Surviving the Fog (20 page)

“Yum, yum,” Kylie exclaimed while rubbing her
stomach.

Mary pointed to the water tower.  "My
husband’s idea was to try drip irrigation.  We have about a
thousand feet of black tubing.  We never did used it though.
 Usually, we receive enough rain and snow during the year to
dry farm our crops."

She took them into the hen house and the
rabbit hutch.  "We have to remember to check their feed, so
they don't run out," she warned the kids.

"That's my job," said Star proudly.

"Me too!"  Comet added.

Then Mary showed them the corral and the barn
with the attached solar room.  The kids were surprised to see
spinach and lettuce growing in the warm room.

"I thought you had cucumbers and tomatoes in
here," Kylie said.

"That was what I grew during the summer.
 I grow leafy vegetables in the winter time," Mary
explained.

"Why is the cow so fat?" Kevin asked.

"She is going to have a baby soon, that's
why," said Mary.  "After that she will give a lot of milk for
awhile."

"Will the other cow give milk, too?" Nathan
asked.

"She's about ready to breed, but I don't know
if we can find a bull now," answered Mary.  "If the calf is a
bull then we can breed her in a couple of years."

"Yuck, that would be her brother," said
Paige, wrinkling her nose.

"Yes, and that is definitely not the best
combination," Mary agreed.  "But we may not have a
choice."

"If Hector and I could build another barn,
this one could be converted into a house," suggested Ralph, looking
around thoughtfully.

"That is a good idea,” Mary replied, “I’ve
been thinking that same thought because there are so many kids at
that camp.  It doesn't have a bathroom though, so we would
have to build an outhouse for it and maybe a cesspool.  Maybe
next spring, I'll talk to Hector about converting this barn into
apartments."

Ralph looked at her.  "You’re doing a
really nice thing, taking us in.  You didn't have to do
this."

Mary smiled at him.  "Yes," she said
simply. "I did.  When you become a parent, you will understand
why."

"Mama, I'm hungry," Comet announced.
 Mary showed them the storage sheds, and then they went back
to the house.

Mary's house had three bedrooms, two
bathrooms, a large kitchen, a large family room, a cellar where she
stored food, and an attic.  The campers had brought two bunk
beds for the younger kids and one of the counselor beds for Ralph.
 The twins shared Comet's room.  The girls shared Star's
room, and Ralph slept in the attic.  Mary was quite
embarrassed about that, but Ralph assured her that he was very
comfortable upstairs.  The staircase was narrow, and the attic
was unfinished, but Mary's husband had insulated it.  The heat
from downstairs rose and was trapped in the attic, making it warm
and livable.  The living room had a large flag stone fireplace
and the kitchen had a cast iron pot bellied stove.

"I sure appreciate Hector bringing me those
cords of firewood," Mary said to Ralph.  "I cut as much as I
could this summer, but I still would have depended on the propane
stove for heat by the end of winter, if he hadn't delivered that
wood."

Everyone settled in as best as they could.
 At first the little ones were excited at the prospect of
having someone to share their rooms with, but after a while they
began to feel like their space was being usurped.  It didn't
help that Ralph would yell at the other campers sometimes, order
them around often, and generally act obnoxious when he talked to
them.  By the end of November, Mary was feeling very stressed.
 Finally she gathered them all together for a talk.

"Look, we have a long winter ahead of us,"
she began.  "We have to try to get along.  We have to
learn to make allowances for each other.

"Comet, Star, your rooms are these kids’
rooms too.  You will just have to make room for some of their
things.  Nathan, Kevin, Comet is a lot younger than you, and
he plays with the kinds of toys that little kids play with.  I
know it can be boring, but try to play with him the way that you
used to play with your toys.

"Paige, Kylie, Star is a little girl.
 Don't make fun of her dolls.  Ralph, I appreciate the
help you are giving me.  Believe me, I do.  And I
appreciate that you think Nathan, Kevin, Paige, and Kylie need to
help me with the chores around the house.  It's okay to point
that out.  It's not okay to push them, or threaten them.
 If they don't help as much as you wish, you are simply going
to have to back off and let me deal with them."

Mary soft manner of speaking and her soothing
demeanor was effective somewhat, and the kids heeded her words.

