A Frigid Mother
We wrote it into the Will/Devo series which includes, in suggested reading order:
It Only Took Twenty Years
The Card Game
Look the Other Way
And now this tale, A Frigid Mother.
Don't let the title distract you. This is nowhere near that particular Literotica category, and it's filed into Non-E because there is zero.
We prefer not to name true-to-life entities in any sort of unflattering manner, but we've decided to dispense with that in this story in the case of ERCOT and Oncor, which are, indeed, the real things, though their employees' names have been obfuscated.
This writing has not been given our usual careful edits as it was written and published over a few hours across three days. We ask readers to forgive mistakes. We'll fix them later. Also, we asked (but don't know if Lit will listen) for this to be published quickly given the time-sensitivity.
We're not sure if you will, but we hope you'll read this fact-based current-events but still fictional story. It reflects a lot of anger we are feeling, and we suspect there are many readers that will understand this at a personal level because they're also up to their own asses in alligators. We hope this story gives those readers some comfort in knowing that this pair of Texans are right there beside you, even though we're anonymous.
Also, to readers who might be thinking about commenting along the likes of "Why are you writing when all of that shit is happening around you?" It's an outlet. We've been busy helping friends and neighbors that need it. "Dawn" is, as I write this foreword, taking hot dinners to two families we know that are now sheltering in hotels, and I, "Will" just finished shoveling our neighbor's driveway with a flat-nosed spade because no one in this part of the state has ever owned a snow shovel. That neighbor, by the way, brought her ninety-one year old mother home into hospice just three days before this hit.
Again. It's an outlet. We're both pissed to the gills, so please, don't judge us.
Monday, February 8, 2021, 6:22pm
"Take this situation very, very seriously," the on-screen local TV meteorologist, Dell Peterson, continued. "There's little variability in the models now, and most are converging toward an extreme arctic incursion this weekend. Today's high temperature of almost seventy degrees will seem like a distant memory by this weekend. We will have an update at ten o'clock, so make sure to tune in, or stay up to date, twenty-four seven, on our app."
Dawn had just stepped back inside after checking in on her aunt and uncle in the guest house.
"Holy mackerel!" she laughed. The winds have definitely picked up," she said.
She didn't need to tell me because the state of her hair spoke the truth itself. I chuckled as she tried to corral it all back behind her head.
"I'm thinking we should go to the grocery store and pick up a few of the basics, you know, just in case," I said.
"Why? Did Peterson say it's going to get bad?" she said, pointing at the muted TV.
"Possibly. But if anything else, if it becomes a sure thing, people are going to hit the stores in droves at the last minute and find empty shelves."
"Yeah, okay. Let's go."
Aaron climbed into his booster and I helped him with his seat belt. We went to the megamart and bought just enough to last us an extra week. We bought some beef, chicken, and pork. Three loaves of bread, a gallon of milk, another package of overnights for Aaron (which he seldom soils anymore), a couple of boxes of pasta and jars of sauce, a half dozen cans of vegetables plus fresh produce, and various other sundries finished our cart. We also bought extra provisions for Dawn's aunt and uncle who usually ate like birds.
No, we weren't hoarding. Our bill wasn't quite $100, which is about what a typical week's worth of groceries cost.
We were smart to go when we did, because, by the end of the week, we were seeing social media posts showing empty shelves at stores all over the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.
Yep, that Monday's high temperature was sixty-six degrees. Tuesday's was thirty-four, which would prove to be the last day of above-freezing temperatures for ten days straight except for a brief hour of thirty-three degrees on Saturday.
Sunday, February 14, 2021, 3:10pm
"Who were you talking to?" Dawn asked me when she came into the study just as I hung up my cellphone.
"I'm sorry, Devo," I said, standing from the desk. "I had planned and made reservations for us to have Valentine's dinner tonight at a new restaurant in Deep Ellum, but that was them calling because they're closing early due to the weather."
"Oh, that's too bad!" she softly whined, understanding that the surprise I had in store wouldn't happen. "I don't guess it surprises me, though. They're doing the right thing to let their staff get home before the roads get too bad."
We both looked out the window at a sight neither of us had seen at our present home. Snow was beginning to accumulate on the streets.
