The Journal: Raging Tide: (The Journal Book 4) (34 page)

“Jeremy was the only other one there that
heard me call out to Karen to not shoot. He knows she didn’t
have
to shoot his father, that it was an act of passion.”
Jim started to say something, and I held up my hand to stop him so
I could finish. “I couldn’t see what Karen was seeing, and it’s
quite likely she felt they were still in danger. All I know is what
I saw from my angle.” I turned in a circle, looking up at the
ever-gray sky. “And Jeremy didn’t have to kill either of them,” I
said, gesturing toward the house.

“Let’s go question the boy,” Jim said.

*

The Misko house was several houses away from
the Giffords’, placing it between the crime scene and our house. It
was a small bungalow, clad in white siding with deep green
shutters. Loraine was in the yard hoeing in the spacious and lush
garden.

“Mrs. Misko, is Jeremy here?” I asked her,
as pleasantly as I could force myself to be. She looked up when I
called her name.

“I think he’s still sleeping. He’s been
staying up all night and sleeping all day,” she shrugged, and
reached down to pull a weed. “It’s very strange for me to suddenly
have an adult child. I don’t know what to do with him and—”

“We need to talk to him,
now
,” Jim
interrupted.

She had an air of defeated resignation as
she led us into the house. She walked over to a closed door and
knocked. “Jeremy, you have company.” There was no answer. She
turned the doorknob. “It’s locked. He does that.”

Jim moved her aside and kicked the door
open. There was Jeremy, hanging from an open ceiling beam, a note
pinned to his bloody clothes.

“
Vengeance is
mine
,” was all it said. Loraine sank to her knees and
wailed.

