“Can you tear down those too?” she asked as she gestured to the outbuildings not in use.
“Ahyup,” he grunted as they reached her overpriced car and she automatically pressed the button on her keychain to open the door and let her in. He glanced at the car as the door opened quietly and on its own for her, expensive enough to pay a couple of year’s salary to someone like him, and most folks around here. It was none of his business though so he hurried over to the trailer where another man stood, awaiting orders. “Let’s get her down,” he gestured to him, and they immediately began removing the chains holding the machine to the bed of the trailer.
The younger man kept watch out of the corner of his eye as the redhead drove the expensive sports car onto the road. She parked it opposite the driveway so they could drive the front end loader onto the property. She was definitely worth a second and third look and he wondered if she remembered him as she watched his uncle maneuver the heavy machine off the trailer. She caught him staring as she got out of the car and he felt his cheeks reddening. He hurried after his uncle to collect any boards worth salvaging hoping she hadn’t noticed. She had said they could take whatever they wanted.
She followed along slowly and looked down at her Prada shoes knowing she should have dressed down for the farm, but after twenty years she had nothing appropriate to wear on such a place. She hadn’t thought about it as the miles passed and she headed for this part of Oklahoma.
Chapter Two
THE ESCAPE
She remembered, vividly, the reverse trip. She had run away from here as fast as the bus would take her. Was she running away from her past or running to her future? She didn’t know, but getting away from South Oklahoma had seemed like the best thing to her to do. Her bags were packed; Mrs. Davidson had agreed to send on the few boxes and trunks when she was set.
“All set?” Sheriff Worley asked, as he gave her a lift to the bus stop.
“Yep,” she answered. She was frightened out of her mind but she knew she had no choice but to go. She had to leave it all behind her. Leave the memories, the only home she’d ever known, the problems, and let time fade it all.
He glanced at the young girl; he could see how scared she was. He knew he would be at her age. She was just a week over eighteen, and had signed all the papers renting out the farm to the co-op to be used as they saw fit, to farmers who wanted to use the land and the sturdy barns and silos that still stood on the property. He didn’t blame her for leaving, there was nothing left. It wasn’t a good time to sell, it never was, not in this economy. Farming was a gamble at the best of times; this wasn’t the best of them. She had lost in so many ways, leaving was about the only option. Maybe some time away would do her good. Some of the boys who went off to school returned a little wiser, some didn’t last, few stayed away for good. He was sure he’d see her back. Small town girls were worse than small town boys for wanting to return to what was familiar, what they knew. There were a few boys around her age and a little older who would gladly marry her. She might be scrawny but she had the farm and that would draw them like bees to honey.
He didn’t know her though. Avril Christenson might have died that day a couple of weeks back, instead of her father. At least in her own mind she had. Not that day, but the week before. They said lightening couldn’t strike twice in the same place. They were wrong. Tornadoes did it, lightening did it too. This time though, the tornado had taken her life in this world, and left her with the shell of the person that was escaping on a bus. Everyone thought her grief was over her father but it wasn’t. It was for the young woman who had been caught in her Chevy truck the week before. The woman had been her best friend and allowed Avril to be brave in the face of a dismal future. She was the one who had given Avril hope. She tried not to remember how much she had loved her best friend, how much they had planned, how much she had wanted to….
“Here we are, now you want some help buying your ticket?” the sheriff offered helpfully, as he would have any young woman.
“No thank you Sheriff Worley, I’ve got it,” she said in a flippant, teenage way. She threw her red hair back over her shoulder, her freckles standing out in relief against her tanned face, the sun making the freckles seem unending. “Thank you for the ride,” she remembered to say politely, as her mother would have wanted her to.
