The Judge was good on his promise to take me not only out of the city but right out of the state. Our journey was hardly discrete due to a three Police cruiser escort complete with lights and sirens out of the city. Then the county cops took over and four of them followed us right to the Washington State line. A local TV truck complete with a huge satellite dish joined in the convoy but according to the local radio, I was being run out of town because I was a threat to society. Not true but small-town politics are messy at the best of times. Thankfully, the state line was just over an hour away but it was clear in that the message they were sending me was very clear… ‘Do not come back or else!’

I relaxed once we passed the ‘Welcome to Washington’ signs. A short distance later, the judge pulled over. Ms Lewis parked behind us. I felt relieved despite being pretty well run out of town. The TV truck had stopped at the state line and the last view I got of them was that the County Sheriff was giving them an interview. I guessed that he would be bragging about how he’d run a dangerous criminal out of the county/state… after all, it was an election year and anything, and everything goes in an election year in the USA, and where anything a candidate can do to get more funds for their campaign, the better.

“Thanks for your help, Ms Lewis,” I said when the three of us were together.

She smiled.
“All part of being a Public Defender. There is no love lost between me and the DA or the cops. We are always in opposition so this little episode is just a normal day’s work for me.”

“Including a jaunt into Washington State?”

She laughed.
"Not quite, but it makes a change from trying to bail out corner boys that the PD busts without even an empty deal bag on them. Anything goes in an election year, and the more arrests he makes, the better it looks on his resume and his wall-to-wall adverts on pretty well every billboard in the county. I know for a fact, that the judge here is getting fed up with the cases coming up before him with zero evidence and even less chance of a conviction.”

I chuckled.
"What's so funny?" asked the Judge.

“Sorry… It is just that I had the same thought about how rules go by the wayside in election year.”

I knew only too well what she meant by 'corner boys’. I didn’t envy her job. It did seem a bit strange that an occurrence that was normally found only in cities had migrated to a rural county in Oregon, but I guessed that the drugs trade knows no bounds.

“Thanks again and I hope that we don’t meet again professionally,” I said as she got back in her car.
“Same here, and I mean that as a compliment. You are certainly not the normal sort of homeless person we get around here if you know what I mean?”

I did know. She was referring to those who got solace from cheap booze or drugs. I tried to avoid them as much as possible.
"Thanks for the compliment. Those have been in short supply in recent years.”

I got a big smile from her as she turned her car around and drove back towards Oregon.

---

“Ok Judge, where to next?”

“Grocery shopping, I think. We still have well over an hour’s drive before we hit the rough stuff.”

“Rough stuff?”

“Yes, just under two miles of a rough track that climbs up into the mountains to where my cabin is located.”

He looked at the concerned look on my face.
“Don’t worry, the cabin is very comfortable and the view is magnificent.”

I had my doubts about that. I had experienced a cabin in the backwoods of the south as a child. They were very basic and almost always had outside facilities. Sometimes, they were little more than a corrugated steel roof and walls over a wooden frame. Windows with glass were optional.

“I don’t understand why you are doing this for me?”

"It is easy. The PD is corrupt from top to bottom. Now that I am not running for re-election, any chance I have to get one over on them the better. The DA is just as bad, but he won't go against me as he is my former son-in-law. He’s the one that had a ‘bit on the side’ and … well… it all got complicated when she ended up getting pregnant. My daughter is and always has been a better lawyer than him. She took him to the cleaners in the divorce. I remained impartial because I had to work with him. But after that, we became sort of enemies in a legal frame. He keeps trying to get one over on me and failing spectacularly. It has been keeping me sane for the past few years.”

He laughed a bit. I smiled back as my mind was on other things.

“Won’t you helping me come back to bite you once you are no longer a Judge?”

"It might but once my term on the bench is up, I'm off on a trip to Jamacia. My great-great-grandmother was born there. According to my family records, I have some relatives there so… Anyway, while I am away, my house will be packed up and moved into storage near Sacramento. I’ve bought a camper which is parked at the storage site in Sacramento, but no one in town knows that. I’m going to be a camper bum for a few years. There is so much of this country of ours that I have not seen and since I am now on my own, I intend to see it.”

I nearly asked why he was alone, but stopped myself in time. He saw my mouth open and guessed what I was going to say but didn’t.

“My wife died three years ago from a tumour on her liver even though she was teetotal. Because of other complications, she couldn’t get a transplant in time, but we had almost thirty good years together.”

His words relieved me.

“How long can I stay at the cabin? It will be June in just over a week. I expect that the winters are not nice up in the mountains. I’m not exactly used to snow and ice…”

“The winters can be pretty severe, but if you put in the work now then you can survive but there Is plenty of time to worry about that."

