Darla's Story (5 page)

The point is that I’m a great driver. I’ve
got thirteen years of practice. So when I ran over the old lady, it
was almost as shocking to me as it was to her.

Mom saw her before I did, screaming “Darla!”
which snapped me out of my daydream about Dad and tractors. I
slammed on the brake, but not before I heard the thump of the
engine cowling hitting a figure in a long dress, cloaked in gray
shadows by the ashfall.

My whole body was shaking with adrenaline.
How could this happen? Had I just killed someone? As much as I
wanted to, I couldn’t wind back and redo the last few seconds. But
maybe I could keep from making it even worse. It looked like she
was trapped under the small front wheels of the tractor: if she was
alive, would it do less harm to free her by backing up or pulling
forward? I couldn’t tell from the driver’s seat. I set the parking
brake and vaulted out of the seat to check.

“Can you hear me?” I yelled.

She moaned, and I let out a huge sigh of
relief. I hadn’t killed her—yet, anyway. I knelt over her—every
part of her but her bright blue eyes was covered, swathed in cloth
to protect her from the ash. The corners of her eyes were crinkled
and gray—I guessed she must be at least fifty. She was trembling,
probably from shock. Her feet weren’t visible. I patted her legs,
touching delicately here and there, trying to figure out if her
feet were pinned under the tractor wheels. And gasped in pure
relief when I found her feet intact. The tractor wheel had caught
her dress, and by some lucky instinct she’d pulled her feet up as
she fell. That plus my quick stop had saved her.

I grabbed the pleats of her dress, trying to
pull it free or rip it. That didn’t work—the dress was made of a
heavy fabric and thoroughly trapped under the wheel. I fished out
the pocket knife I carry everywhere and hacked her free, leaving a
ragged hem on the dress and a swatch of cloth stuck under the
wheel.

“Can you stand?” I asked.

She nodded hesitantly and started levering
herself up. She wore a child-sized backpack stuffed nearly to
bursting, the bright pink Hello Kitty logo smeared with gray ash.
Halfway to her feet, she collapsed. I caught her—she’d passed
out.

Mom slid off the truck to stand beside me.
“Is she okay?”

“She’s passed out. Maybe she hit her head
when she fell down?”

“Let’s take her home.”

I nodded and ducked my shoulder, getting it
under her waist to heft her like a feed sack. She was lighter than
I expected, about like lifting two grain sacks. There was no good
way to carry her on the tractor; I climbed into my seat awkwardly
and rolled her off my shoulder, holding her across my lap. Mom
climbed up behind me, so we now had three people jammed into a
space meant for one.

Luckily the house wasn’t far. Getting off the
tractor proved to be almost as tricky as getting on had been. Mom
slid off first, and I wormed my way out from under the woman,
leaving her draped across the seat. Then I ducked under her torso
to load her onto my shoulder again.

As I trudged into the house, she started
coughing, a dry hacking noise like the asthmatic wheeze of a
smoker. In the living room, I rolled her off my shoulder and onto
the couch. Ash fell from her dress in clumps—it was going to be a
nightmare to get the living room clean again. Which made me wonder:
Who wore a dress to hike around in an ashfall? I would never wear a
dress again if Mom would let me get away with it. Overalls would be
way easier to clean up. And for that matter, who hikes through an
ashfall—and down the middle of the road, no less?

Mom carried a cup of water into the living
room. I levered our guest upright, and Mom held the water to her
lips. She drank deeply, draining the whole thing. Then she
collapsed back onto the couch, her eyes closed.

Mom tried to shake our guest awake—we thought
she’d be more comfortable if she got cleaned up before she
slept—but she moaned, batted at Mom’s hand feebly, and went right
back to sleep. She was lying on her backpack with her head askew.
Mom levered her up, and I worked the straps off her shoulders. Mom
checked her legs over, making sure nothing was broken, while I set
the backpack beside the couch and unwrapped the scarves she’d been
using as breathing cloths. She was older than I’d thought, her
mouth and corners of her eyes creased with laugh lines. She looked
pleasant and friendly, like everyone’s favorite grandmother.

“You recognize her?” I asked Mom.

“No.”

“She’s not from around here, is she?”

“Probably not.”

Mom arranged a pillow under her head, and we
let her sleep. And sleep. And sleep. She woke once late that
evening, and I gave her more water and helped her stumble to the
bathroom. I asked who she was, but she wasn’t coherent enough to
give me her name. Other than that, she slept solidly through the
night, too.

