Un-Connected

by Noah Rea

  We put on some clothes that were a little nicer. Deb wore trucker attire less. Her outfits were hard for me to describe. They usually consisted of tight jeans or sometimes Capri pants as she called them. She had such great legs the Capri pants or a skirt really showed her off. She wore a black or red bra or teddy and a sheer blouse. There was often lace somewhere in there. You could almost see her bodacious figure through it but not quite. It was a tease for sure. It was never gaudy or raunchy and always feminine, but it was something I wasn’t sure I had seen anywhere else. In the evenings she would sometimes have it unbuttoned a little more which made a really nice view at supper.

  While we were walking to lunch, I asked her about her attire.

  She wanted to know what I meant and after a clumsy explanation and description, she laughed and said it was her “Cherry Hill” attire.

  It didn’t matter what she called it. Deb looked delicious in just about everything and especially that.

  Lunch was pleasant. We swapped stories of people we’d known and places far and near. Otis grew up there. But he’d made enough over the years that he and his wife, Tilly, had enjoyed some nice vacations. He had been in the Army and served in

  Viet Nam. They’d been married for fifty-one years. They had two kids who were married, and their daughter had two grown kids, one of whom had just married and the other was about to get married. They called about once a month to check in, but that was about it.

  The grandkids had stayed with them a lot on weekends and summers while they were growing up. Once they learned to drive, the longer stays slowed down a little. But Otis would fill their cars up with gas when they drove out, so they managed to get there a least two weekends a month, rolling in on fumes. They didn’t stay as long but probably came more often.

  Everyone who worked at the truck stop was family. Otis’s brother, Will, and Will’s wife, Barbara, were partners. They had a sister, Betty, who was also a partner but didn’t work there. She came once a week to fill her Escalade and pick up all the receipts. She was their bookkeeper. So Otis pretty much ran the place with his brother, who was pulling some third-shift store duty and doing daytime repairs. Their nephews and nieces were in and out working and helping all the time.

  Tilly had several sisters, who we scattered all over the place as she said, but when we asked where they were, it seemed from her description the most distant one was on the other side of Phoenix. It was obviously a matter of perspective. Deb and I laughed about it later. “All over the place” to us would be thousands of miles apart and maybe one outside the country. Tilly’s most distant sister couldn’t be more than 150 miles away and probably more like 100.

  They had been totally engaging and open to us. We were in a real quandary because we didn’t have much to share and even less we were comfortable sharing. I thanked Otis and Tilly profusely. I told them they had been so good to us that they made us feel a part of the family. I let them know I had just proposed to Deb after being an over-the-road driver with her for almost three years. She had accepted. We told them neither one of us were close to our family.

  Deb told about her marriage and life in Cherry Hill and how her husband found a new girlfriend and ended their marriage. She had been willing to forgive him and go to counseling, but she went twice and he hadn’t shown up yet. So with her high-end real estate remodeling business DOA because of the real estate economy, she started driving a truck.

  She’d driven almost two years when she picked up this wet stray puppy and gave him a chance. She said he still wasn’t much of a driver, but he worked for food, and she couldn’t afford to upgrade. She had intended to do it, though, the first chance she got. So when he proposed she felt she could straighten him and accepted his offer. Otis and Tilly laughed and laughed at her rendition.

  “Have you been married before?” Otis asked looking at me.

  “Yes, but it didn’t work out.”

  Otis asked when we planned to get married.

  Deb and I looked at each other.

  “We’d been talking about it and really didn’t have any family we wanted to be there.” I said looking Deb in the eye. “So it would likely be something really small. We might even go to a JP. It would be fine for me, but I didn’t want Deb to feel slighted so, it was totally up to her.”

  “I had a nice wedding to a jerk and now would settle for getting married with a JP if it was to you.” She said leaning over and getting in my face. “I will take this man any way I can get him.” She said to Otis and Tilly.

  I was embarrassed and thrilled all at once. She was looking deep into my eyes when she said it, and it was sincere and powerful. She almost took my breath away with what she said.

  Otis laughed a big out-loud laugh. “That is great. I have a cousin who is a JP in this county. I bet if I gave him a tank of gas, he would come out here with the marriage application and license and marry you right away.”

  “Wow,” I said to Otis, “this is quite an offer. I don’t know how I can refuse it because I certainly want to be sure she doesn’t get away. Let me talk to her and make a plan. We’ll give you an answer in a few minutes.”

  I took her hand and we walked outside. I told her I had hoped for something more romantic, but I wanted her to be my wife. Whatever she wanted, I would do the best I could. I asked if she wanted me to marry her as Sam or Ben.

  She said I wasn’t Ben any longer. I had needed to change and I had. She told me my driver’s license said Sam. Deb wanted her last name to be Adams, and she wanted me to be her man. And she didn’t want me to use any name as an excuse to stop loving her. So there were no excuses now and never would be.

  She was OK with getting married as quickly as possible without any planning or anything nice, just us, the witnesses, and a JP.

