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Chapter 24
Mike and Kirsten had planned to make their move the second week of June, but when the papers got signed earlier than they expected, they were ready, and Memorial Day weekend was handy. Reasoning that the sooner they moved, the farther they would be from
Kirsten's due date, they decided to get on with it.
Mike was going to be happy to move. Kirsten had pretty much gotten over her scare from the snake, back in April, but she still made Mike check the bathroom before she used it, every time, and she still tried to use the bathroom at the office as much as possible.
As big as she was getting, it was going to be better when she could take showers; she'd used the tub for baths, mostly because a stopper was in the drain, between her and anything that might crawl out of the sewer. But, it was difficult, and going on dangerous, for her
to get up again, and Mike was glad that was going to be over with, soon.
Kirsten wasn't getting the fun, the anticipation out of this pregnancy that she had with her others, and Mike had given some thought to unilaterally deciding to remove the risk of any future ones. He was going to be sneaking up on retirement before this kid was in
college, and one day he realized that he didn't consider himself young, any more.
Moving was clearly going to be a pain in the butt. The only thing that made it easier was that Gil and Carrie had promised to help out, along with the truck from the store. With the handling equipment that he had, plus the strong backs of Danny and his friend, Josh
Archer, that part of it would be much simplified.
In the weeks that had passed since their decision to buy the new house, they had been packing whenever they got the chance, bringing stuff down and stacking it in the living room. Mike had already borrowed Gil's truck on several occasions and hauled stuff out to the
new house, stacking it in the garage, so they still could get through the living room. It was amazing how much stuff they had accumulated in twelve years of living together, how much stuff the kids could cram into the little room they had shared.
Clearly, moving was going to be a big job, and with only the one truck running back and forth, it was going to be a long one, too. A second truck would make life a lot easier, Mike knew, but he didn't manage to put two and two together until the Thursday before the
move, over breakfast at the Spearfish Lake Cafe. He was sitting across the table from Mark when he realized that Mark had a pickup. "Any chance we can borrow your truck for a couple days this weekend?" he asked. "We're going to move this weekend."
"Sure," Mark said. "What time do you want Jackie and me there?"
"You guys don't have to help out," Mark protested lamely, grateful for the prospect of more help.
"Oh, we don't mind," Mark said. "Jackie said to tell you to plan on eating at our place when you move, so you don't have to cook, on top of everything else. It'll make pizza seem a little less tiring."
"You don't have to do that," Mike repeated.
"It's not a case of have to," Mark told him. "It's a case of want to, neighbor."
Both Mike and Kirsten were subdued Friday night, after Tiffany and Henry were in bed. Since Saturday was going to be a big day, they went to bed early, but sleep wouldn't come. "I can't believe it," Kirsten said, laying there in the dark. "This is our last night here.
Think of everything that's happened to us in this house, in this room."
"Going on ten years," Mike agreed. They'd moved there anticipating Tiffany; they'd seen that her arrival would make their little apartment too crowded.
"It's going to be strange to not live here," she went on. "I wonder how long it'll take me to come home from work and not turn the wrong way."
"You'll pick it up, pretty quick," Mike said. "Think of the things we're not going to have to put up with. Like, waiting for Tiffany to get done taking a bath."
"Yeah," she agreed, "Or, Tiffany and Henry fighting over who messed up the room."
"Or, that idiot with the motorcycle up the block."
"Washing dishes. It'll be nice to have a dishwasher."
"Having to park the cars one in front of the other, and always wanting the car in front."
"Yeah," Kirsten agreed thoughtfully. "No snakes in the drains."
"There will be that," Mike said. "We're going to have new problems, but it'll be kind of fun to deal with them."
They lay quietly for a few minutes. They had already anticipated some of the new problems; in the weeks since Jackie had dropped in on them at the club, they had already begun to see why Mark and Jackie called it "Busted Axle Road". It hadn't gotten real bad yet,
but it was easy to see that it was going to get worse before it got better. And, it was clear that when the wind was up the hill, mosquitos were going to be more of a problem than they had been in town. All was not sweetness and light, but the tradeoffs seemed adequate.
"As long as we're here for the last time," Kirsten said finally, "There's something I want to do here for the last time."
"You mean . . ."
"Yeah."
"Aren't you getting a little too far along?"
"Not if we're careful."
They were still asleep the next morning when Henry bounced into the room. "Uncle Gil and Aunt Carrie are here," he reported. "And I can't get the TV on so I can watch cartoons."
