Great, it’s probably him.
At nine a.m. no one is banging on her door. The rain, if any, has stopped. The wind gusts now and then and kicks droplets out of the trees and onto the roof, sounding staccato beats as if from a prehistoric, giant woodpecker.
Tessa didn’t want to worry her mom, but she did call Forsythe when she was at the fairgrounds, before the rain. She only got his voicemail last night. She looks at her phone, no text. No call from him. She finally crawls out of bed. She opens the front door. Stretching, she looks. And looks again. Both ways. Murphy springs out and does his business. Tessa walks all around the camper and cranes to see all the sites she can see.
No black Chevrolet. There is a huge truck and trailer next to her. White, with slide outs. It’s opulent and dwarfs her camper by three sizes. Tessa decides, for whatever reason, Chuck is no longer on her. Maybe he got hung up at the Waffle House.
Her package. Suddenly Tessa remembers why she is in Ottine in the first place.
She hears a whirr and in the middle of the road is a familiar scooter. Chris Hooper. He bumps into her tennis shoe with a laugh.
“Well, hi there, young lady. Fancy meeting you here.”
“What are you doing in Ottine?”
“Why looking for you of course.” Chris grins.
She laughs.
“We have a general delivery.”
“So do I.”
“Well isn’t that something. Have you eaten breakfast yet?”
“No.”
“Well, good. C’mon in our rig and we’ll get some going.”
“This, is you?” she points to the three slide outs.
“You betcha. Wasn’t that storm last night something? We pulled into the site with no big trees around it, just like you,” he says approvingly.
Cindy sees her through a window, waves, and runs out. They hug immediately, like long lost sisters.
“Isn’t this a nice surprise?” Cindy says with a beautiful smile.
“It sure is,” Tessa agrees. “Where are you two headed from here?”
“Northern Arkansas. You?”
“New Mexico. Some place called Truth or Consequences.”
“Oh, that was named for a TV show.”
“Really?” Tessa scrunches her nose. “Why?”
“They wanted a little fame?” Chris shrugs.
She watches as Chris methodically twists from his chair and athletically balances himself against the hand hold by the door so he can manage the steps into the trailer.
“Ladies first!”
“I’ll put Murph in my trailer.”
“Any friend of yours is a friend of ours.”
After breakfast they all pile into the Hooper’s crew cab pickup and Tessa directs them to the post office.
“Don’t tell anyone, but that post office isn’t accessible. Murph and I will wait here.” Chris winks from the driver’s seat.
The older woman behind the counter looks up with a beaming smile. Most of her white, wispy hair is in a bun and her wire glasses are fastened with a turquoise loop behind her head.
“Miss Maybelle?”
“That I am.”
“Package for Tessa Williams?”
“That I have. ID?”
Tessa passes over her driver’s license.
“That’s you to a Tee.” The woman smiles. “A very large man came in here a few days ago and tried to get that package. He related to you?”
“Not by much.”
“A most unpleasant fellow. He smelled ripe too. I didn’t like him at all.”
“Neither do I.”
“Well, his name was not on the package and I wasn’t about to hand it over. I told him to just fetch you first.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh, don’t thank me, just doing my job.”
“Well, I appreciate it.”
After Cindy secures their large package, she grins. “I just love getting general delivery. It’s like Christmas on the road.”
“This is so cool. I can’t believe we had the same mail stop.”
“What are the chances?” Cindy agrees. “But we do try to hit the smaller out of the way towns. Were you having trouble with someone on the way down? That large fellow Miss Maybelle mentioned?”
“No. No. It’s nothing.” Tessa stares down at her package.
After the post office, Chris and Cindy offer to help Tessa hook the truck to her camper. Before she backs up the truck, Tessa drags the kayak out from under the camper and stops.
There, inside it, is a brand new leather rifle sheath.
“See a ghost?” Chris jokes, wheeling his chair up to her.
“Whoa!”
