No Chains Shall Bind Me (The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Seven) (23 page)

Just the usual one step forward two steps back moment in her life as a Focus.

Epilog

“Order up!” Johnson, the shift cook at the Olde Oak Barrel called out.  Gail hustled over, read the order, remembered the table, and served the older couple and their three high school and junior high school kids their finicky late evening meal, keeping a sparkly smile on her face.

Working, even
a mere twenty hours a week, helped her mood, keeping her mind off the household travails and her inability to keep her emotions from yanking around everyone’s juice.  She spied David Carlow bussing tables, and smiled.  He was about the unhappiest person in the household, stuck in a bad job as well as pulling night-time bodyguard duty, all because his wife Gretchen had slipped up and gotten overly emotional at the entrance gate of where he worked at the Detroit Locker plant six weeks earlier, in late June, costing him his old job.  He blamed Gail for everything, and because of her, his marriage was nearly over.

The Olde Oak Barrel wasn
’t fine dining; the place was nothing but a dive, a freeway exit bar and grill chain restaurant knockoff.  On the other hand, Gail found keeping a smile on her face and getting excellent tips far easier than riding herd on her Transforms and their mercurial emotions.

As Gail
had feared, Watchmaker never returned.  Bart had, as Kurt predicted, made peace with Gail and Gail’s inner circle, and kept his job as head of their household.  He was wary of Gail, now, which pleased Gail no end, but he was no longer consumed by fear.  They hadn’t gotten anywhere on contacting any other Focuses, but they had managed to find more examples of Weak Focus households, enough so Gail crossed off her scrawled ‘mine’ from the noteboard.  No, compared to a true weak Focus, she was doing just fine.  Things weren’t perfect – they still faced a Michigan winter living in a small farmhouse…in sleeping bags, using every square inch of floor, including the ancient stone-walled dirt-floored cellar.

Gail noticed Sylvie come in through the thick, gouged and creaky front door of the Olde Oak Barrel.  Strange,
as Sylvie didn’t have a shift, today.  The situation did bring a smile to Gail’s face; the more people in her household who worked here, the more the other staff decided to leave, creating openings for more of them.  This might have been a problem, save that Don Wilder, the manager and owner of the place, loved the business Gail brought in, and would do nearly anything to keep Gail employed.  She didn’t advertise the fact she was a Focus, and few of the patrons knew or cared, and she didn’t officially have any noticeable Focus charisma, but the bar and restaurant patrons liked her well beyond her average waitressing skills.  Something screwy brought in the tips.

As if something wasn
’t always screwy around her.

Sylvie called Gail over, when Gail had a free moment.  “Betha got a call about an hour ago from one Delia Vinote, attempting to verify we were the
‘household of one Focus Gail Rickenbach’.”

“Okay.”  What was it this time?  More complaints from the county authorities about the
ir tents and shacks?  “Why the rush over?”

“Delia
’s a Transform.  Her Focus is going to be calling tonight, and we all thought you might want to get home and take the call, Gail.”

Shit!  A Focus calling her!  “Which Focus.”

Sylvie paled.  “Tonya Biggioni.”

Gail almost died on the spot.  “She
’s a member of the Focus Council!  Dammit, I didn’t do anything!  I promise!  Well, nothing you don’t already know about.”  She hoped the call wasn’t about Kurt’s drug dealing.

“She
says she’s the new director of the Focus Mentoring Program.  Or so she said to Betha.”  Sylvie’s eyes turned wild.  “Biggioni!  The celebrity Focus from hell, the one who singlehandedly quieted the riot in Philadelphia!  What’s she going to do to us?”

“
Absolutely nothing,” Gail said.  She would make sure of that.  “Can you cover for me?  I’ll go home and deal with this bitch.  None of you will have to worry about a thing.”

Damned if she was going to let some outsider interfere in her household
, or with her.  She would never allow anyone to chain her again.

Or so she hoped.

She took a moment to quiet her fears and anxieties, those parts of her which refused to acknowledge that she wasn’t still confined to the farm.  Fear lived on long past the events, she realized.

A pack of
eighteen-wheelers rumbled past on the Interstate, loud enough to drown out the restaurant noise.  She had learned to enjoy the quiet of the Ebener farm nights.

Here we go
again, back into the crazy shit, she thought.  She changed out of her waitress uniform, wiped damp August sweat off of her face, and slipped behind the wheel of one of the household cars to drive back to the Ebener farm.

Author’s Afterward

Thanks to Randy and Margaret Scheers, Michelle and Karl Stembol, Gary and Judy Williams, and as always my wife, Marjorie Farmer.  Without their help this document would have never been made.

Cover credits: Jace on Flickr (tents), Stan Oleson (barn), Mykola Swarnyk (farm).

As
stated earlier, Folio 7 of The Good Doctor’s Tales is a companion piece to my novel “No Sorrow Like Separation”, and is Focus Gail Rickenbach’s backstory.  Gail will appear again in “In This Night We Own” (Book Six of “The Commander”).

You can find out more information about the world of the Transforms and other stories published by this author on
http://majortransform.com.    You can also follow me on my Facebook author page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Randall-Allen-Farmer/106603522801212.

The Commander series continues in “
In This Night We Own” (Book Six of “The Commander”.  With this will come Folio 8 of The Good Doctor’s Tales.

Randall Allen Farmer