They’d be awaiting the delivery of their building supplies and overseeing a crew of loggers cutting down a piece of their private forest and providing the logs which would make up the majority of their structures.
The next months would be a tremendous challenge.
They’d work long hours for many days.
But the payoff would be more than worthwhile: their own homestead in one of the most beautiful places on God’s earth.
Chapter 55
Jenn was a petite woman, rail thin and just a fraction over five feet tall.
She’d developed her toughness at an early age as a means of self-preservation, for she’d seen for herself how cowards and bullies liked to push around ones who were smaller than they were.
She let it be known that she would not be bullied. She would not be pushed around. She would not be taken advantage of.
It took awhile sometimes, for bullies and brutes aren’t the smartest of people. But eventually everyone got the word that Jenn was not one to be messed with.
She was tiny but tough as nails, and she feared absolutely nothing.
Most women… most people… as small as Jenn would be intimated when getting behind the wheel of a Hummer for the very first time.
Not Jenn.
She’d driven tractors and bulldozers. She even drove a big rig for a trucking company for a time.
The Hummer, which was a beast for some people and downright scary for others, was a piece of cake for Jenn.
She saw it not as a thing to be feared but rather a thing to be admired.
It was powerful, sure. It was meant to be. It was as capable as any all-terrain vehicle could be.
It was as capable and tough as she was.
They’d get along great.
She was comfortable in the machine from her first moments behind the wheel.
She couldn’t wait to get it on the road.
Oh, she did have some concerns.
But they weren’t about the road conditions. The beast would take the ash with ease, even where it drifted to a foot or higher.
No, she was concerned about the availability of fuel along the way.
Dean had put a siphon hose in the back. Just in case she had to steal fuel from abandoned vehicles.
And she’d do that if she had to, but only then… if she absolutely had to.
Besides small… besides tough… another thing Jenn was was honest to a fault. It went against her grain to take from others.
“So ease your conscience by leaving money behind,” Dean suggested as a way to ease her mind.
She considered his idea and resolved to do just that if she had to.
That wouldn’t ease her guilt completely, for while she’d be paying for the fuel she’d also be transferring her dilemma to someone else. Forcing the car’s owners to forage for fuel which was hard to find. She’d be paying for the fuel but not for the trouble.
But if there was no other way…
The other thing she worried about was finding lodging along the way.
Surely, she reasoned, the hotels and motels along the way would be shuttered. If employees couldn’t get to and from work there was no way the lodging would be opened for business.
It turned out she needn’t have worried in either case.
The fuel stations had no problems being opened.
Big rig tanker drivers are some of the best in the world.
That’s because gasoline and diesel must be delivered all year around, regardless of weather conditions.
Every day of the year tanker operators are on the road, no matter how bad the roads are.
Ice and snow do not faze them.
Now they could add a new type of road condition to their resumes. For now they were very rapidly gaining experience driving through heavy ash.
Given a choice they’d rather drive through snow and ice, because those things are only temporary. They eventually melt into water and go away.
Ash stuck around forever.
Or at least it seemed so.
Otherwise driving on the two was remarkably similar.
Jenn’s assumption that gas stations would be unable to get gas was premature. No, more than that, it was just plain wrong.
The country was anxious to get things back to normal. All recognized it would be a painfully slow process, but all were anxious to get started. For the ancient adage is true. One must get started before one can get finished.
To that regard the nation’s truckers were hard at work. Tanker drivers were delivering their fuels. Cargo haulers were delivering their groceries and beverages and everything else that had to be gotten here or there or everywhere.
The unsung heroes of the Yellowstone Event were the truckers, for they were knocked down but not out; bloodied but not cowed. They were out and about again, despite all reason.
Everyone else looked at them, shrugged their shoulders, and said “Well, if they can do it, maybe I can too.”
When the ash was falling, many thought getting out was futile.
Now that it had stopped, most saw getting out as inevitable. As mandatory.
As the American thing to do.
So yes, people were finding a way to get to work at the convenience stores. At the grocery stores.
And, too, at the hotels and motels which lined the nation’s interstates.
Businesses were finding creative ways to clear their parking lots of the ash.
Every city above or near the snow belt has a few entrepreneurs who have detachable snow-plow blades they attach to their pickup trucks during wintertime.
Such people, who are almost always bearded men named “Al” or “Sid,” make a few extra bucks shoveling the snow from supermarket and drug store parking lots.
Al and Sid were cleaning up… literally and figuratively, by freeing parking lots of ash all over the nation.
Chapter 56
But there weren’t enough Als and Sids to go around. There was enough ash to keep them employed full time for hundreds of years.
And most businesses simply couldn’t wait.
