And some moments shaped the past, too, made it impossible to look back and see what had been the way it had been.
She had lost her past. Her father had taken it all away, made her unable to feel joy in her memories, unable to believe in the life she’d had.
She’d been wrong when she’d told the rangers that she wasn’t homeless.
*****
She found a huge truck stop just outside of Salt Lake City. Besides the gas pumps, there was a restaurant, showers for rent, and a fairly big store. She filled up, rented herself a shower, and chose a cheap phone from three options, and got a minutes card for it, too. Washed and wearing clean clothes, feeling fresh and a little bit excited, she went to the restaurant and ordered a turkey club sandwich and a vanilla Coke. Then she opened up the phone and worked on getting it set up.
“You need some help with that, little lady?”
She looked up at the man who’d stopped at the edge of her table. He was too young to be calling her ‘little lady.’ Lean, with jeans hanging low and a baggy t-shirt, his ratty brown hair bushing out under a grimy trucker hat. He had a long, scraggly beard, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who should have tried to keep a beard. Big patches of his cheeks were smooth.
He was smiling, but something about him made the hairs on the back of her neck rise up.
She smiled back. “No, thanks. I got it.”
“You sure?”
“Yep. Thank you anyway.”
He stared at her a moment longer, then nodded. “Okay. Well, I’m up at the counter. Give a holler if you change your mind. I’m Cal.”
She didn’t offer her name. “Thank you,” she repeated.
Then the waitress came with her order, and her helpful buddy Cal walked off.
*****
Though Cal hadn’t done anything at all that wasn’t polite, she still lingered over her French fries until he’d paid up his bill and left the restaurant. She gave it another ten minutes and then settled up.
It was after one in the afternoon, and now that she had a map, she’d decided that she wanted to get to Boise, Idaho and stop there for the night, so she had about four or five hours left on the road.
Since her duffel held everything she still had, she’d been carrying it with her everywhere. Out in the lot, she went to the passenger side of the truck first, used the key to unlock the door, and heaved the duffel onto the seat.
A strange shadow told her that another person was coming up behind her, and, instinctively, she tried to jump up into the cab. If it hadn’t been lifted, she might have made it, might even have had enough time to yank the door closed and lock it, but her leverage was off, and she felt hands around her calves.
Without seeing him, she knew it was Cal pulling her out of the truck, so she wasn’t surprised when he wrenched her around and they were face to face. She opened her mouth at once, taking a huge breath, meaning to scream her head off, but he slammed his hand over her mouth.
“I was nice to you in there, and you were a rude little bitch. You’re gonna know how to take a favor by the time I’m done.”
She wasn’t afraid. Not even a little bit. Maybe she would have been, two years earlier, but now, the worst thing that would ever happen in her life had already happened. There was nothing this lowlife could do to her, up to and including kill her, that would be worse than what her father had done.
She shifted her face under his grip, just enough that she could open her jaws and bite down, and she caught a hunk of his palm. She bit until she tasted blood, and he yelled and yanked his hand away.
When he coiled that bleeding hand into a fist, she expected it, and she ducked the blow. Then, without thinking, without checking that she was placed to hit her target, but somehow knowing that she would, she kicked up with a booted foot and landed a solid blow between his legs. He yowled and doubled over, stumbling a couple of steps back, and she scrambled to get into the truck.
She made it and turned back to grab the door, but he was there just as she was, with one hand on the door and the other on the frame, meaning to lunge at her.
With every iota of force she could muster, she threw herself backward and jerked the door with her. It slammed on his hand. She heard bones snap. The sound he made at that, she had no word to describe.
She let the door ease up, and he pulled himself free, and then she slammed it shut and pounded her fist down on the lock.
In the back window, she saw people beginning to head in their direction, drawn by the commotion. Still feeling completely calm, but breathing heavily from her exertions, she settled herself in the driver’s seat, put the key in the ignition, turned the engine over, and drove away.
