Read Online Renewal 3 - Your Basic Swiss Family by Jf Perkins - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jf Perkins
Tags: Science-Fiction
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his feet with a snappy salute. “Yes, Sir!” He came back with two bottles, handed one to Bill, and settled in for another long haul.
Chapter 3 - 8
The next morning, we woke to the sound of my dad chopping wood. Kirk and I had become highly attuned to the sound and groaned in unison as soon as we realized what we were hearing. We stretched as much as we could in the sleeping back and crawled over Lucy to get out of the tent. Dad had shaken off his sour mood from Arturo’s departure, and was happily cutting chips from the first logs he had split the morning before. As usual, we had no idea what he was doing, other than making those chips fly around.
Mom handed us both a paper bowl of the endless oatmeal, and we ate and watched Dad work. It became quickly apparent that he was making benches out of the split logs. He was notching the longer logs to fit on the shorter pieces, which became stable legs to raise the seats up off the ground and to keep them from tipping over. When he had fitted everything to his satisfaction, he drove long spike nails through to make the connections permanent. He gave each bench a shake, stood on them and walked end to end, then smiled with the satisfaction of a job well done. He slid them over to where we had become accustomed to gathering at meals, and greeted us for the day by waving us over to the new seats.
Kirk and I got up and tried the benches. They were much better than sitting on the ground. Just having an official place to rest our butts made our lives better. It was amazing how fast we were reduced from 300 channels and Xbox to the simplest pleasures.
“What do you think, boys?” Dad asked, yearning for some compliments.
We stopped spooning oatmeal long enough to mumble a couple of variations on, “Great, Dad.” It was hard to admit how nice the benches really felt, for some reason. Dad accepted our comments like we were the President, pinning him with some kind of medal, so I suppose we said enough.
Our brief conversation was enough to bring the stragglers out of the tents. Lucy and the boys looked like they would be happy to sleep until noon, but Francine came out of our parents’ tent with her mouth already in high gear. Being boys, we tuned the old lady out immediately, but Mom nodded in Francine’s direction as if she were hanging on every word. Lucy accepted her bowl of oatmeal and sat next to me. From the look grumpy look on my sister’s face, I didn’t even attempt to speak to her. Tommy and Jimmy split up at the bench, with Jimmy settling next to Lucy for his breakfast. He wasn’t ready to sing yet.
Ten minutes later, breakfast was eaten, and Dad was ready to get to work. He dragged us over to the maple, almost physically dragged us. We felt like we had been beaten with a baseball bat that doled out sore muscles but left no bruises. Then, Dad did a magical bit of mind job on us. He told us to make a muscle. We held up our arms and flexed, wincing with the sharp pain. He felt each of our biceps in turn and said, “Yep. Hard work makes for big muscles. I looked at my arm, and probably imagined it, but sure enough, it did look bigger. Just like that, our heads were in the game and we were ready to start again.
By lunch, we had built another ladder, chopped some more young trees, and were well on our way to the second, larger level of our tree house. Dad nailed the second ladder to the tree, since it didn’t need to move for security, he told us. The first platform had been built out of straight logs, arranged to act as a flat frame that hugged the trunk of the tree. It had not been quite strong enough, and he was forced to brace it with diagonal pieces. Dad had apparently been doing some engineer-type thinking because he built the second level with a primitive truss system. He took the heavier logs and made them the long linear side of each truss, and then used a short spacer piece of wood, attached in the middle of that log. He used thinner saplings to
Chapter 3 - 8
The next morning, we woke to the sound of my dad chopping wood. Kirk and I had become highly attuned to the sound and groaned in unison as soon as we realized what we were hearing. We stretched as much as we could in the sleeping back and crawled over Lucy to get out of the tent. Dad had shaken off his sour mood from Arturo’s departure, and was happily cutting chips from the first logs he had split the morning before. As usual, we had no idea what he was doing, other than making those chips fly around.
Mom handed us both a paper bowl of the endless oatmeal, and we ate and watched Dad work. It became quickly apparent that he was making benches out of the split logs. He was notching the longer logs to fit on the shorter pieces, which became stable legs to raise the seats up off the ground and to keep them from tipping over. When he had fitted everything to his satisfaction, he drove long spike nails through to make the connections permanent. He gave each bench a shake, stood on them and walked end to end, then smiled with the satisfaction of a job well done. He slid them over to where we had become accustomed to gathering at meals, and greeted us for the day by waving us over to the new seats.
Kirk and I got up and tried the benches. They were much better than sitting on the ground. Just having an official place to rest our butts made our lives better. It was amazing how fast we were reduced from 300 channels and Xbox to the simplest pleasures.
“What do you think, boys?” Dad asked, yearning for some compliments.
We stopped spooning oatmeal long enough to mumble a couple of variations on, “Great, Dad.” It was hard to admit how nice the benches really felt, for some reason. Dad accepted our comments like we were the President, pinning him with some kind of medal, so I suppose we said enough.
Our brief conversation was enough to bring the stragglers out of the tents. Lucy and the boys looked like they would be happy to sleep until noon, but Francine came out of our parents’ tent with her mouth already in high gear. Being boys, we tuned the old lady out immediately, but Mom nodded in Francine’s direction as if she were hanging on every word. Lucy accepted her bowl of oatmeal and sat next to me. From the look grumpy look on my sister’s face, I didn’t even attempt to speak to her. Tommy and Jimmy split up at the bench, with Jimmy settling next to Lucy for his breakfast. He wasn’t ready to sing yet.
Ten minutes later, breakfast was eaten, and Dad was ready to get to work. He dragged us over to the maple, almost physically dragged us. We felt like we had been beaten with a baseball bat that doled out sore muscles but left no bruises. Then, Dad did a magical bit of mind job on us. He told us to make a muscle. We held up our arms and flexed, wincing with the sharp pain. He felt each of our biceps in turn and said, “Yep. Hard work makes for big muscles. I looked at my arm, and probably imagined it, but sure enough, it did look bigger. Just like that, our heads were in the game and we were ready to start again.
By lunch, we had built another ladder, chopped some more young trees, and were well on our way to the second, larger level of our tree house. Dad nailed the second ladder to the tree, since it didn’t need to move for security, he told us. The first platform had been built out of straight logs, arranged to act as a flat frame that hugged the trunk of the tree. It had not been quite strong enough, and he was forced to brace it with diagonal pieces. Dad had apparently been doing some engineer-type thinking because he built the second level with a primitive truss system. He took the heavier logs and made them the long linear side of each truss, and then used a short spacer piece of wood, attached in the middle of that log. He used thinner saplings to
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