Primitive Country is a coming of age story about a young man searching for his roots. It is also the chronicle of a town and the tales that lie within it. The two accounts come together and become a single story of love and legend.

The car cooled, and Nick, equipped with several jugs of water in the trunk, filled the radiator and continued on. In the next twenty minutes, he thought of how the journal entries sounded to him like a movie script. There was drama and mystery and death. Sadly, the main character was a dud. A twenty-five-year-old perpetual student, afraid of an aging grandfather, afraid to try anything on his own, afraid of life. Not the kind of character that movies are made of.

In his head, he composed until the steam came up through the radiator. He pulled into a gravel parking lot with a small gas station and store planted at one end and wrote: I have written in here since I was sixteen. Until now, not missing more than three days in the last nine years. It has been two weeks since my last entry...

Primitive Country

A NovelBy Dan A. Ruyle

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 Dan A. Ruyle
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4401-7919-8

Chapter One

Even in April, Baker could be near one hundred degrees. Nick's car could only go twenty minutes before overheating, and then he would have to wait half an hour for it to cool down before he could add water. He had learned that the hard way. Just before Barstow, when the problem first came up during one of the cool-off waits, he figured out how many wait-times it would take to get from this Death Valley town to Las Vegas. He hoped no more then seven.

During the next cool-off wait, he reread what he knew to be the last entry in his journal.

I never knew my parents until after they died.

My mother and I lived with my grandparents from when I was a little boy. I only now have a hint of her true story. I did not hold her in my heart as much of a person, but as a child, I did not understand the obstacles that she had to overcome. I never knew how she picked her fights. Giving up her own identity to the overpowering control of her father and at the same time attempting to provide a protective environment for me from his mental wrath.

It was her desire that, unlike her, I would grow up without the overpowering sense of guilt and helplessness that crippled her life. Up to the day she died, I had not done much to contribute to her sacrificial effort.

I still have no memory of my father, even though I have a picture of him from when I was three or so. My grandfather kept me in line, and my grandmother mostly kept me from my grandfather. This was not a difficult task-all my life, I was terrified of Grandpa Prescot.

Mom would come home in the evenings and fight with Grandpa. Sometimes it would be over me. Other times it would be Mom's own fights. I never understood what they were about, but I stayed as far away as possible from them. It was a big house.

The car cooled, and Nick, equipped with several jugs of water in the trunk, filled the radiator and continued on. In the next twenty minutes, he thought of how the journal entries sounded to him like a movie script. There was drama and mystery and death. Sadly, the main character was a dud. A twenty-five-year-old perpetual student, afraid of an aging grandfather, afraid to try anything on his own, afraid of life. Not the kind of character that movies are made of.

In his head, he composed until the steam came up through the radiator. He pulled into a gravel parking lot with a small gas station and store planted at one end and wrote:

I have written in here since I was sixteen. Until now, not missing more then three days in the last nine years. It has been two weeks since my last entry. Before those two weeks, this journal was my comfort, my haven, my friend. Now it seems an empty promise, a false hope, maybe even a traitor. Last night as I pulled them from the shelf by the window of my room, I looked over entries from nearly a decade. Twenty-three volumes of excuses and self-pity. I am not proud of that voice. But it is my voice.

I spent a moment looking out the window next to the shelf where these big black journals were set in order. From that window, you can see the avocado tree under which I was sitting writing in this same journal when I watched my mother die.

While I stared out the window, a memory of one of her many fights popped into my head. Mother attacking Grandfather with fists after he threatened to throw these journals out. There were only five volumes then, and I was ashamed of the pathetic content that she fought gallantly to save. I am still ashamed that I had locked myself in the bathroom, afraid to come to my mother's or my journal's aid.

For maybe the first time ever, Nick thought of what these journals meant. When Grandfather pushed him too hard, he would retreat and write in his journals. After a troubling day at school, he would retreat to his journals. A fight with his mother would push him toward his journals. Any ripple in his life and he would analyze it, record it, close it, and put it on the shelf. Then forget it. Sadly, all those entries were made based on a false premise. His life was a false premise.

A crunch of gravel pulled Nick out of his thoughts. "You got a little overheating problem, partner?" Black cowboy hat, jeans, and a long-sleeve, denim shirt, even in the desert heat. Nick saw only a silhouette with the sun directly behind the man's shoulder.

"It leaks," said Nick. "When it cools down, I can fill it up. I have water."

"Why don't we take a look under there," said the cowboy. "See just what we got." He moved toward the hood to open it and noticed the hood ornament. "Nice statue, partner. Fetch some of that water you got, and let's see where this thing is leaking from."

Nick grabbed a two-gallon container from the trunk, and the cowboy carefully poured some into the radiator. "Whoa," he called out, "leakier then a passel of babies after the diapers done run out. None too big though. You may get down the road yet." Before Nick could say anything, the cowboy had turned toward the store and was walking away.

