Eruption (Yellowblown™ Book 1)

by Hughey, J.

  Mom’s tune had changed quickly after the novelty of the Trenton’s visit gave way to cars and strangers blocking our driveway all day long. “The water is there to take for as long as it keeps running,” Mom would tell the people who ventured toward the house. Most of them understood her tone.

  Grampa rocked on the glider on the front porch, a shotgun propped in the shadows to his left. Grandma often sat with him, her bandaged foot cradled on an old throw pillow as she watched the spectacle and visited with people she knew from church. “Don’t forget about those chickens tomorrow, Violet,” she said on Wednesday morning.

  I’d completely forgotten about the chickens. Boone and I were leaving for a mail run, since Mom’s article in the Gazette hadn’t resulted in any letters showing up in our box. I personally didn’t care about the mail—no one sent any to me, and Dad said all he and Mom got were bills—but figured if going on a bike ride, I might as well do something useful. “Okay, Grandma. I’ll be up early, like you said.”

  Once we reached our usual pace on the main road, I asked Boone what odds he gave for Grampa accidentally killing somebody.

  “He’s keeping them honest,” Boone said. “You’ve seen the news. Things get weird fast, and it’s starting to spread.” After a quarter mile or so, he asked, “Have you ever thought about learning to shoot?”

  I navigated around a broken bottle then looked over my shoulder at him. “Not really.”

  “Might be a useful skill.”

  I tried to achieve the flirtatious appearance of what the regency romance books called a coquette. “Would you be the one teaching me?”

  He grinned back with the confidence of a true regency rake. “You bet.”

  I faced front again. My smile faded. In a different lifetime, back in the hunting store at college, Boone told me I wasn’t going to end up in a militia. He’d told me I wouldn’t need to know how to load the bullets from his yellow cracker box. Now he thought I should learn to shoot. I turned the unhappy implications over in my mind as steadily as my feet turned the crank on my bike.

  He gave me my first shooting lesson later that afternoon, up in the woods. Grandpa supervised, his interest piqued when Boone asked to teach me using his short-barreled shotgun.

  Sara and Mom joined us, too. My sister chewed gum, unimpressed by the stick of death Mom watched like a poisonous snake. She’d insisted on hearing protection but could only produce the set of earmuffs she’d bought to use with the electric leaf blower. They were looped around my neck. Everyone else planned to put their fingers in their ears, except Boone, who handled the gun with the easy grace of someone who’d fired enough rounds to already compromise his hearing.

  “This is a coach gun, double barrels side by side. It’s a break action, meaning it splits open in the middle for loading.” He slid a lever behind to open the gun at a hinge between the barrels and the wooden stock. “It’s empty, no cartridges loaded. Always make sure, with your own eyes.”

  I smiled at him, so adorable in safety mode.

  “I’m serious,” he chided. “Empty or not, don’t ever point it at anything you don’t want to blow a hole through.”

  I smoothed away the smile and nodded, serious for the moment.

  He snapped the gun closed, still empty. He pointed to a metal thumb slider right above the triggers. “This is the safety. Backward, the safety is off.” Next he showed me the triggers.

  Sara piped up, “Can you fire them both at once?”

  Grampa chuckled. “You can, but it’ll set you back on your keister.”

  Boone opened the gun again to slide green plastic cartridges he called “target loads” singly into the barrels. He snapped the gun closed. “The gun is loaded, safety on,” he said, holding it with both hands, the business end pointed at the ground. “I’m going to fire these two, okay? So you can get an idea what it sounds like.”

  I slid the earmuffs off my neck and clapped them on his head. He rolled his eyes when I stuck my fingers in my ears. Back to business, he thumbed the safety back.

  “There’s a bead at the end of the barrel to use as your sight. We’re going to shoot for that tree over there. See the slow rise behind it? You always want to know what might potentially be stopping your shot.”

  He steadied himself on his feet, snuggled the gun into his shoulder. I watched his forefinger ease back the front trigger. Even knowing it was coming, the sudden concussion made me jerk back in surprise.

  While I caught my breath, Mom exclaimed, “Oh!”