Mom made pancakes for breakfast the next
morning. Well, actually they were more like tortillas—we were out
of eggs and milk, so we couldn’t make real pancakes—but they tasted
okay.

Not long after the first pancake hit the
skillet, the old lady appeared in the kitchen doorway. Ash still
clung to her clothes and to the narrow band around her eyes that
had been uncovered, making her look ethereal: a masked ghost ready
for some netherworld ball.

“You sleep well?” Mom asked.

“Where am I?” She leaned into the doorway, as
if the jamb were holding her upright.

“You’re safe,” Mom replied. “I’m Gloria. This
is my daughter, Darla.”

“Where am I? Where’s the bathroom?”

“You don’t remember? Waking up last night?” I
replied.

Mom started to bustle over to her, but I
jumped up to show her the bathroom. I didn’t want to get stuck
cooking.

In the bathroom, I had to explain the squat
tube again, and when I put a pail of clean wash water in the sink,
she drank from it. I offered to get her a cup, but she shook her
head between gulps of water.

Mom had me fetch some clean clothes for
her—jeans and a blouse, not a ridiculous dress. By the time she’d
changed and cleaned up, there was ash all over the bathroom. I
groaned inwardly; ashfall or not, Mom would insist on cleaning the
bathroom until it was spotless.

Finally, we were all seated at the kitchen
table, a plate of steaming tortilla cakes sitting between us. Mom
blessed and served the food, and then the interrogation began.

“We didn’t get your name,” Mom said.

“Ruth,” she answered between mouthfuls.

“Where are you from, Ruth?” Mom asked.

“Champaign.”

“Illinois? You’re a ways from home.”

“I’m not exactly sure where I am.”

“About five miles north of Worthington.”
Ruth’s face looked blank, so Mom went on. “Iowa. Southwest of
Dubuque.”

“A long ways from Omaha?”

“Omaha?” I said. “You’re not even close. All
the way on the wrong side of the state.”

Ruth sighed, deflating a little in her chair.
“I thought I’d gotten closer. Before my minivan broke down.”

“Omaha’s a lot closer to Yellowstone,” I
said. “It’s going to be worse there.”

“I know, I know. I tried to fly out, but
nobody was at the airport. Can you imagine that? We’re in the
middle of a disaster, and they closed the airport!”

“Um, yeah.” I lifted my eyebrows at Mom, and
she gave me a stern look in return.

“Well, that’s just when we need to fly the
most.”

“Planes can’t fly in an ash cloud,” I said.
“Don’t you remember that volcano in Iceland a few years ago? That
shut down all the airports in Europe?”

“Well . . . yes,” she said so hesitantly. I
was sure she had no idea what I was talking about. “But they could
have sent just one more flight to Omaha. Instead of abandoning the
airport.”

“Sure they could’ve,” I said. “And instead of
being here, having this delightful conversation, you’d be a few
dozen hunks of blackened flesh on a crash site not far from the
Champaign airport.”

“Darla!” Mom glared at me.

“I’m sure it would’ve been fine,” Ruth
said.

“Christ,” I muttered.

Mom hurried to change the subject. “You have
family in Omaha, Ruth?”

“Yes, my grandbabies. There’s Esther and
Rachel and the newborn, Peter. Such beautiful children. Let me show
you.” She glanced around, “Where’s my pack?”

“In the mudroom,” Mom replied.

Ruth got up from the table, and I showed her
the door to the mudroom. She grabbed her pack and brought it back
to the table, setting it beside her chair. From it she produced, of
all things, an electronic picture frame. “Where do I plug this
in?”

Mom and I just stared at her; I had no idea
what to say.

“Oh, there.” She noticed one of the outlets
above the kitchen counter and plugged her frame in. Of course it
remained blank. “Your power is down? Mine was off when I left. But
I was sure it’d be back up by now. It’s been what, seven days?”

“Eight,” I answered.

“Shameful. Just shameful. When I was a
younger woman, the power was never down for more than a few hours.
Those linemen would come out in the middle of the night, in any
kind of weather, and fix it. They wouldn’t have let a little ash
stop them.”

I had no idea what to say to that, either. I
looked into her pack—it was stuffed with more electronic picture
frames. “You brought nothing but picture frames?”

