sssarawolf
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Yahoo, thank you 
Story Trash to Treasure
- Thread starter Kathy in FL
- Start date
beaglemama
Contributing Member
Thank you, Kathy!
CHAPTER 36
Real live trained medical staff were on the scene not long after that. I was no longer needed. I wasn’t the only one that was asked to leave the Clinic to make room for additional personnel and the injured. Jan, Jen, and Mari were among the walking wounded and were assigned to Chief Madison who had groups of trainees setting the various buildings to right … or as right as they could be for the immediate needs of everyone. I checked with Chief Delray and she had her hands full. Barbie had been hiding in her room and real life had gotten a little too real for her and her hormones were making her nutso. Delray was seriously worried she was going to go into pre-term labor and asked me to stay with her.
Barbie and I were almost too similar in some areas but there were roads I’d already walked that I could at least help her navigate. “Yo Barbie. Breathe. C’mon, you don’t want anyone to see you with snot-face. And if you tune up and tell me I don’t understand I am going to laugh in your face.”
That wouldn’t have worked with everyone. Probably wouldn’t have worked with many. But I had Barbie’s number. She was tough but she had a marshmallow core that she tried to hide. It was like looking at who I had been for a while before I’d finally accepted my mission in life was to be Bam-Bam’s mom and it gave me a goal to spend my emotional energy on. Barbie wasn’t making the same choices but that didn’t mean I didn’t understand.
“Let’s go get washed up. C’mon. You’ll feel better. You won’t stink. And by then maybe the Clinic will be cleared out a little and Nurse Gilroy and her staff will give you a good check up. Unless … look at me … are you spotting or anything like that? Hurt down low?”
“No,” she said quietly and then I noticed she touch her stomach protectively. Uh-oh, when those ol’ hormones kick in, they really kick in.
I took her down to the showers and since she was shaky helped her to get washed up and into her clean uniform. We were almost to the Clinic when she stopped me.
“Why did you keep him?” she said pointing to Bam-Bam. “Why didn’t you give him up for adoption?”
“I was going to. Was working on the papers and everything but then the mandatory bloodwork came back and it was off. Re-takes were also off. Being an adoptee myself I know what happens to most kids that are special needs. I was a throwaway … the womb donor couldn’t even be bothered to do more than wrap me up like a used kotex and toss me. They found me right before I slid into the landfill. I was born with a cleft palate, a real bad one that bisected my entire face from chin to fore head. Since they couldn’t tell at the time whether Bam-Bam would be born the same … look, I just figured that Bam-Bam was my responsibility. He didn’t ask to get made, and if he was going to have problems, he didn’t ask for them either. And I couldn’t stand the idea of … of being the same kind of womb-donor that had given birth to me.”
“He doesn’t look … you know … messed up.”
“No. And after he was born, they found out I didn’t have the genetic kind of cleft but it had been from some environmental factor like drug use, hypoxia from smoking or high blood pressure, stuff like that. So, I didn’t pass it to Bam-Bam but they still aren’t sure … something could show up later though there is nothing on the genetic panel they did after he was born. In the end they just aren’t sure and by then I’d made the decision and … here we are.”
“I don’t want to raise this … this …”
“Baby?”
“Yeah. It’s a baby. Inside me. And I still don’t want to be the one to raise it.”
“So follow through on giving the baby up for adoption.”
“I know. Just … sometimes I think maybe … maybe I want to know what happens to it. You know after it gets adopted. I want … want …”
“You want to know for sure you did the right thing.”
“Yeah.”
“That sucks. For you, not the kid. Because you know most adoptions are closed. They strip you of your rights and you don’t even get to look at the baby before it goes off to the adoptive parents. They don’t want you to change your mind at the last second. That happened to my parents once and it nearly broke them.”
She sighed. “Yeah. But … but I been thinking. I’ve got a stepsister that can’t have kids. And she’s kinda older than me too … from my dad’s first marriage. We don’t see each other too much. Just the holidays and stuff. We aren’t close or anything … but we don’t fight either. She ain’t a bad person; she even tried to talk me out of some of the crap I got into, but my mother told her it was none of her business. Her husband works and is pretty normal I guess. I mean at least I know them. You … you think if I talked to Chief Delray she’d you know, call them and see if … oh hell, I’m acting crazy. What is this crap?!”
“Hormones. They make the world go round and occasionally blow it up too. So yeah, talk to Chief Delray. Can’t hurt.”
“Maybe.”
I got her into the Clinic finally and turned her over and was ready to walk away when I spotted Mari slumped in a chair in the waiting area.
“Hey. Mari. You okay?”
“I’ve got nightmares in my head. The pictures won’t stop.”
“Ooo kay. Hang on.”
I rushed back and nearly ran over Dr. Patel. “Doc? What about all the trainees that are on meds? I know we have a few. Um … should someone round them up and bring them to the Clinic?”
Nurse Gilroy had just come out of an exam room and said, “Why?”
“Mari Johnson. She says she has nightmares in her head and … is looking bad. I know she’s on meds. But I don’t know how to ask her when she had them last or even to trust the answer.”
“I have this Dr. Patel,” Gilroy said. “Room 2 may have a concussion.”
To me she said, “Doe …”
“I know the sitch. That’s all I’m saying and that’s all I want to know. None of my business. I don’t need more details than I already have to make me do the right thing. Mari … may not be my favorite person and we may have had a rough start but … she’s messed up and it sounds like that isn’t her fault and … anyway … she’s in pain.”
She nodded once and then we went back to the waiting area. It took us both to handle Mari because she started having some kind of episode about explosions and blood and things I hope to never see. Nurse Gilroy gave her a tranq and she finally went to sleep. Jan and Jen, who had come by to check on her, volunteered to sit with her for a while.
As I was leaving they told me, “Chay is looking for you. Did he really laugh … like out loud?”
“Yeah. I think poor Dallas is traumatized since it was at his expense.”
I headed out the door and then didn’t know what to do because it was getting close to dark and the day and the previous one were both finally getting past my own mental defenses.
I jumped when someone said, “Food.”
“Oh … Jan and Jen said you were looking for me.”
“Food. For Bams … and you. C’mon, Chief said bring you.”
I stumbled and he grabbed my arm to steady me. Bam-Bam took that has his signal to try and climb out of the sling. Chay didn’t mind though I could tell he was at least as tired as me. We angled towards the Dining Hall and when we got inside I nearly got sick.
“Hungry?”
“Yes. Is there anything?”
He grunted in the affirmative but instead of getting in line to get a tray and use our IDs he steered me in the direction of a corner table where I saw all of my Chiefs and a couple I only knew who they were because of their uniforms. I don’t know, something just suddenly hit me and I ran over and started checking them for damage.
It was Chief Jackson that reached out and stopped me. “Ease up McCormick. We’re all in one piece.”
I know I sounded like a three-year-old about to have a tantrum when I snapped, “You’re all banged up to heck and back.”
“Yeah well you should see the other guys.”
“And I’m supposed to think that’s funny? And no, I’m not being disrespectful … at least I don’t mean to be. Just … just …”
“Trahern, get her something to eat … and that baby too before he eats you. Boy likes his food he does.” Turning back to me he said, “I need a report of what you did and your location during the incident.”
“It wasn’t an ‘incident’ it was a frelling invasion,” I muttered under my breath before responding, “Yes Sir but it won’t be long. I stayed in the Clinic and helped Nurse Gilroy. I was never even allowed to exit the building until Trainee Trahern was told to fetch me.” Bam-Bam was really starting to tune up so I turned and took him from Chay and then said in outrage, “I wasn’t even allowed to help our crew. They wouldn’t even let me bandage them up.” When Chay took two steps back I looked at him and said, “But I’ll mummify them Nurse Gilroy style if they haven’t let themselves be looked at by someone by now.”
I was surprised by a chuckle from Chief Delray, “I’d pay good money to see that. Now go grab some food. When you report to Chief Jackson I want to hear how Barbie is.”
“That’s another easy one. She’s having a hormonal adjustment reaction and figuring out she’s not quite as detached from her pregnancy as she thought. She still wants to put the baby up for adoption, but I told her to speak to you because she has a step-sister – apparently a lot older than her – that can’t have kids.”
She gave a nod and I left with Chay to head over to another table where they were handing out self-heat meals. I was thinking of the last time I’d eaten one of those but Chay must have been remembering too because he made sure the one I was given wouldn’t set off a nuclear reaction in my gut.
“Thanks.”
“S’okay. For Bams,” he said grabbing something else that turned out to be green beans and applesauce.
That’s when I saw Cooper and Dallas. They saw me heading towards them purposefully a second later and Cooper said, “Yes, we got seen by one of them medicos that were doctoring the fed troops. He was from the local VA unit.”
I relaxed. “Fine. Just so long as you aren’t hurt and not wanting anyone to do anything for you. If I can put up with you guys being overprotective you can just deal with me wanting to make sure you are okay.”
All three of them snorted but they got the message and understood I didn’t think them incapable, in fact just the opposite.
The dining hall was strangely silent, and I looked around at the faces of the people there. There were more than just trainees, the tables were filled by whatever group you belonged with, but the common denominator was fatigue and a strange kind of anger/disappointment on most of the faces.
Dallas noticed me looking and he asked, “Do you remember the Green Riots or are you too young?”
“I kinda remember seeing stuff on the news when I was real little but it never affected me directly, not really. MacDill AFB was right not too far from where we lived and even with a couple of major universities in the area as a breeding ground for that stuff, there wasn’t much in the way of the violent riots that took place. Then it was just over with and … I guess between my medical issues, being homeschooled, and whatever my parents insulated me from it. I studied it but …” I shrugged, not knowing if I’d answered him or not.
“My first stepdad was killed in one of those damn riots. He was a shit, but he didn’t deserve to die like he did. We lived in Austin and for a while everyone in the city walked around looking like you see.”
“Why? Okay, that’s sounds dumb but … the look is just … it’s like a combination of the kind of tired that can make you sick, anger which I can understand, but there’s something else … like an underlying disappointment. So … so why?”
“Disappointment in their fellow man.”
“Disappointment in …? Seriously? You mean they’ve still got illusions that the human race has some redeeming value?” All three men looked at me in surprise. “Not you three too. Haven’t you been knocked around enough to get over that?”
It was Cooper that said, “I would have never taken you for someone that had Green sympathies.”
“Good. ‘Cause I don’t. Politics of any flavor makes my head hurt. People should be left alone to live however they want to without someone constantly telling them they’re pond scum and don’t deserve the oxygen they breathe. The human race may be pond scum, but we are still the top of the pointy food pyramid on this world and that comes with privileges. On the other hand, I get being the top also comes with responsibilities. People just go overboard getting all of it screwed up with power and influence and junk like that.”
Dallas sighed and said, “Damn you are young.”
“Nope. And not idealistic either. Like I said, I know the human race can suck. I try and not be surprised when individual humans prove just how much they can suck. What’s surprising is when you find some that don’t. And even then, we all have our damage and hang ups that tend to screw up things with the best of intentions on our part.”
“You still sound young. You’re going to have to pick a side in this war Doe. ‘Cause if you don’t both sides will run you over.”
“I got tired of being told what I have to believe what feels like a long time ago. My parents never pushed anything on me other than being honest and taking personal responsibility for my actions. So the bottom line is I’m on mine and Bam-Bam’s side. People can either let that be enough … or not. I don’t care. Just don’t get in the way of me doing what I must to take care of him and help him grow up. You do that then you become my problem and you might not like how I deal with my problem. Otherwise live and let live.”
“And what do you think of the refugees? Don’t you think they are just trying to survive?”
“That they were sympathetic until they decided to try and be buttholes and riot and rampage. I wouldn’t have minded showing and teaching them what I’ve been shown and taught. Instead, they just … ran amok. And if they have screwed up my chance to finish out, graduate, and get a job …”
A snide voice behind me asked, “Yeah, what’ll you do?”
I turned and found that it was a couple from Mari’s old clique. “You know if I stand in front of a news camera I bet I could look pretty sympathetic. This big honking scar ought to be good for something. It wouldn’t take much spin to get certain people to feel like they needed to get involved. Then I’m sure there are going to be trials and stuff for at least some of them and I know the system … and know how to get what I have to say heard. Not everyone has to agree to get something accomplished … but if there are enough … or isn’t that the concept that the Green Party always worked from?”
Since they couldn’t make a logical comeback to that I turned back around and put them on ignore and they sullenly walked off. I scraped the last of the self-heat from the carton and then smashed it up like I remember Chay doing on the mover only my hands were finally strong enough to make it as small as his had been. When I was finished I realized the guys were all looking at me.
“What?”
Dallas snorted and said, “You got stuffing.”
“I hope so. I’m going to need it one way or the other when I leave here. I won’t have you guys looking out for me. Maybe I’ve made the mistake of letting you do it too much for me, but I won’t regret it … because I’ve learned stuff too.”
They looked uncomfortable so I added, “Oh get over it. Or did you think I didn’t know you guys were sheep dogs from the get go? I may be the sheep in this equation but that doesn’t mean this sheep is completely helpless … or at least not anymore. You may bark and I may baaa but we can both bite, we just leave different damage when we do.”
Cooper said, “You are so weird.”
“Yep. But you’ve known that for a while so don’t act surprised. What are we supposed to do from here or can I go check and see just how destroyed my room is?”
That’s when I found out they’d mostly left the dorms alone. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t some damage, but it was mostly in the rooms on the outside of the building. I didn’t mean to but about an hour later I crashed and burned. Found out that someone checked on me but decided to let me and Bam-Bam sleep. I woke up early so hungry I was sick from it and ate one of the meal bars that Nurse Gilroy had given me. As dawn approached, I took my water bottle and tried to leave the building but was told to turn around by a federal trooper. I knew the look on his face and thought better of trying to change his mind. I decided then and there not to let my water supply get empty ever again if I could help it. I went down to the shower room and filled up my container from there though I noticed that the water pressure was low.
I was almost to my room when I saw someone with a tablet looking angry. “Where is the trainee that is supposed to be in this room.”
“She is me and I was in the bathroom.”
“You didn’t have permission to leave your quarters.”
“I didn’t know we weren’t …”
“Trainee McCormick.” I turned to find Chief Delray coming towards me. Looking at the woman in uniform she asked, “What are you doing in the dorms?”
“Head count.”
“By whose permission?”
“I don’t need …”
I saw something dangerous glint in the Chief’s eyes and if it had been me, I would have taken a minimum of two steps back. As it was the other woman got a little startled when two Farm security personnel showed up behind her and escorted her from the building while taking her tablet out of her hands.
I said, “I’ll go back to my room. I … uh … I didn’t mean to cause problems.”
The Chief followed me in, shut the door, then said quietly, “You didn’t cause the problem, but you need to be ready to move. Trainees are going to be moved, by program, to a different Haygood holding.” The look on my face must have been something else because she surprised me with a hug. “It’s going to be all right Doe, but I need you on your toes. A situation was created overnight. It seems Judge Haygood took a loan out against the land The Farm is on. The loan was purchased by a conglomerate that …” She wiped her face and I wondered if she had slept at all. “Things are a mess. The Feds and this Conglomerate are in it up to their arm pits but on opposite sides. The Haygood Foundation is fighting being taken over and the riot and the refugees may have been an artificially engineered emergency.”
She was drawing breath to say something else when we hear a scream and then some yelling in the other end of the dorm. Things started falling apart so fast after that that I’m not even sure I can explain it all.
CHAPTER 37 - 1
“Stay here!” Chief Delray tells me before running out and towards the sound of whatever is going on.
I just stand there like an idiot for about ten seconds before my survival instinct kicks in and I take my backpack and start putting things in it that I wished I’d had the day before … the meal replacement bars and the packets of baby food that I had left set aside for emergencies to start with. Then there was screaming and gun fire. Next thing I know there is a thunk out in the hallway and smoke starts pouring under the door and over the top of the dividing walls of my room. And it isn’t a natural smoke but one that burned my eyes and throat letting me know the thump had been a canister of the stuff they used to control rioters with.
There is no escaping it, and with no windows to go out I had no choice but to cover Bam-Bam’s face with his blanket and do my best to go out of my door and try to go down the hall to the outside.
I was getting turned around when I was grabbed and jerked in a different direction than I had been going. I finally figured out it was Cooper when he dragged me off in the direction of Chief Jackson’s office.
We are both coughing and hacking like crazy, our eyes streaming and burning, but he is keeping us down and behind every piece of cover we can use. We finally get there and he pulls us inside.
“Where’s …” I couldn’t even finish my question because I was coughing and trying to check Bam-Bam who was crying and rubbing his eyes.
“Dallas and Chay are getting the girls from the Clinic. Stay down,” he told me.
“What about Chief Jackson and his wife?”
“In some meeting over at the auditorium. The place is surrounded by federal troops so there’s no getting in or out of there.”
“Chief Delray said something about a situation and things getting crazy. The Judge did something stupid? I don’t know … a loan or something like that.”
