The close call

Beep, Beep, Beep…the jarring beep of the alarm rudely interrupted my dreaming. Ugh. Five thirty in the morning always seemed to arrive too quickly. Just because my parents sent me to bed by eight o’clock, didn’t mean I was actually sleeping. We were always so busy most of the day that I never got to finish my books. I couldn’t help it if the most exciting parts always seemed to be happening right before I went to bed.

“Squeak,” the fifth step made a distinctive sound whenever people used it. I had learned from my eight years of experience that I had just enough time to turn off the flashlight and pretend to be sleeping as Mom and Dad headed to bed. I’m pretty sure they didn’t realize that I was reading until the wee hours of the morning, but it was getting so hard to wake up so early.

I hit the snooze button, and snuggled back under the warm covers. I could hear cupboard doors opening and the sound of mom down in the kitchen starting breakfast. Soon the smell of sausage, eggs, and pancakes would fill the house. I loved pancakes!

Our family is made up of seven people. Everyone but me and my little sister would be out of bed already. Dad and Ronnie, my nine-year-old brother, would already be out doing the chores. Jessica, my eleven-year-old sister would be out gathering eggs. Amanda my twelve-year-old sister would be out milking the cow.

I could hear my six-year-old sister, Becca, lightly snoring from the top bunk. Becca never woke up to the alarm. She never woke up to shaking, either. In fact, mom said she didn’t think Becca would wake up to a tornado destroying our house. It usually took mom coming up to get Becca out of bed. I reached over and turned the alarm off. I couldn’t risk Mom hearing that I had hit snooze.

            Sigh. I sprang out of bed and into the shockingly cold air. I couldn’t help it; I began to shiver uncontrollably. I quickly crossed the room to the closet. Why couldn’t they have heat upstairs like the neighbors? The woodstove did a great job of heating the house all day long, but as the coals died down overnight, the old farmhouse steadily got colder. There were times during the winter that dad would get up in the middle of the night and add wood to the stove to keep the pipes from freezing solid, but once spring hit, he wouldn’t bother. At least I couldn’t see my own breath this morning.

I reached into the left side of the closet and grabbed a dress from the hanger. There were about seven work dresses hanging in the closet. They were all the same pattern with some variation of floral print so it really didn’t matter which one I chose. I opened the top drawer of the dresser and grabbed some clean socks. I sat on the beautiful rug that mom had made from dad and Ronnie’s old jeans and quickly slipped the socks onto my feet. I quickly strode over to the bunkbed I shared with Becca and half-heartedly shook her a few times. At least I could tell mom I tried. I tromped down the stairs and burst into the kitchen. I needed to set the table for breakfast. Everyone would be coming in hungry very soon.

“Good morning, Sunshine!” Mom was the only person that ever called me sunshine. She said I had been a sunbeam since the day I was born. She likes to show me a picture from when I was two, my hair a crazy mop of blond pin curls, smiling like crazy while helping her make cookies. It is the truth; I don’t really get angry very often. Ronnie is pretty much the only one who can make me mad. I swear he thinks it fun to try to get to me.

 “Good morning, Mom!” I smile at her and headed for the cupboard that holds the dishes. “Mom, I tried to wake Becca up, but she didn’t even budge.”

“That girl,” Mom sighed, “I don’t know what to do to help her wake up easier.” Mom turned the heat down on the eggs and quickly ran upstairs to get Becca awake enough to get dressed. Becca could seem awake, and even talk to you, but within seconds of you leaving the room, she would be back asleep. Mom wasn’t messing around this morning. As I set the table for breakfast, I could hear her getting Becca up. The closet opened and soon both of them where in the kitchen. I couldn’t help but smile. My sister’s hair was a crazy blond mess and she didn’t exactly look like she was awake and ready for breakfast. Mom would comb our hair into braids later.

