Chapter 38
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
Reeves silently praised the Lord above that he’d only sent rain in this thunderstorm.
Hail would have scared the kids further and driven their already tense panic even higher.
As it was, he’d gotten OJ, Lars, and Eric under the branches of a thick grouping of pine trees where some bushes had also started to grow.
He’d pushed them back as far as he could, noting that the ground back there was still dry. He watched Luke and Corrine take painstaking step after step until they too arrived on the fringe of the shelter.
“Good job, Corrine,” he said, beaming at the girl. “I can get your knee fixed up once we make sure everyone’s safe and dry.”
“I’ve got a first-aid kit too, jelly bean,” Luke said, and Reeves exchanged a glance with the man. Luke definitely had a dark horse, don’t-mess-with-me online persona that had come out the moment Reeves had said there was a storm coming. Before that, Luke had been all smiles, handshakes, and hugs.
He’d brought personalized snack bags for each child, and he’d set up all their tents, helped them with their gear, put their chairs around the fire, and grinned as Reeves did his video segments.
He’d warmed to Reeves immediately, and Reeves had watched him through a new lens—not just that of a country music singer and a man, but as a father and an uncle.
Reeves didn’t have any role models for a father or an uncle, and he found he was starved for men in his life that he could pattern himself after.
Bailey’s daddy was warm and kind, strong and protective, as well.
While he and Bailey had done a couple of things with her family this summer, Reeves suddenly wanted a lot more time with Graham, and maybe some of it without Bailey.
She deserved a man who knew how to be a husband and a father before he became those things, and while Reeves was always over-prepared in every aspect of his life, in this one thing, he had woefully little experience.
He turned and followed Luke, who’d ducked under the lower branches of the bushes and helped his daughter scoot back to the trunk.
Reeves lifted the longer branches and pulled the rope out of his front pocket that he’d placed there upon assessing their shelter.
He tied the branches together and lifted them up, tossing the rope to loop it over a higher pine tree branch and pulling it down to knot it together.
This would allow them a higher entrance and more headroom underneath the branches.
He then scooted in as far as he dared, bumping up against Luke’s side and the shins of OJ. “All right, who’s cold and wet?” he asked.
No one said anything. Then Eric finally said, “Some water went down the back of my neck, so I’m wet underneath my backpack.”
“That happens sometimes,” Reeves said. “You tell me as soon as you start feeling really cold, okay?” He lifted his poncho and slicked the water off to the side.
“I’ve got some hand warmers here. I’m going to give you a couple, so we can keep you as warm as possible. Not much I can do about your back.”
“I’m okay,” Eric said.
Corrine hissed, and Reeves looked over to see Luke cleaning the dirt and gravel out of her scrape.
“It’s just a tiny scrape, bean,” he said. “One Band-Aid will cover it, and you’ll be fine.” Her teeth chattered too, and Reeves unzipped his bag and got out his jacket.
“Luke, she seems a little cold,” he murmured.
Luke finished up with the Band-Aid, looked at his daughter, and then turned toward Reeves. “Pull the poncho off real quick. Put this over everything, backpack and all.”
“I am a little cold, Daddy,” Corrine said, and she started to lift her poncho up, and over her head it went, sending several water drops splattering around the group.
Luke put the jacket on his daughter, and she pulled her knees up to her chest. He zipped the jacket around her whole body, and then recovered her with the poncho.
They’d eaten lunch a couple of hours ago, but Luke had brought snacks to the stream as they’d planned to hike, then fish, and then hike a little higher before returning to camp for dinner.
Reeves had brought chicken nuggets and French fries with fruit and potato chips for the teens, and chicken tenders with extravagant dipping sauces for him and Luke.
He figured he’d save the fancy meal for breakfast, as he normally made his steaks in the evening and wanted to switch it up for the video and the kids.
“Luke has some snacks he’s gonna pass out,” Reeves said, meeting the other man’s eyes once again. “Who’s feeling a little scared?”
OJ raised his hand, and Reeves gestured for him to come closer. “You come sit right in front of me, bud. This storm is going to be over in less than ten minutes. I just know it.”
“Can I see if my daddy texted back?” OJ asked, and Reeves hated the waver in the young man’s voice.
“Of course you can,” he said. “We can pass around my phone, and all of you can text your daddies if you want.”
“I made a group thread with all of your daddies in it, and Aunt Sterling too,” Luke said.