“Yeah. He gave his enemies an opening and they took it. Before he retired, he gave out some pretty hefty sentences to people in the Green Movement that had been judged domestic terrorists. Don’t know all the details but apparently they’ve got doggone long memories, and a big thirst for revenge. Chief Jackson called us in a little after midnight to let us know things looked like they were going to go sideways and tell us to use his place as a rendezvous point as needed. Thought we had more time though; they’re smart, I’ll give them that. They made their move during a big pow-wow between the Feds and the Haygoods.”
“Their move? This is insane. If they hold the upper hand with a loan, why the heck are they acting like we’re a foreign enemy they have to conquer?! Can’t they just evict people the legal way?!”
“Doe listen to me,” he was dead serious and it scared me. This was a side of Cooper I rarely if ever had seen. “It’s not just here. There’s things popping all over the country. This looks like it’s been in the works ever since the Greenies had their butts handed to them in the elections last time. The only positive is that it looks like they have the same problems as last time too … some of them want to handle things strictly political but with enough that prefer to handle things militantly and that’s why people turn against them.”
“I don’t remember things being like this last time. There weren’t people shooting the world up.”
“Sure there was, you may have been too young to see beyond your immediate area. But here in particular? This feels more like payback than anything else.”
My snark came out when I asked, “Oh is that all?”
He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I can’t promise things are going to … to … look, if we can we’ll keep you with us but … there’s a good chance we’re going to get separated. You got something to write with?”
I thought it was a stupid question but pulled out a small paper tablet and pencil stub and handed it to him anyway. He scribbled for a minute and then handed it back to me. “You keep that someplace safe. If we get separated, you try and let us know where you get to and … and … look, for Chay’s sake just try and … you know …”
“Yeah,” I told him looking at the paper. It had the guys’ proper names and some numbers. He explained those were their rank and serial numbers, how the military would track them.
A few minutes later the door slams open and Cooper and I have to exit out the rear door. Bam-Bam is shrieking and Cooper whispers frantically as he is pulling me into the woods, “You gotta find a way to get him quiet!”
The only thing I knew to do was to tie the sling so he could nurse but even then it would only work if he could settle down and latch on … and so long as my milk would let down and hold out.
Then there was an explosion and we got separated in the resulting smoke and flying debris. Last thing I heard him say was, “Keep your head down!”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Things were whack until close to dark when it looked like the crazies had won. From my vantage point in the woods I watched them rounding people up and roughly pushing them into transport movers that would then go I didn’t know where. I finally spotted most of the Haygoods, Chiefs, and some other trainees that I knew including the guys, Jan, Jen, and Mari. All of them looked roughed over. I worked my way around and that’s when I also saw the bodies lined up on the ground.
I didn’t see any kids thankfully but who I did see in that lifeless pile was bad enough. Trudeau was there barely dressed in the garish kimono I sometimes saw him in before getting dressed for breakfast. So was Chief Delray and Nurse Gilroy. Tracey. A few others that I could have put a name to but that hurt too much. They hadn’t been my close friends, but they didn’t deserve what they got, and I grieved them all the same.
I was fighting off crying. It was just so wrong. All of it. At least Bam-Bam didn’t see it. He’d cried himself into a stupor and had finally gone to sleep. I was glad. It was hard enough to try and control myself; a hysterical baby would have been impossible for me at that point. That’s when I heard someone coming my way. I grabbed a big rock and prepared to defend us, but it wound up being a grizzled looking soldier … a Fed.
He shushed me and by mutual agreement we silently moved deeper into the woods. I tore a strip off of my t-shirt and used it to wrap the bloody wound that was on his arm. We were about to move again when there was a shot and the man suddenly fell over almost on top of me.
“Get the other one!” I hear before running into the dark. I felt a hand grab the back of my hair and my training kicks in. The guy hits the ground where I’ve tossed him and before I can think about it I’m bringing the rock I still had down on his head enough times to make what I was pounding change shape. I roll him into a ditch and follow him right before several others run by baying like a pack of hounds, “Wait for us! You got the last one!”
I know in my heart I can’t make it through the insanity on my own. I need help … I need my sheep dogs, I need my Chiefs, I need people to help me to keep Bam-Bam safe. So, suffering my own kind of crazy I creep back towards where I’d seen everyone being held but as I’m going by the shed behind Chief Jackson’s office I detour and grab a compound bow and a quiver full of arrows. I also grab one of the big machetes we would take when we were hiking on an unmaintained trail.
[Bam-Bam, I won’t write it all down. It’s not something I want to remember for posterity and it’s not something I want to brag about to you. I did what I thought I didn’t have any choice but do … though the reality was I did have a choice. I could have run off. I could have left. But I didn’t. I’ve lived with it, but I’ve also cried about it a few times. Maybe by the time you read this I will have come to be at peace with it but if I have that doesn’t mean that I don’t still feel guilty. Don’t judge me too harshly. A lot of us did things during that time that we wished we wouldn’t have done.]
A severely hacked off woman snarled, “Dammit, where are Debra and Carl?! They should have been back by now!”
I could have told her that Debra and Carl wouldn’t be back … ever. Instead I was counting down the seconds. Debra and Carl had gone to one of the sheds to get some fuel for a couple of old-style tractors. The plan I had overheard had been to push the bodies together in a pile with a bunch of other burnables and then destroy any evidence. Or so they thought. You can’t burn that many bodies the way they planned to and even if you could there would still be plenty of evidence left to show what happened and who was guilty. I decided to not even let them try.
I’d stopped to nurse Bam-Bam just long enough for him to go back to sleep. I think the Creator must make it so that’s like a coping mechanism or something for little kids. Either way he was a dead weight in the sling.
I’d listened to the guys and Chief Jackson tell too many stories … of things they had done, things they’d heard done, and things that could be done under certain circumstances. It gave a desperate person ideas, whether they were wrong ideas depended on your viewpoint.
I took that fuel and essentially created a couple of giant Molotov cocktails near piles of things that go boom that the Greenies, or whoever they were, had taken from the Federal troops. Even as inexperienced as I was, I could see that there were too many chefs and not enough cooks. Everyone was in charge – or thought they were – and too few were taking orders. They mistook winning the battle for winning the war and not enough of them were keeping watch over things that needed watching.
It didn’t exactly happen the way I’d meant it to. I was able to start a fire, but it was almost put out by people that had noticed it before the other stuff could start going boom. But after a couple of minutes too many piles were lit and things started popping.
They mistook the noise for something it wasn’t at the time and thought they were under attack. They started seeing enemies where there weren’t any and wound up shooting their own people who were shooting back at them for the same reason. Even though the fires and explosions had created chaos, it gave me enough light so that I could accurately hit what I was aiming at with the bow. Because the arrows were silent no one noticed at first and then I saw Dallas and Chay go on the offensive followed closely by several others from our side.
I didn’t know it when I was making my own mess, but more Federal troops soon arrived on the scene and someone started taking advantage of the resulting Chinese fire drill … and yes I know that isn’t politically correct but I don’t care, that’s what it was. I decided the smart thing to do at that point was to find a hole and crawl in. By dawn everything was finished but the mop up but what a mess everything was. And everyone.
Lucky for me when I decided to pop up out of the hole I was in, Chief Lark vouched for me before I got thrown into the group that was being hauled off. I went looking for the guys only to find that all three were among the injured. I sat with Chay while Jan and Jen sat with Mari and Dallas and Cooper.
His voice was barely audible and they had him rocking some pain meds. “Stay … with … others.”
“You worry about you getting all healed and stuff. We’ll figure the rest out in a little bit.”
“Won’t let you come with …”
“I … I know. Things will be okay. Just … just hold on and … you know … don’t start having … episodes. We might not be able to … you know … for a while so you have to hold on.”
“Will,” he said and he squeezed my hand. “For Bams. For … for you. Can do it.”
“I know you can.”
Mid-day these big medical movers showed up but only the wounded got to go. Jan and Jen were the least of the banged up but they still went because of Mari who was basically a vegetable between the tranqs and whatever was going on inside her head. I’m pretty sure that each of them thought at least one of them would be keeping an eye on me but that’s not the way the people in charge had it happen.
I tried to get close to Chief Jackson, but no one was getting anywhere near any of the Haygoods or their connections. I then tried to find Chief Madison only to find out she was MIA and I prayed she wasn’t in the pile of dead. What’s that old saying? Never volunteer. Maybe I am just stupid, but after volunteering the names of a couple of people they were trying to identify the Feds kept me at it long enough that everyone I knew was moved to another location.
That night they allowed me to stay in my room, but I was back at it the next day telling them what I knew and seeing if I could identify any more of the dead. They did make sure that Bam-Bam and I got fed but by that night no one seemed to know what to do with me. No one seemed to want to try and figure it out either. The problem was I wasn’t quite eighteen yet. They at least let me know that I couldn’t stay where I was.
I packed everything back into the shopping cart and hid it in a place I knew while I waited for someone to tell me what I was supposed to do. And waited. And waited. And waited. The Feds told me I was the responsibility of the local authorities. The local authorities told me I was the responsibility of the Haygoods or the Feds … as a last resort they tried to call in a local social worker but I was so close to the cut off age that the social worker’s supervisor admitted that by the time anything came through I would have aged out. And then it was July and there was no one left who wanted to bother with one slightly underage girl and her baby. There was no one period. The Farm had been abandoned.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Even if I had been acting a little stupid, I hadn’t been in a complete stupor while I was waiting. I spent a lot of time downloading stuff in the library … for just in case. I had been secretly gathering things from what was left of The Farm gardens and surrounding area and using the solar powered dehydrator at Chief Jackson’s office … for just in case. I had run over to the Bee Barn and taken some things … for just in case. I got into Chief Delray’s office and taken some stuff out of there … for just in case. When questioned I said that I was boxing up the various Chief’s personal belongings to help out. They believed it … or at least didn’t care so long as I looked like I was staying out of trouble and thereby not having to be noticed too much. Plus, they had other things on their minds. Not only was there a world war going on, but it looked like we were going to have a civil war to deal with as well. Enemies were capitalizing on the mess going on and terrorism, both foreign and domestic, was sharply on the rise.
Then the day came that the last truck left. I was still stuck thinking that someone would come and for another week I ate blueberries, blackberries, and zucchini from The Farm gardens mixed with salads made from the various green forage I’d learned about. Then more refugees started moving through the area and these were not the Mr. JR type. These were all men and from my hiding spot I could tell they were not the type that were healthy for me to be found by. It was time for me to take the initiative and start figuring things out on my own.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Chapter 37 - 2
All in one night I moved all the “personal effects” of my chiefs into the small basement beneath Chief Jackson’s office. I thought about leaving a message to tell them where their stuff was, but I realized the wrong someone could find it and then all the work I’d done boxing things up so neat and carefully would be wasted effort. The Feds had pretty much stripped everything else like the food stores and fuel and taken it with them. That is one of the reasons why the local authorities pulled out … not enough incentive to hang around.
The one truly inconvenient thing they’d done was to strip me of everything The Farm had assigned to me … uniform, tablet, bedding, everything. They even tried to take my BOB and the things that I’d earned but I pulled a fast one and hid it out in the woods in the place that I’d moved the shopping cart to and told them it had already been confiscated by another group of Feds. Bam-Bam and I would have been butt naked in the woods if I hadn’t done my own confiscating of some of the rag bag items from Chief Lark’s office. When the dorms started filling with refugees I finished moving out to a small, hidden, rock alcove we’d used as a “base” a few times.
I’ll admit I cried that first night. I cried the second and third night too. I’d had illusions of moving forward and instead found myself right back to square one … homeless, friendless, and with no idea where I was going. Only this time there was no Mr. JR, no Proud Mary, no Miss Clarendon or Mr. Blanton, no Chiefs, no Sheep Dogs, or anyone else to help me figure things out, no one else to tell me what the next step was. I had no idea where any of my crew had been taken or what shape they were in. None of the Haygoods were around and I had no idea who to ask where they’d gone. I tried to walk into town the fourth day and was run off like I was a plague victim that wanted to play in their water source.
I finally got a cop to listen to me and I left all my information with him. He promised that if anyone came to the station looking for me he’d relay that I was alive. When he added, “Or at least alive the last time I saw you” it made me sick to my stomach.
I started walking. First, I walked back towards the Florida state line, but I was stopped there and directed to a refugee center to be processed. What a frelling nightmare. If I got propositioned once it was a couple of dozen times, and that was just the first day. When my application for re-entrance to Florida was denied because no one had claimed me, I found myself back on the road. I wandered around Georgia through the rest of July, all of August, September and beyond.
All of the food that I’d managed to save for “just in case” eventually got used up and I was living on what I could forage. In August I ate blueberries, huckleberries, chokecherries, blackberries, mushrooms, wild greens, and the occasional rabbit and squirrel. I got lucky a few times and picked up migrant work picking apples and got paid in kind. Speaking Spanish and having ethnically ambiguous looks helped and so did being willing to get dirty and take any work that was offered, even with a kid on my back.
During that time, I met a few kind people. An old man taught me how to dry apples and other fruit and greens over a campfire. A couple of homeless veterans traveling together taught me how to make better snares and be patient and conserve my own fat reserves rather than wasting more than I brought in trying to forage food for tomorrow. I exchanged what I could by sewing with what I had. A farmer and his wife let me stay in an old shed they had when Bam-Bam caught a fever from too many mosquito bites. August was also the month I learned to like the tart sweetness of wild grapes and how to be grateful when a farmer would leave the outside rows of a field or orchard for poor people to glean from. I always tried to do something to say thank you to people like that, but it never seemed enough. They kept me from starving. They kept Bam-Bam from starving.
September, if not for kudzu and wild mushrooms I don’t know what I would have done. They filled the empty spaces more than anything else did and they were plentiful in the areas I was traveling through. There was still fruit but most of it was wild and small. Too many black cherries made me ill for two days. It was also when I learned to tell the difference between a persimmon that was ripe and one that wasn’t thanks to a prank pulled on me by some kids I was dumb enough to listen to. Shudder. I thought paw paws were a joke at first, but I learned to like and eat them despite the many black seeds I had to first scoop out. The wild plums were my favorite though too many of them also had consequences.
There were so many desperate people looking for work by then that farmers could be picky about who they hired. I still found work in apple and pear orchards though I couldn’t pick near as many as the single males could. I had better luck picking peaches because you had to be so careful not to bruise them which meant going slower … and earning less. Still, I could usually get a cup of soup or something similar that the crew bosses would arrange to keep the pickers going all day long. I learned to eat dogwood fruit and how to bake a wild crabapple in a fire until it sweetened up. I learned to be grateful if all someone could offer me in exchange for helping with chores was a couple of sweet potatoes and the odd squash or ear of corn that was too deformed to be sent to market. I finally learned to harvest honey from wild bees without getting Bam-Bam and I stung to pieces as well.
In October the weather began to change. It was still nice during the day but at night it could get pretty chilly. I found an old and threadbare blanket that someone had thrown in a gully and managed to clean it in a fast running creek. It took nearly 48 hours to dry all the way, draped over the shopping cart as I pushed it during the day, but once it did I started collecting dry grass and cattail fluff and sewing it between the blanket and the sheet that I’d been using for a liner inside the sleeping bag. It took almost two weeks to do that by hand but in the end Bam-Bam and I slept warmer, at least for a while.
I got a look at us from other people’s eyes a few times. The pity was almost too much to see. I’d see women put their heads together and whisper. Some people pointed. A few really rude ones laughed. But most couldn’t even look at us long if at all; their eyes slipped past us, unable to even contemplate being in our position. There were no mirrors in the few public bathrooms that would let the homeless go in and wash up without first buying something, but I didn’t need one to know we looked rough; even rougher than the homeless people I used to pass by in Tampa before my world fell apart. I saw my reflection in water a couple of times and then stopped looking because it was like looking at a stranger … or a ghost.
The homeless life I was living was unlike what I’d experienced right after the storm. Back then there was still some hope that life would right itself, that there would be an end to the situation I found myself in. While never enough, there was still some food and services being offered, the local and federal governments were trying to organize things so that people could once again normalize. But the longer I was on the road the fewer services there were, the fewer options, the fewer organized efforts to do something about the problems that were facing so many, the less and less likely that any of us would ever see “normal” again.
October was also when Bam-Bam turned one and I turned eighteen. I’m sure it was a milestone for both of us but there wasn’t time to do any celebrating; it didn’t feel like there was anything to celebrate. The one thing I focused on was that I was happy we were alive and not in another refugee camp. I heard horror stories from other people on the road and it made me more determined than ever not to find ourselves in one. The road gangs were bad enough. I’d lost more than one camp by being forced to move it or suffer whatever my bravado might have caused, another rape would have been the least of it. I also heard of gangs that were stealing children … some were for kidnapping and ransom schemes and some they simply sold to the highest bidder. So despite it getting harder and harder to do I kept carrying Bam-Bam everywhere, not letting him toddle around except if there was time at the very end of the day when I had the old tarp set up around us.
