Eruption (Yellowblown™ Book 1)

by Hughey, J.

  “No, I forgot to tell you, the post master told the paper they might come out once a week, but people in the boondocks should figure on picking up the mail in Gardenburg. The cost of gas is too high.”

  “Can they do that?” I asked.

  “Apparently, they already did.”

  We were preparing to head down to Grampa’s the next morning when two cars pulled up with their trunks full of the big clear jugs for office water coolers. Boone went on a recon mission with Dad. They came back as the visitors went through the laborious job of transferring water from a smaller container into the larger ones that didn’t fit under the pipe.

  When our guests were gone, Mom, Dad and Sara loaded up in Mom’s SUV. I joined Boone in his truck for the short drive. We found Grandma in a kitchen chair, ready to continue the battle Dad had glossed over last night. For the second time in twenty-four hours, I felt bad for her. Moving from this house must tear at her fifty years worse than my leaving my dorm room had. As if the threat of uprooting wasn’t bad enough, Grandma expected her house to be broken into the instant they vacated.

  Easygoing Dad insisted, in his water-erodes-rock style, and got his way just as Western Case College’s President Ellis had, though I think Grampa’s quiet “Now Bittie, this’ll be easier and safer for all of us,” contributed to her disgruntled agreement.

  Boone offered to stay in the vacated house to ease Grandma’s worries.

  Dad gave him a sidelong look. “What, and have you lounging down here while I dig springs and run off the riffraff? No dice, cowboy.”

  “Well, he needs some place to sleep, Matt,” Mom said.

  I wasn’t sure if she wanted him out of the house to get him away from me or to give us a place to rendezvous.

  “We’ll figure something out,” Dad insisted. “Part of the reason we’re doing this is to keep everybody together.”

  We all pitched in to help them pack. I watched a heavily laden Boone pause in the driveway to look in the metal-sided pole building built for Grampa’s dump truck and excavators. It now sheltered his old camper trailer and Grandma’s sedan.

  He asked some questions when he returned. Grampa pawed through a kitchen drawer for a set of keys. He led Boone and Dad to the trailer. I propped the back door open as I packed the pantry, shamelessly spying. Still stalking Boone Ramer in my weird way, I supposed. I heard the rumble of masculine conversation and the slam of exterior hatches closing.

  The trailer had provided hours of childhood entertainment when Sara and I played house in the rounded, wood-paneled interior. We would set the table and pretend to cook meals on the minuscule stove. She’d force a doll to nap while I unfolded motor club maps to plan trips. I hadn’t understood the crisscrossing squiggly lines beyond the representation of routes to places other than home.

  After ten minutes, eaten alive by curiosity, I wandered out to the shed. The camper seemed smaller than my memory, its inside darkened to haunted house levels by the confines of the garage. Blue gingham curtains sported spiderwebs and dust Grandma would never have allowed to accumulate back in the days when they travelled.

  “So the refrigerator can run on propane?” Dad asked.

  “Sure,” Grampa said. “Or you can plug the whole rig into electricity. You got your water tank under here and a small water heater. That and the furnace take propane. Here’s the thermostat for your heat. ’course I had it all winterized years ago, so the water system will need some flushing.”

  “Probably best to leave the plumbing alone, at least this year,” Boone suggested.

  “Are we going camping?” I teased.

  “Only in our driveway,” Dad said. “This little rig is a good way to put the solar panel to use since the batteries connect right up to it. We’ll have refrigeration as long as we have propane, and a stove and oven. And some extra bunks.”

  I nodded as I opened the tiny refrigerator. A poof of musty air assaulted my nose. I suppose a miniscule harbor of cold improved on no cold at all, but food for a household of seven? In here?

  Grampa produced some sort of battery-operated air pump out of Grandma’s car to make the tires of the trailer go from saggy to perky. As usual, Boone took charge of the heavy equipment. He backed Grampa’s aged but pristine pickup truck into the garage bay and aligned the hitch to the trailer’s tongue in one attempt. The rear end of the pickup settled toward the cement pad when Dad cranked the jack to lower the hitch onto the ball. Boone plugged a wire from the trailer into a socket on the truck.