Northerners: Don't judge. You're accustomed to such things and develop skills and have
Snow in north Texas is rare, and usually isn't a concern because it would typically fall on surfaces that were above the freezing point, other than bridges and overpasses. But because it'd been below freezing for several days already, the ground temperatures had ample time to chill below the freeze point, and driving was quickly becoming hazardous.
"Well. Let's not let that put too much of a dent in the evening," she smiled. "We could have a date night right here."
"Yeah? What do you propose?" I asked.
"We can make a nice dinner together," my wife smiled, and gave me a sweet little smooch.
We did have a lovely one consisting of homemade pizza. Cheese for Aaron, and an incredible Anglo-Asian style for ours.
After Aaron's bath, I settled him into his bed. He was a reliable and willing sleeper by that point.
My wife and I settled into our bed and turned on the ten o'clock news.
The anchor said, "Temperatures are already at record lows all across the state, and they're only going to continue to fall overnight, as will the snow. At Dallas Fort Worth International, the six year snow drought has, of course, ended. One inch fell six years ago, two have fallen already.
"The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ERCOT, is backtracking on their assurances of this morning, and are now warning that load shedding measures, also known as rolling blackouts, may in fact be necessary to protect the integrity of the grid. They are asking all Texans to avoid unnecessary electricity consumption overnight and to set their thermostats to no higher than sixty-eight degrees."
"That doesn't sound good," Dawn said.
"I know. I hope they know what they're talking about."
"Remember the weather, what was it, eight or nine years ago?" she asked.
"Yeah. It was ten. That was the wicked snow and ice storm when the Superbowl was played here, and we got through that one fine," I said.
"Sounds like this storm is worse."
"I hope not, but I've got the furthest faucets inside the house dripping."
"What's that supposed to accomplish other than raise our water bill?" she laughed.
Her unfamiliarity didn't surprise me. She'd grown up in Miami, went to school in Georgia, worked near Orlando for a couple of years, then moved to the Dallas area. Protocols for dealing with extreme cold were not familiar to her or her guardians, whereas I grew up in the upper Midwest and learned such things from my father.
"Keeps the pipes from bursting if one freezes. A pipe freezes from the outside toward the indoors, so a dripping faucet allows the pressure a way to escape. I texted Binh to do the same thing in their bathroom sink."
"That makes sense."
"Done quizzing me?" I asked with a grin.
"Yeah," she smiled back sweetly.
I settled close to her, encouraging her to snuggle her warmth with me.
She rolled to her side and draped her left thigh across both of mine.
"Turn off the TV," she whispered.
"Happy Valentines, my forever," I whispered as I pressed the button on the remote.
Monday, February 15, 2021, 6:45am
An unfamiliar beeping noise awakened me. The digital clock's display was dark. It was its fail-safe alarm's piercing, shrill sound instead of the WBAP morning news. It was brighter in the room than typical for that time of morning, an effect I remembered from my childhood.
It was a learned response. I knew the additional illumination could only come from snow-covered ground. I was almost giddy with memories of building forts and having snowball wars with friends from the neighborhood in which I lived almost four decades before.
I eased the covers off myself, careful not to disturb my wife's slumber. My smile turned to a frown when I felt how chilly it was in the room.
I confirmed my first suspicion by looking out the window to see about five inches of snow on the outdoor furniture situated near the pool. What set my mind into a sudden panic, though, was that I also saw a significant amount of snow dusting the entire surface of the pool itself, which meant there was ice underneath. That meant the pump had stopped circulating the water.
We weren't in the middle of a rolling blackout. No, the power had been off long enough that the house wasn't at its programmed morning temperature of 72 degrees, and felt even colder than the overnight set point of 65 degrees.
I went to the study hoping to figure out when the power had failed. The computer was off. Its UPS's batteries had been drained. I looked at the battery-powered weather station display. The temperature outside was indicating seven degrees. The inside temperature was reading fifty-nine.
I walked back to our bedroom and changed into warmer clothes.
"What's wrong?" Dawn asked from the bed, observing my hurried movements.
"Don't get out of bed if you know what's good for you," I chuckled. "It's cold. The power is out. It's not even sixty degrees on the other side of your covers."
"I can tell. I feel it on my face. How long has it been off?"
