The Trouble Way

By James Seloover

Jake Forest is a man who thought he'd experienced all of those rites of passage moments -- some incredibly good, others not -- now that he had nearly used up all of his numbers.

He experienced the usual rites: graduation from grade school, high school, eloping to Idaho, military service, college, and work at Big Richards.

During his years at Big Richards, he'd seen others struggling to exist in a society that held people in place by greed and lust for power. He watched the little people fight for what was their due.

There were loves and loves lost and, of course, the lusts. He searched his entire life and discovers the romance and happiness he's been looking for with two unlikely people.

"First you are one, then two, then three, and when you use up all the numbers, you die." Bella said when she was three. She said they couldn't be "best friends," because he was too old. But, he could be "the best grandfather in the whole wide world.

He'd come to the conclusion with the accident with Bella in the Raccoon River it would be the last of those damnable rites.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Seloover
• Release date: Sep 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311741004

James Seloover

Raised in northwest Oregon, James Seloover graduated from Knappa High in Knappa, OR. Joined the Air Force in the early sixties, attended Oregon College of Education (late sixties), and transferred to Oregon State University (early seventies and earned a BS in Business Administration), then worked for nearly thirty years in management. Retired and attended Spokane Community College (earning an Associates Degree in Web Development).Worked for the Oregon Department of Forestry and moved to Iowa and worked for several years at DHS. Now babysits his 3-year-old grandson, writes, and assists other authors to self-publish.Has authored two books, "A Bed of Needles," and "The Trouble Way," (both literary novels). He is working on a third, tentatively titled: "At Least Your Head isn't Stuck to Someone Else's," a humorous novel of the people around us who think their problems are bigger than other peoples'. ).Lives with his wife, Paula, in West Des Moines, IA.

Book preview

The Trouble Way

James Seloover

The Trouble Way is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are from the author’s imagination. Any similarities to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

The Trouble Way

James Seloover

Copyright James Seloover 2014

Published at Smashwords

Contents

Chapter 1 Old Jake Forest and Bella

Chapter 2 Jake Forest, Priscilla, and Uncle Wendell

Chapter 3 Old Jake Forest

Chapter 4 Mr. Peter Head

Chapter 5 Candy Lane

Chapter 6 Jesse Martin

Chapter 7 Ann Sandal

Chapter 8 Candy Lane

Chapter 9 Jake Forest

Chapter 10 Linda Bonnét

Chapter 11 Dwight Hutton

Chapter 12 Mr. Peter Hedd

Chapter 13 Old Jake Forest

Chapter 14 Annmarie

Chapter 15 Jake Forest

Chapter 16 Priscilla James

Chapter 17 Old Jake Forest and Bella

Chapter 18 Bella Nelsen

Chapter 19 Old Jake Forest

Chapter 20 Old Jake Forest and Bella

Chapter 21 Bella Nelsen and Gracie

Chapter 22 Old Jake Forest

Chapter 23 Old Jake Forest and Priscilla

Chapter 24 Bella and Jake Forest

Chapter 25 Old Jake Forest

About the Author

Other Titles by James Seloover

Author Website

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Dava. I will love you until all of my numbers are used up.

Dream

When Bella was three, she fell into the ice-caked Raccoon River and died. I was watching her at the time. I saw as she climbed on the sparkling mound of snow, lean over the iron railing to look at the ice-flow, lose her footing, and tumble into the river. Papa …hep you, she said in her little voice as I felt her fingertips touch mine and watched her eyes disappear from sight. I looked over the side and saw her clinging to a floating branch. Something caught my eye and I looked down. Sitting on the bleach white snow like someone placed him there to take his photo was Lonesome, the fuzzy brown stuffed puppy she gave me for my birthday. She named him Lonesome. She couldn’t pronounce her Ls, so she said Yonesome. She was working on Ls by practicing saying yong yegs. She would say, "Long, long, long, then, yong yegs.

Chapter 1 Old Jake Forest and Bella A yong, yong, yong time ago.

2008-2013

Papa, I want you to call me Bella, my little sweetie said. She was sitting on my lap. We both had dolls in our hands and we were playing family.

I don’t know where she came up with the name, Bella. It may have been from a story she had heard or maybe it was someone she knew at pre-school. She liked to play that we were a make believe family and wanted me to pretend that her name was Bella. She knows that I am not really her grandfather but she wants to always pretend that I am. When we meet someone new, she insists that I tell them I am her grandfather. She always calls me Papa, unless we are playing dolls, then I’m Daddy.

