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The morning came early with a cold mist that chilled all of them. Fortunately, the sleeping bags held in their heat very well, and they were snuggled safely in their cocoons. Their bladders, however, didn’t care how warm they were. They were full and demanded to be relieved. One by one, they all made a trip outside to a designated tree Marion had chosen. They could either crouch down or stand and water it. Hurriedly, they returned and were admonished by their mothers to wipe their feet as they entered the slightly warmer tent and got back into their sleeping bags.
“It’s cold,” Richard griped as he came back.
“And it will be colder some days,” Barbara told him sleepily as she too got up to use the potty. She rushed but had a hard time getting the flap of her long johns down and nearly wet herself in the struggle.
“Having trouble?” Marion laughed when she saw her. Her own long johns fit differently, and she just had to undo the buttons to expose her backside and squat.
“Quit laughing at me and help,” she hissed, squeezing the muscles between her legs to hold it in before she embarrassed herself by wetting her long underwear.
Marion helped her get the flap open, glancing at the tent for a moment before tenderly caressing the exposed buttocks and causing Barbara to jump in surprise. She laughed at her partner once again as she finished her own stream, waited until it finished dripping, and fastened her long johns before heading back to the tent, looking tauntingly over her shoulder at Barbara as she left.
Barbara’s expression promised she would get Marion back for that. It was bad enough she had to go pee so bad, but to desire Marion and have the pressure of her bladder pressing on that sensitive tissue within made her as randy as a goat. The need to make love to that woman was almost overwhelming, but she quashed it down since it would do her no good with the children around. They had so much to do before they would again have a moment alone together.
Barbara stopped to build up the fire, placing small logs on the smoldering coals and seeing small needles of pine catch fire before they began to burn the dry wood. When the kindling was going well, she hurried into the tent and quickly dove into her sleeping bag.
“Mom,” Richard moaned.
“What?” she answered, quickly getting between the folds of her bag.
“Someone might see you like that,” he indicated the long underwear she had gone out in.
“There is no one here to see us, and you’ve seen me in my long johns many times,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, but Mom,” he complained again, sounding aggrieved.
“If I wanted to, I could go buck naked out there, and no one would see me.”
“I’d see you,” Marion whispered in response to Richard’s complaint.
“That’s indecent,” he said.
“You sound just like your grandmother. Stop it!” she ordered as she rubbed her feet together to warm them up. She had socks somewhere in her sleeping bag and reached around with her toes to feel for them.
“I have to go out to pee,” Brenda complained.
“Then go,” her mother encouraged her.
“I’m afraid,” she admitted.
“Of what?”
“What if there’s a bear?”
“There aren’t any bears on our island,” Marion stated with authority. Then she wondered, What if there actually were? She had no idea. She glanced at Barbara and could see she’d had the same thought. There were deer, so why couldn’t there be bears?
“Would you come with me?”
“I just went, and I’m finally getting warm again!”
“Please!” she beseeched her mother.
Sighing gustily, Marion capitulated and slowly got out of her sleeping bag. It was colder this time, or at least it seemed colder. “Come on,” she said, sounding much aggrieved.
Now that she had gotten her way, the little girl skipped happily, holding Marion’s hand as they headed to the designated tree. “Don’t watch,” the little girl ordered her mother, so Marion looked off around the meadow they had chosen for their campsite and thought about everything they had to do.
The novelty of peeing outdoors wore off that day. A large bucket they accidently broke the bottom out of served well in the hole they dug to hold fecal matter, and Barbara produced a toilet seat to go on the bucket. Pleased at her cleverness, they turned to more important things than their toilet.
* * * * *
“Well, we should have our cabin over here,” Marion stated as she paced off the dimensions, making hand gestures to emphasize what she was saying. She turned repeatedly to check out the view and make sure it was optimal. She was being very bossy and ordering everyone about and couldn’t have been happier...until Barbara got angry with her.
“Who do you think you are? You aren’t the boss of me!” she told her when she’d had enough. She’d helped to haul their tools up from the beach as well as many of the heavy boxes. The children had also brought what they could carry up the steep slope. Marion seemed in a frenzy.
“I’m sorry. I’m just so excited to get started,” she told her honestly. She hadn’t meant to be so pushy; it was just part of her personality sometimes.
“Well, I’m an adult, and I can make decisions on my own too. I thought this was a partnership?”
They quieted as the children approached, each holding a box, which they put down under the canopy of trees at the edge of the meadow. Marion had insisted they put a tarp above and below their possessions, so they wouldn’t get damaged. Barbara not only made sure their boxes of books were off the ground, she also made sure there were downed trees under the tarp to hold the pile off the ground.