  Without changing his stance he said, “Now, the right barrel.” He slid his finger over the back trigger. This time I tried to see where the pellets went as he fired with another loud pop.

  He shoved the ear protectors down to his neck. “What do you think?” he asked. No one answered. He broke the gun open again to remove the spent cartridges. “Your turn,” he said, holding the gun out to me.

  I hadn’t expected trepidation, but after hearing the bark and realizing I had no idea what he’d hit, I hesitated to touch the thing.

  “Left hand here on the forestock, right hand on the stock,” he encouraged. The wood was warm from his touch. When he let go, the angular weight felt awkward and clumsy. “Close it up. Get the feel of it.”

  I sensed it would take some force to close the gun, so I snapped it with authority. I tried to be smart by sliding the safety on, though I knew the gun was empty.

  I shifted my feet into some approximation of the stance he’d shown us. The stock didn’t fit into my shoulder as naturally as it seemed to in his. He held out two cartridges. Like a moron, I tried to load one backwards, but the brass head wouldn’t clear the diameter of the barrel. Once I’d managed to do it right, the shining ends stared at me like closely spaced owl eyes.

  “Close it,” Boone said.

  I had the irrational fear both barrels would fire if I snapped it shut. “Are you sure?” I asked.

  Grampa shuffled behind me. “It’s not going to fire until you do,” he said.

  “That’s sort of what I’m afraid of.”

  Boone moved closer. “I’ve never heard of a misfire from closing a shotgun, but if it worries you, make certain where the pellets will go if it happens.”

  I rotated so the arc of the closing gun would sweep the barrel up toward the tree Boone used as a target. I clicked it shut then exhaled when nothing happened.

  “Safety on or off?”

  “Umm.” I check the switch with my thumb. “It’s on.”

  “Good. Get set up to shoot.”

  I tried to remember everything. Feet set. Left hand tight on the front gripper thing and push the stock back into my shoulder. Beaded sight at the end of the barrel set on the middle of the distant tree.

  He clapped the earmuffs on my head then moved to stand behind my left shoulder, just like bike riding. “Okay, safety off. Make sure you’re pushing the stock back hard. Finger on the front trigger. Squeeze back.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked again, my voice flat and lifeless, trapped in my head by the earmuffs.

  He lifted the left side to whisper, “You’re tough, Biker-girl. You can handle it.”

  His confidence gave me goose bumps. I gritted my teeth together, set my feet one last time and pulled the trigger.

  The concussion shoved on my torso and knocked the breath out of me for a split second, its flat pressure more shocking than the kick to my shoulder. Wow. An unpleasant sensation, but he was right. I could handle it.

  After Mom and Sara had a turn—neither of them liked it much—I shot another dozen rounds, getting a feel for the gun and where the shot landed.

  “Let’s go bag some squirrels,” Boone suggested.

  “Squirrel and dumplings,” Grampa said. He rubbed his hand over his belly. Sara wrinkled her nose and Mom waved us off, so we set out through the trees on our own.

  I gingerly carried the gun we’d been shooting while Boone shouldered my Dad’s longer-barreled shotgun, what he called an over/under, with barrels on top o
f each other instead of side by side. I pointed at a squirrel poised on the side of a tree. It watched our approach without moving its head.

  “Too far,” Boone said. “A hotter load will go farther, but then your spread gets wider and wider, so there’s the tradeoff.”

  We settled next to a thick-trunked oak. “You go first,” I whispered.

  The quiet woods soon resumed its lively activity. Birds flitted from branch to branch, their wing sounds like fluttering cards. Dry leaves crackled as plain brown sparrows scratched under a spindly bush. The scene was so calming I almost forgot why we were there.

  When Boone lifted the gun, I turned my head stealthily to watch him aim. His quarry sat on the lowest branch of a tree, cautious of us, but obviously unfamiliar with the whole concept of guns.

  Boone switched off the safety. I’d forgotten to put on my earmuffs. The deafening bang of the shot made my head ring.

  The squirrel fell off the branch and flopped to the ground like a rag doll. Its bottlebrush tail twitched.

  “Oh, poor thing,” I whispered as the little critter went through its death throes.

