Chapter 25
With four women in the house, I was astounded at the noise. It seemed to me that all of them could, and did, talk at once. How they made sense out of what anyone said was beyond me. So, thinking to hide away until our evening meal was readied, I retreated to the back porch and began to separate the milk. I'd hardly gotten started when Lisa-Marie showed up with a grin on her face a mile wide.
"Let me do that, Tom. The herbalists and growers want to talk to you."
"Pardon me?" I frowned at her.
"Hey, Fran, Andy and Mai-Lin are asking questions I don't know answers to, or I'd handle it." She grinned. "Do we have water rights on the creek? Oh, and what about herbs that spread easily, what limitations do you want to put of planting those?"
"Jeez." I sighed. "What is going on?"
"Well, Fran has a seed catalogue with her and they say they need to know fairly quickly so they can get an order out for seeds that have to be started soon." She shrugged. "I think it could wait a while, but that's me, they seem to think it's important to know now."
"Okay. You can tell them that I need to check on water rights, but as far as I know, as long as we don't build a dam across the creek, we can draw from it for farming and gardening purposes. As far as easily spreading herbs is concerned, I don't think they should plant things they can't control." I answered with a sigh. "I'll check on the water rights, when I'm done here."
"That's about what I told them I thought, but I'll be honest, I didn't know where to check about water rights, so I thought I'd better ask." She nodded.
"That would be on the deed of ownership, which might very well be in the bank safety deposit box." I nodded. "I think Uncle Silas had a copy of it though. I know I received a copy of it from the lawyer when I inherited the place, and I know that's in the safety deposit box. Of course we can't get at that until the bank is open."
"Hah!" She grinned. "That will slow them down."
"As to the spreading plants and herbs, they might want to check the pernicious weed act." I sighed. "I'll bet some of their herbs will be mentioned there."
"Do we have a copy of that?" Lisa-Marie asked with a smirk.
"I think I do, but it's in the notes or one of my books from the College. I'll look later."
"Good enough." She nodded and spun away to leave me in peace for a few minutes.
Normally separating the milk seemed to take forever, that night it seemed to be done in the blink of an eye. As I walked back into the kitchen, I was met by questions from three of the four women. On top of everything else, Andy was trying to cook as well as try to keep up with the conversation between Fran and Mai-Lin while they poured over seed catalogues and made lists so she was adding extra questions.
I just held up a hand and said; "One question at a time; one woman at a time. Lets see if we can hold it down to a dull roar."
That brought a chuckle, but it did calm them down a bit. Lisa-Marie had dug into Uncle Silas's boxes of papers to see if she could find a copy of the deed to the farm. I walked over to my books from the college and flipped through the indexes of two or three of them, then handed a book to Fran.
"You'll find what you want in here." I handed her the book. "The pernicious weed act also covers the introduction of foreign nuisance plants. A foreign nuisance plant is one that wouldn't be easily controlled and that would include herbs. There's probably even a list of the ones they really don't want to see grown freely or allowed to spread."
Then I cleared a small area of the table of the seed catalogues and grabbed a sheet of paper and a ruler. Quickly I sketched in the area we were talking about, where the creek cut across the lower corner of the 'home' quarter section and Uncle Silas had left 'natural.' That was the area which Fran leased, but mostly I was drawing the sketch to show Mai-Lin the barrier strip that I would normally have farmed, but was now planning on renting to her. As I sketched, I was talking, mostly for Mai-Lin's benefit.
"You'll notice that it's fenced in all around and if you go down to look at it, you'll see that Uncle Silas tried to get the willows and snowberry bushes to grow along the fences. There's a reason. He didn't want the creek banks themselves to erode, so he stayed back from them a short distance and didn't disturb the natural growth. I plan on doing the same thing, in other words, no farming, or digging, or anything of that sort in that area."
"What about this fence line?" Mai-Lin pointed to the fence that separated the area I'd rent to her from the area leased to Fran.
