They gathered in the middle of the street, compared notes.
Marshall, brows wrinkled, said, “No foundation damage, thank heaven. Broken windows, some dust in the fireplace of one twenty-two. Better check that chimney. Given the rumble, it looks pretty good. Still, I better get crews out here tomorrow. Have to pay overtime.” He frowned.
“Better than bad press,” Paul wisely noted.
Folding his arms across his chest, Marshall nodded. “You’re right about that. I’ll make an appointment with the county inspector to come out. He’ll be backed up, so we can fix these small things. We want a clean report card.”
“The trees and shrubs came through.” Paul smiled. “They weren’t big enough to come down.”
“All right, let’s hit the off roads. The buildings not under roof, got to see if the trusses are twisted.” Marshall thought clearly just as he had on the football field.
“What will you do?” Harry inquired, admiring his nonemotional approach.
“Anything twisted, take it down. You don’t need to come with us for that, Harry. I wanted to first go through those houses ready to be put on the market. I’m hoping to open this to the public mid-May. In time for spring fever.” Marshall smiled.
Harry mentioned the cul-de-sac. “There’s a crack in the road near the cul-de-sac and another one at the back intersection there.”
“What were you doing out here?” Paul realized he had no idea what Harry was doing in the middle of all this.
“I’d come out to look over The Barracks and found the old milepost marker. Curiosity.”
“Curiosity killed the cat. In your case, you got an earthquake,” Marshall replied. “And thank you for your help.”
Driving home, Harry noticed a chimney had tumbled down on an old farmhouse.
“Wonder if we’re okay?” Tucker looked out the window to see people standing outside their homes or walking around them.
Talking to her animal friends, a habit, Harry said, “Big risk equals big money. If you’re smart, read the signs as well as have some luck. I can’t imagine how much debt Marshall incurs when he builds these subdivisions. A lot of that is bank money and the clock is ticking on the loan.” She exhaled. “And I wonder how many houses he has to sell to draw even? After that, pure profit. But he knows what he’s doing. He’s been at this since before I was born. Paul has to replace anything that dies within a year, keep up the big nursery, pay the help, pay for fertilizer, keep those greenhouses going. Tell you what, wimps don’t go into businesses like that. I know how I fret over my sunflower crop. I don’t think I could take the pressure they do.”
“You don’t have to,” Mrs. Murphy reassuringly told her. “You have us.”
“Since when do we make her money?” Pewter wondered.
“We don’t. We keep her from wasting it.” Tucker felt her patrolling alone saved security costs.
“She’s lucky,” Pewter bragged.
“For now,” Mrs. Murphy replied.
“What do you mean?” Tucker’s ears shot straight up.
“You know before a big storm or this earthquake we feel things she doesn’t?” Mrs. Murphy explained. “When they do feel it, it’s too late. I feel something about those deaths. Something’s coming.”
May 10, 2015
A boom, a crackle sent Harry running back into the barn from the pasture. No sooner did her feet touch the center aisle than a flash of pink lightning struck the field she’d just vacated.
Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker, thanks to speed, preceded her into the barn.
Another tremendous clap of thunder was followed by rolling thunder. Another bolt of lightning struck in the back pastures, white this time.
Within seconds the rains began, large drops, each of which seemed to thud when it hit the earth.
The horses in the barn eating their early morning grain lifted their heads.
Tomahawk, the aging gray Thoroughbred, watched. “Blast.”
Shortro, the athletic Saddlebred in the next stall, swallowed his grain, replied, “No turnout for a while. This is going to last.”
As the words left his mouth, the rain intensified, slamming the roof, battering windowpanes. The noise sounded like a steady roar. You couldn’t hear yourself think.
Walking into the tack room, closing the door behind her once the cats and dog came inside, she could hear better. The rat-tat-tat-tat on the roof, loud, let her know the rain poured. The hayloft ran on the opposite side of the aisle, across from the tack room. Over the tack room she stored winter blankets zipped into huge plastic bags. That afforded a bit more muffling, but she sank at the desk, wondering how long this would last.
Her cellphone had a weather map. She punched in the icon, pulled up the map.
“You all, it’s a huge green blob with yellow and red parts. Ugly.” She commented on the radar map, colorized, to help people gauge timing, danger, et cetera. “Yesterday an earthquake. Today, this.”
A warning scroll appeared at the top of the picture. She tapped it, a flood warning.
“Ugh and ugly” was all she said.
The wall clock read 8:30 A.M. Even when the rain passed, which would not be anytime soon, the ground would be too soaked to plow or seed. She didn’t want to turn the horses out until the worst of the storm passed. The temperature hovered in the high fifties.
At loose ends, Harry, never happy without a plan, picked up the desk phone and called Susan. “What’s it doing over there?”
“Unreal.”
“Here, too. I can’t get anything done.”
“You can always clean out your closet,” Susan suggested.
“What an awful thought.”
“Well, if you’d throw out all those sweatshirts, including the ones from high school, you’d have more room.”
“It’s not that bad. I haven’t had time to cut them up for rags.”
“You’ve had twenty-five years.” Susan wasn’t buying it.
“I have not. When we graduated, the sweatshirts were good and so were the tees.”
“Will you just go do it and shut up about it? And after you knock that out, throw out half of your shoes.”
“My shoes! What, do you want me to go barefoot and get hookworm?”
“You won’t go barefoot and you are way beyond Mary Janes.”
“Susan, that’s unfair. I haven’t worn Mary Janes since my mother made me when I was little.”
“Some of those shoes are horrible. Don’t even donate them to Goodwill. Burn them.”
“Aren’t you hateful today?”
“Maybe so, but I have organized closets with plenty of room.”
“That’s because you never come out of your closet.”
“Very funny. You’re certainly peevish today.”
“Am I? Maybe I am. I had the whole day planned to overseed my pastures. Spring is so late this year, I kept putting it off, and I’m glad I did.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t do it yesterday. It would all be washed away today.”
“I might as well surrender and do paperwork, my idea of hell.”
“Isn’t it everybody’s? Call me when you’re finished and we can celebrate.”
Harry hung up, checked the clock again, pulled out the long middle drawer of the desk and the farm checkbook with it. Maybe she could get a jump-start on the bills.
The phone rang.
Thinking it was Susan, she picked it up. “Now what?”
A long silence followed this. “Mrs. Haristeen?”
She recognized Snoop’s voice, became instantly alert. “It is. Sorry, I thought it was my best friend calling back.”