Chapter 63
“Nann?”
I wiped my face and came out of the goat pen calling, “I’m coming.”
Wiping my face apparently only made it more obvious I’d been crying. Mitch gave me a understanding look and said, “I wish there was a way he could have stayed.”
“No. He had to get back to Mom and the rest of them. I’m … I’m just a little on overload. Between my dream coming true and you coming home, then Dad Blessing us before he left and all that means, Dale showing up with the replacement patrol and then having to turn around and leave with Dad, finding out about Turnbridge, finding out Dundee requisitioned some refugee stuff for the kids, and on and on and on. Sorry, I just didn’t want Dan and Amy seeing me losing it in case I had a hard time getting it under control.”
He opened his arms and I walked in and nearly started crying all over again.
Finally I stepped back and said, “I gotta stop this. Doesn’t do a bit of good.”
“The kids understand. At least the boy does. I think the little girl is scared.”
I nodded. “She doesn’t understand how Dad and Dale could just leave me here. She’s still confused by what has happened to her and seeing my father and brother leave just made it worse. She’ll come to terms, it is just going to take a while and some reinforcement.”
‘Yeah well …”
“And thank you.”
“For?”
“Not getting into it with Dale. His mouth ran over until Dad chucked that apple at him.”
Mitch cleared his throat. “Well, big brothers are supposed to be asses on occasion. It’s their job. But, gotta admit …” His ears got red and I felt my face go pink. “Uncle John Blessed us. You know what that means.”
“It means that I can change my name,” I said with a giggle.
“Yeah, from Decker to Decker,” he said with a snort. “Now be serious for a moment Nann. Er … you do know what that means?”
“Yes, it means that he considers us married in the church. Why he did it when he asked us to wait until Mom had her say I’m not sure.”
“I am,” he said gruffly.
“Well spit it out.”
“He … er … brought a few things up. Like what happened to your cousin. He said he trusts us, just wanted us to be covered since God built humans to procreate.”
I nearly swallowed my tongue. “I am going to chuck more than an apple at Dale next time I see him.”
“I … er … didn’t think you understood what Dale was getting at. And …” He stopped and drew a breath. “I am pleased that your father Blessed us Nannette, but I still think there are things to take into consideration. I’d still like for Aunt Dina to give us the okay. Do … do you mind waiting?”
“No,” I said making a face. “But at least we won’t be playing house and have any regrets like you worried about in the beginning.”
“Er … yeah. I really wanted you to have a church wedding somehow but … maybe this is for the best, at least as far as the family is concerned. For legal purposes I’m still going to need to figure a way to get the rest of it taken care of. You do understand that? Right? I know the family will agree with what Uncle John did, at least after the shock wears off, but for the rest of it, we need to be careful.”
Looking up into the hay loft I said, “I know what you’re saying. But I guess worrying about me staying … in the garage and pristine … doesn’t mean we can’t check the plugs and that sort of thing.”
The spit in Mitch’s mouth went down the wrong way and I ran into the house laughing, leaving him there trying to catch his breath.
“Nannette! That mouth!”
All I could do was keep laughing as I went to check on Dan and Amy.
# # # # #
“And you sure that Dan isn’t going away?”
It was a good thing that I took the time. Poor little kid was miserable confused. “I’m sure Amy. One of these days Dan will be grown up and have to do grown up things but for now you have him all to yourself.”
“Is that why your brother went away? Because he had grown up things he had to do?”
Maybe I was explaining things well enough after all. “Yep. I was sad for just a bit until I remembered that nothing is going to change him being my big brother and him caring about me, but life has us going different directions these days. And I really, really need to know that he is there for our parents right now. And our uncle and aunt who need him too. If he was just off fooling around I might be upset and stay that way, but he’s not so I’m not.”
Switching subjects the way some kids do when they are topped off with a subject she asked, “When will Pretty want me to scratch her ears?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll talk to Mitch about it. He’s had dogs his whole life. If he doesn’t know, there are some books we can look in. Hey, I’ve got an idea.”
“What?” she asked suspiciously.
“While Dan is helping Mitch and learning about pigs and goats and cows, how about you help me make a mess.” She gave me the look all intelligent five-year-old girls give when they think they’re being pranked. I held up my hand. “Honest. Remember all those honey locust pods you helped pick up yesterday? Well I’ve got an idea. It requires a little bit of mess but what comes out of it … I think will be pretty fantastic.”
