Days and Nights on Old Haven Road.
(The idea for this was inspired by Laika. Who thought maybe a look at some of the other people and such who lived up on Old Haven Road might be something people might like. This is a story about two of those people.)
Ryan had asked him to come over to his place whenever he need some stuff for the kids. Rob once Bobbi Hart pulled on his ace bandage wrapping it over his small but decent breasts and then the two t-shirts and got into the piece of shit Toyota half ton he owned and headed down his lane and checked his Saturday night special to make sure it was there.
Rob wasn’t transgendered; Bobbi Hart had once been a great girl, happy and normal. Then she married Eddie right out of high school him being the great football star of their rinky dink little town of Briar in north Texas. Her life was great until he drank, he got strange and not like the boy she loved when they got married. He got jealous and he hit her. He had always been so loving and apologetic afterwards and her mom told her… “Don’t y’all be stupid he’s a good man and he’s gonna be a good provider. You just gotta not get on his wrong side girl. You seen me and yer daddy.”
It was true, her own Dad was a lot like Eddie and it was a lot like that for a lot of women in Briar. It was the way they were taught growing up that it’s just part of life. In life a little rain must fall.
After Eddie blew out his arm, it rained a lot. His daddy was owner of the town mill and owned most of the timber and a lot of the land so when Eddie flunked out of school because he’d been coasting on his game he got a job at the mill as one of the foremen and he got mad because she’d stayed in nursing school…until he beat her for getting to big for her britches and took her home out of school.
He’d kept her there until the school flunked her out and she lost her own scholarship. Her family didn’t know he hit her that time and hauled her home. They were just glad that she showed some sense for once and returned to her husband. Eddie got worse and worse with the drinking and the beatings and hooked on his painkillers…Vicodin, the Vicodin led to him getting into Oxycodone. It got bad enough she prayed for him to overdose. Then he knocked her up trapping her there even more. He never hit her then, his daddy knew he beat her and didn’t give a damn. She had only been safe because she was pregnant carrying twins.
It’d been Eddie’s greatest achievement when after he had produced twin boys. She didn’t want to know how her life had’ve been if she had just girls. It was too much though when she was doing the dishes and listening to Eddie and her father in law going on and on about raising the boys right and all the plans for their life.
So she waited on them hand and foot and smiled making them nachos and bring her “Honey” and her “Daddy” beer after beer and each one they had got a bit of rat poison before she had added the wedge of lime. She took what money and cash they had, Ernest, Eddie’s dad’s truck and took her boys and fled. Eddie had recovered somehow and chased her in his car to the outskirts of town. He drove across a wheat field to cut her off he had two friends and guys he partied with help cut her off with their cars and he was going to beat her to death with a tire iron.
Ernest being the typical old school red neck had a gun rack in the truck. She’d never fired a gun in her life but she shot all three guys. Bobbi left and had been on the run ever since for murder, and Eddie had lived like the cockroach he was…he’d inherited everything his daddy had and he wanted her dead, he wanted their boys back.
So she learned the hard way over three years and seven states to disappear. Then last year she found herself here As “Rob” Robert Hart a young widower, he lost his wife to a drug problem he quietly told a few people and just wanted a place to raise his kid’s right. Keep them out of the bullshit.
He’s been here living like this raising his two boys as best he could and trying to bring them up right. The biggest deal was the authorities, the whole child welfare thing and they came when he first moved in. It’d been an old hunting camp that some guy name Lewis had owed money on and he’d got in for cheap. It seemed no one wanted to be in the middle of the woods with a lot of swampland and stuff. It took every bit of money he had saved up and still a dose of charity from the realtor who knocked off a thousand off the asking price because of his story.
Lewis had put some work into it and had fixed it up enough. In reality it was and old mobile home that had been brought in by they guy and had water put in with a well and a septic tank. It was old built in the fifties but it was still better than nothing or just about. There was power run in from the main road down his lane which was nearly a mile back in the woods. While he knew the social worker didn’t like it his place was spotless as he’d really learned how to do housework and the kids seemed happy. This far out they’ve never been back.
It was hard, damned hard and Rob had to work his butt off just to make ends meet. Not greatly educated in the stuff that men folk did it became a learning experience. Odd jobs like helping to dig a well or to cut brush and using a chainsaw to cut wood or junk up the wood already felled for the winters wood.
They damned near frozen that first winter in the trailer with that rinky dinky little electric furnace and shitty base board heaters. They’d have been snowed in if it wasn’t for Ryan and his tractor. They’d have starved too if it hadn’t been for him and a few locals.
It’s why he was making the trip right now to Ryan’s house. Ryan lived comfortably made milk and cheese because you had to do something with all the extra milk and he always put in a large garden. It’s the way of people up and around these parts; buying stuff in town was one of those more like going in for supplies kind of things. Up here on Old Haven Road you were more likely to trade services or stuff you had or made.
Rob as it had turned out just discovering things by accident was a pretty good woodcarver. It had just started as whittling just to pass the time as the boys played and something’s turned out pretty good. Over their second winter there it sort of became what he did. In fact he’d built himself a turntable like lathe out of an old two stroke engine and a collection of homemade shaping tools. He paid for all of it in clothes pins, wooden spoons and other wooden made knick-knacks. Everyone around had a real great liking for the dishes though, Rob turned out mugs and bowls of all sizes as well as plates and platters and saucers. He traded mostly with the neighbors but in the fall fair he’d bring out stuff to sell in the fall farmers markets and the fair in Rome.
