Mom was concerned about them having to climb up the stairs, but Dad pointed out that our rooms were upstairs and that the only alternative would be to make the living and dining rooms into rooms for them, effectively cutting off our access to the fireplace, which we needed for heat and cooking. He said if they were downstairs, we could take anything they needed down to them and maybe he could even fashion them some kind of lift in the future. At any rate, it was decided to fix up the basement during the next couple of days before we would bring them home.
I asked Dad what supplies they were able to get in town, and Alex answered enthusiastically, which was uncharacteristic of him, that the town had set up a makeshift trading center in the square where people could bring things they didn’t need to trade for what they did. Dad and Alex were able to trade our grain for a couple of big cans of shortening, and restaurant-sized cans of green beans and coffee from Tipton’s Diner (so that was where Skylar’s parents had been), half a dozen old oil lanterns from Mr. Caruthers, and a box full of scented beeswax candles from Candee Smith, who owned Candee’s Candles.
I asked what we would use for fuel in the oil lamps and Dad said we might be able to use the shortening. I was sure glad we got some things to light our evenings, as it had become too cold to sit outside, and darkness fell so early now. It was hard to all sit around the fireplace every night, trying to get close enough to read. I just wanted some time to myself every once in a while.
Mom was excited that she was able to get some plants from Mrs. Littleton’s Greenhouse. She got some medicinal herbs like lemon balm, feverfew, and licorice root, along with edibles: strawberries, cherry tomatoes, and seeds for planting in the spring. She also got a few books on medicinal herbs and their uses. She couldn’t wait to get home and read up on the plants and herbs that could be found in our own yard, like dandelion, marigold and Echinacea, and how to harvest them for medicinal use.
Sometimes I think Mom is what Granny calls an “old soul,” someone who seems to have lived a past life in the old days and vaguely remembers some of it. Mom certainly acts like this is the kind of life she’s used to and enjoys the most. I’m beginning to think maybe I am a little bit of an old soul too, and Dad is definitely one.
When we got home that night, it was nice to light a candle and take it to my room, snuggle under my quilt that Gram made me for Christmas when I was seven, and read a book I had borrowed from the school library. It helped, somewhat, to take my mind off Skylar, but still, my mind kept wandering to her and that heavenly make-out session. I was tired, though, and it wasn’t long before I fell asleep.
The next day, I was up with the sun and, as usual, so were Mom and Dad. Alex and Calvin both came downstairs not long after me, so we all ate a nice breakfast of bacon, eggs, and coffee as a family.
Dad had our day already planned out for us, so while Mom fed the animals, collected eggs from our chickens, and looked for plants in the yard to harvest for medicinal uses, Dad started us boys on building partitions in the basement for enclosing the bathroom and making two bedrooms for our grandparents, leaving the largest part of the basement open for a common area. We had some plywood and other lumber on hand to build with, but at one point we had to tear out some old walls in the barn to finish up the rooms. It looked a little rough when we were done, but Dad reassured me that it would all look good once the walls were painted.
He was right, as usual. We painted everything with a couple of gallons of leftover paint that we mixed together to make a light bluish shade that covered the space. Mom came down when the basement was complete and declared it “very homey, indeed”, which was Mom’s way of saying “nice job.”
Mom took several area rugs from upstairs and in storage—we had all hardwood floors upstairs covered in area rugs—to cover the cement floor of the basement. The rugs were big enough to cushion most of the open space and make the floor a little warmer for my grandparents.
She also brought down any extra pieces of furniture we didn’t use often, and even her favorite easy chair. Dad donated his favorite chair, as well, and with the loveseat from the family room and our small dining table, the place looked pretty good. I offered my bed for them, but Mom said that they would bring their beds with them from the assisted living center if they could fit them in the wagon.
The next day, Dad had us help install the pot-bellied stove. It took all four men in our house, and even some help from Mom, to get it down the stairs from the cellar door on the outside of the house. We installed it under a window halfway down the outside wall of the open area so it faced the doors to the bedrooms. We had to run the flue out through the window and fix a board around it to fill up the hole. Then we cleared a place on the wall beside the steps to the cellar door to stack firewood, which we did next.
We started the stove to test it out and, after it burned for about an hour, it got so hot down there that Dad decided to divert some of the heat to the house’s heating ducts to send it upstairs to heat our own bedrooms. He told Mom to close off the heating vents in the first floor rooms and that night, for the first time since the cold weather set in, our bedrooms weren’t freezing cold.
Dad placed a thermometer in each of our rooms and found that they were 60°, while the basement was a toasty 70°. He was so pleased with the result that he walked around rubbing his hands together like over a fire and saying it felt like summer.
It was sure nice sleeping that night, what with a candle to read by before falling to sleep and then sleeping in a heated room. The next morning, I wasn’t nearly so eager to hop out of bed.
Chapter 5
Mom and Dad left a couple of days later at dawn to get our grandparents. They left us boys at home to save space in the wagon for any cargo to be brought back. They said they’d probably have to stay away overnight, because it would take about seven hours to get there and it would be too dark and too cold to travel back at night.
