Down the Dirt Road (37 page)

    She laughed out loud remembering his joy on that last day even as his heart was slowly beginning to rebel against him.  If she had known that would be the last time she would take that ride with him she would have laughed then, shared in his joy.  The engine whined and roared and crackled and buckled but stayed running.  There was no telling how long she drove the limping truck around the yard before Momma stepped out onto the porch, a look of shock on her face.  Waving to get Jennie’s attention, she
actually almost jumped up and down as she clapped her hands with excitement.  Jennie pulled up by the front porch, rolling the truck to a stop but keeping her foot on the clutch.  There was no way she was turning it off when she was no where near certain it would ever turn on again. 

     Motioning to Momma to get in the cab, Jennie cranked the old radio loud letting the rocking strains of Tim McGraw’s latest hit fill the small space.  She felt so
good
for the first time in a really long time.

     “Come on up, Momma!  I’ll take you for a spin!”  Momma laughed and waved as she reached for the door handle.

    It took more th
an a little effort for her mother
to pull open the passenger door but Jennie didn’t dare let up on the clutch so she leaned over as far as she could, offering Momma her hand to help her up into the cab. 

    “How on God’s green earth did you ever manage to get this ole’ thing runnin’, Jennie girl?”

     “Just needed a new battery and a stern talkin’ to Momma!  Hold on, I’ll take you for a ride.  We got at least one flat so it’s gonna be a little on the bumpy side!”  
Laughing, Jennie eased up on the clutch and pressed down on the gas, thankful that Daddy had taken the time to teach her to drive a stick shift even when she had insisted it was a complete waste of her valuable time. 

    The two Marshall women inched their way around the yard in John Marshall’s beat up old truck until the gas gauge fell to
E.
  Reluctantly, Jennie pulled it in back in by the barn and turned the engine off.  The quiet inside the cab was almost louder than the roar of the old engine.  Neither one of them moved for what seemed like forever and then Momma spoke.

     “I loved your father, Jennifer.  You know that right?”

     “Of course I do, Momma.  You don’t need to convince me of that.”

      “When he first left us I wasn’t sure how to go on without him.  And when I got sick I thought it was a gift from God-that I wouldn’t have to go on without him.  Now I am so grateful to still be here with you, to be alive and a part of this beautiful world that I feel like I am just wastin’ whatever little time the good Lord has allowed for me.  I don’t know how much time I have left and I want to enjoy
it.  It’s time for me to get busy livin’ again.  At least as much as this damned disease will let me.”

     “You are in love with Uncle Tommy aren’t you?”  As soon as the question out she regretted it.  Jennie wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to hear the answer but in her heart she knew it to be true.

    Momma dropped her head and fidgeted with her hands in her lap for a few minutes before looking up at Jennie with tears in her eyes.  “Is that wrong, Jennie girl?  I mean, am I allowed to fall in love again?”

   Sliding over on the worn bench seat, she wrapped her arms around her mother the way her momma had always done for her.  “Yes, Momma, you are allowed to.  You are entitled to be happy and Daddy would want that for you.  Actually I think he would be pretty pissed off at the way we been doin’ things since he left us, don’t you?”

    Momma sat back and laughed.  “I’m guessin’ you might be right about that sweet pea.  We haven’t exactly been peaches and pie since your Daddy died, have we?”

     Jennie looked long and hard in to her mother’s eyes.  There was something the other woman wanted to say to her but she was reluctant.

    “What Momma?  What is it?”  She prodded her gently.

     Elise looked down again for a moment, preparing herself for what she wanted to say.  “I have been thinkin’…I mean Tom and I have been talkin’ ….I think I am ready for a change…How would you feel if I started spending some time at your Uncle’s farm?  A night or two a week at first…see how things go?”

   “Momma?  Are you asking me permission to shack up with your boyfriend?”  Elise was stunned for a full moment before she broke down in laughter.  Together they laughed until they were in tears.  Finally, gasping for air, Elise said, “Yes, I guess I am.”

    “It’s fine with me!  It’s great actually!  I was starting to worry about you locked away up in your room all the time like Rapunzel.  Uncle Tommy loves you, he always has.  He will take good care of you.  At least, he better!”

    “He already does, Jennie.  He already does.”  Momma reached up and touched her cheek.  “I hate to leave you hear all alone…”

    Jennie patted the dashboard.  “It’s OK Momma, I got Old Blue to keep me company.  She needs a little work and I got a little time on my hands these days so I think I might fix her up a little.  Maybe keep her instead of sell her.”

    “Are you absolutely certain you are OK with this, Jennie girl?  He was your Daddy…”

    “And I am a grown woman and so are you and our lives didn’t end just because his did.”

    “I love you little girl, you know that don’t you?”

     “I know that Momma, I truly do.  But I’m not a little girl any more, you know that don’t you?”

     “I do, Jennie, I truly do.”

     They sat in silence for a moment before Jennie jumped down from the truck and ran around to help her Momma out.  “You better run inside and pack an overnight bag, Momma.  I can hear Uncle Tommy’s truck comin’ down the dirt road.”

     Momma smiled brighter than Jennie ever remembered her smiling as she shuffled across the drive and up the porch steps.  Jennie could have sworn she even saw a little bounce in her mother’s shuffle as she made her way to the door.