Most of that money though had to last all year. So here he was pulling into Ryan’s patch and he could smell baking? When he got out and let the boys out who ran immediately over through the garden grabbing handfuls of peas and beans to snack on as they went and watched to cows and mooed at them.
Coming here made some of the stuff Ryan grew here a treat and he loved the way that they just were so…untouched by all that crap that had gone down in his life. He swore he could smell baking; there was the unmistakable scent of frying doughnuts that was making his mouth water.
“I guess the rumors are true then?”
He asked Ryan as he came out of the house looking…well, not that he’d have said it but handsomer? That guy getting well taken care of and being happy. Ryan usually had stoic going for him, he had stoic down, this was Ryan and Ryan looked happy.
They did the whole guy swing their arm into that handshake thing and grinned at each other. If Ryan knew then like anyone else around here they never said a thing about it. There were times unless they were in the bath they actually were Rob. That wasn’t a bad thing either, Rob as quiet as he was it seemed was liked and he even heard once that a few people in town didn’t blame him if he wanted to keep his kids out of the drugs and stuff that was even in the smaller towns these days.
It all helped in keeping Bobbi away from Eddie.
Ryan smiled. “Yeah, c’mon I’d love for you to meet her.”
He went to the house gesturing and Rob called out for the kids to come over and meet Uncle Ryan’s lady friend. Ryan blushed and smiled and let them into the house where Becky was in the kitchen baking up a storm to use up the buttermilk they had on hand that might have gone bad. There was this huge roaster full of brown paper and she had lines and lines of doughnuts draining off some plain, some dipped in a glaze and those ones that had been rolled in cinnamon and sugar and a little nutmeg.
She, this Becky was actually quite pretty. Now she was about twelve years or so Ryan’s senior but she looked happy. A long skirt that almost went to her ankles and was loose in that gypsy peasant country looking kind of way, her hair in a pony tail and she was wearing a Led-Zeppelin tee-shirt and had her hair pulled back in a pony tail. She was barefoot and dancing as she cooked with a pair of his wooden tongs he had made and she smiled when Ryan kissed her neck and there was that look.
When he kissed her Becky shone from within like someone gave light to her heart. Rob had been alone a long time and had…this was real and it wasn’t something they’d ever had know.
Ryan smiled. “Becky hon, this is Rob Hart the local wood sculptor I told you about, His two sons Robin and William.” William piped up. “That’s Will like Will Scarlet ‘cause Robin’s my brother.”
Becky smiled and blushed and shyly offered her hand. “Hi I’m Rebecca, it’s very nice to meet you….uhm would you and the boys like a few doughnuts and some coffee?”
Rob smiled. “I’d love some Ma’am.” Around here was a lot like the old days you used manners more than most places and everyone extended hospitality to one and other. Robin piped up like his twin had. I don wanna coffee ma’am but can my brother and me have some milk?”
Becky’s smile lit the place up. Rob smiled a little sad and distant for their own losses and yet happy the way that a parent should be at watching their kids eating and stuffing their faces and happily guzzling away milk. The doughnuts made him smile too because they were actually better than his momma’s recipe and it had been a long time since he’d had them fresh out of the hot fat and with a really good cup of coffee to go with them. Part of him was in heaven.
Ryan asked. “You bring any work?”
“Oh yeah I took the time to make you your order up plus I’ve brought a few things I made also if you want to take a look. I was going to take some of it up to the mill to trade off, maybe have a beer while I’m there.”
“Okay, how about after supper. You and the boys stay with us and have supper and get all the stuff you need and then we can all go up to Emmitt’s place and have a few and I can introduce Becky to them.”
“Sounds good, if that all right with Rebecca that is?”
She looked scared. Not freaked out run for you life fear but scared, scared of being caught or found out scared. She was biting her lower lip and staring at Ryan and he smiled and took her hand and squeezed it and she nodded, she changed her grip so their fingers were intertwined and she nodded.
It was great and it was hard to watch. Ryan cooked he had some one stop by before with a whole mess of bass and lake trout and he did them up in this way that Rob was assuming was from Canada. He washed the fish clean then rolled them in corn meal and then lots of salt and pepper and sweetened dried coconut like what you baked with then took tin foil and slathered it with butter and wrapped the fish up each in a buttered sheet. Those got tossed onto the grill with fresh out of the garden potatoes and veggies he put into a foil pack with more butter and a squash was emptied of its pulp and seeds and he did the same with that. Heck the only things that he used pans for was the greens off of the beets and turnips mixed with some from the pea plant too and even some dandelions and some chards. Those were cooked in bacon once they had gotten crispy and the fat had come out a diced up pickled hot pepper and tossed.
It was a bit embarrassing when Ryan had asked Rob to make up a couple of pans of cornbread saying that he made the best cornbread he’d ever had. “Well of course I do Ryan, I’m from Texas we eat cornbread like most folks eat peanut butter.”
It was kind of true but with all the butter milk and bacon and lard there making good cornbread wasn’t too hard. Rob’s secret was melting a little bit of brown sugar into the mix and a can of cream style corn in replacing some of the liquids. That and having a well greased pans and he used butter for that.
It was a great meal and a feast really, the food wasn’t free by any means with him having made Ryan a whole mess of nice wooden bowls and new things to cut and work with his cheeses and hand made old fashioned crocks of wood and boxes for his butter.
