In times like these (we learn to live again)
If there was one thing that everyone in Eaglecrest agreed on, it was that Zachary Miller was a good boy.
Perhaps a bit boring, his old high school girlfriend would add, shrugging her shoulders apologetically.
A very reliable fellow, Father Donaghey would contribute while tending to his rose bushes.
Never did an exciting thing in his life, his brothers would say before going off to do exciting things with theirs.
Zachary had been a good student. He had struggled in some subjects, excelled in others, never played any sports, and whenever one of the hockey players broke his glasses or trapped him a locker, didn't run to the teachers. He stood his ground, until the next big boy came to kick it out from underneath him. High school was not a good time for Zachary, but he didn't consider it the worst either. It was just one of those things.
After high school, he enrolled for an accounting degree at the City University of Seattle, dutifully finishing it within three years. A solid choice, his father praised him, and then called his friend Mitch at the Eaglecrest Bank, arranging for a job interview. Zachary was hired and moved back home.
He spent two years working at the bank, serving and advising the former hockey players without complaint, doing his brothers' taxes, helping Father Donaghey with the roses, and being, as everyone agreed, a good boy.
Until last Thursday, that is.
"Ethel, did you hear?"
"Zachary Miller! Who'd have thought!"
"I never saw it coming."
"I still remember him from Sunday school. Sweetest little thing! Glasses bigger than my Aunt Moira's."
"Helped me open a savings account for Gracie just last week. I just can't believe it."
"Have you checked? Is it all still there?"
"Dear Lord, you don't think- I'm calling Mitch Williams right now!"
Eaglecrest was all atwitter. Mitch Williams had the worst day of his life, the very worst day of his life. His spacious office was filled to the brim with a crowd of shouting, sweating, nosy people. Sitting behind his desk, mapping his face with a tissue, he wondered if today was the day he would finally have a heart attack. His wife had been telling him to retire for years. She was right. Of course she was right. He should be in Florida by now, play a little golf, do some fishing.
"And I'm telling you right now, Mitch Williams," Ethel Guzman threatened, her chest puffed out, "if that boy touched one penny of my Gracie's account, then I'm going to sue. My son-in-law, as you well know, is the best damn lawyer in town!"
Bruce Hare, the local diner owner, only nodded in agreement, muscular arms crossed in front on his chest. Mitch found him much more threatening than the prospect of Ethel's son-in-law suing him. He had arms like tree trunks, a face like thunder and the worst temper in all of Eaglecrest.
"But Ethel, Bruce," Mitch tried to assuage them, hoping for the best, "Zachary only walked out with the cash the Walmart had sent in."
Ethel opened her mouth and shut it again. "Oh."
The large store had opened two years ago, and the townsfolk had not yet decided whether they liked it or not (not that their indecision kept them from shopping there). It was too big, some said, not personal like old Mrs. Shaffer's shop.
Ethel Guzman and Bruce Hare, who just so happened to have gone to school with Mrs. Shaffer middle son, a nice boy who hadn't returned from the war, exchanged a look, and bulky man shrugged.
Composing herself with the dignity that came with baking the best plum pie in town, Ethel huffed and turned around to the rest of the crowd. "Well, I always knew he was a good boy. I said so, didn't I?"
Like all small towns, Eaglecrest, and with it every citizen and every business, is very much set in its ways. For instance, every other Wednesday, the big new Walmart sends the last two weeks' earnings to Eaglecrest Bank. The next morning, Zachary Miller would bag it all up while chatting with Mitch Williams's secretary, and then send it on to the big Seattle branch. Except that this time, Zachary Miller had bagged it all up, wished the secretary a very nice day, walked out, bought Johnny Lafferty's aquamarine 1963 Mercury Comet off of him and left town.
The trick, you know, is just to drive. You don't think about it, you don't plan a route, you just drive. Hitting the road, it's what it's called.
I got my license at 16, like everybody else, but I never drove much. Eaglecrest is so small, you can walk everywhere. When I went to college in Seattle, I took the bus or a ferry boat. I like ferry boats, but then I like the ocean in general. The sight of water calms me.
But now that I'm driving, I am calm too. Works like a charm. I've shrugged off that feeling of unease that's been clinging to my skin for the past few days.
I love this car, and suddenly, I love to drive. The auto transmission helps. Daniel and Mark would never drive anything but stick, but I like this better. Allows me to take in the view. Decide which road I want to follow. There is no plan here; I'm like a leaf in the wind.
