Cities and Throngs and Powers by Alma Boykin

Author:Alma Boykin [Boykin, Alma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

Four: Winter into Spring into the Fire

“Where has the winter gone?” Alicia demanded of the mud and green surrounding the house.

It had passed in shooting lessons, caring for the generator, shoveling, dragging a sledge to the road to meet Teddy so he didn’t have to brave the drive, and selling jewelry. And learning how to play billiards, although she lost far more than she won. Getting a truly great fire remained an elusive art form, but she no longer smoked herself out of the library. And she understood why Fabian had strung ropes to the well house and around the corner to the root cellar. Speaking of which … She took a firm grip on the top of her wellingtons and squelched through the morass. She’d lost boots in the muck twice and it was not going to happen again! Fabian had laughed at her as she teetered, one sock-foot in mid air, the boot firmly stuck ankle-deep. “It’s not funny!”

“Not to you, perhaps, but I find it delightfully amusing.” Although he’d helped her get sorted out. After he finished laughing.

Once safely in the root cellar, Alicia found some potatoes and the last apples, tucking them into her basket. She clipped three onions from the closest braid, then squeezed a fourth. “Ick.” Two more felt as soft, and she cut them out as well, heaving them as far as her arm could throw once she returned to the sunlit world. The rot had missed the rest so she added a fourth to her basket. She checked the potatoes, apples, beets, and carrots, but nothing else seemed bad, so she closed the top of the basket and clomped up the bare steps, shut the door, and squelched back to the back door.

The air smelled green. Alicia stopped, closed her eyes, and basked in the afternoon sun. I am so tired of being cold. I missed Tia Manuela’s funeral because of a blizzard. I’m tired of the snow and ice and I want fresh produce. Well, they’d have that soon enough. Cold frames covered part of the garden, shielding lettuces, broccoli, kale, and other early plants from winter’s last gasps. And no zucchini this year. Man cannot live on zucchini alone, no matter how you try to hide it.

Her eyes sprang open. I’m assuming I’ll be here to worry about a zucchini overload. Her Papa’s latest e-mail had assured her that their landlord had almost finished the repairs on the old house and that she could come back in May. Her eyes filled with tears. I don’t want to go back. This is home. She wiped her sleeve across her face, sniffed hard, and gently rocked one boot, easing it out of the mud. She rocked the other boot loose as well and walked to the foot of the back steps. Alicia used the bootjack built into the bottom step to get the wellingtons off and changed into sneakers, then swapped them for her house-shoes once she’d reached the mudroom.

“Mud stays in the mudroom,” Fabian had informed her grandly.

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