Sometimes I lie awake at night and ponder how I got here.
Growing up, I was always the shy girl. The one who never caused problems or got into trouble. I tried my best to act polite and do what was expected of me without having to be asked. I was at church every week and knew all the answers in Sunday school, although I never raised my hand. I kept my hair long while all the other girls got bobs and never showed my knees or bare shoulders. I didn’t so much as go to Mac’s for a soda, much less partake in the festivities downstairs.
“A good girl with old-fashioned morals,” the ladies called me, the level of admiration and approval varying with the tongue. Oh, how all of their eyes would bulge out of their heads if they saw me like this now.
The truth is, I don’t think all of that led me here. What am I saying? It did to an extent, of course, just not directly.
See, I often find myself dividing my life into two halves: Before and After. I don’t mean to, it just happens. When everything changes, I think it’s difficult not to. Everything was normal Before, and then it wasn’t After. A clear fence slicing through time, forcing each and every memory to one side or the other.
I can’t blame Before for what After brought. I’m not even certain I can blame After for it either. I don’t know that I blame anything, or even regret anything. I don’t know. How could I ever know so quickly?
There’s a lot of life to grapple with when it’s abruptly ending, just as there’s a lot to look back on when you know there’s nothing to look forward to.
But just for conversation’s sake, if I had to pin a moment on when this started, I would say it was that chilly spring afternoon in Mr. Agon’s office.
“You sure you want to do this?” the old man asked, doing a rather poor job at covering his concern and disappointment behind a thin smile. I pretended not to notice.
Instead, I shrugged indifferently while wringing my hands around my skirt under the table. “I never liked it here much anyway, ” I lied. “The farm has truly always been a thorn in my side.”
Mr. Agon lit a cigarette and took a long drag. I couldn’t tell if he was buying my story or not. “I’m sorry that’s how you feel, but-”
“Gaining my independence is the best thing that has come from all of this.” The statement surprised myself even, flying out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying. Hearing other people’s sentimental takes on why I should stay was the last thing I needed right then. I pointedly swat at the smoke drifting in the air towards my face while leaning away.
Mr. Agon sheepishly pressed the cigarette into a full ashtray in the corner of his desk. His shoulders slumped slightly and I suddenly found it difficult to meet his eyes. “It’ll be done by tomorrow. You know I don’t want to do this, but legally I have to ensure you’ll be out by morning.”
“I’ll be gone by then.” It took everything in me to swallow the lump in my throat, but I did it.
He nodded and slid an envelope across the desk. “Write to someone every now and then, won’t you? Just so’s we know you’re doing alright?”
I stared at the envelope like a knot of snakes were about to slither out through the slit. “This is all of it? The farm and the account?”
“The whole kit and caboodle.”
Gingerly, I folded the envelope and let it fall into my coat pocket. I was disappointed it wasn’t heavier somehow, even though I knew it wouldn’t be. If there had been more money, I would have stayed. I wouldn’t have sold the farm to Mr. Madden. I wouldn’t have gone through every drawer and cabinet in the place, selling this and throwing away that until all I had left was a small pile of necessities. I wouldn’t have cried about how I’d never see the white floral wallpaper in the hall again. I wouldn’t have taken the laundry line down and wound it around the wooden spoon Momma used to spank us with when we were little. I wouldn’t have yelled into the empty rooms and heard the desperate echoes of myself yelling back. I wouldn’t have sat talking to the headstones of my entire family buried there in the backyard for an hour and half before going to the bank that afternoon.
I wouldn’t have felt quite so empty. I still wouldn’t have belonged to a family anymore, nothing I could do would ever bring them back, but at least I would belong in a home.
I didn’t say any of that though. No. I smiled as optimistically as I wished I felt, “Perfect. Thank you for all your help, Mr. Agon. Give Mr. Madden my well-wishes and see that he takes care of the place, alright?” With that, I pranced out of the bank with more joviality in my step than I feared my heart would ever feel again.
You see, selling the farm wasn’t what I originally set out to do. For months, I lived in the house by myself and thought that’s how it was going to be from then on. In the midst of my sorrow and lonesomeness, I kept the house going. The floors stayed scrubbed, meals were cooked, my laundry kept clean, the animals fed and groomed, and I even put in extensive work in the garden.
But slowly, and then all too quickly, things began falling apart. First it was the ice box that quit cooling, then the water pump handle broke off, and then the cows trampled over a section of the fence. When a tree fell on the barn, I knew I couldn’t keep going. I’m afraid I’m not handy enough to fix most things, and without a steady income, I couldn’t afford to pay someone else to do it for me.
The house is old, I reminded myself time and time again. Older than me and probably older than my parents. Or rather, older than they would have been. The roof needed to be replaced, the paint was peeling off, and I even noticed one of the bathroom walls was feeling almost mushy behind the wallpaper. In my heart of hearts, I knew what I needed to do, but I dragged my feet on placing an advertisement or even so much as mentioning my plan to anyone in church.
Mr. Madden drove up in his sputtering Ford one February morning and knocked on the door. At the time, he was visiting from Kentucky and looking for a plot of land to farm. Financially, he wanted to find a quick deal with a house already built so he could immediately focus on planting come spring. It seemed as though some nameless person from town had given him the hint to come take a look and throw out an offer.
