Oregon Trails

by Olivia Gaines

  Kalinda noticed that George was having fun with the crowd. He snapped selfies that he promised to upload later in the day on the social media pages. He shooed the guests like they were little goats as he winked at her.

  “A marshmallow roast?” she asked him.

  “It will be fun and all the rage. They are going to sit ‘round the fire, tell lies, show off blisters, and share stories. Each time they come back, the stories will get bigger and word will spread. Next season, they will book ahead and be ready to return to conquer a new trail. Watch. Listen. Learn,” he told her.

  George was right.

  Paul was shocked as he sat beside the campfire that following evening holding a bent wiener on a stick. Even the guests who rented the tiny houses heard about the campfire roasts and decide to join in. The conversation started with someone who swore they saw a bear.

  A man in a felt Fedora showed a picture on his phone of red fox. “No Honey, that is a kit fox,” George corrected.

  Everyone looked at him.

  “What? I was going to be a vet until I found I had to stick my hand in a cow’s vagina. I don’t want to stick my hands in a woman’s koo-koo-ka-choo, I sure as hell ain’t gonna stick it up in some other heifer,” he said with a scowl.

  Three of the men laughed and two of the women looked sorely disappointed. George liked the attention. He even flirted with the two unattractive women.

  “Don’t be disappointed, Sweetheart. I didn’t say I didn’t like women. I love them actually,” he winked at a cute blond with large breasts. “For you, I will forget myself completely and remember the joys of being a man in your arms.”

  He added the last part with some bass in his voice. In the soft glow of the firelight, Kalinda saw one of the women actually drool. George noticed it, too. He looked at her and winked again as he stood slowly, stretching to his full six-foot frame.

  “Ladies, allow me to walk you safely back to your little house,” he said to the two. They were on their feet so fast, dust kicked up.

  Paul shook his head at how easily his cousin had the women eating out his hand.

  “On that note, good people, my wife and I bid you goodnight,” he told the small group as he rose, taking Kalinda by the hand.

  “Say goodnight, Honey,” he said to his wife.

  Kalinda turned to face the group, “Goodnight Honey.”

  They waved farewell to their guests as they made their way to their two-bedroom home. Paul slowed his pace, waiting for her, connecting their hands by linking their fingers. “I want to always walk hand in hand with you, Kalinda,” he told her with a soft smile, the corner of his eyes crinkling a bit as he looked at her in soft light of the porch lamp.

  “And I want to spend the rest of my life making you happy,” she said so quickly that she began to choke on her own spit.

  “Oh no, you don’t! You can’t take it back now, it’s out of the bag,” he said chuckling.

  “I’m not taking it back,” she tried to recover. “I just surprised myself with my honesty.”

  “Your honesty is refreshing. I love it,” he told her as he unlocked the front door. Kalinda giggled like a school girl as he lifted her over his shoulder, carrying her into the house. “I love a lot of things about you, lady.”

  “Hopefully, tonight you can tell me most of them,” she added.

  “If I can find my words, I sure will,” he said as his mouth captured hers in a hot, but brief kiss. “You make me forget everything in my damned head.”

  “Well, don’t forget we smell like smoke, sweat, and something that could have possibly died under the porch last week,” she said, kissing him back.

  “Sounds to me like we need to conserve water and hit that shower together,” he told her, dragging her by the collar of her mint green colored blouse.

  “Yep, sounds about right,” she responded, heading for the bathroom. If this is what love felt like, she wanted more of it. Lots of it, and she was willing to do what was necessary to have this man for the rest of her life.

  Later, as she lay in bed next to him, his breathing even, she scolded herself for turning into her mother. Is this how my mother feels about Hurley Lancaster ? She’d only been married for a couple weeks, but her life force had changed. The guard she kept around personal energy was coming down as she learned to trust and share her energy with others. Demons that haunted her at night still hung close by, but they were not as powerful of an influence as they had been.

  Hopefully, after her mother came out and met Paul, she would be at peace overall. She only had to survive a week in the house with her parents, sharing a bedroom, and being... “Yuck!” she said aloud, turning to her side.

  “One step at a time, Mary Jane,” she whispered.

  Maybe her mother had been right about her and so many more things. It didn’t matter how many times she reinvented her life, each conversation she held with the inner being that fueled her – self-referral always went to Mary Jane.

  Inside, I am still Mary Jane Marshall . Honesty sat in the chair across the room staring at her through the darkness.

  “Oh shut up,” she mumbled to the irony that sat beside the honesty she was reluctant to face, then finally she slowly drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 26

  T wo weeks sped by in an unprecedented blur of weekend guests, large boxes of mini soaps, weekdays of baking cookies and stuffing baggies with trail mix, and being far too excited about 5:30 in the evening. That was her favorite time of day. Paul walked through the front door Monday through Thursday at 5:30 on the nose.

  She had nothing exciting to share with him.

  Her days were basically all the same with variations here and there of planting something, knitting something, or baking something. Some days she spoke on the phone to customers or couples wanting the perfect little get away to the Northeast corner of Oregon that put them far from the maddening crowd, to a wide-open space. A space where they could breathe.

