Outage (Powerless Nation #1) (14 page)

Mason hunched his shoulders, “I tried to convince her to get out of town with me. I know a lot of good places to camp around here where no one would have found us. We could've caught fish and lived off the land until winter. Then we could have shacked up someplace safe with our survival food.”

“Why wouldn't she go?” asked Dee.

“She was scared.”

“Of Hank?”

“Actually, bears and moose. She hated camping. She would have been miserable.”

“So she stayed in town with Sammy?”

“Yeah, and I couldn't stay with them because Hank told me he'd hurt them if he caught me at the house. I found your Grandpa's truck down in the cemetery and rolled it back under the trees. It was a dry, safe place to sleep and pretty close to the house so I could keep an eye on them. I hid the supplies I picked up at the house but somehow Hank must've found them and cleaned them out. They had next to nothing for a few days. When I found out what he'd done, I totally lost it. I didn't make a plan or anything – I just went to his girlfriend’s house and broke down the door. And guess what I saw inside? You won't believe it, Dee.”

“Believe what?”

“All the food. It was like a mini-mart in there. No one was around so I filled my pack as fast as I could and got out of there. I stashed the bag in the truck and decided to go back and get everything he'd taken from us. I couldn't let him get away with it. That's when I wrote you the note, in case something happened.” Mason was on his feet by now, pacing. “He was waiting for me when I went back.”

“Why didn't he just put you in jail? That thing at the church was weird.”

“I know, right?” said Mason. “I'm sure part of it was to humiliate me. But now I think he had a more practical reason. Think about it: which building in town is probably the most secure?”

“The jail?” said Dee, not understanding.

“Exactly. I think after I broke in he decided to move the supplies somewhere safer. The jail would be the perfect place, but with the supplies there he can’t use it to lock people up.”

“What I don't get is why the town doesn't get rid of him,” said Dee. “Why keep a thief around as sheriff?”

“That's the tricky part,” said Mason. “They have no idea what he’s doing. He's the ringleader, but he’s keeping it secret. People invite him over to check out a complaint and he scopes their supplies. A few nights later he sends in his guys to rob them. No one makes the connection.”

Dee shook her head. “That's just so wrong. You need to tell people what he's doing.”

“And then what? Look at me – I'm a runaway, a nobody. They're not going to take my word over the Sheriff's. Plus, you saw what he's capable of, Dee. We need to stay as far from him as possible.

Dee sighed. She could see his point, but it felt wrong to do nothing.

Suddenly Mason grabbed her arm and pointed, “Look.”

She'd forgotten about the eggs. Now she saw that the bag was full of steam and she could hear popping noises from inside. She jumped to her feet and hugged Mason. “Is there anything you can't do?”

He tilted her chin back so he could look into her eyes. “There's at least one thing I can't do – I can't tell you how sorry I was to leave you that day after the EMP. Once I found out how serious it was I couldn't leave Sammy and my mom.”

“But you could leave me?” Dee knew she wasn’t being fair but she didn’t care. “You should have just told me, I would have understood. You guys could have stayed with us.” She stepped back and crossed her arms.

Mason put his hands in his pockets and half-turned away, but Dee heard him say, “If I could go back I'd do it different. I'd do it all different.” Then he walked away and the only sound Dee could hear was the sizzle of eggs in the sunlight.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A
S
SUMMER
FADED
TO
fall, it seemed to Dee that as soon as one crop or plant was harvested and preserved, another ripened and had to be dealt with. She had never worked so hard in her life. She woke up before dawn every morning, still filthy and exhausted from the previous day. Her morning cup of coffee did little to wake or cheer her up, and the boisterous Searle brothers didn’t improve her irritable mood. They were there every morning, full of energy and cracking jokes. She would have guessed it was a boy thing, but Mason looked as cross as she felt.
 