Pushing the grocery cart wasn’t as hard as you would think. There were lots of people on the road pushing or pulling their belongings in something with wheels. Children’s or garden wagons were the favorite … sometimes with or without kids in them as well … but there were a lot of wheelbarrows, other grocery carts, some appliance dollies, and even beach coolers. When there was work, we looked after each other’s stuff for shares of whatever the work brought in; or, we’d throw in together to create a soup or stew that everyone could get a mug or bowl from. It was one of the few courtesies we could show each other; a bit of compassion we could show each other when we got none from anyone else. Sometimes the only human warmth we found was in a shared fire or thrown together meal shared with a stranger.
In October the field work began to slow down except in the apple orchards and by then only the fastest workers with the least encumbrances were being hired. I would set up camp for a few days at a time in locations to try and get ahead of the starving time I sensed was coming, but didn’t want to think about too hard. I gathered acorns and made acorn flour by the pound as often as possible. I tried to teach a few people what I knew but not everyone could or would do that kind of work. The problem was that we had to eat at the same time; we couldn’t just save everything back. Then the wild resources got scarce in any area where we congregated for more than a day or two at a time. I still nursed Bam-Bam when I could but it was never enough to kept my son fed. He learned to eat the same things I did even if I had to chew them up for him at first. And some meals that included the ubiquitous bugs that I swore I would never eat.
I collected pecans and hickory nuts when I could find a tree not stripped by the local wildlife … or scavenging humans. I would walk the orchards at night – assuming there weren’t dogs to keep people out – and picked up the apple spoils from the ground and took them back to whatever camp I had made to slice and dry by the fire. Squirrel was my only meat and that never provided enough fat. I would have eaten racoon or opossum, but they’d already been hunted over and were wary of humans. Every once in a while I would find a stream that hadn’t been fouled in some way and usually was able to catch a fish or two, even if they were just small ones. On one memorable occasion I worked two days straight for a widowed farmer cleaning his house so that it wouldn’t look like a wreck before his daughter and children moved back home. I had thought to stay as their housekeeper but when the daughter got there she ran me off … with a shotgun if you can believe that … thinking that I was taking advantage of her father or was going to steal them blind, or even murder them in their beds, at least that’s what she was screeching while she did it.
That farmer surprised me by finding me in the night and bringing me what he called my “pay.” It was a couple of bruised watermelons, a couple of small pumpkins, a large mixed bag of misshapen beets and carrots, and several dented cans of spam … stuff his daughter turned her nose up at. He was embarrassed but it was his daughter that he was going to have to live with, and his responsibility was to her and her children. I said thank you and that I was sorry a situation had been made. In the back of my mind I tried not to hope that one day the daughter would find out what it was like to walk in my shoes and maybe then she would feel the impact of her actions.
It took me a couple of days but we either ate what the farmer had given us or preserved it by drying, later using it to piece out what little else I was able to forage as we moved about. The canned Spam proved to be the true gold however as it helped with the fats we needed much more than the occasional squirrel did.
The one thing that farmer did tell me about was that there were so many homeless and displaced people on the move that the government had started setting up these kiosk type places as a way for people that had gotten separated to at least know what had become of someone they cared about. It was also a way for people to find out about men and women that were MIA or KIA in the war. He also told me one was being set up in the next town along the road that I was traveling. I’m sure the government used them to try and track the human migration that the country was experiencing as well.
Being run off by the farmer’s daughter seemed to use up the last of my give-a-damn. I got up and put one foot in front of another only to find a way to feed Bam-Bam and because I didn’t have anything else to do. The kiosk was just a point on a map but it was something … and even a small something when you have nothing at least adds a little different to the day.
The thing about the kiosks was that to use them without having to go through a big hassle, you had to have an ID card. Lucky for me the Feds back at The Farm hadn’t confiscated it from me like they had some people. I waited in line and then was flummoxed who I was going to check on. You had three tries and then you had to move for the next person in line. I checked Chay’s name first … though I’d gone back to thinking of him as Quiet Guy; saying Chay’s name always caused Bam-Bam to get over excited. It had been long enough that I wasn’t sure if Bam-Bam remembered Chay or if he just remembered the feeling of there being someone like Chay in his life.
That first time I put in Chay’s name … nothing. Then I put in Mr. Blanton’s name … nothing. Then I put in Dallas’ name … nothing. Nothing. I cried that night when I hadn’t since I left The Farm and I decided not to do it again. November was coming and so was the starving time.
All in one night I moved all the “personal effects” of my chiefs into the small basement beneath Chief Jackson’s office. I thought about leaving a message to tell them where their stuff was, but I realized the wrong someone could find it and then all the work I’d done boxing things up so neat and carefully would be wasted effort. The Feds had pretty much stripped everything else like the food stores and fuel and taken it with them. That is one of the reasons why the local authorities pulled out … not enough incentive to hang around.
The one truly inconvenient thing they’d done was to strip me of everything The Farm had assigned to me … uniform, tablet, bedding, everything. They even tried to take my BOB and the things that I’d earned but I pulled a fast one and hid it out in the woods in the place that I’d moved the shopping cart to and told them it had already been confiscated by another group of Feds. Bam-Bam and I would have been butt naked in the woods if I hadn’t done my own confiscating of some of the rag bag items from Chief Lark’s office. When the dorms started filling with refugees I finished moving out to a small, hidden, rock alcove we’d used as a “base” a few times.
I’ll admit I cried that first night. I cried the second and third night too. I’d had illusions of moving forward and instead found myself right back to square one … homeless, friendless, and with no idea where I was going. Only this time there was no Mr. JR, no Proud Mary, no Miss Clarendon or Mr. Blanton, no Chiefs, no Sheep Dogs, or anyone else to help me figure things out, no one else to tell me what the next step was. I had no idea where any of my crew had been taken or what shape they were in. None of the Haygoods were around and I had no idea who to ask where they’d gone. I tried to walk into town the fourth day and was run off like I was a plague victim that wanted to play in their water source.
I finally got a cop to listen to me and I left all my information with him. He promised that if anyone came to the station looking for me he’d relay that I was alive. When he added, “Or at least alive the last time I saw you” it made me sick to my stomach.
I started walking. First, I walked back towards the Florida state line, but I was stopped there and directed to a refugee center to be processed. What a frelling nightmare. If I got propositioned once it was a couple of dozen times, and that was just the first day. When my application for re-entrance to Florida was denied because no one had claimed me, I found myself back on the road. I wandered around Georgia through the rest of July, all of August, September and beyond.
All of the food that I’d managed to save for “just in case” eventually got used up and I was living on what I could forage. In August I ate blueberries, huckleberries, chokecherries, blackberries, mushrooms, wild greens, and the occasional rabbit and squirrel. I got lucky a few times and picked up migrant work picking apples and got paid in kind. Speaking Spanish and having ethnically ambiguous looks helped and so did being willing to get dirty and take any work that was offered, even with a kid on my back.
During that time, I met a few kind people. An old man taught me how to dry apples and other fruit and greens over a campfire. A couple of homeless veterans traveling together taught me how to make better snares and be patient and conserve my own fat reserves rather than wasting more than I brought in trying to forage food for tomorrow. I exchanged what I could by sewing with what I had. A farmer and his wife let me stay in an old shed they had when Bam-Bam caught a fever from too many mosquito bites. August was also the month I learned to like the tart sweetness of wild grapes and how to be grateful when a farmer would leave the outside rows of a field or orchard for poor people to glean from. I always tried to do something to say thank you to people like that, but it never seemed enough. They kept me from starving. They kept Bam-Bam from starving.
September, if not for kudzu and wild mushrooms I don’t know what I would have done. They filled the empty spaces more than anything else did and they were plentiful in the areas I was traveling through. There was still fruit but most of it was wild and small. Too many black cherries made me ill for two days. It was also when I learned to tell the difference between a persimmon that was ripe and one that wasn’t thanks to a prank pulled on me by some kids I was dumb enough to listen to. Shudder. I thought paw paws were a joke at first, but I learned to like and eat them despite the many black seeds I had to first scoop out. The wild plums were my favorite though too many of them also had consequences.
There were so many desperate people looking for work by then that farmers could be picky about who they hired. I still found work in apple and pear orchards though I couldn’t pick near as many as the single males could. I had better luck picking peaches because you had to be so careful not to bruise them which meant going slower … and earning less. Still, I could usually get a cup of soup or something similar that the crew bosses would arrange to keep the pickers going all day long. I learned to eat dogwood fruit and how to bake a wild crabapple in a fire until it sweetened up. I learned to be grateful if all someone could offer me in exchange for helping with chores was a couple of sweet potatoes and the odd squash or ear of corn that was too deformed to be sent to market. I finally learned to harvest honey from wild bees without getting Bam-Bam and I stung to pieces as well.
In October the weather began to change. It was still nice during the day but at night it could get pretty chilly. I found an old and threadbare blanket that someone had thrown in a gully and managed to clean it in a fast running creek. It took nearly 48 hours to dry all the way, draped over the shopping cart as I pushed it during the day, but once it did I started collecting dry grass and cattail fluff and sewing it between the blanket and the sheet that I’d been using for a liner inside the sleeping bag. It took almost two weeks to do that by hand but in the end Bam-Bam and I slept warmer, at least for a while.
I got a look at us from other people’s eyes a few times. The pity was almost too much to see. I’d see women put their heads together and whisper. Some people pointed. A few really rude ones laughed. But most couldn’t even look at us long if at all; their eyes slipped past us, unable to even contemplate being in our position. There were no mirrors in the few public bathrooms that would let the homeless go in and wash up without first buying something, but I didn’t need one to know we looked rough; even rougher than the homeless people I used to pass by in Tampa before my world fell apart. I saw my reflection in water a couple of times and then stopped looking because it was like looking at a stranger … or a ghost.
The homeless life I was living was unlike what I’d experienced right after the storm. Back then there was still some hope that life would right itself, that there would be an end to the situation I found myself in. While never enough, there was still some food and services being offered, the local and federal governments were trying to organize things so that people could once again normalize. But the longer I was on the road the fewer services there were, the fewer options, the fewer organized efforts to do something about the problems that were facing so many, the less and less likely that any of us would ever see “normal” again.
October was also when Bam-Bam turned one and I turned eighteen. I’m sure it was a milestone for both of us but there wasn’t time to do any celebrating; it didn’t feel like there was anything to celebrate. The one thing I focused on was that I was happy we were alive and not in another refugee camp. I heard horror stories from other people on the road and it made me more determined than ever not to find ourselves in one. The road gangs were bad enough. I’d lost more than one camp by being forced to move it or suffer whatever my bravado might have caused, another rape would have been the least of it. I also heard of gangs that were stealing children … some were for kidnapping and ransom schemes and some they simply sold to the highest bidder. So despite it getting harder and harder to do I kept carrying Bam-Bam everywhere, not letting him toddle around except if there was time at the very end of the day when I had the old tarp set up around us.
Pushing the grocery cart wasn’t as hard as you would think. There were lots of people on the road pushing or pulling their belongings in something with wheels. Children’s or garden wagons were the favorite … sometimes with or without kids in them as well … but there were a lot of wheelbarrows, other grocery carts, some appliance dollies, and even beach coolers. When there was work, we looked after each other’s stuff for shares of whatever the work brought in; or, we’d throw in together to create a soup or stew that everyone could get a mug or bowl from. It was one of the few courtesies we could show each other; a bit of compassion we could show each other when we got none from anyone else. Sometimes the only human warmth we found was in a shared fire or thrown together meal shared with a stranger.
In October the field work began to slow down except in the apple orchards and by then only the fastest workers with the least encumbrances were being hired. I would set up camp for a few days at a time in locations to try and get ahead of the starving time I sensed was coming, but didn’t want to think about too hard. I gathered acorns and made acorn flour by the pound as often as possible. I tried to teach a few people what I knew but not everyone could or would do that kind of work. The problem was that we had to eat at the same time; we couldn’t just save everything back. Then the wild resources got scarce in any area where we congregated for more than a day or two at a time. I still nursed Bam-Bam when I could but it was never enough to kept my son fed. He learned to eat the same things I did even if I had to chew them up for him at first. And some meals that included the ubiquitous bugs that I swore I would never eat.
I collected pecans and hickory nuts when I could find a tree not stripped by the local wildlife … or scavenging humans. I would walk the orchards at night – assuming there weren’t dogs to keep people out – and picked up the apple spoils from the ground and took them back to whatever camp I had made to slice and dry by the fire. Squirrel was my only meat and that never provided enough fat. I would have eaten racoon or opossum, but they’d already been hunted over and were wary of humans. Every once in a while I would find a stream that hadn’t been fouled in some way and usually was able to catch a fish or two, even if they were just small ones. On one memorable occasion I worked two days straight for a widowed farmer cleaning his house so that it wouldn’t look like a wreck before his daughter and children moved back home. I had thought to stay as their housekeeper but when the daughter got there she ran me off … with a shotgun if you can believe that … thinking that I was taking advantage of her father or was going to steal them blind, or even murder them in their beds, at least that’s what she was screeching while she did it.
That farmer surprised me by finding me in the night and bringing me what he called my “pay.” It was a couple of bruised watermelons, a couple of small pumpkins, a large mixed bag of misshapen beets and carrots, and several dented cans of spam … stuff his daughter turned her nose up at. He was embarrassed but it was his daughter that he was going to have to live with, and his responsibility was to her and her children. I said thank you and that I was sorry a situation had been made. In the back of my mind I tried not to hope that one day the daughter would find out what it was like to walk in my shoes and maybe then she would feel the impact of her actions.
It took me a couple of days but we either ate what the farmer had given us or preserved it by drying, later using it to piece out what little else I was able to forage as we moved about. The canned Spam proved to be the true gold however as it helped with the fats we needed much more than the occasional squirrel did.
The one thing that farmer did tell me about was that there were so many homeless and displaced people on the move that the government had started setting up these kiosk type places as a way for people that had gotten separated to at least know what had become of someone they cared about. It was also a way for people to find out about men and women that were MIA or KIA in the war. He also told me one was being set up in the next town along the road that I was traveling. I’m sure the government used them to try and track the human migration that the country was experiencing as well.
Being run off by the farmer’s daughter seemed to use up the last of my give-a-damn. I got up and put one foot in front of another only to find a way to feed Bam-Bam and because I didn’t have anything else to do. The kiosk was just a point on a map but it was something … and even a small something when you have nothing at least adds a little different to the day.
The thing about the kiosks was that to use them without having to go through a big hassle, you had to have an ID card. Lucky for me the Feds back at The Farm hadn’t confiscated it from me like they had some people. I waited in line and then was flummoxed who I was going to check on. You had three tries and then you had to move for the next person in line. I checked Chay’s name first … though I’d gone back to thinking of him as Quiet Guy; saying Chay’s name always caused Bam-Bam to get over excited. It had been long enough that I wasn’t sure if Bam-Bam remembered Chay or if he just remembered the feeling of there being someone like Chay in his life.
That first time I put in Chay’s name … nothing. Then I put in Mr. Blanton’s name … nothing. Then I put in Dallas’ name … nothing. Nothing. I cried that night when I hadn’t since I left The Farm and I decided not to do it again. November was coming and so was the starving time.
CHAPTER 38 - 1
November was cold. Daytime and night. So cold a few times that I had to stay awake all night or risk the kind of hypothermia you didn’t wake up from. During the day I used all my energy gathering acorns and black walnuts, burdock roots, Jerusalem artichokes, and the occasional prickly pear fruit. The sumac drupes were once again dry and ready for harvest; I saved them as a drink that broke the monotony of water boiled to a lifeless taste. Chickweed and a few kudzu tips on the vines that weren’t yet frost nipped were my only greens. Everything else was dead or trampled over.
By November I wasn’t the only one living off what food could be found along roadways and ditches; that meant there was even less than there might have otherwise been. Work had dried up all over except for people that could earn a bit here and there cutting wood or baling hay. The woods were only slightly better, but in many locations, you had to be careful that the poachers and legitimate hunters didn’t mistake you for something they could bag and tag. Or that landowners and forestry agents wouldn’t run you off or arrest you for vagrancy.
There were lots of cattails and I would have loved to have foraged them, but the water sources were all contaminated making them dangerous to harvest from. People got sick a lot with waterborne illnesses. They also got dead a lot; I saw more dead bodies that month than I had from the storm that sent me to The Farm in the first place. I did the best I could but even I got sick once despite boiling our drinking and wash water the requisite minutes. Luckily Bam-Bam only got a mild upset from it and I doubled down on being super careful but that meant going to the waysides where the charities set up shop to get our water and the occasional cup of soup or commodity item.
To get these items I had to first go through a kiosk. I suppose it was the government’s way of trying to track people or count how many homeless or something like that. Usually I tried to hit one up once a week. First I would key in Chay’s name, then Mr. Blanton’s, and then someone else’s but nothing ever popped up. I tried to stop caring. It was just a means to an end, something I had to do to fill my water container. Every time the machine would come back with “no information found” a little bit more of me would die. And when I heard that a terrorist group had used a dirty bomb in the Tampa Bay area I stopped putting Mr. Blanton’s name in; it seemed pointless.
