My Year of Living Dangerously

By Danelle Hall

Mandy Ryan’s To Do List

Divorce lying, cheating rat bastard husband Roger
Live for a year in a yurt
Write a book about it.

Mandy takes a sabbatical from her position as wife, mother and government documents librarian and goes in search of the real Mandy Ryan. She has a contract to deliver a book length manuscript on living the primitive life for a year in a yurt when she has never written a book, never gone camping, and never lived more than six blocks from a Starbucks.

For optimistic Mandy, not a problem.

Except for that plane with no lights.

And Hannah’s murderous nephew, Henry.

If she survives, Mandy would love to become the competent and organized adult she’s always wanted to be. But she keeps forgetting her bottled water and finding moccasin prints around her yurt . . .

And then, there’s Sheriff Tom . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543915822

Book preview

All.

CHAPTER 1

It all started with the damned letter.

Well, maybe it didn’t really start with the letter. But the letter was the proverbial straw.

If I hadn’t been so eager to share that rotten letter, everything might have rocked along as it had for the past twenty some years, leaving me ignorant but happy instead of enlightened and miserable.

But I did want to share my amazing news with hubby Roger.

And I did climb in my funky orange VW bug and drive to his office.

When I realized his car wasn’t in the parking lot there, I started home along the route that I always followed.

The one that led by the Office Motel.

The one where I spotted his low-slung sports car with his distinctive Hot Shot tag.

The next hour is still a blur in my mind, but I think I remember two naked figures tumbled together on a rumpled motel bed, just visible in the light from a Red Sox game on television. I think I remember keying a long ugly scratch across both doors of Roger’s pride and joy, his bright yellow Porsche 911 Carrera. And when I got home, the bottle of Luscious Berry purple nail polish in my purse was empty so I may have defaced his vanity tag.

Or dumped the purple polish on his leather upholstery.

I’m normally not this crazed, but here I am, Amanda Ryan, formerly a government documents librarian and formerly a wife of twenty three years to super salesman Roger Ryan. Now I’m no longer either. I’m just a dumped wannabe writer, primed to begin a year long sabbatical, who wrote a query letter about an idea for a possible book and received a positive response. The New York editor, Edgar, was actually borderline ecstatic in his letter. Fool that I am, I rushed to share the joy with Roger.

I can already picture the back of this mythical and unwritten book that Edgar is waiting for, yeah, the one I’m committed to write. First of all a photo of me. Not one of those thumbnail images where you can’t see the details, but a large photo showing my kinky barn door rust-colored hair and my freckles. Then beneath that photo that I really hate, the biographical information: Author Mandy Ryan. Forty-two years old but who’s counting. Formerly a librarian. Formerly married and recently cheated on. The only important achievement to this point in her life has been the care and feeding of two offspring.

I was a pampered daughter until I married Roger. Then I became a tolerated wife. After the arrival of Cheryl and David, I became a doting mother. My entire life until now has been as either a daughter, a wife or a mother. I don’t know how to be me, Mandy.

My two rug rats, excuse me, my two darling children have grown up into reasonably adequate adults. What this situation will do to them I haven’t a clue. David is old enough that he’ll probably manage. Cheryl is another matter. She was always more Roger’s daughter than mine. From time to time I have my doubts about Cheryl. She is sooooo … I don’t know.

Maybe she was switched at birth.

Maybe I was switched at birth. My mother was a beautiful woman, a woman who would have embraced agoraphobia rather than set foot outside her front door without perfect make up and perfect hair. Her clothes had to be perfect for the occasion, as well. I don’t have the patience for that. As a result, I sometimes look more like an unmade bed than a woman seeking control of her life.

For my To Do list: Gain control of my life.

Cheryl has her grandmother’s appreciation for female adornment, her father’s eyes, and my wild and kinky hair, although hers is strawberry blonde. She probably belongs to us whether I like it or not.

Except there is no us. Not any more.

I close my eyes against sudden tears.