Mom told us to stay at home but, of course, Alex didn’t listen. He left on foot for Robin’s house as soon as they were out of sight. I briefly considered walking to town to see Skylar, but I didn’t have the nerve to walk that far on my own and it didn’t feel right to disobey Mom.
Dad had left us instructions to do some repair work around the farm, like fixing some loose boards on the chicken coop and mending a spot in the goat pen where they had repeatedly climbed on the fence and stretched the wires. I was a little pissed off that Alex wasn’t going to be around to help us, but Calvin stepped up and did more than his part with enthusiasm I didn’t know he had; together, we had everything done by late morning.
We were in the house, eating lunch when we heard the sound of hooves on our gravel driveway out front. Calvin and I look at each other, surprised and concerned that Mom and Dad were coming back so soon. We ran outside to find, to my astonishment and great excitement, Skylar and Jenny Garten on a pair of horses in our yard.
“Hey, Brack,” Skylar said. There was that nickname again. “Hi, Calvin.”
I was struck speechless for a few seconds, during which time Calvin sidled up to Jenny’s horse and started stroking its neck.
“Uh, hi, Sky,” I stammered. I realized that it sounded a little dumb, the way it rhymed and all, but Skylar seemed to like it. She smiled and slid off her horse to put her arms around me and give me a quick kiss.
Then she looked a little worried and said, “Your parents can’t see us, can they?”
“Nah, they’re not home, but even if they were, I don’t think they’d care,” I assured her. She looked relieved, but her brow was still furrowed in confusion. I’m sure she was thinking that her parents would kill her if they saw her kissing a boy.
Jenny was talking to Calvin, and then said a little louder to include me, “You guys want to go for a ride with us?”
“Sure!” Calvin and I answered simultaneously, which made all of us laugh.
“Jinx,” we said at the same time again, and that made us all laugh a little harder. I know we looked a little giddy,
but hell, we hadn’t seen anybody besides our immediate family in several days, and they were pretty girls besides. Even Calvin, who up to now hadn’t shown much interest in girls, seemed to be showing off for them.
We jumped up behind the girls and rode all over the place, stopping now and then to run into the house to grab food or to let the horses rest.
Surprisingly, Skylar was quite a good rider. She explained that after I had left town a few days ago, she had asked Jenny to give her riding lessons so she could ride out to visit me. I was both impressed and flattered that she would go to so much trouble just to see me. It was so exciting to be sitting behind her on that horse with my arms around her waist and her silky hair blowing in my face. I was becoming quite the horse lover for more reasons than one.
I asked Skylar how she had gotten her parents to consent to her traveling so far to see me. She gave me an ornery little smile over her shoulder and said, “Oh, they don’t know. They think I’m staying over at Jenny’s.”
Staying over at Jenny’s—that phrase stuck in my mind. So she wasn’t expected home and my parents weren’t coming home that night… If only we could figure out a way for Jenny to be able to stay.
When I shyly brought up my idea to the girls, Jenny said no way. Skylar seemed a little hesitant too, and I suddenly realized where their thoughts were going. Flushed, I quickly assured them that they could sleep in my parents’ bed and that we could stay up late sitting around the fireplace and talking.
Skylar was game after that and Jenny seemed more at ease with it, but she was still convinced that her parents would freak if she didn’t come home that night. I reluctantly gave up on the idea.
The girls had to leave at around three in the afternoon in order to be home by nightfall, but before they left, Skylar lingered in my arms making out with me. Calvin and Jenny rode a little ways away and talked embarrassedly while we kissed. I know I probably should have been a little embarrassed myself, making out in front of my little brother, but at the time all I could think of was how great it felt and how I didn’t want it to end.
But it did end, and I stood and watched them ride away until the curve of the highway prevented it. It made me think of those classic Westerns where the woman watches her man ride away into the sunset; except that I was watching my girl ride away, and it wasn’t sunset yet.
Alex didn’t come home that night. Calvin and I were convinced that he was taking the opportunity to sleep with Robin again. Robin lived alone on a farm with her dad, Joe. Her mom had died when she was a toddler, and her dad had never remarried or had any other children. Alex had once mentioned to Calvin and me how easy it was to sneak around behind her dad’s back and that they could do almost anything they wanted to. He had put special emphasis on the word anything and winked in a way that left no doubt in our minds what he was implying.
Calvin and I spent a boring evening playing Monopoly by candlelight and talked about the girls’ visit earlier in the day. Calvin seemed to have a little crush on Jenny, which I thought was funny, considering she had at least two years on him. I didn’t think he’d have a chance with her, since he was just a kid and she was in high school. I didn’t tell him that, though. It was the first time he’d expressed any interest in a girl in that way and I didn’t want to discourage him.
The next day, Calvin and I took extra time to clean up the house and yard to make everything nice for when our family came home. They arrived around two o’clock in the afternoon, and what a sight they made as they came plodding up the road in the wagon. They looked just like those old reruns of the Beverly Hillbillies that we used to watch when nothing else was on, with Dad and the grandmas on the bench seat and Mom and Papa perched on top of the mattresses in the back of the wagon. Not to mention the mounds of stuff piled all around them. Calvin and I busted out laughing at the sight, and we ran down the highway to greet them.
