“Those North Northeast winds will dump us with lake effect snow, John. And I have never heard them say a warning was in effect until further notice! Never.”
“Maybe they don’t know how long it will last,” he concluded.
“That’s what worries me.”
“We’re okay, though, right?” He seemed worried.
“Absolutely! But there are a few things we have to do, and quickly.” I, took a sip of coffee, then a bite of toast. I was starting to like my own jam. John picked wild raspberry this time. “If this storm lasts a long time, and by the sounds of it, it will, we need to do all we normally would do over the next four to five days, in less than a day—today!” My mind was reeling with lists.
“Okay, tell me what to do.” He had his pen ready to make his own list.
“Water is critical. I’ll need you to gas up the gennie, and then refill the three five-gallon gas cans. One of them will go to Jason’s, depending on what Don had left for gas, which I don’t think was much, if any. After you do that, get the gennie going and fill the four five-gallon water containers, and the four big cooking pots that are out in the small shed. That should give us enough for several days.” He nodded and jotted things down. “Once the water jugs are full, we’ll need to do all the laundry.” My mind was racing. “And flush both toilets and keep them flushed while the gennie is on.”
“The chickens will need tending,” John added. “I’ll fill their water full, and the feeder. Will that last them a couple of days?”
“Yes, it should, thank you.”
“I’ll bring in extra wood and kindling, too. There’s room behind the stove for about four days’ worth if I stack it right,” he said half to himself. I could see he understood the urgency.
“I’m going to start a double batch of bread, then go to the office while it’s rising. The boys will need both loaves and I’ll make ours later.” He frowned. “Why are you risking going into town?”
“Tomorrow is Food Bank day. I’m going to get ours early and make sure Anna knows about the storm. I’ll get the boys’ share, and David’s too.” His frown persisted. “Don’t worry,” I said, touching his hand, “it looks about six inches out there. My car can handle it no problem. I’ll only be gone a half hour. I promise.”
While I put the bread together and spent ten minutes kneading it, we continued to talk, and John took all the notes.
“We’ll need the snowshoes from the barn. They can stay in the pantry out of the way until we need them. Oh, and I might as well pre-grind some more wheat while the gennie is running all day, so the big electric grinder will have to come in from the shed too, but that can wait until I come back.” I covered the bowl full of dough with a cloth and set it near the stove to rise. What else? What else? What am I missing? What am I forgetting?
* * *
The snow was deeper than six inches once I got out onto the main road, and I could see the plow coming in my direction. I pulled over and stopped, waiting until it was past. I wouldn’t be able to see a thing in the cloud of snow it was kicking up anyway. It was hard enough to see through the falling snow.
* * *
“I didn’t expect to see you here, Allexa,” Anna said, already in the conference room filling food boxes while several people waited. I smiled at the few who had thought enough ahead to get their food early.
“I’m thinking like these folks and picking up early.”
I helped Anna fill the last of the boxes, and soon the room was empty except for us. That’s when I told her I needed four boxes for two people. She raised her eyebrows, but when I explained who I was picking up for, she nodded and pulled out more boxes.
“I managed to get a NOAA report this morning, Anna,” I was trying hard to impress how grave this could be. “We’re under a blizzard warning, no totals predicted, and no time frame on when it might end. I’ve never heard of that.”
“I heard it too. It has me worried, but the town has come through everything that has been thrown at it so far. I have confidence we’ll get through this, too.” She helped me load the four boxes in my car. “Please try not to give into the temptation of going across the road to see your boys while it’s still snowing, you might get lost!” She paused for a moment. “It’s been said you can lose your way in ten feet during a bad blizzard.”
And I instantly knew what I’d been forgetting! I stopped at Fram’s before heading home, and caught Joe as he was locking the doors to go home to ride out the storm.
“Joe, I’ll only be a minute.” I headed back to the hardware department, past all the empty food shelves that stood like sentinels and reminders of more prosperous days. Thankfully I found what I needed and was back at the counter in less than two minutes.