Rats. I promised myself that I was finished looking back. Only forward momentum from now on.

I’m not happy about the separation even though I keep stumbling into a small secret part of me that, I’m ashamed to admit, feels like a kid on the last day of school. Maybe I’ll make it to Greece or London after all. Maybe I’ll never again have to drive Roger to the airport and then go home alone or listen to him talk about his next big score. Maybe I’ll see a stranger across a crowded room …

Maybe I’m the world’s biggest idiot and should take the bastard back. Only he doesn’t want to come back.

And he was royally annoyed about his car.

If I were a better person, I’d feel something other than glee about his car.

But I’m not. And I don’t.

Although I haven’t been able to make myself sign the divorce papers and send them back to my lawyer and best friend, Julia. There’s never been a divorce in my family. I remember lots of shouting and slammed doors, but no divorces.

When I got my divorce papers last week, I did manage to get my first name down on the signature line but then I couldn’t make my hand write another letter. It was really weird the way my hand just stopped working. I thought for a minute I was having a stroke, but nope, just weirdness. So the unsigned divorce papers are in the glove box of my new-to-me baby blue Toyota Tacoma and I’m about to embark on an adventure.

Out of town.

Julia, my friend and my lawyer, advised a change of scenery. One change of scenery coming up.

CHAPTER 2

Fast forward to now, to this moment.

Picture the Oklahoma sun blasting down on two women on a small lawn in front of a small frame house, white picket fence and all, in northwest Oklahoma City.

Picture me with my wild red hair in my eyes and mouth. Picture Julia looking like she just stepped out of a cool room, and is ready for a lovely lunch in a lovely restaurant with lovely cloth napkins.

The final bulging basket is stuffed into the last pocket of space in the back of my almost new truck. Julia, my friend since forever, and now my lawyer, tugs on the rope that anchors the canvas cover.

Julia is a natural blonde who wears her forty something years like a model, and who looks cool even with the Oklahoma sun broiling us. She may have a misting of sweat on her delicate cheeks and over her pouty lips, but unlike me with great globs of moisture rolling down my face, my neck, my back, she still looks cool.

And calm.

And collected.

I stand in my front yard, drenched with sweat. And consternation.

What in the hell am I doing?

What in the hell are you doing, Mandy, Julia says and puffs a small breath of air to cool her face. When I said change of scenery, she continues, I was thinking more along the lines of a weekend in Dallas or a quick run down to a spa in Galveston.

I have a project.

She snorts.

Would you rather I curl up and die?

"I’d rather you start acting like a survivor instead of a wimp and sign the damned papers. You’re not the first woman in this situation and you won’t be the last.

Wiping my face on a yard long piece of paper towel—sweat, not tears—I breathe deeply. Maybe I should examine my motivation for this project. A year in a yurt? Really? No doubt my children will give me their take on my bizarre plans long before I have a chance to consider it myself. But this is Julia. I have to defend my choices.

I have a contract.

And you no doubt have researched this publisher.

Well, no, I …

You’re a librarian, for god’s sake. Of all the people in the world qualified to research some fly by night outfit, you are the queen of the universe.

I’ve talked with him on the phone. He’s fine.

I turn my back on her, ignoring both my misgivings and my reluctant friend and partner in this insanity. Instead I scrunch my sweaty face and mentally run through my To Do list.

Pack underwear, instant coffee and nail polish remover.

Done.

Trade tangerine VW Bug for powder blue Toyota Tacoma pickup, lightly used with low mileage, according to the newspaper ad.

Done.

Notify son, David, and daughter, Cheryl of my change of address.

Did that yesterday.

Utilities off. Telephone off. Newspaper cancelled. Mail forwarded to the Carson Corners Post Office.

House locks changed.

Check. Check. Check and check

All that’s left on my list is my lunch with Julia that will happen as soon as she finishes anchoring my precarious load. And muttering about me being out without a keeper.