I often wished I were someone else. Maybe not someone else, rather a different sort of person. A better one, more like Bella.

I met most all of Bella’s friends at her preschool and some of them weren’t very nice to my little sweetie. One of her friends who she considers a best friend sometimes ignores her. One time, when my baby wanted a hug before she went home, her best friend pushed her away then ran, leaving Bella standing looking down at her shoes. Bella overlooked those shortcomings and always said good things about her friends. Bella is like that. That’s what I want to be like -- but it’s hard.

So, who am I to argue with a little girl who, when I pick her up at preschool, runs top-speed toward me from whatever far reaches of the playground, with outstretched arms, yelling at the top of her little voice, Paaaapaaaaaaa, until she collides full speed into my legs, jumps into my arms, then informs every kid that we pass in the playground: This is my Papa. So, Bella is just fine with me and I’ll refer to her that way as long as she wants me to.

The running and hollering Paaaapaaaaaaa came to a rude end on the day I walked into her preschool and into the room where the four-year-olds were sitting at desks or in front of the teacher listening to her read a story. First, one teacher’s helper saw me and hollered to the second assistant, Tell Bella, her Papa is here. The second assistant, the one in the room with all the four-year-olds, yelled, Bella, your Papa is here. Bella looked up and saw me as I looked around the coat rack, and, as if on cue, hollered, Paaaapaaaaaaa, followed by a screech that only a four-year-old can produce, and got up and ran through the maze of tables and chairs and children until she came slamming into my legs.

I bent to pick her up but before I could, the weighty head mistress, bound to her feet and screaming as loud as Bella had screamed said, Stop … stop right there Missy, and began to shatter Bella’s enthusiasm by telling her that something she had been doing for more than a year will not be tolerated any longer. Now when I go to pick up Bella, no more Paaaapaaaaaaa. I get a look and she slowly stands and walks to me and gives me a big hug. I could tell she was crushed by the embarrassment of the tongue-lashing she got from that horrible oppressive teacher in front of all her classmates. How could she have done such a thing to such an enthusiastic little sweetie who was excited to see her Papa?

On that day when she received that horrible reprimand, we couldn’t leave the outer classroom because Bella buried her head in my shoulder and wouldn’t look up or talk. I sat on the edge of the counter with her hugging my neck and her head on my shoulder for a good five minutes.

It’s okay sweetie, you didn’t do anything wrong, I said. Please talk to me honey.

She sniffed and I could tell she was silently crying, trying not to make any noise, as if she would get another tongue-lashing. It was no use, her fragile feelings had been crumpled. She remained that way until we got into the car.

Lately she had been buckling her own seatbelt. I can do it my own self, she would say if I tried to help her, but this time, she didn’t say a word and let me buckle her in. Her arms limp, her hands resting on her legs and her eyes were focused on her shoes. I fed the seatbelt through the guides and reached over her lap and secured the buckle. I gave her a kiss on the head and got into the driver’s seat.

Did you have a fun day at school today with all of your friends? I looked in the rearview mirror and could only see the top of her head. She didn’t talk the entire way home.

I carried her into the house and we sat in my over-stuffed lounge chair where she just hugged me. We stayed that way for about twenty minutes without speaking. We were both shattered. So, we held each other close and gave each other comfort; I needed it as much as she did.

You are the best granddaughter in the whole wide world, I said. It’s okay to holler to me sometimes but just not in the classroom, Sweetie.

No. I’ll holler when I come to see you at your house. Not at school and not at my house, and not in restaurants -- just at your house, she finally said. She had been thinking all that time and came to the conclusion as to when it would be alright to yell Papa to me.

That would be great, Honey. I love you so much, and when you holler Papa to me it makes me feel really, really special.

So, it was set and we would follow what she wanted to do. It sounded like a pretty sound decision and Bella came to that conclusion all on her own. Once Bella has something set in her mind, there is no changing it.

I hope that head mistress is satisfied.

It came to me that I didn’t even remember the head mistress’s name. What is your teacher’s name, Bella? I’m sorry, I forgot.

It’s Mrs. Ashoff.

I didn’t hear her very well because she wasn’t quite over her embarrassment. So I said, Ashoff?

No, Mrs. Ashoff, she said.

