An Unwelcome Homecoming

by Darrell Maloney

  “No, I mean the day of the week.”

  “Oh. I’m not sure. Tuesday? Wednesday, maybe? Why?”

  “I was hoping it was Friday, so we could go to the Saturday market tomorrow. If the weather stays nice, that is.”

  “Are they even doing the market? The weather’s been way too cold.”

  “They did it last winter.”

  “Yeah, but they didn’t start until the end of winter. Like the end of February, early March. And why do we need to go to the market? We have pretty much everything we need here.”

  “Oh, I know. I just miss going and seeing all the cool stuff that you never see anymore.”

  While Kristy talked she was working on repairing the charm bracelet she’d had since she was a small girl. It was one her grandmother gave her before she died.

  With a pair of needle-nosed pliers in one hand and the bracelet in the other, she was trying to close a stretched eyehole when a charm fell off the bracelet and onto the floor of the deck.

  It bounced once and then disappeared into the gap between two of the deck’s floorboards.

  “Oh, crap!” she screamed.

  She wanted to cry.

  Angie, knowing how much the bracelet meant to her sister, was instantly on her hands and knees trying to help.

  “I can’t see it. It’s way too dark.”

  Kristy, beside her now and peering in the gaps beneath the floorboards, couldn’t see a thing either.

  “Angie, would you mind going to the garage and bringing back a crowbar, or maybe a claw hammer? Something we can use to pry this board off?”

  Angie, who was always Johnny on the spot during any crisis, was up on her feet and running even before Kristy finished her sentence.

  It took her several minutes, because the garage had no windows and was pitch black.

  She had to go down to the basement to retrieve a flashlight and then return to the garage to search for a tool.

  She returned to an exasperated Kristy, and both girls discovered at exactly the same time that she’d wasted the trip.

  “Who the hell installs floor boards with screws instead of nails?” Kristy wondered aloud.

  “Apparently Beth Spear’s dad does,” was the response.

  “Yeah. But why?”

  Dave Spear did indeed build the deck using screws instead of nails.

  And when they found out why, it would make perfect sense. They’d have a newfound appreciation for Dave and the situation he’d left them with.

  And they’d finally find the solution to a puzzle which had been driving them crazy for weeks.

  But first, Angie had to go back to the garage to return the crowbar and find a Phillips head screwdriver instead.

  Chapter 53

  When Dave Spear was a little boy he used to help his dad on all kinds of projects. From making furniture for Dave’s mother to building tree houses in the back yard to installing fences, it seemed every new summer brought with it a long list of new projects.

  It was during those summers that Dave learned how to use practically every type of tool imaginable, and gained all kinds of useful knowledge.

  Young Dave once asked his father as they were building a playhouse for a disabled boy down the street, “Dad, how do you determine whether to use nails or screws for a project?”

  His father answered, “Well, first thing to consider is appearance. You’d never use nails on a piece of furniture, for example, because nails would be tacky.

  “For construction projects you’ll typically use nails as a default. Nails are easier and much cheaper.

  “And use nails if you’re never planning to dismantle your project. If you use nails and then dismantle or modify your project later on, you’ll probably damage it while taking the nails out. However, if there’s a chance you’re gonna take it apart again to move it or modify it, screws are your best bet.”

  For the disabled boy’s outdoor playhouse they used a combination of nails and screws. Most of the playhouse was hammered together with nails.

  But they built the playhouse in four sections, then put the sections together with screws.

  “If you ever move,” Dave’s dad told the boy’s father, “Just remove the screws. It’ll fall into four pieces. Each piece will be easy to carry and will fit in the bed of a pickup. When you get where you’re going, just put the screws back in and it’s good as new.”

  Kristy didn’t know as much about carpentry or building as Dave did, but she knew the basics. She knew that using screws to build a deck floor was harder and more expensive than using nails.

  “Why on earth would he do that?” she spitted and sputtered while removing two Phillips head screws from each end of the eight-foot long plank. “It’s dumb, if you ask me.”

  When she removed the plank and set it aside, she was able to retrieve her charm and was back in happyville again.

  Then she saw something else that was hidden beneath the plank as well.

  “Well, this is peculiar,” she said as she reached in and retrieved it.

  It was a hose about four feet long. Close to one end was a hand-operated crank. It was a hand pump made to pump liquid from one container to another.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Then a light came on in her head. She reached back into the void and felt the ground beneath the deck.

  It wasn’t dirt, as one would expect.

  It was plywood.

  Immediately she got excited.

  “Angie, go into the garage and get another Phillips screwdriver. I need your help.”

  “Why?”

  “Please, just go.”

  Angie went off in a bit of a huff, but at the same time she was curious.

  She hadn’t seen Kristy this excited about anything since before her attack. This was the Kristy of old, not the one who seemed constantly depressed and lifeless.

  Angie returned a couple of minutes later, screwdriver in hand, and helped her sister remove about half of the deck floorboards.

