We are Jemima and Easter Yeggs. Lieutenant Yeggs wants his son to write these reports to keep in touch when we are out having our adventures, and Rev C.S.L., my Dad, doesn’t mind an update either.
Before you ask, Easy is out on a storm chase. Dad Yeggs is working late. Mom Yeggs is at a convention, giving a talk. That puts Lydia visiting Jochebed and everyone thought I could be a great house sitter. Neither Blaise nor Sophie will be home before dark.
Stormie asked, “Can we go outside?”
I replied, “What is interesting about outside?”
Stormie said, “I want to see Daddy.”
I sighed, “Daddy is chasing storms. He is not outside.”
Stormie asked, “But storms are outside. Why can’t we go?”
I shrugged, “I am concerned about you trying to see Daddy outside, but there is no reason why we cannot go outside. Let’s get your outside shoes on and your hoodie.” With that done, we went outside.
As we stood on the deck behind the house, I do what I always seem to do these days. I surveyed the clouds to see if I had a good photo opportunity. Nothing, but a few wispy clouds.
Stormie looked up too, “Which cloud is Daddy on?”
I sighed, “What gives you the idea that Daddy is on a cloud?”
Stormie shrugged using half her body. “I don’t know. He is chasing storms. Storms form when baby clouds grow up. So, I thought Daddy caught a cloud. Why storm chase if you never catch one?”
I groaned, “You said a lot that we have to unpack. Why do you think Daddy caught a storm and is on a cloud?”
Stormie said, “You were talking to Aunt B.B. last night. She gave you a vido of me in preschool. You said you were going to put it on the cloud so that Daddy could see it.”
I moaned, “It was a video, not a vido. And cloud storage on the internet is just a name for where I can be in Tracy and put something in a storage place and then Daddy can look at it wherever in the world he is. Internet cloud storage is not in the clouds, but it’s not exactly in a warehouse either. So, they use the name ‘cloud’ because it is electronic and it can move from place to place, like a cloud.”
Stormie said, “So, the vid-E-o is in a computer somewhere and Daddy can see it when he is not busy chasing a cloud. Now has Daddy ever caught a cloud?”
I nodded, “In a few ways. We don’t catch the cloud, but we have been bumped around inside the Turtle when a tornado hit us. You were in the Turtle once about a year ago, and you liked it when the tornado rushed by us and hit us with sticks and stuff. You got excited.”
Stormie looked at me with disbelief. “If you say so, Mommy. I don’t remember.”
I said, “And storms are formed when an updraft takes hot air up into the sky and this moist hot air mixes with ice crystals in a cloud. With enough energy, the winds will swirl around. Lightning can happen when different charged particles get rid of some of that energy. And no matter how much spinning there is in the cloud up in the air, it is not a tornado unless the spinning winds come down and touch the ground. That is why the storm chasers are in the field. They warn people that the storm is there. They report to the weather service any observations. And our storm chasing team helps the victims if there are any. In that way, we catch the storm. We predict, observe, report, and help people.”
Stormie said, “Oh, but you said it different on TV.”
I asked, “What?!”
Stormie gasped, “Mommy, didn’t you know?! Aunt B.B. takes your vid-E-o and she puts it on TV! We watch it in preschool.”
I sighed, “I know Aunt Mary, please say Aunt Mary…”
Stormie said, “She laughs when I say Aunt B.B.”
I moaned, “That is her codename. Her real name is Mary. You should call her Aunt Mary. But I know that Aunt Mary puts my videos on television. I did not know that Miss Madelaine shows those videos in class. Come to think of it, you children are going to think it’s normal for people to be on television. The Turtle Team is on the Storm Chasing Channel. Your cousin Boaz is the mayor, and he’s on the news at least once a week. Booger from our Sunday school class is on television sometimes during football games. And your Uncle Blaise is on a couple of commercials with Margie. But being on TV is not common. And I may have said it differently about how storms form just now. I was using a script on the television show, so I got all the details right. I think you simplified what I said.”
Stormie, already moving on, said, “Where are the leaves? You know, the pretty yellow and orange and red leaves.”
I smiled, “They fell off the trees, Stormie. Let’s go down the trail toward Baffy’s house. We might pick up some leaves that look pretty.”
When we reached the trail, Stormie said, “Most of these leaves are brown.”
I laughed, “That’s why I said we would have to look for pretty ones. They are yellow and orange when they fall, but as they dry out, they start losing their pigments and they turn brown and then they start to decompose. That is part of the beauty God put in the seasons. We live on a very well-created planet. With the tilt of the earth being 23 and a half degrees, we get our four seasons. We are in Fall or what some called Autumn.”