Is it Ashoff, I said again, still not sure if I heard right.

No, Papa, it’s Mrs. Ashoff, she said again.

Then it sank in. It was Mrs. Ashoff. I got the Ashoff right; I left off the Mrs. part. Sometimes, Bella makes me smile.

A few weeks after the Mrs. Ashoff reprimand incident, I went to Bella’s preschool to pick her up and saw her sitting with her best friend. She looked at me and stood and screamed as loud as a four-year-old can, Paaaapaaaaaaa. She ran through the maze of tables and collided with my legs and gave me that wonderful hug.

You have to use your inside voice. Remember, Sweetie? I tried to shush her.

Mrs. Ashoff isn’t here today, Bella said.

I gave Bella an extra-long Grandpa squeeze for her insight but remained silent.

Bella and I were best friends since we met. She doesn’t know it, but she was my best friend the day after she was born, the first day I saw her. She latched on to my finger with her long little toes and would not let go.

You are going to be my best friend in the whole wide world, I whispered to her while she nestled in her blanket in my arms.

Bella looked straight into my eyes and I knew she would be.

I remember telling her that and when she was older, around three I think, I told her what I had said when she was just a few days old.

Papa, I can’t be your best friend.

Why can’t you be? I asked.

We can’t be best friends, you are too old, she said.

What can we be then?

You can be my best Papa in the whole wide world.

Okay, you have a deal, and you’ll be my best granddaughter in the whole wide world.

Okay, she said.

Several weeks after Bella was born, her mom, Polly Wriggle, decided to move to an apartment in a better neighborhood. Priscilla and I were to meet at Polly’s apartment at noon to help her with the move. Polly drove into the parking lot fifteen minutes late and parked by an over-flowing dumpster next to a shed; she hadn’t thought to pick up boxes and had to run out and get some. Polly and Priscilla were to do the packing and it was my task to hold Bella while they moved in and out of the apartment with the packed boxes and loaded the U-Haul.

I hadn’t been to her second floor apartment before then and was surprised at how disorganized Polly was, being a nurse in training and all. There was shit scattered from hell to breakfast. It appeared from the mound of dirty dishes overflowing the double sink as if the dishes hadn’t been washed for more than a week. I caught a glimpse of a roach skittering from under the dish drainer and off of the counter.

Dirty clothes and shoes were everywhere with a huge pile tossed in a heap in her closet. I wasn’t snooping; the door on the closet wouldn’t close for all the dirty laundry. I could see that she was unlikely to be getting her cleaning deposit back once the landlord saw the apartment. The only ones likely to miss Polly as a tenant were the roaches.

I sat in my Toyota truck with the heater full on. I held Bella cuddled in a soft cozy-warm blanket. Bella opened her eyes a few times and looked to see if I had a grip on the situation. Apparently satisfied, she wiggled her tiny body a moment and went back to sleep. When I was holding her, I always felt there was something I could do to make her more comfortable and I snuggled the fuzzy blanket around her cheeks.

At that time Priscilla was not yet my wife. We weren’t a legal couple for quite a long time. Priscilla and I just said we were married because we are cousins and we have lived so long together that it’s just easier for all concerned. It is illegal in the state we live in for us to get married. Gays can get married but not cousins.

The fact that we weren’t married sort of rankled Polly for some odd reason. I think it was her holier than thou relatives; her loony aunt Dolly more so than anybody else.

Maybe it was her nut, brother, Wally. Hell, he wouldn’t even allow her to say that she was going to the bathroom in his presence. You were just supposed to get up and disappear for a while but not mention where you were going. If Polly didn’t follow her brother’s rules, he would pout the remainder of the visit and refused to talk.

Polly was not married to Bella’s daddy so she really had no room to judge Priscilla and me. The fact is, the man of her dreams was Polly’s co-worker. And, as more came to light of this man, it seems he had children with four other women; one also a co-worker of Polly and happened to be pregnant by him at the same time as Polly.

She told her relatives that Priscilla and I were married so we played along. I don’t know what she told the old relatives about her Man’s extended family. I doubt that her dream man was ever present at any of their family gatherings. The truth is, neither were Priscilla and I. We were good, dependable domestics over the past five years; apparently that doesn’t qualify one for an invitation for a family dinner. Kind of ironic Polly wouldn’t have made the connection; a bit of reverse discrimination, possibly.

