The Journal: Raging Tide: (The Journal Book 4) (25 page)

*

We brought in two cases of mixed liquor and
two cases of wine, one red, one white, and then divided it up
between the upstairs bar and the lower one. I really had no idea
where everyone would congregate.

Next we went through the first tub of mixed
cans.

“I think some crabmeat salad on crackers
would be tasty, and the crab would mask any staleness in the
crackers,” I said, setting aside a couple of cans.

“Sharing the crabmeat?”

“There’s another whole case of it, Jim.
Remember, this is family and close friends.” I handed him two cans
of salmon to put in the box we had already set on the dolly.

“Are you going to make more of those fishy
pinwheels? They were really good,” Jim said.

“I think I have enough time to make a batch
of tortillas, so yeah, probably. If there isn’t enough time, it’ll
be on the crackers.

One of the residents of the wealthy
subdivision had thought ahead to buy a case of crackers, not
realizing they would all go stale within a year. I remember hearing
they could be freshened by heating them for ten minutes in a 350
degree oven. I’d have to try that and see if it worked.

Jim pulled the dolly one-handed into the
attached garage, and then I pulled it up the two steps into the
house. We unloaded everything onto the kitchen island.

“Why don’t you have your hand looked at
while I get started on this? I won’t need any help for hours.”

Jim silently nodded and left. From the
cupboards I pulled out bowls and the hand mixer. Over the many
years we were friends, I’d gotten to know Kathy’s kitchen almost as
well as I knew my own. Of course, now my kitchen is Rayn’s kitchen.
I need to talk to Eric about that more.

*

The tortillas were cooling and the two
spreads were mixed and chilling. The crackers were set next to the
baskets they would occupy. There was very little left to do, so I
grabbed a bottle of red wine and went up the hill to visit with the
nuns next door.

*

“When we saw the Humvee leave this morning,
we were all hoping you had returned!” Sister Agnes said after
giving me a welcoming hug. “How was the trip? Did you learn
anything new?” she managed to ask before Father Constantine arrived
from his quarters. I handed her the wine and turned to the priest.
Of all of my new friends, I think I missed Connie the most.

“Allexa! I’m so relieved you’re back,” he
said, giving me a bear hug. “Everyone in town has been worried
about the two of you.”

“Well, we’re back, safe and sound, more or
less.” When they looked concerned I added, “We’re fine, really. In
fact, we’re throwing a small welcome home party for ourselves, just
family and close friends, and I’d like for you to join us, this
afternoon, around three o’clock?” They agreed, and I said “Great. I
can’t stay, I have things to get ready.” What I really wanted was a
few minutes alone.

*

I found a chair on the lower deck and sat
with a glass of water, trying to empty my mind. So much had
happened in the last six weeks and I hadn’t had time to absorb it
all. I felt like I was still caught up in a whirlwind with my toes
– my bruised and broken toes – barely touching the ground. Was
moving in here such a good idea? I could have asked for any housing
and gotten it. I could have insisted on my home back and Eric would
have moved out. I really didn’t know what the right thing to do
was.

Being with Jim felt good. I didn’t know yet
if it was right or not, but it did feel good. He made me feel safe,
and that said a lot to me. I hadn’t felt safe for a very long time.
Yet, him telling me that he felt lonely last night without me in
his bed put pressure on me I didn’t want. This was something we
would have to discuss, and soon.

I sipped my water and watched the chilly
blue water of Lake Meade lap at the shore fifty yards away. It was
blissfully quiet. Too quiet, I realized. There are no boats on the
water, no skiers, no children playing in the sand at the park’s
beach. There aren’t even any of the annoying seagulls lofting
about, and only one lonely goose. Wait.
A goose?
I stood for
a closer look, almost spilling my water. I suddenly felt a surge of
hope that things just might get back to normal for us one day. One
day starts with one goose. It wouldn’t be soon, this I knew, maybe
not even in my lifetime, but some day it would.

And this was all I needed.

*

At two forty-five, I opened the can of black
olives, drained them, and dumped them on the divided tray. I added
a jar of green olives, and then some sliced pickles, both dill and
sweet. It was a simple condiment tray that was rare food these
days.