Stormie asked, “What is Autumn?”
I sighed, “It’s a word for this season of the year. ‘Autumn’ means the ending of things. So, the autumn of the year is the end of the year, sort of. Some of December is Winter. In meteorological calendars, December is completely in Winter. But Autumn to us is that the leaves fall from the trees. It looks like the trees have died, but they just shed their leaves. The sap becomes concentrated with sugars to keep the sap from freezing. So, if I bend a small twig on this tree it won’t break. If it was dead, it would snap off and the twig would fall to the ground.”
Stormie asked, “So, autumn is when things fall?”
I laughed, “Yes, that is a great way to tie the two names of the season together. But all this is necessary. The leaves turn brown and rot.”
Stormie asked, “What’s rot? Like what Otto used to be?”
I shook my head. “No, Otto was being bad, but now he is a good man and an excellent baker. Sometimes, it takes a while to figure out what you are good at.”
Stormie asked, “Like you, Mommy?”
I nodded, “Yeah, I used to just take photographs to capture a memory. Now, I found out that I have an eye for seeing God in everything. I see beauty where other people see the leaves rotting on the ground. I brought my macro lens. We can take pictures of things that are very small.”
Stormie asked, “What’s this?”
I said, “That’s a log. It was probably a tree limb that fell in a storm. Don’t touch it.”
Stormie asked, “Why, Mommy? I want to see the log. Is the log rotting like the leaves?”
I nodded, “Yes, Stormie. The log will take longer, but it will rot. What’s left will become food for the trees. In the meantime, the log becomes home for bugs.”
Stormie smiled, “I want to see the bugs, Mommy.”
I shrugged, “Okay, but you are going to have to back away. Get behind me. If I flip the log over and we see snakes, we might have to get out of the way really fast. If we see spiders, I might clean them off first.”
I carefully flipped the log over and then I took a step back. I found no snakes and only one spider at the very end of the log.
I said, “Stormie, see the spider. Let’s let the spider do its thing. I think it might be a brown recluse. They are poisonous, but they like to stay to themselves. Let’s look down here. These bugs are ground beetles. And I think that big one is a wood-boring beetle. But see all these little gray things? They are roly-polies. They are not insects at all. They are closely related to shrimp and lobster. They have gills like fish. And if Miss Madelaine gives a lesson on them, they start with twelve legs and then after their first molting, they have fourteen legs from then on. And molting is when you have a new layer of skin that develops under the old one, and the old one falls off. We humans do that one skin cell at a time, but a roly-poly or a snake, does it all at once.”
Stormie asked, “Why are they called roly-polies?”
I giggled, “Let’s see if we can get this roly-poly upset. See! When I pushed him over, he thought there was danger, so he curled into a ball. There are a few other animals that do that. Hedgehogs, pangolins, and three-banded armadillos curl into a ball. The armadillos with more bands have too many bands for them to curl into a ball.”
Stormie had a roly-poly in her hand and it was rolling around. She watched it uncurl and walk. Then, she shook it off onto the log.
Stormie said, “This is a lot of fun. Mommy, but do Uncle Elroy and Aunt Rousie know they have bugs in their roof?”
I nodded, “I think they know.”
A voice from behind me said, “Yes, we know that we have bugs and squirrels and sometimes people on our roof. I think the people are the most annoying.”
Stormie started laughing.
I replied, “I was just showing Stormie which bugs like eating living in moist rotting wood, Irusya.”
Stormie laughed even louder.
I continued, “And I was about to say that Aunt Rousie was not a good way to say your name. She needs to know how to pronounce people’s names correctly.”
The voice said, “Yes, but she gets it from Gigi and Gigi is a force to be reckoned with. Aunt Rousie is an acceptable option considering the options.”
Stormie was laughing even louder.
I asked, “What unfortunate options are there?”
The voice said, “I don’t know. If you said Rou, then are you shortening Irusya or are you making the base for gumbo? Zsa might be short for Irusya, but then look at how many times Zsa Zsa was married. Under the circumstances Rousie is not that bad.”
I said, “I apologize for my daughter’s laughter. It is very disruptive. Stormie, say you are sorry to Irusya.”
Stormie, holding her belly she was laughing so hard, “No, Mommy.”
I gasped, “Do not tell me ‘no’ when you need to apologize.”
Another voice said, “Can you believe it? A mother fusses at her child without knowing what is going on.”
I huffed, “Elroy, I can see my daughter becoming disrespectful. That is no laughing matter.”
Stormie laughed, “No, Mommy, turn around!”
