Paying It Forward Chapters 1 & 2 By Ricky The banker reached into the folds of his gown, pulled out a single credit note. "But eat first - a full belly steadies the judgment. Do me the honor of accepting this as our welcome to the newcomer." His pride said no; his stomach said YES! Don took it and said, "Uh, thanks! That's awfully kind of you. I'll pay it back, first chance." "Instead, pay it forward to some other brother who needs it." -Robert A Heinlein, Between Planets

Chapter 1 – The Storm
Bleep... bleep... bleep.

The following is an advisory from the National Weather Service. Winter storm warning remains in effect until 1 pm Eastern Standard Time this afternoon. Snow and blowing snow. Accumulations of six to ten inches with locally higher drifts. Winds North fifteen to twenty-five miles per hour with gusts up to thirty-five miles per hour. Wind chills from five below zero to fifteen below zero this morning, increasing to around zero this afternoon. Visibilities one quarter mile or less at times. Temperatures six to sixteen above. Heavy snowfall and blowing and drifting of powdery snow will create dangerous travel conditions. Wind chills below zero could lead to frostbite or hypothermia for anyone exposed to the cold. A Travel Advisory is in effect, do not leave your home except in cases of extreme need.

Bloop...bloop... bloop.
 

"Yeah, right" Karen muttered at the radio, staring through the icy windshield at the tail lights of the car crawling ahead of her. There was a lump of ice on the wiper that was smearing semi-frozen goo across her line of vision despite the defroster's best efforts. There were a few vague stripes on the rear window where the heater was trying to melt the snow as it fell.

"Why didn't you activate the Emergency Warning System before I left the house?" she asked the radio. "Hell, why didn't I activate my own emergency warning system? After 86 years I should know better than go to out in this crap, but then I should have gotten that prescription filled before it ran out. Karen, honey, you're getting old."

She took her foot off the brake and eased a few feet foreword, then stopped again. And again. And again.

Ten minutes later she could see the sign of the drug store ahead. Another ten minutes later she could still see the sign, for all the good it did her. She could close her eyes and see the beach in Miami, but it didn't get the traffic moving. Some idiot had stopped in the middle of the intersection, blocking traffic both ways so she was stuck watching the open road on the other side of the idiot.

Eventually she made it into the parking lot, having no trouble finding a space. "Guess I'm the only old fool stupid enough to want to go shopping in this crap," she muttered as she snapped the ice tip in place on her cane and walked very carefully to the door. A short time later she emerged with a small paper bag in her hand. "Not going to be fool enough to go shopping and have to carry anything else in this godawful mess."

Living alone, Karen had taken to talking to herself. "Only way to get an intelligent conversation these days," she told no one in particular. "Good thing I just filled the tank, I may just need it all to get back home."

Nearing home she saw a lone figure trudging slowly at the side of the road. It looked like a young girl and she was wearing a mini skirt and walking in high heels. "Guess I'm not the biggest idiot out on the road today, that little slip of a thing has to be worse off than me." As she slowly passed the pedestrian, she glanced over to see the girl was crying. At least she thought it was tears, hard to tell with the snow melting on her face. When Karen stopped the girl passed her, and they played catch up several times as the traffic moved at about the same pace as the pedestrian.

Karen was sure the girl was crying after a few more glances and rolled down the passenger window the next time they met. "Honey, are you OK?" she called to the girl.

"Huh?"

"Are you OK. You're like to catch your death dressed like that."

"My folks just threw me out, I don't have anything else."

"What? In this weather?"

"Yeah."

"Young lady, you get inside this car this instant. I'm not going to let you freeze to death no matter what kind of crazy mother you have."

The girl just stood there, staring. It didn't take long for car horns to start honking.

"Come on, get in. I'm an old lady, I don't bite, mostly."

The lame attempt at humor broke through the girl's daze and she reached for the door. She quickly climbed in and sat hugging herself for warmth. Karen switched most of the heat to the floor despite the icy windshield to help warm the girl's near naked legs. Stockings in this weather!

"Where are you going?" Karen asked.

"I don't know," came the reply.

"Good heavens, girl!"

"I guess I'm homeless now."

"OK, darlin'. You want to tell me what's going on."

"Not really."

"Your choice. The way the traffic is moving you have about half an hour before I get home. We can figure out what to do then."

"Thanks. I really need to do some thinking."

"Then put your thinking cap on, darlin'. You can use all the clothes you can get in this weather."

Even though her curiosity was running at full force, Karen knew better than to press her unwilling passenger. She would talk when she was ready and no sooner.

