Chapter 2
Everything started on an otherwise ordinary
Friday afternoon. The rabbits knew something was wrong before I
did. I mean, I’d heard the reports on the radio about the huge
earthquake in Wyoming—I’d even heard some nut on KUNI babbling
about the end of times and the volcano under Yellowstone National
Park. But I didn’t believe any of it, at least not until after my
rabbits started acting crazy.
I was out in the barn, working on my
dollhouse. I had a crapload of weekend homework, but who does
homework on Friday?
The dollhouse was more my dad’s thing than
mine. When he presented it to me for my eighth birthday, I had to
fight back sudden tears. Dad thought they were tears of joy and
started babbling about all the micro-furniture we could build
together. But I was trying, and failing, to hide my disappointment.
I’d been hoping to get a tractor—or at least an ATV.
For a while, I kind of liked the dollhouse,
despite my initial disappointment. Building furniture with Dad was
fun. We made bureaus and nightstands—the drawers joined with
dovetails so fine I had to carve them with an Exacto knife. Dad
whittled lion’s-paw legs for the tables and chairs, while I
laboriously fashioned tiny tabletops and chair backs mortised so
tightly that they didn’t need glue.
About the time I turned twelve, I got bored
with the dollhouse. I had my own tractor by then, an ancient Deere
that spent more time in the shop than it did running. When I wasn’t
working on the tractor, I built oddments like my potato cannon. I
could shoot a potato more than five hundred feet with that thing. I
just needed a target—and the dollhouse was perfect.
When Dad saw the results, he was as crushed
as the dollhouse itself. He tried to hide his disappointment, but I
saw the light glinting from his damp cheek as he turned away.
Before then, I didn’t realize what the dollhouse meant to him. He
told me it was okay—that the dollhouse was mine, and destroying it
with ballistic potatoes was no big deal—but I could tell he didn’t
really mean what he was saying.
I had hauled the broken pieces of the
dollhouse into my room. It took more than a month of exacting labor
to rebuild it. Shattered boards had to be recut, yellow
potato-juice stains painted over, furniture repaired or rebuilt.
But the look on Dad’s face when I hauled the resurrected dollhouse
out of my room made all the hours of labor worthwhile.
A year and a half after that, Dad was dead.
Crushed under a cattle grate he had been trying to clean.
When I missed him, I worked on the dollhouse.
I kept it in the workroom in our barn, on the rough wooden slab
that had served as a workbench during those happy hours Dad and I
had spent building miniature furniture.
On that Friday, the day of the eruption, I
was building a tiny pergola to shade the back patio. I cut a joist,
working with an Exacto knife to carve a curved flourish into the
joist’s tail. As I reached for a square of sandpaper, the power
went out.
Losing power on the farm was no big deal. It
happened far too often, although usually not on blue-skied,
late-August afternoons. I stood and heaved the barn’s massive
sliding door wide. With the door fully open, enough light would
enter the barn that I could continue working at least until
dusk.
As the door slammed against its backstop,
jarring my shoulder, the ground shook. An earthquake, maybe,
although I couldn’t be sure—I’d never been in an earthquake before.
They’re not exactly common in Iowa.
I looked around. A column of smoke rose
against the deep blue sky. It looked like it was coming from the
Haymaker place, a few miles northwest of us. The Haymakers were a
bit odd, so the smoke didn’t completely surprise me. Most folks
clear and burn their brush in late fall, after the harvest is in
and the sap has run out of the trees. But if the Haymakers wanted
to do it in August, well, it was their land and their brush.
On my way back to the workbench, I
Everything started on an otherwise ordinary
Friday afternoon. The rabbits knew something was wrong before I
did. I mean, I’d heard the reports on the radio about the huge
earthquake in Wyoming—I’d even heard some nut on KUNI babbling
about the end of times and the volcano under Yellowstone National
Park. But I didn’t believe any of it, at least not until after my
rabbits started acting crazy.
I was out in the barn, working on my
dollhouse. I had a crapload of weekend homework, but who does
homework on Friday?
The dollhouse was more my dad’s thing than
mine. When he presented it to me for my eighth birthday, I had to
fight back sudden tears. Dad thought they were tears of joy and
started babbling about all the micro-furniture we could build
together. But I was trying, and failing, to hide my disappointment.
I’d been hoping to get a tractor—or at least an ATV.
For a while, I kind of liked the dollhouse,
despite my initial disappointment. Building furniture with Dad was
fun. We made bureaus and nightstands—the drawers joined with
dovetails so fine I had to carve them with an Exacto knife. Dad
whittled lion’s-paw legs for the tables and chairs, while I
laboriously fashioned tiny tabletops and chair backs mortised so
tightly that they didn’t need glue.
About the time I turned twelve, I got bored
with the dollhouse. I had my own tractor by then, an ancient Deere
that spent more time in the shop than it did running. When I wasn’t
working on the tractor, I built oddments like my potato cannon. I
could shoot a potato more than five hundred feet with that thing. I
just needed a target—and the dollhouse was perfect.
When Dad saw the results, he was as crushed
as the dollhouse itself. He tried to hide his disappointment, but I
saw the light glinting from his damp cheek as he turned away.
Before then, I didn’t realize what the dollhouse meant to him. He
told me it was okay—that the dollhouse was mine, and destroying it
with ballistic potatoes was no big deal—but I could tell he didn’t
really mean what he was saying.
I had hauled the broken pieces of the
dollhouse into my room. It took more than a month of exacting labor
to rebuild it. Shattered boards had to be recut, yellow
potato-juice stains painted over, furniture repaired or rebuilt.
But the look on Dad’s face when I hauled the resurrected dollhouse
out of my room made all the hours of labor worthwhile.
A year and a half after that, Dad was dead.
Crushed under a cattle grate he had been trying to clean.
When I missed him, I worked on the dollhouse.
I kept it in the workroom in our barn, on the rough wooden slab
that had served as a workbench during those happy hours Dad and I
had spent building miniature furniture.
On that Friday, the day of the eruption, I
was building a tiny pergola to shade the back patio. I cut a joist,
working with an Exacto knife to carve a curved flourish into the
joist’s tail. As I reached for a square of sandpaper, the power
went out.
Losing power on the farm was no big deal. It
happened far too often, although usually not on blue-skied,
late-August afternoons. I stood and heaved the barn’s massive
sliding door wide. With the door fully open, enough light would
enter the barn that I could continue working at least until
dusk.
As the door slammed against its backstop,
jarring my shoulder, the ground shook. An earthquake, maybe,
although I couldn’t be sure—I’d never been in an earthquake before.
They’re not exactly common in Iowa.
I looked around. A column of smoke rose
against the deep blue sky. It looked like it was coming from the
Haymaker place, a few miles northwest of us. The Haymakers were a
bit odd, so the smoke didn’t completely surprise me. Most folks
clear and burn their brush in late fall, after the harvest is in
and the sap has run out of the trees. But if the Haymakers wanted
to do it in August, well, it was their land and their brush.
On my way back to the workbench, I
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