Eden Bound

by Darrell Maloney

  What that hour and a half did, though, was give Tina a chance to drop Johnny off at his cousin’s house, say her goodbyes, and then catch up with Frank and Josie before they had a chance to leave town.

  She came tooling down Main Street as Frank moved his vehicle over to the 7-Eleven’s gas pumps and went in to pay for his fuel.

  And then and there, in the blink of an eye, she hatched her new escape plan.

  She pulled into the parking lot and brought the pickup to rest directly in front of the store, then turned off the headlights and lay flat across the front seats.

  She didn’t want Frank to see her; not just yet, anyway.

  She needn’t have worried.

  When he came out the door he was laser-focused on the Payday candy bar in his hand.

  It was the first time he’d seen the delectable peanut-covered nougat in years. He just couldn’t help himself.

  He had two more in the pocket of his parka. He wasn’t so callous or stingy he’d have gotten himself such a treat and not gotten one apiece for Josie and Eddie.

  He just wasn’t that way.

  But he could still have some fun.

  While the diesel fuel poured into his tank, he’d scrape ice from the edges of the windshield and the side windows, in full view of his travel companions. He knew their rapt attention would be upon the bar in his free hand, for surely they hadn’t seen such a bar in many years themselves.

  Their mouths would water and they’d visibly wince each time he took a bite.

  Each time the bar got a little bit smaller and the chances of him sharing became a little less likely.

  When they saw him take the last bite and toss the wrapper nonchalantly into the trash can next to the pump they’d likely be furious with him.

  Oh, they wouldn’t say anything. That would be tacky.

  But they’d fume and likely wouldn’t say ten words to him in half an hour after he got back in the vehicle.

  Josie would answer with a terse, “Nothing!” when he’d ask if something was wrong.

  Then, when he could barely hold his laughter any longer, he’d say, “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

  He’d produce the two Payday bars from within his pocket and hand them over.

  And he’d be their hero once again.

  It was the same trick he’d once performed on his son, back when the world wasn’t a miserable frozen hell.

  And then later to his grandson.

  God, he missed them.

  He hadn’t seen them in so long.

  He had a new family now. They didn’t share his name or his background, but they were as close as the siblings he once had, the son he once carried in his arms.

  The grandson he used to take fishing and motorcycle riding.

  While he was putting his evil plan into place and scraping the ice from the windshield, he didn’t notice Tina getting out of the pickup and walking into the store.

  And why would he? He was distracted by the prank he was perpetrating and had his back to her.

  He had other things to worry about.

  -45-

  Tina was an accomplished liar, as many people in her generation were.

  Her parents and grandparents firmly believed that truth was always the best and most honorable way, regardless of the circumstances.

  Tina saw things differently.

  In her mind, why get yourself in trouble when you could lie your way out of it? Why suffer the consequences of your actions when you could spin a tall tale and get off scot-free?

  She walked into the 7-Eleven, mustered up a look of frustration and addressed the clerk.

  “Hey, do you mind if I leave my pickup out here for a couple of hours? It keeps dying on me and I’m afraid I won’t make it all the way home.”

  He didn’t answer right away.

  Instead he sized her up, from her head down, as many tactless men do when talking to a pretty girl.

  He smirked just a bit and sent shivers up her spine.

  She, like Josie, had seen his type before, way too many times.

  All women have.

  He was undressing her with his eyes, wondering what she looked like underneath her clothes.

  Wondering, if he played his cards right and said the smooth things he knew all women wanted to hear, whether he’d get lucky on this particular morning.

  He decided the best approach was to pretend to share her concern.

  “What’s wrong with it? If it’s something minor I might be able to fix it for you.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I think when I filled up the other day I got some bad gas.”

  “Well, my replacement should be coming in any minute now. I’ll get off in twenty minutes or so. I can run you home if you want.”

  No. She definitely didn’t want. Not in this lifetime or the next.

  “No, that’s okay. My dad is coming to get me. I just need to leave it there for a couple of hours until he can come back and siphon most of the gas out and put better gas in it.”

  He knew as soon as he heard the words “Dad is coming” that he wouldn’t be getting lucky. Not on this particular day, anyway. He’d likely never see this pretty girl naked, never have the chance to put his slimy paws on her.

  Those pleasures wouldn’t be his to enjoy. They’d belong to somebody else, and that was a pity.

  “Sure, you can leave it out there. I’ll tell my replacement not to have it towed.”

  She couldn’t waste any more time with this sleeze. Frank might be pulling out any time and she had to catch him before he did.

  She said, “Thank you” and was out the door as quickly as she’d come in.

  On her way to the gas pump she dug deep and was able to bring up a few tears.

  Men were suckers for tears.

  Especially older men like Frank.

  Men of Frank’s generation weren’t like the guy in the store. They were raised to honor and respect women, and to protect them.

  Men like Frank hated to see a woman cry, and always tried to help.

