Beth And Jessie Head Out

 

 

Chapter 3

When I woke it was night again. I hurt all over. Then I remembered the night before. No wonder I had slept all morning and then all day. I didn’t see Jessie or hear anything out in the other rooms.

So I sat up, putting my feet on the floor and went looking for him.  This was not going to be easy.  My mouth really hurt. Teeth are numbered you know. My numbers 10 and 11 were completely gone, unless some of the roots remained.  That is an incisor and a cuspid on the left side upper.

I padded out into the living room where I found  Jessie. He jumped up when he saw me.  I must have looked like hell with my black eyes and my missing teeth, but he carefully hugged me anyhow.  There was some crying.

None of this made any sense to either of us.

Jessie is a pretty reasonable cook.  Since I had one hand out of commission and had been sleeping all day he had made potato and corn chowder and cornbread.  By then I was very hungry but had to eat in a very judicious manner because of the teeth.

Then he got me some coffee and we tossed some ideas back and forth but really; I had never done anything illegal.  The only thing I could think is that I had a way of going from person to person and opening their eyes and making them take a serious look at what was going on around them. On the other hand, these people were not police or even FBI.  They were some kind of global spooks I think, but that doesn’t explain why they wanted me gone. Maybe we would never know.

Then we were worried about his call to the local police when he found our Honda out on the road with the door open and the key in the ignition. We figured that we would hear from them very soon. We cooked up a story to tell them about a lover’s spat! As it turned out, they fell for this story.  I think it was a relief to the officer who stopped by the house to ascribe it to a crazy woman driving away and then leaving the car and stomping off.  He didn’t blame Jessie for leaving the scene to search.

“Beth, I’m pretty sure we need to vanish,” he said finally. “It’s been done before. We don’t know who did this to you or why, but we don’t need to help them by making you easy to find.”

“What the heck, Jess,” I said. “Where, when and how?” Truthfully, I liked the idea. Sounded like an adventure.  I am fond of change. I felt better already.

“Oh,” he said, “it will take two or three days to fade out, especially with you all beat up.  I’m thinking of going down to Four Corners, you know, where my parents came from. My great aunt, who is ancient, lives outside Joseph City. This is arid desert country, but she has a small stream on the lot and some trees.  I was there a few times.  It’s nice. Maybe we could stay with her for a while.

“Her name is Julia Chee, and she is old style.” He laughed.

One thing I didn’t mention about Jessie.  He’s a Navajo.  For real. No wonder he was able to track me down wandering the streets of Lynnwood in the middle of the night.

Now, I’d never been down there and met his people.  But ok.  Why not? I had no ties to our location here. My parents lived in Montana and there was no big reason to stay in Washington.

I hoped Mrs. Chee and the rest of his family, if any, wouldn’t mind him being stuck with a Caucasian wife! We had been married for nearly ten years and had yet to produce young.  So at least we wouldn’t be bringing any little half breeds along!  I hoped I was kidding. I didn't know if that was still such an area of trouble. Maybe it didn't matter at all.

Ok, the first thing was to let George who rents this place to us know that we were going to go walkabout for a while and wouldn’t need it anymore. Rent was paid up for the rest of the month and we would get a deposit back.  Any money is a good thing when you are vanishing.  Cash of course. Four hundred dollars to the good.

I looked at him sitting across the room in the semi-dark.  The lamplight glittered in his black eyes.  I thought I am going out to Indian country with this wild man!  I had to laugh a little.  It was a classic.

We made a list of things to do.  Getting our savings out of the bank was the first.  This is not as easy as it sounds.  They want to know things. But Jessie managed to make the withdrawal and came home with nearly ten thousand in hundreds in an envelope. I felt funny being in possession of that much cash, but it was the only way to do this vanishing thing.

I had an old-fashioned briefcase from a thrift store where I liked to keep all our current bills and stuff, so into the briefcase went the cash. Now I meant to keep an eye on that briefcase like never before.

I called the power, water, and phone and isp companies and told them all that we were going to Europe for a year.  They accepted this calmly.

Next we needed to pack the Accord.  This did take a couple of days. Stable food, some basic kitchen stuff, tools, and incidentals went into the trunk. The laptops went at the bottom of that pile. We couldn't leave them to be found, or even give them away. We put our clothing and books and toiletries and cameras and such into the back seat.  The pistols went under the passenger’s seat. Some towels were tucked in around them. We had permits to carry, but still liked to keep them well out of sight.

We had to leave a lot behind.  Jessie took it all to the thrift store and left it in a bin outside after they closed for the night. It was mostly extra clothing and kitchen junk and books that we didn’t need. I left my houseplants in the house for the next renter. I hoped they liked them.