"Same thing, I want to keep a barrier fence in place there. I'm trying to encourage a natural barrier hedge of sorts there as well. In that case though, it's like a living snow fence; it keeps the drifting on the road under control in the winter time. There is an access road of sorts along the back fence that comes in from the road and a gate in that fence; that has to remain for Fran to come and go from her lease. Then on the front side there's another fence, then the ditch and the grass-covered verge, of course the approach across the ditch that allows a vehicle or tractor onto the road has to remain. The section inside those boundaries is what you'll be renting or leasing from me."
"So, you said it's about five acres?"
"I'm guessing at that." I smiled. "It's more than four and less than ten, how's that? Until we take some measurements, even I'm not sure how big it is."
"It sounds wonderful. That is if I can bring in a mobile home and get water, power and telephone."
"Well, the hydro and phone lines run right by the front of it and a sweet water spring pours out of the bank of the creek about a hundred-yards upstream from that inner fence, it can be tapped for water. I think the inner corner, away from the creek would be the best place for a trailer to sit. You might want to think about getting a dog though, I mean part of your rent is going to be for chasing off teenagers who want to go for a midnight swim or have a drinking party on the creek banks. A dog would sure help you do that. Fran's sons raise the kind of dog you'd want, something big, but cooperative, at the same time as being a guard dog, he'd keep you company. Since you'd be helping her out by keeping her natural herbs safe, I'm sure she could talk them into finding you a dog to help you that isn't extremely expensive."
"We'd already talked a bit about that." Fran smiled, her finger holding her place open in the book she'd been consulting. "By the way, the boys might be around to see you and Lisa-Marie later this evening, since the two of you are going to be living on the farm full time now."
"Hmmph." I grunted, knowing that they wanted us to take one of their dogs, but also knowing that Lisa-Marie had her heart set on having a Border Collie.
"Hey, I saw one of that breed of horses that they claim to be dogs when I was staying in town." Lisa-Marie laughed. "I want a dog-sized dog that will be good around a farm, not a wooly mammoth sized dog that would eat half a horse for a meal."
"Oh, they don't eat that much more than a normal dog." Fran scoffed. "Besides, you should see what they do to coyotes. They just seem to hate those imitation wolves."
"It doesn't sound to me like you care much for coyotes yourself." Mai-Lin said quietly.
"I raise goats as well as herbs." Fran said quietly. "Coyotes seem to love goat flesh, especially young goat flesh, in other words the smallest of my goat's kids. One day after I'd been bellyaching to Silas about what the coyotes were doing to my goats he showed up with a dog for each of my boys. In six months those two dogs became terrors to the coyote pack that used to decimate my goat herd. Which means, Tom, you can blame my son's love for Bouviers on your uncle Silas's generous nature."
"I suppose they bred those two dogs to each other and sold the pups?" Mai-Lin smiled.
"Oh no, nothing that simple, he'd given the boys two purebred females with very good lineage. When they decided to have them bred, Silas arranged to have them bred to two exceptional dogs for 'pick of the litter' instead of a breeding charge. The boys ended up with eight pups of their own, but the two that the breeders chose were shown by them and did very well. Of course that made the boy's dogs quite saleable, but even then they kept the best females for themselves. Silas helped the boys decipher the genealogy charts for the next crosses and it seemed to me that in no time at all the boys were up to their ears in dogs that everyone was clamouring for." Fran explained. "So, although they seldom show the dogs themselves, they have no trouble selling most of them. Once in a while there's an accident though and the wrong bitch and sire manage to breed or a dog shows some character that the boys don't think is up to their standards. The dogs are still extremely good, but the boys refuse to sell them as breeding animals. Instead they have them neutered and either sell them off cheaply, or train them and give them away to friends."
"So, in all likelihood then, they would be allowing me the opportunity of getting one of those?" Mai-Lin smiled.
"Probably." Fran shrugged. "I think it would depend on what you wanted."
"I think I would want a big friendly dog to keep me company since I am friendly, but not very large myself." Mai-Lin laughed softly. "I would want a dog that was not too expensive as well, yet one that would answer to me when I needed it."