She opens it up and pulls out Aunt Sadie’s shotgun. There’s no note or anything.
“It’s not the way I look is it?” Chris is mockingly holding his hands up in the air.
She smiles. “I don’t remember placing this here.”
“Well, place it somewhere I don’t have to see it, willya? Those things give me the heebie jeebies.”
She smiles and carefully unlocks her camper, and looks around. Still no sign of Chuck.
She returns and places the kayak in the bed of the truck. She shuts the tailgate, but leaves the cover open so she can see the mark Paul had installed on the inside of the tailgate. It lines up the hitch and the ball. Tessa can’t quite get the distance between the two matched. Sometimes it takes her three or four times of leaving the driver seat and checking just how close she is to have the ball directly under the tongue of the trailer where it needs to be.
Chris, his wheelchair spotted to the driver’s side so Tessa can see him in the mirror, holds his fist up. “There it is! You’re dead on line.” He then removes a tape measure and instructs her to place the dumb side at the rear of the tire. “Now pull it back till you’re in line with where your ball needs to be for the hitch. Got it?”
She nods.
He throws her a two by four from his wheelchair’s front basket. “Now, when you’re by yourself, measure that same distance, eyeball where your rear tire is going to back up, and place that two by four where it needs to be to stop the truck.
“He’s handy that way.” Cindy beams, hugging him.
“Got a tape measure?”
Tessa shakes her head.
“Take that one, I’ve got two more.”
“I can buy one.”
“Don’t be silly. To tell the truth, he has four of them,” Cindy says.
“A little souvenir to remember us by.”
Just as Tessa shuts the cover over the truck bed, they all hear a rumble.
“Uh-oh,” Chris says. “If that storm coming in has wind anything like last night, Cindy and I better get the awning down and this chair inside. If I were you, I’d wait out the big part of the storm. Take off when it dissipates. Don’t leave without saying goodbye. If you’re here tonight, we’ll have dinner.” He grins.
THE RAIN POUNDS on. Cindy is right: receiving the package is like Christmas. Letters and cards from Billy, Dina, and Paul are on top. Eli wrote too. Her mom’s envelope is really thick, it must be a really long letter; she puts all those aside because she smells her mom’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. Two zip lock bags full. “Put in freezer” note says. There’s a long official-looking letter from Mr. Forsythe. In little old man chicken scratch scrawl on the front is written “no rush.” She sets it on top of the other letters. These she can open at her leisure since the hard rain is still not letting up.
Her mom included some tea, some books, chocolate, nuts, and real black licorice from England. She even packed a gift bag for Murphy with his name on it and a big bow. Murphy immediately takes notice of this and smells it. Her mom has splurged. The books though, Mom must not have remembered all the stuff under the cushions that Tessa has yet to look at.
Tessa gleefully opens the chocolate chip cookies and throws Murphy a homemade doggie cookie from his treat bag.
She starts sifting through her letters. Dina
’s first. She had written a long letter with a little poem attached, “Tessa’s Motorhome Cantata.” Dina’s graceful, cursive handwriting, an art form lost among their peers, flows over special woven, beige paper. Expensive. Dina had taken her time, instilling thought into everything about this letter, right down to a soft, aromatic scent. Tessa can almost hear Dina’s lyrical voice singing or chanting the verses she’d dovetailed with Tessa’s current journey and their relationship.
Dina is highly intelligent and clever that way. She’s a scientist and a psychology major, but neither of those had stopped her from entering the same art contest as Tessa.
Tessa’s wood cut print showed her mother sitting, her hair then in a long braid, arms casually over her knees as she watched two children playing in a schoolyard. She’d taken a black-and-white photograph of her mom, using an old-fashioned film camera. Tessa had been about twelve and her mom agreed to pose for her. The wood cut print received honorable mention, not bad for a freshman.
Dina’s charcoal drawing of a nude man frontal reaching for a nude woman, her back to the artist, received first place. Dina just had a natural knack for things like that.