Mason might not have been a morning person or much of a farmer, but he more than made up for it by being a handyman. He made it his personal mission to get as much of the old farm machinery working as possible. The farm had belonged to Grandpa's family for several generations and they saved everything. An old train car sat abandoned in a small field behind the house, and this was the central location for most of the unwanted equipment. Around it were rusty tractors and trucks with tall grass growing up through the engines. Sammy loved to play there, pretending to drive or climbing on the vehicles like a jungle gym while Jasper barked and ran around below.

One morning Grandpa and Mason took a gas lantern and walked out to the old train car together. Grandpa explained the use of each antique while Mason inspected them and took notes. More than anything, Grandpa was worried about feeding the animals over the winter. Their primary feed was hay which grew in fields around the house, and as long as it was kept fertilized and got enough water, he could cut it a few times over the summer and get enough to feed his animals.

In the distant past, they'd cut, raked and baled the hay on the farm with their own equipment, but more recently it made sense financially to hire a crew with high-end equipment to get the job done quickly and cheaply. This year it would be up to Dee, Mason and the three Searle boys to put up enough hay to get the animals through the winter. In the future with some planning they could let the animals graze through the winter, but Grandpa said he didn't have winter cover crops planted. This year their only choice was to get the hay harvested or the animals would probably starve. Dee didn’t want to think about what would happen to her and Grandpa without the animals.

Hyrum experimented with an old scythe for a few hours and claimed it wouldn't be possible to cut enough hay by hand. They only had one scythe and even if they took turns and cut quickly they couldn’t harvest enough for the winter. Grandpa fretted until Dee insisted he stay inside and let them handle it. She worried that the stress would be too much for him.

Over the years the old equipment had fallen into disrepair, and the first piece of machinery Mason got working was an antique mower. When he hitched it up behind the small tractor everyone came along to watch. Dee inspected it but was baffled by how it worked. It wasn't until they started mowing that she understood. As it rolled along behind the tractor, the wheels turned a gear in the center that moved a cutting blade back and forth. The trial run was a success, and everyone cheered.
 

Dee had no idea so many factors had to be considered when harvesting hay. Grandpa had to check the crop to make sure it was dry enough – he said if it rained while the cut hay was curing on the ground it could mold. It was getting late in the season, and as soon as the mower was ready they began cutting. The little mower wasn't very wide and it took a lot of passes to cut the whole field. They also had to make frequent stops to clean out the blades when they got jammed, but it was a huge improvement to cutting the whole thing by hand.
 

Dee worried about how much fuel it took to run the tractor back and forth over the field so many times, but Grandpa said gas didn't keep forever. His big tank of gas would start breaking down in a few months anyway, so they'd be best off using it while they had it. Dee didn't want to think about what they'd do when the gas ran out or spoiled.

After the cut hay sat out on the field for a day, Grandpa said it was time to gather it up. He had an old farm rake that attached to the tractor. It was a lot wider than the mower and was basically just a big pair of wheels and curved metal teeth. The teeth dragged across the ground behind the truck and pulled the cut grass to the edge of the field.

Grandpa said there was no way they'd be able to bail the hay, so he and Mason discussed how to keep it dry over the winter. In the end, they piled the hay on a base of wooden pallets. Using two-by-fours as supports, they made the haystacks as high as they could, trampling them down frequently to compact them. They secured big tarps over the haystacks, and Grandpa said it was as fine a job as he'd ever seen. When they had finished cutting and stacking all of the hay he went into his room for a while and when he came out his eyes and nose were red. After that, Dee noticed he seemed more relaxed.

As much work as it was, Dee considered the garden a miracle. She'd never grown anything and the idea of being able to pick and eat fresh produce from your own yard was miraculous to her. What she hadn't anticipated was how much work it would take to preserve all of the garden bounties.
 

The tomatoes were the first to be ready, and once they started to ripen it seemed like they wouldn't stop. Dee and Sammy picked a box of ripe tomatoes every week and took them up to the Searle house where Sammy and five-year-old Katy played while Dee and Angela worked. Grandpa said they'd always canned a lot of their own food, so he had boxes of canning jars and rings in storage. Angela said she had enough lids for ten families, and she was happy to share.
 