Towards the end of November I managed to catch a quail and I’m not sure which of us was more surprised. The quail passed for what Bam-Bam and I had as our Thanksgiving meal. I refused to think about anything that day except getting to the next station to fill up our water container. It saved the kind of pain that I’d felt the previous year. It saved thinking about anything from the previous year … or anyone.
At the next kiosk, purely out of habit I put in Chay’s name … nothing. Then I put in Dallas’ name and didn’t pay any attention when it asked for the next name and I put in Cooper’s. I prepared to walk through to the water station when the machine made a weird noise and lit up. A clerk came over and said, “You can advance to the window.”
Since it had never happened before I wasn’t sure what that meant. Once I worked my way through that line to stand before a teller I said, “They sent me here.”
“Let me see your ID card.”
I gave it to the man and he put it in and then asked, “How are you connected to Robert Dallas and Benjamin Cooper?”
“Uh … we were in the same training program outside Clayton.”
“Neither of the men were family?”
“No Sir. I don’t have any family … except for my son. Uh … they … they were like big brothers and … um …”
Brusquely he responded, “Since you aren’t family I can’t give you their information beyond the fact they are listed as reservists, but I am authorized to send a short message to them.”
“Does … does it cost anything?”
“No,” he said. “Do you want to or not?”
“Yes please. Just … just tell them that Doe … um … Doe McCormick, that’s me … just tell them that I … just say I’m thinking of everyone and hoping they are doing okay. I … I don’t guess I have anything more than that.”
He looked at me for a moment, a hint of pity in his eyes, and then nodded before typing it out and then saying, “Sign here with your finger.”
I signed the tablet and then headed to the water station trying not to think. See, I’d seen where the message was being sent to … Richmond, Virginia. I wasn’t sure if that was where the guys were located but that’s where the message was going. That night in front of my wee, small fire made with the few dried twigs and bits of charcoal I had saved from my last fire I fed Bam-Bam the warmed-over soup that I’d gotten at the water station. The cold was pressing in and I knew that I needed a goal or I was going to give up and Bam-Bam needed me. So, Richmond it was.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I may not know where I am but I am never lost … at least not physically. I set my internal compass and struck out towards Richmond, Virginia following the roads that would let me keep pushing the grocery cart and give me access to the government kiosk system. It took me two weeks before I reached the next kiosk. Chay’s name, Dallas’ name, and Mari’s name. I was sent to a clerk’s station.
Nothing on Chay. Dallas was still listed as a reservist and I sent the same message I had before. Mari … “Marigold Johnson, deceased.”
“Does … does it say how?”
“No.”
“Um … okay. Just … just send the message to Robert Dallas please.”
At night I did my best to keep us warm. I would make a nest of dried grass when I could find it. Sometimes all I could do was stay awake and shiver while I kept Bam-Bam next to my skin to share what warmth we made together.
When I would reach a kiosk I would always put Chay first but nothing ever registered. I did my best not to think about that. I would then put either Dallas’ or Cooper’s name next. Then I would pick someone else. Nothing ever came up for Jan or Jen. Or Chief Madison or Chief Lark. One time Chief Jackson registered but I couldn’t find out where he was. I could only tell him that I’d boxed up his belongings and left them in his basement and that I hoped he and his wife were safe and together.
Christmas came and went the same way Thanksgiving had. The only reason I realized the date is because I was rounded up and put in with a group of refugees in overnight shelter due to an ice storm and they played Christmas carols at us and made an effort to see that the children were fed more than just the bean broth that the adults got. I was surprised when in the middle of the night children and their caretakers were quickly hustled out and sent on our way with a little bag and someone draped a old plastic table cloth around us to keep the wet off that was pelting down. The next day the rumor was that childless adults had rioted over what they felt was unfair treatment and the feds had stamped down fast and hard. What had initially looked like cruelty throwing us out into the storm wound up being what saved our lives. And they’d given us enough food for each child for another day or two. I won’t ever forget that.
The end of December I finally made it to the Virginia border only to run into the same thing I had at the Florida border. I put my name in, expecting to be stymied only to be shocked when my clearance came through the first time. I got in line and had to stay there or lose my place and start over. Everyone entering the state had to get registered and then go through a series of security checkpoints. At the first point I had to empty everything in the cart. The woman and man going over our belongings wore gloves and a face mask and used sticks to move things around like we were contaminated. They didn’t confiscate anything for which I was thankful, not even anything out of my BOB, but they did tape everything sealed and told me that if I broke the seals I would have to start the entrance process all over again. The only thing they let me keep out was a couple of diapers and Wubbie Duck and that was strictly to keep Bam-Bam from getting upset.
Next station was a medical station. That was no fun; I felt like a horse up for auction, especially when they even checked my teeth. We also had to go through a “de-lousing” shower. Once I figured out what it was I didn’t know whether to be angry or ashamed. It was humiliating beyond words. We had to strip naked, even though it was freezing, and drop our clothes in these baskets that were sent through their own de-lousing bath. We had to put on goggles – Bam-Bam’s barely fit and he only nominally tolerated them – and then we walked through this long plexiglass tunnel where we were sprayed with antiseptic and chemicals to kill any vermin we had crawling on us or in our hair … lice, bed bugs, ticks, fleas, and other nasties. They even sprayed our pubic hair and it put some people to tears.
More humiliating than the shower itself was the lack of privacy and treatment while we did it. There was no preventing people from seeing what the Creator gave you … or what time and circumstances had stolen from you. Male and female, it didn’t matter, though there were warnings posted all over and blared over speakers in multiple languages to not touch anyone or talk or anything else that could be construed as harassing, or some type of criminal battery. I saw a few people balk at the treatment but those were immediately removed from the lines and taken off in handcuffs by people in hazmat overalls. The guards stood around with tools that looked like cattle prods and when I saw them get used, I could tell they didn’t just look like electrified cattle prods, they were electrified cattle prods … and used on wet skin they were painful. Nearly as painful as the cold was.
After the de-lousing shower we walked through a wind tunnel. It was so powerful it stole Bam-Bam’s breath but when we exited the other end even Wubbie Duck was clean and dry. I grabbed the basket with our clothes and though a few seams on our coats were slightly damp, things were clean and for the most part dry enough to dress in. I hustled us into our clothes standing right there by the tables, and I wasn’t the only one. Without meaning to I still saw the bare-naked nature of everyone else. Ribs stood out. Scars. Stretch marks. Sagging skin. Wrinkles even on young people. Baldness. Hairiness. Tattoos and piercings that said things and in places … uh uh, don’t even want to remember.
I panicked for a moment when I couldn’t find my boots but was directed to take the tag off of our basket and get into another line. Apparently they’d been going over our shoes for contraband. There was a white powder all over and in them that I had to knock out … another form of de-lousing since they couldn’t send shoes through the same process they sent the clothes. One woman was screeching about chemical poisoning but most of us turned a blind eye to it, preferring not to risk starting the process over when we’d come that far.
It took a while to find the grocery cart but when I did, I started breathing a little easier. The sealing tape was still on and in addition there was some kind of big sticky label that said it had gone through the last inspection process. I worried momentarily about the ubernet cube but only momentarily because there was nothing I could do at that point and in front of me was a gate and on the other side of the gate was the road to the only goal I had had in a while.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
That night I sat around a fire that a couple of us had built. It was a kind of silent agreement that we all fed it, we all benefited but it wasn’t for conversation or comradery … simply sharing the workload. That’s all there was however. There were no casual questions, no introductions, nothing. Nor was there food that night, not even scrawny squirrels roasting on a spit. Most of the smaller animals were hibernating or had found dens against the weather. The bugs were all frozen so I couldn’t even have that kind of protein to give Bam-Bam and myself. If we had thought getting into the state was the end of our problems, we were sadly mistaken.
Not long after dark the first flakes of snow began to fall, and they continued to fall throughout the night. When I crawled out of the tarp the next morning the others were already gone. I looked around and dug out the bits of charcoal and unburnt wood from the fire and then gathered the other bits of wood that we hadn’t used and put them under the tarp when I took down our tent to try and keep them from getting wet where the snow continued to fall.
I put Bam-Bam in the grocery buggy seat and then wrapped our blanket around him the best way I could. Bam-Bam didn’t mind, he wasn’t a fan of the frozen wet stuff that was in the air any more than I was. Pushing the grocery cart in the snow wasn’t a grand experience but it was better than sitting still. And it was a good thing I did get going because not long afterward some irritated national guards came along grumbling about how the state was letting in too many refugees, that no one was supposed to get in unless they had someone that had agreed to sign for them but too many regulations were being ignored or being skipped over for humanitarian purposes. I figured I was one of the ones that had been “skipped over for humanitarian purposes” because there was no one to sign for me.
That night I was in line at a kiosk when it was closed. I had no place to go so I stayed in line. As people would drop out to go and try and find some warmth I would move forward. I was about third from the front when they started handing out some meals. When the guy doing it saw that I had a kid he quickly handed me two and told me to hide the second one until his supervisor went by. I did and gratefully.
That supervisor was a donkey’s behind, but he did get the kiosk back up and running, snarling at people that if he had to work the nightshift then by God he wasn’t going to be the only one. This time when I put my ID card in a clerk immediately came over and told me to come with him. I nearly panicked and ran but I was just too tired. We bypassed the other lines and then he handed me off to someone else who took my ID card, ran it, and then handed me a slip of paper that was printed out.
“Take this and go over to that tall blonde guy at that gate. He’ll assign you a slot and you stay there until you are given clearance.”
I had no idea what they were talking about but did as I was told. It might have been foolish, but on the other hand another snowstorm had started and I knew I needed to find a spot to set up our tent one way or the other. I was worried about Bam-Bam. I knew I was on the edge and leaning out to fall over. I was worried that if it happened on the road no one would stop for my son. I didn’t want him growing up to think that I had just abandoned him, thrown him away, failed him … or worse I survived, and he didn’t. All of it was an ache in my chest and blanketed my brain so that I wasn’t thinking very clearly.
There was no fire that night and it was cold, so cold. There was no grass to use to make a nest either. And when the wind picked up I gave up trying to use the “tent poles” and instead just used cords and bunjis to tie the tarp onto the grocery cart.
The cart was lighter than it had been in the beginning, but it was still too heavy for the wind to knock over. I wrapped us in the cattail fluff stuffed blanket and climbed inside the sleeping bag but even buried in there it was cold. I put Bam-Bam inside my shirt and coat. There was plenty of room as my clothes had started to hang on me. I knew I needed to stay awake, but I was so tired. I fed my son the extra meal that I had been given and what was left of the one I was supposed to eat, and he then curled up against me and went to sleep.
Things were bad. I knew they were bad, but I had nothing left to give. I tried to stay awake but kept nodding off. I tried to think warm thoughts but that only worked until I realized it was nothing but a fantasy. I sat up but eventually my feet started to go numb. I became scared but I didn’t know why and couldn’t find much energy to deal with it. Even fighting with everything I had left I went to sleep.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Something was taking the covers away. “No!” I remember whispering. “My baby!”
Someone groaned the said, “S’okay. S’okay. Shhhh. S’okay.”
“Save … save my baby. Please. Please.”
“Shhhh. S’okay. Have him … have you both.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Sometime later I vaguely recall hearing a conversation.
“It’s not that I don’t understand Corporal. That storm … we lost some of the refugees to it.”
“Few more hours. Just twelve. Be out of here by tomorrow morning.”
“I … I can’t. It’s not up to me. If she isn’t up to traveling, if they think she’s sick, they’ll put her back over the state line. You don’t want that … hell I don’t want that.”
“Anything?”
There was silence and then the man said, “Look, I can put your paperwork on the bottom of the stack. That’ll give you an hour or two. I know it isn’t much but … it’s all I got man. I could lose my job just doing that.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Chapter 38 - 2
“Doe … need to wake up. Know it’s hard. Know it. But you gotta do it. C’mon. Bams needs you. Wake up for him.”
Then something wet and cold wipes my face and I try and brush it away.
“Yeah, like that. C’mon.”
I open my eyes and I think I’m hallucinating or dreaming. “Chay?” My voice is barely a whisper, but he gets a look of fierce success.
Then there is a snarling voice from outside the tarp that said, “I told you to have every space emptied.”
Another voice said, “The girl has a baby. They’re just moving a little slow.”
“I don’t care if she’s in the middle of giving f@#$%&! birth. Get ‘em out of here.”
Chay jerks the tarp out of the way and I just barely catch his sleeve to keep him from pouncing on the snarling man.
“Chay!” He stops and looks at me. “Just … just help me up. I … I need to take care of Bam-Bam. Help … help me. Please. And please … be real … and not some … some figment …”
“Shhhh. S’okay,” he said before picking me up and letting me lean on the cart. I see snow blanketing everything and the cold is the only thing that is getting my brain to spark. I take Bam-Bam from Chay’s arms and put him in the buggy seat and try and arrange the sleeping bag and blanket to keep him out of the cold. The tarp is folded before I completely zone, but Chay won’t let me push the buggy.
“Hang onto arm. Road is crazy.”
To call what is going on around us crazy was an understatement. Everyone is being lined up behind what turns out to be a snowplow. There’s another truck they’re loading black garbage bags into … only Chay tells me not to look. It takes me a moment to realize they aren’t black garbage bags but body bags. I began to wonder how close I was to being in one. I began to wonder if I was in one and this was all just some sort of cosmic road where I would get sorted to heaven or hell. I wondered if Chay was even there or if it was some guardian angel trying to make it easy on me to go through that part of it.
Something must have showed on my face because he leaned over and said, “Just hold on. Know a place to camp further down road. Get there and you can lay down again.”
“No. Need to feed Bam-Bam. I have to find forage and …”
“Shhh. S’okay. Have a few things. S’okay.”
Figment, hallucination, or guardian angel … I basically didn’t have much choice but to trust what he was saying to me, what little was making it through the fog my brain was in. I knew he asked me a few questions, but I don’t think I answered him. Eventually we turned off down a road and away from the snowplow and the others that were following it. A few hours later I was stumbling and barely able to put one foot in front of the other. Then Chay … or the fantasy with Chay’s face since I still hadn’t made up my mind which it was … takes us off the road and down a rutted path that would have been muddy if it hadn’t been frozen. I was frozen. In more ways than one.
Suddenly there was a lean-to in front of me, the kind that people sometimes store wood in for their fireplaces. Chay pushed the grocery cart into it and I could tell the difference immediately as it cut the wind and got us out of the damp air. Before I knew it there was a small tent and he was putting me in it and handing Bam-Bam to me. Before my frozen brain could form a question … or plea … I heard the tarp unfolding and what was left of the day began to fade. I later found out he’d hung the tarp from the roof of the lean-to and then used rocks to keep the edges from blowing around making it like a tent over the tent.
When he crawled in there wasn’t much room but I didn’t care. I just stared hungrily at his face and begged, “Be real. Please be real.”
“Am. S’okay now. Am.”
I lost it. At first I tried not to cry but it didn’t take long before I was nearly howling … or would have been howling if I’d had enough energy. He held me and all that I could understand was, “S’okay. S’okay. Have you both now. S’okay.”
I started shaking and he pulled me close. I didn’t care. It wasn’t someone I didn’t know in my space. It was Chay and he was here, as real as I needed him to be, and Bam-Bam wasn’t alone, there was someone to take care of him where I was failing. Something of what I was thinking must have come out of my mouth because he shook me a little but then groaned. “S’okay. S’okay now. S’okay.”
I woke sometime later to hear piggy noises that were familiar. When I forced my eyelids open I saw Chay poking green beans into Bam-Bam’s mouth.
I said, “Careful. He still bites if you don’t move your fingers fast enough.”
Two sets of eyes were suddenly focused on me. “Qack! Qack Qack Chay!”
“He remembers you.”
I saw the normally quiet man look like he was going to do his own bit of howling, but I saw him struggle to hold it together.
“Hungry?”
“No. Give it to Bam-Bam.”
“Have food for him. Have food for you.”
“I’m … I’m … not …”
“Shhh. S’okay. Can sit up?”
It wasn’t easy in the small space, but I did, and he opened a thermos and had me drink what was in there. It was broth, warm broth. Before I would force myself to take a sip I asked, “What about you?”
He held up something wrapped up that he later explained was pemmican, some he’d made in preparation for coming to look for me.
“How did you find us?”
“Coop … got note from you. Through system. Dallas too. They used strings to pull info from system. Tracked you. Got you on the approved list. In case you … you tried to cross line.”
“I put your name in every time. Every time I put it in first. But it always said ‘no information.’ I tried the others but …”
The look on his face was hard to look at; a cross between surprise and need. “Put my name in first? Every time?”
I could tell I’d shocked him.
“Every time,” I answered. “I took turns with everyone else’s name.”
He seemed to get more relaxed but focused at the same time.
