Alanna's Powers, Chapter two

Who lifted the two 100 pound boxes?
Update: 21/09/1997 to misc2 

	After seeing my sister crack open walnuts with only three 
fingers of her right hand and do it as if it were nothing, I began 
to think back on our family's past. There were a number of strange 
things which had occurred which had previously gone unexplained but 
the explanations for which were now taking shape.
	About a year before I saw Alanna crack the walnuts, a year and 
a half to be exact, my brother and I had been packing for summer 
camp, eight weeks of roughing it in cabins by a lake in the woods of 
Maine. In those days when you went to camp you packed a big trunk, 
which some people called a footlocker, full of all the things you 
might need at camp. First and foremost from the parents' point of 
view was the list of things provided in the mailing the camp sent 
out. Rain gear, hiking boots, warm clothing, shorts, seven pairs of 
underwear, two bathing suits, etc., etc.. There were also the things 
which we wanted to bring. Baseball mitts, baaseball cards, camping 
gear and the like. Plus, we were required to bring several books. 
Once they were packed they were pretty heavy. At any rate, it took 
two of us to carry the things down the stairs to the driveway, and 
that was with two stops to rest our arms which felt like they were 
being pulled out of their sockets. The problem was, when we got to 
the driveway, the trunk of dad's big Buick was open, but we could 
not lift the footlockers up high enough to get them over the edge of 
the trunk. We could only get them down the stairs and out to the 
driveway by performing a sort of walking dead lift, and truthfully 
our walk was more like a shuffle; we could not lift the trunk enough 
to clear our knees. The new Buick looked awfully shiny, and we sure 
did not want to scratch the paint, so after attempting a couple of 
times to lift the trunk into the back of the car, we put the trunks 
down and ran upstairs to get Dad to help us.
	"What? You mean you can't get them into the car yourselves?" 
He gave us a look of mock disappointment and laughed. "Heh, heh, I 
didn't actually expect you to be able to lift those things. They 
must weight over a hundred pounds each. Here, I'll give you a hand, 
and then it'll be almost time to go."
	But when we got out to the driveway, the two trunks were 
placed neatly in the back of the car, and there was Alanna smiling 
cherubically. Jeff and I looked at each other in disbelief.
	"Well, I'll be." Said Dad. "You boys have pulled a fast one on 
me. Good for you. Jeffey, you must be stronger than I thought, and 
even you Jason, you skinny little thing. You've got some strength in 
those little bones after all. I guess those chores I've been making 
you do have paid off."
	We just kind of gulped. We did not know who had put those 
trunks there, but we knew it wasn't us, and it couldn't have been 
Alanna. When Dad went inside to see how Mom was getting on with the 
lunches we were packing for the trip to Maine, we questioned her.
	"You were the only one out here. Who put those trunks in the 
car?  Now Dad will think we're strong enough to do heavier chores."
	"I'm not telling," was all she said, and she smiled and went 
into the house.
	Now that I know what really happened, I'd love to have seen 
her lift that trunk. It must have been quite a sight, that little 
nine year old feminine body lifting a footlocker weighing more than 
she did and getting it into the trunk of a car without scratching 
the paint, and then doing it a second time.
	The other time had occurred earlier that Fall. Camp had ended, 
and we were back in school. Jeff was in eighth grade, I was in sixth 
grade, and Alanna was in fifth. It was late October or early 
November, and we were clearing a small field behind our house. It 
was about eighty feet by forty feet and covered with long grass, 
rocks, logs, and brush sapplings. Dad wanted to make it into a field 
where we could play a little ball. He also wanted to remove most of 
the rocks to the side and make a stone wall. The task had fallen to 
Jeff and me, since we were the boys and we had proven our strength 
by lifting the trunks into the car, a feat which Dad admired all the 
more as he struggled to get them out.
	In the light of morning, well mid morning once the cartoons 
were over, the prospect of a little outdoor work did not seem so 
bad. However, as the first hour wore on into the second, it was 
beginning to drag.
	At first we had been picking up the small stones and carrying 
them to the side one by one. But that got to seem tedious. Moreover, 
those stupid saplings kept getting in the way. We tried to pull them 
up by the roots, but they were in too strong. So we got the loppers, 
and cut them off at the base. Then we got a wheelbarrow, and started 
filling it up with rocks, thinking this would make the job easier. 