Judging from our sweat-drenched tee shirts and stringy hair, we’ll settle for a drive-thru burger instead of a sit-down, cloth-napkin kind of place. Wherever we go, I’d really like her in my corner before I leave town. She’s been energetically vocal in her assessment of my mental condition since I shared my plans with her. I need her to shift gears and say, Brilliant, Mandy, what a great idea. Her comments so far have been more along the line of Have you lost your ever-loving mind?

I’m probably foolish to thinks she’ll change. I know I’m not going to change. I’ve invested too much, made too many commitments and burned several bridges.

Like I said, I’m a woman on a mission, bad hair, rumpled tee shirt and all.

New York editor Edgar’s letter that kickstarted this whole mess was simple and straight to the point: We are interested in your idea. Contract to follow. Please sign it when you get it and deliver the manuscript by July of next year.

Piece of cake. Right?

It was at this point, on the shoulders of my unfortunate visit to the Office Motel, that my life spiraled out of control.

Whatever the karma or kismet or contagion, I leaped when I should have looked. I said Yes, when I should have said, Let me think about it.

Before I even knew there was one, the window for changing my mind closed.

I’ll admit that while we sat in Julia’s pristine white Lexus under an elm tree and looked out at Lake Hefner, while we balanced McDonald’s cheeseburgers, fries and diet cokes, my courage failed me. If there had been any way to do it, I might very well have changed my mind. Maybe if I told my library director that family matters had intruded and I couldn’t leave town after all, she’d let me have my job back.

Of course a young woman has been hired to do my job this year while I’m gone on my sabbatical. She‘s already installed in my office. I saw her last week when I stopped by to pick up the first of my minuscule checks that have to support me during this year of stupidity. I’ve done all of the paperwork for the sabbatical, and Roger and the Bitch from Hell are already shacked up together.

No, I’m a woman on a mission. I have to be. I’ve signed Edgar’s contract.

So, in spite of Julia’s comments, suggestions, rants and insults, we finish our cheeseburgers, leave the remainder of the fries for the wild birds, return me to my now silent and extremely hot house. The electricity has been turned off. No lights and no air conditioning. A motel would be the sensible choice, but I can’t afford a motel. I’ll be lucky if I eat on a regular basis.

After a sweltering and almost sleepless night, bright and early the next morning, I ease my overloaded pickup out of my driveway in Oklahoma City. With my lungs scarcely functioning, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, I navigate busy city streets to I-40 heading west. Then I drive like a novice NASCAR racer, destination my small sliver of land at the farthest edge of beyond, remnant of my parents’ one effort at estate planning.

CHAPTER 3

Given my luck lately, I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear the siren suddenly snarl behind me. I’m ten miles outside of Juniper Flats, the last town that can be called a town before my destination. Carson Corners, my home for the next year, isn’t a town. It’s a wide spot in the two-lane highway between Juniper Flats, Oklahoma and Conejos, New Mexico. Editor Edgar wanted remote. He’s getting remote.

I hope I can handle remote. I get nervous when I’m more than six blocks from a Starbucks.

The siren nearly sends me into the ditch, coming as it does after hours with only the CD blasting. Shocked, I glance in the mirror and see flashing lights.

Was I speeding?

By now I’m so tired, I can’t remember where the speedometer is, let alone how fast I’ve been running. Carefully, I pull my rocking, swaying Grinchmobile toward the side of the road. With pebbles pinging the undercarriage and my wheels churning the soft dirt shoulder, I careen to a stop.

Maybe I was speeding.

My sweating hands clutch the steering wheel while a big tall man in a cream colored western shirt and Levis climbs out of his car and arches his back as if he’s been in the vehicle too long. He straightens his Stetson, a white one of course, and checks that his badge is in place on his wide leather belt around his trim flat waist. Then almost as an afterthought, he loosens his weapon in its holster.