Eventually, Priscilla and I eloped to Colorado and got legal, where it isn’t against the law for cousins to marry.

I’ve known Priscilla since I was nine or ten when I watched her emerge from a 1950 green Ford camper when she came to live in Oregon. My dad and her dad were going to be partners in what turned into a short-lived commercial fishing enterprise.

After about a year in Oregon, Priscilla disappeared over the hill in the back of the same camper and, except for a couple of meetings, we lost track of each other. Before we seriously connected again, somewhere around forty or fifty years had passed. I don’t know. Who can remember trivial stuff like the number of years having past anyway. Bella would just say it happened a yong, yong, yong time ago. She has a little trouble with her L’s.

When you think of it, it is not all that odd for Bella to want to be called Bella … after all, look at the people around her. We’re all a half-bubble off plumb, as my Mom used to say. Well, some are, some less so. But a big chunk of the people I know are a whole lot more off than that. Polly sure is. It took me a while to realize that. She got progressively more unstable as time passed. It took Polly a while to realize she needed some help and went to a doctor. Since then, Polly has relied on some sort of pills to keep on an even keel. Priscilla and I could always tell when Polly missed a few days of taking her meds.

I’ll fill you in on Polly Wriggle’s downward spiral to her eventual selfish, small self. It was a gradual affair; Priscilla and I didn’t see it coming until it was too late. Each level of her unstable behavior became the new normal so it was hard to tell she progressively dropped a notch. We were comparing her behavior with the most recent level while we should have been looking back years rather than weeks. I’m still trying to get it straight in my mind as to what nudged Polly over the edge. This period turned out to be the not happy part of our lives. I got that phrase from Bella. She was warning me of a particular part of a movie we were watching, the not happy part. I don’t believe that Polly is even aware of the horrific damage she has inflicted. It was far worse than what Old Mrs. Ashoff from Bella’s preschool did. Mrs. Ashoff’s unkind reprimand is no comparison with the damage Polly caused.

Polly seemed mostly normal for the six years that I have known her. Priscilla has known her longer since she was Priscilla’s daughter’s roommate before I came into the picture.

The one who took the prize for instability was that lunatic Janis, my ex. The worst she did to me was to stab me in the goolies with a serrated steak knife. It took Polly a while to catch up with Janis; but she did. On the crazy scale, Polly’s action knocks Janis right out of the arena. She’s the Mike Tyson of crazy.

Bella is one of the few normal people I know. And that’s no stretch. I’m going to tell you some things about Bella and about her mom, Polly. And, I’m going to tell you about a few other nuts I’ve met on my long journey before I ever met Bella. Many people I’ve known, for the most part, had lost their moral compass. Their internal gyro mechanism that kept them flying straight and level seemed to have gotten out of balance, mine included. Bella has the effect of smoothing down the rough parts in my guidance mechanism, allowing the gyro to spin smoothly, leveling my flight path. And none too soon. And, that too, is no stretch.

My name is Jake Forest. It’s my real name. To give you an idea of my age I’ll tell you what Bella told me as I drove her home from preschool.

Papa, you are really old and soon you’re going to die.

How can a little three-year-old have such thoughts? Bella tells it like she sees it, for true, as an old acquaintance of mine used to say; she was from the South. New Orleans. What Bella said didn’t even hurt my feelings. I was glad she was so honest with me.

Chapter 2 Jake Forest, Priscilla, and Uncle Wendell Obviously there was more spit and a bit less polish on the old home front. Lesson Number 3: Same as Number 2; it’s an important lesson.

Late 1950s, Early 60s

Shit happens.

No shit, Sherlock! As Roy, Jake’s old school buddy, had a habit of saying. Roy had a few like that. Another was I shit you not. If you ask him how he was, he would say, Fair to middlin’.

One of the few things that didn’t involve crap happening during that short space of his pre-teen, double-digit years was that Priscilla James, his cousin, made a brief entrance into his hapless life.

Things happened before then that were not pleasant, but he didn’t consider them to be a high level of unpleasantness. It would have been nice if his dad were around more.

Why is Daddy gone all the time, Jakes said. They were living in an old tarpaper roof house that belonged to his grandfather on his Mom’s side.

