“Still, that’s so young,” Mom replied.
“Mom, we love each other and we want to be together. What difference does it make if it’s in a month or a year?”
“So many things can change in a year,” Mom argued. “When the power is back on and you both go back to school, you may feel different.”
“We’ve been in love for over a year, Mom, and that was when we were at school and the power was on. That’s not going to change.”
Dad cleared his throat then and said, “I think this is happy news. I’ll be proud to call you my daughter, Robin. Whether you get married now or later, we’ll decide after Christmas. For now, I’m ready for the delicious meal you lovely ladies have prepared for us.”
Everyone agreed wholeheartedly, so we all gathered around the dining room table downstairs to eat our feast of ham, homemade rolls, canned green beans and fried onions, and homemade apple pie. There weren’t as many dishes as we usually had at the holidays but, for some reason, the dinner tasted better than any meal we’d ever had.
I can’t remember a Christmas that was more special and happy before that one.
Chapter 8
In January, it got cold—bitterly cold. And it snowed—a lot. It seemed like we were having to pay Mother Nature back for the nice weather she had given us in November and December. Our deep freeze in the garage was starting to get low on meat, so my brothers, my Dad, Robin and I decided to go hunting. Paying heed to the Guardsmen who had visited the month before, we left our guns at home and hunted with bows instead.
We only had three bows, so we had to take turns. We figured that the hunting season laws would have been suspended because of the power failure and the number of starving people, but we weren’t sure. At any rate, we doubted that any conservation agents were working at this time or that they had transportation to get around to everyone’s farm to make sure they were obeying the law.
Dad said normally he would never break the law, but since martial law had been declared it had probably changed everything anyway. And he reminded us what the Guardsmen had said: desperate times call for desperate measures. We hadn’t gotten desperate yet, but we could be only a blizzard away from desperation at any time, and it was always best to be prepared for the worst.
We stayed pretty warm and cozy in the house with the fireplace and the woodstove burning 24/7, but outdoor activity was kept at a minimum, except for the days we went hunting. That meant going to see Skylar was out of the question. Even if Mom had let me go (which she wouldn’t have) I would have frozen to death by the time I reached town. Maybe I could have been caught in a snowstorm too. Even I was not too keen on chancing that.
I hid Skylar’s Christmas present in my room to save for when I could see her next. I hadn’t seen her in several weeks and it was driving me crazy. Every time I saw Alex and Robin holding hands or hugging and kissing, I thought of Skylar. Every time Alex snuck out of my room in the middle of the night to be with Robin, I thought of Skylar. Every time I dreamed, I dreamed of Skylar, and even when I daydreamed, I daydreamed of Skylar. Sometimes I thought I had the image of Skylar burned into my retinas like an image left too long on a computer screen.
One day, when Calvin, Alex, Robin, and I were out hunting together—Dad had stayed home to fix some downed fence wire on the horse paddock—I twisted my ankle really bad. Calvin and I were by ourselves, trying to flush out rabbits in a big pile of brush by the creek, when a huge turkey jumped out at me from the undergrowth. It startled me and I fell back, slipping on a loose branch underfoot. Calvin burst out laughing, which probably scared away all the game for miles around, and I chuckled at my clumsiness, as well. That is, until I tried to stand up. The sudden pain in my ankle took my breath away and I fell back down on my butt, wincing. One look at my face told Calvin that I was in serious pain, so he laid down his bow and ran to my side.
Calvin tried to help me stand, but even leaning against him with my hurt ankle in the air was excruciating, and I couldn’t stop the tears from forming in my eyes. I sat back down while Calvin began calling for Alex to help. Alex and Robin were quite a ways away, but they came crashing through the brush as fast as they could. Robin took off her long scarf and wrapped it tightly around my ankle. Alex and Calvin then picked me up, one on each side of me, with their arms linked under my butt and my knees. They carried me home that way, and it must have taken the better part of an hour to get back. Robin ran ahead to alert my parents, and the three of them met us as we were coming up the back pasture.
