She was tempted to take all this as a sign and head right back out of Idaho. She hadn’t been so close to home since she’d left it at a run ten years ago, leaving a flaming wake of scandal and gossip trailing behind her. And fate seemed to be trying pretty damn hard to keep her from Jasper Ridge now.
She’d already missed her grandmother’s burial. The impulse to come home anyway had been strong but painful; maybe it was wrong. Coming home now, she’d face not only the gossip she’d ignited by leaving the way she had all those years ago, but the new condemnation of not being home for Maw. There would be no happy homecoming for Georgia Mackenzie.
But she’d come all this way, and the pull had grown even stronger. That voice in her head, the one that had begged her to stay, not to go, to see that she had everything right where she was, it got stronger every mile closer she came.
Ten years, and she was still looking. Ten years, and she still hadn’t even figured out what it was she lacked. Maybe he’d been right. Maybe everything she needed had been home all this time, and she had just been too young and stupid to see it.
Unlikely. But okay. Here she was in Idaho, after almost three days on a Greyhound. She’d be a coward to turn away now. Worst case—she’d have a day or two of censure from family and neighbors, and get a reminder that Jasper Ridge and the Sawtooth Jasper Reservation were not where she belonged.
So she hooked her bags on her shoulders. Across the interstate, near the Snake River, she saw a sign for a Motel 6, and a couple restaurants over there, too. She’d get a room, and a meal, and in the morning, she’d take the next mechanically sound bus and get her butt home.
*****
The next morning, after a decent sleep in a moderately comfortable bed, Gigi didn’t want to get on the bus and finish the journey home that way. It would leave her in town without a ride, standing on the side of the road in front of Jasper Ridge Gas & Service, right out there for all the gawkers to get their eyes all the way full while she called her sister and asked her to come pick her up. Or worse, much worse—somebody from town could drive by and ask if she needed a ride.
Those eventualities hadn’t occurred to her until last night, as she lay in her motel room, listening to the traffic from I-15, visualizing her homecoming.
No. She needed to come into town on her own wheels, so she could get out of town the same way. The moment she needed to go.
On her phone, she checked her bank account. She’d grown up a poor rez kid, and had never lost the habit of lack, so the only money she’d spent during her wandering years had been the minimum she’d needed to wander, and to maintain herself. Every place she’d stopped, she’d found work; if she couldn’t, she didn’t stop. Sometimes, like Brooklyn, she’d stayed long enough to settle in a little and have an address. She had a credit card and a phone—she’d tried at first to live totally hand to mouth, letting each day bring what it would, but after a couple years, she’d acknowledged that the twenty-first century had no room for old-fashioned vagabonds, not even on the edges, so she’d set up a few accounts, things she didn’t need a permanent address to keep. But she’d never spent more money than she’d needed to live.
After ten years, her account held enough that if she ever found what she was looking for, the place that could hold her, she could set herself up. It did not, however, hold enough for her to buy a car, and she didn’t want the burden of a car loan. If she could even have gotten one, seeing as how she was currently unemployed and had not stayed in one place for more than six months since she was twenty-two years old.
But just down the street from the motel, next door to the Denny’s where she meant to get breakfast, was a place called Snake River Auto Sales. There’d been a commercial for it on television last night; it was one of those places that guaranteed they’d sell anybody a car, no matter their finances. Usually that meant they had some horrific loan program. But didn’t they also usually stock crappy cars? Something she could get for a few grand?
She’d bought and briefly used a few sets of old wheels over the years, when she’d stopped somewhere without public transportation options and meant to stay a while. It was easier to check the online ads and find a private seller, and definitely cheaper, but she didn’t have that kind of time today.
Well, it was worth a look, anyway. The bus didn’t leave until ten; she still had that option in her back pocket.
