Read Feels Like the First Time Online
Authors: Shawn Inmon
It was an overwhelming offer. I had nothing to risk in this crazy adventure. I was a footloose college student with no money and no apparent future. On the other hand, Terri had plenty to lose by helping us. If things went wrong, it could have caused her a huge heartache and been a serious inconvenience.
After lunch with Terri, I found a few twenty-dollar bills in my pocket, which was more than enough to take the next step. Most importantly, I had her pledge to buy two round-trip tickets to Mississippi if the moment arrived.
The next day, my alarm went off at 4 AM. I had a long way to travel and a definite deadline. My plan was to be waiting at the road that led up to Doss Cemetery when Dawn went walking by on her way home from school. That was my only real chance to communicate with her.
My Vega had been broken down for several months, and I hadn’t had the money to get it fixed. If it had been running, I could have made the drive from Seattle to Chehalis in ninety minutes. Instead, it took me three and a half hours via Greyhound, since we stopped at every small town bus depot along the way.
I spent the time constantly checking the ring and taking a mental inventory. Was I in the proper frame of mind to make this life-altering decision? Probably not. Had I formulated a proper plan as to how to proceed if Dawn should say “yes?” Again, not so much. Did any of this dissuade me from my plan? Not at all. When I pictured my life, I could only imagine it with Dawn as the largest piece of it. Eloping was the only way I could see to make that happen.
By the time I got off the Greyhound in Chehalis, it was already past noon and I was in danger of missing my 3:05 deadline in Mossyrock. Luckily, I sat next to a nice lady whose husband was picking her up in Chehalis. They drove me to I-5 so I could hitch a ride, which eliminated close to an hour’s walk. I had never hitchhiked in my life, but it seemed straightforward enough. After an hour of watching an endless stream of cars pass by, I was starting to despair about making it to Mossyrock in time. Just then an old sedan slowed down and pulled on to the shoulder of the entrance ramp. I was excited and ran up to the passenger side window. The driver was a man in his 50’s with a week’s unshaved beard, sucking on the stub of an unlit cigar. He leaned across the car and manually rolled down the window.
“Where ya headin’?”
“I’m tryin’ to get to Mossyrock.”
“It’s your lucky day, kid. I’m going to Morton. Get in.”
As soon as I clambered into the little sedan, I began to question whether it was really my lucky day or not. I immediately noticed a strong, pungent odor. It was a cross between a meat packing plant and the perfume my Aunt Pat used to wear. I hoped the smell wouldn’t dissolve into my pores. I glanced in the back seat to see a heap of glossy pornographic magazines. I weighed the odds of him killing me and dumping my body in a field somewhere versus catching Dawn in time to propose. I just smiled, laughed a little nervously, and faced forward. When we made it to the blinking light at Mossyrock, I couldn’t get out of the car fast enough.
I went straight to the spot where I was going to intercept Dawn. Mossyrock was a small town, and if I walked around, someone would see me and tell my folks. If anyone I knew saw me, I would have faced many uncomfortable questions about why I was in town and didn’t come home.
My heart sank as I saw her coming over the hill. She walked as though she had weights attached to her shoulders dragging her down. I had been concentrating on my own suffering, but it was easy to see she had been hurting too.
Other girls Dawn’s age were having slumber parties and dreaming about who they wanted to ask to Tolo. I was about to ask Dawn run away with me and start a new life. I was beginning to see what the problem was. It was me. The image of Dawn walking down that hill was so disheartening that I’ve never forgotten it.
Dawn crossed the highway and ran straight to me when she saw me. She gave me a sweet smile shadowed by sadness. We both felt the pressure of time. We had five minutes to talk before Colleen would suspect something was up.
I wasted no time.
“Dawn, I love you. Being apart from you is killing me a little bit every day. I’ve thought about this for months, and I can only think of one way to stop anyone from separating us again.”
She stared at me solemnly, nodding her head. The ground was wet and muddy, so I didn’t drop down on one knee. I silently reached into my pocket and took out the little blue box. I opened it to show her the ring inside.
“Dawn Adele,” I said. “Will you marry me?”
If this proposal surprised her, she didn’t show it. In fact, she had seemed more surprised when I had asked her to Prom. Now, she just seemed numb.
She nodded again and smiled at me with more sadness than I could stand. It brought tears to my eyes. She looked me straight in the eye.
“Yes, Shawn, I will marry you.” She said it quietly, but firmly.
She took both rings out of the box and handed them to me. I slid them on her finger. She took just a moment to turn her hand one way, then the other, seeing the way they fit together. Those rings looked better than I could have imagined.
I kissed her briefly and softly. She looked down at the rings on her finger.
“I love them, but there’s no way I can take these home,” she said. “Mom will find them.”
“I know.” I took the rings back from her, put them back in the case and slid it into my coat pocket. It was the last time Dawn ever saw those rings.
I held her tightly against me, feeling her warmth against my chest. Our too-few minutes were gone and she stepped away from me. She looked at me with mournful eyes and turned and walked away. She didn’t look back as she walked around the corner and turned down Damron Road.