“We won’t get in trouble?”
I snickered. “Well Mitch and Dan might wind up a little gobsmacked but we won’t get in trouble for it.”
“What’s gob … whatever?”
“Let’s do this and then you’ll see.”
I remembered an article that I’d found in one of Uncle Hy’s magazines. Grammy was suspicious of the magazine because of the name (Mother Earth News) so Uncle Hy, rather than upset her, had bought all the magazine’s archives on a jump drive. I was lucky my adapter worked with USB so I could use my tablet to search for different things while Mitch was gone. Dad’s talk of sweeteners and chocolate got me to thinking.
Grammy had talked about honey locust pods and as a little kid she’d even shown me how to eat the stuff inside the pods. But that article I read said you could make a carob-like powder out of them. I’d already prepped everything by soaking the pods whole overnight. I had hoped to get this done before Dad left but with Dale showing up there were more important things to do.
Amy and I de-seeded the pods by splitting them lengthwise and removing the seeds. This will be easy to do after they'd soaked. Then we broke the de-seeded pods up into small pieces. Amy was really getting into the swing of making our mess by this point.
If I make large batches I’ll use the dryhouse for the next stage but since I wasn’t this time, I roasted the pods in the oven. While we waited the batch out, we went through the boxes that Dundee had sent over. It was those boxes that got Dale so wound up he talked his way into coming to drive back with Dad. He’d gotten things inside out as only a big brother can do. As soon as he was relieved he was wrong, Dad said he was going to Bless us and great oogley moogley Dale started up again. That’s when Dad chucked the apple at him and asked if Dale could shut up long enough to see what we’d been through while still doing for the family. I think he might have said a few other things during a walk the three men took because Dale came and apologized to me and asked if I was really set on Mitch or was it just ‘cause he hadn’t been around to look after me.
“Don’t take this the wrong way Dale, but as much as you will always be my big brother, you ain’t the center of the universe. Mitch and I came together over time. Mitch has always said that I would be staying pristine until he had Dad’s permission.” That’s when I told him about the car analogy.
“Hmm. I guess that is better than sumo wrestlers.” I wanted to tell him he had no idea but let it go.
Doing his part as a belated birthday gift Dale helped chop a lot of wood. Mitch insisted on helping to stack it, but it wore him out and to save his pride I insisted they both knock it off and come taste test my cooking and then we’d start packing things away in the truck.
Amy was pleased to find some new-to-her clothes in the boxes and they even had growing room in them, including the winter coat and boots they’d gotten from who knows where. There was a Barbie with a couple of outfits in the box as well and Amy was very careful with it. “Can I really play with her?”
“As I understand it, she is yours. You have to help with some chores but when you have free time or during storytime I don’t see why not. Just keep her dressed. ‘K?”
She nodded emphatically. “Abuela and Tia Ziomada said the same thing. I had to keep their clothes on or they’d give my dolls to someone who could.” She sniffed sadly. “We had to leave all my stuff when Uncle Carlos gave us away. Do you think some other little girl has them now?”
“I’m not sure but … I’m sure that God looks out for things like that. I’m not God so I’ll leave that stuff up to Him. But since he is looking after you by doing this? I’m think we can leave lots of that stuff we don’t understand up to Him. What do you think?” She really thought about it then nodded then hugged the Barbie to her. The doll became our audience for the remainder of the “mess” we made.
I took the locust pod pieces out of the oven and let them cool. Then we ground the dried pod pieces in an old coffee grinder that used to just be decoration in Grammy’s kitchen. I had to put the pieces through a couple of times, then found it worked even better to put them through the grain grinder as I didn’t wind up with near so many chunks.
I knew from the article that if we stopped at this stage, we would have a granular sweetener but I was wanting to take it a little further. Now keep in mind that neither carob powder, or in this case honey locust powder, will melt into a liquid state the way chocolate does. To get a very fine powder I had to sieve the entire batch so that I wound up with two products; one, a very fine powder that I put into a spice bottle, and the left over gritty bits that I put in a jar.
For beverages, smoothies, custards and other similar recipes I would use the fine powder. The grittier stuff I could use in quick breads, muffins, and the like. For the surprise, I came up with a recipe where I made some fresh peanut butter like I had been promising to make the kids as soon as I thought their stomachs were ready. Amy was ecstatic, apparently peanut butter is her number one favorite thing in the world next to cheese and she hadn’t had either in quite some time.