JOURNAL ENTRY: July 23

We laid Ken and Karen to rest beside Bob and Kathy
in the baseball field, with Father Constantine officiating in the
rain. Everyone in town joined us. Most wept openly for our loss and
the loss to the town. Jeremy was buried over in Camp Tamarack. Only
Loraine knelt beside his grave.

~~~

August 1

Jim’s hand had completely healed and Dr.
James gave me permission to start therapy on it.

“That feels good,” Jim sighed, as I massaged
his palm. I worked my way down his wrist and up the forearm to the
elbow. Many don’t realize that most of the control in the fingers
start in the arm and elbow.

“The rest might not,” I warned him, as I
worked the tips of my fingers into the muscles of his ring finger.
The muscles were stiff from lack of use and he had a hard time
bending that digit. He winced as I dug in but I didn’t stop.

Jim sucked air in through his teeth when I
forced the knuckle to move. I worked his hand and finger for
several more minutes, and then had him soak it in hot water to
further relax the tiny muscles.

Later I caught him flexing the hand and
forcing movement on his own. He’s a stubborn man and I could see
him regaining full use in record time.

August 10

“Allex!” Jim called out, opening the door to
my bedroom. With dawn still hours away, the night was coal
black.

“I’m awake now,” I answered, my breathing
ragged.

“I could hear you in the other room. Another
nightmare?” he asked gently, sitting down on the edge of the
bed.

“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my feet.

“Tat?”

“Yeah.”

I shifted over to the center of the bed so
Jim could slide under the covers. He held me close.

August 20

The nights
were getting cooler already and that was worrisome. An early frost
would damage the crops that were doing so well now.

Emilee pedaled her bike down the long
driveway where I was working at stacking wood inside the garden
area, getting ready for needing the smudge pot.

“Nahna! Rayn’s in labor! Dad said I should
get you in case you wanted to be there.” I was surprised she wasn’t
riding the new four-wheeler, and then realized she likely came in
the truck with her father and Rayn.

“Of course I do. I was there when you were
born down in Florida, and I was present when Jacob was born too.” I
rushed to put my tools away, then dipped my dirty hands into the
bucket of water I kept nearby to rinse off the mud. “You go on back
to the hospital while I get my keys and I’ll see you there.” I
darted into the house, pausing to wash my hands with soap. The baby
coming in mid-August concerned me, as I thought he wasn’t due until
September.

*

“How is she doing?” I asked Eric, who was
pacing the narrow entranceway of the small hospital.

“Contractions are four minutes apart,” Eric
told me. “Dr. James is examining her now. He said for you to scrub
as soon as you got here.”

“Would you send Emi over to the offices and
tell Jim and Tom where I am and what’s going on? I don’t want
either of them to worry when they can’t find me.”

I waved to James as I passed the partially
closed curtains that surrounded Rayn’s bed to let him know I was
there. I scrubbed and donned gloves and mask, then joined Eric by
his wife’s side just as another contraction hit.

“You’re doing fine, Rayn. You need to dilate
just a bit more before you can start pushing,” Dr. James said. I
could tell his confidence level had grown tremendously since his
first delivery.

“Have you selected names yet?” I asked to
fill in moments between contractions.

“We’ve decided on Alan for a boy and Harmony
if it’s a girl,” Eric said, wiping the sweat off Rayn’s
forehead.

“Both beautiful names…”

A half hour later the baby was crowning.
“Okay, Rayn,” Dr. James said, “on the next contraction you can
push.” And she did. We welcomed little Alan into world at six-ten
in the evening.

I wrapped the baby in a soft blanket and
laid him on his mother’s chest. I caught Eric wiping tears from his
eyes as his son latched on to his finger with a tiny fist. Dr.
James worked the afterbirth out, and then tied off the umbilical
where I had clamped it.

“I’m going to wash him and wrap him in a
clean blanket,” I said and took my grandson. I had a small basin of
warm water waiting and quickly sponged the birth blood from him.
Once he was covered in a fresh, warm blanket, I set him on the baby
scale I once used for measuring shredded cabbage. Alan weighed in
at six pounds eleven ounces, exactly what his father weighed at
birth. This baby was not premature. Then I remembered an old saying
my mother repeated to me a very long time ago: “The first baby can
come anytime, the rest take nine months.”

*

“I feel like a grandfather,” Jim grinned
when I stepped out into the small lobby where he and Emi
waited.

“You have a new brother, Emilee. Would you
like to see him?” I asked. Knowing she would, I had brought an
extra mask with me. I fixed the loops around her ears, then tiredly
smiled at Jim and told him I’d be right back.

*

Jim greeted me with a hug when I came back
out. “You look exhausted, Allex. Did everything go okay?”

“It went perfectly. Labor was relatively
short for a first baby, only seven hours,” I said after glancing at
the clock. “Why is the power is still on?” I asked in confusion. It
was now seven o’clock and the generator should have shut off an
hour ago.

“We made a quick executive decision to keep
the gennie going until the baby was born,” he answered. “This baby
is too important to us to interrupt the birth. Jason is getting
ready to switch the hospital over to the standby generator now and
shut down the main one.” Jim brushed a lock of hair out of my eyes.
“Are you ready to go home?”

“Yes. Let me go tell them I’m leaving,” I