    Jennie felt even more happy and light hearted than she had when she had woken up that morning.  This was turning
out
to be a really great day and for the first time since that last trip down the dirt road with her father, her soul felt light and happy as well.  She and Momma, they were going to be all right, she could feel
it
all the way to the marrow of her bones.

Six Months Later

31.

     For the end of September the air was hotter and stickier than it had been even in the middle of August.  Jennie wiped her grease smeared hand across her forehead, pushing her he
avy curls back and off her face for about the hundredth time that afternoon.  Changing the oil and the oil filter had not been challenging just messy.  Jennie was still finding her way around under the hood of Daddy’s old blue Ford.  Thanks to Mack’s help though, she practically had the thing purring when it was running. 

    She was so good at it in fact, just last week she signed up for an automotive shop class at the community college. 
Jennie was her father’s daughter after all- she found she loved working with her hands and getting the feel for how things really worked, deep inside the mechanics, excited her.

    She was so intent on
the gasket under that oil cap that didn’t fit quite right
that
she never heard the crunch of gravel behind her over the hum of the Garth Brooks song stuck in her head.

    “Excuse me, Miss.  I heard you might have a truck for sale?”

     Jennie froze.  The ratchet in her hand fell through the engine block with a series of clangs before settling on the ground under the truck.

   That voice.  The deep, familiar drawl…

  
It couldn’t be.

  
It just couldn’t be…

    Slowly she turned around, taking her time not to slam her head against the raised hood of the truck. 

   Standing before her was man, one familiar to her in so many ways yet different, definitely older and…wiser somehow.

     Standing in the m
iddle of her driveway, the late
afternoon sun framing his figure like the very light of heaven was Private Grayson Jennings, United States Army.  His hair was slightly longer than when she saw him last and a long, jagged scar stretched over his right eyebrow and down toward his hair line behind his ear.  His smile was as warm and as croo
ked as ever
although his eyes were tentative as though he were uncertain of her reaction to his presence.

     “Grayson?”  She whispered through suddenly dry, parched lips.  “Is it you?”

     “Hello Jennie.  Yes, it’s me.  In the flesh…”  he reached out and pushed one of her curls behind her ear.  “See?”

      “But I thought you were…Michael said you were captured by the enemy.  Missing…”

     Her knees felt wea
k suddenly and the world tilted ever so slightly to the side before her legs crumpled completely.  Strong arms grabbed her around the waist, supported her, held her close.  They didn’t speak, just stood there for the longest time, Jennie working hard to convince herself that she wasn’t dreaming.

    When she stopped shaking, Grayson let her go.  “Can we sit on the porch and talk for a bit?”

    “Oh…oh…of course we can.  I’m sorry… I should have…”  She knew she was stammering but she could seem to form a single coherent sentence in her brain.  Instead she concentrated on wiping her hands clean on a rag while they walked to the porch and settled in on the two rocking chairs.  Momm
a
’s stood empty most of the time these days.  She and Uncle Tommy travelled a great deal.  Right at that very moment they were on a cruise ship somewhere in the Bahamas.  She didn’t remember when Momma had ever been so happy.

  
The chair wasn’t empty now though.  Grayson Jennings, whom everyone had presumed
to be
dead was sitting there looking at her expectantly, waiting patiently
as she settled her thoughts and slowed her racing heart
.

   She set the rag down on the table and he immediately picked it up.  “You miss
ed a spot.”  The tears came flow
ing like Niagara Falls the second he touched her forehead ever so gently and wiped away the smudge she must have left behind earlier.  In seconds she was
back
in his arms,
clinging to his freshly laundered white tee shirt now covered in the same streaks of oil that had been on her hands and forehead.

    “I
thought you were dead,” she whis
pered over and over again.

    “I know.  I know, Jennie.  Everyone did.  I didn’t know how to contact you.  I didn’t even know who I was for the longest time.”

   They sat back down in the chairs staring intently at each other.  Grayson still held her hands in his own as though he never wanted to let go.

    “But Michael said you were taken?  That the enemy took you prisoner and you were being tortured and…”  Th
e tears pushed forward but she refused to cry
so she let the rest of her sentence drop as she worked to compose herself.

    “I was taken but not by the enemy.  While we were out on patrol, we encountered a group of insurgents.  I tripped an IED that was set up as a booby trap along their perimeter.  The blast blew me fifty feet in the wrong direction.  Luckily a local found me and brought me to his home.  I was injured badly, bleeding from the head but the
man was a doctor; a missionary from France who lived among the villagers.  He took care of me, stitched up the head wound and stayed by
my
side day and night until I came out of the fever and coma.  Only when I woke up I had no idea who I was or where I had come from.  My uniform was long gone and my dog tags must have come off in the blast.  I stayed with the doctor and his family for a while, hoping I would come to remember who I was and one day, I caught a glimpse of something that reminded me of where I had come from.”

    He paused and waited as Jennie soaked it all in.  His story was an incredible one, something not
a single
one of her nightmares had ever conjured.

    “What was it?”  She finally asked.  “What did you see?”

     “A girl… a woman… with thick brown curls and a smile that melted my heart from twenty feet and a whole world away.”

     
Jennie rocked slowly in the rocking chair considering all that Grayson had just shared with her.  She still could not comprehend his presence here in front of her.  For so
long she had thought him dead, nothing more than a pile of letters he had no idea she had.

   The letters.

 
Should she tell him Michael had sent them to her?  Would he be angry?  Did he regret writing them?