Depression by cmsix

Chapter 11

Doctor Jorge didn't have Meka's English far enough along so she could say, what the hell is that, but I could see what she meant right away.

"It's a big truck to pull the trailers back down here," I said.

She still didn't understand anything about it, so I told her I'd show her later, and I think she understood later, at least. She wiggled to get back down and I set her on her feet. She grabbed my hand with her good one and started pulling me past Ethel, who'd come out right behind her.

Ethel was only giving George a mild dressing down and she was grinning the whole time, so he probably wasn't in much trouble. Meka didn't give a hoot one way or the other. She had something inside that she wanted to show me, and I was just hoping that it wasn't the bidet.

It wasn't. It was something that George and I had missed earlier. There was a glowing handprint, just like the others we'd seen, but it was at the head of the hall where there wasn't a door. Meka went straight toward it, but she didn't put her hand on it. She looked close and put her hand right below it, and just for a second I could see that there was a dim shadow of a hand her size just below the one that was obviously for me.

Right as she got her hand on it another set of elevator doors opened up. I was looking at the wall this time and I could see that the paneling seemed to sink in on itself, just enough for clearance, and then slide back into the rest of the wall, pocket door style again.

Paneling was a new departure for this version of the house. There'd been a little bit of it in the old house, but it only walled off the bathroom George and Ethel had added.

Of course the house had some real interior walls now and They had used real paneling. When the elevator doors did their little trick, I could see it. No thin sheets of plywood with a dress veneer for my new house; it was normal one-inch-thick boards, one inch being the nominal size of course. The pattern they'd picked was appropriate too; Knotty Pine Pickwick was an old standard in the south.

We entered when the doors were fully open, and for a second I wondered why all the elevators seemed to be freight size. They were nice enough inside but all of them so far had been large.

When the doors opened at the end of our short ride I saw that I had yet another basement, but this one wasn't empty. It looked as big as the house's new size but it had some separate rooms in it, storage rooms I guessed. It also had two big walk-in in coolers. When I went to them and opened the doors I found that they were freezers, not coolers. They didn't have anything in them though, except cold air.

My first thought was that it was going to be a pain in the ass to carry things down to load the freezers and then have to tote it back up when we needed it. Wrong.

Meka dragged me away from the freezers and across the big part of the open space and put her hand under another handprint that was my size. A door the size of the truck elevator's door opened and it led into a sort of rectangular shaped tunnel that ran for about two hundred feet to another big door. At least I figured it out before Meka opened the door on the other end. It opened into the barn's basement.

Damn, there'd been a lot of work and a lot of planning put into my new hacienda. It left me wondering how much of this time traveling I was going to have to do. That made me remember I needed to get Doctor Jorge to teach me a little of Meka's lingo.

We heard Ethel hollering for us from the house's basement then. I'm sure we could only hear it because we'd left the doors open. We closed the one into the barn's basement and walked back toward the house.

Ethel was laughing at me when we got back.

"Has the little stinker been showing you everything she's discovered?" Ethel asked.

"I've been on a tour all right. George and I found the basement under the barn this morning, but we didn't even have a sniff of this one," I said.

"Wanda and I wouldn't have either. In fact I'm not sure that we could have gotten in the house if Meka hadn't found her handprints. She spotted the one by the front door pretty fast though, and after that she's been running around pressing every one she finds," Ethel said.

"She's done a whale of a job I see."

"Yes she has. The only break she's taken from exploring was about twenty minutes to play with her bidet when we showed her how it worked," Ethel said, grinning.

"Did you give her a ride in the Jacuzzi yet?" I asked.

"No, but we filled it up and turned on the jets to let her see them work. I think she's saving that for when she runs out of places to check out," she said.

We were walking back to the elevator to go back into the house, but Ethel stopped and asked a question.

"Did you look in the room that didn't have her handprint by the door?" she asked.

"No, I didn't notice it," I said.

"It's right over there by the freezers," Ethel said, pointing the way.

When I looked I saw my handprint. I started to go right to it, but then decided that there must be some reason to keep Meka out if there wasn't a handprint opener for her. I'd decided that the handprints couldn't be anything but some type of open sesame trigger for the doors they were by.