In exchange Ryan let them have use of his washer and dyer and picked six or so boxes of vegetables from his garden. It was almost a family country scene with all of them out there as a group picking stuff together in the garden that gave Rob pangs of homesickness and the good times but cheered him because Old Haven Road was like this.
After all of that they headed up all of them walking up through the woods and these well worn back woods paths that went between or around or through people’s places until they got to Emmitt’s place and they crossed the little bridge over the stream that turned the mill and walked in. Ryan brought his wheelbarrow and had stuff for trade like butter and cheese and Rob carried the stuff he had to barter with in an old hockey bag. Years ago that might have been too heavy but that was a lot of hard desperate work ago.
The boys screamed and ran ahead to play with some of the other kids that were here with their folks. There were swings and hand made teeter-totters for them to play on and they were already having a good time. There was about six vehicles parked here and a four wheeled ATV and it The Barn there were people mingling and things set out for buy/sell/barter or trade on one of the long benches up against the wall. On the other side was Emmitt’s bar and a bit of a stage and at the back at the far end was the kitchen where things were made just to nibble on or where you could by baked goods from Emmitt’s wife Suzy.
Both of them were old hippies that had been all over the place and knew all sorts of people that ended up sort of famous from those times. Emmitt was one of those old grey haired Willie Nelson types and a bit like Uncle Jessie from The Dukes of hazard thrown in. Suzy was almost twenty years younger that him but had the almost same sort of look as Becky with the skirt and the tee-shirt only here was a Grateful Dead shirt that looked like she got it on tour with them and she had a bandanna on over her hair.
There was booze around all of it homemade and the smells of food and tobacco and the odd bit of reefer and there was Jim Croce playing loudly out of the juke box as a couple of people danced to “Car Wash Blues”. He set out his stuff and if someone had an offer they’d come up and ask. You never had to worry about people stealing your things here, this was one of those places were as much as you got left to your own you got helped and trusted at the same time.
It didn’t seem to matter where you came from or what you did or what your story was. Once you were here you just got to breathe.
He when up to the bar and shook hands with Emmitt and Lane porter who was one of the local guys around here who hunted and trapped mainly but he also cut firewood for a living. Lane was a bit of the new age hippie living in a straw built eco-home and was seriously against industry logging. His adage was cut down a tree plant a dozen. He was also the source of a lot of Rob’s working wood bringing him left over cutting and stumps to turn into his carvings.
They all shook hands and talked a bit well they talked Rob found it a lot easier just to stay quiet and have a few beers. More good tunes started playing and a few more people showed in the whole mid evening thing. Emmitt’s was part pub part trading post and Rob got busy selling a few bowls and all of his clothes pins and coat hangers and he gave a few things to Suzy by way of trade payment for some baked goods and some flour for his own baking at home. Sweetheart that she was she through in a dozen cookies for the boys. He smiled and gave her one of his unrevealing hugs.
“You spoil them Suzy.”
“Their kids, and you here with no family both you and them deserve to be spoiled every now and then.”
“You’re way too sweet for this world y’know that right?”
“Rob honey, that’s why I’m so sweet. The world needs so much more of it. Now git, go have a good time. I’m going to talk to Ryan’s Missus eyeing my guitar.”
He went and got another beer and slipped out to watch the kids for a bit and slipped back inside just as the people who played instrument were gathering on the stage to play including Ryan and his girl Becky who looked scared but excited.
Emmitt tapped him on the arm and he looked over to the old guy. “Rob, this is my “Niece” Danielle, she’s here for a spell.”
Rob sort of instantly got the emphasis on niece she was one of those transgendered types or something but she was actually not really going to pass in regular places. She looked oddly good though in this strange sort of way. Danielle’s shoulders were thick and her arms kind of built, she’d lost weight that much he could tell and there were lots of life scars on her…including her face where she kind of let her hair hide it…Rob was pretty sure that that might even be a wig too. But they didn’t have any body hair; there was the subtle scent of not perfume but of green apple shampoo and soap mixed in with baby lotion and hints of that classic old styled body powder from Avon that smelled like roses.
Danielle was actually attractive if you weren’t some judging asshole. Rob couldn’t help but to inhale as he took her hand and gave her a polite handshake not like the guys but one that treated her like a lady.
“Ma’am it’s a pleasure to meet you.” He saw her blush and gave her a kind smile.
“It’s…its nice...nice to meet you too.” Wow, she was nervous more nervous that Ryan’s Becky was around people.
“Can I buy you a drink?” Gosh when she looked at him with those hazel eyes of her it did something…there was something there that just spoke not just to Rob, but to Bobbi.
“Uhm, n...no…thanks, I don’t drink.”
She bit her lower lip in this bashful cute way. Danielle might be built in a way that never’d pass but there was just something. The long hair this great shape of strawberry blonde and as long as that singer Amada Marshall’s used to be, careful appearance, just hints of make up still going with the age old less is more. This simple dress of pale, pale yellow with white flowers here and there and even though she didn’t fill it out at all she had this sort of an a cup kind of thing going on after her weight loss. Her look was set off with simple white sandals and a white knit open sweater she use to minimize her arms and to hide a bit.
Danielle had this hurt and so tired of the world but so scared to be who she was look to her that Rob’s heart didn’t just go out to her but skipped a beat.
“Then maybe a dance?”
“Uhm…” she looked scared, undecided until Emmitt push her by her back gentle into Rob’s hands as the group of locals jamming up on the stage started playing “Angel Eyes.” By Jeff Healy.
