CHAPTER 1
The pickup chortled to a sick sounding stop. Dad wiped a hand across weary eyes, leaning his head against the seat. "I jess don't know," he said.
"I'm sorry."
"You can't love that kid—he's a selfish, arrogant hotshot with a dead-end future."
"I don't love him," I defended. "But he's a little wild; dangerous maybe. He's older—a bit crazy."
"Well I'm going to kick his butt the next time he comes within ten miles of this place. And you're grounded until you're seventy for wanting that kind of action." His eyes fixed upon me, a pained gaze penetrating deep enough to rehabilitate a rebellious soul.
"I know I've done wrong, Dad."
"Are you sorry or jess sorry you got caught?"
I turned my head toward the pasture. Honey faced us with her head over the gate but Restless raced along the north fence, challenging her boundaries as usual. "Both I guess."
With a sigh of resignation Dad opened the door. "I jess don't know." He took long, slow strides into the house. The stoop of one shoulder must have been the heavy load of disappointment I managed to throw his way.
I sat in the truck for a minute more, despising the heavy silence that filled the cab. The quiet pressed against my ears, amplifying my thoughts until I couldn't take the noise. I pried my door open and climbed out of the truck, stretching my legs. I should have gone to the house but I could see Mom standing near the kitchen window. She would need help with a dozen things as I'd run off and not helped all day. She had it hard, just being my mother, and the stress of our financial quagmire had her strung as tight as a wire.
I started up the walk before suddenly deciding I needed a ride to clear my head. Honey saw my move and her ears picked up. She was waiting at the barn doors when I swung them open. It took no time to saddle her, and then we were off, calling farewell to Restless. "If she was better behaved she might get to leave the perimeter of the pasture," I said to the horse. "But Restless is like me, always pushing the limits of her confine."
Honey carried me to the cottonwood trees that grew along the south end of the ranch. They acted like sentinels, swaying when the wind blew, as if to say, "No, no. No farther than this." On still days they would quietly shiver, teasing me into sneaking past them. They could not bait me into more trouble today, however, and Honey's gait broke into a gentle lope as we swung back toward home.
Today I had nearly run off with Bo Beckstead. He was nineteen and filled his Wranglers with perfection. He could calf-rope like nobody's business, and I dare say he was the best looking thing at the fairgrounds. Many girls in short-shorts and midriffs had looked his way, but he was more interested in my jeans and boots. I liked getting what the other girls wanted! As summer progressed we hit a few rodeos together, had ridden and roped and threw down a few beers. When I rode in his truck I felt good, and I sandwiched myself so close to him that I had to do the shifting. A girl can get a reputation shifting for a guy and that's exactly what I was after.
Of course Bo wanted my hands to be all over more than just his shifter but he didn't get his way. Through all of the hot days of summer I kept my cool as far as he was concerned. "I want you," he often whispered against my ear.
"I am not that easy, Bo—and definitely not cheap." My body language said otherwise, so it's no wonder Bo usually went home frustrated. I replayed the scenes of the past several weeks and my thoughts kept time to Honey's even steps.
Long after the lights were out that night I could hear my mother crying. She deserved a better daughter, but she had me, and she'd need to love me in spite of myself for as long as I'd be around.
What my folks didn't know was the fact that I snuck into their room in the wee hours of morning. I lay on the rug near the foot of their bed just to hear them sleep. Dad's occasional snoring was balanced somehow by Mom's throaty breaths. The sound was rhythmic and soothing, rocking me to sleep like so many times before. I woke up to the sound of my brother's alarm and crept from the room before my adolescent behavior was discovered.
"Hey Sissy," Bubba called, exiting the bathroom with a towel around his waist. "We should play a little one-on-one sometime."
"Yeah," I said, always eager for Bubba time. Unlike me he never disappointed anybody and if I was with him I was never in trouble.
I spent the morning cleaning my room, sorting clothes, doing laundry. My attention to home pleased Mom, and even though conversation was strained, she made an effort to be extra pleasant. "What would you like for lunch, Sissy?"
The thought of her new peas and potatoes in white sauce brought a smile to my lips, and my eager request brought one to Mom's. "That's always been your favorite. Want me to make cornbread to go with that?" I pounced all over that one, yes. To prove my appreciation I even picked and shelled the peas, a task which typically bored me.
After lunch I washed the dishes, telling Mom she deserved a minute to herself. She laughed, "What would I do with that? There's forty-eleven other things waiting for me. Go ahead and get out of here. It's not possible for you to spend an entire day in the house."
I did an awkward thing then. I hugged her. I hugged her to me until we both had teary eyes. "I love you, Mom. Someday you'll understand me."