"Not sure yet. But the pool is iced over which means it's been off for quite a while. I'm guessing four or five hours, at least."
"I thought the news said any outages would only be thirty minutes or so."
"Yeah, No. They were wrong."
She ignored my advice and slipped herself out of the bed.
"I need coffee," she murmured, more to herself than me, once she'd changed into a pair of sweatpants, a long-sleeved shirt, then a jersey sweater. She left the room, making a bee-line toward our son's. Thankfully, his was warmer than ours since it only has a single exterior wall whereas the master has three. He was still soundly sleeping. Dawn tucked an extra knitted afghan over him then walked to the kitchen.
Since the pandemic began, Dawn has seldom dressed "professionally." Not that I care too much, because her incredibly fit figure is flattered by even the most mundane apparel, but I do miss seeing her in a sexy-as-hell business suit. Skirt or slacks, it doesn't matter. Her sculpted body is just so beautiful in form-fitting clothes. The fact that she is a woman of high professional standing adds even more to her allure.
She occasionally dresses like the Vice President she is, but only from her waist up, on days when she's needed to be on-camera during video calls or whatnot. Much more often than not, she dresses very casually.
For me? Cargo shorts? Check. T-shirts with random silk-screened memes? Check. Houston Astros, Texas Rangers, or Frisco RoughRiders baseball caps to cover my hair? Double check! But not that day. I chose jeans, a long-sleeved sweatshirt (I think I only own two), and I even put on a light jacket.
"Sweetie, how are you gonna make coffee without electricity?" I asked.
"Same way you're keeping the pipes from bursting," she said. "I have my own tricks."
"Excellent. Make me a cup, too, please? And, if I don't come back in ten minutes, send a rescue party. I'm going to go check on your folks," I said, referring to her aunt and uncle residing in the guest house.
Dawn's aunt was her birth mother's sister. With her husband of more than fifty years, they were her de facto parents. They'd raised her in Miami from the age of nine after she'd been expatriated by the Vietnamese government when her mother was killed when a motorcycle struck her as she walked to her daughter's school. Her father had been a victim of a construction accident before she was born. We'd relocated her aunt and uncle from Miami to the guest house we'd built for them on our two-acre plot of land in Royce City, Texas, an outlying suburb of Dallas.
They saw me through one of the side windows and waved at me. They were bundled up in layers. Her uncle gestured for me to go to the door.
"We are safe and warm, William," he reassured me in broken but easily understood English. "We do not know this kind of thing!" he said, gesticulating at the snow-covered porch.
"It is very unusual, Binh," I chuckled. "It is strange for me and Dawn, too!"
"Now more cold is coming in, so I need to shut!" he laughed.
"Call or come get us if you need anything!" I yelled through the closed door he closed.
"Okay!" I heard his reply.
Walking back to the house, I stepped around the side of it to check the state of the pool equipment. My heart immediately sunk when I saw the DE filter housing and the casings of both primary pumps had wide cracks with ice visible inside. Several inches of PVC piping did, too.
I said all the curse words I could find before I went back into the house because I didn't want to take my frustration out on my wife or son.
"Are they okay?" she asked, handing me a cup of steaming coffee in an insulated mug.
"How'd you make this?" I asked, sipping delicious and hot brew.
"Simple. Old school. I brought some water up to a near boil, then very slowly drizzled it through the brewer's basket with the coffee and filter in it.
I sipped again.
"Huh-uh," I said. "That wouldn't be this good."
"I made it with the French press," she admitted with a sweet smile.
I laughed. I'd forgotten she had one.
"Your folks are all bundled up in layers. Binh assured me they're both okay."
"Good. I worry about them."
"They're in good shape. Worry about our pool, instead," I said.
"Why? What's wrong?"
"Everything froze up. The filter, both primary and the booster pumps, and some of the pipes are split open. ERCOT and Oncor were totally wrong. This outage isn't because of a rolling blackout. The outage map says there's over a half million customers in the metro area without juice, and more than a million system-wide."
"Oh, jeez. Mother Nature is being particularly frigid," she quipped.
I chuckled at her allusion. "Yeah. More like a frigid mother effer. I hope we can get repairs made before spring, because I'm sure we're hardly the only pool owner with damage. It'll turn into a swamp."
