Chapter 12 Baz
BAZ
Arden was pensive and quiet on the drive back from town, and when they got to Windrock, she collected her shopping bags and her share of the food and told Baz she was going to her cabin for a while.
But she hesitated, looking up at him, and then swiftly stood on tiptoe and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.
“Thank you very much for a lovely day,” she said, and then she fled to her cabin.
Baz was left standing stunned. He touched his cheek, where he felt the warm press of Arden’s lips like a brand.
Mine, mine, mine.
Lexie wandered up. “You look like a steer that’s been punched between the eyes,” she said. “Of course, you look like that most of the time, so nothing’s new.”
Baz shook himself out of a reverie involving Arden’s lips, and Arden’s round hips retreating down the street, and Arden’s everything else. He gave his cousin a friendly smack on the arm. “How’s that for a punch? Here, grab a burger and help me unload your construction stuff before it rains.”
He’d seen the clouds rolling in on their drive back, heavy and gray above the farmland, and now they were closing around the sun, turning the bright morning to a dull afternoon.
They got the truck’s load of lumber, screws, caulk, paint, and other supplies unloaded and covered with a tarp just as the first drops of rain struck the street.
“It’ll slow down the work, but we need it,” Baz said as he and Lexie both retreated inside the open door of the old country store.
“Everything is pretty dry at this time of year, and this’ll make the plants lush and cut down on fire danger.
With us making campfires and all this dry old wood around, we do need to be careful. ”
Elvy had left with her goats while they were gone, but he was astonished at how thoroughly the goats had cropped down the long grass and brush around the buildings. No wonder everything was in such good shape and not too badly overgrown.
It still smelled faintly of goat inside the store. Baz glanced around, reminded that he had left a mess and now he had to deal with it.
“Lexie,” he began.
“Oh look at the time, gotta run. I told Fern I’d come over and help move some furniture that’s too heavy for her to manage on her own.”
Baz snorted. “Have fun.”
He watched Lexie dash across the street through the rain, holding her arms above her head, and vanish in the direction of Fern’s cottage.
Leaving the door open to let in air and light, he decided to take advantage of the need to clean up after the goats and do a regular housecleaning.
The store filled with the pleasant rain smell, a vast improvement over the goat smell.
Rain drummed on the roof as he scrubbed dirty windows, swept the floor, and restored his unpacked clothes and shaving items to where they belonged.
He hadn’t unpacked much so far. Most of what he had brought with him was still stuffed carelessly into his suitcase and backpack.
In this case, it had probably saved him from an even worse mess.
His thoughts kept returning to Arden. He wondered how she was doing.
This was the first big rain since they’d come to the town.
He was pleased that the roof of the old store held up so well; there were just a few leaks to be dealt with, mostly in the storeroom.
He set out some tin cans to catch the drips and remind him where the leaks were to fix them later.
Was Arden staying dry enough? he wondered. Was she comfortable?
As the rain continued to pound on the roof, a few more leaks appeared.
Baz wandered around setting out cans or rags to catch the worst drips and using chalk to mark the leaky spots.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Arden in her little cabin.
It had seemed snug enough, but it was also pretty dim even on a sunny day.
And if the roof was leaking too badly, it might turn her cozy nest into a miserable, soggy disaster.
Yeah, he better go over and check on her.
One thing he hadn’t thought to bring was a rain coat, poncho, or similar. He made a mental note to put it on the list for the next trip back to their folks’ places. For the moment, he pulled his canvas work jacket over his head and hurried out in the rain.
Rain had changed the entire aspect of the town.
The buildings were misty and faint, rendering the place like a painting.
Water swirled down the street, which lacked gutters.
He now realized that a lot of the ruts in the road were because of this kind of weather.
They would need to fix the drainage, perhaps add storm drains. More for the to-do list.
He heard the low thumping rhythm of the generator as he approached Lexie and Declan’s end of the street.
They were keeping it there because Lexie and Declan had been using power tools, and it was easier than running extension cords all over town.
Right now, they were using it for lights; bright electric light spilled from the windows of Lexie’s machine shop and Declan’s schoolhouse.