He looked at my purchase with questioning eyes. “I’ll put those on your tab. Now get out of here and go home!”
* * *
I was gone only forty-five minutes. Thankfully the plow had been by when it had, there was now almost as much snow on the road as before in that very short time. It was snowing hard and it was a struggle getting into the driveway through what felt like a foot of snow. Still grasping the steering wheel, I put my head on my hands after I had backed into the barn, and gave a sigh of relief. John tapped on the side window, startling me.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m really glad to be home. The roads are getting worse.”
“You were late, and I was waiting to help with the boxes.” He gave me that smile that always melts my insides. He had the sled ready, but it still took two trips to get it all in the house.
I did the next step on the bread, setting the dough into the loaf pans to rise again. The gennie was still running and John was almost done with the slow process of filling the water jugs. With so much to carry back in, we both went to the small shed to retrieve the cooking kettles, and get the electric grain grinder. The grinder could make five times the flour in half the time as a hand crank, which I did have, though rarely used. Right now, time was not on our side. While in the shed, I spotted the shower bucket I made and grabbed that too, just in case. John carried the box with the heavy grinder, and I carried the rest, five empty buckets and pots. It wouldn’t be long and that storage shed would be inaccessible without a lot of digging, so I went back out while John continued with the water, and got an extra storage bucket of wheat berries and one of Basmati rice.
John still needed to bring in the wood, so I finished filling the four kettles we had brought in, with water and setting two of them on the stove to heat. Finally, I filled a bucket and was on my way out to the coop, when John called out from the wood shed, “The chickens are taken care of!”
I nodded and went back into the house. The full bucket could go to one of the bathrooms. When John came in with that load of wood, I suggested we go over the notes.
“Let’s see what’s been done and what still needs doing, so we’re not duplicating our efforts,” I said, while we both sipped fresh cups of coffee.
Just then, Tufts decided to make an appearance, rubbing against first my legs then John’s. After a scratch on the head, he went to see what offerings we had left for him in his feeding spot. I made a quick note. John raised an eyebrow in question.
I grinned. “I need to clean the litter box.”
“All the water is done, so we start laundry now, right?” he asked. “I filled the gennie first, then all three gas cans, took water to the chickens and filled their auto-feeder full. On my way back I grabbed our snowshoes off the wall. The chicks left us six eggs by the way,” he said.
Maybe I’ll include some eggs with David and Jane’s food box. We owe them a lot.
“Before the storm gets worse, I need to get the box next door,” I said. I slipped the bread into the oven and set the timer. John wasn’t happy about the thirty minutes or so it would take me to walk there, deliver and walk back. Neither was I, but it had to be done before dark. I promised to take a compass with me. “When I get back, we need to do something else�
��”
“What?”
“Lifelines. We need to run ropes between here and the boys, and here to the barn. I don’t think we need it for the wood shed, since it’s less than six feet from the edge of the house to the shed,” I said, thinking of Anna’s ten feet comment.
“Do we have that much rope?”
“I stopped at Fram’s while in town and bought five hundred feet of clothesline. That should get from here to the boys. Maybe. I’ve never thought to measure it. Plus there’s another three hundred feet in the barn that I stored last summer. We start with a line to the boys.” I had thought there may come a time I would need to do a line to the barn, but it never occurred to me to run one across the road. In times past when this happened, we all would hunker down and wait out the storm.
* * *
It was hard shoeing through all that fresh snow, but I made it to David’s in less than fifteen minutes, and started pounding on their door. He appeared with rifle in hand, which he quickly set aside when he saw it was me.
“Allexa! What are you doing out in this mess?”
“Don’t worry, it’s not my first choice of activity,” I laughed. “I picked up all of our rations early.” I handed him the big box, and I could see the relief on his face. “I added half a dozen eggs for you. We might be socked in for days.”