Rob had only danced a few times since everything as the lead and Danielle hadn’t danced much at all and was shaking and saying she was sorry every time she stumbled or stepped on his feet. He smiled and held her there dancing but slowed it down.
“It’s okay Danielle, like this.” And they slowly almost like a dance lesson taught each other how to dance with each other and she very slowly began to relax, very slowly let herself smile.
It was during. One of the “band” breaks when the juke box was playing Unchained Melody that Rob reached over gently and kissed the first person that they had kissed in nearly four long, hard lonely years.
Danielle backed away breathing hard. Tears slipped out and she looked so hurt and sad. “I’m sorry Rob, god I’m so sorry I…I...I’m not into guys.” She ran outside crying and Rob just stood there stunned until Becky slid up behind him.
“Listen, Rob…I know we just met and I’ve only been around here a few months but I know special when I see it. You two had a spark between the two of you building up that few people ever get to have. Right now Danielle’s all nerves, all fear and she honestly thinks that she’s never going to be worthy of being loved. And she’ll snuff that spark out if you let her because she’s been in the dark for so long she’s scared of what the light will bring into her life.”
He turned and looked at her and instead of Ryan’s shy girl there was another person who’d been through just that and knew just what the hell she was saying.
He let Becky hear Bobbi’s voice in a little tiny “Fuck…” that widened her eyes in surprise and he left her there running out to find Danielle.
She was there on that little foot bridge over the brook and sitting on it back to the railing legs pulled up and was crying. Rob went over and sat beside her and pulled her head onto her shoulder and kissed the top of her head which made her cry all the more.
It had been about twenty minutes when she cleared her throat and spoke to Danielle. “I’m really kind of glad that you like girls although I’ve never seen myself as a lesbian.”
Danielle’s eyes went huge as she lifted her head up and stared at Rob/Bobbi. Bobbi kissed her long and sweet the way that she used to kiss way back when she thought she really had someone to love her.
She broke the kiss. “Dani…I’m really a girl, I’m living like this because I have to it’s safer for me and my boys that way. I know this is crazy, I know we’re both messed up and scared but I felt something tonight, something real and it’s because I met this little bit extra girl that touched my soul. I know you’ve been hurt too but I would really like to try? I’d love to be your boyfriend if you’d be my girl.”
Danielle looked deeply into Rob/Bobbi’s eyes and her response was to kiss him.
*** Becky smiled thinking back to that night and what she had seen and everything. In Rob/Bobbi Dani had found someone who treated her like the princess she yearned to be and still they had this lover’s relationship where the just exactly fit each others needs. Dani was the lover Bobbi had always needed able to let her be as strong and as Rob as she needed to be and at the same time loving and feminine enough to be the lover that’d never beat her ever again.
Becky was smiling because they had moved in together and things had only changed for the better. Danielle’s text showed that much with an excited. “The boys just called me Mom:)”
The end... Thanks Bunches Of Hugs Veronica:)
Days and Nights on Old Haven Road-2
Sweet corn.
There’s just that smell to it isn’t there? I grew up actually just inside of Masstown Kansas it’s just a medium sized small town a few thousand but it was one of those towns that growing up was you lived in town but at least one set of grandparents lived out in the country.
And almost everyone had a hobby garden or a decent sized one in their yards. I remember those times like they were yesterday, I mean it wasn’t great times growing up in the whole post sixties era or at least where I grew up. But we all had gardens pretty much and most of the small jobs you’d have where picking or planting things from the farms around town.
But sweet eating corn…even walking through the cornfields you’d get that smell. Especially when you’re picking ears. But that was one of my safe havens out in the cornfield.
Out there under that sea of green stalks I could think as I would pick earning money at my summer job.
I had a lot to think about.
Like why I was so interested in everything that girls did, the way they moved and talked, smelled but not just sex thoughts even though I had plenty of those but…
By the time that I was a teenager I knew something was wrong…there had to be I wanted to be like the girls I went to school with. I wanted to move like that, to dance and dress and have fun like them…I needed to be pretty in the worst way.
But I never did…a few times…in really secret places, in guilt filled times that just about killed me. Then my body started to. Later puberty and stuff becoming a man and all that hard work.
I was a bit of an outcast.
Not really bullied or thought of as gay or queer because I liked girls like other guys did. Only really, really I ached to be with a a girl as a girl. I dated and had girlfriends but I was odd for guys back then. I was the nice guy, strike one. I was good with and didn’t mind kids. I was kind and considerate to the girls I knew.
Those were all sort of strikes against me. I wasn’t Joe average thing blockhead. And it kind of left me with dates but very few follow ups.
I was the friend.
I hated that and after Jenny Tupper had put me into the friend zone because I just wasn’t what she was looking for… “It’s not you Doug, really it’s just us…there’s no Zip there.”
I was head over heels with her and had been saving up for a ring and after that I got really drunk with the money that I had saved. I woke up in my car outside the recruiting office and was still sort of between hung over and drunk and went inside.
They were more than happy than to take me and ship me off to Vietnam.
I’m not talking about the war there.
Beautiful countries over there when it’s not on fire. I actually came to like a lot of the food. And the women…I…I had this one girl. She was a hooker but she had me as a regular. She was older…almost thirty and she got things about me…she shaved me smooth on leave, I wore her underpants, sometimes her robe. She taught me to go down on a girl and that was nothing that I ever knew of with my mid-west innocent upbringing.