Nick went back to the trunk and lifted one of the larger containers and began to fill the radiator. He was not going to wait for the man to come back. The heat was oppressive, and he had no patience for helpful strangers. But just as the water topped off, he heard the crunch of gravel again. The cowboy held two cans. "Fire that hoss up, and I'll dump this stuff in there," he told Nick.

Nick did as he was told, and after a minute, he could hear the cowboy say, "Rev it up," over the already loud engine. The engine roared, and the cowboy walked back to the driver's seat. "That ought to work for you. You had eighty miles to the next water, and you wouldn't hadda made it. Take it easy down the road. And. ... uh ... nice statue." He started to walk away, and then turned back.

"Oh, let that idle for awhile before starting down the road." He turned to leave again.

"What was that you put in there?" Nick called after him.

"Well I call it, dad gummy, but on the can it says, RADIATOR STOPLEAK. It's in all the places up and down this road. Take care now."

"Thanks." Nick called to the retreating figure, but the cowboy said nothing, just touching the brim of his hat.

Nick sat with the car at idle trying to finish the journal entry. But the only thing that came to him was the day of the funeral. Afterward, sitting under the avocado tree, he remembered a shift in the breeze. A dry, air, not like the Santa Ana winds that come later in the year, but a thin breeze almost as if the air around him had moved to a higher elevation. It had lasted only a moment, then passed. He could still hear the leaves rustling and see the sun flashing through them. Directly above him, heavy on a branch, were three, ripe avocados. He had sat under that tree since he was a child, and never had he seen it bear fruit.

He put the car into gear and pulled up to the store. On the side of the building was a dumpster, and Nick took twenty-three volumes of his life up to that moment and threw them in. He then pulled out to the highway.

Chapter Two

A pewter statue of Mr. Peanut braved the oncoming winds as a hood ornament. Installed in an amateurish way, it leaned slightly forward, giving the impression of bravado as the sixty-mile-an-hour gusts tore by.

It was married to the hood of a 1961, gold Comet that bucked down the lonely two-lane highway. That is, mostly gold; umpteen cans of spray paint did not completely hide the aqua blue finish underneath.

The air was still for this area at this time of year-so still, the blue smoke pouring from the tail pipe did not dissipate and spread out along both sides of the highway that roped over these low hills. The terrain was not rough enough to divert the road one way or another, so it doggedly headed east, away from the setting sun that accented the few trees and darkened the patches of scrub brush making a patchwork of the hillsides.

In his rear view mirror, Nick could see the blue smoke hanging in the low rays of the sun. The unnatural cloud narrowed as it closed in on the car, finally funneling into the tailpipe like a huge arrow pointing to the smog-producing culprit. In Los Angeles, he may not have noticed it, but here, it was so much more open, clean. Had anyone driven by him, the guilty feeling would have intensified. But no car had passed in the last half hour.

There were other aspects of his first car that displeased him. The rear tires, large slick oversized things, stuck out from the fenders and threw mud and small rocks like pinwheel fireworks, whenever Nick went through water in the road. And he wished now, as he drove away from the slow, lazy sunset, that he had pulled the funeral stickers off the front and back windshields yesterday when they were still fresh. The dry desert air and the hot sun had shrunk them so that they clung to the window like death itself. Like the gold paint, and the burlap that was used to cover the tear in the back seat-rotting into the fabric instead-the decals had now become part of the car.

Nick had not thought of these less than desirable aspects of the car when he made the purchase. The only thing he'd noticed was the hood ornament, the little statue of Mr. Peanut. About four inches high, it had an intricate paint job that fascinated Nick. Solely because of that little painted statue, Nick had made his selection from the six cars that were available for less than a thousand dollars on the lot.

He wasn't sure how much longer the car would last. He was surprised that it had traveled down the road this far. The radiator leak had slowed down, and he had traveled nearly two hundred miles without adding water. He only had a little further to go, and then it didn't matter if the car ever ran again. Once he got to the little town that was marked on the map, he would have nowhere else to go. Up until this point, he had not verbalized this situation to himself; somewhere in the less rational, more primitive, part of his brain, he knew this to be true, but he had not said the words or allowed himself to think about their significance until this lonely highway. Now he thought about them and wished that the thought would go away. It was so troubling that he had doubts about what he was doing

On a gravel turnout, he pulled over and turned off the engine. He seriously considered turning around. This trip was so pointless. The car he was in was nothing like the sleek cars in his grandparents' neighborhood. He felt embarrassed for himself for making this decision. Since the death of his mother, he had not even stopped to think. He felt that he was acting like a child, doing crazy things on impulse. He stopped and took a deep breath. His chest was so constricted from tension that he had difficulty getting a full breath. His jaw was clenched. He looked at his hands on the steering wheel. The wheel faded by sun, the dust on the dash, and the patina of grime where someone else's hand had rested in the crook between the steering wheel and the horn distracted him from the fact that his hands were shaking. He whacked at the steering wheel in frustration and the horn began to sound. It echoed against the hills, striking a perverse contrast with the peacefulness of only a moment before. Nick hit it again in shock and fear, a broad-spectrum fear that spread far beyond the sudden noise of the horn. The blaring stopped.

