The Road Less Traveled: A Collection of Short Stories

By Rochelle Hamel

The Road Less Traveled, a collection of eight short stories by Rochelle Hamel, focuses on a core of familiar themes as it explores the importance of community, the value of romantic love, the significance of family relationships, and the hardship of loss.

The story The House by the Road features Jessie, a runaway teen who strikes up an unlikely relationship with a feisty elderly woman. In Call Me Ali, a pampered wife is the only survivor of a plane crash, and in the wilds of Canada she discovers her inner strength and grit. Mackenzie Lewis tells the story of a widow who faces the difficult to decision to save a family heritage in a modern-day business world. In Winter of Content, Claire, a Manhattan lawyer, experiences the blizzards in the mountains of Montana.

The collection follows the emotional journeys of women of different ages who discover an inner strength as they face an unknown future. All have chosen the road less traveleda decision that changes their lives forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475992458

Rochelle Hamel

Rochelle Hamel earned a degree in information systems and a national fellowship from the Life Management Institute. Her life journey has included nursing school, modeling, and working as a landscape artist. Hamel and her husband, Dr. John Hamel, have four children and live in upstate New York. This is her second book; she is also the author of a Civil War novel titled The Darkness of the Day.

Book preview

The Road Less Traveled

A Collection of Short Stories

Rochelle Hamel

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

The Road Less Traveled

A Collection of Short Stories

Copyright © 2013 by Rochelle Hamel.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4759-9244-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-9246-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-9245-8 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013909846

iUniverse rev. date: 06/05/2013

Contents

1.   The House by the Road

2.   Call Me Ali

3.   Second Marriage

4.   The Drifter

5.   Mackenzie Lewis

6.   The Blue Canoe

7.   The Ivory Box

8.   Winter of Content

To my children

SHELLY ANN, SCOTT, BARBARA AND RICK

ALSO TO

My Mom, Judy Kaiding, who passed away before she knew

what happened to Jessie, a character she loved

The Introduction

The following stories are emotional journeys of men and women of different ages who discover an inner strength as they face an unknown future and the triumph of joy when the unseen is reached around the bend in the road.

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in tum makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story—characters, of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

Author, Ann Patchett

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the Manlius Writer’s Group for their support, insight, suggestions regarding a word here, a paragraph there, and the normal grind of editing.

The House by the Road

Jessie’s shoulders felt sore from the backpack. Her steps became slower, as she trudged down the hot macadam road. It was a two-lane road, with rolling hills and shade trees now and then. She had passed a few farms, with cows in the fields. Jessie’s last hitched ride had dropped her off at a crossroads yesterday. She decided to get off the highway and take the country road for a change of scenery. She was sick of the commercial fast lanes.

It was mid August, still warm, with the smell of fall around the corner. The farmers had finished the haying and reaping the oats and were now cutting the corn. It wouldn’t be long before she would have to figure out what she was going to do to get through the winter. She couldn’t keep traveling like this, when the snow started to fly. She was only fifteen and people weren’t likely to hire her. She needed a place to stay. I can’t go back home, I just can’t! She thought.

Jessie’s home life went from bad to worse when her mother, Reba, brought in Jimmy, her latest boyfriend. Jessie never knew her father. He had been in the military and was killed in Vietnam when she was five months old. Her mother never recovered and used alcohol to overcome the loss. Reba worked as a waitress during the day and drank at night with whoever was the boyfriend of the moment. It was up to Jessie, to find odd jobs, so she would have clothes and supplies for school. The Rescue Mission store was her best friend, as she made use of others’ discards. Jessie had learned to isolate herself in her own room away from the crying-jags and arguments of her mother and male friends. Her room was her world, with her ears and mind closing off everything, on the other side of the door. That is, until Jimmy. She was aware of the innuendos, when she would walk past to get something to eat to take back to her room. Sometimes, he would brush up too close to her in passing, but she felt she was safe with her mother around. One evening, she came home from a friend’s house, expecting her mother to be there. The only one there, was Jimmy, and he had been drinking and smoking weed. She went straight upstairs to her room and shut the door. It wasn’t long before she heard him coming up the stairs, calling her name in a singsong way. Frightened, she propped a chair under the door knob. He pushed and pushed until the chair fell over. Jimmy picked her up and threw her on the bed, ripped her tee shirt up, kissing her as he pawed over her. It was at that moment that her mother walked in. There was angry screaming, but not at Jimmy, instead at Jessie. She blamed Jessie for leading him on. Jessie couldn’t believe her mother would take Jimmy’s side. It was at that moment that she made the decision to leave home. By morning she was on her way from New York heading west with a trucker.

