Jeremy
and Linda sat at the dining room table. “How bad is it?” asked Linda.
“Good
or bad?” asked Jeremy.
“Let’s
start with the good,” said Linda.
“The
falling limbs took out the power but none of them hit the house. I’ve been in
the attic and there are no leaks. We got lucky there.”
“What’s
the bad?”
“One
of the limbs took out the power lines, so we aren’t going to have electricity for
a while.” Jeremy paused for a breath. “The snow’s deep. Four foot at least. The
roads are covered. I don’t know when crews can get to us.”
“They’ll
put a rush on it right? We’re out here.”
“I
called Frank,” said Jeremy referring to his friend from high school who worked
with the city. “He said it’s pretty bad. He checked the road personally and there
are a couple large trees over the road. With the snow and ice, it’s going to be
harder to get rid of them. He’s not sure how long it will take to get through
the drifts and up the mountain to us.”
“We’re
stuck here,” said Linda.
“Yeah.”
“We
got the generator though.”
“About
that,” said Jeremy. “Last weekend while we were celebrating our anniversary,
the boys decided to ride the carts around the woods. They didn’t tell us
because they were afraid we’d be mad.”
“This
is not going to be a funny story about how boys will be boys is it?”
“No,”
said Jeremy. “They refueled them a couple of times and they used the reserve
fuel.”
“How
much of it?”
Jeremy
looked at the ceiling.
“How
much of it?”
“All
of it.”
Linda
stood and slammed her hands on the table. “BOYS!”
Jeremy
reached out and rested his hand on hers. Linda stared at him for a long moment.
A moment passed. The boys began to file into the living room. Linda looked at
her husband, sighed, and sat back down again.
Jeremy
turned to the boys. “We know about the go-carts.”
The
boys started to talk. Linda turned to look at them and they fell silent.
“There’s
going to be a punishment for this,” said Jeremy. “However, right now I need you
to go through the living room and all the bedrooms and unplug anything that is
not a lamp.”
A
chorus of okay’s went up from the three boys before they turned around and
started unplugging things.
After
the boys moved into the bedrooms Linda looked at Jeremy. “How bad is it?”
“The
generator is full, but there is nothing to put in it afterwards.”
“How
long have we got?” asked Linda.
“Little
over a days’ worth of fuel,” said Jeremy. “If we use it sparingly, load up on blankets,
and don’t do a lot more than that we might get two. I listened to the weather
on my old short wave and it’s supposed to get colder over the next couple of
days.”
Linda
stood and hugged Jeremy.
“Look
on the upside,” said Jeremy. “All those time you told the boys they’d be the
death of you; now you can say I told you so.”
It
took Frank and his crew just past a week to get to Jeremy and Linda’s driveway.
The trucks plowed through the snow shoving one last tree into a ditch.
Frank was worried, no one had answered a phone
in three days. He was worried about his friend.
The
truck hadn’t completely stopped before Frank was leaping out of the back and
trying to dig his way towards the house. It was just a couple of minutes in
when the porch light turned on. After a few hours more Jeremy, Linda, and the
kids were wrapped in blankets, loaded into a van, and headed to town and
family.
Jeremy
sat up front with Frank talking about what had happened.
“I
don’t understand,” said Jeremy. “I checked the tank every day and it only
seemed to lower a little bit.”
“Your
generator?” asked Frank.
“Yeah,”
said Jeremy. “It should only have lasted a day, day and a half tops. It lasted the
whole time. We never had to shut it off, never had to worry about heat. I don’t
know what to think.”
“I
don’t know man,” said Frank. “If it were me, right now I’d be torn between
thanking god and buying a lottery ticket.”
“Maybe
I’ll do both.”
end
Baby, it's cold outside.
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