"I think I'll take Meka back upstairs to see if I can get her in the hot tub. There's probably a reason she can't open that door," Ethel said, echoing my thoughts.

When they were gone I went to the door and it opened with no trouble. The room it let me into was much larger than I'd thought, and it was crammed with weapons.

Well, it was crammed full of articles of mayhem but not all of them were weapons. In fact most of the space taken up was for ammunition. Is ammunition a weapons? Anyway, I now knew that carbon fiber arrows were next on the agenda for my Indian friends.

Reading the label on one big box, I saw that it contained one hundred fletched shafts. A hundred arrows is a lot of arrows, but it was only the beginning. There were at least a thousand boxes like it, and probably more. I didn't take time to count them; I just made a rough estimate. Stacked near them were boxes of broadheads.

The odd thing about the boxes of shafts and broadheads was that though they had descriptions, instructions, and even pictures, they didn't have any brand names. Then it hit me, they weren't brand name. They were supplied by They, whoever or whatever They were. I guess that wasn't so surprising though, considering where they were.

Looking around a little more I found other common hardware for bow hunting. Then I found the bows. I couldn't know what the bows were made of. It seemed like it might be a metal of some kind, but it was lighter than any metal I'd ever encountered, even titanium.

They were compound bows but they seemed pretty simple, without all the crap hanging off them that modern hunting bows usually had, and they also seemed smaller than others I'd seen. They had a straightforward design without any bells and whistles, but the high quality was obvious.

I found dozens of stuffed targets and stands for them and also plenty of plain points to use during practice. There were simple, but nicely designed, quivers and a few other things to help with practice and later while using the bows. It seemed that Doctor Jorge's wish had come true.

The next thing that caught my interest was a rack of weapons that was no doubt meant for me, and there were enough for a few close friends too; so I assumed that sooner or later someone else would be coming with me on a trip.

They resembled normal weapons but there were differences. I found four shotguns that looked like they had three barrels at first. Closer inspection showed me that two of the three tubes were magazines. They were side by side and the barrel was on top of them, like a miniature pyramid. There was also a loading gate on each side of the receiver.

The shotguns weren't in boxes; they were propped on their recoil pads in a normal looking stand up gun rack. I picked one up and it didn't seem a bit heavier than a normal semi-automatic shotgun. It was marked as a twelve-gauge magnum and it said its capacity was eighteen rounds. That was a lot of lead to sling before reloading.

I saw two Colt Diamondbacks and smiled. Diamondbacks are by far my favorite revolver, but closer examination showed me they weren't marked as Colts. They weren't named at all in fact, but there was no mistaking what they were.

The odd thing was they were stamped as 357 Magnum. That was too much power for a Diamondback. Then again, it was already obvious that whoever made this stuff knew more about it than I did. If they said the small framed Diamondback could handle magnum pressures, who was I to argue.

It looked like my semi-auto rifle problem had been solved too, in spades. I spied several rifles that were clearly knockoffs of the M1 Garand, but not exactly. They had removable banana-clip magazines and were chambered for the 270 Winchester cartridge.

They also had synthetic, pistol-grip stocks that looked very easy to handle, and that was no production barrel on them either. It was stainless steel and fluted along its length. It also had a serious 'flash suppressor/muzzle brake' on the business end.

Closer inspection showed me that they weren't all 270s - three were - but there were three in 30-06 and even three in 35 Remington. The 35 Remingtons would probably be the most useful of all if I kept running into bears.

There were also several web belts with holsters and about a dozen Glock 34 look-alikes. I'd have to try them out to see if they worked as well as a real Glock, but I was pretty sure that I wouldn't run into any problems.

Farther back in the room I ran into some serious gear. Five M4 Carbines with grenade launchers attached, and three M224 60mm mortars. I suspected that they were copies, probably advanced copies, of the normal military weapons they resembled.

One thing was certain; I wouldn't be trying out any mortars or grenade launchers on George's ranch. It wouldn't be for lack of ammunition though; there were hundreds of cases of that.

Right on the back wall of the arms room there was another handprint and when I opened the door, I entered a shooting range. It was almost more than I could deal with.