Well, he is in the Coast Guard, honey, and there is a war going on, she said. As if that was sufficient explanation for his perpetual absences. He’ll be home soon. That war comment was not comforting. Nobody really talked much about that place he’d heard his grandfather talking about called Korea so it didn’t seem to Jake that there was much danger there. After all, his daddy was in the Coast Guard; they didn’t fight wars. It wasn’t until much later, when Korea was over that he learned of his daddy being in that very dangerous war, World War II.

Life sometimes decides to take the fork in the road that leads down the Trouble Way as if someone deliberately turned the sign post, like they do in those cowboy movies where the outlaws send the good guys down the wrong path. Jake careened happily down the wrong way at top speed just like those cowboys riding headlong down the path into certain ambush. There’s a good reason they call it the Trouble Way, Jake came to realize. For him, much of the trouble occurred before he was thirteen. Two biggies were that Priscilla abandoned him when he was nine and his dad dying three years later.

His dad’s death was a monster happening. Someone doesn’t just die and that’s the end. When someone dies, it’s the beginning. That event precipitates a whole log-raft of additional life altering trouble. It changed Jake’s respectable middle class military family to one living virtually two-doors down from poverty.

Then, if that weren’t anguish enough, right smack after his dad died, his baby sister died at the raw age of four days old, and his grandmother, who always kept a bag of Circus Peanuts in her cupboard for Jake and his sister, died within a year. Jake didn’t cry at his grandmother’s funeral like he did for his dad and sister, as if crying would cause someone else to die. He had the stupid idea that he would be seen as tougher if he didn’t. Jake felt bad about not crying for years. He should have cried. Her death ended one of those wonderful eras of childhood, Ma’s house with the secret stash of Circus Peanuts in the cupboard.

Jake owned one pair of shoes, a pair of jeans, and one jacket, none of which were replaced before they practically fell in shreds off his body and then only by someone else’s worn-out crap. For gym class, his mom had to let the water bill drift, as she said when a bill did not get paid on time, to buy him a pair of Converse high-tops.

One thing he did have to admit, they were never hungry and always did have warm clothes to wear, ragged or otherwise.

They did have a used nineteen-inch black and white television. The weak signal was received from a transmitter over a hundred air miles away in Portland via a dilapidated antenna. Jake’s mom would sit in the living room watching two separate shows at the same time on the same channel because the screen displayed nothing but the ghosts of both shows and snow. She never complained saying she got the drift of both programs.

One time, he remembered being embarrassed out of his gourd because the glue on the sole of his right shoe came loose and several of the kids in his class laughed. The shoe was one of those Sears and Roebuck cheap brown canvas slip-ons with a two-inch elastic band across the arch and a thin rubber sole covering a sponge inner sole. The rubber came unglued in the wet Oregon climate allowing the sponge inner sole to become saturated. Along with the squishy sound it made, the sole kept rolling under his foot causing him to trip unexpectedly as he strutted his stuff down the hall at school. When he was not tripping, that sole made a clap, squish, clap, squish noise. He tried to conceal his shoe disability by limiting all unnecessary walking around and walked gingerly when he had no alternative. He tried to fix it with some baling twine, wrapping it about a hundred times around the toe of his shoe to hold the sole in place, but the twine slipped off after about four minutes and he was back squish-flap walking again. What a shitty idea that turned out to be. He tried rubber bands but that made his toes fall asleep and he gave up and resigned himself to flap walking. Eventually, he cut the rubber sole off and squish-walked until the sponge wore through.

There were a few other trouble examples as far as Jake was concerned. His sister’s reaction to the recent family experience manifested itself in her adding to her menagerie. The result was her accumulation of nineteen dogs, an similar number of cats, and a black and white Billy-goat named Dexter. Five of the nineteen dogs had names. None of the cats did. An accompanying herd of sinister fleas skulked onto the homestead and didn’t give a diddly-bump what they infested, a dog’s butt or Jake’s.

Dexter would head-butt anybody who came into range, something that was actually cute when he was a young kid but much less so in his adult years when he grew a set of angry looking horns. He would look all cute and innocent and lure someone to within butting-range, about three feet, and would cease the cute face, lower his head and those horns would inflict some real damage on an unsuspecting grown-up and knock them on their fat keister. His offensive odor could deck a grown man at twenty yards down-wind; thirty on a wet day.

