Oregon Trails

by Olivia Gaines

  She was still holding his lunch bag in her hand. “You also can’t leave without your lunch, unless you want to come home for your noonday meal,” she said with a raised eyebrow.

  “If I do that, I will never make it back to the office,” he said, reaching for the bag and her at the same time. Gently pulling her into his arms, he lowered his head, his lips pressing tenderly to hers. “I could spend almost every hour of my day kissing these wonderful lips.”

  “And I could spend most of my day letting you do just that,” she responded into his mouth.

  “Hmmm, you are some kind wonderful, Kalinda Darton,” he said. One more kiss was added. “Don’t let anyone in while I am gone.”

  “What if your brother or father show up?”

  “Not likely, but if either of them do, stay outside and call me right away,” he said with some concern in his voice.

  “Paul, should I be worried?”

  “If Luke shows up, yes. We will talk more when I get home,” he said, leaving her alone on the porch. He tooted the horn and drove away. She watched the back of the vehicle as it rolled down the hill towards Imnaha. A story was there, but today was not the day to investigate it. Today was a day to get to know her new home.

  A home on the side of a mountain.

  In Oregon.

  Nested in a canyon, behind a town of 176 people with Kalinda included.

  “Shit,” she said to herself as she went inside and closed the front door.

  After three hours, the windows were all clean, the curtains were hung and the bathroom smelled like lemon pine cones. The front porch held the two chairs she’d purchased specifically for the small space along with the table to hold her tea cup. Two cushions adorned the seats and a medium sized pot was used to hold dirt as she planted a few wildflower seeds inside it. The blue peonies would be a nice touch to add some color to the front of the house.

  Inside the cabin, she added touches of color throughout. The blue and white quilt looked wonderful on their bed along with all the other small touches in the master bedroom. Accent rugs gave the room a cozy feel without it seeming as if she were trying too hard for a shabby chic décor. A sense of pride entered her as she unpacked the last box, putting all the special items she’d shipped across country in their respective places.

  The sense of superiority deserted her when she attempted to make dinner. To say her attempts at the meal were a disaster was an understatement. The side dishes were a mess. Gluten free pasta did not cook up like semolina pasta. The contents of the pot were a gooey, sticky mess that had no taste and smelled like the rough side of sweaty armpits.

  Kalinda tried to cook the pasta again. This time, the pasta turned out gritty and still held no taste, and she was bordering on tears. “Why can’t I get this right?”

  She tried once more, halving the boiling time, but cooling the pasta sooner to get the right consistency. “Okay, now we have something here,” she said, smiling as she worked to make a macaroni side dish with peas.

  The gluten free flour was a challenge, but the principals of frying chicken were always the same, above or below sea level. At 3:45, a nice batch of fried chicken that rivaled any bird her mama ever made sat on table. The pasta salad, tasty and perfectly dressed in olive oil with lemon and herbs was ready, along with a side salad. In the basket under the coffee table were balls of wool yarn she planned to use for knitting socks, sweaters, and goods they would need for the cold winter.

  When her husband entered the front door at 4:15, his dinner was hot, his wife was knitting and enjoying a lukewarm cup of tea.

  “Welcome home, husband,” she told him, her eyes focused on her stitches.

  Paul’s voice was lost as he took in all the final touches to their home. For nearly two years, he’d come home in the evenings to an empty house, bland meals, and a 19 inch television that taunted him with poor reception.

  “I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but Lord, I am humbled and forever thankful,” he said while looking up towards the sky. In his hands were a bouquet of wildflowers he’d picked from the side of the road on his way home. He thrust them forward in his hand like a schoolboy holding his first frog and presenting it to his best girl. “I picked these for you.”

  Kalinda placed her knitting aside, rising to greet her hard-working man. “Flowers and confessions of gratitude all in one breath. You make a girl feel special, Mr. Darton.”

  “You are becoming more special to me than anything in this world,” he told her. “I even sent my Mama that damned postcard thanking her for making a real live boy!”

