by Jf Perkins
“You’re ready when the doctor says you’re ready, Bill. Figure on two days.”
“No way am I staying in this bed for two days. Screw that! I’ve got work to do.”
“There you go with that leadership talk again. I’ll have to see what we can do.”
Chapter 5 – 7
Two days later, Bill was hurting, frustrated, and feeling foolish. He was still confined to his hospital bed, mostly because of his brief escape attempt the night before, when he had managed two steps before his left leg refused to cooperate, and sent Bill to the floor with a burning white pain for his trouble. A nurse, who would have been beautiful under any other circumstances, made it her night’s work to keep Bill practically chained to the bed, and not in a fun way. She sent him disapproving glances in between harder than normal needle jabs, and threatened to shave embarrassing parts of his body if he refused to cooperate. In the morning, she had turned over the watch to a new nurse, who Bill was sure they pulled out of the prison infirmary just for him. Just a glance from this new nurse -- Bill secretly named her Belle the Ballbreaker -- was enough to keep him quiet and still. He hoped if he feigned sleep, she might leave him alone. She was savvy to his tricks.
His only relief came in the form of Charlie’s wife, Judith. She was pushing a wheelchair that held a figure almost completely covered in white gauze. Their son, Michael, was awake and just as anxious to get out of the hospital as Bill. Michael’s face was uncovered, thankfully, but he had a turban-sized wrap around his skull, a sling around his right arm, and a vast collection of bandages, some seeping with spots of blood.
“Hi, Judith. Did you come to spring me from this joint?” Bill asked, appearing serious.
“I don’t think so, Bill Carter. I heard about your mischief last night.” Judith replied with a stern expression on her face.
Bill figured Judith was at least five years younger, but she had her mother look polished to perfection, and Bill gave up on his play for her sympathy. “Is this Michael?”
Judith stepped to the side of the wheelchair and said, “Bill Carter, this is my ornery son, Michael. Michael, this is the man who pulled you out of the mess you got yourself into. Meet Mr. Carter.”
“Call me Bill, Michael. It’s an honor to meet you,” Bill said with respect.
“The honor is mine, sir. Please call me Mike.”
Neither man had the use of his right hand. They settled for slight nods instead of a handshake.
“Now that I’m sure this rascal is going to make it,” Judith said with a false look of irritation, “I’m going to head home for a while, and make sure that Juanita and Becca are taking care of your men.”
“Wait, Judith. Is John still here?”
“No. They sent him home to our house last night. I believe they did it because if he were here, you would have escaped for sure.”
The look on Bill’s face showed that she had headed him off at the pass.
“And let me say, gentlemen,” she added, “If I hear of any trouble out of you two, I will send Charlie’s entire office staff over here to watch you both use the bathroom. Clear?”
The response from both of them, “Yes, ma’am,” was so tightly synchronized, she had to make sure that both sets of lips were moving.
“All right, then. I’ll see you both later. If you’re good, I may even bring some real food.” Judith turned and purposefully strode out the door, leaving two grown men to look helplessly at each other.
***
“Hey, Seth! If they keep bringing us food, I’m going to start slipping you scraps under the table,” Terry said, holding his belly against an imagined explosion.
“Don’t look at me, Dead Eye. I’ve never been so stuffed in my life,” Seth replied with a groan added for effect.
“Big man like you, you should be able to clear this table and ask for more.”
“Well, sure. The breakfast table. Did you notice when it changed to lunch? I missed that part.”
“Maybe if we leave, they’ll stop,” Terry said, looking around to see if he was overheard by the two servants, who had obviously been told to keep Bill’s crew happy.
“Maybe, but I’ve learned that if the big man doesn’t eat, the cook gets insulted,” Seth said, caught between manners and a food coma.
“We’re past that now. I guarantee we’ve eaten enough to make them happy.”
“I’m not sure I can get up.”
“Well, you carried Bill all by yourself. You’re just going to give it a try,” Terry said, shoving himself to his feet.
