The skid corrected, she careened further up the lonesome road, hitting unseen potholes and bouncing high on the old spring seat. Fuck them! She swiped angrily at the tears that wouldn't stop falling. Fuck them, and fuck this backwoods shit! They don't know who I am anymore. They don't know what I did to get here! She mashed hard on the brake as the turn, once so familiar to her, came up too sudden. Wrenching the wheel sideways she spun the old ranch truck around, one wheel slipping off the road into the ditch, pitching the cab downward dangerously. Her head snapped forward and smacked the hard plastic steering wheel with a crack.
"Damn," she whispered into the cold air with a puff of white steamy breath. She pulled off her right glove and pushing back the grey cashmere hat, tentatively touched at the knot forming on her forehead. "Ssssss..." She sucked in breath as she checked her fingertips for blood. Not too bad. There was only a tiny speck on one finger, but the knot was swelling rapidly and her head throbbed to an unknown beat.
She adjusted her cap, took a breath and shifted the ancient old pick-up into low and pressed the gas gently. Nothing happened save the spinning of her back tires. "Shit," she breathed, resting her head on the steering wheel in frustration. She remembered she had to lock the hubs in first. She pulled on her glove muttering to herself and pushed at the door. It swung open with a labored squeal as she stepped into the cold, quiet air, her black english boots sinking in the snow to her ankles.
She was in blue tinged shadow, surrounded by the pines covered tip to trunk in thick white frost. She breathed in deep. The air had a sweetness to it, a freshly washed, icy newness that only Colorado winters produced. The cold felt good on her head, like an icepack, quieting the thumping to a dull roar. She stepped to the wheel and gripped the hub and tried to turn.
She strained against the frozen hub, her hands doubled up against the cap in an effort to free it, and her head began to pound in earnest. "FUCK!!!!!" She screamed into the quiet wilderness around her when the damned thing wouldn't budge, frozen in place by time or the cold or who-the-hell-cares. Now that lump screamed back at her in protest, blood pounding in her ears with a dizzying rush. She stepped back and kicked at the wheel, instantly glad when her foot made no connection. That would have been stupid, to have injured herself further out here where no one but one of them would find her. She would be exactly what they thought she was: some stupid city girl who couldn't even pull herself out of a ditch in a four-wheel-drive ranch truck.
It was the same truck they had all learned to drive when they were tall enough to see through the shiny plastic loop of the steering wheel and the dull, blue, cracked dashboard. They had made fun of her then too, calling her "Noodle" and "Olive Oil," her thin, wiry frame always too weak to lift or pull or push. She looked around the truck, stomping through the snow and peering into the rusty bed, hoping for anything that might help free her from her stuck position. She rested her arms along the rail, her chin cradled in the scratchy wool of her black peacoat. No widow-maker, no bags of sand, nothing. She was stuck.
She closed her eyes and listened to the silence push in around the low grumble of the truck's engine. Exhaust billowed out of the tail pipe like smoke from a chimney and she watched, hypnotized, as it made its way skyward. She had thought coming home would help her mend, help her say goodbye once and for all. She had thought being with them would have been comforting, not awkward and lonely. She had been wrong about so many things. They still looked at her with that same disapproving stare, that same accusatory way that said she'd abandoned them. She'd abandoned all of them, even Daddy.
She hadn't, of course. She had tried to stay in touch with her crazy schedule, but it always felt lacking. The long drawn silences on the phone, the failed attempts at video chats, the unanswered emails because they "forgot to check that stuff;" it all added up to more and more distance between them. Now it was a canyon that seemed couldn't be bridged. Today at dinner had proved it. They blamed her. Why, she wasn't sure, but they blamed her.
Trey had been the hardest one to take. "You'd think with all that money you say you're making now, you'd have at least come home to see Dad before he died. Why couldn't you do that? Or do we still not matter to you, like when we were kids?"
"I was in Milan, Trey. It takes two days to get stateside with the best of planning. Last minute, I did the best I could." She had tried to stay calm, to speak low and slow and clear, but he kept on. He accused her of being a fraud, of making more of her career than it really was, of always putting the shiny bright lights above her family. She had finally thrown her plate at him and grabbed her coat and hat before she sped away from the cramped Thanksgiving dinner into the frigid afternoon.
Trey had no clue what those long hours on the trains and planes had done to her, knowing her father was slipping through her fingers one last time. She had known the instant she landed in Denver that he was gone. It had been an eerie, empty, echo in her soul as she had stepped from the terminal to hail a cab. She knew she was too late even as she tapped out a text message to Trent, the middle brother: Landed. Taking cab to driveway, can you meet me?
It had been Travis that answered from his phone. Trent must have shown him her message. Leave it to the youngest to drive the knife home: No one at ranch. Dad dead. At funeral home making arrangements. Truck parked where it usually is. Let yourself in. See you tomorrow.
She had the taxi take her to the driveway and found the same old two-toned ranch truck parked by the gate. It had started up like it an old friend and she'd made her way down the winding drive to the valley where the squat clapboard house sat nestled in the clearing amid scattered barns and sheds. The old red tractor and the rows of neatly stacked round bales stood sentinel around it, smoke curling from the chimney.
One light had shone through the living room window, casting a wide swath of light onto the covered porch and her mother's worn, hard-wood rocker. Peering through the single paned glass, she could see it was the lamp that sat by Daddy's easy chair. The antique lamp with the ash tray fixed midway down flooded the room in soft yellow light. His pipe sat in the glass insert, as if it too waited for him to walk through the door and sink into the chair to light it once more. Standing on that porch in the bright clear moonlight of late November, she had felt like an intruder, an interloper who didn't belong anywhere near anything as pure as that scene behind the window.
She squinted into the bright sky beyond the shadows, back to the present with a jolt. A flock of geese honked and called overhead as they flew southward, the signature V flexing and melting then reforming again to relieve the lead flyers. She had a job to do and the afternoon was waning fast. She did not want to be sitting here stuck when her brothers started home.
She stomped around the nearby trees, gathering fallen branches, twigs, pine needle brooms, anything she could find, to wedge under the tires for traction. Piling the awkward stash by the side of the truck she opened the door and fished behind the seat. Smiling, she pulled forth the stubby old camp shovel, right where it always was. She moved to the drive tires and began to dig around them, uncovering gravel and wedging branches underneath. She was sweating now, under that fancy coat, but she knew better than to strip down. She wiped away a bead of sweat that snuck from under her hat. Doing the work felt good. Her arms ached and her feet were numb, but she was doing something physical and it channeled the anger out of her with every shovel-full.
Trina shoved the spade back behind the truck seat and climbed in front of the steering wheel once more. She pulled the lever back to two-wheel-drive and said a little prayer as she shifted into reverse. The engine idled higher and rocked back against the debris. She eased her foot to the gas and felt a tiny victorious thrill as the tires gripped and rocked slowly backward, the crunch and crack of branches filling her ears. Success was short-lived as the ass end began to spin and wheel its way around sideways. She stomped on the brake and opened the door to hop down again. She adjusted her makeshift ramp and got back in to try again. A few similar attempts finally had her backed out onto the road, engine purring like it was brand new as she huffed out triumphant white puffs of breath hands on her hips in satisfaction.
She kicked the largest of the branches she'd used to the side of the road and proud of herself, re-entered the truck and started back around the curve toward home. She watched as the mess of tracks and pine needles faded into the distance. The boys would see it, she frowned at her reflexion in the rearview mirror, but at least she wouldn't be there, stranded and waiting for them to bail her out. She didn't need them, she wouldn't need them ever again if she could help it.
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