  On Sundays, she and Paul cleaned the houses, preparing for the next weekend. The photos on the website were changed on Monday. New videos were posted on Tuesday, orders for more goods were placed on Wednesday. More inventory usually arrived on Thursday, which she stocked on Friday morning. The weekenders usually started to trickle in around 11, which was also the time George trickled in from Buster’s. It was mundanely routine and the two ran by as the simplicity of her life played out like some old time western romance on the frontier. She wrote the story in her head of a simple woman from back east who became the mail order bride to a man who ran a trading post. Over time, the delicate bride learned to make soaps and jerk venison to earn butter and egg money.

  In the background, the music of Keith Sweat played as she sat on the couch, one ball of yarn in her left hand, gazing out the window with her jaw agape as the story played out in her head. A horse . The frontier woman had a horse – she needed to learn to ride. Maybe I should ask Paul for a horse . Wait. What the hell are you going to do with a horse Mary Jane ?

  Paul arrived home but instead of coming through the front door, he went around back to leave his boots in the mudroom. Old man McFeeny at the last stop on his route had over-irrigated his crop and everything around him was puddles of mud. The mud caught under the wheels of the mail truck, forcing both Paul, the old man, his wife, and three kids, each knee high to a wood pecker, to come out and help push the truck from the stuck position. His blue uniform pants were caked thickly with dirt from the man’s front yard and his shoes were all but ruined. Fearing of tracking the end of his day into the house, he undressed on the back porch, stripping down to just his underpants. The music coming from inside of their home threw him off.

  He entered the kitchen to find Kalinda sitting on the couch in the living room in a fog. It frightened him as his heart rate quickened, dreading she might have had a stroke. Softly he called her name.

  “Kalinda, honey, are you okay?”

  She nearly jumped out of her skin as she sprang from the couch. The two ki
ttens, Light Skinned and Dark Skinned jumped as well with the darker cat using his clawless paws to scratch at the rug in anxiety.

  “You scared the BeJesus out of me, Paul!”

  “The who?”

  “It’s just a term. How did you...where are your clothes...?” she asked one question then the other.

  “Mud. Old man McFeeny lives too close to the river, he overwatered, and it washed out his front yard. My mail truck got stuck...hey, what are you listening to?”

  “Oh, that’s Keith Sweat,” she said as the R & B crooner sang nasally about there being a right and a wrong way to love another person.

  “Kalinda, are you depressed?” he asked with all sincerity.

  “Goodness no! Why would you think I was depressed?” She picked up the ball of yarn she’d dropped that Light Skinned was using as an unraveling toy.

  “This depressing music. Why is he whining?” Paul wanted to know.

  “I’m still trying to get the story from you about why you came in the back door and where are your clothes?” She asked again this time with concern in her voice.

  “My boots are ruined and they are in the mud room and my clothes are in the wash. I didn’t want to track anything in the house and have you swat me with a frying pan,” he said with a laugh. “You keep a pretty tidy house.”

  “Habit. My mother was in the right profession. She was an obsessive cleaner. ‘Just because we are poor doesn’t mean we have to be nasty,’ she would always tell me,” Kalinda said with a far off look in her eyes.

  “You miss her, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do. That is until she walks in that door and starts doling out unsolicited advice,” Kalinda chuckled. Her eyes roamed over his physically fit body, stopping on his thighs. “You know, you have some really nice legs.”

  Paul looked down at his feet.

  “The rest of you is pretty awesome, too,” she said to him with a coy smile.

  Paul wasn’t smiling at all as the song in the background transitioned into the next tune as the man who was hurting his ears began whining about making it last forever. One thing he didn’t want to last forever was that song.

  Or that man singing it.

  He sincerely wanted to fly to wherever that Sweat man was and punch him so hard in the lips he would never sing again.

  “Can we turn off Mr. Depressor over there?”

  “Sure. I take it you don’t like R & B. You are more of a country music kind of guy, I guess?”

  “Nope. I actually prefer classical. Mozart and Chopin are my favorites,” he told her.

  “Good to know. Would you care to tell me the other things that are your favorites,” she asked, moving towards the kitchen, but not turning off the music.

  “Coming home every night and finding you in this house is at the top of my list. Making love to you until you make that little squeaking wheezing sound is a close second. Followed by that sexy back of yours...then your smile...that dry sense of humor and I guess...knowing you love a guy like me is pretty high up there as well,” he said. “What are some of your favorite things?” he asked her.

  “You,” she said flatly. “In those boxers, wearing a smile.”

  Her eyes met his with an intensity that made his man parts jump.

  “Wow,” he said exhaling.

  He didn’t need to hear anything else. All he wanted was to hold her close in his arms. In the background the man started whining out another song as Paul pulled his wife against his body, dancing with her in the kitchen. He wearing a pair of blue boxers, and she was fully dressed with her hand pressed to his chest feeling the beating of his heart against her fingertips could have possibly been the most perfect moment in their relationship.

  “You belong with me,” Paul said, kissing the top of her head.

  “I know. I don’t ever want to be anywhere else,” she responded.

  “I was worried. You were off in your head when I walked in,” he told her.

  “Paul, I am always off in my head writing a different life for myself,” she confessed.