Most businesses resorted to hiring laborers (or forcing their own hapless employees) to free up half their parking lots by piling the ash on the other half.
It was exhausting work, and the Yellowstone death toll rose as each and every day people pushed themselves too hard and dropped dead with heart attacks.
Or inhaled too much of the stuff and sidelined themselves with respiratory ailments.
Those on the radio were advising it was best to go slow. To accept the fact this was a catastrophe which would take many years to put behind us.
Some listened, some didn’t.
Some paid a heavy price.
Within a couple of days after the ash fall ended America was getting back on her feet.
She was stumbling. She was moving slowly.
But she was up.
Jenn made two hundred miles her first day.
She’d have gotten farther, but didn’t want to be reckless.
She passed several four-wheel drive or off-road vehicles along the side of the highway, seen several drivers pacing back and forth beside them, cursing their bad luck.
Jenn was smarter than all of them.
She was smart enough to know that even a piece of machinery made specifically for driving off road cannot do miracles. It’s simply a tool, and in the hands of someone who is reckless or careless or just plain stupid it too can slide off a slippery roadway.
Jenn was neither reckless nor careless. Nor was she stupid.
Several of the men standing alongside their wrecked vehicles watched as she drove by.
Perhaps they felt foolish, and rightfully so.
Perhaps they hoped she’d stop and offer them a ride.
That wasn’t going to happen, for as kind-hearted as she was, she no longer picked up hitchhikers. That was because she’d done so before and was overpowered not once, but twice, by scoundrels who mistook her kindness and size as weakness.
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Besides, she had her own mission, one she saw as one of the most important she’d even been on, and she couldn’t let herself be sidelined or slowed by another’s misfortune.
Especially when that misfortune was brought on by carelessness.
Or perhaps, as they watched her cruise by, they just admired this little spit of a woman who handled a very large and very powerful piece of machinery with such confidence and expertise.
Of the two hundred miles she’d traveled that day, the residential streets in Little Rock were the worst, for it would be several days before city road crews would get them all cleared.
Once on the interstate it was slippery but otherwise clear sailing.
The choke points, the trouble spots, were the on and off-ramps, for the plows were focused on the through-traffic and left mounds of ash blocking each on and off ramp.
The mounds were no match for the Hummer, though, and she plowed right through them, helping clear a path for the passenger cars behind her.
She had no problem finding gasoline, and found a chain motel open for business just before nightfall.
All of them got a good night’s sleep, for all of them were harried.
Darrell called twice that day, just to tell them all he loved them and that Nana did too. That there was no change, but that Nana was in good hands and that she’d be just fine.
Each time her phone ring Jenn hushed the children and pulled over to a dead stop. She didn’t want the vehicle’s big engine to give away the fact they were on the road and well on their way to see her parents.
She didn’t want to deceive her dad, necessarily. She just wanted to avoid a situation where he went on and on about wanting them to turn back.
She didn’t want him to waste his breath, as he was very old and didn’t have that much breath left.
Darrell thought they were still in Little Rock, still buttoned up in their home, and not in harm’s way.
By the time he found out they’d braved the elements there’d be nothing he could do about it.
The next day they made it through Oklahoma City and to Wichita, still bypassing cocky men and their ditched pickup trucks.
She did stop and assist one motorist, a woman carrying a gas can.
Her car was still operable and still had four tires on the roadway. But she’d underestimated the distance between gas stations on her own desperate mission to get to the side of her own injured loved one.
It was a mistake, not stupidity. Everyone runs out of gas at some point in their life.
She asked for a ride to the nearest gas station, but Jenn did her one better.
Jenn had two Jerry cans in the cargo bay she’d brought in case fuel was in short supply.
So far it hadn’t been.
She picked up the woman and headed immediately back to the woman’s car, two miles back.
She emptied five gallons from the Jerry can into the empty tank, pooh-poohing the grateful woman’s tears and expressions of thanks.
Lastly she wished the woman well and went back on her way.
Her own mission had been delayed half an hour or so, but a simple act of humanity is most important when all are suffering.
Chapter 57
It was just past five p.m. when Jenn’s mission of mercy came to an end.
Darrell told the charge nurse that Rocki was still sleeping peacefully. That he was headed downstairs to the cafeteria to get something to eat, and that he’d be back at Rocki’s side in twenty minutes or so.
As he walked down the hall to the elevators, one of the elevator doors opened and Meadow stepped out.
The rest was a blur of activity he’d struggle to remember later.
A blur of happy tears and sad tears, hugs and kisses and “I missed yous” and “I love yous,” and arms that refused to let go.
The cafeteria was quickly forgotten, as food no longer seemed important.
Jenn’s concerns of getting chewed out for coming were forgotten as well, for Darrell was so happy to see them he’d forgotten his admonition.