I went to the garage and switched off the three breakers which controlled the equipment. Sending electricity to it when still full of ice would be catastrophic.
"Honey, come here," Dawn motioned to me with her hands when I returned through the door.
She enrobed me in a gentle embrace. "It's just a swimming pool. We'll be okay."
Her soft and soothing tone reassured and re-centered me. "You're right, Devo," I sighed in her clutch. "What are you going to do to work?"
"There's no internet, of course, and my cell's hotspot seems to be a lot slower than usual."
"I'm going to tell my division to try to do whatever is reasonable to get online, but not feel they need to take a day of vacation if they can't."
"Good boy," she smiled at me. "Beth just sent the same sort of text to all of us."
Bethany Welsley is Dawn's supervisor, and the CIO at the company at which my wife has been employed for about four years.
By nine o'clock that night, the electricity still hadn't come back on. We had to charge our phones and other devices via USB ports in the cars, which was a slow process due to their low-amperage sockets.
"My folks will be okay, I'm sure, but I'm worried about Aaron. It's supposed to be even colder tonight than it was last night."
He'd already eaten his favorite dish of macaroni cheese wheels which Dawn prepared in a sauce pan instead of the microwave.
"Yeah. I know," I agreed.
Most of our cooking appliances are, thankfully, fueled by natural gas, so we are able to prepare food for the extended family of five. Of course, the refrigerator and freezer aren't, and Dawn began to notice several frozen items beginning to soften when she checked.
"Give me a hand. We need to get stuff out of the freezer. Things are starting to thaw a little."
"Where are you planning on putting it? The chest freezer in the garage is already pretty full."
"On the back porch."
"Raccoons or rats will probably get into it. They'll certainly be out foraging."
"We can put most of it into coolers and put landscaping stones on the lids. If they manage to chew through the cooler, well, more power to them."
I chuckled. "Great idea!"
It required only fifteen minutes to move twenty or thirty pounds of frozen food out of the appliance that wasn't doing its job to a location that was decidedly and already frozen. The contents of the refrigerator were far less "volatile," so we left that side undisturbed. I dumped the contents of the ice dispenser into a container and put it in the fridge to keep it cool longer.
An idea struck me while we worked.
"Hey, can you grab the lantern and a flashlight and help me out in the garage?" I asked.
"Sure, but what are you needing to do out there?" she asked, following me with the lights.
"I'm going to take the battery out of my truck and hook it up to an inverter I used to use when cars didn't have built-in USB chargers."
"Okay, but . . . why?"
"Hopefully I can get it all to power that electric throw blanket you like to use when you snuggle up to read. If it works, it'll keep Aaron nice and warm tonight."
"You can do that?" she asked, brows furrowed.
"I can try," I said, not too sure myself.
I popped the hood of my SUV, then disconnected and removed the battery. I found the inverter in a storage bin on one of the shelves. A coil of Romex wire I'd found that the builders had left behind in the attic hung on the pegboard.
I brought the materials into the relative warmth of the house, then went back for tools. I cut roughly two feet of Romex from the roll, then split it to remove the conductors. I stripped the ends, then coiled up the black wire to the positive and white to the negative battery posts, and secured them with large binder clips I retrieved from the study.
I cracked the plastic end off the inverter's plug, and carefully extracted the wires. I joined its black wire with the battery's white, and its red with the black. I wire-nutted the pairs, and the green LED illuminated, confirming the inverter was functioning.
Into the inverter, I plugged the electric blanket which Dawn was holding. The 25% LED illuminated, assuring me the inverter was barely taxed.
A few moments later, Dawn grinned. "It's warming up."
"Nice!" I said.
"I'm keeping this myself. Aaron's going to have to find his own," she chuckled.
I knew she didn't mean it.
I disconnected the parts and carried the heavy battery behind my wife as we went as silently as we could into Aaron's room. She tucked the blanket around him, and I reconnected the apparatus. I moved it where it wouldn't pose a hazard if he awakened and got out of his small bed.
Dawn programmed the sleep timer for eight hours, ensuring Aaron would be comfortable all night at the expense of about ten or fifteen watts of juice powering my MacGyver'ed contraption.
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