  Boone gave me a wry smile. “I shot it on purpose, you know.”

  I felt my cheeks flush. “Sorry. Automatic girl reaction.”

  “Next shot is yours.”

  We brought four squirrels back to the house, one of which I’d shot, giving me a kill percentage of like 8%. I’d been really effective at scaring them off, so much so that we’d had to move to a different part of the woods.

  Boone didn’t make me help skin and clean them, though I did watch, and only gagged on the first one.

  Grandma eyed the tiny headless bodies with skepticism. “At least they’re fattened up for winter. No time to make my own dumplings but I think Candy has some egg noodles in here somewhere….”

  Grandma used beef broth to produce a rich noodle stew everyone but Sara appreciated. Mom rounded out the meal with sautéed baby greens—including kale—and I had to admit, the fresh veggies tasted delish.

  We’d had a long day. Boone and I sat shoulder-to-shoulder, hungry for the meal we’d helped provide.

  Tomorrow, on to chickens.

  Grampa drove Grandma and me to their friends’ farm at dawn. (Somehow, sitting in the center of the seat between Herb and Bittie didn’t stir up the same excitement as sitting next to Boone.) Sara still snoozed in her bed. No one had made a move to rouse her, and I decided not listening to her whine all day would be a plus.

  Paint peeled off the window frames of the two-story house. A scrawny cat darted into an overgrown yew bush randomly placed along the side of the porch, off-center and unpruned.

  We walked through a wet, mostly weeds yard to a leaning, faded red chicken coop set on cinder blocks. Nervous hens pecked at the dirt within a pen defined by a rusting wire fence. A rooster, apparently free to roam, stalked across the lawn. It watched our movements with teensy yellow eyes. The volume and frequency of its loud clucks escalated when we approached the flock.

  A robust woman in heavy rubber boots came out of the stone farmhouse, followed by an equally rotund man, definitely older than me, but young enough to perhaps be her son. They shooed the rooster away, further agitating the scattering hens.

  “Hello, Bittie,” the woman called. “Still want a dozen?”

  “Whatever you can spare,” Grandma said. She introduced me. The man, Chuck, eyed me like the rooster eyed the hens.

  “Chuck will give you a hand with the killing. I got water boiling on the back porch,” said Martha, Chuck’s mother. Grandma limped along behind her toward the porch roughly enclosed with white metal siding and aluminum windows. Grampa stayed with Chuck, so I did, too.

  I didn’t know what to think when Chuck dropped a squawking chicken head first into a metal cone mounted on the rear exterior wall of the coop. The cone trapped the bird with its head hanging out the hole at the bottom. He slit the poor thing’s neck—I thought I would puke—and let the blood run into a bucket waiting on the ground below. When the chicken stopped struggling and the blood slowed to thick drops, he lifted it out by the feet. “Take it to Mum,” he grunted.

  Heavier than I expected, especially holding the bird at arm’s length to avoid the dripping blood, the weight dragged at my shoulder socket. I saw the head in my peripheral vision, swinging piñata-like at the end of its partially severed neck. Martha threw the whole mess into a pot of boiling water. She held the feet to swish the carcass around a few times then dropped it into another pot filled with ice water that quickly turned Jolly Rancher red.

  Grandma waited by the ice water in a chair with a plastic tub between her feet, her hands encased in heavy rubber gloves. She dunked the bird a few times then yanked it back out and started pulling the feathers out in clumps, carefully stripping everything, including the head and feet. She set it aside on a heavy wooden table that displayed an assortment of knives and devices of torture. Looking up at my uselessness, she said, “Maybe you should pluck while I clean.”

  I nodded, unwilling to handle guts bigger than what came out of squirrels. Grampa arrived with two more dead birds, and the assembly line—or rather, the disassembly line—began to function. I kept my head down after seeing Grandma finished severing the first head. I concentrated on smelly wet feathers and tried to ignore the sounds of joints and cartilage being slashed. The stench of saturated chicken, blood, and the innards Grandma spilled out of the warm bodies made me swallow hard more than once.

  Eyes down and keep plucking, I told myself.