“I know. I’ve been listening on the ham. Munising is already shut down with two feet in the last twelve hours. This will be one for the record books. If anyone is still keeping records, that is,” he commented. “You better get back. And Allexa… thanks!”
At the top of his drive, I turned north. It’s hard to get lost when out snowshoeing: you just follow your trail back the way you came. The exception is in a blizzard. My tracks made only ten minutes earlier were starting to fill in. I hurried, which was much easier to do towing an empty sled. The closer I got to home, the less I could see my trail, but I could still see an outline of the big, dark brown barn.
John was as relieved as I was when I made it to the back door. I knocked the snow out of the sled and handed it to him. I then stepped out of my snowshoes, sinking a foot deep in the fresh powder.
I warmed up by the stove, sipping on some soup John had thoughtfully heated. He prepped the food bank boxes, slipping them into large garbage bags to protect them from the constant falling snow. The bread was out of the oven, though not really cooled enough to bag, so I wrapped them in towels instead. I removed all the plastic wrapping from the new packs of clothesline, and loosened the starter ends. We would have to join them along the way. John waited until we were ready to leave before adding the one gas can to the sled that made it very heavy to drag through fresh, deep snow.
Outside, the snow was getting even thicker. I took a compass heading, and I knew the house was due east of here. John tied the rope to the bird feeder post right next to the door, and then wound it high around the closest tree—a tree that was barely visible only twenty feet away. We set out on our snowshoes in the direction I felt would lead us to my sons, unwinding the rope as we went, John pulling the heavy sled. We were never more than a foot or two from each other. Before we got to the large pines that marked the property edge, we stopped to attach the next rope. I’d used a special joining knot many times before, a Boy Scout square knot that got stronger the more tension it was under, deciding that would be the best one to use now. We were momentarily disoriented with the snow shrouding us in total whiteness. There was that instant internal panic of not knowing which way to go. I pulled out the compass to get us going again. A few more feet put us at the pine tree Don had planted ten years ago when they first moved in.
“See the tree, how big it’s grown,” danced across my memory and made me giggle sadly. Fortunately John couldn’t hear me. From there we followed the grape arbor, trailing the rope behind us. Another stop to attach yet another segment of clothesline. I angled our approach to put us closer to the porch, and thirty feet later the gray house loomed in front of us. From there the going was more confident, and John attached the line to the banister on the steps. We breathed a sigh of relief, removed our snowshoes, and dragged the sled up the steps to the covered porch.
Eric opened the door when he heard us stomping the snow off our boots. “Mom! What are you two doing here? Don’t you know it’s snowing out?” He grinned and helped us inside.
“Very funny. Would you help John with those boxes, please?” I kicked off my boots in the kitchen and removed my snowy hat and gloves, leaving my coat on. We weren’t going to be staying. I gave Jacob and Emilee hugs, and then turned to Jason. “Wood supply?”
“When I saw the snow this morning, we started hauling it in,” he assured me. “This looks really bad, Mom.”
“NOAA said a Blizzard, two inches or more per hour, for an unknown length of time.” I didn’t hide my worry from my youngest son. He had to know the severity of this. “We brought this week’s food rations for the four of you. I added a case of ramen, a dozen eggs, two jars of canned bacon, and a jar of corned beef. Oh, and two loaves of bread, still hot.”
“We tied ropes as we came across,” John said, “but—”
“But you need to stay here,” I cut in. “Don’t try coming over until the snow stops, which might be days. It’s bad out there, really bad, and I do not want to worry that you might try taking the kids out in this!” I looked at both of my sons, sternly. “Promise me!”
I felt better when they both nodded.
“Moooom,” Jason said, sounding exasperated, like he was the parent and I was the child.
“PROMISE ME!!”
Eric stepped in front of his brother. “We promise, Mom. We will not come across while the snow is still falling. Not unless it is an emergency.” He looked sternly at his younger brother, taking the lead. Jason nodded, agreeing.
