He reaches in his pocket and hands her the very newest iPhone.
“It’s all paid for. Your Aunt Sadie is very detailed about the route. Your mom has suggested that along the way you might want to visit some family friends? Or whomever?” He looks at Mom.
“I just thought, if you are indeed going to do this for the family, that there might be some places you’d like to go too, since you will be near. Like Uncle Mark and Dolly’s.”
Uncle Mark really isn’t her uncle. He’s a best friend of her mom’s. He taught Tessa how to fly a single engine Cessna 170 when she was fourteen. He even coached her through landing the tail wheeled vehicle and marveled at her natural abilities. Uncle Mark and Aunt Dolly had moved to an airplane community in Florida. She’d never been. That would be fun to see.
Murphy sighs. As uneasy as she feels with the lawyer, Tessa loves Murphy on sight. Murphy is totally bonding with her. He is following her everywhere.
The lawyer looks at Murphy and Tessa. “You do seem the natural choice.”
Tessa pets Murphy. “I’ll do it.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
The lawyer glances behind himself once, and then backs up a step. He shuffles his papers. Tessa and her mom share a curious look and shrug. The guy is blocking the door, they have to wait. Murphy licks his non-existent balls.
“If you successfully complete the task as written, your college tuition is paid in full.”
Tessa’s mouth drops open.
“Excuse me?” her mom asks, her hand to her heart, as if she is about to faint. “I didn’t think Aunt Sadie . . . I mean . . . She seemed to live hand to mouth.”
Just like us. Tessa could hear her mom’s unsaid words.
“Ahhh. Seemed.” The lawyer nods. He looks up. “Yes, well. It’s what her instructions say. Tessa accepts the task, she finishes it, and Sadie agrees to pay her tuition in full.”
He speaks as if Great Aunt Sadie is still alive.
“I know some of the male relatives asked about her truck and trailer; however, those are already off premises being updated for your future road trip,” he continues. “New tires, oil change, gone over so you won’t have any trouble. The interior of the camper is being cleaned, updated, and readied. Stocked for the first leg of your trip. Can you leave in a month?”
Tessa nods.
“Good. It’s settled then?”
The hardest part for Tessa is shaking the old man’s frigid, cold hand.
BEFORE THEY LEAVE the wake, Tessa takes Murphy out back one last time. Over the door to the backyard is an industrial sticker. The kind posted at the front of orchards, or maybe where there is asbestos in the area. It reads: “Enter at Your Own Risk” in bright red letters. Aunt Sadie has all sorts of cool stuff stuck everywhere. An artificial walnut with an animated fake spider was in a nut bowl. It made Jill scream.
As Tessa hits the bottom step, a dark figure moves swiftly from her left. Before she knows it she’s crouched into a defensive posture with her hands balled up in front of her, ready to throw punches.
“Whoa, dude.” Her cousin Joe laughs. “You’d never be able to take me.”
But Murphy is right there, his flag-like tail up and his body between them. Joe looks down and backs up a step.
“Easy there, I was just gonna offer you a hit.” Joe shows her a lit joint and looks around the corner of the house to make sure no one inside can see them.
Tessa shakes her head. “I have to drive. Mom’s beat.”
“Yeah, that was one hell of an exciting episode in there. Sorry ’bout the old man,” Joe says of his dad.
Tessa waves him off. “He’s just always pissed at me.”
“Yeah. He blames you for everything.”
This is not news. She’s used to being people’s whipping post. She wonders if it’s because she never hits back. She doesn’t want to become like the people attacking her, so she defers her responses. She takes it out in her running. She pets Murphy reassuringly and he goes off to do his business.
“Mom and Dad are dickheads. Aunt Sadie nailed that one. Forget about them. You and Eli have always been my favorite cousins.” Joe stubs out the joint on the fading grey of the cedar siding. “If I wasn’t in nursing school, I’d take the gig.”
