Then he pulled her back until the back of her feet caught in the snow. She plopped down on her rump into the fluffy stuff.
Dave ran past her saying, “Nope. Last one in makes the first one in hot chocolate.”
With that he stomped the snow from his feet and walked into the kitchen.
Beth wasn’t long behind him.
Just long enough to make a third snowball, which she slipped into her pocket.
Dave sat in a kitchen chair and told the others, quite gleefully, how ridiculous Beth looked tossed deep inside a snow drift.
“And now she’s going to make me some hot chocolate because the little imp was foolish enough to challenge me to a race.”
He heard the door open and close.
He continued, “I’ll bet you won’t do that again, will you, Pea…”
He never finished the question.
When Beth pulled the collar back on his pajama top and dumped the third snowball down his back it took his breath away.
“No, Dad,” she said with a grin. “I for sure learned my lesson.”
Chapter 15
Dave donned his heavy boots and parka about nine a.m., preparing to head over to Woody’s house.
He normally looked forward to seeing Woody, for they’d become good friends in the short amount of time they’d known one another.
But he knew on this particular morning Woody would gloat a fair amount about being right about his weather forecast.
Then he’d very likely give Dave a lecture he’d received three times already.
“Never discount the knowledge of old people, Dave. Every year we’ve lived has brought us more and more experiences. With experiences come knowledge. That’s why we’re so damned smart. If young people would listen to us more often some of our vast wealth of knowledge and smarts would rub off on them.”
The second time he’d heard the lecture he’d pointed out to Woody he was repeating himself. Woody merely shrugged but didn’t say anything.
The third time he got the same lecture he did the same thing.
This time Woody told him, “One of the nice things about being old is that you can repeat yourself over and over again, as many times as you want, and people think you’re just getting senile.
“What you’re really doing is trying to get under their skin. But they can’t get mad at you because you’re old.”
“Really, now?”
“Yep. Really.”
Dave told Sarah of his concerns as he was changing.
Her solution?
“Just don’t go.”
“But honey, I have to go. I told Mrs. Montgomery I’d bring her a couple of geese today.”
“Geese? Where on earth are you gonna get geese?”
“We saw them flying in yesterday. Probably a hundred or so Canadian geese. They all landed on the lake. But we couldn’t get any yesterday because we didn’t take shotguns. We were fishing yesterday.”
“Dave, it snowed five inches last night. Take a day off. The geese will be there tomorrow.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Woody says when they fly south for the winter they don’t always stay. He says sometimes they’ll rest here for a couple of days and then fly down to the coast.
“He says they’re even more likely to do that because of the snowfall. The snow up north is what they’re trying to get away from.”
“So let ‘em go. You’re not having any trouble hauling fish in, and you brought home a deer last week.”
“Honey, have you ever seen a Canadian goose on a plate? They’re as big as turkeys. They’re easy hunting, and right now they’re just sitting on that lake waiting for us to come and get ‘em.
“We have to strike while the iron is hot. If we wait until the snow is gone they might be gone too. And it’ll take us a week to haul in the same thirty pounds of meat we can shoot in just five minutes.”
“Uh, huh. You know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think you’re so enamored with your new friend Woody that you’d rather spend time with him instead of me.”
“Oh, honey, that’s just not true. Yes, he’s got a better disposition than you. And he tells better jokes than you. And he’s a better conversationalist than you. And since he was a Marine we have a lot of stories we can share…”
“You’re not helping your case, Dave.”
“Honey, but…”
“But nothing. Why don’t you just marry him then?”
“Well, number one because I’m already married. And number two, you’re way prettier than he is.”
“Then how come you’d rather hang out with him?”
“I wouldn’t. I was teasing. Look, this is a great opportunity to bag some birds that usually fly over way too high to shoot. Mrs. Montgomery hasn’t served up any geese yet this year and I promised I’d take her some. And I’ll bring one here too. How’s that?”
“I don’t like goose. It’s too gamey.”
“No gamier than duck and you like duck.”
“How long do you think you’ll be gone?”
“Three hours. Maybe four. And really, what else is there to do around here today? All you guys are gonna do is sit next to the fireplace and tell stories about the men in your lives.”
“Nope, you’re dead wrong, bucko.”
The comment came not from Sarah but from Lilly, who walked up behind them.
“For your information, Dave, we’re going to have a snowman building contest. You’re on Sarah’s team. She objected and said she wanted that handsome guy named Paul who lives down the street. She said you’re a lousy builder of snowmen.
“But we said no, that she was dumb enough to marry your sorry self, so she was stuck with you on her team.”
“Well,” Dave asked, “Who are on the other teams?”
“Red and I are one team and Lindsey and Beth are on the third team.”
“But Lindsey is still on crutches. She won’t be much help.”
“Exactly. That’s why Red and I didn’t want her.”
“Who’s gonna judge the contest?”
