Ms. Got Rocks

by Jacqueline Colt

The front screen door was hanging by a memory of its former self. There was no screen to speak of in the screen door. The scraggy green painted front door was the old style with three-quarters of the door from floor up in wood and then a large square of glass. There was no privacy curtain, Dad would not want or need one. The gulch of a driveway made it very apparent that someone was arriving long before they were at the porch.

  The woodpile stacked at the backside of the cabin was full of split dry wood for the cook stove.

  The view was of the river, the huge rocks and rapids at the bend. A bit farther downstream it was possible to see the top of the bridge constructed in 1914.

  The cabin was located in Whiskey Gap, a collection of small ranches snuggled into a wrinkle in the Sierra Nevada foothills a few miles northeast of Auburn. The population at last count topped out at thirty-five including the dogs.

  Whiskey Gap squatted on the beginning of rolling foothills of the majestic Sierra Nevadas rising from the Big Valley of California.

  The natural grasses were brown and dry this time of year. The willows and cottonwoods at the edge of the river were the only green to rest the eyes from the blistering Big Valley heat. She remembered a front and back lawn, of which nothing remained.

  Rocky dug her notebook and pen from her tote bag, and began the list of things to do.

  "The front steps ready to fall in,-replace" she wrote as she said it aloud. She boosted herself onto the porch and inspected the wood there. It looked safe to walk to the front door. Rocky fished the key out of her pocket and pushed the door open.

  There were scurrying noises from every corner. Up here in the mountains, the mice and squirrels were always on the alert to overrun human homes.

  The dogs would take care of the rodent eviction in short order. Everything would have to be cleaned and scrubbed anyway. Rocky did not remember her Father being such a bad housekeeper, but the entire living area was neither clean nor neat.

  "That is the same couch. The mice have been nesting in that, it's going to the dump immediately."

  “Gosh, the place stinks,” she called out to the dogs.

  The carpets were gone, Rocky wondered where they went. The old wood floors look in good condition though needing a through scrubbing. The floors were a plus. She wandered to the window looking out at the river, the once white curtains were hanging in shreds.

  The whole living area looked like a storyboard for a scary movie.

  “Cheer up old girl,” Rocky thought aloud. “The kitchen is probably worst.”

  It was. She could hear a bird scratching in the stovepipe. At minimum, when Dad went into the hospital, Margie washed the dishes and cleaned out the propane-powered refrigerator. There was plenty remaining to be done.

  The kitchen floor was spongy and sticky, the floor tiles lifting on every corner.

  "The roof must be leaking big time." Rocky wrote that down as well.

  There were neat stacks of canned goods and sealed containers of staples in the pantry. Rocky laughed as she remembered her Father and his insistence on a full pantry, his pantry closet lined floor to ceiling with shelves. The shelves held canned fruit, tin upon tin of Irish tea, evaporated milk, corned beef hash, canned chili, soups of all kinds, a row of Margie’s homemade Blackberry jelly and every possible herb from all over the world.

  Rocky ran her finger over the biggest containers Tupperware ever made; three of them filled with Bisquick, her Father’s favorite cooking tool. All the items were lined up in alphabetical order. The screen on the tiny window was in perfect condition. The pantry itself was clean and neat, in such contrast to the mess in the other rooms.

  The repair to do list was getting longer and Rocky was not even further than the kitchen. She walked back through the living room and down the hall to her old bedroom. If she was lucky that would be habitable.

  Her room looked exactly as she left it, but covered in dirt, dust and glass that had been shot out of the windows. None of this would take long to fix. The ceiling seemed to be solid over this room. The two windows faced the river and with no glass panes in them the river sound in the hot morning was soothing.

  Margie had suggested that Rocky should begin a journal to record how and what she did to fix the cabin and get the claim producing again. Margie believed that the journal would be of interest to the local historical society.

  "Margie, I'm not a journal kind of person. I wouldn't know what to say." protested Rocky."This property is not historical; right now it is hysterical. Nobody would want to know about it.