And wind there is a lot, blowing me here and there and everywhere. I like the ocean, but I'm driving away from it, the Rockies rising into the sky ahead of me. Fewer houses, more clouds. Meadows. Cows. Nature.
Something new.
You'll be wondering why, of course. I bet everyone is.
It's 1969. Three days ago, Neil Armstrong took a walk on the moon, and you know, I realised that I'd never even been to Montana before.
It's ridiculous, it almost being Washington's neighbour state and all, but somehow, I was always too busy. Too busy being a good student, too busy avoiding the bullies, too busy working at the bank. I was too busy working a job that I have no passion for, and Neil Armstrong walked around on the moon, flying into the atmosphere while the world watched with bated breath.
I never made time for anything, not even for a drive across two state borders. I never learned to play an instrument, even though I buy every record I can get my hands on. Hendrix is my favourite.
I wonder if they called the police, Mr. Williams and my dad, wonder if my mother is disappointed and if my brothers are proud.
I don't think so.
It's not even the stealing they will object to, but that I went ahead and did something unexpected. Just like that, I popped the box open and out jumped not a jack in the box, but something else altogether.
I never felt the need to surprise, but lately I felt like I'd been doing it wrong all along, that I wasn't who I was supposed to be. Zachary Miller, clerk. Formerly Zachary Miller, loner. People can now walk on the moon and I was hiding behind a bank counter, being predictable and boring. It's just not right. I take a sip of my soda; it's cool and refreshing and like the road and the car, helps to even things out somehow.
"Kiddo, she ain't worth it, trust me," a rough voice addresses me from my right. It's the man on the barstool next to me; he came in after me, just slumped down and then we did the polite thing where we ignored each other. I frown. Apparently, that part is over.
"Sorry?"
"Man sits in a bar, lookin' like that, it's about a girl."
He looks like he knows a thing or two about sitting in a bar. I can't tell how old he is; older than me, that's for sure. Older than Johnny Lafferty. Younger than Mr. Williams. So something between 30 and 40. His face is tan and lined and half-hidden by scruff. I wish I could grow a beard like that. What I don't wish for is the smell of old sweat and alcohol. He's a drinker. Who knows, he might have spent a year or two in Vietnam. Johnny Lafferty did and now even though he's only 40, his hair is all grey. But Johnny always looks clean and with the man beside me, well, I would bet my mother's pearls that he hasn't showered in a week.
"It's not about a girl," I say and try to smile anyway. I always feel sorry for the veterans; nobody should have seen what they did. If it weren't for my bad lungs, I would have been drafted too, a sobering thought if there ever was one.
He harrumphs and lifts the beer bottle to his lips. There are two empty whiskey glasses on the counter in front of him too. I notice bruises on his knuckles, red and blue, some scabbed over scratches.
Slamming the bottle down, he sideeyes me. "You're not from round here." For a moment, my heart beats faster. I've taken too many beatings to not be wary of men this size. But this is the new me, the daring me, and I don't run away any longer. Neil Armstrong didn't run away.
So force a smile on my face, the one I used to wear in the bank. "Seattle," I say. Strictly speaking, that's a lie. Eaglecrest isn't in Seattle, it's thirty miles away, but nobody knows Eaglecrest, everybody knows Seattle, and I don't really owe him anything.
"What brings you to Stars Creek?"
I decide on honesty. "I liked the way the road looked."
He sizes me up and I sit a little straighter. For a moment, I think I said something wrong, but then he breaks into a smile, all teeth, and slaps my back so hard that I almost smash into the bar face first.
I sputter and steady myself against the bar. He laughs and finishes his beer in one long drag.
And then he leaves, staggering outside, his broad frame disappearing from my sight.
So that's my evening in Stars Creek.
I drive around Montana for another day until I cross into Wyoming and then teeter on the border between Nebraska and Colorado. Sometimes I sleep in the car, sometimes I check into a motel. When I look into the rearview mirror, I no longer see the bank clerk. I see someone with stubble and wild curls, someone who doesn't care about a day job, but still cares about life. I am not like the man from the bar, I still have things to live for, and for the first time in my life, I'm looking for them. The world out here is waiting for me, waiting for me to drive by in an aquamarine car.
It took a while to realise that I'm not worried about the police. I stole $10,721 and I am not worried about the police. I was never daring, but it's only now that I realise I also wasn't ever truly afraid.
I wonder what my mother will do with my records. She never liked them much anyway.
