Chapter 14

Given their late start, Roger and Catalina decided to not push it all the way to their normal stopping point around Nashville, but instead pull in for the night around Elizabethtown, Kentucky. It was a nice motel and had a pool and hot tub, so they put them to use, with Catalina wearing her black one-piece for once. As it turned out, there was a couple there at the same time who had considerably more tattoos than Catalina, so the sight of the cattails on her back got them to talking about tattoos, and then one thing and another. That led to a discussion that continued in the bar once everybody was pretty well cooked.

The next morning they headed on south, both of them suffering from mild hangovers. Even given an early start it was a long haul back down to the camper parked at Wamputa Beach, and it was after dark before they finally drove the Mustang carefully down the familiar bumpy road.

"Jeez, back so soon?" they heard Bill call as soon as they got out next to the familiar motor home. The air was only cool, not the bitter cold that it had been in Michigan a couple days before, and felt better to the both of them.

"Got done what we had to do," Catalina told him. "There was no point in sticking around in the cold. We've got to head back north in a month, though. More of the same, and probably not the last trip."

"So, did you bring Bonnie with you this time?"

"Afraid not," Catalina told him. "She decided to stay up in cold country so she could go to ComicCon in Cleveland next weekend."

"I've been to those, too," he said. "They're not as much fun as the one in Chicago, but they're pretty good. So, are you staying long this time?"

"Probably not," Roger said. "We said we'd help you with the bathhouse, but we really ought to be heading back over to Gulfport and see if we can hook back up with the Habitat for Humanity crew we were working with before Christmas."

"I got a lot done on the bathhouse, but your help will be welcome," Bill told them. "Another day or two ought to pretty well get it down to the little stuff. Too bad Bonnie didn't come with you. We sure had a ball last week, and got a lot done, too."

"Well, she marches to her own drummer," Roger smiled. "And whoever he is, he has a funky backbeat."

"Boy, ain't that the truth?" Bill grinned. "Hey, you two like a drink or something?"

"To tell you the truth, I think I'd just as soon pass for tonight," Roger told him. "We've had a hell of a long day, and we've still got to get the motor home rigged for sleeping. There's a pillow with my name on it and I want to use it."

"Well, all right. We don't have to do it tonight. If you want, I can throw some breakfast together for you in the morning."

Fortunately it didn't take long to get the motor home set up to go to bed, which was good since both of them were pretty close to beat. It still took a little while to wind down, but soon they were back in the familiar bed. Neither of them was in the mood for much in the way of pre-sleep activities, and soon they were sound asleep.

The next morning they had breakfast with Bill, and then they all started in on the bathhouse. He'd gotten the rafters up while they were gone, and some of the decking in place. A serious day of work got the rest of it up, roll roofing down, and shingled. It was warm enough in the afternoon to take a short break for a skinny dip in the bay, but soon they were back at work.

"That was a pretty good day's work, especially the way the two of you go at it," Bill said as they picked up tools and put them away. "It would have taken me the rest of the week to get that done by myself."

"You need us to stick around tomorrow?" Roger asked.

"No, not really. I mean, I could find stuff for you to do, but it wouldn't be something I actually have to have help with. I know you're anxious to get back to where you think you're really needed, and I don't blame you. If you want to get out of here in the morning, it would be fine with me. I just hope you're planning on coming back when the weather is nicer."

"Like Catalina said last night, we've got to be back up north in a month. If it's no bother, it would be nice if we could leave the camper here again. No idea how long it's going to take, it might be a quick trip like this last one or it could last a while. There's just no way of telling."

"Well, after all the work you've put in here for free, you're welcome to leave it here for free outside of the busy season. That probably won't get going till March or so. You can leave it here then, too, but I'd rather it wasn't on one of the hookups."

"It's hard to say what's going to happen after this next trip," Catalina told him. "But we'll figure that out when the time comes."

The next morning they were up early, packing up the camper and tearing it down for the move back to the hurricane-damaged area. It was later than they'd hoped before they got on the road, with Catalina following along behind in the Mustang. It was still a long drive to where they'd been working in Gulfport. Although Roger had enjoyed his time at Wamputa Beach it seemed like a long way out of the way.

Partway through the drive, Roger pulled into a truck stop near Pensacola for gas, and since it was around lunchtime, they decided to eat while they were stopped. They found a seat in the busy place, and a waitress soon came by with water and menus. Roger glanced at the specials list, and said, "Guess the hot roast beef looks pretty good to me."

