Winter Layoff Chapter 7
| Winter Layoff | |
|---|---|
| Chapter 7 of 21 | |
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| Read this chapter | |
| Time frame | Somewhere in December 27-30, 2005 |
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Locations
- On the road from Helena, Arkansas to Spearfish Lake
- Jim's immobile home in the immobile home park
- Clark Construction
- Pike Bar
Characters
Summary
When Jim arrived back in Spearfish Lake he moved the food and clothes from the camper back into his house, the rest of the stuff in the truck and camper could wait until after he caught some shuteye. Then he took a shower and crashed.
The next morning he drove over to the Spearfish Lake Café for breakfast, then drove over to the Clark Construction office. Randy was on the phone so he killed a few minutes in conversation with Rachel.
When Randy got off the phone he and Jim had the discussion Jim had been dreading. He started out describing the situation - My aunt and uncle live in Pass Christian, Mississippi. I knew they got hit pretty hard by Katrina last summer, but I didn’t find out till Christmas just how bad it is. There just isn’t any home there anymore, and they’ve been living on gym floors and with relatives ever since. He continues with ...it’s worse since he’s in a wheelchair. He has been ever since I’ve known him. He got shot up pretty bad in Vietnam, but he and my Aunt Rita have been able to make a pretty decent life for themselves until this came along. Anyway, they took a royal screwing from their insurance company, and while they want to move back home they don’t know how they’re going to be able to manage it. So, anyway, my mother asked me to go down and see if there was anything I could do. Randy, Rachel, I was in Pass Christian the morning of the day before yesterday, and you never saw such a mess in your life. I just don’t know how to describe it.
Jim continued with It’s a lot worse than you see on TV, mostly because the destruction is everywhere – it’s all you can see, no getting away from it. Aunt Rita tells me that there’s only like one house in ten in town still livable. There’s some rebuilding and cleaning up going on, but at least as far as I can see they haven’t made much of a dent in it. Anyway, there’s a huge pile of debris on their lot down there, and they have to get it out of the way before they can rebuild, even though they haven’t figured out how to rebuild yet. I thought that if I could clean that up, it would mean some progress for them. At least they wouldn’t see that part as an obstacle anymore. I thought about trying to do it by hand and with my pickup, but on the way back I got wondering if I could borrow a dump truck and a backhoe from you for a few days. It would be a whole lot easier.
After some more discussion between Randy, Rachel and Jim it's decided that Clark Construction is going to loan the Ford backhoe, a trailer for the backhoe and the Ford dump truck. To handle the insurance and liability aspects they will call it a volunteer effort and run it through the nonprofit Donna Clark Foundation as a tax writeoff. However, Jim will have to wait until after the first of the year, but that's only a couple of days away. In the meantime Randy tasks Jim with verifying that the needed maintenance has been done on the equipment he wants to borrow (oil changes, etc.), plus checking that the batteries are good, and that both the backhoe and truck start and run.
Since it's going to be a non-profit Foundation project Randy has to nix Jims idea of doing some paid side work to cover the expense of transporting the equipment down and back. He does request that Jim not go alone. Jim suggests that Bob Coopshaw would probably jump at the chance to join him. Randy is all for that.
Jim heads over to the Pike to see if he can find Bob, and finds him there at a card game. He brings Russ and Bob up to date, including Randy's agreement to loan the equipment. Jim mentions that he's going to have to borrow a big chainsaw somewhere to cut up that tree, and Bob reminds him that Randy has a big Stihl brand chainsaw sitting out in the tool room.
Some further discussion results in Bob offering to go with him to Pass Christian... Just like Jim thought he would.
Also Mentioned
- Aunt Rita and Uncle John Fleming