  Not like the creep in the store wanted to help, but real honest-to-goodness help.

  She walked around the side of the Hummer just as Frank was placing the nozzle back on the pump.

  “Tina! What a surprise. Hey, wait a minute. Are you crying? What’s the matter?”

  They were words of genuine concern, from a man who genuinely wanted to help.

  She spun her tale.

  “Johnny and I had a major fight. I found out he was cheating on me with my best friend. It’s not the first time, either. But it’ll be the last. I told him to go straight to hell, that we were done.

  “So now we’re broken up and I never want to see him again.”

  Now, the thing about Frank was, he was one of the most helpful guys on the planet.

  But he knew his limitations.

  And one of the biggest was affairs of the heart.

  He was woefully inadequate when it came to soothing women who’d been hurt by their men.

  If they were physically abused, he could step in and pound the cad into the dirt. That was no problem.

  But when it came to an aching heart, he never seemed to find the right words to quell the pain.

  That, he knew, was a woman’s job. They were just better at it.

  “The first thing we need to do is get you out of the cold. Crawl inside where it’s warm, and tell Josie what happened. She might be able to help.

  “Tell Josie I went back in the store, and I’ll be back in a minute. I forgot something.”

  -46-

  By the time Frank walked back out five minutes later with a third Payday bar in his pocket, Tina had weaved a tale to beat all tales.

  A tale of betrayal and broken trust.

  A tale of an unscrupulous boyfriend who’d cheated on her time and time again. Who always apologized and said he’d do better, and who then went out and repeated his scummy behavior over and over again.

  When Frank crawled into the driver’s seat he turn
ed to look at Tina, who was a sorry sight to behold. Tears rolled down both cheeks, her eyes were red and puffy, and her nose was running.

  Without a word he slipped one of the candy bars out of his pocket and held it out in front of her.

  He applied the same logic he always used when his young son was crying.

  The candy might not make things better, but then again it couldn’t hurt.

  Tina took the bar and managed to squeak out a “thank you” and what looked at least a little bit like a smile.

  He handed Josie and Eddie each a Payday as well, for to make them wait would just be cruel.

  Josie looked to Frank and said, “Honey, I hope you don’t mind. I invited Josie to go with us. You think it’ll be okay with your friends at the mine, don’t you?”

  Now, that put Frank in a bad spot.

  He was totally unaware of the food situation at the mine.

  During the first freeze they’d conducted monthly inventories and strictly rationed the food so they knew exactly how much they had at any given time.

  They didn’t count by commodity. They counted by calories.

  Each food item’s nutrition label was carefully examined and inventoried by the number of calories it contained. A box of flavored noodles, for example, might have five servings of one hundred calories each. And there might be two hundred ten boxes on hand.

  On the inventory sheet it would be listed as five times a hundred times two hundred ten, or a grand total of 105,000 calories.

  The logic was simple.

  Keeping an inventory based not on commodity but on calories made it easier to ration 1500 calories per day for adults, 1200 calories per day for children.

  By doing some quick math, they knew at any given time exactly how many days before their food supply ran out.

  And if it ever came down to the wire, and the food situation became critical, nobody would care what they ate as long as they got enough food to sustain them.

  It worked out quite well during the first freeze, and Karen and her kitchen staff did a phenomenal job of preparing three meals a day with exactly enough food to give everyone their daily ration of calories.

  This time was different.

  Frank was kidnapped and taken to Plainview before his friends sealed the mine. Everyone was still in the process of gathering food when he disappeared.

  Accordingly, he didn’t have a clue whether they’d gathered enough food to sustain them.

  And since he didn’t know that, he also didn’t know if his return would place a burden on their food supply. For all he knew they were scraping to get by as it was. For all he knew they didn’t even have enough calories on hand to sustain themselves, and his return would make a bad situation even worse.

  He already felt guilty for that.

  And he felt double guilty for bringing Josie and Eddie with him.

  His friends in the mine were very fine people. Some of the best people he’d ever met in all his years.

  In all likelihood, they’d invite Frank and his new family with welcome arms, even knowing they might suffer mightily because of it.

  In all those hours Frank had been driving six miles an hour, pushing three feet of snow out of the way, he’d worried about hurting his friends back at the mine.

  He’d never mentioned his concerns to Josie, because she was under enough stress already. She was leaving the city she grew up in and the only family she’d ever known and was trusting Frank to take her into a whole new world.

  She didn’t want to be a burden on anyone, and if Frank had suggested her new friends could be sacrificing their very well being to take them in she’d have been crushed.

  Now, with her already pretty much promising their new friend Tina could come along with them, the problem was even worse than before.

  But Frank was very much in love with Josie.

  She’d become not only his wife but his life as well.

  He’d fall on his sword for her. He’d swim the deepest ocean and climb the highest mountain.

  He’d protect her with his very life, and by extension he’d do to same for Eddie.

