At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [88]
Lindsay released a long, exhausted breath. “Well, there you go. It never rains but it pours.”
The other two merely nodded, glumly, and sipped their coffee.
“You’re not getting anything done standing here crying over it,” declared Ida Mae gruffly. “Come on in the house and get some breakfast.”
“My mouth tastes like it’s full of ashes,” Lori said. “I don’t think I can eat anything.”
“That’ll be a first,” replied Ida Mae, turning back toward the house.
“You kids be careful out here in your bare feet.” Cici turned to follow. “There are pieces of hot wood scattered around.”
“Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes,” Bridget added.
Noah was poking around the edges of the barn’s skeleton, absently shoving away pieces of debris, when Lori, dispirited, turned to follow the others inside. She saw Noah squat down to pick something up, and she asked in passing, without much real interest, “What’s that?”
Panic crossed his eyes, and he moved quickly, straightening up, turning away from her, and tucking the object into his jeans pocket. He didn’t reply, and he didn’t look at her. But it didn’t matter, because Lori had already seen what he had found.
It was a cigarette butt.
They were unenthusiastically picking at breakfast when the sound of Farley’s tractor chugging up the drive drew them all outside again.
“Figured you’d need some help cleaning up,” he said, shouting to be heard over the sound of the engine. Being their nearest neighbor, Farley had arrived the previous night almost at the same time as the fire engines, and had stood to the side watching the effort with approving nods until the last hose was wound and stored and the taillights disappeared down the drive. Then, in his usual taciturn fashion, he had tipped his hat to them, climbed back into his pickup truck, and returned home.
Cici tilted her head up at him with an apologetic expression. “Thanks, Farley, that’s good of you. But we can’t afford to pay much.”
“That’s okay.” He spat politely into the ever-ready soda can. “I ain’t planning to do much.”
But what he did in a matter of an hour was more than they could have accomplished by themselves with a week’s work. Using the plow blade on the tractor, he pushed the fallen timbers and charred debris out of the skeleton of the barn and into a pile at the edge of the yard, where Noah was assigned to duty with the garden hose, making certain that the last sparks were fully extinguished. The fact that the pathetic beginnings of the chicken coop were demolished in the process was a small price to pay.
“You all take a shovel and pile some dirt up around the edges of that trash,” he advised, “and she ought to be okay. Gonna have to get a bulldozer in to take down the shell, though.” He held out his hand. “Ten dollar.”
And, because they knew that was all he would accept for his labor no matter how hard they argued, that was what they paid.
The phone rang all morning as neighbors, acquaintances, and the merely curious checked in. A fire, even a barn fire, was an alarming event in the small community, and the news spread like the fog of smoke that still drifted over the valley. “I’m afraid they’re going to start a charity drive for us,” Bridget said after the fifth or sixth call. “I keep trying to explain that we didn’t lose anything valuable, but everyone wants to help.”
“You shouldn’t discourage them,” Cici said. “Maybe someone will donate a bulldozer.” She stood on the back porch, with her work gloves on and her hair tied up in a scarf, and shook her head helplessly as she gazed at the ruin. “I don’t know where to begin.”
Noah, working as though driven by demons, was digging a trench around the pile of smoldering trash that Farley had piled up. Flakes of black ash still drifted from it, and greasy mud surrounded it.