Random Acts

by Franklin Horton

  If her dad wanted to say more, he didn’t. He let it rest. Amanda’s mind was racing. Her mother had been so insistent that Cole was basically an asshole, a horrible person, and that the divorce was his fault, but was that really the case? What she was finding gave her doubts. With those doubts came surges of guilt. How could she question the integrity of her dead mother? Didn’t she love her?

  Although she felt emotionally devastated at that moment, she didn’t cry. She felt too hollow to produce tears. There was still more to this story. More exploring to do. She would have to do it with an open mind to the possibility that her mother may not be the person she thought her to be. Also with an open mind to the possibility that her dad may not be what her mother made him out to be either.

  She looked over at her dad out of the corner of her eye. Could he be the wronged party here? She herself had been an asshole to him solely based on what her mother had said. By all appearances, he’d been so emotionally wrought over the divorce he’d never entered into a serious relationship again. She felt a wave of love for her dad. There was also another surge of guilt, but this time it was for how she’d treated her father.

  At least this was something she could work toward fixing.

  “I’ll pick up a hot water heater first thing in the morning,” Cole said. “Won’t take very long at all to replace it.”

  “That’s fine, Dad,” Amanda said, bursting into tears and running into the house.

  Cole sat there totally clueless as to what to do. “It’s just a water heater,” he called after her. “No big deal.”

  8

  Amanda slept late on Saturday morning. Cole allowed it, though in general he was against people sleeping the day away. He understood his daughter probably needed the extra rest after a couple of days on the construction site. Although they hadn’t pushed her to do anything too hard, the days were still long and physically demanding. Amanda slept soundly until about 9:30 AM when he started mowing right beneath her bedroom window. Amanda didn't feel like it was an intentional effort to wake her up, but at the same time her dad didn't believe in putting off work just to protect the sleeping.

  After flopping around for a while, she decided she might as well get up. She immediately checked her phone. She’d gone to bed unusually early last night out of sheer exhaustion and found she’d missed a lot of group texts between her friends back in Virginia. They were all planning their weekends. None of it was anything Amanda would be able to participate in from North Carolina. She felt like she was a world away, which brought a pang of longing for her old life, and for her mother. She wondered how long it would be before she could wake up and not be hit with those memories before she was even out of bed. With thoughts of her mother came thoughts of the things she was now learning about her, including the fact she may have had a secret life.

  There was also a text from Fox checking in on her and asking how she was doing. Amanda would have to text him back when she was little more awake. She threw on some shorts and went to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water. She’d insisted on buying a case for the house even though it drove her dad nuts. Her dad did have a point that the water they were pumping out of the ground here in the mountains of North Carolina probably was more pure than whatever was in the bottle. Right now, she still preferred the convenience of the store-bought stuff in the plastic bottle.

  She went out on the back porch barefoot and leaned on the deck rail. When her dad saw her he killed the engine on the riding mower.

  "You're not going to be able to run the weedeater dressed like that," Cole pointed out.

  That was apparently a hint that her father had more work lined up for her on her day off. She looked toward the detached garage and spotted the weedeater propped against the wall beside a can of fuel. It was on the tip of her tongue to make some smartass comment back to her father, to tell him she was tired and needed a day to lay around. She knew a little bit about how he thought and she wanted something from him. She would have to earn it.

  She looked from the weedeater to her father. “That’s fine. I'll go change into some work clothes and do the trimming. Will you let me borrow the Jeep later?" She was careful not to word it in a manner that implied it was an ultimatum. Her dad didn’t like those kind of choices.

  "The Jeep?" Cole asked, his face conveying that he found this to be a completely outlandish request. She might as well have been asking for a condo in Hawaii.

  Amanda nodded, not acknowledging his stunned expression. In fact, she had no idea why he looked at her that way. “Yes, the Jeep.”

  "Where do you want to go? You know I’ll take you anywhere. Every time you’ve come to visit, I’ve driven you everywhere you asked to go."

  Amanda shrugged. She looked off to the woods and gathered her thoughts. “This is different. I live here now. I just want to look around town. I want to see what’s here."

  "Uhh, I don't know about that," Cole said. "You haven’t driven around this town."

  Amanda laughed. "Dad, seriously, I learned to drive in Northern Virginia. I’ve driven the DC Beltway. It doesn't get any worse than that. Traffic up there sucks. I think I can handle rural North Carolina."

  Cole wasn’t convinced. "I just don’t know about this.”

  Amanda raised an eyebrow. "I used to drive all over the place at home. Fox would let me. Mom too. If I wanted to go somewhere, I just asked for the keys." She could see that her dad was still struggling with the idea. "If you plan on working me like an adult this summer then you should at least treat me like one."

  Cole’s expression changed and Amanda knew she had played the right card. Her dad had realized the truth in what she said.

  He sighed with resignation. "How about we start with three hours? You can have three hours.” His face indicated he was still very uncomfortable with the idea but he was willing to deal with it.

  Amanda smiled. "I'll go change into some work clothes. Thanks, Dad."