Jessie sat under an old maple tree, whose leaves were starting to show a little color, and took out the peanut butter jar, remaining bread and plastic knife that she had grabbed when leaving home. It was her emergency food. The truckers had been generous at the truck stops, and she had been able to fill her water bottle in the convenience store restrooms. But, since she had taken to the country road, food was scarce. Last night, she had been able to raid what was left of a vegetable garden. Tomatoes, old sweet corn and carrots had been her dinner. She had seventy-six dollars and some change in her pocket, but knew that wouldn’t take her far. Ma will be furious when she realizes I emptied her wallet. Serves her right, she thought, with a sigh and sadness at what could have been.

After relieving herself behind some bushes, she jumped over the ditch and started down the road. She had no idea where she was or where the road would take her. Jessie started singing to herself, you take the high road and I’ll take the low road, then stopped in the middle of the road, trying to remember who used to sing that to her. The puzzlement was still on her face, as she heard a tractor coming down the road behind her. She turned around and waited for it to catch up. Jessie put up her thumb for a ride. The farmer stopped and let her hop up to sit on the fender.

The farm was a mile down the road. She jumped down when he stopped in the barnyard. Thanking the farmer for the ride, she asked if she could fill up her water bottle. He pointed her to a spigot at the side of the bam and walked inside the house. Not very talkative, she thought, as she walked back down the driveway. At the road she turned to look at the farmhouse and saw a curtain pulled back, so she waved, and the curtain quickly fell back into place.

Three days later, after a cold night sleeping under an evergreen tree and scraping the last of her peanut butter jar on to her end piece of bread, she picked up her backpack with weariness never before known. Jessie knew she needed to find water. She had been walking for about a half mile, when she came upon a dirt road on her right. The land was a mixture of woods and old fields of golden rod in full bloom. There might be a stream down there, she thought hopefully. The dirt road was one lane, that followed the up and down hills of the countryside. As she walked over one more crest, she spotted a rundown house by the road. The yard was overrun with weeds, but she could see a well-worn path from the house to a mailbox. There was an old green Ford Scout parked under a shade tree, and a black longhaired scruffy dog sleeping on the porch. Jessie was leery of approaching the porch, because of the dog. She was a city girl and didn’t have personal experience with any animals. Her thirst getting the better of her judgment, she approached cautiously. But, the dog just looked up at her, never raising his grey muzzle from his paws, and thump the tail on the porch. None, the less, Jessie made a wide path around the dog and knocked on the door. No one came, she knocked harder, still, no one. She hollered out a hello. A voice, from outside the back of the house, shouted, I’m coming, I’m coming. A few seconds later, an older woman with disheveled grey hair hanging straight down came around the corner. She was wearing an old ripped plaid shirt over a faded, flowered, cotton dress that buttoned down the front.

A slip hung below the dress, and men’s black rubber boots came almost to her knees. She came up close to Jessie, so she could see her face clearly, squinted at her, stepped back to look her over better, then walked back up to her and said Annie, you’ve come home. She, then, hugged her with a surprising strength. Jessie was speechless.

Could I have a glass of water, asked Jessie, haltingly.

Sure you can. I’ll pump you a nice cold glass while you put your things in your bedroom.

Jessie stared at the old lady in wonderment.

Get along with ya, and I’ll have your water ready for you.

Jessie shyly opened the squeaky screen door, which slammed behind her, making her jump. She walked into a small living room. There was a threadbare rug, with what appeared to be roses in the design. Jessie didn’t see any TV, or even a radio, and yet it felt comfortable. There were a couple of rockers, and over-stuffed chairs and a couch with covers over them. In one comer, there was a potbellied woodstove and over in the other comer, a piano, with white rollers in the front. Jessie had no idea, what that was all about. Along one wall were shelves made of boards and bricks full of paperback books. The small tables near the couch and chair had doilies with lamps on them.

Jessie walked down a hall and found two bedrooms, the first obviously used by the lady, and the second, quite empty, except for an old chipped white iron bed with a bare mattress and two pillows. There was a very small wood dresser next to an open closet with a curtain hanging from a wire across the top. She pulled the curtain aside and saw quilts and