Ice Storm (14 page)

Of course, as soon as Alice left the room she felt stupid. As if she could take on a bunch of thieves. But she had to get help somehow. Where were the grown-ups when you needed them?

Alice ran to the area that had been set up as a registration desk. Quickly she explained the problem to the young man at the desk, who stood up in dismay.

“The Director’s gone to a meeting with the mayor,” the young man blurted out. “I’m just a volunteer.”

“We have to find
somebody
to help!” Alice replied. She ran into the main
tv
room. Looking around, she picked out a guy who was big and muscular, the kind of guy that looked a little scary. He had a snake tattoo circling his neck. He listened to her story, frowned, and collected a couple of other men.

“Wait here,” he said firmly to Alice and the young man from the desk.

The “bad boys” hadn’t even tried to hide their booty. The men found them easily, holed up in one of the offices down the hall. In no time, the tattooed guy was back. He handed Alice a big plastic bag filled with pill bottles.

“Thanks!”

“No trouble,” grinned the man. “We got it covered.”

Alice ran back to Mrs. Hartley and dropped to her knees beside her cot. She dumped out the bottles and frantically looked for something called nitro. Mrs. Hartley had stopped shaking, but she was pale, almost blue, and too quiet. Alice found one. The bottle said nitro but it was for somebody else. Would it still work? Alice knew that you weren’t supposed to take somebody else’s medicine. What if she killed Mrs. Hartley?

Just then the nurse rushed in. “They told me you were looking for me. What’s happened?” She looked at all the bottles in surprise. “Where did you get all these?” she asked suspiciously.

“Long story,” said Alice. “Tell you later. Mrs. Hartley said she needed nitro. I can’t find hers. Will this work?”

The nurse nodded and helped Mrs. Hartley get a pill under her tongue. In no time she began to relax. Murmuring, “Thank you,” Mrs. Hartley fell asleep.

“Explain!” demanded the nurse. Alice explained.

When the Director returned, the little Korean girl was asked to translate the grandmother’s story once again. The Director shook his head in dismay. “It’s to be expected,” he said sadly.

Expected? Expected! Alice was outraged; she couldn’t believe her ears. She felt a little better when she heard the Director use his walkie-talkie to call building security. With the help of the tattooed man and his friends, they rounded up the boys and kept them in an office. Security called the police and the whole group was expelled from the shelter.

“You can’t do this!” they shouted when the police came to take them away. “We’ll freeze! We’re underage. You have to let us stay!”

“Don’t worry, you won’t be outside,” replied one of the police officers sternly. “But you can be sure you won’t be in a place as nice as this.” The police escorted them out. Alice could hardly imagine a place worse than where they were. It made her feel a little bad for the boys, but not much.

Alice took up a post beside Mrs. Hartley’s bed. The nurse said that she’d been suffering from something called angina. It was like heart pain. The nitro helped, but Mrs. Hartley wouldn’t have died. It didn’t matter, thought Alice. Something else might happen. Alice reached up and gently patted Mrs. Hartley’s hand, smiling when she felt the newly trimmed fingernails. As Alice lay on her foamie beside the cot, her mind was racing. How could some people travel a thousand kilometres to help and others steal medicine from old people? How could people like her dad work sixteen-hour shifts in freezing rain and frigid temperatures to get power back on for all the people, and others take generators just for themselves?

Then something else
did
happen. One of the policemen came back. He had a grim look on his face as he looked around for the Director. Keeping an eye on Mrs. Hartley, Alice sidled over to where the Director and the policeman were talking, keeping out of sight behind a potted plant. What was going on?

“Monsieur le Directeur,”
said the policeman quietly. “Begin making plans to move all these people. We may have to evacuate the entire city.”

Alice’s eyes widened with fear.

Day Six

Saturday, January 10, 1998

The Farm

S
ophie didn’t want to get out of bed.
It
wasn’t the cold. She was so used to being cold now that her bedroom almost felt warm. And the kitchen, with the toasty wood stove, would be practically hot. And she’d have hot food to eat, which was more than most families in the Triangle of Darkness could boast. Everything about her life was just fine. Except that her cows were dying and Sophie didn’t know how she could bear it.

The first two died while Papa was in town, trying to get another generator or at least a replacement part. Maman said it was pneumonia. She had to get the front-end loader and hoist each carcass up, then take them one by one down to the lower meadow. She dumped them there to freeze, until they were able to
take care of the carcasses properly. Sébastien wanted to have a funeral. Maman said no. She said it was just the beginning. More cows were going to die and there would be too many funerals. That made him cry. It made them all cry. Maman made them hot drinks but this was too big a problem to be solved by
chocolat chaud.

When Papa heard, he went very still.

The news from Saint-Hyacinthe was terrible. Papa told Sébastien not to worry that the phones were out. There was no point in trying to chase the milk trucks because now the milk processing plants were shut down too. There weren’t enough generators to keep them going. All their milk would have to be dumped. Assuming they could do any milking at all. Papa had registered for a generator, but he was Number 62 on the list.

They all four had gone to the barn to try to finish the milking that had been cut short. The whole family worked for hours, each taking a cow, hand milking just enough to take the pressure off the udder. It made the cows a little more comfortable, but then what? It took a half an hour to fully milk a cow and with fifty of them, well, forty-eight now, there simply were not enough hours in the day to get it done. Not to mention that their hands couldn’t take the strain. Hand-milking was hard work, especially with cows who weren’t used to it.

