For as great as they were, neither of them were Penny Fourpaws.
Penny had been a rescue dog. She seldom barked, and that was such a concern the chitlins’ mom took her to a vet to find out why.
“Her larynx is badly damaged,” they were told. “If I was to venture a guess I’d say she was kicked in the throat by someone very powerful. Almost certainly a large man. Probably hard enough to send her flying across the room.”
Meadow, Autumn and Sam vowed at that very moment to keep her safe from anyone else who might abuse her in the future.
There was something else too.
Penny contracted a Parvovirus not long after she came to live with the chitlins and almost died.
Meadow nursed her and babied her until she pulled through.
There were two ways to look at the life thus far of Penny Fourpaws.
One could say she was a very unlucky dog, to have had first an owner who abused her. Then a virus which almost killed her.
Another might say she was incredibly lucky in that she found the chitlins before it was too late. For they’d move heaven and earth to protect her from future harm.
There was another thing Penny was. She was terribly spoiled.
That was a direct result of the turmoil her life had been up to that point.
For Meadow decreed, and her siblings agreed, that the “loveable lug of a puppy dug” had suffered enough in her life.
For the rest of it she’d want for nothing.
If she wanted to go for a walk, she got it.
If she wanted to be scratched behind her ears, someone did it.
If she didn’t like her dog food she simply stuck up her nose at it and got something else.
Actually, her favorite food wasn’t dog food at all.
It was bologna.
Oscar Meyer bologna.
For she was very finicky when it came to eating.
Snacking, too. She got snacks upon demand.
Now as she neared middle age, Rocki and Darrell finally took seriously her veterinarian’s suggestion to put her on a diet.
“I know everyone wants to show her constantly how much they love her,” the vet said. “But too much of this kind of love can be bad for her health.
“You want to show her love, take her to the park. Roll around on the floor. Play fetch with her.
“But cut back on the junk food.”
So here we had Penny, a chunky dachshund mix who waddled more than walked and seldom barked, barking as she struggled to get up the three low steps onto the front porch.
Then we had the front door bursting open and three chitlins, aged 11 to 15, falling on the deck and rolling around with the most loved canine in the free world.
Penny was as happy as she could be to see the chitlins too.
That was partly because she loved them to the moon and beyond. And partly because Rocki and Darrell had cut back on her treats of late and she knew the kids would be easier to con.
She went back and forth between rolling over so the kids could rub her expansive belly and slobbering all over their faces.
As for Rocki and Darrell, they were barely noticed.
And only by Autumn, who looked up long enough to say, “Oh hi, Nana. Hi Grandpa.”
Then she buried her face under Penny’s tongue again.
They didn’t mind.
They’d always played second fiddle to Penny.
They went inside and got attention from Jennifer, the chitlins’ mom.
“Don’t let all that fool you,” Jennifer said. “They missed you guys as much as they missed Penny.”
“Yeah,” Rocki said glumly. “It sure showed.”
“They did, they did. It’s just that… well, you guys come and go all the time. Penny seldom leaves their sight.
“They’ll be in in a minute. You’ll see.”
A veteran Hollywood actor couldn’t have hit his cue any better.
For at that very moment the front door opened up and three children came running in, looking for Nana and Grandpa hugs.
The Penny spell had been broken.
She came wandering in right after them, tired from the activity her homecoming had wrought upon everyone and looking for a place to curl up for a nap.
And all was right with the world again.
Chapter 45
“I just don’t like the whole idea, that’s all.”
Meadow was headstrong for fifteen, and never hesitated to let anyone know how she felt.
She didn’t let a little thing like age get in the way of voicing her opinion.
If her grandparents were wrong, they needed to be told.
And Meadow wouldn’t stand for any of that, “you’re a child, we’re adults, what we say goes” foolishness.
Nana tried to reason with her.
“But honey, we intentionally held off on all our interviews so we could do this last one and then come back to Little Rock and take a few weeks off.”
“And what’s so special about this interview, that you’d risk your lives driving into the danger zone to get it?”
She put her hands on her hips, something she’d always done when she felt she’d provided the ultimate argument and won her case.
“Well,” Darrell began. “We’ve already started this project by talking to her Uncle Jonny, and to Hannah and Tony Carson. We just need Julianna’s perspective to finish the story. To see it from a third angle. To try to finally understand how it was that her grandmother foresaw the Yellowstone Event and picked Tony and Hannah of all people to share her information with.
“Plus, we promised Julianna we’d come up there to see her.
“You know we’ve never broken a promise to you. To any of you.
“You know promises are a big thing with us. And you know why.”
Meadow did indeed know. It had been drilled into her sweet little head from the time she was three.
She rolled her eyes and recited the well-known family motto.
“We don’t break a promise because every time we break a promise someone gets hurt.”