I stood at the base of the cemetery road with a lump in my throat, feeling more emotions than I had ever experienced at one time. The girl I loved beyond all reason had just told me she would take my side against all others, that she would stand with me always, and love me forever. I had no idea why I felt so horrible. The day I asked Dawn to marry me should have been one of the greatest days of my life. Instead, I felt selfish and sad, like I was putting my own happiness ahead of hers. That was not how I wanted to start our new life together.
I walked back to the highway and stuck out my thumb. Even if I got lucky and caught quick rides all the way, it would be after midnight by the time I got back to my room in the U-District. I had walked, ridden buses, and hitchhiked for more than eighteen hours to spend five minutes with Dawn.
After hitching back to Chehalis, I boarded a Greyhound for home. On the bus, I pulled a notebook out of my backpack and wrote, trying to capture the confusion I felt. It was simple stream-of-consciousness writing. I titled it “Where Can I Find the Strength.” Sideways down the margin, I wrote, “I am ruining the life of the one I love.”
I knew Dawn’s life was more difficult and complicated because I was in it. I was preventing her from living a normal high school life, with none of the pressures and resentments she suffered from her parents on my account.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what her life would have been like without me. The words I wrote illustrated the dilemma I felt so strongly: “Which is stronger/my need for you/or my desire for your best?”
I was getting closer to the answer.
I got off the bus in the U-District in the middle of the night after my long strange journey to propose to Dawn. I was physically shot after being up for almost twenty-four hours. But it was the emotional and spiritual fatigue that I felt the strongest. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t dispel the image of Dawn walking dejectedly down that hill, the weight of the world on her shoulders. That image forced me to see the toll our situation was taking on her. She wasn’t the buoyant, happy girl I fell in love with a year earlier. I couldn’t shake the idea I was the cause of this.
For the first time, I began to think I should leave her. It tore my heart to think that way. The idea seemed like insanity, and I would banish it to a dark corner of my mind. But it would fester there, growing stronger and confronting me again. I still believed we were destined to be together, but was it at any cost? When I closed my eyes, I could see her standing with me on the road to Doss Cemetery, wearing the rings that were now in my pocket. That thought warmed me clear through. Almost immediately, I would think, “but if she puts that much faith in me, how can I not do what is right for her?”
Those first few weeks of December 1978, I lived in the eye of the storm. Everything around me was quiet and routine, but I knew any day all hell was going to break loose again. I had asked Dawn to marry me and she’d said yes. But we needed to wait until at least her birthday on December 27
th
to carry out my crazy plan.
I made a few steps toward our elopement. I made sure Terri was serious when she agreed to front me the money for the airline tickets. I even talked to a travel agent about buying two round-trip tickets to Biloxi, Mississippi. But beyond that, I was just marking time. I should have buckled down and hit the books to catch up on my studies, but I couldn’t focus on school at all.
During those weeks, I spent way more time beating the Aerosmith pinball game and bowling at the Student Union Building on the UW campus than studying. My grades suffered, but my bowling average climbed over 200.
My second Christmas miracle arrived on December 17
th
. I was on the bed in my little room on 23
rd
listening to Kasey Kasem count down the American Top 40, when my landlord yelled downstairs that I had a phone call. He reminded me I wasn’t supposed to use the phone except for emergencies, but since I got a call about once in a blue moon, I wasn’t too worried.
When I got upstairs and picked up the receiver from the dining room table, my heart leapt at the sound of Dawn’s voice.
“We can see each other again!” she said.
“What?
“Mom and Dad said it was okay for us to see each other. Can you believe it?”
I couldn’t. It took a moment to absorb her words. I leaned against the wall as though I had taken a blow to the ribs.
What had looked like an endless, dark holiday season now opened up before me. I thought of going home to Mossyrock and being so close to Dawn and being able to see her without sneaking around. It seemed like a tremendous gift, and I would make sure I wouldn’t waste it.
Best of all, the life in Dawn’s voice was back. She sounded like the carefree, happy girl I always knew. It had been five long months apart, and now I wouldn’t have to debate the difficult decision of removing myself from her life.
We only talked for a couple of minutes because long distance phone calls were expensive in the ‘70s. Dawn said there would be conditions attached to seeing each other, but I couldn’t have cared less. Whatever the price was, I would pay it gladly. I didn’t care what conditions Walt and Colleen set forth. I would happily meet them. I had to see her as soon as possible. It was a Sunday night, but both the UW and Mossyrock High were out for Christmas vacation. There was nothing to stop me from going home the next day.
I hung up the phone and realized I hadn’t asked her why we could see each other again, but it didn’t matter. At that moment, only two things were important; I could see her again, and we didn’t need to run away together. I knew I wanted to marry and be with Dawn forever, but I also knew it would work so much better in a few more years, after I had graduated from college and Dawn had finished high school.
Unfortunately, the Vega was still broken down, and I didn’t have any money to get it fixed. However, one of my many roommates had flown home to Chicago to spend the holidays with his family. He loaned me his car for a couple of weeks on two conditions–I had to pick him up at the airport on New Year’s Day, and I had to promise not wreck the car. I was more than happy to do both and I found myself the proud driver of a boring but functional Reliant K car.