Dark and Stormy

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  Nick laughed. “Yes, Captain.”

  Dr. Hoffen hit a little close to home with his homily. If Gretchen were a lake, she’d be Crater Lake. The deepest water, and perfectly still. And whatever was going on with her looked to be pretty serious.

  “Don’t expect the old folks to get it, Dani.” Nick said. “We know each other much better than they do. Winter quarter will start up again, and they’ll see we were right.” He stirred his granola with a wooden spoon as big as his arm. It wasn’t saying much, since he was built along the same lines as I was—all of 5’ 7” and 120 lbs. He looked like an elf mixing up a pot of trouble.

  I wondered…did Nick count as still waters that ran deep?

  FIVE

  Isaac Daniels

  Sometime after I had gone to bed last night, the snow had fallen thick, dense, and heavy. It was a foot and a half deep on the walking paths, and the corner of the work shed roof had collapsed.

  I stamped my feet and blew on my fingers while I waited for Dr. Hoffen. The shed looked like a simple fix. Just call a roofer and have him come build a roof.

  I wished.

  While I waited, I circled the boys' dorm. It was one of the few buildings not shaped like a barn, though it was plenty old—it had been here since the campus had been a Victorian health spa with a well full of mineral water. The boys' dorm looked sound until I got to the far side. The awning over the side door had broken away from the wall under the weight of the snow. The posts that held it up leaned precariously, the whole works looked like it would fall in a stiff breeze. I did a quick tally of the number of roofs, awnings, and shelters on the campus and came up with... Too Many. If they were all the same age, and all in the same state of repair, there was no way we could keep the school standing through the winter.

  Dr. Hoffen joined me. He clapped his bare hands and rubbed them together. “Another one, hey?”

  “Yup.”

  “I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry. We’re on a schedule and we’ve rebuilt the roofs of two-thirds of the school buildings in the last two years.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “The last inspection didn’t give us any reason to worry about this dorm.” He looked back at the shed. “I think we can fix the shed ourselves still. We’ll just rip off the roof, repair the beams, and throw a metal corrugated roof on it. We could maybe take down this awning ourselves, but we’d better get a professional in to look at it first. Don’t know what other damage might have been done when it ripped away.

  Relief lifted my spirits. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Start by sweeping off the shed roof, then just rip into it. I’ll call Rolf and see what he says about this mess. If he’s free today, you’ll probably meet him out here.” Dr. Hoffen took off without giving me further instruction.

  The snow broom was in the collapsed shed, so I opened the door with caution. It was near the front, small mercies always welcome. Sweeping snow off of roofs was not something I had ever done or seen done back home, but I gave it my best go.

  About an hour into the job—I recognized it should not have taken that long—Dr. Hoffen came back with a short, wiry kid who looked a few years older than me. They went around to the collapsed side of the boys' dorm, so I guessed the kid was the expert roofer, Rolf. I leaned my broom against the shed and followed them.

  Rolf scratched his chin a lot for a guy with no beard. And he spoke to Dr. Hoffen in Swedish. I was impressed with Steve’s ability to keep up. His years living in Brunn Vatten were showing.

  Rolf went inside, and a minute later popped his head out from the window over the broken awning. He cupped his hand around his mouth and hollered down to us in Swedish. Then he waved at the v shaped seam in the roof where the back addition met the original building.

  “You’ve got young eyes, Isaac, can you see the roof better than I can?” Dr. Hoffen asked.

  I pushed my glasses up my nose and stared at it. The roof was covered in snow and looked fine, but the beadboard under the eaves looked dark. “I think there’s a leak.”

  Dr. Hoffen sighed. “That’s what Rolf just said.” He shouted some more Swedish at Rolf.

  Rolf joined us back outside. “The roof over the window is bad.” His English was a bit stiff, but he didn’t hesitate. He seemed to know what he wanted to say. “It will come down.”

  Dr. Hoffen exhaled sharply.

  “Last night the snow was heavy. Tonight it will storm—a blizzard maybe.” Rolf scratched his naked chin again. “The roof will cave tonight.”