“What do you mean by ‘work’?”

“Cutting and chopping wood and making sure that the freezer is full. If you stay over next winter, then you will need a good pile of wood ready to burn and kept dry. The local rangers supply the wood from when they maintain the firebreaks. I let it season for a couple of years before cutting it for the fire. There is more than enough seasoned wood to last a whole year. All it needs is… Well, I'll show you tomorrow.”

He saw a look of concern on my face.
“Don’t worry. I’m pretty good friends with the local firewatchers. I’ll get one of them to drop by and show you how to use a chainsaw safely if I don’t get around to it.”

I was not happy, but it looked like my future was in my own hands apart from the money.

“What about groceries? How far is the nearest store? I guess that it is several miles?”

“Nine miles each way plus the climb up on the way back.”

Once again, he saw a worried look on my face.
“I have another vehicle at the cabin. We should be able to get it going tomorrow morning before I leave. You can use that.”

“Don’t you have to get back for court?”

He chuckled.
"It is Friday today, and I'm not on the docket until Tuesday. That gives me plenty of time to get you settled in before I have to head home."

I began to see the money in my pocket disappearing in a puff of smoke.

“There has to be more to it than just wanting to get one over on the local PD?”

The Judge sighed.
"You are one smart cookie. We have about twenty minutes before we get to the best shop between here and the cabin. If I tell you why, and you want to bail out at the shop then I won't argue. Deal?"

“Ok,” I replied still unsure about where this was going.

"When I saw your mugshot on the docket for my court the other day, I knew instantly what your real name is. As I said before, you have your fathers' eyes and face. I take it that Madeley is not your given name which is if I am not mistaken, Forrester. Am I right?”

I felt that I had been stabbed in the heart, but I managed to nod my head.

“And your father is none other than Governor Bryson.”

“Yes… how did you know?”

“Your father and I are old enemies. It all started at high school and carried on when we were at college and even law school. I was dating this girl in our senior year, but he had his sights on her, so he tried to frame me for a robbery at the school to get me thrown out. That failed because, at the time of the robbery, I was watching an assault case in the local court. The judge was a perfect alibi and looking back, it was probably when I decided that one day, I'd become a judge. I won that battle, but he won the girl.”

He stopped speaking, but I could tell that what he was saying was hard for him. The more time I spent with him, the more I knew that he was one of the good guys.

“To my dismay at the time, fate made sure that we both ended up at the same college and then at Law School. He ignored me at college, but at Law School he found it impossible. He tried several times to out debate me but failed miserably. His arguments just didn’t stand up to direct questioning. I graduated top in the class, and he was second from bottom. He hated losing, always has and always will. If he can’t win by fair means, he has no second thoughts about going over to the dark side. He'll never admit that he could not win at everything and that he knows more about everything, and that includes certified experts. He just shouts them down and calls them fools. There were rumours that he had advanced knowledge of our final exam. He tried to deflect them in my direction, but I'd been five hundred miles away from campus for the final two weeks before the exams revising at the racing stud where my parents lived at the time. Remember, this all happened before the internet. It is so very different now. Somehow, he survived and his papers were graded. You read between the lines! Nothing he does and fails at is ever his fault, but the fault of everyone else. He's gone through staff like a prostitute does clients, if you know what I mean, and no disrespect to your late mom. For him to stick with her for so long says something about her skill and determination.”

I thought I knew a lot about my father, but this was a whole new heap of trash to load on the pile of rotting dung that is his life.

“In our college senior year, he was dating the girl who became his first wife. The day after graduation, they eloped to Mexico and got married on the beach at Acapulco three days later, but even then, he was playing around. When they returned to find that his mistress was pregnant; he paid her off, and she left the state to get an abortion. The new wife took issue with the whole sordid affair and divorced him on the spot. Her father was even more of a crook than him, so he didn't fight it. He only married her because of that connection which backfired bigly.”

“It sort of begins to make sense.”

“What happened then?”

“Your father went into his fathers’ law practice as a partner. Someone coming in fresh out of law school and starting as a partner put a lot of noses out of joint. Six people who were battling to become partners all quit on the spot, leaving their clients in the lurch. The practice went over to the dark side very quickly after his father retired to play golf in Palm Beach.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I went to work as a Public Defender in another state so there was little chance that our paths would cross and for almost ten years, they didn’t. By then I was the lead attorney in the Public Defenders department of a neighbouring state but one day, I saw your father heading into a ‘by the hour hotel’ at a town just on my side of the state line, with the lady that I later found out was your mother. I was waiting in my car on the other side of the road for a client to turn up. I remember that day as clear as if it was today. My client turned up dead that night. All the evidence pointed to your father being behind it but at the time of the murder, he was in bed with your mother. I had to give your father an alibi. That was not my best day. I later found out that my client had told someone who was in the pay of your father where and when I was meeting him. You put two and two together.”