  "Smart Alex, just do it." Margie ordered.

  Rocky would attempt to journal.

  After repairing and dredging all day, Rocky doubted she would be staying awake long enough to journal. Her career as Samuel Pepys looked to be short lived.

  The rest of the afternoon Rocky cleared the glass out of her bed and pulled the mattress out onto the porch where the sunshine could get to it.

  After searching in every room and closet, she found an old broom and dust pan. She added a new broom to the shopping list. The vacuum cleaner had disappeared. Rocky knew that her Dad owned one. There was no shop vacuum in the garage where her Father kept it, either.

  Hours later her bedroom was almost habitable; it needed window glass and definitely a new mattress. The bed linens were all in the garbage bags to go to the dump, Rocky could not save them. The sleeping bag from the plane and Dev’s tent will be fine for the interim and probably fun.

  The first evening in the new home, Rocky boiled water on the wood stove. She made macaroni and cheese from a box that was in the pantry. The dogs were thrilled to get a tablespoon of Mac and cheese mixed into their kibble and canned food.

  After dinner, the dogs went for a swim in the river to cool off. Tomorrow, the kitchen would be squared away and they would have a real meal. Rocky had not forgotten how to cook on the wood stove.

  She and the exhausted dogs spent the night in the tent in the front yard, they watched the moon rise and listened to the river and the owls.

  * * *

  Journal

  Today I started at the top of the cabin with a better broom I finally found this morning and dust rags. The attic is pretty much home for a colony of wood rats. I boosted Phoebe up into the attic and the dog began a through search for mouse quarry.

  I added to what will probably is an enormous shopping list with rat and mouse traps. There are two broken windows, another entirely missing and one cracked. Not bad, I muse, as there are only four windows in the attic anyway.

  She continued her journal writing: Repairing windows can’t be that hard, and instead of windows, maybe I want a roof vent. I added window screening to the list.

  I didn’t find what I was looking for in the attic. The tools have remained hidden and I can really use them right now.

  I swept up four cardboard cartons of pine needles and wood rat debris and hauled it down the stairs and through the house, before it occurred to me to tie a rope to it and lower it through the broken window. I’m too smart, too late as I shove the boxes into the back of the pickup.

  End of Journaling as I am falling asleep writing this.

  * * *

  The pickup truck was loaded for a dump run, with the ruined contents of her bedroom and the boxes of pine needles with mouse debris, and the living room curtains.

  “Getting a ticket for not having a tarp on this load will probably be in my horoscope for today,” Rocky told Lovie and Phoebe riding shotgun..

  “Add a tarp to the shopping list. I don’t need a fortuneteller to predict that I will be going to the dump a lot this week,” she laughed as they turned left onto the county road to go to the land fill.

  After the dump run, they drove by Margie’s, but her car was not there. She must be working the early shift at the hospital this week.

  Pulling into the building supplies yard, Rocky snagged a parking space that was close to the load out door, put the dogs on guard status with the windows rolled down.

 
; After checking her bank balance, Rocky shoved the shopping list and checkbook into her jeans pocket. She was ready for window fixings and new front steps.

  That shopping made her hungry, it was already past lunchtime. The truck was loaded and her checkbook was very slender, but they were ready to get started.

  With a quick stop at the grocery for bread and juice and dog food, they rattled toward the cabin.

  “Damn Tony, I miss my camera,” she thought. "Taking phone pictures isn't the same."

  The phone would not be anything close to the quality of her camera, but she wanted a record of what she was going to do to the cabin.

  Back home, in the attic again, Rocky hauled up the sawhorses by the pulley she attached to the stair banister. It was hot up here, but the critters would not stay evicted without the windows covered.

  Putting the glass in the windows was not that difficult but it took most of the afternoon to do the four attic windows. Rocky brought her tea up there, and surveyed what she could do to finish up tonight while it was cooler.

