being easier to build an outhouse.

I’m sorry but the first thing I thought of when I thought of an outhouse was that dead woman I found. I’m praying really hard that it is something that Rand can fix. If I don’t have any choice I’ll use an outhouse but it will be a blow to have to give up my comfortable indoor toilet.

Other than that we’ve had a fairly quiet day going over where we are at as far as projects and food inventory and where we are going to start putting things. I’ve still got room in the summer kitchen for cans and jars but I would like to keep as much as I can hidden in the pantry closet. Rand said that Daddy “mouse-proofed” the cubby holes as much as possible but we are still going to need to keep an eye on things. The cubbyholes are actually aluminum boxes. The side of the box that faces the attic … the outside … is insulated with pressed board insulation. The inside of the boxes is lined with more pressed board with a vapor barrier and then built out a little bit with drywall, tape, and spackle to make it look like a plain ol’ closet. That will be a good location for some grain storage because it should stay dry. We’ll just rotate the inventory in that hidden space once a month or so until we test how long things will last.

I broke down and made cornbread with beans and rice in the princess because it was just too wet to try and cook outside even with the patio cover that Rand had built. Mitch came by in time for lunch today. Things are deteriorating around the community. There are a lot of “haves” and about as three times as many “have nots.” Pastor Ken is being pressured by some community members to get him to make those that have stuff give it to those that don’t. In fact a man landed a punch on the pastor when he tried to explain that if they would offer to work for some food they’d likely find several people willing to help them. There’s that entitlement thinking again.

Ram sent me a message via Mr. Henderson. He wanted to know if Rand would be interested in bringing his wagon to a certain location on a certain date and time and help haul off “trash” for his commander. A verbal message came along with the written note, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

The cryptic games sound just like something that Ram would get a kick out of. But I told Rand he probably was serious and had something that he thought we might be interested in. With no hint of what that could be Rand asked Mitch what he thought. Mr. Henderson had also been asked to come and he was inclined to satisfy his curiosity. The meet up is tomorrow really early in the day. Brendon is coming even earlier and Rand is going to ask him to ride shot gun. I’m glad. It’s not that I don’t trust Ram exactly; it’s just a matter of Rand’s safety. Traveling alone anywhere for any reason just isn’t a good idea these days.

And with that I’m off to bed. Rand and Brendon have a long day tomorrow and so do I. I’ve got cucumbers and snap beans to pick and can tomorrow.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 47

September 25th – Wow, just wow. Ram really came through. I’m mean totally came through. The “trash” was a bunch of stuff the government had transported down for the relocation centers. The problem for the military is that the relocation centers have all been disbanded. Ram said most people accepted a train ride back to where they came from so we don’t have to absorb too many new people into the area.

There are train car loads of stuff that was supposed to be handed out in those camps and now they have no one to hand them out to. How they get rid of the stuff has been left up to local commanders but it has to be done quickly because they need the train cars back for moving troops around, etc. We’ve gone back to a coal-driven industry base … or something like that.

OK, so none of it is food … that’s the lumps and Rand and I figure we aren’t doing too badly at all considering but I sure was happy to see some of the stuff he brought back. It’s also a double good thing that the RCs were dismantled because without food those places were going to turn into concentration camps the way things were going.

What there was though made me very happy. Soap and cleaners! Bath soap, laundry soap, borax, washing soda, dish soap, household cleaners, toothpaste, mouthwash, bug spray, etc., etc., etc. There were household goods and paper products … sheets, blankets, pillows, table clothes, miles and miles of toilet paper (good thing too since Rand and I were starting to resort to the yellow pages if you know what I mean), feminine products, sponges, brooms, mops, scrub brushes, buckets, toilet brushes, etc.

Clothes … oh my goodness … Rand must have brought back enough clothes to start up our own department store. He told me to go through it and what I don’t think we can use or won’t store or whatever he’ll give back so that it can go in the pile that is going to a community thrift store sort of thing the military are setting up that Bill and Missy will help … uh … administrate or something like that. People are just going to be allowed to come in and pick out stuff but not like Rand, Brendon, and Mr. Henderson and the Pastor did. Each family got a huge wagon load … in fact we got three if you count the fact that Brendon helped Rand bring two loads home in the big wagon and then they went back and filled up the wagon again for the folks at the Crenshaw place and Rand brought yet another load home in our little wagon.

Rand mentioned putting some stuff together for Momma O’s family but Pastor Ken was already on it since he has taken to staying in a little apartment that is over their garage. That’s another story … somebody tried to burn the preacher’s house down out on CR51 and if it wasn’t for someone passing by he would have lost everything including all the pictures of his wife and son that died during the pandemic. Pastor Ken said he is taking it for a sign. He was having a harder and harder time going home to his empty house; he’d start sitting there dwelling on the memories rather than living in the here and now.

I will be sending some of those clothes back over to Missy to deal with. A lot of them are the wrong size … Rand just kind of guessed I suppose … and some of them I can’t imagine what on Earth I’d do with. The clothes were just baled together by sizes … I mean literally baled together with plastic strapping like you used to see on stuff stacked on wooden pallets. Some of the cleaning supplies were thrown into barrels and boxes and a lot of the contents didn’t match. For instance, there were two big cases of bath soap but the only thing that matched about the bars of soap that were inside one of the boxes were the same basic size and shape but different brands, different smells, different colors, that sort of thing. And there were a couple of boxes of what looked like grated soap flakes from all different types of bars. That’s when I really started wondering where all this stuff had come from.

Rand must have seen the confusion and stuff on my face because he came over and hugged me and said, “Don’t start making a fuss Kiri. Please. This is good for us.”

“But where did it all come from Rand?” I asked. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be comfortable with his answer.

After a deep sigh, “Don’t come unglued Babe. You remember me telling you about the early work days where we went house to house in groups and cleaned out abandoned houses of food and stuff? OK … well that stuff had been going on all over. The stuff pulled together around here stayed around here because the program was being run by locals, by people invested in the community. In the big cities and suburbs around them the government was more careful. They shipped in people that didn’t have any connection or sympathies within the communities and everything brought in was boxed up and sent to some type of central warehousing system. Lord only knows what they thought they were going to do with it all. Ram says that there are warehouses up north with stuff just sitting around rotting, full of rodents and bugs, algae and mildew. They basically created hazardous waste sites that can’t even be entered anymore because of all the mold spores floating around. And they’re fire hazards too.”

“But this stuff is all still packaged … well, I mean most of it is.”

“They raided stores, warehouses, production plants, central distribution points; you name it and the government took the inventory in the interest of the public for redistribution. They just never seemed to get around to actually redistributing it. The people that were in the work for food programs would box like items up together or bundle them or whatever and it would go into storage. Items that came in as partials would be treated differently.”

I was having a hard time soaking this information in.

“Let’s take this barrel of liquid soap and this box of grated soap for example. Ram said that anything salvageable was taken even partially used cleaning supplies and open food items out of refrigerators. The open bottles of dish detergent would be set aside and someone would come to collect them, open them, and dump them in a big vat where it was remixed. Doesn’t matter what color or smell the soap was. That’s why those two barrels both look they have snot in them but each barrel has different colored snot in it.”

“Rand, that’s gross! And silly you big goof.”

Rand laughed at me and said, “I know Babe but I wanted to get the frown off of your face. As for the grated soap, used bars of soap were thrown in this big grating machines, mixed together, and then dumped into these garbage bag lined cardboard boxes. I figured you’d be able to figure out some use for them.”

“Well … yeah. It’s not rocket science. I can make my own laundry goop … Momma did and I showed Aunt Wilma how and she did since it was cheaper than buying everyone their own bottle of laundry detergent. We all had to do our own clothes. With a little damp we could even press some of them into balls or bars to make bath soap.”

“See! What did I tell you? And I told Brendon you’d figure something out. Look, there’s … well … there’s something else. Brendon got me thinking and … here’s the thing. We can try really hard to put it off for a while but … “ He took a big breath and then took me over to the stuff that was still covered on our wagon. “I probably should have asked first or taken you with me or …”

Rand pulled back the tarp and I must have gone red from head to toe and really it was sweet but I’m still kinda feeling sort of like I’ve got the shivers. There was baby stuff in there … a bed and a cradle and clothes and I still haven’t looked at it all. It is just sitting in the house in the middle of the floor with the other stuff until we figure out how we are going to store everything securely.

“There was stuff like pots and pans and dishes but I didn’t figure we needed any more of that.” He looked relieved to have guessed right after I shook my head in the negative. “And Ram said there is furniture and mattresses but I wouldn’t even know where we would put it but if you want … Good, because … well … there is some stuff that Brendon and I want to go through tomorrow that Ram is bringing in the next load.”

The way he was hemming and hawing I knew right away it must be tools and things like that. “Well, yeah, I mean spare parts and …”

I had to laugh. “Rand, I’ll tell you the same way my Momma told Daddy … as long as I don’t have to trip over it I don’t care. Is that a deal?”

Then Rand laughed and we actually had a good time bringing stuff inside but I have to say the house is an absolute mess again. I’ve been canning green beans all day today and haven’t even had time to do any pickles yet and there is no way I’m going to be able to do what I need to do in the garden, in the kitchen, and get all this stuff put away too. No wonder Momma would get frustrated with me when I wanted to go outside and play when she needed help inside. It’s too late to apologize now but I guess paybacks will come at some point. I can remember Daddy laughing when Mom would tell brother and I, “I hope you grow up to have one just like you.” Hmmm. If Rand is really serious about that baby stuff maybe I ought to be a little more worried than I am right now.

After Rand was through carting stuff in he dug up the leach pipe. It was full of roots. We were very lucky that the roots came in from the septic tank lid and not in from the leach field side. It is still going to be a major mess. The pipe was so plugged up there was no cleaning it out, Rand had to cut the pipe in several places until he got beyond the roots. And when he cut the lines it was a disgusting mess as the liquid came pouring out of the tank … just nasty looking water because the solids had settled but still, how majorly gross.

The septic tank is going to have to remain open until enough liquid runs out that Rand can fix the plumbing. Plus he has to find some schedule 35 PVC along with things he calls couplers and PVC glue to piece the leach line back together. Looks like it is still going to be the bucket for the next couple of days, I hope he can find what he says we need. I always feel like someone is watching.


September 26th – Argh! I hate yellow-jackets. I got stung all to pieces on my back and it hurts to lie down. It hurt so bad I cried even though I tried not to and when Rand came home after his second run over to Ram’s rendezvous he nearly didn’t go back because of it. I felt stupid and told him he’d better get before I got really upset. That made him smile a little bit but he still brought back a surprise in the last wagon load he brought in.

Why I ran into the nest of yellow-jackets is because I was chasing after Woofer who had caught a coyote slinking up to the house. It was either after Fraidy or the chickens but Woofer caught its scent first and lit off after it like he was going to tear it to ribbons. Maybe that fence around the homesite isn’t a bad idea after all. Well, I think it is kind of weird for a coyote to strike in the middle of the day so I’m thinking it was either really hungry, really bold, or a disease and either way I don’t want Woofer tangling with one so I went after tearing after that crazy dog.

I must have disturbed a nest as I was running through the bushes because it just felt like one or two pokes with a hot pin at first and then my back was on freaking fire. I ran, stripping out of my shirt … maybe not the smartest thing to do … but I managed to get back to the house in one piece without a sting any place else except one on my … uh … sitting spot that made it through my jeans. I couldn’t see much in the mirror at first but within about fifteen minutes my back looked deformed. About the only place they didn’t get to was where my bra straps were. I put on a loose shirt and Woofer came back having chased his opponent I don’t know how far. That dog is seriously deranged. He came back with my shirt in his mouth like we’d just played the best game of catch ever.

Pain or no pain I still had more canning to do. I got forty quarts of green beans done yesterday and my fingers are so sore that I just started cutting the ends of the beans off with a paring knife instead of pinching them off like you are supposed to. The chickens and goats liked the bean stuff that was left over. That billy is evil I tell you, this morning he stole my bucket as I was trying to dump pieces of green bean in their pen for them to eat and there was no way I was climbing over in there to get it back. Then the stupid thing got it hooked on his horn and kept trying to sling it off. I let Rand get it off when he came home for a bite of lunch before heading back out. The goat and I really need to have a discussion about what is acceptable behavior. And he smells too which is another mark against him. I wonder if there is a way to give him a bath. I asked Rand tonight and he started laughing so hard he fell off the sofa. I still don’t get what is so funny.

I just realized what I wrote: “I got forty quarts of beans done.” Done. I’m slipping and slipping bad. Maybe I should pull out the ol’ school books and finish my education. Like my English teacher would say ad nauseum, “Turkey’s get done, people get finished.”

That also brings to mind the fact that Rand said Uncle George is worried that Charlene, Janet, Mick, and Tommy are going to grow up ignorant. He’s started teaching them lessons three days a week using their old school books and the Bible. I mentioned it to Rand and said that I was worried that I was sliding and he replied, “Babe, you’re a walking encyclopedia of memories and what you don’t remember you know how to look up. That’s called being a researcher. You take your research and you put it to use in your own experiments, keeping track of the progress from beginning to end, that’s science. You inventory what we have, estimate what we need, and create a plan on how we are going to get it and that’s math, accounting, and just about the rest of it. You want me to keep going because I can. We all slip every once in a while. You’ve heard what I sounded like after spending a week with Mr. Coffey. It weren’t no easy task finding me education agin’ after losing it for so long lil’ gal.”

I couldn’t help it. Between being embarrassed by his praise and surprised by his silliness I busted out laughing. He makes me feel good about myself in a way I haven’t felt since I lost Daddy. I don’t mean that how it might sound. I don’t look at Rand like a … a … father figure or anything like that. I just meant that he makes me feel secure. Yeah, I think that’s it. Rand makes me feel secure inside and out. Even when there are problems he’s solid, a … rock … a good foundation. I’m so glad we worked things out. Every day I find things that make me even gladder.

It doesn’t hurt that he likes my cooking either. I cooked a pot of green beans today and they sure were good. I wish I had had a little bit of bacon or meat to stick in there but I didn’t so there isn’t any use in making a big fuss about it. I made biscuits, mashed potatoes, and pan fried more squash with some onions. I sent a five gallon bucket of stuff home with Brendon and sent over a basket of goodies for Ram too. Rand laughed when he said Ram was fighting off some of the other guys who spotted the jar of jam and the apples and the sorghum cookies. If Ram is anything like he used to be he’ll wind up sharing them willingly later; he just likes to make a fuss about it first. And he probably wants to save some for his wife. I hear from Rand that she is very, very quiet … like something happened to her quiet … and Ram is very protective of her. He saw her yesterday but not today. There’s a story there but I don’t know if it is any of my business to know it.

Today I canned Dilly Beans, Dilly Pepper Beans (which is a lot like Dilly Beans only you add a good dose of cayenne pepper), and Spiced Green Beans (you can do beets or carrots like this too). This only amounted to a canner full. Mostly what I’ve been doing today are pickles.

When Momma O wrote on the envelope that the pickle vines would make more than you could keep up with she wasn’t kidding. Wow. I have these growing up a trellis and for two days I’ve picked everything ripe and there will be more to pick tomorrow. Maybe I planted too many.

For the pickles I made Ice Water Pickles, sweet chunk pickles, bread and butter pickles, mustard pickles, sour pickles, kosher dills, lime pickles, curry pickles, garlic pickles, ginger pickles, hot-and-sweet pickles, and sweet-and-sour pickles. I know it sounds like a lot but really with both fire pits and the pot belly going I was able to keep up with no problem because I had prepped all the cucumbers first thing this morning. Tomorrow I’m going to make some cucumber relish and cucumber catsup. And I’m also going to try drying some pickle chips and cucumber chips just to see if it will work. I also plan on blanching and drying a lot of the green beans.

I’ll have company tomorrow because Rand said he has to get back to work around our place. I asked him if he needed to go to his uncle’s pretty soon and he said he might in a couple of days. With Mr. Winston and JR over there helping he feels like he’d be one set of hands too many especially when we have so many things that need doing here.

The oats look like a carpet of green grass where they are coming up. The rain we had the other day did them a lot of good. Rand is worried about all the deer and tomorrow Clyde is coming over and I’ll probably need to be ready to preserve some more venison. Doing all of this on my own is a lot of work. It makes me realize why women were so happy to have lots of daughters … or daughter in laws. Or neighbors. Melly is coming with Clyde tomorrow if Roo is up for it and we’ll see what else we can get up to.

Oh, before I forget to record it, the surprise rand brought back with him was a load of … well, it wasn’t really food but it sort of was. Ram said it had been buried under bales of clothes and after they’d gotten them out of the way they found them. I got eight gallons of white vinegar, a case of 24 quarts of cider vinegar, a barrel of white sugar, a half barrel of brown sugar, a half barrel of regular salt and a whole barrel of coarse grained kosher salt, a big jug of vanilla flavoring, and wrapped up careful was a gallon of pickled pigs feet, a gallon of pickled eggs, and a gallon of pickled sausages. I was way beyond happy to see everything but the pickled pigs feet. I am sorry, I may be Southern, my Daddy may have loved them to pieces, I may even have helped my Memaw make them … but I just cannot bring myself to eat them. It’s like frog legs; I know they are good and that they are considered gourmet treats by a lot of people … but they still look too much like what they used to be. Ew!

Rand laughed when he saw my reaction and said he’d just have to eat them all himself and I said he could go right on ahead and do so. Man! I had to rig up a skirt for the jar so I wouldn’t have to look at them every time I open the pantry door. I might eat them if it came down to starving or not … but I’d sure have to do a lot of thinking on it first.
.

September 28th – Been too busy and tired to write in the journal at night. Melly didn’t get to come over as Roo has some kind of ear thing going on. Before Clyde left I gave him a small bottle of olive oil and told him to have Melly warm it up to a little over body temp and put some drops in the ear that is bother Roo. Hopefully that will soothe him if nothing else.

I could do with a bit of soothing myself. Rand made me lock everything up, including the animals and he walked to the end of our road and caught a lift with Ram. There was trouble overnight at the makeshift distribution point that had been set up for people to come look through the stuff off the trains. They were upset that no food was brought in and then started fighting over what was. A lot of damage has been done and when they turned on the military guys who were just trying to keep the unrest from spreading they got more than they bargained for. There are a lot of dead and wounded but the meanness has spread out and the military was asking for community volunteers to try and get it re-contained. He’s been gone all morning and I’ve been sitting here at the dormer window keeping watch.

I was OK until I heard a girl’s scream a few minutes ago. It shouldn’t have been so loud. I know it is still far enough away that it isn’t on our forty but something isn’t right. Dang it, there it goes again and it is closer this time, like the sound is channeling down through our road. Gotta go, hopefully I won’t have a story to tell Rand when he gets home.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 48

September 29th – I know Rand is going to have my tail but once I heard the screaming on our property I felt I had a responsibility to find out what was going on. I couldn’t just ignore it.

I debated what to take with me into the woods. I’m still not comfortable with the shotgun so I took my rifle. It may be small but so am I and with my improved aim I figured it would be as effective. Yeah, I can hear Rand squawking about that now so I’ll leave that bit out when I explain things. I took the Smith and Wesson but I also took the Mark III. I know I’m going to catch heck about that too … assuming Rand notices. I also took my trusty big screwdriver and the wire cutters. I made Woofer stay inside, he was no more pleased with me than Rand is going to be but he still clumps through the bushes too much. He’s all attack and no sneak.

I ease out of the house and by the time I get out of bushes around our home site I could hear crying … more like sobbing and pleading for them to not hit her again, she swore there was a house down at the end of the road. I still didn’t recognize the voice but I followed the sound. I was using the small deer trail through the trees and then stopped on the house side of the road and easement intersection.

“Hey! Look, there’s a planted field here. Maybe the girl is telling the truth.”

“Maybe. Take that side and … shut up girl or you’ll get more of what I just gave you … take that side and I’ll take the princess here and spend a little quality time with her over …”

“You went first last time Hal.”

OK, that was all I needed to hear. The girl was curled up on the ground, completely out of my line of fire. There were five men. Not great odds but I intended to make that four right then. Using a tree to steady myself I got “Hal” right square in the chest. And the guy behind him that was too stupid to duck right in the stomach. Two down three to go.

I know I shouldn’t be like I am about it. I’m feeling remorseful now, but not guilty. I’m sorry it came down to the way things happened but I’m not sorry that I was assigned the job of bringing some justice to their previous victims. In this life I think sometimes you are the victim, sometimes you are the jury, and sometimes you are the executioner. You can’t do the job of the last two without being the first a few times first so that you can have discernment about life and events. Well, I’ve been on the receiving end more than I’m comfortable with remembering. It doesn’t mean that I want to be jury and executioner but it isn’t a job I’ll walk away from either.

In fact, I couldn’t walk away at this point. There were three more bad guys wandering around and I wanted them gone before Rand came home so they couldn’t jump him.

One of those guys was smart and took advantage of the fact that I was feeling overconfident. He came in behind me so fast that if I hadn’t just bent over to untangle myself from some saw briers he would have taken me right then. I was using the screwdriver to pull the think vines off of my jeans and boots. He came right out of the trees behind me and I only had time to turn towards the attack … with the screwdriver out in front of me the guy impaled himself all the way up to the handle.

I don’t know who was more surprised me or him. I don’t think I hit anything vital but I don’t know for sure. God showed him some Mercy though. His eyes rolled up and back and he just sort of slid off the tool and down to his knees and then fell over. He didn’t even draw another breath. I didn’t mean to do it but it happened. I’m glad he went quick and didn’t suffer the way the gut shot guy did.

Now there were only two and they had started running down the road, away from where I was. I couldn’t let them get away. They could hang out in the bushes and hurt Rand. I took off running up the road. The handguns were bumping around in the bag on my shoulder with the wire cutters. The screw driver was back in its “holster” on my hip. And the rifle was in my hands. I was doing a fair imitation of the way I had seen guys running with guns in those war movies. And then I went down, nearly on my face.

The girl had grabbed me by the ankle. I nearly kicked her in the face until I turned around and saw who it was. Even with her face tear-stained and snot covered she still looked pathetic and pretty. “Don’t leave me!”

“Dang it Cassie, let go. I’ve got to get those guys!”

“Don’t … “

But I didn’t have time to listen to her. I was up and running again. They were running down the straight section right after the main gate. I used the fence post to steady me because I was breathing so hard. All I did was wing one of them before they turned the corner down the oaks. I didn’t have long so I really started running all out went down on my knee as I turned the dog leg and got one of them in the back. But the other was still running. I was so out of breath that I considered … only for a second … letting him go but the thought of Rand helped me to suck it up and run full tilt again. He was way down the road by the time I reached the dog leg by the gully and I was breathing so hard that I had a hard time getting a shot. In fact I completely missed the first time. Then the guy turned around and took a couple of wild shots at me. That steadied me and I just thought “big red can, 30 yards, sun straight overhead and wind out of the north.” I was a little high and the damage I did meant that it only took one bullet … my last … to do what I felt I had to do.

I knew I wouldn’t have much time so instead of going back for Cassie I ran up and drug that guy’s body over and into the dense brush and pine trees on the other side of the gully. Only after I was sure that I had camouflaged the body did I set off back for Cassie. I had four more bodies to be responsible for but first I wanted to get her to help me. Running in boots with all the gear I had on was nowhere near as easy as the movies make it look.

I came back but no Cassie, and then I heard a scream back towards the house. That got my heart pumping again. When I got there I found that Cassie had tried to go in the house. Baaad move. Woofer let her know she wasn’t welcome. I got him calmed down but Cassie is still scared of him, which may not be such a bad thing now that I’m thinking about it. It keeps her out of places I don’t want her to go. Given her previous actions I’m keeping her out of as much of our business as possible.

I made her help me drag the other four guys’ bodies to the other side of the gully as well. She complained the whole time. It wasn’t exactly what I had planned on doing with my day either but geeze Louise. She wanted me to take her back to her grandfather’s right there and that is when I put my foot down and her hard head met my immovable rock.

Cassie Henderson is a freaking spoiled brat!!! Whew! Wish I could say it to her face … and I just might if I’m cooped up with her for too much longer.

I really want to like Cassie if for no other reason than because of Mr. Henderson but the girl has rocks in her head and is what my Daddy would have called near next to useless. Apparently she didn’t think her grandfather’s order that everyone stay inside the main perimeter wall that they’ve built applied to her … she’s not “everybody,” she’s Ms. Cassie Henderson, no one’s rules but her own exist in her universe. Puh … leeze!

She takes a horse out even after she was told not to, goes out of sight of the ranch, and then the dummy gets captured while flirting with a stranger … “but he was so cute.” And what does the Ninny do then?! Leads them right to my place; I could slap her for that alone. The reason she screamed is because one of the men took off his belt and whipped her when he thought she was lying about a house being down our road. They hadn’t made it to the easement field yet and with everything so over grown and still green the wagon hadn’t made much difference in how unused the road tends to look.

Once she was inside our house she calmed down considerably but she sure didn’t stop complaining and worse, she started ordering me around. She sure doesn’t know me very well. She wanted a bath, I handed her a bucket and told her to pump her some water. She wanted a hot bath, I told her too bad, I wasn’t firing up the stove to roast us alive in the house. After the bath she wanted clean clothes and make up, I told her no makeup as I don’t have any and the only thing I had for her was a sundress since she was nearly six inches taller than me an about half my size on her northern end if you know what I mean. If she wanted her own clothes she was going to have to wash them out and hang them to dry. She wanted me to do her hair; I told her I was on watch.

It went on like that for the rest of the afternoon and evening. All I could think was, “Rand please come home before I kill you ex-girlfriend’s best friend and start a feud with the biggest landowner left in the county.” After I fed her a dinner of the beans that I had been cooking in the ground since first thing in the morning and it got dark she finally wound down. She wanted to use the wind up lamp but I told her, “No, we might need it if Rand comes in late or your grandfather shows up.” She definitely does not like being on the receiving end of the word no. And she is too old to pout. It’s not near as cute an expression as she seems to think it is.

Yesterday was even worse. She didn’t like grits; too bad, that’s what there is. She objected to bread and jam at lunch with fresh fruit; she wanted yogurt and a salad. She was bored, I told her she was more than welcome to help me sweep and mop the floors and all my other chores. For dinner she wanted steak and potato; that time I laughed in her face and asked her what planet she had been living on for the last few months.

She didn’t help with the dishes, she didn’t make her bed, she didn’t clean up the bathroom behind her. She’d get scared every time I left the house to take care of the animals and didn’t want me to go. Twice she tried to lock me out of the house so I started making her go with me with Woofer to guard the porch. She wasted more water than you would imagine and food too which is why I wasn’t going to much trouble … that and I wasn’t very hungry with Rand not home.

She tried the pouty face thing again to get the lamp when she went to bed and I think I finally started wearing on her as much she is on me.

Today she’s been giving me paybacks. I’ve heard lots of stories about how good Rand and Julia had been together, about all their friends and how much fun they all had … together … close friends … no strangers allowed. Yeah, subtle she is not no matter what she thinks. And I had to listen to the snippy comments about how awful and selfish it was to bring babies into the world the way it is now … and then a fake exclamation of surprise over the baby furniture and a giggle and asking me conspiratorially if I was gonna have a baby and was that why Rand and I had had to get married.

For that one I brought up her good friend Julia’s pregnancy and her logic and justification actually made my mouth hang open. She, Julia got pregnant before things got like they are now so it was all OK and she was just so excited for her. She didn’t like me coming back with the question of whether Julia had ever revealed who she thought the baby’s father was since it obviously wasn’t Rand. And when she tried to make out like it could be Rand after all I told her that even Julia admitted that it wasn’t Rand and counting back she would have gotten pregnant before Rand even came home from college. I can’t believe she didn’t see that one coming but she acted like I was hurting her feelings by using logic and truth.

For the last couple of hours she’s been getting louder and louder about the fact that I need … no, I must … take her back to her grandfather. When she started “musting” me I pulled a naughty and gave her a sleeping pill I told her was a Tylenol for her headache. She’s crashed on the sofa and I’m sitting here at the front window praying that Rand is safe. I’m nearly tempted to leave and take Julia to her grandfather just as an excuse to look for news of Rand.


September 30th – Call me over protective but he isn’t getting out of that bed for at least twenty-four hours if I have to do some like tie him down. I told him so and even though his face was so tired looking he got a guy grin on his face that made me throw a pillow right at his head. Of course then he started coughing again and it is a really nasty cough too. Thankfully I am dusting the cobwebs off of the corners of my brain and remember Momma making me anise tea with honey when I would get a chest cold. I looked it up in Momma’s medicine notebook and sure enough anise tea is used as an expectorant.

I took two teaspoons of crushed aniseed and poured a cup of boiling water over it and left it to steep for fifteen minutes. I strained out the aniseed and then added enough honey that Rand would drink it. Between the heat of the hot water and the licorice of the anise next coughing fit he had he started coughing up blobs of junk out of his chest. Nasty but at least he doesn’t sound so much like a freight train any more.

Mitch brought him back last night and took Cassie off my hands. When Cassie started tuning up to complain Mitch shut her up, “Knock it off Cass. You’ve gone too far this time. Your grandfather has been worried sick … literally worried sick. Tia Cia as well. We wasted valuable time looking for you and two of our men got hurt because of it … Jeffers might not make it and he has two young children with no family left to take them in if he dies. Get on this horse, now.” I didn’t give her another thought after they left though I’ve had time to do it today.

I thought Rand was only over tired last night and suffering from the effects of having to deal with all that has been going on. He wouldn’t settle until he made sure that I’d been able to take care of the animals and then as I fed him some bread and jam for dinner … he didn’t want anything else … I had to tell him about the five men and what I had done. Rather than being upset he said, “I wish I had been here Babe but I had to trust that you could handle things. And you did.”

When he leaned on me to give me a hug … and I got beyond how ripe he smelled … I heard his chest rattle for the first time. First I needed to get him comfortable and I heated water for a bath and put some peppermint bath salts in there. Rand doesn’t much like baths, he prefers hanging a bucket up and taking a shower. To egg him on a little bit I told him it was paybacks for leaving me alone with Cassie for so long.

“That bad?”

“It was horrible. Detestable. Horrifying beyond imagination.”

“Ok, ok … I’ll take a bath and soak but you have to scrub my back.”

“Gee, you drive such a hard bargain.”

I washed his hair and gave him a trim without him realizing it until I was half way finished. It isn’t something to brag about but at least the hair is off his neck and he doesn’t resemble a sheep dog. He told me what had happened to keep him away for so long.

Things are coming unglued and we are getting hit from all sides. Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Valdosta and all points north; they seem to be converging in different places looking for an ever shrinking amount of resources, trying to force the government to do something they have no way of doing, just wandering around aimlessly with no real plan following whoever is the loudest or most charismatic leader at the moment. Rand called them sheeple. But when you have that many, even disorganized as they are, you are going to have trouble. The first day he was away it was the worst. The second day the “leaders” of the various groups were captured or killed, yesterday was mostly something he called mop up.

“Even though they don’t want the responsibility, the military has had to build a couple of large holding centers and dump anyone they catch causing problems into the fenced in enclosures. From there they’ve started busing them to St. George Island. There is only one bridge on and off the barrier island that now has several guarded gates being erected along its length, the island is covered in vacation rental places so they aren’t exposed to the elements, and if they put their mind to it they can probably make a pretty good living there by fishing and what have you. The military is through messing around and court dates are going to have to wait. It will be a little like Australia was for the UK back during the Colonial period. You’ve heard of that?”

“Rand! Oh … you were trying to be funny. Yes, I know what you mean. Criminals, dissidents, etc. were sentenced to exile in Australia if they messed up in the UK.”

“Close enough. It is going to be hard at first but at least they’ll stand more of a chance than if they were sentenced to a firing squad which is what some commanders and citizen groups have been talking about doing. Everyone has agreed to try the barrier island route first or if the person is a known felon then they’ll be put on barges that have been anchored off the coast. That is going to be a bleak life but at least it is a life.”

Rand was so tired he was starting to repeat himself. I got him out of the tub and up to the dormer room and tucked in bed. He was telling me that he had stayed with Ram’s unit up until it got recalled to base. Ram had asked permission to take Rand home but permission was denied, there had been an attack on their base and everyone was needed to put things back to right. When Rand saw Ram’s face and remembered that Sherri was probably on the base he told him not to give it another thought. About an hour later as Rand made it to Lee, Florida and then got a lift as far as River Road.

He started walking again and was a couple of miles further when he ran into Mitch who had come to collect some horses that had gotten loose from a string of them that Bradley and Hoss had brought for a “calvary” group to use. It took them a while, people kept stopping them for news, but Rand finally made it home. Last night was the first night he had slept under a roof since the morning he left.

A couple of hours after he went to bed he started coughing and about two this morning he started running a fever. I don’t know if it is a relapse of the virus or if this is just paybacks his body is giving him for sleeping outside for a couple of nights. Either way, like I said, he is in bed until I say so.

Actually he slept off and on all day and now he is asleep again and I hope for the night. His color is better … I think that is what you call it when somebody that has been sick and pale looks more natural anyway … and his fever is gone. He ate better today too. I made some garlic broth and he said that opened up his sinuses about as well as the anise tea did for his chest. It has cooled down the last couple of nights so I don’t have the fan turned on.

While Rand slept off and on today I did laundry and picked more beans and made some more applesauce. All the talking about babies that Cassie did made me wonder just what are the babies around here going to eat when there isn’t any formula or baby food to buy. I looked in Momma’s notes but didn’t find anything on babies, I guess because she was through, but I did find something in one of the dehydrator books. You can dry veggies to the crispy critter phase and then when you need baby food you can put them through a grinder to make a powder and then reconstitute the powder into pureed baby food. Fruits are just easier to can in their pureed form from what I understand which is one of the reasons that I’m doing more applesauce. The other reason is that applesauce can replace some of the fat that is called for in some cakes and stuff. Better to be prepared with an alternative before you need it I think.

I tried a different bread recipe today. I found it in Momma’s files and the name is what got me to try it. It is called Spinster’s Bread. You take two eggs, one quart of flour, two tablespoonfuls of shortening, one tablespoonful of salt, one teacupful of yeast sponge (which was an experiment I started the other day), and one cup of sweet milk (made from the whole powdered milk. Mix into a soft dough, let rise; mold into loaves, let rise until light then bake it.

I needed to heat some more water for Rand to take another soak in the tub since he’d been sweating so much and because I needed to wash the sheets off of the bed (clean Rand on clean sheets made him a happy boy) so I baked the bread in the princess. I just wish it was going to be cool enough to use that stove year around. It is really easy to bake in. Or, maybe what I could do is keep my bread baking down to one day a week and heating the house up one day a week might not be too bad. Hmmm … I think I’m going hunting in my Momma’s books and see if any of them say what pioneer women did about that.


October 1st – New month, new lesson; don’t handle hot peppers without gloves on and keep your hands away from your eyes too. Don’t ask me how I know. You don’t really want to know. Those jalapenos were worse than any onions I’ve ever chopped. But I got a bunch of half pints of canned peppers and some jelly jars of jalapeno jelly.


October 2nd – There weren’t any church services yesterday. Assuming circumstances allow Pastor Ken, who came by yesterday making his rounds, said that an organized service will be held on the second and forth Sunday each month. People are free to hold a home church meeting if they wish, in fact he is encouraging it.

When the Pastor listened to Rand’s chest he shook his head and then asked me what I had done to help him break the congestion up. I told him about the anise tea and he said to be careful with that because too much could be bad, especially for children, because it has a narcotic effect. I told him he had one cup in the morning and then one cup in the early afternoon and that was all.

The pastor is apparently familiar with a lot of home remedies since he’s been serving in the community for a number of years, especially amongst the older folks who all but survive on stuff like that some times. He was heading back to Momma O’s so I sent him with a bucket of apples, a bag of beans, and some jalapenos. I figure they can work any fussbudgeting amongst themselves. Pastor Ken is the closest thing to a doctor we have access to and when he stops by I like to feed him or at least send him off with something useful. He is also our preacher and we are responsible for supporting him so he can serve the community. Not everyone can so those of us that can need to step up.

After the pastor left I asked Rand who was sitting in the rocker getting his wind back after dealing with the animals, if what I was doing was OK. He said, “Honey, you do exactly what you feel led to do. You feel that way for some reason and Ken seems grateful now rather than embarrassed, like he feels like someone appreciates the position he is in. Momma O will make sure he gets fed and the donations will make sure he isn’t a burden on their household.”

It makes me feel better to know he wasn’t upset that I did it without asking him. It also makes me feel better to see that Rand’s appetite is coming back. For dinner tonight I used a quart of ground venison that I put up last time and made sloppy joes; instead of buns I had to put it on biscuits but it was still good. I don’t have any fresh potatoes to make fries with but I’m still pulling purple top turnips and I made turnip fries. I’d run across it in my Momma’s notes. She got the recipe from someone named “Night Walker.” I presume that means she got the recipe online someplace. Momma had friends all over.

To make the turnip fries you peel and slice the turnips just like you would potato fries. Then you toss them in olive oil and sprinkle with the same seasonings you like on your fries. I’m old-fashioned and just like salt and pepper on mine. Then you bake them until crispy … about fifteen minutes in a 375 degree oven.

To go with the fries I also fried some cucumber strips. Basically you cut a cucumber into long then strips and bread it on both sides with your favorite breading mix. I’m partial to flour mixed with salt and pepper but I’ve also done this with cornmeal at the diner on fish fry Fridays. Then you fry the floured strips in a skillet. The cleaner the grease the fresher the taste but one of the guys that came in regularly always asked us to fry some up with bacon grease left over from breakfast. He called them heart attack salad sticks.

Speaking of meat and fat, Rand likes the way the ham and stuff looks in the can that I did. Rand smoked the meat for flavor and then we spent a day cutting it and canning it. It doesn’t look very pretty to me but Rand said compared to some he’d seen done there was hardly any wastefulness to what was in the jar at all. Whoever heard of getting romantic feelings while standing in a pantry full of jars. I feel silly but it makes me feel good when he says things like that. He said if we can put off butchering until December … which is what Uncle George is shooting for apparently … we’ll be able to “country cure” some meats so that they can keep without refrigeration.

“Uncle George sure is glad he ordered in bulk last time he got his supplies. We’ve got plenty of what we need for a while … maybe two, three years or more depending on the animal situation and how much butchering for fresh use we have to do. We’ve always dried cured but Mr. Coffey was mentioning that there is a wet cure for doing pork that the poor folks used to use. I’ll have to ask him if he can remember it.”

“Oh, you’ve seen him? How’s he doing? Did he get the rest of the sorghum in and the syrup finished up?”

“Yeah. It’s a good thing his grandson and his family showed up. Brendon and I had a hard time getting everything done and he’s got about ten acres of corn that he is going to need to bring in too. Most of his animals are free-range these days so the corn will probably go into his family’s belly. Our corn is looking pretty good but I sure hope my feed holds out. Which reminds me, it doesn’t look like you used as much as I expected while I was gone.”

“I fed Hatchet, Lou, and Bud like you told me to but the flock and the goats I’ve been giving my gardening scraps and they seem to do just fine. We might need to move the goats again in the next couple of days but they don’t seem to be hurting. Fraidy and Woofer eat whatever they can catch or kitchen scraps.”

“What kind of garden scraps are you feeding them that they aren’t wanting feed?!”

“Oh anything that I used to throw on the compost pile. They really liked the green bean stuff and the chickens were in hog heaven over the cantaloupe rinds. They also like the apple peels, cores, and the chunks I have to cut out. “

“OK, that’s fine just … I’m not criticizing, but do me a favor, keep giving them a little bit of feed until we find a balance between them being totally free range and totally grain fed. Especially don’t give them any of the peppers or egg shells.”

“I don’t want the chickens to turn cannibal! Of course I’m not going to give them the egg shells. And well … I was afraid the peppers would give them a belly ache so I didn’t give them that either.”

“Good. Look, I know … uh, I didn’t hurt your …”

“No. I just wish I wasn’t so stupid about all of this stuff and …”

“I don’t want to hear that again!”

“Huh?”

“Don’t say you’re stupid. You’re inexperienced and if I’d thought about it we would have gone over it ahead of time. How many eggs are you getting from the hens?”

“Well, only about one or two because Momma Hen and that other broody cranky one want to sit on theirs.”

“Sounds like they need more feed. We’ll work it out. The hens aren’t going to give an egg a day but one every couple of days should be the minimum. And they might be slowing down for the molt season too. I’m not sure, I’ve never kept bantams. I think they are fairly much like regular sized chickens but I can’t say absolutely for certain. Let that broody hen have the next couple and see if she can hatch them but by the end of the month we’ll collect everything they make and use them fresh. I don’t want to have chicks too far into the cool weather or they’ll die.”

It’s stuff like this I’m grateful that Rand knows. I could figure it out I think but not without a lot of mistakes along the way. And I’d hate to intentionally cause the death of a hen or chick by doing the wrong thing.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 49

October 3rd – Rand went to sleep really early, sun wasn’t even completely down. I think he overdid it. I tried not to be so bossy and bother him after a certain point today but it sure was hard not to say “I told you so.” No good could come of that. He was already feeling a little low.

I found out Rand doesn’t like to think he has any weakness … or at least any weaknesses that he doesn’t already beat himself up over. Uncle George came by today – actually had several people stop by – and I could tell Rand was getting bent out of shape because of the lecture he got about his health and “thinking he is invincible.” But Uncle George didn’t have to heap coals on top of coals by ride him about other stuff too.

I can see Uncle George’s point but I don’t think he needed to be quite as rough on Rand as he was. He fussed about Rand not taking it easy and then fussed because of all the things that haven’t been done yet … fences put up, pole barn, gates reinforced, green house built, etc. I started hurting my feelings too. I know we have that that need doing but life seems to keep getting in the way.

“And on top of this I hear it was Kiri that had to take care of those men that hurt Cassie Henderson. You and Brendon, always running off to work someplace else when there’s work that needs doing at home.”

Rand didn’t explain or defend himself and I didn’t know how without making things worse. Anyone else I would have popped off at them but I’m trying really hard not to say stuff that could cause problems with Rand’s family. After Uncle George delivered his lecture and left – with a bag of apples for Janet and the boys – Rand and I went back to the garden to finish what we’d started first thing this morning. I couldn’t stop myself from asking though, “Rand, what was your uncle so … so … ?”

After he sighed he answered, “That’s just the way he is. He gets worried and it just comes off like that.”

“Well, he doesn’t have to be so critical. We’ve got a lot done that wasn’t and … “

“Don’t take it personal Babe, he was talking to me.”

“I don’t care … and that makes it even worse. We’re in this together. And what’s up with the crack about you and Brendon running around? You were working hard! And it brought in things we didn’t have. Doesn’t that mean something to him? In case I didn’t say it means a lot to me.”

That got a smile and he leaned over and kissed me then said, “Uncle George has a full-blown ranch Honey, with a good number of animals. It takes a lot of work. He used to hire experienced ranch hands that helped him out but he can’t do that now. A lot of them are dead, gone, or trying to make it on their own places or need to work on their family’s places. Look at it this way, when I went off to college he wound up having to hire three different guys to do what I used to do for free … one for morning work, one for evening work, and one who only worked on the weekends or when the other guys needed off. Even if he could find someone these days he can’t pay them anything, money is next to useless. Guys smart enough to work a ranch or farm are gathering stuff to do it on their own these days. Even if he could get some live-in help, they’re going to want more than room and board and Uncle George figures he’s stretched thin enough just feeding everyone he has over there now … and with two babies on the way … “

“Make that three. I guess you weren’t listening when he complained that LauraBeth is sick all the time now too.”

“Oh Lord, poor Uncle George. Look, the workload is one of the reasons that he is looking to cull some of his animals. He needs to make his herds more manageable with the number of hands he has. The other thing is that he doesn’t know whether he is going to be able to feed them or not beyond this winter. He has hay, silage, and feed to make it to spring but after that … who knows?” And with the recent round of illness and no magic cure for Janet … he’s worried about the future and it makes him cranky. And let’s be honest, there’s some truth to his criticism too.

“Rand!”

“Don’t go getting upset. I try and take what he says as a constructive critique and not get too awful upset about it. I have been putting off the fence and some of the other projects we talked about. I still haven’t built that second smokehouse even though all of the supplies are lying over there in that pile. Now that it isn’t in the upper 90s every day I need to start digging fence post holes and setting posts for the heifer and calf to have a place to go during the day. And I need to build real stalls in the barn for bringing them in at night. And I should … “

“And just where does Uncle George expect us to come up with the materials for these projects I’d like to know?”

Rand laughed, “I wished you’d been around the last time Mr. Winston laid into me for being a leech on Uncle George.” With a sigh he continued, “I’m going to salvage what supplies I can and after that it may come down to making our own. I want to put a gate at the end of the road and have it open up into that eighty next to us and then fence in that area around the pond. Adding that area to your … ok, ok, our … acreage shouldn’t be a problem. I talked to Mr. Henderson about it and he says for a fact the whole branch of the family that used to own that land are dead or so long gone that they might as well be for the foreseeable future. If we fence it in we’ll get pasture and a year-round source for animals to go with all of the scrub and palmetto.”

“Will that be enough to keep the cows fed?”

“Sure. Florida cows used to survive on scrub oaks and palmetto alone in the early days and we’ll have hay from what you call the hayfield to supplement them and the other animals. And if the oats don’t make seed heats we can make oat hay out of it. If I have to I find an area that has gone to seed, mow it, then bring it home and sprinkle it all over and hopefully we’ll get some seeded pasture that way. Getting that fence done is going to be work but that old hand auger out in the barn should help.”

“Auger. Oh, is that the thing that looks like a cross between a jackhammer and a giant drill bit?”

“Yep, that’s the one. If the sand is too soft and dry I might still wind up doing some of the holes with a post hole digger. First I’ve got to get the posts.”

He was doing that very thing this afternoon when first Ram and then Mr. Henderson and Mitch Peters came by. I asked Ram about his wife and he said Sherri had come out OK and then he went across the field to talk to Rand. It was funny to see Ram riding a mule. He said he was a Belgian mule and that if I thought seeing a guy in uniform on riding a mule was funny, I should see them moving supplies down the interstate using donkey trains. I believe that would be an unusual sight but doesn’t really surprise me. Donkeys used to be raised as companion animals all over in this area of the state and now you can see people in little donkey pulled carts when they come to church. Momma O has a pet donkey she called Beulah and it wears an old straw hat to keep the sun out of its eyes.

Mr. Henderson came by not too long after Ram left to talk to Rand. I was starting herb seeds that Momma O gave me in some pots. With a nod of his head he sent Mitch off to talk to Rand. I didn’t think anything of it at first and offered him some tea up on the porch.

“Much obliged. Girly I … well, I came by to thank you … for what you did for Cassie.”

I told Mr. Henderson people were making too much of it. I didn’t do it because it was Cassie, I did it because it was the right thing to do and because I was there and could.

“Ayup, figured you’d say something of the sort. But now I gotta ask you something and I’d like the full truth of it if you please. I need to know what happened, in detail, and no making excuses for anybody, not even Cassie.”

I told him and didn’t sugar coat anything. He nodded his head and looked off towards the tree tops. “Well, I’m sorry for the trouble Cassie caused you … no … don’t try to say it wasn’t a bother because … well, I know you didn’t complain or even say anything about it but I know my Cassie. I’ve known for a few years she’s spoiled. Didn’t want to see it at first and when I did didn’t think there was any harm in it. She was all I had left of my kids … lost my daughter and both my sons before I should have, lost their mother too. I just …”

I didn’t know what to say. This was family business and I wasn’t used to people just saying stuff all out in the open like that.

“Things are going to have to change. World isn’t what it was not that long ago. I figure I’ll have Cassie with me one way or the other a long time. Mitch would be a good man for her if she’d just … but she’s still more little girl playing at being grown up than actually being a grown woman. And thankfully Mitch knows that. But a man like him won’t wait forever. I’ve asked him to consider it and he is. I need someone I can trust to take over things when I go. I believe Mitch is that man and I’d like to make sure that Cassie is taken care of at the same time. But that’s neither here nor there at the moment. I just want you to know that anything you need … anything … you come to me first.”

“Mr. Henderson … “

“Naw, just keep it between us. Your man has a lot of pride and I’d ruther …. Well, I was his age once and I know how bad it can hurt to have to ask. If it ain’t handled right he can be made to feel small and that takes some getting over. Mitch is talking to him now. I’m opening up some field next to me but it is all cross fenced in five and ten acre lots. I’ve got posts and fencing to the rafters in one of the sheds now, if he takes them off my hands he’d be doing me a favor. You see what I mean?”