It looked to be about a hundred meters wide and over three hundred long. I wouldn't have to be riding Joe Bob out behind George's house to sight anything else in anyway. It had normal shooting stations and a trolley system for the target racks.

Off to the left, the last thirty meters or so was obviously designed for archery practice. If I was shocked by all this, I could just imagine what it was going to do to Jahedo and his pals, even though it would make it easier for them to get familiar with the new bows.

My war room and its inventory had taken my attention away from the real question. Did They expect me to fight some sort of guerilla war? It was way down on my list of things to do. I might not mind having a go at a few explorers raising hell in North West Louisiana or North East Texas, but I didn't feel up to gathering a platoon and going at it seriously.

I wondered if I'd have any choice at all in the matter. We would see what we saw, but for now I made a graceful exit and headed back upstairs. I found Ethel, Wanda, and Meka in the kitchen. Meka was sipping on a Coke.

"Would you believe it? The only thing down here that's consumable is a six-pack of Cokes. I wonder who they could have been meant for," Ethel said, when I reappeared.

Meka was looking right at her and had the now standard, Cheshire Cat, grin on her face. She was playing with the screw-on cap between delightful sips. I could see that she was completely happy for the moment and it made me happy too.

"At least we have you back from the dungeon now. Let's go up to the house and see about some lunch," Ethel said.

When we got out to the new truck, I saw that every other vehicle had left already.

"Right again, cowboy. We sent the rest of them off so we could have a ride in this big thing. Show us how to get in, and get those eighteen wheels a rollin'," Ethel said.

"Ten. Ten wheels. The tractor only has ten wheels, it won't be eighteen wheels until we hook a dual axle trailer," I said, opening the door and helping them up.

"Our minds are made up, don't confuse us with facts. Let us in there and fire this mother up," Ethel said, and then grinned like a mean little kid.

I saw that Meka understood enough to know I'd been put in my place, and she grinned at me too, even if she didn't know what it was about. It hit me then that older women dressing down a young buck was probably older than time, and that Meka knew I'd been set back on the straight and narrow by the head woman in charge. I couldn't help it, I broke out laughing. It wasn't so bad though, at least I qualified as a young buck to someone.

Wanda and Ethel went into the sleeper and sat on the bunk. I noticed that I needed to find some bedclothes for it and probably a pillow or two. Meka looked like a princess in the passenger seat. She squealed with glee when I made it go up and down by working the air seat valve.

Meka squealed even louder when I lit off the big Cat diesel and then backed to turn us around. She was in ecstasy when we finally got headed down the road. I think it was partly because she had a higher point of view, since the air seat could be raised and lowered. For a second, I worried that she'd sprain her neck by whipping it around to look first one way and then the other.

I decided that when we got back to the house I'd play the trick George had been saving for Ethel on everyone at once, instead of just on Ethel and Wanda.

As I pulled to a stop I let them have a taste of the train horn. I barely heard it myself over Wanda's and Ethel's screams and Meka's surprised laughing. Bob and Doctor Jorge just about knocked each other over trying to get out the back door at the same time.

I had Meka slip over to me and we went down the step while I carried her. She took it as her due, and when I put her back on her feet, she scampered into the house smiling so hard I'll swear I could see it from behind. She'd had an exciting morning and I could tell that the Western Star had moved near the top of her list as favorite transportation. I didn't think it had replaced Little Missy yet, but it had to be pushing her hard.

The smell of hickory smoke hit me about half way to the door and my stomach made an uncouth noise, and then did it again. It was hoping for Bar-B-Que and damned if I wasn't too. Our dreams were realized when we got to the table.

I started with about six ribs and then dug into the brisket. Somebody around here knew how to smoke a brisket. I knew that the main thing was to wrap it in tin foil, slather on the sauce and seasoning, put it in the smoker, and leave it alone. My first bite let me know that someone here knew that drill too.

Another thing that I liked about Bar-B-Que at George and Ethel's was that they didn't serve baked beans, or pork and beans, or any of that crap. There were plenty of beans all right, but they consisted of home cooked pintos, or Ranch Style Beans for the purists like me.

