Whether any particular part of the city gets rain is all hit and miss, of course. But Monica’s sixth sense told her there was a good chance of rain before morning.
It was a good time to fulfill a promise to the kids.
“Okay, let’s make those first two barrels your drinking water barrels,” she said.
“Okay,” said Amy. “What do we do first?”
“Go get a couple of buckets. Empty out as much of the water in those two barrels as you can.”
“What do we do with it?”
“Dump it into the other barrels.”
They did as they were told. When they couldn’t reach into the barrels any more they worked together. Amy tipped them and Robert caught the water which poured out of them.
Finally, they were drained and Monica had them lay the barrels on their sides.
“Now comes the fun part,” Monica announced.
“What’s the fun part?”
“You two get to climb inside and wipe them all out.”
“Huh? They’re all nasty inside. That’s no fun at all.”
“Ah, but it’s more fun than drinking that nasty stuff. If you don’t wipe them out that’s the only other option.”
“Good point.”
On the face of it, it might have seemed a very inconsiderate gesture. After all, they were in the man’s house, for crying out loud.
But they didn’t know for sure if he’d ever come back, or indeed whether he was even still alive.
So it wasn’t unreasonable, in their minds anyway, to use Dave’s drawer full of t-shirts to wipe the green slime out of the rain barrels.
They did an outstanding job. The t-shirts, that is.
The kids, they did an adequate job. When they stood the barrels back up they weren’t spotless, but they were clean.
And they were ready to catch the rain. Clean, fresh rain water that would be quickly strained and boiled and added to their drinking water supply.
Unfortunately the storm clouds blew over that evening without dropping a single drop.
The barrels would have to wait for another time.
Chapter 41
The children’s next lesson was planting crops.
Monica said, “Okay, you two listen up, this is very important.”
They sat side by side on the couch and studied her intently.
“Now then. If I’m still around in the spring I will remind you. But if I’m not it’ll be up to you guys to know when to plant your crops.”
“But how do we do that?”
“Write this in your binder, honey. Have you both seen that big thermometer on the wall in the garage?”
Amy nodded her head.
Robert said, “What’s a thermometer?”
“It’s that big round thing with all the numbers on it.”
“Oh. Then yes, I’ve seen it. I thought it was a clock.”
Amy rolled her eyes.
“Okay, once it gets cold enough outside for you to see ice for the first time I want you to start counting the days.
“Once you get to ninety days winter should be about over.
“Starting on the ninety first day I want you to go into the garage every day at the hottest part of the day and see what temperature it is.
“Am I talking too fast for you, honey?”
“No, Mama. On account of I’m a real fast writer.”
“Okay, once the thermometer says sixty five degrees for the very first time I want you to plant your crops.”
“But we don’t know how to plant crops.”
“I know you don’t, honey. That’s this morning’s lesson. I’ll show you everything I know about planting crops.”
“But I thought you said it was too late in the summer to plant crops. You said the cool weather would keep them from growing, and the winter weather would kill them.”
“Not if they’re little green houses.”
“Huh?”
She reached into her pocket and took out twelve little green houses she’d lifted from Dave and Sarah’s Monopoly game.
“Now then… read me back what you’ve written.”
“When we see ice for the first time we have to start counting days. When we get to ninety one days we have to start looking at the thermometer in the garage every afternoon when it’s the hottest it’s gonna get that day.
“When we see that the thermometer says sixty five degrees it’s time to plant our crops.”
“Very good.
“Now then. Robert, do you know what a hoe looks like?”
“I think so.”
“Amy, do you know what a Phillips screwdriver looks like?”
“A skinny one or a fat one?”
“The fattest one you can find.
“You guys go to the garage and get a hoe and a screwdriver and bring them into the back yard.”
Monica was like most late-stage cancer patients, in that she had good days and she had bad days. On the good days it felt almost as though she’d licked the disease.
On bad days it was difficult just to get out of bed.
Today was one of her good days, and that was a very fortunate thing.
For she’d need as much energy as she could muster to crawl through that trap door in the back fence and into the next yard.
“Okay, you two.
“I’m going to make a couple of furrowed rows with the hoe, and I’m going to go from east to west. If you go north to south your crops won’t get as much sunshine and you won’t get as much food from them. Does that make sense?”
Amy looked at Robert. He raised his eyebrows. Amy shrugged.
Then she said, “No.”
“No what, honey?”
“It doesn’t make sense. I don’t know which way is north or south. Or east or west, for that matter.”
Monica smiled.
Her kids were smart enough to survive on their own. She was starting to believe that more and more every day.