I sure did. I still say I didn’t do anything big and that it wouldn’t have mattered who the girl was but I wasn’t going to turn him down either. Rand needed help and Mr. Henderson needed to help … hand in glove fit and everyone’s male pride was saved.

After all three men left Rand came back and was swinging me around the front yard like a silly man. We were both so dizzy we wound up on the ground laughing. “Oh Sugar, did Mr. Henderson say anything?”

I crossed my fingers and said, “Something about him needing you to do him a favor … his shed was full?”

“Oh yeah. This will work out perfect. I still have a heck of a lot of holes to dig but at least I won’t be breaking my back trying to dig up those posts to start with. I’m beat just getting the five I did manage to pull up. What’s for supper?”

Supper was venison shepherd’s pie made with some canned venison steaks, fresh and dried veggies, and mashed potato flakes made up and mixed with some powdered cheese to make a thick cover on top.

While we ate we discussed what all we had planted today. I got four veggies in the ground: Chinese cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, and spinach. Tomorrow Paulie is going to deliver some fifty or so strawberry plants from Momma O. I hadn’t realized it but she made a supplemental income by selling strawberry plants seasonally at flea markets. She has an abundance right now so Paulie and his dad (the other brother is in a wheelchair with developmental issues) agreed to trade Rand some of the plants in exchange for mowing their hayfield. Rand is going over there tomorrow after lunch but Momma O wants me to have the plants first thing so I can get them in the ground “where they belong.”

Rand has the first level of the strawberry tower built in the center of the garden. He made a big “O” with two strips of metal flashing staked so they wouldn’t come apart. In the bottom of the “O” he put a layer of gravel and on top of that we put the richest dirt we could find on the property that we mixed with some of the compost I made using the barrel composter Rand built (that thing works a lot faster than the compost pile does). Tomorrow we’ll add two or three more levels in concentric but smaller “O”s until we have all the strawberry plants in the ground.

I planted more herbs than anything. Rand said after he gets more of the other projects out of the way he’ll help me build an herb garden. For now I have everything in pots: anise, basil, borage, caraway, chervil, chives, coriander, dill, fennel, horehound, lemon balm, lovage, marjoram, tarragon, mints, oregano, rosemary, sage, savory, and thyme. I planted a raised bed of garlic out in the garden and I also took some of the ginger roots that I had and am trying to sprout those too like I learned at the ladies’ social.

The other thing we are doing tomorrow is to make “manure tea.” Sounds absolutely disgusting but Rand swears it will do the garden good. I hope he is right.

He just rolled over and asked me why I’m not in bed yet. Guess that is my hint to turn the light off.


October 5th – I’ve still got the shakes, Rand too a little bit I think. He won’t let me out of the house and not too far out of his sight when he is inside.

Yesterday was a wonderful day. The sky was crystal clear blue. The humidity was low. And we got everything accomplished we wanted to. Paulie brought over the strawberry plants and Rand said but a little layer of hay so that when the berries make they won’t be sitting right on the dirt. I picked nearly a bushel of pole beans, cooked a big pot that Rand and I ate on all afternoon, gave some to Brendon who had come by to escape his dad for a few hours and who helped Rand get the post holes lined up and marked, and baked a pan of cornbread and two more loaves of bread while I heated water in the reservoir of the princess.

We went to bed and then about midnight or so Woofer went crazy. I’m writing it all in a rush but it actually took a lot of time for things to happen. We got the shutter open enough for us to see that someone was trying to break into the barn and when daylight came we also saw that they had ripped up most of the pole beans and stepped all over in the garden. I don’t think I’ve lost anything except the rest of the pole beans but they were nearly finished making though it would have been nice to get every last pod. They also turned over the dehydrator and cracked the Plexiglas on the bottom panel. The goats were asleep in their pen and I guess the people never realized they were there in the dark.

The moon was not full but not far from it and in the clearing around the house they were completely visible to us. I finally grabbed Woofer around the snout and told him he better hush or I was going to lock him in the bathroom. From there on out all he did was the quiet growl then snort woof that dogs do when they are just this side of chewing somebody’s leg off.

Then listened to them quietly cursing when they couldn’t get into anything; that’s when they started tearing things up. Rand was going downstairs to open one of the windows to get a better shot when I watched one of them light something up and throw it at the side of the barn. It lit the grass around the barn on fire but not the barn itself which is built to match the house … brick on block and both also have metal roofs. But a grassfire would eventually catch other stuff on fire and we couldn’t allow that.

I go tearing down the stairs to see Rand sliding out a window at the back of the house. There is gunfire and sounds of a scuffle and fighting … I don’t really know how long it went on. Then it gets quiet and I’m thinking that Rand is going to come back at any moment. But instead I hear, “Whoever’s in the house … you want this dude to stay alive for much longer you come on out.”

I have no idea what made me do what I did. I don’t know if I need to grow up or start thinking things more thoroughly but all I could do was be furious that they were going to hurt Rand. I slid out the same window that Rand had with my rifle and the Smith and Wesson and a pocketful of ammo for each. I had been sleeping in cut off fleece shorts and it didn’t take long for the skeeters to find me but I didn’t realize it until later.

The moon was just as bright but I knew the yard a whole lot better than the invaders did. And that is exactly how I was thinking of them … invaders in home, in our sanctuary. They may not have been in our house but they were still in what we considered part of our home. I was creeping around the house listening to Rand shout, “No!! Don’t listen to them!!! Don … argh!!!” They had hurt Rand to shut him up.

I saw her standing in the shadows, looking towards the house with the gun raised. I could tell by her expression that the plan wasn’t to let Rand and I live no matter what they were saying. There, leaning against the a tree was one of the last of the metal U fence posts we had. It wasn’t near as hard as it should have been. I picked it up, came up behind her, and chunked it down on her so that the spade part of the post came right down on her head. She dropped like a silent stone.

I walked the perimeter and saw one more and gave him the same treatment but he was a little noisier when he fell.

“Bob!”

Bob wasn’t answering and I knew that I might have overplayed my hand so I went to one knee just like Rand had been teaching me, raised the rifle and started firing even though I was more scared than I wanted to admit that I was going to hit Rand. As Rand went down he grabbed his gun back from his captor and turned around and started firing.

But, unlucky for me there had been a third person hiding in the bushes. How I missed him I don’t know. Probably that overconfidence thing again. He grabbed me from behind but my adrenaline was up and I started fighting right away, never giving the guy a chance to get a good hold one me. He pulled a knife at some point and I felt a nasty burning across my back. I threw my straight back and caught him in the mouth and he turned loose of me. A black shadow tore across the yard and straight into the stranger but a yelp quickly followed and Woofer was thrown in the bushes. But the dog tried to come back only, “Stop Woofer! Get back!!” Bang, Bang, Bang.

Rand, bruised and bloody from his own fight had come up. “Rand! Are they all … “

“Two of them took off on horses down the road. Are you OK, I want to secure these other horses.”

After my nod he ran to grab the horses that were pulling at their reins where they had been tied to a tree right outside our home site. He put them in the corral after stripping them of their riding gear. He’d already stamped the fire out but I got water from the rain barrels and poured buckets on the still steaming grass just to be safe. The first woman I had hurt was still breathing so Rand tied her to a tree but all the other men … four of them … were dead and Rand put them in a pile in the yard. We had been at this hours … the moon had gone down and the sky had gotten that weird color right before the first real light starts to brighten things up … when reaction set in and I got the heaves. I puked in the bushes, something you’d figure I’d be over by now, and then stumbled backwards and hit a tree with my back. I always try really hard not to curse, Daddy told me one time he would know if I did and it has stuck with me even though he hasn’t been around for a long time and I might as well be all grown, but I sure said one then.

“Kiri! When did this happen?!”

“I don’t know I guess when I was fighting with that guy”

It hadn’t really been anything but sore up to that point but suddenly it hurt like salt on a paper cut. It hurt so bad I wanted to puke again. As the sun rose Rand got be back in the house and to master bathroom. My dark t-shirt had hidden things and the dark short had soaked up what I thought was sweat. With the light of day I could see Rand didn’t look so good either. He had a couple of nicks and his face was splotchy where he’d been nearly strangled. His clothes were torn and a mess too and we both stank … of guns, sweat, blood and nasty stuff that happens when people die.

We both cleaned up as best we could. I was lying across the bed in nothing but a towel around my waist while Rand cleaned the cut on my back trying really hard not to cry. I know it sounds like I’m a real wuss, always puking and crying or trying not to puke or cry, but that’s just the way things hit me. I’m fine while something is happening but afterwards all the adrenaline is like a poison and I have to vent it somehow whether I want to or not.

Woofer, who had been playing guard the whole time, came to hyper alert and growled deep in his chest and took off for the door. Rand grabbed his rife, and in nothing but a pair of loose jeans took off after the dog.

“Joiner!!! Call this dog off!! Yo, Joiner, you in there?!”

It was Hoss and Bradley. If Mitch had been with them it might have been Ok. I was trying to get off the bed and cover myself … and not having very good luck … when Rand ran back inside and said, “You stay put! Don’t you move! I’m going to see if Pastor Ken can come out here or how soon. There’s been trouble all over.”

So I stayed put and believe it or not dozed for a bit. I came to when a wash cloth was rubbed across my face, but it wasn’t Rand. “Easy chica. Poor Rand is in a state. The preacher man is away tending a family that got burned out over on River Road. Oh the trouble the night brought us all. It is terrible. Elogie al buen Dios that He was with you. So many dead, so many … and the count is not yet finished.”

“Who?! Oh no, who?!!”

“Easy sweet girl, easy. I should not have told you but, you would have found out soon enough. They tried to come behind us but did not think that our numbers could possibly be true and sent not enough. We have a few injured but none to death. Young Jeffers even took a turn for the better which is a strange blessing for such an event. Two families out on River Road were cut down, another burned out. The Harbinger family lost a barn and some livestock but fought off their attackers from coming in the house itself. Rand’s tio … the one called George … they were attacked but did not count on some surprise that the son-in-law Bill brought against them. The Winston’s were not so lucky; the mother had another attack and no one knows what to do for her. Your friend … Ram Diaz … oh mi calidad … were he not married and I thirty years younger. He and some militares are out rounding up the dead and dying of the oh so bad people to take them away. I am going to give you something to drink and you will feel soñoliento. I want you to relax and not move so much until the preacher man can see you.”

I did sleep for a while, maybe an hour and a half, but woke when I felt my back being tugged on. “You’re hurting her!”

“Rand I’m sorry. If I could to this without hurting her I would. Just hold her so she doesn’t jerk. The quicker I get this done the better it will be for her.”

Argh! Superglue in a deep paper cut. Man that hurt. That is literally what Pastor Ken did on the deep end of the cut. It hadn’t done much damage and he really didn’t want to sew me up with something he would just have to cut out later so on the end that was the worst he used super glue to hold the edges together to keep them from ripping apart at the least provocation.

After the pastor left to see about some other injuries Rand helped me dress and then locked me in and told me that he had to go check on his uncle. He was torn and feeling guilty … guilty if he stayed, guilty if he went. I finally convinced him by promising him I wouldn’t even open a door or window.

He was gone a couple of hours and was very grim when he came back. I wanted to go out and try and clean up the yard, Ram and his “militares” had come and gone some time after I had drank the nasty stuff that Tia Cia had given me and I was brooding about the torn up garden and wanting to see what could be salvaged. Rand wouldn’t hear of it.

Rand dragged the pole bean vines to the summer kitchen and then went and picked anything that looked like it couldn’t wait, mostly just some lemon cucumbers that I eventually sliced and tossed into a salad that we nibbled on throughout the remainder of the day. We sat in the floor of the summer kitchen and pulled the beans that were salvageable and the rest went into the goat pen.

While we sat Rand told me what he had seen and heard. “Uncle George and them made out OK; front gate is messed up but that was more from what Bill threw at them than anything else. He chucked an incendiary grenade through the window of the suburban they were driving. That was a hot mess. Mrs. Winston is … I don’t know what she is. JR says his mom has had some kind of breakdown. One of Ron Harbingers aunts has volunteered to come stay there and help out for as long as needed.”

“What about the Harbinger place? And .. and Julia?”

“They lost a barn, two cows, and some chickens but they’ll survive it. They’ve got an older barn they can use; not as pretty but twice as big and it has a loft. Ron got a little singed around the edges but nothing serious. Julia … I don’t know. Ron’s aunt says she’s OK but there doesn’t seem to be much love lost there if you know what I mean.”

“What started this? How many of them were there and how did they get so organized that they would hit us all at once?”

“Ram says they are still putting it together and the commander has promised to share information just as soon as he can figure it out himself. But, looks like some overlord wannabees that got burnt off their survival retreat decided to move south and take over a new area … but they needed resources and they thought we were plumbs to be plucked. That commander of Ram’s is … well, I wouldn’t want to be his enemy that’s for sure. Word has gone out that legitimate people better find a hole because tomorrow they plan on tearing this area up and anyone that can’t prove they are a resident with legitimate reason to be out and about better plan on learning to fish ‘cause they’ll be heading straight for St. George.”

“But what about the wounded? You know Pastor Ken won’t … “

“Already thought of. The commander has assigned the pastor his own armed escort, a nurse to help him out, and given him some supplies to do the work as he can.”

It went like that pretty much the rest of the day. Rand checking on things outside and me staying in. Tomorrow I’ve got to get out and get the garden watered and check out the orchard and make sure everything else is OK. Rand can’t do it all even though he’ll try.

We talked around and then about what we’d both done last night … or this morning depending on how you look at it. Rand said that we need to think of ourselves as being in a war where we aren’t the aggressors. Like this is our Pearl Harbor or something along those lines. A day that the aggressors are going to regret because we are up in arms and about to take it to them.

I told him I wasn’t too sure I liked that idea. “Honey, I didn’t grow up thinking I was going to have to fight for my life like this. I can’t just … I can’t just let this keep happening without trying to fight it. If we let them get any more powerful, one of these days we are going to find out there are too many of them to fight and hold off.”

That I could understand … I didn’t like it but I understood. I wish the bad guys would just leave us alone. All we want is some peace and security. Is that too much to ask?

Great … Rand has brought me another cup of that nasty tea to drink. I’ll sign off here because if it was like the other two times I’ll barely get the cup finished before I’m out like a light.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 50A

October 7th – Yesterday was a miserable day. I was so sore I willingly laid down in the middle of the day. Rand and I were both tense and stressed out. Late in the afternoon we had horses come down the road and we both went to grab our guns but pushed me back down where I had been laying grabbed the shotgun. He was at the door and ready when someone called out, “Yo! We’re looking for the Joiner place! Anybody out there? Sgt. Diaz wanted us to stop by and check that you hadn’t had many more trouble!”

It was a military patrol. Rand felt them out before inviting them around the blind that is filling in to hide most of the house from the road. I could tell one of the guys was fascinated and just kept looking and looking at the potato vine trellis is had built that was now covered with saw briars and Jessamine vines.

Rand was asking how they things were going while I was moving pretty gingerly to sit in one of the chairs that littered the spaces where the shade was deepest under the trees. They’re pretty sure they have rounded up all the folks that caused the bulk of the disturbances.

“A few of them were decently trained and caused us some trouble until we found where they’d stashed most of their women and children. The wind went out of their sails at that point.”

Rand asked, “What happens to them now?”

“Don’t know for sure. If it wasn’t for the kids all of the surviving adults would get dumped on St. George. We got some of our medical people looking for an alternative location. The orphans, and there are quite a few as they’ve apparently been operating this way without real opposition until this hit this area, might go to the adoption centers that have been set up around the country. Or the med teams might try and process them out to any remaining family. The singles may yet go to St. George. The intact families … well, that’s the problems. The social and med teams are trying to keep from traumatizing the kids any more than they already have been.”

I asked, “Would you all like some tea? Cookies?”

“Ma’am I wish we could but we’re under strict orders not to take anything from locals.”

Aside from being ma’amed like that for the first time in my life all I could do was think, “My cooking isn’t that bad.”

Rand must have read my thoughts. “Easy Honey. Ram told me the commander said it’s for everyone’s protection. Locals can be confident that he’s not going to run roughshod over the third and fourth Amendments and the troops don’t have to worry about being put in a position where locals might be looking for favors.”

The six men all nodded and one of them added, “And our med team says it will be easier to avert any cross contamination or infections if we keep our food supplies separated as well.”

“I guess, but surely y’all can have some water or refill your canteens … water your horses at least. It may be October but it is still a pretty warm day.”

Everybody relaxed at that and smiled but I could tell they were still “on duty.” Reminded me of how my father would get some times.

Rand asked, “Have you had any troubles with locals?”

“Some. Mostly folks are just scared and angry. They try to make us out to be the police, wanting us to get involved in neighbor squabbles or domestic issues and that’s not our job. We’ve been asked by the higher ups to keep that in mind where possible and to keep our noses out of people’s private business as long as it doesn’t infringe on our ability to do our assignments. Those violent survivalist types aren’t helping the situation any. Word keeps trickling down that a crackdown is coming. I know … I know Mack … Mack here has been educating everything that will listen that … “

Mack broke in, “That’s because there is a world of difference between the violent militant groups calling themselves survivalists and legitimate survivalists and preppers. The legitimate ones would be fine for the most part if people would just leave them alone. The others don’t practice what they preach with it comes right down to it. Live and let live and Constitutional rights only apply when it’s to their benefit. They’re stealing resources rather than sticking to abandoned property. If they think they need it or want it, that’s justification enough and then … “

“Whoa Mack, you’re up on that soap box again and it’s gonna get you in trouble one of these days.”

Another one of the men said, “Cut him some slack Bruce, you know what happened to his family back in Michigan. That group finally pushed his family off their land and left them with nothing. If that neighborhood of preppers hadn’t found them and took them in who knows what would have happened to them, especially his little sister. His prejudices come from experience.”

A little more back and forth on the issue and a little more firsthand account of what is going on and then they left leaving a bunch of quiet in their wake as Rand and I tried to think through what we had found out. Rand helped me to get the last batch of jars out of the pressure canner and put it away in the drainer to dry until tomorrow. It’s going to be a at least a week before I can lift anything beyond a jar or two at a time. That means even a cast iron skillet of cornbread is a no-no.

Not being able to lift much finally got me to do something I’d been meaning to try. I used to make these at the diner pretty regularly but it had been months and without a press I had to devise another way to make them. I dislike rolling tortillas because I could never get them right for some reason. The tortilla press made everything so easy, but Momma didn’t have one … first time I’ve ever wanted something and couldn’t find it in the house someplace. So what I figured out was to use two flat bottomed plates.

Start with two cups of all purpose flour, one quarter cup of lard (or solid vegetable shortening), one half teaspoon of salt, and one half teaspoon of baking powder. Use a sturdy fork to cut the lard into the flour mixture until you get a crumbly meal. If you want to get fancy you can use a pastry knife for this but a fork works just as well and you don’t have to dig in the utensil drawer so much. Once you’ve reached the crumbly stage you are going to slowly add one cup of warm (not hot) water and mix it until you have a soft dough. Knead this for five minutes … no more, no less or you’ll have icky tortillas. Make 12 equal sized balls out of the dough for taco sized tortillas or six balls for burrito sized tortillas. Let your dough rest for about twenty minutes covered by a damp towel.

While the dough is resting you need to heat up a cast iron skillet or some kind of griddle. You want it to be dry; “seasoned” is ok but not greasy or sprayed with non-stick spray. I got my two plates ready and then mashed all twelve balls into round shapes an eighth of an inch thick. I left the raw, flat tortillas under the damp towel and then turned over one of the plates I had been mashing with and set it with another clean dry kitchen towel.

You take a raw tortilla out from under the damp towel. Put it on the hot skillet or griddle and dry cook it on each side about one minute. If it puffs up in places just push it back down. The browning will be uneven but that is ok, just don’t overcook it. Once both sides are finished put it on another plate under a dry towel to keep it warm while you finish the rest of the tortillas.

Of course I did all this after I had made the filling up. The expression on Rand’s face when I called him to come in and eat was priceless. I had made venison casadeerillas … I know that is a silly name but it is what it was called on the diner’s menu. It was one of our seasonal items and sold out quick when we had venison in. I shredded some canned venison and using some of the freeze dried cheese (it’s not bad, but is better if you melt it or cook it with something else) and some of the jalapenos out of the garden for rand. Spread the meat mixture, top with cheese and peppers and then squish it on the griddle until the cheese melts. Move it to a plate and then cut it in wedges with a pizza cutter and BAM! Good stuff. At least Rand thought so. He sure scarfed it all up. He needs the calories that’s for sure. He’d been digging more post holes and setting the posts all by himself.

Today has been a little better. Paul came over before breakfast and asked if we could come over. Momma O wasn’t in the best of spirits and his mother was running short of patience with her and Paul and his dad wondered if Rand would hook his mules with theirs and pull the support beam out of an old barn so they could drop it before it fell down on its own.

Rand was a little hesitant at first but Momma O has been good to us and there are times when you just have to take risks and get uncomfortable to help the people you care about. You could see the relief on his face when Rand said we’d be there in an hour. As soon as Paul left Rand looked at me and asked, “You sure you’re up for this?”

Getting up on the wagon seat was interesting. Rand stuck a pillow behind my back but by the time we got out to CR49 I was gritting my teeth and holding on to keep from rocking. The roadway was a much smoother ride and I had time to gather my composure before we pulled into Momma O’s yard.

We were only there a couple of hours but it was enough. Mrs. Delois got some respite and was able to recharge her batteries and rebalance her temper. Paul and his dad got needed help and didn’t have to overextend themselves or their animals, and the job was safer. Rand and I got to repay some good deeds and that made us feel good. I also gained some more tips that I wrote down right away. That tickled Momma O and by the time Rand and I headed home mid-morning, everyone was in a better mood. Momma O gave me a Bible verse to look up – Proverbs 27:17 – she said it is about having good friends. Sometimes I don’t know if what she says is a warning or a blessing, she’s just like that and then the citations make me think … maybe that’s what she’s after. Rand said she’s been doing that for as long as he’s known her.

After we reached the house I needed to lay down for a few minutes but I couldn’t stay put for long. For lunch I fixed our last box of store-bought macaroni and cheese and we had some bread and jam to finish filling in the empty corners then Rand left to dig some more holes while I tried to get at least our under things washed and hung out. That bending up and down was not fun.

While I gently grape-stomped the clothes I thought about one of the things that is bothering Momma O. She won’t admit to it but she is lonesome. She’s very social, like Rand. She can be a little … hmmm, where’s that thesaurus … irascible; but she cares very deeply about people. She’s used to being involved in a very rich and very busy church life. Having to change when she counted so much of that as part of her personal identity is very difficult for her. Some of the programs she worked in were Women on Missions, Senior Socials, the church nursery, Awanas, community care groups, the local women’s league, working at flea markets selling her produce and plants … you name it she seemed to have a finger in it. Now she sits on her porch, few visitors come by. Having the pastor move onto their place has helped Momma O at least as much has it has helped Ken. I may not have the same personality and needs, but I can understand and sympathize with her.

I worry about Rand sometimes. He likes being in touch. He’s so happy when people stop by … well, the right kind of people anyway. Raiders don’t do him a bit of good. And it does do him good to get out with Brendon even if it has delayed stuff here at home. I don’t have a problem with him needing to be around other people besides me. One of the things I love about Rand is he isn’t me and that he does the people thing so much better than I do. I have an idea but I need to talk to Pastor Ken about it to see if it is realistic first.

I remember when I was little and all the family would meet at different people’s farms or homes. You’d bring a covered dish and show up in your work clothes. Sometimes us kids would have odd jobs we could do and sometimes there would just be a ton of kids to play with. With all hands working the job would get accomplished in a day that would have taken the host family weeks or months (if at all) to accomplish. Usually it had to do with planting or harvesting but I remember one barn raising, a time when we helped my great grandmother’s sister pack up and move to town after she broke her hip, and another time we went to Mr. Jimmy’s place (my grandparents’ neighbor) and helped clear an orchard that had been damaged in an unexpectedly late freeze. Since we all brought food, the host family wasn’t burdened and often there was a cook out or bonfire or sing-a-long with instruments after a good day’s work.

I sure would like to see Rand have some help with that fence. I bet Ron Harbinger could use some help cleaning up his place after the fire. I bet some of the older folks in the community … or the inexperienced people trying to make a real go of it … could use some help too. It would give us all a chance to exchange information and learn how much we can count on certain people too.


October 8th – Not too many at the church service today and there was no socializing but I did have a chance to bring up my idea. I thought I’d made a big flop until an older gentleman I’d never been introduced to laughed out loud and said, “Joiner, you best be glad I’m a good fifty years and some older ‘n you or I’d be trying to sweet talk your little filly away to my own kitchen.”

Rand, the stinker, came back with, “Well, you might want to rethink that. She kicks.”

All the men got a good laugh out of it but I coulda just sunk into the ground. Chauvinism has its place but too much of a good thing is still too much of something.

He teased me all the way home and I finally told him if he didn’t want to find out just how hard this filly could kick and how good my aim was he better knock it off. He got another laugh out of that but he did settle down about the filly stuff.

Both of us needed a day to step back and review how things are going. He didn’t dig any holes and we ate out of the bean pot I put to cook last night so that I didn’t have to do any major cooking except Rand wanted to learn how I made tortillas. He’s the type that is fascinated by anything new and likes to at least try it. He may not do it ever again in his life but he can have the satisfaction of saying, “I tried that once.”

Next Sunday everyone is going to the Harbingers to help pull down the old barn before a winter storm knocks it over making a worse mess. They’ll be a short devotion before the work started and then we plan on a big stone soup meal and I suggested that if we put extra liquid we could make plenty of dumplings in place of baked bread or cornbread. Momma O smiled at me like I was one of her prized chicks. I told her it was her idea in the first place and that made her blush when all the men started asking if she “was a seein’ anyone on the front stoop and if she weren’t would she be a interested in it.” She flapped her apron at them and told them all to behave before she scared them to death by taking them up on their tomfoolery.

I know that doesn’t sound much like a “Day of Rest” but people can rest on Saturday or Monday in remembrance of the Sabbath and we’ll still get a devotion on Sunday whether we are in church or not.

Rand will go over to his Uncle George’s place this week to help move some bales out of the hay barn and fix a few fences that need it and then Brendon will come over to our place to help plant the posts. Alicia will likely come with him and maybe one or both the boys and we’ll get some canning done up together.

As for what we have going on at our place, Rand is dealing with the four horses that the raiders left. No one recognizes the brands on the horse so they’re ours but that means that the feed we have is going to go a lot faster than we had expected it to. We really don’t need all four horses but three of them are mares (the fourth is a gelding) and Rand thinks that if we can keep them healthy there might be a market for good horses when things pick back up. You could see the businessman coming out of hiding for a little while when he brought that up.

Rand also fixed most of what the raiders broke. It wasn’t much in the scheme of things and that makes us blessed than most, including Uncle George. When I mentioned that to Rand I got a hug and a kiss. When I asked him what the hug and kiss was for he said it was for not falling apart because things are so rough. That’s when I heard that Julia is having a hard time adjusting to her new life. She is adjusting but just about anything makes her sit down and cry. He found that out from Ron’s aunt that is living with the Winston’s. I feel bad for her but at the same time we have to sleep in the bed we make for ourselves.

I’m glad that Rand was able to fix the crack in the dehydrator with some sort of glue stuff that was in Daddy’s junk room. I’ve just gotten to the point where I can’t do anything but dry all the apples that are coming in. Why on earth Momma planted so many doggone apple trees is beyond me unless she meant to sell them. I’ve giving buckets of the things away when I can and I still have the dehydrator full 24/7. Tomorrow I’m going to cook apple butter for the last time and from there on out, what I don’t dry I’ll make into juice or cider. Now that is a pain in the tush without a press but you do what you can with what you have. I’ve just been cooking the apples down and then putting them through a strainer. It leaves the juice cloudy but I don’t know what else to do.

Rand found a pecan tree when he was out getting posts the first time and he’s been checking on it. The squirrels are taking some but he figures that a week, week and a half, we should be able to gathering all the pecans that we can handle … assuming all the squirrels in the tri-county area don’t find the tree first.

I think the tomatoes will start coming in the end of this week. I found a horn worm or two ever couple of days but I just pick them off and throw them to the chickens. Rand said that we should let the chickens in there and see what they do. I’m going to watch them and the first time they peck any of my veggies is the last time I’m letting them anywhere near the garden.

We need to enlarge their chicken run somehow. We’ve seen barn owls flying around lately and I don’t know if they’ll take the chicks or not but no sense in taking chances. And Rand says that first really cold night we get he wants to go after another deer even if he has to field dress it by himself.

Gosh there sure is a lot of work to being a farmer and we aren’t really a very big operation. Rand said some farms run just about around the clock if they do animals and crops in any number. Gosh.


October 9th – Manure Tea is absolutely disgusting! A couple of days ago Rand filled a five gallon bucket about a third of the way full with manure. Then he poured the bucket nearly full of water. Gag!

This morning Rand said it was ready. We put one of those burlap bags over another five gallon bucket and then strained out the solids from the now nearly black water. Ew! Ew! Ew! The smell of this stuff was enough to gag a maggot. I had to take a cup of the manure water and pour it into a gallon of water to dilute it. This is what I used to water my plants today.

The solids Rand threw on the compost pile with some saw dust to keep flies out of it. I’m sorry, this is just gross. I’m not weak stomached … really I’m not but I’d rather fork manure straight into the garden like compost that play with it like I’m making mud pies.


October 10th – Rand went to Uncle George’s today. He was very stressed out when he came home but was trying not to show it. It was after dinner before he would talk about it. Mrs. Winston escaped from where they’ve been keeping her – she’s been acting very erratic lately on top of everything else – and verbally attacked him in public about being the father of Julia’s baby even though everyone knows that he isn’t. Ron Harbinger was there too and it was painful for both men. Ron kept trying to explain to “Mother Winston” that Julia’s baby was his but she wouldn’t even acknowledge that Ron was standing there and talking.

Pour Rand … pour Ron and Mr. Winston and JR and all of them. We had a few foster boys that came through the house that were suffering from some kind of mental illness on top of their other problems. It was very challenging to deal with them when they weren’t reality grounded. Rand said that Mr. Winston is pretty broken up about. Between Julia and now his wife shattering his ideals of them … Rand said he tried to talk to Mr. Winston but nothing would come out and all he could do was put his arm around the man. He said he thought Mr. Winston was going to shrug him off at first and then the man just broke down sobbing. Ron’s aunt seemed to know what to do and took Mr. Winston by the arm and got him back in the house.

“Kiri, it was all I could do to stand there when that woman was screeching at me. I thought it was Mr. Winston that was the problem all those times but what if it was his wife manipulating things. I just … “

Rand hung his head and I hugged him and asked him if he wanted to go talk to Julia and ask her. “What for? It’s done and over with. If I ever do, I don’t want you to ever think that I have regrets. The only regret I have is that I can’t give you all the stuff … dances, restaurants, movies … all the stuff that I did with Julia. I would be proud to take you to places like that Kiri. No matter how this all started I’m not sorry that we are together and I don’t … I really don’t … want you to ever think that at any point that I would have rather ended up with Julia. I just wish I knew why things had to happen the way they did.”

I can understand wanting to know why. I’ve wondered more than a few times why my family had to die, why I had to be scared up like this, why things have had to happen the way they have, why I was the one that wound up killing those people. The questions to wonder why about seems like it is so long I’ll never find the end of it. One time Mr. Barnes … may he have found the peace he was hoping for … told me that it is ok to wonder why about something but we can’t let the questions we have take up more time than actually living does.


October 11th – So much for Brendon and Alicia coming over. We woke up to a rain … and a cold one at that. Rand had to go out in it and take care of the animals and even with rain gear on he was soaked and shivering by the time he got back to the house. The weather hasn’t turned cold yet but the rain sure was.

Rand was like a caged lion all morning and through lunch. He was all primed to have Brendon help him get some more fence posts up. “We could have finished that one section off and then I would have had the whole pond area finished and ready for the wire! This day is going to waste!! I’ll never get anything finished at this rate!”

After lunch I decided that we might as well put the “wasted day” to good use. I wish I had a camera. Rand’s face was pretty funny when I came out on the lanai where he was sulking wearing that scrap that Missy had given me. “I sure hope your mullygrubs don’t mean I’ve got to stand out here in the cold in this thing for long.” I don’t think I’ve seen him move quite that fast very often.

We were going to light a fire in the fireplace but it really wasn’t cold enough to be worth it, it was just damp. But I did use Momma’s old warming pan on our sheets before Rand went to sleep for the night. Most days he’ll go to bed and then I stay up another hour writing in my journal and unwinding. I find that that extra bit of quiet helps me keep my head on straight..

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 50B

October 12th – Weather fooled us, only the rain was cold yesterday. Today’s weather was near normal for this time of year. It was in the upper 80s during the day.

Brendon and Alicia showed up today full of “whim, wigger, and witality” … or at least that is what my Daddy would have called it. They also brought some canned beef.

“One of the Brahma mixes stepped in a hole and broke its leg. How would like to wake up to that mess? We were butchering and processing late into the night. LauraBeth and Missy couldn’t be in the kitchen more than a few minutes before they would have to run outside and puke in the azaleas. Not Alicia. Nope my bride has a stomach of steel. Our kid is going to be something else, I just know it!”

Alicia looked at me and grinned her small grin and then just rolled her eyes. Apparently Brendon is going a little over the top with the “our kid” thing. It’s kind of cute. “Ignore him. I do.” And we all laughed, even Brendon.

After Brendon and Rand set off towards the pond I asked Alicia, “Are Missy and Laurabeth really that bad?”

“Yeah, they are.” But she smiled. “It just hits different women differently. I had a hard time for a while but now I feel wonderful. Like I could conquer the world, and the moon too. Missy is have a really bad time. I don’t think she has ever been sick much in her life and this is making her miserable. She lets it get to her too much and now she’s starting to get a little scared.”

“Of what? I mean … well … I don’t have much room to talk … “ I said after my brain caught up with my mouth.

“Um, I know this is kind of personal but … are you and Rand … I mean … do you … you know … Look, I know it isn’t any of my business but when I was younger, before we moved to Live Oak, Momma was a licensed midwife and I still have all her books and stuff. The last couple of years she’d given it up … Daddy had kind of beat her down … but she used to teach me what she knew. I just thought if you had any questions or were having problems or anything … “

Well, I figured if there was anyone that I could ask it would be Alicia. “Um yeah, Rand and I … well, everything is normal. We’ve been trying to be careful. Sometimes it seems like everyone else that was married about the same time as us … I mean I’m not sorry that it hasn’t happened but at the same time I’m wondering if there isn’t something wrong with me.”

“Why would you think that there is something wrong with you?”

“The accident. I’ve got … well, you’ve seen the scars. They never said I couldn’t , you know, make babies but they never said I could either.”

“Kiri, I think you are worrying before you need to. If you and Rand are trying to wait then that’s not a bad thing. Have you talked to Rand about this?”

“No! All we’ve talked about is waiting. If it happens I guess that is OK but … but trying … on purpose? I don’t know that I’m ready for that. We just got married! I just turned seventeen! And things … they’re so crazy. What kind of mom would I be anyway?”

“I wouldn’t worry about what kind of mom you’re going to be right now. Trust me, if I’d had my mind someplace other than where it was at … Brendon and I wouldn’t be in the position we’re in. But we did, and we are … and … I might regret some of it, but I don’t regret that. Thank God for grace and mercy.”

“Uh … I had cousins that were named Grace and Mercy … their mom used to say God sent her Grace and Mercy to teach her patience.”

Alicia laughed and we kind of got off to different subjects. At least I know I have someone to talk to. I never really had close girlfriends that I could talk about this kind of stuff with. Maybe I should talk to Rand, but not right now. Every time I go passed that baby bed I start itching.

Mostly what we talked about today was tomatoes. The Floridade tomatoes are coming in almost all of a sudden. We had enough to can sauce and juice today. The sauce we canned by half pints and pints and the juice we canned in quarts. Alicia said their tomatoes started coming in over the weekend but they got theirs in the ground a few days earlier than we did. Tomorrow I’m going to make up a big pot of spaghetti sauce and can it in quarts also. I planted two whole rows of tomatoes so I hope to have enough to make a bunch of stuff with … tomato soup, green tomato pickles, tomato paste, tomato conserve, tomato butter, tomato relish, tomato jam, BBQ sauce, taco sauce, salsa, etc. My Momma used to go out to Ruskin and go to the U-pick farms down there and get tomatoes by the five gallon buckets. A fresh tomato is nothing like those cardboard things you got in the grocery store. At the diner you could always tell when we had to get our tomatoes off-season rather than straight from the field.

The other things started coming in today … cayennes, banana peppers, more bush beans, more cucumbers, and the arugula. I didn’t realize how hungry I was for a fresh green salad until I cut that arugula. I felt like a nanny goat just mowing down anything that was green. Rand and Brendon laughed at Alicia and I but you could tell they enjoyed the arugula, tomato, and cucumber salad that we tossed together to go with the bean patties we fixed for lunch.

After they left I made the mistake of saying that I wished they lived closer. Rand got thoughtful and asked, “Does it bother you? That all you have is me out here?”

“Don’t be silly. Of course not. But it is fun to have them over and to share work with them. I don’t know but have you and Brendon always gotten along like this?”

“Lord no. He and I used to irritate each other and just about drove Uncle George up a wall. Whatever you think to the contrary I’m no angel.”

He was so serious when he said it that I couldn’t help it, I started laughing so hard I fell out of my chair. That started a tickle war and we almost forgot to take care of the chores that needed doing. I know there are bad things out there but being able to share this life with Rand … it makes things a lot better than they would have been otherwise.

Ram stopped by in person this afternoon. He had Sherri with him and she looked even worse than she had last time. Ram didn’t look very good either. I made them both sit and told them they were off duty and he was too close to being a big brother for them to squeak about “locals this and locals that.” I fixed them a fresh salad and then cut up some apples and made some cinnamon honey they could dip them in.

While they ate that, with Brendon and Alicia listening in, Ram explained what they’ve been going through. “There just aren’t enough of us to do the job they want us to do. We’re supposed to be patrolling the corridor between Tallahassee and Jacksonville with two other units but there is just no way. It’s like asking one state trooper to cover four counties 24/7 with no back up and no time off. This mess that happened here the other day isn’t the only battle that has been going on. Our supply line sucks. I haven’t been paid in hard currency in months and even if I had what the heck is there to spend it on? I’m lucky the commander is fine with couples because I don’t have any place for Sherri to go and I’m not leaving her. Her family turned their back on … well, never mind, that’s water under the bridge now. It’s just bad. At least we have orders that we’re to dig in and expect to be here at least through the winter. We’re setting up in Lee between US90 and I10. If you two want any seedling trees you better come tomorrow because we’ve taken over the land that some tree nursery was on. We’ve looked for the owners but we can’t find ‘em and none of the workers want to be responsible for the place since they haven’t been paid in a while either.”

Rand and Brendon plan to meet up and take Uncle George too and go see what trees he’s talking about. Brendon wanted to know what all he’d heard about the explosions in all the big cities.

“It’s a mess. Not much information is getting in or out of some of those areas. The cities that were still in pretty good shape because they had the dams to produce electricity are now hurting bad and for many winter has already started up in earnest. There’s been some light snow flurries out in Denver. Worldwide? Right now the hotspots are where they used to be … lots of ethnically divided countries fighting it out to see who’s going to win. A lot like when the Soviet Bloc started disintegrating only worse and more widespread. If we can get through the winter there might be so many casualties that folks will lay off and stop fighting for a while, give us time to regroup and assess all the damage. On top of that we’ve had some major natural disasters occur.”

“What and where?”

“Tokyo got hit by an earthquake somewhere on the order of an 8.4 and word is that the city is still burning. The loss of life is being measured in the tens of thousands. There was a corresponding earthquake just off the coast of Japan that caused a tsunami and hundreds are dead from that. Russia is suffering from a famine. The nuclear contamination in Russia and China may be manmade but it has set off a lot of natural consequences … there is reports of some kind of plague in China along the Russo-China border although tinfoil hatters think it’s a deliberate release by Russia as payback for the nukes. Who knows? Oil fields are on fire in the Middle East and the smoke is so bad they say that it is going to affect the world’s weather patterns. I’ve seen some of the satellite pics … whole countries over there are blotted out and hidden by the smoke. And scientists say the fires could last for years which could cause crop failure in that part of the world which itself would lead to famine. We’ve had our own problems with wildfires in the west and along the coast of California. There is some kind of rust or blight or something like that affecting rice crops in southeast Asia. We’ve got some kind of mold or fungus … ergot I think you call it … is widespread in the wheat crop this year here in the States. You want me to go on? It’s a depressing list.”

I didn’t want him to go on but Rand and Brendon kept him talking. I saw Alicia put hand protectively over her stomach and then watched Sherri do the same thing. Sometimes I wonder if I am the only person in the world that isn’t pregnant.

The conversation turned back around when Alicia asked about the children of the raiders. “The orphans were taken into custody by federal social services. I wish them the best of luck. Some of the orphanages are OK but I’ve heard other ones aren’t any better than workhouses. No better alternative to St. George was found so singles and families alike were transported there. The Colonel wasn’t happy about it but the General gave him no choice. We just don’t have the resources to make exceptions to the rules. Round hole, round peg, square hole, square peg … you start messing with that and it makes the guys in the accounting office really cranky.”

They left a few minutes after Brendon and Alicia did. “Show me around? Ram has some business with Rand that he hasn’t even talked to me about.”

So I showed her the garden and we talked. She’s nice but she never seems all there until she’s with Ram. I guess it might be stress or some kind of security thing but it’s a little hard to get used to. She fades off in the middle of sentences and then startles and looks for Ram real quick and then she is OK again. Whatever happened to her must have been rough.

They left shortly after that and I suppose Rand will tell me what they talked about if it is important. I hate being kept in the dark though. But curiosity killed the cat and I hope I’m smarter than Fraidy is.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 51

October 14th – Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes. Red tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes. But I’m not going to complain; yesterday Rand caught me sitting down in the middle of the garden eating a tomato just like an apple. I thought he was going to laugh at me but instead smiled and sat down in the dirt with me and took a bite out of the tomato I was eating.

I know that sounds foolish but it was just … just perfect. The garden is so pretty; all frilly green with flowers and fruits. It was warm but not hot and there was just enough of a breeze to keep the bugs from taking over the world. God helped us to take advantage of what He gave us. I don’t think I would have appreciated this if things weren’t like they are. I know there is a lesson in there but I’m just too tired to write it out so that it makes any kind of sense at all.

Yesterday Brendon, Uncle George, and Rand met Ram up at the tree nursery in Lee. They came back with Uncle George’s wagon full of container plants and bare root tree seedlings. The trees they brought home included a couple of serviceberries, some red chokeberry, pawpaws, hickories, chinquapins, redbuds, dogwoods, mayhaws, yellow hawthorns, persimmons, cedar trees, poplar trees, magnolias, crabapples, mulberries, Chickasaw plums, azaleas, rhododendron, elderberries, sassafras, snowballs, blueberries, pindo palms and a bunch of pine trees. They were so excited and I could have just cried. I remember all the work of planting all the trees with Momma and Daddy by hand. We planted (and replanted when a seedling wouldn’t make it from one year to the next) thousands of bareroot seedlings by sticking a trenching shovel in the ground, opening up a slit hole, dropping the bareroot in the hole and then stepping to close the hole. Brother or I took turns coming in behind Momma and Daddy with a watering can if the day was dry so that the little roots would dry out before any air pockets could seal so the tree wouldn’t die.

So while Rand went off to dig more post holes I collected the dirt he would pull up and use it to fill containers to save the bareroot trees in until it was planting time; that would be January and February for most everything though I remember planting pines as late as March one year. Uncle George took most everything with him. With no orchard this was a chance for him to have some edible fruit at his place in a couple of years. He also needs to plant a woodlot as all he has it pasture.

I was so tired yesterday and my hands so sore from carrying bucket upon bucket of dirt that I just couldn’t pick up a pen to write last night. And, I hate to say it, but this may be one of my last journal entries if I can’t figure out some way to fix things. I didn’t realize how many pens that I have been going through. I went digging around for a new one and that was went I discovered the problem. We’ve got a couple dozen pens and a gross of pencils but that’s it. Who would have thought writing utensils would be our first major loss? There aren’t any more to be had. Rand had a lot to say about “built in obsolescence” and things that run out before they are supposed to. He wasn’t blaming me, he knows how writing things down helps my feelings, but he was upset as I was about potentially going back to prehistory style oral history and nothing else.

Tomorrow we are going to the Harbinger place to help with the barn. I’ll admit to being a little anxious about it but it was my idea. Saying it is the Christian thing to do sounds like a copout but that’s true but there is a secret part of me that wants to prove to everyone that might be thinking it that Rand and I don’t have any regrets and that we are just fine … better than fine. And maybe I want to prove that to Julia specifically. I know it is petty; maybe I’m a little insecure even though Rand never has given me a reason to be.


October 16th – Wow, yesterday was … well, it sure was something else. Mostly good but some not so good though I won’t mention it to Rand who seems more at ease than he has been in a while, at least about all that stuff that happened with Julia. I guess he must have found some closure or something.

Rand and I talked about it we decided to only take some commercially canned veggies. It would have been easy for me to take something fresh out of the garden but to be honest we are still hesitant to let people know exactly what we have. The raiders are only one of the problems we could have as the weeks continue to creep by. Hungry people … hungry parents … are desperate people and I’m worried about that whole friends turning to enemies thing that could happen.

I did take two bushels of apples but kept them hidden under a blanket and some hay until we got the feel for how many people were going to show up. If only a few families showed up we’d have enough for everyone. If too many people showed up I’d either keep them out of sight or say they were for the children and/or pregnant women.

We started out just as soon as the first streaks of light brushed the sky. It was seventy degrees so I threw on a flannel shirt on top of my work clothes. Both Rand and I were armed plus I had my screwdriver and my wire cutters. You just never know what that kind of stuff could come in handy. I also had a pencil and a pack of index cards to write recipes and tips down on so that I could file them and continue Momma’s collection. The index cards are going to go the way of the writing utensils soon too only it is possible I may have figured out a solution to both.

The Harbingers live off of River Road back in there. Ron’s grandfather bought the land back in the 50s and slowly built up a nice farm back in there that paid for itself while he pursued a living running a small hardware store in town. Ron’s father was always the primary farm manager but when his father died without a will the Harbinger brothers started feuding between the three of them all of them claiming that their dad said he meant to leave the farm to them alone. It wasn’t until the other two brothers died that Jared Harbinger was able to take control of the farm free and clear by that time though the once prosperous family had eaten up a lot of the inheritance in legal fees and changing times. Jared inherited a mess but amazingly enough had turned his fortunes around only to run into the end of the world. Jared’s preoccupation with the family’s financial and social status left little time to take care of his family’s spiritual status. For whatever reason God gave Ron Harbinger the second chance he didn’t give his brother Fred.

We weren’t the first people to show up but we weren’t the last either. In fact there had to have been at least two dozen families there. Many of them came from the River Road area but there were people from all over; even Mr. Henderson, Tia Cia, Cassie, and Mitch Peters were there. Cassie was very subdued compared to any other time I’ve seen her. She stayed that way the entire time and only spoke to me to appear polite. That’s fine, I know I’m not the one that got her in trouble; she did it to herself.

Julia was gray-faced. I found out later that her father had hoped seeing her would help but her mother said some very nasty things where others could here. I never saw Mrs. Winston but I heard her a few times cackling like a mad woman. If she hasn’t had a breakdown of some type she’s the best actress in history.

I did like Rand asked and tried not to strain my back. It’s close to being healed but it still pinches pretty good every once in a while. I don’t know how it happened but I wound up helping by picking up fallen nails and putting them in a bucket to be straightened out so that they can be reused. Ron apparently had a hole in the pocket he’d been dropping nails into and every step he would take one or two would fall out. I keep bending over to pick them up but for every one I would pick up he would drop two more.

“Ron. Yo Ron. Ron! Hey … RON!!!”

“Huh?” I finally caught up to him, stuck my finger in the pocket of the carpenter’s apron he was wearing and showed him the hole and the bucket I was filling up with his dropped nails. It just caught us both as funny and he snorted with laughter. No big deal. He shifted the apron so that he could drop the nails in the other pocket and we both went about our business.

