The space between the second and third holes was about four inches. Perhaps to make up for the excess space between the first two.
But Monica wouldn’t quibble.
Amy would let him hear about it later, she was confident of that.
Chapter 44
Monica took the twelve little green Monopoly houses from the front pocket of her jeans.
She divided them up, handing six houses to each child.
“Okay. The reason I had you wiggle the screwdriver back and forth is so your holes are big enough for your seeds.”
Robert laughed uproariously.
“Mama, those aren’t seeds. They’re houses, for crying out loud.”
Amy joined in.
“Yeah. What are we gonna grow? Bigger houses?”
She held her sides and doubled over in exaggerated laughter.
Monica smiled.
She realized how preposterous her instructions sounded.
“These are practice seeds, you two goober-headed pollywogs. They are to see which one of you wants the win the prize more than the other.”
Children have certain words which they hold dear to their hearts and which instantly grab their attention.
Words and phrases like “Christmas” and “ice cream truck” and “pizza” seem to magically seek out little ears and use them as portals to fly directly into little brains, while most other words and phrases fly right past.
Especially words and phrases like “do your homework” and “eat your spinach” and “brush your teeth.”
Add to that the fact that neither child had had many “prizes” of late, and Monica had the rapt attention of both of them.
“What prize?” they asked in almost perfect harmony.
Monica smiled and reached into her other pocket.
Out came a Payday candy bar, of all things.
Both little mouths watered.
Both envisioned in their little brains the delectable nugget center rolled in salted peanuts.
Both wanted to reach out and grab the prize and to run away with it, rip it open and wolf it down before the other could respond.
Of course that would be incredibly rude. And their Mama wouldn’t like it.
Now, neither of them particularly minded being rude toward the other; it had never stopped them at any time in the past.
It was the “Mama wouldn’t like it” part which was the real problem.
So they’d pretend to be civil and responsible members of society just this once, no matter how much it hurt, and would follow Mama’s rules.
“Okay, plant your practice seeds and cover them up.”
“Good. Now here’s how it’s gonna work.
“Every two days I want you to water your seeds. Not every day. Every two days.
“When you water your seeds I want you to fill up two empty water bottles. Then I want you to come over here, being careful not to let any of the rabbits out of the yard.
“It’s your responsibility to get both bottles of water over here without spilling any. I would highly recommend you put the caps on them after you fill them.
“Once you get them over here water each of your six houses equally. That means one bottle for each three houses.
“When you’re done, place the empty bottles next to the rain barrels and let me know you’re finished so I’ll know you did it.
“Whoever waters their plants properly for the longest amount of time wins the candy bar.
“Now then, do each of you understand the contest?”
Two little heads nodded.
“Wanna hear the rules?”
Two little heads nodded again, this time with some hesitation.
Amy turned up her nose.
Rules are never as much fun as prizes.
“There’s only one winner. The winner is the one who does everything right and outlasts the other.
“If you forget to water your houses every two days they will die and you’ll lose the candy bar.
“If I go over to check behind you and find out you just dumped out the water instead of distributing it evenly you’ll lose the candy bar.
“If you let any of the rabbits get out when you leave or come back you’ll lose the candy bar.
“Any questions?”
“Can we share the candy bar?”
“No, ma’am.”
“How come?”
“Because I know you rotten little kids. You’re schemers. You’re pirates and scallywags and little con artists.”
She smiled to let them know she was kidding.
Barely.
“If I tell you the two of you can share you’ll put your heads together and one of you will quit the very first day. Then I’ll give the winner the candy bar and they’ll split it with the loser for losing on purpose.
“And all your houses will die.
“This is a serious test for you guys. If you can’t remember to water your houses every two days you won’t remember to water your plants next spring. They’ll wither and die and if that happens often enough you’ll run out of food.
“I don’t want to think of you guys starving to death. So this is important. You have to give it your best effort and make the contest last as long as possible. I’m counting on both of you to give it your best and to do a good job.
“And the winner of the candy bar has to eat it all in front of me and the loser. Every single bite, until it’s all gone.”
Robert asked, “But what if it rains? Do we still have to water the houses if it’s raining?”
Monica’s jaw dropped.
The question was well thought out and made good sense.
It wasn’t like Robert at all.
“No. Every time it rains you can skip watering that day and the next day.
“Now, you two. Make me proud and don’t let me down.”
Chapter 45
The following afternoon Monica sat down at the dining room table with Amy. They worked together to make a diagram of the twenty four furrows and made what Monica called a “crop management plan.”
She had no idea if a crop management plan was a real thing, but it sounded good.
It sounded like something a farmer would make to keep track of what he planted and where.
“Okay, where’s that list of seeds we found in the garage?”