“Beth. She volunteered.”
“Uh, huh. Beth is competing and she’s the judge. And you really think she’s gonna be impartial?”
“Hey, we had to give her some kind of concession for agreeing to have Lindsey on her team.”
“What’s the prize?”
“The losing team has to make chocolate chip cookies for the other two teams.”
Now, Dave hadn’t had a chocolate chip cookie in months. And they were stale, taken from a two year old package he’d found in the cab of an abandoned big rig in California.
“I’m in,” he announced. “I’ll be back by two thirty, three at the latest. Don’t you dare start without me.”
Chapter 16
Dave, true to his word, walked through the door at just before three.
He had not one, but two dead geese.
Sarah met him in the kitchen
“I thought you were going to take those to Mrs. Montgomery’s.”
“I left her two with Woody. He’s gonna run them by there for me. I told him I had a very important event I had to attend.”
“So why bring us two? I thought you were only going to bring us one.”
“Well, that was my intent. But those darned geese fly so close together. I shot at one and took out two instead.”
“Darn the luck.”
“That’s what I said. And if it’s too much meat for you guys I’ll turn the leftovers into jerky.”
“Goose jerky? Is that really a thing?”
“You can make jerky out of anything, honey. I can even make jerky out of you if you make me mad enough.”
“Ha! You like to sound like you’re a tough guy. But if either of us ever kills the other it’ll be me that’s the killer. You’ll be the kill-ee.”
“Is that even a word?”
“Is if I say it is.”
“Well okay, then.”
“What are you gonna do with the birds?
It’s snowman building time.”
“I’ll leave them here on the counter. After we build our world-winning snowman I’ll pluck ‘em and gut ‘em while Peanut’s baking our cookies.
“You sound awfully cocky.”
“Nope. If you’re not sure of yourself you’re cocky. If you’re sure of yourself you’re confident. I know what we’re capable of, and I know what those dizzy girls are capable of. We’re gonna win. Trust me.”
Half an hour later they were back in the kitchen, Sarah mocking him in a falsetto voice.
“Trust me, you said. You knew what we were capable of, you said. Self confident, you said you were…”
“Hey,” Dave pleaded, “The whole thing was rigged.”
Lilly and Red remained outside on the back porch, looking at the results.
Their snowman was very good. Symmetric, well formed, everything was in its proper place.
Dave and Sarah’s snowman, right next to it, was similarly well-built.
Those weren’t the ones they were looking at.
They were looking at the third one, the one next to Sarah and Dave’s.
The crooked and anorexic one.
“So,” asked Lilly. “Exactly how would you describe it?”
“Hmmm… is butt ugly too harsh?”
“I think butt ugly may not be harsh enough.
“How about a nightmare wrapped in nonsense?”
“Possibly. How did they not notice the head is bigger than the body?”
“Hey, I’m just impressed they got that monster head to stay up there.”
“How did they not notice the whole thing is lopsided?”
“They kept looking at it with their necks bent. I guess to them it was okay.”
“Is it me, or is he looking at us like he’s going to eat us?”
“No, it’s just the hideous smirk on his face.”
At that moment the huge egg-shaped head the girls were able to balance atop the snow disaster rolled off and went “thud” in the snow below.
“Well,” said Red, “I guess the snowman from hell is officially dead.”
“Should we dance around him and sing a song?”
“I think we should go inside before they accuse us of killing it.”
They walked into the kitchen and right into the middle of another conversation.
In this one Beth was explaining her rationale in judging hers and Lindsey’s creation the best of the three.
While Dave mixed a bowl of flour and sugar together and Sarah read instructions to him from a cookbook.
“What you four bozos forgot was the arithmetic factor.”
Every face in the room looked at her. Dave asked, “Huh?”
Lindsey whispered in Beth’s ear.
“Oh…” Beth said by way of correction. “I mean the artistic factor.”
Lilly rolled her eyes.
“Let me guess, little pipsqueak. You gave yourself and your sister extra points because you thought our snowman and your parents’ snowman were boring.”
“Yep.”
“And that your snowman, with the egg-shaped head that was bigger than his body, was more artistic than either of ours because you intentionally tried to deviate from societal norms. You went out of your way to create a work of art that more accurately depicted the snow people.
“You made him ugly on purpose to protest against the generalization that snowmen are always pretty and of uniform shape. When in reality most snow people are plain or even ugly.
“And you believe that snowmen created by humans should reflect that.”
Beth looked at Lindsey, who lowered her head.
Beth whispered in Lindsey’s ear, “Is what she’s saying good or bad?”
“You got me, little sis. I don’t know. Take a chance.”
The thing about Beth’s whispers was they weren’t as discrete as she thought they were.
Everyone in the room could hear her.
She locked eyes with Lilly, crossed her skinny little arms, and said loud and forcefully, “Exactly!”
Lilly smiled and said, “In that case, congratulations, pipsqueak.”
