Darla's Story (4 page)

Maybe I was a little fidgety, because she cut
her murmured prayer short. She didn’t scold me, just dropped my
hand, picked up the candle, and led me to her bedroom.

“Pull the box out from under the left side of
the bed,” Mom instructed. “No, the one closer to the
headboard.”

I slid an ancient box marked Ivory Soap
Flakes out from under the bed. Mom opened the top of it and pulled
out a Mason jar full of marbles. They seemed to glow in the
candlelight, tiger’s eyes and whorls gleaming even through the
dusty glass of the Mason jar.

“Where’d you get—”

“They were my mother’s. I got them out once
when you were little—three or four, maybe—but you weren’t
interested in them. You inspected them for a few minutes and then
went back to following your dad around, carrying that plastic
hammer you used to lug everywhere.” Mom’s eyes gleamed in the
candlelight, like the marbles, but wetter.

“Are you . . . okay?”

“I’m fine.” She wiped her eyes.

I pulled her into a hug. “I wasn’t always a
very good daughter, was I?”

“No, Darla. You were the very best daughter.
Are the best. And I love you, even though I don’t always understand
you.”

“I love you, too.”

“I never told you, did I? Why you’re an only
child?”

“No . . . I just figured you only could
handle one of me.”

Mom smiled ruefully. “That’s probably true,
but . . . I got pregnant again only a year after I had you. A boy.
We were going to name him Tom.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of this strange
confession. I pulled away from Mom, wrapping my arms around
myself.

“He came early. It was a horrible birth.
Everything went wrong. Tom . . . he died, and I couldn’t have more
children after that.”

I hugged my arms around myself tighter.
“That’s . . . terrible, Mom.”

“We never told you because we never wanted
you to feel like you weren’t enough. And your dad, he latched onto
you as if you were Tom. You seemed to like the attention, and you
picked up mechanical stuff so fast. Still . . .”

The look on her face was heartbreaking. I
flung my arms around her. “I should have spent more time with
you.”

“No, Darla. You did exactly what you should
have. I see so much of your father in you, it’s like a part of him
is still with us.”

I gripped Mom tighter, holding on until I was
afraid I’d drown in her maudlin mood. The embrace went on so long
that I started to get antsy. “Well, this pump isn’t going to build
itself.”

“I guess not.” Mom released me.

I dumped the marbles on the bed and sorted
through them, selecting the three largest—Mom called them shooters.
They were perfect—more than an inch and a half in diameter. As I
thought through what else I’d need to make an inertial pump, I
muttered to myself, “Thank God the well’s not too deep for
this.”

“See,” Mom said.

“What?”

“I told you prayer works. Who do you think
gave us a high water table?”

“Christ, Mom.”

“Darla!”

Now I had a marble the right size, but it
still took the rest of the day to finish the pump. I cut up the
washing machine’s drain to get a piece of pipe large enough for the
body of my pump. I made a huge hole in the wall, getting at the
drain, but when I shoved the washing machine back in place, the
hole was hidden. I’d have to remember to tell Mom before she used
the washing machine. And trek to the hardware store in Dyersville
to get parts to fix the damage I’d done. If we got our power back,
Mom probably wouldn’t mind. Much.

I chopped up an old pair of Dad’s boots,
making an O-ring from the leather. When I put it in place within
the pipe, it leaked like a sieve. I soaked the leather in olive oil
for a while, and that helped, but it still didn’t seal well enough
to work. Then I hit on the idea of carving up the rubber soles of
the boots. I made three rubber O-rings—cutting up both boots—before
I got good enough at it to make one that didn’t leak.

I attached a reducing fitting to the end of
the drain pipe with PVC cement. The O-ring nestled against the
inside of the fitting nicely. Then I used a rope of plumber’s epoxy
to lock the O-ring in place. I dropped the marble in the pipe, made
sure it was free to move up and down, and my pump was done.

Mom went outside with me to help me pull off
the well cover and lift the submersible electric pump out of the
well. We tied wet dishtowels over our faces and used a roll of
baling twine to make sure we wouldn’t get lost in the dense
ashfall.