Right before lunch I stopped working and then went to the outhouse. When I came out Julia was standing there.

“You can’t have him.”

“Uh …. ?”

“Don’t play innocent with me. You can’t have him.”

“Please tell me you aren’t talking about Rand.”

“Rand? No! Ron … and you know it. You can’t have him.”

“Julia, don’t get all … whatever. I barely know Ron.”

“You didn’t know Rand either.”

“Hey! Look, whatever problems you and Rand had weren’t my fault.”

“Why do you keep talking about Rand?!”

“You’re the one that brought him up!”

“No I didn’t. I told you you couldn’t have Ron!!”

“Why would I want Ron when I have Rand?!”

“Well … well … you can’t have him. Ron is mine.”

Yeah, I know it sounds stupid. I’m putting it down to hormones … hers and mine. And to add insult to injury Ron came around the porch and caught us acting like a couple of second graders. What got me is Julia got this really scared look on her face and then burst into tears and falls into Ron’s arms. He just stands there holding her and I could barely understand what she was saying she was talking so fast and then I caught “you don’t understand” and then she tears off to go inside the house.

“Um, isn’t this the part of the story where you run after her to make it all better?”

“I’ve tried that, it doesn’t work. She either trusts me or she don’t. I’m done fightin’ about it. I married her. Why she can’t let that be enough I don’t know. She wants stuff I can’t give her. She’s going to have to learn to be content with that. If she could maybe we could go forward instead of constantly playing this same old song over and over again.”

Despite what he said he sighed real deep and stepped up on the porch and went inside. I’m glad Rand and I worked our problems out, I can’t imagine living the life Julia and Ron are living.

Lunch and clean up was the end of the work day, with so many people there the job went super quick. I remembered the apples right as people started packing up. There was enough for the adults to all have one and the few kids there were there to have two.

About halfway home Rand and I both started getting anxious to get home. You just never know these days but everything was fine and Woofer and Fraidy were sharing a rabbit they got from someplace. Farm animals one, garden destroyers zip.

The wind picked up yesterday around four o’clock and blew all night bringing with it a much cooler day today and the cool just keeps coming. I’m sitting here with an afgan over my legs relaxing after a long day on my feet. Two more apple trees started coming in and I canned 36 quarts of juice and sliced a new batch to go into the dryer. The wood pile is going down faster than I expected it to. As soon as it cools down I’m going to start canning on the princess to see if the stove is more economical about the wood. I hate that Rand has to chop wood and dig fence post holes because it is such hard work.

Tomorrow Brendon and the boys are coming over but I don’t know if any of the others will be with them. They and Rand will be planting the rye, triticale, and soft red wheat. If there is time Rand also wants to bring ground over in the eighty next to us and plant some rye and triticale there as well. The wheat he is going to hold back in case we need it for bread. I hope it doesn’t get that ergot stuff Ram talked about; Rand tells me that is some bad stuff and was a real problem during the Middle Ages before people realized what was going on.

Tomorrow I’m going to can some mustard greens and collard greens. I’ll deal with more of the apples too but I’m thinking of sending a couple of three bushels home with Brendon. I’ll take care of what else needs to be picked from the garden too. There has got to be a better way than having everything come ready at once like this … Rand said I can do something called “succession planting” where I plant something, wait a few days or a week and then plant more of it, so on and so forth until the planting season is over with. I might have to try that next season.

Tomorrow I’m going to pretend the guys are rabbits and feed them a huge salad with all sorts of stuff thrown in there. That ought to help my workload. I offered to help with the planting but Rand got that stubborn look on his face and said that’s what Brendon was coming over for.

The other thing I’m going to try tomorrow is to make my own ink. Rand brought back a few of the pecans that are starting to fall. If we didn’t have to plant tomorrow we’d go over and get them before the squirrels do. I asked Mr. Coffey and Momma O what they used for ink and they looked at me and laughed and asked if I thought they’d lived back in the dark ages. A woman named Matilda Ledbetter said, “Well, I’m older than both of you and I do happen to recall my Daddy not having the money to buy us ink for the school inkwell one year. He made ink out of pecan shells.”

She told me how it was done so I’m going to try it. Someone else told me you can make an ink out of fermented pokeberries in fact that is what a lot of soldiers used during the American Civil War and it is also what the US Constitution is supposed to have been written with.


October 17th – If it isn’t one thing it is another. Ram came by real quick to say goodbye. His whole … whatever you call it … base I guess … has been redeployed further down the west coast of the state. The only thing he was free to say was thank you to Rand – apparently Rand had agreed to make room for Sherri if anything happened to Ram – and to warn Rand against trusting anyone new that might bring in new units into the area.

“You did not hear this from me. I’m not even sure if Henderson would be able to pick this up from radio chatter yet. Cuba and Venezuela have some friends that are in a very bad way and might be interested in the natural resources to be collected from our country … and they’re getting mighty cold and hungry right now and may set something in motion we’ll all have to deal with. Also, new troops brought into this area – if any – might have a completely different way of doing things and completely different directives from what we had. I haven’t heard but … just … just be watchful and get yourself situated and keep what you’ve got to yourself for as long as you can manage it.” He sighed like an old man and then continued, “Most of us hoped we’d have the winter to regroup and maybe it would knock the stuffing out of the biggest players that might think of standing against us. I’m not sure that we’ll get that break after all now. Every day the play book is getting rewritten. And … and you two be careful. I don’t know for sure … I won’t even guess and won’t admit to this if you say something to someone else … the players in this Administration seem to keep changing. Everybody wants to be in control but no one wants to take responsibility. I honestly don’t know what is going on. We’re getting all sorts of mixed signals from command. Something’s up … but only God knows what it is.”

He left and I’m honestly not sure if I’ll ever see him again. As he left he leaned over and whispered something that put the weirdest look on Rand’s face. Rand wouldn’t say anything about it. We walked Ram to the main gate and then watched as he headed towards US90 to get back to Lee before dark to help Sherri finish packing the few things they had managed to accumulate.

We walked back to the house and finished our chores. I put a dinner of greens, beans, and corn pone on the table but Rand ate with a pensive look on his face. After we put the animals up and it got dark Rand told me to go in the house and not worry if it was a little bit before he came back in. Oh no, that didn’t raise my suspicions at all. Of course not.

An hour passed and right before my nerves snapped he stepped inside with a big box in his arms. He took it straight up to the dormer room and I followed, picking up a piece of paper that had fallen out.

R,

I don’t know how much good this will do you. I’ve never worked in comm but this was part of a set up that was used for local and some long distance back and forth. I think all the parts are here, how you power it up will be your concern. I wouldn’t even tell Henderson you have this, will be a good way to fact check what he lets out.

Proud to have met you and called you friend … and take care of the brat, she can be a handful.

RD

It’s a radio of some kind. Rand says it is an amateur radio set up. He’s never operated one. My dad has some notes on that type of thing but the main problem is going to be powering it and having some kind of antenna. That’s something I know nothing about and apparently Rand doesn’t know much more. Not being able to ask people is a problem. We’ll have to figure it all out on our own. I could see the wheels turning in Rand’s head the whole time until he finally went to bed.

It only got up to sixty-two degrees today and I’m freezing. Rand and I threw an extra blanket on the bed but with the way things are in the dormer room we realize once it gets too much cooler at night we’re going to need to move downstairs so that we can have the heat from the fireplace. It’s too cold to sit here any longer even if I do have a million things to write about. I’m off to bed.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 52

October 17th – Is this not the coolest thing?! I made my own ink! So my handwriting is a little on the rough side since I’m learning to write with what amounts to a quill but if I take my time it isn’t too awful. Rand says that he has some metal nibs in his stuff someplace that belonged to his mother. She did calligraphy for a wedding boutique for a while to bring in some spending money before she got sick. He says if I can wait he’ll find them for me. If he can’t find them then I’ll keep using the owl feather quills. But that also means writing at a desk instead of curled up on the window seat. You have to have the right angle for a quill or dipped pen to work which is kind of frustrating. No wonder all those historical figures carried around those portable desk thingies that wind up in museums.

Cutting the quill was an adventure. I followed the directions in one of my old children’s books about pioneer crafts. It was a lot harder than it looked. Rand wound up having to make a few more cuts using his pen knife. They call them pocket knives these days but pen knives really were used for sharpening quills once upon a time.

The “ink” was actually fun to make; I can see it getting tedious if this goes on for years and years but the alternative isn’t too cool either. The following recipe doesn’t make much ink but if I make too much at a time it will dry out. First you take all of the shell (none of the meat) from about ten pecans and crush the dickens out of them. You don’t need to turn them into powder but you do want them into small pieces. Put the crushed shells in a pan with one cup of water and bring it to a boil and then turn it to simmer and simmer it for one hour. I almost let all the water boil away so when the recipe says simmer they mean a simmer and nothing any higher than that. After an hour most of the water will be gone leaving a very dark liquid. Then you let the remaining liquid sit until it cools.

Next you pour the boiled mess through a small strainer into a non-porous container … like a glass jar. Toss the shells into the compost pile and watch out that you don’t drip any of the liquid on you or you will get a stain … so much for my one work shirt that didn’t have any stains on it. To this very dark liquid add one-half teaspoon of vinegar to “set” the ink and one-half teaspoon of salt to keep it from growing mold. Moldy ink equals major ew! The ink is a pretty brown as you can see.

You are supposed to be able to make ink from berries like this too but I haven’t tried that yet. I just hope they hold up over time. Momma O said that they also made ink from laundry bluing when she was a little girl … I have absolutely no idea what that is though I’ve seen it a couple of times in books; I thought it was supposed to make white stuff whiter so I don’t see how it could make a Prussian blue ink. Weird.

Rand and Brendon were at it most of the day. Planting in the prepared fields in the easement was hard but when they had to break ground in the eighty that is next to us, that was really hard. The wind didn’t help. Rand is a little worried that all the work is for nothing but he also said, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

That’s about how I’m feeling when it comes to canning all the greens we have. I fed a bunch to Rand and Brendon for lunch with corn pone but we can’t eat them as fast as they are coming in, not even if we ate greens morning, noon, and night. Next year I’m definitely going to plant the greens differently. Today I canned the greens in pints. I might regret that later but all I can do is try it this way once. I’ve found it takes about 18 pounds of to make nine pints for the canner.

First you wash the greens, a small amount at a time, to get all the sand, grit, and yuck off of them. Make sure your greens are fresh and don’t have any ucky places on them. Then after you are sure your greens are all clean, cut out the tough stem part that runs up the middle of the leaves. Blanch a pound of greens at a time in steam for three to five minutes. You’ve gotta do this or you might as well not waste your time. Momma had a note out beside the directions and she said, “If you don’t blanche the greens you’ll wind up with something as appetizing as cow cud.” The picture that made in my head was really gross.

You put a half teaspoon of salt in each jar then carefully put in the blanched greens loosely packed; about two pounds per pint jar. Next you take fresh boiling water (I used a tea kettle since the coffee pot was full of coffee) and pour it into the jar over the greens leaving one inch of headspace. From there it is the same as pressure canning for any veggie – eleven pounds of pressure for seventy minutes (pints) or for ninety minutes (quarts). I made a canner full for each type of green – collards, mustard, and kale. I was going to give some to Brendon but he says they have plenty of collards and mustard greens. I should have known with Alicia and Laurabeth running the garden.

When we were sitting down to lunch I all of a sudden got a horrible case of the giggles. Rand and Brendon were chewing on their greens and not saying much. This picture of all three of us with horns and mooing just sort of took over my brain. I had to get up and leave the table and couldn’t even tell Rand what I was laughing about. Brendon shook his head and said, “Don’t even try man. Alicia and Laurabeth will do that at the house. I never understand what the joke is when they try and explain it and that just makes them start laughing all over again.”

I like mustard greens myself though I’ll admit that eating greens every meal is getting just a little much. You have to eat what is coming out of the garden though. I took a jar of ham chunks that Alicia sent me and dumped them in a pot and fried them up a little bit then I added two bunches of greens that I’d washed and cut the steams out of and cooked them down in the ham and grease until they were wilted. Then I covered the whole mess with fresh water and some salt and pepper and let them cook until they were tender. It gave me time to make the corn pones and finish getting the white beans out of the Dutch oven. It may not be the fanciest meal but it is filling and I think healthy too.

I never was a French fry, potato chip, and candy kind of person. Working at the diner spoiled me … not to mention the zit issues. I bet though some of my friends had a hard time adjusting to a life without a fast food restaurant on every corner, sodas in the frig at home, and an entire aisle of candy bars to choose from at the minimart. Well, assuming any of them are left alive that is.

For dinner we had the leftover beans and greens but instead of cornpone I made tomato fritters. You take two sliced tomatoes, one cup of cornmeal and a half teaspoon of salt. Season the cornmeal with the salt and then use it to bread the tomato slices. Fry these up in butter until the crust is golden brown.

Rand is snoring again tonight so I know he is tired. He fooled around with that radio a bit but this isn’t like just plugging something up and it working. First he is going to have to figure out if the solar panels will run the radio, if they won’t then I guess it is a done deal. If they will then we need to figure out an antenna that isn’t too obvious. He says he doesn’t want to transmit so much as he wants to listen to what people are saying.

The thermometer says 45 degrees. Brrrr. I need to find me some warm jammies. I’m particular about my jammies and after the last set got ruined I’ve been sleeping in one of Rand’s oversized t-shirts. That is not going to cut it if it gets any colder.


October 18th – I’ve got sixty pounds of pecans in burlap bags down in the summer kitchen. Knowing that I’ve got about three months to get those things all cracked and canned makes me feel cross-eyed. Rand didn’t just find one pecan tree, he found a small grove of them. We had to fight the squirrels for the nuts but we finally got our share. It took us the better part of the morning but we did it.

I also had to watch Rand climb around in the trees like a monkey, jumping up and down on some of the bigger limbs so that the nuts would fall to the ground. I made the mistake of standing underneath a tree he did that to … falling pecans hurt. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It was cold and windy when we woke up and Rand laughed when he came back inside and stuck his cold hands up my shirt. He’s lucky I didn’t pour his coffee down the drain in retaliation. He likes the jacket that I made him for his birthday. It seems even bigger on him now than it did then but he says it gives him shoulder room. It never did get above sixty degrees today. Rand said it was the earliest cold spell like that he could remember.

We took the mules and the little wagon, a couple of long poles, and some tarps with us and then cut across two fenced eighties. We weren’t all that far from the property where the chickens came from. When we got there we could see that one tree had already been completely stripped so we knew we didn’t have long. We laid the tarps under the trees and then I knocked some pecans off the lower branches with the poles but all that did was tell the squirrels it was smorgasbord time. That’s when Rand decided to make like a monkey. The nuts literally rained down after that.

He shimmied back down the tree and we scooped the nuts up off the tarps and tossed them in the back of the wagon. Rand got so irritated with the squirrels coming from all over that he got his rifle and got a dozen without a problem while I finished putting the last of the nuts in the wagon and covering them with a tarp. Fraidy has kept the squirrel population down around our place and now Woofer gets a share with her so they take out twice as many as she used to do alone. Other places you go you are beating those nasty little tree rats off with a stick. People are even having them chew into their soffits and get into their attics. Once the hole is there then bats and other varmints can make their way in and you have a real problem, especially considering there are no more professional exterminators around or poisons to be had.

When we got back Rand cleaned all of the squirrels – well, almost all of them – while I cleaned up all the debris from the pecans and then put the nuts in burlap bags. When we were finished he moved the burlap bags into the kitchen for me and I started the squirrels boiling. When they were tender I pulled all the meat off the bones and then after that it was just like making chicken and dumplings only I made squirrel dumplings.

But Woofer is in the doghouse. He snatched two of the squirrels from Rand’s pile before he could get them all cleaned. What is worse I had just gone into the garden to check to see if I needed to pick anything that was ripe. Rand was chasing Woofer around the house and he shot straight at me for protection … and in the process broke the main stem of two of my brandywine tomato vines. It was just full of tomatoes too … they were still green but I just know they would have made. I could have cried … after I skinned me a dog for winter booties.

If both of us hadn’t been so mad it probably would have been funny … could have been on one of those television shows that used to come on about funniest home videos or something. Woofer is fast and he thought it was a game. I was squealing at Rand to get him out of the garden and Rand hollering, “I’m trying!” and just missing as Woofer took off in another direction.

Woofer spent the rest of the afternoon on a rope tied to a tree in the yard. I could swear that Fraidy came by a few times to laugh at him. He’s still nothing but a big puppy and he thought he was playing but we can’t let this kind of thing happen again. You could see where Woofer was crying because he was so sad. Rand didn’t have the heart to leave him tied up after dinner but it took a while for Woofer to get his normal goofy attitude back. He stayed close to Rand the rest of the night. In fact they’re both snoring on the bed while I write this.

Now I have the green tomatoes sitting on the counters downstairs too. I know I’ve got some recipes for green tomatoes in Momma’s files so guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow?

October 19th – Rand tested the pecans and he says they need to dry out a little before I start cracking them. Thank goodness! I’ve got enough on my plate. We put the nuts in smaller bags and they are hanging from the clothes line in the summer kitchen to dry a little more.

It got down to thirty five degrees last night and I was sure I was going to wake up to a ruined garden but no sign of it so far except for one limp bunch of Kale and that could have been because of Woofer. Rand thinks it is warming up since it made it to seventy degrees today. I’m glad; I’m not ready for it to get cold yet. Brrrr!

Rand dug holes and set fence posts until lunch. While he was doing that I did what I could to save the green tomatoes. First I started by making green tomato mincemeat. It used a lot of sugar (three pounds of white and one pound of brown to two gallons of green tomatoes) so I doubt I’ll be making any more but what I made tasted pretty good; but it also took two pounds of raisins and a bunch of spices. Definitely going to have to cut back on the “expensive” recipes.

I also made five pints of green tomato pickles. That finished up all but a couple of tomatoes that I breaded and fried for fried green tomatoes to go with lunch.

Mr. Henderson and Mitch Peters showed up as I was clearing the table but there was enough coffee and the squash pie I made wasn’t refused by either man. They came by to give a heads up that they’d be delivering the rest of the fence posts and barbed wire later in the afternoon. They also came to tell us that they were going to be increasing their patrols and if we didn’t mind they might occasionally set up a “camp” on the opposite side of CR49 from our main gate for resupply and or for rendezvous between patrol groups.

What were we supposed to say? Rand said one benefit is that when they do set up there our gate would be less vulnerable but we’d possibly lose some of our privacy. In a community as small as Live Oak is becoming however there isn’t that much privacy to be had once you step off your property anyway.

After Mr. Henderson and Mitch left Rand said, “Not what I was looking for but it will serve a purpose for now so long as Henderson and Mitch are in control.”

“Are you sure? I don’t know, it gives me the heebies that we might be being watched.”

“Honey, we already are,” he laughed.

“What?!”

“Sugar, we’re being watched by just about everyone. There are a few that would be happy to see us fail so they can have a sense of what they consider justice in their world. More want us to succeed because it will mean that their kids can make it too. Most of everyone left is just … well … there isn’t exactly much to take their mind off their own lives so they talk about others’. And it isn’t just the women doing it. I’ve gotten more ribbing because you aren’t barefoot and pregnant yet.”

“Oh, now hold on … “

“Don’t get bent out of shape. Mostly they are just kidding around.”

“I don’t care if they are. That’s none of their doggone business!”

“I know. I know … come on, settle down. I thought you would think it was funny.”

“Well I don’t. It’s bad enough that I can’t make up my own mind if it is a good thing or not. I sure don’t want other people talking about it.

“Well … you know, you could have said something to me. Is this why you haven’t started unpacking the room where we stuck the baby bed? Does it bother you that much? Are you … do you think you might be?”

“Oh Rand,” I said not wanting to hurt his feelings. “No, I’m not, and you know it isn’t because … you know … and if saying it bothers me exactly is the right word. It is just one more thing that people are trying to rush us about. We had to rush into getting married … which I don’t regret so smooth out the wrinkle between your eyebrows … then it turns out that we really didn’t need to because the government types were rushing things on their end themselves and have now called that plan off. We haven’t even been married three months yet; and I like having time for just the two of us. Kids change all of that and from what I’ve seen babies are lots of work! I saw what happened to the girls at school that got pregnant young. It was fun while they were pregnant, they got all this attention and it felt good, but when the baby arrived it turned into a completely different picture. And all this work we have to do to try and get stable? If I get pregnant I’ll have to cut back on lifting and climbing and stuff like that and … “

“I don’t want you lifting and climbing and …”

“Rand, you know what I mean. It was such a pain to get any work done when my back was cut. I had to wait for you to do everything. When Alicia was over here I did all the lifting because she is starting to show. And then, what about that night with the raiders?! If I had been pregnant I wouldn’t have been able to … “

“You shouldn’t have to start with …

“Rand! Stop it. You know exactly what I mean so stop turning it around on me. There are just so many things going on in the world and the idea of trying to have a baby and then raising that baby into someone healthy and good just … just … I don’t know if it is the right thing to do.”

“You don’t want kids?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I do, I just don’t know if I want them right now.”

“Then what are you worrying about? We’re counting days and being careful.”

“Because … because … I don’t know … part of me does want to … in a way … but I don’t know if it is for the right reason or just because … oh I don’t know.”

“Oh Hon,” and he hugged me. “Look, I think we’re just going to have to take things as they come. There are days that I feel so old and tired I can barely string two words together. The idea of you being pregnant right now scares me spitless. If it happens I’ll deal with and be happy about it too but if you want to know the truth, it’s not hurting my feelings any that we are waiting.”

Then I knew it was now or never. I hadn’t even put everything together about how I’d been feeling until the last couple of days and I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“Rand, the way I’m feeling isn’t just about having a baby.” I could seem him get serious and just a little worried. “I’m scared. Something feels like it is brewing. I can’t explain it. All I can say is that is my brain is starting to do the math and it doesn’t like the sum.”

We sat down in the porch swing and Rand put his arm around me while I continued. “Why would they redeploy Ram’s unit like that just days after they told them to dig in for the winter? Why would he take such a big a risk to leave you a radio like that? Why is Mr. Henderson suddenly stepping up patrols? Something just … it just feels … “

I leaned into him and then continued, “Rand I’m not crazy. Something told me I needed to get out of Tampa and get up here. It was one the best things I’ve ever done with my life I think. Something told me that I could trust you … right from the start you were different and I’ve never regretted it for a second. And right now … right now something is telling me to hurry, to build our den with thick walls and to lay in everything we can because something is coming. I don’t know what it is but that is the way I feel.”

Rand just held me. I thought maybe he thought that I was crazy after all but then he said, “My dad was a man that worked hard his whole life Kiri; fifty to seventy hours a week every week for years on end. He was raised hard and had to grow up fast. He could be cranky and cynical. His motto was believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see. He didn’t always have politically correct things to say when it came to people but one of the few things he believed in that he couldn’t see with his own eyes was women’s intuition. It was a joke but was also a serious thing between my parents. Sometimes Mom would just get a feeling about something and that’s all Dad needed to know. She wasn’t even having any symptoms but she told my dad that she knew she was sick. He took her to three different doctors before they found one that would listen to them. Mom was dead less than a year later and dad soon after that. Aunt Rachel used to help Uncle George at the auctions, she had a sixth sense when it came to buyers and sellers or whether a breeding pair were going to work or not and it wasn’t always the way everyone else thought. Nine times out of ten she was right. If your feelings are telling you that something is coming … we’ll go with that. You still have that list of stuff you were making? Good. Make a copy of it and I’ll give it to Missy and have her be on the lookout for it at the Trade-In Shack.”

“Oh Rand, thank you for not thinking I’m losing my mind. I keep wondering if I’m losing it like poor Mrs. Winston. And what’s The Trade-In Shack?”

“The last thing you are is anything like Mrs. Winston … and the last thing that woman is getting from me is pity and I don’t want you wasting any on her either. She brought a lot of her problems down on herself and now she … aw, forget it. Just don’t get drawn in. The Winstons are … they’ll suck everything you have to give right out of you. As for the Trade-In Shack … that’s what everyone is calling the house that Missy and Bill are using to organize all of that stuff that Ram’s unit tried to give out to the community. Missy is a lot better at that sort of thing than she is at gardening and raising animals so she and Bill have worked it out with the others. Bill works on security and manual labor, Missy organizes and runs the Shack which brings in stuff for the families on their road and Uncle George keeps a place for them at his table. It works out.”

“And Missy will help us get stuff on that list?”

“Yeah. We’ll need to be ready to follow the rules like everyone else of bringing in trade for any items that we withdraw but we’ll figure that out. We’ve got enough dried apples that we could probably have anything we want right now. But you just keep drying them … don’t waste jars on them unless there is something you want to keep for us. Actually speaking of jars and lids, one of the things that Brendon told me was he and Alicia went back to get the last of the stuff from her old place and in the back end of her dad’s old delivery van were boxes of what they thought was junk … turned out to be mason jars full of nuts, bolts, nails, paperclips, and stuff like that. Her dad was a hoarder. There were also a couple of cases of rings and lids … unused ones. Alicia has looked at the jars and most of them look sound. As soon as they get them cleaned out the family is going to split them in thirds … they’ll get two-thirds and we’ll get a third.”

“But … “

“Don’t worry about it Babe. It all works out in the end. They’ve been getting fruit from us. We are growing feed for the animals. We’ll trade work come butchering weather. Kiri … come on girl … don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. You didn’t see any of them turning down the bushels of fruit you’ve been sending their way.”

“I guess. You really don’t think I’m being … hysterical or anything?”

“Do you feel hysterical? Do you feel like you are over reacting?”

“No. No I don’t.”

“Then that is what we’ll go with. And if nothing happens then we’ll still be better off than we would have been otherwise. It’s a win-win situation for us.”

I sure hope he is right.

 

[Kathy in FL]

October 24th –

“Work, work, work, All day long,
Crank it up, back it up, bring it on home,
supper on the table and I eat me a bite
then we snuggle on the porch by the pale moon light.
A little bit of me and you doin’ all right.
A little bit of life.”

Every time that song would come on the radio when I was working at the diner we all knew to put our earplugs in because Ms. Belle was going to jack the volume up. Who would have thought my life would turn into a country song?!

The garden is spitting out stuff left and right, the chickens are laying eggs better and I have enough to cook us some real eggs every couple of days and our little flock has doubled in size and Rand has said to go ahead and start taking all the eggs and using them. We didn’t have to wait to get a boar for our soon to be pig herd … one came to us. Rand had actually been after some deer that had been coming around. He had put up a temporary fence made of a set some wooden pallets that we had found here and there and then put corn down in the middle of it.

I’m up but still bleary-eyed and trying to take care of nature’s call when Rand bangs into the house yelling, “Kiri!!!”

I’m half dressed and grabbing for my gun then the loon laughs and says, “I need you to help me! I need nails, hammer, and more boards!!”

I’m so clueless but I’m running around house side with nothing but my jammies and my boots, dragging hammer, nails, and boards over to him and there is something banging around like the Tasmanian Devil and Rand is laughing and a piece of goat pen up against the opening that he’d left for the deer to go in. And he’s laughing and going “ow!” every time whatever it is bangs against the metal sheet and then starts laughing some more!!

Well, we managed to get Taz penned in so he couldn’t break out and we now have a boy pig. Yeah, I know “Taz” is a stupid name for a pig but this guy is something else. Rand said he was domesticated not that long ago because he has had his tusks cut down. Rand won’t let me feed him yet. He’ll still bang around in the pen. Rand is building a bigger yard for him but he has so much to do every day that projects seem to take twice as long to complete.

The weather has warmed up too. It is back to being a high of eighty degrees during the day and doesn’t want to go below sixty degrees at night. This is actually really nice weather and we’ve been taking advantage of it while we still have it.

I can’t even name off the top of my head everything that I’ve canned since the last time I wasn’t too tired to write in my journal. I can tell you what I’ve been doing today. Corn. It’s short corn so I can actually reach everything. It just sort of caught me off guard because I kept expecting it to get taller but then it tasseled and the corn silks turned brown and I knew it was time to start pulling corn. But, just like with the greens, I planted everything on the same day so everything is ripening just about on the same day.

I’m really lucky that Charlene and Missy came today with Brendon. Brendon and Rand were doing something to the hay and also cutting some more trees. We made the plan at the church service on Sunday. Missy had a pile of stuff she wanted to repair for the Trade-In Shack and Laurabeth and Alicia had their pedal sewing machine going every time she wanted to use it trying to sew things for the babies that are coming, making diapers, sewing up the boys’ clothes where they are wearing them out or out growing them. Bill agreed to watch the Shack so she could come over here. I didn’t mind, I hadn’t seen her in a while. Charlene came over to get away since she hasn’t gotten to very often.

All three of them arrived early in the morning; I had barely finished clearing away Rand’s breakfast dishes. The other day Rand brought down my sewing machine from bonus rooms. I’d wanted to move it downstairs anyway so that I could do more sewing this winter. It gets cold in those bonus rooms, I remember that much. Missy was all business and wanted to get to it. I guess she wanted to get finished and get back to Bill as soon as possible. Charlene helped me with the corn.

We canned whole kernel corn and creamed corn. We also made some calico corn; mostly it was the whole kernel stuff. And since Charlene and I were doing all of the work I decided to make us a treat. Missy said not to get any food near her … she didn’t travel so well to get over here … so Charlene and I got it all. This is something my grandmother used to do for those cousins that helped out during corn canning season. Take two cups of sugar and one cup of water and bring it to a simmer, stirring constantly to dissolve the sugar. Continue to simmer about five minutes and then dump in two cups of fresh corn kernels and bring everything back to a simmer. Simmer for another eight to ten minutes, until the white end is translucent. Drain the remaining syrup off … use it to sweeten a veggie dish or cornbread or something like that rather than waste it, you could even add it to the pancake syrup bottle. Spread the sugared corn out on a plate until they are cool … about thirty minutes … and then you can munch. You don’t wind up with much, about a cup, but that is plenty for what amounts to candy.

Tomorrow however I’m going to do something different and Rand has been giving me fits over it all evening; reminding me, checking my equipment, etc. I’m going to ride Lou over to the Trade-In Shack and try and see if we can get anything on our list. Rand has already been and gotten a couple pair of shoes for himself, work boots primarily, and I need the same as well and some other stuff too.

The thing that convinced him to let me go is that Rand finally broke down and had to ask Bill for some help. Bill has his own radio set up that is pretty fancy. He just has to be very careful about the fuel and generator use. Bill agreed to help build an antenna for Rand in exchange for Rand being on the lookout and helping Bill design and build a biofuel set up. The trick was that the antenna had to be a “stealth” antenna so that no one would know for sure what it was.

Bill helped build one that is along the order of looking like a bird feeder only that was too obvious considering anyone that is into amateur radio as probably seen similar stealth designs. We’ve mounted it on the back of the house … an area no one but ourselves ever goes … and instead of a bird feeder it is camouflaged as a wasp trap. If anyone does wind up asking us why it is so high up on the eaves then that will be the perfect excuse as there are a lot of wasp problems around here.

The powering issue wasn’t as hard as we thought it was going to be. My dad was an amazing planner, he just hadn’t hooked everything up yet. Uncle Charlie was always making disparaging remarks about the way my Dad did things. He would complain something was too small or too big or wasn’t mounted right. Luckily the stipulation of the trust prevented him from changing the property in any way. One of the things Uncle Charlie seemed to despise the most was the solar panels on top of the house. He said they were overkill for the security lights, weren’t mounted properly, could have been utilized better, were an eyesore, etc.

Rand tried to explain them to me but I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to explain them correctly here. There are three sets of panels. There is one set of three panels on the barn roof. They don’t hook up to anything and Rand hasn’t found what Daddy intended on doing with them. I love my Daddy but the filing system he used is a little peculiar and his humor even more so which will sometimes impact where we find stuff in the files. The other panels are two sets of three panels mounted on top of the house. Each panel is what Rand calls a 15 watt panel. So on the roof of the house we have a total of 90 watts. We also have a bank of six gel-cell batteries. There is a thousand watt sine inverter, some type of charge control thingy, an amplifier thingy, and all sorts of cables and stuff in one of Daddy’s work benches.

And no, I have no idea what any of that means. Rand and I have agreed to split our responsibilities so that we can get more done … we know the basics of what the other does but until things are more stable and I have more time I am completely happy to turn over all that electric stuff to him to figure out. I’ll learn it, I’m just happy I don’t have to learn it right now.

What I do know is that I watched Rand on the roof hooking up the second set of solar panels as they were apparently just there for looks until Daddy got around to doing something with them. I suspect all of those folks that Daddy had over for dinner when I was growing up had something to do with how easy he found some of his “junk” to bring up to the property every time we came. And then once we got everything hooked up he said he thinks we can run the radio at least 50 hours off of one charge battery before we would need to switch to one of the other batteries in the bank. It also wasn’t fun watching him try to hand drill a hole through the hardy board siding so that we could run the cables from the antenna back to the radio.

The radio works, it makes noise, but we don’t have a microphone for transmitting … it wasn’t in the box that Ram left. Rand isn’t concerned with transmitting right now anyway. What is more important is to be able to hear what is going on out in the world. Well that is easier said than done. You see there are reasons why you take classes and go to school and get training for the field of communications. It’s not as easy as they make it seem in the movies. Rand is learning but even accidentally we are hearing things that aren’t so great.

Not too many people actually give out their locations so you have to listen for a while to see if they drop clues; for example if they talk about snow in their area we know they likely are likely further north than Atlanta. Sometimes people will talk about specific landmarks like a large lake or a highway or a national monument and then you can kind of pinpoint their area if you are quick enough.

Bottom line is that there are a lot of scared, angry, and hungry people out there. The cold only makes them more scared, angry, and hungry. Along the Gulf of Mexico you get the impression that people are digging in if they aren’t actually being forcibly removed from the coastal areas. There aren’t any fisherman on the Gulf … or at least none that will admit to it. No fuel means no fishing fleet. But some people still mention seeing military looking vessels in the Gulf … I just hope they are ours.

One night Rand ran across a guy speaking Spanish. He was talking so fast I could barely keep up but man did he sound dee-ranged. It was death to America this and they’ll get what they deserve that and support our brothers and comrades trying to free North America from the oppressive colonialism of the white Anglos, etc. Yikes. Annie grab your gun. It was hard to tell if he was just crazy by himself or crazy with an audience.

There aren’t that many people out there transmitting. Power sources are iffy and/or hidden and/or being saved and/or just about anything you can come up with. But there is enough. And what they are saying is only reinforcing how I’ve been feeling. And I’ve infected Rand I think.

He’s been going over early, early in the morning and bringing back wagon loads of cement blocks from that place that burned where Laurabeth had her wedding. He’s using some of the blocks to make more secure paddocks for the goats and pigs. But some of those blocks he has been making “blinds” with at different places on our acreage. If anybody notices and asks … and they shouldn’t since they shouldn’t be on our property … they’ll be hunting blinds. He also plans to build some in trees and is getting supplies from some of the tore up trailers and buildings that are further away from us.

I’ve got a couple of days before I have another major round of canning that I have to do. Rather than be at loose ends … or unpack the mess in the spare bedrooms and closets that can be done when I’m stuck in the house due to cold or rain … I’m going to the Shack and pick up some of the things that Missy has from our list. She says there is probably more but she just hasn’t had time to go through everything. I’ll be trading labor and dried apples for whatever I find to bring home. I may not be able to bring it all home, but Missy promises to set it aside until Rand can bring the wagon.

Rand isn’t happy about it but he knows someone has to stay home and keep an eye on things and he has finally gotten enough posts in the ground to be able to wire in the pond area and most of the palmetto area. Mr. Henderson is just waiting for us to finish that and then he’ll deliver the heifer and calf.


October 25th – OK, my shakes are gone enough that I can actually write and I want to get this all out.

Morning turned out to be cold; it was only in the low 50s when I left the house. The rifle was in a sling on Lou and the Smith and Wesson on my hip. I used to feel and little silly going out looking like Pancho Villa but not anymore, everyone dresses this way. Even kids like Mick and Tommy go around armed; each family has to decide for themselves how that works.

I also had a burlap bag of dried apples behind me and I was leading one of the mares. Rand has worked it out, we just don’t have enough feed when you add in the cows, goats, pigs, and chickens. The sorghum will help after it comes in and we hope that the other grains make heads and not just straw, but horses eat a lot and these aren’t doing any work for us as they are mostly some kind of fancy racing horse breed. Rather than letting them get fat and sassy Rand is trading the horse for an old incline horse mill. Rand said for all that it is old it is in pretty good condition since the man who Rand is trading the horse to had kept it up for demonstrations at the local county fair until he died three years ago. The man was looking for a way to leave the area and agreed to take the mare in trade.

Bill is acting as the middle man. The incline was moved to their property and I’ll turn the horse over to Bill. Bill will hold the horse until the man picks him up (he was there waiting on the mare when I got there to approve the trade) and now Rand can get the thing and bring it home tomorrow.

As I was leaving our place Rand made me promise that even if I had to leave everything, including the mule and horse, to just come back in one piece and not to take unnecessary chances. I got a good sized kiss to bribe me to come home soon and then I was off into the misty morning, leaving Rand at the corner of CR49 and US90 where he had walked with me. Lou kept the mare in line for the most part but she didn’t always want to mind and by the time I got her to Bill’s place I was already tired and out of sorts.

The boys had been looking for me since sun up according to Alicia and ran over right away and helped take the mare, the apples, and Lou to be brushed down. Lou likes the boys, they’ve learned exactly the way he likes to be brushed and they’ll talk to him too. I got a brusque greeting from Uncle George who looked too tired to be out of bed and then everyone scurried to get going on the morning chores.

As I come up to the Shack I see Missy hanging over the porch railing puking into the bushes. “These **** bushes should be the prettiest **** azaleas in the whole county for all the **** fertilizer I’m giving them.”

Bill grinned and said, “She’s having a hard time this morning. Come on and I’ll show you where everything is. She really is happy you’re here. I think part of the problem is she is trying to do too much. With you here at least she’ll sit for a little while.”

Basically, every room in the house had a different type of item … shoes, men’s clothes, women’s clothes, children’s clothes, household items, a “grocery,” etc. Even the small closets were utilized for things like office supplies, batteries (very few of them), sewing goods, and the like. My job was to take items out of the shed and sort them into the correct place by size, color, etc.

Did I mention that Missy is a bear for having everything organized? And to keep things that way she personally served anyone that came to the Shack. For instance, a man comes up and says that he is looking for a short sleeved work short. After they work out a trade Missy will has what size and whether he has a color preference. Because she keeps things organized she can go right to the item and be back quick which means she can serve a lot more people than you would think. This isn’t like window shopping in the old days. This is you come in with a list and the proprietor gives you a couple of options to choose from if there are any, you make the trade and then you get gone or go play checkers or something like that.

A lot of people have been coming to the Shack to exchange gossip as much as anything else. They also watch what gets brought in to trade and carry that information out into the surrounding community. It makes for better advertising than anything else available right now.

I heard lots of interesting news (OK, so it was gossip, my apologies to Pastor Ken) without even trying to. Mrs. Winston now has to be confined in a chair because when she isn’t she is violent and tries to hurt people and property alike. There have been two miscarriages and one birth in the last week. One of the miscarriages also caused the death of the mother and the woman who gave birth isn’t doing so well either and is running a fever. The neighbor of the woman that gave birth is acting as a wet nurse for the baby as she was just starting to wean her own toddler. This was a win-win situation because the baby’s father had been helping the woman out since her husband died in a raid. Everyone has a garden in or is trying. Johnny Forrester fell out of a pecan tree and broke his leg. I even saw Mr. Coffey and he told me to have Rand come by in a day or so as he has something for him. I assume that was code for the remainder of our sorghum.

People were complaining about their gardens being puny without the fertilizers and soil additives they’ve been using for years and I told them about the manure tea that Rand made. The oldsters cackled at my description but I noticed other people were listening in and that started a conversation on soil improvement as done by pioneers in this area and on crop rotation as well. Guess I need to talk to Rand about that one.

The Shack was closed for a few minutes so that we could grab a bite to eat and I hoped that Rand was doing OK by himself and would remember the loaf of bread I had put in the warming drawer after breakfast and would take the time to heat up the greens and beans from last night’s dinner that I had put in the little water cooler than Rand had set up for us for the few times we had leftovers or needed to keep something cool for a day or two.

It was after lunch that I started to see more strangers and less locals. These people would come all the way from Lake City and some of the other outlying communities. The rural townspeople weren’t so bad but some that said they came from Lake City were actually transplants from other areas like the relocation centers or the people who had stopped because they ran out of gas there months back when the big city exoduses had occurred.

Three in particular bothered me and apparently they bothered Missy and Bill too because I noticed a change in their demeanor and Bill told me to wait on anything new for a bit. I went in the back and decided to mind my own business, they had to have handled that sort of stuff before and start bagging the things that I had gathered. I found a commercial can opener that gets screwed down to the counter top; this will make opening #10 cans a lot easier. I found a washboard; its lightweight but it will work for almost everything but jeans and coats. I found a mop bucket that has a “wringer” on it. This thing is really big and had to have come from a school or hospital or something like that; it will sure save me some hand wringing of smaller items and maybe towels and t-shirts too. I found me a couple of pairs of work boots and some of that stuff that makes leather waterproof and keeps it supple. I found some more sewing machine needles and some other sewing needs in a box of notions that I brought in from the shed. I grabbed a couple of extra thimbles too and all the straight pins that I found … the long ones favored by quilters. Also in this box were a bunch of sewing patterns. Most of the patterns were for things I didn’t need or wouldn’t have any reason to wear but there were some in there like for unisex vests, aprons, children’s pinafores, and nightwear that I was more than happy to find. I was also happy to find a good scissor sharpener and sewing machine oil.

I had taken a quick look in the “grocery” and really there wasn’t anything in there that we didn’t already have. There were a bunch of pecans in there, a few canned goods, some oils, some dried fruit but not much else. People were keeping their food at home unless they hit a windfall; similar to what we were using the dried apples for.

I was in the middle of trying to figure out how I was going to get all this stuff home and coming to the conclusion that I was going to have to lead Lou rather than ride him when I heard, “Bill!!!” and then a big boom.

If there is one thing besides practice, practice, practice that Rand impressed on me was that a gun should not be in your hand unless you are absolutely prepared to use it. You don’t threaten and you never bluff, you are better off leaving the gun in your holster and running away.

I grabbed the Smith & Wesson and the rifle and ran up to the door of the room I was in and peaked as best I could. Because of the angle of the hall and where everyone was in the front room I could see Bill on the ground with blood on his face but awake and between Missy and the barrel of a gun pointed right at them. I couldn’t see the owner of the gun however.

“We don’t need to trade for squat. We’re gonna take what we want and you ain’t gonna say jack about it dude. And maybe we’ll let you and the lady keep the brat she’s got in her belly.”

I went all cold. I hate that, I really do. I can feel all the feelings in me evaporate and I know it is happening and I can’t seem to do a doggone thing about it. My temper … it gets nasty without my permission. I hadn’t done it in a while and I’d begun to hope that I’d conquered it … nope. My anger took over and left that part of me that has a conscious to go along for the ride.

I dropped into a crouch and got on the other side of the hall and slowly crept down to the end. I vaguely recall hearing guns going off outside and the guys inside laughing. At the end of the hall I crouched down to get below where they’d likely be shooting if they turned my direction. It would also give me a better chance to roll behind the big bar that served as the store “front counter.”

Bill said he saw me out of the corner of his eye and if he hadn’t known who I was he wouldn’t have recognized me right off the bat. I think he meant that I had my “ice face” on … at least that is what Aunt Wilma used to call it when I first came home from the hospital.

Then Bill said, “There’s no need for the three of you to act like this … “

Three. He just let me know that there were three in the room. Thank you Bill, I hadn’t only heard two distinct voices. I came around the corner gun up and aimed. I caught the guy with the rifle pointed at them full in the chest at nearly point blank range. The guy behind caught it in the side at nearly the same distance as he was turning away from the door. There was another guy looking out the window on the other side of the room and as he dived to get behind a chair, my arms had gotten shaky and dropped just enough to catch him in the both bumper cheeks. The other two were down and dead from shock or blood loss I don’t know but the third guy was screaming and squealing.

Bill in the meantime had pushed Missy behind the counter, grabbed his own rifle that had been taken away when he went down and was aiming out the window. I don’t know exactly what he saw but he yelled, “All clear in here!!” I heard in return, “We’re shy one. He dove under the house and we’re trying to flush him out!”

I walked quietly through the house until I heard some noise coming from the back laundry room was … and the back door. I looked out the window and just saw someone crawling out at the corner of the house and trying to take off running. I shout out, “Back of the house, heading for the tree line!” The guy didn’t make it. He tripped and went down and came up aiming to shoot when someone got him first.

I was shaking like a leaf; not from fear but from adrenaline. I knew from experience I was going to be puking any second and found a handy bush just in time. I look to find Mick holding a bucket of water and a washcloth. “You do that a lot. Are you sure you ain’t gonna have a baby?”

“Ain’t isn’t a word and no I’m not going to have a baby. My body doesn’t always like what my brain gets up to.”

“Oh. Missy usually pukes in the azaleas. She says the acid is good for them.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh at how serious he was or cry that a little kid wasn’t even affected by all the shooting. Ron’s aunt came over … I guess she is some kind of trained nurse … and said that puking was better than having hysterics which is what one of the women out front was having. Once she said that I did unscramble what I was hearing and there was some woman out front having a pretty good fit.

It was an hour before things settled back down. Missy completed the trades of the people already in line but then shut the Shack as soon as she could. She was fairly pale … paler than she is normally … and Bill would growl at anyone that came too close. That’s about the only thing that Uncle George looked happy about the whole time I was there.

He tried to go off on Rand letting me out by myself and I’d finally had enough of trying to be nice on this subject. “Mr. Crenshaw, I am not a dog that needs to be on a leash. I will come and go as I see fit. Rand and I discussed it and though he was concerned as you can imagine he trusted me … and you all … to do whatever was necessary if a dangerous situation occurred. He’s got reason to trust me on this as you well know. Now stop picking on him! Just because you are in a foul mood doesn’t mean you get to kick him around anymore. Was he your whipping boy when he was growing up too? From what I’ve seen … and not because Rand complains because all he ever does is defend you … no one speaks up for Rand too much and that is going to stop right here and now.”

Brendon and the other kids just stood there with their mouths hanging open. I don’t guess they’d ever heard anyone talk that way to their dad. I didn’t want to cause family trouble but I had about had it. Maybe Rand was as wild as he said he was as a teenager but he wasn’t that person anymore and it was about time some of them recognized it.

No one said anything, they just stood there. I was not going to play freeze tag so I walked to the barn and got Lou and saddled him up. By the time I was done with that and with loading the stuff from the Shack I was still pretty angry. Everyone was just sort of milling around. “Bill, I’m sure Rand will be by tomorrow or the next day to get that treadmill thingy. Tell Missy I said bye.”

I was walking Lou down the lane when Uncle George said, “Girl you just don’t understand.”

“Oh please, tell me another. Do you know how many times I’ve heard that? Try this … life is short and then you die. Sometimes life is a whole lot shorter than you expect it to be. You think you have time to do what you put off only that time somehow is lost or is stolen from you. Here’s another one … you don’t get to pick. God let’s things happen and sometimes those things happen to the people we love and care about. I don’t know what I would do if I was to lose Rand tomorrow but I sure wouldn’t be having any regrets about standing up for him today. I make sure he knows I love him all the time, not just when it is going to get me something or when I’m not in a good mood. And what if it was me that was gone tomorrow? What if I had died today? Would he have known how I felt about him? I love him for who he is, not for who I wished he was. Rand may have been a pain as a teenager, I sure as heck was … but that was then and this is now and Rand has been working his heart out – first at university and now here – to make himself a better person, to make goals and reach them, to be a real man. I think he’s doing a doggone good job of it and I tell him so. If you were to drop dead tomorrow Uncle George, what kind of words would he remember you saying to him?”

I sure hope I haven’t messed things up for Rand. I’ll be honest and say I’m more upset by that than I am about the stupid robbers now. I worried on it all the way home but I was still careful. It was late afternoon by the time I reached CR49. The sun was making its way to the west and the day was turning noticeably cooler again.

I was making my way down the highway when I saw Rand gallop out of the gate on Hatchet. He checked his speed when he saw me but still managed to come abreast of my location pretty quick. He jumped down off the horse and hugged me to him.