“I get it that your hate my father. Join the club.”

“Yet, he wants to be elected as Governor for what? The second time?”

“After that incident, where he used me was the time when I wised up. I resolved to not let him use me ever again, so I quit the PD and moved out here and have been here for over twenty years. Then you came along.”

“Like a bad penny?”

He chuckled.
"Not a bad penny. You needed help, and I was more than happy to give it."
Then he asked,
“What do you want me to call you? It is clear to me that you are transgendered. While many in this country would want people like you to be eradicated, I am not one of them. So? What is your preferred name?”

“Tiffany. I’d like to be called Tiffany.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Tiffany. No, not pleased, it is an honor.”

“Thanks Judge. I appreciate that.”

We drove on in silence until he pulled up at a supermarket.

“There is one more thing that you need to know before we go any farther.”

This sounded ominous.
“The note that was delivered to me just before we left, contained some bad news. My clerk did some checking on you for me last night so she knew who you really are, but that checking left a trail. The Chief of Police knows because he's been bugging my calls and computer for the past year. This episode should give me enough proof to call in the FBI. The Chief asked her to find the phone number for your father while you were being held in shackles. That probably explains the fake suicide watch excuse. They wanted you immobilised while they waited for your father to get in touch. My guess is that he wants you dead. His style that became clear to us by the end of our freshman year is to not leave loose ends around to get in the way in the future. Even then, anyone who gets in his way was made to pay for it big time. From what you said, you saw that from close quarters.”

I sat there with my eyes fixed on a car that was parked about 50yds from us. Those eyes welled up. I knew deep down that someone would be on their way to find me.

“That was bad news, wasn’t it?”

I nodded my head.
"Someone will be on their way here or rather where we were to take care of me. I am a loose end that has been loose for far too long. I’ve had a few lucky escapes from his clutches in the past but this worries me.”

I turned to look at the judge.
"This affects you too, you know. You are a loose end as well?"

"I guessed as much. It has been a long time coming. Your father promised to 'deal with me' in the future. I’m sure that he'll be pleased to honour that promise after all these years. If he does, then he'll be in for a surprise."

“What do you mean?”

He smiled back at me.
“I’m not the only one with some dirt on your father. He did all sorts of dirty land deals before he became governor. He'd pay well below market value for a property, and just before the taxes become due, he'd sell it to buddies at cost plus a handsome campaign donation. Not exactly illegal but… sailing very close to the wind. That's not all though. One deal involved falsifying environmental reports. The site was heavily contaminated with heavy metals. All the houses that were built on that site had to be demolished due to contamination. I have… or rather my lawyer has both copies of the reports as well as evidence of a financial trail that leads back to one of his companies. Then there is the blatant tax and insurance fraud that is SOP for his property company. He must have a lot of dirt on people in the IRS to have not been investigated thus far.”

I sat for well over a minute trying to digest what he’d said.

“Well, Tiffany? Are you going to bail out? There is a bus stop on the other side of the road. It would take you to Spokane. From memory, there is one due in about an hour.”

After a bit of thought, I said,
“No, I think I will stay. I’ll stay for the time being at least. I’d like to spend at least one night in a decent bed for a change. I probably stink of Jail cell so a shower would be good."

"Good. Now let us go shopping. You will need a complete set of clothes and shoes. That includes raingear as it does get wet around here regularly."

I hesitated. The money in my pocket was meant to be my ‘rainy day’ reserve.

“Are you worried about the cost?”

I nodded my head.
“Don’t. I’ll pick up the tab. Think of it as an investment in a life that is not on the road."

“Being on the road is how I have survived. Being on the road makes me pretty invisible most of the time.”

“Except when you get arrested for no good reason. Then all invisibility bets are off, aren’t they?”

“I guess so.”

---

Just over an hour later, the Judges’ Subaru Forrester, was fully loaded up with food and clothes. He’d also bought some ammunition which made me nervous.

“There are bears in the woods near the cabin. Most of the time, they keep their distance but if they get very hungry then they come looking for an easy meal.”

I understood what he meant.

“Have you ever fired a rifle before?”

I shook my head. I had but I’m not one to call when I still had a way to go with my bluff. The fewer people who knew that I could fire both a handgun and a rifle the better.

“Then I’ll have to give you a lesson tomorrow.”