“Right here. I put it in the pocket of the binder so we didn’t lose it.”
“Good girl.
“Tomorrow bring down twenty four of those shiny rocks from Robert’s room and some nail polish and you and I can paint numbers on them. Do you think Robert would like to help us?”
“No. He’ll say that’s a sissy project.”
“You’re right, he probably will. We’ll paint them and put them in a box for him and he can go over and place them in order, one at the end of each furrow. That way you’ll always know what’s planted in each row. Sound good?”
“Sounds good.”
“Now, your two main crops are going to be corn and wheat. I will write out instructions on what to do with each crop in case I’m… well, just so you’ll have it if you forget something.
“Since you’ll need more of those two than anything else, we’ll plant eight rows of each one. Write on rows one through eight of the diagram “corn, twelve inches.”
“Why twelve inches?”
“That’s how far apart you’ll plant the seeds.”
“How will we know how many is twelve inches?”
“Isn’t there a ruler in your bedroom?”
“Yes, but it has Goofy Grape on it.”
“Tough. Use it anyway.”
“Sadist.”
Monica smiled. Her daughter was starting to develop her own attitude. It was just too bad she wouldn’t be around to see how she turned out as a woman.
“For rows nine through sixteen write “wheat, ten inches.”
“How come only ten inches for wheat?”
“I don’t think it requires as much room as corn. If you plant it only ten inches
apart you can fit more plants in the row.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Now then… You guys both like tomatoes. How about a whole row of them?”
“Can we eat that many?”
“Tomatoes don’t all ripen at once, honey. As long as you water them throughout the spring and early summer they’ll keep producing tomatoes a few at a time. You can pick them a few at a time instead of eating them all at once.”
“Oh, okay.”
“How about squash?”
Amy turned up her nose.
“They’re okay, I guess. Robert likes ‘em way more than I do.”
“Okay, only half a row then. We’ll plant cucumbers in the other half of that row. And squash and cucumbers take up a lot of space, so lets put them on the outside row, okay?”
“Okay, got it.”
After four days the pair had their garden lay out planned, marked and ready to go.
After five they had stakes made and placed in the ground along row number seventeen. That was where they’d plant their beans, and the stakes would allow them to climb.
On the sixth day after they started their project they finally went through the trap door on the fence separating the Speer house from the house next door.
The house next door once belonged to the Castro family, who left right after the blackout started to join their relatives on the other side of town.
They’d left a homemade sign behind which invited strangers to help themselves to whatever they left behind.
The house had been looted several times, and everything of any value was long gone.
But none of the looters ever bothered going into the back yard.
If they had they’d have found a small orange tree and a small lemon tree.
And seedless green grapes growing in a small arbor in the back corner of the yard.
The trees were young and didn’t produce a lot of fruit.
Monica counted only a dozen oranges on the ground and rotted, and perhaps that many more rotted on the tree.
There were even fewer lemons.
But both trees were established now and would continue to survive without being watered. They’d continue to produce fruit and in fact would grow more and more fruit with each passing year.
“Be sure to pick it as soon as it looks like it’s ripe,” Monica told Amy. “Food is much too precious now to just let it go to waste.”
“But what are we gonna do with lemons? They’re way too sour to eat.”
“The people who lived here before us left plenty of sugar in their stockpiles. I’ll write down instructions on how to make fresh lemonade.”
The grape vines survived without being watered, thanks to a better-than-average rainfall that year.
The grapes on the vines were never picked, and were now clusters of raisins.
That wasn’t a problem, since both children loved raisins.
They were afraid to eat them at first, though, until Monica tested the waters.
“Ummm, they’re good. You guys should have some.”
Robert said, “But those can’t be real raisins. They’re hanging on a bush.”
“Well where do you think raisins come from?”
“A little red box.”
The children would set up a second garden in the back yard of the Castro house, carefully working around the grave marker Dave Speer planted for his friend Mikey the year before.
Monica was now confident that as long as they followed her written instructions and Amy’s careful notes, they’d produce at least as much food each year as they were consuming.
Chapter 46
Chad Smith cursed his feet as he sat there, in the shade of a Wholesome Food Corporation trailer, trying to rub some circulation back into them.
Bad feet ran in his family. He remembered his grandfather complaining about his own feet keeping him awake at night.
Chad’s father had to have one of his feet amputated when the veins just below his ankle started shriveling up and stopped the circulation of his blood. It was either take the foot, his doctors said, or risk gangrene and blood poisoning.
Some of Chad’s worst childhood memories involved having to explain to his friends at school functions why his father only had one foot.
He did as many boys do when they’re embarrassed by the truth.
He lied.