  “But we had it inspected last fall, and it was sound.”

  Rolf shook his head. “Weak, old wood. Rot, maybe. I don’t know what they saw last fall. This winter, it’s bad.”

  I wondered if Rolf was lying to get a big job in the winter. Rebuilding the roof of the boys' dorm could keep a hungry builder like Rolf in fat city I guessed.

  “Don’t let anyone sleep here tonight. The roof is going to fall in.” Rolf shook his head mournfully.

  “There aren’t many boys here right now. They can sleep on the ground floor. Isaac, you go arrange that, okay?”

  “No.” Rolf turned away from the collapsed awning. “Don’t be a dumskalle. Move everyone out. If they sleep here, somebody will get hurt.”

  “I’ll find the guys and tell them to move into the student lounge. They can take their mattresses with them. There aren’t that many to house.” I scanned the campus, wondering exactly where all the boys had gone off to.

  Dr. Hoffen nodded. He stared at the boys’ dorm. I could almost see the number signs dancing in front of his disappointed eyes.

  I found Troy and Xavier behind the main building, commonly called huset—the house—chopping firewood. “Did you see the awning on the south side of the boys’ dorm?” I asked.

  “Yup.” Troy cracked the chunk of wood with one swing.

  “Rolf, the roofer guy, says the roof might go in the storm tonight, and that we need to get the guys out.”

  Troy set up another block of wood and brought the splitter down on it with one swing. “We need to get the automatic splitter fixed.”

  I agreed. Hand splitting wood for this many buildings made no sense. “Too bad none of us are mechanics.” I stacked the wood Troy had just split. Xavier stacked his own pile.

  “I’m a mechanic. Think they’d let me take a look at it?” Xavier wiped his forehead. Chopping was sweaty work, even in the snow.

  “Sure.” Troy wasn’t wasting words today.

  I liked the way the mission kids at the school seemed to have a lot of practical skills. Si seemed like the only exception right now, but I had a feeling he was hiding his abilities to get out of work.

  “I’ll talk to Hoffen after lunch.” Xavier took another swing.

  Xavier was a good guy, as far as I could tell. I wished he was planning on staying through spring, instead of just dropping his sister off. The guys of the school could use his steady example. I probably could as well.

  “So, about the move. Maybe we can get it done after lunch as well?” I asked.

  “Yup. Whatever.”

  “All right.” I was tempted to stick around and split wood with them, but they had both manual splitters going and I still had a shed to dismantle.

  Back at my own job site, I pried the shed roof apart, down to the first unbroken beam, and stacked the debris. Yanking at the broken wood and old nails satisfied the primal man in me, so I hadn’t noticed that I had missed lunch. I was securing a tarp over the quarter of the shed that had no roof when Rolf and Troy stopped a few feet away, in the middle of an argument.

  “I won’t put the boys in the girls’ dorm.”

  “You’re a fool, then. The roof over the lounge is no good.”

  “Whose fault is that? You built it.”

  Rolf shrugged. “I was on the crew. I did my job. But I just looked at it, and it’s a mess.”

  “You’re lying to get more work. If you say the lounge is bad you will get to rebuild i
t a second time in two years.”

  “We shingled it five years ago. That’s all. It has rot. If the blizzard comes tonight, it could fall in. I can’t say it will, but I wouldn’t put the boys in there for the blizzard. It’s safer in the dorm.”

  “Then they can stay in their dorm.” Troy sounded triumphant.

  “It’s safer to stay in the woods than the boys’ dorm.” Rolf shrugged and smiled. “Hey, you aren’t many right now. You can come stay at my place. It’s safer than the lounge or the boys’ dorm.”

  Troy gripped the splitting maul in his hand and swung it next to his leg. “The boys can absolutely, one hundred percent, only stay in the girls’ dorm?”

  Rolf laughed. “Lucky boys, right?”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. We have half a dozen buildings on the campus. Why can they only stay in the girls’ dorm?”