Dexter’s demise came one winter afternoon as the result of being tied to a length of chain for weeks to a stake under the pine trees near the blackberry bushes in the backyard. Dexter tangled himself, unnoticed by anyone, in the chain around his neck and darn near strangled. The chain was so tight Dexter could barely bleat. Jake’s dad had to reef the chain from being imbedded like a barbed wire fence strung tight around an alder tree in the hide of Dexter’s bloody neck. Jake couldn’t watch and went back into the house but heard the pop of the 22-cal. rifle shot when his dad ended the goat’s unfortunate misery. Jake thought that maybe his dad should have shot first, maybe weeks earlier, before it was necessary to yank the chain imbedded in the poor beast’s neck.

Much of that animal related anxiety occurred after Priscilla left and before Jake’s Coast Guard Daddy died. By that time, his sister already had enough animals to stock a small petting zoo. Jake sometimes wondered where that military enthusiasm his dad must have had for spit and polish. Obviously he applied much less of it on the ol’ home front than the ol’ war front. Maybe the Coast Guard was a bit unfamiliar with the havoc a multitude of dogs, cats, and one goat named Dexter can create.

During those post-Daddy years, the family meals tended toward substantial quantities of Campbell’s Bean with Bacon soup, bought in case lots, and toast (which, to his sister’s benefit, was her favorite meal ... it was not Jake’s). They had mush (the military term for oatmeal) for breakfast. For lunch it was the mixture of the mushy Bumblebee chunk light tuna fish with Best Foods Sandwich Spread, a mixture of mayonnaise with chopped dill pickle, on Franz white bread sandwiches. It constituted the solitary item in their lunch sack from the time he was twelve till he graduated from high school. It took Jake at least forty years before he could bring himself to eat another tuna sandwich. But, by then he graduated to the higher quality solid white tuna meat and his own mix of mayonnaise and dill pickles.

During those times, the family could never afford to eat out, even at the Custard King, the cheapest of the poor people’s drive-inns in the Podunk little town, Astoria, thirteen miles west of where the menagerie wandered about the steadily dilapidating homestead.

And, all the misfortune happened before he was in the sixth grade. Talk about a gold-standard example of happening trouble.

Before Priscilla left he was in what he imagined Lutheran heaven would be like. For a scrawny, freckle-face, redheaded, farm boy from northwest Oregon, Jake felt the Lutheran God his Grandmother prayed to and instructed him, his sister, and several of the neighborhood kids about, had shown a blinding spotlight directly on him. It was as if He hand-delivered Priscilla to him. She was tall, and absolutely best of all, had irresistible dimples. He knew his Lutheran Grandmother would never approve of his liking her the way he did; she was his cousin. So, as all good practicing Lutherans do, he crushed any expression of his feelings down deep inside, concealed safely from everyone except for the only person that counted, Priscilla.

When he finally garnered the courage to tell her how he felt, it was nearly too late. It was a short time before she left him. They were in the hay barn, jumping from the rafters into the haystack. On one jump, he crash-landed next to her and, on impulse, he turned to her and said, I really like you, Priscilla.

To his surprise and amazement, she responded, I really, really like you, too, Jake, and, to add a thick layer of carrot cake cream-cheese frosting on that second really, she wrapped her gangly arms around him and gave him a tight squeeze which caused them both to lose their balance and tumble over backwards, laughing, into the prickly hay. With that, he nearly floated to the rafters for his next jump.

Jake walked the horse – his dad surprised him and his sister with a pony two Christmases earlier – to the rail fence and Priscilla slipped on behind him. He purposely left the saddle at home and only used the blanket because it was more fun riding bareback. Besides, Priscilla would have to hold on tighter around his waist if they rode without the saddle. He really liked the way she held tight to him as they rocked in unison as the pony ambled easily along the county road.

Priscilla had a brown paper lunch bag with some sandwiches. They headed out toward the creek that ran through a grove of alder trees at the edge of the back field. His grandfather called it the back forty, like in the old John Wayne movies. In reality, it was the back eight or ten. She had been unusually silent for the entire ride.

Priscilla slid off Apache first and Jake followed and tied the pony to a low hanging branch of an alder tree nearby, leaving enough slack for the pony to graze. He took the saddle blanket off Apache and laid it on the grass where Priscilla proceeded to empty the contents of the lunch sack she had packed.

Mmmm, Jake said when Priscilla pulled the tuna fish sandwiches from the sack and handed one to him.

Jake, I have something to tell you. She did not have her usual smile and her dimples were not activated.

He stopped chewing on the bite of the sandwich and stared at her.