Paige and Kylie felt guilty about laughing at
Star's dolls.  One day, they handed Star a lovely handwritten
note, inviting her and her dolls to a tea party.  With Mary’s
help, they took over the living room and held their tea party.
 Star dressed all of her dolls in their finest clothes, and
she sat them around the coffee table on pails.  Mary let Paige
and Kylie dress up in some of her frilly dresses instead of their
jeans.  For the next hour they sat around the coffee table,
pretending that they were at a tea party.  Mary made real tea,
and she served it in her most elegant coffee cups.  Kylie and
Paige made polite conversation with the dolls, and the dolls
responded in Star's squeaky high pitched voice.  A good time
was had by all.  The boys thought the whole thing was silly,
but they were banished to Comet's room for the duration.

Meanwhile, Nathan and Kevin had agreed to
play with Comet's toys, especially his plastic logs, his model
cars, and his action figures.  Lying on the floor, pretending
to be Spears, racecar drivers, and astronauts, they soon reverted
to the children that they still were.

Mary's real problem was
Ralph, who appeared to be socially challenged in her mind.  He
sneered at the girls, he snarled at the boys, and he even grumbled
at Mary.  Once, they got into a shouting match.  Sullenly
he offered to move into the barn.  Mary briefly considered it,
and then she realized that she would be constantly worried about
him, so she vetoed the idea.  
It was
unfortunate that he has such a surly attitude,
she thought.  With his dark hair, grey eyes, and the
shallow cleft in his strong chin, she considered him to be a very
handsome, if dissatisfied, young man.

And yet, for all the trouble he caused, she
could not be unhappy that he was staying with them.  He was a
tireless worker, and in a hundred different ways, he helped her
cope with the struggle that was her life now.  Ralph brought
in firewood without being asked.  The other boys would grouse
if they were asked.  Ralph helped her feed the horses and the
cows.  After the calf was born, he learned to attach the
milking machine, and he learned how to milk the cow by hand, so
that he was prepared for those days when the solar milking machine
would not work.  He watered the plants in the solar room.
 Once after dinner, when Mary was feeling so exhausted that
she left the dishes and went to her room to take a short nap, she
returned to discover that Ralph had washed and dried the dishes and
was putting them away.  If she asked the girls to do the same,
she could count on hearing them whine.

And considering how difficult he was with the
older boys, to her surprise he was kind to her children.  He
never talked down to them.  He admired Star's cartoon posters,
and he told Comet stories at bedtime.  Comet, especially,
became attached to him.

She had to admit that the other kids did do
some work.  The girls would cheerfully help her clean the
house, although they hated to do the dishes, and the boys
faithfully fed the rabbits and gathered eggs when the snow was not
too high to wade through.  And they had all helped to harvest
the potatoes, to blanch them, and to stow them in the insulated
sheds or in the cellar.

They had a large meal for Thanksgiving, with
ham, venison, fresh bread and real butter, spinach and potatoes,
and tasty cold whole milk.  In the morning, Mary opened a
package of DVD’s that contained an entire comedy series she and
Davis had neglected to watch, and throughout the day members of the
household stopped to watch the silly antics of the actors.  It
was a fun filled day, and Mary was thankful that the kids from the
camp seemed happy and were thriving under her care.  But that
night, she thought of her missing husband, and she cried for a long
time.

A few days later, Mary was in the kitchen
preparing dinner when Kylie rushed in the door almost in tears.

"Come quick, Mrs. Brown," she begged.
 "Ralph is beating up Nathan."

Mary flew out of the house and ran to the
barn.  When she arrived, she saw that Ralph had Nathan in a
headlock.  The two boys struggled as Ralph tried to fend off
Kevin, who was circling them and kicking Ralph at every
opportunity.

"Stop it! Stop it right now," she cried.
 The boys sprang apart.  They were panting heavily.

Mary had been toiling hard all day and she
was tired.  "What is it this time?" she asked wearily.

"He started hitting me for no reason," Nathan
shouted angrily, but Ralph was silent.

"Ralph told him to feed the horses, and
Nathan said 'F you,'" said Paige.

Mary was too tired to referee.  "Ralph,
you stay here.  The rest of you go to the house."  She
waited until the kids left, and then she said to Ralph, "I'll bring
you your dinner in a little while."