“I am sorry,” Marion said contritely a while later into the tense silence that had persisted as they moved their things off the beach.
“I am too,” Barbara answered but continued to ignore the blonde as she used her enormous strength to bring up the heavier things.
“Let me help you with that,” Marion offered, trying to make amends.
“I’ve got it,” she said and brushed by her girlfriend to attack the slope with the heavy box. This box contained tools they had gotten from Sears. She was looking forward to breaking it open and using them.
It took a large part of their day to bring everything off the beach and up the slope. When Marion would have started work immediately, Barbara forestalled her by getting the children involved in cooking. The novelty of cooking over a fire intrigued them and making their own food was fascinating.
“You don’t want to hold it directly in the flames,” she instructed Brenda, knowing the boys were listening even if they thought some of this was girls’ work. She wouldn’t allow that line of male superiority crap that her father-in-law had instilled in her son to continue. She knew Marion had faced the same. With two women to influence them now, perhaps that patriarchy could be suppressed, at least she hoped so.
“Why don’t we explore the island a bit?” she suggested after dinner.
“We really need to start–” began Marion, annoyed that they had even stopped to eat lunch, but she knew she needed to be cautious as Barbara was still angry with her.
Ignoring her, Barbara got the children cleaned up, their things put neatly away, and they set out to explore their island.
“Now, what did I tell you about touching plants?” she asked the three of them.
“Leaves of three, leave them be,” Brenda repeated promptly.
“Anyone know what kind of tree this is?” she asked, continuing to give them an education the schools didn’t offer. A sulky but willing Marion followed behind them as they created new trails using the animal trails when they could find them.
“What kind of droppings do you think these are?”
Richard guessed correctly when he said deer.
“We saw a deer in the meadow when we were here before,” she informed the children, who clamored to be shown a deer. “Well, if you are very quiet and very patient, maybe they will come out again.” She didn’t mention that eventually they might have to hunt the deer. Food wasn’t a worry right now, and she was having fun looking around the island.
“What’s that?” Brian asked, pointing down to one of the little inlets around the island.
“It looks like a plank. We should collect any we find. We can always use this flotsam and jetsam to make all sorts of things.”
“What could we make?” Brian asked as he looked from the plank up to Barbara.
“Oh, a shelf maybe, or a step. Who knows what we could imagine?”
“That looks steep,” Marion commented as they set out to make their way down the incline. She wondered if anyone else had ever been on their island. Surely, someone had come exploring before. It was then, she remembered that Mr. Wheeler had mentioned someone having a cabin on the island at one time.
Slowly, they made their way down, sometimes sitting on their heels as they slid and grabbing at trees and boulders to slow their descent, but eventually, they made it to the small cove and recovered the board.
“This looks like a good board!” Barbara said to them, trying to bolster the children and their scavenging efforts. They were going to need them.
“How are we going to get it back to the meadow?” Brenda asked, practically.
“How about you all climb up the length of the board. I’ll hand it to you, and you pull it up. Then, I’ll climb back up and hand it to you again. We can do this until we are high enough that we can carry it together?” she asked, hoping to help them learn to solve their own problems using their adept, little minds.
Marion smiled, loving how Barbara was handling the children. She could sense they were getting rebellious, but she wanted to start on their cabin, and she had no idea how long it would take. She was afraid they would be stuck without shelter, if they weren’t careful.
“Here’s another one, but it’s busted,” Brian said, throwing it back down.
“Bring it along. We can cut it down and use the good parts,” Barbara told him with a smile. “Everything has a use, and we just have to figure out what that use could be.”
Smiling in return, he hastily picked up the much shorter but splintered board and began to look around for more, and everyone joined in.
“Oh, look at the purple stone!” Brenda exclaimed, picking it up.
“Let me see, honey,” Marion said, holding out her hand to examine the pretty stone. It was a deep hue of purple, but it had white crystalized streaks in it that steadily got lighter. “I think this is amethyst,” she said, handing the stone back to the little girl.
“Aren’t amethysts crystals?” Barbara put in, looking over her much shorter girlfriend’s shoulder to see the stone.
“Let me see,” Brian said, trying to grab it from his sister’s hand.
“Brian!” Marion stopped him. “We don’t take things like that! You apologize to your sister and ask, don’t take.”
Sighing loudly, he said, “May I see your purple stone?” He held out his hand expectantly, almost imperiously.
“No,” the little girl said distinctly, closing her fist on her pretty find.
He was surprised she hadn’t immediately handed it over. “Please?” he pleaded, obviously wanting to see it.
