Chapter 10

When I opened my eyes the next morning, the first thing I saw was Meka's eyes; she'd been hovering over me, waiting for mine to open. She showed me that she was quite a little trickster next, by shooting out of bed and beating me to the bathroom. She was flushing up a storm in no time flat.

She was really proud of herself when she came out to give me a turn, and she was smiling so wide I had to smile too. I made it to the john without wetting myself, then washed my face and raked my hair into a semblance of order with my fingers.

For breakfast this morning, Ethel outdid herself. We had pancakes, waffles, bacon, sausage, biscuits, toast, and more. I could see who she was cooking for at once. She'd made some smaller pancakes for Meka and they left room for half a waffle on the plate beside them.

Since Meka had already showed us that she liked syrup on her sausage and bacon, Ethel had piled it all on the same plate so it could get a good coating. Wanda helped Meka with the syrup and butter for the pancakes and waffles, and when they were done, Ethel slid two sunny-side-up eggs right on top of the whole thing. Meka smiled her widest and even giggled a little and then tore into it.

Meka could put away the groceries. For a six year old she had an A1 appetite. It was a little funny to me, but when she ate a big breakfast or big dinner it didn't slow her down for a second, but if she packed it in at suppertime, she wanted to go to bed almost right away. I guess it was because she was used to that.

When breakfast was over, Meka didn't seem too interested in going down to see the house right away. She had at first, when she'd thought we'd be riding Joe Bob and Little Missy, but when she found out we had to go in the pickup and see about moving back in, she developed a need to let Doctor Jorge teach her a little more English.

Me and George went down there first, by ourselves in fact. I guess it didn't seem exciting to anyone else. It had been assholes and elbows yesterday to get everything moved out. It probably was a little hard to work up much enthusiasm to go undo everything everyone had just done yesterday. Since it was my house, I was more interested in it than the others.

As soon as we reached the driveway, George and I both knew the others would be sorry they'd passed up this trip. The new driveway was the first tip off. It wasn't iron ore gravel any more. It was a concrete driveway with curb, gutter, storm drains, and the whole works. It looked more like a very wide city street now, and it led around to the carport on the side of the barn.

Except the barn wasn't here now and neither was the carport. There was a barn here, but it wasn't the one that left last night. This one was stone construction, like the house, and it was over three times as large as it had been, not to mention that it was now fully two stories.

Oh, the carport was gone too, and had been replaced by an eight-car garage, with roll up doors no less. It wasn't an afterthought either, it joined the barn in a T, and its roof's peak was the same height as the barn's. It seemed too long, as if we were going to park cars nose to tail, one behind the other. I knew a normal garage was about twenty-five to thirty feet deep, and this one was easily a hundred, but we didn't even try to look inside, since the barn's big front double doors were open, beckoning.

The barn was now a good bit farther from the road, it had to be because the house had grown more than the barn had. It was huge. Though it seemed to have the same general proportions, the actual size was greatly increased. The roof had been changed too. The Spanish tiles were gone and it now had a slate roof, like the new barn and garage.

The barn's front doors were wide open, and the first thing I saw was a handprint on the inside wall by the big central hall's door. It looked like it was glowing and there was no doubt that it was doing so to attract attention.

When I placed my hand over it, the handprint disappeared and in a few seconds I heard what sounded a little like elevator doors opening. I was still facing toward the outer wall and looking out the big front door.

"I'll be dipped in shit," George said, from behind me.

I turned around and I'd have taken a dipping myself. That noise that sounded like elevator doors was made by elevator doors. They were large, like for a freight elevator, and they were open. All the space that had been the other barn's little office, and more, was now elevator.

What the hell, George and I got in. I didn't even have time to wonder about not seeing the doors when we came into the barn.

I didn't feel us moving and wondered if we needed to do something else. All we had to do was wait, and about twenty seconds later the doors opened again. We were on the new second floor. I guess you could call it a loft. It didn't have a ceiling; it was open to the rafters. There wasn't anything in it, just wide-open space.

"Damn, there's room for three or four thousand bales of hay up here, if we were still doing it the old fashioned way," George said.

"Don't say another word about that. I'll walk away from this whole deal if I have to stack hay bales even one day," I said.

"Ya don't care much for the old fashioned hay bailin' then?" George asked, grinning.

"I wouldn't haul hay if I could eat it."

We got back in the elevator and I looked around for some type of button to make it go. We didn't need one, and this time, after the doors shut, I thought I could feel the tiniest sensation of motion.

This trip took longer than the first one, and I wondered what was happening until the doors opened onto the basement. Who ever heard of a basement in a barn?

It was empty, completely empty, but it had probably a sixteen-foot ceiling and if I'd been guessing, I'd have said that it was exactly the size of the new barn and carport together, or maybe even larger. But it was all empty space; empty well lighted space no less. I couldn't see any fixtures; the light just seemed to be coming from the ceiling.

