“Local radar shows this last band to be out of the county in another hour or so,” Baker said, turning into the wind, the rain lashing us roughly. “We’ve got room. No point in trying to get them into town so don’t argue.”
Ollie gave me a look that I couldn’t read before clapping Baker on his wet shoulder. “Makes sense. We’ll head to Bastian Acres then.”
He turned from us while speaking into his shoulder-mounted microphone. Relaying the newest situation to dispatch, I suspected. Baker gave me a nudge toward the assisted-living building. We hustled into the foyer, water lapping at our ankles, and stepped up to the main floor. Here the water was less deep but just as muddy.
“Down here!” a woman in burgundy scrubs called and waved. We jogged down the hall to a cafeteria. “Hey, I’m Iris, the on-call LPN. We have two aides, those two gals in the navy blue, and thankfully no one else. Dietary and maintenance didn’t show up, which is understandable given the situation, so it’s just us. We do have our cars to help carry some of the people out.”
“Ma’am,” Baker and I said in unison. “We’re from Bastian Acres, and due to road conditions and washouts, we’ll be takingyou and your residents to our ranch. Things there are still good water wise, and we have lots of food and beds.”
I nodded as Ford and Lincoln emerged with two elderly gents holding onto them for dear life. Bella came after, a frail older woman in a pink fleece set in her arms. Our seamstress was more muscular than I had imagined.
“That sounds amazing. Any port in a storm,” Iris replied, her pant legs soaked all the way up to her upper thighs. “Some of the residents are pretty mobile, but a few are wobbly. Two require assistance.”
“We’ll get them all out and buckled in,” Baker said, and with a smile of reassurance from me, we began leading those who could manage the swirling waters to our cars.
Three, well, four, if you counted the woman Bella had toted out to Hanley’s ride, had to be lifted and carried to our cars. One fellow was a big guy with a bushy mustache who had recently had surgery to remove his big toe, so Linc and Ollie double-teamed him, lifting him and his wheelchair and then walking with care to my SUV. We got him loaded into the front, his wheelchair in the back, and then helped a wiry old man into the cab seat. Both were balding and had that monk’s circle of silver hair. They knew each other well, it seemed, for once the final resident was loaded into the used truck Linc had bought for the farm, as one truck among so many wasn’t cutting it, we formed a convoy of sorts. Ollie led the way. Two cars that belonged to the staff followed the sheriff’s Jeep, and we Bastians pulled up the rear.
“So hi, I’m Dodge, and we’re heading to Bastian Acres to dry off and wait out the rain,” I had said after climbing in.
“Good to know. Always did like Eleanor Bastian,” the old fellow said and got a grunt of agreement from the other. “Frank,” the big guy beside me said. “That’s Albert in the back.”
“Nice to meet you both. I’ll try to keep it under eighty.”
They both chortled as we pulled out in a line of flashing lights and high beams.
“Did you see that Penelope trying to stuff cookies in her girdle?” Albert asked as we trundled along.
“She’s always stealing cookies. Just the other day I saw her pull a vanilla wafer from her cleavage,” Frank replied.
“Given where her titties rest, she probably had to dig into her stockings,” Albert tossed out.
They went on to rip on Penelope, the cookie thief. Some of their comments were quite funny. The longer we rode along, the more they reminded me of Statler and Waldorf fromThe Muppet Show. Their banter made the ride back to the ranch much more enjoyable. It kept me from fretting over Dahn and Ollie and this miserable weather. It seemed that every season brought perils from Mother Nature that farmers and ranchers had to muddle through.
The lights were on at home when the Lilac Hills convoy pulled in. The front door opened, and Granny and Dahn stepped out onto the porch. She had one hand on her cane while the other rested on my son’s slim shoulder. Seeing them both filled me with relief.
“Come on in, I got some soup warming and two loaves of bread in the oven,” Granny shouted out over the rain and wind.
Unloading the residents seemed easier than loading them up had been. Probably because we didn’t have murky water around our feet. Bella carried the woman in the pink fleece inside, smiling down at her as she placed her tenderly on the sofa. The old woman grabbed Bella by the hand.
“Sit with me, honey,” she asked, and so Bella sat after draping a knitted blanket around her shaking shoulders. Linc, Ollie, and I got Frank inside and in his wheelchair. The house filled up quickly. Dahn stood in a corner chewing his lip, unsure of all the strangers now taking up room in his house.
Once everyone was inside, we went around back to change out of our wet clothes. Ollie and Frank removed their soaking wet shoes and socks, outerwear, and borrowed some joggers after tossing their uniform pants into the dryer with our soggy clothes. His shoulder mic never quieted while we fed the residents some soup and warm bread. Sometime later, I found my son in the kitchen scraping scraps into a bucket for the chickens. The living room was packed with old folks, some napping and some not, watching old episodes ofMurder, She Wrotethat Granny had on DVD.
“You okay, buddy?” I asked, coming up beside him at the sink. Granny was sitting at the table with the rest of our clan trying to sort out sleeping arrangements over coffee and cinnamon buns.
“Old people smell funny,” Dahn blurted out.
“Beg your pardon, young man?” Granny’s affront was comical.
“Not you, well, not always you. Sometimes you do smell like that old wreath in the sewing room.”
“That’s eucalyptus,” Granny hurried to explain to us. “I got a rub for my sticky shoulder that has eucalyptus in it.”
“If you wouldn’t be outside at the crack of dawn firing off a gun, maybe your shoulder would stop sticking,” Baker replied without missing a beat.
“Maybe if I booted you in the backside, you’d stop moving my cans,” Granny fired back. Hanley nearly choked on his coffee. “Now, if we can stop talking about my shoulder liniment, we need all you boys to sleep in the barn tonight.”
No one objected overly much. The old folks needed the beds more than we did. We gathered up some sleeping bags, some food and drink, and headed out to the barn. Goat barn was the chosen barn as the goats were dry and didn’t create the plops that cows did. Bella and Granny stayed in the house because Bella was unable to get the old dear in pink fleece to let her leave her side, and Granny was sharing a bed with Iris. The otherstaff were spread out on the floor near the residents in whatever bedrooms they could fit in. It was tight in there, but now the rain had finally slowed to a gentle shower, we hoped the cramped quarters would only be for a day, two at the most.