I ate too much. I knew I was but couldn't help it. I was so full that I barely had room for two slices of the apple pie, and that was a shame. Not ten minutes later it was even more of a shame because Ethel had organized the move back into my house and my services were required to take the other trailer down there.

Meka wasn't about to let me out of her sight either. She followed me to the truck and I helped her into it for the backup under the trailer. She would not stay seated while I made the connections and cranked the dollies either. When we were ready to roll I helped her back into the cab and away we went.

I was planning to hop the curb and back the trailer up near the front door, like the movers had done while loading it. Ethel was already down there though and she wouldn't hear of it.

"How are you ever going to have a lawn if you keep running trucks over it. Use your new entrance, they must have put it there for a reason," she said.

It made sense but I still thought it would be more work for the ones doing the actual toting.

Meka and I drove around to the parking lot at the back of the barn and I lined the truck up with where I knew the elevator would rise. We both got out and it came to me that there was no place to put my hand to make it open. Meka spied it just then though.

There were two handprints glowing on top of the curb, one for me and one for her. She beat me to it and the grass started levitating. Well, not exactly, but you get the picture.

Back in the truck, we drove into our giant elevator when it was in position. When I stopped inside to get out and see about letting it down, I noticed that the door had closed behind us and I waited. Sure enough, the door in front of us opened about half a minute later.

I drove out and headed for the tunnel I knew was at the other end of the barn's big basement and the doors there started opening on their own too. The set at the other end of the tunnel did the same and they all closed shortly after we were through them.

I knew the basement was large, but I was surprised when I realized it was big enough for me to circle around and back the truck toward the elevator. I was about to when I saw part of the floor rising. It was a damned loading dock type of setup. When it stopped it was at the perfect height for the trailer's floor.

I got out to open the trailer's doors then got back in to bump the dock. I saw there was room for the other trailer too, so I dropped this one and put Meka back into the cab. We headed back up to the parking lot where I'd dropped the first trailer.

When we got back to the loading dock with it, I saw that Ethel had all their hands working on unloading. Meka and I got out and I was going to help, I swear I was. George came over from where he'd been leaning against the dock, holding it up no doubt.

"I hope you aren't tired of driving that thing around yet," he said.

"Doesn't matter if I am or I ain't. I can tell that Meka ain't tired of riding in it," I said, grinning like a fool I know.

"That's a damned good deal. I called around and found the best CB shop near here; it's across the road from the Flying J up north of Texarkana. A big truck needs a CB in it," George said.

"You know anything about the guy that owns that place?" I asked.

"No, I just found out where it was," George said.

"Well I'm no CB expert, but I've only found three guys I trust in the US. Beard has dropped off the radar, but I know that Clay is still in business.

"The other one is in North Carolina, just after you get most of the way through the gorge, but I ain't sure he's still there either. Probably be better all around to go out to Clay's, it's only a hundred and thirty-five miles on the other side of Ft Worth," I said.

"Ain't that a long way to go for a CB?" he asked.

"Maybe, but nothin' pisses me off worse than a radio that don't work," I said.

"What the hell, if you got the time, I got the money," George said.

"Now you're talkin'. I got his card in my billfold. I'll call him and see if we can get one installed tomorrow," I said.

Ethel came down about then and she walked over to us. I was afraid it was going to mean lifting that barge and toting that bale for me, but that wasn't it at all.

"George, what kind of trailers do you have for the new trucks?" she asked.

"Nothin' but pole trailers so far," he said.

"Well get on the phone and call somebody. I don't want the house to look like a damned wood yard with log trucks parked all around and pole trailers hangin' from every tree.

We have a ranch, George, not a pulpwood yard. Buy some bull-racks and see if you can get John to go fetch 'em. He looks nervous standing around down here with nothing to do. Besides, I don't think Meka is tired of ridin' yet," Ethel said.

She didn't give either one of us any time to argue, or even piss and moan, she left when she had spoken. George kept that resigned look on his face until she was back in the elevator.

"By God, I stole a march on her this time. I done talked to three people and found a place in Dallas that has two brand new trailers. Call that Clay and see about your radio and we can save one extra trip anyway," he said.

