Lockdown Christmas Miracle Ch. 03

They agreed to start work the following afternoon and called it a day. Eric was tired from all of the work he'd put in over the last couple of days, but excited in a way that he hadn't been since the school year started. He was solving problems, getting creative and working out in the fresh air instead of sitting in front of the TV.

Better yet, when he was focused on the two projects, Eric wasn't thinking about looking down one of his sister's tops or whether they were wearing underwear at that moment. He had been jacking off more than usual over the last couple of days, hoping it would diminish his sex drive and help him control the images that kept popping into his head, but he found that as much as he tried to focus on something else, he kept conjuring up fantasies about his sisters each time, at the exact moment he came.

It only took an hour to join the cables the following morning. Eric anchored the pulley to a stout tree at the top of the slope and wrapped the inner groove of the pulley wheel with a couple of layers of a textured rubber strip to help give it some grip as the cable would be allowed to press into the thick rubber layers under tension. He had done the same with the rim of the spare he had waiting to swap out with the existing back tire on the small tractor. Eric was glad that he had talked through the tropical paradise project with Ellie before he rigged up the rope pull, and after adding a plow attachment to the tractor, pulled it around the back of one of the sheds, plowed away the accumulated snow in a rectangle and dug out a shallow pond area along one side of the space.

Eric then backed the tractor into position at the bottom of the cable run, swapped out the right rear tire for the modified rim he would use as the lower pulley, wound the cable around the rim and then inched the tractor forward on its existing tire until he had a firm tension on the cable. He had placed some plywood on top of the cleared piece of frozen ground beneath the rear axle, and using a couple of hand jacks, proceeded to jack up the rear of the tractor until the remaining tire was a few inches above the ground. He placed some homemade wood chocks under the front tires and gave the tractor a hard push from every angle to make sure that everything was steady. He couldn't get the body of the tractor to move even an inch from side to side and the tension on the cable, along with the wedges under the front tires, kept it from being able to move forward down the gentle slope, even a tiny bit.

Starting the small diesel engine, Eric went up to the garage to retrieve his old snowboard and boots while it warmed up. Once he was in position, he reached over to put the tractor in low gear and watched the cable begin to move in a slow steady turn around the rear rim as the other wheel slowly spun a few inches off the ground. Grabbing onto a passing closure on the lower part of the cable in his gloved hands, it began pulling him easily up the slope at a steady, gentle pace. Eric had cleared any debris from below the cable as he had connected each length and his snowboard smoothed out his earlier footprints as he rode up the hill. The path through the trees worked well and he didn't notice any slippage on the cable, even as he plowed through some of the more uneven patches of snow and small drifts.

Reaching the point where he had mounted the pulley to a tree at the top of the slope a minute or so later, Eric released the cable and swung his board around until he could slide at an angle into a clearer part of the slope to begin weaving his way down the open hillside in wide sweeping arcs. Even though the ride only lasted 20 or 30 seconds, Eric was beaming with pride and pleasure at the thrill of sliding down the small hill and immediately grabbed the cable to ride back to the top of the slope. If possible, it was even more fun the second time, as Eric picked a better line and finished with a wide sweeping arc, and a good amount of speed, before pulling up short behind the tractor, throwing up a small spray of snow.

Each time he rode up, the path to the top got smoother as he focused on making it better with his board, widening and straightening it with each pass. He had ridden down at least a dozen times before satisfying himself that the contraption worked perfectly. He called Cassie on his cell phone and had time to make a couple more runs before he saw her come around the corner of the shed below him as he rode down from the top of the slope.

Cassie threw her hands up to her face in disbelief as she watched her brother slide down the hillside to pull up in a spray of snow beside the shed, his arms raised in triumph like he had just medaled in the Olympics. She bounced up and down in excitement and ran over to wrap Eric up in a huge hug. She couldn't believe he had pulled it off!

"This is frickin' amazing Eric! I can't believe you got it to work!" She finally released him from the tight hug. "You're a genius!"

Eric blushed and beamed with pride. "I can't believe we never thought of this before, Cass!" He looked back up the slope. "I mean it's not a black diamond run, but I forgot how much fun it was even to have this little ride. Watch this!" He demonstrated being pulled up the cable line and used a small bump on the hill to get a tiny bit of air as he came down the middle of the slope with as much speed as he could. He pulled up at the bottom in a bigger spray of snow and couldn't repress the huge smile that wouldn't leave his face.

Shutting the tractor down, they went back to the house for lunch and Eric laughed when Cassie pointed out that their mom would have a fit if she saw what he'd built and they both agreed that their dad would make them take it down as soon as they saw it. Even if their father would think it was cool, they knew he'd still make them take it down, even if just to keep his mother from worrying and complaining about it until they did.

