The Big Bad Blackout

by Megan McDonald

  “Tell you what. Let’s play Musical Board Games,” Grandma Lou said.

  “Wha? Huh?” said Judy and Stink.

  “Musical Board Games. It’s Abe Lincoln approved. You know Musical Chairs? You each get to pick two board games. We’ll set up all four games around the room.”

  “Four games!” said Judy.

  “I’ll turn on the music and you start playing one game. When I stop the music, you move to the next game. It goes really fast.”

  “That’s cuckoo-berry!” said Stink.

  “Cuckoo-berry times four!” said Judy.

  “Let’s play,” said Stink, bouncing up and down. “No. Wait. Can’t. There’s no power. How are we going to play music?”

  Grandma Lou dug in her bag. “One thing you should know about your old grandma. She never leaves home without . . .”

  “A deck of cards?” asked Stink.

  “Cough drops?” asked Judy.

  “Batteries!”

  “Stink, go get Dad’s old CD player,” Judy said.

  Judy and Stink played Musical Board Games till they were out of breath. Pugsy chased after Judy and Stink, and Milo chased after Pugsy. Mouse watched the whole thing. Then they played Spit in the Ocean and Old Maid (which Grandma Lou made them call Not-So-Old Granny).

  “Let’s read a book,” said Grandma Lou.

  “It’s too dark,” said Judy and Stink at the same time.

  “Jinx! One - two - three - four - five - six - seven!” said Judy. “You owe me a hot chocolate, Stink!”

  “Too bad the stove doesn’t work in the blackout. Ha, ha!”

  Grandma Lou rummaged through her bag and pulled out a book. “Candlelight Stories! This was your dad’s book when he was your age.”

  “Coolsville,” said Stink. “Abe Lincoln didn’t have electricity in his log cabin, so he read books by candlelight, too.”

  Grandma Lou read a fairy tale about a mouse, a bird, and a talking sausage! While she read, Stink folded origami boats. Mouse toyed with them. When Judy made a hurricane flip book out of sticky notes, Pugsy tried to chew it.

  “Weird!” said Stink. “I bet Abe Lincoln did not have a book about a talking sausage. I never knew it could be so fun without a computer.”

  “Or lights,” said Judy.

  “Or a TV or video games,” said Stink.

  Stink got out his markers and made a poster about nine things to do in a blackout.

  Dad tried Stink’s flashlight radio, but he couldn’t get a signal. “I’ll try the radio in the car.” When he came back, he said, “Sounds like they closed half the streets in town. We may need Gert just to get you two to school tomorrow.”

  “School?” said Judy.

  “School?” said Stink.

  “Just kidding!” said Dad. “Actually, they may need the school for a shelter, so it’ll probably be a few days.”

  “Yippee!” yelled Stink and Judy.

  When it was time for dinner, Dad asked, “What should we have? Peanut-butter-and-marshmallow sandwiches?”

  “I did manage to get bread, eggs, and baked beans at the store,” said Mom.

  “Silver-dollar pancakes!” said Stink.

  “Don’t tell me. Abe Lincoln ate silver-dollar pancakes,” said Judy.

  Stink shrugged. “No. But he did eat corn cakes with honey. And sausages. Not the talking kind.”

  “Breakfast for dinner,” said Grandma Lou. “I like it. But I have a better idea.”

  “What could be better than having silver-dollar pancakes?” Stink asked.

  “Ghosts in the Hole,” said Grandma Lou.

  “Ghosts in the Hole?” Stink asked in a whisper.

  “You take a piece of bread and cut out the middle with a cookie cutter.”

  “We used to call them Toads in the Hole!” said Dad.

  “We did. And I just happen to have” — Grandma Lou rummaged in her bag — “a ghost-shaped cookie cutter. See? You cook an egg in the middle. We can do it in a skillet over the fire.”

  “Ghost toast!” said Judy. “I like it!”

  “Ghost Toasties!” said Stink.

  In no time, Grandma Lou had whipped up ghost toast for everybody. Pugsy ate the one she dropped on the floor.

  “My Ghost Toastie is staring at me with a creepy yellow eye,” said Stink. “I call it the Eye of the Storm.” He stabbed a fork into the Eye of the Storm. Yellow stuff oozed all over his plate. “Dinner, I mean breakfast, is better cooked over a fire. Pass the beans, please.” He picked up a spoon, dug in, and ate beans right out of the can.