The ash was thick over the pump cover—three
or four inches. It was heavy, far heavier than wet snow, and it
stuck to my hands, turning them a ghostly shade of light gray.

We got the useless electric pump out of the
well, and I cut the water supply tubing and electrical wire with a
hacksaw. Mom and I trooped to the barn, carrying the pump and the
tubing we’d pulled out of the well.

The dollhouse was still on my workbench. It
looked alien somehow in the ashen haze of the flashlight’s beam.
Too pristine to be part of my world now. Mom and I moved the
dollhouse to the barn’s storage room to make room to work on the
pump. Our ash-stained clothes left long smears of gray on the
dollhouse’s white paint.

I replaced the electric pump with my inertial
pump, paying special attention to the joint where my pump connected
to the tubing. I didn’t have any fittings the right size, so I used
a lot of epoxy and duct tape. It would hold, I thought. It had to
hold—I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my pump.

Mom helped me haul the contraption back out
to the well. She held a flashlight for me while I threaded my pump
down the shaft and duct-taped a pole onto the tubing where it
emerged from the well, to make it easier to pump. Then I took hold
of one end of the bamboo pole and started pumping.

Nothing happened at first, of course. I
pumped for one minute . . . two . . . nothing. It seemed like it
was getting heavier—harder to pull up after each downstroke—but I
was getting tired. And then, finally—water! It splashed out the end
of the tube Mom held, glistening in the light of the flashlight,
soaking her left pant leg.

Mom laughed, her voice a distillation of pure
relief and joy. “You’re a wonder, Darla.”

“It’s a really simple machine, Mom.” I turned
my head to hide the grin spreading across my face before I realized
Mom couldn’t see it through my breathing rag, anyway.

“We’d be mighty thirsty before I figured out
how to build that ‘simple machine.’” She had redirected the tubing
into a bucket, but we’d barely wet the bottom of it before we
noticed that way too much ash was falling in, fouling our
water.

So I spent the next hour making a bucket
cover with a hole just the right size for the pump tube. We worked
well past midnight, according to Mom’s watch. It was impossible to
tell by the sky—noon was just as dark as midnight. We filled almost
every waterproof container we owned. If my pump failed at some
point, I wanted to have enough water on hand to last until I could
fix it or build another.

When I woke in my bed the next morning,
Monday, I wasn’t sure what was going on. For a moment, I forgot
about the eruption, despite the grit clinging to my skin and the
omnipresent sulfur stench. I was seized by a ridiculous panic—I
hadn’t done my homework. Then I came fully awake and realized it
didn’t matter. I didn’t need to worry about school; I needed to
focus on surviving.

So that’s the way I spent the next few days.
I got up early every morning, fed and watered my rabbits, worked on
mechanical projects all day and most of the night, then collapsed
into bed.

After the water pump, I pulled the toilet out
of the downstairs bath and built a squat tube—a piece of pipe and
funnel—so we wouldn’t have to trek out into the ash to pee.

I started worrying about the roof, so I
attached a series of poles to an old garden rake, lengthening the
handle, and used that to pull ash off the barn and house roofs. I’d
noticed how heavy the ash and rain were, and we had more than six
inches on the ground now. Both the barn and house were old, sturdy
buildings constructed of heavy timber, but if you put enough weight
on anything, eventually it’ll collapse.

As I raised the rake for the first time, I
bumped the gutter. It ripped free with a screech, narrowly missing
me. As the gutter crashed to the ground, big glops of wet ash
splurted out, splattering me. More fell off the roof, and I cursed
out loud. The wet ash reminded me of the time a pigeon pooped on me
in Dubuque. But for a pigeon to make droppings like these, it’d
have to be elephant-sized. I ducked my head and stumbled farther
back, waiting for the bombardment to end. When it did, I dragged my
long-handled rake out of the muck and returned to clearing our
roof.

