Read Online When She Flew by Jennie Shortridge - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jennie Shortridge
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been, but he wasn’t. He said, Well, then, I guess it’s time to see if the Emergency Plan works.
This is our Emergency Plan:
1. Extinguish the campfire with the bucket of dirt beside it. If it is nighttime, blow out all candles.
2. Pack emergency backpacks with two changes of clothes (including socks and underwear), toothbrush, soap, comb, and any other personal effects. Wear your coat and boots, even in summer.
3. We are allowed two books each and I am allowed one toy (although I’ve outgrown most of them). I am in charge of my schoolwork and Pater is in charge of our Bible, papers, and money (I have a folded-up copy of my birth certificate and an emergency twenty-dollar bill at all times in my sock), water, and some food. We each must strap our sleeping bags to our backpacks.
4. Make sure we’ve left nothing behind that can identify us. Pull up the rope ladder and jump down from the tree house.
5. Sweep the campsite thoroughly, including our footsteps, as we leave. Hide the broom in dense foliage.
6. Retreat to either the fallen cedar up and over the hill, where we have cleared a nice space that fits us both comfortably, or exit the park down the steep north route (which Pater says no one else in their right minds will ever go up or down) in case of extreme emergency.
7. If we are separated, we are to meet as soon as possible at church. I am to ask Reverend Rosetta for shelter if Pater doesn’t arrive right away. If he doesn’t arrive in one week, I am to ask Reverend Rosetta for bus fare to Denver.
8. Once I am in Denver, I am to call Pater’s mother, whose phone number is written on the back of my birth certificate. She is, at heart, a good woman, Pater says, and will take me in to live with her until Pater can join us. Ask her to send a check to Reverend Rosetta covering bus fare and any expenses I’ve incurred. He means food when he says this, but I like the way he says it better. It sounds more like an official plan.
Our Emergency Plan is a secret. We’ve added to it since but we started it a long time ago, back when we didn’t have our tree house yet, or candles, or lanterns, or anything to do once it got dark at night but sit in our tent, or if it wasn’t raining, out by the fire—always a small enough fire to put out quickly.
Pater would tell me stories about all kinds of things, like how he used to go camping with his dad and brother, Robert, in Colorado when he was a boy, and fish for trout in the Platte River, how the fish would spew their eggs all over the place when he and Robert were trying to take them off the hook. His dad would fry them with their heads on with some potatoes and onions, and Pater said that was some of the best food he’d ever eaten. Once he even told me about when his father left to go live with another woman in Nebraska, how his mother had run after his Ford Bronco for half a mile. Pater laughed like that was funny, but his eyes didn’t look happy. His dad came back to live with them after a few months, and they were all supposed to act like it had never happened. I was surprised that these were the same people I knew as Grandma and Grandpa Wiggs, who I’d always thought were the most upstanding people in the world, but I also felt special, being told this story. It meant I was growing up, even though it made me realize that there weren’t perfect people in the world, the way I had always thought.
I told Pater things, too. I told him what I’d learned in school while he was away at the war, showing off my times tables and tongue twisters. I’d also tell him stories I made up on the spot: silly ones about enchanted animals and princesses, or scary stories about monsters and dark caves. I never told him everything about while he was gone, though. Even when I was young, I knew better than to get him all riled up. Now that it was just the two of us, it was peaceful, and I wanted more than anything to keep it that way.
Memorizing the Emergency Plan was a game we
This is our Emergency Plan:
1. Extinguish the campfire with the bucket of dirt beside it. If it is nighttime, blow out all candles.
2. Pack emergency backpacks with two changes of clothes (including socks and underwear), toothbrush, soap, comb, and any other personal effects. Wear your coat and boots, even in summer.
3. We are allowed two books each and I am allowed one toy (although I’ve outgrown most of them). I am in charge of my schoolwork and Pater is in charge of our Bible, papers, and money (I have a folded-up copy of my birth certificate and an emergency twenty-dollar bill at all times in my sock), water, and some food. We each must strap our sleeping bags to our backpacks.
4. Make sure we’ve left nothing behind that can identify us. Pull up the rope ladder and jump down from the tree house.
5. Sweep the campsite thoroughly, including our footsteps, as we leave. Hide the broom in dense foliage.
6. Retreat to either the fallen cedar up and over the hill, where we have cleared a nice space that fits us both comfortably, or exit the park down the steep north route (which Pater says no one else in their right minds will ever go up or down) in case of extreme emergency.
7. If we are separated, we are to meet as soon as possible at church. I am to ask Reverend Rosetta for shelter if Pater doesn’t arrive right away. If he doesn’t arrive in one week, I am to ask Reverend Rosetta for bus fare to Denver.
8. Once I am in Denver, I am to call Pater’s mother, whose phone number is written on the back of my birth certificate. She is, at heart, a good woman, Pater says, and will take me in to live with her until Pater can join us. Ask her to send a check to Reverend Rosetta covering bus fare and any expenses I’ve incurred. He means food when he says this, but I like the way he says it better. It sounds more like an official plan.
Our Emergency Plan is a secret. We’ve added to it since but we started it a long time ago, back when we didn’t have our tree house yet, or candles, or lanterns, or anything to do once it got dark at night but sit in our tent, or if it wasn’t raining, out by the fire—always a small enough fire to put out quickly.
Pater would tell me stories about all kinds of things, like how he used to go camping with his dad and brother, Robert, in Colorado when he was a boy, and fish for trout in the Platte River, how the fish would spew their eggs all over the place when he and Robert were trying to take them off the hook. His dad would fry them with their heads on with some potatoes and onions, and Pater said that was some of the best food he’d ever eaten. Once he even told me about when his father left to go live with another woman in Nebraska, how his mother had run after his Ford Bronco for half a mile. Pater laughed like that was funny, but his eyes didn’t look happy. His dad came back to live with them after a few months, and they were all supposed to act like it had never happened. I was surprised that these were the same people I knew as Grandma and Grandpa Wiggs, who I’d always thought were the most upstanding people in the world, but I also felt special, being told this story. It meant I was growing up, even though it made me realize that there weren’t perfect people in the world, the way I had always thought.
I told Pater things, too. I told him what I’d learned in school while he was away at the war, showing off my times tables and tongue twisters. I’d also tell him stories I made up on the spot: silly ones about enchanted animals and princesses, or scary stories about monsters and dark caves. I never told him everything about while he was gone, though. Even when I was young, I knew better than to get him all riled up. Now that it was just the two of us, it was peaceful, and I wanted more than anything to keep it that way.
Memorizing the Emergency Plan was a game we
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