She snuck a few glances at the girl huddled in the passenger seat whenever traffic came to a halt. It didn't take long to decide she was wearing a not very convincing wig. Really, Karen had seen better wigs on a Barbie Doll. Her clothes were pretty tight, not so much outgrown as a poor sense of fashion. Of course anyone who saw the pictures of herself at that age would have had a good laugh, fashion was such a fickle thing.

Was she really once so young that she would have dressed like that in weather like this? Well, not really. When she was that age a skirt like that would have been unthinkable. Hell, when she wore trousers and climbed into an airplane it like to caused a riot.

Those were the days: biplanes and canvas wings, not the streamlined airborne buses they had these days. The wind in your hair and the ground a few hundred feet below as she danced on the wing while the yokels gawped.

Speaking of yokels, what were the local yokels going to say if she took in this waif? She had no doubt in her mind that she was going to take her in, at least until she could find out what had possessed the girl to run away. And then she had to figure out what to do about it. There was no way she could toss this kid back out in this storm.

Karen finally made it home and pulled into the garage. Turning to her unexpected guest she said "Well, this is the place I call home. You got any ideas about what you want to do?"

The poor kid just sat there and shivered, looking terrified to say anything.

"I expect that means you haven't got a clue, right?"

The girl nodded slowly.

"Well, come in and warm up for a while and we'll think of something."

"Uh, thanks."
 

In the kitchen Karen busied herself making tea and thawing a couple of cookies in the microwave. Living alone she kept such things in the freezer so they wouldn't go stale before she could finish them. She set a box of assorted teas on the table and let her guest pick out what she wanted, then poured the hot water. Such routine bustle seemed to have given the girl time to relax and look less like a frightened calf.

"I suppose I should introduce myself. I'm Karen, a sarcastic old woman who specializes in lost causes and Quixotic rescues. I left my shining armor in the closet and I haven't rescued a damsel in distress since my granddaughter had a friend who ran away from home years ago. That was a home that needed running away from, mind you, but that one stayed 'till she graduated high school. Not that I'm expecting you to hang around that long, but stranger things have happened. I suppose you have a name, too."

"Tim-. Uh, Tamar."

"You can kick the kid out of the Bible Belt but you can't kick the Bible out of the kid, eh?"

"Well, I did have to read it an awful lot."

"Tamar? Didn't she pull a fast one on one of those old time hypocrites that the Bible loves to hold up as examples of virtue?"

"Jeez lady. If my mother heard you say that she'd about turn purple."

"I should hope so. Back when I was your age, I had to sit through a whole lot of crap in church 'cause that's what respectable people did back in the thirties, some of it must have stuck. Didn't the old dog get his daughter-in-law preggers and then try to kill her or something like that?"

"I don't believe this! How did we end up doing a Bible lesson?"

"Because an old Catholic heathen like me is always interested in religion. The crazy things that some people believe have always made me curious. What was the original Tamar like?"

"She married Er, one of Judah's twelve sons, but God got pissed at Er and killed him just after the wedding. They had this crazy custom that when the husband died the widow had to marry her dead husband's brother and have children by him, so the firstborn child could be legally the son of the widow's first husband."

"These are the same people who think gay marriage is a sin? Don't that beat all?"

"So anyway, Judah offers his next son, Onan, but Onan didn't want kids so God up and croaks him for pulling out too soon and 'spilling his seed.' Of course the woman got blamed and Judah won't let her marry the last son, Shelah. I suppose he had second thoughts and was running out of sons, anyway. But Tamar still wants to have kids so she disguises herself as a prostitute. She lures Judah into sex so she can get pregnant with her first husband's bloodline. I gotta admit that don't make a lot of sense to me - why would she be so hot to become a single mother or else to be second fiddle to Judah's other wives?"

"Don't ask me, honey. Raising two boys was no picnic even with George around to help. So what happened to Tamar?"

"Oh, she gets her wish and gets knocked up, but old Judah decides she ought to burn as an adulteress. Then Tamar comes up with Judah's signet ring, his staff and the belt that he gave her when he - er - did the deed with her, so old Judah suddenly decides that she is more righteous than he is because she fulfilled a widow's responsibility to see her husband's line carried on. He decides he was in the wrong when he tried to stop her. Of course he kind of neglects to talk too much about him screwing a prostitute..."

"I get the feeling all those Bible lessons haven't really taken on you."

"Yeah, you could say that. Seems most people use the Bible to tell you that everything you want to do is wrong."