I fished out the number and called. Apparently the place was too big by now for Clay to answer the phone, but someone did. When I asked, he told me they had plenty of Ranger 2950s and that he'd tune one up and have it ready in the morning.

"I got two new trucks," I said, "Tune up two. I can bring cash or give you a credit card number over the phone. Whatever suits you tickles me pink."

"All right, we'll be there about nine in the morning," I said, and hung up.

"That didn't take long," George said.

"Naw, it's the drive that will take the time, and waiting around to get it put in, but there ain't no help for that," I said.

"When you plannin' to leave?"

"Might as well go on and go, I just want to see if Ethel can furnish a couple of pillows and sheets for the bunk and pack Meka a few clothes."

Talk about service. Ethel did better than that. She, Wanda, Carolyn, and Geneva were down in the basement ten minutes later with sheets, pillows, and the whole works. They even made up the bed for me.

After that they left for George's house to pack Meka a bag. All of them, except Ethel, who dug around through my things and packed a bag for me. An hour later, Meka and I were heading out Hwy 77, toward the junction with I-30. We had a a big ice chest full of Cokes and cold cuts, and two thermoses full of fresh brewed coffee. We even had our insulated mugs.

We only made it to Six Flags that day. I'm sure Meka didn't understand what it was when we saw it from the interstate, but I had noticed a sign and gone through town instead of around the loop. I called Clay's and told them to put us back one day.

We had time to do a few hours during the daylight and so we stopped for some fun. Meka could hardly believe the place but she loved the rides, well most of them anyway. I will say one thing for her, when a roller coaster made her puke; she wiped her mouth and kept on screaming.

After we closed the place down I drove back across to the TA in mesquite. No need for a hotel when we had our own room behind us.

The next morning we had breakfast in the coffee shop and then I paid the ten bucks for two showers. I hoped Meka could get it done by herself, and it turns out that she'd been paying closer attention to the way showers worked than I'd imagined. The only help I had to give her was wrapping her cast in a trash bag first.

I was done before she was, and waiting outside her shower's door when I heard her give the commode a last six flushes. That's my girl.

Since we were moving early in the morning, I drove on over to the dealership George had bought the trailers from. I didn't even have any paperwork to do; George had taken care of everything over the phone. We hooked the brand new bull-rack and headed for Clay's.

We pulled in about three hours later, around eleven AM, and darned if Clay wasn't behind the counter. He didn't know my name of course, but I could tell he at least remembered seeing me before.

I gave him a credit card for both radios, the coax, antennas, and antenna mounts - he was about to send a guy out to install one of them.

"You are going to tune it up aren't you?" I asked.

"Already taken care of. He'll have to set the SWR, but everything else is ready to go," he said.

"Just so we're on the same page, I need it tuned up to do about seven hundred and fifty watts," I said.

He looked at me a little funny, and then grinned.

"That particular tune-up cost a little extra," he said.

I was pretty sure he didn't want to sell the linears on a credit card, so I didn't even ask; I just reached in my pocket and laid a banded bundle of hundreds on the counter. It was ten thousand dollars and I knew it wouldn't be anywhere near that much, but I didn't want to haggle.

"Take it out of that and don't forget the other one will need the same treatment," I said.

He opened the bundle, took out sixteen bills, and handed me back the rest. I knew better than to wait for a receipt for the linears.

Clay took the radio back into the shop part of the building and fiddled with it for a few minutes. I assume he was turning down the radio's output so it would work better with the amplifier. He confirmed it when he came back and handed it to the installer.

"I set the radio back to a two watt carrier so it will sound better with the amp. It'll be kinda weak if you don't have the heater on," he said.

I told him this wasn't my first radio and he grinned at me. Meka was standing by the CB they had on behind the counter and I could tell she was listening. For once I was glad she couldn't speak or understand English yet. Two truckers were having a cuss fight with each other and they weren't being polite.

The install guy was better than the one I had last time I'd been here, a little over an hour better in fact. Meka and I were headed back to the truck less than two hours later.

"You headed off to pick up some cattle?" Clay asked, as we were leaving the shop. I guess he thought he should make a little more friendly conversation.

"Naw, I'm not a bull-hauler, I just found the trailer," I said, and we left while he was still laughing.