The crackers were in baskets beside the two
dips, and the pinwheels would come out of the fridge when the first
guest arrived.

Glasses were lined up above the bar, and the
ice bucket was full.

“Table looks good Allex,” Jim said, his hair
still glistening from his recent shower. He gazed at me. “May I ask
a favor? Would you wear that red dress you had on last night? It
looks so good on you and as much as I’ve liked seeing you in BDUs
and tight jeans, I really liked seeing you in a dress.”

I could do that for him, for me. I grinned
and scurried downstairs to change before anyone arrived.

*

“Mom, you didn’t have to make food for us,”
Jason said eying the olives and then popped one into his mouth.

“Enjoy them,” I said when I saw his
delighted expression. “They are the only thing that can’t be
replaced. If we don’t eat them soon, they’ll go bad.”

Rayn scooped some crab meat onto one of the
oval crackers. “You mean there’s more crackers?”

“Some, but we can make saltines, wheat, and
cheesy crackers, and graham crackers, too when these run out. We’ll
do some baking classes soon.”

I left them at the food table so I could
talk with the nuns who had just arrived.

“I’m so happy to see you could make it,” I
said to the clergy group.

“We wouldn’t have missed it,” Father
Constantine replied for all of them. “I must admit that we are all
curious about your adventures.”

“We’ll do our best to entertain you,” I
laughed. “Sister Agnes, while we were at Sawyer I was given a bag
of mail that was destined for Marquette and Moose Creek,” I said.
“You four are the ones who know best who is here, so I thought you
would be the most logical to sort through it all and deliver
it.”

“We would be delighted to,” she replied.
“Will there be regular mail?”

“I doubt that, unless we set up a regular
run to the base. It’s highly unlikely they will be coming here just
to bring mail.” A regular run to Sawyer. Now that was an
interesting thought.

*

Everyone had a few bites to eat and with a
glass of their chosen drink, they all began to congregate in the
large living room, settling into the comfortable leather couches or
sitting on the floor. Tom had thoughtfully started a fire in the
large fireplace to keep the chill away. A stiff breeze had picked
up and the outside air had cooled significantly.

“I’ll be the first to say that it’s good to
be home,” I said, looking around at the faces of my family, my
friends. Of course Jason, Amanda, and Jacob were here, as well as
Eric, Rayn, and Emilee. Ken and Karen stood near the door, ever
vigilant, and Joshua stood near the back, trying to stay out of
sight. With the nuns and priest, and Art and Clare Collins, it made
for eighteen of us, a tight and supportive group.

“So start at the beginning and tell us
everything,” Amanda said gleefully.

“Well,” Jim started, “we took the new mining
road all the way to Hwy. 41 and it took most of the first day.”

“Now that county road 150 is open, getting
to 41 will be easier,” Tom said.

“Open? There was that rock slide, how did
you get past it?” I asked.

“Keith Kay brought one of his earth moving
bulldozers in from the field. It took him almost a week to move all
the boulders, and then a crew to deal with the small stuff, and
it’s now open,” Tom informed us. “You could have come home that
route if you had known, but of course there was no way to let you
know.”

And had we known we wouldn’t have had three
extra days sheltered in the mine portal avoiding the electrical
storms.

“Anyway, Walstroms had burned and collapsed,
and the Shopmore store’s roof caved in, likely from the big quake.
There is no way to salvage anything further from either place,” Jim
continued. I noticed Tom taking notes.

“We found a house in a nice subdivision to
stay in overnight,” I said, “and we stayed for two days, checking
out the rest of that neighborhood for anything salvageable.”

“It was our first encounter with bodies,”
Jim stated flatly. “A family of four; we put all of them in one
room, so they would be at rest together.” The room got very
quiet.

“Were there more?” Art asked solemnly.

“The next day we found a murder-suicide in
one of the other houses,” I said. “After that, we headed to
Sawyer.”

“Why go to Sawyer, Mom?” Jason asked.