"Damn, this is strange," George said.

"I'll say."

"I wonder what in the hell it's for. I know one thing; you could pack a hell of a lot of something in it. In fact, you could put a hell of a lot of almost anything in it," he said.

We struck out one way and walked around the perimeter of my new giant hole in the ground. It wasn't like a hole though. It was completely finished inside and seemed like it was made of the same material that had covered the ground while the house was gone. The most amazing thing to me was it was clear span. There wasn't a support post down there anywhere. Another set of elevator doors were down at the far end, but they were much wider, probably forty feet or so.

It opened when we came near it and we walked in, to get another shock. The damned elevator was at least a hundred feet end to end, and forty feet from side to side.

"Why is it so big?" I asked, but didn't really expect an answer from George. Just as well because he didn't give me one.

Thirty seconds later the far end opened up and we could see that a driveway led away from it. We walked to the far door and looked outside. It wasn't really a driveway, at least not leading to the door. It was like a big parking lot. There was obviously room enough for a semi-truck and trailer, or three, to park, turn around, or whatever.

The edges of the concrete parking lot were finished with curb and gutter just like along my new road. It also had storm drains in several places. The only break in the curb led to more driveway, going back toward my new road.

"Well, we don't have to wonder what it's all for now. It's a perfect setup for a big truck to come around back, pull into the elevator, and then be lowered to unload," George said.

"That's what it looks like, but I can't figure out what we're supposed to put down in the barn's giant basement," I said.

"I'm sure we'll get the idea when the time comes," George said, and I didn't doubt it.

"George, would you mind riding back down so I can see what it looks like when it's lowered? All of the parking lot part seems to end right here at this door, the pasture is coming right up to the back of the curb out here," I said, pointing to it.

He agreed; we both walked out of the elevator and then he walked back in. It descended, and when it was gone I couldn't tell that it had ever been there. The space was covered in pasture, but I couldn't see even a hint of where the elevator had been, not even in the curb and I know a section of it had gone up when the elevator had.

I was looking right at it a few seconds later when it started back up. I still couldn't believe the curb had fit in so seamlessly, and I saw it separate when it began rising.

When the doors opened again, George stepped back out.

"What did it look like?" he asked.

"While it was in the ground, it looked like pasture on top, and I couldn't tell where any joints were, not even in the curb," I said.

"Let's take a look around on the outside and walk back to the front door," George said.

We did and there wasn't anything that looked out of place, except for the parking lot to nowhere. We'd already seen the outside of the new garage so we walked around the other side. It looked like your everyday, extra large, stonework barn. If there was such a thing.

"If they're planning on you storing something down there, they've made it simple to get truck loads of it here and then unloaded," George said.

"I think I'd better hold off on even thinking about that for now. Let's go see what they've done to the house," I said.

One thing I'd noticed right away was that the house had a back door now. When we were closer, another handprint started glowing. Since I knew the drill I put my hand on it and in seconds the door opened. But it didn't swing open.

It had looked just like the door that had been at the front of the house before it made its unescorted trip, but it wasn't like it at all. After I'd done the handprint deal it slid back into the wall, like a pocket door. When it was fully open you couldn't tell it had ever been there and everything looked like it was just a permanent opening in the stone wall.

I didn't have time to worry about that right now. We stepped into the kitchen and it was now the most modern one I'd ever seen. It wasn't that it was fancy or frilly, or even exceptionally attractive - it was that it had everything - two of everything in fact.

The floor was the most amazing part to me at first. It looked exactly like the other one had, except it was smooth, completely smooth. You could see where the stones had been put down, you could even see where they were joined, but the was no cement between them, and no type of grout. The rocks just fit together now, perfectly, and they were as smooth as everything else that had come around lately.

My little rock cabin was no more. The new living room was bigger than the entire cabin used to be. And there were three bedrooms on each side of a hall that led to an operating room, or at least that's what it looked like to me.

There was an examination/operating type room through a door at the end of the hall. It had what looked like and operating table to me - and medical style cabinets covered almost all the walls. The tip-off was one of those giant movable lights hanging right over the table.

On the other side of the operating room was another hall with two patient room doors on each side. A door in the other end of the hall led to a small office/waiting room, and there was a door in it leading outside. Hell, it was like I was going to open a small hospital.

Frankly I couldn't understand why all this had been added. I was no doctor, and even though I could do first aid, I didn't need a damned operating room for it. I guess it wouldn't hurt anything, and it would beat hell out of cutting out musket balls on the kitchen table.

We turned around and headed back into the house. Checking out the bedrooms this time, we saw they were all large and had individual baths. Two of them were larger than the others and they were directly across the hall from each other.

I supposed that one was mine and one was Meka's. The baths were well equipped, with the two for the larger rooms even more so. Meka and I had a shower, a normal bathtub, and a big four-seater hot tub each.