An Unkind Winter (Alone Book 2) (17 page)

     Frank returned.

     “The water was only a little bit icy, so it should boil in ten or fifteen minutes. While we’re waiting, you can tell me how you plan to get all the way up to Kansas City, and how I can help you in your endeavor.”

     “Well, I plan to drive if the roads aren’t completely blocked with dead cars. If I get part of the way there and then get bottled up, I’ll see if I can find a farmer with a horse and gear. And I’ll try to barter my car for it. If all else fails, I’ll walk. I figure I can live off the land and still make ten miles a day. That’s three months, worst case scenario. But I’ll get there. The only thing that’s holding me back is this damn weather.”

     “You mentioned that same thing before… that you knew how to get your car started. Are you sure you can do that?”

     “Well, I’ve never done it before, if that’s what you’re asking. But the concept is sound, if you have the right parts.”

     “I don’t suppose you’d mind sharing that information with me, would you? I mean, it’s not some kind of secret you’re keeping, is it? I prepped for five years before the power finally went out. We never got so serious that we decided to keep bunny rabbits, so I’m not quite on your level. But Eva and I used to watch all the prepper shows, and write down ideas we thought might help us. We put aside what we could, as often as we could. You can tell by looking around the house that everything in it is old. We skipped things like new furniture and vacations and such to buy staples and supplies. Some of our friends thought us crazy, but now we don’t seem quite so much so.

     “But I have to say, Dave, that of all the research we did prior to the blackout, I never saw anything that hinted we could get vehicles working again after an EMP. So how did you figure it out?”

     “Well, like I said, Frank, I’ve never actually done it. But I’ve walked my way through the process in my head, and in theory I see no reason why it won’t work. As for where I got the information, it was from my Grandpa Speer.

     “You see, my Grandpa Speer and I were very close. He died just before my high school graduation, and I was devastated for a very long time. But he left me with a lot of really great memories. Way more than most boys have of their grandfathers.”

     “How so?”

     “Well, I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. And I know I was a handful for my parents. I roamed the neighborhood, always looking for something to do, always looking for mischief to get into. Nothing serious, mind you. I never got arrested or hurt anybody or anything. But I was the kind of kid who’d try to hop on a moving freight train and ride it for twenty miles and then walk back home all night long and into the next afternoon.

     “I was always skipping school to go fishing and putting rocks into people’s hubcaps and climbing water towers to spray paint my girl’s initials on the top. Stuff like that.”

     Frank smiled, as though remembering his own mischievous childhood.

     “Since I was such a handful, I always went to spend summers with my grandparents. He was a cotton and sorghum farmer outside of Lubbock, and he also grew about fifty short rows of vegetables on the side of his fields for people to come and pick by the bushel. And for Grandma to can. Anyway, Grandpa was as big a prankster as I was, and Grandma always said that’s where I got it from.

     “We used to go out sometimes on the little highway that ran from Tahoka to Post. State Highway 380. He’d take one of Grandma’s old purses and tie some fishing line to it and leave it by the side of the road. And he and I would hide in a culvert fifty yards away.

     “There wasn’t a lot of traffic on Highway 380 back in those days, and the highway patrol never traveled on it. They focused on the busier roads. So sometimes it would be five minutes between cars, and they usually came through going pretty fast.

     “We used to sit in the culvert and talk about life and memories and missed opportunities and such, until we’d hear a car coming. As soon as it passed over us we’d peek up and look for brake lights.

     “Sometimes the drivers were going too fast to even see the purse, or weren’t paying attention. But we could tell who saw it, because we’d see their brake lights light up immediately when they screeched to a halt.

     “Well, as soon as we saw those brake lights, Grandpa would start furiously reeling in that purse, hand over hand, while the driver stopped a couple of hundred yards up the road and either turned around or backed up.

     “Of course, by the time they got back the purse was long gone. We’d watch from the bushes and laugh. Sometimes they’d walk back and forth, scratching their heads for half an hour or more.

     “Grandma used to stand in the window of the farmhouse, watching us off in the distance, just shaking her head.”

     “Did y’all ever get caught?”

     “Once. A man saw us in the bushes and came over to talk to us. He said his wife accidentally dropped her purse out of the car window, and asked if we’d seen it. Of course we said we hadn’t, but Grandpa was sitting on it by then. He asked what we were doing in the bushes under the culvert, and Grandpa said it was the only shade within two hundred yards in any direction, which was true. He said we were just discussing the meaning of life and why men do the things they do. He invited the stranger to join us but the man passed. He said he had to find his wife’s purse so she wouldn’t be upset anymore, and he left.”

     “Sounds like a good time, and a nice memory.”

     “Oh, that’s not the best part of the story. The best part was, after the man left, Grandpa just shook his head. I asked why, and he said, ‘Dave, that just goes to show you that you can never completely trust anyone. Everyone lies every once in awhile. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for selfish ones. Do you know who that man was, the one who just said his wife dropped her purse and he was just retrieving it for her?’

     “I shook my head no, and he said, ‘That was the preacher at the Church of Christ in Tahoka.’

     Frank laughed uproariously.

     “Well, I guess that just goes to show you gotta be careful who you trust in life. Wait right here. I’ll be right back with our coffee. No milk, of course, but I have creamer in little packets and sugar.”

     “Thanks, but I drink my coffee black. I’ll leave all that foo foo stuff for someone else.”