“Mr. Henderson came by earlier with some men to help me getting the last section fenced off. While he was there he got word from one of the patrols of the trouble at the Shack. Are you OK?”

“I’m fine. Just glad to be home.”

“I shouldn’t have let … “

“Oh, don’t you start. I let you be the boss of me and I don’t mind it but don’t start with that ‘letting’ stuff.”

“Are you sure you’re OK? You … you seem upset.”

“I … Rand, I popped off at your uncle. I’m sorry if it upsets you but I’m not sorry I did it.”

As we walked back to the house I explained exactly what had happened. Then I went on to tell him about what I said to his uncle and why. By the time I finished he was getting so mushy I was afraid someone was going to see. Rand is real physical with his affection and he is forever catching me unawares with it. Bottom line Rand isn’t angry at me, or upset with me. In fact all he said besides showing me that he liked how I stood up for him was, “You think it is any wonder now why Missy and Uncle George don’t always get along?”

“I’m not like Missy.”

“Not in everything, no … but in some of the ways that count when it comes to independence, loyalty, and stuff like that you are. Laurabeth and Charlene are like little sisters to me … but they will fold to their Dad with just one look from him even if it means giving up their own opinions. Janet was the one that was most like Missy but then she got sick and … well, I don’t like to say it but I think Uncle George is trying to remold her into the way he thinks she ought to be. He won’t let her get well because he is afraid if she does he’ll lose her in the same way he lost Missy for a while.”

“Are you sure you weren’t studying psychology at UF?”

After he was done laughing Rand said, “I like people Kiri. To me they are the most interesting of God’s creation. They come in so many different shapes and sizes and colors and personalities that you can’t ever get bored with people watching. But as different as people are there are a lot of things they have in common. Maybe I analyze people too much, but I don’t mean any harm by it.”

I suppose we all have our hobbies. I’m not much for people myself but I enjoy it when Rand translates their nuttiness for me. It makes them easier to tolerate. I’m thinking though it would be nice if we could put warning labels on some people. At least then you could be prepared when they did something violent without cause and stuff like that.

I guess we’ll find out tomorrow if I’ve messed things up with the Crenshaw clan. I don’t know if I’m anxious to know or not. I like ‘em and all but I wouldn’t mind putting some distance between us and them if they are going to constantly have negative things to say.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 54

October 26th – Didn’t leave the house today, neither of us did. If it wasn’t tending to the animals or checking on the garden we didn’t go beyond the lanai. It rained cats and dogs all day long. We probably got the whole month’s expected rainfall on one day.

I guess I can handle having to wait another day to see if I messed things up for Rand. He tells me not to worry about it. How can I not worry about it? Messing up my own life is one thing but messing up Rand’s is totally wrong in so many different ways I can’t even count them. I’ve already decided if I have to grovel I will; I’ll do anything for Rand.

Rand on the other hand has a different opinion and we had a little bit of a tiff over it. “You are not going to apologize.”

“Rand …”

“I mean it Kiri. Are you sorry you stood up for me? Didn’t you mean what you said?”

“No. Yes … I mean no I’m not sorry I stood up for you and I did mean it. I just can’t stand it that maybe I caused problems and …”

“One, you don’t know you caused me any problems. Two … to be honest I’m tired of feeling like I always have to apologize for my past mistakes. I’m not the kid I used to be and it’s time people started treating me different. I’ve moved out but they haven’t moved on. Babe, you’ve done more for me … for making me feel like a real man … than you’ll ever know. I don’t even like to think about how I let Julia run all over me since we were just kids. I now know it wasn’t really Julia I wanted but what having a relationship with Julia gave me … or what I thought it gave me.”

This was getting a lot heavier than I thought it would.

“Babe, if there are problems, then maybe it was time there were problems. Maybe a little … separation … might do us all some good. It will give us some time to prove to ourselves that we can stand on our own if we need to. Maybe it will give Uncle George some perspective too.”

“But what about the grain fields and … and all the work that you and Brendon do together? What about butchering season? What about …”

“Easy girl. We’ll just have to work it out as it comes. I didn’t say it would be easy, but it might be necessary.”

I guess. But I’m still nervous.

And when I get nervous I get antsy. And when I get antsy the only thing I can do is work or I can make myself sick from nerves. And all the downstairs rooms were piled high with stuff and disorganized to the point I hated to even be inside during the day. It was as good a time as any so I started my fall cleaning. And since Rand couldn’t really do any outside work he said he’d help which was great.

First room I worked on was the master bedroom. I have to stop calling it my parents’ bedroom because it really isn’t. Not anymore. And when the weather cools down to the point we are better off with a fire in the fireplace Rand and I will be moving downstairs. The first thing I wanted to do was to strip the bed and flip the mattress.

And that is when we found another hiding place. I can’t remember my parents doing this. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t know about it at one point, just that it is gone from the ol’ faulty memory banks now. But I we have another theory that is more correct.

Rand was helping me to flip the king-sized mattress when, “Ow! Babe, my sock is caught on something over here.”

When I got around to his side of the bed I would see a nasty splinter and a bloody spot on his sock. “Oh my gosh. Hang on. Let me get the tweezers and a bandaid.”

I was digging around in the first aid kit when Rand hollers, “Babe? Were your parents like pack rats or something?”

I was coming out of the bathroom and answered, “Yeah, kinda. Why?” And then I stopped. And looked.

Instead of the normal simple wooden frame that you find inside of a box springs Rand was lifting a whole sheet of plywood up. “Give me a hand with this.”

The material that normally covered the top of the box springs had pulled away revealing two hinged doors. Once we got the mattress off and out of the way, finished pulling away the silky cover, and opened the hinged doors we found yet another storage space.

Inside the normally empty space were a dozen cans of olive oil, a few cases of canned bacon, a case of canned cheese, several number ten cans each of cream of wheat, 9-grain cereal, instant oatmeal, elbow macaroni, two cases of what claimed to be canned cakes from the mredepot, cans of powdered pudding mix, some cans of green coffee beans, some canned BBQ beef and pork, and a few other odds and ends tucked in the corners.

Something was wrong. My parents didn’t have the money to spend on this fancy stuff; it didn’t match any of their other storage preps. And I’d never even eaten cream of wheat until … and then I spotted the canned brown bread and the case of blackstrap molasses and two jugs of maple syrup and I knew as for sure as I could be. And it fit if I thought about it.

“This isn’t something my parents did.”

“You sure?”

“Almost totally positive. My parents wouldn’t have stored stuff like this. It isn’t what we normally ate at home. I sure don’t think Momma would have bought canned cakes when it was cheaper for her to make her own; maybe a few items in here, but not really much of it. See those green coffee beans? Aunt Wilma was a coffee snob. She spent more money on expensive coffees that she would grind herself in a month than my parents would have dared to spend on Folgers for a whole year. The other thing … Uncle Charlie loved brown bread. Every 4th of July he would order a case of it so that he could have it for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Aunt Wilma didn’t use any kind of processed sugar in her food so the maple syrup would have been her, sure as heck wouldn’t have been my parents as that stuff is expensive. And the blackstrap molasses, Daddy ate that sometimes but only Briar Rabbit brand, this other stuff is the stuff that Uncle Charlie put in his coffee every morning.”

Then after taking a closer look at the food and thinking about it I was able to say for sure that my parents hadn’t done this. “I can prove this wasn’t done by my parents. You see those Vigo dried soup mixes? I remember Aunt Wilma going into ecstasies when they first came on the market. That was after my family died and I had been living with Aunt Wilma for a couple of years.”

“OK Babe, I believe you. Is it possible that your Aunt and Uncle … I don’t know … had thought this was a good place to evacuate to? That maybe they had known about your parents’ stash of stuff?”

I thought about his question while we unloaded everything and took it to the summer kitchen until I could separate it. “They may have suspected but I don’t think they knew much. They would have … well, especially the dormer room … gotten into stuff more. There is a hidey hole under the kitchen cabinets that was empty. Uncle Charlie may have found it and taken whatever was inside. He used to work on the plumbing and stuff like that until I mentioned it to Mr. Barnes who put a stop to it by reminding them of the stipulations in the trust. It might also explain … I never understood why Uncle Charlie was just laying out in the open rather than going inside the barn or the house to die unless it was something that had happened quick. Or maybe … “

“Honey, if that was your uncle you found – and I do not doubt you just you said yourself you only ID’d him by a work shirt name label that seemed the same as the ones he wore – it doesn’t matter anymore. He came up here, leaving you in Tampa to face who knows what. You said there was a broken liquor bottle. Maybe he was demented by then or even sick himself. He wouldn’t be the first, or the last, to go crazy from grief and fear. Either way, the only question that remains as far as I’m concerned is whether this is the only hidden stash they made or if there are others … even some buried around the property.”

“Weeellllll, if it was up to Aunt Wilma you aren’t going to find anything buried outside. She was not the outdoorsy type and hated the very idea of mold or mildew or damp. I doubt there is going to be anything structurally in the house either … those trust stipulations and how Mr. Barnes would drop in to inspect things some times. The barn maybe?”

“No, there really isn’t any place in the barn after you take out your Dad’s junk room. All the walls on the inside are exposed block. The floor is a solid slab. Nothing in the loft either.”

“Then they may have shot their wad with this or planned on bringing stuff with them maybe. The only other place I can think of … but … “ I looked at Rand.

“Where?”

“The shed … maybe? But not the hidey hole that my dad had in there for the fuel canisters.”

We headed out there and Rand grimaced, “Why does this thing look so different from everything else? What a mess!”

“Yeah, well. It’s what is left of our original lean to. Daddy meant to do something about it eventually. Eventually never came.”

“But the mess …?!”

“That was Uncle Charlie. He resented like heck that Daddy had built all of this and was younger that he was and was fair on his way to a good retirement when he got out of the military. Uncle Charlie started from a wealthy family but he was the youngest of five brothers and by the time he was old enough to get a piece of his father’s car dealership, the only thing left was working for his brothers in the garage … he wasn’t even a manager out there. Mr. Barnes overlooked this shed when he was writing up the trust stipulations and … well … this was Uncle Charlie’s act of defiance.”

Rand laughed and said, “You have got to be kidding me … that’s … man, the more I hear about your aunt and uncle the luckier I feel. Uh … I didn’t mean … “

I smiled to let him off the hook. It’s not like I didn’t stick my foot in my own mouth fairly often. “Yeah, well … I think you were lucky too. That’s one of the reasons I hope I haven’t … “

“Oh, let’s not start that again. I’m not standing out here in the rain to argue. If this rain gets any harder we aren’t going to be able to hear each other. Since you’ve already checked the concrete bench on this side what is on the other side?”

“Rand, I really don’t expect to find anything out here. Aunt Wilma hated it out here.”

“Which gives me an idea what we might happen to find, especially after some of the things you’ve said in the past. Here Sugar, move and let me get that bench.”

“What do you … oh. Oooohhhhhh.” After he moved the concrete bench Rand pulled up a bunch of bottles of liquor … the hard stuff. Aunt Wilma only let him have a beer or two on the weekends during the summer. She considered liquor a waste of good money and a good way for them to lose their lucrative foster license.

“Um, Rand, I never asked but do you …”

“Kiri, I did when I was wild but I got to where it was … it was a problem. It got to be where I had to drink to have a good time. The youth pastor at the church dared some of us that he knew drank to stay sober at any of the parties we went to and see if we still had fun … and what we thought of how the other kids who did drink were acting. If we drank, he wanted us to give him a call and he would come pick us up. He was a good guy. He tactics didn’t work for everyone but they worked for me. I stopped drinking cold turkey and … I was tempted a couple of times at UF – it’s a big party school and it is hard not to want to be a part of things – but I didn’t. I was too worried about keeping my grades up or losing my scholarship.”

“Rand … I wasn’t even … I didn’t mean to sound like I was being judgmental. I just meant … well, if you want this stuff but I actually meant, if you didn’t mind, I’d like to set the brandy aside for preserving the Christmas fruit cakes and if we could save the vodka and other clear stuff for tinctures and things like that.”

Rand looked at me and I tried not to be embarrassed at the can of worms that I had opened and then he started laughing. “You know something? I love you.”

We looked around and what we found could have stocked a small liquor store. It made me wonder if Aunt Wilma and Uncle Charlie had had the same priorities. Aunt Wilma stocking food … but it was all just specialty stuff, nothing that would provide long-term sustainability …and Uncle Charlie stocking liquor but nothing else from what I could see. On the other hand it did seem to fall into the “store what you eat” type of prepping.

The boxes of liquor bottles are on the floor in the hidden pantry for now. We have to decide what to do with it later. I’ve tripped on those boxes every time I’ve gone in there today and it is getting irritating.

The rest of the day we spent going room by room trying to unpack and reorganize. We moved all of the clothes into the master bedroom his and her closets, the dresser, and the chest o’ drawers. We set aside two sets of sheets and a few extra blankets and pillows and then loaded all the extra bed linens into the space in the box springs. That really did help. We unrolled all of the rugs we had and put them down in every room in the house except for the kitchens. It was going to mean more work for me in once sense but Rand actually did me a favor and fixed the non-electric rug sweeper and now I wouldn’t have to roll them up and take them out and beat them to clean the rugs.

In Rand’s things from his parents was some old oil lamps – some of these were so pretty it was hard to believe they were actually practical – and candle sconces. Rand had brought some kerosene with him and some white gas too but we hadn’t needed to use it. When the days get significantly shorter we might though. There was a couple of antique wind up clocks that hung on the wall or set on a table or ledge. We replaced some of the battery operated clocks with those. We put his family photo albums on the shelves with mine and they all became ours. We took most of the preparedness books and moved them to the dormer room which left room in the bonus room bookcases for Rand’s books.

We got the master bedroom finished and Rand’s old bedroom emptied and straightened up. Most of the third bedroom has been finished as well. The last room was the one with the baby stuff in it and I plan on working on that one tomorrow. It is the messiest and now that almost all of our other storage areas are bursting at the seams I’m going to have to think about where I want to put stuff.

The old washer and dryer were moved out onto the lanai, Rand capped off the dryer vent, and we moved all the stackable plastic drawers we have in there. I labeled every draw and we arranged them alphabetically. Those drawers helped us to organize all the small stuff that didn’t really have a home.

Rand has to leave early in the morning so he is already sleeping but I got up after he fell asleep since I was still antsy. I think I’m finally to the point I can sleep and not just toss and turn. Fraidy and Woofer are sleeping on the new rug we brought upstairs. They are really cute.


October 27th – As Rand told me, “It wasn’t unexpected Babe. Just let it go for now.” It isn’t as easy for me to ignore as it seems to be for him. “Kiri, it’s not the end of the world. When Uncle George figures out we’re not folding to his emotional blackmail then he’ll get over it. Or he won’t and it still won’t be the end of the world. We’ll figure it out.”

The rain ended during the night and the cool, low-humidity weather behind it dried everything much faster than I thought it would.

“Babe, call me a worrywart if you want, but I’m gonna ask you to stay around the home site while I’m gone today. My plan is to be back by lunch, grab a bite to eat, then head off to Mr. Coffey’s with the wagon right after that.”

I honestly didn’t mind as much have I might have. I woke up with the sniffles, probably from all of the unpacking and rearranging yesterday. Some of that stuff was pretty dusty.

Rather than a large breakfast Rand asked if I could make him a couple of bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits. The case of canned bacon we found yesterday had tempted us both. The one problem I noticed as soon as I opened the can was that it had a lot more slices in it than Rand and I would use in a single meal. And without refrigeration there was going to be a lot of waste if we weren’t careful.

Rand was off and I watched him until I couldn’t even hear the jangling of the mules’ harnesses and then went back inside and set out my plan for the day. I started the day by wiping down the dehydrators and filling them both up with more apples. I had to toss two trays of apples that had gotten ruined in the heavy rain but Taz loved them. Taz also got most of the apple cores and peels.

The mosquitoes were worse than I expected so I had to put on a long sleeved shirt and then I went out to the garden. The beets were in so I pulled most of them as well as anything else that I needed to deal with. I spent the remainder of the morning canning plain beets, pickled beets, beet relish, and beet-apple relish.

For lunch I made a nice green salad from the lettuce that was still coming in and rice pilaf and Apple Pecan Burgers. Everything was ready when Rand arrived home pulling the incline. He was in such a good mood I thought at first everything was fine. While we were eating thought it became apparent that everything was not all right.

“Babe … come on. Everything is going to be fine. He’s more miffed that I wouldn’t take the bait and ask him what was wrong. I used to fall for it because I couldn’t stand the pressure. I’m stronger than that now. Laurabeth and Charlene stayed in the house and didn’t even come out to say hello which was pretty par for the course. Alicia was on the porch and waved which was pretty brave for her. She’s caught between a rock and a hard place and I don’t blame her. The boys acted like nothing was wrong. Oh yeah, Mick said that you tossed your cookies, you didn’t tell me that.”

Being reminded of my embarrassment didn’t help me to feel any better and Rand continued, “Bill and Missy said to say hello and I’ve got a couple of boxes of things tied to the incline that if you could untie and bring in while I’m off to Mr. Coffey’s would help. Missy asked that we save the boxes for her as they are running short.”

“Maybe we should have sent a box of that stuff we found yesterday to your Uncle. Maybe it would have … “

“And maybe Uncle George needs to learn that he can’t twist and turn me the way he used to. This is as good a time as any for him to learn it. Look at me Beautiful. I mean it. One way or the other things will work out and I don’t want you worrying it to death.”

“It bothers me Rand.”

“Don’t let it. Now let me have a kiss so I can go hook Bud and Lou to the wagon and get out of here so I can get back before it gets too late. It is going to take time to unload the wagon when I get home and I don’t want to have to do it in the dark.”

For dinner I planned to use up the canned bacon making BLTs. But first I wanted to try and finish that last bedroom, or at least make a good dent in it.

First I took all the baby stuff out and set it to the side and that let me get at everything else. I noticed most of the mess was craft supplies and things like that so I was able to halve the mess really fast by taking it all upstairs to the bonus room that I had designated as the sewing room. The rest of it was just a matter of finding places to tuck things. After I had finished with that I moved the baby stuff back into the room and just for the heck of it arranged everything so that it looked nice.

I was at loose ends so I took some pecans out on the front porch and started cracking them. Every once in a while I would find one that was nasty and I’d drop that into a bucket to give to Taz. I was on my second pail of nuts and it was getting later than I thought Rand had meant to come home when I heard the wagon coming back very slow. There was a prancing horse as well and then Hoss came around the screen and said, “Hey Kiri, Rand’s been hit. No, no … I didn’t say that well now did I? I mean literally hit but not by bullets. Not even the highwaymen have a lot of ammo these days.”

Well when I put my heart back in my chest and ran out I could see that Hoss, poor choice of words or not, was correct. Rand was pretty roughed up but seemed to be in fairly good spirits. “They didn’t get the sorghum Babe.”

“To heck with the sorghum! Look at what they did to you!!”

It really wasn’t as bad as it looked at first but I’m still not real happy. Rand wouldn’t let Hoss leave until he gave him a jar of syrup which Hoss gratefully accepted with embarrassment. He’s trying to work for Mr. Henderson and help out his family that lives over near Uncle George at the same time, the syrup will probably find its way over there on his next day off.

The barrels of sorghum are sitting in the barn until we can figure a better place for them. Rand was hungry and he was half way through his first sandwich before he told me that Mr. Coffey wanted to trade for two of the remaining horses. His grandson (a man older than Ran) needed some way to get around and he’s too tall to ride around on a donkey.

“I’ll trade him the gelding and one of the mares. I’m having second thoughts about breeding horses. I think we might be better off breeding mules. I’m keeping this last mare until I decide what to do.”

So we’ve got a lot of stuff accomplished the last two days but it is beginning to feel like the lull before the storm. I can’t exactly put my finger on it. We’re cleaning up, getting ready, making sure all our ducks are in a row. Rand thinks that I’m just worrying more because I’m tired and unsettled about this thing with the Crenshaws but I’m not sure. That crazy guy was on the radio again saying the same sorts of things … death to America, yada, yada, yada … but this time he had one or two people responding to him and egging him on. There were also more sightings of large ships in the Gulf of Mexico and of some kind of major explosion at Mobile, Alabama.

What I was feeling before … it feels like it is getting closer. Every little thing that happens or that I hear of happening adds another straw on the camel. I just wish I knew for sure what I should be worrying about the most, the uptick in real problems we’ve got going on close to home or the stuff that is going on out in the world.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 55

October 28th – Well, it turns out that Mr. Coffey’s grandson is a goldmine … OK, not literally, but figuratively he sure is by some measures. We are going to get a freezer in exchange for the two horses. It has to be on the quiet so Rand is going to build a room in the barn to accommodate it. Basically, if I am understanding it, they are going to take a propane type refrigeration system … which Mr. Coffey’s grandson already has several of since he was in that green energy business before and brought a bunch of his junk with him … and utilizing the ammonia gas system and a special lens you get “heat exchange” or something like that. Rand drew me a picture, it didn’t help much. It looks like a regular refrigerator … he said we are getting one called an EZ-Freeze … that has a hose that would connect to a propane tank. Only instead of utilizing propane to heat the ammonia gas we’ll use a Fresnel lens (curved kind of like a lighthouse lens) to concentrate sunrays and generate enough heat to generate the heat exchange. It isn’t very big but at eight cubic feet it is enough to cool down meat and stuff to make sausage and to save food from one day to the next to keep it from spoiling.

It sounds simple but I have a feeling if it was as simple as it sounds it would be a lot more common than it was pre-pandemic. I can see right off the bat that one of the drawbacks would be what happens if the sun doesn’t come out … like it rains all day, or for a couple of days. And what if you get a gas leak or your lens breaks? When I asked Rand about it he said that nothing comes without risks but this was as close as we were likely to get. The horses really didn’t cost us anything to begin with, they were “found assets.” The refrigeration, even if it just gets us through the first butchering season, will be a tremendous benefit. He emphasized though he didn’t want anyone else to know about it, whether it was the Crenshaws or Henderson and his men. Word about something like this would spread and we’d become a target.

“Keeping this to ourselves and proving we can keep our mouths shut … well, I have a feeling that Ben Coffey just may have some other ideas he’d like to try out, may already be trying out, and we might get some side benefits from that.”

I suppose, but I just don’t trust something that sounds too good to be true. I think I will just keep on doing as many things without the need of a frig or freezer as I can that way if the thing doesn’t work or breaks I’m not out too much. Rand calls that my “redundancy fetish” and he thinks it’s “cute.” I’ll give him “cute” if he ever calls me that in public.

I’m actually excited about it even if I might not sound like it; but, Momma always warned against counting your chickens before they were hatched. Take the Bantam corn for example; I thought there would be a lot more corn from the rows I planted than there actually was. It is too late in the season to plant more, plus I have to hold some seed back to plant next season’s crop which has to be bigger than this season’s crop. I’ve got two other chances that I hope will help. The first one is a corn called Country Gentleman, the other is called Hickory King. But neither one is a yellow corn; Country Gentleman is a white shoepeg corn (and I have yet to figure out what that means), and the Hickory King is a dent corn that hopefully I’ll be able to dry.

The other thing is that the chickens are slowing down on their eggs. I thought we’d get more. Rand said it is natural. As the days shorten and the weather gets cooler they stop laying as much. Good thing I have all of those powdered eggs.

And clothes … I thought about clothes as I washed our clothes and hung them out on the line first thing this morning. I now understand why women used to wear those huge aprons all the time. The aprons catch splatters, dirt, and ashes before they could ruin their dresses. Rand and I are trying to be more careful with our clothes too. When he’s working outside Rand wears these Dickey coveralls or a pair of bib overalls if it is too hot for the coverall. I wear big canvas aprons when I can, sort of like I used to wear when I worked at the diner. I’ve certainly got a pile of them … Momma had a thing for aprons. Some of them are really pretty and she only wore them at the different holidays or when Daddy brought home important people from the base but most of them are meant to be work aprons, but even those are pretty.

I needed something to make me feel pretty today. Cassie came by and she had Julia with her. Mitch was driving Julia back to Ron’s place and the two had wanted to stop in to see us. I still don’t know what to make of the visit but I didn’t want to embarrass Rand or make Mitch any more uncomfortable than he already very obviously was.

Julia is really big now. I wasn’t sure how to go about asking when the baby was due without bringing up potentially uncomfortable subjects so I just told her she glowed … which wasn’t a lie, she really does make for a pretty looking person. I asked them all if they’d like something to drink. Mitch said they couldn’t stay long but was happy to get away for a few moments with Rand to look at Taz. I hadn’t moved the chairs off of the porch yet so all I needed to do was set a small table there and fetch some glasses and the tea. I also brought out some cookies that I had baked.

I don’t think they knew what to say any more than I did but then Julia asked, “How do you keep up with it all?”

“Keep up with what?”

“The cooking, cleaning, laundry, garden … just everything. How do you keep up with it?”

I told her about having specific chores for specific days so that I wasn’t trying to do everything every day. “So you do all the laundry on one day?”

“If I can get away with it. And as you can see Rand and I have started trying to protect the clothes we do wear so I usually only have one load of really dirty stuff and I can wash it separate from everything else.”

Cassie said, “I’m so glad I don’t have to do any of that. Tia Cia takes care of it all.”

For the first time I saw Julia snap at her friend, “Yeah Cass … and who do you think is going to do it for you when Tia Cia gets too old, or gets sick or something. God, you’re such a princess.”

Whoa. Then after another uncomfortable silence Julia looked around and not seeing the men leaned over and asked me, “Does Rand … does he hate me?”

“Um … I don’t think that is actually something I should be talking about … “

“Look, I know I messed things up. Just tell him … just tell him … that I don’t blame him for anything if he does. I just … I know I made mistakes and now … now I’m paying for them. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling like I feel right now. Ron … he’s different … from the way he used to be I mean. He’s always going on about not wasting the second chance we got. We’re … working on things. I just …,“ and then she kind of sputtered out of words to say.

“Look Julia, I can’t speak for Rand but … I think he is dealing with the way things turned out. That’s all I can say; that’s all I’m gonna say. You want more, man up and go talk to him yourself.”

“You’re mad at me too.”

“Not really Julia. If I think about it too much then yeah, I can get angry but right here, right now? I just don’t like being put in the middle of stuff and the stuff between you and Rand that came before me and Rand … I consider it NOMB.”

Cassie was the one that asked. “NOMB?”

“None of my business.”

“Oh.”

Julia said, “Look, I will … I just … not right now. I’d mess it up. I know I would. And people would talk. They’re already talking. I hate going anywhere. People always look and stare.”

“Julia, people were looking and staring at you before all of this, it was just for a different reason. I’ve had to put up with people looking and staring ever sense the accident. I don’t like it but there isn’t a whole lot I can do about it. You learn to ignore the people who do it and get on with your life. Or you go crazy. I tried both … I prefer getting on with my life, it’s a lot less work.”

The guys came back and Mitch packed everyone up and then they were off.

“Thanks.”

“Huh?”

“Thanks … for being civil. I know the two of them. They can be …”

“Rand, I’ll tell you like I told Julia and please, please don’t take this the wrong way. What went on between you and her? As long as it doesn’t deal with our here and now I consider it none of my business. It’s not that I don’t care it’s … I just don’t want to make things harder and thinking about … you know, her and you, together … I just don’t like it.”

“What brought this on? Did she upset you?!”

“No! Don’t go getting all upset. That’s not it at all Rand. If you want to know the truth I think she is sorry. Sorry about what I’m not exactly sure but she admitted the place she now finds herself in is her own fault. And as long as she isn’t trying to get you back – or get back at you – I can let it go at that. Can you?”

He did that scrunchy thing with his eyebrows that he does when he’s thinking something over. After a pause he said, “Yeah. I don’t really think about her much anymore. What kind of guy does that make me?”

“One that has moved on. Trust me. I learned about moving on when I had to learn about letting go of how angry I was at the drunk who killed my family. I can’t tell you the last time I really thought about him. Do I get angry if I think about it? Yeah … but not so much at the guy anymore as at that it happened at all. The guy just became a nonentity for me. I can barely even remember what he is supposed to look like. He is the past. This … and us … this is my present and my future. Does that make sense or does it sound too corny?”

Rand gave me one of his grade A hugs and said, “No, it doesn’t sound corny and it does make sense, at least to me. I used to be mad at the doctors because they couldn’t save my mom. You have to let some things go or you’ll destroy yourself over them. Lot’s of people are going to have to do that … get passed all the people they’ve lost in this pandemic and all the violence that has come along with it.” And then after a deep sigh, “Look, if she asks again … and if you are in the mood to tell her … say … say that I’m OK and over it and getting on with my life and that I … I guess I figure now isn’t the time to hold grudges. We’ve got more important concerns in life.”

And work, we’ve definitely got work to do.

Today the first variety of popcorn – Japanese Hull-less – was harvested. We can’t pop it yet, it needs to dry a little more. But we lost several ears to birds and squirrels. They’ve learned that Fraidy and Woofer can’t get in the garden fence. So Rand is thinking about putting a doggy door in there, we’ll just have to lock it during the night.

It’s always something. But even with what we consider to be our biggest problems and set backs we are so far ahead of a lot of folks around here. We haven’t seen Pastor Ken very much lately. He’s been very busy ministering to people – weddings, funerals, comfort, and care. Rand has been hearing all sorts of talk.

People are hungry. Many of them were dependent on the military and National Guard bringing food in. Those that have overcome that are struggling to raise any kind of garden without automation or chemical fertilizers. Even if they’ve been able to get a garden going they are fighting thieves … human and animal … and realizing that it is very difficult to subsist off of a garden.

People are thirsty. No more working well pumps. Ponds and lakes are becoming contaminated with human and animal waste and the clean open water sources are insufficient for all of the people taking bucket after bucket of water out of them. The free flowing water sources, like the Suwannee and some of the local springs, just aren’t that easy to get to and transport water from in sufficient quantity.

People are dirty. Water shortages means washing is a lower priority to cooking and drinking. But this is creating environments that bacteria and junk can grow in, making people sick.

People are depressed, sick, angry and a lot of other things that aren’t healthy and it is this that keeps Pastor Ken the busiest. Getting people to meet together and work together is helping but people resist this, sometimes out of suspicion and sometimes out of pride.

And those of us who are succeeding? We feel like we have to be very careful. People are unpredictable.


October 29th – No church services today. Rather than go out … we had thought about going to Itchnetuckee for a picnic … we decided just to hang out and have a rest day. I don’t know exactly how “restful” it was but we got caught up on our inventories and plans and that was something that had started to bug both of us.

Later in the afternoon I made a treat for us, Spiced Pecans. I took enough powdered egg whites to make the white of one egg and then dumped in three cups of pecan halves stirring until the nuts are completely moistened. In a bowl I mixed together a half cup of sugar, a half teaspoon of salt, one teaspoon of cinnamon, a half teaspoon of ground cloves, and a half a teaspoon of ground nutmeg. I sprinkled the spices over the moist nuts. I then baked them for thirty minutes in a preheated 350 degree oven, stirring them two times to keep them from burning. They smelled so good.

It was nice to have something sweet to go with the sour news we listened to on the radio.

Some of the radio operators try to perform a service. Technically they aren’t supposed to just be broadcasting like a radio show, they are supposed to be having a conversation but sometimes you just have to do what you can do. Directions on how to collect water and purify it is being passed around. How to cook certain types of greens. Information on places you want to avoid if you are traveling. Messages are being called out to try let people know their loved ones are still alive.

Some of the news isn’t very good at all. There are rampant diarrheal diseases running around the country. And no, that wasn’t an attempt to make a bad joke. What is scary is a lot of this stuff is real third world like the cholera and dysentery outbreaks. Lots of upper respiratory stuff too from exposure now that the weather is cooling off around the country.

Then you have the lawlessness. It has tapered off now that citizen groups have formed in earnest … that is a quote from a one of the conversations we overheard … but now there are fights between citizen groups over scarce resources, hunting areas, etc. Basically say you have Small Town A, then a nature area or preserve or federal lands, then Small Town B. Both Small Town A and Small Town B claim the land that is between the two. If the area is big enough with enough resources it is fine but if it is a relatively small area with limited resources … it can turn into a free for all with very little provocation. Think the Hatfields and the McCoys with a lot of tit for tat actions.

Rand was saying that even as cut back as our population currently is, if we return to a totally agrarian society, there may still be too many people in some areas.

The most worrisome of all if that there was a “landing” of foreigners around Port Charlotte. These “foreigners” were heavily armed and quickly overpowered the locals but the military was in the area and it reportedly was a route after that. The military was all over it after that and there has been a news blackout since. So the question being asked is whether this was just a onetime pirate or “boat people” type of event or if this was a precursor of the worried about invasion.

Scary stuff.


October 30th – Chili on the menu tonight. It’s getting cooler. I’ve also noticed the days are getting shorter too. Before, I usually had some daylight left to write by but not now.

Rand and I were kind of bummed when we woke up this morning; hard not to be after what we listened to last night but the day got better. Uncle George came by with Brendon. He brought two gilts with him … that is female pigs that haven’t had babies yet. Let me tell you, Taz thought it was Christmas. We put the gilts in the new pig yard that Rand had built. A nice tree, located outside of the yard, was big enough to shade half of the pig pen; one quarter of the yard got filtered sunlight, and the last quarter got full sunlight. Rand told me pigs get sunburned really easy so you have to be careful. The tree had dropped a lot of acorns into the pig pen and as soon as the two gilts calmed down from being transported away from all their friends they started snuffling and snorting and chewing those acorns right up. I also put some garden scraps in the pig trough and they liked that too.

Then Rand, with Brendon and Uncle George’s help, moved Taz into a little penned off section. You should have heard him trying to sweat talk the gilts. Both the gilts and Taz have a little house they can go into for the night if they choose. The walls of the pig pen are solid for now until we can try and make it safe for them to have a regular fence.

I hurried up and made a little more for lunch but Uncle George hemmed and hawed about it being too much trouble.

“You’re Rand’s uncle … the only one he has as far as I know. Don’t tell me what is too much trouble please.”

By the time he was finished eating the greens, beans, and bread I fixed he was in a more relaxed mood and he sure didn’t turn down the spice cake that I had made. He got talkative too. They are having their own challenges with their garden. Squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, and even humans have done their fair share of raiding. They’ve also had trouble with rats in the feed barn and had to trade for a mother cat and kittens to try and take care of the problem.

They are shooting for the week before or the week after Christmas for butchering depending on the weather. “When we do start it we need to be quick. Henderson has had a lot of trouble with beggars coming by to demand that he kill his herds to feed all the hungry people around. I don’t want any more notice taken of us that absolutely necessary and you’ll both need to come to help out. It’s going to be a lot of work without the extra help I normally hire. How’s them goats of yours?”

Billy is just as mean as ever but the two female goats are real ladies, one of them is a little ditzy though. We tried them on in a fenced enclosure but this goofy female goat keeps getting her head stuck so Rand put up the solid panels again. I think she might be far sighted or something because every once in a while she just seems to walk into the panels and then she jumps back like she startled herself. I told Rand and he laughed so hard when I asked him if goats ever wore glasses. I didn’t think it was that funny, I’ve seen horses that wear blinders.

Brendon helped Rand split a little firewood while Uncle George looked around. He noted the fence that Rand had finished and now we were just waiting for Mr. Henderson to bring the cow and calf. He saw all that we had done … really looked at it for the first time I think. I just stood back and let him. When they left I watched him say something to Rand and Rand’s look of surprise that followed it.

Found out later that Uncle George had praised him for all the progress he had made and it wasn’t followed by a “but … “ or anything. I know that made Rand happy. Maybe I said what needed saying after all.


November 1st – Pretty momentous day. Mr. Henderson brought the cows. Yes, that’s right … cows. Two heifers and their calves. He wouldn’t let us say anything about the extra, just said it was something he could do so he was doing it. And one of the calves is a boy … a little bull. The two Momma cows aren’t related so we have the start of some breeding stock. Rand had to hurry up and build a couple of more stalls in the barn … it sure is getting full at night when we put all the animals up.

I milked a cow for the first time today! Yippeee!! It was fun but I’ve just added at least two extra hours of work to my day. And I haven’t got a clue what I am going to do with all that milk!

Ben Coffey came by with the refrigerator today too. It takes at least a day before it is cool enough to do anything with so we drank our fill and are trying to save the extra milk in the cold water cooler. Mr. Henderson said that we’ll likely get at least twelve gallons of milk per day from the cows. Oh my goodness. If we don’t milk them they’ll go dry after the calves wean but I hate the idea of wasting any of it. If the milk is soured in the morning I’ll use it for cooking. I’m just having a hard time imagining Rand and I being able to go through twelve gallons of milk a day. Boy do I have homework. I had no idea that cows made so much milk every day!

I think I finally finished harvesting all of the dried beans and getting them put in containers in the pantry. Sometimes I just stand in there and look around and feel so good.

Of course then I remember that there are people all around us that could be starving. I told Rand that we could spare some bushels of apples but he doesn’t want to. He said if people came asking for work we’d pay them in food but the few times he’s been approached they just have their hand out. So I continue to dry or juice the apples, at least a batch every day.

I give the leftovers to Taz and his harem and Ol’ Billy and his. Pretty Boy and his brood don’t do too badly either. Even Rand looks like he has stopped losing weight. I’m glad.

Sometimes all of our blessings make me feel guilty, something I never really felt before over the money Mr. Barnes managed. Rand said I shouldn’t. He said God didn’t mind people being well off, He just wanted people to acknowledge where it all came from. Then he got a pensive look on his face and said, “If they would just ask for work instead of a hand out.” I guess it isn’t always easy for him to overlook the suffering around us either. But he has standards and I guess that is just one of them.

Weather has warmed back up a little. Almost reached eighty degrees today but there wasn’t much humidity. That was nice.

More crazy talk on the radio. You just never know what to believe any more. We keep getting opposing reports about what happened down in Port Charlotte. Haven’t hear the crazy guy on the radio for the last little bit. Now there are a couple on the radio talking like they are the KKK and white supremacist. If it isn’t one flavor of crazy it is another.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 56

November 2nd – Cleaned the house today top to bottom but it didn’t take much effort, Rand and I don’t make any more mess than we can help and I just finished reorganizing everything. It helped to keep my mind off of things when I wasn’t doing other stuff. Also Rand and I ate watermelon until we were practically sick, juice rolling down our chins. Getting the watermelon and beefsteak tomatoes form the garden were one of the few bright spots in the day.

First off the weather, this has been the coldest day yet. It was overcast and we never saw the sun at all; it got no higher than sixty-five degrees and according to the little weather station that Rand has set up we were getting 10 mph winds out of the N and NNE, though the wind has let up now that the sun is down. It was dark by 5:45 which made serving dinner a challenge. We ate in the summer kitchen with stools pulled up the island. Tomorrow we’ll start eating dinner about five o’clock in the breakfast nook where the bay windows are and hopefully we’ll be finished and I’ll have things cleaned up and in the dish drainer before I have to use the lantern. If we get hungry I can always make warm milk or popcorn.

Rand expects it to drop down into the upper 40s tonight. We debated on whether we should move downstairs but we are trying to wait a while longer simply because we are so comfortable up here in the dormer room. I know the 60s are probably tropical compared to what some people are living with right now in other areas but I’ve lived in Florida so long that the 50s and 60s are just plain cold. The only thing I can say is that the humidity is so low that we don’t sweat much when we work.

Milking is interesting. Rand suggested that for now I just milk in the morning and let the calves feed all day. When the calves wean I’ll have to milk morning and night – he said we’ll both do it since there are two cows so that it will get done faster.

The milk I was trying to save last night separated overnight. It’s nice to know that I can use this way of doing that just in case the refrigerator goes south at some point. I scalded the old gallon jar butter churn that my Dad bought at some flea market or other. I nearly burned myself with the boiling water but I didn’t want any icky stuff in the food I am trying to make. Then I skimmed off the cream from last night’s milk and dumped it in the jar, screwed the lid in place and then got a sore arm turning the crank handle. The butter, once it made, was a big glop in all of this liquid that is buttermilk. I poured that into another dish and stuck it in the frig with the milk from this morning’s milking.

I poured fresh water on the butter glop and rinsed the butter and poured it off several times until the water stayed clear. After draining the last water off I dumped the butter glop onto a plate and then had to squish the remaining water out of it use a couple of clean plastic paddles. When that was done it was still a little squishy so I put it into a plastic storage container and put it in the fridge. For all the work, it didn’t seem like a lot of butter. Rand laughed and told me it takes about two and a half gallons of milk to make one pound of butter. I got about a stick’s worth of butter today and we used it on the honey-buttermilk cornbread I made for dinner. The buttermilk was what I poured off of the churned butter. Cooking from scratch is neat but you sure have to plan ahead. I’m hoping that the cooler will help me not make too many mistakes.

The skim milk that was leftover after I took the cream is what we drank today and what I used to make hot cocoa tonight. This whole milking business is pretty neat … a lot of work, but still kinda neat. Tomorrow I’m going to try making white cheese. I’ve watched it being made by Mrs. Belle but I never got to do it myself, she was that particular. It’s basically just a gallon of milk and a cup of vinegar. How hard could it be? And besides, I’m dying for some fried cheese. And according to some recipes that I’ve found, after you’ve clabbered milk for cheese you can drain off the liquid from the curds – this is the whey – and then make ricotta out of that. I’ll really fatten Rand up if I can make ricotta. Old fashioned cheese cakes were actually made from ricotta rather than cream cheese. I was talking about this stuff to Rand tonight and he got silly and starting chasing me around the house growling, “Yum! Yum!” Gosh, he can be so silly sometimes.

Saw Pastor Ken for the first time in a while and he really didn’t look good at all. Rand and I wouldn’t take no for an answer and we got him to come sit down to each lunch with us. The watermelon perked him up but it never got rid of the darkness behind his eyes all together. A lot of the old folks are dying. Different reasons … health problems catching up with them, depression, accidents, just plain giving up. Momma O is struggling too. If Paul hadn’t gotten really serious about a girl Momma O practically helped to raise and them talking about marriage so soon she might have just given up by now.

“I hate to say this but Paulie getting married and possibly starting a family would likely give Momma O a reason to live. She’s getting to the stage in life that setbacks like she’s had can be life threatening.”

“What kind of setbacks?”

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever met Paulie’s brother? No? Well, he is confined to a wheelchair and his health always has been precarious even under the best of circumstances. Well, he had a seizure or stroke, I can only guess at this point, and he’s going downhill rapidly. His parents are resigned, have been since he was born the way he was, but Momma O just isn’t dealing with it well at all. And they’ve had some setbacks with their friends … people that think they are leading a privileged life protected by Henderson and his men. Momma O was already lonely, not she feels intentionally cut off.”

“Would it help if Kiri and I were to go visiting more often?”

“Maybe. Couldn’t hurt. Kiri, I hate to ask you … and I can understand if you … How do I put this? Momma O really enjoyed you asking her about the gardening and looking for hints on how to do things. It made her feel … useful … important. I’m not asking you to lie but if you could … “

“Stroke her ego a little? It’s not a problem Pastor. I actually like talking to Momma O. She stood by us and did for us when no one else would. And besides, she probably has forgotten more than a lot of people know right now.”

I feel bad for Momma O, and bad for Mrs. DeLois too who had to try and manage everything when her mother is depressed or sick. This Sunday is a scheduled church service. Rand and I are going to see about maybe arranging another work day like we did for the Harbingers and then we’ll see about other visiting days too.

That wasn’t the only bad news that the Pastor had to share. There is still a lot of the thieving and raiding going on. Not so much around here or over on the road where Rand’s family lives but River Road is getting hit pretty regularly – it used to be the “rich” side of town and people think it still is I guess – in the outlying areas like Mayo, Lee, Dowling Park, McAlpin, Luraville, and Wellborne.

And we’ve got a couple of cases of some kind of diarrheal illness … possibly norovirus or shigella. It hits hard and fast so the Pastor has warned us to be very careful of anything (or any one) we come in contact with.

All of that was just lovely news on top of the stuff we’ve been hearing on the radio. Same stuff as before, just more of it. The incident down in Port Charlotte is really being played up, or maybe it really is as serious as some people are making it out to be. It is so hard to know. Rand said that the mainstream media was pretty stupid by the time the last president took office but they did serve a purpose, at least with their cameras and talking heads you got some view of what was going on.

It’s been dark so long it feels like I’ve been up forever but not really. But I am tired and Rand is nodding off over his book too so I’ll stop here and get us both to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a full day … as always.


November 3rd – Today was supposed to be baking day but mostly I was canning and making cheese. The beefsteak tomatoes are coming in and what we don’t eat fresh I’m canning tomato juice with. Next week I want to can some soups that I can just open and heat up on those nights when I don’t feel like cooking and the tomato juice will really come in handy.

I’ve got a half dozen watermelons sitting on the kitchen counter that I haven’t done anything with. They are really ripe so within the next day or so I need to get going. The rinds from the watermelon we ate yesterday I split between the chickens and pigs. I made sure and give the chickens enough so that they wouldn’t start fighting over it. There is one cranky hen that is always batting at the chicks if they get in her way. Methinks she is going to be the first fryer if she keeps this up. The goats lipped at one of the rinds I gave them but they were much more interested in the beet tops that I tossed in from the last batch of beets that I pulled.

Of course I didn’t throw all of that watermelon rind to the animals, I pickled quite a bit of it. I also fried some of it just to see if Rand would eat it. I like it but it takes some people a little bit of a push to even try it. First you mix together some cornmeal, flour, salt, and pepper. Then get your oil heated to 350 degrees. Then dredge your cubed watermelon rind (minus the outer skin) in the flour mixture. Drop it in the oil and fry it until it is golden brown, about 8 to 10 minutes. Stir gently and then fry it a little more, about four minutes. Drain well and then you can season with salt and pepper if you want to. It’s meant to be eaten while still warm.

Rand ate it. I dared him and he did and then I had to fight for my share, especially after Mr. Henderson came by with Mitch. Of course Rand had to dare them to try it and then it was a race to see who could eat their share the fastest. After they left Rand told me Mitch said that Mr. Henderson has really had Cassie on a tight leash. She threw a fit when he said she couldn’t come out on patrol with them and he said it looked like Mr. Henderson had come close to slapping her. He’s told everyone that Cassie isn’t to have a horse until further notice and she has also been assigned to all the work details that she didn’t have to do before which is causing her to pitch fits. All I could think is that you reap what you sow but I managed to keep my mouth shut for once.

While everyone was having fun with the watermelon rinds I was making a mess with the watermelon flesh. I made watermelon jelly, watermelon preserves, watermelon jam, and I have some slices of watermelon drying. The last has me a little leery but Momma’s recipe card says that after it is dry it is a bit like candy. We’ll have to wait and see.

The other thing that started coming in today were the persimmons. I canned a bunch of pints of persimmon pulp. I also made some persimmon jelly and persimmon butter. The persimmon butter seemed to take forever but that is probably because I was watching it and wanting it to go faster since it was the last thing I was making before I started dinner.

For dinner I fixed an arugula and watermelon salad, and followed that up with a stroganoff I made with egg noodles, canned cream of mushroom soup (not much of that left), and powdered sour cream from the food storage stuff. And then some fried cheese!

Good thing I re-read the recipe for White Cheese; it only requires a quarter cup of vinegar and not a whole cup like I thought. That’s even better. I still don’t know what I’m going to do to replace my white vinegar when it is all used up because it is distilled. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

First you take a gallon of milk and heat it to 185 degrees. Take it off the heat and add the vinegar, stir for just a moment to incorporate it, and then leave it alone for ten minutes. After that you pour the resulting mess into a cheesecloth line colander to let the liquid drain off. I saved the liquid and gave it to the chickens who had a hay day with it but next time I think I’m going to try and make the ricotta with it.

I lifted the corners of the cheesecloth and pinched them together and then used a heavy duty clip to hang the goo-filled cheesecloth bag on a hook above a bowl for a little over two hours to catch the remaining drips. And at the end of that time … vavooom! … Houston we have cheese. I stuck the cheese in the cooler to firm up a little bit and when I was ready I sliced it thick, breaded it, and fried it. Rand said it was a good as going to the fair. There is still some cheese left so tomorrow I’m going to try using the broiler in the princess for the first time. I’ll slice the tomatoes thick, top them with a slice of cheese, and then broil them until the cheese is melted and brown. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.


November 4th – Getting up early bites. I know it is necessary but I’m so tired. Right after I put my journal away last night … I had to make more ink today … reports of a battle in the Gulf of Mexico came over the radio. It was close enough to land that it could be seen at night and there were several different operators verifying what they saw. No news from the government admitting that the incident occurred and the operators from last night have been silent today, perhaps keeping their heads down … I hope it is nothing more sinister than that.

