“Chris,” Carrie tried to keep the fear and the pain out of her voice as another horrible twisting pain hit. What was this? Could she be having contractions? “We need to go...now.”
The men did not move or speak. It looked as if they were locked in a staring contest, daring the other to move first. It was Carrie’s moan of pain that ended it. Chris looked up and realized how white she was, her lips were thin and her entire body was hunched. He jumped up into the buggy, pulled hard on the reins and turned Ichabod and the buggy towards the Carters’ house. He didn’t bother to look back at Wes Perkins who wisely didn’t try to stop them. In the two blocks to the Carter’s, Carrie’s pain seemed to subside. When Chris pulled her close and asked her if she was okay she nodded.
“I think I’m getting that stomach flu that’s going around.” She looked up at his concerned face and smiled, “I’m sure I’m fine.”
She insisted on waiting in the buggy as Chris jumped down, made room for Liza and Joseph to sit in the back and everyone loaded up.
She said little on the drive home while Joseph and Liza chattered on and on about how Abigail was pretty sure she was pregnant. “She might be about two months along,” Liza chattered, “So Little Christopher,” she was sure Carrie and Chris were having a boy, “will have someone to play with.”
Carrie didn’t respond, just leaned in closer to Chris.
He pulled the buggy to a stop directly at the steps of the farmhouse. The fact that Carrie had been so quiet scared him more than anything.
Liza jumped out making a comment about valet service and turned to go inside. “Liza,” Chris called to her, “Could you please have a look at Carrie? I’ll be there as soon as I get Ichabod settled in.” He helped Carrie down from the buggy gently, and smiled at her with concern. “Go lay down, I’ll be there in a minute.”
It was in the barn that he saw the blood. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? He had to have been blind. It was bright red. A large circle of it spread on the quilt, drips of blood down the side of the buggy where he had helped Carrie down. How had he not seen it? He ran then, leaving the horse still hitched to the buggy. He ran full out, despite the sharp pain from his weak ankle. He ran through the open barn doors, across the wide yard and up the stairs, barely touching them as he barreled through the door.
Fenton had barely opened one eye, still half asleep in his favorite recliner when Chris flew through the door. He passed Joseph, who was sitting at the counter in the kitchen sipping from a cup of hot chocolate left over from breakfast, “What in Hades is going on?”
Fenton bellowed as he stood up, wincing visibly as he put his weight on his bad leg. Chris did not answer, he was too busy flinging open the door as Carrie began to scream and Liza called out frantically for towels.
No one ate dinner that night and Ichabod spent most of the afternoon and evening standing in the barn without being unhitched from the buggy or fed.
At nearly ten o’clock that evening Fenton and Joseph went out and cared for the horse, which had stood patiently waiting while tears and loss unfolded within the farmhouse walls. The old man moved slowly, as if he could feel the entire weight of the world on his shoulders.
“Gramps?”
“Yes, Joseph?”
“Will Carrie be okay?”
The little boy looked up at his grandfather. He didn’t remember either of his parents. His father Isaac had died before he was born and his mother when he was still an infant. Carrie and Liza were his mothers, and Gramps and Chris, were his dads. The fear of losing any of them had suddenly been made very real.
Fenton didn’t bother to wipe away the tears that still fell all these hours later.
“Yes, Joseph, Carrie will be okay...in time. But she’s awful sad right now.”
“And the baby? Is the baby okay?”
“No Joseph.” The old man couldn’t bear to say anything more. He sat down on the rough plank bench, pulled his grandson close and cried.
Inside their bedroom, sheets changed and the small body wrapped, Carrie sobbed, her heart breaking. Amy Lynn Aaronson had lived for five brief minutes, each breath a struggle, before her chest had risen no more and her body had stilled and then cooled in their arms. She had been tiny, not a single hair on her head, her skin bright red.
Chris held his wife and cried with her long into the night.
Stones and Trailblazers
“Funny to think of a cave as home, but it was, for just that little while. Despite the drafts and the invading rodents, we healed there, again. It seems that, up to that point our lives had been a cycle of trauma and recovery. I think it was the tipping point, the path to something better. Where the next few weeks would take us would eventually be a place I have come to think of as home. Each step, from Clinton, to the cave, to the moment we stepped into that house in Belton...no matter how terrible some of those memories are...I think I would not be who I am now if not for the steps I took to get here.” – David’s Journal
Madge’s passing had changed everything. The cave was different, less full of life. Jacob whined constantly, looking at each of them in turn as if he were searching for the old woman.
Two days later, Jess reluctantly asked David to help her cut her hair. There were no mirrors, other than a tiny handheld one. Without his help it would have been by feel. It was a rough job, but her long, wavy hair turned into tight little curls which hid much of the unevenness. They then gathered all of the black walnut shells and boiled them in water on the stove. After the water had cooled, Jess hunkered over the pot and dunked her cropped hair into it repeatedly, holding her hair in the water as long as possible.
The result, after her hair dried, was a mass of muddy brown curls, a marked difference from the long-haired blond she had been that morning. They both had stained fingers from the walnut shells. It turned their hands an odd shade of brown that did not go away for several weeks, no matter how many times they washed them.
