Ice Storm, page 6
Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, Sébastien had become an expert in organization. Even though he was just this weird little nine-year-old, he seemed to be able to figure out all the logistics of what equipment should be in what place and where it should go next. He had a list of farmers, a list of equipment, a time chart and even a map of the farms. Once he’d figured out what should go where, he called Papa on the cell phone and told him what to do. Papa took it from there. Maybe it was all those video games that had taught him how to strategize. Whatever it was, Sébastien seemed to have come a long way from worrying about a loup-garou attack. It cracked Sophie up when she thought of all the people who unknowingly were following the instructions of a nine-year-old in the middle of a crisis. And although she would never in a million years admit it, she was actually kind of proud of him.
Sophie got out of bed but didn’t bother with her housecoat. She was already wearing three layers, and the kitchen would be warm. She made her way down to the kitchen, stoked the stove and put some water on to heat. She checked the clock on the wall – battery operated, thank goodness. They had never lived by the clock before, but they sure had to now. It was 7:00 a.m. She checked Sébastien’s schedule. He had drawn a huge chart on the back of a big sheet of leftover Christmas paper. With different crayons he had coloured in the three farms, calling them Farm A, Farm B, and Farm C. He’d added the generator and the milk trucks. Sophie had added cooking, laundry, feeding the cows and cleaning the barn to the schedule. They had the generator from noon to four in the afternoon and from midnight to four in the morning. That meant she and Sébastien had to feed the cows and bring in more wood for the stove before then. When Papa and Maman came back with the generator, they had to be ready to go.
Sébastien came into the kitchen, dark hair sticking up all over his head. He immediately checked the time, then his schedule, just as Sophie had. Helping himself to a bowl of cold cereal, Sébastien planned out the day, making colour-coded adjustments here and there. Then he called Papa.
“Allo, allo,” he said. “Papa, are you on schedule?” Sébastien nodded while he listened, making a few notes on his chart. “D’accord, c’est bien!” Sophie rolled her eyes as he hung up the phone with a flourish.
“More,” he demanded, holding his bowl out for a refill. “Little tyrant,” responded his sister, as she filled the bowl.
Sébastien fixed his green eyes on her face. “You’re nicer than you used to be,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Why?”
“Because you’re smarter than you used to be,” she shot back. “You haven’t talked about a loup-garou since Monday.”
“Loup-garous don’t like the rain,” replied Sébastien as he slopped orange juice over his cereal. Sophie groaned. So much for feeling proud of her weird little brother.
After breakfast they headed out to the main barn. Feeding all the cows was a big job. Each cow ate about twenty-five pounds of hay and twenty pounds of grain every day. They also drank eight gallons of water, but there was nothing Sophie and Sébastien could do about the water until the generator arrived to work the water pump. Luckily there was still a little left in the trough. The cows were milling about the free-stall barn where they were spending most of their time because of the awful weather. It made the barn pretty hot and stinky, and there was an awful lot of manure. The cow manure was usually removed by an alley scraper but the scraper, just like everything else, was run by electricity. Sébastien would have to shovel.
Sophie attached the hay trailer to the tractor. Then she loaded some bales of hay to feed the cows. It should have been silage, but silage was stored in the tall silos behind the barn and it took power to get it out. So hay was the only option. Sophie drove into the centre aisle of the free-stall barn. Using a pitchfork, she put a small pile of hay in front of each cow’s stall. Immediately heads began to stick out through the metal rungs of the barriers as the cows reached for a mouthful.
When the cows in the main barn were content, Sébastien went back to the house to make adjustments to his schedule and Sophie went to visit Mélisande. Adalie mooed gently as soon as she saw Sophie. The calf came to nuzzle Sophie’s hand, looking up at her with huge soft brown eyes.
“You are so beautiful!” crooned Sophie as she crouched down to rub Mélisande’s velvety nose. “Has Adalie been giving you good feeds? Have you got lots of milk inside you?”
As if in answer, Mélisande moved away and began butting Adalie’s udder. She found a teat and latched on. Little rivulets of thin, white milk began to drip from the edges of Mélisande’s mouth as she sucked. Sophie smiled. “It looks like you’re doing just fine.”
