After their lunch Monica sent Amy to retrieve it and described what it was she was looking for.
She brought it back, holding it at arm’s length, as though it were dangerous.
“It looks like some kind of weird alien cloaking device or something.”
Monica smiled, which in turn made Amy hug her around her neck and tell her she loved her.
Monica almost never smiled anymore. She was generally in too much pain. On the rare occasions she did it was a special time for both of them.
“Relax,” she told Amy. “It’s just something we’ll use to strain our water before we boil it.”
Amy yawned and deadpanned, “Sounds absolutely boring, Mama.”
“Then how about this… before we boil water, I’m going to teach you how to make a campfire.”
The look of boredom left the child’s face and she beamed.
“Really?”
“Really.”
Monica honestly wasn’t comfortable with the whole notion of her children building fires.
She knew there were so many things which could go wrong.
Children who are seven and eight years old are too careless; they lose focus.
They’re accident prone.
Still, there wasn’t any other way. They would soon be left to fend for themselves. They would have to use fire to survive.
And there would be no one else around to help them.
The only solution would be for her to train them, to counsel them on the importance of safety, and to hope for the best.
Chapter 37
After Sarah confessed to Dave she’d cheated on him he cried for awhile, then asked the usual questions.
“Why?”
“I honestly don’t know, Dave. I’ve been asking myself the same question over and over again, and I honestly don’t have an answer.”
“Guess.”
“Same answer. I don’t know.
“I could say I was lonely, but that would be a cop-out and a piss-poor excuse. And it would be disingenuous, because I know you were just as lonely and you didn’t cheat.”
“How do you know? I was on the road a long time.”
“I know you didn’t because I know you. You’re not the type of person who’d cheat. You’d cut off your own arm before you cheated on me.”
“I used to think you were the same way.”
His words stung, but they were honest.
“I tried to convince myself it was something akin to Stockholm syndrome. I know there have been documented cases where female hostages fell in love with their captors.
“But I knew better. That wasn’t it.
“The sad fact is, Dave, I had a weak moment and went somewhere I never should have gone.
“I’m sorry. I’ve never been more sorry about anything I’ve ever done. I’ve not only betrayed you, I’ve hurt you and after all you’ve been through you needed and deserved so much better than that from me.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“You said there were documented cases where female hostages fell in love with their captors. Did you fall in love with him?”
“No, honey. I tried to convince myself I was. It would have made it easier to justify to myself what I did. But I was only fooling myself.
“Parker came across as caring and decent. It was a charade he carefully cultivated.
“But it was a ruse. He was not a nice man. He wasn’t worthy of my love. He wasn’t worthy of my affection either, but I gave it to him anyway. I was stupid. Incredibly stupid.”
“Do you love me?”
“Oh, honey, I love you with all my heart. And for the rest of my life I’ll be trying to show you how much. If…”
“If what?”
“If… you’ll give me a second chance.”
“A second chance for what? To cheat on me again?”
She fell silent.
She deserved his hurtful words.
She knew that.
She’d hoped he would have responded better.
But she couldn’t blame him for lashing out. She couldn’t blame him for doubting her.
She couldn’t blame him for hating her and telling her to go to hell.
But he didn’t do that.
He was a better person than that. She’d pegged him right.
He wouldn’t cast her out; he wouldn’t send her away.
That was partly because she was still the mother of his children. And he wasn’t a man who would divide his family. She was confident in that much.
She was confident he’d forgive her in time.
But in the meantime he’d need his space. He’d need to heal. He’d need to wrap his arms around what she did and to put it past him.
In the meantime she wouldn’t rush him.
But she wanted to know where she stood.
No, she needed to know where she stood.
She reached out for his hand.
He turned and walked away.
That was three days before.
Since then the tension in their little group was palpable.
Sarah and Dave were speaking again, but just barely.
Chapter 38
Sarah was repentant and apologized to Dave a dozen times.
He wasn’t angry so much as he was incredibly hurt.
She finally arose again early, and called him out again away from the others.
This time she offered to leave him.
“I’m still close enough to Ely to turn back. Traveling on my own I can get there in a week or so. Or I can take one of the girls with me. Heck, I can take both of them if you want. You can find another woman who won’t screw up the way I did. You deserve a woman who you can trust. And I don’t deserve to be your wife anymore.”
It was mostly a self-serving statement; they both knew that.
They also both knew that Dave wouldn’t let her traipse off alone in a dangerous world, regardless of her transgressions.
“I don’t want to break up,” he said. “All I want is for the pain to go away.”
She answered, “If I could take the pain away and put it on my own shoulders, honey, I swear to God I would.
“If I could go back and do it all over again I swear to God I would.