One time they both entered a poetry slam.
As difficult as it was for Tessa to write a poem about losing her twin for an unknown amount of time, it was even more difficult to speak it. People politely clapped.
When Dina got up, she rocked the house.
She pulled her long blond hair up into a twist and she rocked back and forth from one leg to another with her voice loud and insisting they listen and when she ended with, “Yer balls of blood . . .” the room was standing and whistling and she won the slam, hands down.
Afterward, as they shared a beer outside at one of the quiet tables, Tessa said, “I don’t know how you do it. You can do anything.”
Dina laughed.” I just give them what they want. It’s a no brainer.”
“So, you don’t live this stuff?”
Dina shrugged. “A little. No. Not that much really. People are predictable. The slam is run by guys who want to think women want to suck them off so a poem like that rocks their world. It’s stupid really. Let’s get outta here before one of them makes a pass at us, okay?”
“But like the Art Contest . . .” Tessa asked as they walked.
Dina waved her hand. “It’s a game. I go online, see who the judges are, their likes and dislikes and fill the void. If it’s poetry I write like them. If it’s art, I draw like them. I like to see if they’ll take the bait. And so far they do, every time. Poetry, if it gives the guys a hard on, you’ve won.”
Tessa never had a man’s cock in her mouth and she isn’t so sure she ever wants that. The very idea . . . but, according to Dina, that’s all men want and they will follow you anywhere.
Tessa just wants Dina following her everywhere, and so far, that hasn’t been a problem.
The poem is lengthy and whimsical; Dina has married their actual lives together with a mystical one and it ends with them someday living together. Tessa falls back on the bed with the letter on her chest, in bliss. She is sure she will treasure this one letter alone for the rest of her life.
Next she opens Eli’s letter. He’s in great spirits. The new lawyer went to court after hiring a highly respected private investigator, a former state police detective the judge knows, and the judge has agreed to review the private investigator’s findings. Huge news. Tessa is elated.
She opens Paul’s letter next. It’s written on garage notepad paper. Paul’s Automotive. Wow. She didn’t know he owned the garage, she thought he just worked at it.
I take very seriously all you’ve chosen to share with me. I know I reacted poorly at first. I apologize. I asked you to be honest and you were. You’re the type to wear your heart on your sleeve and I do care about you a lot. I can’t pin it on any one thing. You just mean a lot to me. Maybe we’re not meant for each other, but I’d like it if you would still consider me a friend.
Wow. She thought she’d never hear from him again after she told him everything. She had to be honest with him. As cute as he was, she couldn’t sleep with him.
Billy’s letter. She dreaded this one. But better to rip the band-aid off now. She isn’t very careful opening this envelope. As suspected, he blames everything on Dina and writes he has been played. He admits visiting her mom! Oh, for fucks sake. Really? Her mom never mentioned that. Wait till the next Mommy Call. He ends the letter with, once Dina doesn’t need Tessa, he may or may not be around. As if.
Her mom’s letter fills her in on all the neighborhood news, which they’ve already shared on the iPad in the once a week sessions. The best newest news is Holly called, asking about her and will be home for a visit in the fall, so they can catch up then.
Mr. Forsythe’s letter packet is full. It has some extra gas cards, written info on official contacts along the way, should any more trouble arise, some interesting facts about the places she is going next and the procedure for a smooth customs crossing at the border.
There. All her box is done, except for the gift.
The small box is heavy for its size and ornate, a grey box with darker designer grey lines in overlay, tied with a gold bow.
Tessa carefully unties the bow.
Inside, wrapped in heavy paper and cotton swathing is a smaller box. Inside that box, a gold ring with a small, secondary crescent band arching upward on a slight angle, encircling a beautiful, small diamond.
The inscription reads, “With love, Dina.”
Tessa realizes she isn’t breathing. Her heart burns and happy tears fill her eyes.