It looked like tomorrow was going to be a busy day.

---

Forty minutes later, the judge turned the Subaru off what poses as the main road for the area and onto a track. He stopped and said,
“It gets rougher the farther we go so hang on.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. He saw my concern.

“This car can get up and down it. Just you wait until you see what I have at the cabin. That beast eats roads like this for breakfast.”

I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about but I knew that I’d find out in good time.

Then a few minutes later, we passed an area that had been newly logged. Those logging trucks are often overloaded and the drivers are paid by the load. That made me think again about the damage to the road surface.

Then I cajoled myself for not watching where we were going. I was trying to think about anything other than the prospect of being hunted by some paid assassin.

I concentrated on trying to remember the significant points in the landscape including the location of the nearest store.

He was right with the description of the ‘dirt track’. It was passable as long as you didn’t go too fast. After a good twenty minutes of slow but sure progress up the track, a building came into view.

“Is that it?”

“Yes, that is my cabin and your home for as long as you want it.”

The wooden structure was set well away from the surrounding trees. I could see what looked like a garage off to one side as well as a large woodpile. There seemed to be more than enough wood stacked and ready to last a year let alone the short time I would be staying here.

Then it hit me. We’d never talked properly about how long I’d be here. I knew that he had other plans but I felt like a bit of a sideshow… an excuse to get out of town.

I pushed those thoughts to one side for the time being and helped him unload the car.

“Why don’t you sleep up there?” he said pointing to a room up in the eaves.
“There is a nice comfortable bed ready and waiting. I’ll pull out the couch so I’ll be fine.”

“Thanks,” I replied more out of the sense of having to say something.

I took all my new stuff up into the attic room while he sorted out the groceries.

“I think that it is time to get the fire going and something to eat,” said the Judge.

I looked a bit bewildered.
“If we are going to cook something, then the range needs to be fired up and that involves wood.”

I saw the empty wood basket and took the hint. While he went and finished sorting the things out inside, I went outside and filled the basket with wood. I was struck by the peace, the silence. A few birds and the sound of the wind in the trees and that was it. For someone who had been raised in the middle of a city, it was a bit unnerving. I'd have to get used to this.

I carried the full basket back into the cabin. He’d opened up the shutters that covered the windows so that now, the interior was bathed with light. It looked a lot larger with natural daylight rather than artificial light.

“Here you are,” I said proudly as I carried the basket into the kitchen area.

“That will last for the rest of the day but this place seems to eat wood even in summer.”

I took that as a warning as I helped him put the last of the groceries away.

“Before I start to get us something to eat, there is something that you need to see.”

“What is so important?”

“Did you see some of the fire damage on the side of the road just before we turned off to come up here?”

“Yeah. Does that mean this place could get burnt down?”

“With the right conditions, yes, it could. That’s why there is a fire hole.”

“Fire hole?”

"A fireproof cellar with an exit well away from the house. Why not see if you can spot the entrance?"

I could tell that he was playing with me. I thought about objecting but common sense prevailed. Knowing where it was might just save my life if a wildfire came this way.

I scanned the wooden floor without success. I tried looking under the few rugs that were scattered about but once again, there was no sign of a trapdoor.

“Ok, I give up. It can’t be in the floor…”

“You are right. My late wife insisted that the floor was too good not to mention too expensive to spoil with a trapdoor. She beat me up verbally until I agreed to her demands. That left me with the problem of where to put it. Do you want to look again?”

I had to agree with his wife on the floor. The polished oak floor was just too good to spoil. I wandered over to the large fireplace. On either side of it, there was a large stone. It looked as if a person could fit through a gap that was behind one of them.

“Behind one of the large stones of the fireplace?”

“Give the girl a prize. Now how do you open them?”

“Why? Now that I know where they are what is the problem?”

“Wildfires can even outrun Usain Bolt given the right sort of wind and easily leap a gap of thirty yards. You might need to find them in a hurry, and in total darkness."

That made some sort of sense even though I wasn’t planning on staying very long. I rarely ever stayed in one place more than a week. The job at Lakeview had been just about the most settled I’d ever been since Mom was murdered. I’d learned the hard way that staying in one place for too long made me careless. I hoped that the activity of the past few days would not expose me to too much danger in the next few days.

I went over to the fireplace and tried prodding and pushing. Nothing happened.

“Ok, I give up.”

“Press the long stone just under the shelf.”

I did as he instructed, and there was a definite click.

“Now press down on the outside of the stone.”

I did and it moved out of the way.

“There you are. Open Sesame!”

I stuck my head down inside and saw a set of steps leading down into the dark depths.