“Well, I had more of them in the van. I
couldn’t fit them all in the backpack. So I just brought my
favorites. The baby pictures, the ballet recital, the Lion King
performance—oh, you should see Esther in her Zazu costume.
Adorable! I do hope the power comes on soon.”

“So,” I said, “you’re walking across Iowa in
a dress—”

“It’s Esther’s favorite. The one she likes to
hug.”

“And you brought nothing but useless hunks of
plastic and metal?”

“They’re not useless—they’ll work fine when
the power comes back on. I had water and snacks in the outside
pockets, but I ran out.”

I leaned down, cradling my forehead in my
hand, trying to hold my thoughts inside my brain. Unsuccessfully.
“When they taught common sense in kindergarten, you were in the
timeout corner, weren’t you?”

Mom and Ruth erupted into simultaneous
protests.

Ruth: “Well, I’ll be—”

Mom: “Darla Jane Edmunds, you apologize. This
instant! I’d most certainly trek to Omaha if you were stranded
there.”

I glared at Mom for a moment and then turned
to Ruth. “Ma’am, I am most sincerely and wholeheartedly sorry if I
in any way offended your sensibilities by stating too baldly what
any reasonable person would find obvious.”

“Darla!”

“May I be excused, please? I need to try to
harvest some corn. Unless you’re both planning to eat picture
frames?”

“We will talk about this later, young woman,”
Mom said. She made a shooing motion with her hands and turned back
to Ruth. “I do apologize for my daughter’s rudeness.”

“Why, Rachel is only four and she would never
. . .”

I closed the mudroom door so I wouldn’t have
to hear whatever else our addlepated guest said.

The ash scraper on my tractor worked okay. It
took some getting used to; I could only drive about twenty feet
before the ash overloaded it, and I had to stop and pry it up,
leaving a ridge of ash behind. And it took two passes to clear a
section. Still, it was way more efficient than digging up the corn
by hand. Within two hours, I’d hung six gunnysacks stuffed with
corn ears off the side of the tractor.

I drove back to the house and shut down the
tractor. The cloth covering the extra air filter was almost
completely jammed with ash, so I took it to the pump to rinse it.
Then I hauled all six bags of corn into the mudroom. By the time I
got cleaned up, Mom had set up a mortar and pestle—unfortunately a
small one, designed for grinding spices, not corn—two plastic
laundry baskets for the husks and silks, and pans for the kernels
and meal.

“Can I help?” Ruth asked.

“You’re our guest,” Mom said.

“Sure, you can help,” I said. “I’ll husk the
corn, you get the kernels off, then Mom can grind it. Sometimes you
can just twist the ears in your hands, or you might have to use a
knife.” I thought about the fact that Ruth had dragged electric
picture frames along on her trek from Champaign, so I added, “Make
sure you don’t hold on to the sharp end of the knife, okay?”

Mom silenced me with a glare. And maybe I was
being a bit unfair. I didn’t hate Ruth—she was just so . . .
impractical.

The operation went fine—better than I
expected. I’d shucked all six bags of corn before Ruth had finished
removing the kernels from the first bag’s worth. Grinding was going
even more slowly. We needed more mortars and pestles, or better
yet, a real grinder with a stone. The finished product was a little
mushy—we’d have to dry the cornmeal to preserve it.

“I’m going to head out to the barn,” I said.
“See if I can improvise some kind of gristmill.”

“Thank goodness,” Mom said. “I don’t know how
much more of this my hands can take.”

“Would you like to trade for a while?” Ruth
asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

I slogged out to the barn, thinking about
grinders. Maybe I could hook one to my bicycle? And I thought I
might be able to make the grinding stones with the bags of Redi-Mix
concrete I kept on hand for fixing fence posts.

I spent Friday afternoon sketching out a plan
for a bicycle-powered grinder and building forms for the concrete.
I had to make two stones, a base and a runner. The runner stone
needed a feed hole for the corn kernels and some way to attach it
to the bicycle chain.

Making a circular concrete form is tricky.
The only time I could recall Dad and I doing it, we’d run to the
hardware store in Dyersville and bought a heavy cardboard cylinder
the right size. That wasn’t an option, of course, so I figured I’d
need to make some kind of template. I struggled for more than an
hour to cut a misshapen, sort-of-circular chunk of plywood with an
old coping saw.