Dad took me from my brothers and carried me all the rest of the way to the house on his own. I had always known that Dad was strong, but I didn’t realize he was that strong at the age of forty-three. He wasn’t even breathing hard when he laid me on the sofa in the family room and pulled it closer to the fireplace.
Mom took over then, gently pulling off my hiking boots and socks while I bit my lip to keep from yelling, then giving the ankle a quick examination. She decided that I needed to take my jeans off, as well, and that hurt too, even though she was very careful. I took off my coat, hat, and gloves, and Robin brought me a heavy quilt to curl up in.
Mom asked her to make me some hot tea and told her to use the dried willow bark in it. She also told her to steep some dried comfrey leaves in a bowl with a little bit of boiling water to make a poultice for my ankle. She put a pillow under my foot and made me lie there all day while she and Robin waited on me and doctored me. I know Mom was concerned about me, but it seemed like she was almost enjoying the chance to use her new knowledge about herbal medicines.
Everyone took turns sitting and talking with me for a while, and the rest of the day went by mercifully fast as a result. I slept on the couch that night and stayed there all the next day. Mom alternated the warm comfrey poultices with snow packed on my ankle every half hour.
The biggest problem I had while my ankle healed was getting to the bathroom. Someone had to help me get there for the first couple of days (not the most comfortable situation, I can tell you); after that, I could hop on one foot to get there.
Let me explain here how we had to handle the toilet situation after PF Day. We had to use a bucket of water poured in the stool to flush it. That meant a lot of going out to the hand pump to fill buckets of water in order to flush two toilets with nine people using them. We soon adopted the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow” policy to save on water hauling.
Another problem that presented itself in the bitterly cold month was the outdoor hand pump freezing up. Dad had to build a little house for it lined with leftover batt insulation from when we insulated our attic. Even then, there were mornings when he had to go out with a lit branch and unfreeze it with the fire. We started filling every bucket we had on the premises with water during the afternoon, which was the warmest part of the day, and keeping them in the family room all night so we’d have water to use that evening and the next morning.
Hauling water was a chore no one really liked to do, but everybody knew was important. It was usually up to us boys to fill all the buckets every afternoon, and with all three of us doing it, we usually got it done pretty quickly, but boy, was it cold!
I felt really bad for the three weeks or so that it took my ankle to heal enough to walk on. It was another couple of weeks before I could carry the heavy buckets of water without hurting my ankle under the pressure. But Robin, sweet Robin, willingly took my place at the pump for all those weeks.
It hadn’t taken long for all of us to see why Alex loved her. She was so sweet and caring and you could tell she wasn’t just doing it for “brownie points”. I didn’t know how everything was going to work out after the power was turned back on, but for the time being, we were all glad to have Robin. She was getting especially close to Mom—she was the daughter Mom had never had, and Mom was the mother Robin couldn’t remember.
Mom and Robin also shared an interest in herbalism and studied the books Mom had gotten daily. They tended their herbs and talked about them all day. They
were constantly on the lookout for aches, pains, sniffles, and coughs that they could doctor. The funny thing was, though, besides my sprained ankle, no one in our house got sick or hurt that winter. We had always had a bout of the flu and several rounds of colds during the winter months, but that year, not a sniffle. Mom said it was probably due to the fact that we were not exposed to any viruses since we had seen no one outside our family since Christmas Eve. It seemed strange, but it was nice to wake up feeling strong and healthy every day.
I caught up on a lot of schoolwork while I was off my feet. It’s not that I really wanted to do it, but I can tell you, it gets pretty boring without TV or video games when everyone is off doing something else. I couldn’t even listen to music. Sometimes I would hobble downstairs to visit my grandparents, but I mostly kept to the couch or my bed and read or did schoolwork.
