Life is struggle (Cumberland Saga)

Miss Shannon and her elderly mom were the last two refugees to show up that week. The two had made it into their safe-room before their back door was battered in. The cell towers were down and Shannon could not drill through to 9-1-1.

The invaders were primarily after Miss Shannon’s mother’s pain drugs but stayed to loot and vandalized. Miss Shannon and her mother made a break for freedom just before first light when the sounds of looting died down. She pushed her mother’s wheelchair out into the misty darkness and they spent hours in the sassafras thicket by the paved road. Miss Shannon texted Sally who retrieved them. The two of them were able to lift Miss Shannon’s mother into the passenger side of the wheezy, old pickup. Miss Shannon rode in back with her mother’s wheelchair.

Miss Shannon was not the crying type but her mom’s prognosis was grim without her blood pressure meds and her Tramadol. She blamed the wind for her tears when they disembarked at Copperhead Cove.
 

Bob was "Miss" Shannon's husband and he was a travel nurse. The last Shannon knew, he was still reporting for working at his current assignment in the Emergency Room in Tulsa.

***

Amira was helping Sarah prepare breakfast when Sarah bolted out the door and started throwing up.

Ruefully wiping her mouth on the back of her sleeve when she came back into the kitchen, she washed her hands and started preparing more food.

“I don’t think you should be preparing food if you are sick” Amira pointed out.

“I ain’t sick. At least not the contagious kind” Sarah said, tersely.

After a couple of heartbeats, enlightenment. “Are you pregnant?” Amira asked. It was the only thing that made sense.

“Don’t tell Blain” Sarah said. “He don’t need to know...yet. I don’t always...well, carry them well the first three months.”

Reading between the lines, Amira surmised that Sarah had miscarried in the first trimester and didn’t want to raise Blain’s hopes. And here she was knocking herself out. Getting up early. Preparing for the first day of canning chickens.

Amira felt something inside of her come unleashed. She was needed.

“Walter. Come in here for a few minutes” she said after sticking her head out of the door.

When he ambled back into the house, Amira said “Miss Sarah is beating herself to a frazzle and we are going to take over most of the heavy work of canning the chicken and let her just be the boss.”

Sarah started to open her mouth but then realized that she would really founder if she had to stay awake for another 19 hours. If she just got the ball rolling, maybe she could take a nap?

“What do you want me to do?” Walter asked.

“First thing I want you to do is to swing by our house and pick up a bottle of multi-vitamins to give to Sarah. Then I want you to ask around. See if any of the newcomers brought some LP fired turkey-fryers” Amira said.

Turning to Sarah, she asked “How many are we going to need?”

Mind fuzzy, Sarah had trouble coming up with a number “...well, one to keep the scalding water hot. Maybe one to pre-heat the chicken-n-juice for hot-pack. Maybe one for the canning jars…”

Thinking back to her years in Bosnia and realizing where the likely bottlenecks were she told Walter “Get five of them if can. And ask about any camp-stoves. They have better control of the heat.”

Amira would not need 55k BTU/hr once the canning kettle was up to a boil and she would struggle to keep the scalding pot at the precise temperature needed to loosen the feathers without cooking the skin.

She almost suggested skinning the chickens but stopped herself. Back in Bosnia, they WANTED the fat in the meat, both for energy and for flavor. That, and the fact that they used the chicken feathers for various things even when duck-down was immeasurably superior.

Walter went wandering off. He had a mission.

Amira told Sarah to sit down and to sip on some “lemonade” while she took over the lion’s share of the work, asking Sarah’s advice as she went.