Suddenly, the door burst open and Mandy and Jessica came bustling in. The milk pail was almost full to the top. I ran to get the milk filter and funnel. Amanda put the pail down and disappeared into the pantry to get the glass jars for the milk. A few minutes later she came to the kitchen and placed the jars in the sink. “Thank you, Hollie,” she said as she smiled warmly at me. “You’re always such a good helper!” She put the filter into the funnel and began pouring the steaming hot milk through the funnel into the jars. Each jar held one gallon and I watched as Mandy filled three jars.

We had affectionately named our Holstein, Darcy the dairy queen, but called her Darcy DQ for short. She had recently had the cutest little calf and we were getting six or seven gallons of milk a day now. She ate a lot of hay, but she turned that into the most delicious milk. This was the time of year that mom made all kinds of delicious things from milk. We had homemade ice cream every night after dinner, she made the most delicious cream cheese spread for crackers, and there were wheels of cheddar cheese aging in the spare fridge.

“Holly, will you get the lids for the jars, please?” Mandy’s voice interrupted my thoughts. I trotted over to the drawer where we kept the lids and grabbed three. As I began putting the lids on the jars, Mandy took out last night’s jars so she could skim the cream for mom. Amanda ladled the thick cream out of the milk jars into clean quart jars. Each gallon of milk gave us a quart of cream. Mandy put the new jars into the back of the fridge, carefully found a place for the cream, and put last night’s milk into the front. Mom would probably give one of the gallons to the chickens. We just couldn’t possibly use up seven gallons of milk a day, so we shared with the other animals on the farm.

While we were busy taking care of the milk, Jessica came in with the eggs. She wiped them off with a rag and placed them into cartons. Some people from town saved egg cartons for us and brought them to us when they came to get eggs. We had fifty chickens, so we got fifty eggs a day. We kept a lot for ourselves, but sold the rest.

“Amanda, go call dad and Ronnie for breakfast please.”

“Yes, Mom,” Amanda cheerfully answered as she headed for the back door. “BREAKFAST,” she hollered as loudly as she could.

            In no time at all, the two of them came bustling in the back door. Their coats were quickly hung on the pegs by the back door and their work boots were put on the back porch. Mom did not appreciate the boy’s barn-dirty boots tromping across her clean floors.

            We all gathered around the table. It was my turn to sit by Mom. Mom and Dad have a specific place they sit for meals, but us kids rotate like a volleyball team. Every night we move one seat the right, or counter-clockwise. I really like that we all get a chance to sit by mom and dad.

            “Let’s pray,” Dad’s said. We all bowed our heads and closed our eyes. At least I think we all close our eyes. I have never had the courage to open my eyes and look around.

My dad’s baritone voice filled the quiet, “Father, thank you for all the blessing that you have given us. Thank you for allowing the rain to fall on the just and the unjust and for caring about the tiny sparrow that falls to the ground. You know what we need and we trust you to provide. Thank you for providing food for us in abundance and thank you for Mom, who works so hard to prepare food for us. Amen.”

“Amen,” we all replied.

 As soon as that word left our lips, we began reaching for the plates of sausage, bacon, eggs, and pancakes. I scooped some eggs onto my plate and passed the bowl to Becca. Ronnie handed me the plate of bacon, but I kept that one moving on. I’m not a huge fan of bacon. I took several pancakes, slathered them with home-made butter, and topped them with the real maple syrup mom orders from a family in Michigan by the five-gallon bucket. We really are blessed. We have a barn full of hay and feed for our animals, so much delicious food, clothing, and most of all, we have each other. “Blessed indeed,” Mom would often say.

            We cleaned up breakfast and headed into the living room to start school. We don’t have a church school in our small Mennonite community, so Mom homeschools us. Honestly, I feel so happy that I don’t have to ride a bus like the neighbor’s children do. I can’t imagine sitting in a classroom at a desk all day. I was just finishing up my math work, when Dad burst in the front door.

            “FIRE!” He screamed. “The trash jumped the barrel. The ditch is on fire!”