“Okay,” I breathed. “Have you pumped water? How much gas do you have for the gennie? We only brought five gallons, so it will have to last.”
“There’s one container left. That gives us ten gallons. We will make it last, Mom,” Jason said contritely.
“You’ve still got the FRS radio? We will be on from 9am until 10am, from noon until one, and again at 5pm until 6pm. Check in at least once a day, okay?”
They agreed.
“Something else…” I handed Eric the remaining hundred foot clothesline package. “I want you to run this from the back porch to the wood pile. Now—before we leave. We’ll wait.”
Eric looked over at his younger brother. “Come on, Jay, she’s right. Besides, they won’t leave until we do this,” he poked Jason in the ribs. This reminded me of when they were young boys. My boys are now men. When did that happen?
When they came back in, I said, “Just one more thing,” Jason rolled his eyes. “I love you both,” and I kissed each on the cheek. “See you in a few days.”
As we put our boots back on, getting ready to leave, Jason came in with a package. “We were going to bring these for dinner, so you should take yours with you now.” I nodded and tucked the package in my large pocket, giving him one more hug.
I didn’t think the snow could come down any harder, but it did. The rope was truly a life line as it guided us back across the road. I’m not sure I could even see the compass. We literally pulled ourselves along until the big maple tree and then the bird feeder post came into sight. A foot away from there, the brown house came into view. Once inside, I collapsed from exhaustion. John was tired too. I could see it etched in his face.
“We still have some things that need to be done,” I said and I pulled my list closer to look at, “though I think we need a break, and something to eat. Shoeing is hard work!” I gave him a wan smile. “Soup or a sandwich?”
John picked out a jar of tomato soup, and set it to heat, while I made a single cheese sandwich to grill. We would split both. It wasn’t good to eat too much and then do the heavy work that lay before us. The deck needed some shoveling so we could run the generator again, and one last safety-line needed t
o be run, to the barn. I would make sure we had a substantial dinner.
“All the laundry is done, Allex, why the gennie?”
“We need showers, John. We’ve been working and sweating all day,” I glanced at the battery operated wall clock, the one that had housed his Beretta. It was only three P.M., and with the heavy snow blotting out the sun it looked dark enough to be past dusk. “It might be days before we can have normal showers.” I brought in that shower bucket only as a last resort. “If you shovel and get the gennie going again, I’ll run the line to the barn. And don’t give me that look!” I gave him my most confident smile. “The shoveling is too hard for me, and I’ll not have you do all the work. Besides, I’ve walked that route in the blackest night. I’ll be done before you.”
We used paper plates for the sandwich, and burned them in the stove. The soup bowls would be washed later. We both put on lightweight dry clothes, and set to our tasks. John reluctantly started on the shoveling, while I donned my bright blue, pink and purple ski jacket, hat, gloves and snowshoes to make the short trek to the barn.
I tied one end of the fifty foot clothesline to the bird feeder post, aimed myself at the now invisible barn, and started walking. After a few minutes, I tripped and fell. The orange rod I used to mark the corner of the raised garden bed caught on my snowshoe. I freed my shoe, and then realized I had dropped the clothesline—the white clothesline which I now couldn’t find. My heart stuttered. I was enveloped in a cocoon of furious white flakes, unable to see in any direction. I had a choice to make. The orange rod put me four feet from the garden fence, which would lead me to the barn, which still didn’t get me back to the house. My alternative was to backtrack quickly, right now, before my trail filled in, get to the feeder post and get the line again. I opted for going back. The powder was deep so my trail was easier to follow, but only if I leaned over as I walked so I could see past the falling snow. Partway back, I found the end of the line I had dropped. I went the rest of the way back to reorient myself. I tied a loop on the free end of the rope and slipped it around my wrist. No more dropping it!
The Journal: Cracked Earth Page 26