  “Take it easy pulling out,” Grampa said. “Been sitting long enough those brakes might be locked.”

  “Yes, sir. Let me know if the lights are working, too.”

  “Will do.”

  I resisted the bizarre urge to climb up in the cab next to my Nebraska rancher. He started the truck then rolled the driver’s window down so he could hang his head out to look behind him, definitely the cutest All-American boy I’d ever seen.

  Grampa gave him a thumbs up. “Hot dang. Brake lights are good.”

  I heard the emergency brake click off and the engine rev slightly. The camper creaked forward. “Slick as grease,” Boone called.

  Grampa smiled, proud of his equipment. “That’ll come in handy,” he said as Boone stopped twenty feet down the driveway. “Propane tanks were full when I stored her. The furnace sips it.”

  “It’s awesome,” I agreed. “You’ll be handy, too. We’ve got a lot of projects going at our house. We need somebody to keep everyone straight.”

  “I’m pretty good at managing projects.” He looked around the homestead he and Grandma had made together. His lips pressed in a tight line for a moment before he strode toward the back door.

  We finished loading stuff out of the house, including Grandma’s impressive assortment of canned goods, since, according to her, these would be the first things stolen if left behind. Boxed jars of green and red and yellow took up the entire rear of Mom’s SUV, with the seats folded down.

  Grandma clung to Dad’s arm as she limped to Boone’s truck—entrusted to Dad for the short drive—while Grandpa locked the house and the garage where they’d parked her car for now. Mom had already left with Sara, and Dad followed with his parents, leaving me to be just where I wanted. Grandpa’s truck bobbed with the weight of the trailer behind it. Boone tapped the brakes several times in the driveway. Something on the trailer squealed in protest but must have responded acceptably because he pulled out on the road. The truck motor roared gently, coaxed into accelerating on the uphill pull.

  I slipped over to the center of the seat like a girl on a date with her farmer boyfriend. Boone put his hand on my leg without looking at me. He watched his side mirrors as he nursed the rig up the narrow road toward The Perch.

  “What the heck?” I muttered when I saw Dad park at the entrance of our driveway.

  Sara ran down to meet us. Boone rolled down his window. “Dad said to tell you there’s, like, three cars of people up there getting water. He said everything is fine, to wait here until they clear out.” Message delivered, she ran back up the drive, tendrils from her perfect ponytail trailing behind her head.

  Boone set the brake and turned off the motor. He didn’t say anything. His heedfulness to the driveway held me silent as he returned his hand to my leg and rubbed his thumb on the inside of my thigh.

  You’re a gift I’m not going to get to keep. The thought slammed into my brain so aggressively I feared I’d spoken out loud.

  Boone didn’t change his posture. He watched the first car exit the driveway but, I realized, he drifted beyond this truck, outside of Indiana, thinking about people I didn’t know and a place I’d never been. My hand flattened over his. I memorized the moment again, pressed my palm down and closed my eyes to focus on the slight answering squeeze of his strong fingers.

  Despair bubbled and threatened to gasp out of my throat. I swallowed, forced my eyes open to study his silhouette in the afternoon light.

  Look at the world right here, right
now, Violet, I thought as the second car meandered down the drive, a belt squealing at the turn.

  Boone rubbed his chin, generating the rasp of unshaven whiskers.

  “Thank you,” I croaked. At least it sounded like a croak to me, but he didn’t look over.

  “What for?”

  “For helping my family so much. We’d be a disaster if you weren’t here.”

  He didn’t answer for a long time. “You’d be fine.”

  Dad jogged toward us. “The last one’s right behind me,” he wheezed.

  When he’d driven away, Boone finally looked at me. I liked his intensity yet worried about an underlying sadness he didn’t try to hide.

  We were together, here and now, but for how long?

  He gripped my chin with his thumb and forefinger. The force in his touch suggested passion. The kiss suggested apology. You’re a gift I’m not going to get to keep.

  I leaned my head on his shoulder as he turned the ignition key.

