The Most Miserable Winter Page 6

  “Before I go to bed at night I turn off the generator to save fuel and let it rest. That’s why there are candles and lighters in each room of the house. If you need to use the bathroom at night, Lilly’s room is right above you. She said to yell, and she’d carry your candle from the living room to the bathroom for you, since it would be kind of hard to do on crutches.”

  “Please tell Lilly thanks, but I’d rather make my bratty little sister do it.”

  Red smiled.

  She was an only child. Her mother got sick with cancer before they could make her a brother or sister. She used to miss not having any siblings when she was younger.

  But then again, being an only child had its own rewards.

  Once Lindsey was situated it was Beth’s turn for the grand tour, this time of the upstairs.

  “This’ll be your room while you’re staying with us, booger head.”

  “Booger head? Why are you calling me that?”

  “Lindsey said it was your nickname. She said I should call you that and you’d be good with it. I personally think it’s cute.”

  She caught a bad vibe from the youngest Spear.

  “What?”

  “It’s not my nickname. It’s something she’s called me since I was a little girl. And I’ve always hated it.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Beth ran to the landing at the top of the stairs and yelled down, “I’ll get you, you evil butt brain!”

  From the living room Red heard Lindsey’s response: “Bring it, booger head!”

  Red rolled her eyes. To Dave the meaning was clear.

  “Oh, boy. This is going to be lots of fun.”

  In the end, everything was okay. Dave apologized to Red for his girls’ bad behavior. He talked to both girls and told them he’d make their lives miserable if they didn’t get along, and by nightfall all was well in the Poston house.

  Red stayed up until well into the night with Dave and Sarah while the two women got to know one another. By the time they all turned in they were well on their way to becoming lifelong friends.

  Chapter 16

  Moving Sarah was much more of an ordeal.

  She needed to remain bedridden, as she was still too weak to walk. Still too weak to sit up. Barely strong enough to turn herself occasionally and feed herself while propped on one elbow.

  Doc Matlock had no gurney, though, or any other type of bed with wheels.

  And even if he did, it wouldn’t be suited to roll up and down curbs or the bumpy sidewalks between his offices and Red’s.

  The only way to move her was by using the same buckboard she’d ridden into town.

  Jacob hitched up the team and brought the rig around to the front of the building.

  He offered to carry Sarah out of the building to the buckboard as well, but Dave’s pride wouldn’t let him.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Dave said, and was quite determined to follow through.

  Jacob understood and didn’t push the issue, though he knew he was stronger and more able to do the task.

  Jacob knew that Dave was worn out and weakened from the ordeal everyone in his family had endured in recent weeks. That eventually he’d be back at full strength, and carrying his wife would once again be an easy job for him.

  But for now he was a shadow of his normal self and such a job was extremely difficult.

  Also, though, Jacob was a man, just like Dave.

  A man’s pride can be a wonderful thing. It can push him to do things he wouldn’t be able to do without it.

  It can also be a man’s downfall, for it can make him so stubborn and headstrong he’ll attempt to do things he has no business doing.

  Jacob would abide by Dave’s wishes.

  He’d let Dave move his bride, as it was certainly his place to do so.

  At the same time, though, he’d hover closely nearby.

  In the event Dave wavered, or his knees began to buckle, Jacob would be close enough to grab Sarah before he dropped her to the floor.

  As Dave picked her up and started their journey to the wagon he noticed Jacob nearby. He knew what Jacob was up to and nodded his approval.

  He’d have done the same thing were the situation reversed.

  In this manner the three of them made their way from Doc’s treatment room out the door, down the steps to the street, and onto the bed of the wagon. The patient was never aware of the dynamic at play, or why Jacob was always at her husband’s elbow.

  At the same time, she was never in danger of falling. Dave’s pride wasn’t wounded, as it might have been if he’d had to watch another man carry his wife. And the results were the same: at the end she was safely aboard the buckboard and ready for her ride up the street to Red’s house.

  At Red’s house Red had a surprise in store for them.

  It was small recliner, made exclusively for the infirm, as it leaned back almost flat and had hard rubber wheels on all four corners.

  “I got this at an estate sale three or four years ago,” Red explained.

  “It was used by Tucker Ridley to roll his wife Edith around the house in her last years. She was stricken with ALS in her early seventies and lost her ability to walk.

  Dave put Sarah in the recliner and tried it out for size as Lilly took over where Red left off.

  “Red won’t tell you the whole story so I will. Tucker and Edith had been struggling for years but nobody knew it. They were a prideful couple, you see. They had no children, and people thought they were well off. Well, it turns out they lost all their money in the big banking mortgage scandal in the 1980s and were living strictly on their social security stipend.

  “When Edith died there was no money to pay for her funeral, and Tucker flat refused to accept any charity. Red suggested that he look through her things and find the things he didn’t want or need, and said she’d have an estate sale to pay for the funeral.

  “There were only a few things Tucker didn’t have an emotional attachment to. It seemed that everything reminded him of Edith.