I found Dad in the tack room of our barn where he was oiling harnesses. They'd belonged to Granddad, and they were something the bank hadn't stolen from us during the nightmare of the last two years. The big old draft horses they fit on were gone, however, and every other cow and horse on the place had gone to auction. Dad had stowed Restless and Honey at Uncle Gib's until the banking jackals had retreated or else we might have lost them as well. The bank didn't want our truck, it was too old.
Dad had aged with the stress of it all, yes. Silver gathered near his temples now, and his face was gaunt and hollow. "Now Sissy, you think about these harnesses every once in a while."
"What do you mean?"
"What were they used for?"
"To harness the team."
"They could pull a house down if they were harnessed together." The recollection of horse pulls and competitions came to mind. Dad had loved to show them off. He might have stashed the Belgians with Uncle Gib, but the bankers knew he had them. "I loved those big ol' horses."
"Best team in the west!"
"What if we put Restless in a harness and asked her to pull?"
I thought of the fidgety horse, faunching away at the north gate, white mane tossing in the sun. "Oh dear," I chuckled, shaking my head. "You'd have better luck domesticating a full-grown wildcat."
Dad laid the rag aside, then kicked one lanky leg up on a bucket, studying me closely. "Watch jess what it is you're harnessing yourself to, okay?" The question was meant to make me think. Again the eyes tried to fix whatever was going haywire inside of me.
I looked away, suddenly wishing I had another option—but did Dad suspect? "You mean you don't think Bo Beckstead is good enough for me?"
"I don't think you've yet met the man that is your equal, Sissy, and you're not as grown up as you think you are. Take it easy, take time to know yourself before you dive head first into a mismatched team."
I nodded, hurting inside the way Judas must have done at the Last Supper. But what I was about to do required sheer stupidity and a lot of nerve. Had I been wiser I could not have gone through with it at all.
I rode Honey one more time, loath to unsaddle her that evening. We had ridden for four hours while I memorized every post, tree, and irrigation ditch on the place. I never wanted to forget any of it. I stared at the horse barn, Dad's shop, the garage, the peeling paint on the back of the house. When I slipped the bridle off Honey's nose that night I put my arms around her neck and wept until I couldn't take the pain another minute. "Goodbye Honey," I whispered, turning her into the pasture. I closed the doors with a lump in my throat.
We always ate supper late in the summertime, and it was 9:00 before we took our places around the table. Bubba was in good spirits and teased me through the meal, a blessing in disguise. It drew attention from my heartache. When my folks weren't looking I captured mental photographs of their faces; tired and worn, but so right. I stared at my Dad's calloused hands, never wanting to forget the strength in them. They were good hands.
Bubba settled himself in front of the television for a while, and I snuggled next to him, sharing a quilt as we had always done even though it was far from chilly in the house. It was hot, actually, but the patchwork quilt just belonged on the couch, and it was an item of comfort. It smelled of Bubba's aftershave and leather. It smelled faintly of Jergen's lotion and popcorn. I determined I would take the quilt—it must come so that I could always wrap myself inside of it.
At midnight I crept into my parents' room, kissing their cheeks while they slept. "I love you so much this is killing me," I whispered. I left a note on their nightstand then slipped down the hall to Bubba's room.
"Are you asleep, Bubba?" No response and so I stepped closer still, standing over his bed. I watched him for several minutes. He was my best friend! He was handsome to a fault, with dark, curly hair and the bluest eyes. I was afraid a kiss would wake him so I left a note on his desk.
I carefully rolled the quilt from the couch and tucked it under my arm. One hand carried my suitcase; my other hand carried a duffel bag and my pillow. It had to appear obvious that I'd run away of my own free will and choice.
Stars twinkled overhead as I stepped into the night. I walked briskly, counting my steps as I went, barring logical thought or heartsickness. I would meet him at the highway and then that would be that. The first chapter of my life would be closed, and only the albums in my bag and the memories of my heart would know that it had ever been written at all.
"I didn't know if you'd come," a voice said from the shadows.
"Then you don't know me very well. Once I commit to something I do it."
"Such an idealist; we'll see how long that lasts." I didn't embrace him--because it wasn't Bo Beckstead who threw my baggage into the trunk of a car. In fact I had only run off with Bo to season my folks and the cops for this time around. When officers questioned my parents, as they would do later in the day, they would ask, "Has she run away before?" And my parents would say, "Yes, a couple of days ago, in fact."
The questioning would continue, "Has she been in trouble recently?"
"Yes," would be the answer. I'd given my folks hell for the past four months, and it had all been systematically planned. It was pre-requisite behavior to avoid a kidnapping investigation. I would join the ranks of troubled, missing teens. I wished there might have been another way but as sure as the Yankees burned Georgia to the ground, my course was already set.
