The pleasant rain shower from before had evolved into a real storm and was now bombarding the small dwelling with buckets of water. The tent leaned to the left, then to the right as a strong wind whipped around them. Lindsey smacked her forehead with her hand.
“Ugh! The Indian! He was right. He warned me, but I completely forgot,” she cried.
Now Jake looked confused. “The Indian?”
He leaned closer so he could hear her brief story about the unexpected encounter with the Native American man from the Zuni pueblo, including his suggestions that they either leave or prepare for the pending storm. Too late for either option; they were in the midst of it now. The storm intensified with each passing minute.
Rivulets of rain teamed up to form deep puddles that overflowed onto the dirt road, turning it into a river. The river, affected by the downhill slope and the whipping of the wind, carried the illusion of miniature, white-capped waves on its surface and seemed to have a hypnotic effect on Lindsey. A deafening crack of thunder propelled Jake into action. He grabbed a dazed Lindsey with one hand, the birdcage with the other, and made a dash to her car with Wendell right behind.
“Get in and stay put,” he shouted over the raging noises of the storm. “I’ll be right back.”
She watched him throw everything he could find—camp chairs, cooler, and several large rocks—inside the tent to keep it from blowing away, then he grabbed the pillows and hurried back to the cars. There wasn’t enough room for both Jake and Wendell in Lindsey’s car, so after giving her a pillow, a blanket, and one of his walkie-talkies, he and the dog jumped into his Jeep to wait out the storm.
Through the window she saw Wendell shake, leaving less rainwater on the dog but a whole lot more on Jake and the interior of his Jeep. Jake’s walkie-talkie clicked on. “Ah, yes,” Jake said. “Nothing like the smell of a wet dog confined in a small area. Good thing I like you, Wendell.”
It felt good to laugh. They both managed to sleep a little, and it was reassuring to hear Jake’s voice over the walkie-talkie every now and then.
“Lindsey, are you still awake? Over,” whispered Jake at one point.
“Yes, Jake. I’m awake. You don’t have to whisper. Malcolm is awake, too.”
“I just wanted to make sure you were, well, all right. You seemed really bothered by the storm. Over.”
“I’m okay now,” she assured him. “Are you all right? And must you say ‘over’ each time?”
“That’s walkie-talkie talk, woman. You copy?”
She giggled, thoroughly enjoying how he could make her smile. “Okay, then. Copy that, and a big 10-4 back at you,” she replied.
He chuckled. “Try to get some sleep, Linds. I just wish that we…I wanted to…Oh, never mind. I’ll talk with you in the morning. Good night.”
“Good night, Jake. And thank you…for everything.
When the sun rose, the storm was gone, and so was the tent. The campsite was unrecognizable, littered by broken branches. The actual tent site was now a small pond, the fire pit a mound of mud, and the tent and its contents were nowhere to be seen. The morning air smelled fresh and fragrant, and the trees sparkled with tiny raindrops still clinging to the leaves and pine needles. But the ground was thick with sloppy, slippery, red mud that stuck like glue to everything that came in contact with it. The clean up would be challenging.
Lindsey jumped onto a large rock and folded her arms over her chest. “I declare this area to be an official disaster zone,” she announced, then dropped her arms. “Where do we begin?”
Jake scratched his matted and mussed hair. “I’m wondering if we should begin at all. Maybe we should just cut our losses and go back to Tucson.”
An unexpected wave of desperation and panic overcame Lindsey. “No! We can’t end this—whatever this is—like this. Does that make any sense?”
“Yeah,” he said vaguely, sounding both tired and sore. Then he muttered, “No, not really.”
“Let’s at least try to find the tent,” she insisted. “We don’t want to litter the Zuni Mountains.”
