Scout paused as she wondered what kind of mother she’d be, and decided that Nana-mode wasn’t so bad, but it had produced her mother.
So.
Seemed like a lose-lose all around. Was there a third option?
She bet the Nightstalkers could figure out a third option.
Scout flipped the sign on her door to DO NOT, and walked into her new room. Sometimes she missed her old room in North Carolina with its nice window to the roof where she could climb out and sit in the dark and smoke and watch Nightstalkers parachute out of the sky.
Once at least for the latter.
But this room had its upsides. There was a lovely window seat looking out onto the river and all her books were on built-in shelves. She liked snuggling up on the cushions on the window seat and reading and watching the action on the river. The locals called it Fort Loudoun Lake because there was a dam about twenty miles to the west. But Scout called it the Tennessee River, because the river was here before the dam and it had river barges, and barges didn’t go in circles on a lake. They ended up somewhere on a river. Point A to Point B. On one tug she’d seen Chattanooga, TN painted on the stern, and she knew that was a long way past the dam, downriver, traveling through a lock in that dam and the others. A bunch of dams on the river, each one dropping the level seventy feet. She’d researched it, and on some base, explorer level, it excited her to think one could get on the river in her own backyard and travel over six hundred miles, meandering southwest through Tennessee into Alabama, turning back north, crossing back into Tennessee, past the Shiloh battlefield, and then into Kentucky where the river links up with the Ohio at Paducah. And from there, of course, the Ohio went to the Mississippi and the Mississippi went all the way down to New Orleans and beyond there to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Gulf, the Atlantic, and from there the world.
Sometimes Scout wondered if she ought to consider a career in the merchant marine. Or if the lure of the Mississippi was from all the Twain she’d read.
She’d read all the Twain there was to read.
On the far side of the river, the original rocky side (her house was on the drowned farmland side created when the dam was put up during the early 1940s by the TVA), a barge was anchored, putting in a dock for a house on the cliff. The barge was old and battered and every piece of metal on it was covered with rust, but it had a crane and a pile driver to pound the long wooden poles down into the river bottom, and lately she liked to just sit on her window seat and watch that power in action, listening to the rhythmic thud during the day.
Her mother complained every time it was working and had already called the TVA to complain about the noise.
As if.
Scout likened that to people who bought a house in the flight path of an airport and then complained about the noise of the planes taking off and landing. Speaking of which, while they weren’t on the civilian flight path to Knoxville Airport, only a few miles away as the crow flies, for some reason big military planes flew overhead every day, taking off and landing. She figured the air force just had to take a different runway from the civilians, just like the Nightstalkers hadn’t been able to fit in her old gated community. The military was just different.
Scout liked the river and overall she rated this place better than Senator’s Club, although she missed her window egress and the ability to sit on the roof and smoke. For that, she now climbed under the wood fence and then went down to the riverbank and hid behind a wooden seawall the owner of the barn had put in. It was okay, but she had a feeling once summer really hit, the mosquitoes were going to be a bitch to deal with.
She could smell the French toast, but it was a thin smell because her mother had held back on the sugar and cinnamon, which her nana would have piled on to make the heady aroma of a real, vibrant dish. One that would draw you downstairs, just to be in the presence of its creation.
Scout also liked the new bathroom because a bunch of the plugs were built into the cabinets and drawers so her mother didn’t complain about tangled wires or scummy electric toothbrushes out in the open. If it was hidden in a drawer, her mother was of the “out of sight, out of mind” persuasion, at least when it came to her daughter.
Scout hit the face of her iPad and music came out of the speakers built into the ceilings, which was also a cool feature. The whole house could be controlled by iPad, and not just the music: lights, locks, garage doors…pretty much everything. It was a smart house, according to the real estate brochure. Scout thought it was probably getting smarter than her three-person family and would one day turn on them.
She’d seen a house do that back in North Carolina.
The Nightstalkers had blown it up and then burned it down to ashes.
She didn’t think her mother would be happy if that happened.
Sometimes, though, when she saw her dad at his computer and the Quicken program was open, she had a feeling he wouldn’t be too upset to collect on the insurance.
Scout turned on her toothbrush and stuck it in her mouth, keeping her lips shut so the drool didn’t run down her face. She wanted to be out of here as soon as she wolfed down the skimpy breakfast her mother was preparing. She wandered back to the big window and watched the barge across the river. The crew had just arrived and tied off their skiff and were getting ready for a day’s work. A speedboat roared by, some guy water-skiing behind it in a wet suit, because May was too early, even in Tennessee, plus it was slightly chilly at 7:15 in the a.m. There was a cluster of ducks near their dock and Scout tried to remember what that was called — a gaggle? Or was that geese? — which got her trying to remember the difference between ducks and geese.
Her family had two Sea-Doos on lifts on one side of their dock, but the boatlift was empty. Her dad sat every evening after work with his catalogues and laptop and looked at boats the way her mother went through her yoga attire catalogues and Southern Living magazines. Weird the way everyone wanted different stuff and spent so much time looking—
Scout yelped because her mouth suddenly got hot and her back molar was tingling like she’d lost the filling and hit a nerve. She jerked the toothbrush out of her mouth so quick, she forgot to shut it off, spraying herself and the blue window seat and the window with spittle and toothpaste. Before she hit the off button, it stopped. As did the music and the lights overhead.
Her first thought was she’d have to clean the window and wash the seat cover.
Great. Her mother couldn’t even make French toast without flipping a circuit breaker.
She looked over and the iPad screen was dark, which was weird, because even if the power went out, its battery should keep it on. And then she realized the battery-powered toothbrush wasn’t wired in to a circuit breaker either.
Scout tossed the toothbrush in the sink and went downstairs. Her mother was standing in front of the stove, the French toast sizzling, the lights on.
“What’s up with my room?” Scout asked.
“What do you mean, honey?” Then the range exhaust fan stopped, as did her mother. “Well, that’s weird.”
“Must be the breaker box,” Scout said, even though she doubted her mother knew what one was, never mind where it was.
And she knew it wasn’t the breaker box. One could hope.
Sometimes hope isn’t a good thing.
Then all the lights went off and the two just stood there for a moment staring at each other.