The Most Miserable Winter Read online

  Two very bad men were bold enough to approach them at one of the market days.

  “Where’d y’all get all that jewelry, honey?” the ugliest of them asked. “Why don’t you think about sharin’ some of it with us?”

  He went on, “I reckon we could provide you and your little sis some pretty good protection, if you’d just share some of your good fortune.”

  Kristy was just a little bit flustered, but hoped it didn’t show.

  She said, “I don’t give a damn what you reckon, mister. Becky is all the protection we need, thank you very much.”

  The man looked at Angela, who was shaking in her boots, and said, “Is your name Becky, darlin’? Is your sister depending on you to protect her?”

  Kristy brought the barrel of her rifle up fast, pressing it hard against the man’s neck.

  “This is Becky, you scumbag. She’s got one in the chamber and her safety is off and I have the twitchiest finger in San Antonio. And right now it’s a hair away from blowin’ your brains into the trees behind you.

  “If you got any sense in your head you’ll get the hell out of here and keep on runnin’. Because if I ever see you again I’ll shoot you on sight.”

  He didn’t run.

  But he did back down.

  And he was visibly frightened.

  “Well, crap, little missy. Calm yourself down. We was just offerin’ a service, that’s all…”

  Kristy sensed she had the upper hand. Both men were armed, but their weapons were still holstered. And they were obviously more frightened of her than she was of them.

  The ugly one apparently wanted to restart their conversation.

  She, on the other hand, wasn’t having it.

  She raised the rifle to her shoulder and aimed it right at the man’s head.

  At the same time she called out, loud enough to turn heads twenty yards away, “One…”

  The men backed away quickly, the ugly one still protesting, “But… no need to get upset, honey…”

  “Two…”

  At that the men turned tail and ran, not wanting to find out how far she’d count before firing.

  It was at that moment Kristy decided that for her sake and Angela’s they needed to team up with somebody. They needed to stay away from the market until they had backup.

  Chapter 13

  Red Poston lost her mother to cancer when she was only seven.

  After that it was just her and her father in a stately old five bedroom Victorian house near the town square in Blanco.

  There was a small barn and a stable out back, and city ordinance allowed residents to own up to “three head of horses or livestock of any type,” anywhere within the city limits.

  Blanco had the feel of a little country town and it wanted to keep it that way.

  Most of Red’s life was typical of a girl growing up in a small town. She eventually went to college and became a surgical technician or a “scrub nurse,” as she was called by those in the profession.

  Her career, unfortunately, was short-lived.

  She convinced herself early on that even the best surgical teams couldn’t save everyone; that they’d occasionally lose someone on the table. It was inevitable, and she expected it to happen.

  It never dawned on her it would happen three times in a single year.

  Or that two of those times it would happen to children.

  In all three cases the medical board cleared the team of wrongdoing. They’d followed established procedures to the letter. The surgeries had been done properly. The patient should have come through.

  But sometimes bodies which are wracked with disease are just too tired or too far gone to respond to lifesaving surgery.

  Surgery itself, despite it best intentions, is a traumatic event.

  And results aren’t always as expected.

  Red signed on as a scrub nurse to help people.

  She wasn’t strong enough to watch them die.

  Especially the children.

  The ones she’d gotten to know in pre-op.

  The ones she promised to share an ice cream with after they’d cleared recovery and were put on a regular diet.

  The ones she considered her friends.

  She wanted to save lives.

  She didn’t want to watch the little ones code on the operating table. She didn’t want to hold their hands while emergency lifesaving measures were being implemented.

  And then to feel those hands go limp.

  Or to watch the monitors flat-line.

  She hated herself for walking away from the profession. She felt she’d wasted everyone’s time. She felt flawed.

  Her father, who everyone called Butch, disagreed.

  He’d held her close the night she resigned her position and walked out of the hospital for the very last time.

  “You’re not flawed. You’re a human being, that’s all. You’re tough in a lot of ways, and tender in others. You’re not flawed because you can’t bear to watch children die.

  “Nobody can bear to watch children die. You just let it get to you more than some others.

  “That’s okay, honey. Let those others take the ball and run with it. There are a thousand other ways you can help people. The world doesn’t love you any less because your heart is bigger than most.”

  Red left nursing behind her and took a break from working, getting married to a wonderful man named Russell. The two had a son, whom everyone called Rusty because of the flaming red hair he got from his mother.

  Russell and Rusty died two years before when their house exploded under mysterious circumstances. Red herself was injured in the same explosion, having only survived through luck.

  She’d stepped out the back door seconds before the explosion, getting blown through the air for several feet and suffering broken bones and internal injuries.

  But at least she made it.

  Her father Butch was murdered not long after, suffering something which appeared as a heart attack but which was far more sinister.

  In a matter of days Red Poston lost every family member she had left and was totally destroyed.

  Butch had always called her “Texas tough,” and if anyone was going to persevere it was Red.