“If God wants to strike me dead this very minute and send me to hell for all eternity, I swear to Him I’ll go without complaint.
“I can’t change what I did. All I can do is tell you how sorry I am and work hard to win back your trust. And I know there’s a good chance I’ll never win it back.
I love you, Dave. I have no right to ask you to forgive me.
But for all of our sakes, I’m asking you to give me another chance.
If you can’t bring yourself to do that, then tell me and I won’t burden you with my presence anymore. But I can’t live with the not knowing anymore. I just can’t.”
With that she brushed past him. She walked to a nearby creek and sat on the shore, throwing pebbles in the water and losing herself in her own thoughts.
Dave could have followed but let her have her space.
For his mind was heavily burdened as well.
While the others broke camp Lindsey peeled away and disappeared into the woods with a roll of toilet paper.
When she returned she was a little bit testy.
Beth noticed, and offered her only sibling her loving support and guidance.
“What are you so bitchy about, you big-headed troll?”
“Excuse me?”
“Just trying to be helpful, that’s all. When you went off in the woods you were smiling. Now you’re grumpy. What’s up with that?”
“Nothing, really. It’s just that I don’t like being watched.”
“Somebody was watching you out there? Who?”
“It wasn’t a somebody. It was a creepy old owl. He flew over my head when I was looking for a private spot.
“Then when I found one he perched himself on a tree branch and watched me the whole time
I was doing my business.
“I wonder if owls can be perverts.”
“I don’t know. Maybe if he was a male owl. All the boys I met in school were perverts.”
“I doubt if all of them were, Beth.”
“Well… maybe most of them.”
Lind looked around.
“Well, in any event, he seems to be gone now. I hope he never comes back. It felt kind of creepy, him watching me like that.”
“Hey, now you know how I feel to have you around.”
“Shut up, twerp.”
“Make me.”
Sarah approached them and put an immediate stop to it by uttering a single word.
“Girls!”
At that same time, unseen by any of them, a grizzled old owl took flight from a nearby pine tree and headed south.
Chapter 39
In San Antonio Amy’s education continued.
Robert helped, but only because his mother made him.
He had very little interest in how to make rabbit jerky or to strain water.
When it came to working with fire, though, he was all in. Little boys have a natural desire to play with matches and burn things.
That’s why so many barns and backyard fences are burned down all over America every year. And so many guilty little boys are told never to touch a match or a lighter again.
Ronald never let either of his children start a fire. If he’d had his way they’d have him start their fires for them until they were in their fifties and he was on his deathbed.
Of course, he was no longer in the picture so what he used to do no longer mattered.
Monica wasn’t really comfortable with the whole thought of her kids starting and maintaining fires either.
In her mind that was an accident waiting to happen.
But if she trained them how to start and use a fire correctly and made Amy take careful notes she could minimize the risk.
At least she hoped so.
Dave Speer had a folding campfire rack on the back deck.
Neither child had a clue what it was. Robert thought the wrought-iron contraption was a step stool.
Luckily it held his weight without collapsing, for he’d stood on it in an effort to peek over the fence into the next yard.
It was basically an iron shelf, with the shelf surface made from heavy steel mesh.
It was sturdy enough to hold a three-gallon cook pot and was ideal for boiling water or for grilling meat directly on the mesh.
Monica used it a couple of days before to show Amy how to make jerky.
It turned out pretty good and Amy beamed when Monica proclaimed it the best jerky she’d ever had.
For that little adventure Monica built and started the fire.
Her instructions to the children were to watch her closely, and for Amy to take careful notes of what her mother did and how.
“Next time we need a fire,” Monica told them, “It’ll be your turn.”
This was that next time.
Monica stood back and observed as Amy consulted her notes and told Robert what to do.
“Okay. Get two handfuls of tinder and place it on the bottom, then two handfuls of kindling to place on the top of it.”
It was the way Monica learned to make a fire when she was in the Campfire Girls.
God, that seemed so long ago.
But she still remembered the basics.
“Okay, now we take the wood and stack it up like a teepee over the tinder and the kindling.”
Once that was done, Amy sparked a fireplace match and held it at arm’s length, then lit the tinder at the bottom of the pyramid.
“Hey, I wanted to do that,” Robert whined.
“Hush up,” Amy said. “I’m the oldest, so I get to do it first. If it goes out and we have to try again, you can do it next time.”
But it didn’t go out.
The tinder lighted the kindling, which lighted the broken and cut pieces of two-by-fours they were using as firewood.
It was all soft wood, so it would burn fairly quickly. But they’d brought over a good-sized pile of it from the abandoned house behind them and had plenty to keep it going once it roared to life.
And roar to life it did. Monica knew her stuff. The wooden pyramid structure was fully engulfed in under a minute.
