by Ron Foster
“OK, I’ll listen. I have been around cars. I am not totally ignorant you know.” The boy said flustered at Farley’s lack of trust in him.
“All right then. Here we go Jeremy.” Farley said as he pulled off the side of the road and shut the engine down so they could swap seats.
“Stick your foot on the brake, see it don’t go anywhere at the moment.” Farley said wanting the boy to know exactly where the brakes were at first.
“Well, I already know how to start a car up; Mama had me start the car up in the winter time to warm it up many times. I already drove it backwards once when she wasn’t looking too!” Jeremy said watching conflicting emotions cross Farley’s face.
“All right, since you know how to start one, here we go.” Farley said looking over at him and poised to grab the boy or the wheel if needed, and thankfully the kid didn’t stomp on the accelerator.
“Hey, this is easy! Nothing to it! I’m driving!” Jeremy said, all smiles.
“Yeah, you are doing well. Let’s keep it that way. Your motto today is slow and easy wins the race, you got me? I tell you another thing too son, once you start driving back towards that old crazy bastards house, don’t be turning it into no road race or be leaving me behind because, I also got this.” Farley said, arching his back and reaching into his pocket for the .380 pistol.
“Why didn’t you shoot that old man then? Why didn’t you shoot him, Farley?” The boy asked, looking at him like he was the dumbest creature on Earth.
“Get your eyes back on the road, boy. I would have shot the son of a bitch but he was on me too quick and I couldn’t get to it so I thumped him with that whopper chopper instead.” Farley said still sweating from the encounter.
“That was pretty cool! I never seen two old men go at it before; I didn’t think you all had it in you.” The boy began before Farley gave him that look again.
“This old man can still dance son, as for that other one, that son of a bitch put me through my paces and I feel lucky to be alive!” Farley said with a grimace.
“I mean, no sooner than I quit worrying about you running at me with your Boy Scout knife then that old man came running at me with that axe and murder in his eye. I guarantee you if I could have got to my pistol this day would have ended quite differently.” Farley said only half glad he hadn’t shot the old son of a bitch and wondering now what to do about him further.
“So what’s the plan now? We know he’s awake or we think he is maybe awake. He’s probably madder than hell and you left that axe of his laying out in the front yard so he’ll probably be back at us again with it!.” Jeremy said looking over at Farley.
“Damn boy, I told you watch the road.” Farley said easing the steering wheel back to get in the middle of the road.
“I don’t know boy, I’m thinking on it. If that axe finds its way into his hand again, I will shoot him. Now the big problem is I was going to give him his car back less that bit of gas we borrowed, but I’m thinking better of it at the moment. Which way is your Mama’s house from here anyway?” Farley asked but already knowing the answer.
“Well you got to go right back by Finch’s house to get there. Are you going to sneak up on him or you going to put the pedal to the metal as we go by?” Jeremy asked.
“Told you I was still thinking on it. I just don’t know at the moment. That puts a new hitch in my plans. I know he’s not going to be getting around too well with that whop in the head anyways but who the hell knows? At least as far as we know he don’t have no gun, you don’t have no pistol stuck in your shorts do you?” Farley asked eying the boy more closely.
“No, Farley, I told you he didn’t have any guns. I did see some bullets but I didn’t see any sign of any guns.” Jeremy said recollecting.
“What kind of bullets?” Farley asked once again reaching towards the wheel to make an adjustment and to remind the kid to quit looking at him when talking.
“Wasn’t much of anything, just an old partial box of .22’s that looked like they been there a hundred years.” Jeremy said paying more attention to his driving and not wanting Farley to threaten to thunk him on the head for looking at him or to the side of the road while driving.
“What do you know about bullets, boy? Does your Mama have a gun?” Farley asked cursing himself that he hadn’t already asked that all important question already.
“No, don’t worry she ain’t got one. She used to though, had a little .25 stainless steel one. Once in a while one of the uncles or somebody will come by and take me shooting as long as Mama wasn’t coming along. I’ve shot me a .22 rifle, .20 gauge shotgun and a .38 pistol.” the boy said proudly.
“Well that’s good, I am glad somebody took the time to come by and show you shooting but if he’s got .22 shells that might mean we might have missed his .22 and that worries me.” Farley said.
“That was a really old box of shells and only half full. Guess I should have told you about them. You reckon you are going to get in a firefight with him next, Farley?” The boy questioned.
“Where did you learn that word from boy, firefight- you probably learned it playing on them violent video games like all the rest of your generation?” Farley asked regarding the kid.
“No, my Daddy was a Vietnam veteran. He’s crazy too you know and stays down there at the VA hospital but he used to tell me stories before he got all mean.” The boy said as Farley regarded him and wondered what a hard life this kid had experienced that was beyond his years.
“I guess I should have searched that house more myself. Did you pay particular attention to his front and back doors when you were looking for guns?” Farley asked.
“Yea, that was the first thing I did. Weren’t any weapons around there. I knew to do that because that is generally where everybody goes to put them up when Mama comes to visit.” The boy said.