“No problem. Now you take care, ya’hear?” he spoke in return and watched as she gathered her backpack and two duffels and headed into the office that doubled as a bus stop and cafe. He watched through the door and looked around to see if any undesirables were loafing about. He didn’t want this young girl hassled. He would have treated her as a daughter, as any young thing in this area would be treated. Poor young thing to lose her best friend and father within a week of each other, and have to graduate high school all alone, no relatives, no close friends to see her off. Mrs. Davidson had been kind enough to take her in these last few weeks until she graduated, but other than that Avril Christenson was on her own. Maybe she was better off. That best friend of hers had been nothing but a troublemaker since she was born, with unnatural leanings from what he had observed. He had never caught her at anything, but a person knew about such things. He thought her interest in the young Avril a tragedy in the making. It had only been a matter of time until she corrupted that innocent child. Maybe God had taken her for that reason, to prevent it. That poor child, with a father like Owen Christenson to have been left with nothing like that. It was best that she leave, at least for now.
Avril knew the Sheriff was watching her, he couldn’t help himself, nosy bugger that he was. She bought a one-way ticket to California, and when the clerk asked if she wanted the return ticket, she declined. The clerk had graduated from the same high school the year before and couldn’t blame her for leaving and not coming back, she wished she could do it. She knew who Avril Christianson was, everyone knew. The tragedy had been all over Oakley. Losing her father like that, the poor child, and right before graduation and her eighteenth birthday, such a loss. The clerk watched her as she sat down on one of the benches for the bus that was due in at any time. Avril looked out and saw the sheriff’s car was still there, waiting to see if she got on the bus so that his ‘obligation’ to the citizens of this small town was discharged. She suspected he was afraid she would stay and expose him for the lecherous fool he was, a drinking buddy of her fathers, who hadn’t protected her from his abuse. The many scars on her soul she laid firmly at her father’s feet, but that man outside waiting in the sheriff’s car could have prevented some of them after her mother’s death.
It hadn’t been her fault that her mother had been ‘poorly’ after giving birth to a ‘girl child’ instead of the much anticipated son and heir. That she couldn’t have any more children had been blamed solely on Avril, as she had been told over and over throughout her life. Her mother tried to make up for it by shielding her from her father’s abuse while she was alive, but he wore her down, he killed her slowly and surely until the shell of the woman blew away in the Oklahoma winds. Her death had been laid firmly at the young Avril’s feet, and she was made to feel the abuse that her mother had shielded her from for so long. She was to take over all the duties of running a household. At ten, this was too much for any child. Farm work is tough on a woman at any given time but for a child with no one to teach her; she faltered at every turn. Only her friendship with Ellie had given her hope. Ellie implanted a fierce hope that gave her a will and strength to survive to escape her father’s tyranny.
She learned to do her chores quickly and if not perfect, to hide the flaws so that she would have time to meet Ellie out on the prairie to escape his notice for a few minutes every day. She shared all her girlhood dreams with the older girl. With four years separating them, Ellie seemed worldly and wise. She understood without being told what was happening to the smaller and younger girl. She saw the bruises and scratches from the belt she had been given for not finishing her ‘work’ in a timely manner or not up to his expect
ations. Many times his rage was fueled by liquor; he had no idea of his strength as he yelled at the youngster.
Avril put aside her memories for a moment as she watched the bus come in and one person get off. It looked bigger than the school bus she had ridden to school for nine years. She bravely got up from the bench and gathered her things, her most cherished possessions in two bags and a backpack, the rest in storage at the Davidsons, for how long she didn’t know, but it couldn’t be long as they were charging her for keeping it there. It was their way of profiting from having to ‘keep’ the minor and not getting enough out of the deal as she had turned eighteen this past week. Had she not been so close to turning eighteen, they would have been appointed her guardians, and stolen every dime from her parent’s small estate. She slowly approached the bus with her ticket in hand, and the driver leapt off the bus.
“Two bags miss?” he asked respectfully, as he opened the massive storage container underneath the bus. She nodded as he took one bag and gently put it inside the bin, and then reached for her second one closing the doors behind the bag. She must have looked worried as he said, “They’ll be safe in there.” She nodded with a tremulous smile.