It was so much that part of me getting touched…
Lily taught me other things too. Vietnamese, some French…I had no idea they spoke it over there. How to cook like they do and I gave back, money and I shared stuff from my care packages from home. They had corn there but she had never had corn on the cob before with real butter.
In those sic years of hell she kept me sane and…alive.
Yes six years, my second tour was cut short by my getting shot up enough that they sent me home.
I went sort of into hiding for two years after that just staying with family, and the farms before things changed.
My Big brother Dixon pretty much forced me to go to the fall fair where I met Jane.
It’s funny, Dixon didn’t really like Jane even though the whole thing was to get me out of the house and with people. Jane was a bit of a hippy, and she wore bell bottom jeans and a tube top that night and her hair was cut short and she was smart.
But You ever just get hit by love?
Jane smacked me in a way that went passed all my issues. The girl in me fell head over heels with her and swore she’d do anything to be with her. Jane was just…you ever meet that girl that is just so kissable and so sexy when she says something interesting…which was all the time.
She took me right into this place where I finally felt normal. I know, I know and yes the feeling of needing to be the girl me came back but by the time it did we were married, had gone through college together and had a house just outside of Topeka and I was just starting my first years as an English teacher.
I love my wife…My girl side loved her so much she went quiet for as long as she could…In a way I’ve always been that wallflower girl that’s always there close as she can get to that other half of her soul…but never seen.
*So she ties up her dreams in ribbons and bows and puts them in a box that was always meant for the hopes other girls had. She takes the heavy stones from his life she’s been living and sinks that hope chest that’s her under the lake made from her tears.*
I wrote that once…It’s somewhere in the reams of little books of things I’ve written over the years.
And yes like so many I suffered in silence…
It wasn’t hell though, I lived through hell. Jane does love me, and time passed, we had kids. Steven and Sophie and I love being a dad, I reveled in being daddy when they were little because daddy was and is really close to being mommy.
If anything the kids helped my soul survive.
Jane too.
I’m serious, she might not ever know how those close intimate times made me cry happy tears inside, that her pulling my to her and holding me with her breasts against my back meant…she was being loving, getting comfortable.
Those times the girl in me was hugging her knees crying happy tears just for that closeness.
Jane…she’s the one that saved my soul.
……………………………….................... The kids have moved out Steven’s in Tampa and Sophie’s up in Canada studying acting at Stratford. And we’re done…I’m done and both Jane and I are retiring early.
We’ve been looking at places and Jane’s really been on this getting into shape bit. She’s cut her hair short again and has hit the gym and is running again and she’s getting really fit. Actually fitter than she’s ever been and she’s been on HRT too since getting set on pause.
I’d be worried about a mid-life crisis if she was a guy. I’d be worried about her seeing someone else but she’s not…just…we’ve been having too much sex lately for that. I’ve been going down on her more lately than in twenty years.
She’s just…it’s like she’s really living life.
I even got worried about her health but other than those things that hit you when you hit our ages we’re both okay. Okay I get put on some different meds not to interfere with my little blue buddies but other than that…
We’re looking to move. She has a cousin who told her about this place in the middle of nowhere south Ohio. She’s actually more and more excited by this than anything since college.
We even went to see this place this old farmstead on this Old Haven Road that just…the place was nice, it needed a ton of work but there was this vibe here especially when one of our neighbors showed up.
There was a knock. “Jane?…Hello…It’s Becky, is that you and Doug?”
We came out to the front of the house and she had these berry filled pie crust turnovers for us. And…and she was like me.
I mean Becky was as pretty as she’d likely ever be without surgery and she mostly passed, okay maybe since I’m me I noticed things more and stuff but the thing that really caught me and made my heart stop was Jane.
She never even blinked and took Becky for the girl she was living as and they fell right into that way two friendly women get.
I had to slip out and walk the yards pretending to look around and trying not to cry and be jealous of her. We even ate over there for supper and that was just torture…even if I was happy for her in a way…she was who she really was and loved by her guy.
………………………………............I got up and I slipped out of the hotel room and sat in the car with the door open having a can of ginger ale from the soda machine they had outside. I hadn’t been in the mood to make love and hadn’t been able to sleep. I just sat there hovering on the edge of tears thinking, trying not to fall apart.
Jane came out in her panties and one of my shirts and at almost sixty she was still able to break my heart.
She took my ginger ale and took a sip.
“Put one of our CD’s in love.”
I put it in and she pulls me up to dance with her both in our underwear, three in the morning bare feet on the pavement.
“Sorry Jane it’s just…I don’t know.”
“I do…”
I look at her and smile while my inside voice sadly says…No, no you don’t.
“It’s nothing honey, just stuff.”
“I know…it’s time.”
“Time…?”
I went to look at my watch and she steps forward and pushes me against our car and kisses me…Jane kisses me like she’s never kissed me in my life…and her hands move to cup my breasts. Well my chest and while I don’t have mobs as the call them I’m not young and buff so…there’s some give that lets her cup them into little mounds like I’ve tried so many times myself and she keeps kissing me and rolls my nipples…and I start to lose it. I start to cry and cry and slide down the car until I’m bawling.
It’s out…it’s out and oh god she knows and she’s still holding me…she sits down right there on the asphalt and in her panties and pulls me into her lap and I cry, the real me cries until it’s dawn and the sun’s coming up and the real early morning people are staring at us as they drive past.
Okay…one nice fellow stops to ask. “Hey are you too alright, did he have a heart attack or something?”
