When he came back downstairs, he congratulated us, especially Mom, for a job well done, and told us that the baby had an unusually large head, which was probably why Robin had had so much trouble pushing him out. Other than that, the baby was perfectly healthy and he had every reason to believe that Robin would recover nicely.
Before we went to bed that night, or should I say early the next morning, we stopped by Robin and Alex’s room to see the baby one last time. He had just finished nursing and was sleeping so angelically in Robin’s arms, it seemed almost like it was a Hollywood movie.
Mom asked if they’d thought of a name for him yet and Alex looked Robin in the eyes for a few seconds before saying, in a husky sort of voice, “We’re naming him John Joseph, after both his grandpas. We’ll call him Joey.” No one was more moved by the name than Dad, who was one of the namesakes.
When we were all ready to go to bed, I gave Skylar a kiss goodnight, then I lingered a little while after the others. I shook Alex’s hand and he hugged me to him, saying, “Thanks for your help there, Buddy.”
I kissed Robin’s forehead and stroked my little nephew’s downy soft head and finally went to bed.
Chapter 22
That Christmas was special for several reasons. We had survived our second (and hopefully last) marauder attack, our farm was prospering, we had completely adjusted to life without electricity and were even enjoying it, the newest addition to our family was a joy to everyone, and most importantly, to me anyway, I asked Skylar to be my wife.
First, let me tell you about what ended up happening to the bad guys. Rick Thomas and some of our other neighbors took them into town. It took them nearly seven hours to get there and by that time, many of them were nearly dead from exhaustion, injuries, and lack of food. Our guys made sure they stopped to let their captives get drinks from creeks and take breaks every now and then, but it was still quite an ordeal for them.
When they got to town, the town policeman and the county sheriff took over. Someone had ridden ahead to the next town to fetch the doctor, like I mentioned before, and he came and spent most of the evening trying to patch them up. About a half dozen of the ones who had gotten away were caught trying to steal from other farmers, all of whom were prepared for them thanks to the Fab Four; but there were others—no one knew how many—who were unaccounted for. The prisoners were all kept in the school gym and given food and blankets to sleep on, which was more than they deserved, if you ask me.
The sheriff was able to get a hold of the National Guard by short-wave radio and, the next day, an army transport came and picked up the marauders. The last we heard, they were to be taken to a larger county jail, and we may have to travel there to testify at their trials. We don’t know for sure at this point, though, because we are still under martial law and the regular courts are backed up so far, they may never catch up.
Things got back to normal pretty quickly for our family. Papa’s head injury bled quite a bit the first couple of days, but had healed up enough by Christmas that he got his bandages removed and didn’t have to pretend to be one of the shepherds in the nativity anymore. Dad, Calvin, and I finished getting the house and yard back to normal, except for the broken panes of glass. We didn’t have any glass to replace them, so we just boarded up those empty spaces.
Little Joey is so incredible. I’ve never been one to ooh and ahh over babies much, but there is just something so special about that kid. At just a week old, he’d look at each of us like he already recognized us, and he’d smile at us; really smile, not just gas, as some people like to claim. He rolled over from his tummy to his back at just five days old and we had to watch him carefully whenever we laid him on a bed or the couch after that. Besides having an uncommonly large head (which to me doesn’t seem much bigger than most babies I’ve seen), he seems to be unusually strong and smart.
Now at just five months old, he can already sit up and say a few words: mama, dada, papa, and nus (for nurse, which he likes to do quite often). Mom says that he is quite young to be doing those things and even I, who have no experience with babies, can tell he looks too young to be so developed.
And he has so much personality! He loves to play hide and seek and can always figure out where you’ve hidden his toy right away. When he finds it, he starts giggling so loudly and happily, you can’t help but laugh too.
