Winnemucca

So there I was, down the road again. I sorta had a destination in mind, but not really. I was walking down dusty US-95 in Nevada. The so-called Winnemucca Road. I don’t know why I am here- never do. I have been traveling for the past 25 years. I don’t think I’ve been in one place for more than six months. I sure don’t remember it. I’m 42 years old.

Oh, perhaps you want to know my name? Well, name’s Johnny. You don’t need to know my last name. That’s not important. I don’t rightly remember it myself, honest. Been so long since I’ve used it. You don’t need to give your last name to work as a short order cook, a pearl diver, or a busboy. At least not in the kind of choke-and-pukes I’ve been working in. Those have been my staple for jobs, when I even have one.

I’ve been walking now for several days. Outta McDermitt. Don’t rightly remember how many exactly. People don’t seem to really pick up hitchhikers much anymore. Over the past 25 years it is sad how much I have watched human trust go in a downward spiral. I’m just a hitchhiker. A man who can’t afford a car and has no home. I’m always wandering. Been doing it since I was 17.

I never take advantage of good people. I don’t hurt people who don’t hurt me. I do my best to repay all kindness given to me. I pay it forward whenever I can. It’s the right thing to do. What goes around comes around. If everyone just treated everyone else like they mattered the world would be a better place.

Oh, the memories come to me every so often. I ran away from home because people caught me. Sweet little Suzie; loved that girl. Loved that girl with all my heart. I know she loved me, too. She had said it enough times, with feeling. I could feel it in every warm caress, every affectionate touch, every gentle kiss. She was the sweetest, nicest, most innocent thing I had ever seen. She loved with every fiber in her being.

We called it dating back then. I don’t know what people would call it now. Her parents didn’t know; didn’t suspect. They didn’t believe in dating. They didn’t believe a 15 year old girl, especially one so introverted, could be able to “date” a person. They thought we were just close friends.

Well, they weren’t totally wrong. We were that. We shared everything. We didn’t start out as lovers, you have to understand. We started out as friends, best friends. We just had a lot in common. We started out living in the same apartment complex in Hornell, New York. As our parents got higher in their jobs, we moved across the street from one another in a suburban development.

They didn’t see the change that exploded between us that day in the Caribbean. The change in our emotions came fast- I’m getting ahead of myself here.

She was shy, and the sweetest little redhead you’ve ever seen. She had the palest of skin and a smattering of freckles, which complemented perfectly her green eyes. I always thought she was cute. When she was young, we’d go everywhere together. She was sort of a little sister and best friend all in one. I must have known her since she was three and I was five.

We were a pair and came as a pair. You’d never see one of us far from the other. She followed me around, and I followed her around. We practically lived out of each other’s pockets. We played games and got into all sorts of mischief together. Our parents were also the best of friends. Our dads both worked in management at the Erie Railroad repair shops when we were younger.

As we grew older, well, I started turning from a boy into a man. I didn’t make any moves on Suzie, then. She was too much of a friend for me to see her as a girl, at least that way. But soon enough, she started turning from a girl into a woman, too. It was natural that we’d fall in love, I guess. It was weird the way it slowly worked in that direction subconsciously, and then exploded to the surface.

Still, we were proper kids raised by conservative parents. We didn’t start having sex or anything. We kissed and let each other know how much we loved each other. At first we made out a little, always clothed, but we quickly realized that was a dangerous thing to do, both in terms of getting caught and going out of control.

We did take some risk, we got into a secret routine that nobody knew about. At night I’d sneak over to her room and climb in the window just after bedtime. I’d lay with her for a while and very softly sing her off to sleep with a lullaby. I could always sing. It was my one talent in life, really. After she’d been asleep for a while, I’d sneak back to home and go to sleep, myself.

There were close calls, but it wasn’t hard to roll out of her bed and lay still on the floor the few times her mom or dad came to look in on her at night. She was always afraid- terrified- we’d be caught. She enjoyed it too much to stop me, though. I was a cocky teenager at the time. Of course I never thought I’d be caught!

Until that fateful day. See, her worst fear happened. I fell asleep next to her. I was tired that night and before I could leave, I just zonked out. Her dad walked in to wake her up for school. There was nothing truly wrong with our pose. We were spooned up together on our sides. I was in my pajamas and she was in her nightgown. My arm was wrapped around her belly and one of my feet was in front of one of hers.

But her dad, of course, didn’t see it that way. He blew a gasket the moment he saw us together in bed. I mean he literally kicked me out the door. Well, more specifically he kicked me constantly as I drunkenly ran for the door, grabbed me when I was halted by it, slugged me a few times, opened the door, and physically kicked me out of it.

I ran home in tears, but by the time I got there, my mother was waiting for me at the door in a rage. She screamed at me and screamed at me. I had embarrassed her. I was not welcome at Suzie’s house anymore. If her dad so much as heard I was talking to her in school, he would call the police. My heart was broken; I didn’t know how I’d go on in life.

I gathered my backpack and went to school. Suzie tried to sit next to me on the bus, but I told her not to. The pain on her face, and the slow tears forming in her eyes broke my heart even further. I was in fear of my life; I couldn’t explain to her anything, I just didn’t want to mess up the thin ice I felt we were both on.

This went on for several days. She would come to me, and I would gently tell her we couldn’t be seen together. I watched as we both got more and more depressed, knotted up in sadness, stress, and a little hurt.

Finally, Suzie sat next to me at lunch and told me that she was not, under any circumstances, going to leave this table. We needed to talk, period. Shy as she was, she was also the one who always bulled ahead in our relationship. With everyone else she was reserved and timid- with me, a picture of audacious temerity. She talked about things the way they were.