  She healed and went after those who murdered the three people she loved most in the world, and who’d tried to murder her as well.

  Finding out the murderers were acting on behalf of a sadistic and very greedy town banker named Savage, she went after them and killed them both.

  While she was gone to Lubbock in search of one of the men, Savage coerced the town council into naming him police chief in the belief holding the title would protect him.

  It didn’t.

  In the end, old fashioned Texas justice prevailed.

  Savage and his henchmen were all dead. The town was freed from Savage’s tyranny, and the town council asked Red to take over as the new police chief.

  Their request wasn’t to award spoils to the victor; far from it.

  It was partly to show the town’s gratitude for removing Blanco from beneath Savage’s thumb.

  But mostly because she’d proven herself to be a more than adequate adversary to those who’d take advantage of others.

  As the mayor said to her when pinning the badge upon her chest, “Your dad always said you were Texas tough. I never knew exactly what that meant, but now I think I do.

  “I think he meant that you’re tougher than any bad man in the State of Texas. And I think you’ve proven him right.”

  For several months Red continued to live alone in that stately old house in downtown Blanco, but got lonely.

  She invited her lifelong friend Lilly to move in with her.

  “I get the master bedroom downstairs, right?” was Lilly’s response.

  “Fat chance, dummy. There’s four very nice bedrooms upstairs. You can take your pick of them. But the downstairs bedroom is mine.”

  Now, since Dave and Sarah Anna Spear were staying with Red as well, every one of the five bedrooms would be full. That was something new for the old house, for it had never happened before.

  Chapter 14

  Sarah and Lindsey were “admitted” to Doc Matlock’s office on the day they arrived in Blanco.

  “Admitted” was a loose term, for it was certainly no hospital. It was the former residence of the town’s founder, a man named Enoch Perkins; a stately manor centrally located across from the courthouse.

  Enoch Perkins named the town Blanco in honor of the white-barked birch trees which seemed to cover every bit of land in the county back then in 1888.

  Blanco means white in Spanish, you see.

  In 1898, when the new town was a mere ten years old, the birch trees developed a blight which wiped out every single one of them.

  But the town kept her name.

  When Enoch passed away he willed the brick manor to the town, since he had no living relatives.

  The building served a dual purpose for years.

  The town doctor’s office operated out of the front of the building, and the volunteer fire department operated out of the back.

  When the worldwide blackout hit a year and a half before, the volunteer fire department disbanded.

  Their only truck no longer worked and there was no longer a way to get water to flame. Having a fire department seemed pointless.

  Doc Matlock continued to operate from Perkins Manor. He lived upstairs, but was never quite comfortable there because he claimed it was haunted by Enoch’s ghost.

  As for the downstairs, it was left unlocked twenty four seven. Just in case someone needed medical care in the middle of the night.

  A large sign in the lobby said:

  IF DOCTOR ISN’T HERE

  HE’S PROBABLY UPSTAIRS.

  YELL REALLY LOUD.

  Of course, the treatment rooms usually didn’t have overnight patients.

  When patients occasionally stayed past their treatment time, Doc arranged for medical assistants to sit with them.

  After he finished treating Sarah for her severe dehydration and Lindsey for her badly fractured leg, he decreed that neither was to be moved for at least four days.

  Dave and Beth?

  They occupied two of Red’s upstairs bedrooms, side by side, across the hall from Lilly.

  Oh, they spent very little time there.

  Really only the time they were sleeping or getting ready for bed.

  Most of their time was spent at Joey’s Co-op Diner or at Doc’s office sitting with Sarah and Lindsey.

  Both were getting along splendidly.

  Doc knew his stuff.

  He liked to say, for those unsure of his abilities, that he didn’t look like much.

  “Somewhere between a ragamuffin and a hobo,” he’d describe himself in country speak.

  “But my medical degree is just as good as any slick city doctor,” he’d continue. “And my heart’s in the right place. That’s the key to healin’. A doctor can have a medical degree from the fanciest university in the country. But if his mind’s on the golf course and his heart’s countin’ his money he ain’t worth a damn at all.”

  Doc Matlock never played golf, though Blanco did indeed have a run-down course on the edge of town.

  And he didn’t get into the profession to get rich.

  What he meant to say, in his down-home way of speaking, was that he got into the trade of medicine to help people.

  And he was very good at doing just that.

  By the fourth day both Sarah and Lindsey were chomping at the bits to get out of Doc’s place and to Red’s, where they’d complete their healing processes.

  Doc teased them both.

  “Damn! Every time I talk pretty girls into hanging out at my place for any length of time, they try to escape. I can’t figure out whether it’s my ugly face or my terrible personality, but I keep running them off.”

  “It’s neither,” Sarah told him. “You’ve saved our lives, and that’s something we’ll never forget. Thank you.”

  It was then that they saw through the doctor’s rough interior and to his soft heart.