CHAPTER 2
For sixteen weeks I'd prepared myself to do this. Four months of mental games, of steeling my nerves against the pain of this re-birth, so why did tears course down my cheeks as the car ate up miles of road, spitting them out behind us as I watched in the side mirror?
"You're sailing on The River of No Return," the driver said flatly, speaking of the foreboding Salmon River rushing in deep gorges through rough Idaho wilderness. "If you ever try to come back we'll kill them, we'll kill them all."
I didn't say anything, I just leaned my head against window while mile posts flew by with alarming speed. I figured Dad had reached Terreton by now; he'd go there first thinking I'd snuck off to be with Bo. But here I was, already spying Spokane behind me. We had driven through the night, reaching Missoula at 2:30 a.m., then through the long, long, winding canyon to the Idaho panhandle, across the narrow northern tip of the state, and into Washington.
During the hours of travel the driver had spoken only a few acidic sentences to me, terse and threatening words meant to injure and cut, just in case the former me wasn't already dead. Surely there was enough lifeblood in me that my nerves ached, and I pictured myself flinching inside the way squashed rabbits do along country roadsides. Their nerves spasm and jerk into moments beyond death.
As best as I could tell, we were now cutting a diagonal jag across the southeastern corner of Washington. As the crow flies, I was now closer to where we'd begun, but cars can't fly over the jagged, Salmon River Mountains. Horses were about the only transportation mode that could go due west from where I had once lived. So it had been a ridiculous route through three states, but I suspected the driver made it all the more ridiculous to keep us from being found just in case the police had already circulated my picture.
I never asked for bathroom breaks, but whenever the driver pulled into a station for gas I'd take advantage of them. My stomach was cramping with stress and I felt ill to the very center of me. We stopped at a station in Kennewick, and I ran into the bathroom quickly. Diarrhea is never pleasant on a road trip, and this road trip was the worst of my nearly seventeen years. After the lower-bowel assault was over I knelt over the toilet, violently hurling. As I exited the stall for the second time, I met the driver standing in the doorway of the ladies' room. Apparently I had taken longer than he thought I should have.
I washed my hands and splashed water on my face while he stared at me in the mirror. "Will you give me enough time to brush my teeth?"
"Learn to better control your sick urges or deal with it," he said coldly.
So I scooped water into my mouth and rinsed it the best I could; gargling, spitting a stream into the sink without giving him the satisfaction of an answer.
In a few miles we crossed the Columbia River, and yet another state line, putting straight west now. "Portland?" At first I had suspected Seattle—but now I could read the writing on the wall. My question remained unanswered, and only freeway signs satisfied my basic curiosity.
Lost in a new world and strange terrain, I watched river barges freighting grain to elevators along the river. This was new to me, and for a couple of hours I forgot everything. Not until I wished I might have spoken to Dad about the marvels of freighting grain along the river route did the pain register and my guts tie again into knots.
We turned off the freeway at The Dalles. I was grateful because my churning stomach needed relief, but instead of a station we drove to a splintery home near the hill. I didn't know whether or not I was to get out of the car. The man had already slammed his door and stood now, dragging on a cigarette. I saw a sheet stir at the window where proper curtains should have been. I did not want to go into the house.
The driver blew smoke from his nostrils hotly, motioning impatiently for me to join him. This I did with wary trepidation. I felt even more ill when he told me to get my bags from the car. "We are staying here tonight. I need some shuteye." It was the kindest statement of the journey.
Subwoofers made the house pulse, and it seemed to shed chips of paint with every beat. Even from the sidewalk I could feel the vibrations of Mötley Crüe. A nervous looking lady let us in the house. She was smoking a joint and the house stunk with the sickly haze. "Who be da slut?"
That brought my head up sharply. She had never seen me before, yet she had the nerve to call me that? My country girl roots were set to knock her on her scrawny backside, but then I remembered why I was here; why I wasn't home riding Honey on a summer day. Drinking a few beers and shifting for Bo Beckstead hadn't quite prepared me for all of this, reputation or not.
"Who do you want her to be? She needs I.D.'s."
"So-shull Secure-i-tee, too?"
"Everything. Duke said to create the whole package for her, that way we are always ready."
"Dee-ploma and everee-ting, huh?"
"Yes."
"Does Duke care where she's from?"
"As long as it's not from Idaho."
That's when I noticed the other guy. He was sitting at a cluttered table in the next room. He had a typewriter, a word processor, a computer, a laminating machine; everything a person would need to crank documents.
"Come here bitch."
"I have a name," I said, tiring of their boorish disrespect quickly.
"What is it?"
Suddenly I floundered. Who was I? I could no longer be Cicely Violet Nichols; she died, at midnight her life was over. Everything Cicely had been; the things she loved, the influences in her life, were now cast aside like they never happened. I had considered different names and aliases over the last few months, but an alias is different than an actual identity.