Then he had to tell his boss that he was leaving.  This was hard because Jessie liked his job and his boss, who was a nice old man of few words and much skill. I think his boss, old Evan, knew something was up, but he was a man of few words, as I said.

For once I was grateful not to have a cat.  It would be hard to find a home for a cat or to take it along. Maybe in the desert I could have a cat someday.

One morning it was all done. We decided that we would eat in town before takeoff, because the kitchen was all packed away of course.

There was one final task, cutting our connection to our lives here in Washington.  Jessie took his ax out of the trunk and carried his cell phone, a rather new Samsung, over to a stump and chopped the phone in half, then minced it up a bit. Can’t get much more final than that!  Then he buried the pieces out in the woods a little way and came back and put the ax in the trunk and slapped the lid down. My phone was still in that place in Lynnwood that I had walked away from.

We were now ready to vanish.  A spattering of rain blew in almost sideways. The trees bobbed around a little.  The sky was low and gray. Clouds slipped off to the west before the light wind.

I was still very sore, but so excited that I didn’t think about it too much.  I knew it would be a few weeks before my hand was healed.  The bruises and black eyes would be gone sooner. I decided that I had better wear my sunglasses on the road, so I didn’t attract attention whenever we stopped anywhere.

We looked at each other and then at our old home.  I could tell by looking at Jessie that he was doing that prayer thing he did silently, but he said out loud, “God bless us, we’re going to need it!”

We hopped in the Honda and headed to the gas station and then McDonald’s. Not ritzy, not cool, but handy and anonymous. As Jessie entered the drive-through lane the wind blew more cold rain at the windshield in hard little beads and I thought it might be a long time before we see weather like this again.

 

Chapter 4

It’s a long drive to Arizona.  A mad man could maybe do it in two days.  But why push it. Driving tired is not a good idea. Bad ideas tend not to keep you anonymous.

Now the freeway is a fairly anonymous place, especially in an old Honda so we drove south on I-5, until we could get on 84 in Portland and headed east.  It is not easy to find a large new hotel that will take cash and ask no questions, so we rooted around Pendelton Oregon until we found a small courtyard type motel that was happy for some cash business.

The first night away from home we had street tacos for dinner, and they were great. We drove back to the motel and brought that briefcase in with us for the night, along with some pajamas and that kind of junk.  Jessie locked up the Honda which we were able to park right outside the door.

I was using a drug cocktail of two Advil and two Tylenol, which acts about like one smallish Vicodin, for the soreness, so I slept pretty well.  Jessie sat up making instant coffee and looking for something on the TV.  TV was a novelty to us because we didn’t have it at home. There was nothing to watch so he finally came to bed and got some sleep.

In a funny way, I realized as I was dropping off to sleep, we were street people now.  Homeless, but not totally broke.

Morning came with sunshine. We showered in the funny little bathroom, packed up what we had and went on the lookout for breakfast.  There was a nice little bakery that worked fine for breakfast.  Coffee and pastries. Then we went to a Safeway for supplies for the drive. Drinks, chips and some sandwich stuff.

I wanted to spend the next night in Wendell Idaho because I knew people from there and wanted to see the place.  Plus, I knew it was a small town and we might find another old-style motel there.  So, we got back on 84 and drove through La Grande and Baker City and crossed the border into Idaho at Wieser. There was a good rest stop there, so we had a little picnic and slept in the car for half an hour before continuing southward into the center of southern Idaho. It was, of course, beautiful country, so very different from western Washington.

There was a small motel in Wendell owned by an old Basque couple. They were pleased to have the business and the place was clean though quite old-fashioned. There were old prints of mountain scenes on the wall and a coffee pot and a little fridge.  No microwave. The bed was only a double, which is unusual in motels and hotels now’days.

The next day we went for it and drove all the way through Utah and stayed in Page Arizona, a wild and beautiful landscape, and a rather common little town. We just didn’t feel like staying in Utah and it was a hard day’s driving, especially since I could not help Jessie. All went well in Page. We found a small old fashioned two story hotel in town, which had a nice breakfast in the morning included in the cost.

The next day all we had to do was head south down highway 89, which is a nifty small road and make a left onto 40 and head to Joseph City, which is not actually on the Reservation.

It seemed good to us to spend the last night in Joseph City and then go north on 77 to Jessie’s great aunt’s place and see how things were with her in the morning. Maybe she would be delighted to see her younger relative coming back from the white man’s world.

Link to the whole Beth and Jessie story, called They Haven't Taken My Phone Yet;

They haven't taken my phone yet^.docx