-32-

     The two men sipped their coffee and bonded, becoming closer friends with each passing minute.

     After entertaining Frank with tales of vanishing purses and boyhood fishing trips, Dave finally got around to the subject of how to make vehicles run again.

     Sarah always said that Dave provided fifty dollar answers to five cent questions. But he eventually got around to answering the question if she waited him out long enough.

     “My Grandpa could fix anything with his hands. He never took anything to a mechanic, ever. Whatever broke, be it in his farmhouse or on his equipment, he took great pride in fixing it himself.

     “I remember we were finishing up his harvest one year and we were trying to hurry. We had maybe five acres left, and the weatherman said there was a huge storm front on its way in.

     “And, of course, that was when the harvester he rented decided to break down. He had me run to the house to tell Grandma to call the equipment rental and to stay there to find out what they told her. I had to go back out to the field to tell him they wouldn’t come out until after the storm passed.

     “He said, ‘Bullshit!’ That was the one and only time he ever used that word in my presence. Usually he substituted other words, like ‘dad gummit’ and ‘goll durnit.’

     “Anyway, he ran to his old F-100 tractor and took it to the barn and towed his welding rig over to the broken harvester. He had me hold the broken piece in place while he welded it, as the wind started to blow real hard and dirt was pelting our faces.

     “After a few minutes it was good as new. Grandma came running outside to tell us she got a call from a friend in Tahoka. The tornado sirens were going off in town, and there was a tornado somewhere in the area.

     “Grandpa told Grandma and me to run to the shelter, and we did. But Grandpa, he climbed back on that harvester and went back to work, even in howling winds that must have been forty miles an hour or better.

     “He wound up bringing in the last of his crop, by himself, and got it all in the barn just before the clouds let loose with the most vicious rainstorm I ever saw. His fields were so flooded you couldn’t walk in them for at least a week without sinking down in mud up to your ankles. But that crop, it was in the barn just as dry as could be.”

     Dave suddenly caught himself, and realized he was going on and on.

     “Oh, I’m sorry, Frank. I guess I’m getting kind of long winded.”

     “You’re doing fine, son. You just keep right on going. It so happens my appointment calendar is completely free at the moment.”

     “Anyway, like I said, Grandpa never relied on other people to fix things. He found ways to fix them himself. The best example was that F-100 tractor I mentioned. I don’t know how old it was, but it looked ancient to me at the time. He always said it was the best tractor he ever had, and he kept that thing running for many years, until he got old and had to give up his farm. Then he gave it to his best friend with the agreement it would never go to the scrap yard as long as Grandpa was alive. Grandma said he loved that tractor more than he loved her.

     “I don’t know if you’ve been under the hoods of many tractors, but you’d be amazed at how few parts they have. At least back then, anyway. I’m not so sure about today’s tractors. But back then, there were just a few basic parts under a tractor’s hood. Nothing fancy, nothing extra, just enough to get the thing started and keep it running.

     “So, I was thinking one day, and figured that after the EMP hit, if I had the right parts, I could bypass most of the crap on a modern car and just rig it up like a tractor. Just bypass the fuse box and the electronic ignition and the on board computer and just use the basics.

     “The biggest part is the battery, of course. I put two new car batteries in my Faraday cage, but if the EMP didn’t happen within a couple or three years I knew there was a chance they’d go bad. So I also went out to a farm equipment dealer outside of town, and was able to buy two dry batteries.”

     “What do you mean, dry batteries? Like the ones with caps that you can add water to? I didn’t think they made those anymore.”

     “They still make them for farm equipment, but not for cars. They told me at the dealer that when the government mandated sealed batteries for cars, the agricultural lobby got together and got congress to write an exemption into the bill. The farmers knew that a battery would last a lot longer if they could check it themselves to keep it from going dry. And apparently their lobby was able to bribe enough congressmen to get themselves exempt.

     “So, anyway, I bought two dry batteries and some acid to put in them when the time comes. I also got a replacement starter and solenoid for each of my vehicles, two tractor ignition switches that I could mount on the dashboard, a couple of relays and some wire with in-line fuses.

     “Theoretically, I can replace the starter and solenoid, mount a second ignition and run it through the relay and battery and to the solenoid directly, install a new electronic fuel injection package, and bypass all the other electronic mumbo jumbo

     “I figure if you can start a tractor that way, you should be able to do the same with a car. They both operate in the same basic way, once you get all the electronic crap out of the way.”

     Frank smiled and rubbed his chin.

     “That does sound like it might work. You said, ‘in theory.’ Does that mean you haven’t actually tried it yet?”

     “No. I’ll wait until it gets closer to spring. I don’t want to add acid and water to the battery until the last minute, because it’s only supposed to have a five year lifespan and I want to stretch that as long as possible. But I fancy myself a fairly decent backyard mechanic. So unless I’m totally missing something, I think I can get it going.”

     Dave looked at his wind up watch. It said 3:05.

     “Oh, heck, Frank. I’m sorry. I’m keeping you up all night. I’m up every night so I can sleep in the daytime. But this is your sleep time and I’m keeping you from it. I’ll head out so you can get some rest.”

     “Oh, nonsense. I can take a nap any time I want tomorrow. There’s really not a lot to do around here. Especially when it’s too cold to go outside. And I’m enjoying our conversation. Have another cup of coffee and stay all night long if you want.”