  He had a little more to say as he maneuvered her through the kitchen. Their bodies pressed closed together, enjoying the rhythm of unspoken need. Never had he imagined that everything would work out so well with a mail order bride. Kalinda was everything he could want in a mate, a woman, and more. He wanted her to be happy, not only with her life with him, but with who she was.

  “Maybe, with both of your parents coming, you can ask the burgeoning questions fueling your fear and get some closure,” he told her.

  “Maybe,” she said. Right now, she didn’t want to talk about it.

  Right now she didn’t want to talk at all. Kalinda stepped back, pulling him by the hand into their bedroom.

  “What about dinner?” he asked, his stomach rumbling loudly.

  “I am going to make you forget all about your empty belly.”

  “Okay then, but you are going to have to turn off whining man. I won’t be able to concentrate enough to...,” his words were swallowed by the force of her mouth on his as she pushed him down on the bed.

  “To hell with him,” Paul said, losing himself in the moment.

  S unday morning arrived with the departure of carloads of relaxed urbanites heading back to crowded cities full of people crowding into box stores, box shaped cars, and working in boxed shaped buildings. The last of the guests rolled out as her mother and Hurley Lancaster rolled in. George, who firmly believed that if Jesus didn’t have to work on Sunday neither would he, left after the campfire to be with Buster.

  Kalinda had work to do. Cleaning supplies in hand with yellow rubber gloves, she could not hide the surprise of seeing her parents arrive early.

  The tiny houses had to be cleaned. Normally, she and Paul would have them done by two, have a late lunch by three, and a movie on the couch by four, which was also the time her parents were supposed to arrive.

  “Surprise!” Annie Marshall yelled out as she stepped from the car looking like she’d just gotten off the plane from Zamunda and was awaiting the arrival of Prince Akeem.

  “You are early, Mama,” she said, setting her cleaning gear on the porch. “Welcome, you two.”

  Hurley was all smiles as he looked about the lands, grinning from ear to ear. “Lawd bless my tired eyes. The air up here is so fresh and so clean, I can almost smell my ear,” he said.

  Paul came out on the porch and stood frozen in place as he took in the beauty that was Annie Marshall. The way Kalinda described her he was half expecting a round bellied Mammy with a handkerchief tied on her head. Instead what he witnessed was a statuesque ebony goddess with large wide set eyes and the cutest nose that his wife was blessed to have inherited, and when she smiled at him, his knees buckled a bit.

  “Honey, this is my mother Annie Marshall. You already know Mr. Lancaster,” she said.

  “Hurley, Mary Jane – everyone calls me Hurley. Your husband is family. He can do the same,” he said.

  Annie had moved closer to Paul, inspecting him from head to toe. His eyes never left the woman’s face as he took in everything about her from the simple purple maxi dress to the red hoop earrings and the red scarf around her neck.

  “Paul, please stop staring at my mother like that! It is rude,” Kalinda said to him, punching him lightly in the arm.

  “I can’t help it. Ms. Marshall, you have got to be the most stunning, ebony skinned creature I have ever seen in my life. Honey, your mother is absolutely...flawless,” he said to Kalinda.

  “Now he is being rude and is going to get socked in the nose if he keeps it up,” Hurley said.

  Annie swatted at Hurley. “All these years later and this man still acts like the prized bull in the pen,” she said.

  “Rightly so, you beautiful thing,” Hurley said. “Paul, from the moment I laid eyes on her I was completely lost. I have been lost ever since.”

  “How long ago was that?” Paul inquired.

  “I was 16 years old,” Hurley said. “I fell in love
with her and have been in love every day of my sad sack life.”

  “Anyhoo,” Kalinda said, not wanting to hear any of it. “You guys can come on in, and get comfy. Paul and I have to clean the tiny houses and get ready for the week. It only takes us a couple of hours to clean the five rentals, collect the trash, burn it, and stuff like that.”

  Annie’s eyes were wider than they naturally were anyway. “What is this I am hearing? My Mary Jane is cleaning houses?”

  Kalinda’s feathers were already ruffled. The idea of Hurley Lancaster hoarding her mother’s life since she was 16 made her stomach roil. She never had a chance at a normal existence because of him . Anger was simmering beneath the surface, threatening to explode and scald them all. Walk away, Mary Jane .

  “I don’t mind cleaning the houses since I own them mother. It is a big difference,” she said, grabbing her cleaning supplies and taking off towards trail one.

  Paul looked at Hurley and Annie. “It is going to be a long week if you three can’t have an open, honest dialogue about her life. She keeps reinventing herself to find a place where she belongs because you two never took the time to explain the obvious love you have for each other. Tonight over dinner, you two will clear the air and clarify why her life played out the way it did. She deserves some kind of truth so we can move forward with our lives in honesty. We can’t move into our future if her past is making her feel as if she doesn’t deserve something better,” he said firmly.

  “I like you, Paul” Hurley said.

  “And I would like you even better if you told your daughter the real reason behind the way you two have raised her,” he said.

  Annie touched his arm. “We can do that. I will go and start making us something to nosh on, then I will treat you guys and cook a really fine dinner,” Annie said.