  She went back in the kitchen and shut the door behind her. She sucked down the rest of the bottle of water, feeling like she still hadn’t replaced everything she’d sweated out at the construction site this week. She flew up the stairs to change. Just the idea of this small adventure, the prospect of getting out for a little bit on her own, was the best she’d felt in weeks. She felt like it was a step toward moving on with her life, toward healing.

  9

  When the yardwork was done Amanda showered, put on clean clothes, and bounded down the steps. She found her father waiting for her at the kitchen table, sweating through his shirt and drinking a Gatorade. Amanda should have known that this was not going to be as easy as simply grabbing up the keys and driving off. Her dad walked her outside and insisted on giving her a twenty-minute lecture on the differences between driving a Jeep Wrangler and whatever else she’d driven in her life, interspersed with facts about how the Jeep would handle on certain sections of the road between their home and town.

  The tone of his lecture almost made her smile but she was afraid he’d get mad so she did her best to hide her amusement. She endured it all because she didn't want to screw up the opportunity for a little freedom. When the lecture was over, Cole extended the keys to her. Amanda snatched them and hugged her dad. She wasn't an overly affectionate child but this meant something to her. It was an important moment of trust between her and her father.

  Amanda climbed in the vehicle grinning from ear-to-ear. She buckled her seatbelt, and carefully backed out of the driveway under her Cole's hawkish gaze. It was nothing like backing out of the driveway in her old Virginia neighborhood. Instead of a wide paved driveway, her dad's house had a narrow gravel drive cut into the side of a wooded mountain. It was crowded with her dad's work truck, the construction trailer, and odd bits of contractor gear like stacks of drain pipe and pallets of cinderblocks. Fortunately, the Jeep had a tight turning radius. She was able to get it turned around quickly and escape the withering burn of her father's attention.

  The driveway connected to an
other gravel road. Amanda drove carefully, fully aware from her dad’s speech that gravel could sometimes behave like rolling marbles beneath the wheels of a vehicle. The last thing she wanted to do was end up over the hill somewhere and have to suffer the consequences.

  She was unable to resist pulling over at a wide spot in the road and taking a quick selfie leaning against the hood of the jeep. She thought it looked cool, the background a blurry sun-dappled green. She thumbed in a quick description of the photo: Finally some ME time in NC. #mynewlife #westernNC #jeepgirl #freeatlast.

  She posted it to several of her social media accounts and got back on the road. After ten minutes of gravel she ran onto a paved road and wound her way toward Boone, North Carolina. While local people didn’t think of Boone as a small town, after five years in the congested metroplex of Northern Virginia it felt quaint, friendly, and comfortable. Maybe she’d always remembered enough of her North Carolina childhood to never completely settle into the DC burbs.

  She always felt everything in Virginia was a hassle, from eating in restaurants, to driving on the freeways, to simply finding a place to park. She didn’t know why anyone wanted to live there other than the thriving job market. Even though she’d agreed to go visit Fox sometime, she hoped she’d never find herself living in Virginia again. This was a much better place. While living up there had felt like home when she was there, being here felt like returning to her real home. It was an odd feeling and she didn’t know what to make of it yet. It was another confusing aspect of a very confusing time.

  This particular outing wasn't as much about her needing anything from town as just wanting some time to herself. She wanted to decompress and process the things going on in her life. She was tired of feeling like she was being scrutinized and worried over. The way everyone was treating her, like she could snap at any moment, made her embarrassed and uncomfortable. As much as she missed her old high school friends, even they made her feel uncomfortable sometimes. They didn’t know what to say to her either, and their pity was more than she could take.

  She was also trying to figure out her relationship with her dad. She loved him, of course, but it was more complicated than that. She understood you could love someone and not like them as a person. She’d loved her mother too, and her mother portrayed Cole as the bad guy in the relationship. That made Amanda not like him very much. She’d been too young to know the details of why her parents split up and how she ended up in Virginia. She did know that every time she came to visit her father, her mother grilled her on her return home.

  “What did he say about me?” she’d ask.

  Amanda would give the same reply each time. “Nothing.”

  “I doubt that,” her mother said.

  Yet it was true. Cole never talked about why things fell apart and he never pointed a finger at his ex-wife. As a result, Amanda still had no idea what had happened to her parents’ marriage. She wondered if her dad was actually as bad as her mother made him out to be. If not, then what did that say about her mother? Just thinking about something like that made her feel guilty again, as if she were questioning her late mother’s integrity.

  The unstoppable montage of thoughts and emotions made the drive pass quickly. When she reached town she slowed down to the speed limit and paid attention to the shops, restaurants, and businesses. Had she been back in Virginia today she would probably have gone somewhere with her friends that morning. The group texts she’d missed the night before had been about everyone planning their day. They would probably have gone shopping in the morning. In the evening they might have gone to a coffee shop and hung out, or gone to a movie. She was thinking about how she was going to fill a summer here with no friends when a sign for a bike shop caught her eye.

  Seeing the sign and the bikes out front reminded her of how she’d enjoyed riding a bike as a kid in North Carolina. When her mother moved her to Virginia, the girls her age didn’t ride bikes. They had other interests and those had eventually become her interests as well. When she outgrew her kid’s bike, she didn’t ask to replace it.