Back in the days when cigarette companies advertised, an ad campaign featured a gorgeous western hero of a man, rough hewn features, a cowboy hat, chiseled face, tousled sandy hair. He sported manly shoulders sheathed in a snug western shirt with pearl buttons. Tight Levis and worn cowboy boots completed the picture. The dream image had him leaning against a corral, horses in the background, and with the sun setting behind him, enjoying a Marlboro cigarette. Hence the name, Marlboro Man.

Walking toward me is the perfect reincarnation of the Marlboro Man.

As if he has all the time in the world, he saunters slowly to the back of my truck, stops to examine something, probably my tag, eyes the precarious, tarp-covered mountain of my stuff, writes something on the small pad he has removed from his breast pocket. Maybe it’s my angle of view in my side mirror. Maybe it’s my sleepless night causing my eyes to cross. The man is gorgeous. At least I think he is. He moves like he’s gorgeous.

But then I may not be a good judge of men at this moment. I’ve had a rough couple of months.

Reflective sun glasses and an impassive face under his broad brimmed white Stetson fill my side mirror. I lower my window and force stiff cheek muscles to smile at him.

Granite Jaw doesn’t react. Drivers license, please.

His voice is deep, a bit gravelly with a trace of southern in it, a bass voice, a chord on a Spanish guitar voice …

Ma’am? he says with just a touch of impatience.

Damn. Wonderful voice, rotten attitude. Just my luck.

I suck in hot, dusty air and try to remember, through my fog of uneasiness and fatigue, what in the hell I did with my license. My hands shake as I dig in my purse for the small plastic card. Is it out of date? When was the last time I renewed it? Have I ever renewed it?

After dumping a billfold, a purse sized package of Kleenex, a plastic spoon, a roll of mints, a cell phone, one green sweat band, miscellaneous credit card receipts, a small purse-sized address book, a pencil with no lead, and a soggy Hershey bar, I find the license and hand it to him without looking at it. Maybe he won’t look at it either.

Amanda Ryan, he says, carefully examining my license and then carefully examining me.

I hate that photo. It shows every freckle and every mile marker on my forty-two year old face. I look like I just got out of bed, either drunk or hung over, and forgot to comb my kinky, red hair.

Of course that’s the way my hair looks most of the time, but still …

Excuse me, he says politely.

I tune back into the moment.

Where are you headed in such a hurry, Amanda?

Mandy.

He nods. Mandy.

Carson Corners. My voice cracks. I clear my throat and try again. I’m moving. To Carson Corners.

I would never have guessed. His dry voice rumbles from somewhere deep in his chest. Welcome to the county, Mandy. I hope I’ll see you again.

I hope not, I mutter.

Just what I need. A ticket. More expense.

He laughs, a rich and lovely sound, and writes the driver’s license number on his ticket book, makes other notes, tears off a sheet and hands it and my license to me.

Not a ticket, a warning, Mandy Ryan. A freebie. Your truck is overloaded and your left turn signal’s not working. Use your arm until you get that fixed.

He grins at my blank look.

Manual signal. He demonstrates, his left hand popping into the air to signal a right turn and then pointing straight out in the opposite direction for a left turn. Have a nice day. He touches the brim of his hat with two fingers.

And he’s gone.

I sit in the stillness after he pulls around me and heads toward Juniper Flats. No ticket, I remind myself.

How did he know my turn signal doesn’t work? Was he behind me when I passed that last RV? Am I that tired?

Still too shaken to drive, I step out of the pickup and stretch my legs. My arms ache. My eyes feel dry and scratchy. I want this drive to be over now. Right now. A Mandy tantrum seems like a good idea, only there’s no one to impress. I settle for sailing a couple of flat rocks as far into the grasslands as I can. Then I dig out the plastic spoon and the melted Hershey bar for a chocolate fix.

I’ve come too far to turn around and go back.

I’ve signed a contract, taken the book advance and spent it. I can’t give the money back.

There’s nothing to go back to. At least for a year. My replacement has moved into my office at the library. Roger has moved in with Miss Tan and Tawdry, and her parakeet. Son David lives in Colorado and doesn’t need me. Daughter Cheryl and I have a love/hate relationship I’ve never understood or taken the time to unravel. I keep thinking she’ll grow out of it. Maybe I need to grow out of it.

