A Breath Until Forever (5 page)

“It's alright. Mailboxes can be fixed.” Joshua said. “People can not.”

And with that, Joshua led her deep into the yard and to a rambling shackled home. It wasn't uncommon for her to meet strangers on her trips, but it was very rare of her to follow them in such a wilderness deplete of people and then go into their homes. But she felt instantly comfortable with Joshua and felt like she could trust him. She wondered if that's what victims felt before being butchered by a serial killer. But this was different. The day was to hot, too wild for a killing. And so she followed Joshua into the house, where he led her down a foyer and into the kitchen, where there was a clumsy old, rotary green phone and he picked it up and dialed the local garage. He chatted it up with a rough sounding man, as she heard his growling voice grumble right through the telephone line.

“Chuck will be down in a bit.” He said. “He's working on a beat up '55 Buick right now.  Pistons gone mad in it.  Gone as wild as my bull Battle who I rent out to the rodeo every year. He'll be here to fix you up. Not so sure about the windshield though, that's going to take more of the city professionals, but he will check that engine and get you back on the road to go where you want to go.”

As he said these things, an overwhelming wave of curiosity overcame him. “And where exactly are you goin'?” His eyes penetrated her eyes, searching for an answer that he really didn't care about, but wanted to know none of the less.

“Thunder Valley.” Meredith, the woman with the bad driving skills, answered.

“Beautiful place.” The stranger responded back. His roughened face instantly unwrinkled.

“Am I close?”

The man smiled. Two soft dimples appeared in the outer corners of his cheeks. “Your in it.”

“Really?”

“Really.” The man shifted his position, leaning to his left now, instead of his right. The overbearing sun was in his eyes, and now with this new posture, he could use Meredith as a wall to block it out.  “And what does with a nice lady like you want to do with Thunder Valley? Lots of dangerous places here, lots of streams that will take you down, and lots of wild bear to rip off your face alive.”

“Mr. Cambria, the gentleman who hired me, wants me to paint ten pictures for a new hotel he is opening up in Miami.”

“There's a name I haven't heard in years. Left his wife and two children and went to the big city of flamingos, good old Miami, and nobody has seen or heard from him again. I heard that he became some kind of big shot of hotels. He made it didn't he? Pursuing his big city dreams. He was good friends with my Dad. My dad didn't like him leaving a wife and children behind and hasn't spoken to  him since.”

Meredith didn't know what to quite say. A man leaving his wife and family in order to pursue a dream doesn't make for the character for a very good man, but a job was a job, and Meredith didn't want to speak ill of him, although she thought of it.

Noticing that Meredith was awkwardly quiet all of a sudden, Joshua took it upon himself to continue his own personal thoughts about a man who left the area a long time ago with bad intentions.

“So that son of a bitch just doesn't have a cold heart after all.” Meredith was quite shocked about Joshua's instant reaction to her breaking the news as to the reason why she was here in Thunder Valley. Was he Bi-Polar?  “Has a sentimental side to him, does he?”

“What do you mean?” Asked Meredith, confused.

“Sent someone out here to paint Thunder Valley.” Explained Joshua. “Everyone who leaves Thunder Valley, always comes back home. I guess this is his way of coming back home.”

“Yup, I supposed so.” Said Meredith.

Joshua suddenly thought of something, that made him slightly confused. “He didn't want to just take the picture, you know hire one of those fancy photographers?”

“No.” Answered Meredith. “Said he wanted more of a picture than a picture...that he wanted a memory living forever in the immortality of paint. He even wants one for himself.” Explained Meredith. She remembered meeting Mr. Cambria in Seattle. They had met at a local cafe, and he had showed her brochures of the beautiful hotels that he owned. He had never said that he was from Thunder Valley, only that he had been there before, and that he wanted to capture the beauty of Thunder Valley within paintings, her paintings, which he heard, always exploded with color and life. She remembered him being a large man, with a bald head, and who wore a pink tie. He also wore white pants, a white shirt that were held up by black suspenders. He was a fashionable man, but in a strange more flamboyant way, and she often wondered if that perhaps he was gay, and he hadn't wanted to tell his family. And that was the real reason why he left Thunder Valley. But it wasn't for her to judge, or interfere in Mr. Cambria's personal life, and so she left it at that, shaking her hand, thinking that he was a nice man, with a nicer smile, and made the deal for her to travel to Thunder Valley to paint ten pictures. Nine to hang up in the suites at his new hotels, and one for him, to hang up at his private home in Miami above a fireplace mantel in replacement of the swordfish he caught in the Canary Islands back in 1965.

“Getting back to his roots. Hmmm.” Joshua looked like he was thinking hard now, his eyes wandering around to another place. “Wonder why he wants to remember this place, after forgetting about it such a long time ago and running away from it.”

Meredith instantly thought about Mr. Cambria's alleged lifestyle, but she stayed quite about her judgments. Looks could be deceiving, and she didn't want to give her judgment any less satisfaction. “People can be strange, I guess.” Was Meredith's answer, which seemed to have been suffice for Joshua, for Joshua answered with a nonchalant, “I imagine so.” and left it at that, not speaking of Mr. Cambria for a very long time after that.

“Listen, pretty lady, would you like a drink?” Asked Joshua, who was starting to feel a little guilty about not remember his manners.

“Would love one.” Said Meredith. She had a rough long journey to Thunder Valley, and a drink was more then welcome in her life right now. “You got a rum and coke around?”