She supposed she should have stayed and called the cops on her new phone, but she just wanted away. Salt Lake City was definitely not where her journey would end.
Back on the highway, she realized she was grinning. Once she noticed that, she began to laugh. She laughed so hard, she had to pull over to the shoulder. She laughed until tears streamed from her eyes, until her sides ached.
She hadn’t laughed like that in two years. Why had getting attacked brought it out?
Because she’d kicked the shit out of that guy. She’d felt no fear, and she’d kicked the shit out of him.
She felt powerful. Invulnerable.
Alive.
Back in control of her senses, she pulled back onto the highway and headed toward a new life.
Somewhere.
Chapter Three
The flatbed wrecker pulled up onto the shoulder of the highway and stopped about fifteen feet ahead of her truck.
She’d been standing in the weeds off the road, a fair distance from the truck, because the smell near it was too much to tolerate for long. She’d put the hood up, mainly for its universal signal of a breakdown, but she wouldn’t have known a carburetor from a radiator. There’d been a time when she’d have relished working on this truck with her father, but he didn’t like people around him when he was under the hood.
Anyway, the truck was lifted too high for her to have been able to do anything in the engine, even if she’d known what to do.
Luckily, she had a new cell phone—a smart one—and she’d been close enough to a tower or something to have service and be able to look up help: Jasper Ridge Gas & Service.
She was in Idaho, but she hadn’t made it to Boise.
A man got out of the wrecker, settling a misshapen cowboy hat on his head as he did, and she headed up to meet him. He was tall and extremely thin, like a skeleton with skin and baggy clothes. His skin was deeply creased and ruddy, as if he’d never gone indoors in all his—fairly long—life.
After her adventure in Salt Lake City, she was reluctant to get too close to a strange man, even if she had called for the help he was apparently there to provide.
“I guess you called for the tow,” he said. He didn’t smile. Somehow, that made her feel more at ease.
“Yeah. It locked up, and I almost went off the road. The wheels wouldn’t turn, the steering wheel got all stiff, it made a weird, screamy-roary sound, and the smell was unbelievable.”
Nodding, he stared at the truck but didn’t get closer. He took a deep whiff and turned to her, studying her with faded blue eyes set in yellowing whites. “You didn’t smell anythin’ until it locked up? Nothin’ peculiar happened before now?”
Feeling like a stupid chick, she couldn’t maintain eye contact. Instead, she glared at the truck, the latest in a long line of her father’s betrayals and attacks. “It started acting a little weird about an hour or so ago. I was trying to get to Boise before I stopped.” Boise was a city. She’d thought she’d be better off stopping in a city.
Her wrinkled savior chuckled at that and chewed on the toothpick in his mouth. “Missy girl, I don’t got to even look to know how bad you got it. That smell? That’s transmission fluid. Smell that strong, and the truck actin’ like you say? You burnt your tranny straight to hell.”
Her heart started to po
und a staccato beat. “Is that expensive?”
He chuckled again. “Well, I got to haul it in, give it a good look before I can say a price, and an old truck like this, we could do a rebuilt, but you’re still pro’lly lookin’ at a couple grand.”
“Jesus. Really?”
He nodded wisely, with a hint of pity. “Yup.”
“Well, fuck me.”
Her language surprised him, and he narrowed his eyes in censure. “You say you’re headin’ up to Boise?” He pronounced the second syllable ‘see’ rather than ‘zee.’
Not without her truck, she wasn’t. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t have two thousand dollars to pay to fix it.” She turned and looked back at the wrecker. Above the rear bumper, the name and number of the shop it had come from was painted in fading red script.
She scanned the landscape. Fields dotted with cows and sheep, and clusters of woods merging into forest, and on the horizon, not far at all, an impressive mountain range, still topped with snow. She’d seen a sign on the highway and knew those were the Sawtooth Mountains, part of the Rocky Mountain Range.
It was pretty here. Even the sky seemed more—higher and bluer both.