  Walking around the attic, Rocky spotted a piece of plywood. She knew she could use that if she could get it down the stairs. Looking up, Rocky saw the late afternoon sky in several places through the roof. She could probably patch those from the inside, but decided to table that until Devlin told her what was possible. It was not going to rain any time soon anyway, but there was no point fixing the windows and having a lace shawl for a roof.

  Wrestling the plywood downstairs and with the hammer, saw and nails from the truck, the plywood was now replacing the missing window glass in the living room.

  The kitchen was not cleaned and the front steps were not fixed by the time the sun set.

  It was apparent to her that she was not as good at this as she had hoped.

  “Rome wasn’t built in a day, either,” she muttered to no one in particular and stirred her iced tea.

  The dogs were happy with dog kibble and scrambled eggs for dinner and Rocky opened soup and ravioli cans. Hunger made happy in this case.

  She was bone tired, but determined to have the kitchen cleaned before she went to bed and when the old kitchen clock struck midnight it was finished and so was she.

  The kitchen floor was going to have to be replaced in spots where it was spongy. Rocky decided to crawl under the cabin in the morning and see how bad it was. The linoleum was in sad shape, but she had no plans to replace it for the short amount of time that she would be living in the cabin.

  The last thing before going to bed was taking a few photos of the kitchen area. Jen would be itching to do a Trading Spaces make over for Rocky when she saw them.

  Rocky set her time frame. Work on the cabin for this week to get it habitable. Then send out the resume after a trip to the copy shop in Auburn.

  Also this first week, she would squeeze in going over the dredge and equipment. It may be possible to get the dredge in the water for the rest of the short gold dredging season in the Sierras. Next week, she would respond to resume hits and set up interviews.

  Rocky had not thought about Tony or the divorce all day. Her mind was clear and fresh with no flashbacks. Her body felt like she has been pounded tender for cooking.

  Saturday morning, Rocky went to town for supplies of dog food, milk and seeds for the garden that was to be. She had the cell phone pictures printed off at the copy store.

  The truck automatically turned into the driveway with a garage sale sign. Rocky found a good buy on drinking glasses, and the buy of the decade of two barely used camera tripods for the incredible price of fifteen dollars for the pair.

  Almost as exciting was a slow cooker, which would make dredging day meals a lot simpler.

  By Sunday, Rocky had mailed twenty resumes to major and minor airlines and charter services that were of interest to her. She also mailed a long letter and lots of pictures to Jen in Anchorage.

  The kitchen had new windowpanes and a door that closed and locked. The slow cooker was cleaned and made a big stew without heating up the cabin. The front screen door was hanging straight and fully screened again, it needed painting though, but that could wait.

  Margie brought Dad’s microwave and computer over from her garage.

  “Dad has a computer? The hermit of the twenty first century had a computer,” Rocky was stunned. Margie started to laugh with her.

  “That was after electricity came up the hill,” Margie told her.

  “Dev, what do you think, did he get electricity to have a computer or vice versa?” Margie asked.

  “I think it was kind of simultaneous, he had a really good gold season three years ago. He had the money to hook up the electric,” Dev was pounding on a windowsill to repair the split.

  “For a while, though, he swayed back and forth about needing the electric or not,” Margie added to the story.

  "Yeah, I remember that,” Dev took up the tale. “I think the clincher was when he went to the gold show in Las Vegas and found out that he could get daily New York gold prices on the Internet and talk to other gold miners on e-mail,” Devlin was smiling at the memory.

  “We came up one Sunday and the phone was hooked up and Dad was sitting at the computer, writing to some miner in Alaska. It was a hoot, I think he couldn’t wait for us to leave, he became an Internet junkie,” Margie too, was grinning at the memory of Dad that day.

  “Well, anyway, here it is, I’ve been paying his Internet connection every month, you are online, his password is Goldbum1967,” Margie said.

  “That was the year he and Mom were married. Guess that was easy for him to remember,” Devlin was talking and taking the computer out of the box.

