Renewal 6 - Cold by Jf Perkins Page B

with his wounded limbs.
    “Damn, it sucks getting old,” Bill said.
    “And shot,” Terry added brightly.
    “That too,” Bill agreed.
    “I’ll be right back.”
    Terry retrieved a hot mug for himself from the kitchen and sat down in a heavy oak rocking chair in the corner of the room. “Where’s Aggie?” he asked.
    “Oh, most likely she’s out and about, taking over while I’m too feeble to argue.”
    “You’re probably right. She seems the type.”
    “Between you and me, she does a better job than I do. She keeps up with ten times as many things as I can and still finds time to cook dinner.”
    “How did you meet?”
    “Now, Terry, that is getting way ahead of the story. You can’t screw with my obsessive need to tell it in order.”
    “How about a hint?”
    “If you want a preview, ask Aggie. She probably remembers it all differently anyway.”
    “In that case, how cold did it get that first winter?”
    “That’s a fair question. The answer is: I don’t know. George Carroll’s thermometer bottomed out at twenty below in early October and stayed there until mid-May.”
    “Holy crap! It hasn’t been that cold in my entire life.”
    “Be thankful for that. We almost... Let me tell it.”
    ***
    The threat of deadly cold was actually good for Dad. With a new project underway, he seemed to recover from losing Francine. At least his guilt seemed to retreat into the background. I can’t say the same for Arturo. Even though he was little out of shape at first, he took a great deal of pride in his physical strength, and his slowly mending leg took a bite out of that pride. There was a period when I thought that the only thing keeping him going was his little boy. It certainly wasn’t Juannie. Looking back, I can guess with some certainty that there were many times when he secretly wished he had left her in Orlando to fend for herself.
    She was a spoiled only child, with a proud cultural heritage to boost her sense of entitlement to ridiculous heights. That was fine in the trappings of a convenient pre-Breakdown society. She had her uniformed husband, who went on to a good private sector job. She had worked in a theme park, where her reality was literally a fantasy built on top of another fantasy. The world was completely secure, other than the rampant Orlando crime, and it would never change. After the Breakdown, she was still well sheltered. The park closed immediately of course, and she went home to a well-stocked pantry, one of the few things that Arturo had insisted they do. She had sat in the light of her scented candles and simply waited for Arturo to rescue her.
    Now that she was there, in the barn, it seemed that family was secondary to whatever she really wanted, and worse, she was only willing to do the bare minimum to get by. She and Arturo had many sideline conversations in which he pleaded with her to work harder. She had run her usual gamut of pouting, whining, and finally flirting her way out of the bind. In a better world, her sheer beauty could have won entire wars. In survival, it made her look childish at best, and idiotic at worst. Before long, she became just another wound that Arturo tried hard to ignore. He never forgot his responsibility, though. He took care of her even when his real impulse was to throw her out in the cold.
    Juannie was hiding in a tent the next morning, when George knocked on the barn door. At Dad’s invitation he came in wearing a blue insulated coverall, a Russian style fur hat, and some incongruous high tech gloves. He was carrying the plug wires from his old pickup truck.
    “Morning, folks. Think these will do?”
    “Good morning, George,” Dad replied. “Let’s test them out.”
    Arturo slid behind the wheel of our station wagon and pulled the hood release. Dad quickly replaced the damaged wire with one from George’s bundle, and told Arturo to give it a try. The car battery was weakened from the cold and the engine turned over sluggishly, but