Down the Dirt Road (25 page)

    OK, so no one ever actually said that
to her but it was clear as day in their eyes as they looked at her with pity and sadness.  There were times when she just wished everyone would stay away.  She didn’t need anyone’s pity.  She was happy with her life.  Content anyway.  The farm was home, her job was hard work but paid the bills and Momma was doing well lately.  What more could a girl ask for?

    How about a friend?   Someone to watch a movie with or discuss a good book with would be nice.  Maybe a phone call on a Saturday afternoon from someone her own age or a romantic walk by the lake with someone who wasn’t only trying to get her into bed. 

    No, her life wasn’t perfect but it was hers and she didn’t need anyone feeling sorry for her, thinking they could make things all better by dropping off a dozen sugar cookies.  All their holiday well-wishing did was assuage their guilt at forgetting about Elise and Jennie Marshal three hundred and sixty four days out of the year.

    One of Uncle Tommy’s boys pulled in to the drive and honked the horn to get her attention.  Jennie waved
and dragged the shovel onto the front porch where she propped it against the siding for in preparation for her later in the day.  There would be more snow, of that she was absolutely certain.  Thankfully it was a weekend so she didn’
t have to go to work.  The snow was heavier than it had been all week, the roads in town would be a horrible mess for sure.

    Stomping her feet to knock off as much of the white stuff as possible, Jennie stepped inside the front door
and began
to shed her winter coverings.  The old braided rag rug that had been hand made by her Grandma Marshall caught all the melting snow as she shook her head, wet curls hitting against her cold cheeks.

    “That you, Jennie girl?”  Momma called out from the kitchen the same greeting she had called to her for nearly twenty years.

    “It’s me!  Be right there!  Sure hope you got somethin’ hot in there Momma!”

   Some hot tea would taste great right about then, not that she was much of a tea drinker but her insides were near frozen.  She needed something to thaw her out.

    Outside she could hear the grating sound of the plow against the gravel of the drive way.
  There was no way she could have stayed on top of all the snow without the help her uncle had been sending her way.  They would have been long since snowbound if not for the assistance.

    Momma was standing in front of the stove stirring something in a pot.  The kitchen smelled fabulous; her mouth instantly began watering as she inhaled the delectable aroma of homemade chicken soup.

     “I thought you might be needin’ somethin’ to warm you, sweet pea so I started a pot of soup.  There was some leftover chicken from supper the other night- just enough to make a good batch of stock.  You drink that tea over there while I get the vegetables going.  Should be ready by lunchtime- just in time for you to shovel that walkway again!”

    Momma laughed.  The snow was falling so fast, Jennie would be outside at least three or four more times before the day was over if they wanted to avoid having the walkways disappear.  No matter how rotten the weather, the animals needed caring for.   Jennie watched her mother as she cut carrots and celery and onions, dropping them into the hot chicken broth by the handful. 
It was the first time since the day her father had died that Elise had prepared anything other than toast or cereal.  Momma was having a good day it seemed.

    “Smells delicious Momma.  I can’t wait to try it.  You must be feelin’ pretty good today.”

     “You know, I really am.  This is the best I have felt in a long time.”  She grew quiet then, the only sound in the kitchen her knife against the glass cutting board. 

     Jennie sipped the piping hot tea and marveled at how quickly something like tea could warm a cold body so quickly.  She had never been much of a tea drinker but this week of cold and snow had changed all that.  She found she looked forward to the sharp taste of unsweetened tea leaves and the burn of the boiling hot liquid as it passed through her esophagus spreading heat to her cold muscles.  She quickly relaxed so much that her eyelids began to droop.  Long ago memories of her childhood- helping Momma roll out cookie dough, sprinkling the pepper on a pot of chili, shelling snap peas and lima beans from the garden- filled her mind.  It felt good-
right
- for them to be there together again.  She had missed her mother being a mother; even though she was a grown woman
she still wanted her Momma to be the Momma of her childhood.
  

   
“I had a dream about your father last night."
  Jennie sat up straight, wide awake.  Momma
never
spoke about Daddy. 
Ever.

   “What… what sort of dream?”  She asked hesitantly, kind of afraid of the answer would be.

  Momma chuckled.  “A good dream, Jennie girl.  We had a little chat, your father and I did.  I gave him a bit of hell for leavin’ me and he promised he was waitin’ for me.”

      “Does he… did you tell him…about Uncle Tommy?”

      “Well, now, I think it’s likely he already knew, don’t you?  Your Daddy’s been watchin’ over us since he’s been gone, you know.  He’s real proud of you.”

    “Proud of me? 
For what?
”

    “Says you’ve turned out to be one amazing young lady.  He keeps an eye on you, you know.  Told me to tell you that he knows what you gave up to stay here but that he appreciates it more than you will ever know.”

     What she had given up… why did it always come back to that?  When she thought about it honestly, Jennie didn’t have any real plan for her future
before her father’s death.  Of course she always talked about getting out, leaving him and never looking back but that was it.  She had never formulated any sort of get out of town plan.
  Just a dream of a different life, right?  But when she sat down and
thought about it, what was wrong with the life that she already had?

     “I am glad you had the dream Momma.  It seems to have made you very happy today.”

     Momma turned and faced her with a smile.  “It has Jennie girl but not for the reasons you might think.  It was
so
good to see his face, his smile again, even if it was only in my dreams.  But most of all I had the chance to say goodbye.  I told him I loved him, I miss him and that I can’t wait to be with him one day again
but I also told him how angry I was at him for leaving me.  He promised me he would never really leave me but reminded me I still had a life to live and a daughter to love and that was reason enough to hang out in this world just a little bit longer.  When I woke up I felt stronger physically than I had in a very long time.  As though my body had finally told Lupus to back off for a while.”