“System screwed up,” he said. “Some things true. Some things not. Almost lost it … almost couldn’t hold on. Said … said you were MIA.”
I thought about that and then shrugged. “I’ve not been ‘in action’ since that mess at The Farm.”
“Thought you … drafted.” He stopped and cleared his throat.
“I wasn’t old enough until October and by then … I don’t know. Sorry if I worried you … or the others. Are there any others besides Dallas and Cooper?”
He sighed. “Talk later. Finish broth before cold. Then we rest. Long way still to go.”
“Are we going someplace then?”
He looked at me closely and he must have seen something that worried him. He reached out and tipped my face and then nodded slowly. “Yes. You come with me. Have place to go. But first eat … then rest.”
I did as he told me, vaguely feeling thankful that I didn’t have to figure out what to do on my own. Then I took care of Bam-Bam. After a moment of trying to string thoughts together I told him, “Maybe we can unzip the sleeping bag and lay on the blanket so we can put Bam-Bam between us.”
He gave me that strange searching look again and said, “Got big bag. All get inside it. Warmer.”
I didn’t like when he told me to take off our shoes … my boots and the moccasins that I’d cobbled together for Bam-Bam … but then he took his off and started guiding all three of us into what I realized was a double sleeping bag. It took a little bit of time, and it was crowded inside the big bag, I didn’t care. And when he pulled my feet between his to keep them from being too cold I started to relax until I began to worry that someone would come and run us off.
“Shhh. S’okay. Another storm is blowing. No one out in it. And if is … better not try.” The last words were a growl. The sound should have scared me, but it had the opposite effect. I felt safe for the first time in a long, long time.
“Doe … need to wake up. Know it’s hard. Know it. But you gotta do it. C’mon. Bams needs you. Wake up for him.”
Then something wet and cold wipes my face and I try and brush it away.
“Yeah, like that. C’mon.”
I open my eyes and I think I’m hallucinating or dreaming. “Chay?” My voice is barely a whisper, but he gets a look of fierce success.
Then there is a snarling voice from outside the tarp that said, “I told you to have every space emptied.”
Another voice said, “The girl has a baby. They’re just moving a little slow.”
“I don’t care if she’s in the middle of giving f@#$%&! birth. Get ‘em out of here.”
Chay jerks the tarp out of the way and I just barely catch his sleeve to keep him from pouncing on the snarling man.
“Chay!” He stops and looks at me. “Just … just help me up. I … I need to take care of Bam-Bam. Help … help me. Please. And please … be real … and not some … some figment …”
“Shhhh. S’okay,” he said before picking me up and letting me lean on the cart. I see snow blanketing everything and the cold is the only thing that is getting my brain to spark. I take Bam-Bam from Chay’s arms and put him in the buggy seat and try and arrange the sleeping bag and blanket to keep him out of the cold. The tarp is folded before I completely zone, but Chay won’t let me push the buggy.
“Hang onto arm. Road is crazy.”
To call what is going on around us crazy was an understatement. Everyone is being lined up behind what turns out to be a snowplow. There’s another truck they’re loading black garbage bags into … only Chay tells me not to look. It takes me a moment to realize they aren’t black garbage bags but body bags. I began to wonder how close I was to being in one. I began to wonder if I was in one and this was all just some sort of cosmic road where I would get sorted to heaven or hell. I wondered if Chay was even there or if it was some guardian angel trying to make it easy on me to go through that part of it.
Something must have showed on my face because he leaned over and said, “Just hold on. Know a place to camp further down road. Get there and you can lay down again.”
“No. Need to feed Bam-Bam. I have to find forage and …”
“Shhh. S’okay. Have a few things. S’okay.”
Figment, hallucination, or guardian angel … I basically didn’t have much choice but to trust what he was saying to me, what little was making it through the fog my brain was in. I knew he asked me a few questions, but I don’t think I answered him. Eventually we turned off down a road and away from the snowplow and the others that were following it. A few hours later I was stumbling and barely able to put one foot in front of the other. Then Chay … or the fantasy with Chay’s face since I still hadn’t made up my mind which it was … takes us off the road and down a rutted path that would have been muddy if it hadn’t been frozen. I was frozen. In more ways than one.
Suddenly there was a lean-to in front of me, the kind that people sometimes store wood in for their fireplaces. Chay pushed the grocery cart into it and I could tell the difference immediately as it cut the wind and got us out of the damp air. Before I knew it there was a small tent and he was putting me in it and handing Bam-Bam to me. Before my frozen brain could form a question … or plea … I heard the tarp unfolding and what was left of the day began to fade. I later found out he’d hung the tarp from the roof of the lean-to and then used rocks to keep the edges from blowing around making it like a tent over the tent.
When he crawled in there wasn’t much room but I didn’t care. I just stared hungrily at his face and begged, “Be real. Please be real.”
“Am. S’okay now. Am.”
I lost it. At first I tried not to cry but it didn’t take long before I was nearly howling … or would have been howling if I’d had enough energy. He held me and all that I could understand was, “S’okay. S’okay. Have you both now. S’okay.”
I started shaking and he pulled me close. I didn’t care. It wasn’t someone I didn’t know in my space. It was Chay and he was here, as real as I needed him to be, and Bam-Bam wasn’t alone, there was someone to take care of him where I was failing. Something of what I was thinking must have come out of my mouth because he shook me a little but then groaned. “S’okay. S’okay now. S’okay.”
I woke sometime later to hear piggy noises that were familiar. When I forced my eyelids open I saw Chay poking green beans into Bam-Bam’s mouth.
I said, “Careful. He still bites if you don’t move your fingers fast enough.”
Two sets of eyes were suddenly focused on me. “Qack! Qack Qack Chay!”
“He remembers you.”
I saw the normally quiet man look like he was going to do his own bit of howling, but I saw him struggle to hold it together.
“Hungry?”
“No. Give it to Bam-Bam.”
“Have food for him. Have food for you.”
“I’m … I’m … not …”
“Shhh. S’okay. Can sit up?”
It wasn’t easy in the small space, but I did, and he opened a thermos and had me drink what was in there. It was broth, warm broth. Before I would force myself to take a sip I asked, “What about you?”
He held up something wrapped up that he later explained was pemmican, some he’d made in preparation for coming to look for me.
“How did you find us?”
“Coop … got note from you. Through system. Dallas too. They used strings to pull info from system. Tracked you. Got you on the approved list. In case you … you tried to cross line.”
“I put your name in every time. Every time I put it in first. But it always said ‘no information.’ I tried the others but …”
The look on his face was hard to look at; a cross between surprise and need. “Put my name in first? Every time?”
I could tell I’d shocked him.
“Every time,” I answered. “I took turns with everyone else’s name.”
He seemed to get more relaxed but focused at the same time.
“System screwed up,” he said. “Some things true. Some things not. Almost lost it … almost couldn’t hold on. Said … said you were MIA.”
I thought about that and then shrugged. “I’ve not been ‘in action’ since that mess at The Farm.”
“Thought you … drafted.” He stopped and cleared his throat.
“I wasn’t old enough until October and by then … I don’t know. Sorry if I worried you … or the others. Are there any others besides Dallas and Cooper?”
He sighed. “Talk later. Finish broth before cold. Then we rest. Long way still to go.”
“Are we going someplace then?”
He looked at me closely and he must have seen something that worried him. He reached out and tipped my face and then nodded slowly. “Yes. You come with me. Have place to go. But first eat … then rest.”
I did as he told me, vaguely feeling thankful that I didn’t have to figure out what to do on my own. Then I took care of Bam-Bam. After a moment of trying to string thoughts together I told him, “Maybe we can unzip the sleeping bag and lay on the blanket so we can put Bam-Bam between us.”
He gave me that strange searching look again and said, “Got big bag. All get inside it. Warmer.”
I didn’t like when he told me to take off our shoes … my boots and the moccasins that I’d cobbled together for Bam-Bam … but then he took his off and started guiding all three of us into what I realized was a double sleeping bag. It took a little bit of time, and it was crowded inside the big bag, I didn’t care. And when he pulled my feet between his to keep them from being too cold I started to relax until I began to worry that someone would come and run us off.
“Shhh. S’okay. Another storm is blowing. No one out in it. And if is … better not try.” The last words were a growl. The sound should have scared me, but it had the opposite effect. I felt safe for the first time in a long, long time.
sssarawolf
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Thank you.
Siskiyoumom
Veteran Member
Thank you. So glad Doe’s protector found her!
larry_minn
Contributing Member
I can’t wait to read it again.
Loving this! I’m so glad they found each other!
Taco Salad
Contributing Member
I just want to say thanks. I stumbled into this forum a couple weeks ago and it was this story that kept me interested and got me to poking around in. Great story and it looks like a good bunch of people here.
Welcome.
larry_minn
Contributing Member
How terrible. You left her cold, tired, worn out in a sleeping bag with her kid & Chay. That was almost 3 WEEKS ago. She needs to use the bathroom. 
.
.
sssarawolf
Has No Life - Lives on TB
I know there was more to the story then this, 
.
.
There is. For the heck of it I will try and get it posted tonight.I know there was more to the story then this,
CHAPTER 39
For three weeks we walked, making camp early in the day if a storm was coming or walking as long as possible if the bad weather held off. Some days we covered a lot of ground, some days it seemed we barely went any distance. We saw fewer and fewer people as the weather worsened and as we got farther and farther away from the large highways.
We didn’t talk a lot, we never had had long and deep discussions, but what we did talk about helped us both to piece in what had happened while we were apart.
“How get through Tennessee?”
“Want to know the truth? I have no clue. When I think about it, I must have missed the check points pushing through the woods in areas trying to get away from the road gangs or looking for food. All I know is one day the kiosk said Georgia and the next one said Tennessee. I didn’t think much about it.”
He grunted and then we were both focused on pushing the cart up the next steep stretch of road.
I suppose I should have just pushed it off the side of the road and left it there but the one time I said that Chay shook his head. “S’okay. Bams and you need stuff.”
Sometimes we’d make camp early and Chay would tell me to stay, that he’d be back. When that happened, he would go far off the road and hide us in a thicket, under the branches of a large evergreen, or even one time between some boulders. When he left he would sometimes be gone only a short time but more often he was gone quite a while. The longer he was gone, the closer it got to dark, the more worried I would get. I never knew where he went but he always came back with something … usually I could tell he’d been hunting because he came back with a cleaned carcass that we then cooked on a spit or grilled in a pan from one of our mess kits. A couple of times he came back with something else and the look on his face told me not to ask where it had come from … cans or packages of store-bought food.
One time he came back with a pack I didn’t recognize and inside it was a lot of packaged food. He also came back looking like he’d been in a fight. It was real dark when he came back that time and all I could do was throw myself at him and tell him not to do that again. That he’d worried me sick.
“S’okay. S’okay. Shhhh.”
Turns out he’d gone hunting only to run across a situation where a gang was holding a couple of forest rangers, trying to get them to tell them where their extra ammo was being stored. Ammo was hard to get and what was available legally was heavily regulated. Most places it was more difficult to get a license and permit for ammo than it was for getting them for the actual gun.
Chay didn’t hesitate and he … he did what he did and there were no men left to beat on the rangers. He would have just walked back off into the woods, but the rangers insisted he take what he needed from the gang members’ packs and then get before the people the rangers called showed up to clean up and possibly keep him from returning to us.
“Said was wife and baby. Uh … s’okay?”
“Did it make it so they let you go?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s okay.”
That’s all that was said on that subject, but it wasn’t the last time we had to use that cover to keep people from being suspicious of us traveling together.
In addition to him asking me questions I asked him where he’d gone in the medical mover.
“Hospital. Then shipped home. Wanted to go look for you but … didn’t know where to start. Then they said MIA. That was the bad time.” He seemed to get very upset by that.
I shook my head as I worked on crocheting a longer string for Bam-Bam’s mittens that would keep him from pulling them off and dropping them to the ground. “Don’t worry about it. We’re back together now. And Bam-Bam has two people to look after him. I just don’t know for how long they’ll let …”
He got a dangerous growl to his still gravely voice and said, “No one take Bams or you. Together. Going home.”
I sighed. “You sure? I … I just … I can’t …”
And when I would get confused and unsure, mostly because the future was just a big blank in my mind, he would pull Bam-Bam and I into the tent and tell me, “S’okay. S’okay. Am here.”
Bam-Bam was always between us at first but sometimes it seemed like he didn’t take up much space. The only time I was ever embarrassed was the time I slid down the bank of a stream and got wet. I was stiff with cold and he had to help me into the only half way serviceable clothes that I had left. That night, even with dry clothes on I was so chilled that I had to sleep in the middle. Chay pulled me against him and Bam-Bam slept wrapped in a blanket in my arms.
“S’okay?”
“Y…y…yes.”
“Scared?”
“N…n…n…no.”
“Good. Safe. Won’t hurt you.”
And I believed him. And from that night forward that’s how we slept. Bam-Bam was a happy little bed hog and Chay didn’t get kicked in the stomach or banged in the head anymore. And I felt warm … and safe.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I was losing track of time. My give-a-damn was back but just barely. So long as Bam-Bam and Chay were within my line of sight I was content to continue to live the way we’d been going. But Chay on the other hand seemed to be growing worried. Sometimes he’d make me sit and he’d ask me to tell him my story all over again from the beginning. That took effort. I had to think. I had to think about things I would rather not. I would have to think about people I would rather not.
Sometimes he’d talk to me when I’d turn away and not want to do what he asked. During one of those times I learned that Jan and Jen were hiding near where Dallas and Cooper could keep an eye on them. They were living under assumed names in like a witness protection program. I learned Mari wasn’t dead but she wasn’t exactly alright either. She’d been hospitalized … a mental hospital … and no one was sure if she’d ever be getting out. She’d had another breakdown and she mostly existed in a fugue state.
The Haygoods may have had to leave The Farm, but that land had never been their only compound. They had to deal with changes but the biggest one was that the Judge was no longer the patriarch of the family … or he was but it was merely a courtesy and the power he’d once held now rested in the hands of others. Chief Jackson and his wife were living on one such compound someplace along the Northern Tier … an area that straddled the border between Minnesota and Canada. It had been Chief Jackson’s pulling strings as much as Dallas’ willingness to exchange favors that had helped Chay to find me. Each kiosk I stopped at was another point to plot on a map and when he was sure he had my path he set out with Dallas and Cooper monitoring my progress for any change. When I crossed the state line into Virginia they made sure that there was only one direction I could go and Chay made a beeline to intersect with us. When he walked into the camp he’d been so relieved, then to find me unconscious … and frail … it triggered his worst worries.
Looking at myself as I write this for you Bam-Bam I know I’m in rough shape. My ribs show … but not as much as they did when he found us. My face is all sharp angles … and so are my arms and shoulders. My hair, the only thing I’ve ever come close to being vain about, is limp, lifeless, and feels like straw. My face is so pale you almost can’t see the scar that runs down the middle of it. I’ll never be a beauty queen but I’m not sure even my parents would recognize the person staring out at the world with my eyes.
Bam-Bam you were thin too but not like some of the children I saw on the road with bloated bellies, bowed legs and faces that looked too much like those I saw in the history books of places that wars never seemed to leave. You nearly ate Chay up … figuratively and literally. You remembered him or remembered the feel of him in your little baby mind. And when you discovered he would still “honk” when you grabbed his nose you couldn’t get enough of it. And Chay couldn’t get over the fact you hadn’t forgotten him.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I suppose that everything eventually comes to an end. Or maybe not an end exactly, but one part flows immediately into the next part. The day things changed Chay had kept us walking a lot longer than usual. It was dark and we were both stumbling with fatigue but still he didn’t stop. I never questioned our direction or starts or stops because I’d never questioned them when we were all a crew back on The Farm. It was a matter of recognizing that someone else was in charge … and now that Chay had come to find Bam-Bam and me he was the one “in charge.”
But not asking doesn’t mean I wasn’t dealing with the consequences. Suddenly one of my knees gave out and I went down. He helped me stand up but I was struggling to stay up. “Just little further. Can make it.”
“Okay,” I told him.
I must have been sleep walking because the next thing I remember was Chay telling me to hold Bam-Bam and stay out of the way, he was going to bring the stuff out of the cart down.
Down?
It was dark but I sensed the place we were was different from our normal camps. Bam-Bam sensed it was time to eat and he tugged at my shirt. He wasn’t going to get much, but something was better than nothing. Then I heard a door close.
A door?
I heard something but couldn’t tell exactly what, then a snap and a fire. Only not like our other camps but in a fireplace, a real one, not just a fire ring. In the light it made I could tell that Chay was exhausted. I looked over and saw our belongings from the grocery cart and reached over and dragged the double sleeping bag.
“Here,” I told him holding up the edge of the bag.
He crawled over to us and leaned against the wall that was also at my back. I put the sleeping bag across our legs and we just sat there slowly falling asleep with Bam-Bam between us.