  We went in to tell Otis what we had decided. He said it was great. He had already talked to his cousin, and he could be there in about an hour with the marriage application as well as the certificate. Otis would sign the blood test required by the state, and we would be married today. No, he wasn’t a doctor.

  Otis asked if we had any wedding rings. I guess the blank looks on our faces told him all he needed to know. He told us to wait right there and ran out of the room showing he was excited too.

  Tilly clapped her hands and smiled. “This will be fun. Wait right here on Otis. I’m going to make some phone calls.” Then she stopped. “We want so badly for the young people in our family to be happily married, and it seems so hard these days. We want our kids to see weddings between people who really, really love each other. We can tell you two do, so we don’t want to barge in on you or intrude. But this could be really good for our family.”

  We didn’t know what to say, so we just smiled and said it would be great.

  Otis returned with a ring that was obviously old. It had about a carat diamond with smaller stones on both sides. The wedding band had been soldered to the engagement ring a long time ago. Otis asked us to please take it. It had been his mother’s, and no one in the family wanted it.

  Deb protested, saying she couldn’t take something out of their family.

  “Nonsense,” Otis said. “Besides you are family now. Just make me god- grandfather if you have any kids.”

  The ring was a little big but she put a little tape on the back for today and we would get it resized later.

  Deb said she had to do something with her hair and makeup, though I thought it a waste of time.

  “You look beautiful to me.”

  She went shrieking off to the truck to see what she could put together. She dragged a bag full of stuff in to find Tilly, and they disappeared.

  An hour later, she and I were standing under a canopy with the beautiful mountains as a background and a salty old JP. Deb was beautiful—as an understatement. She was Cherry Hill with attitude in a skirt that was a little above her knees and shorter than any dress I had seen her wear before. She had low string heels as she called them. She had painted her toe nails a beautiful dee
p red. She wore a deep red bra with a little more transparent blouse than I had seen before. Her hair was pulled back a little on one side to be different than every day and looked great as always. She was delicious.

  The JP asked us if we wanted to be together forever, if we would be faithful through good times and bad, and be there each for the other. He asked if we would cleave to each other and keep ourselves only for each other. We both did, and she became my wife. Tilly had a good crowd of grandkids, nephews, nieces, brothers, sisters, in-laws, and more. Probably one hundred people stood there for the ten-minute ceremony. Then we got a few pictures of Deb and me and then some with us and a few others including Otis and Tilly. There were some young couples who wanted pictures with us.

  Then we went inside, and Otis said the ice cream and drinks were on the house. People looked at Deb’s ring and oohed over it, though I’m sure several had turned down the offer of owning it.

  Otis thought it was well over one hundred years old. Lots of people came and introduced themselves and thanked us for letting them come to our wedding. A couple of young bucks told me if I didn’t take good care of her, they would be willing to. They said it with enough enthusiasm I was sure there was some truth to it. Then one of them asked me how I was feeling. He didn’t want to wish me any harm, but if I got sick, he wanted to be the first one to know about it.

  When most everyone was gone, Tilly thanked us as well. She said she wanted the best for all the kids, as she called them, and she wanted them to take life and marriage seriously. She said our wedding with the obvious love we had for each other would help them make good choices in life.

  We headed off to the motel in a Jeep we borrowed from Will. Before we had gone many miles, Deb told me to “pull over because we needed to talk.”

  I kind of smiled on the inside, because it was a little like what I said to her just before I proposed. I hoped this would be good news as well.

  Then Deb turned to me with this real serious face. “OK, here’s the deal. I grew up Catholic, and I have never taken birth control as the Church says. I used to use the rhythm method of birth control when I was living with Larry but haven’t had to in a while. When I was trying to save our marriage I just threw the rhythm thing out the window. You know about my life and my ex. So after a very few flings since then, here I am. You can have me as often as you want for the next three days and then for about five days after that you can’t unless we make other arrangements. I don’t want to get pregnant even though I don’t think I can, and I would love to have your children in a normal world but not now. So right now I think you ought to tell me again how much you love me and how pretty you think I am.”

  The remaining ten minutes to the motel seemed to take an hour.

  If I have to tell you about that afternoon and night, you need help. Sydney Sheldon wrote a novel I never read, but the name was Morning, Noon & Night. Dr. Pepper used to say 10, 2, and 4. The next three days went by too quickly. Our cell phones were off. We paid for everything with cash. We had no contact with the outside world. But it would be happy rest and relaxation.

  One day Deb shrieked. “I didn’t tell mom and dad. It happened so fast I didn’t think about it.”

  She called and her mother answered. “Mom I have a confession to make. Is dad there?”

  “Yes he is here. What is it dear?”

  “Mom I have been telling you about Sam that is driving with me. Well he and I have become good friends as I told you and …. We got married.”

  We heard her dad loudly say in the background, “I told you so. I knew it was going to happen!”

  “We are so excited for you honey. Your dad has been telling me for over a year that it was going to happen. When will you be back this way so we can meet Sam?”

