Down Hill Water

Down load Part Six

Like a Pig in a Mire

            "Yeah, Yeah," he answered.  "I was busy with this show."
            Fred snorted and turned away to get some fuel for the fire.
            "Is that stove all full of clinkers?"  Ellis asked, as Fred went through the kitchen.
            "You better take a look at it," he answered.  "I don't really know what I'm looking at in there, but there is a lot shit built up at the bottom where the fire is."
            Ellis got up, went into the parlor and opened the stove.  There was six or eight inches of clinker built up in a solid mass under the few embers that glowed on the surface.  "Yeah, the things full of clinkers," he said.  "We need to get them out of there somehow.  We had a special tool at home, when I was a kid, just for taking the things out.  We might be able to get them out with a small shovel and some kind of poker.  We also need a bucket to put'em in."
            "There's a bucket in the back of the car and that shovel you got the ice out of the well with is the only one around I think.  What kind of poker do you need?"
            "Oh, I don't know really.  Something with a hook on the end might work," Ellis answered.
            "Let's go out to the old shop and dig around in the junk again," Fred said.  "We might find something that'll work out there."
            They put their coats on and headed outside.  The snow was falling harder than before and the tracks they had made earlier were nearly covered.  They plowed their way to the old shop and began digging through the piles.  In a short time, Fred had found another shovel that had a broken handle and was somewhat smaller than the one they had used earlier.  Ellis had found three pieces of iron rod that he felt might help in their efforts.  One, a piece of reinforcing steel about three feet long that had been bent over at a right angle six inches from one end, and the other two were small pieces of angle iron a little over two feet long.  When they got to where Fred's car was parked, on the way back to the house, Fred opened the trunk and handed Ellis the bucket.
            "I think I'll see if I can back this thing up a little closer to the house," Fred announced, shutting the trunk.  "You know we're going to need something to put this coal in once we get it out of the car.  We need a coal bin or something."
            "What about that old metal watering trough out in the barn," Ellis mentioned.
            "That would be great, if there's room on the porch for it," Fred agreed.
            Ellis returned to the house with his makeshift tools and Fred started the car.  The extra weight of the coal gave him plenty of traction to back across the deep snow in the yard and soon the Volvo was idling smoothly about three feet from the back door.  He shut off the car and went into the house as well.  Ellis was busy in front of the stove, poking at the clinkers with the hooked iron rod, trying to pull them out the door into the shovel.  The bottom of the door was three or four inches higher than the mass of clinkers and they kept slipping back into the firebox.  The shovel was too wide to fit into the stove, so he couldn't scoop them out and he stopped in frustration.
            Francine came into the room, looking over Ellis' shoulder.  "Why don't you use those other two pieces of steel like chop sticks and just pick them out of there one at a time?"  She said, picking up the two chunks of angle iron and demonstrating on one of Duncan's shoes that he had kicked off next to the stove.
            "Shit, that might work," Ellis said taking the clumsy chopsticks from her.  He poked around with them in the stove until he had a large clinker separated out from the rest and then attempted to pick it up between the to pieces of angle iron.  They twisted as he did so and the clinker fell back into the fire.  All this time coal smoke wisped out of the stove into the room.
            "You better hurry up, Ellis, the house is filling up with smoke," Fred said from the kitchen.  "And I thought your cigarettes smelled bad."
            Ellis tried again and the clinker fell, once more back into the fire.  He failed again on the third try, and Francine nudged him away.
            "Here, let me do that," she said.  "You don't know how to operate chopsticks anyway.
            Ellis stepped back and held the shovel in front of the stove door and she deftly took the irons and picked the clumps of spent coal out of the stove, one at a time, setting them in the shovel, without dropping any.
            "See how easy that was," she said, when she had finished.  "You just have to have a little coordination, that's all."
            "Oh I see, and you're just the picture of grace, I suppose," he said sarcastically, dumping the last clinker into the bucket.
            She stood up, giving him a warm smile.  "If you say so."  She winked at him, turned away and went into the kitchen without another word.