“Ticket please?” he asked, as she hesitated to head for the door of the bus. She handed it to him as she adjusted her overly full backpack on her shoulder. He looked it over, surprised to see the destination, and handed it back to her. “You first,” he said politely and indicated the stairwell. With a last look over her shoulder at the station and the sheriff car sitting there, she went up the stairs and looked for an empty seat, one where she could watch the container if it were opened up again. All her things were in those bags, she couldn’t afford to have them stolen. Sitting down, she put her backpack on the empty seat beside her, to discourage anyone from sitting next to her. She glanced around making sure not to make eye contact with anyone, and noticed the bus was barely full. A few people in the back seemed to be traveling together, but most were sitting by themselves like she was. She was close enough to the front to watch for her stuff, and to the driver in case anyone wanted to start something. She watched as he closed the door, as he sat down and strapped himself in. She looked for seat belts, but there were none, just like on the school bus. She had often wondered at that, the bus driver had once explained that in the event of an accident, that it was so the driver could get the kids out easier. She hoped a bus this large didn’t get into accidents. As the bus pulled away from the depot, she saw the sheriff’s car pulling away in the opposite direction, a small cloud of dust blown up from the tires. She guessed she was no longer Sheriff Worley’s concern.
At first she watched the familiar landscape go by as the bus picked up speed and headed for the Interstate. It would take a while as there were several small towns such as hers that it would have to stop in. Sometimes, someone would get on, but not always. Sometimes it was a total waste of time. They had to stop though apparently, from what she could see. The landscape gradually began to change, and once they were on the Interstate it went by rapidly and she gulped, she had never been this far from home and she knew she had to be brave. A lot would change now, there was no going back. The hands of fate had been turning for weeks now and she would be brave. She was going on; Ellie would have wanted her to, for both of them.
That was the day Avril began to go by her middle name Ellen. To honor her mother who had also been named Ellen, and it was close enough to Ellie, that it was to honor her as well. She gulped, remembering Ellie’s sweet face and the plans they had made, together. They had just been waiting for her to graduate high school and turn eighteen. They had so many plans. Ellie had saved up enough for both of them, by working at the gas station, to start over somewhere else. The two of them against the world. They had been ready; they were just waiting for the right time.
Her father must have sensed she was getting ready to leave. His drinking had never been worse. His abuse had only increased. He felt he owned her. She was his child and she had to do what he said, his sense of ownership was truly distorted. Her turning eighteen though must have bothered him as it came closer and closer, and he started getting meaner, if that were possible. He didn’t approve of Ellie May Fredericks, those ‘white trash’ Fredericks that lived in the mobile home trailer park. They were better than anyone living in a trailer park. He had told Avril often enough to stay away from her. The rumors about that girl were positively unnatural. He had laughed when he heard that the tornado had ripped through the trailer park where the Fredericks had lived and killed not only Ellie, but many other ‘white trash.’ He thought he was better than anyone living in a tornado magnet as he called mobile homes. He owned a home, he had a farm, he was better than anyone in that part of their small town.
Avril had been the one to identify Ellie, when the body was found along with her truck. Only her short yet beautiful honey blonde hair identified her with its shaved sides and the designs scored in them. Avril had run her fingers through it just the night before Ellie had been caught in the tornado, pulling into the park just as the storm hit. She had never had a chance to run to the bunker that was in the center of the park for the residents. The terror that she must have felt when the twister sucked up her Chevy must have been horrifying, her face, now at peace, still had remnants of the dirt and debris that had embedded under her skin. The rescue workers that had found her hadn’t bothered to clean her up, and Avril had been hard pressed not to throw up at the sight of her beloved best friend and what nature had done to her. She left the ‘temporary’ morgue after identifying Ellie, and headed right for the mobile home park. The mobile home that Ellie had lived in was off its blocks and on its side, but she crawled in anyway with one look around to see if anyone had seen her. She knew scavengers would be arrested, but they would be through if she didn’t get to Ellie’s things first.