  “Stink, you never liked beans before,” said Mom.

  “They taste better in a can,” said Stink. “Just like how Abe Lincoln ate them.”

  “Stink, Abe Lincoln didn’t even have food in a can. Did he?” Judy asked.

  “Yah-huh,” said Stink. “They ate stuff from cans in the Civil War. Some guy even invented the can opener back then.”

  “Yes, but did Abe Lincoln eat breakfast for dinner?” said Judy.

  “No matter how great he was,” said Stink, “I’ll bet even Abe Lincoln never ate Ghost Toasties while he waited out a hurricane.”

  Dinner was over. The Moodys huddled around the fireplace. Orange and blue flames licked the logs, sending spooky shadows dancing across the family room. Outside, the rain made a steady drumbeat on the roof.

  “Is it time yet?” asked Stink.

  “Is it time yet?” asked Judy.

  “It’s time,” said Mom.

  “Time for what?” asked Grandma Lou.

  “Time for s’mores!” yelled Judy and Stink. Dad got the long forks. Mom got the chocolate and graham crackers. Stink and Judy ripped open the marshmallows.

  While they roasted marshmallows on sticks over the fire, Grandma Lou said, “S’mores go better with stories. Let’s each tell a story.”

  “You first, Grandma Lou,” said Stink. “And make it scary. But not too scary.”

  “Hmm, let’s see,” said Grandma Lou. “Oh, I know. Well, this story isn’t scary, but it is about a hurricane.”

  “Hurricane story. Cool beans,” said Judy.

  “When I was a young girl, a little older than Judy, I lived on a farm and — ”

  “Is this an olden days story?” asked Stink. “Like in Abe Lincoln times?”

  “Or an LBS like Dad tells,” said Judy. “A Long Boring Story.”

  “Thanks a lot,” said Dad.

  “Did you have electricity back then?” Stink asked Grandma Lou. “Because Abe Lincoln didn’t.”

  “Yes, we had electricity,” said Grandma Lou. “I’m not quite as old as Abe Lincoln, you know. Anyway, my dad — your great-grandpa — let me raise chickens for my 4-H project. I belonged to the Cluck Club.”

  “Bwaaaack!” Stink clucked. “Bwack, bwack.”

  “I had six chickens. One of them — Suzie Q — was very special. When she was just a three-day-old chick, I rescued her from the jaws of our barn cat, Daisy.”

  “Oopsy-Daisy!” said Judy, and everybody cracked up.

  “Suzie Q had blue legs and black tail feathers. I had to hand-feed her because she had a crooked beak. That chicken rode around with me on my bike. She’d hop on my shoulder when I was brushing our horse, Sweet Potato, or read with me.

  “I’ll never forget the first time she laid an egg. She stood up straight as a statue, raised her head high and — oopsy-daisy — looked as surprised as anyone when out popped a monster egg. Not just any old white egg, either. A blue egg!”

  “Whoa. Like an Easter egg?” Stink asked.

  “Yes, sirree. That bird laid the most beautiful sky-blue egg you ever set eyes on. I knew right then and there Suzie Q would win me a prize at the county fair.

  “Then it happened. One warm, fall day — October 1954, I think it was — wind started whipping around the farm like crazy, blowing over anything that wasn’t nailed down. We heard on the radio that Hurricane Annabelle was headed our way.

  “Boy, that was some storm. Rained like a riv
er. One-hundred-twenty-mile-an-hour winds. Took the roof right off our toolshed” — Grandma Lou snapped her fingers — “just like that.”

  At almost the exact same time that Grandma Lou snapped her fingers, the shutters slapped against the house. Stink jumped.

  “Hurricanes are serious business,” said Grandma Lou. “Folks up in Hampton had reported gusts of a hundred thirty miles an hour. So you can imagine, when Hurricane Annabelle blew in, I was worried about my chickens. Chickens don’t even like to get wet.”

  “Makes them madder than a wet hen,” said Dad, laughing at his own joke.

  “All the chickens scurried into the coop, except for one.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Judy.

  Grandma Lou nodded. “It was my Suzie Q. I looked everywhere for her. By that time I was wet as a drowned rat. My dad made me go back inside the house.”