“Exactly, Meadow. We promised Julianna we would go up there and conduct an interview with her before she finished her work and evacuated to who-knows-where and we could never find her again.”
“And then what?”
“What do you mean, honey?”
The teen was softening just a bit. Darrell could sense it.
“What are your plans for after you finish with this Julianna… person?”
“We’re coming right back here to Little Rock, just like Nana said. We’ll stay here for at least a month and we’ll decide with your mom whether we want you guys to stay here, or whether it would be safer to move to somewhere else.”
“We’re supposed to be safe here, Grandpa. I’ve been watching the news.”
“Well, yes. From the blast. But depending on which scientist you listen to Little Rock is supposed to be covered by anywhere from two inches to two feet of volcanic ash.
“It’s like snow, only it doesn’t melt, it never goes away. It’ll be here for years, until rains slowly wash it all into the ocean or it’s trucked away and disposed of.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying just because the city survives the blast doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll still be habitable. It might be years before anyone can live here.”
“But… where would we go?”
“I don’t know, honey. That’s one of the things we’ll discuss after we meet with Julianna and then come back.
“In the meantime you can look on the internet with your brother and sister and look for places where it might be fun to live.
“Talk among yourselves and come up with some places you might like to live and talk to your mom about it.
“Then when we come back we can all talk about options.
“After we narrow it down a bit, your Nana and I can make plans to pick you all up after school gets out for the summer and we can go look at some of them.”
Meadow’s mom Jennifer walked into the room.
“Go look at some of what?”
“Possible places to relocate to.”
“But Little Rock is our home.”
Nana said, “We know that, Jen. But Little Rock after the volcano won’t be the same. Some scientists say the ash will kill everything. That you won’t be able to grow anything here for a decade or more.
“They’re saying the way of the future is for everyone to live as close to the coasts as possible. That the people who will survive will be those who live close enough to the coast to get seafood and seaweed.”
“I already told you, Mom. I refuse to eat seaweed.”
“Yes. I hear you say that now. But if you get hungry enough you’ll decide that trying it’s better than starving. And who knows?
“You just might like it.”
Samson, ever the repository of enlightening information, offered his two cents.
“We had seaweed in science class last year.”
“You did?”
“Yep. The science teacher brought it in in a big cooler so we could try it.”
“And how was it?”
“It tasted like salty spinach.
“I didn’t like it at first, but he mixed in some Italian dressing and stirred it up and sprinkled grated cheese on top of it and then it wasn’t so bad.”
Meadow said, “Can we get back to discussing what we were discussing?
“Puleese?”
“Sure,” Grandpa said. “Just tell me what we were discussing again.”
Meadow picked up a couch pillow and threw it at him.
He ducked and it hit Autumn in the side of the head.
“Hey…”
Grandpa pointed a finger at Meadow and said, “Wasn’t me! She did it!”
Nana intervened.
“You kids stop it! Especially you big ones.”
Grandpa sulked.
“Well, she did.”
Chapter 46
“Meadow, honey, tell us your concerns.”
“Well, the obvious one is that you guys are driving into a place you have no business being, to talk to a woman you’ve never even met, to get an interview you can probably do without, to finish a book that won’t change your lives one way or another.”
“Did you say all that in one breath?”
“Nana!”
“Sorry. Meadow, honey, traveling around the country interviewing people and writing books about our experiences is how we make our living. It’s how we pay our taxes and our bills. It’s been that way for a very long time.
“You know that.”
“You don’t have to do that. You could get a job at 7-Eleven.”
“We don’t want a job at 7-Eleven. We love what we do. And finding a job you love is a rare thing these days.”
“Okay then. Forget 7-Eleven. Allison says she can get you a job at Pizza Hut.”
“You’ve talked to Allison about this?”
“I talk to Allison about everything. You know that. She’s a much better listener than those two.”
She cocked a thumb in the general direction of Samson and Autumn. They looked at each other, shrugged, and went back to coloring.
“See?”
Allison was Meadow’s cousin and BFF. The two lived in different states, but thanks to their smart phones and the internet were pretty much inseparable.
Allison was five years older and already moving through college at lightning speed on her way to a degree in criminal psychology and a job as an FBI profiler.
She also worked as an assistant manager at Pizza Hut to help pay her way through school.
“But honey, we don’t want to work at Pizza Hut.”
Two-Cent Samson spoke up again.
It turned out he was listening after all.
“But I want you to work at Pizza Hut too. If y’all moved back to Little Rock you could bring home leftover pizza every night.”
“Don’t you think you’d get tired of pizza every night?”
The question caught him short.
But not for long.
“Maybe. But they sell chicken wings too.”
He went back to coloring.
Meadow tried a new tactic.
“How are you gonna drive to Yellowstone?”