When I woke up I found he’d brought in wood and fixed the cage thing around the fire. He was once again feeding Bam-Bam and I just watched the two of them together. I knew that no matter what happened I could trust that someone that cared would take care of my son. The reason why Chay cared might have been a little more complicated than your average story, but I still trusted him to do the best job he could and that he wouldn’t give up.
He must have sensed me watching him because he came over and said, “Going out. Be back. Don’t let fire go out.”
This time instead of taking his backpack he only took a small pouch he slung across his shoulders. That’s when I got the first good look around where we were. It was a room, or a room of sorts. It was bigger than I had thought at first, around twenty feet by thirty or thirty-five feet. The floor was concrete, or at least concrete under the dirt on the floor. The walls were concrete but had regular looking pock marks like something used to be attached to them. The “ceiling” I finally figured out used to be a floor. How I figured it out was I went over to a place in the wall that had some boards nailed across it and saw the ground.
I don’t mean I looked down from the window and saw the ground. I mean as I looked out the window the ground was right there. Once my brain finally added up what I was seeing I realized we were in a basement. Which would explain why there was a hole boarded over in the ceiling … its where there used to be stairs. I walked over to the door and thought about going out to look around, but Chay had asked me to stay in and not let the fire go out. Plus, the door itself was cold. Just getting away from the fireplace was cold.
I figured out that Chay had us camping in an abandoned basement. I started cleaning an area so that Bam-Bam could move around without getting filthy, but I kept on cleaning and all the dirt, dust, and cobwebs are now piled up in the far corner. I set up our camp so that Chay wouldn’t have to … need to start doing more to share the workload. I don’t know how long we will be here but Chay definitely meant to reach this place so it might be for a couple of days.
I spent some time rearranging all the stuff in the tubs and I’m pretty sure that I can leave one here. No need to carry useless weight. And that’s when I found this journal and discovered having time to think meant I had time to get bored and need something constructive to do to hold off the fact I was getting worried.
Chay has been gone a long time. Not as long as that time with the forest rangers but long enough. What if he is hurt? He doesn’t even have his backpack with him. How do I find him? I gotta think of something else to do now that I’ve written out as much as I can stand to. Even Bam-Bam has run out of energy and crawled in the tent and went to sleep. I’d crawl in after him except I’m waiting for Chay. I …
There’s noise outside. Chay must be back.
Jeepcats27
Senior Member
Thank you for bringing this chapter over!
CHAPTER 40 - 1
Been a few days and what a few days it has been. So I don’t get it scrambled for you Bam-Bam better to start where I left off, though that doesn’t make it much better.
There was noise outside. I put the journal down and when the door rattled I got up and started walking over thinking it was Chay. Only suddenly the door slammed open and some guy was filling the opening and cussing long and hard.
“Another one! Another one!! Isn’t it bad enough you worthless shits have wrecked the town?! Cost me my job?!! Well you sure as hell are NOT going to set up camp on our land! Get your crap and get gone you waste of skin!!”
I tried to stop him when he grabbed the tent and started dragging it towards the door. “Stop! Stop!! We’ll leave just stop!!!”
He doesn’t stop and while there isn’t much of me I jumped on him and started fighting like a girl. [In case you haven’t figured that out Bam-Bam that means your momma was fighting as dirty and mean as I could manage.] He finally yanks me off and slams me into the wall but then he stops as he hears Bam-Bam shrieking. I, on the other hand, didn’t bother to stop to try and figure out the look on his face but reach in and pull my son out and to me and try and take off. I didn’t get far because he wasn’t fighting fair either. He grabs me by the hair and starts dragging us out through the door and into the cold air.
I’m used to pain but no one likes having their hair used as hand-held device. I try and get him to let go and tell him, “We’ll leave just stop! Let us get our stuff!!”
“F@#$ no! You probably stole it anyway! Go on! Get out of here you vagrant bitch!! I’m done putting up with watching you sad sacks of waste flop anywhere you please! Ain’t taking it no more!”
He pushes me and then I feel his boot kick me in the butt and I’m going down. The only way to protect Bam-Bam was to twist as I’m going down and land on my back, but whatever I landed on knocked the wind out of me and I saw stars. I also saw someone barreling into the guy that was tossing us off.
I’m trying to remember how to breathe and get up at the same time. I hear a woman yelling, “Oh Lord! Dirk! Tanner! Get your brother!!!”
Two guys are dragging Chay and the original guy apart. Then the woman comes towards me and I finally get a lung full of air and I shriek. Chay tosses the guy that has him trying to pin his arms and runs to me and the woman stops in her tracks.
“Let’s just go,” I beg. “Let them have it.” My heart felt like it was going to exit my chest through my throat. To the woman I said, “Please, just let us have our stuff and we’ll leave. Please …”
“No!” Chay snaps. “Mine!” He looks at the others and snarls at them. Scary snarls. He went from sheep dog to guard dog to attack dog.
I just knew there was going to be trouble and I was terrified they were going to call the cops. “Please Chay. Please. They’ll just call the law and … and … please let’s just go. We can find someplace else. Please.”
He picks me and Bam-Bam up and backs towards the door. “Go away! Go! Ruined it!”
Then the woman starts to come towards him and surprises me by saying, “Chayton Remington Trahern you put that poor girl down right now.”
Chay and I both say NO! at the same time, me clawing to hold onto his coat and his arms tightening around me. The woman blinked and then looked at me closely. One of the guys says, “Mom?”
“Stay where you are Tanner and keep your brothers over there too. Cory has obviously done something regrettable.” She looks at Chay and asks, “Honey is this the girl you’ve been so anxious about, said you had to find?”
“Go away Lauralee.”
She shook her head like he was talking crazy, only to me she was the one being crazy. Then she confirmed it by saying, “In your dreams little brother. You might be able to push the others around, but I guarantee I’ll thump you in the head and scramble what brains you still lay claim to if you try that with me. You understand?”
Then I’m wondering if I’m the one that is crazy because I thought I heard her call Chay her brother, her little brother, and my confusion only increases exponentially as I’m trying to figure out what to believe and what not. But it’s hard. It’s cold, so cold and then a strong gust of wind blows and tries to steal Bam-Bam’s breath and he whimpers. Chay growls and then he rushes down the stairs to the door and carries us over to the fire. He gently sets us down and then reaches over and grabs the blanket that the tent had been setting on and uses it to wrap Bam-Bam and I up. I look up and I see the woman and a fourth man coming through the door. I start trying to get untangled but Chay keeps gently but firmly re-wrapping us in the blanket.
“S’okay. Shhhhh. Look at me. S’okay. Mine. This place. Bams and you. Mine. Stay here. S’okay.”
I’m scared and getting more confused and my chest starts to hurt and some of that must have shown on my face because the woman was suddenly all business.
“Mark! Get the boys … scratch that … get Tanner and Dirk to start bringing in Chayton’s stuff starting with the bed and mattress. I don’t want Cory near this mess he’s created. And be quick about it. Chayton, hold her and calm her down while I get my bag.”
I’m shaking and shaking and the adrenaline dump from the scare and then trying to “save” Bam-Bam is only making me feel sicker.
“S’okay. S’okay. Shhhh. Safe now. S’okay.”
That’s all I remember for a little bit. Next thing I remember are hearing the voices of a couple of girls a few years younger than me.
“Oh my gosh, they’re still going at it up there.”
“I know. Momma and Aunt Laura might have the last say this time.”
“But … you don’t think … Daddy won’t let them send off Cory will he? He wouldn’t let anyone send Uncle Chayton off and he was lots worse.”
“Uncle Chayton was messed up from the war. Cory is messed up ‘cause they won’t let him go to war.”
“That makes no sense. Cory isn’t bad, not really. Why can’t he stay away from that stuff? On the other hand, I’m thinking maybe Momma is right and men are three-quarters crazy.”
“Better not let her hear you say that. She don’t even want us thinking about men yet, even if it is to think about them being crazy.”
The other girl snorted. “I’d like to know how we’re not supposed to considering how many are always underfoot.”
“Now you sound like Aunt Laura.”
“Well maybe she’s right. At least maybe about the ones around here.” She stopped talking just enough to get distracted by a new subject. “What’s that big scar on that girls face from? You think she was a soldier like Uncle Chayton? You think that’s where they met? ‘Cause they ain’t telling us squat.”
“Uh uh. She’s too young … and she … um … You know Baily Jackson?”
“The girl in your class?”
“Yeah. Well she was born with a hair lip and she’s kinda got a scar like that.”
“She don’t have a scar this long.”
“I know but I heard Uncle Chayton telling Aunt Laura that this girl was born with a … a … I can’t remember what Aunt Laura called it, some scientific word. Anyway she was born the same way Baily was only it was her whole face.”
“Ew.”
“Shhhhh. Don’t get stupid will you, or they’ll make us sit in the truck.”
“Maybe we should. For sure we’d be able to hear what they’re saying better. Plus maybe Uncle Chayton would let us hold the baby. He’s cute … and he likes green beans.”
“Gosh does he. He ate just about the whole can and then …” she snickered like she couldn’t help it. “Did you hear Uncle Chayton honk when the baby grabbed his nose. And then he quacked like a duck and gave the baby that funny blanket thing.”
“I know. Oh … my … goodness. I thought Aunt Tilly was gonna have to go change herself she was laughing so hard.”
The other girl giggled guiltily and whispered, “You better not say that where she can hear you. Just ‘cause Aunt Tilly is old don’t mean she still ain’t got an arm like Daddy when she wants to.”
“Do I look like I’m crazy?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
I finally realize I’m not dreaming but I’m still super confused. All I know for sure is that, if the two girls can be believed, Chay has Bam-Bam but something is going on someplace where they are … and I’m not … and I realized I wasn’t getting any less confused just lying there in a stupor. I must have done something to draw their attention because one says, “I’m gonna go tell ‘em. Don’t let her get out of bed.”
I try and sit up but keep having to stop because my brain can’t unscramble the difference between what was and what is.
I’m in a bed … a real one with a real mattress and not just a thin cot like I’d been sleeping on since forever. And it is all made up nice like Momma used to keep the beds. I’m inside the sleeping bag but over the top of that is a quilt that has geometric shapes done up in repeating squares and there are big, fluffy pillows to lay on too. The room the bed was in was the basement but there is now stuff piled all over the place making it feel a lot smaller than the cavern I’d originally thought it. I’m not in any of the clothes that I’d made over from the rag bag but in a flannel nightgown.
I hear fast approaching steps and see Chay rush in and over to me. “S’okay. S’okay. Safe.”
I kept wanting to say something but I didn’t know where to begin. Instead I took Bam-Bam who was reaching for me and making the sign for sleep. I say, “He’s tired.”
“Uh … look.”
He goes around to the shadowed side of the room and then rolls something into view. It’s a baby bed.
“Sleep here while you eat.”
I’m still trying to figure out if I’m awake or asleep when an older woman walks to the end of the bed I’m in making me jump. “S’okay,” Chay whispers to me as he lays Bam-Bam down.
Then he makes a sour face at the woman and tells her, “Go.”
She gives him a face I wouldn’t want to see on my mother’s and tells him, “Boy I don’t know who you think you are lately but you better watch your tone with me or injuries or no injuries I’ll swat you one you won’t soon forget. Now stop your hovering and get that girl something to wear as a bed jacket before she catches a chill. And ask your sister to bring down that thermos of soup Mark’s wife brought with her. I swun boy, you act like you left your brain over in them foreign parts.”
Chay was getting the look he used to get at The Farm when there were too many people so I said, “Please don’t talk to him like that. Chay is just a sheep dog and protective.”
The older woman kinda looks me over and says, “Hmmm. Well he is that I grant you but there’s no need for all the growling he’s been doing lately. We’re all family here after all. Sugar, you got any family you want to let know you’re still in the land of the livin’?”
I look at Chay and he just sighs. “Like Chief’s wife … easier to just answer.”
I turned to look at the old lady when she asked, “What’s he talking about?”
“The man who was the Chief of our training program had a wife and she could be … persistent … when she wanted something from you.”
The old woman snorted and flapped at hand at Chay and said, “Get goin’. I ain’t gonna eat the girl for Heaven’s sake.”
Chapter 40 - 2
Chay looked at me from behind the woman’s back and rolled his eyes and winked at me, something he’d never done before.
“Now then, finally got him out from under foot. We don’t have long. You tell me if my nephew … if he …”
Figuring out she was asking if Chay had been some version of improper I explained, “Chay is my friend. We share Bam-Bam because … because … it looks like maybe that’s the way it is supposed to be. We … we just … look it’s complicated and there’s no way to tell it quickly but some of it has to do with Chay’s past and some of it has to do with mine. At the same time its neither; we just have figured out how to get through life and help Bam-Bam at the same time.”
“Mmm hmmm, complicated sounds like the right word for it. But Child, you still look some confused. Are you all right Honey? Lauralee done looked you over but she ain’t saying much just yet.”
“Um … yes Ma’am. I guess it’s … I didn’t know Chay had family. It’s … one of the things we never talked about.”
“No?”
“No ma’am,” I said though I could see she seemed a little hurt by my words. I tried to dig out of that hole and told her, “I don’t have any … family I mean. So maybe … um … it’s like this, where we were all our time and energy had to be spent on getting better so we could get work and not be a burden on society. And they were sticky about something they called fraternization, and even though we weren’t doing that, proving we weren’t sometimes got in the way of other things, like talking about personal stuff. We … our crew … we didn’t really talk about family and things like that, or at least not much … I kinda got the feeling that it upset them to think about it much. It was no secret that I didn’t have any and one of our crew mates – Cooper – he had seven older sisters. Beyond that we didn’t really … some things hurt is all. Chay probably was trying to be nice by not mentioning that he has … so much.”
“Well that’s a nice excuse but the truth is Honey things were left in a mess when my brother died when Chayton was a boy. Things haven’t been much less than a mess just ‘cause he’s grown up. Messes seem to follow that boy around in life, but I’ll allow as not all of them are his fault. Mark and Lauralee and the others took turns raisin’ him but him being so much younger than them and the circumstances … well I don’t guess I’m surprised he didn’t mention he had any family. But he does. And Mark has finally grown and gotten over it to the point that he wants all the family to stick together which might be hard for Chayton to believe for a bit yet. Maybe you can help us with that and give Chayton a reason to stop wandering around all over the place looking for the good Lord only knows what.”
I was thinking that was not anything I was going to touch until Chay had his say and didn’t give her any encouragement one way or the other. I didn’t have to make any conversation because Chay came back looking harried followed by the man and two other women.
The woman I hadn’t seen before said, “Chayton? Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
He sighed then pointed to them and said, “Doe, family. Family, Doe.”
The looks on his face and theirs I had a hard time not laughing. Instead I said, “Let me guess. You’re Mark. You’re Lauralee. And you must be the girls’ mother. Um … how do you do? My name is Doe McCormick and my son’s name is Blake though we call him Bam-Bam. In case Chay didn’t say, we met at this job training place called The Farm. He and two men named Dallas and Cooper were my crewmates and they helped me to learn stuff so I could stand on my own two feet and not be a burden.” Then it all hit me again and I added quietly. “But … but lately I guess I haven’t been doing a very good job.”
Chay was just there in my face and he said, “S’okay. Good Momma. Held on and got word so I could come find you. Now eat. And then rest. Time for other later.”
“But your fam …”
“Eat. Rest. Now.”
It was Lauralee who said, “Chayton’s right Honey. We can do the howdeedo’s another time. I need to get home and make sure my own sons haven’t decided to duct tape their brother up in the silo and leave him there until he sobers up. Might sound good right now but probably not the most constructive thing long term. Mark? Allison? Aunt Tilly? And we better be getting’ the girls home. School day tomorrow.”
The woman Allison said, “I’m not sure this is the least proper for them not to have a chaperone of some type. What will people say?”
The man named Mark harrumphed and said, “We can talk about that later. Gettin’ late and another storm is on the way. Dadburn this weather anyway.” The he hustled the others out of the room and Chay closed the door, put a bar on it, and leaned against it like he was afraid they might want to come back in the next few minutes.
He looked at me and I couldn’t help it. I snickered. Then giggled. Then laughed only there were some tears in there I tried to hide. “Are you sure this is real? Or … or did I get carted off in one of those body bags and …”
He came over and grabbed my shoulders. “S’okay. Safe.”
“I know I’m safe. You’re here. Just everything is so … so … surreal.”
At my words the tension seemed to leave him. “Real. Too crazy not to be. Now eat. Then rest.”
“Have you eaten?”
It turns out there was enough food to share since Bam-Bam had already eaten. I wanted to move off of the bed but he said, “Warmer here. Set table up tomorrow.”
“Uh … do I owe for the food for …” Chay’s look told me to pick another line of questioning so instead I asked, “Where did all of this stuff come from?”
“Shed. Stored there when … when Cecile wouldn’t live here. S’okay?”
“It’s your stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“Then as long as you don’t mind us using it …”
“Don’t mind. You and Bams stay here. With me.” I didn’t answer right away. “Don’t want to?”