Jane wave him off. “No, no we’re fine, we’re just having a moment.”
He leaves and we sort of tearfully laugh and she gets up helping me to my feet. “Come on Dove lets go back inside.”
“Dove?”
“It’s the name I’ve been calling my wife.”
“Wh..what…?” Big glompy tears fall again.
“Well Douglas just doesn’t suit you does it love?” She tenderly wipes those tears away and kisses the girl I am.
“How?…when…”
“I think I’ve known a long time but I read those books of poetry and those short stories when we cleaned out Sophie’s things.”
“You don’t hate me…”
“Never…I love you…”
“You do…even…”
“You are your soul baby…you love who you love…It took me some time but in the end it never changed how I feel…well maybe love you more.”
“More…?”
“Dove…you set so much aside, gave up so much for me, for the children and It took me awhile to see what transgendered is but it really just made me love you all the more…”
“You do…?”
“Yes…oh sweetest heart yes…it’s also why I wanted to come here.”
“It is?”
“Yes, my cousin was actually badmouthing Becky not knowing I was married to this wonderful girl so when I got the courage I called Becky and talked to her. This is it honey…I want to live here…it’s time.”
“Time?”
“It’s your turn…I want this, I want you to be you and I want to start over here with my beautiful wife.”
“You do?”
“Yes…stay here.”
She sets me on the edge of our hotel bed and went digging through her purse. “Dove, close your eyes?”
I’m not used to any of this and scared as hell I close my eyes and I smell her close to me. “Okay honey, open your eyes.”
I look at her and she’s standing there and she drops in front of me on her knees and open this ring box. She opens it and it’s sized for me but it’s a diamond engagement ring just like hers.
“Dove…you are the other half of me. You are my heart, you are my soul and I’ll lover you forever, I’ll be your for always…please, please baby…be my wife.”
………………….
(Sob!)
(Happy, losing my mind sliding off the bed to face her Sob!)
“Y..Yes…Oh God Jane yes!”
……………………………….....................................I won’t go into the details of our love life only to say we are both very happy.
It’s been a long road but I’m smiling, really smiling all the time now. And feeling the sun on my small breasts as I’m just enjoying the way my dress flutters around me in the garden…it’s priceless. Horns honk as I finish picking another basket of corn. It’s my 3rd birthday as the real me and the neighbors are coming over and we’re having a BBQ and corn boil. I wave as everyone’s gathering and actually just stand there watching everyone hugging myself.
Sometimes…something special, sometimes miracles happen.
Dove.
Days and Nights on Old Haven Road-3
Patchworks….
Ryan thought it was a good a name as any for the place Becky had bought. After they had gotten together things just sort of gelled for them in their relationship. And since he had all the things they both needed or likely ever would need at his house Becky had moved in with him.
It had turned out to be a great not perfect but it was great…they had their moments despite starting the way that she did Becky was all girl and sometimes she’d have her moments.
Sometimes he’d just be a guy and be a bit messy and she’d complain. Sometimes she’d get emotional and he couldn’t get why. And they were still learning about each other. Just getting to communicate was new to both of them. The trip to Canada hade helped but Becky was more than used to holding things in and keeping stuff to herself and Ryan was the same hurt and hardened by some of the things that he had seen.
But they did love each other…
For Ryan…Becky was this whole other side he thought…well actually he never though about, he honestly never thought that he had this kind of a side to him.
She had taken over his porch. It was one of those old country houses style ones he had made to go with the gable roof with the wrap around glassed in porch it was going to be where he’d take off his working clothes before going inside and when Becky had started painting in there he had to fix a lot of it and he’d made it quite nice. But it made her happy and Becky loved the light it had and it became her porch studio for when she painted and she had a nice sitting area on one side too where she usually jammed with her guitars.
He loved that she could play because he loved music but he couldn’t play a lick.
He’d always say that if you strapped a guitar to any girl she was incredibly sexy. Becky of course said he was nuts whenever he told her how smart and how sexy and how beautiful she was…there was so much hiding there in her and even out and even post op she was just still trying to get out of that deep hurt where she’d lived for so long.
He saw it in her art a lot. She sold a good number of pieces that she did for sale online. A lot of people are of a lot of different minds about an artist selling their art but there was art she wanted to share with people like some of her nature pieces and there was some stuff that you’d only see online or if you came to the house.
He loved that about her.
He loved so much about her.
She’d been worried over what was to be done with her place and Will and Dani had moved into it after awhile there was still stuff that she wanted to do. She had so wanted to make a difference.
So it started out with him and Will clearing some of the property out and Sebastian Winslow had died and his camp had been left for a long time and they contacted to family and they asked a price on it.
Okay it was that good Ryan bought the property whole since the family lived in Alabama and had no intention of coming up here.
So once the land was cleared off and they had divvied up the firewood and the lumber they poured a foundation and with a home made sled and a big BBQ and the neighbours helping they moved the cottage/camp from the lake onto the property.
It was a real dump actually and ended up being parts for this place.
Patchworks…like a quilt Becky had said. Because everyone had a little of something to donate to the place and they had collected over the winter all these things even scouring a few of the nearby towns for cast off and tossed out construction materials and when they thought they had enough they built the house.
It was actually designed around the stuff they had and it still looked…it looked like a two story house that hippies had built and really it kind of was but not counting the free labour and the hours they built a two story four bedroom home for just around forty six hundred dollars.
