SLOGGING THROUGH WINTER… Good & bad (Part 169n)
I’d tried to
reach Ward, the man who’s company cleaned the bank each evening, to see
if he was going to stop at the bank on Monday but wasn’t able to make
contact. But, late in the afternoon he left a message that he would be
there that evening. His usual arrival time was 6pm, give or take, so I
decided to stay. I wanted to show him the desk in the basement that I
wanted moved. I knew Elle wouldn’t be pleased but if I wanted the job
done I’d have to stay late. I apprised Mae of what my plan was and she
responded by saying she was ready to stay whenever I wanted her to. No
matter what I threw at her she seemed to respond positively. She told me
she’d just come back from the cellar and had some ideas for when we
returned to the project. It sort of bothered me that someone so bright
and willing was working as a teller.
Mike, the
messenger/custodian had put out the rat poison I’d purchased. The part I
didn’t like with using it was that there was no way to know if it
worked. With the traps we’d always see the results. The only four people
who knew about the possibility of a rat were Hobie, Mike, Mae and me
and we’d all agreed to keep it quiet. With 80% of the employees being
female I knew it would become a problem if the word got out. I’m not
going to pretend I was entirely comfortable in that situation but going
back to when I worked training horses seeing rats (and big ones) around
the barn areas was a common occurrence. Mae seemed to be stoic about it,
never mentioning the possibility of running into one as being a problem
for her. Even so, I really wanted to know the (possible) rat was gone.
When
I showed Ward the desk he was impressed with the size of it. However,
he felt he’d need at least three other guys to do what I wanted. He
tried to lift one corner and struggled. He made no promises but said
he’d get on it, one way or another. He was a local sports legend with
many believing that if he’d had the opportunity he could’ve been a football star
in college. Everybody liked him and if he liked you there wasn’t much
that he wouldn’t try to do for you. Luckily, I was one of those people.
Because so many people liked him he was a party to some interesting
‘inside information’. On this evening he was willing to share some with
me… the town Supervisor was being investigated for supposedly taking
kickbacks having to do with the new Town hall. That was a bit of a shock
because the man had done an outstanding job of cleaning up a “good old
boy” situation in the town. I never liked politics and ever since I’d worked at
the County Center after leaving the horses I wanted nothing to do with
them. To say the least it was disturbing news.
Wednesday was a
full Board meeting day. Because of the two snow storms some of the committee
meetings had been postponed and put off until right before the big
meeting. I’d been made an ex-officio member of the branch committee but
hadn’t been called to attend any since that announcement. The committee chairman
had called for a meeting at 2:30pm, right before the Board meeting.
Thankfully, my prep work for the Board meeting had been done in the morning. I was
still a little ‘gun shy’ as to being able to speak up to see if there
had been any developments concerning the application for the new branch.
After having been shown the possibilities for ingress and egress to the
site nothing, at least to my knowledge, had happened. When I saw
“Polack Joe” arrive early and head straight upstairs I began to have
concerns. I was collecting the limited materials I had concerning the
site when Joanie gave me a message and it was to tell me not to go to
the meeting. Somehow I knew Joe had something to do with it. I stayed at
my desk until it was almost 3pm hoping to get a call to attend but it
never came.
The call I did get was from Lena, Bert, the
presidents secretary, but it was to ask a question and not to invite me
to the meeting. Lena had also been the secretary for the previous president
for many, many years and they’d become close. He was still on the Board
and when he stopped by to say hello to her had asked if she could take a
look at some of his old files and records. It was something personal
and he wanted her to do the searching. As I’ve written, just about
everything in the way of files was in the cellar so Lena contacted me to
get access to that area. I told her I’d meet her at the storage area door and show her
where the most recent additions had been placed/stacked/thrown. I told
her the lighting wasn’t really conducive to in depth searches and
offered to help her. She declined and as I pointed to the stack of boxes
I told her to be careful. She assured me she would and would return the
key when she finished up. Being down there I was tempted to do a little
more in the area where Mae and I’d been working but decided to wait for
the desk to be moved and headed up the stairs.
At my desk I had a
visit from J J, not always a good thing what with his penchant for
making almost ridiculous requests. But, he fooled me. He asked if I knew
where Lena was. She’d been called into the Board meeting but no one
could find her. A look at my watch told me she’d been down there far too
long so I told J J to follow me and we headed for the cellar. The door
was closed but not locked. Walking in to the dimly lit storage bin I
could see Lena. It looked like she was leaning into the pile of boxes
but I could see she wasn’t moving. There were any number of boxes now
spread out on the floor. As both J J and I moved towards her we called
her name but there was no response. J J, who was an active leader in the
Boy Scouts, moved past me and checked her breathing. We both knew we
couldn’t just leave her leaning against a bunch of boxes so we each
grabbed an arm and lifted her off. The first aid kit was in the ‘break’
room which was no more that ten feet away. We got her in there and lay
her on the couch. J J went for the smelling salts while I tried to get
her in a somewhat comfortable position. In so doing I had to lift her
legs up off the floor and put them on the seat cushions. I started to do
it by lifting both legs at the same time but her upper body position
wouldn’t let me. So, as J J broke open the capsule I got her body turned
so that I could move her legs one at a time. I know you won’t
believe me but my focus was on Lena and getting her to wake up.
However, when I lifted the other leg up she came to and she pulled it up
to her chest. An instant, close up, panty peek!
The short version
of the story… She’d been struggling to get to a box stacked on top
and tried pushing/leaning herself into them to get to it. She told us she felt her foot step on something “soft” and then
she lost her footing and fell into the boxes. As she tried to get back
to standing she looked down to see what she’d stepped on and saw… a rat…
and that’s all she remembered. After I heard that I returned to
the storage area and there it was… a fairly large rat lying at the base
of the now askew boxes. Evidently, the poison had worked.
To be continued…
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