  “Still, he found a few things and Red did what she promised. She sold each of the items at outrageous prices and raised enough for one of the most elaborate funerals the town had ever had. Edith was well loved by the community, you see, and all her friends and neighbors stepped up.

  “I paid two hundred dollars for a thirty five dollar coffee pot. Butch, Red’s father, paid three hundred for a twenty dollar toaster. But nobody minded, because it was to honor Edith and to help Tucker.

  “The very last item was this rolling recliner. I looked it up on line. It retailed for less than three hundred dollars, but Red paid two thousand for it.

  “Tucker never knew the details, or what the town did for them. He asked Red if she was able to get enough to cover the funeral and she said, ‘Yes, sir. Just enough.’

  “Tucker died a year later of a broken heart. He just couldn’t go on without his bride of sixty seven years. When he died the town passed the hat, and his funeral was just as big as Edith’s.”

  “Wow,” Dave said. “That’s quite a tribute.”

  “That’s life in small town America,” Lilly said.

  Red stepped back in.

  “I actually bought this for my dad, to use when he got old and his legs gave out. That’ll never happen now, since John Savage had him murdered. But I’m still determined to get two thousand dollars worth of usage out of it. So you are but the next one in a long line of Doc Matlock’s patients to use it.”

  “Well, I’m honored,” Sarah squeaked. “And thank you.”

  Sarah got more or less the same tour as Lindsey and was placed upon a comfortable single bed on the other side of the room from her. It would be her home for the next few weeks.

  Most of the group settled into easy chairs and rockers to watch an old movie about a yellow brick road and flying monkeys and a talking man of tin.

  Lilly retired to the kitchen to make meatloaf and peel potatoes for dinner.

  Beth said to Lilly, “Mind if I come and help? I’ve seen this movie a zillion times.”

  Lilly, almost six feet tall to Beth’s three feet two, said, “Of course, honey. If you’re sure you can break away from Munchkin Land.”

  Chapter 17

  As they peeled and mixed and baked for the group Beth and Lilly carried on a conversation about surviving in a small town in the wake of the largest blackout in history and its aftermath.

  “It hasn’t been easy,” Lilly said. “I think we had an advantage that big city dwellers didn’t have, in that we all knew and cared for each other. I mean, I lived in Houston for a couple of years while I finished my college degree. I didn’t know any of my neighbors, and was close to only a couple of the people I worked with at the restaurant.”

  “You worked at a restaurant? Wow, I’d love to work at a cool place like that someday.”

  “Believe me, it was nothing glamorous. It was a lot of hard work for very little pay. I only did it to help pay my way through school.

  “Anyway, I didn’t like working and living in the big city. After I got my degree I couldn’t wait to get back here to Blanco. When the power went out, everybody was as concerned about their friends and neighbors as they were about themselves.

  “There were a few exceptions, of course, like John Savage and his cronies. But for the most part everybody pitched in to help everybody else. It’s still that way.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, early on, in the first few months, we had a rash of several suicides right out of the blue. I mean, these were families everybody thought were getting by. They told people they had enough to eat and were in good spirits. And then, boom. Over the space of about two weeks three families and a couple of single people killed themselves.

  “That’s when the town council decided to dig deeper to find out how everybody was really doing. Their goal was to knock down the facades and the pride that was keeping people from asking for help, and making more of an effort to find out who needed assistance. Then to find creative ways of getting it for them.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “Some people are just too prideful to ask for help, no matter how much they need it. We had several people in town who were great people, but they just didn’t have the skills they needed to survive in the new world.

  “They didn’t know how to grow vegetables or to hunt or fish. They couldn’t get enough food to eat to keep from starving. Oh, they tried. But trying to learn such skills while you’re under the gun to do so is the wrong time to do it.

  “Some of the families, when they ran out of food, just gave up.”

  “Well, what did the town do to help?”

  “For one thing they asked for volunteers to be block coordinators. I’m nosy by nature and like sticking my nose in other peoples’ business, so I figured it was a natural job for me.”

  Beth cocked her head to one side.

  She felt a bit silly for asking, but her mother always told her if she really wanted to know something she shouldn’t be afraid to ask.

  Her father always told her the only dumb question is, “Is supper ready yet?” He said when supper’s ready she should be ready to smell it. If she couldn’t smell it, it was probably still cooking.

  Beth’s father was such a bonehead sometimes, but she loved him way too much to tell him.

  “Okay, I give up,” she said to Lilly. “Exactly what does a block coordinator do?”

  “I basically just keep in touch with everyone on my block. I visit each of them at least once a week. I watch to see if they’re losing weight or seem down or depressed. I come right out and ask them what they need.

  “Sometimes they’re running out of firewood or heating oil. Sometimes they’re short of food. Sometimes they need medication or medical supplies.”

  “Whatever their needs, I report it to the crisis center.”

  “Why don’t they just report it to the crisis center themselves?”