After walking the hillside in a search and rescue formation of two, they discovered the battered and torn tent about a hundred yards to the south, trapped in a deep ravine. Some of their things were still in the tent, including clothing, sleeping bags, a flashlight, and the filing box. All were soggy and in poor condition, but at least they hadn’t been strewn throughout the forest. The cooler and the camp chairs had dropped out of the tent about fifty yards before it landed, and they’d stayed tucked and tangled in a grove of thorny bushes. Lindsey made one trip up the hill, dragging the empty and ripped tent, while Jake made several trips to carry its former contents and any other items he came across between the tent’s final destination and the old campsite.
Attempting to ignore the reawakened pain in her wrist, Lindsey began hanging the recovered items out to dry in the sun. During a brief break she watched Jake set the chairs and the cooler on a flat, sunny, not too muddy spot, then drag away some of the branches that had fallen, saving the best ones for firewood. Starting a fire would be a greater challenge today.
“Jake, I think we should try to set the tent back up. It’ll dry faster that way. But I only found two tent stakes, and we really need at least four. Eight would be even better.”
“I’m on it, Linds,” Jake said, then retrieved his all-purpose knife from the glove box in his vehicle and took a crack at carving a few wooden tent stakes.
By mid afternoon, the tent was almost dry. Except for the rips on the floor and around the door, it was actually usable. Once the sleeping bags were dry, they could be brought in to cover the holes on the floor, and Jake had some double-sided tape that would temporarily help with the door.
“You carry double-sided tape in your car?” Lindsey asked with a hint of a smile.
“Sure. You never know when you might need it. It’s handy stuff.”
“Uh, huh.”
By sundown, the tent was ready for occupancy, a fire was burning, and the exhausted campers sat by it, sipping red wine and eating spaghetti from a can—part of Jake’s emergency rations. Fortunately, Lindsey had kept the dog food and the bird food in the trunk of her car, so the pets’ meals went unchanged. Jake’s warped and sagging box of files sat beside him, near the fire. She had to wonder if its placement was in preparation for destruction by fire, or if it was merely to accelerate the drying process. Or was there more to learn?
Still staring at the box, Lindsey said, “I know you told me a little bit about the topic of your thesis, Jake, but I’m not sure I understand your hypothesis. What exactly were you trying to prove?”
He took a sip, looking thoughtful. “At first the big question was whether women who were alone—without a life partner, regardless of the cause—grew or regressed.”
“And the answer is…?”
“Well, I botched up my research in so many ways, but if I was forced to put an answer into words—which I guess is what you are asking me to do—I’d have to say that some women alone grow and become stronger, wiser, and eventually even happier human beings, but others regress and shrink away from the world around them. Most women alone journey back and forth, spending periods of time growing and periods of time regressing.”
Lindsey scowled at him, unimpressed. “You had to conduct all that research to come up with that answer? All humans, women and men, alone or with partners, go back and forth like you mentioned.”
“Leave it to a kindergarten teacher to tell it like it is, with simplicity and clarity.”
They both smiled and went back to their wine, gazing at the stars in the recently darkened sky. A silent but profound and undefined sadness hovered around their campsite like early morning fog, and she knew they both felt it. This would be their last night in the Zuni Mountains. Tomorrow they would head back to Tucson in their separate vehicles, back to their own lives—lives that would be different now after all that
had transpired. So when a brilliant, falling star arced across the jet-black sky, she silently and secretly, wished upon that star. She wondered if he did, too.
“Hey, Jake,” Lindsey asked gently, breaking the stillness. “Ever since you told me about Shawna’s life, I’ve been thinking about her. What do you think she will do now?”
“Oh, I didn’t tell you?”
“I don’t think so. Not that I recall.”
“Well, after the infamous assault and night-long conversation, I went home and called my sister, Julie. She’s a psychiatrist up in Oregon. I told her about Shawna, and Julie thinks Shawna, with some serious, lengthy therapy, might be a candidate for turning the clock back, reversing some of her physical changes, then spending some time investigating and relearning how to be a man. Her desire to become a woman might be due, primarily, to her father’s influence rather than her own wishes. It’s a complicated long shot for sure, but Julie thinks it’s worth exploring. She called Shawna and easily convinced her to postpone the sexual reassignment surgery for a while, and Shawna seemed willing to talk with her again. So we’ll see.”