Tessa is strangely protective of the house and Joe sees her look at the smudge. He wipes it clean with a thumb. His hands are large. His thumb would probably cover half her palm. Cousin Joe has become quite handsome. Standing six-four, he has the Jesus look all the girls fall for—the moustache, beard, the shoulder-length brown hair, the high cheekbones that run in their family and he has incredibly bright inquisitive brown eyes.
“How’s Eli doing anyway?”
“He’s okay.”
“You going to see him on your way north?”
“Yeah,” Tessa conceded. “If I can.”
“That’s where you gotta go first, right? North?”
“How’d you know?”
“Oh.” Joe waves a hand dismissively, as if it isn’t important.
Murphy rejoins them, this time sitting squarely in front of Tessa, facing Joe.
“Mom. She gets all the details,” Joe finally says. He stoops to pet Murphy, but Murphy moves his head.
“Guess he isn’t real affectionate, huh? Not like Aunt Sadie, she was one of a kind.”
Tessa doesn’t know what to say.
“So why are you doing this?” Joe asks.
“I dunno. I’m sick of school. I want a break. Why not?”
“Cool. I get it. Take a break. Road trip. Whatever.”
Tessa nods.
“Well, I best make an appearance before Dad comes around the corner.” Joe reaches out to hug her but Murphy is immovable, so he clumsily touches her half on the shoulder. “Be cool, cuz.” He jogs up the back steps.
Tessa looks down at Murphy, once the door closes Joe inside.
“You really don’t like him, do you?”
Murphy looks up at her and wags his tail against her leg, one, two, three, four times.
They were going to get along just fine.
Chapter 2
Eighteen months earlier.
TESSA WAS ON a gurney, surrounded by the privacy drape. Waiting. A nurse came in and regarded her with a genuine smile.
“Your morning cocktail.” She held the syringe upward from her elbow. “Which cheek?”
Tessa rolled to her left and the prick pain of the hypodermic was immediate.
“That will start to settle quickly and everything is in order,” the nurse reassured her.
Tessa rolled back and her mom took her hand.
“I am so proud of you,” her mom said.
Tessa’s eyes filled with tears. “I think I’ll be okay. That surgery at sixteen had to be worse, right?”
Her mom nodded.
“That was three layers of muscle, right, so this should be a piece of cake.” Already the drug was taking effect. Tessa’s fear was fleeing to some recessive bank of clouds. Everything seemed brighter in the room, and lighter. She was exhilarated.
“Oh my God.” She smiled. “I am so glad this is happening.” It was the last thing she remembered before waking again. A man with dark golden skin above his mask was standing over her, eyes smiling behind his glasses.
“Hi, Tessa, I’m Dr. McMan. I’m your anesthesiologist today. All I need you to do is breathe deeply and count back from one hundred.”
Tessa didn’t even get to ninety-six.
She remembered the recovery room because there was a baby crying. From her previous surgeries, when you could read the clock on the wall, they let you go to your room. She asked if she could be moved. The baby’s wailing was giving her a headache and making her nauseous. She could hardly see. The attendant asked her to look at the wall and she just made out the time.
“Close enough,” he said and started wheeling her out, but wait, the baby was coming too!
It was all Tessa could do to not puke as they rode the elevator together
, the crying baby and her. She tried to have empathy for the infant. Why was it here? What surgery did it have to have? She was relieved when they pushed her away from the noise and the racket.
Once in the room, her stomach began to settle. Now the regimen of ice chips. And then there would be the dull ache of pain returning. She remembered the drill. She could handle it.
Her mom was there waiting. Every time she woke, her mom was always right there, reading a book, or just watching her. She grabbed Tessa’s hand each time and gave it a reassuring shake.
“I love you,” Tessa said and fell asleep for hours.
The burning pain began as a dull ache and inched up toward bonfire status. They kept her in the hospital to make sure she was peeing okay. They wouldn’t let her out till she stomached a full meal and she walked down the hallway and back, several times.