“Ok, Terry. Let’s go find the others.”
“John’s asleep upstairs. Nick and Rob said they were going for a walk. I’d bet Jeffry is upstairs with his big brother.”
“In that case, I think I’m going to collapse on the porch.”
“Want a sandwich for the road?” Terry asked, pantomiming a ducking motion.
“Man, if this wasn’t someone else’s nice house, I’d flat knock you out with that sandwich.”
They both left the dining room with silly smiles on their faces and unsteadily staggered their way out to the shade of the porch, settling into the broad wicker chairs. Seth listened with satisfaction as the snapping and creaking subsided, and he was sure the chair would not collapse under him.
The sky was still overcast, in that hazy Tennessee summer way, suggesting only a nice afternoon thunderstorm could possibly break the stagnant humid heat. The manicured neighborhood was sheathed in a glare of golden white, muting the darker greens of June vegetation. There had actually been plenty of rain, but the look of dryness in the leaves made it look and feel more like late July. The whole effect, made Terry feel like he had been away from home for a long time. In his scale, that was true. Up until the past week, he had never gone more than a couple of days without seeing his folks, sharing their stories until the cool of the evening made sleep possible in the tiny salvaged cabin they called home.
The men were well on their way to a nap on the porch, when Terry spotted Judith striding down the sidewalk. He let his gaze linger on her tall, willowy form and long brown hair far longer than he felt was polite, but with a twenty-year-old set of hormones, there wasn’t much he could do about it. Then his mind, properly primed, switched over to thinking of Sally and her red hair. He realized that she hadn’t really been in his mind much, with everything he had been doing, but now that he thought about it, he was anxious to get back to Teeny Town and see her, bad attitude and all.
Judith stepped up onto her porch and asked, “Are you boys doing ok? Are my ladies taking care of you?”
Unconsciously, Terry’s hand rubbed his stomach. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you,” he said, and hesitated for a moment. “Uh, Mrs. Bell. We really appreciate it, but maybe you could ask them to take a little less care of us. Even Seth here can’t eat any more.”
Judith laughed for the first time Terry had seen. “Yes, Terry. I’ll talk to them. They’ve watched Michael grow up, too. I’d say they just want to make sure you feel properly appreciated.”
“We do, ma’am. We surely do.”
Seth held his bloated belly and nodded emphatically.
“Ok, boys. I think I can get them to hold off until supper,” Judith said with a smile as she gracefully disappeared through the front door.
Terry couldn’t help but think of her transformation from before the trip to after they returned with her son. She was certainly cordial before, but she was alive now. Everything about the woman was magnified, and oddly for Terry, that meant more than all the profuse thanks he had endured since they returned to Murfreesboro. The other part that meant a great deal to him was his place in the small team of men. He had departed with them from Teeny town as a green outsider, a piece of luggage that they were required to tote along. Now he was one of them, and among young men, the best way to know was the big invisible target for good-natured teasing he now wore proudly on his back.
“Hey, Big Guy. I’m going to head over to the hospital and check on Bi
ll. I’ll see you after a while.”
Maybe Seth heard him. Maybe not.
***
“Hello, Mr. Shelton. How goes the outside world?” Bill asked as Terry knocked quietly and stuck his head in the door.
“Oh, you wouldn’t like it out there. It’s hot, humid, and hazy...” Terry noticed he was not making a dent in Bill’s determination to get out of the hospital. “And there’s a swarm of locusts that spray like skunks, and they have sharp teeth. Big sharp teeth.” Terry made a grasping motion with the last part, mimicking the nasty bite of imaginary locusts.
“Good try, but you know we only get the biting skunk locusts once every seventeen years.” Bill responded with a sideways grin.
Terry just shrugged with a mischievous smile of his own.
Bill was about to make introductions when he looked over and saw that Mike was sound asleep in his wheelchair. Instead he just indicated the sleeping young officer and said, “Mike Bell is awake, more or less.”
