Chapter 3: Memory Lane

I’m taking a drive today. The trees rush by. There is so much to see. The mountains roll by. I’m listening to Tim McGimmons on the radio. He’s singing about loss today. My mind wanders back to a woman who had stolen my heart a long time ago, back when I was just a kid. She had brown hair, drove a pickup truck, and she always wore brown leather cowboy boots. She listened to country music. She was here and gone. She was so beautiful. So free. I remember seeing her galloping on a horse on our dirt road. I wished the two of us could ride together, but it never happened. I guess she thought I wanted more. Lord knows she was right. I wanted so much more. At the time, I swore I would marry her. She just wanted to hang out. There was one night we both got a little drunk. We were in her red pickup truck, and the stars were lining the sky. They reminded me of the starlight I always saw in her eyes. She never talked to me again after that. I’m not sure just why. Just what happened. That night is magic to me. That’s why I swore, after Miranda, I’d never fall in love again. Not with Allison. She was too good to be true. Too good for me, if I really got down to it. I sighed, kept listening to the radio, and driving down the road.

I knew where she was today. We’d known each other for years, and I knew that she was painting. I’d seen her paint once. Allison. She deserved so much more. I hated myself for hurting her the way I had. She was there, in her log cabin. Her wooden easel was right in front of her window. Outside, there was a forest, and the sun was setting right about now. She loved the sunset. I knew she did, when she was painting. She dipped her brush into the assortment of paints she had, sighed, and started to stare at the blank canvas, wondering what to create today. She starts with dark blue. It’s probably the color of her heart’s emotions. I hated myself. I took a drink of the beer I had in the cupholder. There was never anyone on these roads. No cops. It was a good place to be when I wanted to ease my mind. A good idea to be moving when I didn’t want to stay in one place.

I pictured her, adding a little bit of yellow. I also figured that was how she wanted to feel: happy, bright.

I was only picturing her the way I saw her, I supposed. The way I wanted to see her. The way she used to be, before I’d broken her. Sometimes I wondered how she’d gotten that desperate. Why she’d started throwing herself at men as if they were going to heal some kind of void she’d felt since she was a little girl. I feared it was lost. Her grandmother had died when she was only seven years old. She probably wanted to hang onto any relationship she could for as long as she could. She probably didn’t want to let anyone go willingly, the way she’d been forced to do with her grandma. I was taking advantage of her, but I knew no other woman would have me.

I knew that no one would come to me that easily. Most women would see me for who I really was: an insecure cowboy with nothing to lose. Very little to gain, and a very small amount of money in the bank. I killed my own meat. I went deer hunting every year, brought home the big ones, did all the trimming and cutting and whatnot and then I roasted em up. Made some really good deer jerky. Allison never came with me. She always wanted to, but I told her it was a man’s sport, and ladies had no business with them shotguns. She didn’t listen to me. She was quite feisty. She went on her own one time and she actually caught one, put it in her daddy’s truck, and drove him, angry the whole time because I had refused to go with her. That afternoon had been fun. She’d called me a chauvinistic piece of shit for not ever goin’ with her before. I ain’t no chauvinistic shit. Just a good ‘ole country boy. I remember tellin’ her that but she wouldn’t listen to a damn thing I said.

I rolled my eyes just thinkin’ about, put the bottle down, and hunkered down on the couch, watching the sunset over the Sangre de Cristos. Women...I thought, as I laid there, takin’ it all in.