She’s bursting to share this enormous news with someone. Unable to tell her mom, who doesn’t approve; she certainly can’t run next door and show the neighbors. Eli would understand. She sighs and holds the moment to herself.
Their tummies full, Tessa’s heart glowing, the incessant rain lulls her to sleep.
TESSA STORES HER letters under the sofa seat with the travel books and DVDs and old photo albums. She thumbs through the old albums, trying to take her mind off the fact she would like to run next door and show off her ring, but then she’d have to explain everything. She can’t call Dina, because she won’t be out of work till midnight. Additionally, part of her is nervous that Uncle Chuck is lurking somewhere nearby, ready to pounce again. Perusing the photo albums settles her jumbling, tumbling mind.
Murphy lies patiently at her feet, his dry warmth snuggled against her, during the second monsoon. She chooses the photo album filled with black-and-white pictures, figuring they are the earliest. Aunt Sadie and Uncle Percy on their wedding day, best man and maid of honor beside each of them. The maid of honor is as tall as Percy.
Relatives and little kids she doesn’t know.
Then there are old pictures of The Grand Canyon. Tessa recognizes the fabled dimpled series of mountains. She’s always wanted to try painting an image of these same mountains with purple hues of watercolor. Mule deer. Much smaller than Northern Michigan ones.
She pages through and realizes some of these pictures are the route she is covering. Every now and then different couples join them, as if they’d just met up at a campground, or on the road.
Sadie and Percy were sure hearty travelers. First in a wood-paneled station wagon. Sadie smiling, with the rear tailgate door open, on her tummy, face in her hands, a nice fit for her, but what about Percy? The back didn’t look long enough for him. Maybe they put a board out for him.
Oh, there’s the barn on North Manitou. Wow, there were more buildings, and roads, and houses. An old shipwreck still visible.
Traverse City had just a paved two-lane along the water, and motels. Everything seems familiar but looks different.
She finds a color album starting in the sixties. The tall lady and shorter man couple. He has glasses. Tessa opens up the black-and-white album. The tall lady with a different man. No. It’s the same man. He has no glasses and a lot more hair. The young twenty-something version.
Percy with dark hair in the black and white and this fellow. Washboard tummies, just like Cousin Joe. All men must have them, Tessa sighs.
Tessa looks from the color photo to the black and white. Then she pages back to the wedding photo. It’s the same couple, just not married yet.
Tessa has breezed through another set of wedding pictures because it isn’t anyone she knows, except Sadie and Percy. Then she sees Sadie and Percy are at their wedding, their best friends.
Wow, they sure hung with that couple a lot. Those people even came out to visit them, in some desert place. A motel with a couch outside in front of it. Deserty-looking mountains behind. The motel looks flat and new and kind of kitschy her mom would say. Men with cowboy hats and boots, one foot up on a half barrel, another foot up on a water trough.
Tessa returns to the color album. There’s a loud knocking at her door.
She hasn’t noticed but the rain has let up and now she’s suddenly frightened.
Uncle Chuck? The pounding continues.
“Tessa! It’s Cindy.” Tessa opens the door. “Want some dinner?”
“Is it that late?” Tessa realizes it’s getting dark. “I guess I got lost in the photo albums.”
“Is that what your box held?”
“No.” Tessa smiles. “Letters, but I burned through all them and then I received these.” She holds up one of the bags of chocolate chip cookies.
“Dessert!” Cindy squeals and her eyebrows pop up over the rim of her glasses. “It’s finally quit raining, for a moment there, we thought we might all have to move to higher ground. Flooding.”
“Wow, the high water being an issue never even occurred to me.”
“In the National Parks they try to keep an eye out for folks, but in some of these smaller places, you’re left on your own. The San Marcos is behaving for us.”
“Have you ever heard of this?” Tessa shows Cindy the NAWAC patch. Cindy doesn’t notice the new ring on her finger, and that’s okay.
“I can’t say that I have, but bring it over, Chris will be interested in seeing it.”
The Urn Carrier Page 9