She was only slightly sedated now. No more pain shots. She began weaning herself off pain pills. With sedation removed, the burning pain was sharper but her muscles healed faster. She was not bedridden, or foggy. She could see clearly and taste food. The surgeon came in.
“Knees up?” It was not really a question.
She froze at his casual flipping up of the sheet.
“Everything is looking pink. No sign of infection,” he said, sounding as if he was down a deep tunnel and relaying the news back to earth. “I couldn’t be more pleased.”
He flipped the sheet down, patted her gently on the knees, and nodded for her to relax.
He read and wrote in the chart, and typed into the laptop. She liked this hospital. They doubled down on everything, written chart and digital so there were no mistakes.
“You’re very strong.” He smiled. “Weaning yourself from the pain medication, are you?”
Tessa nodded. He reached down and affectionately held her socked foot.
“I will see you in two weeks at my office.” He walked to the door and looked back. “I’m very proud of you.”
It took six months before she could run a full quarter mile without stopping. At first, she just walked around the track, once, at Ralph Young Field, MSU. In three months she was fully running part way, taking the quarter mile oval track curve as fast as she could in sprints, her long hair flying. As she hit the straight away she eased up and jogged easily to the outside.
Almost autumn, and the football players were released from the stadium. Some of them stood by the fence.
She didn’t really notice the football players at first because lots of folks were jogging and pacing and running. The same group she’d seen, older people, younger people, some athletes. Non-athletes were supposed to run on the outside three lanes, but she considered this elitist. So she did what she wanted as long as she didn’t interrupt anyone else’s routine. When she did the sprints she took the lane she wanted. When she walked she made her way to the outside. She was on her last two sprints, her long legs running. Her arms pumped, hands open, eyes focused, first on Case Hall, and then the big round curve of the stadium. It was freeing to run so hard. Any pain, any residual burn, dissipated in her running, legs and feet punishing the cushy red surface of the track.
At the fence line, as she finished her last sprint and gently jogged to the outside to slow and then walk, clapping reached her ears and she realized other people were in her world. She saw three or four football players openly admiring her.
“You have some fast feet, girl.” It wasn’t sexual. It was true admiration.
Tessa felt herself flushing. They high-fived her and turned and walked away—their helmets in their hands, their cleats clacking against the blacktop path.
“You keep working it,” one of them called back, and she waved, smiling.
Tessa felt like a rock star.
TESSA HAS A recurring dream involving her mom and her twin brother, Eli. In it they’ve narrowly escaped a monster. They’re running in the woods back of the first home she can remember. A treacherous trail of roots and large trees. It seems like it’s October, because they’re in Halloween costumes, and it’s cold. Tessa has lost a shoe, but her mom is quietly pleading with her to run anyway, so Tessa runs silently, their breathing the only noise.
All of a sudden the monster is in front of them. His face is grotesque and misshapen, as if he too is wearing a Halloween mask, but he isn’t. He’s growling and bleeding and he swings his arm back and forth.
He has a sharp machete in his right hand, and the monster laughs at them. “Little bits. They’ll never find you. No one will ever know.”
Each time she wakes from this dream, it’s like she’s under water. She’s inhaling huge gasps of air, as if she hasn’t been breathing at all.
ANOTHER DREAM, BUT more like a memory and this one is true, because her grandmother still speaks of it. Tessa was only four or five at the time.
Grandmother had sent for them. She lived in the remote area of Ontario. Between Sioux Lookout and Sudbury, along the rail line was a singular post with a stick on it.
When the stick was up, the train stopped and picked up the pair of Anishinaabe and took them into town for supplies. Heading north out of Minnesota, her mother told the conductor where they needed to stop and he nodded, knowingly.
They looked out the windows until their mom said they were close, and they gathered their packs and put on their shoes again. Her mom ushered them to the front of their car, and the train started slowing, slowing, slowing. Each braking a puzzle to the other passengers looking up from their papers and snacks. What could be the problem in this wilderness? Then they spied the trio in the front and stared.