Whenever I had trouble with a geometry assignment, Calvin would help me out. I think he might be a teacher when he grows up, because he always had a way of explaining things that made them unbelievably easy to understand. It also helped that I could go at my own pace and spend more time on things I didn’t quite get. I wasn’t under the pressure of school. At home, I found myself truly learning.
Mom helped me with history by sitting and talking with me about a particular period I was studying. Sometimes Alex and Robin would join us, and we would have lively discussions about the Hundred Years War or the French Revolution and we would repeat, “Let them eat cake!” and other famous sayings any time a chance presented itself. It was fun learning history that way, even more so because we could now really understand the hardships of living during that time period.
For science, Dad read up on some cool experiments that he, Alex, Calvin, and I would try to recreate at our kitchen table. Some worked great while others kind of flopped, but I think I learned more from those experiments than I had in any science class. It was a hell of a lot more fun anyway.
English had always been a piece of cake for me. Mom had me writing stories and poems and, of course, reading, reading, reading. By the time the power came back on, I was sure I would be the best-read kid at school. Mom had checked out dozens of classics and some more modern books from the school library. I liked to read. It was a way to escape my boredom and the throbbing in my ankle for those first couple of weeks. After that, I was so addicted to it, I couldn’t stop reading except to do my chores and other schoolwork. It also helped keep my mind off Skylar.
I hadn’t seen her for almost two months and it was horrible. I wondered if she was thinking of me, or if she had decided I lived too far away to mess with. It was the worst feeling, being left to wonder if she was making out with some guy in town. I also worried about her getting enough water and food and staying warm enough without burning down her house.
Alex and Robin’s happiness together didn’t help the situation, and although I was glad for them, I had to look away when they got all lovey-dovey. I was so looking forward to spring, when we could take the wagon to town and I could see Skylar and get all my questions answered. There was her Christmas present too, although I was thinking I should be calling it a Valentine’s Day present instead.
I tried hinting to Dad about wanting to go to town as soon as we could “to get supplies” and he said we would when the weather lets up a bit. He said it with a twinkle in his eye that made me think he was on to me wanting to see Skylar. Dad was quiet but he didn’t miss much that went on around him. He was a pretty cool dad. As long as you acted like a gentleman and did your part around the house and farm, he’d help you out whenever he could. After Robin lost her dad, I was more and more thankful that I still had mine.
Chapter 9
By March, spring had still not arrived, but the worst of winter seemed to be over. February had been as brutal as January, so we only got the wagon out once that month, and that was to go check on Mr. and Mrs. Caruthers. Aside from Mrs. Caruthers being all bent up with pain from her arthritis, they were faring pretty well. Mom had made up some tea of dried alfalfa and celery seeds with instructions for Mrs. Caruthers to treat her arthritis. We then chopped more wood for them and checked on their livestock.
Mrs. Caruthers gave us jars of gooseberries, stewed tomatoes, and applesauce that she had canned in the fall. “Gotta make sure you get enough vitamin C,” she said. “Wouldn’t want to get scurvy now, honey.”
Speaking of honey, she gave us three big jars of honey from her nephew who raises bees in the next county over. We had run out of sugar shortly after Christmas, so that honey tasted amazing. Besides making sure Mr. and Mrs. Caruthers were all right, the honey made the freezing cold trip worth it.
Not much else happened until the middle of April, when spring finally began getting the upper hand in the wrestling match with winter. One chilly but sunny day, Dad decided we should all ride into town. You can bet we were more than excited. Even the grandparents wanted to go.
Dad loaded up the truck with buckets of grain and smoked venison, leaving just enough room for everybody to sit. Mom tucked us all in with blankets and thermoses of the last of our coffee, along with a picnic lunch of deer jerky, Mrs. Caruthers’ applesauce, and a handful of honey cornmeal cakes that Mom had made. The trip there may have seemed excruciatingly long, but I think the horses were as excited as we were, clipping along at a good speed the entire way. We made it in three hours instead of the usual four.