“Good deal. I doubt that he has any firearms then, but we’ll be careful just the same when we head back.” Farley advised.
“How ya’ll fixed for food over there Jeremy? You look like you have been finding enough to eat.” Farley said thinking about what a fix he was in now that he was about to have some gas and had all his preps hidden in the woods but not being able to tell the boy anything about that .
For that matter, what the hell was he going to do now that he had gas for his van and all that shit stashed with this kid in tow. Do I leave it, do I load it, do I give the kid the car and send him on his way? Or do I get ready to shoot the old bastard when I come by again?” Farley thought in a whirl of panicky thoughts.
“Why are you way out here, Farley? Do you live around here someplace? Were you staying over at the campgrounds?” the boy asked.
“No, I’m traveling out of the city and I was going to try to move up to an old fishing cabin I had at the lake and see if I could get by a little bit better over there.” Farley said still distracted by the other thought of what to do with his preps and the old man.
“I told Mama that we should stay ourselves right here and not go to Mobile at all and that I could get us by. There’s some fish in the lake, although they are not going to bite every day or even regularly. I would have found me a gun I was going to hunt with but I haven’t seen any in the houses yet.” Jeremy said flinching as he realized he just clued Farley in as to how much thieving he’d been up to and then immediately changed the subject.
“Folks at home don’t like Mama and me too much; they kind of tolerate us and invite us over at times. But they don’t do it that often or that much and forget sometimes that we’re related. Sometimes we have to go to social services or something to get us a little help. We got us one rich relative that’s pretty good about making sure she’s got enough money to pay for her meds, that is if she doesn’t spend it on liquor occasionally. Other than that they don’t have us around much, so I don’t know why she thinks it’s so all fired important to get back down to them.” the young man said with some dismay.
“You got you a hard life you’re living, my f
riend. Wish there was something more I could do for ya’ll but times being what they are, us two hobos got to just keep making do, I guess.” Farley said enjoying the child’s smile of being included in the two hobo sentence.
“Why don’t me and you stay down here and hunt and fish and take care of Mama? There’s an empty cottage next to us. I will tell her I couldn’t find any gas and you won’t have to tell her you smacked the old man upside the head with an axe. We could hunt and fish and just get by. Mama’s still a pretty woman; she’s not hard to look at. You might even like her.” The boy said hopefully, looking at his new found hero.
“I, uh, ummm, nope don’t think that sounds like such a great idea, Jeremy. We will get you some gas, plot and scheme around that old man if he’s up and about and ya’ll can get on up with your kin folks down south, that sound o.k.?” Farley said wanting to pat the boy on the shoulder but knowing that might be the wrong thing to do.
“Aw, come on now! I told you that you can live next door. You ain’t got to take up with the old lady. I was just suggesting it. She won’t like you anyway, too old with that gray white hair. Oh, no offense now!” The boy said slowing down for some ruts in the road that Farley was about to warn him about.
“See how it pays to watch the road, Jeremy. You handled that well. No my friend, I think it’s going to be time pretty soon for us to part ways and seek our own paths but thank you for the invitation. I might stick around a day or two just to make sure that old bastard doesn’t come after ya’ll but I think the best idea is for you all to head south and I head to my place up at the lake.” Farley said to the quietly contemplating boy.
“That sounds like a good idea, I guess, if you not going to stay here by us. Maybe you could help me talk to Mama into staying here because we don’t know how the folks back home are going to receive us. Like I said, they don’t much like being around us, we don’t really even know what’s going on; we don’t have any radio, you see? The folks at the country store said that the sun had somehow messed up the electricity and that there were bad earthquakes up around Tennessee way. Mr. Garcia that had the cabin next to us hung around for a week and he had a radio. That’s the cabin I told you that you could have. He told me that the whole United States had no power and that raging wildfires and badly damaged cities that the government had to deal with were occurring all over but he didn’t tell me much more than that. Must be bad, him and Mama were whispering a bit and all he did was pat me on the head when he left and told me to stay safe. Why is it that adults think they got to pat younger folks on the head like we don’t understand a thing?” Jeremy asked.
“I don’t know boy, you want a pat on the head?” Farley said laughing and sharing the moment that he had been treating the kid like a small ignorant adult all this time.
“That’s another thing, I don’t want to get around that cheek pinching Aunt of mine, she lives in a big house with one of my other relations and I don’t like going over there. You got to dress up and wash up and everything else for an hour of dinner as they talk about us and how much they been helping us and such.” Jeremy said before asking “is that you up there on the left?” after spying Farley’s van.
“Yea, that’s me.” Farley said as the boy slowed down.
“How are you going to get the gas out of this car? I didn’t think to ask you to cut a piece of garden hose off back at the house.” the boy said.
“I got something better than that. I have got me a readymade siphon hose with a bell on it to jingle so I don’t have to worry about that.” Farley said thinking about his readymade hose. The Emergency Siphon™ and hose come packaged in a re-sealable zip-top bag for clean, compact storage anywhere you need an Emergency Siphon™. To use the Emergency Siphon™, you simply insert it into your barrel or source container and shake to start the water flowing.