"I think the boys could probably do something for you." Fran smiled. "You'll have to talk to them though."
"Well, right now let's forget dogs and seeds and all that stuff. It's time to clear the table and set it, so we can eat." Andy announced.
I started to get up to help and got shoved back in my seat by Lisa-Marie.
"Sit!" She ordered and winked at me. "You and Mai-Lin did the chores and Mai-Lin served us lunch. We'll do this and return the favour."
"Oh my." Mai-Lin stared at her for a moment and then looked at me and broke into a giggle. "You do not argue, big Tom?"
"I don't argue." I grinned at her.
"And if you think Tom is big, wait until you meet Fran's sons. You'll see what I mean if they drop by later." Andy laughed.
"Yes." Lisa-Marie grinned. "Each one of them must weigh three or four times what you do. They're big."
"Oh, but I do know them." Mai-Lin laughed and to my surprise she blushed. "I went to school with David. We even dated a few times, but at that time my family was not very enthusiastic with my being around a white boy. Since my family now feels that I am an old maid who has turned down all of their prospects and want to be a gardener, I believe they would think differently, but I don't really care about their thoughts."
I glanced at Fran and saw her smile, then noticed the somewhat surprised look that smile brought to Andy's face. My eye caught Lisa-Marie watching as well, then saw her gaze shift toward me. I shrugged my shoulders and rolled my eyes when her brows lifted in question. There was too much going on under the surface for me to understand, but I knew that I was watching a developing situation of some sort. I almost seemed to me as if Andy was somewhat jealous of Mai-Lin, yet that didn't make sense, or did it?
I knew that Lisa-Marie was going to ask my opinion the next time we were safely alone, but at the moment I didn't have enough information to go on to offer any opinion at all. In fact Andy's look had astounded me as much as it seemed to have floored Lisa-Marie. Yet all we were going on was that one look which had fleetingly crossed Andy's face. Still, we had come to know her quite well in a very short period of time, at least I thought we had? Perhaps we didn't know Andy as well as we thought we did? Or were we putting too much emphasis on that one unguarded look of surprise?
I knew I was going to be paying close attention to the way Andy and Mai-Lin interacted in the next little while, particularly if David and Sampson dropped by that evening.
Nothing untoward happened during the meal and when we were done I was surprised that Andy accepted Mai-Lin's offer to help her wash and clean up the dishes after the meal. Fran, Lisa-Marie and I remained at the table, talking quietly about the happenings in our lives since we had talked last as we finished off our cups of herbal tea.
Of course Fran seemed to be quite interested in the way we both felt about our health and I knew part of that was brought on by her interest in the effects of the very tea we were drinking. Both of us told her that we thought things were stabilizing nicely which pleased her to no end. She did ask a few questions about Andy, but nothing that we hadn't expected her to ask.
I think she found the fact that her shipments of herbs were still sitting in my equipment shed somewhat humorous, especially since I told her that they weren't bothering me at all. I even laughed about it because the blizzard would have made it impossible for anyone to come and get those shipments. She agreed, acknowledging that I'd hit on the real reason that they were still there. Her customers still needed them, and she wondered If I'd mind if she hung around until Monday to make sure they came and got their supplies while the roads were open.
Neither Lisa-Marie nor I minded one bit, it meant there was one more person in the house, but both Lisa-Marie and I enjoyed her company so I knew it was no problem. I had a fleeting thought of teasing her and insisting on no more Midnight visits, but decided to leave that alone for now. I did resolve to let Lisa-Marie in on catching Fran's unwitting response to my earlier teasing words, but that would also have to be done when Lisa-Marie and I were alone.
Our tea cups were empty and the girls had even washed them when we heard someone drive into the yard. I got up and went to the front door to be met on the porch by Fran's sons.
"Hey guys, how are you doing?" I greeted them. "Your Mom warned us that you might be around this evening; are you on your way to another hockey game?"
"Hello Tom." One of the grizzled giants smiled. "Actually, we heard you and Lisa-Marie had come to your senses and were both going to be living on the farm permanently."