  “I don’t know yet mom but we will try to make it before too long.” There was a pause and she said, “Mom I need to go but I love you and am sorry I didn’t wait for you to be here.”

  “Don’t worry about that. We just want you to be happy.” She said.

  After a week or so, we decided to drive back out to the truck stop and see what was going on.

  We hung around there awhile and guessed they thought we were getting bored. Otis offered us the use of an old car anytime we wanted to go into town to a motel or movie or whatever. There was a little town that was closer than Phoenix that had a small theater with two screens. They usually had four to five movies showing in rotation. Tilly volunteered to call and find out what was showing if we wanted. We had no other plans, and I sure wasn’t going to get back in the truck and read a book.

  Tilly had written down the movie choices, which really was a waste of time, because only one would be considered an “A” movie. The rest I had not seen and didn’t intend to see. So we went off to the movies in the late afternoon and sat in a theater with about twenty other people. We saw a movie we’d seen before, but we were so happy. It was the cheapest movie I had ever paid for. Admission was three dollars, and we were so full of lunch and ice cream, we would not likely be eating supper. But I was so happy to have Mrs. Adams with me nothing else really mattered. She was calling me Mr. Adams now. She was bossing me around a little too.

  “Mr. Adams, why don’t you save us a seat while I go to the bathroom.”

  And then she giggled as if she were a kid. I had never seen her so happy. I hoped I could keep her that happy always.

  After the movie we were walking to the car, and I started to take her to the passenger side

  “No, Mr. Adams. Where I will be sitting will be closer to the driver’s door, and it is where I want to get in.”

  I was so glad to have her as my wife and so glad we had those relaxing few days because it was changing fast, again. When we got back to the truck stop, Otis motioned us into the three-car repair garage. He closed the garage door immediately behind us. My heart was in my throat.

  Otis explained how a black SUV showed up and a guy was asking questions about a couple coming through. They didn’t show any interest or ask any questions about the truck, which was the only one in the parking lot and more than in plain sight. They had bad old pictures of both of us and wanted to know if he had security tapes or knew if we had stopped there. The niece who was at the cash register was the best liar of the bunch, according to Tilly. She told them no one fitting that description had been through there, and she said she would remember because they hadn’t had many customers all day.

  “Great job, kid,” Otis said and then turned to me. “OK. I knew your trouble with family wasn’t the whole truth, but our niece said they looked pretty scary, and their black SUV looked evil.”

  I stammered an apology to Otis and said it was way worse than I had told him. Someone was trying to kill me and now Deb, too. I told him the reason I didn’t tell him everything was that it wouldn’t seem true, and we didn’t want to bring him into our mess. We were very conflicted about it and were so grateful to him and his family. I told him I hoped he would not take our lack of candor as a slander but as an attempt to spare them trouble. I told him we would be on our way as soon as we could to change clothes.

  “Not on your life,” he said. “You make a stand right here. Are you a Christian?”

  “Yes, but not a very good one.”

  “Son, there are things about you we knew as soon as we saw you. I have been a good judge of character for at least fifty of my years. Those are bad people, and you need to quit running from them.”

  “I’d love to, but people get killed messing with them.”

  “I have a story to tell you sometime. But for now all you need to know was that several years ago Tilly had a dream about a couple coming here on the run from some bad people. In the dream she was asked if she would help them, and she said she would.”

  He paused for a moment. “So it meant we all are going to help. The whole clan. Some of the young ones don’t believe all the stuff Tilly tells them, but they are good shots, they know how to duck live fire, and they aren’t afraid. Son, you
are among friends and family. This can be a tough land, but it can also be a tough land to pry somebody off of. You need to stand right here, and we will help you slug it out.”

  I talked to him about all the kids and about how we were sure these people were killing all across the US. How they were not people to mess with. I told him I was scared to bring all his family in to this.

  He told me they were fighters down to the babies crawling on the floor. He said if they could ride a bicycle, then they could shoot a gun.

  “These people are trained assassins probably with full auto rifles and who knows what else.”

  We had this conversation back and forth for fifteen minutes, and he finally said he would not be dissuaded and he wanted us to stay. He told me there were Korean, Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan veterans in the group, and this was just family.

  Otis said he had friends he had known for seventy-five years who would stand with him in any fight he got into. He said he would not call on them normally, but if things got really rough, they would be there.

  Finally, I looked at my new bride. “We both know they are crazy, but we would probably be safer with them.”

  She nodded “yes”, so the deal was done.

  I asked him what he had in mind. He said the niece had asked them for a phone number in case they showed up. The guy wrote a number on a napkin with no name. I think she should call them.

  “What! Otis, have you lost your mind?” I raised my voice in surprise and fear.

  He looked at me for a second and then laughed. If we know they’re coming we can be prepared.

  “But how do you get prepared for people like them?”

  Otis told me to follow him. In a room off the garage and behind the store was a heavily paneled room that you entered through a hidden door. It had security monitors and electronic surveillance, which was beyond what this place presented off the street. But that wasn’t close to all they had in the room. One whole wall was rifle after rifle and handguns and shelves underneath with ammo.