said and then added with a grin, “Grandpa.”

*

I accepted a drink from Tom, took a swallow,
and let it warm me as the alcohol slid down my parched throat.

“I want to thank both of you for keeping the
generator on.”

“It was the least we could do,” Tom
said.

“By the way, did you notice how chilly it’s
gotten?” Jim asked.

“Yes, I noticed it earlier. I’ve started
stocking some firewood inside the shelter, just in case we have to
use the smudge pot. I think tomorrow we should also alert the other
gardeners to the possibility of an early frost so they can cover
their plants. It would be a shame to lose the harvest after so much
work.”

August 25

I slipped out of Jim’s bed, intent on an
early shower. The view through the enclosed deck stopped me cold.
It was white outside, and it was snowing! I was stunned for a
moment, and then I rushed back into Jim’s room.

“Jim, wake up!” I shook him until he opened
his eyes. He looked at me dreamily until he realized I was
distraught.

“What’s the matter, Allex?” he sat up, now
fully awake. The down comforter slipped off his bare chest to
expose a mat of curly gray hair.

“It’s snowing! We need to cover the
gardens!” I rushed back to my room for appropriate clothing.

Pulling on a jacket I hurried to our small
garden of raised beds, thankful I had dropped the sides a few days
ago, though it was still very cold under the shelter. Inside the
enclosure I wadded up some newspaper and stuffed it into the smudge
pot. Then kindling and a few larger sticks went in. I struck the
lighter that was always in my pocket. On the third try I got a weak
flame and lit the newspaper. The wood was well seasoned and soon
the fire was sending up billows of smoke that hung at the top like
a heavy fog. I used a long pole and opened the plastic flap Jason
had installed. The gray smoke drifted out and the air cleared. I
put a couple more pieces of wood into the half barrel and went back
into the house.

The battery clock on the wall said it was
only six-thirty. How were we going to alert everyone so early?

Tom stepped out of his room, concerned over
the activity. Apparently I hadn’t been very quiet in my rush to get
outside.

“What’s going on, Allex?” he scowled.

“It’s snowing, Tom, and if we don’t let
everyone know so they can cover the gardens, all the vegetables
will freeze!” Instinctively I reached for the coffee pot to make
our morning brew. Within ten minutes, the three of us were out the
door, dressed, with coffee mugs in hand.

Jim ran next door to wake Harold. That house
wouldn’t need any further protection, and we needed his help up at
the community garden.

Tom and I grabbed some sheets and tarps from
the barn and took off for Bradley’s Backyard with Harold close
behind. Jim piloted the Humvee around the town, blasting the loud
horn to wake people.

*

By noon, the gardens were mostly covered,
but the snow was coming down even heavier. Inside the church,
people were gathering to get warm and for guidance.

“It may be premature or too late to worry
about the plants, so I would highly suggest everyone pick the
mature produce and quickly,” Harold said from the podium. “The root
crops should be okay for now. However, beans, tomatoes, peppers,
tender greens, and anything above ground will get frost burned if
left out.”

“There are a lot of beans out there, Mr.
Wolfe, we can’t possibly eat that many,” a young woman called out
from the back.

“Keep some fresh for eating over the next
two or three days, and the rest we will start with mass canning,”
he looked over at me and I silently nodded. We had days of
processing ahead of us.

“What about those of us who have our own
gardens?” another voice asked. “I planted all corn in my backyard.
What am I supposed to do with all of that?”

“Yeah, we were encouraged to do a single
crop. Now what?” That voice was tinged with anger.

“Harvest your own gardens first,” I replied.
“The idea is to get the food out of the damaging snow. It’s going
to be a great deal of work, I won’t deny that. Just keep in mind
this is
your
food
for the winter! There is no waiting
until a better day. It has to be done
now
!” I looked over
this sea of unfamiliar faces and wondered what I was doing here.
“We’ve set up a house as a food processing station and storage.
Most of you are already aware of that. After you have separated
what you want fresh, take the rest to that house and we will set a
schedule to help you process it. I know we thought we had another
month of growing and could tackle the harvest in stages. Well, we
were wrong. Now let’s get busy!”

*

“Are you going to start harvesting, Allex?”
Tom asked.

“No, we don’t need to. That shelter has
bought us some time. Not much, but some,” I answered, knowing it
should be done soon or the weight of the snow would collapse the
plastic sheeting. “What I need to do right now is get to Eric’s
garden and help them.”

“I think the community is expecting you to
work with them first,” Tom continued.

“There are a hundred people out there
working to save their produce,” I said in exasperation. “My sons
have each other, Amanda, and Emilee. That’s it! I’m going to save
my family first.” I turned to leave and bumped into Jim standing
behind me.

“I’ll come with you,” he said. “Tom, would
you make sure the fire in the smudge pot keeps going? Remember,
that’s
our
food, too.”

*

We spent three hours at Eric’s picking
vegetables and digging root crops with the snow falling around us.
In the end, there were bushels of small and medium sized potatoes,
onions, beets, and rutabaga, and more bushels of ripening and green
tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, all of which were stacked in the
greenhouse to stay out of the continuing snow.