He said, “My dad was a war hero. He walked across a mine field to pick up a wounded soldier and carry him to safety. He almost made it, too, except that last step he took before he made it out of the field was on a mine.”
That story was way cooler than honestly saying, “We have bad veins in my family. He had to get it chopped off.”
Chad had the additional problem of suffering from diabetes, and any diabetic knows that one of the worst effects the disease brings upon the body is what the doctors call “diabetic foot pain.”
Chad’s doctor was very progressive and a big believer in natural medicines.
For years he’d kept Chad’s foot pain at bay by prescribing him R-Lipoic Acid.
Chad could still see the old man’s face the day he explained, “Now, don’t get the L-Lipoic Acid. That’s the other kind, and it won’t do you any good at all. Get the R-Lipoic Acid and it’ll take away your pain.”
And it did. The pain in Chad’s feet disappeared and he stopped having to pop ibuprofen like candy just to get through his day.
Then the world went dark and R-Lipoic Acid was impossible to find.
Chad’s foot pain returned.
And on top of that, his hometown of Meridian, Mississippi was taken over by an outlaw gang.
His friends and neighbors were being shot down on the streets, and he knew someday his own luck would run out.
The only way to survive was to get out of town.
All the bicycles were gone, taken by residents who fled before him.
Horses weren’t to be found either.
Most had been eaten, either by their owners or by poachers who saw them grazing in a field and couldn’t pass up the chance for fresh meat.
Horse meat, it seemed, was better than no meat at all.
When Chad left Meridian he left afoot, with all his belongings in a pack upon his back.
It was simply his only option.
For a year and a half he’d been on the road, traveling a few miles a day on his cursed aching feet, living off whatever food he could collect from abandoned tractor trailers and by fishing and shooting small game.
As it turned out the walking, as painful as it was on his feet, was actually good for him.
His blood sugar finally stabilized as he gradually lost those extra sixty pounds Doc had always chided him into losing.
He didn’t diet and lose the weight on purpose.
The weight loss was a side affect of his walking for miles a day and eating from a rapidly diminishing food supply.
But the result was the same. More than a year later he was leaner and healthier, with a lower A1C, lower blood pressure and lower bad cholesterol.
In fact, some would say his new lifestyle suited him and was good for him.
Except for his constantly aching feet, that is.
He’d searched every truck he climbed onto and wasn’t able to find the R-Lipoic Acid.
He’d been able to find ibuprofen. But it did little good. Same for acetaminophen.
A doctor he’d stumbled across suggested he wear shoes which were half a size too large, and to wear two pairs of thick socks and cushioned insoles.
That helped during the daytime, but didn’t help him at all at night, when he tossed and turned and begged the pain to go away.
He only really slept well every third or fourth night.
On those nights his mind was so exhausted from the three or fours hours of sleep he was getting on other nights it simply tuned out the pain and let him rest.
Still, he was beaten down and exhausted. All from those damned feet.
All in all they made him a very miserable man
.
Chapter 47
Chad Smith wasn’t a bad guy.
At least he didn’t consider himself so.
He’d never been to prison and he’d never murdered anybody.
He’d been in his fair share of barroom brawls but never maimed anyone.
He’d only pulled a knife on a guy once, and tucked it away again before the cops got there so that didn’t count.
He’d beaten a few girlfriends, but hadn’t sent any to the hospital. So in his mind that was okay.
Yes, he was a pretty good guy; maybe not by the standards of most people, but by his own.
His standards were a bit looser.
Still, this world had changed people.
It was much colder than the world which existed before the blackout.
People were more aggressive.
More brutal.
People no longer asked others to share what they had.
They just took what they needed.
Now, if Chad believed in a higher power it might be easier for him to police his own behavior.
It might be easier for him to empathize with others.
He’d been forced to go to church as a child. And like many children who are forced into going, he came to hate it.
He wanted to sleep in on Sundays mornings like many of his friends did.
He was always the last one to the playground on Sunday afternoons.
Sometimes, if a game of hoops or sandlot baseball was underway he could slip into the game.
But only if one team was a man short.
Otherwise he had to wait for the next game.
There were other reasons he despised his parents for dragging him to church on Sundays too.
He remembered watching his old man toss a couple of twenties into the collection plate each Sunday.
Nonchalantly and carefree, as though a couple of twenties were easy to come by.
He couldn’t count the times he asked his parents for a new pair of shoes, or lunch money, or money for a movie with his buddies.
Only to be admonished.
Money doesn’t grow on trees, he was told. Money is in short supply, he’d hear. Maybe after your father gets a pay raise, they’d say.
Sometimes he went to bed hungry because the family ran out of money before payday.
Texas Bound: Alone: Book 11 Page 14