"I've noticed that, too. Well, we can while away the time discussing religion some other time. Right now we need to talk about just what you are going to do with yourself for the next few days. You can stay here a while; I have a history of taking in strays, as my late husband called it.

"Thank you, Karen. I really didn't think about what I was going to do when I left the house."

"You're damned lucky you didn't freeze to death."

"I know, but I didn't have a lot of choice. It was get out or get beaten."

"But how could your parents let you go out dressed like that?"

"My parents take 'Spare the rod and spoil the child' seriously. When Mom came home early and found me dressed like this she flipped out." The bitterness in her tone was downright painful.

"Honey, what you're wearing would have caused a riot when I was a girl, but it don't look so outrageous to me." Karen was confused. "How can they get so upset about how you're dressed? You look better than a lot of the young girls running around these days, even if that mini of yours is a bit light for the weather."

"Karen, that's just it, they won't accept I'm a girl - that's what gets them so upset."

"Some people are powerfully squirrely, I suppose. So what do they think you are? A space alien or a robot?"

"Worse. They think I'm a boy."

"Honey, you both got problems if they think that."

"Yeah! But I don't know you at all so I guess I can tell you that they think that way 'cause I was born with boy bits."

"You what?"

"The doctors told them I was a boy. They don't believe me when I tell them it isn't true. They just say it isn't natural, but they never bother to listen to anything I say."

Chapter 2 - Tamar's Story

Karen sat at her kitchen table at a complete loss for words. Her late husband, George, had always told her that taking in strays would surely result in a case of fleas or maybe the worms. It seemed he may have been right, this was quite a can of worms.

"Don't that beat all? I suppose we need to book you on one of those TV talk shows to tell your story. I wonder how much they pay and how good you'd be at wringing tears out of the audience?"

"Are you crazy, lady?" The girl looked poleaxed.

"Probably, at least that's what I keep getting told."

"I couldn't do that!"

"They'll probably want your parents to sign a release, anyway, so that wouldn't work. By the way, how old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"Tamar?"

"Sixteen in a month or so."

So if your parents want you back, the law will say you have to go back. Well, unless you get married or join the Army or something."

"Yeah, as if anyone would marry me - or there's anyone I'd want to marry. And like the Army is going to want me. Anyway, I've been disowned and I don't want to go back."

"And have you given any thought as to where you are going to live?

"Uh, not much."

"I suspect that things were a bit, shall we say, emotional when you left? Most folks will calm down and regret the words they shouted."

"Emotional! You could say that, kind of like a hurricane is, shall we say, a bit of wind and rain. As far as they're concerned transgender is evil and needs to be beaten out of a child for his own good."

"I hate to ask, but is that hyperbole or can you produce some bruises?"

"I didn't produce the bruises, I received them, but yeah, I have the bruises to prove it." She lifted her blouse and there was no doubt of her story. "Not that it does any good, the nurse at school kept finding ways to not get involved. Our wonderful Christian schools don't have parents that abuse students."

"So the Bishop told the Cardinal. But I doubt you're Catholic or you would have called it a 'Parochial School'. Speaking of school, you do know you have to go to school for a couple of more years even if you ran away from home? At least you will if you want to get anywhere in the future."

"Yeah, I know."

"Don't sound so enthusiastic. I suppose that's another one of those things that wasn't important at the time. And that's a rhetorical question so don't bother to answer. Good thing it's school break, so we don't have to worry about that right now."

"I wasn't thinking about much besides getting out NOW."

"Survival is like that, and most times that instinct is the right one. Just like I didn't stop to think when I picked up a crying young woman in a snowstorm. I think that was the right decision to make, even if it will make life a wee bit more complicated for the next few months."

"Months?"

"You didn't think I was going to throw you out, did you? You can stay with me while we figure out what you're going to do with your life."

"I can?"

"At the risk of quoting the Bible again, just think of it as my turn to be the Good Samaritan. Tamar, honey, you're out on your feet. What say I scare up an old nightgown and you crawl into bed for a few hours and try to get some rest? For that matter, at my age I find I have to nap a lot more often than I used to."

"Nightgown?"

"What else would a young lady wear in bed? As long as you're my guest you will be a young lady. We'll work on the complications later, but I've watched enough daytime talk shows to know that you wouldn't have walked out into a snowstorm if you weren't sure you belong on my side of the gender fence. Now off to bed with you, young lady!"

Karen's character was inspired by the wonderful women in Fanny Flagg's The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion.
 

Thanks to Alys for her input and proofreading. The story was much improved by her advice.