I’m not sure, but we may be moving back to Wisconsin, she said. Mom keeps crying and pleading with Daddy to move back home.

If you do move, when do you think that will happen? Jake asked.

I’m not even sure if we will move. It’s not for sure, but it might happen. I don’t know when, she said and began to unwrap her sandwich. I hope we don’t. I really like it here. And, I really like you too. I don’t want to go back.

It probably won’t happen. Your mom is probably just homesick and will get well after she is here a while longer. Don’t worry.

I hope you’re right, Jake. But, I’m scared. She leaned over and gave him a hug and buried her face in his shoulder. I’m really, really scared.

He felt cool moistness of her tears in his neck. When she finally let loose of him, she gave him a quick peck on the cheek. I’m sorry.

It’s okay. I’m sure everything’ll … be … fine, Jake said, his voice breaking like when he had to give one of those horrifying class presentations. He shielded his eyes from her because of the moisture forming in the inside corners. Some hero, eh, Jake-O.

The ride back home was even quieter ride than the one to the back forty. Priscilla held on to him extra tight, hugging his back, her head turned to the side. They remained that way for a long while after they got back home as if she didn’t want to ever let loose of him. Jake let Apache graze while they just sat on his warm back. Finally, Priscilla slid off, saying her Mom would be worried and then said goodbye and strolled toward her house.

Don’t ... try not to worry, Priscilla. It’ll probably be okay.

She turned and just stood there; then ran back to him, pulled him nearly from the pony’s back and kissed him. She spun and ran toward home and glanced back one final time and waved. Jake tossed a wave, reined Apache around, heeled him into a gallop, and was scarcely out of Priscilla’s sight before he began to cry in earnest.

Ma –Ma is what he and his sister called their grandmother, like the woman in the old Ma and Pa comedy movies – talked of a God that just would not take Priscilla from him. He was absolutely, positively certain of that. Well, what he really knew absolutely, positively about it was absolutely, positively ... rip-shit nuthin’.

Neither knew at the time, but she had two anxiety-filled short months to the day after that little picnic on the saddle blanket by the creek before God said something to his key grip angel like, Cut … That’s a wrap … Kill the spot and can it. The grip doused the spotlight and that little production came to an abrupt end. The light gleaming so brightly on Jake quickly faded to a dying amber glow and was soon merely a fading memory.

Priscilla would be climbing over the tailgate and under the white canopy lid covering the bed of that old green Ford pickup she, her Dad, Mom, and brother drove west across country to Oregon. They had migrated just like those Okies escaping No Man’s Land of the Oklahoma panhandle, fleeing the dust pneumonia of the dust bowl and heading to California. Priscilla would disappear from his life, forever, for all he knew. He sure as heck had no reason to think her Ol’ Man would flip a U-ie in that rusted-up Ford and beat-tracks back to Oregon just because little Jake-O had a broken heart and really, really liked Priscilla. First off, it was a first-class sin, mortal, for all he knew, if Lutherans had such a rule – her dad’s family belonged to a tribe of Lutherans who lived in the East – second, as if a second was even needed, her dad didn’t give a flying fiddly what scrawny Jake-O thought. His uncle had a bigger problem, a homesick wife who hadn’t stopped her daily crying jag for the three months leading up to their departure. Problems don’t get any bigger than a blubbering woman. Jake knew that for darn sure, first hand.

One time, Priscilla started to cry because Jake said she was sure tall. Well, obviously you don’t tell a tall girl she is sure tall and expect her to start blubbering. He meant it as a compliment. Priscilla was sensitive about her height and didn’t take it as any stupid compliment no matter what he intended; he found that out lickety-split, as his Mom would say. Crying women are no picnic. Another thing, it doesn’t do you a darn bit of good to say you didn’t mean anything by it either. Doesn’t matter one, single, solitary bit. You said it so you darn well meant it. You can say you didn’t mean it till the wet cows come down the lane on a rainy night and the crows roost in the cherry tree at dusk; it doesn’t matter. You better come proficient at saying I’m sorry, or you’ll be one miserable José till the last darn crow lights its pointy-ass in the cherry tree. Women are weird that way. Height and I’m sorry ... that’s about all you need to know about women; that’s it in a gift box with a fancy red bow stuck to the corner, and your name printed in black ink on the gift-tag.

It was around the time Jake really got to really liking Priscilla that she