"Don't bother," replied Ralph sullenly.

Mary felt a rush of heat to her head.
 "Don't tell me what to do," she yelled.  "This is my
place, not yours." She stalked out of the barn.

The mood at dinner was subdued.  The
boys avoided Mary's eyes.  She suspected that they were
feeling guilty.  In a whiny voice, Comet asked several times
where Ralph was, and when he was coming in to dinner.

After dinner, Mary, in a voice that brooked
no nonsense, told the kids to clean up, wash the dishes, dry them,
and put them away.  No one argued with her, or suggested that
it was not their turn.  Mary made a plate of food for Ralph,
and then she clomped to the barn through a light layer of snow.

Ralph was mucking out the stalls.  He
looked up when she came in, his eyes brightening for one instant,
and then he ducked his head and went back to his task.  Mary
sat down on a low wooden bench.

"Please, come and eat," she said.

Ralph hesitated.  He wanted to say that
he was not hungry, but the truth was that he had been working all
day, and he was starving.  He put down the square shovel sat
down on the bench next to Mary.  Mary handed him his plate and
a moist towel.  Ralph wiped his hands and brow, and then he
picked up his fork and began to eat.  Mary said nothing while
he ate.  He didn’t speak as he wolfed down his meal, for as
usual the food was delicious.  At last, sated, he put his
plate down, sighed appreciatively, and wiped his face.

"I want to talk to you," Mary began.

"I know.  I screwed up again," Ralph
said with a grunt.

"I want to talk about that, too, but first I
want to thank you."

"What?" Ralph asked.

"I said, I want to thank you.  And maybe
that's part of the problem.  I haven't thanked you enough, and
so I haven't been a good example," she said.

"You don't need to thank me for anything.
 I'm staying alive because of you," Ralph replied.

"We are staying alive together, Ralph.
 Gee, we sound like the Beegees.”

“Who?” he asked, his brow wrinkling.

“Never mind,” she said. “Ralph, even if I was
doing everything, I would still need to thank you now and then.
 For talking to me, if nothing else.  I need adult
conversation, now and then.  The other kids are a little too
close in maturity to my own children."

"Sorry, I don't get it."

"Why did you say, ‘sorry’?" she asked.

"What?"

"Just now, you could have said, 'I don't get
it', but instead you said, 'sorry, I don't get it,'" she said
pointedly.

"Uh...I guess I was apologizing for not
understanding," he answered.

"Yes, you were.  You were apologizing.
 But why?"

"Just trying to be polite."

"No, you weren't trying to be polite, you
were being polite,” she explained knowing that he could see the
difference.  “Ralph, that's most of your problem.  You
are not polite most of the time, and most of the time you don't
even try to be polite.  Hear me out," she said, as his face
clouded over.

"Think about a little ball bearing,” she
said.  “It rolls around on its track doing its job.  But
rubbing against metal causes it to heat up.  It gets angry.
 And the metal track gets angry, right back.  Something
has to be done to calm that anger.  So grease is put on that
ball bearing.  It soothes the friction between the ball
bearing and the metal.  Bumping up against each other still
makes the ball bearing and the metal a little peeved, but that
grease cools off both of them.  Ralph, politeness is human
grease.

"Ralph, you are a decent person.  I can
say that, because I trust you with my kids.  But you don't
practice politeness on a daily basis.  I want you to try a few
things, please.  I want you never to ask anyone in the house
to do anything without saying, ‘please.’  And when someone
does something that you have asked them to do, I want you to say,
‘thank you.’  If you do that for me consistently, well then,
at the end of a month if they don't start responding better, I'll,
well, I'll... knock 'em on their butts."

Ralph laughed that vision.  "No you
won't."

"Well, no I won't, but I'll want to," she
answered with her own laugh.

"Say, ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ huh?" Ralph
said.  "All right."

"I have something else I want you to do for
me," she said.  "I want you to learn something about each of
those kids.  Where they come from, who their families are, and
what they like.  And I want you to tell them things about you,
just like you told me about you.  Did you know that the twins
are going to have a birthday in February?  They will be
thirteen years old.  Talk to them about something other than
work and survival.  Trust me; it will help you, and it will be
good for them."