To the peanut butter I added some of the grittier honey locust powder and a pinch of the fine and some rolled oats. Amy and I took that mess and made it into balls. When all the balls were made (we’d washed our hands well beforehand) I let her lick her fingers. The look on her face was priceless.
“Mmmm … mmmmmm … mmmmmmmmmmm!”
I laughed and then I heard Mitch and Dan out back. I put my finger to my lips in a shush and then gave her a wink. Quietly I said, “Watch this.”
I walked to the screen door and said, “Mitch? Dan? You got a sec? I need a favor.”
They trudged up the stairs and I pointed to our handwashing station. “Clean your hands good please.” When Mitch would have said something I gave him a look asking him to play along. He was a good sport. “Okay, I need a couple of taste testers. I’m thinking about something we could trade next time Dad comes but I’m not going to all the work if you don’t think it is worth it.”
Trust me, I don’t know who was giggling and laughing more, “Amy or me.”
“What’s this?!” they both asked in surprise.
I looked at Amy and said, “This is gobsmacked.”
“It sure is,” she giggled.
I explained to Mitch that it wasn’t chocolate or carob but honey locust and how I’d done it and how I’d gotten the idea. “I usually ran my battery down every night trying to come up with ideas for us to try.”
“How’s the tablet holding up? I meant to ask.”
“Fine as far as I can tell. But I’m glad you have one of your own now in case mine goes kaput although I suppose it is for some official soldiering something or other.”
“No, it was for keeping us from going nuts during quarantine.”
“Huh?”
“Most of those guys were still hung up on television, digital games, all that stuff. It was like being in a ward with a bunch of addicts going through withdrawals. Some of ‘em were really climbing the walls.”
“Were you okay? Why did they give you a table?”
“Because they couldn’t give them to some and not others. They would have had a mess on their hands. I got to keep mine since I was a ‘good boy,’” He said before rolling his eyes.
He looked off to the Ridge line and sighed. I said, “You’re thinking of Turnbridge.”
“Yeah. I know these things happen from personal experience but … it shouldn’t have happened to him. And to have an IED so close to a Safe Zone. He’s in for a long rehab and recovery.”
“He didn’t lose a body part.”
“Dundee said the burns are over 40% of his body. If there’s infection, he may yet lose something.”
“We’ll pray for him. And we sent that letter to his mother to give to him. Hopefully knowing there are people thinking about him and all the rest, telling him he can come for a visit when he is so inclined but this time without Butch and Pretty running him up a tree, will give him something to think about.”
He nodded and then said, “Can you keep Dan up here on some pretext? I might have to put down one of the goats. It’s limping pretty bad from that fall it took yesterday.”
That’s when the boy in question pops out and says, “I can help. I helped Poppy. Uncle Carlos had a weak stomach. Poppy said I had a strong stomach.”
“Uh …”
“I know. You don’t want me sad because I was playing with the goats that fall over but Poppy said that some animals are food and some animals are pets and you don’t play with your food. I know that goat that limps isn’t a pet. She’s food. Poppy said that was the circle of life and how God set it up after Adam ate the apple.”
Mitch looked at me and I could only look back and give a little shrug. Mitch then told Dan, “Okay. We’ll give it a try. I wouldn’t mind a bit of help if you want to know the truth.”
I backed off the porch and almost ran into Amy. “Abuela made really good goat before she went to Heaven. You think she is making goat in Heaven for Jesus and the Disciples?”
Rather than put my foot in it I said, “Above my paygrade to know that kind of stuff.”
Amy giggled and asked what chores she had to finish before she could play with the Barbie doll. I notice she wasn’t saying “her” doll yet, but I didn’t force it. She either would or not but either way it was going to take time.
“Okay, tell you what. You help me to carry these beets down to the cellar and help me get a squash from upstairs and assuming nothing else comes up, you can have time with the Barbie.”
She smiled real big, put the doll on the table “so Mutt wouldn’t do a no-no” and then tried to pick up a bag almost as big as she was.
“How about you take this one,” I said handing her a smaller one. “And I’ll take the one you have. You need to be able to see your feet on the stairs. And let me go first Kiddo so I can turn the lantern on down there.”
Thank you. Back to the scanner. I found more of hubby's moms letters in the back of the box from the 1970'sthrough 80's. Plus a few from my aunt and dad. I'll check back again when I take another break.