“Now that would be one heck of a story!”
“I agree, and so does my sister. Shawna’s life story has Hollywood written all over it.”
As the evening progressed, sounds of the night emerged with great vigor. Insects, owls, and distant coyotes sang their songs as Lindsey and Jake sat quietly, appreciating all nature had to offer.
Lindsey suddenly blurted out, “Hey! Where’s my mail?”
“What?”
“My mail. You know, one of your main reasons for coming to find me.”
“Oh, right.” He flashed a sideways smile. “I guess I almost forgot about that.”
“Well, I doubt the United States Postal Service will forget that you forgot.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Where did I put your mail? Hmm. There wasn’t much, really. But I remember moving it to somewhere it would be safe. Oh, sure. I placed it in the last and empty file at the back of this box,” he said, gently sliding the damp and misshapen box closer. He frowned into it and came up empty-handed. “I don’t understand. It was right here. It was. I guess we could send out a search party in the morning.”
On that note, they both turned toward Wendell’s pile of stuff. He’d started up his own search and rescue, and had quite a variety of saliva dampened items in his collection. Lindsey jumped to her feet and headed to his pile.
The first thing she found was a dead squirrel. “Ooh, yuck.” She dug a little deeper, then stood up. “Wait! Wait! This could be it—or at least some of it.” She brought everything that resembled a paper product back to the fire to take a closer look. “Like you said, not much here: a piece of what used to be a bag of Cheetos, someone’s water bill, pages from a magazine—I think they might be from Teaching Today.”
A twinge of excitement shivered within her as she spotted the last two items—two envelopes addressed to her. One was a bill—no surprise there. The other, a damp, wrinkled, and slightly chewed envelope, was from Elisabeth Meriwether.
“Who’s that?” asked Jake.
“She’s the head of that awards conference I attended. It’s probably just a follow-up letter about future events,” she said, happy simply to have received something that was neither a bill nor junk mail.
She carefully uncrumpled and attempted to flatten the damaged goods, hoping to decipher the somewhat smeared or missing words by the light of the campfire.
“What does it say?”
She squinted hard at the typing. “The first line is all in caps. It says—Oh, my gosh!”
“It says oh my gosh?”
She jabbed him with her elbow. “Oh Jake, you’re so funny. No, it says…I don’t believe this. Here, look.” She passed it to him, and he read it out loud.
“CONGRATULATIONS, LINDSEY. YOU HAVE BEEN NAMED THE NATIONAL INNOVATIVE TEACHER OF THE YEAR.”
Lindsey shrieked with joy and amazement. “Do you know what this means, Jake? Do you?”
“Nope, I don’t,” he said with a charming grin. “But I bet you’re gonna tell me.”
Lindsey’d had her share of ups and downs, and this was definitely an up. “Actually, I don’t know all the details, and most of the middle of this letter is unreadable due to, well, teeth marks,” she said, glancing at the dog, “but at the conference I think Elisabeth said the national winner would present her innovations next school year and would be paid for doing that. Let me see if I can make out anything else from what’s left of this letter.”
“You do that, and I will pour us each another plastic cup of wine, because no matter what else the letter says or doesn’t say, this calls for a celebration.”
She barely heard him as she sank into her chair. “Oh, this is difficult to read, but I definitely see some words. Oh wow. I can see sabbatical…arranged with your district…regular salary…royalties?…expenses…summer pay…begin work now…now?…advance of $200 next week…call soon!”
“Let me see that. Maybe I can piece together a few more words.” He peered closely at it. “So far it all sounds great, though. Huh. The only thing I can add to what you already read is a zero.”
“A zero?”
“Yep. Your advance is not $200, it’s $2,000! Cheers!” toasted Jake. “I think you are going to have an incredibly interesting and lucrative year, my dear.”