            Ellis picked up the bucket, went outside and stood next to Fred's car, wondering where to dump the clinkers.  It seemed to him that he should build a path, like the one his father had built for his mother's flower garden, but there weren't any gardens here to make a path through.  The area out behind the bathroom had been a flower garden previously, but no one had cared for it in a long time.  It had rained considerably before he and Fred had gone to Seattle and the ground around the front porch had become quite muddy.  'Maybe, I should spread it around there,' he thought, turning that way.  When he got to the area, he couldn't remember where the muddy spots were, so he dumped the cinders in a pile at the side of the house near the porch, where it would be handy when the snow melted and the mud season began again in the spring.  He returned to the house, setting the bucket in the trunk of the Volvo as he went by and then went into his room to get a tape measure.  He measured in several directions on the back porch to see if the watering trough would fit and then went in the kitchen.
            "You want to go look at the watering trough?"  He said as he came through the door.
            "What are you going to water?"  Francine asked.
            We need something to put all that coal, out of Fred's trunk into," Ellis answered.
            "I think these potatoes and onions are ready to eat," John said.  Why don't we have some breakfast before you do that?"
            "That sounds good," Fred answered.  They gathered around the table and John portioned the gooey mess out of the frying pan onto plates and they ate.  Duncan came in from the parlor, grabbed a plate of food and returned to the soap opera.
When they had finished eating, Ellis pushed himself away from the table.  "Well, I guess we better get that trough, before the snow gets so deep we can't even find the barn," he said.
            Fred got up, turned to the cupboard and took the pistol from the shelf, stuffing it in the belt of his pants.
            "Are you going to shoot the trough or what?"  John said with a laugh, as Fred zipped up his coat and picked his gloves up from the counter.
            Fred gave him a look of disapproval and then smiled as he and Ellis went out the back door.  It was snowing even harder.  It came down in large flakes, thick enough that the barn, less that two hundred feet from the house, was barely visible.  They made their way to the barn and were greeted by Effie the pig as they ducked in out of the falling snow.  She oinked a few times, holding up her snout, hoping one of them had brought her something to eat.  When she found nothing, she squealed a couple of short high-pitched grunts of disapproval and burrowed back in under the haymow.  Fred and Ellis went to the watering trough and pulled it out from under a pile of old boards.
            "It doesn't look like it would hold water anymore, but it'd sure hold a lot of coal," Fred said, leaning over the side, inspecting its condition.
            Ellis took the tape measure out of his coat pocket and stretched it the length of the trough.  Satisfied, he held the tape across its breadth.  "Shit, it's only four feet long.  That's six inches shorter than where it needs to go," he said, "and it won't stick out past the door or anything."  He put the tape back in his pocket and turned to survey their best path out of the cluttered barn. 
            "Well let's pack the thing back to the house," Fred said picking up one end.  "The thing sure is heavy."
            The two of them got down low, picked the trough up from the bottom and made their way out of the barn.  Ellis was in front, holding the trough around behind him.  Going was not easy once they were outside the barn and they made slow progress back to the house, but after considerable effort, they made it.  Fred had pulled the car up so close to the back door, it was hard to maneuver the trough in past it to the porch, but they finally managed to place it where they wanted.  They stepped back to look at their work.
            "Boy, that thing takes up a lot of room," Fred said, sliding the trough up tight against the wall of the porch.
            "Yeah, it sure makes it crowded in here," Ellis agreed, "but I don't know where else we could put the damn thing."
            "There really isn't anywhere else," Fred said.  "We might as well fill it up."  He picked up one of the two half full sacks of coal and dumped it into the trough.
            Ellis poured the other sack into the bin and together they picked up the large cardboard box full of coal that sat on the floor, dumping it in as well.
            "We need another bucket," Ellis said.
            "Why don't you grab that big cooking pot from under the sink," Fred said, "or better yet, that old waste basket, no one ever uses, in the bathroom."