Paul came by today and said that he and Sadie – this is the name of the girl he has been attracted to – will be getting married this Sunday. Her mother died during the third wave of the pandemic and her father just up and disappeared day before yesterday. He’s done it before but never under the circumstances that Sadie and her little sister were in. Paul has asked if he could trade for some milk every few days somehow until they can work out a trade with Mr. Henderson … they are trading a large field of hay for a cow. I’ll leave that up to Rand, there are projects around here that he could use a couple of extra hands to finish up, setting the poles for the pole barn comes to mind.

Brought in a bunch of dried beans today. The shoe peg corn also started coming in today. I canned a bunch of it. I like it now that I’ve tasted it. I better like it after all that work we put into it. For dinner I made a corn casserole, buttermilk cornbread, and broiled tomatoes. I wish Momma and Daddy could see me now. I wish any of my friends from school could see me now, boy would they be surprised.

Church tomorrow and there is going to be a full dinner. I talked to Rand and we’re going to bring cheese and corn casserole, a big pot of greens, a couple pans of cornbread and some homemade butter all of which is sitting down in the kitchen all wrapped up and ready to go first thing in the morning. I won’t ever forget the gift of seeds that Momma O and Mrs. DeLois gave us for a wedding present so I made pillow cases for Paul and Sadie and we are also going to give them a large bag full of different dried fruits. We want to cultivate friendships as much as we cultivate Sparkleberry Ranch. After all, you never know what could be coming down the road these days.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 57

November 5th – Paul and Sadie had a pretty wedding. It was chilly first thing in the morning, woke up and it was only in the 50s, but by the afternoon it was seventy-six degrees. From the sound of things I’m not the only one with a cough that won’t go away. Rand has said that we should plan on sleeping downstairs from here on out. Weather like this is what they call pneumonia weather. Cool to cold at night and then warm to hot during the day. It starts with a cold, sinus drop makes your throat sore, then you start coughing, and then the yuck hits your stomach or your lungs. I’m sloshing around tonight have drunk enough peppermint tea to gag Santa. But at least I’m not hacking like I was this afternoon.

Sadie’s little sister was really cute too all dressed up in a made over princess costume. You could see she was just dying to role her eyes every time someone mentioned she looked just “adorable and doll-like.” I don’t think at twelve I would have appreciated being called cute or doll-like either but she stayed pretty good natured about it until the boys really started pushing her buttons. Sadie’s little sister’s name is Hannah and I don’t know who is thrilled with whom more … Hannah or Momma O. Sadie has done her best under bad circumstances but they’ll both be much better off going to live with Paul.

There is some sorrow tinged with the happiness of the wedding through. You can just tell that Paul’s brother isn’t doing well at all. No one honestly expects him to survive the winter – he is prone to lung congestion and infections – and with no antibiotics or advanced treatment around it is highly doubtful that he’ll survive his next bad turn.

We got to the park while the sky still had that rosy, early morning glow to it. Pastor Ken was already there as were all of Paul’s family. Rand asked me to hold the wagon reins while he jumped down to run over and help Paul and the other men get Paul’s brother and wheelchair on the ground safely. The food we had brought was boxed up but hidden under some hay and out of sight.

Rand was wiping his hands when he looked up and his eyes widened at something over my shoulder. I turned quickly and then released the brake and flicked the reins as I’d seen Rand do so many times and the mules pulled forward a little harder than I had expected, nearly pulling me off the wagon seat. Luckily Rand was there before I could lose control of the animals but the ruckus drew attention to the fact from everyone else that other people were starting to arrive and some of them were looking decidedly nosey.

What Rand had seen and why I had responded the way I did was because a woman was looking in the back of the wagon. They couldn’t see anything but it still bothered me. It always embarrassed me when kids I went to school with would gawk inside other people’s cars at school. “Oooh, leather seats. Outrageous sound system. Ew, there’s like a jock strap in the back seat. Can you believe someone actually still listens to that CD? I’d like to know how she affords those shoes … you know her father isn’t around and her mom is a waitress at the 1999 Club.” Stupid catty stuff, but it was like they just had to know other people’s business. Looking back I can’t believe our school didn’t implode with all the methane from the gasbags that went there. Those types of people would do the same thing to your hall locker or the gym lockers. You learned to keep everything in gym bags or to carry it around in your backpack just to keep people out of your business.

And now, grown people were doing it. But the woman did look hungry. When she asked if we had anything we needed help I said the first thing that came to my head, “All taken care of but thanks.” It wasn’t exactly a lie but it sort of was and Rand was standing right there and it made me awful uncomfortable. He got up in the wagon seat and moved the wagon between Pastor Ken’s buggy and Paul’s big horse-drawn hack he rescued from the local railroad museum. Before he got down he kissed me on the temple and said, “Easy Honey, it’s OK. You handled it as well as I could have. Trust is something you earn these days. You don’t go snooping in other people’s stuff like that.”

I still hate lying and there is no way to work it around to make it right but at least Rand understood why I said what I did. About that time Mr. Henderson showed up and he had his own way of hiding the obvious.

“Yo, Joiner … some of you other fellas … come lend us a hand here. Had a dog pack sneak past the sentry and try to take down a heifer. We killed the dogs but we had to put down the heifer. Figured it was a shame to waste what looks providential … help us get her finished up and we’ll start grilling in short order.”

They had more than enough hands helping … Sunday best and all … which gave me a chance to slip down from the wagon and quietly move what we brought to the tables. That same woman was staring at me and giving me the evil eye when I carried the basket that had the cornbread, cheese, and butter in it over to older ladies who were in charge of the buffet table.

“I know who you are. You’re that girl that goes around killing people.”

“Excuse me?”

“Word gets around. You kill people or you get people killed … you figured out which it is yet? Either way it ain’t healthy to be around you. Sooner or later your man is gonna find that out.”

With that she turned around and left. I have to say it made me sick to my stomach. No one with any sense wants to have that kind of reputation. Who wants to be known as a killer?

Pastor Ken made me jump when he came up behind me, “Don’t listen to her. She’s bitter. She’s from over in Mayo. Her husband left her years ago and she had five boys to raise on her own. The oldest turned out all right. Last I heard he was still alive and working in Orlando in EPCOT’s hydroponics farm. The youngest boy isn’t too bad either and went to go live with his brother in some kind of apprentice program … free labor for training. But the middle three were more trouble than even their dad was. All three of them joined the roving gangs. Her second oldest was killed back on that raid at the Food Depot. The next to youngest boy lost his leg from the knee down and three fingers on one of his hands from the same battle. The middle boy is probably the meanest of the lot but he’s slow from pickling his brain with homemade hooch from an early age; he’s all fists but no intellect if you know what I mean.”

Dumb and dumber might not be a threat right now, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t be a threat down the road if things continue to shake out like they are doing. I filed the information and then talked to Rand about it tonight. I also asked him to watch his back. I’ll never forgive myself if something happens to him because someone is out for revenge over something I did. He promised but … it is awful hard not to sit around worrying.

At least I don’t have to worry anyone noticed all the food we brought. Mr. Henderson’s surprise eclipsed everything. I’ve begun to think that maybe that was the plan. After the service and as people began to load up on beef and other stuff from the buffet, I kept hearing Henderson and his men talk up how they’ve doubled the guards and how this was a one off event and how nothing (or no one if you were reading between the lines) was going to get to the ranch or animals any more. They sure as heck impressed some people with all the guns they were carrying around.

I think Cassie and Julia are on the outs with one another. They are polite but I could tell that Julia made a point of Cassie seeing her walk … well, waddle considering how big she is now … over to me and ask me how to crochet an edge on a little bonnet that she was making. The thread she had was pastel green, yellow, and white and it made me think about how people weren’t exactly going to be able to plan for exactly what flavor of baby they were going to get any more.

I showed her how to put a real simple scallop edge on the bonnet. She was telling me thank you and then started crying. I didn’t know what I had done and she kept saying that I hadn’t done anything that she just couldn’t seem to help it. She got herself under control, thanked me again, and then waddled off. I think she is scared. She was holding onto her belly like she could protect it or something. I guess if I was going to have a baby and two-thirds of the stories I’d heard hadn’t exactly ended “happily ever after” I wouldn’t be feeling real confident either. I keep seeing bits and pieces of a girl that I’d like to be friends with, that I could understand why Rand would have liked her … maybe, in some weird way, we can be friends at some point. I mean if Ron Harbinger, with all the stuff he’s gotten up to in his life, can change then surely a girl like Julia can too.

The fellowship went longer than Rand and I had expected it to. We needed to get home and tend to the animals and try and get some rest before this coming week of work. We daren’t leave the animals out while we are both gone but it wasn’t fair to leave them locked up in the barn too long either. We said our goodbyes and then tucked the gift of dried fruit in with the other gifts the couple had received and packed up to head home.

We had the wagon on US90 when we heard a buggy coming up behind us fast, not racing but catching up. Mitch Peters pulled up beside us with Cassie on the seat beside him. You could tell Mitch already leaned heavy in the direction of I-wish-I-was-any-place-else-but-here. He desperately tried to start up a conversation with Rand but Cassie was complaining too loud.

“I don’t see why I had to leave the party. It was just getting good. There was going to be music and … “

“You’re grandfather told me to take you home so you could help get dinner ready for the men who didn’t get to go to the services or fellowship. He won’t be staying much longer himself, only until they get the last of the meat divided up between the families that are the most in need.”

“Why do I have to … “

“Because your grandfather said so.”

“I think he is getting senile or something. He’s never treated me this way before. I haven’t done anything to .. “

And then my mouth took over. I leaned around Mitch and said, “You’re right, you haven’t done anything. In fact, you are so good at not doing anything that your butt is going to get so wide you won’t be able to fit on that wagon seat much longer. And you just keep right on not doing anything. That way Mitch won’t have to be so careful not to hurt your grandfather’s feelings when he opts out of trying to have any kind of relationship with you. Keep right on not doing anything and …”

“Now listen you little … you better watch your mouth. One of these days my grandfather isn’t going to be around to protect you and … “

“That’s right Tweedle Dee. Your grandfather isn’t going to be around forever but his legacy will be. His legacy includes the ranch. It supports and is the livelihood of a lot of people these days, including some of your own family. So think … on … this …. Chica. You claim to know your grandfather so well. So, do you t really think your grandfather is going to take the risk of leaving that ranch to anyone that isn’t completely capable of taking care of it and taking care of the people that have been under his care? Do you fit that description? Without your grandfather you … are … nobody. You are nobody because you don’t do anything. Until you learn to do something with your time besides moan and groan and complain that your life isn’t as easy as it was before you are going to stay a nobody. Get over yourself, everyone else already has … even your grandfather.”

Rand and Mitch cringed like they were waiting for a nuclear explosion.

Cassie, tearing up said, “You can’t talk to me that way.”

“Uh … newsflash … I just did. Didn’t see anyone or anything stopping me. Did you?”

Then her bottom lip started to quiver. “Rand, how could you … you pick this … this … “

“Forget it Cass. You aren’t capable of understanding. But for the record it goes like this: I love her, she loves me, we’d both die for each other, we never lie to each other. And we both work as hard as we can so the other person doesn’t have to carry any more of a load than is necessary.”

“I … I … “

That’s when Mitch stepped in and sighed, “He’s right Cass. And so is she. You just either can’t or won’t see what is right in front of your face. Your grandfather isn’t a young man. The way things are today any of us could be gone before nightfall today but your grandfather is under a lot of stress doing his best to take care of his people … and you aren’t making it any easier on him. You cause problems with the workmen and their families. You’re thoughtless, rude, and spoiled rotten. You treat Tia Cia like she is nobody when without her your grandfather wouldn’t be the man he is. You know they could have already been married and maybe have given you a young aunt or uncle to grow up with but it is too late for that now. But I don’t think your grandfather plans on waiting any longer for you to grow up Cass. I think he and Tia Cia are going to get married sooner rather than later with or without your approval. And I’m just about done waiting on you to grow up too. I’ve waited this long for your grandfather’s sake. But I’m to the point where I’m thinking that no matter what kind of hope their might have been to begin with, there isn’t much left now. You don’t have too many choices left. Either straighten up and get serious about contributing to the welfare of the ranch and its people or … or be prepared for the consequences. You know your grandfather won’t ever turn you out but you are using up even his patience at this point.”

Uh huh. Mitch flicked his reins and the last I saw of them was Mitch’s sharp and forbidding profile staring straight ahead and Cassie sitting there looking at him with her mouth hanging open.

Rand and I were quiet the rest of the way home. I couldn’t help but think I had stepped in it again. Rand pulled around the blind and up to the barn.

“Rand, I’m … I know … oh boy … I know my mouth got ahead of my brain again.”

“Huh?”

“With Cassie … I’ll apologize and … “

“Oh no you won’t! Now looka here, did I make you think that I was mad at you?”

“That’s not what I meant, I meant that … “

“Yeah, I know what you mean Babe but you need to stop being willing to always be the one that apologizes. Besides, sometimes things need to be … aired out. Maybe someone else would have said it different but the plain fact is that no one else has.”

“Rand I don’t want to cause problems … I … I … I’m afraid one of these days I’m really gonna turn into an embarrassment for you.”

“Never!”

“Never say never. I can be … “

“ … Exactly what I need and never had the sense to pray for. Look Babe, what you said needed saying. Cassie needed to hear the bald truth. What she does with it is up to her. But from here on out she can’t say nobody explained it to her. And there are witnesses so she can’t lie about it, not even to herself.”

“But … “

“No buts, I meant it. It gave Mitch the … opening or push or courage maybe … to lay it out for her; to give her one last chance and to tell her its her last chance or he’s gonna move on.”

“Are you sure? Should I say something to Mitch? I never meant to put him in a bad spot.”

“What is there to say? I’ve known Mitch a long, long time. Chase wasn’t the only one that Mitch used to drag out of trouble. Mitch … he’s not … Look, Mitch and Cassie can work out if Cassie will just give up a lot of those stupid ideas she’s gotten from romance books. Most guys aren’t like that. Mitch is just a regular guy … feed him, water him, remember to pat him fairly often and he’s good to go. He hates drama … those types of women were more his dad’s style.”

“But Cassie acts like such a drama queen.”

“Yeah … acts like a drama queen. She’s spoiled that’s a fact. But she’s also a decent person … or can be. She used to be real good with the little kids at church. Mitch likes little kids too. He says they don’t get rotten until they turn into middle schoolers. And she … well, as far as I know anyway … was never the … uh … promiscuous type. She dated a few guys steady in school but when she wouldn’t put out they moved on.”

“Well I don’t know her that well. I’ll take your word on it. As long as you don’t think I’ve caused more problems.”

“Babe, the problems were already there. All you did was shine some light on them. Now … I’m tired of talking about that spoiled brat, the ball is in her court. She can get over herself or not. We’ve got enough problems of our own to spend time working on and I don’t see anybody jumping up and down trying to help us. Right now I’m going to finish up Bud and Lou and let the rest of the animals out for a couple of hours before it gets dark. After I finish with that why don’t you meet me in the loft so we can … talk.”

So after we “talked” we mapped out some of the things we want to do this coming week. We’ve got a full list as usual. One more cup of strong peppermint tea and then I’m off to bed.


November 8th – Been too tired and snuffly to write at night, all I’ve wanted to do is climb in bed and curl up and hope I can sleep for a couple of hours without waking up coughing. Rand says that we are moving downstairs this weekend, sooner if the weather turns cool again. I would have tried to argue him out of it if I’d had the energy. It got over 80 degrees today and I couldn’t decide if I was hot or cold.

The reason Rand is trying to wait is because he is running wires trying to give a few solar operated LED lights. They are going to be small but he said they could give us the edge. The other thing he is in the middle of doing is putting in a small wood stove in the corner of the room. Rand is worried that the fireplace might not heat the room enough or would be a wasted heat at night. The little stove came out of one of the half destroyed trailers not too far from the house where the chickens came from. Rand found it when he’d gone over there looking for some heavy-duty bolts to put the pig house together with.

It’s been more work to install than he expected. We actually had to build a fireproof box for the wood stove to stand on so that we could get the below the maximum ten feet of vertical venting height. We also had to joggle the location a little bit to work in the minimum distance from the walls, miss all my dad’s stuff he did up in the attic area, make sure we had complete fire safety, and lots of other stuff.

I don’t even bother asking where he learned all this stuff anymore; it’s either “Uncle George,” 4H, or Daddy’s files. I wish he had a recipe for making this cold and cough go away.

I spent Monday and Tuesday picking watermelons and doing what I could to can some and eat as much as we could. What did I learn? In addition to all of the water in the watermelon they should come with a warning label that says “this watermelon contains an enormous amount of fiber and the results will be predictable.” Rand and I laughed about it but it also seemed to make me even more tired … or at least that is what I thought it was.

This morning I felt a little more rested and decided to tackle the garden but got sidetracked when I realized that all my nantes carrots are ready to harvest. I had the second batch going in the canner and went out to the garden to get the next bunch to clean and chop when … poof … I don’t remember what happen. I came to when I felt cold a cold rag being put on the back of my neck. I inhaled real sharp and then started coughing so hard I started seeing spots. With Rand banging on my back I finally coughed up a wad of that gross crud that gets stuck in the back of your throat when you are sick. I didn’t care if it was lady like or not, I spit that stuff out before it made me gag.

“That’s it, you’re going to bed.”

“I can’t. My carrots!”

“I’ll take care of the carrots. How long have they been on?”

“I don’t know … the timer … is the timer going?”

“Yeah and it’s time for the jars to come off the heat. Sit here and don’t you dare move,” he said as he propped me in one of the lawn chairs.

After he moved the carrots off of the heat he helped me into the bathroom and I had to suffer through a blasted cold shower and then when I was shaking so bad I couldn’t hear myself think over my teeth chattering he carried me upstairs and basically restricted me to bed and this is where I’ve been every since.

I can’t get sick. There is too much to do. Tomorrow a bunch of the popcorn is going to be dry enough to bring in and I can’t just leave it out there; the squirrels and ‘coons have already tried their darnedest to take their share and ours too. The delicate squash are going to be ready to pick too if we don’t get any rain overnight. By Friday the pumpkins and cabbage will need to be picked and processed. And Saturday is laundry day again.


November 9th – This sucks. I can barely breathe. I tried to get out of bed and nearly fell down the stairs during a coughing fit. Rand won’t help me down the stairs. I drug myself over to the dormer window and watched him take the shocks of popcorn into the barn. He looked up and caught me and his face and finger pointing made me understand I had better get back in bed real quick. Well, it wasn’t quick, but it was faster than he could get up the stairs.

“Girl, I’m gonna staple you into that bed. I’m not kidding Kiri. I can’t get my work done if I have to worry about you not staying in bed where you belong.”

So I did and here I am, slowly dying a painful death as my brain rots away from boredom.

November 10th – Shaken, not stirred. That’s how my brain feels.


November 12th – Feeling a little better but I’m awful embarrassed. Tia Cia brought horehound tea to help get rid of the crud in my chest. She also had Cassie with her this morning … that’s the embarrassing part. I hate for people to see me like this.


November 13th – I’m still coughing a little but at least I can breathe again. I am so stiff and sore it feels like I’ve been biking forever, especially my neck and back. Rand helped me take a shower this morning but by the time I was finished he had to lift me out of the tub and help me dress. I feel like such a baby.

But even with that, between the horehound tea and that echinacea and astragalus tablets that Tia Cia had me taking I’m feeling a lot better than I was. Pastor Ken has been by almost every day. He diagnosed me as having acute bronchitis.

I can just vaguely recall Rand carrying me down the dormer stairs and laying me in the master bedroom bed and promising me that he wouldn’t be gone any longer than necessary. I found out later that he had ridden Hatchet to the end of our road and over to Momma O’s and left word that he needed Pastor Ken as soon as he could. Momma O had Paul ride over to the Henderson Ranch … Pastor Ken was treating a man that had lost a toe after it was crushed by a bull stepping on it … and Tia Cia insisted on coming with him and bringing her satchel of herbs.

The next thing I remember is Rand getting upset and the Pastor telling him, “Rand, it happens. She’s young and strong and if we can get that stuff broken up she should be all right.”

“If? Should?”

“Rand … I wish I could make guarantees but I’d be lying if I did. We just don’t have any more antibiotics in the area. We went through all of the fish antibiotics we scavenged from the feed store during the last wave of the pandemic.”

I remember hearing Tia Cia’s calming voice telling the two of them to take it outside if they were going to get “muy macho.” I wanted to laugh and tell Rand not to worry so much but I went back to sleep instead.

It feels like I’ve been living in an episode of the Twilight Zone. Not asleep but not awake either. Time didn’t feel like it was running the right way either. It wasn’t until this morning that I had the energy to even cry about all the waste in the garden.

“Hey … hey, hey, hey … don’t Babe. Nothing has gone to waste. Come on now, it’s not like you to cry.”

I couldn’t help it, “You’re just saying that. I know … “ and I just kept crying.

“No I’m not. The Popcorn is in the barn. I sliced and put a bunch of the carrots in the dehydrators and the rest of them are just fine where they are at until you can get to them. The winter squash and pumpkins are sitting on the counter in the summer kitchen and Tia Cia is coming by today to process some of them. The cabbage can stand to wait a couple of more days too. And tomorrow Charlene and Mick are coming. Laurabeth and Alicia wanted to come as well but Pastor Ken nixed that since they’re pregnant and just got over colds too. This weather has everyone a little loopy. Now dry those eyes and get some rest.”

Of course I couldn’t rest, not really. And when Tia Cia showed up with Cassie I could have just died. I’d already seen what I looked like in the mirror. But I can’t recall her making fun or snickering or saying something nasty at all, not even when we were alone in the room together. She gave me some strange looks but that is about it.

I’m out of energy again. This is so stupid. Tomorrow come heck or high water I am getting up.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 58

November 14th – I felt like such a dope today. I needed to tell Charlene and Mick what to do but I really hated it. I tried to get up and do things too but every time I would try I would either get the shakes or start coughing like I was gonna hack up a lung.

Mick is a little stinker. Charlene started laughing when he said, “How come? Laurabeth and Alicia sure don’t have a problem bossing us around and they ain’t even as nice about it as you are!”

It was plain, even to me, that I needed their help if anything was going to get done. Tia Cia had canned a load of pumpkin and a load of the Delicata squash for me but that barely scratched the surface of what I needed to do. I feel so far behind.

First thing we got the Delicata squared away since it had been sitting out the longest. It is a winter squash and I didn’t even know that it was called “Delicata” until Momma O told me. Growing up we always just called it sweet potato squash and used it the same way since that is what it kind of tastes like. Memaw made a pie out of the puree that you couldn’t tell whether it was made out of real sweet potatoes or from the squash.

First we peeled and cubed the squash and then boiled them for two minutes. Then you take the cubes out with a slotted spoon and put them into the prepared jars. Take the water you boiled the squash in and pour it over the cubes leaving about an inch of headspace, wipe the jar rims, and process.

After the Delicata squash it was time to do something with the pumpkins that were beginning to look a little over ripe, at least in my opinion. Once the pumpkins were cooked we took quite a bit of it and just cubed it and canned it the same way we did the squash but another good sized batch of the cooked pumpkin we pureed and turned into pumpkin butter. For each batch of pumpkin butter you take three cups of cooked, mashed pumpkin pulp and you add to that two cups of sugar, one half teaspoon of ground cinnamon and one half teaspoon of ground cloves and one half teaspoon of lemon juice (which I’m getting very short of if truth be told). From there you cook it just like apple butter and can it the same way as well.

While the pumpkin butter cooked down we also got a lot of carroty stuff going; plain or spiced carrot jam, carrot marmalade, carrot relish, dilled carrots, pickled carrots, and spiced carrots. Tomorrow I have to think about cabbage, broccoli, onion, and Hickory King corn. That should make me feel nice and rejuvenated. Not.

I did manage to find the oomph to make biscuits and despite the fact that it is beginning to cool down the summer kitchen got so toasty that we left the doors and windows open. With the princess running full steam and the pot belly outside too, we made pretty good use of the daylight hours but it was also having one of the firepits up and running that made the difference. Running four canners was a lot to keep up with but at least we cleared all of the produce on the counter top.

After we got the last batch of pumpkin butter going we still had a decent sized glop of pumpkin puree left. The longer I looked at that little pile of pumpkin the bigger my craving got for a pumpkin latte. I hadn’t had one in a long time. They were a special we made at the diner and it is just about the only way I will drink coffee. Aunt Wilma never did understand why I could never drink coffee, she was a coffee snob and my Dad could drink a pot or two of coffee a day by himself, my grandmothers kept pots of coffee on all day … I just never developed the taste for it. Instead I enjoy tea, all sorts of teas from herbal to earl grey. I used to try the nastiest tasting stuff just to freak Aunt Wilma out. I suppose you have to get your kicks where you can.

As for the Pumpkin Lattes though, totally yum. The trick was going to figure out how to make a “crock pot” because that is the only way I know how to do it. Well, I took an old stone crock and put it in the warming pan of the princess. I don’t think it is exactly the same but it worked for what I needed. For two really big mug’s worth you take three quarters cup of real strong coffee and whisk in two cups of milk, two tablespoons of pumpkin puree, two tablespoons of sugar, two tablespoons of vanilla (yeah, that much), and a half teaspoon of pumpkin spice and you let this cook crockpot-style for two hours.

Maybe I should watch the rich stuff in the future because Mick was pinging off the walls by the time Uncle George came to pick them up. When he asked, “What in the Sam Hill has that boy been into?” I gave him his own mug of latte and he didn’t ask again.

“Well, glad to see you’re doing better but that cough still sounds nasty. Rand … son … might have some weeding goslings for you in a couple of days. Bertha Ferguson lost one of her geese and has too many eggs for her flock as it is. She says if you’ll promise to come help to mow their back forty she’ll give you some of them.”

I was getting shaky and cranky and all I could think of was, “Great, more responsibilities for me to make time for.” Rand looked at me and said, “It’s OK Babe … the goslings will pull their weight literally by helping to weed in the garden. That’s if they are the right kind of geese.”

“They’ll do the job all right though they’d be more use if they were spring hatchlings. They’re a White Chinese breed. Kiri girl, you should see a bunch of goslings mow through any kind of broadleaf vegetable patch. Now, I wouldn’t let ‘em in the corn until the corn was up quite a bit but they do a fine job on just about anything else, including strawberries which I see you’ve got yourself a fine patch of.”

Which was Uncle George’s way of saying I needed to weed the strawberries since they were looking sloppy. Nice man, but some of the ways he tries to give advice make me want to grind my teeth on bad days. It’s not like I didn’t feel bad enough about all the grass growing in the tower already.

After Uncle George left with Charlene and Mick about all I had energy to do was make dinner. Rand offered but he’s no more rested than I am and besides, I make less mess. And speaking of cleaning up, Charlene gave me an idea for doing something with all of those blasted acorns that started raining down last month. Charlene was talking about how everyone is beginning to run out of both flour and cornmeal unless they’ve figured out how to grind their animal feed. Then she said that Alicia was experimenting making other types of flour … millet, potato, sweet potato, rice flour … and acorn flour.

I know I’ve got the directions for this someplace in Momma’s files because I’ve seen it. I would have started it today but frankly after Charlene and Mick left I was too tired. I’m sitting here at the little secretary table that Rand set up for me in the bedroom. He wants me to have a warm place to write as the weather becomes cooler; I’m far enough away from the stove that I won’t roast but close enough that I’m not going to have cold feet either. Now I just need to find the energy to climb into bed. I need to ask Rand what he did with the step stool I kept tucked under the bed; when I say climb into the bed that’s exactly what I mean.

Hopefully Rand won’t fall asleep up in the dormer room listening to the radio. I don’t know if I even have the energy to go get him up if he does.


November 15th – Feeling a little better today. Didn’t cough as much although I’m still snuffly. I’m sorry, using a bandana to blow your nose in just feels gross, having to wash the bandanas is even worse. I suppose I could have used some of the toilet paper we have left, but as a girl I feel like I already use more than my fair share of it.

No help today and boy do I feel it. Brendon came over early to tell us Janet had another really bad spell last night. The spells are getting further apart, which is a good thing, but the spells themselves aren’t getting any easier on her. From the sound of things she is very congested still this morning even though the fever broke. Ron’s aunt is over doing some kind of therapy on her … postural something or other … where she is put in different positions and she is basically kind of whacked on the back with a cupped hand in specific locations. Brendon said that it helps knock the mucus loose so that she can clear it out.

And apparently, Rand and I aren’t the only ones that are questioning Uncle George’s insistence on keeping Janet still and quiet all the time. Ron’s aunt … I can’t keep calling her that but the idea of calling that starched up woman Aunt Buzzy like Ron does gives me the shivers … has told Uncle George that Janet is in desperate need of exercise. She needs to increase her lung capacity, not just put up with the diminished capacity she has right now. As soon as … um … Aunt Buzzy (ew, shiver) … helps get Janet through this latest crisis she has said that Janet is going to start on a stationary bicycle and if Uncle George doesn’t like it that is just too bad. Brendon said his dad looked like a trout out of water with his mouth opening and closing but nothing coming out. And then he just gave in.

“At least Dad had the sense to get out of Ol’ Buzzard’s way … “

“Brendon!”

“Aw come on Rand, you used to call her that yourself. That woman is … is … I don’t know what she is but she is definitely something. You should see how she manages Mrs. Winston. I don’t know what Mr. Winston would have done if Buzzy hadn’t been willing to step up. Rumor has it she did it because she and Mr. Winston used to have a … thing for each other before Mrs. Winston caught his eye and won’t that give you nightmares if you think about it too much.”

Brendon may be more mature than he used to be but I can guarantee you that if his mouth and mine got into a contest I wouldn’t be able to say for sure that I would come out the winner. Brendon finally left after doing everything he could to wind Rand up.

No matter how much I tried I could only run three canners today and I was pushing it to do that. I almost let the cornbread burn but caught it just in time; it was dark brown but still edible.

Rand is ragged around the edges too. I can tell he has lost weight again and he hasn’t shaved in quite a while. Not that I mind, the grungy look is kind of hot looking on him right now though I can tell now that he isn’t trying to do everything himself he is beginning to remember that he said having a beard itches. I caught him scratching under his chin several times today.

A lot of the milk had to be given to the animals. He saved all the cream he could but the skimmed milk gave the pigs and chickens a little change up in their diet. Mick and Charlene drank their fill yesterday even helped me to churn the cream that had been saved. Luckily neither one asked how Rand has been saving the cream. Charlene isn’t all that much young that I am but she has led the petted and protected life I would have if my dad had lived. It’s made her … soft, less observant I guess you would call it. That was good for us yesterday but might not be good for Charlene in the long run.

Rand put off any major projects today and mostly stayed in or around the house. He neatened and prettied up around the wood stove in the bedroom. He also helped me shuck and clean the popcorn so we could put bags of the kernels in the freezer for a couple of days. From there we’ll dry it back out and store it in some of the Tupperware containers I’ve saved. He spent most of his time on small projects like sharpening his tools and working out all of the salvage material he is going to need for a couple of different projects he has in mind. That mean he was on hand to help me move the canners when I started running out of oomph right after lunch.

Rand tried to get me to lie down when he caught wind of how I was feeling but I was feeling too far behind and in a rush. I really wish I could have but I’ll resent went all of the crops are in When I told Rand that he snorted and said, “No you won’t. You’ll find something else that you think needs doing, but you’ll do me the favor today by not canning anymore before dinner. OK?”

Rand doesn’t really pull the I-am-the-man card very often but it was pretty clear that’s what he was doing right then for all he said it like I’d be doing him a favor. I think maybe I scared him when I got sick.

The other night, before I had even gotten well enough to get out of bed, he started talking about us need to have rules and such. He went on to talk about how I was overbooking myself and trying to do too much. Rand is the only guy that I’ve ever been with and if I didn’t trust him … some part of me already loving him … I would never have married him and given him any kind of authority in my life. But, even with Rand I have “authority issues.” With anyone else I would have probably ignored them and done what I wanted anyway, but I like the peace I share with Rand and have learned to think before I act when it comes to him.

“You’re right,” I told him after thinking it over. “This way I won’t have to worry about you so much either.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, this will be really great. You’ve lost too much weight and I get worried at the end of the day when you are so tired. Now that you’ll be quitting work so much earlier … “

“Now wait. I didn’t mean … “

“And … “

“Well, this is all hypothetical of course. We need to be thinking about having rules. After I get through these next few projects we should sit down and talk about this.”

Whew. Averted that one. I really don’t have a problem if Rand wants “rules,” I just want them to apply to both of us.

Today we cut the dry stalks of the Hickory King corn and the reason we had to cut them is because they were too tall for me to reach. The stalks all reached between eight and twelve feet tall and every one of them had two ears which was pretty doggone good. Rand and I measured it out; each dried ear yields a half pound of corn kernels so each corn plant is giving us roughly a pound of dried kernels. The shucked ears are sitting in bushel baskets in the summer kitchen waiting for me to have time at night to rub the kernels off and that most definitely requires gloves.

I put most of the broccoli to dry but I made broccoli and cheese today and I have a few late bunches that I’ll use as they mature. The onions were pretty easy to bring in and what I did with them was to take old pantyhose … and yes, they are old but clean hose … and I dropped an onion all the way down to the toe of one leg and then tied a knot. Then I dropped another onion down to the knot and then tied another knot above that onion. I kept doing that until both the legs of the pantyhose were filled. It looked like a bizarre garland and I have two pair of pantyhose hanging like this in the pantry. The other onions I am going to dry or can tomorrow.

I know it doesn’t seem like I did much today. I didn’t even get the bed curtains cut out that I meant to start on. I got some stuff done but I am very tired and tomorrow is cleaning day so I’m going to go to bed and curl up next to Rand. I have found a good way to stop him from snoring in the middle of the night. If he wakes me up really going at it hard I sneak my cold feet up under the back of his knees.

I need to write the funny down before I forget. Last night Rand was snoring so bad that not even Woofer could stand it. He came over to my side of the bed and made a doggy noise and I told him it wasn’t my fault, to take it up with Rand … so it did. Woofer went over to Rand’s side of the bed and stuck his cold nose right in Rand’s ear. Oh … my … goodness. You would have thought someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on him. I laughed until I started coughing again. Then we got into a bit of a pillow fight. Then we made up.

Still … I hope Rand doesn’t snore so much tonight. I can always judge how tired he is by how bad he snores. My goal is one day not have him snoring at all.


November 16th – I am so tired. I think I over did it too because I’m coughing again. It was probably the ammonia I was using to clean with; not smart. But, I don’t have all that many options for cleaning lately and I mostly definitely needed to give the house a thorough cleaning today. The house feels truly clean for the first time in a couple of weeks. I did floors, walls, and bedding today.

Or maybe I’m coughing from the wet feet I got while doing the sheets and bedding. I did get kind of cold. Rand says he might have an idea, he isn’t sure. Every day he finds something new to think about in Daddy’s files. There were these directions for building a passive solar hot water system. I don’t know how well it will work in the cool weather but it is definitely something he is figuring out how to mount on the roof. But what he was thinking is that he could also mount one on the roof of the barn. Then he could run the hot water pipe down the outside of the barn and into a lean to where he could set up a wash tub and wringer.

I really like this idea. One, it would keep the washing mess out of the house and I wouldn’t have to spend time mopping up the inevitable drips that get on the floor. Two, it would save time by me not having to haul bucket after bucket of water or heat water to wash the grungiest stuff in. Three, it would save water because I could drain the wash water into a bucket and use it to water the orchard or whatever. Right now I’m letting the water go into the septic system. And, Rand said if he can find all the parts he plans on putting together an alcohol fuel distiller … basically that’s a fancy name for a still … and if he can create alcohol fuel then he’ll build me an agitating washing machine that will run off of a combustion engine. And this guy was getting his business degree!? He should have been going to school to be an engineer. I said that to him and he said, “No way! Too many rules back then on what you could and couldn’t do. I small scale and like building stuff for us but that’s about it Babe.”


November 17th – Sad day. Paul’s brother passed away in the night. Pastor Ken said his internal organs just gave out this time. The family has decided not to have a big wake or home going service, not even a graveside service. As a matter of fact when Rand rode over there first thing this morning after finding out from Mitch he was just in time to dig the last two feet of the grave itself. There is a small graveyard that has been in the family for years in the back corner of their yard lot. Paul’s dad says they don’t know what they are going to do for a headstone so they’ll just mark it with some limestone chunks like I did the place where Uncle Charlie is buried.

While Rand was over there I made up a large bowl of tangerine slaw. It’s basically a sweet slaw. You take shredded cabbage and add Miracle Whip or mayonnaise, a little bit of sugar, some raisins, and drained canned Mandarin orange sections. I kept back some for Rand and I and then put the rest in a plastic container with a lid and was walking up the road when I met Rand coming back. Mitch was with him. They had come to get one of those chunks of limestone out of the eighty next door to our forty; none of the chunks at Momma O’s was movable. Rand kissed my forehead and took the slaw back with him when he left in the wagon. When he came back I could tell he needed to talk.

“He was a big as a grown man but when we lifted him to put him in the ground … he weighed less than some kids I’ve picked up. He didn’t starve to death but he his muscles were all atrophied and he must not have had any kind of bone density. Looking at him now it is a wonder he lived as long as he did. They were providing around the clock care for him. At least he lived long enough to be at Paul’s wedding. Thank goodness for Sadie. She’s giving Mrs. DeLois and Momma O something to focus on.”

That wasn’t the last of the sad news. Julia’s mother escaped; she gnawed her restraints in two if you can believe that. She’s in nothing but a nightgown … assuming she left it on … and they’ve been looking for her all day. Rand went to help when Hoss came by to tell us about it. Someone had brought their hunting and tracking dogs and they had her scent and followed it for almost five miles but lost it in a fresh skunk spray and they weren’t able to pick it back up. The search was called off when it got dark, Rand didn’t get home until almost nine o’clock and I was getting worried.

“The path she was taking doesn’t make any sense. It looks like she may just be wandering. As many times as we had to go in circles it is a wonder we didn’t trip over her. It looks like she might be heading out towards Ichetucknee. I have a hard time seeing her make it that far but if she does we might never find her if she falls in.”

“Rand, I want to help look tomorrow.”

“What?! You just got over being sick and … “

“Rand, I’m the last person to really care about how things look but … we don’t need people thinking that either one of us is holding any kind of grudge against any of the Winstons. That’s the kind of thing that can fester and maybe cause us problems down the road.”

“I know, I’ve already thought of that … and gotten some comments from people today. That’s why I’ve made sure and not gone off looking by myself. I don’t want anyone to say anything other than I tried as much as everyone else.”

“So … “

“Look, I understand what you are saying but you were bad sick. You’re still coughing.”

“Not as bad.”

“OK, not as bad but still I don’t like it. And Kiri, some of the people that are helping in the search … they aren’t exactly the kind of people that … that … Look, I don’t even know how to say this without sounding …” He mangled his hair and then continued, “Babe, I don’t want you around some of those people. Some of them are strangers but some of them … they’re people … they’re people Chase and I used to hang out with when we were at our worst in highschool. Some of them still carry a grudge against me for turning my back on them.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be near them either!”

“It’s different. I can’t look weak. But if you come with me tomorrow I’m going to worry and if they see me worrying they’ll know you are a weakness and they might try … “

“Rand Joiner, are you forgetting who you’re talking to? I’ve spent the last few years of my life surviving in a house full of trouble teenage boys. I’ve … I’ve … Well, I’ve defended myself as necessary. I love you for wanting to protect me but don’t forget that I can protect myself as well.”

“I know … I just … look, let me think about it. Oh heck. Fine. But you are going armed – pistol and rifle – and I want you to carry that big screwdriver you’re so fond of. And that kukri of your dad’s too. The kukri will help you get through the underbrush and … and if you keep it in hand it will be good for self defense.”

So I put together two packs, one for Rand and one for me; food, water, and a few other odds and ends. They aren’t very big and there isn’t much in them … we’ve actually stuck some stuff in our pants pockets or inside our jackets … we don’t want to draw too much attention to what we have but trying to fit in isn’t going to do us much good if we get hurt trying to hide in plain sight.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 59

November 19th/20th – This has been a long two or three days. I think it is after midnight so technically I guess you could say we are into our third day.

Yesterday, day before yesterday depending on which clock you are looking at, Rand and I were up before the chickens. I didn’t do more than heat water for breakfast – coffee for Rand’s thermos and hot spiced tea for mine. I baked a thick and hearty cornbread last night that had bacon bits, cheese, and bits of dried apple in it and what we didn’t eat for breakfast I sliced and added to our nosebag lunches. I was glad that I did too considering how things turned out.

We rode the mules. We were going to ride Hatchet and Dilly … I named the filly Daffodil but she seems to answer better when we call her Dilly … but Hatchet tried to get frisky the first day of searching and take Rand through a thick stand of blackberry canes. Hatchet scratched himself up and Rand decided that it is better to keep him away from other horses until he’s healed. In hindsight I’m glad because even though Dilly is a sweet pea for a horse I needed Lou’s protective stability and he minds me better too most of the time.

The morning was pretty eerie. Mist lay draped like a thick veil on and around everything. It wasn’t cold but it was coolish and we wore our jackets; I could feel mine getting heavier as it picked up the damp in the air. The mist held back the morning until we reached the trading shack and when the sun finally found the sky the mist acted as a million tiny mirrors and it suddenly seemed far brighter than it should have been.

The whispering started as soon as we rode up and increased in volume as I dismounted and went over to Julia where she sat wrapped in a quilt on the wide veranda of the Shack.

“Julia, I’m so … to be honest I don’t know quite what to say. I’m not here to cause problems. I just want to help. I want you to know … “

Julia gave a small, sad smile and said, “It’s all right Kiri. I understand. And … and thank you.”

“Has there been any word?”

“No … none.”

Looking around I asked, “Should you be out here? It’s a little damp.”

“If you can get my daughter to go inside you’ll have had more luck than the rest of us,” Mr. Winston said as he stepped up to the railing.

“Daddy … you know I … “

Ron came over and interrupted what was obviously an overplayed argument. “We’re going to start heading out. Sawyer has a map drawn. Any group that forms after these do will be sent to a different sector.”

An older lady I didn’t recognize came to sit with Julia and I went back to Rand who was visibly bristling. The guy he was facing might have been heavy at some point but he had lost a lot of weight and not in a healthy way. “Well, well. And what little girl do we have here?”

“The girl that is gonna turn you from a scrawny looking rooster to an even uglier hen if you don’t back out of my personal space.”

I’d caught Rand off guard and he barked out a big laugh at the look on the guy’s face.

“My gawd Joiner. You done married a … a … I don’t know what you done married. It’s a cross between a porc-a-pine and a Chihuahua.”

Before Rand could get angry again I looked at the guy, smiled my best stewardess smiles and said, “So long as you remember that we won’t have any problems. Just don’t forget that I can shoot a gun just about as well as I can shoot my mouth off.”

We got back on the mules and left the guy … found out that used to call him Sasquatch but his given name is Arnold McPhee … standing there laughing.

“Babe, you are something else. I’m gonna be bald before I’m 25 if you keep doing things like that. But I wouldn’t have credited it, you just got one of the guys on your side that I never expected to see happen. If Arnie likes you then hopefully he’ll be able to talk some of the other guys around. Not too many run up against him.” To be honest I could care less but if it makes Rand happy then whatever. The guy just seemed like a pompous blowhard to me; all wind, no substance.

I was the only female in the eight-person group we were in. There was Rand and I, Ron, Hoss, and four other guys that Rand wouldn’t let get too close to me. Only one of those guys seemed to be more of a donkey’s behind than our mules’ hindquarters were related to – a guy they called Mercer – but he was easy enough to ignore. And I noticed as long as I ignored him everyone else seemed able to as well.

Eventually the guy shut up and we rode slowly in a side-by-side line from morning to noon. A short break for lunch and then we remounted and continued. A brief halt was called when a piece of torn material matching the description of Mrs. Winston’s nightgown was found stuck in a devil’s walking stick bush.

“Well Ron, what do you think son? Continue on? Send someone back with the info?”

“Hoss can you and Joe ride back and get folks to converge on this area? We’ll keep heading this way until we hit the river. If we don’t find her before then we’ll wait there for the dogs.”

Mercer tried to offer up his two cents on the subject but everyone pretty much did the opposite of what he suggested. What was irritating was how he always seemed to try and draw our group off course, saying he saw stuff that turned out to be a shadow or nonexistent at all.

There was another bigger strip of the same material caught on the barbed wire that marked the boundary of Ichetucknee State Park. All the men sighed and Mercer started running his mouth saying that there was just no way that “the old bat” could have climbed the fence and gotten into the park. I dismounted and pulled out my wire cutters. Ron looked at Rand and Rand just shrugged.

I’m sorry. I’m a doer. Sitting around waiting and wringing my hands doesn’t do it for me. It was obvious that the fence had been stretched out a little. And there was another small fluttering string hung up in a cedar tree on the other side of the fence. I wondered what kind of evidence Mercer would need to admit the obvious. Ron led us though the gap I had created and the going quickly became much more difficult. A couple of the horses started to balk and eventually even Bud and Lou bogged down in the overgrowth.

Those of us with machetes dismounted and starting cutting a path. It didn’t take long for me to start coughing. I was able to hide it for a while but eventually Rand noticed and came over and called for another break. It was when we stopped moving and stood quiet and still that we heard it.

There was a shriek and then some rough laughter by several men. The alert level in our group spiked. Weapons were quietly drawn and checked. We tied the animals off to a tree and waded through the vegetation heading in the direction we heard a second and then third shriek followed by a very audible moan and more cruel laughter.

Rand and the other men looked at me. There is a time to argue and a time to just shut up and be the little woman. I stepped off into some bushes and took up a rear guard type position. I saw Rand relax a little and give me a wink to let me know he appreciated what I was doing. The men then headed deeper into the very overgrown park, eventually disappearing from view. If things had been any less serious I might have been upset but I wasn’t. I was however wound tight and listening for trouble which turned out to be a good thing.

Several feet to my left and behind me I heard, “Where’d them guys go?”

“Shut up Skeet. Fizz is checking their mounts and he told us to ambush ‘em when they come back. How we gonna ambush ‘em if they hear your mouth flapping?”

Skeet and his partner were so skanky that I found them by smell before I actually got a good look at them. Their BO was a combination of sour armpits, unwashed feet, and vomit-covered drunk. They reminded me of how the dumpster behind the diner smelled when the BYOB club at the other end of the strip center would sneak some of their garbage into ours.

For some reason their odor made me just as angry as their words. There was some of the cleanest open water in the area flowing within the park and here they were stinking up the place and not even noticing.

“I think they had a girl with ‘em. How ‘bout we hide out with her for a while?”

“Forget it. Fizz has already called dibs on her and you know DC will give him what he wants since he found that old hag for them to play with last night.”

I prayed right there that Mrs. Winston’s mind was too gone for her to understand what had likely been happening to her.

“Hey, where you think DC got those rigs full of stuff from? I … “

“Shut up man. DC don’t like nobody askin’ questions about his business. You want to keep breathing, you better stop talking. DC will use you for games next time.”

“Sure man. It’s cool. I just thought … you know … you been with ‘em even longer than Fizz. You’re smarter than Fizz too.”

“Yeah … and don’t you fergit it either. Fizz’ll get his someday, someday soon and … “

I was shocked and nearly screamed when a hand suddenly appeared from behind the man that was talking and in the hand was a knife and the knife did what knives were designed to do.

“Geez Fizz. You didn’t say you was gonna kill ‘im.”

“What did you think I was gonna do idiot? We’ll blame it on those guys and no one will be the wiser. You mess this up and you’ll follow … “

“Sure Fizz … sure. No problems here. I kept my mouth shut about everything else haven’t I?!”

“Shut up you idiot. Let’s set up here and we’ll catch those guys on their way back. You do what I tell you to and I’ll see you get a piece of the next one we find, maybe even let you go first.”

My blood was boiling but it was a cold boil … felt like liquid ice was flowing through me. Everything got sharper and clearer. I could feel that “gone away” feeling coming on and this time I was saying hurry up. I was still trying to decide what I was going to do when the decision was taken out of my hands.

I could hear gunfire coming from the same direction that the shrieks had come from. Both men jumped, obviously they hadn’t expected our men to fight. Fizz ordered, “Come on, we’ll catch ‘em in a crossfire.”