When we had begun to unload everything, Dad asked where Alex was. Calvin and I looked at each other, neither one of us wanting to break the news to them. After a few seconds, I answered, “He walked over to Robin’s house yesterday and…” I didn’t bother to finish.
All Dad said was “Damn!” under his breath. Mom just shook her head and turned back to unloading the stuff.
Granny, Gram, and Papa were tired from the journey, so Mom insisted they lie down on our beds while we fixed up their rooms downstairs. Mom was unusually quiet about Alex’s disappearance. I think she was disappointed that he had disobeyed her and had given no thought to how much his absence would make her worry. Maybe she was kind of upset about him getting old enough to leave home soon too. It made me sad to think of her being upset, so I made sure to give her extra hugs and help her with whatever she was doing the rest of the afternoon. It seemed to cheer her up some.
My grandparents came downstairs later and were very pleased with what we had done for them in the basement. They all decided that they would be very comfortable here and began making themselves right at home while Mom fixed us all some dinner. We all ate downstairs at the dining table and had a good time catching up on things that had happened since we had last seen each other.
At one point, Granny told us, with tears in her eyes, how many of the residents of the assisted living apartments where they had been living had died or were on the verge of dying without the medicines they needed to stay alive. It made me sad to think of all the kids who had lost their grandparents and made me very grateful that my own grandparents were in good health.
That evening, after the sun had set and the stars were twinkling brightly in the sky, Alex came home. He brought Robin with him. Her eyes were all puffy and red, and her nose was shiny. Alex was grim and I could tell right away that something was very wrong. Mom and Dad must have known too, because they didn’t even scold him; they just asked, “What happened?” to which Robin began crying again. She hid her face in Alex’s shoulder.
“Robin’s dad was hurt real bad yesterday.” I could tell Alex was trying not to cry too. “A bull kicked him in the belly. He was bleeding really bad when I got there, and Robin didn’t know what to do, so I ran as fast as I could to the Jenkins’ place and brought them back to help, but it was too late.” Alex started choking up. He barely got the next words out. “He died last night, and we buried him this morning.”
Mom swept in and put her arms around the both of them, murmuring over and over, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” between sobs.
I was stunned into silence. I had never experienced a death so close to my family before. I mean, my grandpa on my Dad’s side had died when I was little, but I didn’t remember him at all, and a kid named Sid Eldon from the next town over had wrecked his car and died, but he was a lot older than me and I hadn’t really known him.
But Robin’s dad, Joe McKnight, was part of our small community; I saw him often and heard his name even more. He was a friend of Dad’s and he was healthy and strong. Suddenly, life without power and gas-powered vehicles didn’t seem so cool, after all. I wasn’t sure how to act or how to make Alex and Robin feel better. I glanced at Dad to see how it was affecting him, but he had turned away and was stoking the fire. It didn’t need stoking.
Mom made Robin a strong cup of tea out of some of the herbs she had been growing and laid her down in Alex’s bed. Alex lay next to her and held her in his arms until she went to sleep, and then came downstairs to talk to Mom and Dad.
“She can stay here, can’t she?” he asked pitifully. “I mean live here with us? She doesn’t have anyone else.”
“Well, of course she can stay,” Mom answered soothingly, putting her arm around Alex. “You can move into one of your brothers’ rooms and she can stay in yours. Did you bring her any clothes or anything?”
“No, she just wanted to get away from there as soon as we could. She’s a wreck.”
“Poor thing. What a horrible thing to have to see.” Mom shook her head and brushed away new tears forming in her eyes.
“It was awful, Mom. All that blood. I didn’t
want to leave her there alone with him, but I had to try to get help.” Alex laid his head on Mom’s shoulder just like a little kid. “I’m sorry I disobeyed you yesterday, Mom, but I’m glad I went. For Robin’s sake.”
“Yes, don’t worry about it, sweetie,” Mom soothed. “It’ll be alright.” They sat like that for a long time until Alex gave in to exhaustion and decided to go to bed.
I felt really sorry for Alex for the first time in a long time. Of course, I felt even sorrier for Robin, but I was surprised at the depth of emotion I felt for my big brother. I felt kind of protective of him, so I told him to go sleep in my bed and that I’d find someplace else to sleep. He looked at me tenderly with tears in his eyes and said, “Thanks, Buddy.” Then he reached out and gave my shoulder a little squeeze before slowly, painfully, climbing the stairs to my room.
The rest of us sat in the family room around the fire, holding each other real close and not talking much. Gram and Papa were the first to go to bed, then Granny left too, but Mom, Dad, Calvin, and I sat for a long time just holding each other. For the first time in over a month, I didn’t think of Skylar.
Chapter 6
For the next couple of weeks, Robin was just a shell of her former happy-go-lucky self. She cried at the drop of a hat and barely ate anything for days. That was understandable, of course. She had just lost the only parent she had ever known and did not even have any other relatives to live with. She was forced to live with her boyfriend’s family and even though we were all very friendly and tried to be comforting to her, there is just no replacing your own family at a time like that.
Teenage Survivalist Series [Books 1-3] Page 4