  The mountains were full of bicycling trails. There were National Forest and state parks trails popular with mountain bikers. There were old railroad beds that had been converted to scenic trails curling through the mountains and running along scenic rivers. Even the roads were covered with road cyclists, many of whom came from all over the world to train in the mountainous terrain. Cycling Coach Chris Carmichael even had a camp in the area where he trained famous cyclists like Lance Armstrong.

  Until the moment she saw the sign, Amanda hadn’t thought about bikes in years. She hadn’t ever considered whether she might have any interest in trail riding. She felt an interest now, an almost irresistible pull. Biking would be something new and she needed that right now. She would be able to get out of the house and lose herself in the woods. She would be away from the pity, the sympathy, and the uncomfortable pauses as people tried to figure out what to say to her.

  It might even be a way to meet other people her age.

  She slowed, signaled, and turned into the gravel parking lot beside the bike shop. She eased into the space between two other cars, applied the parking brake, and killed the engine. She climbed out of the car, careful not to hit the vehicle next to her with the door, and she used the key fob to lock the door.

  The gravel crunched beneath her feet as she walked around to the front of the store and stepped onto the sidewalk. A rack along the sidewalk held various types of bikes on display. Tags dangling from the handlebars held model numbers, specs, and prices. Amanda flipped over the tag on one brightly colored bike and sucked in a deep breath when she saw a price of $4000. That was way beyond her budget. Hopefully they had something a little cheaper.

  She looked at some more of the bikes out front and then went inside the store. Behind the counter a guy looked up as she walked in. He smiled and greeted her. She realized he was the first guy around her own age she’d seen since arriving in North Carolina. She threw a hand up in an awkward wave and walked around the store, overwhelmed by the variety of bikes.

  The guy came from around the counter and approached her. "Hi, my name is Ben. Can I help you find something?"

  Amanda stammered a little bit. “I-I’m Amanda.” The guy was attractive and athletic. He was outdoorsy, with hair that was a little long and a beard that appeared to be under cultivation.

  "Are you shopping for a new bike?"

  She nodded. "Well, kind of. I haven’t ridden for a long time but I might like to get back into it."

  Ben gestured around the store. "Did you have something particular in mind?"

  She shrugged. "Not really. I don’t know anything about these kind of bikes."

  "Then let me show you around. We’re mostly a dealer of Specialized brand bicycles. We do carry a few others and we also sell used bikes. Most folks who come in here are interested in mountain bikes or hybrid bikes, but we sell a few cruisers and road bikes. The hybrids are like a street, trail, go anywhere kind of bike. Cruisers are like the bikes you see at the beach."

  Amanda nodded, a little overwhelmed by the onslaught of information. Her parents had purchased her last bike for her and it was pretty much a plain old kid’s bike. Well, maybe not completely plain. It had Disney Princesses on it.

  Ben could tell how she was feeling from her blank expression. "Let's start with this— where do you want to ride? What do you see yourself doing on a new bike?”

  He was good at this, she thought, immediately putting the customer at ease. "I hear there are a lot of trails around here. I’m wanting to ride trails."

  Ben laced his fingers together in front of him like he was giving a rehearsed presentation. "There are a lot of different kinds of trails to choose from. Are you thinking the flatter, more touristy kind of trails or are you looking at the technically-challenging mountain trails that are more like rollercoaster rides? Or are you just looking for a nice all-around bike that will let you do a little bit of everything until you fin
d what you like?"

  Amanda pointed a finger at him. “That’s it. I don’t know exactly what I want to do but I’d like to try it all."

  Ben nodded and smiled at her. His smile completely disarmed her and brought on a mix of emotions. The awkwardness of the interaction told her that her feelings were still a little jumbled from all she’d been through. She talked to guys all the time at home. It had never been like this. She was usually pretty comfortable meeting people.

  "Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said. “It sounds like what you need is a good all-around mountain bike with a rigid frame. Those come in a variety of wheel sizes and people choose different wheel sizes for different reasons. Traditionally people used twenty-six inch wheels but a lot of people now are liking the twenty-niners. There's also a 27.5 inch wheel there in the middle."

  More choices. She was also certain different choices brought different prices. "I’ll be honest with you. I just started a new job and I haven’t earned a lot of money yet. Which kind is cheapest?"

  “I understand. Definitely twenty-six inch wheels then," he said. “Do you know much you want to spend?"

  Again, she had a blank look on her face that told him she wasn’t sure. "How much do I need to spend just to find out if I'm gonna like this or not? I don’t want to buy more bike than I need but I don’t want to buy a piece of crap either."

  "Well, here's the deal. I've worked here since I was a kid. My dad owns the shop. He told me if you get too cheap of a bike it turns riding into an unpleasant chore and you're less likely to enjoy it. If you're able to spend around four or five hundred dollars you can get a bike with decent features to start you off on a good solid footing."

  Amanda was comfortable with that. Her father had paid her for her work in cash yesterday. Even though it wasn’t nearly five hundred dollars she also had money from when she lived in Virginia. Her savings account was still in the bank there but she’d brought the money from her checking account with her. It wasn’t a fortune but it was enough.