  For Sarah’s words actually made the man blush and look away.

  For years he’d used self-effacing humor as a means of avoiding the tender moments. He hated being praised and hated even more being the center of attention.

  He was really a shy man by nature, you see. He knew he was good at what he did. He did indeed save the lives of many people other doctors would have given up on.

  He just didn’t like it much when the patients he saved fawned over him or heaped praise upon him.

  “Yeah, well…” he finally stammered. “Send me a Christmas card occasionally or something.”

  Those words quite effectively killed the conversation.

  But not Doc’s embarrassment. For while Doc was helping Lindsey walk back and forth across the floor getting used to her crutches she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

  Everyone else in the room laughed.

  Doc?

  He flushed again and looked stunned.

  “What on earth was that all about?”

  Lindsey stood her ground.

  “That,” she announced, “was for saving my leg so I could walk again.”

  She’d been worried about losing the leg and having to be fitted for an artificial one.

  On her fourth day in the clinic the leg was in a cast which stretched from her ankle to mid-thigh.

  But it was there.

  And she would not be told she couldn’t show her appreciation for the man responsible.

  Doc was at a loss for words, but not for long.

  “Just don’t go messin’ up my work by jumpin’ off any more cliffs, young lady. I might not be so accommodatin’ next time.”

  Chapter 15

  Just the act of moving Sarah and Lind from Doc’s place to Red’s was a chore unto itself.

  Lind was now on crutches and was able to move herself, albeit a little at a time. Doc had done an excellent job of setting and casting the leg, but she was still exhausted from their long walk from Kansas.

  They moved Lindsey first, Dave and Red did. She walked down the sidewalk of Main Street twenty or thirty steps at a time, until her tired body convinced her it was time for a rest.

  Then Dave did his thing.

  He was following behind Red and Lindsey, you see, on the sidewalk which was barely wide enough for two people.

  When Lindsey needed to stop and rest he was Johnny-on-the-spot, rushing forward with the folding lawn chair he carried with him.

  Each time she needed it he unfolded the chair and placed it directly behind her, then helped her into it.

  Red, for her part, never stopped in her constant banter, telling first the history of the little town and then some favorite stories about Doc Matlock and several of the other townspeople.

  It was the way of a small Texas town, where everyone knew everyone else and generally liked them. Everyone had their own idiosyncrasies or odd habits which made them endearing but not necessarily strange.

  The journey from Doc’s to Red’s would take more than half an hour, though only a few hundred yards.

  But there was no hurry.

  It was not only a way of Red and Lindsey getting to know one another. But it gave Lindsey and Dave a chance to meet many of the townsfolk. For not a block went by without a handful of people stopping while on their own strolls, or pouring out of nearby houses, to introduce themselves and to welcome them to Blanco.

  It was another way of a small Texas town. Even strangers are treated as family.

  At Red’s house, Dave carried his daughter up the porch steps and into the drawing room.

  He stopped to catch his breath, chided by Red to “Come on, old man. I thought you were stronger than that.”

  He had no comeback, as the long walk from Kansas had sapped his energy as well. His only comment was “I think I’m gonna need a nap once she gets settled in.”

  Lindsey was shown the downstairs and fell in love with it.

  “Oh, I love the way you’ve decorated,” she told Red. “It looks… amazing!”

  “This is the house I grew up in and I’ve always loved it. My mom made everything, from the comforters and couch pillows to the drapes. She was an amazing seamstress.”

  She grew melancholy for a moment.

  “She was an amazing… everything. I still think of her each and every day.”

  Lindsey reached out to her and hugged her. She too had been thinking a lot about mothers and mortality after coming dangerously close to losing her own mom.

  She could definitely relate.

  “I expect you’ll spend your first few weeks down here with your mom, since the old man there is too tuckered out to be carrying you up and down the stairs.

  “Once you can manage the stairs you’ll move into my old bedroom, where you can help yourself to anything still in the closet and dressers…”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t.”

  “Oh, yes you could and you will,” Red insisted. “We’re about the same size, so a lot of my stuff should fit you just fine. This is stuff I haven’t worn in a long time, so I obviously don’t need any of it. You arrived with just three or four changes of clothes, so you most definitely need more.

  “Besides, I’m thinking mostly of myself. The more clothes you have the less often we’ll have to do laundry. When you get up tomorrow look through the closet behind the couch. I put a few of my things there I think you’ll like.

  “Seriously.”

  She said the last word, seriously, with a tone which made it clear the conversation was over, that there would be no argument.

  They went from there to the bathroom halfway down the hallway.

  “Now then, I turn the generator on when I go outside to make my morning rounds, which is about six a.m. It’s usually about eight before the water is heated enough for a shower.

  “After about ten I turn off the water heater so we can use the power to run lights and the fridge and DVD player and such. The water will stay hot all day for those who shower or bathe before bedtime.