  When they were in the midst of it, they heard Robert yell “Fore!” and pieces of wood came flying over the back fence.

  They were well out of the way, but some of the rabbits weren’t.

  They scattered quickly when the first couple of pieces hit the ground.

  Tossing the pieces of firewood over the fence was much easier than dragging them through the trap door and besides, it was rather fun. It was Robert’s preferred method of bringing the wood home because… well, because little boys like throwing stuff almost as much as they like getting dirty. It’s ingrained in their DNA.

  After the last piece of broken plywood came falling from the sky like a wounded duck, the trap door in the fence popped open and two little bodies came crawling through.

  To say they were surprised by what they saw would have been a serious understatement.

  They looked at one another and wondered what madness had overtaken their friends; what type of insanity had stricken them. But they were afraid to ask.

  Both of them sat in the middle of the yard and stroked some of the friendlier rabbits until the girls finished their task.

  Then Kristy dragged the piece of plywood from beneath the deck and into the back yard, exposing what she was positive she’d discovered.

  She didn’t know how much of it was down there, or exactly how it was stored.

  But she was darned sure she’d found Dave’s diesel stash.

  “I knew it! I knew it! It just didn’t make any sense for him to stockpile so much of everything else and so little fuel!”

  There, for all the world to see, was what Dave very cleverly hid beneath the deck; four blue plastic drums, each holding diesel fuel.

  The drums were buried so that only the tops were above ground level. The bung holes and the vent holes were capped, but could be removed easily to allow the fuel to be pumped out.

  “The Jerry cans we found next to the generator weren’t for siphoning fuel from trucks on the street. They were for pumping fuel
from here.”

  She did some quick math and said, “I’ve seen drums like this before. I’m pretty sure they hold fifty five gallons each. That’s two hundred twenty gallons. That’s enough to run that generator for years.”

  Actually, her math was correct, but she was still mistaken. She had no way of knowing that as each drum was emptied it could be lifted out to expose another drum beneath it.

  Dave Spear was a prepper who believed that more was better.

  And that even more than that was best of all.

  *************************

  Thank you for reading

  ALONE, Part 15:

  An Unwelcome Homecoming

  Please enjoy this preview of

  ALONE, Part 16:

  Back on the Move

  Dave got an unmistakable feeling of uneasiness as soon as they entered their old neighborhood in south San Antonio.

  Everything looked familiar, yet something was decidedly different.

  He just couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

  For the previous hour there’d been almost nonstop chatter.

  Dave pointed out the city park where they once picnicked.

  They rode their bikes there, when the girls were younger. Lindsey rode her own. A purple Barney the Dinosaur bike with training wheels.

  Beth was little then, and laughed out loud from the baby carrier behind Dave’s bike seat.

  She loved feeling the wind in her hair and leaned out as far as possible to catch as much as she could.

  Dave had forgotten that part. But now it came back to him. He smiled as he remembered how hard it was to keep from tipping over when Beth grew to almost three years old.

  She still leaned far out, but was a chubby little girl then and weighed twice as much as she did the year before.

  He remembered having to lean just a bit to the other side himself to stay balanced.

  Over there was the convenience store they used to walk to on hot summer days for ice cream.

  Now every window was shattered, probably by looters in the early days of the blackout.

  The owners had hammered plywood over the windows, but it did little good.

  Nearly every piece of plywood had been pried back off again. Those which weren’t were covered in graffiti or kicked to pieces.

  Still, that store fared better than the pizza restaurant next door. At some point it was burned to the ground.

  The only proof the restaurant was ever there was the thirty foot tall Italian chef on the sign out front.

  His name was Antonio and he still held a huge pepperoni pizza.

  Antonio still stood sentinel over the site, and reminded passersby of better times.

  “Well, the pizza there sucked anyway,” Beth said.

  Beth was one who was never afraid of sharing her critiques or personal views, whether one asked her or not.

  Lindsey, for once, agreed with her.

  “Orlando’s was much better.”

  Dave’s mouth watered.

  Not for pizza, for he wasn’t a pizza fan.

  But the tortellini Alfredo that the chef slapped onto a plate at Orlando’s was to die for.

  He knew a lot of the staff at the restaurant socially, for the manager was a former Marine.

  Every time the family went there for dinner Tony Morelli came to their table and joined them. He and Dave swapped stories from their days in the Corps. Tony bought him a beer or three.

  Sarah usually had to drive the family back home, because she and Dave had had an agreement for years. He was allowed to drive after two beers and a full meal.

  But no more than that.

  It was no problem. Everyone had a good time, and Lindsey was right.

  The food at Orlando’s was awesome.

  They passed Beth’s elementary school.

  Lindsey asked her if she wanted to go inside.

  “I’ll go with you, little squirt. Just in case there’s any monsters hiding in the shadows waiting to grab you and eat you.”

  Lind caught her father’s eye and winked, then added, “That way I can help them by holding you down.”