"No cartoons for you today, Henrykins," Mike told him. "I unhooked the TV set last night so we can move today. We've got a lot of work to do, and that means you, too."
"Go ask Aunt Carrie to give you some cereal," Kirsten added. "There's some in a box on the kitchen shelf. Tell Uncle Gil and Aunt Carrie we'll be down in a minute."
"OK, mommy," the boy said, and turned to leave the room.
"Would you believe me if I said I don't want to get up?" Kirsten said.
"You're not getting out of it that easily," Mike told her, throwing back the covers. "I will admit, the sooner this day is over with, the happier I'm going to be."
"Yeah, me too."
"Look, Kirsten," Mike said, pulling on his underpants. "I don't want you overdoing it today. We're going to have plenty of help. You just take it easy and direct traffic. Don't you be hurting yourself."
"I know, I know. It doesn't seem right, but I know," she said, throwing back the covers on her side. "Would you go check the bathroom for me? I feel like I'm going to explode."
"Speaking of last times for everything," Mike said, pulling on a T-shirt, "That's a good one."
"That's one thing that will be really nice," Kirsten agreed.
By the time that Mike and Kirsten got downstairs, Mark and Jackie had arrived, bringing a huge thermos of coffee and a box of donuts. Mike gratefully poured himself a cup to lever his eyes open, while Kirsten nuked hot water for decaf. "Sure glad you guys are
here," Mike said. "Where's Danny and Josh?"
"Josh went to pick up Danny.?" Gil snorted. "They'll be along in a bit."
"Where do you want us to start?" Mark asked/
"I don't know," Gil said. "Without the kids here, I'd just as soon not start in on the real heavy stuff, and it'll be easier to move it later if we have some of the boxes out of the way. We'll just have to be careful not to block things up out at the new house too much."
They managed to get one round trip in with boxes and some of the lighter furniture before Danny and Josh showed up, bringing another pickup truck borrowed from Josh's cousin. From there on, it was a little difficult to keep track. Kirsten drove out to the new house
and tried to direct boxes to the right room. They had developed a marking system for the boxes, but marking the boxes had broken down toward the end, and some got misdirected, but fortunately, none were too bad. The worst misdirection came with a box of canned food,
which somehow got placed in the foot of Henry's closet, and promptly buried under a pile of toys. It was August before it turned up.
Still, it went quickly, more quickly than Mike would have believed. The three trucks weren't quite loaded on their last run to the new house, which came about 1 PM. Somewhere in there, Jackie disappeared, and showed up at the new house just as the trucks were
being unloaded, carrying a couple of coolers. "Lunchtime," she called.
The kitchen table had been set up, but it was under a pile of boxes, and the chairs had disappeared. Jackie sat down on the floor, and cracked open the coolers, and began serving.
"Wow," Mike said. "Pastys and gravy, no less. When did you have time to make them?"
"Made them yesterday," Jackie reported, serving Mike one of the meat pies smothered in brown gravy, a local treat. "I put them in the oven earlier this morning."
"This is a real treat for our first meal in our new house," Kirsten said. "You shouldn't have gone to the trouble."
"That's exactly why I knew I should go to the trouble," Jackie said. "Just to be neighborly."
"You know," Kirsten said thoughtfully, "I think we're going to like being your neighbors."
After lunch, Carrie turned to setting up the bathroom, while Jackie started on the kitchen, as Gil, Mark, and the boys moved boxes up from the garage. Kirsten, Mark, Tiffany got into Mark's pickup, to make one last run to the old house, to see if anything had been
missed. "I like our new house, Daddy," Tiffany said. "I like my new room. Now, can we get a dog?"
"Not just yet, Tiffinapolis," Mark said. "We need to get settled in ourselves some, first, but it won't be long."
"Can we get a dog like Cumulus?" she asked. "He's a lot of fun."
"Oh, maybe," Mark said. "He does seem to be a nice dog. I'm just glad Mr. Gravengood decided to leave him at home today, or we'd never have gotten any work out of you at all."
"You're just like Mark," Kirsten said. She wasn't too crazy about getting a dog, but had resigned herself to it. It had been Tiffany's main goal since the idea of moving had come up. "Get one dog, and the next thing you know, there's a dog team out back."
"That would be great, Mommy," Tiffany chimed in. "Can we?"
"I'm not going to tell you to ask your father," she snorted. "He'd probably say yes."
They found a little to load in the pickup truck, but not much. The house had been pretty well picked clean. "Well, I guess that's that," Kirsten said. "No turning back now."