“There is a light switch on the roof above the steps. Go on down and explore it. It was also a food store for any meat that we hunted. The cool temp in the fall makes it perfect for hanging game like deer. The back way out is to your right at the bottom on the steps.”

I went down into the cellar. It was far roomier than I’d imagined. A dimly lit tunnel led off to my right. It seemed to head away from the house, woodshed and garage and into a small area of scrub that appeared to have been cleared of timber a good few years before.

“I can see the tunnel.”

“Go and follow it and I’ll see you outside.”

There was little choice but to follow the tunnel. At the end, there was a wooden trapdoor in the roof. I pushed on it and it moved a little. I tried again and it opened. Looking down at me was the smiling face of the Judge. He extended a hand. I accepted it and he pulled me up and onto the ground. We were some seventy or eighty feet from the cabin.

“Thanks. I wondered where it came out.”

“We left this area alone after we built the cabin. The view from here is pretty good.”

He was right. The view down to the valley below was spectacular. I could see a truck moving along the highway. I hadn’t realised that we climbed that far up from the road.

“That is quite a view alright.”

“There is more than enough air in the tunnel should a fire sweep through the area. Stay put until it passes through or burns itself out. There is a box of candles and a lighter on a shelf near the light switch. There is a hurricane lamp under the sink for when the batteries run out. They are charged by three solar panels on the roof. In summer, they are more than good enough to light the cabin at night.”

He smiled.
“I think that we have done enough for today. Let’s go back inside and get something to eat?”

“That is a great idea,” I said closing up the exit door.

---

“Squeeze the trigger. Don’t jerk it.”

“I’m trying but my finger and brain don’t seem to be properly connected.”

He laughed.
“Those were almost the exact words that my wife used when I taught her to shoot.”

“Look Judge, I don’t think that I’ll be staying here long enough for hungry bears to find me.”

He smiled.
“There are always the bears on two legs to worry about.”

It took me a second to get what he was on about.

“Do you think that I could be tracked here?”

“I’ll be perfectly honest with you Tiffany. That last message made it pretty clear that the cops back in Oregon have ratted you out to your father. If he really does want you dealt with once and for all, then yes, I do. There could be some bad guys on their way here right now.”

“But… you said that this place was not known to anyone in Oregon?”

“I did say that, but they know that we came in this direction and there are property taxes to pay on this place as well as land records. It is very, very difficult to remain invisible these days if the people searching for you are determined enough plus I’m not crooked enough to hide the ownership of this place in a shell company.”

“That is very true. I learned very quickly that I needed to become a hobo just to survive. My father has fingers in so many local and federal government pies that becoming one of the invisibles as some politicians love to call us seemed the best way forward at the time. We don’t pay taxes, vote or contribute to their or their opponents’ campaigns so we are to be ignored or simply moved on and kept out of sight of the TV crews when they come to capture their soundbites for the evening news.”

“That is a pretty jaundiced view of the world, isn’t it?”

I smiled.
“From where I am in society, it is about the only view. Almost all of the cops that we meet are out to either put us in jail for no good reason or run us out of town… Just like the ones back in your hometown.”

“True, so very true.”

After a pause where the frown lines on his face deepened, he said,
“What about your future? What do you want to do… after you know what?”

I chuckled.

“I have thought about that a lot over the years. Most of the time, I tell myself not to be so stupid and that I could easily become just another statistic in the list of people shot by the cops for no reason other than being black, looking suspicious, being in the wrong place at the wrong time or all three.”

“And now?”

His question stunned me. It was my turn to frown.

“I’ve seen you change a lot in just the short time that we have been here.”

“Oh. I get you. I don’t know but the peace and beauty of this place has gotten to me and that worries me. I have had to keep moving just to stay alive as you well know. The longest I’ve spent in one place was six months. I was working alongside some illegals on a farm. I only left after it was raided by Immigration. They ignored me but I took the hint and left the next day in case they sent CPS after me. Some bitter experiences and a few close shaves have told me more than once that I can’t afford to become sentimental or attached to any one place. I learned that several years ago at a place near the southern end of the Appalachian Trail. The inbred locals took offence to a black hobo living in their midst. It was hard to leave such a beautiful place but only thanks to one of the few good cops did I get out without facing a lynching. Someone had started a rumour that I’d knocked up a local girl. I hadn’t but… you fill in the blanks.”

The Judge changed the subject and we chatted a bit more about the cabin and its surrounding environment. I could tell that he was trying to sell me the idea that I should stay. Even while he was talking, I was planning an exit route. That was just something that I did wherever I spent more than one night in the same place.

[to be continued]