  “So what’d you do?” Judy asked.

  “I pressed my nose to the window, my eyes glued on that chicken coop, hoping she’d come back. I was plenty angry with my dad for leaving Suzie out there and not letting me go back outside. I’m sure I hardly said three words to him for a whole week!”

  “What happened? What happened?” Stink asked. “Did you ever find her?”

  “I went to bed. Hardly slept a wink. Woke up the next morning and everything was blown to smithereens. Tree limbs had been tossed around like pick-up sticks. The toolshed was just a pile of toothpicks.”

  Mom held her breath.

  “The chicken coop was gone!”

  “What do you mean gone?” Judy asked.

  “G-O-N-E gone. Blown from here to Hullabaloo or Timbuktu by Annabelle.”

  “And Suzie Q?”

  “For days after Hurricane Annabelle blew out, I rode around in the back of my dad’s truck, searching high and low for that chicken, calling for her, asking everybody we came across if they’d seen a blue-legged, black-tailed chicken with a crooked beak.”

  “Did you ever find her?” Judy asked.

  “Just when I thought I’d never see Suzie Q again, one day, out of the blue, I picked up the newspaper. Right there on the front page was a story about a girl a few towns over who won first prize at the county fair for a blue egg! The paper said she’d found her prize egg-layer in the hurricane, so they called their blue-legged, black-tailed chicken Annabelle.

  “I knew Annabelle had to be my Suzie Q. I could tell by her crooked beak. Not to mention she got herself a first-prize blue ribbon for laying the most beautiful blue egg.”

  “Did you get her back?” Judy asked.

  Grandma Lou’s face glowed copper in the firelight. She smiled. “My daddy drove me out there and we met that girl and her family and I’ll be gobsmacked if that chicken didn’t flap right up onto my shoulder as soon as she saw me.

  “I got my Suzie Q back. To this day, I still can’t figure out how she ended up a whole three towns over. But that was the power of Hurricane Annabelle.”

  “The end,” said Stink. “That was a long story.”

  “And it wasn’t even boring!” said Judy.

  Stink stabbed a marshmallow with his fork. “Let’s have some more stories with s’mores,” he chirped.

  Mom smiled at Dad over her glasses. “Dad and I have a story. About our wedding.”

  “It’s the story of how another woman came between us,” Dad teased.

  Stink’s eyes got big. “You mean Mom almost wasn’t Mom?”

  “And you almost weren’t born,” Judy teased.

  “Her name was Stacy,” said Dad.

  “Yech,” said Stink.

  “Hurricane Stacy!” Mom cried.

  “Hurricane Cupid,” said Grandma Lou. She winked.

  “Tell us. Tell - us - tell - us - tell - us!” said Stink.

  “For the record, an outdoor wedding was your mother’s idea,” Dad began.

  “The day started out warm and sunny,” said Mom.

  “Then all of a sudden,” Dad said, “about an hour before the wedding was supposed to begin, the temperature dropped and the wind kicked up. The whole sky went dark.”

  “Those dark clouds were like a sign,” said Mom. Stink shuddered as wind howled down the chimney. A prickle went up Judy’s back.

  “Trees were bending sideways, and all the chairs on the lawn blew over,” Dad told them. “By that time, about sixty or seventy guests had already arrived.”

  “Then the sky opened up,” said Mom. “Rain like you’ve never seen. And I was in my dress! I ran for shelter under the big white tent, where the tables and food were set up for the reception.”

  “Did Dad see you?” Judy asked. “That’s way bad luck!”

  “I’ll say. I thought the whole wedding was off!” said Mom. “But Dad suggested we have the wedding under the tent, too. Dad and Grandpa Jack rushed to town to get emergency supplies like flashlights and batteries, in case the power went out.”

  “Bad idea,” said Dad, shaking his head.

  “The roads were flooding,” said Grandma Lou. “There were downed power lines, fallen trees. It was dangerous to be driving around in that.”

  “So what happened?” asked Stink.

  “CRRASHH!” Mom slapped her hands together like a thunderclap. “The rain came down even harder and blew in sideways under the tent. Me and Grandma Lou and my parents and the guests started moving the food from the tent into the old barn. We had saved most of it when — ker-plunk! — down came the whole tent.”