Well, she’d decided that she’d know when it was time to stop. This seemed like a crystal-clear sign.
“Is Jasper Ridge a place?”
“Yup. ‘Bout ten miles up ahead.”
“Is it a decent place to live?”
He narrowed his eyes again. “I think so. Lived there all my life. My people helped make the settlement, long ways back. Can’t say we get a lotta newcomers. Tourists, sure. Not keepers, though. You don’t got a place you’re s’posed to be?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Just…somewhere. Somewhere new.”
“How old’re you, missy girl?”
She smiled. The question didn’t bother her. So far, the people who’d asked it seemed to want to help. Strangely, though, she’d always before been perceived to be older than her years. Only since she’d left Santa Fe had people questioned whether she was of age. She wondered if it had to do with being alone. But she’d been alone for years now.
“Twenty-one.”
He stared at her for long enough that she began to feel fidgety. Finally, his internal judgment rendered, he said, “Well, let’s get this hunk up on the wrecker. If nothin’ else, there’s the motel down the road from the station. Give you a place to put your head until you figure out what you wanna do. Mary’s a crotchety old hen, but say my name, and she’ll let you take the room on account.” He held out his hand. “I’m Floyd, but you might s’well call me Jerk. Ev’rybody does.”
Wondering if the nickname were kinder in context than it sounded, she shook hands with her newest friend. “Hi, Jerk. I’m Gabriela, but everybody calls me Gabe.”
No one had ever called her Gabe in her life. But everybody would from now on.
Jerk touched a finger to the brim of his battered, wilted straw cowboy hat. “How do, Gabe.”
*****
Like everything else she’d seen of Jasper Ridge and the Idaho around it, the Gemstone Motor Inn, just a short walk from the Jasper Ridge Gas & Service, seemed too artful to be real. Gabe half expected to open the door to the office and find the back of a movie set.
Instead, she found a skinny old woman with aggressively teased blue hair and black cat’s-eye glasses, the kind with rhinestones at the temples and a beaded chain hanging from the stems and looped around her neck.
Actually, she could’ve been a set piece, too. “Hi. Are you Mary?”
The woman nodded brusquely. “Help ya?” she asked, sounding something less than helpful.
Gabe came all the way in and went to the desk. “Yeah. Um, Jerk sent me over? He said you might have a room you could let me take on account?”
She didn’t know why all of her sentences were coming out as questions, but she smiled and tried to make herself look responsible and mature—which she was.
But Mary squinted at her behind those glittery spectacles and pursed her lips like a schoolmarm. “Which means you ain’t got money to pay up front.”
She did, actually, but she wasn’t sure how long she’d be staying, and something in the woman’s look made her reluctant to say too much. “I’m thinking of staying in Jasper Ridge. Looking for a job. I’m good for the rate.”
Mary made a noise full of scorn. “I’m sure. Jerk’s too soft for my own good. Fine. Rate’s fifty a night. I’ll give you a week on account, and then you’ll have to settle up.” She looked over her spectacles. “Lemme see your ID. If you run out on me, or you break up the room…”
Gabe dug her wallet out of her back pocket and handed Mary her license. “I won’t. I’ll take good care, I promise.”
Another scornful snort.
“You know of anywhere there’s a job in town?”
Without looking up from the form on which she was writing Gabe’s information in perfect, grandmotherly cursive, Mary shook her head. “I guess you could check over at the Jack. Reese might do ya somethin’.”
“The Jack? Reese?”
Sighing like she was dealing with a very slow toddler, Mary stood up, turned to the back wall, pulled an old-fashioned motel key on an oblong plastic fob from a row of small hooks, and then came back to the desk. She slid the key to Gabe’s side but didn’t lift her hand from it.
“The Apple Jack Saloon. Reese Webb runs it. If he don’t need help, could be there’s somebody around there who does. It’s still early enough in the season, you might find somethin’ temp’rary, anyway.” She took her hand from the key. The number ‘10’ was stamped on the red plastic fob in gilt.
