Cara Colter - Major Daddy

The combined weight of the children and the baby was startlingly small. It was their warmth that surprised him, the seeming bonelessness of them as they melted into him, like kittens who had found a mother.

For an old soldier, a terrifying thing happened.

Soaked in tears and whatever horrible warm liquid that was seeping out of the baby’s diaper, he felt a terrible weakness, a softening around his heart.

“Okay,” he said, putting his voice into the blessed silence with extreme caution, “tell me what happened to Grandma.” Out of the sudden chorus of overlapping voices, he began to pick out a story.

“The lights went out.”

“She fell down the steps.”

“Blood everywhere.”

“Lots of blood. Maybe bwains, too.”

In bits and pieces, like putting together a verbal jigsaw puzzle, Cole figured out who the children were, where they were from and what needed to be done.

They were the movie star’s children. When the power had gone out, their grandma, who looked after them when their mother was away, had fallen down the steps in the darkness. The children had presumed, erroneously, Cole hoped, that she was dead.

“I knew I had to get help,” the oldest girl told him solemnly, “but they—” she stabbed an accusing finger at the two boys “—said they had to come, too. And we couldn’t leave Kolina—”

“That me,” the toddler in the dress told him, then relaxed into his chest, her cheek warm and soft and wet, and inserted her thumb in her mouth.

“—or the baby, so we all came. And here we are, Mr. Herman.”

Mr. Herman? They obviously had him confused with a different neighbor, possibly one who was friendly.

He considered telling them he was not Mr. Herman, but they had a shell-shocked look about them that told him to save his breath.

He saw immediately the order of things that needed to be done. He had to get to the grandma and fast. Possibly, she was not dead, but hovering on the brink, where seconds could count.

“Your name?” he demanded of the oldest one.

“Saffron,” she told him, and the rest of them piped up with the most bewildering and ridiculous assortment of names he’d ever heard. The older of the boys was Darrance, and the other one was Calypso. Calypso!

The smallest girl batted thick eyelashes and reiterated that her name was Kolina. And the baby, he was informed, was Lexandra.

The impossible names swam in his head, and were then pushed aside by more important tasks that needed to be dealt with.

“Okay,” he said, pointing at the oldest girl, “You are not Saffron anymore. You are Number One. And you are Number Two…”

He went on quickly, numbering them largest to smallest, and he could see that rather than being indignant about the name changes, it was exactly what they needed. Someone of authority to relinquish the responsibility to. Having established himself as boss, he confidently gave his first order.

“Now, Number One, I have to go see to your grand-mother, and I am placing you in charge here. That makes you second in command.”

Adding another number had been a mistake, because the child’s brow furrowed. He hurried on. “Number One, you are to make sure each of these children sits quietly on this couch while I go to your house and check on your grandmother. Nobody moves a muscle, right?”

He was already calculating. What were the chances his road was open? Slim. If he had to hike cross-country, he could probably be at the big house on the point in ten minutes, going flat out.

It pierced his awareness that Number One was not the least impressed with military protocol or her new title of second in command. In fact, she was frowning, her expression vaguely mutinous.

“No,” she said with flat finality.

“No?” Cole said, dumbfounded. Apparently the child had no idea that he outranked her and was not to be challenged. In fact, her cute little face screwed up, and she let loose a new wail that threatened to peel the paint off his ceiling. Fresh tears squirted out of her eyes at an alarming rate.

He felt himself tensing as four other faces screwed up in unison, but they held off making noise as their sister spoke.

“Mr. Herman, we’re not staying here by ourselves,” she told him. “This house is spooky. I’m scared. I don’t want to be in charge anymore. I want to go with you.”

He only briefly wrestled with his astonishment that this snippet of a child was refusing an order. Obviously the other kids were going to follow her cue, and he did not have the time—nor the patience—to cajole them into seeing things his way.

As much as it went against his nature, he surrendered again. Twice in the space of a few minutes. He could only hope it wasn’t an omen.

He hurriedly packed a knapsack with emergency supplies, and then he turned his attention back to the children.

For a man who could move a regiment in minutes, getting those five children back through the door, arranged in his SUV and safely belted into position was a humbling experience.

Precious moments lost, he finally fired up the engine. Just as he had feared, at the first switchback in his own driveway a huge ponderosa pine was lying lengthwise across it, the branches spanning it ditch to ditch. He’d reversed, plotting furiously the whole way.

The children spilled out of the vehicle and back into the house. He took the baby and lined the rest of them up, shortest to tallest, and inspected them. They were all dressed inadequately for even a short trek along the roughly wooded shores of the lake.

Biting back his impatience, Cole pulled sweaters and jackets off the hooks in his coat closet. “Put them on.”

Giggling slightly, the children did as they were ordered. Cole stuffed Kolina inside a large sweater. It fit her like a sleeping bag. He intended to carry her, anyway.

He used pieces of binder twine to adjust the clothing on the older children so they wouldn’t be tripping as they walked. Lastly, he looked for head coverings. Well versed in the dangers of hypothermia, he knew the greatest heat loss was from the head area. In a moment of pure inspiration, he raided his sock drawer and fitted each child with a makeshift woolen cap—one of his large socks pulled down tight over their ears.

He inspected them again. They looked like a ragtag group of very adorable elves, but he had no time to appreciate his handiwork. Once more, the children were herded out the door.

He put the smaller of the boys on his shoulders, and then had Number One hand him Number Four, the toddler, Kolina, and Number Five, the baby.

He set as hard a pace as he was able, changing Number Three, on his shoulders, with Number Two, the bigger of the boys, every five or six minutes so that none of them would tire. The girl, Saffron, showed remarkable endurance. The beam of the flashlight picked out the well-worn trails that wove around the lake and to the point of land where the movie star’s house was. To his intense relief the ax stayed in his pack. There were no obstacles so large that they could not get around them, though the path was littered with tree branches, cones and needles. Debris continued to rain around them as the wind shrieked through the trees.

It would have been a two minute drive to the house from his cabin. Overland, they made it in just over thirty minutes, which Cole thought was probably something of a miracle.

The children did not whine, or cry or complain. Soldiers could be trained to be brave. That the bravery of the children came to them so naturally put his heart at risk in ways it had never been risked before.

He heard the weak voice calling into the night before he saw her.

“Children? Where are you? Saffron? Darrance? Calypso? Kolina? Lexandra? Dear God, where are you?”