It seemed to; we piled rock after rock into the barrow, glad that we 
did not have to walk all the way across the field to the wall we 
were building. What we did not count on was the weight of the 
wheelbarrow loaded down with rocks. I could not budge the thing, and 
Jeff could barely get it off its hind legs, let alone roll it 
anywhere. It was just at this time we came upon the biggest rock in 
the field. It did not seem really big at first, as it was partially 
covered with moss. Once we peeled back the moss and dug under the 
edges, we realized it was a big one. Not bigger than a bread box but 
a whole lot heavier. 
	Jeff reached under the edge and tried to pry it loose.
	"Hey, Jason. Come on," he said. "You gotta help me man." So I 
squatted down next to the stone, and together we made it rock a 
little, like an inch or so.
	"Hey, we need a big crow bar. I think Dad's got one let's go." 
Just as we were about to leave, Alanna appeared from the house where 
she had been helping Mom in the kitchen.
	"Hey guys. How's it going?"
	"This is your fault," said Jeff. "You never told Dad who came 
and put our trunks in the car that day. Now he thinks if we can do 
that, we can work in the yard all day picking up rocks. I'm tired of 
it."
 	"Do you want any help? I can help a little. Oh, and I almost 
forgot, Mom says you can come in for a break and have some 
lemonade."
	"Yeah right," said Jeff, dripping with sarcasm, "you can help; 
you can lift that boulder and put it over there; then you can take 
that wheelbarrow full of rocks and dump it over there. Then you can 
pull up all those saplings by the roots and throw them on the slash 
pile over there, and then you can fill the wheelbarrow with the rest 
of the rocks and build the stone wall."
	"What? You don't think I can do it?"
	"No," he said walking in for the lemonade, "I know you can't 
do it. You'll be in before we come out to finish."
	Well, he was half right. We went in for the lemonade, which 
stretched into two lemonades and some cookies, which stretched into 
watching the first quarter of the Michigan-Purdue game on TV, which 
stretched into watching the first half. Just as the half ended 
Alanna reappeared looking a bit tired but also refreshed.
	"Oh my God!" I said. "We forgot you were out there. We have to 
go find that crow bar and get the rock out of the ground."
	"No you don't," she said. "It's done."
	When we went out to check on it, it was done indeed. The 
boulder was off to the side of the field and was now the keystone to 
a substantial loose stone wall. The wheelbarrow full of rocks had 
been emptied along with a number of other loads of rocks from what 
we could tell. On top of that a large pile of beech, oak, and maple 
saplings was in the tall grass on the other side of the stone wall. 
Roots and all. All we had to do was bring in some of the tools and 
put the wheelbarrow away.
	"So, who did you get to help you? Who did our yard work?" We 
asked.
	"The same guy..., I mean person who helped you with your camp 
trunks," she said, and smiled.
	"Alanna, what happened to the seams of your jacket and pants? 
They are all stretched and torn."
	"Um, I don't know mom." And she didn't.
	Jeff had no idea what had happened, and I did not know until 
after the walnut incident. That's when I began putting two and two 
together. I tested her a little with tasks which involved a fair 
amount of strength. For instance, one day I handed her a few steel 
bars which we used to mark the edge of the driveway, so when the 
snow came the plow would know where the driveway ended and the lawn 
began. The plow had bent some of them. "Here you bend these back 
while I go find the sledge hammer."
	I watched her straighten them. It was not like straightening 
pipe cleaners, but she was able to do it. I would have needed a blow 
torch, a vice, and a hammer. I grabbed the heavy sledge hammer, and 
handed it to her handle first. She grabbed the handle with one hand 
and did not let the nine pound hammer end drop an inch.   
	We also cleared some bricks out of the shed from a building 
project Dad had been doing. I created a little game with her to see 
how many bricks we could each carry. While I stacked them with one 
arm into my other hand and managed about five, she placed them two 
deep in a row of six, squeezed them together with her two hands and 
hoisted them easily. Twelve bricks does not weigh all that much, but 
carrying them the way she did involves keeping constant pressure on 
the end bricks to keep the middle ones from falling.
	It was at this point that I knew she had been the one to 
perform all those feats of strength that we had assumed some 
neighbor had done. It was also at this point that I realized how 
much her strength turned me on. It was only later I learned how 
much.