CHAPTER 2

A LONG WAY FROM HOME

The flight from Vegas to Sacramento, while longer than the flight between Ontario and Vegas, was wrought with internal anxiety that has haunted me most of my life. It wasn’t the death of my parents that caused this. I felt the weight of this anxiousness long before they died.  It haunted me repetitively during the first day of school. It wasn’t just what people call first-day jitters. It was an overwhelming feeling of dread that often resulted in me vomiting in the bathroom at school. I’d often wait for the crowds of kids to go into their class that first day after the first bell and have the bathroom to myself. Darby would cover for me. She’d tell the teacher I had to use the restroom and would be in shortly. She knew my struggles but didn’t share them.

I knew if I could get myself to throw up, much of the anxiousness would be dispelled and life could go on. I’d be able to go back into the class and start the year off without incident. I often wondered why the thought of facing an entire classroom full of kids as I opened the door caused less anxiety but could never figure it out. It became an act that needed to play out. I figure it did so because I knew what to expect. I knew how it would go more than not knowing what would happen. I could face all those eyes looking at me coming in late for class at that moment after vomiting more than I could not knowing how it would all play out.

When our plane landed in Sacramento, Sandy, the flight attendant, came for us. Sandy told us, “An associate of your grandfather is here, Mr. Fitch.” We had no idea who this Mr. Fitch was. It was unsettling but not as much as the first day of school unsettling. Certainly not as unsettling as it was to see our parents both lying in their individual coffins, separated by the wood, brass, and silk in a bed that was really no bed at all. Many of my memories of my parents to this day involve them being together but when I see them, I see them separated in those coffins. It is a horrible visual to have to recall.

            As we came down the ramp to the gate at the airport, an unusual-looking man stood there. He was close in age to Grandpa Lewis. His hair was dark with flanks of gray. His hair was messy like he didn’t have time to comb it or chose not to. He wore a rumpled button-down shirt and dirty khaki pants. His shoes were well-worn sneakers with holes in them, one even untied.

Yet, what was even more unusual were his eyes. His eyes seemed to work independently of each other, as though they could look two different ways at once. Could this be the man our grandparents had sent to come and pick them up? Was it a mistake? Was this even safe?

The man approached us with a trying warm smile.

“You must be Mr. Darius and Miss Darby,” he said. His voice was raspy like he was a character from a book or movie. Not like a real person at all.

He immediately grabbed Darby’s backpack from her. “Here, Miss. Let me carry that for ya.”

Darby questioned, “Where are our grandparents?”

The man looked at her and then at the flight attendant.

          “Well, your grandfather does not see so well in the evenings and the drive from the farm is quite a distance for him and your grandmother. They asked if I wouldn’t mind picking the two of you up for them.”

            I asked, “And, who are you?”

“Me?” he said. “I’m Fitch. I work for your grandfather on his farm.”

           Darby then asked, “Are you a farmer?”

           He smirked, “No Miss. I do odd jobs around the farm for your grandfather. Work he cannot always do himself.”

            Fitch then turned to Sandy and asked, “Do I need to, ah sign anything?”

            She answered him back, “No sir. Your name was entered into our log as the contact here. You are welcome to go.”

            “Well, then. Let’s go,” he said. He put his arms around both of us and turned us toward a walkway to the baggage area. “We should go and get your bags. We still have a long trip ahead of us. It is still a couple of hours to Owensville.”

Fitch had picked us up in the farm’s rusted old Chevy truck. It was impossible to say the color. It looked like a hybrid of green, gray, and rust. Fitch put our bags in the back of the truck and a furry head popped up. It was a dog, a mutt to be sure. When the dog saw us, he howled in unison with a long stretch. He was gray with matted hair that was long and out of sorts, much like Fitch’s. He was drooling and the hair around his mouth was wet and sticky. As Fitch passed the dog, he gave him a scratch under his chin and a pat on the head.

            “This is Rascal. He’s half dog and half family.” Darby and I looked at each other. “Where I go, he goes,” Fitch said. “Except they don’t let his kind in airports. He ain’t much of a police dog officially but he alerts us all when someone sets even an inch too close to the farm.”