  Boone and I made an early start on our bikes the next morning, escaping before someone corralled us into a project. We coasted down the hill then settled into an easy pace I knew we could maintain on the state road. I aimed for Gardenburg and our mail, driven by an underlying curiosity to see the happenings in town, what with random people sourcing water at The Perch.

  “How did you sleep?” I asked. (He’d spent the night in Grampa’s trailer.)

  “Great.” He pedaled in his usual spot off my left shoulder.

  “Did you get cold?”

  “Your mom gave me blankets,” he said.

  “It was chilly in the house. You had to be freezing in that tin can.”

  “Maybe you’re just delicate.”

  I looked back at him with arched brows. “I’ll show you delicate.” I picked up the pace. Forty-five minutes later, we wheeled along Main Street, winded, our cheeks stinging with cold.

  “Phew, woman,” Boone panted. “You found another gear this morning.”

  “The delicate gear,” I reminded him. He smacked my butt with a light flip of his fingers, the playfulness an unexpected change from his brooding last night.

  The Gardenburg downtown hadn’t been a hotbed of coolness since the 1950s. Now, even more storefronts stood empty, and chairs were propped on patio tables at the only outdoor café. The drone of a few generators carried through the crisp fall air.

  Quiet and unthreatening, nothing in Gardenburg suggested the slightest potential for the roiling waves of angry urban humanity the TV crews filmed. Thank goodness.

  Inside the post office, a bank of windows on the side wall lit the interior. A clerk with big hair, especially remarkable considering the water crisis, greeted Boone and me from behind the counter. Her eyes, with lids shadowed in frosty blue, wandered from his ruddy face down the front of his black athletic jacket. Cougar.

  “I’m here for the Perch’s mail,” I said. “From Sycamore Springs.”

  She sorted through some bundles. “Matt or Herbert?”

  “Both, I guess. One is my dad and one my grandpa.”

  She shrugged. “Normally, I’d need their permission, but you don’t look like a good candidate for mail fraud.”

  She laid two rubber-banded packs of letters on the counter. “What about the Criders? Are they near your place?”

  A sleepy uniformed man wandered out from a back room. “Sycamore Springs? That’s my route.” He started sorting through the bundles. “Here, you can take Perkins, Smith, and Rice, too.”

  “Hey, hold up,” Boone said. “We rode here on bikes to get her parents’ mail, not to do your job for you.”

  The man tugged his blue baseball hat down on his forehead, immediately defensive. “My EMA didn’t change with the gas prices.”

  “What’s an EMA?” I asked.

  “Earned mileage allowance. I use my own car and gas for my route. I’m losing money every time I go.”

  Boone asked, “Still turning in your timesheet?”

  Offering no denial, the postal employee turned away. “Take the letters. Don’t take them. Makes no difference to me.”

  “That’s obvious,” Boone said.

  I looked at a certificate on the wall. “Where’s this Postmaster guy?” I asked the big-haired lady.

  She licked her lips. “In back. I’ll get him.”

  She stood aside as the Postmaster, poster boy for a Jeff Foxworthy redneck joke, meandered to the counter. The short sleeves of his uniform shirt were rolled up like a trucker’s. His smile showed only his bottom teeth. Not because he didn’t have his top teeth. His upper lip just worked that way and made me like him even less.

  “I’m wondering about the Sycamore Springs mail?” I asked.

  “It’s not economical to continue rural delivery.”

  He might have been reading a cue card. I gathered I wasn’t the first disgruntled customer to cross the threshold, though I might be the first who’d been asked to deliver the mail for them.

  “Ever?” I asked.

  “Not until gas goes down.”

  “But our delivery guy’s still getting paid?” I demanded, made brave by Boone’s initial challenge.

  He shifted on his feet. “Times are hard,” he said.

  “No kidding. My dad sells dental supplies. Guess how many people are going to the dentist right now.” I inclined my head toward Boone. “His family lost their cattle to ash. If the driver can’t afford to come out, I get it, but are you going to let him collect a check for work he isn’t doing?”