"So we come bearing presents." The other huge hulking giant grinned, offering me a box that I could see was perforated to let an animal breathe. "You should let Lisa-Marie open that inside the house."
"This isn't a pup is it?" I looked at the size of the box with doubtful eyes because it was certainly too small to hold one of their dogs, even a young pup.
"No, that's not a dog." Laughed one of the big pair.
"It's actually a cat." The other grinning partner in crime admitted. "Although we do have a couple of dogs that we'd like to have you and Lisa-Marie look at."
"I thought we'd agreed to hold off on that idea for a while?" I said quietly, still unsure which brother was which.
"Well, we did hold off." One of the pair looked at me almost in surprise.
"We said we'd wait until you two had decided to move to the farm permanently, so we did."
"What we have in the jeep is another cat, a barn cat. She's a really good mouser and used to live outside most of the year. However, the one you have in that box has always lived inside and was a lady's pet." The taller, slightly heavier fellow spoke again.
"They don't expect that Mrs. Granger will be able to care for herself any more. So Jean and her mother asked us if we'd rescue the old cats that the two old women had and offer them to you and Lisa-Marie. David and I had fun catching them without scaring them half to death since they smelled the dogs on us, but we managed." Samson grinned. "After the number of days they were alone in the house, they were hungry enough to go into a baited trap. We took them into town and the vet checked them over, but he said they're fine, just a bit hungry. After a full day of being fed right, they're even getting over that."
"We were by earlier, but you folks must have gone to town, I guess."
"I'll definitely take the mouser if she can live in the barn." I grinned. "I think when she knows where it came from, Lisa-Marie will be happy to have this one too, but why don't you carry it, Samson? By the way, just to warn you, Lisa-Marie repeated just tonight that she wants a Border Collie for a dog."
"Oh, we know that." He managed a smile. "But, would you mind carrying the cat? It makes me want to sneeze and it gets David even worse."
"Okay you two gentle giants, come on in and make yourselves at home." I invited with a grin.
The idea that a cat made these two huge men sneeze and feel uncomfortable seemed so incongruous to me that I was laughing when I stepped back inside.
"Delivery for Lisa-Marie Carruthers, soon to be Lisa-Marie Williams." I said loudly, holding out the box to her. "Jean sent you a thank you offering for all the help you gave her."
Lisa-Marie frowned at David and Samson as she took the box. "It's not a pup is it?" she asked suspiciously.
"No, it's not a pup." Samson sighed. "Talk about one track minds, you and Tom think almost too much alike."
He went on to explain about the two old ladies and their cats, then about the fact that Jean had suggested we might want them as pets. Lisa-Marie and Andy slowly opened the box as he talked and out marched the most regal looking cat I've ever seen. It wasn't a Persian, the hair was a bit too short and the nose too long for that, and although its markings were similar to a Siamese, they weren't the same. However, to be honest, I didn't know what breed it was. I sat down on a chair to watch and see what happened.
"In case you're wondering, she's a purebred Birman, sometimes called a Burmese." David's voice rumbled. "Jean and her mom just don't think it would be right to take her to their house, they already have cats and so do Triple Dub and his mom. We can't very well have her around our place, Mom's American Standard cats would eat her alive and the dogs in the house would drive her nuts. So Jean and her mom thought of you two. Tom has already accepted the tabby cat for out in the barn because we know she's a good mouser."
"Oh, I'll take her in, if she'll have us." Lisa-Marie laughed almost nervously. "She looks like she belongs in a castle though."
"Oh, I think she already likes the place." He laughed at her as the cat marched around slowly, wandering here and there.
The cat decided she'd found a home and leaped into my lap, already purring as she head butted me for attention.
"Hey, you're supposed to be Lisa-Marie's cat." I told it as I scratched between her ears. "What's her name?"
"Aunt Nettie used to call her Princess." Andy grinned at me as she came over and scooped up the cat to drape it over her shoulder. "The same thing used to happen when your Uncle Silas used to go visit the Aunties. Anyone's lap was fine for her unless Silas came in, if he did, she had to visit him."