They ended up stewing most of the tomatoes, which Angela said was the easiest and most versatile method. This required washing the tomatoes and then cooking them briefly in boiling water until the skins cracked and peeled off. They cut the tomatoes into bite-sized chunks and boiled them with salt, pepper and a little sugar for about ten minutes. When they were done, they were poured into the clean canning jars and set to boil in two large canning pots Angela placed on a double burner camp stove in the backyard. She said even when they had electricity she always did it this way because it was cooler than standing in a steaming, hot kitchen.

Lining up the processed jars of tomatoes and hearing the lids making popping noises as they sealed was one of the most satisfying experiences of Dee's life. She went home tired and content, and Grandpa served poached eggs in stewed tomatoes for dinner that night. Later in the season she learned how to make tomato sauce with a hand strainer, and salsa with the onions, peppers and garlic that were now ripening in the garden. The salsa even brightened up their old standby meal of scrambled eggs.

While Dee canned peaches, peas, green beans, and beets the boys were busy in the fields. Under Grandpa's direction they brought in three truckloads of corn that they shucked and stored in an old corncrib once they'd cleaned it out and repaired it. After they picked as many ears of corn as they could see, the cows were turned loose in the field to find the rest and to eat the corn stalks.

Feed corn was a lot different than the sweet white corn Dee was used to eating back in Maryland. The kernels were thicker and tougher, but still delicious when eaten with plenty of salt and homemade butter.

On Sundays the Searles didn't normally come over to do chores, so Dee was surprised one Sunday afternoon when Jeremiah knocked on the door and invited them to come out for a picnic. It was too far for Grandpa to walk. But Dee, Mason and Sammy were excited at the prospect of an outing. All of the Searles were there except Hyrum, who was finishing a book and said he’d head over after he finished. Sammy insisted on bringing Jasper who ran circles around the whole group while they walked, as though trying to round them up.

The picnic area turned out to be the place where she had found Hyrum fishing. Apparently it was a favorite spot with the family. It was a warm autumn day and the sunlight filtering through the changing leaves created dappled patterns of light on the picnic blanket.
 

Angela provided a loaf of freshly baked bread and a container of spreadable cheese she’d made herself, cold grilled potato wedges, as well as a small can of olives as a treat. Dee brought a jar of home-canned pickles, celery spread with peanut butter, and the inevitable eggs – hard-boiled today.

While they ate, the boys talked about the work on the farm and speculated on how they could get some baby pigs to raise in the spring. Dee joined in the conversation now and then, but was mostly content to enjoy the companionship of family and friends. She tried to remember if her family had ever spent time together like this before Jacob died and it made her a little melancholy to admit to herself that they hadn't. They loved each other, but talking and just being together wasn't something they did.
 

Dee's reflections were broken by laughter, and she looked over at Sammy, Katy and Jasper. All three of their faces were covered in peanut butter from licking it out of the celery. “Some things will never change,” she giggled as she eyed the stripped celery stalks, showing not a single nibble or bite.

After the picnic was cleaned up, Angela sat under a tree and read a book while the children threw rocks in the stream. Jeremiah and Joseph went to look for the so-called bear cave, and Mason and Dee were left on the picnic blanket in the patchy sunlight.

“You're turning out to be quite the cook,” said Mason, opening a pocket knife and whittling a stick he picked up. “Those eggs were hard-boiled to perfection.”

“Ha-ha,” she said, pushing against him with her shoulder. “You wouldn’t be laughing if you’d been here before I started cooking lessons. It’s really too bad you missed the great fish fry debacle of 2014.” Dee looked up suspiciously as Angela made a half-choked sound behind her book.

“See?” she told Mason. “The legend has already become part of oral tradition in Lookout Falls.”

“Well, now you have to tell me. Maybe I can set the story to music.”

“You'd have to figure out something that rhymes with powdered sugar.”

“Powdered sugar?” Mason's eyebrows shot up. “For a fish fry?”

“Oh please. Don't tell me you've never confused powdered sugar and flour.”