I needed this kick in the pants from her. I had had my tail between my legs so far it was up my ass. Even with it, I was still a bit fearful. But I knew I had to tell her why I was acting this way; no punishment was worth hiding this from her.

“Look, Suzie,” I said to her, “I love you. With all my heart, I love you. I will never love anyone but you. I don’t think I can. I will always love you. But there is no way in hell this is ever going to work. Not with your dad. I’m scared of what will happen if he finds out we talked; thats why I’m not talking to you!”

“Johnny,” she said to me, “We need to talk to him. He has today off. He’ll be in a good mood. Come home with me and we can talk to him. We can explain.”

“Ok, Suzie. I guess it’s worth a shot.”

I was scared. Terrified. Terrified of what would happen at this discussion. But truthfully I was more terrified of what would happen if we went on like this, it was an untenable position.

She leaned over and kissed me. As we let our passion come to contain itself to hide it from the world, we had stopped the hard kissing and stuck to small ones. This wasn’t small. This was one of those long, drawn out, smothering kisses. The ones you see in movies and all the young kids go “EWWWW GROSS!” We wrapped ourselves around each other and kissed again and again. It was, in a word I had used to describe our visibly showing our love before, imprudent.

We went home to her house carefully discussing what we were going to talk to her dad about. We’d tell him that we were in love. That we had been in love for a long time. We’d indicate that we understood that he didn’t want us in a heavily physical relationship, and we were really sorry we did what we did. We’d play by his rules, whatever they were, but please let us be together.

We thought this was eminently fair; after all, it would give him the control. We’d never go behind their back anymore. I think that was probably the mistake we made; going behind his back to begin with.

When we got there, the plan went out the window. That’s always the way it works in anything, I have since found out. Upon the first contact with your adversary, all carefully laid plans go out the window. You need to learn to think on your feet instead of endlessly trying to figure out what would happen in a specific future situation.

Naturally, he blew his gasket again. Even so, I wasn’t expecting the violence of his reaction. Frank slapped his daughter across the face and literally threw her into her room. He called her a whore and a slut, and told her she was grounded. I was shocked by his reaction, and I had known him for most of my life.

I, too, was a man with a temper and I blew up at him. I couldn’t abide the physical abuse and the vitriolic turpitude coming out of his mouth. I have spent many hours of my life contemplating what happened in the next few minutes. Spent a lot of time meditating on how to ensure how to never react with such rashness.

I flew at him in a rage. The force of my body impacting his knocked him ass over teakettle. I should have stopped there, but I was a burning inferno of rage. I did something I have programmed myself since never to do: continue hitting after the fight was over. I must have punched him a dozen times.

It didn’t even stop there. I got up, started to walk away, but my anger was a bubbling cauldron of rancor. He had violently attacked the love of my life. I kicked him several times sharply in the side of the chest. The cracking sound of one of his ribs fracturing or breaking finally stopped me.

Through a bloody mouth he hissed at me he was going to call the police and have me arrested for a dozen different crimes. Seized by the fear that should have stopped this in the beginning, I finally let discretion be the better part of valor and ran the fuck out of his house and disappeared.

The police came to my parents’ house, but I had always been good at hiding. I stayed away until they left late that night. I walked outside the back of my parents’ house, went to the window of my room, opened it, and slid in. My parents were asleep or something. I’m sure they weren’t fully expecting me to show up at home after the savage beating I had given Frank.

I got to my typewriter, inserted paper, and started typing. I typed several letters.

The first one was to my parents and went as follows:

Dear Mom and Dad,

I’m sorry. I am very deeply sorry. I’m going to tell you a few things you need to know. I know the police are looking for me and that Suzie’s dad is going to press charges. This letter is, to some extent, a good bye. I’m running away. I know I can’t get away with what I did to Frank. Hell, I admit I don’t even deserve to.

But the truth is, even if I got leniency, I can’t live life here without Suzie. I just can’t, I love her too much. Maybe in a few years I will come back. I’m sorry I did this to you, and I’m sorry I need to leave.

I love Suzie. I love her with all my heart. I had no wish in my mind to do anything but marry her the moment it was ok to do so. She is my best friend, the greatest person on earth, and I never want anything other than the best for her. This is one reason I am leaving. That can’t happen while I am here.

I know you think of me and Suzie as just friends. And we are that, as we always have been. But I mean we were growing up, and when we took that cruise, we just fell into something else entirely. Life changes as time goes on, and that was a change we couldn’t just undo.

For the past few months I have been engaged in the practice of sneaking out of my room at night and going to hers. I’d sing some songs to lull her to sleep, stay for a few minutes snuggling her, and go back to my own room. That is all that happened. What happened a few days ago was that while doing this, I simply fell asleep.

I love you. It is the hardest thing in the world to do this to you. You don’t know how hard this decision was to make. But I need to leave here, and furthermore I don’t want to cause you more embarrassment. As long as Suzie lives near me, I will long for her and keep trying to be with her. The embarrassment will continue. I must leave.

I love her parents. Her father thinks we were doing things we haven’t done. I know he thinks that. He is trying to protect his innocent daughter from what he feels is a man trying to take advantage of her. I understand that, too. I don’t blame him for anything beyond losing his temper; as I lost mine. I just wish he would let us explain to him the truth. But I can’t hate him for doing what he feels is right in his mind.

I am giving you two more letters. Promise me that you will make sure the one directed to Suzie is given to her no matter the cost in you getting it to her. She needs to know. Please don’t read it, and please don’t let anyone else read it but her. The other letter is to her parents. Please see that they get them too.

With all my love,

Johnny