  In less time than it took to tell, the cabin was again computerized and hooked to the Internet. The whole works was nicely sitting on the freshly scrubbed floor.

  It looked fairly ridiculous, but it worked if you were as tall as an ant.

  The living room had windows with screens and would close. The entire cabin floor had been scrubbed with Margie’s buffer scrubber machine and then with her steam cleaner. Though it took most of Sunday and all of them working, the whole cabin looked fresh and without a doubt smelled better.

  Devlin and Rocky made the new front steps Friday night. They fixed the kitchen floor, even though that meant working into Sunday morning to do it. While they worked on the floor, Margie did the window jobs because her knees do not crawl around on floors. She installed the mini blinds in the bedroom and the living room. Rocky slept in her old room the remainder of the night.

  They loaded the old soft furniture from the living room into both trucks for a dump run on Monday morning.

  The living room was clean and bare of furniture other than the computer.

  Monday afternoon Rocky looked at her little home and decided that if she could possibly manage it, she wanted a darkroom out of that closet right there.

  “What is that?” Rocky asked the air in the living room.

  Chapter 6

  She saw a dredge outfit through the newly sparkling window. Her bare feet slapped down to the floor from the window sill.

  “Is that dredge on my claim?” she said squinting her eyes down to judge the distance. Rocky flew out of the lawn chair and looked closely at the strange dredge in relation to her claim markers.

  When her Father bought the place with the gold claim, he and the children celebrated by collecting rocks. The surveyor came out to the cabin with his transit to measure the five acres true boundaries.

  The Clancy family spent days building three-foot high cairns at each corner of the property. They built one at each end of the claim on either side of the river. Devlin and Rocky spent most of the time selecting the right rock for each side of the cairns and their Dad did all the real work.

  Rocky eyeball lined up the cairn at the river’s edge and the dredge in the river.

  “Yeah, that dredge is on my claim,” she exclaimed.

  Whistling up the dogs they met at the corner of the cabin as she ran upriver. She
was on the bank across from where the big dredge was chugging away in the middle of her piece of the American River.

  Rocky lunged into the river with the dogs running down the bank after her.

  She yelled to the dogs."To me and guard."

  .She heard both of them hit the water swimming. The three of them were swimming up to the illegal dredge. Rocky reached over and turned the dredge motor switch to off. She called the dogs; they turned and swam back into the shallows. Rocky intended to stand waiting until whoever was down there surfaced.

  “Lovie, Phoebe, guard.”

  She said that in a command, no nonsense tone of voice and immediately both dogs moved in front of her. They stood hock deep in water watching the river. The hair on their backs standing on end. The dogs were formidable. They scared the daylights out of her. Phoebe would hold until called off. Lovie would kiss the intruder after awhile.

  It was a long time before the river surface broke and a skin diving hood came into view.

  Even covered in a wet suit hood, Rocky could see that this man was incredible looking. The slim straight nose, the skin unblemished, creamy milk white, with high cheek bones. His mouth was the only non-angular plane on his face, his upper lip was a bow shape and was it not set in such an angular male setting, it would have been lushly, sensually, feminine. There was nothing sensual or feminine to it now,

  It was set in an angry scowl, and there was a crease in the area between his straight black heavy eyebrows. Scowling was something this face had done too much. Rocky had never seen eyes this incredible color. They were a sparkling blue that she could not see the end of, nothing was reflected in them.

  The man spit out the dredging hookah mouthpiece and yanked the wet suit hood from his skull. This freed a shock of glossy, thin, straight, raven black hair. The hair fell over his forehead and eyebrows almost into his blue eyes.

  The face was a study in sharp angles and contours, painted in black and white. If he were not shouting obscenities at her and moving across the river into her area, Rocky would be thinking he was the most gorgeous man she had ever seen, bar none.

  When he had to stop shouting to get a breath and to swoop his wonderful hair out of his intriguing eyes, it was Rocky’s turn to do the talking.