She crawled through the debris to find the ‘safe place’ that Ellie used to hide her money and most treasured things. She found the box after a long search through all the jumble. She was relieved to find the rolls of bills and the various trinkets in the box. She cried when she found the engagement ring she had known Ellie wanted to give her, but was waiting until she was ‘legal.’ She looked around the room and took a sweatshirt she found, but other than that she left everything as it was and crawled out of the trailer. She was just in time as she took off from the other scavengers coming into the park who would be looking for anything they could find and sell. Supposedly ‘looking’ for bodies, any money or jewelry ‘found’ would disappear. She hid the box among her own things, hoping to keep it from being discovered by her father.
Owen Christenson didn’t care about anything, but what he could find in the bottom of a gin bottle. If his friends distilled something a little more than one hundred percent proof, well that was fine by him too. When he saw her after the death of her best friend, he laughed and told her she was ‘better off’ without that ‘trailer trash’ and now she could go find a ‘real man.’ He even offered to find her one. She shuddered in distaste, but knew better than to answer. Around her father she was shy, she was quiet and respectful, she was non-visible as much as possible to the man. She kept his house as much as she could and waited for the day when she could leave. She had promised her mother that she would graduate high school, something she herself hadn’t had the advantage of, and regretted her whole life. She wanted to keep from his notice, and the idea of his ‘friends,’ who looked at her with barely disguised lust, made her disgusted. Lecherous hands had reached out to her as she fetched beer for his ‘friends’ for years. He never stopped them, never defended her. She had learned to avoid them, for if she ever complained or spilled the beer, her father would berate her. Words were almost worse than the physical beatings, as he harangued her for ‘fun’ in front of those friends, much to their mutual amusement. Egged on by their silent appreciation of his abuse and his particular style of child rearing.
She watched the telephone poles loop up and down as the sun went down and she
headed into it. She was heading west. Far, far away from the devastation of the two tornadoes that had hit this section of Oklahoma in one week’s time. Ellen couldn’t help but wonder if her father would still be alive if she had woken him when she heard the tornado sirens go off. She had heard them loud and clear across the prairie miles from her bedroom and headed for the stairs to head for shelter. He had been asleep on the couch wearing his ‘wife beater’ t-shirt, appropriately named since he had always worn such disgusting shirts to beat not only his wife, but his daughter as well. He was snoring loudly, and she debated briefly about waking him, knowing she would be backhanded for ‘bothering’ him, but also knowing that the sirens were going loud and clear and that they should head for the shelter her grandparents had built to protect the humans from this very thing. He drooled in his sleep as his hand came up to rub his crotch and then up to rub his nose. She shuddered in disgust at the sight. The sirens must be spinning around as they came louder and then fainter, it was the next circuit that decided it for her, and she headed to the shelter, alone.
It was hard for her small frame to open the door; it was a heavy steel door. The wind was blowing so hard she nearly lost her footing as she struggled with it. She could see the vent spinning around on top of the storm shelter to let in some air to the close quarters. It was built tough, but she managed to pry it open, the wind catching it, before she was pulling it shut behind her and bolting it. She was in absolute darkness and she reached for a flashlight she knew they kept on the shelf. Something soft brushed against her hand, she didn’t know if was a spider web, a mouse, or what, and she squealed at the sensation, but determinedly felt for the flashlight against the eternal blackness that was before her. She wouldn’t go down the steps without seeing where she was going. It was a black pit, a void, an absence of any light, and she was frightened. She had heard the roar of the wind, the steel door had shut that out, but in the absence of sound the dark frightened her further. There, there was the flashlight. She quickly pulled it to herself and flicked it on. The beam was feeble, the batteries old and unused. She cursed in her mind, not aloud, just in case someone could hear her and berate her for her naughty mouth. She shone the flickering beam around and saw another flashlight on the shelf. This one too was weak and unused, but between the two weak beams she felt better and could see further. She saw a lantern further down and headed carefully down the stairs. The noises outside as things hit the door scared her, she wondered how long she would have to stay down here, she wondered if she should go back up and get her father. Remembering how he had laughed at Ellie’s death, seeming to take pleasure in the devastation on his young daughters face, she firmly decided that he was on his own. He would make her pay in countless ways later, but she knew it was a price she had to pay.
Small Town Angel Page 29
