Remnant: Ruth and Boaz

Carmen kept her message to the boys simple. “Girls are different than boys. Girls like to talk.”
 

Blaine, one of the boys said he liked to talk.

“Not like that” Carmen said. “Girls talk when we are nervous. We talk when we are happy. We talk when we are sad. We talk when we are mad. It is like breathing.”

“That sounds like you, Blaine” one of the other boys teased.

“Girls will start arguments so they have somebody to talk with” Carmen insisted. “We will say things we know you think are stupid just to get you to talk.”

“So what do we do?” Blaine asked.

“Let your girl talk. Let her know if you agree with her. Go ‘uh-huh’. If what she is saying doesn’t make any sense, say ‘Tell me more’. It will make sense, sort of, eventually” Carmen said.

“But what if she doesn’t want to talk to me?” Blaine asked.

“Then don’t waste your time” Carmen said. "She isn't interested. Look for another."

“Is that all?” Blaine asked.

“Of course not. If she says ‘I am cold’, put your arm around her. She doesn’t want your jacket. She wants YOU” Carmen said. “If she pouts, you might try giving her a kiss. But if she pulls away, you have to be patient. She will let you know when she wants a kiss but you have to pay attention.”

This information was baffling to the young men. It wasn’t what they saw in movies.

Carmen heard two of them murmuring in the back.

“And if you force yourself on her, I will slit your throat” Carmen promised. “You don’t need force. You need patience.”

“It is cold and dark out there. They won’t be running away. You are big and strong and safe. Of course they will want to spend the night with you. They are not stupid” Carmen said. "But they first need to get comfortable with you. They want to know that YOU care for her and will protect her."

"She will know you care if you listen to her talk. She just wants somebody to hear her. And then she will know that is the person she wants to hold her" Carmen said.

One of the boys stuttered, “How will I know if it is OK to try and get to second-base?”

“I am not sure what you mean by ‘second-base’” Carmen said. “But you might try gently touching just a little bit and asking ‘Do you like this?’ or ‘May I touch you like this’. Of course, she might be purring like a kitten and then you will not need to ask.”

*

Much to Carmen’s surprise, Pastor Morales didn’t blow a gasket when Carmen informed him that the next group to evacuate needed to include fifteen, boy-crazy girls.

“Ruth and Boaz.” is all he said.

“Who are Ruth and Boaz?” Carmen asked.

“A story in the Bible. Ruth slept with Boaz so her mother-in-law would not starve.” Pastor Morales said.

“There are stories like that in the Bible?” Carmen asked.

“There are all kinds of stories in the Bible” Morales gently informed her. “It wouldn’t be a very useful Book if it didn’t tell us about real humans and real problems.”

“So, did God blast Ruth with lightning?” Carmen asked.

“No, it turned out OK” Morales said.

The pastor’s wife suggested that if there were fifteen boys, then they should send more than fifteen girls. The dynamics of choosing would leave the last two to pair up both feeling like they were losers.

Given the circumstances, and the fact that they were sending ten groups out that night, it made sense to put two girls with each group (making them 12 people). There would be five extra girls but that would make the others just a little hungrier in pairing up with the strange men. A target poor environment makes the hunters quicker to pull the trigger.

*

Don’s paranoia led him to do a low elevation fly-over of his home air-strip. He picked up small arms fire pinging the rear of his fuselage, clearly revealing that his home had been over-run.

He had been counting on a forbidding appearance and a rough, long, twisting two-track to discourage looters. He had forgotten how easy it was to look at satellite images and scope-out prospective targets.

He saw them pumping fuel out of his tank into barrels in the back of a truck. He saw somebody coming out of the door of his home.

Don wasn’t too worried about them finding his hordes of precious metals or all of his weapons. He had them secreted in various places around his property, including one beneath the concrete sidewalk the man was walking on. It was accessed by pulling a concrete block out of his foundation to reveal the open end of a large diameter, steel culvert. Nopity-nope. They weren’t going to find that. 

Don was pissed but there wasn't anything he was going to be able to get to anytime soon.
 

He had his plane. He had three hours of fuel. He had the twenty, gold Krugrrands his passengers had paid him in a small, padded tie-bag in his duffle. He had cargo that needed to be delivered.

He decided to continue on to Eaton Rapids and deliver the latex and rubber. They undoubtedly could find a place to put him up until he got things sorted out.

*

Leslie Spaulding was sitting in her favorite rocking chair in a warm shaft of April sunlight. “Dar, can you get me a glass of water?” she asked.

Ever since Doc Foxx had told Dar about Leslie’s dangerously high blood-pressure, Dar had done everything he could to make her comfortable.

He went to the kitchen and poured a tumbler of water from the pitcher.

When he walked back to the living room, Leslie was dead. No sounds. No thrashing. No signs of distress. She was just...gone.