I turned around, and Caulk and Perry were staring at me, seemingly laughing along with Stormie.
Stormie said, “They were using Aunt Rousie and Uncle Elroy’s voices, then you never turned around to see who was there.”
I sighed, “Caulk, you could wear a bell on your collar.”
Caulk groaned, “It defeats the whole idea of stealth mode. I have a hard enough time sneaking up on someone with my male ding-a-ling partner.”
Perry said, “Hey, I’m right here, and Aunt Jemima did not hear me sneak up either. So there!”
Stormie said, “Mommy, I just realized. I gotta go potty, real bad.”
I moaned, “I locked the house, and I can’t run really fast.”
Caulk said, “Irusya is farther along with her pregnancy, and she can’t run either. Funny, Aunt Rousie and I got pregnant about the same time, and mine are off at boarding school and she is still pregnant. Humans! But if I declare this an emergency, I can take Stormie to the Hobbit Hole.”
Stormie brightened, “Underground? Yes, I can’t hold it much longer.”
Caulk laid down, “Stormie get on my back. Hold the handles. And put your head on my collar. Do not move your head until I say so. Aunt Jemima, I am calling your phone on a video call. Accept it and then you will see what I see.”
The phone rang. I answered and selected video call. Caulk ran toward the only thing green in the wooded area, a cedar tree. A limb or two of the cedar tree seemed to float upward and Caulk ran underneath. She went down a spiral ramp, what I later learned was called a spiramp. Caulk ran past two large cages on the left and two on the right. She stopped and laid down again. Caulk said, “The door to the left, Stormie.”
Then, Caulk looked forward. There were two legs wearing pink coveralls. “What is the emergency, Caulk?”
Caulk said, “Irusya, a little girl had to go to the bathroom really bad. Her mother is about as far along in her pregnancy as you are. So, there was no way she would reach the Yeggs home. If it were me, I would do my business right there in the woods. You know, do dogs do their business in the woods? But people have this thing about bathrooms. I am trying to adjust my priorities to the inferior human set of priorities.”
The legs went to the door of the bathroom. “Stormie, do you need any help? The bathroom and dog food prep room combination is not set up for children yet.”
Stormie said, “I did good, but I can’t reach the sink to wash my hands.”
Irusya opened the door of the bathroom. Caulk looked in so that I could see the room. There was a walk-in shower, I guess for the dogs. There was a toilet for the humans, and a large bag of feed had been laid on its side. Stormie must have used it to climb onto the toilet seat. And then to the side there were three sinks. One was a slop sink for mopping up messes. One was a food prep sink. The third sink was like a kitchen sink with a large countertop. Irusya lifted Stormie onto the countertop, and she washed her hands.
Irusya said, “Aunt Jemima, I come up to get you, and you can take the tour.”
In about a minute, a larger group of cedar branches floated out of the way showing a human sized door. There were two levels. The upper level were the bedrooms for humans and a large room of television screens and computer screens. The lower level was split into two sections: half for the dogs and the other half for kitchen, dining room, and den.
I asked, “What if you get crazy and have more than three children?”
Irusya laughed, “We will cross that bridge when we come to it, or the children have bunk beds: boys’ room, girls’ room, and visitor room. But being a family that is also a security team, I doubt if we will entertain many visitors. I am thinking my mother when baby comes. Pink Lady say that she can have visitors stay with her. But she say noisy family on second floor with stormy child and another on way might have to visit relatives to make room.”
I shrugged, “I have no idea who she might be talking about.”
My phone rang. It was Dad Yeggs.
I answered, “Hello.”
Dev Yeggs said, “I just got home with Gigi, and my house sitter is not sitting in the house.”
I said, “We were exploring the back yard. Stormie needed to go potty and the Hobbit Hole was quicker than me trying to run back to the house. You know children at that age. They don’t have to go at all because they are having too much fun, and then suddenly it is an emergency. Luckily, Caulk was right there.”
Dev Yeggs said, “I smell the spaghetti sauce in the warmer. I am starving. And I need someone to talk to. You are the only one who qualifies, but I want what I say recorded so that Sophia can hear it.”
I said, “We are on our way as soon as we can figure out how to get out of this place.”
When we came in through the back door. Stormie gasped and ran into Dad Yeggs’ arms.
Stormie said, extremely fast, “Granddaddy! We found some clouds that Daddy is not on. We saw all the leaves that fell off the trees ‘cause it’s fall, and I played with beetles and roly-polies. And I got to ride down the spiramp into Hob Ho. It was a lot of fun!”
I said, “Thinking of that fun, Stormie will get a thorough inspection when she takes a bath tonight. Hair washed. No fleas or ticks. We do not want to have anything hitchhiking from the woods into the house.”