Terry stepped out in the hall and flagged down the scary nurse to wheel Mike back to his own bed. He probably needed a long rest.
When Mike was gone and door bumped shut, Terry was the first to speak. “I should have snuck in some food. They are trying to kill us with edible kindness.”
“Good way to go, I’d say.” Bill replied. “I’m sure Judith will bring some back with her, now that she is done with yelling at doctors.”
“Yeah, you should have seen it. That woman was scary.”
“They all are, given the right situation.”
Terry chuckled and said, “Yes, sir. A couple of examples come to mind... One in particular.”
“I’ll just bet. Take my advice, young man. They can smell fear.”
Chapter 5 – 8
Mom was pure genius at handling my dad. It took a while to really see that simple truth, but I got one of many hints when we pulled up in front of the Carroll’s barn on that old hay wagon. She was subtle about it, but one look at her face made it clear.
At the exact moment when the realization struck her that the rickety old barn was her new home, her expression said, “This won’t do at all.”
Then she turned to my dad with a smile and all the hope in the world, and said out loud, “Well, it beats living in a tree in this weather.”
The wind was shrieking around the barn, through the open gaps in the weathered wood, and across the dead power lines strung from one outbuilding to the next. The clouds were solid, lumpy, and dark with that peculiar smell of snow. They were streaming southward so fast that any snowflakes were probably holding on tight to anything the clouds had to offer.
We unloaded our possessions quickly, with the unconscious desire to get out from under that sky as quickly as possible. Everything was piled haphazardly inside the crooked doors, with our organized father making no effort to create his usual stacks. I was worried about him. The events at the school were still clearly on his mind. Arturo was safely back, but only half as effective as he was when he left, and now he was faced with a barn that was old before George was born, and would provide virtually no shelter from the cold he was expecting.
Dad looked around and gave himself a snap-out-of-it shake before he hopped back on the hay wagon and rumbled off with George to retrieve the car from our camp site. While he was away, Mom took over and had us going through the barn, looking for anything that might be useful. We didn’t find much that seemed useful at the time, but outside, in the barn’s lean-to shelter where George kept tractor implements, we found a few pieces of plywood. Mom had us drag them into the barn, and directed Kirk to nail them up on the north wall of the barn. She reasoned that most of the really cold wind would come from the north, and closing the gaps on that side would be the most shelter we could manage with the materials at hand. She overlooked the obvious.
The barn was open on the ground level other than a tack room, a row of stalls, and the support poles that held the leaning structure upright. The space overhead was divided into a three dimensional grid, which seemed to be part of the structure until I spotted two levels of dry tobacco hanging over the front walls of the stalls. I didn’t know it was tobacco at the time, but I correctly reasoned that the grid work was intended as drying racks. In the back corner, behind the four stalls, was a tall stack of dusty old hay bales.
I remembered something Dad had said about lining our storage pit at the camp with hay bales for insulation, and the obvious idea hit me. I began to explain it to Mom, and she picked it up before I finished the first sentence. Being a kid means being alternately amazed at how dumb parents are, and how unbelievably smart they can be if you help them a little bit. She instantly had everyone, except Arturo and the little boys, dragging hay bales into position, first stacking along the north wall, and then out from the corners. We stacked them up as high as we could reach, and then Kirk climbed up the original stack to walk out along our new walls and hoist another row on top. At least the adults could stand up without losing a hat to the wind. When we were done, the barn had become much more livable. It wasn’t warm, but at least it felt more secure than the treehouse.
Dad eventually arrived in the car, via a chain attached to the hay wagon. He called us outside to help him wrestle it in line with the barn’s double doors. When he saw what we had done, he actually cracked a smile, rare in those days, and gave my mom a hug. Then we moved all the gear and food to one side and pushed the car into the barn.