*****
No, it was not possible to buy a used car from a dealer for a few grand, not even in Idaho. But the sales dude was working her hard anyway. He recognized her as Native—which wasn’t a stretch; with her straight black hair, bronze skin, and black-brown eyes she did not look like Becky Bougie—and had decided she must have hit it on the slots or something at the casino south of town, so he was trying to convince her to use the money she wanted to use to buy a whole car on a down payment instead. A down payment on a loan with twenty-five percent interest.
Fort Hall, where the casino was, wasn’t even her home reservation. She was from a tiny reservation at the foot of the Sawtooth Mountains, one the government had tried, more than a hundred years ago, to disband and force to move to the southeast, to Fort Hall, a larger reservation other bands of Shoshone had been forced to. The Yanks liked to keep the Natives corralled together. Like livestock.
But the Sawtooth Jasper Shoshone had a good relationship with some of the white settlers nearby, and those rich whites—one in particular—had stood with the tribe and convinced the government to back off. Gigi’s people had kept their home. They’d paid in dramatically reduced federal aid over the years, but they had their home, and for the Shoshone, hunter-gatherers deeply connected to the land and all that dwelled on and within it, that was a real victory.
It was almost nine-thirty, and there was nothing on this lot she could afford outright. She was going to have to ride the grey dog into Jasper Ridge and start the gossip mill right off the bat.
“You know what? I’m going to pass,” she told Wayne the Used Car Man.
“You’re not gonna find a better deal, hon. Other guys, they’re gonna try to screw you.”
How very much she hated it when strangers used endearments like ‘hon’ and ‘sweetie.’ Man or woman, it set a dynamic like they were above her, and it pissed her off. Also, was there some kind of creepy double entendre in what he’d said?
“Thanks, but I’m not inter—” As she turned to walk away, the morning sun glinted off something red and sparkly, tucked against the side of the building. She took a few steps in that direction—oh, looky there. “Is that for sale?”
“That? Oh, hon, you don’t want that. Harleys ain’t for girls.”
She spun back and gave Wayne and his bolo tie the look that comment deserved. “I started riding bikes when I was fourteen, Wayne. Learned on my dad’s old chopped Street Bob. That’s a Sportster 883—mid-90s or so, right? Is it for sale?”
Wayne blinked. “Uh ... yeah. ’95. It just came in on a trade last night. It’s got over a hundred thousand miles on it. We were gonna wholesale it.”
She reached the bike. It was indeed in rough shape. The high-flake metallic paint was oxidized, and the silver flame decals had chipped off around the edges. And who knew what the engine would sound like. But the faring was intact, and it had a nice Mustang seat and nail-head leather saddlebags. This bike had been flashy as hell once. It reminded her of her dad’s old chopper. “Does it run?”
“Strictly speaking, yeah. Rough, though. Needs a lot of work. More’n it’s worth.”
She’d be the judge of that. “Got the keys?”
He ran in and came back with a skimpy two-key ring with a paper tag attached. Gas tank and ignition. Gigi took the keys and mounted the bike. She fired up the engine, turning the throttle to make the engine roar.
She’d intended it to roar. Instead, it coughed a few times, and the bike spasmed under her. It threatened to die, but she goosed it again, and it found its will to live and finally roared. She knew what was wrong and how to fix it, and
until then she had faith it would at least get her the hundred and fifty miles or so to the reservation.
This was a sign. Right here. She was supposed to go home. If only for a day, this was right.
It was a bitter kind of nostalgia. On this bike, she was surrounded by memories of the best and the worst of her life in Jasper Ridge. But it brought home back to her in its full force.
She killed the engine and looked at Wayne. “How much?”
He did some quick calculating, and Gigi waited to hear some absurd number. How much over value was she willing to pay for some nostalgia for a long-ago time when home had felt like home?
A lot, actually. She’d been ready to spend three grand on a car. This bike, in its current condition, was worth maybe half that, tops. She’d be okay with paying the three. All those years of frugality gave her the chance to be extravagant now.
“Two grand, as is,” Wayne said, and Gigi decided maybe she didn’t hate him that much after all. He was making a good profit, but he wasn’t trying to kill her with it.