Dev Yeggs said, “After supper. I am starved.”
During the meal, Stormie and Gigi talked more than ate, but they both eventually ate all their food. During Stormie’s bath, I inspected Stormie from head to toe. No unwanted insects, arachnids, or roly-polies.
Stormie was exhausted, and she quickly went to bed. Gigi, in the same bedroom, was at least polite enough to not talk, and I think she did not take long to nod off.
I sat on the sofa. Dad Yeggs got up from his comfy recliner and sat next to me.
He said, “Can you give me a hug? I keep telling people about my bearhugs. It is not the pressure applied that makes them work. It’s the love and concern. Grandma (Naomi) gives me those kinds of hugs when I need it, and I certainly need it right now.”
I said, “Oh, dear, this sounds serious.”
He nodded, “Homicide is always serious, but there is that one case every now and then when I question why I enjoy working these cases. It was a case that Poached worked on. Open and shut. Never to go to trial, but the circumstances make my every nerve shout in pain. If you don’t mind. I will give the story in story book form. The way I dislike when Poached writes his reports. A police report shows the facts in the order they were learned, not chronological from the perpetrator or victim’s point of view.”
I put my arm around him. He leaned in closer and sighed. “I guess this story starts in June, college summer session. Three incoming freshmen. They took a couple of classes each morning and then spent the afternoons testing out of various classes that they thought they already knew, three really smart young ladies, but even smart young ladies can make mistakes. Well, there is the month gap between the end of summer school and the beginning of the fall semester. The girls went home.
“Zinhle Zizi is a girl whose parents are from South Africa. She is from the eastern edge of the state. She is from a bedroom community of the city in the next state, south of One Horse where the Lewis kids are from and north of the SE corner where Mitzi is from.
“Colleen Masterson is from that wild west tourist trap in the northwest corner of the state.
“Then, tragedy struck when Alice Chalmers went to her home, south and west of us. Her parents were enjoying having some freedom. Their daughter was off at college. Their son was old enough to take care of himself at fifteen. He was a responsible kid, maybe a little too naïve.
“Anyway, the parents were out on a hike, and no one knows what exactly happened, but they fell and both died. It did not seem like a suicide pact, just a freakish accident. Probably one slipped and fell and the other overreached to save the other and they both died instead.
“There were not any acceptable options for Atlas, Alice’s brother, so he came back with her at the start of the freshmen year. They snuck him into their quad apartment. There might be boys in one quad next to girls in the next. Your Aunt Pink has some rooms set up that way: a common area and then four bedrooms. Jethro, Baldy, and the two Lewis kids are in one.
“Atlas was responsible, but naïve. For the first couple of weeks with no incidents, Atlas would walk to the nearest Diet Smith bus stop and go to school. Nobody even blinked. But then Diet Smith had its first in-service day when the teachers work but the students stay home. Zinhle and Colleen had the afternoon off, while Alice had a long lab. Atlas fiddled on his tablet. He got a couple of projects way ahead of schedule. It seemed he was trying to be all consumed with school to not deal with the grief. He was reading next month’s topics in World History when Zinhle and Colleen came in and sat on either side of him. They turned on some soft jazz so they could mellow. They read their reading assignments, and then Zinhle started laughing. It seemed Atlas had a boner. She teased Colleen that Atlas must like her. Colleen returned the tease. It escalated to one daring the other one to kiss him, put her hand where it should not have gone, things like that. To Atlas, it must have seemed like a fantasy. He thought Alice would come through the door at any moment, and everything would go back to normal. At least, I suppose that crossed his mind.
“Alice was delayed due to an experiment that she could not get right. The play on the sofa escalated to the point where none of them had clothes on, and they were doing things they should not be doing. They did not get caught by Alice, but now that the ice had been broken, Atlas was distracted by Zinhle and Colleen. Whenever Alice was out of the apartment and Atlas was in the apartment with at least one of the other girls, they had bedroom gymnastics. Both girls got pregnant. They felt they had to tell Alice. Zinhle decided to wait until fall break to tell her folks in person. But Colleen called her Dad. If she had called her Mom, her Mom would have broken it to her husband slowly.
“Colleen’s Dad hardly said anything to Colleen. His name was Bart but everyone called him ‘Bat’ since they lived in a wild west town. He drove to the apartment building. Since Atlas went to school early and had no after school activities, he was at the apartment alone. When he opened the door for Colleen’s Dad, Atlas got three rounds in the chest for his trouble. The evidence showed that Colleen’s Dad walked around, leaning down at the dead boy. We are thinking that he saw that he had just killed a boy, not a man, not someone who would understand. He had no idea that the boy had even been the father of his daughter’s child. He sat on the sofa and killed himself. Open and shut case. Murder-Suicide.