  My tarp was secure so I joined the conversation. I didn’t like the idea of sticking the boys in with the girls, especially with Dani’s concerns for Gretchen still fresh in my mind.

  “It makes sense to keep everyone in the same place. One building to run on a generator if the power goes out. One building to heat with fire. One building to keep the pipes running. One building to keep the food in.” Rolf was relaxed as he condemned the whole school to blizzard conditions. He would go home, safe to his own bed tonight. It was up to us to worry about keeping the boys and girls apart, and keeping the roofs over our heads.

  “If the skola is no good why don’t we move everyone into the huset?” The student lounge was in the school building—skola in Swedish. But it wasn’t the only large community building. The main building was also large. Plus, I lived in it. “If what you want is food, safety and warmth, move to the building that already has the kitchen and the dining room.”

  Rolf shook his head no. “Not enough showers.”

  “For one night? How many showers do we need? My apartment has one, Nick’s apartment has one, and the guest house has one.” The third apartment on the upper story of the huset was for guest lecturers, and currently empty. “Nick and I could split the boys between us, and all of the girls could stay in the guest house.” As I said it, I knew it was a bad idea. My apartment was a bedroom with room for one bed, a bathroom that consisted of a toilet, sink stuck to the wall, a shower head that came out of the wall adjacent to the toilet and a second room that had a mini-sized Ikea-like kitchen on one wall, and a desk on the other. There wasn’t room for one extra mattress much less three or four. Nick’s apartment was the same. The guest house was slightly larger. “Or the girls could sleep in the dining room and the boys could have the front hall. If nothing else, the food is all there.”

  “The boys can go stay at the Hoffen’s house.” Troy said.

  I didn’t agree. “They’ve already got three kids stuffed into that little two bedroom place. Where would they all sleep?”

  “It’s better than the dining room.”

  “Don’t be prudish Americans. Let the boys and girls sleep together. No big deal.” Rolf winked. “Plus, it’s easier to keep warm, ja?”

  I couldn’t tell if he was being serious, but secular Swedes were notoriously relaxed about their teenagers’ love lives.

  “I’ll discuss this with Dr. Hoffen.”

  Rolf shrugged. “Or you can all come to my place. Plenty of room.” He smiled like he meant it. “But if we’re going, we need to leave now. The storm is coming.” He peered off towards a bank of ominous clouds in the distance.

  The sky directly overhead was blue, but if those clouds carried a blizzard, he was right, the storm would be here soon.

  SIX

  Dani Honeywell

  Johanna didn’t like the directions to move dinner service to the girls’ dorm. And she really didn’t like the directions to pack up enough for breakfast and maybe lunch the next day, either.

  Whatever the roofer guy had said to Dr. Hoffen had really got under his skin. Mind you, the clouds were pretty ominous. I grew up in snow country, frequently without electricity, so I was all for Dr. Hoffen’s plan.

  Bundle us up, tuck is in, and pack lots of food. Nothing at all wrong with that with a big winter storm on the way. The days were short in December, and if we had to weather a very dark and stormy night, I wanted to do it with plenty of food and company.

  Big winter storm were Nea’s words. Blizzard, schmizzard essentially. Blizzards weren’t common at all in southern Sweden, and she laughed at the idea that we needed to pack up a few days’ worth of food. Then again, she had also left the school for the safety of her own home well before dinner. Winter storms, even if they weren’t blizzards were not fun to drive in.

  “Don’t be too hard on her,” Megan said. She stacked another packet of knäcke bread in an apple crate. “She never panics, and I knew she would have tried to drive home no matter what the weather looked like. This way I know she’ll get there safely.”

  As gross as shelf-stable milk was, I didn’t mind boxing it up to bring to the dorm. We had a small fridge in the common area, but it would be full of the leftovers we were trucking over. Milk that wouldn’t spoil on the shelf would be a welcome addition to my morning coffee.

  Which reminded me that I needed to grab the Gevalia from the student lounge before I locked myself in for the night. The coffee we served in the kitchen was fine, if you don’t like coffee. But I needed something with more punch in the morning.