            Ellis went into the house, grabbed the metal wastebasket, dumped the few bits of paper out into the parlor stove and returned outside.  Together they transferred the coal from the trunk to the bin and then Fred pulled the car back out onto the driveway.  The once watering trough, now coal bin, sat a little over half full, Taking up more than it's share of the back porch, but it was better than the sacks and boxes that had previously cluttered the area.  Fred took the tarp out of the trunk, shook the dust out of it and spread it neatly back in the trunk, ready for the next coal run.  Ellis scooped the wastebasket into the bin, filling it about half full and together they went inside.  Fred rebuilt the fire in the parlor stove and then joined the rest of the group in the kitchen.  Francine's fresh pot of coffee was ready and they all relaxed around the kitchen table with a cup.  Duncan hadn't moved from the couch in the parlor and still sat glued to the television.  John and Molly sat conversing quietly about some book on transcendental meditation they had both read and appeared to be quite comfortable with each others company.  Once again, Ellis felt a twinge of jealousy at the prospect of their increasing friendship, but he let it pass.  He was beginning to see that his relationship with her, might have been the result of her dilemma with Frank and not the magical spark that he had first thought.  He reminisced back through his many relationships with women.  All of which had ended in his being dumped for one reason or another.  This would be just one more in a long string.  He already knew that he fell in love too easily and here again he had jumped in, barely knowing the girl.  He took a drink of his coffee and smiled at his own misfortune, as if it was just another lesson learned.  It did cross his mind, however, that he probably hadn't learned much either. 
            "We got a lot done today," Francine said, setting her coffee cup down on the table.  "I think I'll make another batch of groats."
            "That would be great," Ellis agreed.  I think I'll pay attention to how you do it.  I have to admit that yours are a lot better than mine."
            "It's just a matter of proportion and I think baking them in the oven instead of that frying pan makes them a lot lighter and less apt to turn into rocks the next day."
            John stood up, stretched and walked into the parlor.  "Hey Duncan, you want to go into your three o'clock class?"  He asked.  "I think I'm going to go into my geology lab.  I have to do a bunch of shit in there, or I'll never pass the damn thing."
            Duncan looked up momentarily.  "No, I think I'll pass," he said, looking back at his soap opera.
            "Okay, then I'll just go alone."  He returned to the kitchen.  "Do we need anything from town?"  He asked.
            "Probably a million things that we can't afford," Francine spoke up, with a chuckle.
            "I should pick up some blankets," Molly said, leaning back in her chair.  "There's some other stuff I should have grabbed yesterday too."
            "You can ride along if you want," John offered.  "I could drop you off at Dave and Carol's and then pick you up after my class."
            "You want to go into town, Ellis?"  She asked.
            "Not really," he answered.  "Do you think it's a good idea for you to go in?  Frank could be there at Dave's right now."
            "Oh, I don't think he'll be there yet, and besides, I thought I'd stop and call there before we went by."  She got up and went into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.
            "We have to go right away, or I'll be late for my class," John called out to her.
            "I'll be right out," she called back through the thin door.  "Hey Francine,  if you need anything like cooking stuff, I have some money and I'd like to contribute."
            There were quite a few things Francine could use in the kitchen and she began to write them down on an envelope that had been sitting on the table for days.  When Molly came out of the bathroom, Francine handed her the list.  "Here," she said.  "You don't have to get everything there, but butter is probably the most important.  A little white flour would be good too.  Most of what we have here is that heavy stuff like buckwheat and soy flour.  If you can, get a small sack of those white beans, I'll make some soup.  The rest of that stuff would be nice, but it really isn't necessary."
            "I can get all of this stuff, it looks like." She said, looking over the list.  She went to the hooks by the back door, took her coat off and put it on.  John had already put on his and they went out.  The door shut behind them and the house was silent, except for the television.  They could hear Duncan's Toyota start up and then pull out of the driveway.
            Fred went into the parlor, joining Duncan in front of the tube.  Francine got up, went to the cupboard and began taking out the materials for a new batch of groatcakes.  "It looks to me like there might be something starting between those two," she said, as she set a large mixing bowl on the counter.