Coming Home

A Texas Twilight Tale: Down the Red Dirt Road, Home is waiting

"I think she's coming home today, Lou."

"How do you know that, Bertie?" Bushy mustache bristling, the man looked out the window of his little Trailer in the Woods, down the red dirt driveway. Past the potholes filled with sugar sand, his eyes followed the lane of misty pines lining the long trail out to the main road.

Bertie ran slender fingers through her own silky grey strands, then reached over to flip a wiry white curl from Lou's wrinkled forehead. "She called me. She said she just wanted to hear my voice, but I know her. I think she's wanting to come home, so I told her come on home."

"Well, she can come for a visit, but she can't stay. She's still got a lot of work to do. If she doesn't finish that Art installment, a lot of people are going to be disappointed. Once you walk away from a project, you can't go back... and that's not even counting all the other stuff coming down the pike." He shook his head, jowls wagging. "She always was a Mama's Girl; she never could bear to be away from you for long -"

"Nah, she's her Daddy's Girl through and through. I could say the same about her with you. We'll see if she decides to come home or not. Even if she's not ready for a visit, I am."

Tying her checked cotton shirt up around her midriff, Bertie still exuded a trim charm that belied her age, skinny jeans and flip-flops finishing out an East Texas Spring Fashion plate. "Why don't you go fire up the tractor and trim out the path so she can walk in easy? You know she's been having trouble negotiating that path lately."

Finishing off that last gooey bite of ice cream and peach cobbler, Lou dusted the crumbs from his mustache and ambled down the Single-Wide's steps, his stout body taking time at each step to correct course. It had been so long...

he made his way through the neatly-rowed garden, patting each red tomato as if it were a beloved child. A beautiful big black-haired dog appeared, and she took his hand in her teeth, holding it to walk beside him.

"Good Girl, Dixie. You heard, then; she's coming home." Adjusting the straps of his suspenders, Lou hitched them up to keep his pants from sliding into an unwanted position across his disappearing hips. He climbed up into the tractor seat, and turned the key; the engine rumbled to life, and the blue tractor rolled out, brush hog in tow.

He made two passes around the yard, but not so close that he would bump the underpinning of the little Single-Wide Trailer's carefully painted beige panels and redwood trim. He mowed around the tree, burgeoning with figs, then through the front yard with its blooming pears, very carefully across the septic tank field lines, then up and down the drive way to at last park beside the well house. Stopping, he clambered down to check the well's water level -

it all looked perfect.

Grunting with satisfaction, Lou puffed up the steps of the redwood deck and sat himself down on the porch swing that beckoned beneath his hand-painted sign:

~Home Sweet Trailer~

His pride and joy, the porch swing gave him immense satisfaction, and he immersed himself in each pleasant squeak of its chains. Hearing him, Bertie brought Lou his Jelly Jar of iced tea, matching hers. They sat together, making the seat squeak in tandem. He took a sip;

"You know, this is Heaven..."

Bertie just beamed, and sipped tea alongside him, swinging her flip-flopped feet.

They heard a car rattle up. "Ah, she's here! Do I look right?"

"You always look right, Bertie; there's never been a finer looking woman than you." Lou grabbed her hand, and gave it a smooch; the bristles of his mustache brushed her fingers and Bertie cooed at him, only to stop:

Footsteps were heard, slow and hesitant. One, then another, scrunching through vines and over branches; a groan was heard, then a sigh;

She came around the corner, pushing through an unseen barrier. Dark hair framed a haggard face, thick curls pulled back into a neat ponytail, a simple t-shirt and khaki slacks draping a figure more like her Father's than her Mother's. She tripped over an invisible obstacle -

Bertie gasped into her hand: "Oh my God, Lou, she looks so old..."

"It happens to us all, Bertie." He squeezed her hand, waiting for his Daughter.

Stumbling to the redwood deck, the Dark-Haired woman sat on the bottom step. She said nothing for the longest time, just staring past the Utility Shed, through the fig tree and into the woods. Bertie wanted to say something, but didn't, knowing that the right words are sometimes no words at all.

Back to her parents, the Woman lit a cigarette, smoke curling up through her own hair, a musky halo. It hung in the air, rising through the fiberglass panels of the porch roof to blot out the sun.

"Jake's gone. He's been gone, I just didn't know it; but tonight he took his things and disappeared with some woman I've never seen before." Bertie hugged Lou, stunned, as the Dark-Haired Woman took another drag from her cigarette.

Lou's mustache bristled. "I always knew Jake was a son-of-a-bitch, but this is low, even for him." Bertie hushed him, then whispered to the Dark-Haired Woman:

"I'm so sorry, Baby."

The Dark-Haired Woman said nothing in return; listless, her fingers plucked a plum thorn from her pants leg. "You always said you'd be here for me. You said you’d be here...“

“I’m here. I’m right here, Sweetie -” Bertie’s pale fingers brushed her Daughter’s shoulder, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“I just want to come home. I just want to see you..." The Woman threw down the cigarette and crushed it into the dirt. "Lil' Burt's a grown man now, and I'm old. I don't see any reason to stay. I don't see any reason to live this way anymore. Nothing makes sense..."

The Dark-Haired Woman pulled a pistol from her waistband.