Even under the covers Sophie could hear the cows, her girls, bawling in distress. It was a horrible noise. They were thirsty and uncomfortable. Their lives had been totally disrupted and they didn’t know why. And what could she do except watch them suffer? There was simply no point in getting up. There was no solution. She would rather pull the covers over her head than hear them cry out their agony and watch them die one by one.

|||||

“Sophie! Are you awake?”
shouted Maman. Sophie groaned. “Come down for breakfast. We have work to do!”

Sophie dragged herself out of bed and headed unwillingly to the kitchen. Sébastien was already sitting in front of a tower of pancakes.

“Petit cochon,”
spat Sophie, more out of habit than anything else. Sébastien, as usual, ignored her. Sophie scraped her chair noisily across the wooden floor, rattled the dishes on the table as she sat down heavily, then turned a belligerent face towards Maman. Sophie wanted to make sure that everybody knew she was upset.

Maman turned from the sink and put her hands on her hips.
“Ma fille,
being miserable with us won’t help anything. We didn’t bring the storm.”

Sophie scowled. Maybe so, but she sure didn’t feel like being all polite and smiley. She needed some way to show how upset she was, some way to show the world that this just wasn’t
fair
! There didn’t seem to be anything she could do except be miserable, so she was just going to go ahead and
be
miserable.

Maman was still staring at her, eyebrows raised, hands on hips. Sophie shifted a little in her chair. Maman kept staring. Sophie began to feel uncomfortable. Finally she said angrily, “If I can’t feel miserable, how am I supposed to feel? Happy? Thrilled? Excited?” she added sarcastically. “Aren’t I allowed to feel the way I want to feel?”

Maman sighed. “Of course you can,” she replied. “But you shouldn’t inflict your feelings on others, not if it doesn’t help anything. Making everybody feel worse doesn’t help. So can you allow us all to move on?”

“Move on to what?” Sophie said under her breath, as she turned to get a breakfast plate.

“Say that out loud,” commanded Maman. “For once, Sophie, let it out. Reach down inside and say what you mean, get it out in the open, deal with it. Stop keeping the stuff that hurts you inside!”

Sophie was shocked. She and Maman had never really argued before, not like this. It was way easier to pretend that they weren’t fighting even when they were. They would sigh at one another, roll their eyes and walk away, always pretending on the surface that nothing was wrong. They never said the words out loud. Sébastien had stopped eating with a forkful of pancakes halfway to his mouth, maple syrup dripping everywhere. The only sound in the kitchen was the crackling of the wood stove.

Sophie couldn’t say a word.

Finally Maman shook her head sadly. With a crooked grin, she said, “Sophie, when you were little, you had the most terrible temper tantrums. You would throw yourself to the ground and beat your little fists and scream and yell whenever you didn’t get your way. Papa and I taught you to stop. Now, I think we taught you too well. Now you can’t let your feelings out at all. I think you need to have a tantrum. God knows this storm is worth a really good one.” Wearily, Maman turned back to the dishes in the sink.

Sophie could feel her eyes filling up with tears. Maman had never spoken to her like that before. Sophie felt hurt, and ashamed. She wanted to hold her ground, to continue to punish them because they weren’t as sad as she was. She wanted to fight back. But a little voice in her head was telling her Maman was right. Everybody was sad, but it was only Sophie who wanted to hide in her bed.

She held herself very, very still. She couldn’t
inflict
herself on them. Maman had said so. Sophie didn’t think she could hold the tears in for long and she knew she had to, because if she started to cry she’d never stop. At first, she just wanted to get away. Then she thought of Mélisande. The calf wouldn’t yell at her.

Sophie grabbed her coat from the peg in the kitchen and ran to the barn. She curled up beside Mélisande, wrapping her arms around the calf’s warm neck. This was good. But everything else was so bad.

Sophie didn’t know how long she’d been in Mélisande’s pen when she heard the commotion in the lane. Somebody – or something – was coming. Sophie held herself even tighter. She wanted to see. She wanted to help if she could, but now she was embarrassed. She didn’t want to
inflict
herself on anybody. Sophie knew she was being stupid. The longer she stayed hidden the harder it would be to face everybody.

Sophie stood up and looked down the lane. There were a couple of army trucks in the yard. But there was no trailer, so they hadn’t brought a generator. Why had they come? As Sophie watched, eight men, strangers, got out of the trucks. Sophie stepped a little closer to get a better view. They looked like farmers, but like no farmers she’d ever seen before. They wore very plain clothes and big black hats. Sophie’s curiosity finally overrode her embarrassment and she went outside to find out what was going on.

Papa was shaking hands with the strangers. When Sophie arrived, Papa introduced her. The men smiled at her. They looked very kind. Who were they?

“Sophie, Sébastien, run to the barn and get the cows who are most uncomfortable.”

“Should we take them to the milking parlour?” asked Sophie.

“No, get them over to the maternity pen as fast as you can.” Sophie and Sébastien looked at one another in surprise and took off at a run.

The barn was a terrible place. The noise the frightened cows made hurt Sophie’s heart. How to choose who was most uncomfortable?

“Sébastien,” she called urgently. “The prime milkers. Get them – they’ll have the fullest udders.” Sébastien understood immediately. Not all cows produced the same amount of milk. The ones that produced the most would be in the most pain. Picking a few cows nearly created a stampede for the milking parlour. All the cows wanted to go there. Sophie tried to calm them as best she could, even though she had to yell to be heard over all the bawling. Once out of the barn, she and Sébastien had to force the selected cows away from the milking parlour and over to the maternity pen.