“Well, that’s the most important part, Peanut.”
“How come?”
“Because if nobody eats it it'll go to waste. And a creature’s life should never go to waste. So I’ll take all the credit, since nobody else wants to.”
His faulty logic made absolutely no sense at all to Beth. But if he was going to take credit for something he didn’t do, she wanted her share as well.
“Well, I ate some too, so I get more credit than you.”
“Na-uh.”
“Uh-huh.”
Sarah just rolled her eyes.
She was glad to see Dave being silly again.
For several days after she told him about her affair with Parker he was sullen and moody. She’d never seen him depressed before in all the years they’d been together, but she saw and recognized the classic signs.
No matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t bring him out of his general funk.
She told him she loved him more than she’d ever loved anything or anyone. That she was stupid and was dreadfully sorry for her transgression.
She also told him she’d abide by whatever he wanted her to do, be it go or stay, with or without the girls.
Finally, the previous afternoon, he went to her and took her hand.
He said he forgave her and that he was past it.
“I’ve loved you too much for too long to let this break us apart. I believe that it was a one-time thing and that you were in a weakened state of mind. Let’s get past it and get on with our lives.”
Neither had any expectations that would be the end of it. There would be times in the future when suspicion would invade Dave’s mind and he’d be irritable or moody. It might haunt him off and on for years.
Trust is a wonderful thing, but a broken trust takes some time to rebuild.
They’d agreed their marriage was worth saving. And both admitted they were as right for one another as any couple could be.
Lindsey, once she saw her parents were working through it together, decided it was no longer her place to be involved in it and backed off. She was working hard to mend fences with her mom.
Beth and Sal? They both knew something was causing tension between Dave and Sarah, but also saw it seemed to be getting better as each day rolled by. That being the case, neither one asked what was bothering either of them.
Instead, Sal brought up a completely different topic.
“Have any of you noticed the owl that seems to be following us?”
Beth said, “I saw an owl a couple of days ago.”
Sarah said, “So have I. I’ve seen him a couple of times. Do you really think he’s been following us? What for?”
Lindsey said, “Owls eat rats, don’t they?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“That’s why he’s following us. He sees Beth and thinks she’s a big juicy rat. He wants to make a meal out of her.”
“Shut up, butthead.”
“Shut up yourself, twerp.”
“Owls are very big in Native American culture,” Sal said. “The Indians believed they were a harbinger of death.”
Beth’s eyes got big. She had no idea what he meant, but it sounded very spooky to her.
“You mean they kill people, Grandpa Sal?”
“Not exactly, little one. The Indians believed that owls were occupied by the souls of those in their tribes who died, and that when someone else in their tribe was about to die the owls came back to escort them into the afterlife and to get settled there.”
“That sounds way too creepy. How do you know that?”
“My Nellie had Sioux blood in her. Perhaps it is her soul embodied in the owl. Perhaps since I am old and falling apart, she’s watching over me. So that when my time is come I can go to be with her.”
“I don’t want you to die, Grandpa Sal.”
“Don’t worry, little one. I have no plans to die anytime soon. If my Nellie’s spirit is in that owl, she’s just going to have to wait.”
Chapter 51
By odd circumstance Chad Smith also happened to be eating rabbit at his campsite six miles away.
Chad took his with a single shot earlier that day, had dressed it and wrapped it in burlap, and was cooking it on the end of a stick over an open fire.
He had no macaroni and cheese to augment his meal.
No preserved boiled cabbage either.
Chad was like most highway nomads and traveled very light.
He had no shopping cart to carry his provisions. Just the pack upon his back, and it typically carried just water and ammo.
For most highway nomads not named Speer, life on the road was a daily effort to find enough food to get them through the day. They weren’t going to any particular place. They just wandered wherever their fancy took them.
They slept not in tents but in the sleeper cabs of the abandoned big rigs.
The sleepers were unbearably hot in the summer and icy cold in the winter, but once one got used to the accommodations they weren’t that bad.
At least the thin mattress on the trucker’s bunk was soft.
And if they’d passed by the sleeper cab and slept outside on the hard ground, it would still be unbearably hot in the summer and icy cold in the winter.
Life as a road warrior wasn’t the best or easiest way to get by.
But it wasn’t that bad.
He’d stumbled across the Peterbilt just as the sun was starting to dip in the western sky.
He still had a couple hours of daylight left, but he was in no hurry.
He had no particular place to be.
And his feet seemed to be hurting more than usual on this late summer day.
He’d pounded on the side of the truck’s cab to make sure it wasn’t already occupied. When he got no answer he tried the door and found it unlocked.
That was good. It meant he didn’t have to break a window.
The truck was an older model, with window cranks.