“Now stand back and let it collapse, then each of you grab the rack and place it over the middle of the fire. You have to be careful so you don’t burn yourself.”
Once the rack was in place she sent the two over to one of the rain barrels.
“Use the stick to stir it up and mix it real good,” she instructed.
The water smelled absolutely rank. The sides and top were coated with a putrid layer of green, and stirring it created a kind of thick green muck. Part water, part… gunk.
“Mama, I don’t think I can drink this,” Amy said while trying not to retch.
“It’ll be a lot better once we’re done with it.”
Maybe.
She hoped.
“Amy, you fill the bucket with water. Robert, you hold the strainer over the cookpot.
“Very good. Now hold it steady, Robert, while your sister pours the water through the strainer. Keep that up until the pot is full. Then we’ll go get the second pot from the kitchen and fill it up too.”
The strainer caught all of the particulates, but the strained water was still green.
And still pretty nasty.
After boiling it for ten minutes they let the fire die down and then burn itself out.
Once the pot handles were cool to the touch the children carried each of them to the kitchen table, where they’d be allowed to cool overnight.
“Why don’t we just leave them outside to cool, Mama?”
“Well we could, Robert,” Monica said. “But we’d have to scrape the bugs off the top in the morning before we could drink it.”
“Oh. Maybe we should take them inside.”
“Great idea.”
In the morning they’d use a clean ladle and a clean funnel to fill twenty seven empty water bottles.
Each one would be marked in black sharpie with the letter “R” so they’d know it was rainwater and had to be used first.
The cases of clean drinking water would be broken into as a last resort.
The “R” really wasn’t necessary, for it still had a tint of green even after the boiling.
And it still smelled pretty nasty.
But as Monica pointed out after downing half a bottle, it really wasn’t that bad.
Chapter 40
Although Monica had no problem with the boiled rainwater, the kids didn’t like it.
So the next day they made a deal.
“If you kids want to do the work, we’ll clean out two of the barrels. You can use those two for your drinking water and the rest of them for your irrigation barrels.
“Your plants won’t care if the water is green or not. They’re not as finicky as you two.”
Amy had a question:
“What’s irrigation?”
Robert had another one:
“What’s finicky?”
“Finicky is when you’re very picky about the flavor and color of the water you drink, even though it keeps you alive no matter what it looks or tastes like.
“And irrigation is the water you’re going to use to grow your crops.”
That notion excited Amy.
“You mean we’re gonna grow crops? Like farmers?”
“Yep. In fact, that lesson starts tomorrow. But first I need to know whether you want to take me up on the offer. I’ll show you how to have cleaner and tastier drinking water if you’re willing to work a little bit for it.”
Amy looked at Robert, who said nothing but shrugged his shoulders.
He was game. There was nothing else to do.
“Okay, good. We’ll do that this afternoon. First, let’s review what you learned about boiling drinking water.
“Amy, read what you wrote in you
r binder.”
Amy read every note she’d taken.
Monica didn’t actually see the words, and knew that while many were misspelled it didn’t matter.
As long as Amy knew what they said she could translate them to Robert.
As it turned out, little Amy was a note-taker extraordinaire.
Monica had her add only two things:
“Take a red crayon and write these two things across the top of the page…”
“Okay, Mama. Shoot.”
“The only place you’re allowed to burn a fire is in the fire pit in the middle of the back yard. Never, never never in the house.”
“Geez, do I have to write all three nevers?”
“You got something against nevers?”
“Only when I have to write them three times.”
“Okay. Write them four times then.”
“But…”
“Five times.”
“Okay, sure.”
She cheerfully complied before she had more nevers than page space.
Once she was done she held up the binder so Monica could check her work.
Sure enough, she’d written the word “never” five times.
Mama explained, "The reason that’s in red is because it’s so important. No matter how cold it gets in the house in the winter, don’t ever light a fire in the house. There’s too much chance you’ll burn it down.”
“But there’s a fireplace in the den, where that great big weird box is.”
Monica glared at her. She gave her the “mother look.”
That was all it took.
“Okay, okay, no fires in the house!”
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Pinky swear?”
“Mama, I said I promise.”
“Okay, I guess that’s good enough.”
“Wait. You said there were two things to write in red. What was the second thing?”
“The second thing is ‘Don’t ever play with matches or lighters.’”
“Heck, we already know that.”
“Write it.”
“Okay, okay…”
In the afternoon rain clouds were threatening.
San Antonio, in late summer, gets a lot of rain from pop-up thunderstorms. The clouds tend to roll in in the late afternoon hours and sometimes open up right around sundown.
Texas Bound: Alone: Book 11 Page 12