“No,” she said again and turned away.
“Mom, she won’t let me see,” he complained, immediately whining.
“Well, then, perhaps you should have asked politely in the first place?”
Disappointed, the little boy tried to show he didn’t care and turned away, but he gave away his deep interest by constantly turning back to look at his sister. The little girl shoved the stone deep in her pocket, so she wouldn’t lose it.
“How did these boards get here?” Richard asked, not interested in a purple stone.
“They probably washed down from a river or somewhere someone was working on something. Maybe it came from a wood mill and floated into the ocean? Since they washed up on our beach, we’ll have to watch for more things for the house,” Barbara told him.
“I wonder how an amethyst got on our beach?” Marion asked, looking around at the stones on the beach for another.
“That seemed pretty smooth for a crystal,” Barbara stated, looking around too.
“I’m sure the water and the grit of the sand polished it smooth.”
They spent some time on the beach but found no other crystals and no other wood they could salvage, so they did as Barbara had suggested and shoved the longer board up the steep slope until they were even enough to carry it. With the boys in the front and Barbara in the back they carried the board back to their meadow. Marion carried the shorter one that Brian had found.
“Well, that was a nice haul,” Barbara praised them. “We should wash up.”
“We’re out of water,” Brian said, showing them his canteen was empty.
“I’ll go get more,” Richard offered, grabbing his own to head down to the cove.
“You weren’t thinking of putting ocean water in that, were you?” Barbara stopped him.
“Yes, we’re surrounded by water you said.”
“But it’s saltwater,” she informed him, seeing that the other children were watching and listening. She could tell they were wondering if he was in trouble.
“Yeah?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders and frowning.
“Next time we are down by the water, taste some. Don’t ever drink it, but taste it, and you will see why you should never drink sea water. It’s full of salt and bad for you.”
“So, what are we going to do? Go back to Franklin for water?” he asked, sounding genuinely worried.
“Nope, we have our own spring,” she informed him with a smile. “Come with me, if you want to see it,” she said as she grabbed her own canteen and a five-gallon bucket to fill.
The children grabbed their own canteens and were soon running in front of her.
“That was nicely done,” Marion complimented her, hoping their earlier anger had dissipated.
“We’ll certainly get more work done if they don’t know they are doing it,” Barbara laughed, showing she held no grudge. They held hands as they walked along, smiling at each other. “You need rocks for the foundation of the cabin, don’t you?”
“I thought we’d put it up on wood,” Marion mused, imagining it.
“Yeah, but bugs are more likely to climb wood, and they could get into it and make it rot. Maybe we should dig and make a small basement?”
“That’s actually a good idea. I’m sorry. We should have discussed this more. I guess I just wanted to get started with my ideas.”
“We have a lot of work ahead of us, and there is no one but us to make it happen,” Barbara reminded her, squeezing her hand reassuredly.
They chatted about what they wanted in a cabin and what they hoped to accomplish in the coming year.
“So, we plan to build a summer cabin for next season?” she confirmed, talking about their second cabin and their guests.
“Yes, I figure we could have dozens if we wanted, but we’ll have to have clearly outlined paths for that and make sure they are far enough apart that no one is looking into anyone else’s back windows.” She had hated how close they were to their neighbors in the apartment.
They stopped the children before they got too far ahead and showed them where the hidden spring was. Barbara showed them how to stack rocks to make a little dam and create a bit of a backup. “Once we have a pond here,” she indicated the puddle they were creating before it spilled over the dam, “we can fill our canteens and the bucket.”
“How’d you get to be so smart?” Marion asked her with a smile as they watched the clear water fill the pool they had created.
“Fortunately, there isn’t much silt,” she murmured with a return smile. They filled the canteens and the bucket, and she carried the heavy bucket back.
“Who can carry these rocks back?” she challenged the children, pointing to some rocks they hadn’t used on their small dam. The children’s exuberance was astounding, and it was exhausting their mothers to watch.
“Why?” the children wanted to know.
“Well, we need rocks for the cabin, but if you can’t carry them, it’s okay. We’ll just use the wheelbarrow another time,” she challenged them, using reverse psychology.
The children began gathering stones from the field and the rocks at the end where the spring was, and little piles began to appear at the end of the meadow where Marion wanted to build.
“You are brilliant,” Marion told her. “That keeps them busy, and when they help, we don’t have to keep watching them.”
The two women had taken a length of string and were measuring out the cabin. It looked huge but they didn’t want it too large, just comfortable. They also knew they couldn’t build it too big since they were following a book on how to build, and they weren’t sure how much they could do on their own. They began to dig down with their shovels, throwing the dirt to one side or the other. It became a competition, but they eventually had to stop because they were tired from their very full day. They also needed to wash up, make dinner, and eat.