That was also good. He immediately rolled both windows down so the air could circulate and start cooling the sleeper.
There were no rain clouds in the sky, so he could leave the windows down all night long.
Lately the nights had started to cool just a bit. Soon the days would too.
He was looking forward to winter. It was a lot easier dealing with cold weather just by wearing extra layers of clothes and covering up with several blankets.
The summer days, when temperatures frequently went into the nineties, were a lot harder to deal with.
Even when he stripped down to a thin t-shirt and shorts he was still miserable.
He pulled the curtain back and crawled into the sleeper cabin.
The vents on the roof were still open, left that way by the last nomad who slept here.
That could be good or bad, depending on whether it had rained since then.
The four inch thick mattress appeared dry. And he saw no evidence of bed bugs.
There were probably head lice at the head of the mattress, but that didn’t bother him much.
He’d had head lice for months and he was pretty much used to them.
So good. These were adequate accommodations and he should get a good night’s sleep here.
He climbed back out of the cab and left both doors open, and then went to the back of the trailer to see what the driver had been hauling.
This wasn’t what the nomads called a “virgin truck.” They were becoming harder and harder to find these days.
No, this one had been rifled through a dozen times or more.
He could tell by the discarded pile of cargo directly behind the trailer.
Nomads had a very bad habit of throwing things they didn’t need out the back of the trailer and out of their way as they searched for things they could use.
Oftentimes the items were perfectly good, but just not what the nomad was looking for.
If Chad didn’t find what he needed in the trailer, he’d crawl through the pile i
n hopes he found it there.
He had a standard list of things he always hoped to find when he rifled through a trailer.
Water was the first thing. Sometimes these rigs carried a couple of pallets of water, destined for a grocery or a big box store.
Nomads usually only took a few bottles because they had no means to carry more.
Consequently, and perhaps surprisingly, a lot of the trailers still had water aboard a year and a half after the truck died and came to an abrupt stop.
And that was good, because it saved Chad the trouble of boiling water from a stream or a lake to fill his empty bottles.
He found one pallet that originally held sixty four cases of drinking water.
Most of it was gone now, but there were enough stragglers to allow him to fill up his pack with twenty bottles.
That was a two day supply for him.
It was a good find.
As for the empties which already filled most of his pack, he just dumped them onto the debris pile which made up the rest of the trailer.
No sense being tidy or orderly.
That just wasn’t the way of the nomads.
Farther up in the trailer he found several cases of canned foods, including six cases of ravioli.
He cracked open one case and was disheartened to find they were swollen badly.
Swollen cans meant they were spoiled and no good to him.
He’d have to settle for the rabbit he shot earlier in the day.
Now he sat next to his campfire, burning on the pavement just a few feet from his sleeping quarters. He continued to curse his aching feet, which continued to make his life absolutely miserable.
Maybe tomorrow would be the day his luck would change and he’d stumble across a truck full of fully-assembled bicycles.
Probably not, but even men who were down and out and barely surviving could still dream.
Chapter 52
The night passed without incident for the Speer family.
Sarah was the first to rise and placed a hand on Dave’s chest to let him know she was there.
He stirred almost immediately, and then opened his eyes.
She walked away from the camp, knowing he’d be right behind her.
They’d made some real progress in recent days, and he was learning to keep his emotions in check and to try to bury the past.
Things would never be the same between them; not really. But they’d go on. Regardless of what happened both felt they’d always been destined to be together. Neither would challenge destiny.
She’d asked him to forgive her and he had.
Forgetting was something neither would ever do. Not totally, anyway.
They stood together, watching the sky turn orange in the east. When the first streaks came over a nearby hill they marveled at how beautiful the new day could be.
And how it seemed to wash away whatever the previous day had been.
They hadn’t made love since Sarah had gotten on that airplane that fateful day. When Dave found her in Kansas the first time they were too distraught over Beth’s having been taken.
When they were reunited at the bunker there was just too much tension. Dave generally went into a funk for days after he killed, even when it was for good reason. It was just part of his emotional makeup and his internal turmoil over the whole “Thou shalt not kill” thing.
Every time he killed, whether it was on the behest of his country, his own self-defense, or the defense of his family, he spent days debating with himself whether he’d done the right thing or committed a grave sin.
It wasn’t uncommon among soldiers to do so, and the same was true of police officers.
By the time he was resolving to himself that he had no choice but to kill the bad men in the bunker, for they surely wouldn’t release his family willingly… then he had the whole infidelity problem to deal with.
Sarah, for her part, didn’t push him.
She felt dirty and unworthy of his love.
She’d resolved in her own mind to wait until he was ready.
This morning he decided he was ready.
He took her hand and led her to a meadow a quarter mile away from the others. They made love in the tall meadow grass.
