Eliza's Home: Cypress Hollow Yarn, #6

CHAPTER ONE

"Y ou can make it. You will make it," Eliza muttered to the truck, which was rattling out a discouraging put-putting noise. It was juddering as if trying to shake water off, and every now and then the engine gave an ominous thunk.

The salt-wet wind filled the cab of the truck, and goosebumps rose on her arms, just as they always did when she was moving – when the air would be different tomorrow, and the day after that.

The truck shook again and started to slow. No, no, don’t do this. Come on, truck, you owe me. It was only a year old, a 1944 Model 498T. Eliza was sure it wasn’t the engine, not in a vehicle this new.

She should have known that guy had watered his gasoline. It had been too good to be true, the farmhouse on the side of Highway 1 with the hand-lettered sign, Gas For Sale. He hadn’t charged enough for the fuel, and she should have been more suspicious. She’d been in a hurry, though, too distracted to stop and wonder about it. She’d just wanted to get back on the road. He’d given her a frank up-and-down while she took the money from her envelope.

You married, girl?

Eliza had ignored him. He didn’t need to know her story. Not with the way he was leering.

’Cause if you wasn’t, I’d say stay a spell. You hungry? I shot some quail yesterday, got it on ice. You gotta watch for buckshot, and they’re mighty tiny birds to take a load like that, but they’re still good. You’d like ‘em.

She had thrust the money into his hands and avoided his goodbye shoulder squeeze by twisting sideways. Not even thirty minutes north, with the vast blue ocean on her left and a low line of green hills on her right, the Ford had started making funny sounds.

Come on, come on, Eliza said to the truck, which clearly wasn’t listening. She’d only been heading north for seven hours, and she’d been planning on making it at least to the Oregon border by late tonight. Then Washington, and then Canada, Vancouver. Across the border, with her envelope of cash. A new country. A new plan – one that would change and move just as she did. When she tired of Vancouver, she’d work her way east across that vast country, and if she bored of that, she’d head down to New York, a city she’d loved when she’d passed through it once at twenty-two, just out of college. Some place George would never find her. Come on, just to the next gas station. I’ll get someone to empty you out and we’ll start again, with nice, fresh, clean fuel.

But the Ford refused to comply, shuddering to a slow crawl and finally coming to a complete stop on the side of the road with a cough and a sigh.

Shoot. Oh, if she got that farmer in her sights, if he drove by right now, she’d give him what for and how. Eliza got out and stood next to the truck for a moment, clenching her hands in fury. She kicked a tire and stubbed her toe.

Then, careful to look both ways across the narrow, two-lane highway even though there wasn’t a car in sight, Eliza crossed and then clambered up the low sand dune on the other side.

The ocean stretched out in front of her, as deep a blue as a color could be, as vast as the sky above. The water seemed different here to that in San Diego, and she felt as though she was seeing a real ocean for the first time. Down south, the water was friendly, inviting. When you looked at it, you knew you could swim and swim and then dry off in the sun, sand crusting in the crooks of your elbows and knees. Here the water was rough, telegraphing its frigidity even from a hundred yards away. White caps battled each other, and sandpipers raced at the edges of the white froth, dodging the waves as if they were scared to get their feet wet.

Damn it! she yelled at the waves. She waited for someone to chastize her. Good girls never curse.

No one spoke. There was no one visible for miles, not to the north where a heavy bank of fog drifted landward, nor to the south, where the ocean curved away and out of sight in a tangled blur of blue-gray.

Hell! Still nothing. It felt good, and Eliza’s heart lifted for a moment before it came crashing back down to reality. She was here. Alone. Running away again.

So she said the worst thing she could think of. Goddamn! She followed it with a quick, very satisfying scream of frustration.

Lightning didn’t strike. God didn’t poke his finger through the thickening fog and strike her dead.

Jesus on a tent pole, woman! What in Hades is wrong with you? As a man rose from behind the dune to her right, Eliza screamed even louder, this time in fright.

Are you dying? Have you been stabbed and I just can’t see the blood yet? The man hurried toward her, his long legs pumping through the drifting sand. Are you wounded?

What are you doing there? Why were you hiding? Are you a criminal? What if he was a rapist? A murderer? Perhaps she should have taken that farmer up on his offer of a quail dinner.

The man held his fishing pole aloft. Sure, most criminals carry fishing gear to throw off their victims. No, I was taking a blamed nap in the sun after managing to catch exactly nothing this morning. He was closer now, only half a dune to go, and he was looking at her as if he thought someone should cart her off to the nearest asylum. I have this crazy need to check on women screaming their heads off.

Huh. That’s strange. I didn’t hear a thing, said Eliza, putting her hands on her waist and facing him squarely.

The man raised his eyebrows. They were very nice eyebrows, Eliza couldn’t help noticing. Full but well shaped, they framed his brilliant blue eyes. He had the lightest stubble across his wide jaw, as if he’d shaved so early that by now, in the early afternoon, it had already started to grow back. He wore a green work shirt with a paint stain on the right cuff.

As if he knew she was looking at it, he flicked his wrist to turn the cuff around. If you didn’t scream, then I’m afraid I have a moral obligation to go find the woman who did, though by the sound of it, she’s probably already dead.

I wouldn’t waste your time, then, Eliza said. Dead is dead.

He shrugged. True. Looking back at her truck, he asked, Walk you back to your vehicle, miss?

Speaking of dead, she said.

Ahhh. He offered his arm, and the strangeness of a man popping up in the dunes and offering to walk her across the highway suddenly struck her as more amusing than alarming.

Thank you, sir. She took it. His bicep was twice, no, three times