“Yeah,” Dave added. “Good job.”
“One thing, though,” Red said. “Your artistic snowman wants you to go out and pick up his head. It’s lying out there in the snow.”
Chapter 17
Angela and Kristy were going stir crazy in San Antonio.
The rainy weather had kept them indoors for three straight days. And while they’d always been able to stay ahead of the food crisis by having several days’ supply on hand, it was getting mighty low.
“We’ve only got enough for two more days,” Kristy said after inventorying what they had in the cupboard.
“We need to get back out today.”
Thankfully the sun rose to clear blue skies and it looked to be a dry day ahead.
It was still frightfully cold, and a bitter breeze from the north promised to make it colder.
But that’s what coats and scarves and knit hats were for.
“What’s our game plan?” Angie asked.
“Same as before. We’ll take two backpacks and go back to that same death house. It’ll take both backpacks, and at least two more trips, to get everything out of that box spring.
“On the way, though, we’ll make a pit stop at Melissa’s house.”
“Why not on the way back?”
“If we collect the food first there’s more chance we’ll get robbed of it. If anybody tries to rob us on our way to or from Melissa’s, we can just turn our backpacks upside down to show they’re empty. We can’t do that if they have food in them.”
“Good point.”
“Besides, if Melissa and her family want to join us they may want to come with us to get the food. The more the merrier.”
“Are you sure this is the way to go? Us partnering up with other people, I mean. What if they eat more than they collect? What if they just turn out to be additional mouths to feed when we can barely feed ourselves?”
“I honestly don’t know how it’s going to work out, Angie. If it looks like we’re being taken advantage of in the deal I guess we can call the whole thing off. Tell them never mind and go back to just being the two of us.
“But I think this is the way to go.
“I mean, I hate to call them gangs because I think they’re like us. Just trying to protect themselves and survive from day to day.
“But whatever you call them… gangs or families or tribes or whatever… I’m seeing more and more of them out there lately.
“They have people who go along on their missions and stand guard while they’re in the houses. So they don’t get ambushed when they come back outside. And with more people they have additional people to carry food.”
“But they eat more food because there are more mouths.”
“True. But having only two mouths to feed isn’t necessarily a good thing if people are going to rob us and take the food away from us.”
“True.”
“Besides, I almost got killed once. And it made me realize if I had died, you’d have had a very bad time of it. You might have died too, but not as quickly as me. You’d have died of starvation, and that’s a painful and terrible way to go.
“I think if we’re in a group there’s a far less chance I’ll be killed coming out of a house. And that’ll make your chances of survival better as well.”
“Who is this Melissa girl? Tell me about her.”
“Melissa was a year behind me in school but we had a couple of the same classes. She’s a sweet girl and had my back once when two other girls tried to push me around. I still owe her for that.
“Her dad was in the Army, stationed someplace in Germany. I’ve never met him because he was overseas pretty much the whole time I knew her.
“I’m pretty sure he was still over there when the power went out.”
“Did she have any brothers or sisters?”
“No, she was an only child.
“I thought of her because every time I went over there it was just her and her mother. If her dad couldn’t find a way back from Germany to help them, they’re all alone and struggling, just like we are.
“They might want to join up with us for our mutual protection.”
Angela put her winter boots on and started to lace them.
She stopped between the boots and looked at her sister, a concerned look upon her face.
Kristy asked, “What?”
“You know that if we do this it’s going to change everything about our lives, don’t you?”
“Meaning?”
“Well, if we’re going to go out and come back as a team that means we won’t be able to live in separate houses any more.
“That means they’ll have to move in with us or we’ll have to move in with them. And living in a house with perfect strangers means we won’t have any privacy at all.”
“If we live in a house with perfect strangers they won’t be strangers for long.”
“I’m just making a point. That’s all.”
“I know. And I’m not faulting you for being concerned.”
“There’s another thing too.
“Say Melissa’s father did somehow make it back from Germany. If he was in the Army he’s probably used to taking charge. What if he wants to be bossy and take over everything? Tell us where to go and what to do and all that? What if he’s the dictator type?”
“Look, Angie. I’ve already thought about all this. I’m going to make the same offer to anyone who joins us. The can join on a trial basis. If they decide it isn’t working out for them for any reason they can just walk away, no hard feelings.
“And we’ll have exactly the same option as everybody else. If they don’t agree to it, we’ll go find someone else. Fair enough?”
“Okay. You mad at me?”
“Nope. You’re my kid sister. How could I ever be mad at you?”
They hugged.
“Besides, you’re all I have left in the world. We have to be a team. You and I, we have no choice.”
They finished dressing and donned their packs, then walked out into the crisp air.
Angela turned the collar up on her coat and asked, “Which way to Melissa’s house?”
“Up two streets and over two more. Follow me.”
An Unwelcome Homecoming Page 6