  A lot of husbands have a very difficult time telling their wives “no.”

  Frank Woodard was one of them.

  Really now, how could he say with a straight face that he loved her and would do anything for her and then deny her any wish?

  Those types of husbands are all over the place.

  They often put themselves in difficult situations to make their wives’ and families’ lives easier.

  This was one of those situations, and Frank was one of those guys.

  So he did what those guys always do when their wives ask them to do something difficult.

  He smiled and said yes, while at the same time keeping to himself that what he just agreed to would be monumentally hard to carry out.

  He kept that part to himself.

  He didn’t know how he’d keep his promise to his wife, but he’d find a way.

  “Sure,” he stammered to Josie, with a nod to Tina.

  “I’m sure they wouldn’t mind a bit.”

  -47-

  Frank drove south through the city of Big Spring and was delighted to see that Mamie was right: the highway to San Angelo was indeed open. And not only that, but it was recently replowed.

  That meant there was practically none of the most recent snow on top of the icy pavement to slow down their progress.

  It also showed the difference between the work of a professional snow plow operator in a vehicle actually made for such a purpose, as compared to Frank with his makeshift plow.

  The guy who Frank guessed came through here no more than a day or two before extended the width of the cleared roadway by about four feet.

  Now there was room for an oncoming vehicle to pass, albeit it very carefully and at very slow speed.

  Because of the plow operator’s recent efforts, Frank was able to pick up speed to an unbelievable forty miles an hour.

  He was in a state of traveler’s bliss.

  He even did a quick calculation in his head so he could spread the good news to the others.

  “If the cleared road goes all the way to Eden, and the operator got on Highway 83 in Eden to clear a path to Interstate 10, we’ll be at the mine late this afternoon.

  “If Highway 83 isn’t cleared it might be tomorrow morning. But either way it won’t be the additional week I was expecting.”

  It was indeed good news, for all of them were tired of driving at a snail’s pace.

  By the time they’d gotten a few miles south of Big Spring they fell silent.

  Eddie, his fears calmed by Josie’s soft words, his stomach now full, was asleep and softly snoring.

  Everyone else was lost in his or her own thoughts.

  Frank was trying to decide whether he was asking too much of the people at the mine to take in not only his new wife, but two other people as well.

  After all, he wasn’t there from the beginning. He and Eva were guests themselves, having met the mine’s residents when he was on a hunting trip during the first thaw. He and Eva hit it off with them instantly and were invited to move into the mine to ride out the second freeze.

  Tragically, Eva died during a horrific accident.

  At the time Frank thought he’d never get past his grief and start living life again.

  He wanted to give up and to follow her so many times, but recognized that suicide was a sin. He would not take that step, but would wait for God to take him when He was ready for him.

  Instead, God put Josie in his life.

  It was a totally unexpected turn of events, but he was certain Eva would approve. All she ever wanted was for Frank to be happy.

  And he was.

  The problem, as he saw it, was that the people at the mine were too good to others.

  When they invited he and Eva to live with them they assured him they had enough provisions to take on two more mouths to feed.

  But he always wondered whet
her that was really the case. He worried that when voting to bring them on board the residents agreed in secret to eat a bit less; to stretch their provisions a bit farther.

  He was almost certain they’d welcome Eddie and Tina with open arms, even if it meant cutting their own daily rations a bit.

  And that wasn’t what he wanted.

  He’d tell them in advance he already had a Plan B and even a Plan C. He’d tell them he could not bring himself to be a burden on them or to take advantage of their generosity.

  Whether they’d be honest with him about their food stores was anybody’s guess.

  But he hoped they were.

  While Frank was driving in silence and developing his backup plans, Josie was lost in her own thoughts.

  She’d never met anyone in the mine.

  Everything she knew about them she learned from Frank. And they’d talked for hours about the group. She knew who the leaders were. Which were friendly and which were a bit grumpy. Who the practical jokers were, which ones were deeply religious and who’d led troubled lives.

  Frank tried not to betray any confidences or secrets his old friends had shared with him, but wanted to give Josie a bit of an overview of each of her new friends.

  Trying her best to remember how Frank had described each of the mine’s residents, she imagined what her new life would be like.

  It promised to be vastly different than life in Plainview, where nearly all the people she lived with were criminals with few scruples and fewer morals. Where everyone was at each other’s throat and the tension was always palpable.

  She’d make the best impression she possibly could, of course. She’d be as helpful as possible and contribute every which way she could. She’d be friendly and kind, and would apologize twenty times a day for Eddie’s behavior.

  She’d win them over with her kindness, and that would take very little effort because it was who she was.

  Still, she couldn’t help but worry just a little bit that some of the residents might not accept her. They might view her as an interloper, a stranger within their midst.

  Frank reached over and took her hand, then squeezed it and winked at her.

  It was almost as though he read her thoughts.