Outside chores done, at least as many as could be done without power, Sophie went back into the house to wait. When the generator arrived, practically an army of people arrived with it. All of Saint-Hyacinthe was following the power.
Just a few minutes after noon a parade of vehicles began to snake down their lane. First was the tractor dragging the generator. Papa was driving. Behind him came Maman in the truck. The back of the truck was full of brown grocery bags. Behind her was the milk truck. And behind the milk truck came the neighbours in various pickups and four-wheel drives. The farm with the generator not only had power for their animals, but also had power for people. Lights went on, tvs and radios worked, furnaces kept houses warm, and water tanks, after a little catch-up time, gushed with hot water. In the middle of a blackout, everybody shared.
Sébastien ticked off the arrival of the generator and the milk truck. Mission accomplished for Farm A. Then he grabbed a clipboard, ready to sign people up for the shower schedule. Sophie made sure there was a stack of clean towels in the bathroom. The neighbours parked all higgledy-piggledy in the yard, leaving just enough room for the milk truck to escape once it finished pumping all their milk from the bulk tank into the refrigerated truck. Papa hooked the generator up to the pole and flicked the switch. Lights! Heat! Action! The men headed for the barn. More hands made the milking and the watering and the cleaning go faster. The women headed for the house. They dutifully signed up on Sébastien’s shower schedule, and then descended on the kitchen while the water reheated. Dough was kneaded, vegetables were chopped and casseroles prepared. Sébastien picked up his video camera and made himself annoying.
“This is Madame Boisvert making broccoli casserole. She always makes it for the church potlucks. Too bad it has to have broccoli. Madame Boisvert, is that absolutely necessary? Can you add more bacon, s’il vous plâit, to disguise the taste?” Madame Boisvert shook her wooden spoon at him good-naturedly.
“This is Madame de Bellefeuille making her world-famous tourtière!” Madame de Bellefeuille was okay with the filming, except she didn’t want Sébastien to capture her secret ingredient and of course, that’s exactly what he tried to do. It was pretty funny, and all the neighbours knew Sébastien, so there were no hard feelings. Sébastien was just being Sébastien.
Two of Sophie’s friends came with their parents, who had come to help with the milking. The three of them retreated to her bedroom, at least until they smelled biscuits baking and hightailed it back to the kitchen. The smells were heavenly. When the steaming casseroles were pulled from the oven to cool, the women cycled through the shower, trying to leave at least enough hot water for the men to use to wash up before they ate. The men came to the kitchen in shifts, and then went straight back to the barns.
Four hours later, after the last group of men had washed and eaten, the women divvied up the bread and the casseroles for each family to take home. Papa unhooked the generator and gave the tractor keys to the neighbour who owned Farm B. The pickups and four-wheel drives filled up with people and snaked back down the lane. Some of them went back to their own homes to sleep and others went on to Farm B to help with the chores there. Maman cleaned the kitchen. Sébastien went back to his chart, studying the details of the next shift.
Sophie collected all the dirty towels to go into the washing machine at midnight when they next got the generator, and then slumped down on a kitchen chair with a tired smile. Really, the power outage was an awful lot of fun.
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“Girl? Girl! Wake up!”
Alice rolled over in her sleeping bag. She was so warm. Except for her nose, which felt like a small icicle. She poked that icicle out of the tent.
“Yes, Mrs. Hartley?” she asked groggily. “Do you need something?”
Mrs. Hartley was sitting up on the sofa. She raised her eyebrows. “Girl, I need a lot of things, most of which I can’t have. Right now, I need my medicine. It’s in my backyard.”
“Where?” asked Alice. She was hardly awake.
“My backyard. I never took you to be stupid, girl. Wake up!”
Alice crawled out of the tent. “Why is your medicine in your backyard? Where in your backyard?” Alice was trying, but this was a little weird.
“I’m diabetic,” said Mrs. Hartley slowly, enunciating each word as if she was speaking to an idiot. “My insulin has to be kept cold. How cold is your fridge these days, girl?” demanded the old lady.
“Well, pretty cold,” replied Alice tartly. She was awake now. “I filled it with ice and snow.”