By Thursday, it was a little brighter. At
least we could tell the difference between night and day and didn’t
have to carry flashlights and candles everywhere during the
daytime. Which was good—all our batteries were dead, and we were
running low on candles. We’d run the batteries out both in the
flashlight and listening to the radio, trying to find a station.
Either no radio stations were broadcasting, our radio was broken,
or the ashfall was messing up the signal somehow. We had two sets
of rechargeable batteries, but without power, they were useless.
Maybe I could figure out a way to recharge them by hand—I filed
that thought away for later.

I decided to use the daylight to work on my
tractor. We were running out of food, both for humans and rabbits,
but I’d planted over 190 acres of corn in the spring. The ears were
mature, but the kernels were way too moist—if we had harvested this
early, we would’ve had a horrendous drying charge at the co-op. But
wet or not, the corn was perfectly edible, despite being buried
under almost a foot of ash. Digging it up by hand would be an
exhausting nightmare. I wished I had a bulldozer blade for the
tractor. Instead, I used an old piece of angle-iron to fashion a
long blade that I could drag behind the tractor on two chains. With
one chain longer than the other, the ash would get scraped off to
one side.

As I worked, I sent a silent thank-you to my
dad, wherever he was, for buying an oxy-acetylene welding rig
instead of the electric kind. An electric rig would’ve been as
useful as a boat anchor, but the oxy-acetylene setup worked fine
without electricity. I would feel so much better—so much safer—if
he were here with me. Still, he’d left me the knowledge and tools I
needed now, so maybe he was with me in a way.

Then it was time to consider the tractor
itself. Its air filter was good, designed for dusty jobs like
plowing, but no way would it hold up in this God-awful ashfall. I
took the air filter out of our pickup, fashioned a cloth cover for
it, and attached it over the tractor’s air intake. It was a bit of
a spit-wad setup, but it worked okay. The tractor ran way too
lean—starving for oxygen due to the doubled filter—but it ran.

I grabbed an armload of old feed sacks,
hopped onto the tractor, and drove it right up to the house, the
blade scraping through the ash behind me.

“You continue to amaze me, Darla.” Mom said
when she saw the tractor running.

“I know—”

“And you’re humble, too.” Mom’s smile morphed
to a scowl.

“Let’s go get some corn.”

“We should check on the Haymakers, see if
they came through the eruption okay.”

“We’ve got maybe a day’s worth of rabbit
pellets left, and what, two or three days of food for ourselves?
And only that much if we both eat your cream of wheat.” You have to
be half dead of starvation to eat cream of wheat. Unless you’re my
mother. Who’s weird.

“The Haymakers might have even less. And that
fire we saw was over by their place.”

“We don’t have enough gas to go driving all
over the place.”

“We’re not driving all over the place. Just a
couple miles to check on the Haymakers.”

I sighed and went to unhook the blade from
the back of the tractor. Arguing with Mom when she got all
neighborly was hopeless. My tractor was an old model, a
single-seater, so Mom and I had to squeeze in together, with me
sitting at the front of the seat between her legs. Normally this
would’ve been unbearably hot, but with the rain, ash, and dim
light, we kind of needed to huddle close for warmth. In fact, it
seemed way too cold for Iowa in the first week of September.

We rumbled down the road to the Haymakers’
place. I almost missed it, but I caught a glimpse of the mailbox
through the ashfall as we passed.

The place was deserted. Mom and I both banged
on the door and yelled. No one answered. The ash was smooth and
untracked, although that didn’t mean much since it was still
falling—filling in tracks and footprints fast. Their barn was gone;
all that remained were a few sticks poking up from the huge
ash-covered mound where it had been. We even checked their grain
silos—there was no sign of humans there, either. We couldn’t tell
what had caused the fire we’d seen. Maybe they really were burning
brush, or maybe the fire hadn’t been here. Finally, we gave up and
headed for home.

That was when I ran over the old lady.

I’m a great driver; I’ve got thirteen years
of experience. I learned to drive when I was four. I couldn’t reach
the pedals of our old F150, of course, or operate the gearshift,
but I loved to sit on Dad’s lap and steer while we checked our
fields.

I wasn’t tall enough to drive on my own until
I was nine. That was the same year I bought my own beat up ’63
Deere, trading two heifers I’d raised as a 4H project. Dad and I
spent hundreds of happy hours getting that thing to run.