“But Poached did some digging. Bat Masterson was the fake lawman in the town; he was a quick draw expert. He would use blanks in the gunfights, but he had live rounds to rapidly shoot cans and bottles off a rail fence. He was not thought of as being a hot head, but he was very protective of his daughter. He just snapped. Sadly, it was Alice who found the bodies.”
“So, in the course of a few months, Alice lost all her family members. But her roommates carry children with her brother’s DNA. Zinhle was the one who started the naughtiness on the sofa. She blames herself. Colleen called her father instead of her mother. That might have only delayed the situation, but Colleen feels responsible.
“The university called your Aunt Pink. They are turning another quad on the fourth floor into an apartment for the three girls. In spite of Zinhle and Colleen going behind Alice’s back, right now, they are the only family she has. None of them want to stay in the old apartment, but for now, the evidence of a crime needs to be cleaned up. The university is going to pay Pink, but you know her. She’ll add that to her next donation to the school. They’ll be two doors down from Crystal Lewis. That makes three unwed expectant mothers, with Josie across the hall with her son Daniel. I am sure those girls will become a support group. Throw Menzie in there and you have experienced support for the three expectant mothers. Pink thinks that Crystal may want to move in with the other girls, since her quad has Jethro, Baldy, and Colin. She is the only female in the quad.
“But, Jemi, right now, all I can see is that young boy with a look of confusion on his face. It was all senseless. Two lives lost. Five lives forever altered. The three ladies, and we must think of the two unborn children. Both pregnant college freshmen have made a pact that if either of them have a boy, the name will be Atlas. But it is cases like this that make me want to switch places with Poached. He can do homicide full time, and I can break up an illegal gambling den or arrest someone for solicitation. Nope, that won’t work. I will end up investigating drug overdoses and have the same problem.
“Everyone sees the stone-faced police lieutenant. They wonder how anyone could see all this day after day and remain a stone wall. But they don’t see me here, on the sofa, being a basket case, wanting someone to hug me and take the pain away.”
He had finally talked it out. I sat there silently, with tears in my eyes, hugging him as hard as I could muster.
I had seen my Dad, an ordained minister, come home after sitting by a faithful old saint that was ready to pass away. He would be so drained, but in his case, he was assured by the person’s faith as to where they were going. But people like these two recently deceased, do you have any reassurance at all? As Dad Yeggs said, it is just senseless.
Credits
We have had the talking dogs for a couple of years. Elroy is a computer security specialist, promoted by the alphabet soup organization outside Washington DC to maintain security of federal assets in Tracy (Jacob and Dinah Levy, GrandPa Yeggs, and the Niblicks). Being the computer genius, he tricked out the collars on Caulk and Perry, huge guard dogs. The collars have cameras, microphones, and speakers. The collars are tied into Artificial Intelligence so that Caulk and Perry can talk to people without Elroy feeding them things to say. Caulk, the female Caucasian Sheep Dog – German shepherd mix is the lead. Perry (Great Pyrenees – German shepherd mix) is a male who has a playful side. Rhoda, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, never got used to the talking collar. She is the “lone wolf” of the team. She patrols where the other two are not responding to an alarm in case there is a distraction (a feint) before the main attack.
In trying to shorten Irusya, Caulk suggested Rou, short for roux, the starter for Cajun Gumbo. The other was Zsa. Zsa Zsa Gabor was “famous for being famous.” She lived to be 99 years old, and she had nine husbands, but none at the same time.
Alice and Atlas Chalmers are named after an old tractor and farm implement company. We had an abandoned Allis Chalmers tractor that my Dad wanted me to crank as see how well it ran – the old crank starter type engine. I spent a couple of days wearing myself out trying to crank it (yes, with gas in the tank, and fresh spark plugs), and I never got a spark. Dad came home from the next business trip and we used the old Massey-Ferguson tractor to tow the Allis Chalmers to the nearest shop. They took the engine apart and declared it a total loss. But in this case, Alice is still alive and her two friends each have an unborn child of her brother. The family was not a total loss.
Zinhle Zizi is an American, but the name is Zulu.
There are a few Wild West Towns. I have only been to Dodge City, Kansas. My wife had been to a few. They have live performances, like gunfights in the streets, an operating stage in the saloon, and of course, a bunch of tombstones on boot hill. I had “Bat” Masterson react the way his role in the Wild West performances would have acted. In other words, he snapped.
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