The Comet breaks down in the middle of Kansas. There's wheat all around me, having grown tall in the reckless summer sun. It's still hot here, and the sweat running down my chest reminds me that I ran out of clean shirts 60 miles ago. I'm a long way from the pressed shirts and subdued ties of my banking days. When (or if) I get to the next big town, I'm going to buy myself some bellbottom jeans and one of those tunics I saw some people on television wear.
But no matter how much I changed in the ten days since I left home, I still don't know the first thing about fixing cars. My brothers do, my father does, I don't. It's late in the afternoon, the last gas station was miles and miles ago and I have no idea what to do now except wait for someone to come by and give me a ride.
It takes two hours until I see another car on the road, but the Buick just whizzes past, ignoring my desperate bid for attention. I even jumped up and down, but that didn't help at all.
The next car, another twenty minutes later, slows down and pulls up to where I stand. There's a woman in it, pretty in a wholesome kind of way. She reminds me of my kindergarten teacher, Miss Hardy, who always knew when someone had kicked me during recess and gave me cookies to make it better.
"Car trouble?" she asks, leaning out of the passenger window to check out the Comet. Her eyes are green like mine.
"Yes, ma'am."
She laughs. "I'm not that old. Hop in, my husband will fix it up for you."
The inside of her car smells like peppermint and burgers. I throw a quick glance over my shoulder, and right enough, there are a few empty burger boxes on the back seat.
"I'm allowed," she says and pats her stomach. It's only then that I notice the sizeable bump hidden underneath the green cotton dress. "Christopher says I should eat healthy now, but I think I should just give the baby what it wants. And what it wants is burgers and breath mints."
That explains the smell of peppermint. I smile and we chat, talking about food and the road and the summer and all sorts of things that don't matter in the great scheme of things, but make people happy anyway.
We head down the road for a while until we take a left and hobble down a dirt track. I gasp - the sight literally takes my breath away. The track is framed by fields of sunflowers on my left and right, and they have grown tall, taller than the car, taller than me, and taller than the small farmhouse that is now creeping into sight.
She brings the car to a stop and calls for her husband as she tries to climb out without her stomach bumping into the steering wheel. I climb out, hurry around the car and offer her a hand. She takes it, smiling. "My, you're a good boy, aren't you?" Her grin is cheeky and I blush a little.
"I'm 23, hardly a boy."
"Then you might want to take your hands off my wife." I drop her hand and whip around.
He's tall, and looks serious, and I feel as if I've done something wrong. There are oil stains on his jeans and shirt and he's wiping his hands with a cloth. His pale hair is neatly combed back, unaffected by the heat.
"Jenny, who's this?" he asks and makes his way to the car, helping her out with more gentleness than I would have thought him capable of.
"Don't scare him, Christopher. His car broke down, can you tow it back here and take a look at it?"
I have a feeling that if anyone else asked him, he would just say no, but Jenny, as I now know my saviour to be called, is someone special. Someone you don't say no to. Someone who's simply good.
"Sure." He bends down and gives her a quick kiss. "I'll carry the groceries inside and then-" he turns to me. "What's your name?"
"Zachary, Zachary Miller." He looks me up and down. "Sir."
"Right," he says and turns his icy blue eyes back to his wife, "and then Zachary Miller and I will tow his car."
The good news is, Jenny's husband can fix my car.
The bad news is, he won't do it today. It's too late, and he doesn't want to work into the night.
Jenny insists that I stay in the small guest room of their sunflower filled house and join them for dinner. Kind of hard to say no when my car is in her husband's hands.
They cook together; it's sweet. She's the one giving the orders, her husband follows them, only to have her re-do everything anyway. Her laughter comes easily, and he smiles a lot. Right here, in this slightly shabby kitchen, I see true happiness. There's something about the way they are together, so at ease, so loved up, it makes me want to have the same.
By the time we sit down for dinner (steak, mashed potatoes, a green salad, and homemade ice cream for dessert), the sun is setting, bathing the kitchen in a bright orange light.
Jenny is bubbly and tells me all about how they met (high school sweethearts), what they're doing (he teaches gym and history, she waitresses in the local dinner) and how she inherited the old farm from her grandparents. It's more or less falling apart around them, she explains, but they repair what they can.
"We don't do much with the fields," she admits, and ties her hair back. It's dyed peroxide blonde, like Marilyn Monroe's, but I can see the darker roots.
"The sunflowers are nice," I say, not quite able to find the right words. They're not nice, they're spectacular. I wish I owned a camera. My mind flashes to the rest of the money in the trunk, and I realise that I can, if I want to. It's an extravagant thought, and not why I took the money at all, so I bury it, and take the picture with my heart instead.
