Older community residents, who’d known my family for generations, delighted in revealing my parents in a different light. The stories they shared were new to me, even if the tales were forty years old.
At the first stop, Maxine Crenshaw plied me with homemade doughnuts and recalled the night my father pulled over her husband for erratic driving. Milt Crenshaw, in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, had left the house without his eyeglasses or his pants. He’d also forgotten the state had revoked his driver’s license. Rather than toss Milt in jail, my father escorted Milt home and advised Maxine to hide the car keys.
Simple. Direct. I could visualize the scene, the amused set to my father’s mouth upon finding Milt in his boxers. Would I ever overcome the need for more time with Dad to hear his stories of life behind the badge?
Over sweet tea and pecan cookies, Esther Beecham told me about my parents getting tossed out of Barb and Joe Jorgen’s wedding dance. Apparently my mother instigated a hair-pulling fight with another bridesmaid. When the man who tried to separate the drunken women got a little too friendly with Mom, Dad beat the crap out of him. The aggressive side of my dad didn’t surprise me-cowboys liked to express opinions with their fists. But the ever-proper Sunny Gunderson, in a knock-down, drag-out, girl fight? In public? That’d shocked me.
Maybe I was as much a chip off Mom’s block as I was Dad’s.
I only made those two stops. In my gut I knew I was done actively campaigning. I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d become a poseur of the worst sort and continuing this charade would dishonor my father’s memory.
The drive to the ranch was a blur. I ignored the ranch hands as I marched through the barn. ATV keys in hand, I climbed aboard my escape vehicle and took off like the hounds of hell were chasing me.
Shoonga loped by my side as I navigated the muddy grooves forming a path across the field. Damn dog loved getting sloppy. His antics lightened my load as he tried to hurry me along, as if he knew where we were going. By the time I reached my destination, the tightness in my chest had loosened somewhat.
Years had passed since I’d last traversed this rough terrain in the spring. An abundance of rain meant mud, mud, and more mud. I abandoned the ATV and hiked the incline, my boots weighted with wet earth, which made skirting the delicate ferns and clumps of grasses near impossible. A decade of drought forced plants into dormancy. But months of spring rain coaxed them out, including four species I’d never seen.
At the top of the plateau, the damp wind lifted my hair, whipping strands back across my face with stinging force. I tipped my head to the gloomy sky. Billows of white and gray skittered across the endless horizon. Patches of pale blue appeared fleetingly, punch holes of sanity beneath the roiling storm clouds.
I know how the sky feels.
I spun a slow circle so I could take in the vista. From here I spotted deciduous trees lining the river’s gouge across the land. The differences a little moisture brought to the color palette in the valley were astounding, representing every green hue from jade to mint.
From here I could locate the weather-beaten mounds of desiccated earth known as the Badlands. Hauntingly beautiful in its barrenness. Its isolation. Its monochromatic fortitude.
I closed my eyes and listened to the music of the wind. The dissonant changes in pitch. The harmonic whistling tones. The melodic ferocity of the gusts. The wind ebbed and flowed like the tides, but wind wasn’t tied to the moon. Its power was absolute. And wind raced and raged across the prairie as if it were its due.
Through the mournful squalls, I heard the rumble of an ATV in the distance. Then closer. Then it stopped.
Shoonga rose from his resting spot, tail wagging, chippy little barks telling me who’d disturbed me.
I kept my face to the wind, zeroing in on the musky scent of wet mud, the pungent sage, the occasional hint of sweet floral, and now the whiff of gas and machine oil.
The dog settled, content with the attention from two masters.
Once he’d leveled his ragged breathing, Jake spoke. “Pretty spot. One of my faves.”
“Mine, too.”
Wind blew. Time passed.
Finally, Jake said, “You okay?”
“Not really.”
“You left the ranch in an awful damn hurry.”
He waited for me to speak. To confess.
I’ll admit it took me a while to admit, “I’ve done a dumb thing, Jake.”
“I doubt that.”
A fresh gust of air, laden with moisture, churned around us. I wanted to scream my frustration to the sky to see if the wind would carry the sound away. But the scream remained lodged in my throat, burning me. Choking me. Unvoiced. Unwanted.
“Storm’s coming,” he said.
“It’ll pass.” How I knew that, I don’t know. I just did.
I wished for thunder, lightning, howling wind, and driving rain. When I focused on angry external elements, I could keep angry ones raging inside me at bay.
As the wind gentled, three things became clear.
One: the J-Hawk I’d known, the man I’d been so determined to find justice for, had been long gone before I’d found him dead.
Two: I’d made the wrong choice, running against Dawson instead of running to him.
Three: out here, on top of this bluff, was the only place I didn’t feel like I was drowning in the enormity of my mistakes.
“You’ll find it, Mercy.”
“Find what?”
“Whatever it is you’re looking for.”
Jake squeezed my shoulder and left me to my demons.
I dreamed of Levi.
We were sitting side by side on the bank of the Cheyenne River. The water was low; the sun was high. Big black clouds of gnats zigzagged above the water in an oddly beautiful insect ballet. The heat-baked scent of clay lingered beneath the stagnant stench of the river. The late-summer levels of the Cheyenne had turned the water into reddish-brown sludge. The mud spatters on the stones resembled blood.
“Why are we here?” Levi asked, skipping a piece of shale across the murky surface. “There’s nothin’ to do. Can’t swim. Can’t fish.”
I slapped a mosquito on my thigh and a bloody bump welled. “Can’t we just hang out? Enjoy spending the day together? It seems like I never get to see you anymore.”
Surly, he stared across the unchanging landscape, keeping his face in shadow. “All we ever do is sit around the stupid ranch.”
“I’d think you’d act happier since we’re not there right now.”
Splash. Plunk. More stones met the river bottom. “How come you never take me anyplace cool? Like to the waterslides or to the lake?”
Heat fried my scalp. Insects swarmed me, biting my sweat-slicked skin, angrily buzzing in my ears. “Because your mom won’t let me. She worries about you. She wants to keep you safe.”
Levi leaped to his feet, graceful as a young antelope. He walked into the river.
“Levi, come back here.”
“Why? The water is ankle deep. You think I’m gonna drown? Or maybe a mud hole will open up and swallow me?”
Fear lanced me, sharp as a spear. “Don’t say that.”
He took two more steps in, water sloshing into his ratty-assed athletic shoes. His head whipped around, his hair glinting in the sun like a piece of dark amber. Levi grinned at me. That cocky, boyish grin that buoyed my spirits and broke my heart.
“Please. I’ll take you to the damn waterslide. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Just come back… okay?”
His smile faded. “I can’t come back, Aunt Mercy. You know that.”
Then Levi shimmered away like a heat mirage and receded into nothingness.
And the scream I’d been holding inside me all day finally broke free.