"Oh my God! No -" Bertie grabbed her Daughter, hands flowing like water through the Dark-Haired Woman's arm. "No, don't this isn't the way it's supposed to happen! Lou, Lou say something -" Bertie burst into tears, and her tears drizzled into the light, swept away by the breeze.

Lou leaned down to whisper: "Bud Turner tried to end it all too, and he just ended up an idiot in a nursing home."

"Lou, NO!" Hissing at Lou, Bertie tried again to grab the gun, but her hands slipped through the metal, grasping nothingness. "What your Father means is suicide is not the answer! It only leads to more pain..."

Hiss-weeping, the Dark-Haired woman was trying to rack the slide, but her hands slipped from the gun, fingers weak with heartache. She pushed the slide against the edge of the step, then shoved downward, racking it into place. A round cycled into the chamber.

"There's already enough pain in the world - don't make more! Please Baby, it's not time yet, it's not time... stop, stop -" Bertie was flailing, trying to reach her Daughter:

"Lemme have me another whack at it." Pulling Bertie back, Lou muttered into the Dark-Haired Woman's ear. "Lil' Burt hasn't had the guts to tell you yet - but he called me earlier today. He's a bag of nerves and you're gonna need to be there." He raised his voice:

"You've got a Grand-Baby on the way, a little toot of a Girl."

Bertie turned luminous black eyes to her husband, hope meeting terror.

"Yep, your Grand-Baby’s gonna need her MeeMee..." Irritable, Lou's mustache bristled again: "especially since her Mama's a hussy."

The hand holding the gun trembled.

"I already told Bert to name the lil' girl Louisa, after his Mama. This is the Best Day of his life, but he just doesn't realise it yet. Don't make it the Worst Day of his life instead…"

The Dark-Haired Woman sobbed.

Lou reached through the mists, and his hand found the gun. He pushed down, hard, and the pistol fell from her hand and into the jumbled lumber that was once the redwood deck's steps.

A cold breeze blew; Bertie's arms snaked their way around her daughter's rotund waist as Lou held on to them both, the world shattering around them.

The Trailer's roof blew away to ashes, filling the burnt out hollows where the redwood deck's posts should be; the garden sprang up to greenbriars, thorny plums now towering above the scorched skeletons of the blooming pears. The tractor transmuted into a pile of charred metal, the melted tires fused to the ground from a long ago fire…

And still, they all clung to each other, even as the misty sun crashed into the horizon and the moon sprang up from the shadowed pines to fill the midnight sky. The Dark-Haired Woman wept and wept, rocking on the last ruined step of the redwood deck:

"I just want to come home. I want to come home..."

"Not today, Baby, not today." Bertie whispered into her Daughter's ear, holding her tight until at last the sobs subsided; she wiped tears from her Daughter's hollow cheeks. "Home is waiting, but not today..."

Lou jumped down off the deck to kick the gun into the shadows beneath the woodpile. The Dark-Haired Woman felt around, trying to find the pistol, but it eluded her in the darkness. She sighed, then wiped her face with a sooty hand;

a ring, and a call. A ring, and a call again, her device lighting up from within.

The Dark-Haired Woman picked it up: "What the hell, why is Bert calling me at this hour? Ah God, it's got to be something urgent." Shaken from her despair by otherworldly reality, she reached for the gun again -

She heard a clatter. Spooked, her bleary eyes raked the degraded rubble, long years crumbled, seeking ghosts. She only saw what she had never seen before: exposed by wind and rain, a burnt scrap dangled from a rotting post in the moonlight:

Scrambling through glass and nails, the Dark-Haired Woman staggered through the brambles to clutch the beloved trinket to her chest... with shaking fingers, she wiped away the grease of the fire, washing away the ashes with her tears.

~Home

"You're here! I know -" the Dark-Haired Woman teetered on tired feet, cradling the last remnant of her Childhood Home to her broken heart.

"I know you're here.”

Making her way through the thicket of thorny plums, she pushed into her car and a voice was heard, calling from her device:

“Mom? For some reason, I just thought I should call you. I just couldn’t wait any longer. I - I’ve got some news, and I think you’re gonna wanna be sitting down for this…”

the voices faded as the car rolled away, through overgrown remains of what used to be a driveway, next to the collapsed well house, then out to the red dirt lane -

her car slipped from sight.

Stars whirled high above the Loblolly Pines, spinning into infinity. Brambles slithered into the sugar sand, disappearing as a green grassy lawn took hold; flowers sprang up from the ashes, and the pear trees bloomed with the fig, next to the little Trailer in the Woods. Once again alive, Dixie appeared beside Bertie to stand at Lou's side, listening as Dark-Haired Woman's Car rattled away.

Lou took Bertie's hand:

"I told him to call his Mama." He looked to his hand painted sign on the redwood deck, part of it now missing.

Sweet Trailer~

"And I made sure she took Home with her."

Bertie's translucent eyes glowed as she swirled around Lou, both of them fading as the Sun topped the towering pines: "She'll bring it back when she comes Home for Good. But today is not that day! Not today -"

she kissed Lou, right beneath his glorious mustache, and they both exploded into a thousand shimmering shards of Dawn.