Every time I come into the room that he’s in, he gets excited and stretches out his arms for me to pick him up. He always says something that sounds like “banban” when he sees me and Robin thinks he’s trying to say Bracken. He doesn’t say anything to Calvin yet and that makes Calvin kind of jealous, but Robin says that Calvin is just harder to say. He calls Mom and the grandmas “mama,” as well as his mom, and he calls Dad and Papa both “papa.” Robin says he’ll sort all that out later. Anyway, he is a joy to us all and we only wish there were more of him to share.
I know you probably can’t wait to read about how I proposed to Skylar. Well, first I have to tell you all I had to do to prepare for the actual proposal. The day after Joey’s birth, I took Skylar back to town. I spent all afternoon trying to get Mr. and Mrs. Tipton—I mean Dave and Barb—alone so I could tell them my intention and ask for their blessing. They surprised me by saying that they couldn’t imagine a better son-in-law. I think Skylar got a little suspicious when she came into the room and found us all hugging with big smiles on our faces.
Next, I had to find a ring. Mom had given Alex (for Robin) an antique wedding and engagement ring set that her grandmother had given her before she died. Mom offered to let me have her wedding set, but I didn’t want to take them from her, so I asked Granny if she had something for me. Granny had tears in her eyes when she took off her wedding rings, which she had continued to wear even fifteen years after Grandpa’s death, and told me that she would be honored to have Skylar and me carry on the love that she and Grandpa had had for each other by wearing their rings. She even got out Grandpa’s ring from her treasure box and gave it to me to wear.
Granny’s engagement ring isn’t just the usual white-diamond-in-a-gold-band type. It has a light blue, heart-shaped gem, which Granny said is topaz, set in a silver filigree band, and the wedding ring is a band of tiny diamonds also set in silver filigree, which is designed to fit snug against the engagement band. I knew Skylar would love it, because her favorite color is blue and she likes silver jewelry better than gold.
On Christmas Eve I rode to town to pick up Skylar, as her parents and I had arranged. Mom sent them a big, juicy ham and Barb had baked us a sweet potato pie. I’m sure Skylar got suspicious again when her mother hugged her tight and had tears in her eyes when she said goodbye, because she asked me on the way back home what was up. I said it was nothing special, just another wonderful Christmas with the most beautiful girl in the world. I can be romantic when I really try.
That evening we had a meal that included a wild turkey I had shot a few days before, and then we headed to the church for the Christmas Eve candlelight service. The parking lot was filled with horses and wagons of all types, many of them homemade from old tractor and truck parts like the Banks’s. The funniest and most ironic contraption was a small horse trailer rigged up to be pulled by two horses, with the people riding inside the trailer and being pulled by the horses instead of the other way around. We all got a good laugh out of that one.
Everyone was really surprised, though, when an old truck came chugging in and Jim Riley, one of the mechanics in town, got out. We all swarmed his truck while he told us how he had been working on converting the vehicle to burn corn and soybean oil instead of gasoline. He said he could also convert an older model automobile to burn wood if anyone was interested. Several of the men, including Dad, Calvin, and I, were interested in finding out how to do it and we stood around for a good half hour, talking about it while the women cooed over little Joey until Reverend Campbell called everyone in for the service.
After the service, we talked to Mr. Andresen for a little whil
e and he said that there had been another solar flare on the 17th, just as I’d thought. He said it was unprecedented, as far as any scientists knew, to have so many CME’s in a row. He was a little worried about excess radiation affecting people, animals, and even plants, and he warned us to watch out for signs of radiation sickness, like nausea and vomiting, spontaneous bleeding, blisters and ulcers, severe weakness, and hair loss. He also said that radiation can cause all sorts of birth defects and we breathed a sigh of relief that little Joey seemed to be normal—well, except for his unusual head size, intelligence, and strength, that is.