  “Very funny, twerp,” Beth countered. “I stopped believing in monsters the day I discovered big sisters are ten times worse.

  “Besides, I don’t think I’d like going in there. I think seeing the empty rooms would make me very sad.”

  They passed the school by and ten minutes later turned the corner at the end of their street.

  Dave got a bad feeling. Everything looked more or less the same, but something was decidedly different.

  As they neared their house, Dave studied everything closely. He was looking for a hint… a clue… that would tell him what it was which had changed.

  As the girls grew more and more excited about finally being home, he finally saw it.

  The picture window in their front room was different.

  The phony eviction notice Dave had so carefully placed in the corner of the window… it was gone.

  “Keep walking,” he said, even as he winced because he knew he was ruining everyone’s homecoming.

  “Something’s not right. Keep walking and don’t look at the house.”

  *************************

  ALONE, Part 16:

  Back on the Move

  will be available worldwide on Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble Booksellers in July 2020

  *************************

  *************************

  Please enjoy one of my short stories,

  And thanks for reading my books.

  -Darrell-

  *************************

  The Journey of the Hands

  By Darrell Maloney

  Copyright 2004

  I was born in a big marble building in the middle of Philadelphia in 1925.

  Back then I was sturdy and strong, with a sharp chiseled face. I even sparkled in the sunlight, although I didn't see sunlight for the first time until I was six months old.

  I took my first boat trip on the Erie Canal, in a canvas bag with 999 others just like me. It was cramped but not uncomfortable. I had no idea where I was going, but was happy for the company of the others.

  From time to time the bag we were in would be tossed from hand to hand as workers moved us from the boat to an armored car, then into a bank in Detroit.

  The first time I was touched by humans, I was picked up by a grizzled old merchant named Hanz, at his family's apotheke in Taylor, Michigan. He handed me to a lovely woman named Clara, in a beautiful gingham dress and a bright yellow Easter bonnet.

  Clara immediately passed me to a young girl named Betsy, who held me up in wonder in the dusty sunlight breaking through the store's east window, and marveled at how I shone.

  I remember the brilliance of the light, and the warmth of her little girl hands, sticky from the gumball she had been passing back and forth between her mouth and her fingers.

  Thus began my journey of the hands.

  I took my first train trip in a rickety old Pullman car, nestled into the pocket of a man named Gustafson Baker. He preferred Gus, although his wife used his full name when she was peeved at him, which she frequently was.

  The train moved west over the Rockies, into Salt Lake City. I was rooted from my nest in Gustafson’s pocket and dropped into the hand of a young porter named Joe, who helped carry the Bakers' bags from the train into the station. Joe traded me for a piece of penny licorice a couple of days later.

  I look back at my days in Salt Lake City with fond memories. I got to meet a lot of people and felt the warmth of hundreds of hands as I was passed around, sometimes several times a day.

  Sometimes the hands were soft, and smelled of sweet lilac or perfume. Sometimes the hands were grimy and gnarled, covered with dirt or coal dust, or heaven knows what else.

  Sometimes I would ride around in a genteel lady's pocketbook for days or weeks at a time. The women tended to hang onto me longer than the men did. I suppose that's because in the
bottom of a pocketbook I could be easily forgotten.

  Once I got to go to a magnificent schoolhouse in the small pocket of a girl of nine named Millicent. She traded me and an old buffalo nickel for a bowl of soup and a biscuit. Then she sat down and ate her lunch amidst a chorus of chatter and giggles, while I sat in a cold cash drawer, waiting to be passed to someone else.

  By the time I was five years old I had given up on my goal of counting the number of hands I had touched. The quest was borne out of boredom, and I had no idea it would be so many.

  After the first hundred hands or so I gave up on trying to remember all the names, or the details. After a thousand or so I gave up altogether. Suffice it to say it was a lot of hands in those early years.

  When I was ten, I was on the move again.

  This time was not so glorious a journey. I slipped through a hole in the pocket of a farmhand who was loading steers into a cattle car heading south.

  For days I lay on the hard wooden floor of the car as it lurched along its tracks, occasionally being stepped on by a four-legged beast which had no more idea where we were heading than I did.

  We wound up in southern California, where the cattle were turned into steaks and I was passed many times from one hand to another. I learned my worth was two tomatoes or one apple. I was in the land of itinerant farmers, most of whom were displaced by the dust bowl and the depression, and moved west in search of a better life.

  I would go back and forth, from a set of scratched and cracked hands belonging to a picker, to the soft and lotioned hands of a grocer, in exchange for two tomatoes, or an apple, or a pat of wrapped bread. Then given in change back to another set of cracked dry hands.

  Back and forth, day in and day out. It was monotonous. Sometimes I was passed back and forth in poker games, where I was apparently enough to ante my owner's hand of cards into the game.

  In 1943 I belonged to a man named John.

  John had picked me up on a sidewalk in Waco, Texas, where I had been carelessly dropped by a small child whose hands were too tiny to carry a handful of change.