Chapter 10

I went back to work after my father's burial, but I was indifferent to everything around me, soulless. When back in my condo from the cemetery to take a drink, Melanie had told me unequivocally that she did not want to see me ever again; to her, my attitude towards my mother in the graveyard had been a huge disappointment about me as a person, as a son, and a lover.

I really didn't know what to do with my life. I thought, and thought, and thought trying to make a decision to sort my life and make sense of it. I didn't need to work for money, I hadn't any friends, and now I didn't have the only person in the world that loved me and cared for me. Well I told myself, the last part it is not truth. Melanie cared for me, and I did apart her from my side with my behavior and my stubbornness. And mother? Did she love me? Did she care for me... ?

Yes, I finished telling myself, she loves me and cares about me, as a mother do, and I also love her, but, the big difference is, I'm also in love with her, I want her, and now she is free. Now the obstacle who stood between the two, my father, is no more, unfortunately because I loved him deeply; but now if I get my mother to love me as my life partner, I will not be cuckolding him.

After looking deeply inside my soul and thinking hard, I decided to quit my job in maritime platforms for good, go to the house that had been my home, make peace with my mother and try to get her to fall in love with me, not small task. Great was my surprise when I got to what had been my parents home and found strangers living in it.

I found out the name of their lawyer and through mine I got to know what had happened to my mother and where had she moved to. Her new mail address was in Clark Fork, Idaho, so I knew she was again at her parent's ranch. I decided then and there that was my destiny.

Clark Ford had not changed much with the passage of time from my childhood. Same old main street, Fourth Ave., the same Old Town Square with its monument to some veteran born in the town and died in some war, the forest, and the beautiful river that gives the town its name Clark Fork River. It still has that small town charm where the most hustle and bustle you will see is the elk and deer playing in the meadows. Its six hundred residents are some of the best around with a humble reputation to please.

So, to Clark Fork I went looking for my mother. Last time I had been in town was when I was sixteen years old, almost ten years before, so the risk of someone recognizing me as the grandson of the Sorensen's was almost nil. At that time I was a young city boy who spent his summer holidays with his grandparents, now I was a man of twenty-six years who appeared to be forty.

And considering that my features have changed, in some way disfigured, with much gray in my beard and hair, the scar on my face and the strip of snow-white hair on my head and face, I thought I was fairly safe in my anonymity. To complete my disguise I needed to change my name, I elected John Van Nuys, Melanie's son name.

One of my first concerns was to find accommodation in a town that by its few inhabitants had no hotel, I remembered that a few miles before reaching the town by Interstate 95, there was a small motel that catered mostly to hunters and fishermen in hunting or fishing season.

So for the time being I made this place my residence site. In every small township gossip is a way of life, and Clark Ford was no different in this regard. I, being a stranger was a subject of gossip, and at the same time, after a couple weeks in residence I was treated to some small tidbits of the town peccadilloes. Best place was the barbershop, followed by the station-service-bar-restaurant, but I did prefer the post office.

I had spread the word I was looking for work, preferably something related to numbers, but accepted any other kind of work; since I was in a kind of spiritual and sentimental recovery from a failed relationship. In the whole time I was in the town, I hadn't seen my mother even once, and I would not inquire about her to avoid any suspicion. I wanted that when we were going to meet it were by chance.

I sounded out the lady of the post office as subtly as possible, without naming her, when Mrs. Sorensen appeared by the post office to pick up her mail. It was easy, the answer was she came to town once a month, and was due anytime. I tried to be prepared for what I was going to do.

Three days later I was loitering near noon looking at some notices at the post office when she opened the door and entered. My heart leapt and skipped a beat and it seemed to stop in my chest. She was incredibly beautiful, gorgeous and glamorous, even wearing cowboy clothes; jeans pants, ranch riding boots, a red plaid flannel shirt and a cowboy hat that covered her beautiful white blond hair now combed in a ponytail held with a red cloth strip.

"Oh mother, mother" I thought "How much do I love you".

She gave a perfunctory look at the place and looked at me disinterestedly when passing by my side as she asked for any mail.

The answer to her question was negative, and she made a gesture of ill humour to that answer. She gave the impression of being a person not accustomed to be denied. When she apparently took the reins of her temper and calmed her bad humour, she asked politely to the lady in the post office to send for her when the booklet she was waiting came.

The post office clerk, answered yes of course, and asked what kind of book was, and what topic was referring to, so she knew when she sorted the mail.

My mother answered it was a kind of accounting book, as she was having some trouble to straighten the bills and the bookkeeping of the ranch. I was elated, I had now the means to approach the ranch, become indispensable to my mother in the management of the ranch, and become indispensable to her in other ways.

Next day with my accounting books, the same I use to manage my investments, I headed for the well-known road to my grandparents' ranch. Now all my years of study would bear fruit; not money, of that I have enough, now they would serve to get me my mother, or so I hoped.

The road to the ranch ran through a dense forest, quiet and in communion with nature; I made the thirty or so miles to the ranch house in less than an hour; at the end of the road, the forest opened into a wide valley to the bottom of which, were the house, barns, corrals, warehouses, and peons sheds.

When my car approached the railing of the house veranda, the door opened and on the threshold appeared the figure of a beautiful blonde goddess covering her eyes from the sunlight to distinguish who had arrived, my mother. I was mesmerized, and in a flash I felt how difficult was going to be working at her side, if she accepted my offer.

"Good morning sir, may I be of service" was her greeting.

I was tongue tied and with a tremendous effort I answered her.

"Good morning to you Mrs. Sorensen"

She looked at me patiently waiting I explained what was my business. I tried to explain.

"Well, err ... I was yesterday morning at the post office and ... and..."

"Yes?" her manner was cold, not arrogant or disdainful, just in a kind of--explain your business and lets go forward with our lives-- manner.

"Well, as I said, I was yesterday in the post office when you went in and I heard, unintentionally of course, your conversation and your need of a certain book".

She did not say a word, just raised her eyebrows and her eyes had a certain air of interrogation, or perhaps indifference, her attitude was remote and I was getting increasingly nervous and could not express my thoughts clearly. And to think this was the same woman I thought I hated and had refused to see her.

"You see madam I have worked as an accountant, not registered, and I was thinking that I could work for you and be of help".

She looked at me in a strange way and said mockingly, "Just like that, you come out of nowhere, and you try to come into my house"

My mother was as tough as beautiful.

"No, no, it would be preposterous of my part to think that way; I would go to town after work, of course, that is if you hire me, I could help with other chores at the ranch as well".