  Kalinda burst into laughter. “Get in here and get washed up for dinner with all of your smooth talking.” She took the flowers adding them and water to one of the two vases she shipped. The flowers were perfect as a centerpiece on the table, which was ready for dinner.

  “This looks real nice Kalinda, and I am actually hungry,” he told her as he came back from the bathroom. “It’s been a long time since I have looked forward to having a meal. Coming home to a hot meal and you...whooo,” he said to her. “A man can really get the big head about himself and his place in the world.”

  “You make me blush,” she said shyly.

  “You are appreciated. My life has new meaning...I am energized. How about we go for a walk after this great meal and I show you some of the trails?”

  “That sounds great,” she told him.

  “Good, good,” he said. Out of instinct he reached for her, kissing her on the temple and squeezing her fondly. He was losing himself to her. He was falling in love with this woman and he was okay with it. For the first time in his life, he felt okay about loving a woman with everything in him.

  Chapter 14

  “W hat do you mean I can’t touch that land?” Luke yelled across the room at his father.

  “Just what I said, Luke. The stipulations are clearly outlined. Every Darton has to sign off on the deed for the land to be harvested, farmed, or have a single tree felled. Your brother has adamantly opposed any cutting on that land,” Jeremiah said to his son.

  “Well, maybe we can get around him,” Luke mumbled.

  “How? How do you propose to do that? He is married now and she is a Darton. She is a powerhouse of a woman too. At her own wedding, she managed to persuade almost everyone in that room to his cause. Even me,” Jeremiah said. “I am really starting to think he might be on to something.”

  “And I am starting to think he is on something heavy, like drugs. Daddy, seriously, you can’t be buying into this. He goes and orders some black mouthpiece off the internet and gives her our last name, and suddenly you want to venture over to his side. This was not part of the plan!”

  “Luke, plans change. Maybe we can use this to our advantage and say that the Dartons are committed to saving the land and preserving the planet,” Jeremiah added.

  Luke sat contemplatively staring at his fist. Another one of his brother’s daydreaming bitches was getting in his way. Just as he took care of the last one, he would quickly dispatch of this one as well. She was no different than any of the others. All that was required was to wave a few dollars at them, promise a position of influence, and the panties would drop. Kalinda wouldn’t be any different.

  “Whatever you are thinking, stop it,” Jeremiah said to his eldest son.

  “Daddy, what do we know about this woman? She could be waiting to have a couple of babies and take our family for everything we have,” Luke protested.

  “Your brother’s accounts were down to less than twenty-five grand last week. This morning I ran into Aubrey’s assistant at the bank. She was making a deposit. The simple girl told me everything. Evidently, Kalinda made an equal investment in the Paul’s company. It was six figures, so she is not after money,” Jeremiah.

  “Then we owe it to ourselves to find out what she is after,” Luke said softly.

  “Do yourself a favor and let this one go, Luke. There are other projects, other tracts of land we can cultivate,” Jeremiah said as
he gathered his things.

  “That may be. However, my heart was set on that one,” Luke mumbled.

  “Leave it be son. Making a move on this, you may not come away so unscathed,” his father told him.

  “Oh, you are on his side now, Daddy?”

  “No, I love both of my sons. I am just asking you to not be so damned aggressively foolhardy this time. I don’t know what happed between you and that woman he was seeing before and I don’t want to know. Yet, if you go out of your way, drive to Imnaha, and get into some altercation with his wife, I will know that what Paul has said about you is true,” Jeremiah said.

  Luke had heard enough. His father was growing soft in his old age and sometimes, a man had to handle things for himself. His brother, again, was in his way. Now, he’d married some media savvy sow who also planned to ruin the resort he had negotiated to be developed on that ten thousand acres. I got rid of the last one. I will get rid of this one, too.