Darby and I just, sort of, looked at this mess of a dog, not sure what to say.

           “Well, you better pet him if you expect to be able to sit in the front. You see, he usually sits up front with me and works the radio. He loves country western music. I don’t care for it. But he likes it.”

We both moved up to the truck bed and petted the dog. I scratched him under his chin like Fitch had, and his hind leg twitched when I did.

            “Rascal, settle down,” Fitch said. “See, he likes you.”

The inside cab of the truck was covered in dust. Darby slowly crawled in and sat on the bench-like seat next to Fitch. I was glad to sit next to the door, in case I had to make a quick escape for whatever reason my creative mind could fathom.

When Fitch jumped into the cab of the old truck, a dust cloud sprang up as his weight hit the torn vinyl cushion. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a huge hunk of keys, and shoved one into the ignition.

            “Better roll your window down a bit. The heater in this thing won’t shut off and it can get quite hot even in the evenings.” He began to crank his window down with his left hand. The window was the old-fashioned kind. The ones you had to crank up or down. I cranked my window down as well. It was a marvel that the truck still ran. It sounded like it had a cough and an audible ticking inside its engine. 

            The sun began to go down as we drove out of Sacramento. The rumble and ticking of the engine, along with the rolling movement of the cab on poor shocks, lulled the two of us into a sleepy state. I struggled to keep my eyes open. Fitch reached over for the radio and put on a scratchy oldies station that he hummed along to. As much as we tried to stay awake, Darby and I both fell asleep.

We had never been to our grandparents’ farm before. I didn’t even think our own parents had. Our grandparents had moved up to Owensville several years prior. IT was when our grandfather finally retired as a university anthropologist. The farm was only ten acres but had all the amenities you’d expect a farm to have. It had a small barn with two pens, a chicken coop, a water well, a quaint rustic cabin, and a petite two-bedroom house.

It is nighttime and the truck hitting bumps in the road quite hard had awakened both of us from our sleepy state. The orange glow of the old truck’s headlights seemed dim on the highway.

          “They don’t pave these outlying roads like they should,” Fitch said noticing we had been shaken awake. “They don’t do a lot of things out here like I bet they do in the city.”

By then, my eyes were fixated on the road. The dim headlights barely illuminate the pavement and yellow line down the center. Beyond the pavement was an incredible darkness, like a huge wall of black on both sides of the road as we drove. I gazed out at the wall of nothingness. Occasionally, the road curved, I could see that the black walls that stood nearly thirty feet high were thick trees of the forest. It seemed we had driven miles before another house with lights on was seen - the only proof of civilization.

Fitch finally turned on the blinker and the inside cab of the truck glowed a green color while the outside glowed an orangish yellow as the signal went on and off repeatedly.

          “Well, we’re here,” Fitch announced. We looked right and watched as the truck glided to the turn-off. The road in front of the farm was gravel and the crunch of the gravel under the tires was a new sound. My anxiety rose between the crunch of the gravel and the darkness of the night making this new home mysterious and somehow scary.

It is a quick left from the gravel to the dirt road onto the farm. The dirt road continued upwards and there sitting on the hill was the glow of the front porch light at the house. We could see the silhouette of a figure looking out the front window. The figure disappeared and the front door opened. Out came two silhouetted figures. One had a tall thick frame and the other much shorter and rounder. Fitch pulled the truck up and around a circle in front of the house and put the truck in park. Rascal was barking from the truck bed and from the front porch, there was the bark of a much smaller dog. It was as if Rascal was calling out to it, “They’re here! They’re here!” and the other dog was answering back with the same refrain.

Coming down the steps from the porch toward the truck was a familiar round face. It was Grandma Mimi. She wore a huge smile that went from ear to ear. Her face wore her wrinkled skin well. With her smile, her cheeks looked like two rosy apples sitting atop a lazy letter “c”. Her hair was pulled back in a clip and was long and flowing both gray and black. She wore what you might expect a farmer’s wife to be wearing: a floral dress with a hand-stitched apron in the front.