When we got home from church, we all had a mug of warm milk and some cookies that Gram had made, and then everyone went to bed. Everyone except me, that is. I had told Mom and Dad about the proposal, so they didn’t mind that I stayed downstairs with Skylar. They were real happy about it too, which surprised me, because I thought they would give me the whole “you’re only seventeen” speech. I guess they were happy about the way Alex and Robin’s marriage had worked out and they realized that we’d be eighteen in a few months anyway and they were already so used to having Skylar around. I think they also appreciated the fact that I hadn’t just sprung it on them like Alex did, so they were more prepared to get their heads around it.
I made Skylar sit in the armchair right beside the Christmas tree and I knelt down in front of her. I know it was a really old-fashioned way of doing it, but it just felt right, with the old-fashioned way we were living now. Skylar started to cry before I even asked her, and when I did, she threw her arms around me and said yes before I could show her the ring. Just as I thought, she loved the ring, and I mean loved it. She put it on right away and even though it was a little big, she wouldn’t take it off, but just kept looking at it and hugging me over and over. I didn’t show her the matching wedding band. I wanted to surprise her with that on our wedding day. See? I told you I could be romantic when I tried.
We stayed up almost all night and cuddled together in a blanket in front of the fire, talking about the future. We talked about the wedding and where we would live afterwards and how many children we wanted. Even though I was scared to death at the thought of seeing Skylar go through what Robin had, I had to admit I’d love to have a little tyke like Joey. Of course, Skylar was all for having a dozen kids—she loves kids.
We decide that we’d live with Mom and Dad, if that was okay with them, because Robin and Alex were talking about moving to Robin’s old house. We all hated that idea of course, especially since they’d be taking Joey with them, but we understood that they needed more room and a home of their own now that they had a family. Alex was excited to try his hand at cattle ranching and joked that we’d have to start calling him the Baron, and that he’d even give us a job helping him if we were nice enough. Robin wasn’t too keen on keeping a bull again since her Dad’s accident, but Alex said they’d leave it with the Jenkins’s and borrow it as needed.
On Christmas morning, all the women gathered around Skylar to see the ring, and Granny showed her how to tie a little piece of cloth around the underside of the ring to make it fit. Then we had a nice breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast made from Mom’s fresh-baked bread, along with some homemade cinnamon rolls made by Gram. We gathered around the Christmas tree and sang carols and exchanged gifts. I won’t say what everyone got, but I will mention some of the more memorable gifts.
Dad had taken the electric washing machine and refashioned it so it could be agitated manually or by riding a stationary bike. That way, Mom could get her exercise while doing laundry, he joked. But more importantly, the tub could be filled automatically with heated water from the solar water heater, pumped through the pipes by the hydraulic pump, and then, at the flick of a lever, could drain out through the existing drainage pipes. No more filling and dumping, filling and dumping. The clothes still had to be wrung through the rollers, but Dad had mounted them on top of the washer so they could swing over the tub when it was time to wring out the clothes. Dad said he’d work on some kind of solar dryer for her next Christmas and Mom laughed and said that it seemed laundry was becoming a theme for gifts for her.
One of my favorite gifts—besides Skylar agreeing to be my wife, of course—was from Calvin. He had taken apart an old solar-powered model car he had built for his fourth grade science fair project and had rigged up a way to recharge batteries with it. He had gathered up our dead rechargeable batteries, recharged them all, and then gave them to us in some of our long-forgotten gadgets, like flashlights, clocks, and our Nintendo DS.
My favorite was my MP3 player. I had almost forgotten how nice music sounded. Skylar and I spent the rest of the day just listening to music from before PF Day. Little Joey’s eyes got real big when I put the headphones up to his ears and we all had a good laugh about that.
Skylar spent New Year’s Eve with us too. We had a wonderful night, lounging outside around the fire pit because the weather was still so nice. In fact, the weather never did get cold that winter. We had a week in February where the temperature dropped just a few degrees below freezing, just enough to freeze the water in our buckets for our cold cellar, but other than that, it stayed in the fifties and sixties most of the time. Mr. Andresen said that was most likely because of the increased sun activity. It made the winter very enjoyable, whatever the cause was.