  The walk up the first trail was peaceful, and Kalinda snapped photos of the trailhead markers, fauna, and flora. Paul made a point of singling out plants that were perennials, bugs that were helpful and everything that could hurt an unsuspecting body. Kalinda made notes in a small green notebook.

  “May I ask what you are writing in that journal, wife?”

  “I am going to make trail markers on the first two trails to annotate the types and names of the plants and fauna. The trails that we build after these two, people should know the plant and wildlife,” Kalinda said, snapping a photo of deer tracks for the website.

  She continued walking, looking, observing, until they came upon the first tiny house. Kalinda didn’t wait for him as she walked up on the porch. There were no chairs. “This won’t do,” she mumbled. “Do you have the keys on you for this door?”

  The jangling in his pocket indicated as much as he opened the wooden front door to let her inside. The floors were bare, the cupboards were minimal and the towels were an embarrassment to be hung on a rack. The handmade rugged wilderness style furniture was so-so and bedding was not provided.

  “Are the trails only open in the warmer months?” she inquired.

  “Yes, for the safety of the weekenders and me included. I don’t want some idiot wandering upon a set of hibernating bears. You know they aren’t actually sleeping during the winter. Bear are just kinda laying about without a care in the world. That is until you walk up on them,” he said with wide eyes.

  “You sound like you know that from experience.”

  “Ahhh, yeah!” he said with even wider eyes.

  “I can’t wait to hear this story,” she said with a laugh.

  “Don’t laugh. It was a cave full of sleeping damned bears. I could smell it, but like a fool I went inside with my little headlight on high, looked about and turned my face to the left and there it was, a big ass bear standing up. Then two more stood up and I took the hell off, running with Hershey squirts in the back of my pants,” he said with a frown.

  “Did they catch you?”

  “No, but if they wanted to find me, they could have followed the smell of the poop in my pants all the way back to my cabin,” he said with a twist of his bottom lip.

  Kalinda fingers pressed into her lips to stave off the laughter. The look on his face was as sincere as a ten-year-old confessing he’d broken his mother’s favorite lamp as he seemed to relive the moment, even going as far to touch the seat of his pants, as if he was squirting little brown pellets all over again.

  Paul clapped his hands together. “Speaking of poop, I brought home some enzymes for the septic tank,” he said, grabbing her by the hand. “Let’s head home. I thought I smelled cookies or something sweet,” he said grinning.

  “I did make a pineapple upside down coffee cake,” she said with a grin.

  “You sure I can eat that?”

  “I made it with gluten free flour,” she said.

  “Wow, just plain wow,” he said pulling her roughly into his arms and kissing her deeply.

  Kalinda was a slightly off balance when he let her go. “Paul, you are really an affectionate kind of guy, aren’t you?”

  “Oh yeah, twice a week, and meat and taters on Wednesday,” he said. “That’s all I ask. You can pick the two days of the week.”

  “It seems odd to me. Maybe we shouldn’t schedule our lovemaking, but let it and us occur spontaneously,” she said to him.

  Paul was shaking his head no.

  “No?”

  “No,” he said flatly.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  He turned to face her and true enough, his body was on the ready. He turned back and continued walking as if his next words had no weight. “I don’t know what it is about you, but every time I touch you, hold you, and kiss you, I am ready to go. Yes, you are my wife. Yes, the winters will be long and cold, but I want a life partner, not just a bed buddy. I am doing my best to connect with the woman and get to know you, not just your body. So a schedule for intimacy to start is good, or I won’t get a damned thing done. If in a year, we still can’t keep our hands off each other, fine. We will have made the first year and it will be about something more than us just being good together in bed. I have had that. I need you, Kalinda. But I don’t want you for just now. I want you for a lifetime, so if I have to discipline myself to keep my hands off you, than I will do that,” he said still walking.

  “That was really beautiful. It would have been nice if you were looking at me when you said it,” she grumbled.

  Paul stopped and faced her. “I am falling head over heels in love with you, Kalinda, but I need to make sure that it’s not just a full belly and sated cock that I am confusing with something else,” he said flatly.

