Down the Dirt Road (2 page)

terrified to leave her Momma even for a few hours. As she

sat, huddled in the corner of the huge green seat, hugging

her My Little Pony backpack to her chest, Trisha Parker

climbed the steps to the bus like she was walking the red

carpet in Hollywood. With a smile as bright as the neon

pink bow in her long blonde hair, Trisha plopped down in

the seat next to Jennie and held out her hand as she

introduced herself. No, Trisha had never been afraid of

anything. Always jumped into the water without testing it

with a toe first; embraced all of life with an excitement

Jennie never understood. Trisha’s carefree ways were

often reckless, something else Jennie could never quite

grasp either. While Jennie carefully weighed each

decision, choosing the safest, most reliable path, Trisha let

loose without even considering that someone else might get

hurt.

  
If Trisha had thought for even a moment about how it

would affect her relationship with her best friend, maybe

she would have skipped the loft and taken a cold shower

instead. But Trisha liked sex and she definitely wasn’t a

virgin like Jennie. Trisha had shared stories with her late

at night that made Jennie blush, even in the dark.

   
Jennie’s best friend was hurt when the tanned, muscular

farm boy with the tempting smile and eyes as blue as the

ocean asked her shy best friend to a movie. But, Trisha’s

own big blue eyes and dimples won her any guy she

wanted and so she moved on, many times over. Jennie had

trusted her friend and her boyfriend while she was away

visiting her granddaddy’s ranch for a week. It had never

occurred to her not to.

  
But they had betrayed that trust less than four hours after

Jennie left on the train.

   
It had to be Trisha’s fault. Michael wouldn’t ever do

anything to hurt her.

    
But he did hurt her. He had sex with her best friend and

now Jennie’s heart was broken. It was pain like none she

had ever experienced before.

  
Trisha was her best friend- ex-best friend she corrected

herself quickly- why would she do such a thing to her?

 
Just because she could.

 
The little voice taunted her deep within her mind. The

evil thoughts took over again.

 
Maybe if Jennie were lucky, Trisha would go up in the

spontaneous combustion right along with Michael. Maybe

it could happen while they had sex in the hayloft.

  
You don’t want them to die no matter how mad you are.

 
 
Her conscience could be so annoying.

 
 
Of course she didn’t want them dead. Maybe they could

just suffer for a very long time. Hurt as much as she did

right then.

 
So, something painful but not necessarily deadly… that

would suit her just fine.

 
Radiation sickness? Too gruesome and that never ended

well. She had read all about it on the internet.

  
Long battle with cancer? Now, there was a possibility.

As long as they ultimately survived she could live with

that. So, cancer it would be then.

  
If she were being honest, though, spontaneous

combustion was still her favorite choice.

  
Heavy rivers of sweat trickled down the back of her neck

as frustration, hurt and anger lay heavy on her shoulders.

Grasping her thick curly hair in a clump, she wrapped a

worn rubber band around the mass tying it into a loose

knot. Random curls sprung out in every direction, coiling

into tight springs with the humidity that hung thick and

heavy in the air but she didn’t care. No one would be

looking at her anytime soon.

  
Maybe the weather was what had driven Michael and

Trisha into each other’s arms. Out in California they say

the hot, dry Santa Ana winds made people do strange

things. Maybe the hot Virginia coastal winds made people

uncontrollably horny.

 
“Damn you Michael and Trisha!” Jennie yelled to the

clear blue sky. The weather had nothing to do with it. It

was pure, unadulterated lust tempered by uncontrollable

teenage hormones. According to the health teacher at

school, they were responsible for every bad decision a

teenager ever made.

  
Did that mean their behavior was excusable? Was she

supposed to forgive them just because of rampant

hormones?

 
No way. They both knew exactly what they were doing.

And they knew it was wrong, no matter how right it felt at

the time.

   
From behind her, she could hear the familiar whine of

her daddy’s old Ford pickup truck. It must have been later

in the day than she thought if Daddy was heading back

from town all ready. Each day, promptly at four thirty in

the morning, before the rooster crowed and the cows started

braying, Daddy climbed into his worn out old truck with

the failing engine and drove into town for his shift at the

factory. At one each afternoon, he drove home to the

family farm and worked until Momma called him home at

sunset for supper.