The door of the schoolhouse was open, and Lexie was helping Declan work on it. She had a hammer in one hand and looked like she was trying to straighten out a twisted hinge.
“You look like a drowned rat, ‘cuz,” Declan said. But he seemed more teasing than cutting about it. He was in a much better mood than yesterday.
“Need any help?” Baz asked.
“Nah, we got it. You can come inside and dry off if you want. There’s a fire going.”
Baz shook his head. “If I get dry, I’m not going to want to go out again. The place is looking good, though. What the heck are you planning to do with it?”
Declan smiled one of his rare sideways smiles. “No clue. I just like it, but I have about as much of an idea for this place as you do for the general store. Unless you want to be an old-time storekeeper.”
“Hey, maybe I do. A town like ours needs a general store.”
Declan shrugged and reached to support the door while Lexie wrestled with the back of her claw hammer, trying to bend the warped hinge back into place.
“I’m gonna have to take this off and pound it back into shape,” she decided, laying the hammer on a windowsill. “There’s no way I can get this hung straight like it is.”
“I see you’re embracing the blacksmith lifestyle,” Baz remarked with a grin.
Lexie switched to a screwdriver to take the hinge off. “How are things down at your end of town?”
“Leaky. Flooding a little in the street. I’m glad we did the shopping run earlier today.”
He was getting steadily wetter by the moment, so he gave them a wave and went onward.
Water was really flowing in the street now, he noticed.
Although the townsite seemed level, it was actually tilted slightly, so all the water flowed down toward the highway.
That helped keep the town dry, but it probably meant that in a very long, heavy rain, there was a risk of the road washing out and stranding them.
Another thing to plan for, he supposed, but he decided not to worry about it for now.
The town itself was clearly high enough to be out of danger, since it had been standing for a hundred years.
As soon as he turned onto Arden’s side street, he found himself temporarily disoriented.
Everything really did look different in the rain.
There was a faint smell of wood smoke in the air, and using that, as well as his memories of the layout of the street, he found his way to Arden’s cabin and knocked on the door.
“Just a minute!” Arden’s voice called.
There was some coughing, and then she opened the door. Smoke hung in faint wisps inside the cabin and drifted out past her.
“Oh, good,” she said, stifling another cough. She grabbed Baz’s hand, and before he could fully register the touch of her small, warm fingers, she pulled him inside. “Do you know how to make a fire in one of these things?”
She gestured at the small iron stove in the corner. The door in the front of the stove stood slightly ajar and smoke was seeping out.
“I thought this would be easy,” Arden said. “I’ve made campfires, and I’ve used fireplaces, you know, the decorative kind. But it won’t burn, and I can’t figure out why not. It just smolders and smokes.”
“Is it getting enough draw?” Baz asked. He saw that she didn’t understand. “The fire needs air flow. There’s a vent on the front of the stove that needs to be open, and there might be a damper in the chimney—a handle that can open or close to control the amount of air.”
He left the front door open to let the smoke out and went to have a look.
There was an iron stovepipe going from the top of the stove to the low ceiling, and sticking out from the middle of the stovepipe was a T-shaped handle. Baz touched it to make sure it wasn’t hot, grasped it, and tried to make it turn.
“Yeah, this is your problem. This is the damper, and it feels like it’s stuck shut. Probably rusted.”
Arden waved a hand in front of her face, trying uselessly to sweep the smoke away. She sneezed. “Can you get it to work, do you think? You guys have tools, right?”
“Let me give it a try first.” He banged on the chimney with his fist, jiggled the handle, and abruptly he felt something crack free and it turned.
The change was immediate. The smoke began to clear as it was sucked up the chimney rather than roiling out into the room.
“There you go. Looks like you’ve got a pretty decent fire laid otherwise.
” Baz crouched in front of the stove. “Here, give me a few of those little pieces you’ve got there.
” Arden knelt beside him and handed him some selections from the small pile of kindling and birch bark beside the stove.
“You’ve got a nice setup here. You do know campfires. ”
“I won’t take the credit. This was all mostly here already. Whoever used to live here left some wood, or maybe it’s been used by campers.”