George politely gave us some time to settle into our new space, but Mom was not even close to settling. Dad had left for less than an hour and came back to discover that the politics of power had shifted. I wondered how much was a change in my mother, and how much was the opening Dad left for her when the trauma of the school began to take its toll. She called us all together for an extended family conference, and we watched in amazement as she laid down the law.
“Ok, everyone. It’s clear to me that we’re going to face a hard winter. We need food, we need blankets, and you men will have to tell me for sure, but it looks like we’re going to need building supplies. Oh, and something for heat, since we can’t build a fire in this dry old barn. How we’re going to cook, I don’t know. David, figure it out.” Mom punctuated her speech with broad gestures and an almost military demeanor.
I could see the mildly shocked reaction from Lucy and Kirk, but even more surprising was the fact that Dad and Arturo took it in stride. It was an early lesson in the power that women wield. Juannie, on the other hand, seemed prepared to argue, but she didn’t have the first idea about how to survive, and slowly yielded the floor to Mom.
“You’re right, Beth,” Dad said. “We need that stuff. I guess we’ll start by trying to fix the car.”
Mom was taken off guard by the easy agreement, and looked almost disappointed. Dad told me later that she was wound up for a big argument, and he had learned years before that the only way to win was to agree immediately. “Keep that in mind, son.”
Dad and Arturo seemed relieved to have a job to do. They opened the barn doors for the extra daylight, increasing the swirling wind inside the barn, and began poking around under the hood of our old station wagon with flashlights. Arturo’s leg was obviously hurting, because he stood in one spot, leaning heavily on his new cane, while Dad did all the work. Mom had the rest of us setting up the tents right next to the hale-baled northern wall and creating a neat stack of the rest of our supplies. By the time we had our weapons lined up against the wall near the door, Martha strolled into the barn, bundled in a red winter coat against the frigid wind.
“Hello, everyone. I thought you might want to come up to the house for some supper. We don’t have much, but we’d be happy to share.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Carroll,” Mom said. “I was about to suggest dry cereal for dinner. I don’t know how we’re going to cook.”
“Oh, I think George has some ideas he’s just dying to share. We’ll get you fixed up.” Martha said with her quiet little smile. “Just head on up to the house w
hen you’re ready.” She took a moment to wave at the children, and turned back out the barn door, taking tiny steps as if she expected to hit an icy patch on the worn dirt path.
Two minutes later, Dad shouted, “Found it!” He pulled a wire out of the engine compartment, and held it proudly, like a trophy. It was an ignition wire with a badly frayed section about 4 inches from one end. “Must’ve taken a bullet,” He said.
“Well, that was easy,” Arturo said. “All we need now is an ignition wire and we’re good.”
“After supper. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
Mrs. Carroll’s idea of not having much was similar to the idea of country mile, because the table was loaded with food. We all scuffled into the tiny dining room and, with the friendly urging of the Carrolls, we stacked in shoulder to shoulder around the table. Martha was practically singing with excitement at having company, and George smiled indulgently at her cheerful antics.
Mom smacked Tommy’s grabbing hand away from the fried chicken, telling him to wait until everyone was seated. George was the last to sit, looking at his strange new family as he folded his hands into a prayerful pose.
“Dear Lord, thank you for all of our many blessings on this cold evening. We have our home, we have our food, and we have our new friends, who You have given us in this time of hardship. Bless this food, and bless us all in the days to come. In Your name we pray... Amen.” George finished his simple blessing and gestured with a large spoon. “Dig in, folks.”
The room was quiet for fifteen minutes, except for the sound of clinking china and utensils, as we shoveled the home-cooked meal into our hungry gullets. Finally, Juannie spoke up. “You know, I used to spend my entire meals trying to get Jimmy to eat. Now he just eats whatever you put in front of him.”
That broke the spell. Jimmy, always ready to grab the spotlight, stopped eating, stuck out his lower lip, and folded his little arms across his chest. As usual, he worked as a perfect conversation starter, laughter being the perfect ice breaker.