But she had to be careful not to make any assumptions. They were still little kids, and she couldn’t presume they knew something that they might not yet have been exposed to.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll make some furrows and then you can each make some right next to mine. And from now on, when you do this every year, make sure the furrows always go in the same direction. Okay?”
Amy was in a bit of a defiant mood.
“Okay. But I still don’t understand why it’s important that all the rows go from east to west.”
“Just trust me on that, honey, okay?”
“Yeah,” Robert told his sister. “Just shut up and do what you’re told, lame brain.”
“Mommmm!”
“Robert, please don’t call your sister a lame brain.”
“Why not? She is.”
“Please. Both of you. Just stop it.”
Monica put her fingers to her temples. She felt a migraine coming on.
One which her children’s bickering probably triggered.
They were immediately regretful.
Both went to her and held her.
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“Me too, Mama. We won’t argue anymore, I promise.”
More to pacify her daughter more than anything else, Monica explained her logic.
“If the furrows are facing the wrong way, the crops on the east side will cause the crops on the west side to be in the shade for part of the morning.
“The crops on the west side will cause the crops on the east side to be in the shade for part of the afternoon.
“If the furrows run east to west they’ll be in the sun for the full cycle each day. And more sun means they’ll grow better and produce more.”
Amy said, “Oh.”
She was satisfied. And she was reminded once again that her mother knew way more than she did.
Chapter 42
Monica used the hoe to make the first two furrows.
They weren’t as straight as a laser, but they were pretty darned s
traight for a sick woman who could barely walk a straight line and who could only stand for five minutes without having to rest.
The kids’ furrows looked, as Monica very ably described, “like squiggly worms.”
But they were good enough, Monica reckoned, so she didn’t ask them to redo them.
She knew that gardening, like so many other things in life, was something they’d get better at the more often they did it.
As each year passed and they became bigger and stronger, their gardening skills would improve.
In the meantime, whatever meager crops they were able to coax out of the ground would be added to the food stores they already had.
There was already enough food in the house to feed the two of them for several years, so learning to farm immediately was not a requirement.
Once the furrows were done they went back to the Speer house to rest and have lunch.
And to answer whatever questions the kids would inevitably have.
Robert started them off.
“Mama, how come we had to make all those lines like that? That was hard work.”
Before she could answer Amy added her own follow-up.
“And why did you call them furries?”
“Not furries, honey. Furrows. Furrows are like little trenches that help with irrigation. They channel water, so that if it’s more than one plant needs the extra water will roll through the furrow and water the next plant instead.”
“You mean rainwater or the water we pour on each plant?”
“Well, both, actually.”
“How do we remember which direction to make the furrows next year if we don’t know east and west?”
“After you harvest your crops you’ll pull up the dead stalks and toss them over the fence into our back yard for the rabbits to eat over the winter months.
“Then you’ll go over the furrows and make them a little bit deeper, and then they’ll be very easy for you to see the following spring. By redigging them twice a year they’ll never really go away, so you won’t really have to know which way east and west are.
“But if you really want to know, all you have to do is watch in the morning to see which direction the sun comes from.
“That’s east. And if you watch which direction the sun disappears each night that’s west.”
“Okay. That’s cool. Can I write that down in my notes?”
“Sure you can, baby. The more things you write in your notes the easier you guys will have it after I’m gone.”
Amy grew silent. She looked at her feet.
“What’s the matter, honey? Did I say something wrong?”
When Amy looked up again her eyes were moist.
“Mama, please stop telling us you’re going to die.”
Monica wrapped her arms about her daughter and hugged her.
“But honey, it’s true.”
“But we don’t want you to.”
“I know. I don’t want to die either. But unfortunately that’s reality. It’s going to happen. And we need to prepare for it so when it does happen you’ll know what to do.”
“But Mama… we know all that. But when we’re having good times and you bring that up… it makes the good times go away and suddenly our good times aren’t good times any more.”
She was absolutely right.
Monica had been so adamant about teaching them everything she knew about surviving, and reminding them why it was so important they learn, that she was spoiling the time they still had together.
She didn’t even realize she was doing it.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Amy. “I’ll try to do better, I promise.”
“Thank you, Mama.”
Monica resolved to herself to stop saying she was dying.
They were obviously well aware of that. They were preparing themselves for the day when they’d go looking for her and find her dead in her bed or on the floor.
Pounding it into their little heads every day wouldn’t do any of them any good, so she’d stop.
That wasn’t to say she’d slow down on their training, though.
She’d continue to teach them something each and every day until… well, as long as she was able.
Or until Amy’s binder was full of notes about everything Monica knew about how to survive in the new world.