“Hmmm,” said Mrs. Hartley. “Well, I said you weren’t stupid. The insulin is right outside the back door, stuck in a snowbank. I need one vial marked “40” and one marked “50.” And I need my diabetic kit. It’s in the downstairs medicine cabinet. And if you don’t want me passing out on you, you’d better get it NOW!”
Alice hurried. A passed-out Mrs. Hartley would not be a good thing to have in her living room. She shrugged into one of Dad’s coats and went out the back door. The insulin was easy to find, the diabetic kit not so much. Boy, the old lady took an awful lot of medicine! Alice took a quick look...she had more pill containers than a pharmacy. There were a couple of medical kits; one had a bunch of needles in it, and another had a couple of little electronic dohickeys with a whole bunch of tiny white strips of plastic. Alice wasn’t sure which kit Mrs. Hartley needed, although the needles seemed a pretty good bet. She grabbed both. Luckily Mrs. Hartley hadn’t passed out by the time she got back.
Mrs. Hartley used one of the electronic dohickeys to prick her finger and squeezed a big drop of blood on one of the plastic strips. Alice was horrified and fascinated all at once. The old lady stuck the bloody plastic thing in the other machine and it started to beep. When it finished beeping, Mrs. Hartley checked the readout on the machine. “Not good,” she murmured to herself. She looked at the “40” vial. The liquid inside was too cold, nearly frozen. She couldn’t draw it out of the vial. Mrs. Hartley gave the vial to Alice.
“Warm it up; roll it between your hands. You’ll have more body heat than me.”
Alice did what she was told, and then handed the vial back. Mrs. Hartley took one of the needles and inserted it into the vial. It was just like in the movies, when the bad guy fills a needle with poison to kill somebody. Alice watched with wide eyes as Mrs. Hartley lifted up her nightgown and stuck the needle right into her side. Gross, gross, and super gross!
“Is that what all diabetics have to do?” asked Alice when she had recovered from the sight of Mrs. Hartley’s wrinkled stomach.
Mrs. Hartley fixed a look on Alice. Then she sighed. “If they’re insulin dependent. Some people can just take pills, but not me.”
“What will happen if you don’t take the insulin?”
“I’ll die,” said Mrs. Hartley simply.
It was Alice’s turn to stare at Mrs. Hartley. Wow. Then she had a horrible thought. “How much insulin is in your snowbank?”
Mrs. Hartley leaned back against the sofa and closed her eyes. “Two more days worth.” Alice spent a minute taking in that little piece of information. Babysitting Mrs. Hartley was not going to be easy.
Alice escaped to the kitchen, promising to make some hot tea. She needed to think. All of a sudden, her plans for dealing with the cold and the dark and the loneliness had changed. Now she had Mrs. Hartley, who couldn’t walk and was going to die in two days if Alice couldn’t get her more medicine. Unbelievable. Were pharmacies even open? Could she get to one if they were? And didn’t diabetics need special food? It wasn’t like her kitchen was offering a lot of choice.
While Mrs. Hartley drank the tea, Alice asked her about the food thing. It wasn’t so bad after all; Mrs. Hartley could eat tinned spaghetti and baked beans and they had lots of that kind of stuff. Mrs. Hartley gave her a list of the other drugs she needed from her house and Alice collected them all up in a plastic bag. She also brought over some of the non-perishable food from Mrs. Hartley’s kitchen. So far, so good. They had a pretty good larder and Alice’s barbecuing skills were improving. After a couple more hot drinks, Alice was pretty sure she could move on from boiling water and actually cook something.
They both napped after lunch. Alice left the tent flap open again. It seemed rude to zip the door shut with somebody else in the room. She woke to find Mrs. Hartley staring into the tent right at her. She could be really creepy sometimes. Alice glanced down at the nails. They were safely in Mrs. Hartley’s lap. Unfortunately, the old lady noticed the glance.
“Worried I’m going to tickle you to death?” she said ominously.
Alice’s jaw dropped. “You know that’s what the kids say about you?”
“I’m not blind or deaf, girl. Course I know. Kept all of you off my property, didn’t it?”