"They come back every year. I used to hide in the field when I was a girl." She smiles, fond memories playing out on her face. Christopher reaches over and puts his hand on hers.
"Could you sell some of the fields?" I ask, thinking how they could use the profit to fix up the house, to get things ready for the baby.
Her face falls.
Christopher turns to me.
"We're not looking for change," he says, his voice as chilly as winter rain, but his eyes, his eyes are haunted.
I fall silent.
I don't sleep well.
The moon is bright and shines on my face, the blanket is scratchy, but that's not what's keeping me awake. It's Christopher and the way he's looked at me, mad and afraid as if I were the one to bring doom to his house.
When I get up, Jenny has already left for the diner. She works Sundays as long as the baby lets her, and she mentioned something about church. I struggle to remember. Right, she was going in her lunch break, and invited me to come.
I have a feeling her husband doesn't want me to.
As I button up my shirt, I see the Comet through the windows. It's no longer in the old barn, it's standing right smack on the driveway, the sunflowers behind it, the sun making its aquamarine paint gleam. I'm sure it's been polished.
I make my way down the creaky stairs. There are a few black and white pictures on the walls, with not a speck of dust on their frames.
Christopher is already waiting for me in the kitchen, wearing his Sunday best.
"It's fixed," Christopher announces and hands me small parcel. There are a hundred fine scars all over his hands, and the skin looks cracked and rough, with oil clinging to it despite his best efforts to wash it away. I accept the parcel and meet his eyes. He looks uncomfortable. "Sandwiches, from Jenny. Safe journey."
I glance into the kitchen. There's a place set at the table, a glass of milk and a plate with a few crumbs on it. I bet Jenny wasn't the one to wrap the sandwiches.
"Thanks," I say and accept them. "It was nice of you two to take me in and fix my car."
He just nods and turns away. It's all the good-bye I'm likely to receive. He wants me gone, clear as day.
It's only when I drive towards St. Louis, listening to the radio, where they keep talking about a festival that'll start upstate New York in a few days, that I realise that somehow, Christopher seemed awfully familiar.
There is less money in the trunk now. I bought some bellbottom jeans, some sandals (having decided that I never want to wear socks again), a few of those tunics, and some shirts I want to tie-dye the next time I sleep in a motel.
Also, I left $ 800 on the nightstand in Jenny's sunflower house, tucked under the lamp.
Janis Joplin sings To Love Somebody. The sun is just rising and as it stretches out over the the completely empty roads, no soul in sight, I decide to head East.
I want to go to that festival they keep talking about on the radio.
Roads, I have begun to believe, have a mind of their own. I try to head directly towards upstate New York, not wanting to miss Joplin, or Santana, or The Grateful Dead, or God forbid, Hendrix, but I somehow wind up taking a detour through Charleston.
It doesn't look like Eaglecrest, not even in the slightest. It's like Gone with the Wind come to life and reminds me of my mother watching it on our television, her eyes glued to the small screen. The buildings are tall and beautiful and in a way, every single one looks like the White House.
And when I see those white pillars just as night falls, so many of them, and the moon Neil Armstrong walked on so bright in the sky, I again wonder where I know Christopher from. And perhaps Jenny too. And that man in Montana.
And this part of myself.
The other shoe drops when I pull up the curb in a suburb a little while later. I've just been driving around in the warm summer night, thinking and wondering and finally, just now, remembering. Of course I'd only remember here, with him. I don't bother locking the car and make my way up to the porch, where he's already waiting for me.
We could be brothers, you know; he looks more like me than Daniel and Mark ever did.
His hair is slightly shorter and mine is slightly redder, but we are built the same. His eyes are blue, mine are green, but they have seen the same, and it's not the road I'm talking about, not the Montana mountains or the Kansas sunflowers or even the Seattle ferry boats.
He gets off the porch swing and walks towards me. There's only one lit window behind him, the rest of the house is dark.
"Let me tell you a story," he begins, eyes glinting in the dark. "It's the story of four men; friends, brothers even. They were brave and as most brave people are, stupid. Thought they knew everything better than everyone else, when really, they knew diddly squad."
I laugh. We were morons alright.
"Am I the last or the first you're running into?" he asks, genuinely curious, and pulls me into a hug. Nobody has ever hugged me like this, so sincere, so bent on contact. This is more like home than Eaglecrest could have ever been.
"The last."