“Throw in a full-face helmet, and you got a deal.”
“Adults don’t need a helmet in Idaho.”
Spoken like someone who hadn’t seen what was left of their father after a drunken, helmetless motorcycle wreck.
“Throw in the helmet,” Gigi said and held out her hand.
Chapter Two
Jasper Ridge 5 Miles
Sawtooth Jasper Indian Reservation 7 Miles
Boise 103 Miles
Gigi pulled onto the shoulder and stopped her new old Harley about ten feet before that ancient sign. She pushed her face shield up and studied it. Three bullet holes had gained ten more years of rust since she’d last seen them, and the word Boise was in danger of being unreadable, with the hole through the i and the thick skim of rust around the edges. Most of the reflective quality had worn off the white letters, and the highway green was oxidized to seafoam.
Everything that was home, all her memories and feelings about where she’d come from, who she’d been, what she’d known and believed, it was all summed up in this faded green, rusted-out old highway sign.
Jasper Ridge. Her hometown, in a manner of speaking. Where she’d gone to school. Where she’d worked and played. Where her best friends had lived. Where she’d fallen in love. Where she’d betrayed that love.
Sawtooth Jasper Indian Reservation. Her homeland, in every manner of the word. Home of the Sawtooth Jasper Shoshone band, her people. Where her family lived. Where she had grown up. Where she had been lost. What she’d run from.
Boise. Until ten years ago, the biggest city she’d ever known. Exotic and out of reach. The place she still mentioned when she tried to explain where she was from. Where her father had been coming from when he’d stopped at a roadside tavern to drown his disappointments and come home in a box.
Sitting astride the old Sportster, its out-of-tune engine shimmying under the seat, Gigi stared at those few words, their weary declaration. Her heart slammed unstably against her ribs, and she wondered how much of the shake of her hands around the grips was the engine, and how much was her past racing up into her present.
Ten years. More than that—she’d left in June, in the dark of a Friday night. Left her family, her friends, her love, and a creamy beaded dress hanging on her closet door.
The world she’d run from looked just the same. The fields along the sides of the road, the Sawtooth Range looming high to the north, their teeth jagged and rocky. Even this sign—more aged, but still the same nonetheless. From right here, she could almost imagine that the world had stopped, or that the last ten years had been a particularly vivid dream.
The Shoshone people held the earth in the great esteem due an elder and believed that they all shared a connection, a spirit. Animal, vegetable, or mineral, earth or flesh, it didn’t matter. All were one. That was why her people were so distraught when she’d left; she’d torn a hole in the fabric of their very existence. It was also why her heart beat so wildly now; she could feel the connection trying to draw her back in, return her to the weave.
Sitting here on the shoulder, Gigi saw again how magnificent this world was, how rich and calm, how full of history and beauty, how easy it was to find a moment’s peace. There was no rat race here, no bustle, no change. Mountains and forests and fields, standing as they had for millennia. Sky and sun and moon sheltering them for infinity. Not even the asphalt ribbon of the highway or the occasional blast of wind from a passing vehicle could disturb the eternal truth of this world she’d grown up in the midst of.
But five miles up ahead, just a few more minutes on the road, she’d pass another sign, welcoming her to Jasper Ridge, Idaho, and there, nothing would be the same. Not for her.
*****
Welcome to Jasper Ridge, Idaho
Hitch Your Horse and Sit a Spell
Population 2,315
Home of the Jasper Ridge Riders, 2017 State Champions!
The welcome sign was the same sign as always, though it looked like it had gotten a paint job—probably after the last census. The population had changed since she’d been in town; the number was down by twelve. The state championship sign was very new and still vividly red, tacked on a slant across the bottom of the welcome sign. It didn’t suggest what sport, but Gigi didn’t have to strain herself with a guess. Jasper Ridge High School’s football team had always been a respectable contestant at State, though they hadn’t made it all the way to the final in her day, much less won the championship.
Gigi laughed as she rode past the sign, remembering her days in a red and white cheer uniform.