She was wiping her hands on the apron, either because they were wet or out of complete habit and nervousness. She then stretched out her arms to welcome us. Unsure of what to do, we sat in the cab in silence.  We smiled back, but Grandma Mimi’s face just called to return a smile. Then before we knew it, she had the door open and was reaching in for us

           “Look at you. Look at you!” she said. “Are these not the two most beautiful-looking kids you have ever seen?” Immediately, I was swept out of the truck, and off my feet, by this woman who is extremely strong for her short frame. Darby slid across the seat and was grabbed with one arm by Grandma Mimi. She wrapped us up in her warm embrace.

Not since our parents had died had a hug come with such warmth. As Grandma Mimi held on for what seemed like an eternity, neither of us wanted it to end. Her clothes and skin were extremely soft and comforting. Her smell was unlike anything we had smelt before but it seemed familiar. It was likely a combination of flour, Comet cleaner, and lavender perfume.

As she let go, she stood back and just looked at us. Her face beamed with smiles.

           “Jack, would you look at these two? Could you have imagined that they would be this grown up,” she said as she held on to each of our hands.

Grandpa Jack was tall with a serious face. No course of a smile to be seen. As he looked over at us, the seriousness of his face caused both of us to avoid any eye contact with him.

           “And, responsible too,” Fitch said, as he lowered the truck tailgate to let Rascal out and to get the suitcases that have been thrown around the bed of the truck on the drive. “They both flew here on their own with no trouble,” he continued. “I can’t say when the first time I ever even flew on an airplane was. Must have been in my thirties or sometin’ like that.”

Grandma Mimi beamed, “These are real good kids. Their mother always had nothing but nice things to say about the two of them. Come on, let’s go inside. I bet you two are hungry. I baked a cherry pie.” She motioned us up the steps of the porch and then she stopped.

            “You do like cherry pie, don’t you?” she asked. She realized she didn't know us well enough to know what we liked and didn’t like. Her cheery face suddenly showed a heaviness from perhaps a tinge of guilt or remorse for not knowing us. I noticed and felt bad for her. I didn’t understand the situation that caused us to be separated from these grandparents and didn’t care. She cared. Her worry at that moment proved it.

Darby answered Mimi back, “Yes, Ma’am.”

Mimi smiled back. “You can call me Grandma or Mimi, dear. Whichever you’d like. And how about some ice cream on that pie?” She looked over at me.

           “Alright,” I said with a smile. She may not have known us well, but she'd soon find out that ice cream was what I loved most.

The three of us walked up the porch steps. As we did, the smaller dog that had barked from the porch as we pulled up, began to bark again.

            “Oh, pay her no mind,” Grandma Mimi said. “That there is Duchess. She’s just saying hello in her territorial way.”

            “Can we pet her?” Darby asked.

            “Well, let me pick her up before you do. Just so she knows it’s alright. She’s an old dog and does not take too kindly to new people.” Mimi scooped her up in a protective manner. Duchess was a small cocker spaniel. She was white with tan patches that covered both her ears. Her muzzle was flecked with gray and when Grandma Mimi picked her up her whole body shook in excitement.

              “Now, now, Duchess. These are my grandkids, Darby and Darius. They will be staying with us for the summer. You’ll like that, I know,” Mimi said. “It’s okay to pet her now.”

I reached out first, then Darby more cautiously. She didn't want to scare the dog. Duchess’s fur was particularly soft. Darby kept petting her silk-like ears. Duchess moved her head to meet Darby’s hand on every stroke.

              “She probably needs a good brushing,” Grandma Mimi said. “Darby, would you like me to show you how I brush her tomorrow?”

               “Yes, ma’am!” Darby was quick to answer.

 Grandma Mimi put the dog down and we continued up the steps. As we did, Grandma turned and called back to Grandpa Jack, “Are you coming with us?” She waited for his response. She was hinting for him to come along.

“I will be in, in a while. I need to check something down at the cabin before I come in,” he answered. His voice was deep and strong.

It was a few years before; Jack and Mimi came down for a Christmas visit. It was the last time they saw their son and daughter-in-law together. It was also the first and last time they saw us.  They had come down on their way to San Diego. Darby remembered Dad and Grandpa not having too much to say. It was almost as if they avoided each other in conversation altogether. The visit was short, awkward, and strained.

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