“It’s not that. Staying with you would be easy. But that means I just went from being society’s burden to being your burden … or something like that I guess. Your family isn’t going to like that. I was supposed to get training and get a job and … and be the Mom.”
“Are the Mom. Mom means more than a job. And not a burden.” He had to stop and clear his throat and take a drink. He shook his head. “Work things out but not all in one day. Just got here. Need … need to rest. Rest feet and mind. Mark will keep others away. For little while.”
“Are they really your brother and sisters?”
“Mark and Lauralee yes. Allison Mark’s wife. There’s others. They’ll be around, but not until they see what Mark says. He’s oldest next to Lauralee.”
“And … um … the others that were here?”
“Lauralee’s sons. Tanner and Dirk okay. Cory is dumbass. Drinks. Dopes. Blames others for problems. Problem is he’s knothead. Hurt you?”
“I didn’t know who he was. I thought it was like the times I had to run from the road gangs.”
“Not ask that. Did he hurt you?”
I saw what he meant but shook my head. “No. Not really. I don’t know why my chest hurt. I didn’t fall on it.”
He put his spoon down and then took my hand. “Need be careful. Lauralee works clinic … nurse … PA. Understand?”
“Your sister is a physician’s assistant? In a clinic?”
“Yeah.”
A picture of the last time I’d seen Nurse Gilroy flashed painfully through my mind and it took me a moment to refocus. “Okay. But what do I need to be careful of? Will she turn Bam-Bam and I in?”
“No! Mine!” At my startled look he looked a little embarrassed but tightened his hand on mine then said, “Lauralee said … you … careful. Too little food. Too much walking. Too much cold. Bodyfat low. Need to build up. Stay with me. You and Bams stay with me.”
“You sure? I … I don’t have … a lot … I mean … I … I …”
“Shhh. S’okay. Too much lots of things. Time to rest. Regroup. Figure it out.”
My pride started kicking in. “Yes. We’ll stay. On one condition. You let me help. With something … anything … just … I need to.”
He nodded but told me again it was time to eat and then rest. I looked over at Bam-Bam and he looked completely satisfied. And I looked at Chay and he looked like things were as they should be. But when I looked at things all I felt was confusion.
The soup was warm, thick, and rich. I was feeling sleepy even before I finished it. But it was my turn to do the dishes. Chay had just gone outside to gather more wood so I was going to take care of things before he could go all Papa Bear. I ran into my first problem when I couldn’t find our water. I found it buried under some stuff and was digging it out when Chay came back in.
“Thirsty?”
“A little. But I need to do the dishes.”
He started to say something and I just looked at him. He snorted and helped me to not only get to the water but to dig out the rest of our stuff.
“Don’t need do. Need rest.”
“We both need to rest. So sooner it is finished the sooner it happens. Um … Chay?” He glanced my way. “I’m … grateful. But … this?” I asked pointing to the nightgown. “Um …”
He came over to me and said quietly, “Safe. Won’t hurt you.”
“I know that. But … I’m a mess. I … I mean this …”
“S’okay. Have lots time now.” He glanced at the bed and asked, “Still okay?”
“Uh … like in the tent?” He nodded. I thought about it and then nodded.
“Safe. Bams and you safe. Here. With me.”
“I know. Mostly. But if I don’t know it’s not because of you but because of … of before. And because I worry about later. But right here, right now, I know it’s okay.”
He nodded slowly. “Understand. And … I … I need you and Bams … here … now ... and later. Need it. Want it that way. But more can wait. Both our minds need to rest. Other things to think of first.”
And I knew I could trust him. Chay – like some flipping white night – had shown up and rescued us. Maybe he has his own reasons, but they aren’t bad reasons, and it is us he says he needs and wants. Sure, it is a little crazy, but it is also totally something that I can see him doing though I’m still having trouble believing he did it for Bam-Bam and me. Dad and Mom picked me and now Chay is picking Bam-Bam and I. That’s something that is going to take some getting used to.
He could have gone on to someone else, I’m sure there are plenty of women with little kids out there that would have jumped at the chance to have some guy do that for them. I wouldn’t have held it against him if that’s the path he took in life. I won’t blame him this time if that’s the way it goes. But so long as it is Bam-Bam and I that he needs I want to do something to prove that I won’t just lay around and take advantage of him. Not just want to but need to. In the same way he needs us here, I need to be more than just a dolly, I need to be real. Maybe that’s pride or something but that’s how I feel. But Chay is smart enough to know that we aren’t going to figure this out in a day or two and that things have been so crazy for so long we need quiet so we can get our heads on straight.
I think he also understands that while I’m willing to deal with the new I am facing, I still need some of the old too. After we’d both cleaned up for the night – there was a real bathroom behind a door I hadn’t seen – he told me to get back in the bed then he picked Bam-Bam up and handed him to me. He turned down his lantern and then came to the other side of the bed and asked once again, “S’okay?”
I laid down and then scooted to the center of the bed and said, “Yeah.”
“Good.”
The bed was big, bigger than any I’d ever slept on, but the three of us still slept close together. I had to wake up once in the night to comfort feed Bam-Bam who suddenly decided he wasn’t sure about finding himself someplace new. It didn’t take long to get him back to sleep and when I tried to settle back into sleep I felt Chay’s arm wrap around both of us.
“Be okay. Warm enough?”
“Mmm hmm.”
Instead of moving his arm like he normally did after checking on us he left it there and I didn’t mind. Neither did Bam-Bam. I think that is the first good night’s sleep I’d had in longer than I wanted to remember.
Chay looked at me from behind the woman’s back and rolled his eyes and winked at me, something he’d never done before.
“Now then, finally got him out from under foot. We don’t have long. You tell me if my nephew … if he …”
Figuring out she was asking if Chay had been some version of improper I explained, “Chay is my friend. We share Bam-Bam because … because … it looks like maybe that’s the way it is supposed to be. We … we just … look it’s complicated and there’s no way to tell it quickly but some of it has to do with Chay’s past and some of it has to do with mine. At the same time its neither; we just have figured out how to get through life and help Bam-Bam at the same time.”
“Mmm hmmm, complicated sounds like the right word for it. But Child, you still look some confused. Are you all right Honey? Lauralee done looked you over but she ain’t saying much just yet.”
“Um … yes Ma’am. I guess it’s … I didn’t know Chay had family. It’s … one of the things we never talked about.”
“No?”
“No ma’am,” I said though I could see she seemed a little hurt by my words. I tried to dig out of that hole and told her, “I don’t have any … family I mean. So maybe … um … it’s like this, where we were all our time and energy had to be spent on getting better so we could get work and not be a burden on society. And they were sticky about something they called fraternization, and even though we weren’t doing that, proving we weren’t sometimes got in the way of other things, like talking about personal stuff. We … our crew … we didn’t really talk about family and things like that, or at least not much … I kinda got the feeling that it upset them to think about it much. It was no secret that I didn’t have any and one of our crew mates – Cooper – he had seven older sisters. Beyond that we didn’t really … some things hurt is all. Chay probably was trying to be nice by not mentioning that he has … so much.”
“Well that’s a nice excuse but the truth is Honey things were left in a mess when my brother died when Chayton was a boy. Things haven’t been much less than a mess just ‘cause he’s grown up. Messes seem to follow that boy around in life, but I’ll allow as not all of them are his fault. Mark and Lauralee and the others took turns raisin’ him but him being so much younger than them and the circumstances … well I don’t guess I’m surprised he didn’t mention he had any family. But he does. And Mark has finally grown and gotten over it to the point that he wants all the family to stick together which might be hard for Chayton to believe for a bit yet. Maybe you can help us with that and give Chayton a reason to stop wandering around all over the place looking for the good Lord only knows what.”
I was thinking that was not anything I was going to touch until Chay had his say and didn’t give her any encouragement one way or the other. I didn’t have to make any conversation because Chay came back looking harried followed by the man and two other women.
The woman I hadn’t seen before said, “Chayton? Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
He sighed then pointed to them and said, “Doe, family. Family, Doe.”
The looks on his face and theirs I had a hard time not laughing. Instead I said, “Let me guess. You’re Mark. You’re Lauralee. And you must be the girls’ mother. Um … how do you do? My name is Doe McCormick and my son’s name is Blake though we call him Bam-Bam. In case Chay didn’t say, we met at this job training place called The Farm. He and two men named Dallas and Cooper were my crewmates and they helped me to learn stuff so I could stand on my own two feet and not be a burden.” Then it all hit me again and I added quietly. “But … but lately I guess I haven’t been doing a very good job.”
Chay was just there in my face and he said, “S’okay. Good Momma. Held on and got word so I could come find you. Now eat. And then rest. Time for other later.”
“But your fam …”
“Eat. Rest. Now.”
It was Lauralee who said, “Chayton’s right Honey. We can do the howdeedo’s another time. I need to get home and make sure my own sons haven’t decided to duct tape their brother up in the silo and leave him there until he sobers up. Might sound good right now but probably not the most constructive thing long term. Mark? Allison? Aunt Tilly? And we better be getting’ the girls home. School day tomorrow.”
The woman Allison said, “I’m not sure this is the least proper for them not to have a chaperone of some type. What will people say?”
The man named Mark harrumphed and said, “We can talk about that later. Gettin’ late and another storm is on the way. Dadburn this weather anyway.” The he hustled the others out of the room and Chay closed the door, put a bar on it, and leaned against it like he was afraid they might want to come back in the next few minutes.
He looked at me and I couldn’t help it. I snickered. Then giggled. Then laughed only there were some tears in there I tried to hide. “Are you sure this is real? Or … or did I get carted off in one of those body bags and …”
He came over and grabbed my shoulders. “S’okay. Safe.”
“I know I’m safe. You’re here. Just everything is so … so … surreal.”
At my words the tension seemed to leave him. “Real. Too crazy not to be. Now eat. Then rest.”
“Have you eaten?”
It turns out there was enough food to share since Bam-Bam had already eaten. I wanted to move off of the bed but he said, “Warmer here. Set table up tomorrow.”
“Uh … do I owe for the food for …” Chay’s look told me to pick another line of questioning so instead I asked, “Where did all of this stuff come from?”
“Shed. Stored there when … when Cecile wouldn’t live here. S’okay?”
“It’s your stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“Then as long as you don’t mind us using it …”
“Don’t mind. You and Bams stay here. With me.” I didn’t answer right away. “Don’t want to?”
“It’s not that. Staying with you would be easy. But that means I just went from being society’s burden to being your burden … or something like that I guess. Your family isn’t going to like that. I was supposed to get training and get a job and … and be the Mom.”
“Are the Mom. Mom means more than a job. And not a burden.” He had to stop and clear his throat and take a drink. He shook his head. “Work things out but not all in one day. Just got here. Need … need to rest. Rest feet and mind. Mark will keep others away. For little while.”
“Are they really your brother and sisters?”
“Mark and Lauralee yes. Allison Mark’s wife. There’s others. They’ll be around, but not until they see what Mark says. He’s oldest next to Lauralee.”
“And … um … the others that were here?”
“Lauralee’s sons. Tanner and Dirk okay. Cory is dumbass. Drinks. Dopes. Blames others for problems. Problem is he’s knothead. Hurt you?”
“I didn’t know who he was. I thought it was like the times I had to run from the road gangs.”
“Not ask that. Did he hurt you?”
I saw what he meant but shook my head. “No. Not really. I don’t know why my chest hurt. I didn’t fall on it.”
He put his spoon down and then took my hand. “Need be careful. Lauralee works clinic … nurse … PA. Understand?”
“Your sister is a physician’s assistant? In a clinic?”
“Yeah.”
A picture of the last time I’d seen Nurse Gilroy flashed painfully through my mind and it took me a moment to refocus. “Okay. But what do I need to be careful of? Will she turn Bam-Bam and I in?”
“No! Mine!” At my startled look he looked a little embarrassed but tightened his hand on mine then said, “Lauralee said … you … careful. Too little food. Too much walking. Too much cold. Bodyfat low. Need to build up. Stay with me. You and Bams stay with me.”
“You sure? I … I don’t have … a lot … I mean … I … I …”
“Shhh. S’okay. Too much lots of things. Time to rest. Regroup. Figure it out.”
My pride started kicking in. “Yes. We’ll stay. On one condition. You let me help. With something … anything … just … I need to.”
He nodded but told me again it was time to eat and then rest. I looked over at Bam-Bam and he looked completely satisfied. And I looked at Chay and he looked like things were as they should be. But when I looked at things all I felt was confusion.
The soup was warm, thick, and rich. I was feeling sleepy even before I finished it. But it was my turn to do the dishes. Chay had just gone outside to gather more wood so I was going to take care of things before he could go all Papa Bear. I ran into my first problem when I couldn’t find our water. I found it buried under some stuff and was digging it out when Chay came back in.
“Thirsty?”
“A little. But I need to do the dishes.”
He started to say something and I just looked at him. He snorted and helped me to not only get to the water but to dig out the rest of our stuff.
“Don’t need do. Need rest.”
“We both need to rest. So sooner it is finished the sooner it happens. Um … Chay?” He glanced my way. “I’m … grateful. But … this?” I asked pointing to the nightgown. “Um …”
He came over to me and said quietly, “Safe. Won’t hurt you.”
“I know that. But … I’m a mess. I … I mean this …”
“S’okay. Have lots time now.” He glanced at the bed and asked, “Still okay?”
“Uh … like in the tent?” He nodded. I thought about it and then nodded.
“Safe. Bams and you safe. Here. With me.”
“I know. Mostly. But if I don’t know it’s not because of you but because of … of before. And because I worry about later. But right here, right now, I know it’s okay.”
He nodded slowly. “Understand. And … I … I need you and Bams … here … now ... and later. Need it. Want it that way. But more can wait. Both our minds need to rest. Other things to think of first.”
And I knew I could trust him. Chay – like some flipping white night – had shown up and rescued us. Maybe he has his own reasons, but they aren’t bad reasons, and it is us he says he needs and wants. Sure, it is a little crazy, but it is also totally something that I can see him doing though I’m still having trouble believing he did it for Bam-Bam and me. Dad and Mom picked me and now Chay is picking Bam-Bam and I. That’s something that is going to take some getting used to.
He could have gone on to someone else, I’m sure there are plenty of women with little kids out there that would have jumped at the chance to have some guy do that for them. I wouldn’t have held it against him if that’s the path he took in life. I won’t blame him this time if that’s the way it goes. But so long as it is Bam-Bam and I that he needs I want to do something to prove that I won’t just lay around and take advantage of him. Not just want to but need to. In the same way he needs us here, I need to be more than just a dolly, I need to be real. Maybe that’s pride or something but that’s how I feel. But Chay is smart enough to know that we aren’t going to figure this out in a day or two and that things have been so crazy for so long we need quiet so we can get our heads on straight.
I think he also understands that while I’m willing to deal with the new I am facing, I still need some of the old too. After we’d both cleaned up for the night – there was a real bathroom behind a door I hadn’t seen – he told me to get back in the bed then he picked Bam-Bam up and handed him to me. He turned down his lantern and then came to the other side of the bed and asked once again, “S’okay?”
I laid down and then scooted to the center of the bed and said, “Yeah.”
“Good.”
The bed was big, bigger than any I’d ever slept on, but the three of us still slept close together. I had to wake up once in the night to comfort feed Bam-Bam who suddenly decided he wasn’t sure about finding himself someplace new. It didn’t take long to get him back to sleep and when I tried to settle back into sleep I felt Chay’s arm wrap around both of us.
“Be okay. Warm enough?”
“Mmm hmm.”
Instead of moving his arm like he normally did after checking on us he left it there and I didn’t mind. Neither did Bam-Bam. I think that is the first good night’s sleep I’d had in longer than I wanted to remember.
CHAPTER 41
I don’t know if it was finally getting some place I could stop or exactly what but the kind of sleeping I did the next couple of days was the kind I remember doing when I would be hospitalized while recovering from whatever the doctors had felt needed doing. Momma always told me it was because my body was healing and to just let it, but I didn’t do it when Bam Bam was born and there were parts of me that sure needed healing after that.
No, I think I slept because I didn’t have enough to put into healing. I know the cold I was fighting off sure zapped my strength.
“Have to get up,” I sighed to myself one morning sometime later.
“Why?”
I jumped a bit, for some reason still surprised to find him over on the other side of the bed.
“Because.”
“Cold out. Stay in bed. Sleep.”
“Chay …”
“Nothing we can do for now. Later enough time.”
“I need to forage.”
“Not today. Got supplies. Later.”
And I let him have his way because he was right. Even with the fireplace the cold pressed in from the dark corners of the room. But later did come the next day. But only a little bit. There was a pile of Chay’s stuff that needed to be dealt with. There was a table and chairs. They looked old but real nice. The cushions on them were more spring than stuffing but I knew, with the right scraps, I could fix them … and even fix the pretty embroidered covers too. There were sheets that needed mending. Chay had a couple of boxes of clothes and they weren’t bad, but they needed a good wash and mending in a few places that I could do just sitting.