They didn’t discuss leaving, other than to begin making a pile on one side of the cave of things they wanted to take with them. The pile grew and shrank, then grew again as Jess and David tried to decide what was worth taking and what would be too much. They also experimented with expansions onto their original backpacks, adding loops that could hold tools and Jess sewed the buckskins into cot lengths that could be rolled up and tied, then hooked onto their knapsacks.
Tina went out daily with Quincy by her side and picked the fresh greens that were just emerging...she brought back oxalis, wild violet, fresh new plantain, and handfuls of fiddlehead ferns. The greens were a welcome break from their stores of preserved meat and the last few packages of ramen noodles. The little dog acted as a guide and a hunter. Three times they returned with fresh rabbit as well as plenty of greens.
David had improved even further with the bow and arrow, whooping in excitement the first time Quincy pointed at a bird and he successfully brought it down. It was a scrawny pheasant, but Jess and Tina had both been excited to eat something other than squirrel or dried venison and encouraged him to continue trying.
Food on the trail would be scarce since it was still early in the year, each of the packs included as much dried meat and fish as it could comfortably hold. The dog would help them catch food too, but that would only help if it was safe enough to build a fire and cook whatever she killed and brought back to them.
Jess wedged the beautiful leather book into her pack. She had read through the entries over and over the past few days, seeking the comfort of Madge’s scribbled words. What she had read had brought tears to her eyes. The old woman had loved them so much, felt so thankful for their arrival, and Jess felt her loss keenly. She had become a mother to them all in the short time they were together. The other journals, mostly specifics around the work she was doing, were sealed inside a metal box and placed in the off-limits section of the cave. Jess added a note to the top of the stack before sealing the box. In the note she explained who she was, how they had wintered with Madge in the cave, an
d their eventual destination.
Jess figured that anyone who knew where the cave was would be able to find the box and make their way to Belton and find her. She hoped it would be one of Madge’s children and that she could meet them and someday share with them her special memories of their mother.
She kept one other notebook out and stuffed it in her jacket pocket. Madge had sketched many plants, some here at the cave, many not, and listed by each sketch the name and uses for each plant, along with notes on what part of the plant should be used. Madge had filled Jess’s ears with more information than she could easily remember, but the little notebook helped with the tiniest of details.
She also had the names and last known contact information for Madge’s family within the journal in her pack, for whatever good that would do her. How in the world would she find them when there wasn’t mail service?
On the fifth day after Madge’s death they looked around and realized there was nothing left to pack. There was plenty of things, but nothing more that they could fit comfortably in their bags or via the travois they had rigged to pull behind them. It was time to go. They ate breakfast, washing their meal down with bitter hot boiled chicory and doused the fire.
Before the trees closed behind them the little band stopped and looked at the cave opening, almost fully hidden unless you knew what to look for, and it felt like they were leaving home. They trekked down the trail to the rock cairn and thong tree, stood for a few moments, and then silently turned north and began to follow the waterline of the lake.
What little discussion they did have had come last night. Until given a reason to avoid them, they would try to find the nearest highway and begin the journey back to Belton that way. It would cut time off of their journey and kept the travelers near any remnants of civilization and possible food sources. It meant returning to Clinton, following Highway 7 into Harrisonville and then up 71 to Belton.
The air was cool and the sky clear. According to the pocket calendar they had kept in the cave, it was March 5th. This time last year Jess had been planning her and Erin’s escape from the camp.
“God willing and the creek don’t rise, we’ll be in Belton within two weeks. We’ll head north until we meet up with YY and take it to Highway 7 ‘till it turns into Highway 71,” she pointed on the map to David each step along the way. “If the fighting has died down, we might even hitch a ride and make it in days or even hours.”
She glanced at his worried face, “Don’t worry, we’ve got ammo and you are a great shot. You’re our backup. Things get bad, they aren’t going to expect a teenager with a baby and two little kids to haul off and start shooting.”
His worried look turned into a smirk, “Who ‘ya calling little?” He waved in his sister’s direction, “She’s the short one...I’ve grown two inches over the winter!” That earned him a laugh from the teenager. From the way his pants were riding high, he’d put on more inches the past summer as well, the ‘kid’ was growing up fast.
They took pains to hide their weapons. Jess was right, what they had on their side was their youth and the element of surprise. It might just come in handy along the way. Madge had shown them a trail when they had first arrived and told them if they followed it, it would put them on a relatively straight course to Clinton. They followed this, thereby avoiding backtracking their path to the cave and avoiding the bodies to the north as well as the old farmhouse where Erin had died.
The first two days they made good progress, winding their way back up to Route YY and then heading west back into Clinton. The town was deserted, and it looked as though there had been more fighting, as well as an extensive fire. It took some doing to find their old house. It looked as if there had been a fire.
Nothing was left, just blackened ruins and a flooded basement. Tina made a beeline for their parent’s grave, plucked an armful of tulips and jonquils that poked out of the patchy grass of their old yard and laid it on the mound. The cross that David had set there had disappeared.