  “Well, damn. I should have left well enough alone,” she mumbled.

  “I will not lie to you, be dishonest, or tell you half-truths. I love you being here. I thoroughly enjoy making love to you, but honestly, walking through that door to the way you laid out our house, dinner being ready, food that tasted fantastic, I was so happy, my shit was harder than breaking the code on the Ebola virus.” His eyebrows were arched as if his words were all rushing to jump out of his mouth at once. He continued by saying, “What I am saying is that you are making me really happy. I only want to make sure you are as well. You don’t deserve to be with some man who wants to bounce on top of you every time he looks at you. You have feelings and plans, and I want to hear them,” he said with a smile.

  “After you hear my feelings, is that when you plan to bounce on top of me?” she asked.

  “...Pretty close after,” he said with a grin.

  “Lucky me,” she said wistfully.

  “No, I am the lucky one,” he said, kissing her full on again. “I am so damned happy I am scared that someone is going to try and take it away. However, your happiness is important, too. You have to be heart content here. I am going to do whatever is necessary to ensure that you are.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay,” he responded. He was grinning as he laced his fingers within hers, kissing her knuckles before setting off down the trail.

  Hand in hand they walked back to their cozy, two-bedroom home. The evening was ended on the front porch with two cups of decaf tea and a slice of pineapple upside down cake made with gluten free flour as the sun set behind the mountain. No words were spoken as he helped her do the dishes and he prepared for his work day on Tuesday. His fingers touched the flat screen as he walked by it on the way to bedroom.

  Kalinda was fast asleep before his head ever settled onto the pillow. In a week or so, she would be on his time schedule but right now, she needed to sleep. He held her close, staring at her face before turning off the lights. She was smiling in her sleep.

  “I will take that as the first sign of your happiness, my beautiful wife,” he said kissing the tip of her nose. “It works for me.”

  Chapter 15

  T uesday went by in a blur as Kalinda made her way over to the home o
ffice to take inventory, assess the setup and make notes. One thing she knew was missing were welcome baskets in the cabins for weekenders. If I can figure out how to make specialty soaps...nope...order some soap. Maybe organic granola...

  She toyed with other ideas that included a specialty tea, candies, homemade marshmallows, and other ideas that could only be purchased from the office by their weekend trail walkers. Main staples for the store would be socks, blister repair, and hydrocortisone. She added the notes to her green notebook.

  In the house, her cooking books were scattered about the countertop as she looked for recipes on candies. Most of the ingredients that were necessary for optimal results she didn’t have. She was short a few items and decided she may need to go into town to shop. The internet was intermittent and hard-pressed for a consistent signal, even with the television. Against her better judgement, she grabbed her purse and keys and took off for town, just to see what the local towns folks had to offer. As a backup, she brought her camera.

  Remembering the goats in the middle of the street, she slowed as she neared the post office. Paul’s vehicle was parked alongside as she pulled into the nearest space, putting her car in park and shutting down the engine. Her purse on one shoulder, the camera on the other, she began taking photos of the quaint little post office where her husband worked.

  My husband works here .

  “Postman ain’t there,” a sandpapery voice said. “He should be back soon. ‘Least I hope...I need someone to walk me over to the store. All them damn goats get ornery in the mornings, and I don’t want to take a chance.”

  “May I assist by escorting you safely across the street?” Kalinda asked the elderly man.

  “Sure can. I hope you are as pretty as you sound. I want to make all the jack holes in the store jealous...me walking in with a pretty girl,” he said.

  His leathery skin, which seemed parched by too many days in the midday sun, screamed for moisturizer and someone to care for it. Dry lips crackled like old gift wrap tissue as droplets of thick white saliva collected at the corner of his lips each time he spoke. Kalinda wasn’t certain which to look at first, the sad state of his personal hygiene or the glazed over white eyes that could not see her shape nor form.