"Why do I find that so unsurprising?" Lisa-Marie snorted, moving over and stroking the purring cat. "I think she'll settle in just fine. The only problem is we aren't really prepared for a cat. We've got no food for them or anything like that."
"Oh, we brought her cat bed and her litter box, as well as both cat's food bowls and water dishes, not mention the food each cat preferred." Samson smiled at her. "The old ladies used to spoil their cats."
"The other cat not so much, they used to let it run outside when the weather was warmer." David laughed aloud, his voice rumbling slightly more than his younger brothers.
"Talking about the other cat, maybe we should let it out too." Samson suggested. "Did you say it was to go in the barn, Tom?"
"I'll come with you." I nodded, getting to my feet.
"May I come as well?" Mai-Lin asked quietly.
"You sure can." I snorted, wondering why she bothered asking.
"Tiny, what are you doing here?" David asked in astonishment.
"Well, Tom and my Mother are friends and since I wish to be a vegetable farmer, Mother and I approached him about renting a piece of land to do it on. He seems to have a perfect place for me to rent which will allow me to live and work the way I wish." Mai-Lin walked over and grinned up at the huge man who must have weighed as much as four of her. "Can I please have at least a small hug from such a large and well-remembered friend?"
She squealed in delight as he lifted her off her feet and hugged her gently
I looked at Lisa-Marie and Andy's surprised faces and then at Samson and Fran's smiles and I couldn't help but grin.
Things were definitely getting interesting.
In the long run everyone except Lisa-Marie and Fran made the trip out to the barn with the box containing the other cat. When I had Andy open the box, this cat showed a completely different attitude to the one in the house.
She exploded out of that box like a cyclone, landing near my feet and taking about one second to orient herself, then she was across the floor and leaping up onto the top bar of one of the partitions between two of the stalls in the barn. She sat there and stared around herself for a few seconds as if assessing the situation before she marched along the top rail of the stall to perch near the junction of the two mangers of the stalls, which gave her several options of which direction she could move if she felt the need. Then she settled back and proceeded to do a cat's wash of her front paws and face.
That pose lasted about thirty seconds and just as I noticed Andy tense as if planning to move slowly toward the cat, the light brown and dark grey tabby's head swung to one side and she seemed to tense. I reached out and caught Andy's arm, shaking my head, but nodding toward the cat as her ears twitched and flattened slightly.
There was a sudden blur and the cat erupted to dive down into one of the mangers. An instant's scramble and a single pounce later, then the cat's head came up proudly. In her jaws was a dead mouse. After a defiant stare at the five sets of watching human eyes as if to tell us that was how it was done, she leaped back to her preferred perch and proceeded to crunch into the mouse with obvious delight.
"Eew." Andy turned her head away, screwing up her nose in disgust.
"To the cat, that's filet mignon." I chuckled.
"Maybe sirloin tip." Sampson offered with a snort and I actually laughed at Andy's even stronger grimace.
"You don't have any mouse baits or anything like that around, do you?" David asked.
"Nope." I snapped instantly. "I don't like them at all, too much peripheral kill."
"Peripheral kill?" Mai-Lin looked at me as if I was a stranger. "What is that, please?"
"Well, lets say you use mouse bait. A mouse finds it and gorges itself. That mouse is now dying from the poisoned bait, so its reactions are slow. A weasel catches it and gets poisoned too, then a hawk kills the weasel. The same poison might kill five or six animals, most of them beneficial to the farm in some way." I said with some feeling. "I hate poisons like that and avoid them at all costs."
"Well, I think for a while at least, she'll be easy on the bought food." David grinned at me, handing me her blanket. "I don't know if she'll need this or not."
"Oh, probably not, but she might. We'll put it in the old cat bed that Uncle Silas had for his old cat, just in case."
I grinned, opening the stall gate, lifting a ragged hunk of cloth off of a shelf with ends and a top, but only a low board across the front which had a special extension that had a depression to hold a cat dish. I handed the dish to David who turned it upside down and dumped out the dust and whatever else was in it. He rinsed it carefully before drying it and filling it with dry cat food, then handed it back to me. Putting that in place, I walked back put of the stall just in time to watch the cat leap down and scurry for a second before it pounced and killed a second mouse.