She’d been proud of Amy a couple of days before when the tyke brought the binder to her and showed her what she’d written on the front cover.
It said, in big block letters:
AMY AND ROBERT’S SURRVIVLE GUIDE
“Oh, that’s a great title,” Monica said.
She was proud of her daughter for the effort she was putting in. And she certainly wouldn’t quibble about one tiny little spelling error.
“Okay, break’s over,” Mama finally announced.
“It’s time to plant our little green houses.”
Chapter 43
Now, at last, the children would find out whether their mother was insane, as they’d begun to suspect, or was merely up to something fun.
Ever since she told them they were going to hone their growing skills by planting little green houses they’d been trying to make sense of her words.
She took the Phillips screwdriver they’d pulled out the previous day and used a magic marker to make a black mark all the way around the blade an inch or so from the tip.
Then she led her young charges back through the trap door and back into the yard behind them.
“From now on let’s call this the farm,” she said. “That way whenever I say let’s go to the farm everybody will know what I’m talking about. Agreed?”
Amy looked at Robert and shrugged. He said, “sure.”
Why not?
“Okay, each of you pick out a furrow. Don’t make them side by side. And mark them with something so you’ll remember where your furrow is.”
“But Mama, I didn’t bring anything to mark them with.”
“Oh,” Monica said. “Then I guess it’s a good thing I remembered to bring something along.”
From her pocket she produced two small rocks.
Each was about the size of a small potato. They’d come from the rock collection on a shelf in Lindsey’s old bedroom; the room now occupied by Robert.
Each one was painted, using bottles of acrylic nail polish she’d found in Sarah’s bedroom.
One rock said “Robert” in dark blue polish.
The other said “Amy” in hot pink.
“After you decide on a furrow place your rock at the end of it so you remember where it is.”
Amy hugged her rock, finding beauty in it as only a girl of eight could.
Robert took his without looking twice at it, for to him it was simply a rock. A rock with his name on it, sure. But a rock nonetheless.
He had no idea that in the later years of his life it would be one of his most prized possessions.
For now it was merely a rock.
They did as instructed, placing their rocks at the end of their carefully selected furrows.
“Okay, Mama. Now what?”
“Okay, now comes the tricky part. It’s tricky because we only have one screwdriver to share, and because you guys aren’t exactly very good at sharing your things.”
Amy looked at Robert.
Robert looked back and cocked an eyebrow.
It was a look which said, “I’m not going to let you show me up.”
With great flourish he announced, “She can go first. I’ll wait.”
Now any other time Amy would have considered Robert’s pass a great victory. She’d have grabbed the screwdriver from Monica’s hand with a smirk and done… whatever she was supposed to do with it.
But not today.
She couldn’t let Robert’s act of chivalry take away from her victory.
“No,” she said. “I insist. You go ahead and go first.”
“I don’t wanna! I said you do it, butthead!”
“I’ll show you butthead, you li
ttle creep…”
Monica rolled her eyes and sighed.
“There’s no winning with you two, is there?”
Her question went unanswered, for the two learned the difference between a rhetorical question and a real question long before and knew which ones they could safely ignore.
She let them bicker a bit longer and then interrupted.
“Stop it. Both of you. Amy, you’ll go first.”
There was no debating her words.
It was a command decision.
No, scratch that. It was a higher decision than that. It was a Mom decision, which is to say it’s just one step below a commandment from God Almighty.
Sort of like a Dad decision times ten.
Amy said something under her breath and took the screwdriver.
“What did you say, honey? I didn’t hear you.”
“I said he has brontosaurus breath.”
Monica smiled and turned to Robert to hear his rebuttal but he had none. Apparently he really did have brontosaurus breath and couldn’t argue the point.
The argument was over and Amy had her tool. All she needed were her marching orders.
“At the end of your furrow,” Monica instructed, “poke a hole into the ground.
“Not a real deep hole. Only about an inch deep. Only up to the black line.
“And before you pull it out of the ground, wiggle it back and forth.”
She followed the instructions to the letter, lest her brother ridicule her and start another argument.
“Now move forward about ten inches and do it again.”
“How much is ten inches?”
Monica held up her hands, roughly ten inches apart. Amy studied them, then nodded her head.
Monica turned and showed her hands to Robert so he understood as well.
“Now, do the same thing until you have six little holes.”
After the sixth hole Amy said, “Okay. Now what?”
“Give the screwdriver to Robert. Robert, do the same thing she did.”
“Okay, but mine will be much better than hers.”
“They will not!”
“Stop it, you two.”
He made his holes, which were fine holes indeed.
The space between the first two holes was about a foot and a half.
Texas Bound: Alone: Book 11 Page 13