There was nothing special about it. In fact, it was awkward for both of them. But it was a big step forward and eased a lot of tension.
As they walked back to the camp they said very little. Each was mostly lost in their own thoughts.
But they were glad they’d done it.
Beth chastised them when they returned.
“Where have you two been? We were getting ready to send a search party out for you.”
Leave it to Beth to decide to choose this of all days to get up early.
Dave smiled and said, “We went for a walk, Peanut.”
“A walk? A walk? That’s all we do, all day every day is walk. And that’s not enough for you two? Sheesh!”
Lindsey stuck her head out of the tent and asked her little sister, “Who are you yelling at way too early in the morning?”
Beth swept a hand in the direction of her parents.
“These two. They decided to just up and go for a walk, leaving us here for the bears and wolves to eat.”
Sarah said under her breath, “We should be so lucky…”
“I heard that, Mom.”
Lindsey smiled.
That stoked the fire beneath Beth.
“What? What?”
She hated it when Lindsey knew something she didn’t.
Lindsey was growing up, and strongly suspected she knew why her mom and dad went for a walk. Her suspicions were confirmed when she saw the dried grass clinging to the hair on the back of her mother’s head.
She brushed it off and caught Sarah’s eye. Sarah flushed just a bit and Lindsey squeezed her hand. It seemed that any differences they’d had over the whole Parker incident were in the past now.
None of the group saw the old owl perched on a high branch above them, watching their every move.
Chapter 53
By eight o’clock they’d broken down camp and gotten everything loaded.
They were getting more and more efficient at the task as each day went by.
And as tired as they were the previous afternoon, they were chomping at the bits to get back on the road again.
That was the same every day.
It wasn’t that they loved trudging mile after mile in the sometimes blazing hot sun. But rather they knew they’d never get to their destination until they got started each day.
There would come a time in their lives when this journey would be nothing but a distant memory. A surprisingly good one, in all likelihood. For thus far it was more an adventure than a chore.
Some men climb mountains because they’re there.
Some men go into space because they’re bored with mother earth.
This family could have stayed in Kansas. In all likelihood they’d have had a comfortable life there.
But Kansas wasn’t their home.
Texas was their home, but to get back there they’d have to take the great adventure, the great journey of their lives.
“Might as well get started,” Dave said.
So they set off again, just as they had for more days than they could now count.
Five minutes on the road Beth asked what day it was.
Nobody knew.
“I know what month it is,” Dave offered. “It’s August.”
“I thought it was September now.”
“Well… maybe. All I know is it’s still hot.”
They covered the first two miles before stopping for a break.
They’d have gone farther, but this was a particularly hilly part of the state and they had to push their carts uphill half the time.
Sal was in a particularly joyous mood, for he’d dreamed of his Nellie the night before. That always brightened his spirits.
“I don’t know what you people are complaining about,” he said
as he pulled up on his go-cart. “Do you know how hard it is to steer this steering wheel for hours each day?”
Beth stood up from where she sat in the prairie grass on the median and walked over behind him.
She rewarded him for his comment by dumping a handful of grass upon his head.
It didn’t stay there for long.
His bald head certainly did nothing to help hold it into place.
But Beth felt better and everyone enjoyed a good laugh.
Lindsey, also in a good mood because her parents were getting over their issues, commented, “Sorry, Beth. His head doesn’t hold grass the way Mom’s does.”
Her comment went over Beth’s head, as well as Sal’s.
But her parents caught her meaning and blushed just a bit. Dave pulled his own handful of grass and chased Lindsey with it.
After twenty minutes everyone was rested enough to resume their trek. Their bellies had been filled with water and those who needed to relieve themselves had snuck off into the woods to do so.
They struck out again thinking they didn’t have a care in the world.
And that same grizzled old owl watched their every step from the driver’s side mirror of a Mack truck a quarter mile behind them.
They passed their halfway point, a sign for Mile Marker 151. Six more miles and they’d have their twelve in. They’d stop there and take a vote, whether to set up camp or to quite literally go the extra mile. That seemed likely, for everyone was in a good mood.
And when everyone was in a good mood they were much more likely to want to keep the happiness going at the end of the day.
As was his habit, Sal roared ahead of them to each new turn or the crest of the next hill. If there was anything of interest out of their view, he’d come back to tell them: “There’s a river not far ahead,” or “There’s an abandoned Walmart truck just around the bend.”
If there was nothing of particular interest, he’d turn around and drive back to them anyway, for it would be pointless to get too far ahead of them.
In those instances he had a different routine.
He’d motor back to the group and make a face at little Beth as he passed her by.
She’d respond in a similar manner.
Texas Bound: Alone: Book 11 Page 16