“O.K., now this is how we are going to have to do this little transfusion here, little brother. I got to siphon the gas out of this car into the five gallon jug and pour it into my tank and then we will siphon some more and get you filled up. The way I figure it, that’ll probably leave old Mr. Finch about a quarter tank when we’re done and that’s good enough. I still hope like hell he’s incapacitated and don’t decide to get out in the middle of the road as we go by with a gun or something he might have. I got me another gun and no, you can’t have it, that’s called a Henry Survival Rifle and let me tell you what, it’s a tack shooter when it comes to target shooting. It’s disassembled at the moment but I’m about to assemble it, just in case.” Farley said opening the backdoor of the van and dumping the three quarter full five gallon jerry can of water out on the ground after telling the boy to drink his fill and doing so himself.
Farley had left the thing in the van instead of putting it in his cache because if someone else got themselves stranded on this desolate end of the road it would have been there for them but actually he didn’t feel the need to carry this fifty pounds of weight an eighth of a mile to a more secure location and had got lazy. As Farley siphoned off gas and filled his van and prepared the fuel container for Jeremy’s homeward bound journey, he thought about his preps and what to do next. Well, carry them with you of course you dang fool, he told himself with some trepidation.
“Look here, Jeremy; I’m what you might call a prepper of sorts. No, get that light out of your eye, I ain’t no Doomsday prepper with 5 years worth of supplies but I do have a bit extra with me that I am willing to share with you. Just some basic rations to get you and your mama home for helping me load my van with the rest of it.” Farley said regarding this young soul that fate had stuck him with.
“What do you mean? Where’s it at? How far? Where do we have to go to, Farley?” A flurry of questions started spouting from the boy.
“We ain’t got to go nowhere but here but it’s a hump to tote it back to the vehicle. I got my stuff stashed in the woods around here close. I unpacked this van yesterday after I run out of gas with hopes of coming back to it and guess what? I’m back. Now if your little lightweight self can man up enough to help me carry it all out of the woods and load it back into my van again, I will give you two weeks’ worth of food, that is if you’re eating light. Some of it may be unrecognizable to you but food is food and the first thing on your list is a twenty five pound box of parboiled rice. Now that doesn’t sound like much for gourmet eating but oatmeal beats no meal, son, and I’ll give you six cans of cream of chicken soup and a bottle of soy sauce to make it go down easier every day. Actually, twenty five pounds of rice could feed you and Mama for a month but I ain`t going to be that hard on you because you’ll be thinking you ought to be looking like a Chinese eating all that plain rice and you’ll be fussing at me . I will give you one case of MRE’s, that’s meals-ready-to-eat, little soldier, stuff army gives you and that’s cool ‘cause it’s got stuff like matches and toilet paper in them, too. What you want to do is, you and your Mama split them 12 meals and share for twelve days, one meal a day between the two of ya’ll and eat that rice as your second meal of the day. Save the hot sauce in them MRE’s, you will need that later. Rice with hot sauce and whatever will be just as good as the soy sauce is to break up the monotony. Don’t ask me for no more even though you know I got it or you’re about to know I got it cause I ain’t giving it to you. Old Farley can be as mean as old Mr. Finch if you bug him too much. What are you doing about fire? I see you got that Boy Scout knife of yours, you been a Boy Scout or did you just get one of them uncles to give it to you?” Farley asked standing tall letting his whole six foot two inch frame slightly intimidate the boy not to beg him for any more food or supplies than he was willing to give.
“Well, we got matches. I have been collecting those, and toilet paper and old lighters and everything else from the houses I have been looking around in on the lake.” Jeremy said giving Farley a wince at the boy’s thieving ways and wondering if the places were occupied or unoccupied with that little thieving or foraging boy running around.
“You ever he
ar of a 72 hour kit or a survival kit like those downed pilots use sometimes before?” Farley said thinking and rubbing the stubble of his beard that he had started sporting many weeks ago.
“I’ve heard tell of a survival kit before but I never heard of a seventy two hour kit. What’s that?” Jeremy asked.
“That’s three days worth of food or 72 hours worth of stuff you put together to prepare for hurricanes like you do down there in Mobile from the government memorandums and warnings they advise you to do. Does your Mama get extra batteries and water and such getting ready for the storms to come?” Farley asked.
“Well, we talk about it and we got a few extra things but you ought to understand we don’t have much money mostly and when hurricane season comes around we generally count on neighbors and relief to help us through.” the boy said to Farley while rubbing his hairless chin.
“OK, I got some extra crap I’m going to give you but I’m not going to go though the whole survival kit giz whiz with you but I am going to show you how to use a modern day type of survival tool. They call these things ferromecium rods, boy. They make sparks. Sparks make fire but there’s an art to it. And I’m going to give you this one and you’re going to wear it around your neck whether you like it or not because it’s the main thing you should have with you to survive... If you have fire you have life. Don’t lose your life because you forgot your fire. You now carry the fire and your own survival.” Farley said and then demonstrated the basics of using it and told him of the use of petroleum jelly and cotton balls much to the boy’s delight.