In March and April, Skylar and I helped Alex and Robin work on Robin’s old place to get it ready to move into this summer. Nobody had lived there for over two years and it was not set up for living in without electricity like our house is. The fences had to be fixed for holding cattle again and the barn filled with hay for feed and fresh straw for calving. Sometimes Mom, Dad, and Calvin came along and helped too. Little Joey sat and watched all the activity with great interest and sometimes would clap and giggle when we were concentrating real hard on some task and we’d all end up laughing and taking a break. I’ll tell you, that kid was the best manager anyone could ask for.
Two weeks ago, I turned eighteen and Mom said I was officially graduated from school. Skylar turned eighteen just three days ago and we had a very special birthday party for her at the diner with her parents and lots of friends from town. Jenny and Ben were there, although Jenny had broken up with Ben and was now dating his friend, Matt. Ben was interested in Taylor Smith, Irvine’s little sister. I wanted to warn him against getting too involved with that family, but Skylar told me to let it alone.
After the party, Skylar and I sat outside in back and I remembered her words to me two and a half years ago like it was just yesterday: “nothing is ever going to be the same from this day forward.”
Tonight, as I sit here writing the final words of my story about learning how to survive in a world without electricity and how to survive cowboy-style battles and pioneer-type emergencies, I realize that I’ve become accustomed to writing with a pen on paper. My handwriting has actually improved a great deal, and probably my grammar too. All in all, I think PF Day has been a wonderful gift to my family and me, and I can only feel grateful to the sun for giving us this new life. I know we are stronger and closer than ever and are prepared to survive whatever may come our way.
And now comes the most important event of my life, as I wait here in the living room, surrounded by my family and friends, for my beautiful bride to come down the stairs and become my wife.
If you liked Bracken’s story,
you might like to read Ben’s story,
Time Lost: Teenage Survivalist II
Ben discovers that living in the middle of a big city makes survival nearly impossible. Starvation, dehydration, disease, freezing temperatures, and out-of-control fires imperil the desperate population. After facing unimaginable losses, Ben finds hope for the future when he meets Sara, who has endured her own share of agonizing loss. But when a murderous gang threatens to take away everything Ben has left, he and Sara flee to a wilderness area of a large city park where they learn to live off the land for survival.
Or Taylor’s story,<
br />
Ice Queen: Teenage Survivalist III
Taylor knows what it takes to survive; she’s been surviving on her own as long as she can remember while her parents alternated between drug-induced catatonia, rehab, and jail. But does she have what it takes to survive the failure of the world's power grids, her parent's and older brother's painful withdrawal from drugs, and the emergence of the mental diseases the drugs had been masking for years?
Although each book reveals very different aspects of survival in often contrasting situations, Bracken, Ben, and Taylor prove they have what it takes to survive. Their lives eventually entwine in ways that none of them could have foreseen. The books do not have to be read in any specific order.
www.amazon.com/Julie-L.-Casey/e/B00943SWXQ
Discussion questions
1.Immediately after the students in Bracken’s class heard the initial big explosion on PF Day, what did they fear had happened?
2.Why didn’t Bracken know Skylar very well, even though they had known each other almost all their lives? How is it possible to feel you know someone without really knowing him or her?
3.What things did Bracken’s family already have that gave them an advantage for survival after PF Day? (Examples: fireplace, harvested grain, hunting equipment, water well, chickens etc.)
4.What things did they acquire that aided their survival? (Examples: livestock, wood-burning stove, horse-drawn farming equipment, etc.)
5.What things did they make to aid their survival? (Examples: solar bottle light, solar water heater, solar heat exchangers, etc.)
6. How did the townspeople pull together to help each other survive? (Examples: town market, stoves made from old water heaters, specialization and trading of skills, etc.)
Teenage Survivalist Series [Books 1-3] Page 14