“Thank you.” Gabe took the key. “So much. Where’s the Apple Jack?”
“Bit of a mile down Ridge Road here.” Mary waved vaguely to the west, indicating somewhere farther down the main road. “Other side of Old Town. Just start walkin’. If you ain’t blind, you won’t miss it.”
*****
Old Town turned out to be about four blocks of Old West touristy cuteness, and Gabe changed her mind about the rest of town looking like a movie set. These blocks reset the scale. More than a movie set, though, this stretch looked like a theme park—so much so that she wondered if, in fact, the buildings were as old as they were supposed to look. Was this really Old Town, or was it the touristy version of it?
The shops inside the picture-perfect Wild-Westy buildings—boardwalks and hitching posts and all—were clearly made for tourists: candy shop; leatherworker; a novelty photography studio, showing portraits in the windows of people in 1800s costume; a t-shirt shop; a woodworker; and on and on. Everything you’d expect from a tourist town.
One shop was like a visitor center, with posters in the windows of must-see locations and must-do events. A large poster dominating one window showcased a place called Moondancer Ranch, which looked like one of those luxury resorts where rich people played cowboy. Dude ranches, she thought they were called.
She had a vague memory that her mother had liked a movie about one of those places. Gabe couldn’t remember its title or many details, but it had had the guy who’d played Miracle Max in it.
Smiling at the memory of her mother’s laugh, Gabe stepped off the boardwalk and walked into something more like a normal small town. Across the street, in a building like a bigger version of the Old Town shops, set back from the road by a gravel parking lot about one-third full of pickups, was The Apple Jack Saloon.
It was dusk, and the building’s narrow front windows glowed with amber light and neon beer signs. She could hear the low beat of country music. Feeling a little bit nervous—maybe Salt Lake City cast a shadow longer than she wanted to admit—Gabe crossed the road.
Inside, ‘The Jack’ looked about like what Gabe had come to expect: rough wood and beams everywhere, a massive, long old bar against the back wall, simple four-top tables scattered around the floor, a couple of red-topped pool tables, a big, old-fashioned jukebox playing twangy music. Maybe eight or ten tables were occupi
ed, mostly by men in worn denim or poplin jackets and oft-handled cowboy hats. Most men had left both on, but there was a stack of cubbies near the door, and a few of those had hats in them. A row of hooks held about as many jackets.
Most of the stools at the bar were empty. Behind it, a tall, broad-shouldered man poured a beer on tap and slid it down to a guy standing at the end. Hoping the bartender was Reese, Gabe crossed the room.
No one had noticed her come in, as far as she’d been able to tell, but as she approached the bar, she felt like she was walking down a runway. Every eye seemed to be on her.
At a table near the pool tables, three men sat. They seemed to be all about the same age, but Gabe couldn’t tell what that was. Youngish, she decided. Two were making a real show of checking her out, wearing wide grins, pushing their hats back, and rubbing their chests. The other one, hatless, facing her, simply watched, his face inscrutable—but when one of his friends made a raunchy wolf whistle, Hatless popped him on the shoulder and nearly knocked him from his chair.
Gabe smiled a little and turned to the bar. The big bartender came right over. “What can I getcha?”
“You got Corona?”
He nodded and reached down to pull a bottle from ice. As he popped the top, she asked, “Are you Reese?”
His eyebrows went up as he set the bottle on the bar with a glass. “I am. You got me at a disadvantage, miss.” He held out his hand.
She shook it. “I’m Gabe. Mary at the Gemstone motel said you might know where there was a job open?”
He’d been smiling, but at that, the eyebrows went up again. “You puttin’ down a stake?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. If there’s work. My truck broke down, and I can’t afford to fix it.” She ignored the glass and took a long drink from the bottle. As the beer hit her stomach, she remembered that she hadn’t eaten since the truck stop in Salt Lake City.
Somewhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 1) Page 3