I thought, “Oh no you won’t.” I was already braced and ready. I fully admit that I shot them both in the back without a second thought. It is what they had planned for Rand and the other men. It may not have been fair but at the moment I felt like I was at war … and I intended on our side winning.

Something told me that I needed to go check the animals to make sure they hadn’t been moved. I ran back and could feel my chest starting to tighten up but I kept going. Sure enough our mounts weren’t where we left them but it was easy enough to follow the trail through the bushes using the kukri and I found them tied off in a new location. I was debating whether to move them back or wait for the men when my braid was grabbed and used to swing me around into a fist that felt way too big.

“Next time you shoot darlin’ make sure the guy isn’t wearing Kevlar.”

That’s an affirmative. Fizz grabbed me but was still suffering the effects of my shots to his back and the wind that got knocked out of him. But a vest doesn’t cover everything. It certainly didn’t cover his legs which is what I started slashing at with the kukri once we’d started to tussle. I dropped with a rabbit punch to my kidney … why do the big jerks always like to hit the most painful spot in the most painful way possible? I tried to brace for the rest of the fight but that punch was the last real move that Fizz made. I guess I had raked the big artery in his leg during our fight and he was down and in a pool of his own blood staring at nothing by the time I got my breath back.

I was hurting all over but especially my back. I leaned against Lou trying to catch my bearings. Bless that mule, he was shaking but didn’t move away from me and let me hold onto him without a whinny of complaint. I heard some men and thought it was Rand and the others but it wasn’t. A couple of the guys in this group were definitely nothing I could handle. I stayed as quiet as I could but one of the horses got shook up from all the blood and noise and broke loose and went charging into the open. The guys started fighting over who was going to get the horse when the gunfire started up again and was coming closer.

Within a few minutes I didn’t have a flaming clue what was going on, who was fighting whom, or which direction the bullets were coming from. Iooked for Rand in the fray but so no one that I recognized. When I heard automatic gunfire and a bullet grazed another one of the horses I didn’t feel like I had any choice. I loosed the animals from our hiding spot and sent them as away from the fighting as I could figure out for them to go and then I took off too.

I didn’t have time to worry though I know a part of me was thinking that Rand was going to be so upset about Bud and Lou. I didn’t really know where I was heading either; all I knew was that it was away from the heavier and heavier gunfire. I panicked for a moment but then realized there was nothing I could do except do for myself at the moment; and I prayed Rand wouldn’t do anything crazy looking for me. The gunfire was getting close again so I kept running.

Boy did I run. And run. And then fell when I tripped over a fallen signpost on an overgrown trail. It said Blue Hole Spring. I blinked rapidly a couple of times trying to get my brain to work on something besides the sounds of battle and discovered I could finally orient myself. I’d spent enough time holed up in that snack bar staring at the map on the wall behind the register and from those memories I concluded I was at the far north end of the park near the upper tube launch. That made sense; we’d come into the park near the old family campground at the north entrance but somehow I had wound up on the east side of the river instead of the west. I must have been running in circles part of the time.

I stopped, pulled myself together and knew I needed to head back north or I wouldn’t be able to cross the river until I reached US27. The problem is that there was no going north. The fighting was heading my way again. I kept the river on my right so that I wouldn’t turn in circles again. At Missions Spring I had to stop. I was getting the shakes and getting dehydrated. The day was getting later and cooler but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t sweating.

At this point I heard the big guns and engines approaching again; it was like a freaking war zone. Everything was noise and confusion. I prayed that Rand was all right as I knew he’d be praying for me. It seemed so huge, like the fighting had taken over the whole park but in truth the fighting was in a concentrated area that moved, I just happened to always be on the leading edge of it. If I had been able to get out far enough ahead and then tried to break away and to the east I could have let it pass me, but moving as slow as I was on foot I had a different reception of what I thought was happening.

I tried to break away at Mill Pond Spring but got hung up trying to go around the river spur. By the time I was around it the fighting was practically on top of me again. Right after Mill Pond Spring I picked up the park’s shuttle road and I not only mentally knew where I was but visually knew as well though things were even more overgrown than last time I was there. This was the midpoint tube launch area and where the developed area of the park started.

I was halfway to the park’s main entrance, but nearly empty of all energy. I needed to find a place to hole up and I needed to find it soon. It was getting dark. I thought of how safe the snack bar had felt … solid block walls, metal doors … and that is where I headed with what little speed I had left to muster.

I reached Dampier’s Landing and found the boardwalk. It was a good thing I had to stop or I would have walked straight into what would likely have been my death. The gloaming evening saved me and so did a broken shoe lace I knelt to re-tie.

“DC … DC … what we gonna do? Them squatters from before we took the park have got them some guns this time.”

A big, rough looking bald headed man turned and looked coldly at what was obviously one of his underlings. It was a sight out of that crazy movie Mad Max in Thunderdome. They were dressed in a mish mash of what they must have thought was cool survival clothes that made them look tough. Baldy had all sorts of junk clipped to his jacket too that gave it a pseudo-authoritarian look. He said, “We’ve got guns.”

“Not guns like these Boss. They musta got them off some military or National Guard unit.”

A low, impatient growl followed these words. “I’m not leaving my stuff. They were too slow to take it themselves. Now it is mine. They can’t have it now just because that they’ve decided they want it after all.”

“No sir but … “

This is where I finally found out that I was in the middle of what amounted to a gang war of some type. The guy DC was the leader of one gang and took something before the “squatters” – the other gang – got around to taking it, whatever “it” was. I figured “it” must be in the big truck trailers that I could see lined up in the picnic parking area. It is also where I found that there weren’t nearly as many people involved in this “battle” as I had expected. There were definitely dozens on each side but not the hundreds I had imagined.

Three jeeps and some dirt bikes came out of the bushes and the fight was on. I kept my head down and crawled through bushes … and dead bodies, some new and some not … trying to get to the snack shop. I did some shooting of my own the few times I was discovered.

Darkness descended and I never did make it to the snack shop. I crawled into a stand of palmettos and asked God to send all the snakes someplace else for a while. The fighting wasn’t quite as heavy during the night but it never let up completely. Every once in a while I would catch myself falling asleep but not for long. A scream that came from close by or a round of automatic gunfire and I was awake with a pounding heart. The one thing that the night gave me was time to worry. I remember what Momma used to call worry … it is taking tomorrow’s clouds and to hide today’s sunshine. I don’t deny that to be true but I doubt Momma ever imagined I would find myself in quite the predicament I was in.

The night seemed to last an eternity. I worried about Rand, prayed he was all right. Tried to keep myself alive so that any worrying that he was doing would be for nothing. I wondered what had happened to Bud and Lou, they had given us such a head start over other people. I prayed the ammo I had would last as long as I needed it to. And I tried to stay warm.

The weather must have dipped down into the 40s, maybe even the upper 30s since I was so near the river and under bushes that never saw much daylight. I sucked starlight peppermints that were so old not all of the plastic wrap would come off of them; trying to keep my coughing from getting so loud someone would hear me. I snuggled into my jacket and used the backpack to keep my hands and face warm. I also ate the snacks and jerky that I had brought to keep my strength up and to stay warm. The last of the spiced tea helped me get through the coldest part of the night. And thanked God that I had thought to wear two pairs of socks – a thin inner pair and a thicker outer pair – rather than just the one I normally wear at home.

The fighting remained sporadic until dawn and as the sun rose it briefly picked back up. That’s when I saw him; the baldheaded guy, the one called DC. He didn’t look so good; he was never a beauty queen but he looked a little denuded having lost a lot of his little pretties off of his jacket and he has little rivulets of blood running down his face from cuts on his head. At some point he must have gotten one of the big guns from the squatter gang. He was shooting anyone he saw, I doubt it mattered whether they were from his gang or not at this point. He looked as crazy as Mrs. Winston did at her worst.

Then DC was hit once, then twice and as he spun around he sprayed bullets everywhere catching his killers off guard and taking them with him into the abyss. I laid flat on the ground trying to wait out the chaos. When DC fell that seemed to drive everyone that much crazier. There was running and screaming and some hand to hand fighting. I was stepped on twice in the lunacy but no one seemed to notice but me when they did it.

DC’s mouth was still moving and I could just read his lips though it was more than my life was worth to actually hear what he said. “It’s mine. You can’t have it. Finders keepers.” What a way to end a life, reverting to selfish childhood while your guts leaked out onto the ground in an abandoned parking lot.

Suddenly it was just over. It was like détente was reached catching everyone by surprise. Enemies looked at each other then ran in opposite directions. They didn’t get far as the few survivors started squabbling over the motorcycles and few operating vehicles. More gunfire and then the ranks of fighters had thinned so much everyone got their own bike or jeep and high tailed it out of there. It was like the now bullet riddled trailers were invisible.

I must have stayed on the ground another twenty minutes expecting someone to think of those trailers and come back. I knew I needed to get back to Rand. I knew he would be frantic. I was frantic … but I’m afraid I’m also as nosy as a cat.

I picked my way over to the closest trailer and opened the back. The door was heavier than I expected but I managed to stop it from clanging open hard. The air wafting out of the trailer nearly made my eyes water. As the outside trailer it had taken a lot of bullets and the bullets had broken what was inside. Liquor … lots of it and not just beer; I could tell by the smell. Beer has a yeasty smell to it, the harder stuff smells like … well, like alcohol. I didn’t climb up in the trailer although there was room. Last thing I wanted was to get booze and beer foam all over me.

The trailer was far from full. If it was full when it was moved here they’d been drinking a whole lot of the stuff. I closed the door and moved to one of the two remaining trailers. The middle trailer was harder to open; the latch was bent. Then when I got that open I had to pull on the door and it squeaked rather than swung freely. This trailer wasn’t full either. Wasn’t even a quarter full but what it was full of nearly made my eyes fall out of my head. It was ammo cans loaded up on wooden pallets and wrapped in plastic. The one that was closest to me was unwrapped and most of the cans were sitting around and opened. Most of the ammo I didn’t recognize but I dipped my hand into one and pulled out 9mm and I saw boxes in another that were definitely .22LR. I thought about it and then looked around. When I didn’t see anyone I pulled out my ammo pouches from my backpack and refilled them both.

Then I got a naughty idea and I’m really, really glad I did. I knew the palmettos where I hid were far enough off the trail that it wouldn’t be an obvious place to look. It took me about twenty minutes but I moved all the ammo cans that I could find that had 9mm in them off into those palmetto bushes then I did the same thing to the .22LR … I left the rest alone because I didn’t recognize them and I needed to get moving.

After shutting that trailer back up I went to the third and last trailer and opened it up in the same way. It was full of boxes stamped with the letters FEMA, CERT, and FLNG. It was obvious that DC had been a baaaad boy. He really had taken stuff he shouldn’t have. Some of the boxes had things called “Grab and Go” kits. I threw one of each type of those cases into the palmettos and followed it with some of the other stuff in there that I thought I could manage. I left the cots alone as they wouldn’t do us any good. The hard hats weren’t worth the trouble either. I grabbed a couple pairs of safety goggles and shoved them down into my back pack. I found boxes of hand warmers, those cheap rain ponchos, silver emergency blankets, bottles of alcohol and antiseptic and stuff like that, tube tents, cable ties, work gloves, fluorescent safety vests in several different colors, flares, glow sticks, medical responder kits, boxes of plastic food trays, rope, duct tape, folding shovels, garbage bags, empty sandbags, and … empty body bags. I couldn’t even get to everything to see what it was but what I could grab cases of I took out of the trailer and hid deeper and deeper into the thick sea of palmettos. I got cut all to ribbons until I thought to use a pair of the gloves I found.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 59B

It was now at least an hour later and I was starving. The one thing I hadn’t found was food, not even clean drinking water. If there was any in the trailer it was far in the back or might have been eaten up by DC’s gang … certainly they had to have been living on something besides the liquor.

I could have spent all day going over the corpses I had been studiously ignoring but I didn’t have all day. I had a long way to walk to get home … or at least get back close enough to the Henderson Ranch that I could catch a lift and wouldn’t have to walk all the way home. I grabbed the rifle that was lying beside the corpse of the man called DC as well as the magazines that lay on the ground beside him. I looked at the bullets and remembered that there had been an ammo can half full of these types of bullets too which I then hid with the rest of the stuff in the palmettos. The rifle was going to be heavy to carry back to Rand but I figured that coming with gifts might just get me out of some of the hot water I was sure that I was going to be in.

There was no help for it, I started putting one foot in front of the other and headed towards the main gate only to find an awful mess that took me a while to walk around. DC was some kind of paranoid. He’d converted the front entrance of the park into a real end of the world wall and gate using cars that they had somehow piled on top of one another. It looked nothing like the last time I had been there.

I thought about climbing over the cars but after trying twice and feeling the wrecks shift and slide I decided it was safer to go around than over. That was easier said than done and I had to backtrack, go around to the parking area where tubers got out of the river and then cut out of the park towards US27 that way … and it sucked. I finally cut through the last fence and could see the road.

I also thought I was seeing a mirage. There was Lou grazing on the other side of the bike trail that parallels 27.

“Lou? Come here boy, come on.”

Lou pricked up his ears and trotted across the road to me. And then Bud came out of the grass further away and followed Lou. Halleluiah I thought, ”At least I could take Rand his mules back.” Both animals needed their manes and tails combed out badly, they had hitchhikers all over them. Lou had some scratches on his forelegs but nothing bad. Bud was just irritable and snapped at me which started both mules acting like two year old boys in a tussle. I finally grabbed both of their reins up close and got them back under control. Lou was ready to follow me but Bud took more convincing to get moving and then when he started to move he all but dragged me down the road.

“Whoa you dang blasted mule! I said Whoa! We’re doing this my way, not yours.”

Well, it wasn’t as easy to do as it was to say, eventually however Bud got the idea that I was trying to take him home and since that was where he wanted to go anyway he decided to cooperate. It took a couple of tries but I was finally able to mount Lou and keep Bud’s reins in my hand. The first time I tried that Bud pulled me backwards and I fell on my butt before I could even swing my leg over Lou’s saddle. That jarred my bruised kidney enough to make me want to cry. The second time he nearly pulled me up and over Lou by my arm. I think he was doing it on purpose. Third time was the charm and I made it up and got sat.

The sun was nearly straight over head but at least we were finally moving. I was nervous and the mules picked up on it. It made it even harder for me to keep them in line. They startled as easy as I did; a coyote almost made them run when it darted across the road and when a fly bit Lou on the rump I nearly went flying.

Then as we turned onto CR49 I started to smell smoke … not the fireplace kind of smoke but an acrid bitter smoke. Then about where I knew the Henderson Ranch to be I saw it, thick and black above the trees.

I got off the road and rode the mules along the old property lines. I got close enough that the smell was making my eyes water and the mules balked at going any further. I tied them off to a handy tree … really tied them off so they couldn’t run away … and snuck up for a better look. Some idiots were trying to burn their way into Mr. Henderson’s property. Several of the railway storage containers that where their front barricade were damaged by fires that were still burning. Behind the trees on my side of the road was a big truck looking thing that had a big machine gun mounted on it … like one of those things the squatters had used against the DC gang. The bullets were belt fed and were bigger than any that I had seen anyone else use. There were about a half dozen men with that truck using it to fire at the ranch and anyone that tried to put the fires out.

Well, it didn’t appear they expected anyone to come calling at their backdoor. I took the salvaged rifle and used a fallen tree to prop it on. There was no way I was going to be able to stand and shoot this thing, Rambo I was not. I hoped that a magazine was a magazine was a magazine and that they worked similarly enough that I would know what to do if I needed to change it.

I burned up the whole magazine without even trying. I’ll think about what I did later, I’m just too tired and this last two days is as close to real war as I ever want to get. Basically the shooters were no longer a danger to the ranch or anyone else. I tried to call out to the ranch hands but every time I drew a deep breath I would start coughing. Finally I gave up and put my fingers … my dirty fingers, yuck … in my mouth and gave the whistle that I hoped Mitch or someone else would recognize. It was the one that Rand had taught me to call the cows with.

I was just about to whistle again when a young man snuck up on my right. I nearly wet my pants but he grinned, “You gotta be Rand’s Kiri.”

“Oh! Is Rand here?? Where?!”

“Naw … Mitch bet a couple of the guys that it was you whistling. I heard you coughing and told the guys not to take the bet and volunteered to come out and check.”

“But Rand … have you seen him?”

“Seen him, heard him, nearly got in a fight with him when he didn’t want to stop looking for you last night. Come on. This lot was the last of them. We’ll radio over to the Shack and Rand will be here as fast as he can get a horse … or a dirt bike. Lots of those things lying around today.”

I made him wait until I got the mules and by the time we crossed the road Mr. Henderson and Mitch were there with the silliest grins on their faces. Well, what was I supposed to have done … just pass on the other side like the first three did in that parable like I was too good, too busy, too important? That’s not me and I hope it never is.

Mr. Henderson said, “Already passed the word. You could hear Joiner in the background. If it takes him more than an hour to get here I’ll eat my hat. Come here girl.” I got a big sweaty hug and was turned over to Tia Cia while the mules were taken to be watered.

The ranch had held up but there had been injuries, mostly minor but one man had died when the attack on the gate first started. “At this rate Chica, there won’t be a set of sheets left in the whole county. We’ve torn almost all we have in our reserves to make coverings for wounds. When we change bandages we are boiling them so that we can reuse them another time. Cassie! There you are mi bonita, take Kiri and you both go get something to eat and drink … now that your grandfather has decided to use some sense he is letting me dress the cut on his head.”

Cassie looked bad, her eyes were hard blue marbles sitting above dark circles. “Come on, I want to eat fast and then get back. Can you believe those jerks?! We have a dozen men … a dozen … over in the bunk house that will be at least a week before they are up and around. That doesn’t include all of our walking wounded. Jerks!! There are little kids … luckily most of them were in one place playing and parents didn’t have to go looking for them. Jerks!! What did you do to them anyway?”

“They won’t be causing any more problems … ever.”

“What? Oh. Jerks. Here, you better eat. I’d fix tea but Tia Cia keeps it locked up so that the kids can’t get into it accidentally. Water OK?”

“Water is perfect. Have you heard from Rand?”

“You could say that.” I looked at her and as I ate a tortilla wrap of rice and beans she explained, “Rand nearly killed Martin Mercer.”

I choked on a piece of rice and then asked, “Mercer … the same one that was in our search party?”

“One and the same. I’m sorry to say we all used to be friends until Martin got into some real trouble and was sent to juvie hall back when we were freshman in highschool. He came out even worse than he went in and Poppy refused to let him anywhere near me anymore. Anyway, Rand is blaming Martin for how things have blown up. Apparently he got trigger happy and started shooting when he had been asked to stand down and be quiet. And what is worse, it may be that Mercer was dealing with those people at the park and started shooting to distract things so that no one would find out about it. Bill Sawyer was left in charge of finding out whatever it is that Martin did or did not know. And then the men are going to decide what to do about the gang in the park.”

I had finished one wrap and started another one and was thinking about what I should and shouldn’t tell this new and improved Cassie when we both heard a commotion outside. I grabbed the big rifle thinking it was another attack and was out the door and then got barreled into and thrown over someone’s shoulder before I even got a look at their face. Good thing I recognized the pants pocket I had sewn up just a few days ago.

“Rand! Rand!! Put me down! All the blood is rushing to my head and I just ate and I’m going to puke!!”

“Out!”

Cassie lit out of the kitchen and sang, “Just call if you need any help!”

The door slammed closed and Rand and I were tripping all over each other trying to say hello, I love you, kiss, and hug all at the same time we were checking the other over for any injuries. What a mess … but it was my mess and I just about wanted to crawl up inside him and stay there forever.

Rand’s face … he’d been in yet another fight. At least his nose wasn’t swollen this time but he did have a split lip and I tried to not hurt him as I kissed him. He found all of my scratches and bruises and kissed or patted each one. Between one thing and another we finally wound up on the floor sitting in the corner of the room near the wood pile.

“How did you get here so fast?”

“Motorcycle. Where have you been?!”

“Hiding in the palmetto bushes and staying out of trouble.”

“It don’t sound like you were staying out of trouble.”

“OK, I didn’t cause any trouble, or not much, and I stayed out of as much as I could. I’ve got news about what happened in the park … Mr. Henderson might want to hear this.”

“Can it wait?”

“I wish. Most of both gangs killed each other off but there are three trailers of supplies that are ripe for salvaging and it is good stuff.”

“Fine,” but I got a good and hard kiss and more to come before he got off the floor and went to get Mr. Henderson and Mitch.

We took wagons and mules and left as quick as we could meet up with two other contingents, one from the Crenshaw’s road and one from River Road, before we could get back to the park. Mercer had broken under questioning and those that could were making for the trailers to get their share.

Despite that we had started out as quickly as we could we still had to fight with returning gang members who were already plundering the trailers. They were mostly focused on the liquor and the ammo but even the other trailer had been gotten into already. The gang members ran with what was in their hands when they saw everyone, leaving a mess behind that was then sat upon by the supposedly more civilized members of our community. Fights broke out and not even Mr. Henderson nor Bill could get them to calm down and split things up more equitably.

When Rand would have entered the fray I grabbed his hand and squeezed. He turned his head and looked at me but I was too afraid to look at him with other people around; too afraid that I would give away that I’d hidden stuff because I’d been afraid of just something like this happening. Even Clyde and Brendon were acting like crazy people making me a little sad for some reason.

Rand pulled me back and away from the fray and into the shade of some low hanging trees. He bent his head down to my ear and if anyone was bothering to pay attention it just looked like we were making out after being apart and worried for each other. He whispered, “What and where?”

“Behind you deep in the palmettos. A little bit of everything but more than we might be able to get in a single little wagon load unless we load down the mules and horses too.”

“You’ll need to explain how but we’ll talk about that later. How far back?”

“At least fifty feet. Now you know how I got all scratched up.”

Then we were interrupted. “Hey you two!! Dang! Not even Alicia and I would … “

“Knock it off Brendon. You’ve never lost Alicia in the middle of a freaking gun battle either. What do you want me to do? The trailers are all but cleaned out already.”

“We got a good wagon load for the Shack and for the family. Help us to secure the load and then we are going to leave. Good to see you are safe and sound Kiri, don’t let my cousin scream at you too loud. He really has been a pain in the a …”

“Brendon … shut up. I’ve had just about my fill of it all OK?”

“Sure thing Kiri. No harm meant. And I’m serious … glad you are OK and dad and everyone else is too.”

Rand and I helped him tie down the wagon load and then Clyde came up, “There are enough empty casings around here to keep us all in bullets for a long while if I can get the other supplies I need. If not, I might be able to melt some of this crap down and make mini balls.”

I left them to the discussion and sat on a bench watching the last few human buzzards pick the corpses clean of their guns, equipment, and clothing. I was just starting to wonder who was going to take care of the bodies when I spied Pastor Ken counting them. I walked over.

“There’s too many and too few volunteers.”

I responded, “What about the concrete plant down the road?”

He looked at me and then gave a tired nod before walking towards Mr. Henderson who then donated a wagon to the cause. We loaded the bodies, some of them as dirty as their odor had indicated. I stayed at the park and waited for Rand to return. People thought it was because I was embarrassed by the sight of the naked bodies but in reality I just wanted to make sure no one accidentally stumbled across the cache I had hidden.

Mr. Henderson strolled over to my side. “Tell me again what happened.” So I told it again while he and other people were listening.

“DC was that big bald guy?”

“Yeah but I really don’t know who the squatters were. I only heard one side of that story.”

“Doesn’t matter for now. Probably leftovers from the relocation camps since you said the park had been empty when you came through months back.”

“I’ve been afraid to ask. What happened to Mrs. Winston?”

“They got her back relatively safe if even less sound than she was when she run off. Hortencia is going to help with that. There are a couple of herbs she grows that can be used as a sedative. I’ve got a man that knows someone growing marijuana and they’ll try that next if the herbs don’t work. It might not be an issue much longer. The woman was … well … tortured is the ugly word for it. She’s frail of body as well as mind now. She may not have the strength to get away another time.”

“What about Mr. Winston … and Julia?”

Pastor Ken came over and heard my question. “In their minds Mrs. Winston has already died. They are taking care of her body out of respect but they’ve already started on their grieving. They aren’t the only ones that have relatives that were functional with psychotropic meds that have since run out and left them with someone that is difficult to deal with, they just happen to be the worst example of everything that can go wrong. Thankfully Julia is finding she has more strength than she thought. Ron took her home yesterday and has kept her in bed. So far no contractions but I don’t expect her to go full term. From here on out it has to be about making sure Julia gets enough rest and nutritious food so that the baby doesn’t come too early and so Julia isn’t any more susceptible to anything than we can manage.”

“Let Rand and I know if there is anything we can do. I know, I know. I saw people flapping their gums yesterday when I showed up. I’m sure me disappearing overnight didn’t help. But I don’t hold a grudge … whatever happened is over with and Rand and I think it is just better for the four of us to make a clean start and get passed what used to be. We’re all changed from who were … Ron, Julia, Rand and I … there is no sense carrying on like a child about it.”

Both men nodded and it wasn’t much longer before Rand and the others came back. Mr. Henderson gathered his men and other wagons and turned and told Rand, “Take the wagon home since it is already hitched up to your pair. I’ll bring a team and collect it in the morning. Just give us time to get out of here. I suppose you’ll want to pick up some of these casings anyway and have Kiri show you where she hid.”

I swear, Mr. Henderson must read minds. I’m sure he knew somehow that I had cached some of the stuff but I’m not sure how. Maybe he didn’t and I’m reading too much into it. Or maybe I gave it away in my retelling of the story. I don’t know.

After Henderson’s teams left … to make sure I followed them and saw them leave the main gate … Rand and I waded into the palmettos and started pulling out the cases and boxes I had hidden there. More than once Rand stopped me to give me a kiss. He’s taken care of me, of us … I just want him to know that I’m trying to learn to have the presence of mind to do the same thing, to take advantage of things as they come along. I’m not the same high strung kid I was when I first biked here from Tampa. I’m not even the same girl I was when Rand and I got married. I feel a lot older than seventeen. There are days I can tell Rand feels older than his age too.

I was really starting to run down as Rand drove the wagon home. The adrenaline was gone and all the things I had done were starting to knock on my conscience and say, “Hey, remember us … we sure aren’t going to let you forget for long.”

It had taken us some time to load the wagon so that the contents wasn’t sticking above the sides and by the time we left the park and drove passed Henderson’s ranch it was dark. All we did was wave and they waved back. No one was sure if the last of the fighting was over so Rand was still on high alert. I was doing my best, but I know I wasn’t at my best by any stretch of the imagination. By the time we got home I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open. We took care of the animals … Rand had stopped by to make sure they had feed and water … then unloaded the stuff from the wagon into the spare bedroom; another mess for me to take clean up.

Using the lukewarm water from the small black barrel I keep in a sunny spot I took a few bucketfuls inside to shower with. I smelled of sweat, fear, and gun smoke and desperately craved to be clean. I was lathering up when Rand startled me by climbing into the shower with me. That’s all it took. I was crying and shaking, but at least this time I didn’t puke. I think Rand did a little crying too though I’ll never say anything about it.

We rinsed off and were toweling each other dry when he rubbed across my kidney and I jumped. It had gotten dim in the bathroom because we have the shutters closed so Rand walked me into the bedroom so he could flip on the little LED track lights he’d installed. He did a little cussing that I won’t record for posterity but considering the guy was already dead there wasn’t anything Rand could do about it. Well, the inevitable was inevitable and he told me to stay in bed while he checked on things one more time.

When he came back, it was with a small summer sausage and some of the last of our packaged cheese and crackers. I lit a candle and Rand lit the wood stove to drive off the chill that was starting to creep in in earnest. I also put on a flannel sleeping shirt and some fuzzy socks. We had a picnic on the floor … Rand hates crumbs in bed even more than I do … and afterwards we cuddled and talked.

Rand asked, “Did you know that this Thursday is Thanksgiving?”

“What? Well, I mean I guess I did but it has kind of snuck up on me. Do you want to have your family over or go over to their place?”

“What would you think about it just being us this year? Would it hurt your feelings any?”

“Noooo. But is there a problem.”

“No, not really. I just … I’m tired Kiri. I want a day just for us. I want to celebrate the things that we should be thankful for but … we’ve left the animals too much recently and I don’t want to keep leaving them locked up in the barn. I’ve seen lots of turkey and I’d like to try bow hunting again. Farmer’s Almanac says that it is supposed to be a cold Thanksgiving this year and … I just really … this sounds bad but I don’t want to get caught up in the same old, same old that happens with Uncle George at the holidays. It can get depressing and … I need a break from depressing Kiri. I need … “

I put my fingers over his mouth gently and said, “You don’t need to justify how you feel. If you want it to just be the two of us then that is the way that I’m happy for it to be. No questions. No comments.”

Rand seemed to relax all the way after that and was soon asleep. Not me. I wanted to sleep but my tired had vanished. I had no intention of writing as much as I have but … sometimes you have to bleed it off so that you can get it out of your face and put away for a while. I expect I’m going to be paying for my long night once Rand wakes up. Either way, I’m finally ready for bed and that’s where I’m going.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 60A

November 20th – I think today was the first time I felt truly resentful of the responsibilities I now have. All I wanted to do was stay in bed, and I wanted Rand to stay with me and I just wanted the rest of the world to go take a flying leap head first over a steep cliff.

I’m tired of people shooting at me. I’m tired of shooting other people. I’m tired of watching how low people can sink … including friends and family. I’m tired of having to scrape away the outside layers of people and events to find good things to balance the equation. I’m tired of having to remind myself that “peoples is peoples” and that life isn’t fair. I’m tired of having to decide between what is emotionally easier and more comfortable and what may help us down the road.

Life was a lot easier when there was only me. In a way life got easier once Rand and I totally committed to one another and I’d never give him up willingly if I was given the chance to fight for him. But, at the same time my life has also gotten more complicated … my baggage, his baggage, our baggage. People, people, people … my tolerance level for them is pretty low at the best of times; the last little bit and today have been more challenging than usual.

It was so hard to wake up this morning and get going. Unfortunately for me Rand was in a really good mood. Fortunately for me he is pretty good at reading my moods and suggested that I stay in bed and he’d get breakfast. Well, of course I couldn’t stay in bed after such a sweet offer so I got up and tried to make up for being so curmudgeonly by making a nice omelet. The food even helped my own mood a bit and so did the fact that Rand did the milking.

After breakfast I felt a little more human and tried and get down to business. I had a lot of cabbage that I needed to do something with. First thing I did after looking over the garden was can some cole slaw.

Take three pounds of cabbage and cut it into quarters and remove the core. Then wash two large carrots and cut it into chunks. Next use whatever method you have handy to shred the cabbage and carrots into “slaw” size. I’ve got one of those old had crank shredders that Momma used at canning time but I also tried using the fine shredders holes on a cheese shredder, I used the crank simply because it reminded me of good times with Momma. After you have everything shredded fine dice two large onions and toss them into the cabbage and carrot mess. Mix one teaspoon of pickling salt into the “slaw” stuff and let it sit at room temperature for forty-five minutes. While the “slaw” is sitting, mix two cups of white vinegar, one and one-half cups of sugar and two tablespoons of celery seed in a sauce pan. Bring to a boil and then boil for one minute. Cool the vinegar mix slightly and then pour it into the slaw and mix well. Ladle the coleslaw mixture into hot, sterilized jars, adjust two piece lids, and process for 15 minutes in boiling water bath canner. To serve the slaw use it as is or drain it and then stir in salad dressing of your choice or mayonnaise. I figure this will be a good way to have some “fresh” greens when it is too hot to actually grow them.

While the slaw was processing I made beet relish. I had canned extra beets just for this purpose. Combine one quart of chopped, cooked beets, one quart of chopped cabbage, one cup chopped onions, one cup of chopped sweet red peppers, one and one-half cups sugar, one tablespoon of horseradish, one tablespoon of salt, and three cups of vinegar in a large saucepot. Simmer the whole pot for ten minutes then bring it to a boil. Pack the now hot relish into hot jars, leaving ¼" headspace. Adjust the caps and process for fifteen minutes in a boiling water bath. This yielded nearly ten half-pints. The little bit that wouldn’t fit into a jar I put in a bowl for the lunch and dinner table today. It was a nice change.

With the beet relish in the canner and the slaw sitting on the counter cooling I started the corn relish. I think I have just enough fresh ears of corn left after this to roast some corn for Thanksgiving and after that I’m going to let the remainder dry. We’re going to need a lot of feed next year and I’d like to have enough corn to make cornmeal from as well since there is no way the wheat flour is going to last unless I use up all of the wheat I have in the long term storage cans. But first we’ll have to pull out the seed we will need for next planting season.

For the corn relish you start with eighteen ears of corn and boil them for five minutes. Then you cut the corn from the cob and put it into a pan. I had to use one of Momma’s huge porcelain dishpans for this. These are part of the “junk” she got when my grandparents passed away. There is a picture of me sitting in one of these when I was about three or four years old, that’s how big these things are.

To the corn I added one small head of chopped cabbage, one cup of chopped onion, one cup of chopped sweet green peppers, one cup of chopped sweet red peppers, one cup of sugar, two tablespoons of dry mustard, one tablespoon of celery seed, one tablespoon of mustard seed, one tablespoon of salt, one tablespoon of turmeric, one quart of vinegar, and one cup of water. Then I brought everything to a boil; reduced the heat and simmered for twoenty minutes. Once the relish simmered I packed it hot into hot jars, leaving a quarter inch headspace. I adjusted the caps and processed them for 15 minutes in a boiling water bath. I got a full six pints out of the batch so I made a second one to make sure there was enough to last through the year.

In case I’ve failed to mention it, I was raised on relish trays. Momma could put one together at the shortest notice imaginable. The door rack in our refrigerator always had lots of goodies to choose from and all of them homemade. But that is a problem for me because I don’t have a refrigerator. There is the cooler/freezer in the barn but that is fairly small and is reserved for the dairy products for the most part. I also hope to use it when it comes time have more eggs than I can use in a day so that I can save them up. Rand is talking about something called an “icy ball” but it requires ammonia gas I think. There are so many projects we could do but might not be able to all for the lack of one vital ingredient or piece. The list is in small print and it is still longer than my arm; and getting longer every week it seems.

It wasn’t lunch time but I set some of the shredded cabbage that I had set aside and made a regular cole slaw and then made some hush puppies. It would have been nice to have had some fish but we didn’t, well not regular fish anyway. What I made was salmon croquettes from one of the last cans of salmon in the store bought supplies. The hushpuppies didn’t go with them too well but Rand didn’t seem to notice; he ate his two and most of my second one since I wasn’t as hungry as I thought I was going to be. Mostly all I seemed to want to do was pick at my food. Rand noticed and asked if I was feeling OK.

I wasn’t sure how to answer him. Physically I was just tired but I feel all in knots on the inside. He suggested I was having a delayed reaction to what had happened in the park. I suggested I was having a reaction to people in general and that I wished they would just all behave so we could get on with living our lives.

After an early lunch Rand asked if I wanted to take a walk. That sounded nice at the time. It was too hot for a jacket and too cool to go without something so I grabbed one of Rand’s flannel shirts wishing I had a few of my own that didn’t come down practically to my knees and didn’t wind up looking silly because of how much I had to roll the sleeves up. Rand said I looked “cute” which only made me feel grumpy again, but I relaxed as we walked. Of course the rifles we carried made holding hands difficult so we mostly just walked side by side and spoke quietly.

We were up at the dogleg where the gully is when Rand mentioned that the smell isn’t noticeable any more. I realized he was right and am relieved. For a while there it was pretty bad even though I had carried all those bodies far over into the pines on the other side of the property line. The vultures are pretty numerous even today. I guess they’ve started calling that spot home. The only good thing is that apparently it freaks people out to see all of the vultures around here constantly and people stay away; superstitious or scared, I don’t really know which. Hoss got a kick out of telling me the other day that I was getting a “reputation.” Great. Lovely. Is the sarcasm coming through strong enough? I doubt it. I hate having people talk about me, I always have. People don’t know a tenth of what they think they know. It is a wonder that Rand even wanted to have anything at all to do with me.

This whole “I want it to be just the two of us” thing for Thanksgiving is fine with me but I do worry that maybe it is me driving people away rather than Rand wanting to get away. I don’t see him being able to live that way for long though, he is too much of a people person or at least he is compared to me. He told me not to worry about it but that wasn’t much of an answer.

When we got up to the end of our road I really noticed just how over grown the ditches and right of ways are getting. Little oak tree sprouts are everywhere and the Johnson grass is taking over. Cracks in the road are forming too but CR49 is still in better shape than the parts of US90 that have seen fighting. I have been noticing that the parts on our acreage that used to get bush hogged semi-regularly are really getting bad too. Rand hopes that the goats do their thing and we have some kids (of the goat persuasion) this coming spring. They haven’t up to this point so either Billy isn’t interested or the does aren’t interested in Billy … or we aren’t doing something right. It must be more difficult than just introducing the boys and girls to one another. Good grief, I hope I don’t have to set up a goat dating service; I’ve got enough to do.

Of course more goats mean a bigger pen area for them. Rand said we could probably have them in with the cows but I’m not sure how many cows and goats together will work on that space. Rand says around here you can generally work two cows per acre of land. We’ve got about ten acres fenced in but if the rye fields don’t work out we’ll make that claimed land a second pasture area and move the animals back and forth as necessary.

Bradley was manning the two-man station that Mr. Henderson asked our “permission” to set up across the road from us. It isn’t really directly across the road, more across the road and north about a hundred feet or so, closer to the intersection of CR49 and US90. We walked down to hear the news. It wasn’t good; it wasn’t horrendous but it wasn’t good either.

Rather than being concentrated in one area and battling each other the remnants of the “squatters” and the “DC gang” were out and about looking to recoup their losses and to do whatever it is that they thought they were doing to survive. Frankly, the population in this area has gotten thin enough that surely they could simply build their own homestead and blend in with little effort. I don’t understand why they have to make it so hard on themselves and everyone around them. People on both sides are going to wind up hurt or dead and there has been enough of that already for Pete’s sake.

There have been a few raids here and there but nothing too valuable was stolen as most people don’t have stuff worth getting shot or knifed over. Those that have something valuable like animals or food of some type are learning to protect it sufficiently that anyone trying to steal it will take a heavier loss than anything they gain by the effort. And I don’t know how but word gets around and often a successful repelling of a thief makes other potential thieves and raiders think twice, or at least that is what we are learning from the few raiders and thieves that have been caught alive and then questioned. Usually however a raider or thief escapes … or they don’t. There aren’t any jails these days, not since the National Guard pulled out, and people aren’t shy about using deadly force when necessary.

Martin Mercer’s family got hit especially hard but no one can confirm whether it was done by one of the gangs or by locals looking for vengeance. It’s hard to say and after what I saw happen at the park neither one would surprise me.

I got tired of being eyed by the young guy working with Bradley and left the conversation and started stuffing my pockets with the acorns I found on the ground a few feet away. They were different than the ones that we have around the house. The ones at the house are kind of an oval shape with a pointy end opposite where the cap end. The ones by the guard shack were small and round. I also saw a huge stand of Spanish Bayonet … a type of yucca (yuck – uh not you-ca). In the next couple of days I’ll dig up the smaller ones and take them back to our place and plant them in such a way to help keep the cows under control. I’d really like to eventually be able to enclose the entire cow pasture with agave and Spanish Bayonet. It is a food source that will double as a fence and protective barrier for the animals. Rand loves the idea, now it is just a matter of getting enough of the plants. He brought back a lot from the tree farm in Lee but they are years away from getting big enough to do the job.

Rand finished talking and we started walking back. “Sorry if you were bored.”

“I wasn’t bored just … I hate being stared at and that guy with Bradley … “

“Was he bothering you?! I didn’t see anything … if he … “

“Down big fella. It wasn’t like that. It looked more like if I would have said ‘boo’ he would have jumped out of his skin. I’m not a freak no matter what some people might think. You finally helped me to get over feeling like that and I thought I was over caring what people thought but … “

“Hey now … it really did bother you didn’t it?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry Rand, I just have days where doing the people thing is hard for me.”

“Don’t worry about it Babe and if it matters I don’t think Brian meant anything bad. He has always been a bit jumpy, that’s why he teams with buys like Bradley that are calm as an ox. He is actually a lot better than he used to be.”

“Lucky Bradley,” I said while rolling my eyes.

Rand laughed and we walked the rest of the way home not talking much about anything in particular, just enjoying each other’s company. Maybe that is why God teamed me with Rand, he balances out my issues. I wonder what I give Rand beside the beginnings of male patterned baldness?

Once we were back in our yard Rand went off to work on the hot water thingy for the barn roof. It will probably be the spring before I can use it, certainly will have to be after any chance of freeze has passed. Rand said we won’t get too many of those nights but there will be enough of them that we could still bust a pipe.

For me I went and picked the miniature blue popcorn that was dry on the stalk, shucked them and laid them on the counter to cure for a couple of more days just to be on the safe side before I put the kernels in storage. I also picked the butternut squash. They aren’t big like the ones I used to see in the grocery store but they were big enough that when I split them, stuffed them, and then baked them they made half a meal for Rand and I. I added the leftover hushpuppies and then made a rice pilaf to round things out. I canned a load of the squash and had them finished by the time Rand came in to clean up so we could eat before it got dark.

While we ate I asked Rand what his favorite Thanksgiving foods were; pretty standard stuff … turkey, stuffing, green beans, corn casserole, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie. I have a few more that I’m going to add to this, the only thing missing will be cranberries but I have some dried ones that look like raisins that I’ve been saving for something special. I’ll have to start thinking about that tomorrow. It may only be the two of us but I’m determined that it will still be nice and memorable.


November 21st – Brendon and Clyde came by today. I’m glad that Rand and I managed to put a lot of the stuff from Ichetucknee away in the dormer room before they arrived. They were still crowing about what they had been able to get … in some cases what they had basically taken out of other people’s hands. They kind of picked at Rand by saying that they could have used his help if he and I hadn’t been making out. Rand’s a better person than I … I would have blown both barrels at them but Rand helped me ratchet back my need to defend him by putting his arm around me and saying he had different priorities and that we weren’t hurting enough that he was willing to risk getting hurt for something that wouldn’t do much more for us than what we already have.

Brendon rolled his eyes … gosh there are days that if it wasn’t for Alicia I could gladly kick him in the shins … but Clyde looked thoughtful and said, “Well, you did come out with that rifle.” Rand just responded with a noncommittal, “Mmmm.” Clyde is the “go to” guy when you need something fixed on your gun or reloads for your ammo; I think it is called being a gunsmith or something like that. I think he expected Rand to show off the rifle. It is actually up in the gun vault and the ammo I stored out in the palmettos has been safely tucked away as well.

Clyde gave me a bit of a look and said he noticed a big gap in the ammo that was in the trailer compared with the weapons that the bad guys were found with. Rand replied, “I don’t recall noticing but were you able to figure out what they took before you guys ran them off?”

Clyde seemed to relax and then replied, “Couldn’t tell. Stuff was spilled all over the place and people were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Don’t know if they were even paying attention to what they took.” I guess Rand’s reply had given him an alternative theory to think on rather than being suspicious of me and what I might have done. I wonder if that is what gave me away to Mr. Henderson or if it was something else?

Then they went on about how the folks over on their road were getting together and were going to share a big pilgrim style Thanksgiving. Not a hint of an invitation. Rand looked relieved that they didn’t asj. I think he just wants what he wants but doesn’t want to create a situation to get it. That’s fine. Whether it bothers Rand or not I’ll tuck this little incident into my memory banks. I won’t be vindictive about it but if anything is eventually said I will bring it up. Normally I would not care at all, but for these people to be Rand’s family they too easily exclude him from stuff. It may not be ill-intentioned but that doesn’t make it right.

I was in the middle of baking pumpkins so that I could make some pumpkin-y stuff over the next few days … pancakes, bread, muffins, pies, empanadas, etc. … so I didn’t bother playing hostess to the hilt like I might have noirmally. Brendon mentioned how good something smelled and I said, “Thank you.” If he was looking for something to eat he had hacked off the wrong girl.

I disappeared for a bit leaving them to do the guy-talk thing without me under foot. After they left Rand walked around to the summer kitchen, sat in a chair, laid his head down and then started laughing. Laughing!

“Babe I wish you had been out there. They were doing everything but standing on their heads trying to get me to admit that you had somehow gotten to stuff before they all did. I didn’t even act like I knew what they were hinting at and they wouldn’t come right out and ask. I haven’t had so much fun driving Brendon crazy in a long time.”

“And that is funny why?” I asked perplexed and worried at the same time.

“Oh, just ‘cause.” After he got a look at my face Rand said, “Oh come on. Now don’t go getting all upset. This isn’t a problem.”

“Oh it isn’t is it? They are basically saying that I got to stuff before they did and that they want to know what we got. For one thing they make it sound like I took unfair advantage of the situation. For another, even if I did – and I did of course – but even if I did, why do they need to know what I took out of those trailers? What business is it of theirs? They weren’t exactly playing fair themselves when they were after ‘their’ share. What good do they think it is going to do for them to know what it is or isn’t? Are they going to try and ‘equitably’ redistribute stuff?!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa … I think you are taking this a little too personal Honey.”

“Am I? Rand, I’m sorry but I just don’t have a real good opinion of people. I’ve met some good people that have helped me out when they have had no reason to do so. I’ve also met some dregs of humanity. Trust me, there are a whole lot more dregs than there are good. I know these folks are your family … and I guess by extension mine if they’ll claim me … but I saw how Brendon and Clyde acted yesterday; Paul and some of Henderson’s men too. That was … disappointing … and it reminded me how people can get, even those we care about and like. No offense against your people but it makes me wonder if they would turn on us if they thought we had more than we should.”

“I’ll admit things got a little hairy while people were taking stuff out of the trailers. “

“A little?”

“Ok, some of those people … including members of my own family … acted a little too much like the same people they were taking the stuff from. I’ll even admit that watching them was a bit like being the only sober person at a drunken frat party. But I’m not sure I’m willing to extrapolate from that and say that if they knew what we had stored away here that they’d make us share the wealth.”

“Mmmmm. Then why don’t we tell them about all the secret storage stuff we have? Why do we keep the dormer room and its content a secret? The hidden pantry closed when anyone is around? Invite people into the house rather than having a sit down on the front porch?”

Rand looked at me and I could see him scrunching his eyebrows and that at least means that he is really thinking. “You have a point. You may have a bigger point than I want to concede. I don’t know.”

“Oh Rand, I don’t want to take away the … confidence or belief … you have in people. I love that you get the people thing better than I do. Maybe I’m too suspicious. I don’t know. Please don’t be in a bad mood because …”

He put his arms around my waist and pulled me into his lap to let me know he wasn’t mad and said, “Babe I’m not. I don’t think that my family would try that equitable redistribution crap the government tried. That doesn’t mean that I’ll ignore the potential problems either. So yeah, we keep our stuff to ourselves. Uncle George hasn’t exactly been helping us for free. I’ve got to go next week and work in his hayfields and I am the one that bought the pigs and beef that I’m claiming as mine during butchering week before this all got started as well as the feed for them. I love my family; I’m not blind to their faults. I’m not saying they wouldn’t try guilting us into doing something but I’m nearly positive they wouldn’t use force.”

“Guilting isn’t bad enough?”

Rand smiled again and said, “I love you, you know that? Don’t worry about the family. If they try using guilt just ignore it. And no, I’m not saying that it is always easy but I stopped letting it get to me a while ago. You helped with that even more. They can’t make us do anything so try and relax about it. To be honest I’ll be glad to see the other side of butchering. This way if something does happen … and I’m not saying it will … we can afford a little more separation. I do love Uncle George but I don’t like feeling beholden to him any more than necessary.”

I just don’t see how people do it. I can’t remember stuff like that happening in my family. But then again, we lived far enough away from the bulk of my family that when we visited there wasn’t time to fuss and fight or whatever. We only had time to enjoy each other’s company before having to leave again. Come to think of it, none of them fought too hard to be my guardian and I kind of got dropped out of the family loop after a while. Oh, whatever. That stuff happened a long time ago and there is no changing it. It is what it is. I just don’t understand people and their drama sometimes.