“I needed information on the rift and on my
troops that went to the Soo,” Jim told him. “That
was
the
main purpose of this trip.”

“What we didn’t expect was they weren’t
going to let me, a civilian, onto the base.”

“So I made her a lieutenant,” Jim laughed.
“And no one dares question the top ranking officer when I called
her that.”

“Do we have to salute you now, Mom?” Eric
teased and we all had a good laugh.

“Did you get to see the rift the earthquake
caused?” Father Constantine asked.

“First hand,” I said quietly.

Jim put his arm around my shoulders. “She
fell in.” That caused quite the stir of questions, which we
sidestepped for now.

“The Army Corp of Engineers built two
bridges across the rift, which is about five hundred feet across at
Superior and varies in width all the way to what was Gladstone.
They are in the process of building a concrete and rock dam to stop
the flow into Lake Michigan. It’s really quite impressive. We
crossed to the other side at the one bridge that’s military
guarded,” I went on.

We spent another hour telling everyone about
Annie and Glenn, and the Goshens, including our return visit to
their homesteads. As agreed, we left out the kidnapping, so also
left out the situation with Andrea and Patsy and the massacre in
Yardley.

“Colonel, did you make it to the Soo?” Rayn
asked, naturally curious about her fellow soldiers.

“Yes, we did, Sergeant. The battle with the
Canadians ended with the big quake, so everything was fairly quiet
there,” Jim replied. “I had a great deal of inspecting to do, and
reports to file, so we stayed close to a week.”

“During that time some of the more senior
officers kept hitting on me, so the Colonel came up with a plan to
stop them,” I interjected, letting Jim explain the rest.

“I knew we were always under watch, so I let
our ‘spies’ see what they believed to be me proposing to Allex,”
Jim said.

Wow, I didn’t expect the room to go dead
silent. “I wasn’t and didn’t propose, though if they thought Allex
was ‘my woman’ they wouldn’t dare approach her. What we couldn’t
let anyone find out was that she wasn’t really military. It
worked.”

“Meanwhile I kept busy setting up their
Emergency Operation Center, which the ranking major had let close,”
I said looking at Tom. “It was something I knew I could do and had
been trained for, and already having the expertise fit with my new
military image.”

“Since Allex had gotten two computer geeks
to get the base back online, the word of our ‘relationship’ made it
back to Sawyer before we did,” Jim continued.

“Actually, it was all very comical, but I
guess you had to be there to find it as funny as we did,” I added
when no one even cracked a smile.

“We stayed a couple more days at Sawyer
while I finished some final paperwork, which included my…
retirement papers,” Jim announced. “In three more weeks I will be
officially retired from the Army.”

“You will always be Colonel to us, Sir,”
Eric said proudly and fondly. “May I ask how you hurt your
hand?”

“I was changing a tire when a tremor hit and
the jack slipped. Allex got me back to Sawyer where the field medic
amputated my little finger, which was crushed beyond repair. The
ring finger is broken and will be fine,” he answered, holding up
the freshly bandaged hand.

“After that we went back to the house we
stayed in on our way out,” I picked up. “We loaded up a trailer we
found and came home.”

“Not quite,” Jim corrected me. “We had just
made it to the paved mining road when the storms hit, and we took
refuge in the mine. Three days of lightning, thunder, and heavy
rain in a cold and damp cave was about our limit. We dug our way
through mud slides and here we are!”

“Those storms were bad here, too,” Tom said.
“We shut down the generator during the storms to prevent it from
getting fried.”

I was quite pleased that we were able to
tell our travels in such a brief yet complete way. After two hours
of almost non-stop talking, my throat was dry and I was ready for a
drink!

*

I had taken my spiced rum on the rocks out
onto the big upper deck for some air, while the others helped
themselves to more food.

“Mom,” Jason said, following me outside, “I
have the feeling you didn’t tell us everything about what went
on.”

“You don’t need to
know
everything,”
I said. “Besides, much of it was a long, boring drive. Give me some
time to be home, please. It’s been a trying and complicated six
weeks, Jason. I can’t just dump six weeks of events into two
hours!”