“I want to text my daddy,” Lars said as OJ scooted over and pressed back into Reeves’s backpack.
He unlocked his phone and handed it to OJ. “It’s that top one right there, bud. Tell us what they’ve all said too, would you?”
“Okay,” OJ said, and he took a deep breath.
“Uncle Luke sent a long text about the storm and how we’re seeking shelter, and that if they don’t hear from us in one hour to call for help.
He told them what campground we’re at, and reminded everybody what vehicles we drove, and that we’re camping only two hundred yards from the parking lot. ”
Reeves smiled because OJ made this sound like he was narrating a summer Little League game and not an emergency text for help. “Aunt Sterling replied almost immediately and said, ‘I’ll text the family and get everyone praying.’ Then she said, ‘Don’t you dare do something crazy!’”
Luke chuckled, and Reeves did too.
“Then my daddy said, ‘Should I head that way right now? It’s a couple-hour drive, and maybe you’ll need some help?’”
Reeves shook his head. “Tell him he doesn’t need to come, OJ. We’ve got satellite phones and emergency gear, and we’re fine.”
OJ’s thumbs started to fly across the screen, and Reeves watched as he typed, We’re okay, Daddy. Reeves says you don’t need to come, because we have lots of gear, and we’ve taken shelter under some trees. He says the storm is going to pass in ten minutes, so just hold on, okay?
He sent that and scrolled back up.
“Uncle Trace said he’d get in the truck and go to my daddy’s house. Uncle Tex said he would call Graham Whittaker and let him know.”
Reeves’s heart filled with love for the Youngs and the Whittakers, the good men and women rallying around their loved ones…and him.
“Mav said he’d pray and go to Uncle Otis’s, and Morris said he’d just left Uncle Gabe’s and would go to Aunt Sterling’s place.” OJ twisted and looked back at Reeves. “Everything else was about prayers, and a couple of texts have come in while I was reading. They want an update.”
“Give the phone to Lars,” Reeves said. “You gave your daddy a little update, OJ. Lars, you tell your daddy you’re okay. Tell him what we did. Tell him where we are. Give him an update.”
The sound of plastic bags being passed out met Reeves’s ears, and he took the small, snack-size bag of Fritos from Luke.
“We’re gonna have a snack. We’ve got water.” Reeves exhaled heavily. “You know, we could sleep under these bushes tonight, and we’d be fine.”
“It’d be a little cold,” Luke said, cutting a glance in Reeves’s direction.
Reeves shook his head. “Nah, we’d build a wind blind, and I’ve got two emergency blankets in my backpack that would cover all four of you kids.” He grinned around at the group. “This is what I do, you guys, when it’s me against Mother Nature, I bring everything I need to make sure I can win.”
“But you just told us down there that we wouldn’t win,” Corrine said.
“If you don’t have the things you need, and if you lose your head,” Reeves said. “Then you lose. But we haven’t done either of those, have we?”
She shook her head and popped another cheddar and sour cream chip into her mouth. Luke got out two bottles of water from his pack and passed one to Corrine.
“Eric, where’s your water bottle?” he asked.
The boy started shifting around to get to his backpack. Luke knelt up to pull it out of the pocket, and he handed it to the boy. “I want everybody to eat and drink.”
“All right,” Lars said. “I finished my update to my daddy.”
Reeves nodded at Lars and then Eric. “Give Eric the phone so he can talk to his dad too, and then we’ll let Luke and Corrine talk to their momma and wife.”
“Okay.” Lars passed the phone to Eric, and Reeves started to relax, despite the continuing rain.
It wasn’t nearly as violent as before, with the drops turning smaller the longer it went on.
Reeves wondered if the wind might become the real enemy.
Wind obscured vision by kicking up dust and debris, and if someone was wet, the wind only chilled them faster.
He finished his bag of Fritos and looked over to Lars. “Let’s go around and say one thing we’ve done this summer that we’re really proud of, and one thing we’re scared of right now. I’ll go first.”
He grinned around at the group, surprised at the things flowing through his mind that he might share with them. Then he remembered that OJ had called him Uncle Reeves, and he’d seen the way Bailey interacted with her family, and how the Youngs had shown up to help her after the flood.
They shared with one another. They showed up. They did hard things together. They laughed and they cried, all of it forming a bond and a tether that Reeves recognized was missing from his own life.