  “Whoa,” said Judy.

  “By that time, I was drenched,” said Mom, “and my dress was ruined. I looked around the barn for something dry to wear. All I could find was a trunk with some old costumes in it.”

  “Did you dress up like a witch?” Stink asked.

  “Or Wonder Woman?” Judy asked.

  “Annie Oakley,” said Mom. Dad cracked up.

  “That’s cuckoo-berry!” Stink said.

  “That’s still not the worst part,” said Mom.

  “What’s the worst part?” asked Judy.

  “How can it get any worse?” asked Stink.

  “No Dad,” said Mom.

  Judy twisted a curl of hair. Stink tore at a fingernail.

  “Three o’clock. Four o’clock. Five o’clock,” said Mom. “Still no Dad.”

  “Did you get scared to marry Mom and run away?” Stink asked Dad.

  “Of course not!” said Dad.

  “Did you think Dad had ditched you, Mom?” Judy asked.

  “It did cross my mind,” said Mom. She twirled her wedding ring back and forth. “But mostly I was scared to death that something had happened to him.”

  “The power had gone out, too, of course,” said Grandma Lou. “No lights, no microphone, no music.”

  “No wedding,” said Mom. “We were all holed up in the barn, just waiting, listening to the storm rage, when — Blammo! — off blew the barn doors! I remember seeing cocktail shrimp bobbing and floating like rubber duckies in a puddle.”

  Dad tossed another log on the fire. Sparks danced up the chimney.

  Stink was practically jumping out of his skin. “Dad! Where were you?”

  Dad just smiled. “Let Mom tell it.”

  Mom went on. “I was sure the whole barn was going to blow down like a house of cards. I mean everything else had gone kaplooey, right? That’s when, above the howling wind, I heard a siren. It grew closer. And closer. Finally, a fire engine came screaming up the drive. My heart jumped into my throat. I was sure they were coming to tell us that something bad had happened to Dad and Grandpa Jack.”

  The room got quiet, except for the spitting fire.

  “From a loudspeaker on the fire truck came a voice like Darth Vader. The voice said, ‘Kate Edison. Will you marry me?’”

  Mom’s eyes teared up. “I raced out into the pouring rain in my Annie Oakley costume. There was your father, leaning off the fire engine, wearing a giant yellow slicker, a Little Mermaid life preserver, and a funny grin.”

  “You had to mention the life
preserver, didn’t you?” Dad said, chuckling.

  “I burst out crying. I was never so happy to see your dad.”

  “Grandpa and I had driven the car through some deep water in the road and the engine conked out,” Dad explained. “We pushed the car to higher ground and tried forever to get it started. Luckily some firefighters stopped to help. When I said it was my wedding day, well, the rest is history.”

  Grandma Lou clapped her hands. “Now you kids know the story of how Annie Oakley married a fireman.” Stink and Judy laughed.

  “So you got married and had us and lived happily ever after?” said Stink.

  “And . . . we had cake,” said Dad.

  “Lots and lots of cake,” said Mom. “It was about the only thing that didn’t get ruined that day. And the fire truck played its radio over the loudspeaker so Dad and I could have our first dance together.”

  “The Temptations. ‘I Wish It Would Rain.’” Mom and Dad started singing.

  “That’s a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad story,” said Judy. “But the ending makes it so great!”

  “Epic!” said Stink. “Hey, wait. Did you say Edison? That’s my middle name.”

  “I thought it was Earwig,” said Judy.

  “Hardee-har-har.” Stink made a face at Judy. “Too bad the real Thomas Edison didn’t come to your wedding. He could have invented the lightbulb all over again and saved the whole entire wedding!”

  Judy snorted.

  “From a whirlwind romance to a hurricane wedding,” said Grandma Lou.

  Stink held out a couch pillow. “Kate, Kate, will you marry me? Mww, mww, mww.” He made smooching sounds.

  Judy hung a pillowcase from her head for a veil and pretended she was in a wedding march. “Da, da, dah-dah,” she sang.

  “We still have a piece of that wedding cake,” said Mom. “In the freezer.”

  “That’s the iceberg in the back of the freezer?” Judy asked.

  “What are we waiting for?” Stink asked. “Let’s eat it.”

  “We’re saving it for a special occasion,” said Dad.