"That is one helluva mouser!" I said enthusiastically."I suppose when you had her at the vets, he knows her history does he?"
"Unh huh." Samson nodded and grinned. "He said to warn you that she hasn't been fixed and that she's pregnant."
"Thank you. That's exactly what I wanted to know." I gave him a thumbs up sign and a grin. "I think this farm has enough mice to support a couple more cats like her. I certainly want one for up in the equipment shed."
"I would like to have one for company in my trailer as well." Mai-Lin smiled at me.
"I don't think you'll have any trouble disposing of her kittens." Andy laughed. "In fact you may find you have to argue to keep one yourself. She's well known around the neighbourhood."
"How old is she?" I asked quietly looking at her again.
"I think she's four or five; she can't be much older than that." Andy smiled. "This will be her third litter of kittens, I think."
We discussed her for a bit, but she'd polished off the second mouse as we watched, then had gotten a drink from one of the water bowls in the stall and had stalked off in the search of further prey. We looked around the barn a bit and talked to the two big men about the animals for a few minutes, then headed back to the house.
Inside we found Lisa-Marie with her nose buried in Uncle Silas' papers again, while Fran had her seed catalogues scattered on the table once more. Andy and Mai-Lin joined them, but the two huge brothers turned to me with wide grins.
"We understand you just bought a few CB units. We're sort of the local experts." David chuckled. "Have you ever set up a CB before?"
"Nope, are you offering to help me to set mine up?"
"That's really why we're here." Samson nodded. "Where are you planing on putting the base unit? Having it here in the kitchen would be nice, but it might be better in another room."
"Well . . ." I started to say.
"That goes in the farm office," Lisa-Marie spoke out before I could say anything more. "I haven't got him his desk yet, but there's a table in the corner of the room you can use to set it up for now."
She got to her feet and dusted her hands off, then lead us down to the room that Uncle Silas had used as a parlour of sorts. She pointed to the front corner of the room which had a window facing the road and another with a view out across the fields.
"Tom's desk will go right there and mine will be in the other corner, under that other window. That way there won't be any squabbles between us about either one of us disturbing the other's projects. He gets the CB."
"Cripes, are you sure? This is a great room." David said quietly as he looked around. "Gosh, a farm office with a fireplace?"
"Yep, I'm planning on having book shelves on most of the walls and I plan to leave a small sofa in here, maybe a hide a bed for extra guests, once we start to have kids. There's no reason an office can't be comfortable too." She said firmly. "I've seen him when he gets into record keeping and studying things. I'd like to have a room where I can be comfortable at the same time, that way I can keep him company while he vegs out to the world around him."
"He gets to concentrating, does he?" David asked.
"Concentrating? That's not what I call it." She grinned. "When he gets his nose stuck into something, he's lost to the world. You could set off an atom bomb in his hip pocket and he'd never notice."
"Aww now, that's hardly fair." I protested.
"Hey, it's not a problem." She wrapped me in a hug. "It's as much a part of you as your thing with the animals."
As I looked around, I realized that I liked her idea for layout to the room and if she wanted me to have the prime corner of it for my desk, I wasn't going to argue.
"Okay guys, I guess this is where we put it." I shrugged. "All the bits and pieces are in those boxes and I'm sure not turning down any help at setting it up. I was going to have to do a bit of studying before I could do it."
I'd hardly finished speaking and they were opening boxes and taking out pieces. Over the next couple of hours they not only set it up, but they explained what each piece was and what it did.
First, they brought in tools from the jeep, bored a hole in the wall and put in an insulated sleeve for the antenna lead. After that we put on coats and went outside where they installed a lightning arrester over the end of the sleeve and connected a ground lead from it to the main house ground. Then they rigged a temporary lead to one of the mobile whip antennas and mounted that on a sixteen-foot two-by-four that they fastened to one of the front porch uprights and guyed it off to the outer corners of the house using clothes' line wire.