  Megan and Johanna carted the first load out of the kitchen while I packed more loaves of frozen bread into a crate.

  The kitchen door swung open and a skinny guy with pale, straight hair and almost no eyebrows sauntered in. I had seen him around campus earlier in the day. Rolf the roofer, Isaac had said. “Hej hej.” I offered him the casual, Swedish hello.

  He grabbed a cookie from the jar Johanna kept stocked for staff. Clearly, he knew his way around the place. “'Hey, hey' to you to.” He winked.

  I cringed. “Are you going to make it out before the storm starts?”

  Rolf shrugged. “If I leave now.”

  The dark, full clouds that had threatened all day had finally rolled in. I didn’t know what it would take to make them spill their storm, but I had to agree: he had better hit the road. “Need something for the road?”

  “I could use a little company.” He sidled over to me. Like, actually sidled, crossing the room like a crab would, side to side, with a weird, kind of simpering, smile on his lips.

  I took a few steps back. “Long drive home?”

  “Big empty bed.” He winked again.

  I gagged, just a little, on the inside. “Well, heh heh.” I tried to keep it together. I had recently learned about myself that I was prone to assault when feeling threatened. This wasn’t a threat. Just a weird guy with bad social boundaries. My crate wasn’t as full as I had planned, but I picked it up. “Have a safe drive.” I had to walk past Rolf to get out of the kitchen, but what was the worst he could do?

  He smacked my bottom as I passed.

  Gross, but not the end of the world.

  I hauled the crate of food to my dorm, and shut the door with relief. Isaac was straightening out mattresses in the common area. It looked like the boys would all sleep there, and the girls stick to their rooms. Gretchen, Cadence, Bel, and I each had a room to ourselves, so it was smart of Isaac to stick the boys all together. He could keep an eye on them, make sure they stayed where they were supposed to.

  I blushed at the thought—after all, I was probably the most likely to give into temptation.

  And if Isaac was just going to sit up and watch the boys all night…

  I would not sneak off and visit him. That would be very wrong.

  “Has Rolf left yet?” Isaac directed the question to the whole group.

  “He was just in the kitchen.”

  Johanna was packing up the empty food crates. “I will go send him on his way.”

  “And then go home yourself, right?” I could hear the wind whooshing outside already. The storm ha
d started.

  “Ja. I’m just over the ridge, but I had better get out now while I can.”

  “Do you want one of us to go with you, in case something happens?” Troy pushed one of our couches against the wall to create a better walking path through the mattresses.

  Johanna laughed. “Nej, nej. Don’t be silly. I can make it home fine. I just need to leave this minute.”

  Troy nodded. “Smart.”

  “Let me help you with those.” Cadence took the crate from Johanna’s arms. “You get a move on it.”

  “Tack så mycket.” Johanna’s color was bright and her eyes were happy. In spite of her earlier complaints, she seemed to be enjoying the crisis.

  I counted heads. Isaac, Troy, Megan, and me. Everyone else was missing. “Where is everyone?” I shivered. It was only six in the evening, but the black skies made it feel much later.

  “Working, I guess.” Megan laid a stack of folded blankets on a side table. “Steve is home with the kids. I’m headed there. I caught Rolf on his way to the kitchen earlier and invited him to stay at our place. He agreed, but mostly because I begged.” She grinned. “I wouldn’t dream of letting him drive out in a blizzard.”

  I was more than a little relieved. I didn’t want anyone to drive in the storm, but I also I did not relish the idea of him and his grabby hands staying in my dorm.

  “Was there anything else in the kitchen you guys needed?”

  I passed a glance at the little kitchenette. It looked stocked. “I can’t think of anything.”

  “Okay. See you all tomorrow!” Megan’s eyes were shadowed, and her face tired, but she smiled. She had weathered a lot of years in Brunn Vatten, and the storm didn’t seem to faze her. Plus, her own little house was about thirty feet across the yard from us.

  An hour later, I was in my happy place. I had managed to secure the good coffee to make tomorrow morning bearable, the whole crew had made it safely in, and we were gathered around the fireplace.