Spent some time tonight cracking acorns; better late than never. I’m going to try and make acorn flour but for now I’m going to bed.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 60B

November 22nd – Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I’ve been busy. First of all Rand got our turkey in the middle of the morning which meant that I had to stop what I was doing and clean the bird so that we could put it in the cooler until I can start cooking it in the morning. I plucked it like a chicken … so not fun … and saved the best feathers for quills and threw the rest in the compost hole Rand dug way back in the corner of the property for junk that we can’t do anything else with. To pluck the turkey I had to heat up a huge pot of boiling water outside, hang the turkey over the pot, and dip boiling water to pour over the turkey to scald the feather so that they would come off in one tug. Once I had finished that Rand took the bird and took care of the innards. He left me the giblets to make gravy with and then took the other bits off for Woofer and Fraidy to have at their leisure but out of my sight. I’m not easily grossed out but I do have my limits.

The bird is clean and sitting in the cooler. It looks pretty big for us, it weighs fourteen pounds now that it has been cleaned inside and out, and will take about three and a half hours to roast. I’ll start first thing in the morning after my early chores are finished.

I did some baking today that will hold over for tomorrow’s meal. One of the things I baked was Pumpkin Bread but instead of white sugar I used some of the sorghum that Rand had helped harvest. Mix together one-half cup of sorghum syrup, one cup of pumpkin puree, two eggs, one-half cup oil, and 0one-half cup of water. Next sift together one and two-thirds cup of plain flour, three-quarter teaspoon of salt, one-quarter teaspoon of baking soda, one-quarter teaspoon of baking powder, one teaspoon of all spice, and one-half teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredient and mix well. Then add ½ cup golden raisins & one-half cup chopped nuts. Instead of golden raisins I used some of the dried cranberries and for the nuts I used the pecans that I had shelled. Pour batter into a large prepared loaf pan and bake at 325 degrees F for about forty-five minutes. If I had to do it over again I’d probably have added a little more sweetening but then again I like my quick breads sweet.

I started my “sponge” for making salt rising bread tomorrow by scalding a cup of milk and sifting a half cup of cornmeal into it and then cooking the two until it thickened. From there I pour the gunk into a sanitized quarter mason jar, covered the top of the jar with some cheesecloth, wrapped the whole thing in a towel and then set that in the warming bin of the princess. Hopefully it will do its thing overnight and tomorrow I’ll be able to finish the bread.

I baked a pumpkin pie and a pecan pie and those are sitting in the pie keep. Instead of a bunch of other pies I made some dried fruit empanadas from the apple and peaches I dried out of our own orchard. I baked the pan of cornbread today to use to make the stuffing with tomorrow as well.

When I wasn’t cooking I was cleaning. I wanted to eat in the formal dining room. We hadn’t yet, not even for our wedding feast, and I wanted to just for the heck of it. The fancy dishes and silver were pretty dirty so I spent over an hour trying to clean up all of the serving pieces I wanted to use. Just in case it got dark early or it took longer to cook than I expected I took down the useless like fixture over the table and hung an oil lamp … looked antique but was actually a modern anniversary gift from my grandfather to my grandmother when I was little. Memaw used to use it when the power would go out at the farm. It uses regular lamp oil instead of kerosene which I guess is a good thing since that is what I have. Rand has about five gallons of kerosene but he wants to save that in case he has to sit up during the night with the animals if it gets really cold.

In the midst of everything else I worked on the acorn flour. I can guarantee this is not something that I would want to have to rely on all the time. It is a lot of work.

First you dump your acorns into a bucket or bowl of water and if you have any floaters you can toss those since they are likely insect eaten on the inside. Good acorns sink because their nut meats are intact. Drain the water off of the acorns and into a big kettle of water and bring that water to a boil. While the water is heating start cracking acorns. And crack … and crack … and crack. You will have to pick out the nut meats but don’t freak if they are all broken. You want them that way.

Put your nutmeats in a bowl and then pour the boiling water over them. Stir them up a bit and then let them soak until the water darkens. When I first started this morning it would only take fifteen or twenty minutes for the water to get ucky looking. By this evening it took forty-five minutes. I’ve set them to soak for the night and I’ll see how dark the water is in the morning. If it still looks like tea then I’ll change to fresh water and keep going until the acorns don’t leech any more tannin into the water … the tannin is what makes the water dark. I hope to be able to finish up the acorn flour tomorrow but we’ll have to wait and see.

I also made marshmallows because I needed them for the sweet potato casserole I am making tomorrow. To make the marshmallows I combined three tablespoons of Knox dry gelatin with one-half cup of cold water and let it stand for an hour. In the meantime, I heated two cups of sugar, three-quarter cup of light corn syrup, one-half cup of water, and one-quarter teaspoon of salt to a boil and cooked the whole mess until it reached the firm-ball stage (244°F; 117°C). Once there I removed it from the heat and poured the glop slowly over the gelatin, beating it constantly with my heaviest whisk. I beat it for a good 15 minutes; my arm felt like it was going to fall off and is still sore tonight. When thickened but was still warm, I added two tablespoons of vanilla (or you can add any flavor you want if you feel creative). I spread the mixture in a pan that had been lightly dusted with cornstarch and left it dry overnight. I’ll finish them up tomorrow.

For the most part the day was a lot better for me than the day before had been even with Mitch and Mr. Henderson dropping by. Mitch looked cross-eyed at me making acorn flour but he said he’d heard that other people were doing it. Both men admitted that Cassie had surprised them and Mitch had an … interested look on his face I guess you would call it; like he was interested in this new Cassie but wasn’t quite sure what to make of her or whether to trust her. Who knows? If they push her too hard to change they could make a big a mess as Cassie did by not wanting to change at all, but it isn’t any of my business. It’s not like I have a great track record when it comes to people skills.

After the two men left Paul and Sadie showed up. I like Sadie; she’s a bit of a smart aleck just like me only she is sweeter and better at laughing at herself. She is also as nosy as I am about wanting to learn how to do something that she sees and has never done before. She was interested in the acorn flour and wrote down the directions to take make to Momma O who I have no doubt has some improvement that can be made on the process.

After they left Rand said all three men had been feeling him out to see if we had taken anything from the park. Rand said he only mentioned the rifle and then asked if they had heard of any ammo for it like we didn’t have any beyond what was left in the magazines I had picked off of DC. Rand said Mitch backed off like he was no longer sure of his suspicions but Mr. Henderson never did push at all. He is such a wiley man; I’m sure Mr. Henderson suspects something but it looks like he doesn’t really care or maybe approves. Whether he will use the information down the road or not is a horse of a different color.

Either way I think I’m done worrying about it too much. We’ll just need to remember to be careful of exposing the stuff down the road before it gets more spread out in the community through trading and the like.


November 23rd – Happy Thanksgiving!! I am as full as a tick and we’ve got enough leftovers that I don’t think I’ll have to do any cooking tomorrow which is really nice for a change.

I was up early, even before Rand for once since I was a little sick to my stomach for some reason; probably just leftover nerves. That happens to me on occasion. He was up though by the time I was out of the bathroom and even had the fire in the princess going for me warming up a pot of water. Tea was exactly what I wanted and Rand took a mug of coffee with him when he went to the barn to deal with morning animal chores.

The first thing I did was check the sponge and it was bubbly and smelled pretty yeasty which meant that I had done it right. Then it was time to get the rest of it going. In a saucepan I combined four cups of milk and one tablespoon of sugar and heated it to scalding. Then I cooled it off slightly and added it to the cornmeal mixture in a large mixing bowl. Next I gradually stirred in six cups of flour that I had ground last night and set the whole mess in a warm place to rise until it doubled (that took approximately 2 hours).

By that time Rand came back inside and brought the turkey with him along with the skimmed cream from yesterday’s milking. I rinsed the bird off again just to be safe in case it had gotten anything on it between the cooler and the house then I plopped the carcass in a roasting pan with a lid. While I was doing this Rand ate a couple of slices of pumpkin bread with homemade butter. He offered me a piece but my stomach was still saying no. He gave me a kiss and said he’d do the milking for me again which was a big relief.

I buttered the turkey’s skin and then put the lid on the roaster and slid it into the preheated oven. I put a quart of green beans in a pan and then seasoned them with salt, pepper, and a little corn oil. It wouldn’t be the same as having bacon drippings but one of these days we’ll have our own bacon. I didn’t have any fresh potatoes, I don’t even know how I’m going to grow any since you need seed potatoes to begin with, but I did have one can of potatoes left over from some of the original stored items. I put those in after the beans had cooked down a while.

After the beans I put the sweet potato casserole together. I had to use canned sweet potatoes and I was said that when they were gone that might be another thing I never see again, or at least not for a long time. I layered the pineapple and sliced sweet potatoes in a 8x8 baking pan, sprinkled a little mace and cinnamon over them and then covered and set it aside.

It was finally time to get going on the bread again. I took the bread mixture and added three-quarter cup of shortening, one-half cup of sugar and one tablespoon of salt and mixed well. From there I gradually added six cups of flour and worked it in. Then came the hard part. I put a generous dusting of flour on the island and turned the dough mixture onto it. I worked in more flour and kneaded it for about 20 minutes. Then I divided the dough into four equal parts and put it in greased and floured loaf pans. I brushed the tops of the loaves with shortening and placed them in the warming tray of the princess to give it time to rise to double its size (took approximately 2 hours).

I put the ears of corn on to roast and finished putting together the cornbread stuffing. I was a little stuck at that point waiting for the oven to be freed up so I did a little cleaning, put fresh water on the acorns (the water was still kind of tea colored), made the bed, pulled some apple juice out of the pantry, and a few other odds and ends. By the time I was finished with that it was time to take out the turkey. The turkey required a few minutes to brown the skin up a little but not long. I set the roaster on the side board to let the turkey rest and then popped in the bread and the sweet potato casserole, bread, and small pan of cornbread stuffing that I made up … it was like fitting together a jigsaw puzzle but it worked.

At twenty minutes the casserole had to be topped by the marshmallows that I had cut up using kitchen shears dipped in cornstarch. And then it went back in until the top was bubbly and brown. When that was done and ready to come out so was the stuffing. I brushed the bread with some more butter and called Rand in to get cleaned up while the loaves backed for another twenty minutes or so.

It was getting very cool outside but I hadn’t noticed because the kitchen was so warm. Rand said he could see his breath out in the barn but he didn’t think we were going to get a freeze. We’ll check thermometer one more time before we go to bed. While Rand washed up I finished setting the table and lit the lamp just because of the heavy cloud cover and everything looked so nice and cheery I wished for a camera to capture the moment. Then for some reason I started getting sad. I have absolutely no idea why. Stupid hormones I guess.

I wiped my eyes before Rand came out and when he asked all I said was, “Onions I guess.” There is no sense in upsetting him when there isn’t anything he can do about it.

We had fun trying to follow the directions in one of Momma’s etiquette books on how to carve a turkey but after a few minutes we just laughed and the meat came off however it came off. Rand likes the dark meat and I like the light meat so he took a drumstick and I took some of the breast. It was good if I do say so myself except maybe a little dryer than I meant for it to be. Momma used to cook her turkeys in a paper grocery sack but I daren’t use ours for that since we might need the few we have for something else.

We ate and ate and ate. Neither one of us has eaten like this for a long time. It isn’t often that we eat passed being full. You could have rolled me around the house I ate so much. Even with that there are plenty of leftovers. Rand asked if I would make turkey sandwiches tomorrow and I said he’d probably be eating turkey until he was sick of it.

He said, “Not a chance Babe. This is good. Not even Uncle George’s turkey came out like this. He usually deep fried a small turkey and by the time we all got a taste it was practically gone. Uncle George can’t stand Thanksgiving leftovers.”

“Well then I guess it is a good thing he isn’t getting any of yours. You want me to save any of the pie before I put it away?”

Maybe next year we’ll share Thanksgiving with someone else but it was nice to have our first Thanksgiving just be the two of us. Rand went out and put the animals up early with a little extra feed for their own Thanksgiving dinner and it gave me time to clean up. I was still at it when he came back in and between the two of us it wasn’t a minute until it really was finished.

It also wasn’t a minute before Rand got silly and started chasing me around the house. It is a wonder we could even move. We ended up building a fire in the fireplace and we’ve just been relaxing ever since. I crocheted a bit but couldn’t seem to set my mind to it. I finally put it aside and started writing in my journal. I don’t know what is wrong with me to have the fidgets so much.

I think I have a game plan for tomorrow. I need to finish the acorn flour. I want to try my hand at making soda; Rand mentioned that he was craving one the other day and it has got my taste buds tingling for some now. We’ll need to finish off the leftovers and I want to can some turkey soup and maybe make some turkey jerky. I really need to start thinking about what I’m going to do when certain things start running out like white sugar and wheat flour. I’ve got general ideas in my head but I need to sketch out a timeline and put it on our big calendar.

I think for now though I’ll just go climb in Rand’s lap. I haven’t got a clue what is up with me but I don’t like this kind of coming apart around the edges feeling I have. There hasn’t been any more bad on the radio … well, no worse than normal … hardly any traffic lately to be honest. Nothing is really going wrong. Rand and I are doing all right. Maybe I’m just looking for trouble or maybe it really is just hormones. I don’t like it whatever it is.

 

[nancy98]

WhooooooooooHooooooooo She's back!!!

Thanks Mizz Kathy

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 61

November 24th – Felt a little better today and was up early and a good thing too. I realized that I had completely overlooked the persimmons that were ripening. I’ve got so many that I need to deal with that now I’ll be using persimmons to make stuff for the next several days to make sure nothing spoils. I was so upset I was nearly crying which I seem to be on the brink of a lot lately but Rand told me I was being too hard on myself. He said that he didn’t realize they were ripe either and he’d been over in the orchard pulling the last little pithy apples to throw to the pigs. That made me feel a little better but not much.

Ever since I was bad sick, maybe before but I didn’t notice it so much on a regular basis, it is like just anything makes me want to tear up. This is ridiculous. I shouldn’t feel this way. Rand and I talked a little bit last night and he said that he hadn’t noticed that I was very “weepy” and then wanted to know if I had noticed that he seemed crankier than he used to be. I said, “Cranky?! Rand you always seem to be in a good mood to me except every so often.”

“Well, that’s a relief. But I tell you the truth Babe, there are days when I’m glad it is just the two of us around here. It is like I’m all stretched out with not as much patience as I think I used to have.”

So it seems maybe both of us are feeling “stretched out.” Maybe it is all of the extra and constant work. Maybe it is the complete change our lives have gone through over the last six to twelve months, heck for both of us at least since the pandemic started affecting our lives. Maybe it is partly that first year of marriage jitters. I don’t know exactly what it is but we are both feeling it and neither one of us considers it the other’s fault which is good. I know what stress feels like and while I do feel stressed, I don’t necessarily feel stressed out. I wish I could explain the difference. Hopefully we’ll get a handle on it because apparently neither one of us likes the feelings we are having too much.

For breakfast I toasted up some of the salt rising bread, heated up some sliced turkey, made a small batch of homemade mayo and grabbed one of the last heads of loose leaf lettuce out of the garden. Then I fried up a couple of eggs and opened a can of that Yoder’s bacon (the camouflage cans gave me the giggles so maybe I’m farther on the other side of crazy than I think). Then to surprise Rand I used up the some of the last of those little triangle cow logo cheeses that are supposed to taste like Swiss cheese. Ta da … restaurant-fancy turkey club sandwiches only without the tomatoes. They were so filling I had to save half of mine for a mid-morning snack.

Right after breakfast I was determined to finish the acorn flour. I drained the acorns one last time and rinsed them by the colander full (I lined the colander with cheesecloth beforehand). I took a cautious nibble and when my pucker didn’t turn inside out I called the acorns completely leached out. I spread the broken up nutmeats on baking sheets and put them in the oven for a bit of drying and toasting. From there I took them out and then ran them through the hand grinder a couple of times until it looked like corn meal. I put the acorn meal in a plastic Tupperware container and then put it in the corner of the cooler. Momma’s notes say that acorn flour doesn’t last long before it goes bad. I’m hoping that keeping it cool will help it to last longer. That’s a lot of work for a little return, I sure don’t want to have to watch it go rancid and waste all of that time.

Until I can figure something else out I’ll just have to save all of the acorns I can in their shell and hopefully that will help us to piece out the flour and cornmeal until we can get steady sources set up. The corn grinding has been going pretty good but anything that will make it last longer isn’t something to turn your nose up at. The corn has to feed us and the animals. Luckily I discovered, kind of by accident, that popcorn grinds up just as well as dent corn so next season we’ll double or triple the amount of popcorn we plant, we’ll just have to plant it away from the other corn because Rand says they might cross pollinate wrong.

We had a bit of wind during the night so I wanted to check to see if some of those stubborn, out-of-reach apples had blown down finely. I was picking up some of the nasty ones to throw to the pigs when I realized the persimmons weren’t changing colors, they were kind of stuck on that orange-ish stage they had been for a while if not going to mushy brown and falling from the tree. And that’s when I realized that I had been looking at ripe persimmons starting about two weeks ago. I squawked so loud Rand said he heard me over in the rye field. I was just fit to be tied. I couldn’t believe I’d made such a mistake.

I also saw some dried red sumac berries and realized that I had some lemon substitute, at least as far as flavoring goes. You don’t use sumac for the acidity but for the flavor which is very sour. That is another problem that I’ve got on my list of I-don’t-know-what-to-do list. Not knowing for sure which wild things are good to eat and which aren’t. I know some of them like honeysuckle, red sumac, passion fruits, and dandelions but I need to learn the other things. Alicia said at one point that she’d teach me but that was months ago and I don’t know when she would have the time now that she is going to have a baby. Last time I saw them Alicia, Laurabeth, and Missy were starting to show but I haven’t seen them in … well, I can’t even remember exactly when. It’s been a while which is kind of strange.

I grabbed a couple of bushel baskets as I explained to Rand why I was stomping around and so bent out of shape. He helped me pick two bushels of persimmons and carry them to the house and then headed to the grain fields in the easement. We didn’t plant much grain but what we did plant looks good except where the deer are eating it. It is so cold today that Rand decided to try and get one or two deer, field dress them then bring them back to the house and make some venison jerky. Well, he didn’t get one or two … he got three, but that happened later in the day.

First I had to start work on the persimmons and to do that I had to turn the two bushel baskets of persimmons into pulp. That is easier said than done. Momma’s notes say you can’t really use a Foley food processor because you get too much of the seed in your pulp and it is ruined. What she said she did was take the really, really ripe persimmons (and boy were these ripe, the skins were so fragile they just about crushed each other in the bushel baskets) and wash them gently and then put a few of them at a time in one of those laundry bags you do delicates with; the wide mesh ones that you can zipper close; we also used those bags as “dunk bags” in Girl Scouts to dunk our dishes in boiling water that had a little bleach in them as a final rinse for sanitation. Once the fruits are in the bag you start twisting the top of the bag so that it crushes the persimmons as you tighten it and tighten it and tighten it some more. The pulp oozes out of the holes of the mesh into a bowl you have below your work area. As soon as you’ve squished it as much as you can, all you have left are skins and seeds and the pulp is in the bowl.

The pulp is very thick and gets very sticky as it dries so you need to clean as you go or it will make your job a whole lot more difficult.

The first thing I made was Persimmon Jam and the recipe I used was the one that called for the least amount of sugar I could manage. You mix two quarts of persimmon pulp, one cup of sugar, one cup of orange juice (I made it from TruOrange packets), and grated orange rind (which I have from Momma’s spice rack) in a non-reactive saucepot and cook it until it thickens which is usually about twenty minutes. Then you can it in half-pint jars same way you would any other kind of jam. I wound up with six half-pint jars so I made a triple batch.

While the Persimmon Jam was processing I made Persimmon Jelly. Rand came in while I was in the middle of the mess and fixed himself some leftovers and fixed me a sandwich as well but it was guy-sized so it took me forever to finish it. Good thing that my jeans have a lot of room in them or I would have had to undo my belt.

For the jelly you take three cups of pulp and add three tablespoons of lemon juice and your pectin. Bring that to a boil and then add then add one cup of honey and bring it to a rolling boil for one minute. Put this in half pint jars and process it same as normal.

The last thing I did was can the remaining pulp plain. Without sugar it won’t keep as long but this way I’ll at least be able to keep it for a while and get some use out of the it. Tomorrow I’ll have to find the time to get the pulp from the remaining persimmons. Next year I’ll know what I am looking at and won’t be so rushed or risk losing the fruit.

I heard a few shots while I was canning and figured Rand must be hunting. I heard another shot a few minutes later and didn’t think too much of it, after all no one hits the target 100% of the time. I went on about my business and was cleaning up the kitchen having decided not to do any more canning since it was getting so cold. Boy, was I in for a reality check.

A few minutes later Rand, on Hatchet, came barreling into the yard. “Kiri!! Babe! Help me get the wagon!”

OK, heart attack city but when I ran out of the house Rand was grinning like a complete loon so I figured whatever it was couldn’t be too bad.

“I take it you hit what you were aiming at?”

“Sure did. Got us three of the best looking of the lot but since I don’t know how long this cold spell is going to last we are going to need to get it all processed as soon as possible.”

“Three … of what?!”

“Deer dear.”

I rolled my eyes which only made Rand grin even bigger. I remember how long it took to process one deer and now he was talking about three! But truth be told it put a little kick in my step too. I like my veggies probably better than most folks but it is weird how much meat I ate without realizing it until we didn’t have it to eat any more.

So, that’s what I’m doing even now. It got to be too dark and cold outside (it is in the 30s out there, brrrrr) so I’m down to the two pressure canners on the princess. I’m so tired I can’t stand it but I can truly say it is a good kind of tired. Rand has the meat hanging on the eaves of the carport outside of the summer kitchen. He also has a fire going out in one of the pits so we have something to see by … thank goodness for bright moonlight otherwise we’d be stumbling around in the dark. Inside we have the wind up lamps and some of the LEDs up and running but that still leaves lots of shadows in the corners of the room.

I found a use for the rancid olive oil, can’t remember if I even mentioned that the oil that came out of the mattress hidey hole was rancid. I made Biblical lamps out of them with some of the lamp wicking that Momma had in her craft supplies. It doesn’t give off great light but I figure if it was good enough for Jesus why not give it a try. The trick appears to be keeping the wick saturated at all times which means the oil level doesn’t need to be high and the wick doesn’t have to be long. It gives off a nice yellow light but it isn’t enough to write by but it helps me find the pot holders and jar lifter without hitting something hot.

Oh bother, there goes that dog again. I’m going to have to wake Rand up and he just put his head down on the table.


November 25th – Well, if I’m not tired today I don’t know what tired is. I used to hear Daddy say that when I was growing up and I used to think it was really weird. Now I think I know exactly what he meant. This is the kind of tired that is given as a definition of what tired really means.

Last night was a total freak out. No wonder Woofer was acting so weird. My Lord, that thing could have taken any of us or any of the animals if it had gotten into the barn. Rand says if we are going to start seeing animals like that he is going to have to hurry up his plans for building a secure goat house and a secure pig house … I’m sure that isn’t what you call them but basically that is what they are. The pigs are getting cold anyway so a little house that is all closed in would be a good idea anyway.

What did Rand have to shoot last night? A freaking jaguar … or leopard, but we think it is a jaguar since it had spots. It was either someone’s illegal pet, from a zoo, or from a big cat rescue facility. I’m not sure it really matters where it came from. It was trying to drag off the last deer carcass when Rand stepped outside. And that lunatic Woofer tried to take it on. He has a slash on his hind end but it isn’t deep and Woofer got in his own lick on the cat breaking its foreleg. Rand’s head shot was a mercy killing at that point to put it down.

Mitch came over today just to say hello and when he saw the big cat he radioed for Mr. Henderson and some of the other men. When Bradley saw the big cat he said in his slow and plodding way, “Well … looks like I owe Brian an apology. I thought he was just having another one of his fits when he said he saw a jungle cat last week.” Bradley reminds me of Eyeore the way he talks.

They all stood around goggling at it and talking long enough that I had to fix an extra pot of coffee. Rand is doing whatever it is you do with the pelt and he says that when it is ready we’ll see about making something out of it. I’m trying to imagine what that might be. It makes me think of Tarzan movies and George of the Jungle.

I’m sure the story will be all over in no time. Mr. Henderson made a tongue in cheek comment about it adding to our mystique. No one asked me if I wanted to have any mystique. Frankly I’ve got enough problems without someone starting to tell tall tales about us.

I was so tired the only constructive thing that I managed to do, besides laundry and harvesting the cushaw squash, was make vegetable soup using some of the venison instead of beef. So far none of the venison that I’ve opened to use from the first time I canned it with Alicia has had any hair in it so I think I did a good job. I’ve tried really hard to be as clean this time but having to do some much in the near dark has me nervous.

The bucks were hung and bled and then Rand started cutting them up for me. I wiped them down really well so I’m pretty sure … but there is still that worry in the back of my head. It would be so embarrassing to have company over, use the meat, and have someone find hair in their food. Ugh.

Last night Rand, when he wasn’t butchering the meat, was grinding some of it for me to brown and then can with some broth I made up. I also made a pretty good sized batch of turkey soup that I canned. I’ll add “noodles” or rice or something like that when it comes time to serve it. Today I boiled the deer bones and the turkey bones to make broth with.

Man my back is killing me and it is so cold that Rand and I have a fire going in the wood stove in the bedroom. Even my ink is cold and thick as you can tell from my handwriting. It won’t freeze tonight according to Rand but it won’t be far from it. All the animals are snug in the barn including the pigs and goats so I think it is time that I got snug in my own bed.


November 26th – Today is Sunday and I’ve tried to make it a day of rest, I really have, but life just doesn’t want to cooperate. This day has been a day of revelations. First we heard that Julia had her baby. It is a little boy. And by littke, I mean very little; he was barely five pounds when he came into the world. Julia was in labor most of Thanksgiving Day and the baby was born just shy of midnight.

Both Julia and her son are doing well. And if rumor is to be believed the baby really is a Harbinger from the looks and a particular birthmark on his little hind end. They named him Frederick Steven Harbinger … but he will be called Steven and not Freddie by all accounts. The same source said that Ron was strutting around like a rooster, crowing about how handsome his son was and what a trooper his wife was, and … well, I guess I’ll have to see it to believe it.

I always wonder how news travels so fast around here. We don’t have TV or broadcast radios or newspapers. I suppose Pastor Ken is partly the cause of how fast news travels. I’m sure Mr. Henderson has something to do with it too since he likes to keep his hand on the pulse of the community. There is also that bulletin board that Missy started up at the Trade Shack. But it just seems people run their mouths so much. If I had any personal and private information I’d make sure it stayed between Rand and I. Having people talk about me when I’m not around gives me the heebie jeebies.

The next revelation is that I won’t be setting up a goat dating service after all. They didn’t have any trouble at all, they just needed to be left alone so that nature could do its thing. Rand and I did get a little silly over it. Rand says he hopes the pigs get friends too because that means that in the spring our “flocks” will begin to increase so that we can “grow our own” rather than be dependent on others for our domestic meat.

Then the next thing to happen came very late afternoon; the trains continue to run, sort of. Everything is so quiet these days with the lack of automation that the sounds of the train must have carried for miles and miles. Rand was getting ready to put the animals up and I was cleaning up where I had been cutting some pumpkins and persimmons to dry; all we could do was stare at one another.

“Did that stop as close as it sounded?” I asked.

“Hard to say but if I had to guess I would say that some of that train is stopped down at the end of CR49. You want me to go check?”

“Not really. It is almost dark and I … Rand, there aren’t many that could get a train running. I’d feel more comfortable if … “

“Easy Babe. I want to get the animals put up first anyway. Oh, listen, it has started back up again. That’s the cars pulling against each other.”

The last revelation comes with a whole bunch of smaller (or bigger depending on your perspective) revelations. An hour after the train had come through Rand and I had eaten our dinner and I was cleaning while he finished putting the animals up for the night. I nearly dropped a glass when I heard Rand give out the piercing whistle call he does when he wants me to come running fast.

I wiped my hands on my apron and checked the pistol that is never off my hip lately and stepped out the front door. Rand was pounding the back of a dark-headed guy who was coughing pretty badly. Slowly the guy caught his breath and turned his face my direction. And I ran.

Ram was terribly thin. His pallor was scary. His normally olive complexion was almost grave-like and the bones of his face were very prominent. But it was his eyes that really drew my attention. They were the same snapping black as they ever were but somehow the “snap” was unhealthy and full of sadness and nightmares.

Rand and I drew Ram in, helped him to take off his backpack and hot him settled in front of the fireplace. That married thing where you don’t really have to talk to understand what the other one is saying comes in handy sometimes and Rand nodded at my questioning look. Rand stayed with Ram while I went to the kitchen and heated some broth and sliced a piece of bread. It only took a moment but by the time I got back Rand had a sorrowful look on his face.

“Hey Shorty, it’s not that bad,” Ram wheezed out. “I’m 500% better than I was. But if you don’t mind I would say no to an invite to sleep on the sofa tonight.”

We’ve learned a lot from Ram tonight, so much I can’t really sleep though I’m going to climb into bed in a moment anyway after I check on Ram one more time. He was shot in some beachfront battle and the wound became infected. He probably would have managed a gotten better faster if he hadn’t had a severe emotional upset at the same time. Sherri left him … she basically gave him a Dear John letter and went off with this other soldier that promised to take her back to her family. Ram said it took a while for him to decide whether he wanted to live or not. He is on furlough and is on his way to see whether Sherri ever made it home or not and if she did to get a “divorce” from her. Since the marriage was common law to begin with I’m not sure exactly how you would go about getting a divorce unless you just make an agreement or contract stating that they both agree they are no longer married. Ram wants to have something to turn in so that Sherri can’t claim any special dispensation or benefits from the military if he dies before he remarries or whatever … he also wants to make sure that she wasn’t pregnant with his child or something like that.

Tomorrow Rand is going to take him to the rendezvous point so that Ram can get on the train for the next leg of his journey. I just feel so bad for him; I never would have imagined that such a thing would happen. It makes me feel more and more blessed.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 62

November 27th -- “Fear not! He is mighty. Nothing and no one can stand against Him. Even the mountains bow before Him. He conquered the grave. He is the Author of salvation. He values His children more than all His other creation and will protect us all of our days.”

Pastor Ken preached on that one of the first services I went to around here. It is something that has stuck with me. But there are days when I have to keep reminding myself of those words. The days are so full it is a temption to just stop keeping track of them. And sometimes what the days are full of remind me of all I’ve lost. After that comes the worry about what I have left to lose.

Rand isn’t home yet. I finally put all of the animals up and I’ve closed the last shutter and lowered the lost roll down door. That … that hurt. Every crank of the handle felt like I was tightening a vice around my heart. It has been a very cold day, the warm up that Rand expected hasn’t arrived yet and it even rained off and on, though not hard. It is raining harder now that darkness has fallen.

We were up even earlier than normal despite how late we had been the night before. Rand got the bleary eyed animals moving and fed them and put them in their respective pens. I made pancakes for breakfast, mixing in some of the acorn meal and a little corn meal as well to make the flour go further. Both Rand and Ram ate well and as usual Ram had to make a comment. “Hey Shorty, you can still cook. I can remember though the first time you tried to make chocolate chip cookies. You couldn’t reach the oven controls ‘cause you were still in your chair and you hadn’t learned to cook with your aunt’s non-something or other flours. Instead of chocolate chunks it was carob. It was like trying to eat a Frisbee.”

I told him everyone makes mistakes in the beginning and if he wanted to keep on eating what I can cook these days he better knock it off with the memories. Aunt Wilma used all of these non-gluten, non-corn flours and it takes some getting used to when you are trying to bake with them. I packed both men a bag lunch while giving them the eye letting them know that I better not hear any complaints.

Ram’s lunch was for his long ride on the hospital train. Given some of the things that he said, not outright but I can read between the lines, rations are slim to none at some stops and he is so thin that it is probably contributing to his length of convalescence. I wished there had been time for Pastor Ken to take a look at him.

Rand was going to go see a couple of people he hadn’t seen in a while, something about trading work, and then he was going to pay our respects at the Harbinger place. The last I saw of them was as they pulled out with the wagon.

I milked the cows and then went about the daily chores required to keep our place running smoothly. Lucky for me the garden is in the middle of production. Things start picking up again in January but here at the end of November and for most of December I’ll have a little vacation except for improving the soil by turning under some compost.. I would have picked up some wood today but it was just too wet to be worth it. I picked up the stuff that had shed in the yard but that was it.

I had some time on my hands with the rain here and Rand gone so as a surprise I finally got around to making the soda pop I have been promising to make. I started by pulling out a couple of the empty two-liter soda bottles that I stored at the very top of one of the spare bedroom closets. They are bulky but light and getting them up and out of the way keeps me from going ballistic over the mess they make when they fall over like bowling pins. I had cleaned the bottles really well before we stored them but I cleaned and sterilized them again just to be safe.

While the plastic bottles dried I mixed on cup of sugar and one-quarter teaspoon of regular old yeast then shook it up really well to mix it evenly. I funneled this mixture into one of the now-dry plastic soda bottles and then filled the bottle half full with plain old room temperature water. To that disgusting looking mess I added a tablespoon of extract. I screwed the lid onto the bottle and rocked it back and forth to mix it all up. Then I filled the bottle the rest of the way up with water until there was an inch of head space and then rocked it some more until all the sugar dissolved. I used vanilla extract for a cream soda, something that Rand likes. I also made a bottle of Rootbeer flavored soda and orange flavored soda. If this works out I’ll make other flavored sodas as I have a bunch of different extracts between Momma’s leftovers (she bought the good stuff so it lasts years), Aunt Wilma who was a fiend for experimenting with natural this and natural that, and all the junk I found when we were cleaning out that eccentric house at the end.

The soda with be finished after it is left on the kitchen counter and gets “tight” the way a fresh bottle of pop would feel on the grocery store shelves. If this works out this may be going in people’s Christmas baskets. It doesn’t take that much yeast and it takes less sugar that doing a lot of baking does and I’ve got enough of those two-liter bottles to start my own landfill. Well, it’s good to be hopeful about the future … isn’t it?

Why is it we only seem to remember to pray this hard when something feels insurmountable? I’m praying that nothing has happened to Rand and that for some reason he has just had to find a place to hole up for the night. Maybe it was one of the mules. Maybe it’s a wagon repair. It doesn’t have to be for a bad reason … does it?

Am I asking for an answer to prayer or for a miracle?

I haven’t been able to sit still. It wasn’t until about three o’clock that I started to wonder where Rand was. As evening began to fall I became concerned but not worried. Everyone is late on occasion and I know how to take care of the animals now. They all mind me, even crazy Taz; all that is except for Hatchet who has become a pain in my backside. The mules are less stubborn than he is. Rand needs to ride him more but there isn’t the time for that there used to be. The mules are work animals; Hatchet is a recreational animal built for speed rather than real labor. Rand feels bad for the horse. He says it must be like he is a Ferrari that only has back country dirt roads to travel down.

I put the animals into the barn, gave them whatever care was required, and then shut them in for the night. They all seemed content to come in out of the cold and damp. Then I closed most of the shutters on the house that stay open during the day for light and air. I left the shutters on the summer kitchen open and as it got to be pitch black outside with the clouds covering the moon, I added a lamp in the window as I tried to keep dinner warm.

But it got later and later. I blew out the lamp, closed the shutters, and put down the roll-downs except for the side door where I stayed in the kitchen. The stove grew as cold as the dinner and I finally knew he wasn’t coming home. I am now upstairs, despite the bone numbing cold up here, listening to the radio. There isn’t much noise out there but what there is depresses me and leads me to think about what we learned from Ram last night.

Ram said when he and his group arrived down in south Florida they found an already entrenched population of foreign troops. They had gotten so entrenched, Ram explained, because they had landed not as invaders but as a humanitarian aide group made up of an international coalition. And they did provide aide … in the beginning.

Someone was smart. Someone was very, very smart. They knew human nature, or at least nature of entitlement that exists in some areas of the world. The locals fell for their act hook, line, and sinker. Then the “humanitarian mission” began to morph into something more insidious. Turn in those dangerous guns for food and fuel. Identify the gang members and criminals to the local authorities (a puppet organization set up by the coalition). Then, be good citizens and turn in your neighbors for infractions of the new rules. You are getting paid to do so with extra points in your ration books.

Then the screws tighten even more. The fuel originally offered as part of the regular aide became reserved for only the most helpful and loyal of the friends of the coalition. Food assistance was no longer supplemental; soon food was only available through the coalition’s “stores” and then only if you were on an official list. The only way to get on that list was as what amounted to an informant; and it was easy to be punitively removed.

Some people began to realize what was happening but only about half of them even cared. They gave their loyalty to whatever group gave them the most “stuff.” It wasn’t long after that however that the coalition began to overplay their hand and move too fast. They thought they had eradicated all resistance at this point when they really hadn’t met any yet.

The invaders, on short supplies themselves, began to get stingy … and corrupt, bypassing the established system of distribution, stiffing the very people who secured their power base. They began to treat the locals like cattle and ration aid only to those that qualified as special friends … and the favoritism had no obvious rhyme or reason. It was both stick and carrot depending on the situation and the logic was lost on the masses who had envisioned the invaders as some type of kinder, gentler version of what they were used to before things fell apart. The elderly, children, and otherwise “non-contributing” members of the community suffered great deprivation at the hands of the coalition than they had before their arrival. Single, unattached females were treated like chattel and all females needed a strong or connected protector to prevent the unmentionable. The “redistribution of resources” moved from keeping the resources local to exporting them back to Venezuela, the base of operations for the coalition. Rebellion did occur on occasion, so did public executions after make believe trials.

Is the situation the military found when they arrived. Again, someone was very smart; they used the locals’ fears of their situation becoming even worse to confuse them as to who were the legitimate authorities; better the devil you know. There were few open battles in the beginning. Once the military arrived however it didn’t take long for things to start hopping.

Ram said it could have remained the way things were progressing … battle upon battle with no clear winner … if the coalition’s supply lines hadn’t been shut down, if US forces hadn’t followed the supply lines back to a particular port in a particular country, back to a road that led from the port to a militarized base. The disruption by destruction that the long range US military wrought gave the ground troops in south Florida the ability and time to whittle the coalition down to the point they retreated. Then their ships were sunk off the coast by our Navy and Coast Guard reinforced by the military leaders now at least back in partial control of our national administration.

Even with the military coming in and trying to help restore order and repair infrastructure some people are still idiots. Not everyone was happy our side won. When the coalition pulled out abruptly some lost their status, and some of them their basic needs as their neighbors took revenge. They didn’t want to realize they were already being shafted by the coalition as their privileges were being taken away.

That is how Ram came to be injured. His patrol was reclaiming equipment left behind during the enemy’s retreat on a public beach when they were attacked by locals; not because they were after the equipment, but because they were trying to reinstall the coalition.

While Ram was in the mobile hospital, and nearly ready for duty again, was when he received the Dear John letter from Sherri. She didn’t even have the nerve to tell Ram in person and she could have quite easily since she worked on that ward as a discharge clerk. He was devastated but it went even further. He learned that she had been having an affair with one of his best friends. The other men that had wives and girlfriends – they were a close knit social group – avoided him, too afraid his circumstance would become their own by association.

Reading between the lines I can tell that hurt Ram nearly as bad as Sherri leaving. Men who fight side by side have a unique bond. They become a close knit type of family. To have this relationship fall apart just like his marriage was too much. Stress flayed Ram’s body leaving it open to infection the same way his pain had flayed his spirit leaving him open to depression. I think Ram would have been better off to stay with Rand and I for a while. He needs to remember he isn’t alone so he won’t do anything crazy since he doesn’t feel like he has much to live for.

Gosh, just listen to what I’ve written. I sound like some of the psycho-babble I was forced to endure when I was in counseling. Ew. But … I recognize the feelings that Ram has all too well. And that’s terrifying because it would be so easy for me to feel that way again if …

Stop it girl. Stopit, stopit, stopit! It doesn’t have to be as bad as you are painting it.


November 28th – Still no Rand. No anyone for that matter. By mid-morning after I’d taken care of the animals … it is still raining so I left them in the barn, but even there I could see their breath in the cold … I couldn’t stand it anymore. I put on the best rain gear I had and trudged up to the end of our road to see if there was any news.

That was when I began to feel something strange is going on. There was no one at the patrol shack. Actually there wasn’t a patrol shack. I stood there like a fool not quite believing what I was seeing … or actually what I wasn’t seeing. The shack wasn’t just gone; it was like it had never existed in the first place. No wood, no chairs, no table, no posts where they strung their horses, no latrine … no anything. The bare earth was covered with fallen leaves and pine straw in a haphazard and natural pattern all the way back to the road bed. Grass and branches were bent over and you couldn’t really even see the small clearing where the shack had been. It was enough to make me doubt my sanity for a moment. Weird.

The rain was beating down but I could still smell smoke on the air. I shouldn’t have been able to. It would require a pretty large fire to waft that kind of smell even in this weather. Or a close one. But the smell wasn’t out of the south, the wind wasn’t blowing the right way for that. No, the smell was coming out of the NE with the wind and the only large structures close enough were already dilapidated and in disuse. There hadn’t been any lightening in the rain and I saw no smoke off in that direction, certainly hadn’t seen or smelled anything like that yesterday.

Then I saw … it … on the other side of the road, a little north of my position. I thought it was just some debris at first but the closer I got the more I had to cover my mouth and nose. It was raining hard but the vultures were already at it. I braced myself and took hold of my stomach with both hands. I was praying so hard sweat was popping out on my upper lip despite the cold. When I got there I still wasn’t as prepared as I needed to be. It wasn’t Rand. It wasn’t Ram. It wasn’t anyone that I knew well though something told me I’d seen them someplace before. The other body, the one half in and half out of the ditch all but hidden by the tall brown grass I didn’t recognize at all … what little was left to recognize. The turkey vultures had had several hours to do what turkey vultures do. This was where the smoky smell had come from. There was no other fire damage visible so the bodies had been dumped there but for what reason I can’t even guess. Maybe they fell off of a charnel wagon.

As soon as I thought about it I faded back into the over grown right of way avoiding the water-filled ditches as much as possible. I ghosted down to Momma O’s place. It took a bit of time, trying not to get any wetter than necessary, but once I got there I crossed the road and stood in the winter remnants of a trellis full of confederate jasmine vines. I looked at the wide front porch. The screen door hung by a single hinge and the front door stood wide open. The house reminded me of a woman caught mid-scream. No one was around. What was worse was neither were the animals. There was a single dead chicken laying under the azalea bushes; not even a coyote or vulture had found it yet.

I felt guilty wandering through the house without permission but I had to know. The front parlor showed nothing except for the open doorway but I did find a few clues on my tour. There was an over turned table in the upstairs hallway. One of the bedroom doors, that I presume was Paul and Sadie’s based on décor and contents, was busted in at the latch. Down in the kitchen a pot of grits lay in a congealed mess on the floor. Remembering all the cowboy movies I watched with Daddy I checked the stove and the fire didn’t have a spark of life left in it. Whatever happened occurred quite some time before I got there.

I shut up the house against the weather and predators (human and animal) and tried to decide what to do. It was a trek to the Henderson ranch on foot and there were no other close neighbors for me to check on. I headed back to the house but cut across the woods rather than walk down the grass at our main gate any more.

I stumbled through a few more hours in the day doing what chores around the house I could while in a half daze; nothing too dangerous or I would have wound up hurting myself or breaking something most likely. Finally I just gave up and sat down and used my head for something besides a hat rack.

I’m going out after it gets dark. I’ll leave a note for Rand just in case he comes back while I’m gone. I’ll leave a stash for him in the shed hidey-hole under the bench in there like we’ve talked about doing and slide the door pole above the inside of the shed door. It blends in and isn’t visible over the metal lip that is there. You have to put your hand up in the track to locate it. It is still raining and I hope that will help hide me from whatever … or whoever … is driving the weirdness.

I’m going to go see about the Crenshaws. I’d go to Mr. Henderson but I don’t want to get shot at if I can avoid it and something must be going on for things to be a screwy as they are. I’ve got my bag packed, my weapons and extra magazines loaded, and a cover for the rifle. Rand had his shotgun with him so I’ve brought a bag of shells for him just in case. And I’ve prayed. I’m going to rest for a few hours until full dark, take care of the animals, and then head out. Just please God, no more bodies.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 63A

December 4th – Haven’t written for a few days. I was too busy and too overwhelmed by everything to stop and think about it before now. When I caught myself talking to the brussel sprouts out in the garden I realized it was time to step back and get some perspective before I really jumped the tracks.

The night of the 28th … yeah, just looked at my journal and it was the 28th … that night I put on dark clothes that made me look like a cross between a Goth wannabe and that old blonde actress in that movie Private Benjamin when she is marching through the mud and muck. Didn’t feel like much of a comedy though; felt more like I had stepped into some whacked out, LSD laced version of Alice in Wonderland.

I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn’t some PTSD dream and that I was really doing what I was doing. If I had only known how those feelings would double up as the night wore on I don’t know if I would have had the courage to start. I think that is why, if precognition really exists, God doesn’t give it to too many people. If people always knew what was coming down the pike they’d probably decide to check out early rather than face it.

All the pack and gear was a little heavy but wouldn’t have been as bad if I hadn’t had to put rain gear on top of everything else, winter gear to keep myself from freezing, and slogging through puddles and wet ground that felt like quicksand every few steps. I’d like to record for posterity how many trees and bushes I walked into because of the dark but I lost count. At least I wasn’t running at that point and I only fell down a few times, not counting the bath I took in that ditch that I see in the dark.

The summer and autumn had given all the greenery time to try and take over the world. It was much more difficult to reach the Crenshaws by going across fields than it had the last time I had attempted this with Alicia. I think I could have dealt with the miserable weather and lack of light if it wasn’t complicated by the fact that the rain had my hearing all out of whack on top of it. I finally had to take the poncho off my head and just deal with the soaking. The hoodie took away what peripheral vision I had and the rain drops felt like fingernails against my eardrums. The dirty USF Bulls baseball cap I wore kept the water out of my eyes for the most part or I would have been blind as well as nearly deaf.

I learned to hike more carefully but it make for slower going and it was after midnight before I made it to the Crenshaw’s place. I knew right away that something terrible had happened. The Winston place was burned to the ground. A couple of the floor joists … I think they were the floor joists … were still warm to the touch and the rubble definitely smelled icky enough that the damage wasn’t that old.

I only took a few steps and tripped over what I thought was a piece of wood I hadn’t seen. That was my first step down the rabbit hole. As soon as I got a good look at what I had tripped over I realized God had decided not to answer my prayer. I wasn’t sure who it was at first, except that it was a female, most of the anatomy was in the right spots. The one hank of hair left is what identified the poor woman. Mostly it was an unfortunate shade of gray from the scalp but on the ends was about six inches of false blonde from the last dye job Mrs. Winston had.

Someone had tried to cover her up and put stones at the four corners of the plastic but the wind had ripped it loose from its moorings and the rain beat down without mercy on what was left of the poor woman. I couldn’t see her family leaving her exposed like this, not even for a short while. I search around for other bodies but didn’t see any. I had a gut sick feeling.

I was much more cautious as I approached Clyde’s house. The baby’s bed was turned on its side and there was a window busted out in there. Other than that there was no other damage. I crossed over to Uncle George’s place. No one was home. Missy’s place was empty too. I went out to the barn … no animals. Things began to freak me the heck out. I checked all of the houses up and down the farm road and nothing. No people, no animals, damage in a few houses but nothing major, one brown smear on the bedroom door in one location and a puddle of brown in another. The rain continued to fall and I was tempted to let some tears fall as well.

I decided to check the Trading Shack and thank God that I did but I still nearly wet myself when that bird shot blew out the window I had just past in front of.

“Oh my God … OhmyGod … Kiri … please, please, please, I didn’t hit you did I?!!!”

“Not for freaking lack of trying!!! Dang it Missy, give me a blasted heart attack next time!! And if I’ve messed myself you are going to give me something out of the supplies for free!!!”

Then we fell on each other crying and laughing at the same time. A pain racked voice from the hallway said, “If y’all are done now I’ve started bleeding again and could use a little tender care.”

Bill is in pretty bad shape. He took what he calls an in and out in the shoulder and he bled quite a bit from a head wound. The attackers thought he was dead and didn’t check him over too well. He and Missy had been over in the Shack cleaning up from a day of heavy trading when their nightmare started.

They attacked almost every home on the road simultaneously. The noise of the rain gave them the advantage over most everyone. The fact that they went after the kids first had most families giving up without a fight. They’d go in, take a kid, hold them at gun point and the rest went pretty much like you would expect it would. If a house didn’t have kids they would either use a pregnant woman, someone else’s kid, or an elderly person to force compliance. They hit in the dark. First they took the people away and then they came back for the animals.