They were led back down the hallway and into Rocki’s room.
Jenn whispered to the chitlins in a hushed tone, “You guys can’t hug her and you can’t be loud. You can hold her hand, but only after you wash your own hands.
“And you can talk to her as long as you don’t do it loudly. If you feel like crying, please step out in the hall to do so. We want only happy thoughts in here. It’ll make the situation much better.”
Samson asked, “Do you think she can hear us, Momma?”
“I think so, son. If you tell her you love her I think it’ll help her a lot. Just knowing you’re here beside her will too, and she’ll be able to feel your little hands in hers, and that’ll help most of all.”
Darrell had a room at a hotel across the street, though he’d only used it to grab a short nap occasionally when he found himself falling asleep on his feet.
He walked over and traded it for a suite, then left his wife in his daughter’s capable hands while he took a long nap he desperately needed.
From that point on, he’d switch off with Jenn so that Rocki was never left unattended.
Not even for a minute.
The chitlins?
They seldom left their Nana’s side, except when dragged away to the hotel each night to get some sleep.
When they started getting bored the second day one of the doctors came to their rescue.
He brought a small television and a video game console and set them up on the other side of the room. He had the second bed removed and replaced with three easy chairs.
“The only thing I ask you guys is that you keep the volume all the way down to zero so it doesn’t disturb your Nana. Is that a deal?”
Three little heads bobbed up and down.
From that point on one chitlin held Rocki’s hand, while the other two were mere steps away, playing games to pass the time. Yet always ready to run to Rocki’s side when she woke up.
They changed places frequently, so that Rocki’s hand never got cold.
It went on that way for several more days and nights.
On the afternoon of Rocki’s ninth day in intensive care, she stirred just a bit, then turned her head to one side.
Everyone was gathered around her, and everyone expected her to open her eyes and say something.
Or at least to smile and acknowledge their presence.
Instead, a very loud alarm sounded from the monitor above her head.
Her heart monitor suddenly flat-lined, her blood oxygen level went from ninety one to zero.
The room went deathly silent, the only sound the footsteps of her nurses running down the hallway.
The charge nurse had always been friendly in the past, but was now all business.
She looked to Darrell and said, curtly and decisively, “I’m sorry. You all need to leave.”
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Thank you for reading
THE YELLOWSTONE EVENT
Book 6: The Aftermath
Please enjoy this preview of
THE YELLOWSTONE EVENT
Book 7: Life Goes On
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Gwen took the lasagna out of the oven just as Hannah finished buttering the French bread.
The door to Gwen’s RV opened and Melvyn poured himself in.
Gwen said, “You look beat, honey.”
He grunted, “This is the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life. But you know what? It’s also very rewarding. There’s just something rather cool about building your own home and knowing your grandkids and great-grandkids will be living in it long after you’re gone.”
“How many logs did you get notched?”
“Fourteen today. That brings the total to forty two. We’ll have all of them done by Friday, when Hal and his crew come back to show us how to place and anchor them.
“According to what Hal told us last time he was here, that puts us four full days ahead of the average cre
w.”
Gwen smiled.
“That really means a lot to you, doesn’t it? Knowing that the two of you are moving faster than most men your age, I mean.”
“Oh, it means a lot. It proves that we’ve still got it, if you know what I mean.”
He winked at Gwen.
She was proud of him. As he’d gotten a bit older in recent years it seemed he enjoyed physical labor less and less. Despite his doctor’s efforts to implore him to stay in shape he’d found solace in his easy chair more and more as each year went by.
It wasn’t just Melvyn.
In the months prior to the discovery that the Yellowstone Caldera was becoming active, Tony had been becoming less and less so.
Active, that is.
He’d stopped jogging, he’d stopped going to the gym.
He was spending more and more time watching sports on television and playing video games with his friends.
Now he enjoyed walking around with his shirt off.
Hannah enjoyed it too, admiring the expanding biceps and strong back he was building.
She asked, “Hey Melvyn, what did you do with my husband? You didn’t hit him over the head out there and leave him for bear bait, did you?
“I kinda like him and I want to keep him a bit longer.
“He comes in handy for gutting fish and changing light bulbs and stuff.”
Melvyn chuckled and said, “No, but it reminds me of a good joke Hal told me last week.
“How come you should always take a buddy with you when you go fishing?”
“I don’t know, Melvyn. Why?”
“So if you happen across a grizzly bear you can shoot your buddy in the leg and then run.”
“You didn’t shoot my husband in the leg, did you?”
“No. He went next door to your RV to shower. He’ll be right along.”
“Good. You had me worried for a minute.”
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The Yellowstone Event Book 7: Life Goes On
The Yellowstone Event: Book 6: The Aftermath Page 17