Going Home

by Marnay McClintock

Horns blaring sitting in this parking lot they call a I280 West of San Jose. “I’m gonna be late again cried Melissa!”

“Ugh.”

“Why did I think the sun was brighter in Southern California?”

She asks herself for the umpteenth time in the last six months.

“The sky is forever an ugly grey-brown, I don’t remember the last time it rained.”

When she moved here three years ago, she thought it was the perfect place, she had landed the job of a lifetime, the people where beautiful, and all she had to do was look outside to watch the waves crash onto the sand. Now at every turn there was a stranger staring her in the face, it didn’t really matter if you could see the ocean because you sure could not even find a patch of sand to sit your butt down. She couldn’t even recall when she last saw a star shoot across the sky.

As if on cue her phone rings.

“Hello.”

“This is her.”

“Dead?”

“He’s dead; why do I feel nothing?”

“I should feel something. Right?”

“What, yes I’m here”

“I understand, okay.”

The rest of the day was spent in a fog, while everyone about her went on as if the world hadn’t just shattered into a million pieces. She thought, God, when was the last time she even saw her dad? Three years… she had loaded her green explorer and headed for the California sun, swearing that was the last time she would step foot in that dusty nowhere town East of Amarillo. He tried calling last week and as usual she had somewhere to be. Important things to do. Where do I go from here? She asked herself.

She never did make to work. Sitting in her favorite chair, staring into the mug of light brown liquid as if it held all the answers, she wouldn’t be sleeping tonight anyway. Delaying the calls, she had to make, she just wasn’t ready. She put off calling the lady from the hospital back as long as she could,

Here goes nothing…

She spent at least two hours on the phone, calling all the family that she could think of, after which she slipped into soft pj’s crawling under her favorite blanket. Shutting out the world for a while. Melissa woke up tangled in the sheets and blanket on the floor.

“I have to get out of here.”

“I want to go home.”

Running around like a woman possessed; throwing clothes and shoes into garbage bags and everything else she could think of that she would need for the foreseeable future. An hour later she was shoving her trunk closed. One more walk around her little house that she loved, making sure everything was secure. She still hadn’t decided if she would be back, she would figure it out later.

The sun was going down by the time she was sitting behind the wheel, she was headed east. Melissa went through the Starbuck’s drive-thru, coffee in hand she was headed for Texas, it was going to be a long night. She planned on driving as long as she could and then she would stop and sleep for a few hours. With any luck she would be pulling into the ranch in a day and a half.

All the way there the memories of her daddy kept flooding in. Them riding horseback together when she was a little girl. She could see him throwing his head back laughing and slapping his knee, at something funny someone would say. Just then she heard a pop.

“Crap, what now?”

Next thing she knew she was sitting on the side of the highway with a flat tire, waiting for a tow truck, of course in all the chaos she had not even thought about her tires. Sitting there she remembered her first flat tire; her daddy had of course come to the rescue. He wouldn’t be coming to the rescue again. Two hours later and she saw the tow truck coming up in her rearview. She flipped her visor down to try and put herself back together, after all she didn’t want to scare the tow truck driver. It was as if he was looking back at her with those hazel eyes looking back at her.

“Oh God help me, I’m such a mess.”

“Hi, ma’am. Do you have a spare?”

“Yea, it’s under the truck.”

“Got it.”

“Give me a few minutes and I’ll have you back on the road.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

As he tipped his hat and smiled at her, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and she saw her crooked smile which her dad had always said she got from him. Of course, that started up the water works again. This guy is gonna think I’m nuts Melissa thought. Once she was back on the road, she started questioning the last three years of her life. Why, did she even leave home in the first place? Now all the reasons were trivial and stupid her and her daddy had been on there own almost from the beginning and she had just left. He had kissed her goodbye and said, “go chase your dreams baby.” And that is just what she did but she learned one thing about dreams, they can be futile.

I have got to pull myself together. You are going to end up in a ditch Melissa. Maybe I need to get some sleep she thought. Next motel and I’m pulling over said Melissa out loud, talking to herself. She had been driving for what seemed like forever and she was worm out. She kept her eyes open for signs along the highway, at last she saw one off in the distance.

“Please be a hotel, please, please, please.”

“Yes.”

“Motel 6 ten miles ahead, thank God.”

As soon as her head hit the pillows, she passed smooth out. Six hours later she had grabbed a quick shower, went through a drive-thru for some coffee and sandwich to eat on the road. She was deep in the Southwest desert, there was beauty all around her yet it was just a blur to her. All she could think was I got to get home. It was like her own personal mantra.

“POP pssshhhh.”

“Seriously?” Melissa slammed her fist on the dash.

“This can’t be happening!” She screamed as steam starts rolling out from under the hood of her car. Stuck on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck again. If her daddy were alive, he would be giving her the third degree right about now. She could not sit still so she got out and opened the hood and as she had suspected she had a busted radiator hose; she didn’t think that there was any other damage. A fifty-mile tow and another couple hundred dollars later and she was on the road again.

She got another hundred miles behind her and a torrential downpour started. At this point she was not surprised; the sun was starting to go down. This day and a half trip was turning into three, She decided she might as well stop in Santa Fe New Mexico and grab a hot meal and get a room for the night, she would start fresh in the morning. The sun woke her up the next morning, she was so close she could almost smell the cows in the pasture. Five more hours and she would be home, it was going to be hard with her dad gone.

By four o’clock she was pulling up to The Double M ranch, it wasn’t much just a few hundred acres that was perfect for raising prime Texas beef, and her daddy’s pet project of raising prize winning stallions. She pulled up to the ranch house, not much had changed in the three years since she left at least not on the house yet something had changed inside of her. When Melissa left, she thought she wanted more than this place could ever give her but all she found was that she didn’t fit in there. It had been great for a while being on her own in a place where no one knew her but her heart had never left this place. She was climbing out of her truck when she was greeted by her daddy’s foreman Sam.

“Welcome home girl.”

“Oh Sam” Melissa cried as he wrapped his arms around her, inhaling the scent of hay and dirt. “Home.”

The End

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