Jess saw that the children needed a little time. “We can camp here tonight, that shed where Jacob was born is still relatively intact.” No one argued. One edge of the shed had been blackened by fire and a large tree limb had fallen and gouged a divot in the roof, but it looked better than camping out in the cold. The days were cool and the nights often dipped below freezing.
The previous night they had curled up together for warmth. Jess on one side and David on the other, with Tina and Jacob sandwiched in between. The two on the outside had spent far too much of the night awake and shivering. The walls of the small shed would provide a break from the wind and contact with the cold earth.
David found a piece of limestone rock and scraped a cross and his parent’s initials into it. Jess helped him pull it into position and, as had become their custom, they spent a few moments the next morning remembering who they had lost. She had never met them, but Jess knew David and Tina well, so she talked about how proud their parents would have been to see them and know they were doing well and learning and growing. Before moving on they tried sifting through the blackened ruin of the house, but there was nothing left to salvage.
By noon they were on Route 7, the road was clear, but bodies in advanced stages of decay appeared at intervals in the ditches that ran parallel on each side. It made them all nervous, but none of these bodies were recent. They were dressed in an unfamiliar uniform. None of the group was willing to get close enough to the corpses to find out which army they were from. Quincy was their barometer. The dog was smart, more attentive than ever since they had set out, and she stuck close by their side at all times.
“Still think we should be using main roads?” David asked, in mid-afternoon when the dog began to first whine, then growl deep in her throat. The day had begun sunny but near noon the clouds had rolled in and the sky was gloomy and overcast. The wind had picked up, and they were walking into it, which made it harder. It was possible they could get snow, it was only March and snow this late in the season wasn’t unheard of.
Quincy had begun to whine after they crossed over the South Grand River. They looked around, but nothing appeared out of place. Still, the little dog knew her stuff, something was up.
“Let’s get off the road and into that stand of trees over there.” Jess pointed to a small patch of forest on the other side of a marshy section of land. It wasn’t the best cover, the trees were still bare of leaves, but it was better than walking down the middle of the highway. They kept a sharp lookout, headed for the trees, and soaked their shoes walking through the marshy area. This was a problem, especially for Tina and David, who had barely usable shoes, having grown over the winter.
Their toes rested firmly against the ends of their shoes, straining against the fabric. The water was icy cold, and they were relieved to get out of the open as the wind continued to increase. Jess quickly began to realize the depth of the danger they were in. They did not have good shoes, there was still a strong possibility of snow and freezing weather, and they had no idea where to find shelter for the night. “What in the hell was I thinking wanting to leave the cave so early?”
The small group plunged into the tree line, pushing on until the road was difficult to see. Quincy had stopped growling and was now only whining, as if she was picking up the scent of something familiar, but something that bothered her nonetheless. The escape to the trees had only taken a couple of minutes and none of them were surprised to see several camouflage Army trucks motor down the now deserted road, full of soldiers and weapons. They were heading into Clinton, not out of it, so for now the band was safe. If Quincy hadn’t warned them, they would have never made it off the road and into hiding in time. Jess reached down and scratched behind the pup’s ears with stiff, half-frozen fingers. “Good work, Quince. Now if you only knew how to find us some shelter for the night, we’d be set.” The dog gave a little whine and licked Jess’s fingers. Then she sprang away, nose to the ground, leading them west.
“It will take longer
if we stick to the trees,” David said as they followed the little dog, “But if we keep the road in sight, we’ll have cover and some safety and still be following the main roads.” Jess just nodded, it sounded like a good plan to her. An hour, perhaps far later, her stomach rumbled painfully. It had to be mid-afternoon by now and they hadn’t stopped to eat any lunch. Tina was stumbling along listlessly to the rear, even David looked worn out. Trekking through woods was far more difficult than the road.
Jacob sealed the deal by waking and crying fitfully. At nearly six months of age, he wasn’t as impatient as he had been a few months ago. Then it had been a cycle of wake, scream for food, eliminate, scream to be changed, rinse and repeat. Now at least he gave her time to get settled, and would reach his arm up out of the sling to touch her face. He loved the necklace David had made for her and played with it for hours on end. She reached in, caressed his head, and put the disk of the pendant in his tiny hand. That would distract him for a while, but he would need to eat soon.
The sky was gray and ominous through the trees. It held an almost certain promise of freezing rain or even snow within the dark clouds. And although it was only mid-afternoon, the light was fading. David looked up at the sky as well, “We need to find shelter, Jess, shelter and food, and soon.” As if to emphasize the point, Jacob whined again, kicking his legs against Jess’s stomach in displeasure.
At that moment, Quincy, who had been heading west with her little nose to the ground, gave a short bark and dashed south, to the left, disappearing within the trees. “Squirrel? Rabbit?” Jess asked, looking in the direction that the little dog had gone. David shook his head, and turned south. They could hear the dog give two sharp barks a few hundred feet away. Five minutes later, deep in the woods now, they found Quincy at a small clearing. The smell of wood smoke had made them nervous, but as they approached they saw a small family and relaxed a little. There were four of them, a man and a woman and two small children, a boy and a girl.
The Storm: War's End, #1 Page 27