The gooey chocolate slides off the spoon and onto my tongue. Chocolate doesn’t solve life’s problems, but it comes close.

I’m hot, sticky and cranky from the uppermost kink of my carrot-top hair to my flip flop encased fuchsia toenails . But the chocolate is sweet on my tongue and gives me a sugar high as I climb in my pickup, start it, and put it into gear. I pull down on the turn signal, then remember I don’t have one.

My arm shoots into the hot, dry afternoon, and like a Grapes of Wrath refugee, I guide the overloaded truck onto the empty highway and continue racing the sun toward the end of my journey.

CHAPTER 4

I should have left Oklahoma City at least an hour earlier than I did. The sun is much too low on the horizon for my peace of mind. I have to find someplace to sleep tonight.

I pause at the top of Keegan Gap and survey Carson Corners spread out below me with its few houses clustered at the base of the Keegan Hills. A wooden sign, faded and worn to pastel colors, welcomes me to Carson Corners, Home of Kit Carson’s Great Grandson.

I creep down the main street, looking no doubt like a gypsy surveying the possibilities. I pass the old schoolhouse, fashioned from blocks of sandstone and guarded by a cattle gate that allowed people to enter by pacing through a narrow S curve, but kept the cows on the outside looking in. The small museum, also from the native sandstone, has a new sign, and a new metal roof. I ease past the ancient grocery store, unchanged since I lived here as a child. Then my overloaded truck is suddenly past all six blocks of the town and I’m staring out at the long valley beyond. Nothing I passed looked remotely like a boarding house or any other kind of room-for-rent establishment.

My short drive toward Conejos, New Mexico forces me to face a decision—another drive of sixty miles in one of three directions: west to Conejos, east to Juniper Flats or north to Kaliche, any of which will have a motel room. Or don’t make the drive and face an uncomfortable night in my overloaded pickup.

I’m so tired I’ll be lucky to make it the nine miles to my land. No way am I driving sixty miles over narrow, unlighted country roads tonight.

When I lived here as a child, some thirty five years ago, my parents complained that there were no motels. When someone came to visit, he or she had to stay with us. My mother was meticulous about her personal appearance but she wasn’t that great a housekeeper. So guests required a frantic attack on the debris from our daily existence.

I thought surely by now someone would have at least opened a bed and breakfast or started a dude ranch. Something.

Nope. no bed for a tired traveller. My quick survey of the dark or empty houses up and down Carson Corners few streets reveals no signage of any kind promising a bed for the night.

Well, hell.

I give up my futile search for a room and park in front of the small grocery store, a dim light just visible through the large glass window. Good. At least I can get a soda and a candy bar before I head out to my land. I need a couple of bottles of water also. I should have bought those in Amarillo or Dumas, but I didn’t want to stop.

I climb stiffly from my pickup, go up the two cement steps to the walk in front of the store and try the door.

Locked.

A closer look reveals shelves of cereal and potato chips and candy bars in the light of a small dim bulb. No people. Again I try the door that still doesn’t open, and then see the small sign in one corner of the large window: Closed.

Great. No place to sleep and no snacks to tide me over until I can settle and shop. I hope this isn’t an indication of what my year is going to be like.

After another futile tug at the grocery store door, I get back in my pickup, turn my unwieldy vehicle around, drive east to the small turnoff and then head north. If I’m going to sleep rough and hungry tonight, I want to be hidden away on my land.

Olive green hills dotted with pinon and capped with sandstone bluffs form the boundary of the valley. White-faced cattle litter pastures that stretch from horizon to horizon, their bovine shapes becoming shadows in the encroaching dusk. Cactus and coyotes, magpies and meadow larks flourish in this high desert country, although most of the fauna and much of the flora has already settled for the night.

The narrow road leads me along the base of No Name Ridge to the cut that allows the road to continue north toward Colorado. My small piece of land lies off of Simpson’s road, a few miles this side of the Colorado line.