Each time the train braked, Eli and Tessa swayed into their mother’s wool pants and soft coat. It was the color of deer. Then the man in the hat and uniform slid open their car and they dismounted from the black grated steps, their mom helping lift them off.
They moved from the big white sharp rocks and down the slope, and the man leaned way out and waved toward the front of the train. The train started chugging slowly away. Some people waved at them, and Eli and Tessa waved back.
When the train was gone, there they were, in the middle of nowhere with no one around and only the humming of the tracks as it registered the steel wheels long down the line.
In the midst of tall pine and tamarack, was a little footpath to follow. Maybe it was more a wildlife track. They begin the mile long walk to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Tessa loved the smell of pine and tamarack. This was late spring, but not fly season. Still a cold nipped to the air, but the sun was up and full. They trudged alongside their mother, carrying their little backpacks of food. They would wear the same clothes day in and out for the week that they stayed. It was more important to take food, and Senna leaves and greens for her grandmother and grandfather. Her mother sang, “Carry me down the old Piney Road.”
Her mother carried the larger pack with all the supplies her adopted mom and dad requested. Fat back, side pork, salt, and coffee, maybe some sweets, honey, and tea. And a fifth of Seagram’s V.O for Grandpa. As they walked along the mushy melting snow, her mom suddenly stopped singing and put hands across the chests of Tessa and Eli, as if stopping them from going through the windshield of a car.
In front of them, a large black bear stood, sniffing the air. Sniffing, sniffing. It sank down on all fours and growled and struck a huge paw through the snow, warning. Her mom froze, then, ever so slowly, placed Tessa and Eli around behind her, not taking her eyes off the bear.
The bear stood once more, and sniffed left and sniffed right, grunting, and suddenly two cubs scrambled up on the trail with her. The bear padded a few steps forward and struck her paw through the snow again. Warning. Keeping her cubs close, she huffed and snuffed breaths in, as if reading the air. Then she stopped all movement. Her cubs stayed very still behind her, as if knowing their mom was making a decision.
“Mmmmmmm,” the bear seemed to say. At least, that was what Tessa heard. Then the bear turned left and crossed into the pine. There were little noises of the pine brushing ag
ainst her fur and then nothing.
Their mom remained motionless.
Eli and Tessa looked up at her.
Later she would say a million thoughts went through her head. Should they make a break for it and head back to the rails? Should she drop the packs with all the food and honey and peanut butter?
She stayed rooted, listening, every muscle straining to sense if the bear was still there. Finally, their mom cautiously stepped forward, as if walking along a steep ledge, keeping her twins near and to her left side, away from where the bear had crossed into the pine.
As they stepped into the big melty footprints the bear had left, her mom stopped once more. There, not very far in the pines, was the bear, quietly watching on all fours, her cubs behind her, soundless and motionless.
Silently, her mom pushed Tessa and Eli forward. They continued walking ahead of their mother, her gently pushing them along, her back to them, as she walked backward.
The bear came out, walking on all fours, and then stood once more. She took in one large breath, and dropped down, pushing her cubs ahead of her, treading slowly down the path toward the train tracks, continuing her path from hibernation.
Chapter 3
TESSA AND BILLY, her boyfriend, just arrive home from his lacrosse game, and she hears the rumbling of a Harley, or maybe, something larger, coming behind them. A beautiful, butter cream and baby blue pick-up with a matching color-coordinated trailer pulls to the curb of her house.
“Tessa Williams?” A handsome guy, maybe mid-twenties, steps out. His dimples are deep. His eyes green.
She nods.
He brings a digital handheld tracker, the kind like the UPS drivers have, and has her sign on the line. He clips it to his belt and reads from his clipboard. “We need to go over the entire vehicle and make sure it’s to your satisfaction.”
“Holy shit,” Billy says lowly. “This is it? This is what you’re driving all over the country and Canada?”
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