And that was a lot of paintings and a lot of butter and a lot of milk and stuff. Will had gone above and beyond really making most of the furniture and the cabinets and dressers and stuff when they didn’t have donations for some of it.
Why?
Because of Becky.
There were people like her that she sort of new, some were out a lot of them weren’t and there’s just sometimes where being out there with the way that things were going in the real world that…that some people couldn’t deal any more and.
Patchworks…
If you feel that you’ve been thrashed to the point of life having kicked your ass so hard all you can do is find a corner to crawl away and hide in…there’s room here. No work no pressure…be who you can be when you can be…when you can’t.
Well we’ve all been there.
He looked at the finished product and smiled. It might help and it might not but he’d survived, Becky had survived and maybe just maybe they could give back just a little bit.
*** Becky smiled and sighed looking at the house. It was sort of a long shot really you sort of had to be desperate and you had to just be a certain kind of person to even live out here on Old Haven Road.
You left the main road and went for five miles towards the state park on a chip seal road called Cat-tail Ridge Road. Then you came to Old Haven Road and it’s a dirt road and its seven miles before you got to the first house and that was Eddie Crandel’s place and he ran this really small garage and store. You know with the gas pumps from the 50’s and where they sell groceries. Actually they sold all of the milk and butter there from her and Ryan’s place and the ice cream too.
Yeah it was illegal she was pretty sure just like the fact that Eddie sold other stuff from canned goods in jars to meats that some people had put down but it never really bothered Eddie too much. They all were so far out of the way and his place had a large old barn place his guy ran that took all sorts of merchandise that fell off the back of transport trucks.
Uh-huh Eddie’s guy; Dave…
They were gay and the best thing about Old Haven Road was you didn’t meet people way back here that really cared about stuff like transgendered people, or that two hairy bear bikers covered in their fifties with beards and tattoos ran a garage and were life long committed partners.
If you weren’t comfortable around hippies and those that were really different or having a neighbour trade a dream catcher for a pound of butter then this place wasn’t for you.
But it’d been five years since she and Ryan had started a life here together and the entire time this place had been a balm to her soul. She was just who she was here.
But she still…
She was a Christian girl despite how sometimes people that said they were acted she was still pretty connected to that side of herself. She had been raised for the first part of her younger years by her grandparents who were just really kind and decent people and she just had grown up with that whole thing of when you’re blessed…
You pay it forward.
So Patchworks was born out of that and drinking good whisky out of a mason jar mug up at the lake one night camping and fishing with friends. And everyone there had thought it was a good idea…because most everyone out here was here for that exact reason and sometimes a place to stay and a place to get on your feet was so needed.
Becky had even knitted and quilted for the place over the winter getting to reconnect with things that she had learned from her grandmother…a really sweet lady…a real lady too despite being country and a woman who either knew who she was all along or just didn’t care and loved spending time with her anyway.
It was nice looking at those knit patterns and getting to reconnect. It actually inspired her to paint and draw a lot of them and those days as she could by memory. One of her favorites was this picture of her grandmother on her back step just sitting in the sun shucking peas.
Every time she passed it in the back porch she’d smile and talk to her. Even if it was just a “Morning Nan.”
Like a lot of her life with Ryan she’d somehow got something back.
*** The house had been done almost two months and while she had a few mentions of it being there online in a few of the places that she was on and trusted there was a lot of people too scared, or the place just being in the middle of nowhere that it freaked a lot of people out,
She supposed it might make a good retreat maybe if she just offered it to be used as breathing space.
She set out some of her paintings and some of the tole-painting things that she had done that they liked here to put up for sale. She had just gotten paid and went into the Cinni-bun place to get a coffee and she saw a woman there with old clothes on in layers and on an old laptop nursing a coffee with a young pair of kids there sleeping on the bench seating near her.
The kids were wearing layers too.
Becky got her coffee and took a few sips and mulled over the scene and was going to head outside when she heard the little girl....
“Da…uhm…Momma…I’m hungry…”
She saw this pained expression on the woman’s face. She passed okay, the clothes sort of hid whether she’d pass or not. It wasn’t the pain of her daughter slipping on what to call her but it was the look she had while checking her pockets and then her purse.
Becky saw her counting a few crumpled bills and change, lots of pennies.
She just couldn’t.
Really right and she looked outside with it getting dark outside and there was snow starting to fall.
Becky went over and politely coughed. “Hi.”
The woman looked startled and quietly said. “Hello?”
“I’m Rebecca; you three are new around here?”
“Uhm…we’re just passing through…sorry we should be going anyways…”
Becky reached out and put her hand on the woman’s and just looked her in the eyes. “How about a coffee before you head out, my treat.”
The woman looked at her searching more than a little afraid and leery. “I couldn’t impose…”
“You wouldn’t be.” Becky did something she usually never did anymore and used her old voice or as close to it as she could now. The woman’s eyes widened. “You’re…?”
Becky nodded. “Yeah…so how about that coffee?”
The woman looked her over in that way that women like her had to meeting someone new and more so the way that a mother would trying to protect her children.
She must have seen something there that passed inspection and she nodded. “Okay…”
Becky smiled at her. “How do you like it?”
“Uhm…anyway…I’m not fussy.” But her tone was saying that she couldn’t afford to be.
“And them?”
“Oh I…that’d be imposing.”
“No, that’d be me just…treating children it is Christmas time right?’
“Yes…okay then they’re not fussy either.” She looked a little more than sad, maybe even ashamed.