"Me too," Catalina agreed. "Except that as much as I've been sitting the last few days I probably ought to be watching my figure. I wonder if they do half orders."

"Could be," Roger shrugged. "Besides, you'd probably be working those calories off in the next few days, anyway."

"I sure hope so," she smiled. "Maybe I will have the full order. The price is right, anyway."

"Well, at a truck stop they expect you to eat like a trucker. You know, thinking about truckers makes me think if we're going to be doing all this driving with two vehicles from one place to the next, maybe we ought to be thinking about getting some CBs so we can work out stops like this."

"Not a bad idea, but I can tell you a better idea. Why don't you get a cell phone instead of borrowing mine all the time? What's more, maybe you could find one you could plug into your computer, so we don't have to beg a phone jack from someone every time we want to check our e-mail."

"You're right, that sounds like a better idea. If I'm going to do it, I probably ought to be looking around here, rather than up ahead. It might still be slim pickings for that kind of thing around Gulfport."

"Let's ask if there's a mall around here somewhere," she suggested. "We could leave the camper and take the Mustang and your computer so we could be sure everything would work."

It took another hour to find a cell phone that would work with the computer and get it set up, before they got back on the road. It was getting late in the afternoon when they pulled into Gulfport, so they headed over to the area where they expected the Habitat for Humanity crew to be working, but there was no sign of them -- and that gave the cell phones their first workout. "So, what do you think?" Catalina asked.

"Beats me, Cattail," he replied on the new-enough-to-be-uncomfortable little phone. "My understanding when we left before Christmas was that they were going to be working in this neighborhood for a while."

"Well, they're obviously not," she replied. "So what do we do now?"

"I guess there's not much we can do but head over to the volunteer center I was at last fall and ask."

Catalina followed him across town to a somewhat-battered shopping center that had housed the volunteer center where he'd found out about the Habitat for Humanity crew a couple months before. Not terribly surprising, the storefront was empty; obviously the volunteer center had moved, but there was no sign of where it might have moved to. After a quick conference standing between the vehicles, they decided the best thing to do was to lock up the motor home and go looking around in the more maneuverable Mustang. "We could find a cop and ask him," Roger suggested. "That was how I found the volunteer center the last time."

By now it was getting late in the afternoon and the sun was getting low. They were a while finding a policeman, but when they did they were told that the volunteer center had consolidated with some other disaster relief agencies at a different location on the west side of town. They headed over there, to find the place closed up for the day. "Well, I guess that's that," Roger commented as he got back in the Mustang. "They sure don't make it easy, do they?"

"Probably FEMA picked up the deal from a volunteer effort so now they're working banker's hours," she grumped.

"You're probably right," he said with a tone of resignation. "Count on the feds to take over something that's working and louse it up. Bureaucrats have to justify their existence, after all. I don't know if there's anything else we can do today."

"I suppose we could go get the camper and bring it over here to boondock for the night," she suggested.

"We could, but I'm not too sure how bad I want to spend the night in this part of town. It looks a little rough to me. Where we left it strikes me as a lot better."

"Yeah, me too. But, tell you what. Let's just drive down the coast a little and get a feeling for what kind of progress has been made."

"From what I've seen so far there's been some made, but there's still years of work to be done. But, that's not a bad idea. It'll kill an hour or so, and if we find something to do tomorrow we may not get the chance again soon."

The coastal highway had long since been cleared to the west -- it had been pretty well cleared even when Roger first came to the area back in September -- and it was the easiest way to check things out. On the way, Roger related a couple of stories about how bad a mess Pass Christian had been when he'd first come to the area, and how it had been torn up even worse than Gulfport, if such a thing were possible. When they got to the town, Catalina turned off the highway without comment just to let Roger see how much change there had been, if any.

As they drove down one of the side streets, Roger saw a familiar sight -- a group of Amish men walking toward them. As they got closer the Amish seemed even more familiar, to the point where he yelled, "Cattail! Stop!"

"What?" she said as she slammed on the brakes.

"That's Aaron and Michael and that gang I was working with down here before!"

"Why do I feel a 'bingo' coming on?"

Roger only half heard her as he was piling out the right door of the Mustang. "Aaron! Michael! Good to see you again!"

"Yah, good to see you again too, Roger," Aaron smiled. "I see you're still at it."