  “Well, they certainly can. But many of them don’t, either because they’re too proud or because they consider their own situation not as bad as others. They might neglect their own needs so that the crisis center can focus on somebody else they think might be worse off than they are. They keep it all low-key, so that people don’t start gossiping about families needing this or that. But they try to determine each family’s needs and get help for them.”

  “Can you give me an example?”

  “Sure. Maybe Mrs. Smith’s house has a furnace which runs on heating oil. She’s almost out of oil so she’s only running her furnace a couple of hours a day. The rest of the day she’s putting on three coats and covering herself with blankets.

  “Well, that’s obviously not a good way to live, nor is it healthy. And another thing, she was dependent on her social security check before the blackout and they’re not coming in anymore. So she has no money left to pay for heating oil.”

  “So how do you help her?”

  “The crisis committee might barter with Bud Kelly. He’s a prepper who lives outside of town and he has a working pickup truck with a big tank on the back. He drives to a refinery just outside of Austin three days a week and fills the tank with heating oil, and then comes back and sells it to our town’s residents who have blue money or other things to trade for it.

  “The crisis committee might look at Mrs. Smith’s situation and declare her a hardship case. She would then qualify for some of the disaster relief money the town gets from FEMA each month while they’re trying to get the nation’s infrastructure working again.

  “But they’ll tell Bud they’ll only pay twenty percent over his purchase price. They want to pay him a fair rate, but don’t want him to get rich off his neighbors. He’ll show them his invoice and if he paid four dollars a gallon they’ll pay him five dollars, plus a delivery fee, to fill up Mrs. Smith’s tank for her.

  “At the same time they’ll send the Lucas brothers to see Mrs. Smith to help her cut down on the amount of heating oil she uses so it lasts her longer.”

  Chapter 18

  “Okay,” Beth said. “Now you’ve lost me for sure.”

  “Okay, there are three Lucas brothers. Ron, Rob and Mike. Mike is the only one who’s dreamy and he’s really hot. But that’s a story for another time.

  “All three of the Lucas brothers are single and they’re all handymen. They had their own business before the blackout hit and did a lot of work around town for the older residents.

  “Now they work part time for themselves, for those people who have blue money or precious metals and can pay them outright.

  “They also do contract work for the town, but the town doesn’t pay them in money. The town pays them in chits that they can cash in at Joey’s Co-op Diner.

  “After the crisis center arranges to have Mrs. Smith’s fuel oil delivered they’ll send the Lucas brothers over to see her.

  “They’ll assess her situation and make some recommendations.

  “They’ll say something like, ‘Ma’am, since your husband died several years ago you probably don’t use his den anymore, do you?’

  “She might say, ‘Heavens no. I haven’t gone in there in years.’

  “And they might ask her, ‘Are there any other areas of the house you don’t use anymore?’

  “And she might tell them she never uses the extra bedrooms or his hobby room either.

  “They might suggest to her that she let them move everything out of those rooms and into her barn for storage. And then they can seal those rooms off and stop heating them unnecessarily. They’ll tell her that her heating oil will last twice as long if she only heats the parts of the house she uses.

  “And while they’re there they can check her attic insulation to see if it’s adequate. And they can check her plumbing and roof and gas lines and everything else to make sure everything’s in working order.

  “After they finish they’ll leave, and tell the crisis center what they recommend needs to be done, and they’ll negotiate a work order.

  “They may determine that Mrs. Smith needs twenty hours of work done, and if the town agrees they’ll do the work and the city will pay them not with blue money, but rather with chits.

  “In the end Mrs. Smith will get her heating oil and the capability of stretching it. She won’t be charged. The Lucas brothers will charge the city a fair price for their efforts, and everybody wins.”

  Beth nodded her head, but at the same time had a puzzled look upon her face.

  A couple of things still confused her about the whole process.

  “I’ve heard about blue money. Mom and Dad have talked about it a couple of times. But I don’t really know what it is.

  “And what in the world is a chit? It sounds a lot like a word I accidentally use sometimes when I’m angry at Lindsey. But my mom usually yells at me when I say it.

  “Even though she uses the same word herself sometimes.”

  Lindsey laughed.

  She understood how easy it was to be confused by unfamiliar words.

  So she tried again.

  “Blue money looks just like the old money, except it’s printed on blue paper and has the words LEGAL TENDER stamped across both sides of it.”

  “But what was wrong with the old money?”

  “They lost control of it. When the power went out people overran the banks and supermarkets and everyplace else that had large amounts of cash and stole it all. Plus, the computer systems which kept track of all the banks’ transfers with the fed fried. So there was no way to tell how much of a share each bank held.

  “The only way to fix the problem was to declare the old dollar worthless and develop a new monetary system. That’s what they’re going to do with the new dollar.”

  “You’re starting to lose me again.”

  “The Federal Reserve saw that this could happen and prepared for it. They have an underground mint in Nevada that wasn’t damaged during the blackout. Not only that, but they had millions of sheets of blue paper in storage there, and armored Army trucks to use to deliver the new currency.