             Fire. No. My brain tried desperately to make sense of the words it has just heard. Fire. I couldn’t move. I just stared at Mom.

            “Everybody grab an empty five-gallon bucket from the shed and run to the water pump!” Mom said firmly. She was pale and looked so scared but she used the firm no-nonsense voice she used to give us directions that were non-negotiable. That tone told us to stop messing around and take action immediately. It was exactly what I needed to get moving.

            We quickly ran outside. My hair whipped across my face and my skirt billowed up from the strong South wind. The shed was near the garage. We all ran as fast as we could to grab the buckets and then ran to the well. Becca and I were too small to carry buckets, but we could help fill them with water. Everyone else formed a long line between the well and the ditch on fire.

            We don’t have trash trucks that pick up our trash, we have a burn barrel. All the trash that can be burned, is. The burn barrel was located north of the house but south of the barn. The wind was driving the fire toward the barn. That barn was full of dry hay and fifty pound sacks of feed. We filled the buckets with water and Jessica carried them to Ronnie, who carried them to Amanda, who carried them to Mom, who carried them to Dad. Then they were handed back the same way. Dad dumped them onto the flames, but it didn’t seem to be making any difference.

            “Oh, God! Please, please protect our barn.” I silently prayed as I filled each bucket.

            “Shelley, keep putting the water on the northern part of the fire. I’m going to try to dig a firebreak.” Dad handed buckets to Mom and ran to get the shovel. Amanda left the line to help Dad shovel. The rest of us just kept working at putting out the fire. Nothing we were doing seem to even slow it down. The wind was driving it quickly toward the barn. I have no idea how long we kept this up. Time seemed to stand still.

            “Jessica, run to the house and get some old towels, QUICKLY!” Mom’s voice had such an edge of desperation to it. The fire department would never make it in time to save the barn, or the years’ worth of hay inside of it.

            It seemed like only seconds before Jessica was back with her arms full of old towels.  Mom took one and started beating the fire. Ronnie kept pouring water on the dry grass that was ahead of the fire. Jessica and I both grabbed towels and began mimicking Mom’s actions. Becca took the hose and started filling the buckets.

The wind died down for a few seconds, but that was enough for us to begin to win the battle. Thick smoke filled the air and black ashes where falling like snowflakes from the sky. I was so tired and my throat was burning, but we kept battling on. Dad and Amanda both came and grabbed towels and began beating the flames. Suddenly, the remaining flames reached the firebreak and the whole thing was over. We looked at each other, almost not believing that the wild fire had happened at all. Sweat, mixed with soot, covered all of our faces, and my mom and dad were panting. A large swath of scorched earth covered the space between the burn barrel and the outside of the barn.

“Fill all the buckets, we aren’t done yet,” Dad’s voice still had the non-negotiable tone to it. He took the full buckets and began walking through the area looking for smoldering spots. When he saw wisps of smoke, he doused the area with water.

When he was satisfied that the immediate danger was over, he gathered us together under the tree. “Thank you for obeying so quickly,” his voice broke with emotion. “Everyone worked together and by the grace of God we avoided disaster. We have so much to be thankful for right now.” I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen my dad overcome with emotion. This was one of them.

Jessica’s clear soprano rang out the beginning of a hymn, “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.” Quickly, Amanda’s alto and Ronnie’s tenor harmonized, “The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.” Soon seven voices were raised in thankfulness, “When other helpers fail and comforts flee. Help of the helpless, Oh, abide, with me.” We fervently sang all three verses. No other words were necessary. A hush fell upon all of us as the hymn ended, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I looked around the circle and realized how very right mom was. Blessed indeed. We had each other, so we had everything we would ever need.

“Well, time to get back to work,” the spell was broken as Mom brought us back to reality.  Dad stood watch all afternoon, making sure that the wind didn’t fan a hot spot back into a flame. From then on, we were very careful to make sure that the trash was lower in the barrel and we didn’t burn on really windy days.