The first thing we noticed as we approached the town was that the four huge windmills were turning, their immense, whale-fin blades lazily slicing through the air. They had been still the last few times we’d visited, and the sight gave us hope that power may be back on in the town. We noticed when we got into town, however, that there were no lights on and businesses were still closed. There was no one in the town square. It seemed there was no one in the rest of the town, but as we plodded around, we came upon a group of kids and asked them what was going on. I was disappointed to find that Skylar wasn’t among the group.
They told us that the trading market that used to be held in the square had been moved to the school gym for the winter and that most of the townspeople were gathered there. When asked about the windmills, the kids enthusiastically explained that parts had been obtained, and that the electric company had just recently been able to test them.
With a renewed sense of excitement and hope, we rode to the school and joined what seemed like half the town in the gym. I hadn’t seen that many people packed into the gym since we won our district basketball game last school year. The president of the Electric Co-op, Mr. Jenkins—Mom’s boss—was trying hard to be heard above the din of excitement in the crowd.
Everyone was hopeful that they would have electricity soon, but Mr. Jenkins explained that it may be a gradual process and that the windmills would probably not be enough to run everything in the town. Priority would be given to getting water and heat on for those that were in greatest need. Then his team would work on getting at least a little power to everyone else. He warned us to unplug all appliances, including furnaces and air conditioners, and to make sure all light switches were off so that when the electricity came back on, the surge wouldn’t blow anything out.
After Mr. Jenkins finished answering questions from the crowd, everyone came down out of the stands and started milling around. There was a lot of laughter and patting friends on the backs. I spotted Skylar’s parents from across the gym and headed their way, hoping she would be with them.
Mrs. Tipton spotted me looking around and hollered, “Bracken, honey,”—she always called me and almost every other customer ‘“honey”—“are you looking for Skylar?”
I was surprised that she knew what I was doing and a little worried that I was so transparent in my intentions, but when I nodded yes, she pointed over to the first row of the stands where Skylar was sitting rather forlornly, looking down at her hands in her lap, all by herself. I tried to saunter over there coolly, but I couldn’t help myself and I ended up rushing over, probably looking like Leroy
Jenkins of World of Warcraft fame charging into battle.
Skylar looked up at me before I got to her, and the smile that spread across her face was enough to light up the whole town. She jumped up and threw her arms around me, almost knocking me off my feet.
“Brack!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been so worried about you, all alone out there in the country!”
I wasn’t sure if she was thinking that my parents hadn’t returned, since they were away from home the last time she’d seen me, or if she meant my being alone without her. I started to say that I’d been worried about her too, but she grabbed my hand and said, “Let’s get outta here!”
We snuck out of the gym and found a spot on the south side of the building that was shielded from the north wind. Skylar immediately cuddled up to me and my fears of her finding someone else were instantly put to rest. With my arms around her waist, I could tell she was even thinner than she had been the last time I’d seen her, when I had ridden behind her on Jenny Garten’s horse. It made me very concerned about her and I asked her how she’d been.
“The winter was awful,” she replied sadly. “It was really hard getting food and water because of the snowstorms.” Then with tears in her eyes, she added, “Lots of people died, Brack. It was so horrible. We couldn’t even bury them until last month.”
She recited a list of names of the people who had died, mostly elderly people who I didn’t know well, but there was one that shocked me to the core: Irvine Smith.
She said he’d suffered so much since he couldn’t get any of the drugs he was addicted to, and his health had just continued to fail. He didn’t have a very good family and, at one point, they had even thrown him out of the house. He had stayed with various families in the town, but in January he was found outside, frozen to death after a snowstorm. No one was sure if he committed suicide or if it was an accident. Even though Irvine wasn’t a close friend of mine, I was shaken by the sadness of the situation and the fact that he had been friendly to me the last time I’d seen him.
Teenage Survivalist Series [Books 1-3] Page 6