Eric and Cassie conspiratorially cautioned each other to quiet down as they entered the house and tried not to look guilty when they entered the kitchen to find that Ellie was already awake and eating a pop tart while drinking coffee at the table.

"What's up with you two?" She asked looking over the rim of her mug as she took a sip of coffee.

"Oh nothing," Cassie said breezily. "Just acting silly". She shot Eric a look of admonition and held a finger to her lips as she circled behind Ellie on her way to the fridge. "Turkey sandwiches okay for lunch, Eric?" She started pulling leftovers from the fridge.

Once Cassie had gone upstairs after lunch, Ellie leaned over to ask Eric softly, "Was that about my surprise?" She flashed him a devious smile.

Eric feigned shock. "You know I can't tell!" he frowned at her playfully. "How would you like it if I blabbed about what we're doing?"

"Can't believe you're holding out on me!" she wrinkled her nose. "But is it really good?" She smiled mischievously. When Eric wouldn't reply, she shrugged, "Well at least you can keep a secret."

Once Ellie got dressed, they made their way out to the spot Eric had laid out for what they started calling, 'Operation Paradise'. Laying out the PVC, it all started to come together pretty quickly as they weren't bothering to glue the joints together. Eric figured they'd have to take it down at some point and that way they could just pull the PVC apart and put it back where they found it. Wrapping the frame took longer than Eric thought it would, but once they'd gotten the first couple of laps around the frame completed, the film was pretty well anchored to the frame and except for needing ladders and some creative ways to keep tension on the wrap while they covered the peaked roof, the process went reasonably well. A gust of wind came along and threatened to carry the entire enclosure away, but Eric managed to keep it from flipping over and had Ellie hold it down from the inside until he had a chance to find some stakes and wire to anchor the lightweight structure to the ground.

Once it was in place, they ran another layer of plastic wrap around the bottom of the frame with enough extra material that they were able to pack some snow on top of the plastic around the outside and create a seal against the wind. Eric carefully cut an entrance with a utility knife and finished it with a PVC frame that he attached with a heavy application of duct tape. He created a flap to cover the seams on the outside, along with a latch system with some wire, to keep the door from opening and closing in the wind.

Ellie helped him to carry in and open the section of pond liner and they spread it evenly over the ground, including the 'lagoon' pit he had dug out with the tractor. They then carried in a few of the fake potted office plants to weight down the corners. Eric helped carry Ellie's painting supplies over to the site in a wheelbarrow before going back to load up on what would be the first of many loads of sand bags.

After the first few trips, Eric stopped to rest for a minute as he watched Ellie applying blue acrylic paint in a thin wash across one 'wall' of the enclosure. The wrinkles in the wrap caused the light from outside to resolve into a blurry impressionistic painting and the translucent color of paint applied across it looked almost like a stained glass effect. He sat down for a moment on a stack of sand bags and unzipped his coat as he had started to feel warm.

Eric was watching Ellie stretch to apply paint onto the underside of the ceiling above her with a roller when it dawned on him that she was only wearing her sweater. He had been caught up in admiring her how nice her butt looked in the jeans she was wearing and the nice curve of her hips as her sweater rode up that it took him a moment to process that she had taken her coat off.

He looked over at the low afternoon sun coming in all along the south facing length and he realized that it had already warmed up substantially in the enclosed space. On a whim, he went to retrieve a wall thermometer he had seen hanging in one of the sheds and bringing it back into the space watched it slowly rise from the high twenties until it topped out at almost fifty degrees! He showed it to Ellie before they set it near the door and Eric began spreading the bags of sand around the edge of the 'lagoon'. He ended up making a few more trips to the storage building but eventually covered the rest of plastic sheet, all the way to the edges, with a couple of inches of sand to form the 'beach'.

By that time, the sun was getting low and Ellie had completed most of the 'sky' color on the walls and ceiling. She needed Eric's help to get the highest parts of the peaked roof, but when they stepped back to admire the result, they had to admit that the natural blue of the film with the help of the paint made for a really awesome effect. Only the vague shapes of the world and splotches of light and dark came through the 'sky' they had created.

Cassie cooked dinner that night after her nap and they all agreed that they'd had enough turkey to last them until next Thanksgiving. They each had a small drink of cognac after dinner and agreed to pool half of their money from the next week's allowance to buy food. They got online and figured out a menu and managed to do it without arguing. Cassie offered to go shopping for food in the morning as they only allowed a limited number of customers in the store at one time anyway. She agreed to stick to the list they'd made and didn't get any arguments from Eric or Ellie.

The cognac was a nice remedy for the sore muscles and tired joints they had from the work they'd been doing and Eric was asleep by nine o'clock, contented with how both of the projects were going.