“How is it that you don’t know what has happened?”

“I came over here because Rand hasn’t been home in two days. You remember my foster brother Ram? He had stopped by and he was in bad shape after south Florida so Rand was taking him back to the train where it had stopped over near old downtown area then he was supposed to go to the Harbingers and … and he never came home.”

“And you haven’t seen anyone else?”

“No! I mean, not living. There were two burned bodies dumped not too far from our front gate and then … then I think it is Mrs. Winston across the road.”

“Yeah, they didn’t realize she was crazy when they tried to use her and … well, the inevitable occurred as you can imagine. You haven’t seen anyone else? No one at all?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?!”

“Hey, don’t yell at Missy she’s just … “

“Well so am I so lay off. I don’t know why they missed our place. Do you have any idea where they took folks?”

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean ‘maybe?’ You either you do or you don’t.”

“Kiri, take it easy. Missy and I have been holed up here … “

“Bill, enough with the explanations. Just spit it out for Pete’s sake.”

“They were dressed in camou but nothing standard issue that I used to see come through. Not your average hunter’s camouflage either. The color of the green … if you want the truth I saw some of that out of the jungles of South America but … “

“Venezuela … could you tell …”

“How the … Kiri, they were speaking Spanish or something close to it.”

“Castellano … that’s what they call it. Most of the words are the same, they just sound like they are in a different dialect.”

“That’s right, you speak Spanish.”

“Get off it Missy. Ram was talking about what had gone on down in south Florida. I guess those creeps didn’t give up after all. They are being backed by the … “

“Russians,” Bill said finishing my sentence for me.

“Yeah. Guess that didn’t take much of a brain drain to figure that out.”

“No. And it explains some of the Anglo-looking people them.”

“So, where do you ‘maybe’ think they’ve taken everyone?”

“Hoss said … “

“Whoa, back up. You’ve seen Hoss?”

“Yeah. He was at his relative’s place and was cutting through and stopped by the Shack for a second and mentioned he was heading back to Henderson’s. He said tomorrow he might have a little news to trade because there had been a transmission that there was some type of fight going on at the old military outpost, the one over between River Road and the old GoldKist processing plant on US90.”

“Well, that gives me a place to start.”

“That gives you … oh no you don’t girl.”

I remember turning and giving Bill a look. There aren’t too many people that dared to tell me no like that before things went to heck in a hand basket. Bill found out there was only one or two I tolerate it from these days … and he wasn’t one of them.

Bill blinked first when Missy hitched up her breath like she was going to cry. I looked at her and said, “You don’t really expect me to baby sit the two of you do you? You’re both adults and neither one of you stood up to your Daddy when he was being so rough on Rand.”

“But … “

“Missy, under any other circumstances … but not this, you can’t ask me to sit around and not try and find out what has happened to Rand.”

“It isn’t about anyone for you is it?”

“You want to get nasty Missy I can and with a clear conscience. No, right here right now it isn’t about anybody else. I owe Rand my loyalty, my love, my life, and likely my sanity. Right now he is all I care about. You want to hold that against then go right ahead. Does that make me hard? Maybe. After that comes Momma O … and after that Mick and Tommy and Pastor Ken. Those folks have given me the most acceptance for who I am and I don’t intend just sitting around waiting for someone else to …”

Bill broke in, “Kiri, Missy is awful close to her due date and I’m next to useless. If something happens to me … “

“Then find a hole for you two and crawl in. When I find out what is going on I’ll be back or I’ll send some help or something. If you need some food or water I’ll … “

Missy, rather coldly said, “No. We can take care of it.”

Bill, trying not to get in the middle of a cat fight said, “Kiri, this isn’t … Girl, Rand wouldn’t want you to … Nothing I say is going to change your mind is it?”

Feeling a little bad for the way things were going despite what I had said I told him, “Bill, would you let someone or something stop you finding out about Missy? Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I can’t feel that same kind of need. I’m not a frilly girly-girl. I’m not even a normal kind of girl. I’m me … rough, not able to put up with people much, scarred in a lot of ways. But Rand stood by me, from the very beginning. He’s never asked me to be anyone and anything else than what I am. He … he …”

I guess Missy must have thawed a bit because she put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed and it let me continue. “He is the reason why I get up in the morning and the reason why I can sleep at night. The reason why I even bother trying to … maybe I shouldn’t put that kind of burden on him, maybe if … If I was going to have a baby or there was a kid or something I could handle things if … Look, I have to know. I can’t not try. I’m not asking you to understand. I don’t really care if anyone understands. It’s just the way it is for me.”

I finally looked back at the two of them and it was like they had seen me for the first time all the way. It wasn’t a real comfortable feeling so I got up and grabbed the bucket they were using for water and went outside and filled it from the water barrel and filled up my own canteen at the same time. When I came back in I was back in control and had my attitude wrapped around me like Kevlar. “You have food or do you need anything else?”

“We’ll be fine. Stay out of trouble if you can Kiri. Whatever has happened I know Rand wouldn’t want you walking to your death with wide open arms.”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that. I’m not going looking for it, that’s not the plan. I want a chance at my happily ever after and I’m not about to let some jerks cut me out of it.”

There was a few more things said, mostly Bill giving me tips on strategy in case I needed it, then I was off. There were only a couple of hours until daylight and I wasn’t going to make it on foot the miles I needed to travel before it arrived.

Live Oak is like a spider’s web, lots of major roads radiate out from the city center. One of those roads is CR136. The Crenshaw’s place is on a road off of CR136. The county road then runs SW until it hits the city center and then keeps going slowly changing to a due east direction before running smack into the southern end of River Road. That was a haul to walk, almost made me wish that I’d ridden Hatchet … almost.

It was mid morning and I was so tired of weaving and dodging to stay out of sight that by the time I got to the intersection I knew I needed to rest or I was going to be useless. It hadn’t stopped raining either. My feet were soaked and so was the rest of me. There was an old house set back from the road and I went in. The house had been salvaged over so many times that it wasn’t much more than a frame in some places but the roof was relatively intact and kept me out of the rain. There was an old metal bed with some junk piled around it and I crawled under it like a vampire to get out of what daylight there was so that I could rest and then sneak in under cover of darkness.

And boy did I sleep. I woke with a start when something squeaked in my ear. Thank you Lord for the rain because I made enough noise to draw every baddie within a mile with all my scrabbling to get out from under there. Rats, I so do not like them. I sure as heck don’t like them squeak at me like an alarm clock but what happened next was too providential for me to curse them completely.

I pulled myself together, grabbed my gear (after checking it for hitch hikers) and then took off in the direction that would bring me behind the old GoldKist plant where who knows how many chickens used to meet their fate. I was no more than five buildings away when boots on a run had me ducking for cover. Men, men with guns, big guns were going from building to building. I guess they were looking for stragglers they might have missed the first go around. They didn’t look too happy to be out in the cold, wet weather. The men that were higher in rank, I presume they were anyway because they were standing around telling the rest of them what to do, were shouting, “¡Muévale los perros! Estamos tarde y el comandante flay le si hay más retardos.”

Sounded like things weren’t moving to someone’s timetable. Fine by me, I decided to cause them a few more delays and I got my first chance when one of them men snuck off to take a potty break. What is it with guys anyway? They get so involved with marking their territory that a brass band could march up behind them and they wouldn’t notice. As far as I know the guy is still down under the manhole plate where I dumped him after I caught him on the back of the head with a piece of convenient tree branch wet and heavy from all of the rain. There wasn’t any water down there so I expect it was an electric junction or something.

What I didn’t dump down in there was his gun and ammo belt and the bandolier of grenades he had been wearing. The grenades looked like dark green apples with pull rings. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do with them but I figured they would come in handy. This next part is something I’m not too proud of and figure I’ll have to answer for some day.

I’ve gotten pretty good at plinking with the Mark III. I can hit the bullseye at fifty yards. I don’t know how that compares to what really passes for marksmanship but Rand likes it and I’ve hit the bullseye at nearly 70 yards, but not farther. I don’t know if that is the limit of the gun or what but I only needed to get 60 yards and I wasn’t aiming at a little bitty bullseye but at a man in the back of a truck holding one of those military radio gizmo thingies. I don’t know what planet these guys come from but no one with any brains just sits in the bed of a pick up in the middle of a war … and I had declared this to be a war. He was just leaning back in the truck like he didn’t have a care in the world, arms spread wide, mouth open to catch the rain.

I told myself, “You’re just plinking cans, aim for the radio and cut them off.”

I got the radio … and the guy wearing the radio and God sent a clap of thunder to cover the shot. I had moved and found fresh cover before the group of twelve … make that ten … men still didn’t realize anything was amiss. I guess they had had it so easy up to that point that they had gotten careless. I decided not to push my luck and ran for it. No one saw me or at least no one shouted, “Hey, look, there’s a girl … let’s get her.”

It started to rain harder and I ducked under some bushes to catch my breath. The extra gear from the guy I dumped down the hole weighed me down and I was really tempted to leave it behind. I’m glad I sucked it up and brought it with me, it came in handy.

I didn’t have any more trouble – sometimes you just know your guardian angel is working overtime – and followed River Road up to for a while and then cut behind where I knew the old outpost was supposed to be. I nearly puked when I saw what was happening; I would have puked if I had known it all.

It looked like one of those WW2 internment camps from those documentaries you used to be able to watch on the Military Channel. Tall fences where people were mashed together like sardines. Men in one area, women in another, young children separated out into a third. They didn’t need to have too many guns on the adults because they had a lot trained on the children. Then I saw some of the rough men dragging a young girl out of the crowd of women. The women tried to hold onto her but they were punched and butt stroked with rifles and then someone shot a gun into the crowd of young children … they all ran screaming in different directions but it didn’t look like any of them had been hit, at least not that time.

I knew I didn’t have much time so I ran around the compound through the overgrowth that was there. They hadn’t even had time to clear the land where it had grown back from the last trimming it had been given. I didn’t even stop to think. It was just a stupid portable outside the main compound fences, paper thin walls, two doors, a few blackened windows. The day had grown dark earlier than normal because of the weather and I took advantage of it. I ran into the door on the opposite they were going to enter. My brain was going nothing to ninety in less than five seconds. For some reason Rambo got stuck in my head and I knew what I was going to do.

Two men drug the young girl into the portable slamming the door behind them, I came out from where the door closed and using one of Daddy’s knives out of his collection I … I stepped up behind them and did what I thought was necessary. The girl they had thrown on the stained mattress just laid there crying, waiting, unaware that I had taken care of her current problem. I turned quickly and rigged a grenade on the chain lock that was on the door then I turned to find the girl staring at the two men. I grabbed her and ran to the door I had come in, took a quick peak hearing the other men laughing on the other side of the building, and then drug the kid into the thick bushes and kept going even after the explosion that signified that someone had become impatient for their turn.

An old, overturned bread truck became our refuge and that is when I realized who the girl was … Sadie. She fell on me and was crying and I don’t know what all but I couldn’t seem to find it in me to be kind. I slapped her to get her to stop and said, “I need to know as much as you can tell me about how things work here. We haven’t got much time. That explosion is going to be like stirring a hornet’s nest with a sugar bush stick.”

She’d cried snot all over her face and I handed her a bandana as she told me basically the same kind of story that Missy and Bill had. The men had caught Hannah as she gathered eggs and used her to force the rest of the household into compliance. Paul had tried to lock her into their bedroom but they broke down the door and dragged her downstairs. As soon as they had been herded to the pins the little kids and babies had been taken away and the men and women separated. I asked her if she had seen Rand and she said no but that it didn’t mean anything because she had only seen Paul and his dad a couple of times since they had been separated; but she also said that some of the men that had fought in the beginning were taken away and you could hear shots. None of those men came back.

I told her I was going to have to leave her there and she started to panic but I told her she really didn’t want to go where I was going and that Hannah, Paul, and his family needed her to stay safe, they were going to need her when this was all over with. I felt funny when I said it, like it was true in a way that I wasn’t going to like.

I left her my extra canteen and some food. That helped lighten my load a little bit but I didn’t bother leaving a gun after she told me she didn’t know how to shoot one because her dad said only loose women handled guns. Well, I was about to get as loose as her dad probably fantasized about. She caught me off guard when she hugged me as I was leaving and I felt driven to tell her to stay hidden here for as long as she could but if she had to move, to do it carefully and to stay out of sight and out of the way.

It was back to the dark cold rain and the sounds of the enemy running around like chickens with their heads cut off. As soon as I thought that I wondered where the command center was for the compound. At the time I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the information but, just like the grenades, I thought it would be useful.

I scrambled around to the other side of the compound as quickly as I could. All the activity was on the side where I had blown up the portable and I wondered if I had left Sadie in the wrong place but it was too late to go back and change it. I refocused and started looking at the mess the enemy had made. They had tents galore set up and I could see where the train had been derailed and a couple of the cars were lying on their sides. That would have been the explosions reported by Henderson’s men. I also so a pile of dead soldiers stacked some ways off. The rain was keeping the predators away for the time being.

I saw a bunch of men packed into one tent and figured it was the mess hall. Some men were being directed at filling sand bags and they were using these to build makeshift walls around some of the free standing tents. One looked a little bit like a MASH unit and another one looked like a small radio station. The radio station was the focus of a bunch of arguing. I couldn’t see what was going on in any of the other tents because the lamp light didn’t penetrate far enough but none of them looked like there was a lamp on inside of those tents either so they might have been sleeping quarters. I didn’t see anything that looked like a command station. I guess the movies make it seem like it is so easy to figure everything out.

I was trying to think so hard that he got the jump on me before I even realized it. I was kicking and fighting and then got flipped over on my stomach which knocked the wind out of me despite the hard hand across my mouth.

In my ear I heard, “Ow! Don’t bite! Will you stop it!! Blast it! Ram was right, you’re as mean as a cottonmouth when you get cornered!”

I stopped fighting and as soon as I did the man let up and I squirmed out of his control and pulled the Mark III and put my back to a tree and aimed.

“My gawd girl. Point that thing someplace else. And be careful of them grenades you’re swinging around, you want to blow us all up? By the way, now that I’ve spotted you I assume that was your doing over there.”

It took me a second then I recognized the guy. He’d been with Ram that first time, at the church service.

“You don’t remember my name do you? It’s Duncan … Pepper Duncan. No, don’t ask, my dad was drunk at the time. Have you seen him? Ram I mean.”

“Not for a couple of days. My husband never came home from bringing Ram to the train.”

“Rand. That’s your husband’s name. I heard about him to. Ram said he was the only guy crazy enough to put up with you.”

“If you are done insulting me, would you might telling me what is going on and where is everybody else?”

“I’ll tell you if you point that thing … fine, have it your way. There isn’t an ‘everybody’ any more. You’re dead or your behind the fence.”

“You’re not behind the fence.”

“No. No I’m not.”

“And why would that be?”

“Because if you’ll notice I don’t look like I’m much of a threat now does it?”

I looked at the direction he was pointing. I blinked and then blinked some more. Pepper was missing the foot on one leg and from the knee down on the other.

“Looks can be deceiving obviously. You didn’t have any trouble sneaking up on me and taking me down.”

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 63B

I surprised him. His mouth hung open and then he grinned. “You’re all right. Look, I don’t know what you are thinking about but there are too many of them. Ram said you were crazy, he never said you were suicidal.”

“I’m neither, Ram is a big fat pain in the backside and I’m going to kick his for telling my business all over the place. As for what I was doing I was wondering where the command center is for this place.”

“Hasn’t got one. I don’t think this is the command group. I think this may just be the advance guard or something like that. They were to come in, soften up the place, and then get it ready for the main body to arrive. They’ll either use those people as cannon fodder or as collateral. Our guys aren’t going to want to massacre our own, not even to get to the enemy. Bad for morale and we got enough of those problems already.”

“OK, if what you say is true then we don’t have that much time.”

“Much time for what?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out. Do you know if the military are sending troops in here?”

“They got the report. I know that for a fact as I was the one that sent it. What they do with that information is anyone’s guess. Depends on what resources we have in the area and how many and how big a threat they consider this incursion. They’ve let other ones go unchallenged.”

“What?!”

“For cripes sake, keep your voice down. We’ve had some Asian incursions on the West Coast but there wasn’t much left over there worth anything anyway. The Canadians are coming across the border for food and fuel too but we’ve formed a sort of coalition with them so local authorities turn a blind eye to the salvaging as long as that is all it is … no taking stuff that already has legal owners. The Republic has held firm on the southern border with surprising tenacity now that they are allowed to use whatever force is deemed necessary. That’s why we are now seeing incursions by water.”

“You mean invasions.”

“Call them incursions; you’ll stay out of trouble that way.”

“Call it like it is instead of some stupid political correctness and you might be able to correct the problem sooner.”

“Yeah, yeah … that’s above my pay grade. I’ve got my own problems to worry about right now sweetheart.”

“Well, don’t look at me, I’ve spent my time in a wheelchair. At least what you’ve still got obeys the commands your brain sends them.”

I’d surprised him again and he gave a quiet chuckle and shook his head. “Fine. Let me tell you what I’ve been thinking while I was sitting here feeling sorry for myself. You see that radio tent? Something is wrong. They’ve been working on it for over 24 hours straight and that big guy, the one that looks like Dolph Lundgren … “

“Who?”

“Never mind, the big blonde … the Russian … he’s been getting angrier and angrier and about an hour ago he put a bullet in some guy’s head and bellowed out something like, “¡Tonto incompetente!”

“That means ‘incompetent fool’ if you are pronouncing it correctly.”

“You speak Spanish?”

“Well enough and it is pretty clear that he was calling the guy incompetent.”

“Yeah, even I could figure that one out. Anyway, everyone is getting all nervous and bent. Look … see those men there? The Anglos? They’re the Russians, or at least Eastern Europeans. See how they are standing off and away from the rest of the men?”

“The Venezuelans?”

“Ram told you. Yeah, the Venezuelans. Even before the pandemic got bad the Russians had built bases of operation in Venezuela. Long political story that I ain’t going into. It simply was and when the pandemic had the kaka hitting the twirling blades old grudges started looking like they could be settled. And there is a worldwide resource grab going on. China is too busy claiming the rest of Asia and most of Africa right now, or trying to claim it. Russia has decided to take the Americas. But they have to keep most of their forces in the motherland to fight off China stepping into their territory as well. And both countries are trying to claim the oil reserves of the Middle East, but China needs it worse.”

“So, Venezuela to make up the difference and to give them some manpower.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think things are going near as well as either country expected. Even little, nothing countries had access to suitcase sized dirty bombs before the pandemic and both Russia and China got pounded and pounded hard. Venezuela saw that and has gotten a little big for her britches and the Russians gave them a couple of nasty blackeyes to remind them who’s boss. It’s made for poor coalition relations. But the Russians are the brains, the experience, and they’re the ones with the equipment … there is no way that Venezuela could have gotten this far without help, a lot of it. I’m thinking that they might just be the brains of the operation here as well. If someone could cut the head of the snake off … Who knows?”

“So how do we do it?”

“How do we? Are you crazy? I told you, this was all just conjecture!”

“Conjecture or not it is the only plan I’ve got. The problem as I see it is that whatever it is it has to be big enough to really disrupt things or they are going to take it out on the little kids and women just because that looks like the kind of people they are. Where are they getting their fuel for the trucks and jeeps?”

“You’re nuts! Grade A certifiable!!”

“Yeah, yeah. I thought you told me Ram warned you about that. Do you know where their fuel is?”

“It’s over there. No, over there, that small tanker. The way they monitory that thing I’m thinking they don’t have much and are waiting resupply.”

“They didn’t get any when they attacked you guys?”

“We were a hospital train … emphasis on the train. We weren’t carrying fuel, we were running coal.”

“Like a … a choo-choo train?”

“Yeah smart aleck, like a choo-choo train. Coal is about all there is going these days for large transportation activities.”

“I just thought of something. Where are the animals?”

“If you mean the ones their patrols have been bringing in, they are over at the processing plant.”

“So that means that there isn’t just one group but two.”

“More. You’ve got all the small patrols that are out trying to round up stragglers.”

“Great. Do you know how big the force is at the processing plant?”

“Not big, Maybe a quarter of what there is here.”

“As heavily armed?”

“Yeah. No. Heck, I don’t know … no, I don’t think so, not really. They might have one mounted machine gun to the six that are here. I know there is another six in the field for sure but there may be more than that.”

“Crap, but not as crappy as it could be. I can’t take care of the animals but … “

“But what?”

“What happens if you put a bullet into a propane tank?”

“What?!”

“What happens if you shoot a bullet into a propane tank?”

“A big fat boom.”

“So the bigger the propane tank the bigger the boom?”

“Theoretically? Yeah, I guess. What are you cooking up in your twisted little brain.”

“Legless man or not, I’m going to kick you if you don’t knock it off. See that messhall?”

“Darling, I’ve been smelling the … oh. Holy … And it’s right in the middle … Forget it, you aren’t going to hit it with that little thing you’ve got. And blowing a propane tank isn’t as easy as I just made it out to be.”

“I don’t intend on hitting it with this little thing, “I said, referring to my .22 rifle. “I’m going to hit it with this.”

“Little girl, that is a Kalashnikov. Have you ever shot something like that?”

“Sort a. But they are all just point-and-shoot so stop acting like I talking about landing a 747.”

“Kiri, I’m not joking. If you don’t hold something that powerful correctly you could get hurt. I’d do it but my legs aren’t the only things … I took some shrapnel to my eyes and my far vision is shot, no pun intended.”

“Look, I don’t know what else to do. I can’t just sit here and wait for whatever is going to happen. If you have any better ideas sing out. And what did you mean about the tanks not going boom?”

Pepper got real serious and then said, “I didn’t say they wouldn’t, just that it was harder than you would think. How good are you with the pistol?”

“I can hit the bullseye consistently at 50 yards.”

“Well, this isn’t fifty yards, this is almost 250 yards. And you are going to need a clear shot.”

Looking around I said. “I’ll climb a tree.”

“Girl, it doesn’t work that way. The kick will knock you out of the tree if you aren’t ready for it and …”

“Stop telling me why it won’t work and help me to figure out a way it will!”

After a pause he said, “Over in those trees is a culvert. It will get you closer for sure. It might also get you are clearer shot. The problem is going to be that gun going off in an enclosed area. If you don’t have some ear protection you’ll lose your hearing. You might lose it anyway at least for a time just from the percussion. And you are going to be caught. If someone sees you you’ll be as good as dead. You are also going to need to hit it near where the cookfire is which is going to make you angle even more difficult. The bullet hitting the tank isn’t really going to do much more than release the gas from pressure, you are going to need to make sure that fire gets to that gas as it is being released.”

He went one for a few minutes more but I was focused on getting into the culvert and what I could do after I did what I wanted to do which was make the big tank explode.

(later)

I had to stop and check on things and get some new ink. Everything is so quiet this time of night. It reminds me of how quiet and muffled everything was in the culvert. I had shoved some tissue in my ears, wrapped a bandana around them and then pulled my knit cap down over that. Not the best protection by any stretch. I had the perfect angle from a less than perfect position. I was practically lying in the open, only hidden by some scruffy little turkey oak saplings growing up through the cracked cement and clay mud.

Pepper was right, this was a completely different kind of shooting. The long range stuff was outside my talent, but I didn’t see where I had much choice than to at least try. And I wasn’t trying to hit a squirrel’s eye … I was aiming at a big white tank that looked as big as a hippopotamus’ rear end … roughly the same shape too for that matter.

The deal was to pray for God to guide the bullet, aim, shoot and then pray the entire time that the tank actually exploded.

I was shaking so bad that I had to calm myself down and when I finally did it the results were more spectacular than I could have ever imagined. The fireball was huge. The cooks had been making food as fast as they were serving it. The entire mess hall tent and everyone in it was just … gone. The radio tent and everyone in there as well. Further out a watch tower had two of its upright legs damaged and it collapsed into the men’s fenced in area. Chaos ensued.

I think what happened was that the guns of the guards were taken and were used to take more guns for other guards. I could see the big Russian running out of a tent that had only partially escaped the blast. I helped the chaos along by rolling a grenade his direction. I thought at the time he was done for. I was wrong.

I’m not even going to write about what happened over the next hours. I don’t even want to think about it. They said it was war. OK, it was war. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t still rules. I know “fair fight” is an oxymoron. I know it was me or them, us or them … but I don’t know if that makes any of that right, or if it is something I’m just going to have to live with and let God sort it out when he gets to be inclined.

Some of the enemy men weren’t even men … they were younger than I am. Just kids. Some of them … some of them hardly big enough to carry the guns they had in their hands. Why does the world do this? No … why do people do this? Life is hard enough as it is, why do they have to make it worse? And why would these boys join in? Was there no other option open to them? I guess those are questions I’ll never have an answer for. It’s bad enough I was faced with the questions to begin with.

Sheer desperation and determination won the day, but not without casualties. Momma O had a heart attack the first day of the internment. I guess Sadie had been too shook up to tell me. She’s not dead, but … no one seems to think she’ll pull through this time. Ron Harbinger’s aunt was killed in the fighting. Julia is bad sick, she starting bleeding after she was beaten and despite first rate care … or as first rate as we have around here … she isn’t out of the woods yet. Paul’s dad was shot but will live; he’ll walk with a limp for the rest of his life but he’ll live. I thought Paul was going to break down and cry when I told him where I had left Sadie. Hannah refused to leave Ms. DeLois’ side. She has a bruised confused look around her eyes and I’m afraid to ask why.

Mr. Henderson has a broken leg … shin, not thigh. Several of his men are dead but he’s vowed to continue looking after their families. Mr. Winston, Julia’s brother, and Ron’s Aunt Buzzy are at the Harbinger place. They buried old Mrs. Harbinger beside her husband; she just wasn’t up for the stress. Pastor Ken is one of the walking wounded. He’s up, but is just as often down. There are too many wounded. I heard one woman moan, “What next? Locusts?!” That is pretty much my feelings at the moment.

I looked, begged people I recognized for some word of Rand. Nothing. Finally some of the least wounded … I fell into that category at the time … decided it was time to take on the ones that were barricaded in at the processing plant, before they got any reinforcements. It wasn’t much of a battle, those men tried to throw down their guns and surrender. They weren’t given the option. That’s something else I’ll have to live with since it isn’t exactly something you can undo.

But that’s where I found him. I thought at first … well, never mind what I thought. They’d had some fun with him. I’d seen him after a fight before but never anything like this. Ram, wheezing his way through the explanation, said they’d been caught almost as soon as they had been hit as they were crossing CR129 as they were travelling west on US90. Ram was forced to play translator for a while then when the radio problems started they were sent to the processing plant to the radio that was set up there. The Russian left in charge there knew no Spanish and the Venezuelans knew no Russian but the Russian did speak English, well sort of. The Russian spoke English to Ram who then translated it into Spanish for the Venezuelan Major. The Venezuelan spoke Spanish to Ram who translated it into English for the Russian. Ram said it was a farce.

Don’t you just hate movies that run along and you think they’ve resolved the conflict and the protagonists get to live happily ever after only to find out in the last five minutes of the movie that the monster really isn’t dead and it has come back to eat everyone? I despised that type of movie, they made me want to scream especially when it was really unexpected rather than contrived just to irritate the viewer.

I cried buckets when I realized that Rand was alive. He was beat up and ornery but alive. Found the mules and the wagon too. They had all sorts of crap loaded on it but Bud pulled it with ease by himself. Rand had only had Bud harnessed to pull single and Lou had been tied to the back of the wagon. I had Bud in the harness and had helped Rand into the back of the wagon and had gone over to the makeshift corral to get Lou so we could get home before dark. Rand was worried about the animals despite the fact I’d told him at least three times I left them with plenty of food and water in case I was gone for more than a day.

I was tired and distracted but that was no excuse for what happened. Lou was acting skittish and suddenly tried to drag me. I made the mistake of letting go because I thought he would kick me. It wasn’t Lou that kicked me, it was the big Russian … the one I thought I’d blown up.

It felt like a sledge hammer hit me. I was down and have some guy spit blocks of consonants in my face that I didn’t understand. I did understand that he was hacked; his hands around my neck pretty much made that clear. I could hear the horses screaming and then that faded as the spots in my vision got bigger. I tried ramming my fingernail under his to make him let go but I guess they teach you how to deal with pain like that in the Russian army because it didn’t seem to faze him at all. It felt like either my face or my lungs were going to explode if I didn’t get some relief and then I imagined that it had started raining again because there were drops of wet all over my face … then nothing.

I came to when it felt like someone was feeling me up. And then my head was tilted back and I was suffocating. It took a minute but I finally found it in my to pinch my attacker.

“Ow! She’s back … watch out for the nails. She scratches like a cat.”

My whole focus was getting enough air into my lungs so that I could let Ram have it with both barrels right between the eyes. But then I heard a snarled, “Get out of the way.” And I was crushed against a smelly shirt and was getting something that was a cross between a lecture and a promise of love everlasting if I would just open my eyes.

Rand was a mess. And I guess I was closer to being dead than was healthy there for a bit. I’m still bruised from Ram’s attempt at CPR. The “rain” was wear Rand and Ram had dealt with the Russian at the same time. There wasn’t much left of … well, there wasn’t much left and he won’t be a problem ever again.

Then the military arrived. A little late to be the Calvary but their medical triage facilities were welcome. Rand and I were patched up while Ram gave his report that is being passed on to someone higher up the ladder. The soldiers from the hospital train that survived are still waiting for the tracks to be cleared and repaired. Ram was assigned to the Colonel’s office as an interpreter. He’s also receiving much better care; he was by yesterday to say he was being reassigned to the Colonel’s staff on a permanent basis and they were going to set up in the Big Bend area. He’d keep in contact as he could, we’ll know it when we see if whatever that is supposed to mean.

The military also took the view enemy troops that escaped the townpeople’s … justice. Maybe that isn’t what it really was but I’m afraid to think about what else you could call it. A lot of the Venezuelan and Russian weapons just disappeared. The Colonel and his people didn’t seem too perturbed about it. The man seems to think that an armed citizenry is a better protection from invaders than a citizenry totally dependent on its armed forces for protection. Mr. Henderson thinks highly of the man. Goody.

Today was the first day I looked in the mirror and didn’t see a purple strawberry staring back. My throat is still black and blue but time will take care of that. My ribs are another matter. It will probably be at least a week before I’ll be able to draw a deep breath or cough with wanting to double over. I had a clearly defined boot print on my back before the bruise started spreading out.

Rand is sick. I mean really sick, maybe not pneumonia but close. Ram snuck over some kind of cillin and shot Rand in the hip with it and he finally started to improve. Ram wanted to give the same kind of shot to me and I told him he’d eat the needle before he got it anywhere near me. I had some funny reactions to medications after the car crash and I’d rather not take any chances.

Brendon and Paul have come by a couple of times. They check on Rand … and me … and I get news of what is going on outside our gates. It isn’t good but at least now there is an enemy to prepare for. If Pepper … who is awaiting transport to a VA hospital for possible prosthetics once the train track is repaired … is right and this was only an advance guard, what will the main body look like? Providence, luck, whatever … will that be enough next time if there is a next time?

I’m tired. So tired. It is taking everything I have just to put one foot in front of the other. But all I can think of is that we’re running out of wood and it is cold again and I have to churn the butter before the cream goes off and turn the compost and manure under the garden soon so that it will be ready for planting next month. It is taking everything I have to take care of what has to be done today. How am I supposed to prepare for some invading army with who knows what kind of weapons to throw against us that may or may not be coming tomorrow or a few weeks of tomorrows?

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 64

December 6th – Rand had a setback yesterday. He scared me a little bit. OK, he scared me a lot. But more than anything I’m mad at myself over what happened.

I was very tired from trying to do everything for days on end in addition to the sleep I hadn’t been getting. I was a little testy I’ll admit. All I wanted was a warm bath to help with my legs that were really feeling the extra work and the cold. It wasn’t like this in Tampa, the cold never lasted this long or at least I never had to be out in it like I have been. The rain and damp weather hasn’t been helping either. And I guess I was running into that stuff where Momma and the other grown up women used to say things like, “Men are so gosh darn pig headed sometimes.”

Well, Rand had been trying to get out of bed but it was mostly because his fever was making him kind of discombobulated and he wasn’t thinking straight. But after the fever went away he stopped trying to get out of bed but once I had come inside and started writing in my journal it seemed he kept calling me for something every few minutes. I made the mistake of giving him a bell just in case I didn’t hear him call. Well, he went from calling me to ringing that bell. I was real tempted by dinner time to take the clapper out of that bell and then I thought about just melting the stupid thing down all together. I finally wound up staying up later than I had meant to trying to finish my journal entry and even then he would wake up and start talking to me.

So yesterday morning I woke up late and had to get started in a rush and Rand fussed at me a little for leaving the cow so long un-milked. I know he was just cranky from not feeling well and I tried to take it as constructive criticism because goodness knows he was right. Thing is I just wasn’t in the frame of mind to really absorb it like I should have. His criticism just felt like one more thing I wasn’t doing right. Hatchet and the filly didn’t want to mind me. Billy and Taz were both being ornery. The chickens pecked the heck out of me when I checked their nests and one of the cows tried to kick me; guess my hands were a little cold. It was just a hard day for me. I suppose you are bound to have days like that ever so often but it just seemed like I was getting a month of my ever so oftens all at once.

On top of that I burned the cornbread and somehow put salt in the sugar bowl which ruined the batch of tea that I had made … only it wasn’t me that figured that out because I hadn’t taken the time to taste it before it left the kitchen. Rand took a big swig and starting coughing right away which spit the tea all over his food, the covers, and him. It was just a mess. After I got him and the bed cleaned up I went back outside and did as many outside chores as I could … stalls needed mucking, fresh hay needed to be forked in, I had to pull the Big Max pumpkins that were ready except for the one that Rand has been growing for fun to see how big he could get it, and eleventy dozen other things. And to be honest I was staying outside to avoid the dat gum bell too.

By late yesterday all I wanted was to soak in that bath … only when I went to get the hot water out of the reservoir it was all gone and I knew for a fact that I’d filled it up that morning. I looked and looked for a leak and tried to figure out what I had done wrong. I spent nearly forty-five minutes looking for the problem. Then I hear that bell going off and I run that direction thinking something was wrong.

When I got back to the bedroom instead of finding Rand in some serious trouble he snaps, “What is taking you so long? I want to go to bed.”

“Then go to bed. I’m not stopping you.”

“Yes you are. You’re up banging around. I thought you said you were going to clean up and come to bed. I haven’t seen you all day.”

“Yes you did. You’re just not feeling good. Go on to sleep. I’ll be back in a bit.”

“I want to go to bed now.”

“So go.”

“I said … “

“Rand, I’m trying to figure out what is wrong with the reservoir on the princess. I filled it full of water this morning and now there isn’t a drop of water in there. I …”

“Of course not. I took a spit bath after you got tea all over me.”

“After I got … After I … You used … You used the water and didn’t fill it back … Do you know …. ARGH!!!“ I just snapped. I threw the bucket down, grabbed my coat, and went outside. And if I’m lying I’m dying, he started ringing that bell like he was calling the cows home. I just kept walking and wound up on the little bench out in the orchard that I go to sometimes when things get the better of me. The sound of the stupid bell followed me all the way out there.

Eventually the bell stopped and I had a good temper tantrum that left off with a few tears. Then I got myself under control and I started to feel bad for how I’d acted. Rand has put up with a lot from me and has taken care of me when I’ve been sick and he didn’t complain once, was always good natured when if I’d been him I’d probably dumped me in a ditch someplace until I learned a little appreciation.

I got up and was going back in to face the music; Lord knows I deserved it after the way I had acted. I wasn’t paying too much attention but then I looked up and saw Rand holding on to one of the posts of the patio beside the summer kitchen. No coat, no hat, and he was barely in his boots.

I ran over and he just about fell down as I got there. He was shaking like a leaf. I opened my mouth – don’t know what I was going to say – but before anything could come out Rand says, “Ssss … ssss … sssoooorrry. Sorry.” I could barely understand him his teeth were chattering so hard.

I got him back in the house and back to our bedroom but it wasn’t easy. We were both freezing cold by the time I did and I boosted him into the bed and added wood to the stove to try and get things warmed back up. Woofer and Fraidy have been sleeping in the barn … Fraidy takes care of the mice and Woofer acts as a guard dog. They’ll probably come back inside but I just couldn’t keep up with them and Rand and everything else. Right then I was just glad I didn’t have to trip all over them too.

I pulled off Rand’s boots and got him tucked back in the covers and he kept saying he was sorry. He needed to help more. I don’t know what all but it was basically he was sorry for being “unappreciative and having a bad attitude.” He was sorry he was being a burden.

I felt bad for making him feel bad and for making him think I thought he was a burden. It was a long time before he warmed up. I finally told him to just stop it. It wasn’t his fault that I was tired and out of sorts and if anyone had the bad attitude it was me. He would hear that. It was that silly back and forth stuff when you’re trying to make up and neither wants the other to take any of the blame.

He finally settled down and I set to trying to get him comfortable again which included checking and redressing all of his wounds. The invaders didn’t leave too much of him untouched. His face was barely recognizable when I first found him. I still remember feeling that that couldn’t be Rand, it just couldn’t be. But it was. Both eyes were swollen shut. His face was cut up pretty well because the jerk that knocked him around a lot had this big ring he wore. He took a lot of body blows and they’d strung him between two posts and lashed him with a belt pretty good too because he wouldn’t tell them what they wanted to know. Problem is Rand doesn’t speak Spanish. He couldn’t understand what they were asking. They burnt him with home-rolled cigarettes in the soft places and used a heated spoon in a couple of places too. And they kicked him in his, you know, man parts a couple of times just to be really mean.

If we hadn’t shown up when we did I supposed they would have gotten around to breaking things fairly soon. I went to school with some Columbian and Honduran kids and they used to talk about the bad gangs in Central and South America and some of the reasons that their families would come to the US. It wasn’t all about economics. Sometimes all they wanted was to get away from the cartels and the violence, mostly though they just brought that way of life with them.

It had been a week since it had happened and Rand was healing pretty good, especially after the shot that Ram had given him but he was restless in his sleep. I hadn’t known what to do for him. I guess that was part of my testiness too. Who wants to really accept that there are some things that you just can’t make better no matter how much you want to. I could say that the men that did this to him are all down and dead the hard way but I’m not sure that is exactly the kind of thing that would bring a guy like Rand any comfort. I told him how proud I was of him just for surviving, but that sounds kind of like one of those “faint praise” scenarios since surviving was the only thing he’d been given the chance to do. What really made me feel bad was when he started talking about it. I made me feel worse when I realized he hadn’t talked about it because he’d been worried about making me feel bad.

“I’m sorry I left you to face this alone.”

“Rand … “

“I should have done like you asked and made Ram stay an extra day. We wouldn’t have been caught like we were.”

“No, you don’t know that. It could have wound up even worse.”

“I’m sorry. I just … I just wanted to go see my friend Dell.”

“Rand, there isn’t anything wrong with that.”

“Yeah. Yeah there is … was. I wasn’t going after work like I told you. I was … I wanted …”

“Rand whatever it was … “

“No. Dell’s folks … they had a Christmas tree farm. I was going over to try and … I wanted it to be a surprise. For a stupid tree I left you alone. God almighty what was I thinking?!”

“Rand! That’s enough. It all worked out. Now stop it. You’ve got to stop this.”

We went on like that for a while. That’s when he started talking about what they’d done to him. A couple of times … well, even grown men need to shed a few tears to bleed off the bad stuff. He finally talked himself out and fell into an exhausted sleep. Helped along by the chamomile tea I’d fixed for him to try and get him warmed up on the inside … and by the sleeping pill I told him was an aspirin for his ouches. I don’t think he has figured that out yet.

When I was sure he wouldn’t wake up if I moved I got off the bed and barely made it to the bathroom and shut the door as quiet as I could before I was puking and crying at the porcelain throne. I was so mad and there wasn’t anything I could do. I wanted to go back, go back and do worse things to those men. I know we are supposed to forgive our transgressors. I know we aren’t really given a choice in the matter if we want to be forgiven for our own transgressions … but it has been so hard not to dwell on it; not to go back and stroke the memory over and over, building up poison in my psyche.

I crawled in bed feeling like I’d lost something but I wasn’t sure what. Surprisingly I slept. I woke up this morning and was out before Rand woke up. I hurried through the morning chores and then came back inside. He was in the kitchen taking the coffee pot off the stove I’d lit before going out.

“Tea’s ready. It looks cold out there.”

“Not as cold as it has been. If you feel up to it, it might do you some good to sit on the porch and get some fresh air. Lord knows Woofer would be overjoyed to get a chance to lick you to pieces. He moves like greased lightning and he almost got in the house and would have woken you up.”

“Let him. If he starts jumping too much I’ll put the leash on him. He’ll mind just to have me take it back off.”

“Mmmm. Let’s see how you feel after breakfast.”

It was almost if the confession of last night hadn’t happened. I scrambled some eggs and made the biscuits soft since Rand’s mouth is still cut up pretty bad. At least he didn’t lose anything teeth and nearly all the loose ones have firmed back in place. One of his molars looks discolored so it might have gotten some nerve damage. Only time will tell.

I was in the 70s today. The weather was better for my legs but the humidity made me feel tired and limp after the brisk cold weather we’ve been having. Uncle George came by today by himself. He was shook to see how bad Rand looked. He’d been gathering up Alicia, LauraBeth, and the boys and trying to get them home and to bed since they were all in pretty rough shape. He’d been convinced that Rand was safe and had been trying to figure out a way to help. He never did get to see the shape Rand was in at the processing plant. Last time Brendon came by he’d mentioned something about his dad seemingly refusing to believe that Rand could have been tortured despite what he’d been told. I guess he decided to see for himself.

A cool breeze had sprung up and Rand started to burrow into the quilt I had wrapped around him. Uncle George finally convinced him to go inside and I served them some lunch and then went outside to make sure none of the animals were getting up to mischief and to turn the pumpkin that I was drying in the dehydrator. I came back to the house to find Uncle George sitting in the rocker barely able to hold his coffee mug without spilling what was inside it.

Until that time I’d never heard Uncle George curse. I’d seen him look like he wanted to but I’d never actually heard those kinds of words come out of his mouth. I’m sure he wouldn’t want me to record his lapse but it sure was something when he let loose a string of them. Then he drew a breath and asked kind of rhetorically, “Did you see what those dirty blankety blanks did to my boy?!”

Well, after I rehinged my jaw I said, “Yes sir. I have been the one taking care of him.”

He looked for a second like his head was gonna explode but then he calmed down some. “You said he was doing better. This …. This?! … this is better?”

“Yes sir. Actually what you see is quite a bit better than what he was at first.”

“Girl sit down. I cain’t talk to you if you look like you preparing to run off. Just how bad was he?”

“I thought Brendon told you.”

“He did but I guess I thought he was exaggerating. He said that Rand had been … been tortured. That’s not something you want to believe.”

“No. No it isn’t. But that’s what they did. And before you ask, no, I don’t know what for. I wasn’t there and Ram was in another part of the plant and didn’t realize what was happening. He thought Rand had just been incarcerated with some of the other men that had been brought over to help take care of the animals. When we finally found Rand I thought Ram was gonna kill the few invaders that were already dead.”

“What about you girl? What did you do when you found him like this?”

“Uncle George, I’d rather not ever talk about it. I … I don’t know that I can talk about it. Most of them were dead by that time. I don’t even think this guy realized that … I was looking in all of the offices trying to find out where a noise was coming from that I kept hearing. Ram was with me. The guy had just started to … you don’t want to know Uncle George. I’ll live with it. Rand was unconscious. He doesn’t have to know and I don’t want you telling him. Do you understand?”

“All right. What you’ve told me is enough. I want hold it against you girl. And I won’t ask you about it ever again. There’s some things … well, it’s over, just don’t let it fester if it starts to. You come to me and talk it out. We’ll keep it between us. Understand.”

It was a second before I could answer him because the offer and the acceptance had been so unexpected. But I agreed and I suppose maybe one of these days I’ll take him up on it, but not right now. Not when everything is still so fresh and unsettled.

It was about that time that Mitch rode up the road and hollered ahead that he’d brought a couple of visitors. With my hand on my pistol … and Uncle George covering from behind the hedge row I was growing on the trellis … I met them as they rode up.

“Kiri, this is Major Timble and those three are his escorts.”

I nodded as the remaining introductions were made. I asked, “You’ve got business here?”

“Hmm. Sgt. Diaz warned me that you preferred things to be brief and to the point.”

“Yes sir, you could say that,” I responded waiting for him to continue.

“I am investigating the incursion …”

“The invasion.”

I could tell I wasn’t making any friends by the way the Major’s lips thinned out. “As I said, I am investigating the incursion that occurred last week. I have been given to understand that you instigated the rebellion … “

“Whoa. First off, before you think that I’m just some doofus chick that doesn’t have any respect for your rank I’d like to state that my Daddy was a Sgt in the US Air Force before his death. I have all sorts of respect. On the other hand, Sgt. Diaz is right when he says I don’t have a lot of tolerance for being run roughshod over. I won’t be railroaded. If you have specific questions I’ll give you specific answers but if not I suggest you come back when you’ve got your questions figured out. My husband was tortured by the invaders and he is far from well and needs my attention. His uncle is also here visiting and I’m trying to get news of his daughters and daughter-in-law that are very pregnant and that were also hurt by the invaders. So if you …”

“Ms. … Joiner is it?”

“It’s Mrs. Joiner so you can keep any idea you might have about me being some kind of Rambo bra-burner.”

“Please, let’s not be difficult.”

“Fine by me but I’m not the one … “

“Oh for heaven’s sake girl, I just need to ask you a few questions.”

“Then ask ‘em instead of dancing around about it … but call a spade a spade already. I’m not made of sugar and I won’t melt. You can’t scare me any worse than those people already have.”

By that time Mitch was having to look off in a different direction and bite his lip. Uncle George was tugging at his hat and chewing on the inside of his cheek.

“Fine. What I really need is for you to walk me through exactly what happened. You are our only witness … “

“What happened to Pepper Duncan?”

The major started looking real uncomfortable and I started getting suspicious. “Major, what happened to Pepper?”

“Lt. Duncan succumbed to his injuries.”

I wasn’t buying it. “He was fine when he and Ram left for the hospital tents. He was strong as an ox despite … you know … the leg thing. He took me down and the only reason I got loose of him was because he let me. He wasn’t sick at all.”

The major continued to look a little green around the gills and I was starting to get mad when one of the other men said, “Begging your pardon Major but … ma’am, Pepper Duncan was my friend but after his injury he wasn’t … well, he wasn’t himself. That’s how he and Sgt. Diaz had hooked up, they were in a special ward for men … that were having … difficulties. Sgt. Diaz has obviously improved a great deal since I last saw him. Pepper had as well from what everyone was saying. But they were doing a debriefing and … the feds since a civilian psychologist … the man had never seen combat, never had any training … it’s just … Pepper was fine going into the debriefing but coming out … There is an investigation but that won’t bring Pepper back.”

The Major took back control of the conversation and said, “So you see Mrs. Joiner, not only do we need you to give a deposition as to what you saw from the outside, we’d like you to give testimony as to Lt. Duncan’s frame of mind while you were in his company.”

I was a few moments absorbing what I’d just found out. “What do you need me to do?”

“Optimally I would like you to physically walk through that day, your actions, and to recount everything that you can.”

“Now?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“But …”

That’s when Uncle George said, “She ain’t going by herself. My boy is too sick right now but I’ll be here. Mitch, I’m going to bring the two young un’s over here first thing in the morning, they’ll handle the chores, but I expect Henderson to see to everything else. You understand?”

Mitch answered, “It’ll be taken care of. You stay here and supervise and someone will go with Kiri.”

“In case y’all have forgotten, I’m sorta standing right here.”

They kept on making plans and this time it was the Major who was biting the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning.

So that’s what I’m doing tomorrow. Rand is fit to be tied but I don’t see any way around it. Uncle George is bringing Mick and Tommy over first thing and Uncle George will keep Rand company … assuming he doesn’t drive him nuts … while the boys do the chores. I made a bunch of extra biscuits and I’ve set dried veggies to soak. I’ll put everything on a slow burner before I head out in the morning to try and minimize the mess they make in the kitchen. I have a feeling that tomorrow is going to be a little rough for a couple of different reasons and I’d rather not have to dread wondering what shape the house is going to be in when I get back.