"This is just until we can get your tower out here from town." David said nonchalantly as if it wasn't a problem at all.
"We'll borrow your two-ton truck for that and break it down into sections, no problem." Samson answered the unspoken question my raised eyebrows had asked. "I know you were talking about a concrete pad for it, but it would be better if we just drilled down four postholes on the corners with a posthole drill and poured four columns. It uses far less concrete and that way the base won't frost heave in the winter."
"While we have the tower in sections, we can check all the fastenings to make sure they're solid, then we'll give it a good coat of paint too." David added as we walked back into the house, then into the new office.
He glanced around and grinned. "While we're at it, we should run a phone line in here, then you could get one of those new computers. We've got one and, man, does it ever make keeping track of our records easy. Since you're still a student, you can get a modem and link up through the phone using your student number. That way you can get onto that information network they're setting up between all the colleges and universities. Eventually I think that's going to be a lot handier than it is now. Even now it's great for getting answers to a lot of the questions that you might have, even if it's slow, but it would make your studying a lot easier."
"Yep, you can get a printer and type your letters out like we do. It lets you keep a copy and you don't even need to keep a printed copy if you don't want to. You can just save the file to a floppy disc or one of those hard disc drives and store your file that way." Samson added as he began to hook up the various pits and pieces. "Nice radio by the way. I'm glad to see you got a booster, that way you've probably got enough power to get through to us easily, maybe even enough to talk to your folks."
"It's a good radio too and I see you got a full compliment of crystals for frequency, which will pay off in the long run." David was adding another cable link from the booster to the radio and plugging things in. "There, that should do it."
"Huh, you guys lost me about half an hour ago." I looked at the little lights on the front of the radio light up and heard noises from the speaker. "You mean it's ready to go?"
"Sure, you want me to show you how to get out and make contact?" He asked.
"I guess so." I looked at the rig and shook my head. "I'm going to need a lot more education before I understand all this."
"It'll come easy enough." Samson laid a huge hand on my shoulder. "We'll give you a full run through again later. Heck, you'll even need call signs, but it's all no problem."
"Oh, I was assigned a number on my license for contacting other people." I sat down in a chair, off to one side, but had hardly gotten seated when that darn cat leaped up to settle herself on my lap.
"Those government call signs are just a pain in the butt." Samson grinned. "Legally we should use them, but we all use nicknames or 'handles' instead. For instance, David is 'Big Bear,' Mom is 'Mama Bear' and I got stuck with 'Little Bear' or sometimes 'Baby Bear.' Go ahead and show him, David."
"Okay." David sat down, picked up the mic. and changed frequency. " 'Wee Willy', have you got your ears on, this is 'Big Bear' just trying out 'Farmer Tom's new rig, over."
" 'Wee Willy' here, you're coming in like gang busters, 'Big Bear.' Over."
" 'Triple Dub' here, 'Big Bear.' You're signal is five by nine here too. Tom will need a different handle. We've got a 'Farmer Tom' listed from east of Olds now. By the way, Jean wants to know how the cats are doing? Over."
" 'Big Bear' back at you, 'Triple Dub.' The cats are both fine and dandy, They settled right in, in fact the fancy one is sitting in his lap right now. I swear he charms any animal. He did the same thing with our dogs. Over."
The guys talked on the CB for a while, but I was feeling stubborn and resolutely turned down all their attempts at finding a 'handle' for me, deciding to temporarily just use my initials. So, my call sign became 'T. S. W.' for the time being.
I'd been up early and it was growing late, so I began to yawn. David and Samson caught on to the fact that I was very tired and suggested that they come back the next day to help me mount the other two mobile units, then help with the bathroom. Having seen how they worked together and considering how badly I wanted that bathroom done, I couldn't very well turn them down. I accepted.
Half an hour after seeing them out the door, I was in bed. Looking back on it later, if I had thought about how little physical labour I had done that day, yet how tired I felt that night, I should have realized that something was wrong, but I didn't.