Later, while I sit on Simpson’s Road looking at the barbed wire gate to my very own ranchette, while I ponder my non-existent options, the sun slides behind a range of those olive hills to the west with a fiery flourish.

Not knowing what else to do, and too tired to drive another mile, I wrestle the gate open, drive through it, close it, and drive around the small rise so I’m out of sight of the road.

By the time I’ve eaten a cereal bar and washed it down with the half bottle of water I’ve been nipping on since Juniper Flats, early dusk has deepened into a stronger shade of dark.

By the time I’ve gone behind a tree, then rescued my crocheted afghan from its task of separating breakable mixing bowls, I’m trying to remember if I packed a flashlight. I locate a large plastic bag of soft goods by feel and prop it against the driver’s side door for an upright mattress. I’d move to the passenger side or the bench seat in back, but both are piled almost to the ceiling with my clothes, my camera, my files for my writing, my computer, my printer, and my Alphasmart word processor and various and assorted other stuff.

Stars are sparkling across the black sky by the time I’m settled behind the steering wheel of my pickup. With the chill and eerie emptiness pressing down and the sky too large above me, I take stock of my situation.

Doors locked. Check.

Hunger partially assuaged. Check.

Windows up to the max in spite of the heat. Check.

Heart in throat.

A large swallow and a deep breath. A couple of deep breaths, actually.

Through the truck windows, I watch a full moon paint the land silver and create a beautiful and ghostly dreamscape. I am not a fearful person. I’ve flown in small planes, scrambled around in caves, climbed one of Colorado’s peaks, a fourteener, one of those over fourteen thousand feet above sea level.. Okay, it was one of the easy ones, but I hiked it. I even tried the zip-line installed over the Royal Gorge after the fire.

Of course Roger was with me when I did those things so I can’t claim to be too adventurous. But still, I wouldn’t be doing this fool thing of living alone for a year at the edge of the civilized world if I were easily frightened.

But there is something spooky about empty country. I prefer the danger of humans to the mystery and silence of true solitude.

A soft hum eases into my awareness and grows louder as I stare out at the silver landscape. It sounds like a plane. Idly I look for the blinking, moving star that night planes resemble. I can’t find lights. The sound increases until it sounds like the plane is directly overhead and not that high. Still no lights.

Then the sound is past and seems to be moving toward the northeast. I catch just a glimpse of movement and a dark shape as the plane goes in front of the white sandstone cap-rock on top of Preacher Hill. I’m puzzled that someone flying over rough country with hills would not have lights. That seems reckless bordering on stupid.

I listen until the sound is gone and the night is silent around me again. Then I wrap my afghan close, punch and shift the bag of soft goods into a semblance of comfort, scrunch my eyes shut, and think about Cheryl and David, living their lives apart from me now. The split between their father and me surely won’t bother them that much. They’re grown.

Our breakup bothers me, but that’s just because I haven’t gotten used to the idea yet. I swallow twice, clench my jaw, scrunch my eyes shut, and search for another worry topic.

Editor Edgar pops into my mind.

Good, a prime anxiety generator.

It’s been forever since I’ve written anything. Needless to say, I’ve never written a book. Can I pull off this book writing thing? I’m a librarian, for heaven’s sake, not a writer. True, I love the written word, and I read a lot, but I don’t think that qualifies as author training.

Edgar thinks I can do it, though. So maybe I can.

Six months ago when hubby Roger and I stopped talking, and my forty-second birthday was rushing toward me like a runaway eighteen wheeler, on a whim I queried two publishers with a book proposal.

I would live off the grid for a year in a primitive dwelling sans electricity to prove that even though we love our hair dryers, and smart phones, we are adaptable creatures. If forced, through whatever circumstance to give up CNN and Fox News, we could survive for a year without them. I proposed keeping a journal to document my experiences living off the grid under third world conditions. The journal would then become a book.

It sounded better six