     Rising from the table Jennie crossed to where her mother stood and pulled her close.  It was the first time she had hugged her mother since the trip to the hospital in the spring and only the second time since the funeral. 
The
older woman felt so thin compared to the soft Momma she remembered from her youth but still it felt good to have
a little
human contact
after so long.

     A knock at the front door interrupted the peaceful moment, startling them both.

    “Momma?  Were you expecting Uncle Tommy?”

     “No, sweet pea, not until this evening.”

     “Well, maybe it’s just someone dropping off some more Christmas cookies.”  Jennie headed toward the front room to see who their mysterious guest was.

     “I can’t imagine who it might be in this weather.”  Momma mumbled as she followed Jennie to the door, curious herself as to who would brave the storm to stop by.

    A second knock, louder and more insistent this time sounded against the solid wood door followed by heavy footsteps walking down the front steps.  Jennie jogged the last few steps and yanked the heavy wooden door open.  Cold air and snowflakes swirled around them like a funnel cloud, a big brown delivery truck pulling away from the house kicked up diesel fumes that burned her nostrils. 

     “Hmm…. It was a delivery truck, Momma.”  Her mother stood behind her holding her woolen shawl close.

      “Well, what did it leave, Jennie girl?”

       Jennie looked down at the porch and saw a medium sized package wrapped in brown paper and looking like the Washington Nationals had used it for football practice prior to it being dropped on her front porch step.   Leaning down to retrieve the package, she shivered as a sharp wind picked up and passed through her flannel work shirt.  Snow clung to the bottom of the box as she tried to dust it off with her bare fingers but the more she wiped at it, the more snow the wind blew in to the house.  Finally she just gave up and slammed the front door closed against the blizzard outside.

     “It’s a box, Momma.”  Nothing like stating the obvious, good job Jennie. 
Momma didn’t seem to care about her words though, only the package in her hands.

     “It’s for you, Jennie girl and it looks like it has travel quite a ways to get to you.  I wonder who it’s from?”

      Jennie knew immediately who it was from.  As soon as she saw that US Army stamp across the postage and the familiar chicken scratch handwriting, she knew. 

     Michael McKee. 

    What on e
arth could he be doing sending her a package?  Wasn’t his letter with its ridiculous request enough?  If this was a Christmas gift for Trisha… and he expected her to wrap it up and deliver it… well that fool had another thing coming!

   
“I know who it’s from Momma and I don’t want to open it.”

   
“Who?”

      “It doesn’t matter, I don’t want to open it.”

     “Who is the box from Jennifer?”  No one had called her by her given name since she was a little girl.  Well, except for her teachers- every year it took a good couple of weeks to get them to stop calling her Jennifer.  Momma meant business when she pulled out her full first name.

     She sighed heavily as she carried the box back to the kitchen.  “If you must know, it’s from Michael McKee.”

     “Your Michael?”  There was definitely no hiding the surprise on Momma’s face.

      “
Momma!
  He’s not
my
Michael.  Don’t really think he ever was.”  She didn’t even try to disguise the disgust in her voice.

     Elise held up her hands in surrender.  “OK, OK.  He’s not your Michael but is that the Michael we are talking about here?”

    “
Momma
… I only know
one!”

     “Well, then just go ahead and open the package.  See what not your Michael sent you.  It looks like it came a long way.”

     “I think he’s in Iraq, Momma.  Remember he and Gr… some of the other local boys joined up last summer?”

     “I remember, Jennie.  I may not leave the house much but I do keep up on what’s going on around town.  Now go on, open the box, sweet pea.”

      Placing the box on the dining room table, Jennie stepped over to the counter and grabbed a knife.  Carefully slipping the knife through the packing tape, she worked the box open
.  A layer of brown tissue covered the contents.  Pushing aside the tissue paper, Jennie stopped and stared at the contents of the package.  It was not at all what she had
expected.  She had been right about the gift for Trisha, there was a small
package covered in red paper with her name on it.  What surprised her was the bundle of white envelopes held together by a thick a rubber band.  The top one was addressed to her as were all the others she found when she flipped through them.  There had to be at fifty of them addressed in a handwriting she didn’t recognize.  Tucked along the side of the box was a single sheet of paper folded in half, her name scrawled across it.
  Momma watched quietly as she removed the piece of paper and opened it.

   
Dear Jennie,

        I hope by now you and Trisha have found a way to make peace with each other.  If I have learned anything over here it’s how quickly a life can come to an end.  One minute you are walking down a dirt road with two of your buddies, the next an IED goes off and you are walking alone. You, I know, have experienced just this very thing so I know you will understand me when I say life is too short not to care.  I have included a small Christmas gift for my
wife with this package.  Will you please see to it that she gets it?

    You may have noticed the stack of letters in the box by now.  Yes, each and every one of them is for you, all from
Private
Grayson Jennings.  He has spent hours writing to you over the past months yet never mailed a single one.
I have no idea why.
I send them on to you now because I know that he would want you
to have them.  You see Jennie, they may be all that any of us have to remember him by.  Private Jennings was out on a scouting mission when his team was ambushed.  Two men were killed instantly, a third stumbled back to the base badly injured and well, no one knows what happened to the last man.  Grayson is officially missing in action and has been for exactly seven
days
as of the day I write this letter.
I just felt like you should know.