Becky went and ordered two hot chocolates and a large double-double coffee and while that was getting done she slipped over to the garage part and bought three of those sandwiches in the cooler and came back with all of it.
The woman’s eyes went a bit wider and she looked near tears when she sat down with the coffee the hot chocolate and the food. “You didn’t have too…”
She passed her a coffee and a sandwich. “It’s okay; I’ve seen my own rough times….I still don’t know your name?”
“Oh…I’m…Mary.”
“Hi Mary.” She said warmly.
Becky took a sip of her coffee and Mary took small bites of the Dagwood she’d been given and she had that look of it having been awhile. There were tears running down her face when the kids started eating and made the sounds that little kids made when something was really yummy.
She loved the smiles on their faces. She passed Mary a tissue and the little girl looked at Becky and so did the little boy. “I’m Hanna and he’s Joey. Thank you this is really yummy.” Joey nodded his mouth really full and gave her two big thumbs up.
“You’re welcome you two.” She smiled at them and looked at Mary. “Can I ask?”
“My wi…my partner passed away two years ago in a car accident…she made me promise…I mean she knew…Joanna knew about me…she made me promise to try and be me…uhm Mary.”
Becky nodded and smiled. “She must have loved you very much to be that accepting.”
“She wasn’t just my wife but she was my best friend…”
Becky teared up a little as the kids stopped eating and took a side each for their mom and hugged her tight. A tear did fall when Joey hugged her really as tight as his little body could and he sniffled to her. “She wuz right you’re an awesome mom.”
Mary cried a bit harder this was really hard on her still. Hanna said muffled into her mom’s side. “You’re a good mum…we don’t wanna live somewhere else.”
“Mary?”
“I…I was fired…that whole right to work…and times are hard…I’ve been looking but…and they took the house because of Joanna’s medical bills and her parents…they want my kids…if I can’t have a job or a place…they’re going to send CPS after me.”
Rebecca nodded and wiped at her eyes. “I think your Joanna’s still looking out for you.”
Mary looked at her with tears streaming down her face. “Wh..What?”
Rebecca smiled at her. “My husband and my friends sort of set up a place, it’s kind of a pay it forward thing but we’re quite far out of the way so no one’s taken us up on it yet…if you need a place to stay it’s all yours.”
“Wh..What…why?”
“Like I said it’s a sort of pay it forward thing.”
“But I can’t pay anything.”
“I didn’t ask did I?”
“I…..”
Becky leaned over the table and held her hand and looked her in the eyes. “Mary…listen to Joanna okay…it’s Christmas time and I have a manger okay…”
It was sudden and it was unexpected but Becky soon found herself being hugged hard over the table by Mary and the two kids gripping her waist tight.
“Mom…?” Joey asked muffled in their sides the looked up at both women. “Did is mum really looking after us?”
Mary looked at Rebecca and Becky smiled and nodded. Mary looked down to her two kids who were both looking just so…
(Sniffle-sob.) “Yes honey, your mom will always be looking over us and loving us.”
Becky cried pretty hard and so did Mary and the kids until both of the children had fallen asleep and they carried them both out to Mary’s car. It was a next to rusted out old eighties Cutlass supreme station-wagon…they’d been living in it. They got the kids in the car and Mary looked at Becky again
“Are you sure? Three extra people around…extra mouths…it’s just.”
“I’m sure…besides if I could and didn’t my sister would kick my ass.”
“She sounds like a character….”
“She was…she was awesome….”
“So you really believe…”
“Yeah…I really do.”
They hugged and it took awhile and Mary’s car had a lot of issues getting that far and they’d just pulled into their driveway when something went in the car with a black puff of smoke and the car died.
They got out of both cars and popped the hood but there was too much smoke to see what had broken or burst. Billy got Mary and the kids into her car and took them down the driveway to Patchwork.
She got them inside and made a fire on and turned on the circuit box and then called Ryan and asked if he could help out.
She put the kettle on and was showing Mary the house while everything was warming up and telling her where that got what or who made what for the house when Dani showed with a few boxes of groceries gathered from both houses strapped into place with bungee cords.
Mary’s eyes went huge when she got a look at Dani…
“This…this is for real…? We’re okay here? Just okay to be….”
Dani hugged her like she’d known her for awhile. “It’s Old Haven Road…as long as you’re more about love than you’re about the hate…then...Welcome home guys.”
Becky started some old fashioned coco and Ryan and Will came a few minutes later the doors of the car open and then pushing it all the way into the yard in neutral.
The smell of coco and a wood fire kissed the air and made the difference between the snowy night out there so much the different.
The kids squealed. “TV!, TV!” and turned on the television and there was a movie playing or something but as the girls were letting the guys in and passing them coco a sweet song started playing and they just stopped to listen.
“God…Joanna loved this song…” Mary breathed.
Becky nodded wiping at her eyes. “Sis does too…”
O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, the night when Christ was born;
O night, O holy night, O night divine!
O night, O holy night, O night divine!
Led by the light of faith serenely beaming,
With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.
O'er the world a star is sweetly gleaming,
Now come the wisemen from out of the Orient land.
The King of kings lay thus lowly manger;
In all our trials born to be our friends.
He knows our need, our weakness is no stranger,
Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!
Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!
Truly He taught us to love one another,
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.
And in his name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
With all our hearts we praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we,
His power and glory ever more proclaim!
His power and glory ever more proclaim!
*Merry Christmas HUGS*