Alice didn’t know how to respond. “So you don’t like kids?”
Mrs. Hartley didn’t answer. There was an uncomfortable silence. Alice decided to crank up the radio.
Montréal is a photographer’s dream – the icy vistas are intensely beautiful. It is also being called a war zone. Today, thousands more head for shelters in Ontario and Québec after more freezing rain delays repair work and Hydro-Québec admits there can be no quick fix. Even Rideau Hall, the Governor-General’s home in Ottawa, has no power.
Alice sighed and turned the radio off. Mrs. Hartley shot a look Alice’s way.
“Does your Dad drink?”
“What?!” Alice was shocked. “He doesn’t, but that’s none of your business!”
“Don’t get your knickers in a knot. I want to know if you have any alcohol in the house.”
“So you drink?” asked Alice belligerently.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” exploded Mrs. Hartley. “Stop being so prickly, girl! Just because you think I’m a monster doesn’t actually make me one! I’m worried about the toilets.”
Alice just stared. This conversation was making no sense at all. Toilets? To her surprise, Mrs. Hartley’s lips began to quiver. In another moment she was smiling and after that came a great big belly laugh. Alice shifted from wondering about toilets to wondering how such a scrawny body could make so much noise. Maybe Mrs. Hartley was a full-on lunatic.
“I got up to go to the bathroom while you were sleeping, girl,” said Mrs. Hartley between chuckles. “Lucky it wasn’t far away, because old ladies like me, well, we gotta go when we gotta go. I noticed your taps dripping. That’s smart.”
Alice, still bewildered, said, “My Uncle Henri told me to do that.”
“Whatever,” said Mrs. Hartley. “Toilets have to be protected from freezing too. You need to pour in some anti-freeze, if you’ve got it. If not, liquor will work as long as it has a high alcohol content.”
“How does that stop them from freezing?” asked Alice. Her head was still spinning but she was curious.
“Alcohol lowers the freezing point of water. It’ll have to get a lot colder before the water freezes, which hopefully means your toilets won’t crack.”
“But how will we use the toilets? Won’t we flush it all away?” asked Alice.
“I meant,” Mrs. Hartley said in a long-suffering voice, “MY toilet. I won’t be needing it for the foreseeable future.”
“Oh,” said Alice. “So, just so I have this straight, you want me to find my dad’s alcohol and pour it down your toilet?”
Mrs. Hartley nodded. “You got it, girl.”
Shaking her head, Alice went to the cupboard where her dad kept the alcohol. He didn’t drink strong liquor, so all he had was a bunch of unopened gift bottles his workers had given him for Christmas. She called out the names to Mrs. Hartley, who told her which ones had the highest alcohol content, and then trudged them over to Mrs. Hartley’s house. This babysitting job was beginning to feel like slave labour.
Once back at home, Alice couldn’t help herself. “How did you know about the alcohol thing?” she asked.
Mrs. Hartley hesitated for a moment, as if she didn’t want to admit the truth. Then she looked Alice straight in the eye. “I know a lot of things,” she said. “I used to be a schoolteacher.”
“But that’s impossible,” cried Alice. “You hate kids!”
“Did I say that?”
Alice didn’t answer.
“You know nothing about me,” said Mrs. Hartley quietly. “Even though I’ve been your next-door neighbour since you were born.”
Well, that’s not all my fault, Alice thought. It wasn’t like you were very friendly.
“I knew your mother, though,” Mrs. Hartley continued. “You’re not much like her.”
Alice bristled. “I am so,” she said angrily. “Everyone says so!”
“Oh, you look like her, all right. But your mother had a mind of her own. She and I had some good talks. I was really sorry when she got sick.” Mrs. Hartley sounded wistful.
The Tickle Lady and her mom had been friends? This day was getting weirder and weirder.
“How’s the skating going?”
Alice tensed. “Fine.”
“And you like it?”
“Of course I do.”
“I see you on tv sometimes,” said Mrs. Hartley. “You’re sure you like it?”
“Of course I like skating! I love skating!” Mrs. Hartley was making Alice mad. “Why else would I spend my whole life doing it? What – you think I skate because I don’t like it?”