As one would imagine, I was rather caught off guard by all of this, but hesitantly gave him permission to walk around. He was a happy-go-lucky sort of man, and in no time at all I was telling him little tips and tricks for how my father made all those acres of land work for him. By the end of the hour, Mr. Madden made me a more-than-fair offer that I couldn’t let pass me by, and we agreed to move forward with the transaction in a month – enough time for me to pack up the house, and enough time for him to pack up his wife and kids and leave Kentucky for good.
Things were finally official on that gray March evening. Mr. Madden had the farm and I had the money. Luckily, he agreed to buy the livestock as well for a small additional fee. I likely could have made more by selling them individually to some of the neighbors, but it was one less thing for me to worry about. Perhaps even more so, there was something inside of me that hoped the animals all felt bonded with one another, and that I had saved them from the agonies of separation. That perhaps my abandonment wouldn’t sting so badly since they still had familiar company. Truly, who’s to know what goes on inside the mind of a cow or chicken though?
My three suitcases waited for me outside the bank, just where I had left them. They were awkward things to carry all at once, but not so heavy that I couldn’t manage. With handles looped around my arms, I made my way to the bus stop. In my focus to get everything cleaned and packed up in the house, and between my emotional traumas of saying farewell to life as I had always known it, I radically failed to form a plan of how to move forward. How to take the next step.
Beneath my feet, I felt the bottoms of my shoes coming unattached. Too many more steps and I’d start landing on them all wrong, folding the hard soles backwards in half, creating creases to further encourage the separation. Walking farther than I had to was out of the question until I could buy new ones. What a time to be without proper footwear.
The thought of running into the mercantile there in town drained my soul. Mrs. Hickerson would pound me with question after question. She would ridicule my lack of a plan, and rightly so. I deserved such a fate – invited it, even – but I intended to evade chastisement just the same. She would attempt to spin me stories of my folks, just as Mr. Agon did, and try to persuade me that my decisions only bring shame to my family’s legacy.
I had already made my bed and planned to sleep well in it without anyone else’s nightmares.
All too soon, I was standing at the bus counter. I had planned to soak in the town for the last time, memorizing every minute detail often overlooked and underappreciated in its familiarity. Alas, my thoughts got the best of me, as they always tend to do, and I forgot to notice anything.
“What can I do for you, sweetheart?” asked the woman behind the ticket window.
My heartbeat quickened, “I need a ticket.”
Her red-lipped smile tightened, “Well I suspect you do if you intend to catch a bus. Where are you trying to go?”
When I didn’t anser right away, she looked downright annoyed. My mouth went dry. I didn’t know what to say.
“Alright, honey, look. We close in half an hour. Why don’t you go home and sleep on it, then come back in the morning and I’ll help you… get to wherever it is you’re going in the most efficient way possible based upon your needs.”
“No, no,” I stammered. I didn’t have a home to go to. I had already said my goodbyes. “Where can I go tonight?”
“There’s only one bus left and it’s heading West, running all the way up to Washington state. It’ll be here in about,” the woman glanced at the pocket watch hanging from her smart-looking jacket on the verge of sporting one-too-many almost-but-not-quite-camouflaged repair patches, “fifteen minutes.”
Washington. While I never quite had a particular destination picked, I suppose I planned in the back of my mind to go up the coast. The East Coast, that is. To end up somewhere in Boston or New York City or Philadelphia. Take a bite of the big city life that I’d never so much as tasted. Never in my wildest thoughts did it occur to me that I should go to some godforsaken place even smaller than Candler, Tennessee.
Nevertheless, I hear myself say, “I’ll take it. One ticket, please.”
The woman looked clearly surprised, then concerned. Her eyes left mine to scan the street behind me. I wasn’t certain if she was looking for angry police or worried parents or maybe even both. When no one ran out from behind any building, she reluctantly pulled out a price sheet. “This route is going up through Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, dips into Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and finally Washington. The further you go, the more expensive your ticket, of course. Tell me what city you’re aiming for and I’ll help you find your closest bus stop.”
After some puzzled back-and-forths between both parties, I finally came to the conclusion to pay as I went from city to city until I found the right one. The bus ticket woman all but turned her nose up at me, more than likely filing me a mere half-step above the “hobo” category, but she handed me a ticket once I set the money on the counter.
Not two minutes after, the bus rolled up and I boarded alone. The vehicle was about half-full with folks from wherever it came from. In exchange for my ticket, the driver took my suitcases and left me to scout out an empty seat. I was immensely grateful to find a row to myself and slid over by the window.
My fellow passengers were reading newspapers and books, sleeping, working on sewing and knitting projects, talking softly to their seat companions, and staring blankly out the window. With nothing on my person, and too much shyness to ask for one of my suitcases back, I studied my town for one final time.
Will I ever be back?
I quickly replaced my gut answer of ‘probably not’ to ‘not unless it’s what I want.‘
I had no idea.
Peace filled my soul as the bus pulled away. Goodbye, little town. Goodbye, Momma and Daddy and David and William and Minnie. Goodbye, Before.
I watched Candler disappear behind us and roadside disappear beside us and the sun disappear above us. I watched the moon and I watched the stars. I watched the other passengers and I watched my hands wring at the skirt of my floral flour sack dress. I watched and watched until I could finally watch no more.