Rolling down Ridge Road, she was glad for the full-face helmet and its properties of disguise. The Sportster was loud, and drew attention from the people on the sidewalks, mostly in the form of irritated scowls. A few of those scowls she recognized, but none she wanted to recognize her. There were people she’d missed enough to be willing to endure the guilt and possible condemnation to see again, since she was here, but the rest of Jasper Ridge and all their yapping mouths could sit on a sharp stick. They’d get their chance to whisper soon enough.
Meanwhile, she rode through town and let the familiarity of home roll over her, like a hair shirt. Jasper Ridge Gas & Service. The Gemstone Motor Inn. The tacky-quaint shops of Old Town, like Wild West Impressions and Goldstone Gifts, and her personal favorite, Sun Dance Art and Craft, the shop where she’d worked through high school and beyond.
Passing Hephaestus Farrier and Smithy made her think of the Cahill family. She’d been sort-of friends with Heath and Logan Cahill, by association. Her mother had kept her abreast of events in town as well as on the reservation, so she knew about the scandal of Sybil Cahill, Heath’s wife, and Brandon Black, Heath’s friend and Sybil’s lover, and the tragedy that had killed Sybil and Ruthie, her and Heath’s little girl, and all the drama that followed. She was glad to see the forge open and running. Heath was a good man. He was remarried now and had another child. Another one on the way, too. Or maybe by now the baby had been born?
Logan was married, too, and that was practically miraculous. He was the kind of guy who was wonderful as long as you weren’t romantically inclined toward him. Charming and funny, sweet as can be, and always willing to lend a hand—but once you slept with him, he was a real dick. Not that she knew firsthand, but everybody in Jasper Ridge, and maybe all of Idaho, knew him for the player he was.
She would have said it would be more likely for the whole state of Idaho to go vegan than for Logan Cahill to settle down. But he’d gotten married a few months back. She’d gotten that news in the last message her mother had sent that hadn’t been about Maw dying.
Just past Old Town, before Jasper Ridge rolled out to a few streets of little bungalows and then ranchland and the reservation beyond it, stood a big old wood building, looking just as it always had, like it had come straight off the lot of a John Wayne movie. It had stood just there since settler days and was one of the oldest buildings in town. Th
e lot was gravel now and held cars and trucks rather than horses, for the most part, and neon signs hung in the windows, but it was the same old saloon that Old West cowboys and roughnecks had clomped into after a long day’s ride. The old hitching posts still lined the long porch, and sometimes, a horse still got tied there while its rider went in for a cold one on a hot day.
The Apple Jack Saloon.
Reese Webb, proprietor.
A horn honked behind her, the pseudo-polite double tap like a throat clearing, and Gigi waved and surged forward from the stop sign. She pulled over into a parking spot across from the Jack and stared at that sun-dried old building. The pickup she’d been blocking drove on, and the shadow of a cowboy touched the brim of his hat.
In New York, that was not the gesture an absentminded stop-sign blocker would have gotten.
It was still early afternoon on a weekday, so the Jack’s lot was mainly, but not entirely, empty. Unless the world had reversed on its axis while she was away, Reese was working. If not behind the bar, then in his office. She could go in there and see him.
And what, exactly, would he do, face to face with her for the first time in more than ten years? Throw confetti? Break out the champagne?
Hardly.
It wasn’t Reese she’d run away from, but to everyone they knew, it had looked just exactly like that. The runaway bride. But he knew the truth. It wasn’t him she’d run from. She didn’t know what she’d run from, not all of it, but she knew it wasn’t him.
But it was him she’d left.
She wasn’t ready to face that. Maybe she wouldn’t ever be.
She walked the bike out of the space and rode off through the rest of town, toward the reservation.
Home. Such as it was.
*****
Entering
Sawtooth Jasper Indian Reservation
Land of the Sawtooth Jasper Shoshone
Chief Job Black Eagle
Anywhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories, #3) Page 2