“I’d say everyone did a good day’s work,” Barbara told the children. “I think tomorrow we should figure out how to set some fishing lines, so we don’t have to stay there all the time to fish. Then, when we want to check them all or reset them, we’ll have fish waiting for us.”
“We’re going to eat them?” Brian asked, sounding enthused.
“Well, you will all have to learn to clean them. I’m not going to do it all.”
“Why not?” Richard asked, genuinely puzzled. “If you are going to cook ‘em, shouldn’t you clean ‘em?”
Barbara’s first thought was to give the young boy a sharp retort, so she took a deep breath before replying. “No, I think whoever catches them and brings them in has to clean them.” She could see he badly wanted to say something like, “But that’s a girls’ job,” but he knew better than to say anything like that around his mother.
“I’m going to need a bath soon,” Marion complained good-naturedly as they got ready for bed after getting the children settled in the tent and off to sleep.
“I think it’s going to rain. Can you smell it?” Barbara spent a few minutes rigging a sheet of bark to protect their fire from the oncoming storm. Even if others couldn’t smell the rain, she could, and she didn’t want to waste matches to restart the fire. They had to conserve wherever possible.
She was right. It started to rain at some point during the night, and they woke to the pitter patter sound of the rain on the tent. They had a bowl of dry cereal each with what Barbara referred to as armored heifer or canned milk.
“Where in the world did you hear it called armored heifer?” Marion asked, sputtering in laughter over that expression.
“Some of the kids at the store where we stocked up called it that,” she smiled as the children guffawed over the words. Despite the rain, they kept the children entertained before finally letting them out to play in it.
“Now, it’s cold and we must work, so I don’t want you going in and out of the tent and tracking mud in. If you are coming out to help us, you will have to hustle to stay warm and that means helping us. We could have a contest,” Barbara challenged them.
“What kind of contest?” Brian asked, not too enthused about working but willing to go out in the rain.
“How about we see who can make the biggest pile of rocks?” she asked him.
“That’s no fair; they’re bigger than I am,” Brenda sulked.
“Well, then you will have to gather for all the girls on the island,” Marion put in, to waylay the tantrum she sensed coming on.
“But I am the only girl on the island,” the wise, little girl pointed out.
“Yes, you are, so you have to represent all the little girls.” She smiled, to show she was teasing.
“Can’t we play?” Richard asked.
“Yes, absolutely, but you can’t come back into the tent to change your clothes until we get finished,” she answered him, pointing with her thumb at Barbara and herself.
They didn’t realize how cold the rain would be. Barbara built up the fire, but everything was wet from the rain, and the wood smoldered, causing lots of smoke. Everyone wore rain ponchos, and the children loved the novelty of it...at first. The adults helped gather rocks, using the wheelbarrow to carry them and help build up the various stacks. The hole they had dug the previous day was a quagmire.
“We don’t dare dig in that,” Marion lamented.
“Well, it is spring,” Barbara pointed out.
They gave up mid-morning, defeated by the cold rain as everyone’s teeth were chattering. They returned to the tent, leaving their shoes under the bark by the fire to dry. Barbara made sure the shoes couldn’t catch on fire and were steaming under the canopy. Her own bare feet were squishy as she made her way into the tent where they were all gathered to change out of their wet clothes.
“I’m s...s...s...sooo cold,” Brenda chattered, and Marion grabbed her with a towel and rubbed her briskly.
“Boys, turn away,” she called, so she could strip the little girl, get her in dry clothes, and then tuck her into her sleeping bag.
“I’m not sick,” Brenda protested being put to bed.
“None of us are sick, but we are all going back under our covers to stay warm. Somewhere, I have cards, so we can all play games,” she promised.
Barbara made sure Richard was dry and warm dressed in clean clothes while Marion got Brian sorted. They hung their wet clothes outside on a line she strung up, her own long johns going on last as she changed into pajamas. The pajamas were shorter than the long underwear, but at least she was dry.
“The rain is washing our clothes,” Richard quipped, laughing. The other children joined in, thinking he was hilarious, and the two adults smiled.
The adults taught the children how to play various card games as they whiled away the rainy day. When they got bored with that, Barbara and Marion took turns reading to them from adventure books they had brought along for this very reason. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe and Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss were going to be favorites, they could tell. The children enjoyed themselves after all the hiking and work they had done the previous day.
The rain lasted three days, and by the time it ended, they were all sick of the tent.