“What do you mean, honey?”
“Well, we’ve been watching the news just like the rest of the world. Every highway in and out of the Yellowstone area is clogged with traffic from people evacuating. Even the lanes that carry traffic toward the park are being used by people coming out of it.”
“Not all the lanes, Meadow. One lane is still marked for traffic to the park so emergency workers can get back to pick up more evacuees.”
Meadow put her hands on her hips.
She was rather adamant when she thought the people she loved were in danger.
“And the whole evacuation thing doesn’t give you a clue it’s dangerous in there, Nana? Come on, now. You’re smarter than that.”
She spoke with a tone bordering on insolence, but Rocki didn’t call her on it.
She couldn’t, because she knew Meadow was right and had their best interests at heart.
But Rocki had been around a long time, and was dedicated to her craft.
And she never broke her word.
She’d told Julianna they’d make a trip to Yellowstone to do the interview.
And they would.
What she hadn’t told Julianna was that after the interview was done she planned to give Julianna essentially the same lecture she’d just received from her granddaughter.
She’d try to pull Julianna away from the park; to convince her that her work there was done. That she owed it to her family and friends to abandon the area and get to a safe place.
“Look, Meadow,” she said. “Most of the scientists on television are saying we have at least a few months. I heard one yesterday swear we had several years.
“We made a commitment to meet with the park ranger and to interview her. Now we have a responsibility to do that.”
Meadow had her counterargument ready.
“But what about your commitment to us, Nana?”
“What do you mean, honey?”
“What if they’re wrong?
“What if that Dr. Wayne guy is right? That it’s going to explode any day now? What if you go off to the park and you never come back?
“How are we supposed to feel, knowing that our Nana and our Grandpa went off and died and won’t be here anymore?
“You guys promised to teach me how to drive, remember? How are you gonna do that if you’re blown to bits?”
It gave Rocki pause.
But she was as hard-headed as Meadow, and in fact was the one who passed on the hard-headed gene to Meadow through Meadow’s mom.
She was just as adamant she needed to meet what she saw was her obligation to Julianna to do the interview and to try to save Julianna’s life.
“Meadow, I promise you that once the interview is done we’ll get out of the danger zone and stay out until after the eruption.
“That’s the best I can do for you.”
But it wasn’t enough for Meadow.
The following day, as Darrell and Rocki packed up the RV and prepared to head for northern Wyoming Meadow was nowhere to be found.
Everyone else said their goodbyes, but Meadow was AWOL. She saw herself saying goodbye as something permanent. Something which might be the last goodbye she’d ever say to them.
She opted out, and the couple left without her hugs.
That gave Rocki a sense of foreboding as they left Little Rock and made their way north.
As every mile of highway rolled beneath the lumbering RV she wondered more and more whether they’d made a dreadful mistake.
Chapter 47
Wayne and Julie Hamlin had a wide circle of good friends.
Most college professors do.
Especially those who are considered experts in their field.
There aren’t a lot of volcanologists in the world.
It’s not a profession scientists flock to, for most of it entails poring over reams of data and visiting active and dormant volcanoes around the world.
And let’s face it… once you’ve seen a dozen different lava flows they all pretty much look alike.
It’s the shortage of noted and trusted volcanologists that work to the advantage of those in the field, though, and that’s especially true of the ones at the top of their game.
Wayne was very much in demand, and had been for many years, when it came to geologic conferences, commencement exercises, congressional inquiries into climate changes, possibilities of future eruptions and the like.
For many years he’d traveled all over the world, taking temporary leaves of absence from the University of Missouri at Springfield to travel to Congress, the United Nations, or various universities around the free world.
He’d even been to Russia on three different occasions, to soothe the nerves of the residents in Siberia when a long-dormant volcano started a “shake and bake campaign.”
That’s what volcanologists call it when a volcano combines the opening of steam fissures and frequent earthquakes to terrorize nearby residents.
A side effect of Hamlin’s travels was that he and Julie had friends all over the world they’d made when he went here and there and everywhere and she accompanied him.
In recent days many of those friends had been encouraging the Hamlins to get away from the states and to come and visit them.
Some of the invitations were temporary; many were permanent.
In a three bedroom house on Kalkturmstrauss in the city of Wittlich, Germany, a little man named Hans Grubel heard his phone ring in the kitchen.
He had a tiny shovel in his hand and was heading out the back door to tend to his garden.
His wife Elyse had walked to the city’s Centrum, two blocks away, as was her morning habit.
Germans don’t shop as Americans do, a week and a cartful of groceries at a time.
German markets don’t even offer grocery bags. They depend on their customers to shop daily for just a few items, and to bring reusable canvas or plastic bags with them.
The Yellowstone Event (Book 5): The Eruption Page 14