During breaks in the storm Chay would be outside. I could hear him chopping wood if I was near the window or the door but further in I couldn’t hear a thing. It was so quiet, especially when Bam Bam started a power nap, that I’d start imagining all sorts of things and then would have to go over to the window or door and … and then I’d be able to settle back to whatever I was trying to do. Mostly it is what Mom would have called “piddling around” meaning it was a lot of little stuff that put all together wouldn’t necessarily make big stuff. Mostly I seemed to be working in circles and not really accomplishing much. I got myself so tired that I finally just pulled a chair beneath the window and sat to mend some of the socks I found in one of the boxes.
The sound of the chopping stopped and I could hear voices. There were two men that I heard plus Chay saying something. Then I heard a female voice say something that didn’t sit too well with Chay because he said something most would consider rude. That set the female to squawking but made the two men laugh. I was trying to figure out what that meant when I realized what I heard wasn’t wind but some kind of motor off in the distance. But after a bit of quiet I heard the motor sound growing distant and the real wind starting to pick up again.
I was just starting to get anxious when the door banged open and Chay came in with a large box in his arms that he sat down in disgust. Then he spotted me and I could tell he was making an effort to adjust his attitude. “Too cold for you there. Should be by the fire with Bams. Or in bed resting.” I sighed and looked away trying to dig myself out from under the blanket I’d pulled over my legs. He came over and bent down, “Shh, s’okay. Sit where want.”
“It’s … not that.” Chay is good at waiting me out. “I … I can hear you better here. When you’re outside.”
“Er … scared?”
“No. Uh … not really. Just … just …”
“S’okay,” he said putting a hand over mind where I was all but mangling the sock I had just finished mending. “Outside. Not gone.”
I sighed. “I know that. In my head. Can’t seem to get the rest of me to … sometimes … this is stupid. I know you are just outside. I don’t know why I’m acting like this.”
“Getting used to quiet.”
“I like the quiet. Better than listening to a lot of drama. But …”
“But?”
“It’s the quiet without you in it. I know you’re there but … oh this is ridiculous.”
“Not.” It looked like he was struggling to say something, not getting the words out but the words themselves. “Reaction.”
“Huh?”
“You. Reaction. Nerves. Lots of … rough … since Farm. Been alone. No crew. No chief. Doing all on own. Take time to get head … and heart … believe no more alone. Us. Crew. Together.”
I’ve never been a touchy-feely person. With Mom and Dad it was okay but it was slow and careful most of the time because of my surgeries and stuff. But at that moment I threw myself at Chay and couldn’t stop shaking. “Shhhh. S’okay. Shhhh,” he said after getting over his surprise.
“I’m not a baby. I’m the mom. But … but thanks. Everything is just spinning and spinning. But … not where you are. You’re like where I hid during the hurricane. Like being there when I didn’t think I could go on one more step. For Bam Bam … for … for … for …”
“For you too. Same you … idea of you … made me strong … made not lose it. Both need time to believe … in stuff.”
Finally I stopped shaking but my chest was hurting again and it felt like all my oomph had drained away. I remember nodding and having a hard time holding my eyes open but that was it for a little while.
A couple of hours later I hear Bam Bam making this funny noise and I couldn’t swear to it but I thought Chay was making a weird animal sound instead of honking or quacking on demand like usual. I just barely managed to crack an eye open and then surprise had both eyes wide open and me struggling into a sitting position. Chay was on the floor on all fours and Bam Bam was riding on him. The noise was Chay quietly “neighing” and “bucking” while Bam Bam kicked his heels into Chay’s side.
“Uh oh. Noise woke?”
Chay looked at relaxed and as happy as I’d ever seen him and all I could do was shake my head then cover my mouth trying not to laugh. It was obvious he’d been feeding Bam Bam at some point because there were bits of green beans and carrots stuck in the hair near Chay’s ears.
“Eh. S’okay?”
“Yes,” I said with a smile that set him to smiling.
But then I remembered. “Did I hear … I mean were there people out there with you? Earlier I mean?”
I could tell that the subject didn’t exactly make him happy then he shrugged. “Allison have big mouth. Told others. Ev and Wallace come with Neesylyn. Put fat noses where don’t belong. Can take care of you and Bams. Can do it. Will do it.”
“Um … we’re a team right?”
He opened his mouth to grump but then closed it slowly and instead said softly. “Crew. Me, you, Bams. Me … Chief. You … er … “
“Supplies and logistics.”
He nodded. “Sure … supplies, logistics. Bam our sheep. Is good?”
“Is good,” I told him. And it was … but we’d work on some of it later when I could pull more of my own weight. But the frown was leaving his face, especially when I reached over and pulled a bit of green bean out of his hair.
I took Bam Bam and was cleaning him up while Chay used a camp towel to clean the rest of the junk out of his hair. While he did that he explained, “Ev and Wallace brothers. Under Mark and Lauralee. Neesylyn cousin. Pain in the neck. Think knows everything about everything. Uncle Vernon’s daughter. He at least stayed in truck and kept Aunt Tilly out of hair.”
“She was out there?”
“In truck. Giving orders.” He rolled his eyes to a corner of the room where we’d stacked stuff until we could figure out best where to put it. There was lots more stuff than there had been just that morning.”
He hunched his shoulders. “Mother’s family heard. Wanted make a scene. Sent her stuff. Why Mark not around. Said didn’t want it ‘cause …” I could tell he was getting upset.
“Um … I’m … er … Why would your brothers and family send their mother’s stuff and even if they did … why would that cause a scene?”
Chay sighed and rubbed his head like it hurt. “Need tell. Just don’t leave cause … just don’t leave.”
“Chay you know my story, yours can’t be worse.”
“Not mean that. Just … let tell.”
CHAPTER 42
Chay had to go chop wood after he finished. The story wasn’t horrible, but it must have been awful for him. Might explain a few things too, but since I hate that psychobabble crap I’m not going to explain it here.
Basically Chay’s father – Mark Trahern Sr. – was a happily married man. Then for whatever reason he became a not happily married man. Something to do with his wife starting to have empty nest syndrome and going through the change of life at the same time and blaming him for both. Along comes a younger woman – a waitress at the bar he’d started to head to on the weekends to avoid his wife who really let him know what was his fault and apparently that was everything by then. She’s saving up to go to community college and become a dental hygienist. Only suddenly college becomes a lot further off because the affair of “friends with benefits” results in her getting preggers.
Mark Sr. is trying to figure out how to do the right thing all around when wife asks for divorce. Just doesn’t want to be married anymore. Mark Sr. figures this fixes everything and it is like God is telling him which way he should jump. Hitch comes up when Chay’s mother … Reba Sue Remington … doesn’t want to get married. She’ll live with Mark Sr. so he can help with the baby that’s coming but if she decides she wants to go, she doesn’t want any ropes holding her back. Mark Sr. is fine with that – at least he was for a while – because Mark Sr.’s wife is suddenly going balky on finding that Mark Sr. isn’t going to be miserable without her and she decides to make him pay coming and going and stirs up a lot of stuff with their kids, all of them adults or close to it and a couple of them married with their own kids on the way.
Two years go by, wife making everyone as crazy and miserable as she is, Chay getting born and Mark Sr. finding he likes being a dad better than he likes being a husband, his older kids struggling to walk the line between their parents and not being allowed to have much luck at it. Then “The Wife” gets sick with a female cancer and Mark Sr. feels bad and tries to do what he can to help her only that makes Reba Sue miserable because she’d started to change her mind and want to be married after all but couldn’t be because of The Wife.
Cut to the chase and a year later Mark Sr. decides that while he might owe The Wife something, it isn’t his soul and while he still helps her, he also builds a house for Reba Sue and Chay that has no attachments or memories of his old life. Reba Sue is happy. Mark Sr. is at peace. Even the adult kids are starting to accept things. Fly in the ointment is The Wife. Then one night the house catches on fire and Mark Sr. gets Chay out but dies when he goes back in to rescue Reba Sue who fell on the stairs on the way out. Neither adult leave the house alive.
Chay gets shipped around from half-sibling to half-sibling until he is old enough to take care of himself. He meets Cecile and the rest … is just a continuation of the soap opera he grew up in. The Wife? Well when he was in middle school the cancer comes back and this time there is no remission. But she didn’t need to hang around by that point because she’d created enough misery for her kids and Chay to last a couple of lifetimes.
And while I wouldn’t say The End exactly, I would say that it explains why Chay hates drama nearly as much as I do. And it isn’t all because of the torture he experienced in foreign lands but the torture he probably got dished as he was growing up.
[Bam Bam, I sure hope that by the time you get around to reading this that Chay and I have worked out or through our beginnings so we could give you a better life than what might have happened. If not, I hope I’ve apologized bucket fulls. Bad enough there is just going to be drama in life whether you want it or not. You don’t need the people that are supposed to be taking care of you create it and make you suffer with it.]
When Chay came in I was ready. I made acorn “meat” balls using things that Chay and I had gathered on our way to this place, and a few things that were left over from his other supplies. I thought Chay’s head was going to spin on his neck when he first saw them … and smelled them. They were good if I do say so. And just like on trails with Dallas, Cooper, and the Chief it seemed that food put Chay in a better mood.
“S’good,” he said as he ate of one the meatballs off of the stick I had cooked them on. “How? Don’t remember these.”
“A recipe I collected when I was doing research at The Farm. Had it on the Ubernet Cube. You … um … don’t mind that I used your supplies?”
“Ours.”
“Huh?”
“Ours. Supplies ours.”
“So you don’t mind?”
“No. S’good. No waste. Acorn flour?”
“Yeah. The stuff we made as we walked here. I didn’t want to risk it going sour and … you’ve been working hard. You need to eat.”
“You too.” He looked over at Bam Bam who was eating his share … at least he was eating what wasn’t trying to go up his nose. “Bams likes.”
“I think he would eat most anything that didn’t try to get away. And he’d give it a good shot at chasing it down if it did try.”
That made Chay grin for real. “Good. Mean will grow.” Then he asked, “How do?”
I took that to mean he wanted to know how I had made them. The original recipe was something like four cups of ground acorns, three cups of breadcrumbs, one large red onion that had been chopped, two cloves of minced garlic, salt and pepper to taste, three teaspoons of Italian seasoning, two tablespoons of chives, one and three-quarter cup of shredded cheese, a half cup of broth, and four eggs. You mix the dry ingredients together, the wet ingredients together, then the wet and dry together to make a mess. Then you form this mess into balls. Then you bake them for thirty minutes.
Well I had to do my best with what I had and it was only about half of what the original recipe would have made. I didn’t have any fancy Italian seasoning so I left it out, but I did have some dried wild garlic that was the tail end of my own supplies that I kept to make broth with when there was nothing else. I also had some dried wild chives that I’d been saving for the same purpose. Just about everything else was out of Chay’s stuff and I knew I’d need to get busy sooner rather than later foraging to try and replace what we’d used.
Instead of an oven I just threaded the “meat” balls onto sticks and cooked them near the fireplace. When they were ready I had made a glaze out of some chili sauce and grape jelly. I think we could have all eaten more but I was going sparing with the supplies as much as I could.
After the food Chay finally said, “Might as well get over with. Damn they’re nosey.”
“Nosey?”
He looked angry and ashamed at the same time. “Don’t think I can.”
“Think you can what?”
“Take care of you and Bams. Can. And not their business.”
“We can and no it’s not.”
“Still … not look gift horse in mouth. Will take for you and Bams. No other reason. Never was there when I was kid. Just want to make a scene now. Mostly to prove they’re better.”
“Better? Better than what?” I asked as I followed Chay’s footsteps over to the significantly larger pile.
“Me.”
----------------------
Link for Acorn Meatball Recipes:
Acorn Meatballs of the World
Acorn “meatballs” may appear to be nothing more than bland brown rounds. Don’t be fooled by their unassuming appearance. Acorn meatballs...
hungerandthirstforlife.blogspot.com
Other Acorn recipes:
Acorn Recipes — MIGHTY WILD
Acorn recipes and cookbooks. Recipes and food made with acorns, chestnuts, chinquapin, and other nuts.
www.mightywild.com
CHAPTER 43
“Unless they’re flipping white knights that ride to the rescue and just show up like … like a miracle …” I was getting my own version of upset and Chay sensed it.
“S’ okay.”
“I know. Just … no one is better. No one.”
“’S okay. You need rest.”
“No. I’m … I’m okay. Just no one better say they’re better than you. No one.”
Chay looked at me strangely for a moment then nodded slowly. “Need rest again. But … can do this for a few minutes. Then you … bed. Sleep.”
I wasn’t going to fight him on it because I felt like my batteries were running out again.
The pile looked something like what I would find at yard sales and thrift stores back when I was at the halfway house. It made Chay angry.
“Told them I could …”
“I can work with this Chay.”
“Shouldn’t have to. Not charity.”
I sighed. “Try not and think of it like that. This is … think of it like when they would give us stuff at The Farm. Usually it wasn’t new … but it was new to us. We still worked for it, had to pay for it, and sometimes …” I sat down because it was sit down or fall down. “Please don’t be angry. I can work with this Chay. I can.”
“Cast offs. Stuff would send to camps ‘cause didn’t want it.”
“So? Same thing we got at The Farm. Doesn’t mean we can’t make it into something else … or different … or something.”
“Have some this already … dishes, pans … don’t need their trash.”
“Then don’t think of it like trash. Think of it like … possibilities … or maybe parts and supplies … something like that. Just because some of this may be one thing now doesn’t mean it can’t be made into something else later.”
“Fine. But gets put someplace till need it. Use what I already have.”
“Sure. I’ll box it up and put it … um …”
“Some furniture still coming. Mark bringing when have time. A chest can use.”
“Okay. Are you upset about the food?”
He snorted. “Aunt Tilly up to tricks. Testing to make sure … er …”
“That we aren’t going to be wasteful? She don’t know us very well do she?”
“No. None do.” He looked at the box of food stuffs and finally shrugged. “At least mean not have to go to town for a while. ‘S good. Not leave you yet.”
My head went one way and my mind went another and next thing I remember is I was in the bed and being held while I shook. “Shhh. ‘S okay. Right here. Right … here.”
“Ssss … s … sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“Shhh. ‘S okay. You need me. ‘S good. So good. Can sleep for real now? Sundown. Sleep time.”
“Just … be here.”
“Will. ‘S okay.”
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
I finally got around to asking him what time it was. Not the time of day but the date on the calendar. I nearly freaked out when I found out it was mid-January.
“I have to get foraging. I have to do …”
“Not yet. Still too cold. Bad storms over and over. You funny color again. Lauralee coming soon. Will ask.”
“No.”
He looked at me then said, “Yes. For me you will.”
Well that wasn’t fair but he saw he had me and didn’t say anything else about it.
“It doesn’t sound like it is storming right now.”
“Isn’t. But still cold.”
“I want to see Chay. I … I can barely remember what things look like.”
It was a battle of wills. He probably thought of me the same way I sometimes thought of Bam Bam when he wanted to do something new, something I wasn’t ready for him to do. Finally, Chay agreed but made me put on several pairs of socks, boots (they almost didn’t fit), and then a coat and on top of that several blankets.
“I can barely move.”
“S’only way,” Chay said. I sighed and he led me to the door.
Getting up the stairs was difficult. I knew we wouldn’t be long because neither one of us wanted to take Bam Bam out in the weather … or wake him up from the power nap he was taking … so I started looking as soon as my eyes reached ground level.
“Ice. I thought it was snow but … it’s ice.”
Chay made a noise in agreement. “Rain. Freezes at night. Melts during the day with more rain. Freezes again. Bring trees down.”
I looked around but then he gently turned me to a large pile of limbs.
“S’good for now. Trims out weak. Leaves more sun for strong come Spring. S’good. Don’t have to go far to get wood for fire.”
“I’ll help bring it …”
“Later. Seen enough? Getting pale.”
“There’s … there’s nothing for me to forage. To help.”
“Will be. Not much longer,” he said before turning me and making me go back down.
When we got back down I almost didn’t want to take off all the layers. I was cold. But it wasn’t the kind of cold that came from the weather, not really. Chay must have sensed it.
“Shouldn’t have let you …”
“Don’t start that. Please.”
He blinked.
“Better now?”
“Because you found us. If you hadn’t … Bam Bam could have … he could have ….”
“Shhh. S’okay now.”
“Is it? I don’t know what is wrong with me. I … I …”
“Remember? Reaction. Take time. Trust me. Know good. Think have under control then … wham … like getting hit with club to back of head. But will happen less.”
“How long until it happens less? I feel stupid. I’m useless. I …”
“Don’t say. Just need rest.”
“All I do is rest! I need to … to …”
“Will. But need rest too. See when Lauralee comes.”
I didn’t want to listen to that but I also didn’t seem to have a choice. It was either go lay down or fall down and though I didn’t really want to do either one, laying down made more sense.
Jeepcats27
Senior Member
Thanks for all the new chapters, I signed off before I saw all the chapters!