Lindsey’s plastic cup did not rise to join the toast; it didn’t move at all.
“Cheers?” Jake tried again.
But she was no longer floating on air, sporting a smile that could melt the hardest of hearts. Tears tumbled down her cheeks, and sobs rendered her breathless. It was too much. She couldn’t handle all the emotions roaring through her. She stood up, ready to run into the night—but from what? And to where?
But tonight, Jake was ready. He caught up to her just as she struggled to open her car door, took her into his arms, held her close, and let her cry.
“Let it out, girl,” he said gently into her ear. “Let it all out. It’s okay.”
Lindsey slumped weakly, willingly against his strong body, and Jake leaned against the car. Sensing something was wrong, Wendell cautiously stepped close to the couple and sat, gazing up at them, looking first to Lindsey, then to Jake, and back again. He put a paw on Lindsey’s leg, hoping for a pat on the head or a scratch behind his ears—some kind of sign that everything was all right.
“Listen, Linds,” Jake said, “I don’t know what this emotional release is about. Maybe nothing, maybe everything. But I do know that you deserve that award. Look, your life has turned around, and you did it. You created all the greatness, all the goodness. It was there all the time. And the best is yet to come.”
Still wrapped in the safety of his arms, Lindsey returned the whisper. “Thank you, Jake. You’ve always been there for me. Long before I even knew it.”
He took her head in his hands and looked directly into her tired eyes, searching for something. But it was she who asked the question. Her voice trembled. “Why am I falling apart now?”
“I don’t know, Lindsey. But for now, just breathe. Slowly…Good…You’ve been through a lot. Give yourself a break. Everything will be all right.”
Jake’s hand brushed back the stray hairs that had tumbled from her ponytail, partially covering her eyes. “Lindsey, I know this is none of my business, but now that Shawna and Anthony have broken up, will you let Anthony back into your life?”
“I don’t mind you asking. It’s okay, really. I’ve given that question a lot of thought. I know Anthony wants to come back to me. At least that’s what his brief note said.”
“Yeah. That’s pretty much what I figured,” Jake said, then he looked away as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear her answer.
“There was a time,” she said, “Well, most of the time, actually—when I would have jumped right back into his arms and tried to pick up where we left off. God, I
wanted that so badly, and for so long.” She gave him a weak smile and shook her head. “But not now. I could never be with him again. I have a new understanding of what is important in love and in life, and he doesn’t fit the description. I’m certain of that. But what about you? What will you do now? Begin a new doctoral thesis?”
He smiled. “No. That’s a definite no, at least for now. I’ve learned a thing or two about myself this year, and after all the snooping and sleuthing I’ve done, talking to all the players in your life and putting two and two together, so to speak, I’ve decided that I’m a better detective than a psychologist, though the two actually go together quite well. I do have a plan, and my time here in the mountains with you has helped me confirm it. So for now, I will enjoy great satisfaction through using my BS degree and my interest in plants, the earth, and any aspect of nature, to obtain a job at one of the local nurseries. And—” He grinned wickedly and wiggled his eyebrows. “You’re gonna love this. I thought I might write a detective novel in my spare time. As a hobby, just for fun. What do you think of that?”
With his arm still around her shoulders, they strolled back and sat by the fire. “Sounds like a great plan for you,” replied Lindsey. “It seems almost everyone I know is writing something: travel logs, architectural articles, fact and fiction about troubled or special needs children, and, of course, now, detective novels. So maybe I will, too. In addition to Lindsey’s Art Journaling with Children teachers’ book, I just might write—in my spare time—a romance novel.”
Jake laughed out loud, and she was drawn into his sparkling eyes. He looked relaxed and happy, and so incredibly handsome, sitting by the light of the fire. So when he turned toward her and his smile was different, she knew something had changed. His eyes locked onto hers with such intensity it was as if she was able to see, really see, into his soul. And she sensed she wasn’t the only one by the fire with these feelings.
Kindergarten Baby: A Novel Page 28