Chapter 5

I woke up before my wakeup call, but still felt washed out. Then again, I'm not usually one to jump out of bed bright eyed and bushy tailed to start with. I dragged my butt out of bed and made it to the shower without killng myself and the hot water helped clear some of the fog from between my ears. By the time I'd finished I was capable of at least being able to think half straight.

Dressed and packed up, I knocked on the adjoining door to check on my traveling companions. Elizabeth opened up the door almost as soon as I knocked, with a brilliant smile on her face, and informed me that they were all just waiting on me today. This hotel didn't have room service, so heading out to get some breakfast was the first thing on our agenda once we dropped off the room keys and checked out. Unfortunately, there really wasn't any place that looked like they had a decent breakfast anywhere around our hotel, so we hit the interstate and continued east.

We had only gone about two miles when we saw a sign informing us that there was a Cracker Barrel just a few more exits further. I have been to about a hundred of their restaurants around the country with only one bad experience, so that seemed like a good choice to me. "The Girls" all agreed with me, so we exited the interstate and pulled into the parking lot.

Apparently there aren't too terribly many old people that like to get out to eat that early in this part of the country, and we were seated just as soon as we walked up to the hostess' station. I will spare you the details of our breakfast, as three young hungry girls are not a very pleasant sight to witness when they set their minds to filling their bellies with food as quickly as possible.

Breakfast taken care of, we resumed our trek across the country with nothing much of note happening. We did hit some pretty heavy rain a little after getting into Nebraska, which caused our forward progress to decrease considerably. No matter where I have lived or traveled in America, people all seem to forget how to drive once some water falls from the sky. Not much that can be done about that other than just sit and suffer through it, so that is what we did.

The rain kept up for a few hours and we made very slow progress, but all of a sudden it stopped, and we were once again able to get back up to speed and continue on our way. If you have ever driven this stretch through Nebraska, you know how straight and boring it is. There is almost nothing to look at, and pretty much nothing worth listening to on the radio, either, so I just turned it off.

The three girls all appeared to be dozing in the back seat, and this was the time that Linda took to start to quiz me about my history.

"So, tell me... have you ever been married?", she asked.

"I came close a few times, but never actually tied the knot with anyone. There have been a few women I have been very close to or lived with and acted as if we were married, but something always happened to cause us to split before ever taking that last step", I replied.

"Tell me about them. We have the time, and I would like to know more about this strange man that picked us up in the middle of nowhere, coincidentally headed to the same place that we are going, and keeps spending money on us without asking for anything in return", she said with a sly little glance towards me.

I took a deep breath and began, "OK. Well, the first woman I lived with was named Melisa. We met when we were both working at an amusement park called Kentucky Kingdom during its first year of operation, when we were teenagers. It went bankrupt at the end of that year, but was later bought up by a big amusement corporation and reopened a few years later. We moved in together about a year after we started dating, to a little two room apartment over near the airport. We were happy enough for a while, but our work schedules eventually shifted to the point where we barely saw each other anymore."

"After about a year, we decided that it just wasn't worth everything we were going through to keep our place when we never saw each other, so we each just moved back home. I had signed up to join the Army so that I could have a career, and be able to provide for the family we had been talking about starting, while she continued working her job at UPS. A few weeks before I was due to ship out, she informed me that she was pregnant. I was absolutely thrilled, as was everyone on both sides of our families, and we made plans to get married as soon as I got back from Basic Training. A few minutes before I got onto the airplane to head out, she handed me a letter and told me not to read it until I had gotten on the plane. We had a teary goodbye, I got on the plane, found my seat, and opened the letter. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to read."

"She told me that she had cheated on me with someone that she had gone to high school with, and there was no way that the baby she was carrying could be my child. She made no apologies, gave no explanation, and made no reference to the future we had planned together. I was devastated. My world had just been pulled out from under me, I was an emotional disaster, and I was on my way to a place where I could not afford to let any of these emotions show. I decided that one way or another I was going to get out of being in the Army, since my reasoning for joining in the first place no longer existed. It took me about a month, but I got released and went back home a broken man. I never saw or spoke to her again."