  The Postmaster shrugged. “He’s getting his base pay, no EMA. The whole country is going to the devil anyway.”

  I blinked at him. “I’m reporting you.”

  “To who?” He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. “You think, with the world coming to an end, anybody gives a darn whether the rural carrier to Sycamore Springs, Indiana, is delivering the mail?”

  An unusual spurt of bravery flowed up in me and made my voice shaky. “Probably not. But my mom writes for the Gardenburg Gazette, and I’ll bet the people around here will be plenty interested.”

  In my head, I saw my Dad digging a hole in our yard, and Grandma tuckered out from canning tomatoes, and the Trentons trying to keep their animals watered. “There’s still right and wrong. People have to keep doing their best, you know? We’ve got strangers coming to our house for water, trying to survive, while your mailman naps in your office. Do you feel good about that?”

  “Take your feel-good lecture somewhere else, kid.” His grimace betrayed embarrassed guilt as he returned to his office/fortress.

  The clerk eased forward. “Thank you,” she whispered as she looked over her shoulder. “They give all of us government workers a bad name.” She hesitantly pushed the two Perch bundles of mail across the counter.

  My shoulders slumped. “Who else has real letters, not junk mail?”

  She shuffled through the bin. “Magazines?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “People need an escape.”

  By the time we left, our packs were stuffed to bursting. I’d lived in Sycamore Springs all my life, but had to backtrack a few times to find everyone’s mailbox. Finally done, we wove through the cars lined up on our driveway, our stomachs growling for a late lunch and shoulders sore from the extra weight we’d carried.

  Mom met us on the porch, hands dug into her hips. “We were worried sick,” she scolded.

  “Violet volunteered us for a free gig for the United States Postal Service,” Boone said.

  “I tried to text you but it wouldn’t go through,” I added.

  I handed Mom the mail then walked over to the glider to give Grandma hers. They both looked from their little piles back to my face. I shrugged. “The mailman is sitting on his butt. He figured if we were bringing our mail back, we might as well bring some of the neighbors’, too.”

  “Some of the neighbors’?” Boone said, laughing. “We must have stopped at thirty houses.”

  “I guess your Dudley-ness is rubbing off
on me,” I retorted.

  Mom smiled while Grandma nodded. “I’m proud of you,” Mom said with her head tilted and eyes shining.

  “Just one thing,” Grandma said. “I don’t approve of a fine young woman like you saying the ‘b’ word. I’m sorry, Candy, but the language in this house….” She clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “When Matthew was Violet’s age, I had a cussing board. He got a tick mark for every foul word, and then he owed me chores on the weekends.”

  “When did I say the ‘b’ word?” I asked.

  Mom’s eyebrows arched with amusement. “I think she means ‘butt.’”

  “Grandma,” I protested. “You can’t give me a mark for the word ‘butt.’ That’s not even swearing.”

  She pointed at me with a finger permanently bent at the middle knuckle. “It’s not a nice word, Miss Violet Perch, especially for a young woman. Her focus swung back to Mom. “Can we hang it in the kitchen? No need to let these youngsters get coarse because of a little ash.”

  Dad poked his head out the door. “There you two are. What happened?”

  “Delivering mail. Hey, did you have a cussing board when you were growing up?”

  He burst out laughing. “Lord, I’d forgotten.”

  Grandma’s jaw dropped. “Well, now, there’s a mark for you.” She shook her head with disapproval. “Taking the Lord’s name in vain, Matthew. I raised you better.”

  “She wants to give me one for saying ‘butt.’”

  “Butt? She could have said ‘ass,’ Mother.”

  “Oh!” Grandma puffed. “Candy? I’m not joking. I want a cussing board.”

  Mom sighed. “We can use the dry-erase board by the phone. It’s not like we’re getting any messages lately.”

  Demand for our spring water increased as the Gardenburg system struggled. There were generators at the water treatment plant, of course, but fuel to run them became scarcer by the day.

  Most visitors were respectful and appreciative of our water. They chatted as they waited their turn. A few knocked on our door to ask if we could give them jugs to fill. My parents were firm. Surprisingly firm.