  When Grampa and Chuck finished the killing part, they took over butchering while Martha, Grandma and I plucked. They collected what I recognized as cleaned chicken parts in a gray plastic tub. Another tub held feet, heads and internal organs mixed with unidentified pink and yellow and whitish globs. I hoped the dissection lab refuse pile stayed here.

  “Many hands make quick work,” Grandma said as we finished.

  Unfortunately, Chuck included the yucky tub in one of his trips to Grampa’s truck. He slid the raw parts into the bed while Grampa removed a box of Grandma’s canned goods.

  “They’re for you,” Grampa said, indicating Chuck should take it. “We appreciate you and your mother sharing some of your food to get our family ready for winter.”

  Martha and Grandma talked on the porch. She fussed when she saw the jars. “Now, Bittie, you already paid me for those birds. Here, now, you take some eggs, too.” She scuttled into the house and returned with a brightly printed foam carton. “Here’s a dozen and a half, nice ’n’ fresh. Violet, you carry them so your grandpa can help her to the truck.”

  As Grampa drove home, I opened the carton to inspect the orange-brown eggs lined up in cups where stark white discount mart eggs had once been cradled. EXP June 30 was inked into the lid. Sometime last summer, a shopper who didn’t mind if her French toast wasn’t free range, Omega-3, organic vegetarian fed, had placed eighteen plain white eggs in her cart, paid for them, and drove home, never guessing, a few months later, the refrigerated case would be empty and warm, leaving her bereft of her favorite hot breakfast. Now we traded home-canned applesauce for eggs laid by chickens I’d just helped butcher.

  Our circle of life closed tighter, a lasso pulling in around the world in a diminishing halo.

  Grandma pulled two old smock aprons from a kitchen drawer to wear in her chilly kitchen. The flowery scent of fabric softener waged a brief, losing battle with the odor of dead poultry as I tied the strings at my waist. She put the blend of random, partially unidentified parts in a stockpot filled with seasoned boiling water while I spread the parts I recognized on trays to roast in the gas over. Empty jars from the basement were rinsed with water from a five-gallon camping dispenser and lined up like soldiers as the house filled with the steamy odor of cooked poultry.

  I whispered a prayer of gratitude when Grandpa dumped the boiled laboratory pieces into a black trash bag. He wore long oven mitts to pour the broth through a cloth-lined strainer. Golden liquid swirl
ed in a stainless steel bowl. Bubbles of transparent yellow fat glistened on top. I removed it with a spoon.

  We tucked the partially roasted pieces in jars. Grandma showed me how far to fill the jars with the broth, and how to wipe the rims with a towel soaked in vinegar. I placed shiny new flat caps on top and screwed down reusable rings, finger-tight. We loaded jars into the pressure canner where she’d already added a few quarts of water. With the lid on, she lit the gas burner beneath it and set her timer for fifteen minutes.

  We kept filling jars. When the timer went off, she called me to the stove. “You want a good flow of steam, then set your timer for another ten minutes, then you’re ready to build the pressure.” After the second timer, she put what she called the regulator in the lid of the cooker. “Now we have to keep adjusting the heat to keep it at eleven pounds of pressure for an hour and a quarter.”

  I monitored the stove since Grandma still had a bum foot. After the arduous prep, most of canning consisted of waiting. We had to let the pressure decrease before I could retrieve the hot jars with a special pair of tongs to gingerly place them on the towel-covered counter. While we waited, I loaded a cooler with perishables from her refrigerator and she talked. She told me about butchering pigs as a girl—“Always the day after Thanksgiving.”—and fermenting homemade sauerkraut in ceramic crocks. “My, that was a strong smell.”

  Grandma had me correct the water level in the canner before we loaded it again. The third and last batch of jars I managed by myself, with her watching to make sure I didn’t make a mistake that would “blow us to kingdom come,” in her words. Memory of the tomato incident provided strong motivation. I’d do almost anything to avoid chicken flesh and bones blasted across the pink cloud ceiling.

  Condensation coated the kitchen windows. The unexpected pops of sealing lids punctuated our industrious sounds as the flat tops sucked down to concave by the cooling air trapped in the vacuum of the jars.