His eyes turned away from the interior and to the hills around him. The quiet was imposing. He did not think he had ever experienced such quiet. A few horses had their heads down in the green-gray brush that covered the hills. They were far away, but he could hear their shifting as they foraged. Then, as if the expanse and quiet had opened something up in him that he wanted desperately to suppress, the last moment he saw his mother alive came back to him. Startling and vivid.

He had heard the clomping of a horse before he heard the voice. It was a scream. Emitted in terror-it did not have much force. Like a baby out of wind, but still desperately trying to be heard. At first, Nick thought that the person was on a runaway horse, but as the pair came around the bend on the horse trail, he could see that the rider had fallen off and a foot had caught in the stirrup. Dragged behind the panicked horse, attempting to get her foot loose, the struggle looked impossible. Her black, riding bonnet had come off and blond hair bounced over the loose dirt of the trail.

Nick thought he might grab the animal as it came by, but he sat immobile. He had never been around horses, even though his mother kept one stabled at the riding club at the bottom of the hill. As it got closer, he realized the immense force of the animal. The danger of what he imagined attempting welled up and stunned him. Then, no more than thirty yards away, the rider's eyes caught his. They had eye contact for the briefest moment. Nick saw the familiar face of his mother intent on staying alive. Instinctively, he stepped inside the posts that defined the riding trail. He had no idea what he was going to do other then a vague notion of helping his mother. The horse charged toward him, directly in the path of the huge animal. Fear welled up in him. There was no time to analyze or intellectualize.

In the past, he had always dealt with strong emotions by stepping back and looking at how he felt with a disinterested, aloof view. Now there was no time. In seconds, fear turned to horror. No thought, just emotion. His body, on its own, stepped back out of the riding trail. He stood, paralyzed, as the horse drew closer, the heat from the animal radiating on his face. Fear froze him so tightly that he could barely turn his head as the horse, in panic from the body dragging at its feet, came even with him. Huge eyes staring through him. For a fraction of a second, Nick saw in the horse's eyes exactly what he himself was feeling: raw mind, numbing terror, all encompassing, and primitive.

Just a fraction of a second after that stunning moment, Nick's eyes again came in contact with his mother's. Her face distorted in pain or fear or both, Nick could not tell. It seemed to him that they looked at one another for a long time. Longer then he could ever remember looking at her since he was a small boy. Then, her face softened, and she opened her mouth. Nick was sure it was not in another scream but words. She wanted to tell him something. In that slow motion instant, he was sure that she was going to speak, but before any words could come out, the horse cut sharply at a bend in the trail and her whole body swung out wide from the horse, slamming into a post on the other side of the riding trail. The horse continued down the trail, still dragging its rider, now as limp as the riding crop that dangled off one of her trailing wrists.

The first car in fifteen minutes to pass him on the road pulled him back from the memory. With a new sense of shock, he realized that the moment he looked into the eyes of that horse-and felt whatever he had felt-was the first time he had felt alive in all his life. While he knew this, he didn't understand it, and felt shame at the thought.

He turned over the motor and it started. Out of habit, he looked in the rearview mirror to see if the way was clear to make a U-turn. It was the smart thing to do. Quit this now and go home. It was some strange panic over the death of his mother that had brought him this far. Now, after reliving the instant that had caused the panic, the frantic mental activity that had begun at the moment of his mother's death was now replaced with a numbing calm that he had come to regard as his normal state of mind. It was time to turn around and go home. It was time to act his age. The practicality of this new thought was so logical and comforting that he was surprised he had not thought of it before. He looked down at the album in the passenger's seat and recalled his grandmother's last words. "This is not your place anymore, Nicky."

He shuddered with humility over his grandfather's last words of rage. "She came right by you, and you didn't try to save her!" The moment of comfort passed. He took his foot off the brake and pulled the car out onto the road, still heading roughly northeast as he had been for the last two days. He would find no peace back home.

Once on the road again, he glanced down at the red circle drawn on the road map of Utah as he had done every few miles since leaving Los Angeles. In the center of the circle, was the name of a town: Uinta. A minor, state highway was the only road going to the town. The thin, grey line indicated the smallest road that the company making the map thought worthwhile to display.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Primitive Countryby Dan A. Ruyle Copyright © 2009 by Dan A. Ruyle. Excerpted by permission.
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