Rescued

Chapter 11

"Come on, we need to get baths today," Birdy announced to the occupants of the bedroom.

Sunny blinked up at her.

"Well... unless you don't want one," Birdy amended and shrugged.

"Yo--ou don't have running water... up here... do you?" Sunny asked, voice hitching again. She wondered when it would stop, when she'd be able to speak normally again.

"We've got that line run up from the kitchen and buckets," Rainy said and smirked.

Sunny frowned. "How--"

"Noah made this system, he's piped water through the other bedroom window," Birdy began the explanation. "And we put it into a big pot on the fire in Mom and Dad's bedroom. When it's hot, we take the buckets to the bathroom and use them."

"H-- how many buckets?" Sunny asked. That sounded like a lot of hot water to be porting around.

"Oh, only two or three," Rainy said. "It's not a real bath, and it's not a shower, either."

"But it gets you clean," Birdy said. "And it's a LOT better than the shower they rigged up outside."

"Warmer, too," Rainy said and grinned.

"Hmm," Sunny said, she didn't really understand what they meant, but decided not to press for answers, that would just require her to use her voice.

"So we girls get to go first," Rainy said.

"But only if we get the fire going real hot," Birdy said. "And keep the big pot full for the next person."

Sunny nodded.

"You can go first today," Rainy said and smiled. "Go find your new clothes."

"Oh, yes," Sunny said and nodded.

"And we'll get the fire going," Birdy said.

Well, Sunny supposed they were 'new to her' clothes. They weren't too terrible.

Sunny bathed. If she could call it that. She stood in the old claw foot tub, naked to the skin, and bathed out of one bucket of water. She scrubbed up with the soap, even washing her hair with it, careful of her staples. She realized she probably shouldn't have washed it when the line began to sting. She rinsed it a second time and made a note to ask for something to clean it up with when she was done.

She dressed in her 'new' clothes when she was rinsed and dried. She had to admit that the jeans fit perfectly, not that they were perfect jeans. There was a tear on the right leg under the knee, and the left leg had a stain.

After dinner the night before, the womenfolk had set a big kettle of water over the fire in the firepit outside and scrubbed their 'new' clothes. After everything was washed and cleaned, it was put in an odd barrel contraption to dry with Gabe turning a crank on the backside of it to keep the clothes from burning over the fire.

But even after all that washing, there was still a stain on the leg of her jeans. And a tear below the knee of the other leg.

Oh, well, she thought. Fits in with the rest of Browntown. Just a little torn and dirty, though Ami was fastidious about the kitchen and her bedroom remaining dirt free. And to their credit, they were spotless when they went into Hoonah yesterday.

Sunny wondered what could be done about the dirt in the rest of Browntown. Well... now it was slush with the snow and wet everywhere. She wondered what it was like when it wasn't wet.