“I don’t think Mother Nature is interested in resourcefulness today for some reason. Sorry, Reggie. I have to go.” Charles whistled for the dogs, and they came on the run. He was surprised that they allowed him to outfit them in Yoko’s wool sweaters. It was almost as if they knew what they had to do and were cooperating. Treats in his pockets, a water bottle in one of his vest pockets, flashlight in another, Charles clapped Reggie on the back. “You’ll see me when you see me.”

Reggie Clapper stood at the window and watched until the snow swallowed Charles and the dogs. He offered up a prayer, dressed himself to cross the front courtyard, where he first built a fire, then got to work on installing the heavy pole in the center of the big room. He took a moment to wonder how the ladies were going to decorate the pole. Women had such strange ideas when it came to decor. It never once occurred to him that what he was installing was a stripper pole.

His heart thundering in his chest, Charles started his descent down the mountain, Murphy and Grady in the lead.

Thirty minutes later he was at the base of the mountain. He offered up a prayer before he made his way to the military Hummer that guaranteed to take him anywhere he wanted to go in any weather condition. He used up another twenty minutes storing the skis and his boots and drying off the dogs. He turned on the engine and cranked the heat as high as it would go before he climbed back out to clear off the ice and snow from the front and back windshields. By the time he got behind the wheel, the heater was spewing out warm heat. He handed out chew bones to the dogs, talked to them a minute or so before he shifted into reverse, and headed out to the highway, where Lady Luck smiled on him a second time with a stretch of highway that had just been plowed and sanded. The huge tires of the Hummer gripped the road, and Charles was on his way, the dogs sleeping peacefully in the backseat, curled up next to each other.

Charles prayed that the sanitation workers along the route he was driving were as on top of the storm as the North Carolina road crews.

“I’m coming, Myra,” he muttered over and over as he blasted down the road.

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

By the time Myra and Annie made their way to the Post apartment building, both women were exhausted, physically as well as mentally. Myra held the door open with her shoulder as Annie trudged past her. “I have never, ever in my life been this cold or this exhausted. These damn boots have given my blisters other blisters.”