He nods against my shoulder, pulls away and puts his hands into the pockets of his slacks, rocking back on his heels.
"How drunk was he?"
I think back to that bar in Montana, to the tall man who made the beer bottle look small in his hands, who staggered out, having to steady himself against the doorframe. To his bruised knuckles and loud laugh. "Very."
"He remembers," my host offers, and leans himself against one of the white painted pillars. Here, they're made from wood. I think up there, it was marble, marble all around, cold and dangerous and tempting.
"I never found Kunzite," he continues, and I'm not sure he minds. Kunzite's and Jadeite's relationship has always been tumultuous. Jadeite railed against the hierarchy Kunzite loved to impose. In my few weeks away from home, I too have rallied. And while doing that, I found the man that didn't want finding. And I also found who he was with.
"He's married," I admit, weighing my words. "Teaches gym and history. Baby on the way."
"That sounds happy."
"He is." I don't mention the scars on his hands, where the oil stains clung to the cracked skin. Another veteran of a useless war.
Jadeite, however he may be called now, exhales, sounding surprised. "So he doesn't remember."
Sometimes, little lies are good. Sometimes, they are not that bad. So I smile and shake my head, buying time for all of us. This lifetime is to live. And everything else will follow later. "Not a thing."
"Did you? When you met him?"
Did I? "No." Not then. Perhaps I felt it, like you can feel rain before it falls, but I didn't know. That's another thought I keep to myself.
We sit down on the steps, side by side, and watch big cars slowly drive down the streets, their headlights skimming dried lawns and cats that hurry out of the way.
He reaches in his shirt pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. He lights one with a match and then shakes another one out of the wrinkled pack, offering it to me. I accept and inhale deeply. I don't cough and I'm sure he notices how this makes me proud; it would certainly explain his chuckle.
"So you didn't remember. And now you're here."
I look at the ash, how it slowly consumes the cigarette. There is a question in his voice, one he doesn't need to ask.
I sigh.
"Neil Armstrong walked on the moon."
"And then you suddenly knew that once upon a time, so did you?" he asks, clearly mocking me. There's bitterness under the jovial smile. I wonder, does he live here alone, in that big house with the one lit window? I think about it for a while, almost forgetting the question he asked me.
"No," I reply eventually, trying to find words for something that is only now coming together in my head. Some things can't be explained. Some things can only be felt. "But I realised that what I was wasn't enough."
He nods, taking another drag, blowing the blue smoke into the deep blue sky. I hear someone moving in the house, and half turn around, craning my neck to make out who it is. I have an idea, and want to know if I'm right. Things are different this time around.
"Don't," he admonishes and I turn back, feeling colour creep up my cheeks.
"How did you find all of us?" he asks, trying to brush over this moment of awkwardness.
"I didn't. It's-" and then I begin to laugh. It's completely stupid and I know it's going to sound even more stupid when I say it out loud. "I-" air is hard to come by now, "I robbed a bank and drove across the country."
"You did what?" he asks, sounding amused and scandalised and proud and repelled and impressed and so much like he did then. He shakes his head. "Now is probably a good time as any to tell you that you're talking to a police officer."
"You are in the police?"
That sobers me right back up.
"Everyone's got to do their part," he says, "and they weren't going to send me back to Nam, so..." his voice trails off, and he lets the silence fill in the blanks. Three of us seek life, one seeks redemption. I just never thought he'd be the one to go down that route. But if I lived amid the sunflowers and with Jenny by my side, I would do everything to stay put too. I always thought she was the nicest of them all.
We sit in silence for a while. Behind us, a window is being opened, and the sound of someone moving around what I think is a kitchen reaches my ears. Then, a lullaby.
"Children?"
He smiles, no bravado, just bliss, and looks down at his feet. "Ellie. She's eight months old."
And that's it.
"Well, I'll take off," I say, and pat him on the back, pushing myself up. I'm 23, but with all the driving and the sitting around, I feel a lot older. And then I realise that I am.
"Where're you going?"
I grin. Time to be young and free again. "Woodstock."
"You look the part," he chides, and gets up too.
"I feel the part," I reply, and think of the rest of the money back in the trunk.
Tomorrow, tomorrow I'm going to buy a guitar. Tomorrow, I am going to learn how to play.
We hug once more, and I see the outline of a woman against the lit window, babe on her arm. We break apart and I hurry down the garden path, climb into the 1963 Mercury Comet I bought from Johnny Lafferty thousands and thousands miles ago and, and without looking back, slowly drive away.
The End