    
Jennie hated living on a farm and she absolutely despised

living in the world’s smallest town, frozen in time decades

ago. Michael had been like a breath of fresh air. Falling in

love had brightened her days, given her something to look

forward to each morning when she awoke from a night full

of wonderful fairy tale dreams where Michael was her

prince and she was a princess in some faraway land. A

place where all the roads were paved.

  
Turns out Michael was no prince, indeed.

  
Some princess that made her…

  
The day would soon come when she would escape the

time warp that was her home and make a new life; reinvent

herself in the city. Any city, it didn’t matter where. Any place that wasn’t that place would do.

 
The old Ford stopped in a cloud of dust beside her.

 
“What ya doin’, Jennie girl? It’s too hot to be walkin’

this time a’day. Hop on up in here and I’ll get you home

and in the kitchen with a glass of your momma’s fresh

lemonade in a jiffy.”

  
Daddy looked tired. Very, very tired. She couldn’t

remember a time when her daddy hadn’t been strong,

almost superhuman. That morning she couldn’t help but

notice how exhausted he was. Farm life was killing him

too. It was sucking them all dry from the inside out.

  
In that moment she really, really hated her life. She had

to get out before she ended up like Momma and Daddy.

She would never be a farmer. Never.

  
“Just walkin’ home from Trisha’s. Didn’t know how late

it was.”

  
“It’s not late, sweet pea. Just wasn’t feelin so great so

the boss let me leave a coupla’ hours early.”

  
“Oh.” That explained why he looked so worn. She

relaxed against the cracked vinyl of the bench seat as daddy

shifted the gears. The truck lurched forward as the

transmission squealed and then they were on their way,

lurching and heaving over the cratered dirt road.

   
They rode on in silence. It was nearly impossible to carry

on a conversation anyway as the engine roared and the

truck bumped and clumped along the road. Daddy always

drove just a little faster than he should. He enjoyed the

challenge of dodging the craters and seeing just how fast he

could make it the mile from the main road to their front

door. Jennie held on tight to the door handle as she

bounced up and down on the broken springs. Every rut

caused a new shimmy or shake in the truck’s frame, the

shocks groaned and the cab rocked back and forth almost

precariously.

   
The ride gave her a reason to push thoughts of Michael

and Trisha out of her mind as she focused on not flying out

the window. There was no such thing as air conditioning

the year John Marshall bought his beloved Ford so the

windows were rolled wide open.

   
The front end of the truck crashed against the hard,

packed dirt sending Jennie flying forward. Daddy shot out

an arm to stop her from slamming into the windshield as he

had done so many times before as far back as she could

remember.

  
“Sorry, sweet pea. Guess that dip got a little deeper after

the spring rains.”

  
It was what he always said when he hit that spot a little

too hard. If the spring rains had been responsible that dip

would be in the center of the Earth already.

  
Sometimes he managed to make the jump, the old

Ford’s worn tires going air borne over the deep drop in the

road before slamming hard against the ground on the other

side. Those were the days he grinned like the young man

he once was in a Mustang fastback, street racing down back

roads. Those were the days when John Marshall reverted

back to more than just a father and a husband and a farmer-

even if for just a brief moment or two- he became a man

with a wild streak and a love of all things dangerous.

  
What would he have become if he hadn’t met Elise

Johnson twenty three years ago and fallen head over heels

in love with the farmer’s daughter?

  
Now, in a ridiculous twist of fate, Jennie was the

farmer’s daughter, stuck down the end of a rutted, dirt track

with cows to milk and hay to harvest; with a broken heart

and a burning desire to turn and run as far from that dirt

road as she could possibly get.

  
Jennie took a deep breath and steeled herself against the

next set of dips and drops as the truck bounced her around

like a wet sneaker in the dryer. They were only a few

hundred feet from the driveway. Sweat poured off of her

forehead now. Maybe it would have been a better idea to

just walk the rest of the way home?

   
Finally the bouncing stopped and the old engine

sputtered to a stop, emitting a loud bang and a purple plume

of burned oil. The frame shuddered and then the cab was

eerily silent.

   
“Why don’t you get a new truck Daddy? Put this one

out of its misery already.”

   
Daddy chuckled as he patted the hood of his old Ford

lovingly. “She’s a classic, sweet pea. We been together a

long time, me and her. Longer even than me and your

momma. You wouldn’t want me to replace your momma

just because she got a little old and creaky, now would