“I gotta Coke.” He offered. Being that Meredith was a pretty woman, and Joshua had instantly been attracted to her, he decided to flirt a little, and see where it led him. “But you are going to have to work for that rum.” He gave Meredith a  little wink. Meredith smiled a 'hard to get' smile, and Joshua fell for it.

CHAPTER TWO

A cold rain swept up against the old planked ranch house in the south North Carolinian valley. Winter had just passed and Spring was unearthing it's new birth. It had been raining for five days straight now, and the storms that it rode with, were hungry and feverish. A tornado had even touched down nearly three miles away from this place leaving a path of devastation and destruction Joshua had just gotten a raise at his job at the engine plant and he was drinking a nice cold beer in celebration. Joshua watched the rain through a dirty window, seeing the view towards the North Hills thinking of Adrienne. She had died in that tornado that happened just days before, from something that he would rather not remember as it was so horrendous that the pain emotionally crippled him. It had been on her birthday. They had just moved into a trailer home for a few weeks before, crushingly happy that they could buy and build a happy home together. He told her he was going to surprise her he left, when he returned there was nothing there. She had blown away in the wind, along with their dog had been found underneath a heaping stack of ? He remembered holding her in his arms. And although he knew she was dead, the life out of her, she was cold and white he tried to breathe life into her. Joshua thought of her now and the gentleness she had offered to him the goodness of a kind hearted young good woman who kept him steady in his ways, who helped him to steer out of trouble. She had given him a second chance at life and kept him away from the bad history that he seemed to always get himself into.

He had called his mother. He remembered crying for hours and each of them had the words to make this even anymore comfortable. She hadn't even made it to her 21
st
birthday. He had been working hard, working up to 80 hours a week at AR Steel Company where he worked as a machine operator, and he had struggled to make this relationship work as he was never home and arrange they would especially reserved for that day.

This morning his buddies from AR Steel Company going to stop by and try to cheer him up. He had already had the beer, his buddies came and talked and shooting the shit remind him and it temporarily from Adrienne.

Joshua watched as they left later that afternoon, in their old pick up trucks some of their flatbeds full of hay and others full of chickens and ranch equipment. They were all country boys around here. Full fledged country boys. They turned down the country road and heading towards Michigan Street. He was lucky that he had such good friends who actually cared, and he never understood how people could go through life without having good friends. Friends were as important to have, as the air that you breathe. Joshua had many faults, but the one thing he did not lack was to be a friend. To have a friend, you have to be a friend. He was told by his father, who seemed to understand that friendship will get you through the worst of times.

Joshua had been working at the steel plant earnestly, when he had met these good friends. He had wondered what life was all about, why he kept getting kicked in the nuts by Karma. It was his friends, who rode Harley Davidson motorcycles, had more tattoos than a sailor from war, and who could drink anyone underneath the table with their pools of whiskey and rum, that kept him on the straight and narrow and had helped him keep it together, when he was unraveling like a spool of thread.

It was when he put in a 12 hour shift at AR Steel Corp. that he had met her. Adrienne. The pretty young girl who lived on the outskirts of town on a small farm that raised horses for racing. He was heading back home, but very tired and exhausted, and had fallen asleep at the wheel. He had run into the back of her. Luckily, she was not hurt, but she had come out of her truck yelling and screaming. There were only a few scratches on the bumpers, but Adrienne had a hot and scorching temper, and she sure let him know that she had not been too happy about him running into her. She yelled, she screamed, she cursed, she hit him against his arm, but after was all said and done, all he had to do was to look up at her, and with those cool blue eyes of his, the eyes of gods before him, Adrienne had instantly shut up, and had fallen in love with a man, a stranger, a man who could look into her soul. Minutes after, Joshua's charm had managed its way to flatter her, and they had a date that night, after he got some well needed sleep, to go to Laura's cafe for a cup of coffee and to talk about how much he would owe for any damages done. Unbeknownst to Joshua, the damages that had been done to Adrienne had been internal, and it had affected her heart.

For their date, Joshua wore a large brimmed cowboy hat. It was black, and had a black leather sash around it. This was his ball breaking hat. His bull riding hat. The hat he wore when he wanted to put on a good show. And tonight, he wanted to put on a good show with Adrienne. He waited on the corner for her. She was already fifteen minutes late, and he wondered if she had stood him up. She hadn't, for moments after, she came to him, like a dream, wearing long ribbons in her curly hair, and a wispy clean summer dress that loosely fell from her tiny frame. When he had seen her, he grew instantly aroused, and his hardness bulged from his well worn Levi jeans. His heart grew the size of what grew in his pants, and along with it, grew a great big smile. Adrienne was quite a woman. They went to the cafe, and within minutes, they were holding hands, looking into each other's eyes lovingly, where the sunlight of the summer's day looked earnestly upon them. And that's when he fell in love. With a rich spoiled girl whose family bred a line of winning race horses, whose name was Adrienne Fury.

CHAPTER THREE

“What am I doing here?” Meredith thought to herself as she loosely sat in the half lit bay window, one leg crossed over the other in a casual, but almost sexual way. Her white dress was thin and see through and through the shimmering glimmer of the sunshine that drawled in, you could see the contour and shape of her, every inch and hourglass curve and her breasts that weren't held by a bra, but lightly tugged down by gravity, round and swollen yet loose and ample like most other woman her age. Supper was now over and she was just sitting there, like she so often did, recalling the events of the day and the memory of trying to remember what bliss was like and what happiness felt and enjoyed just the peace and quiet the end of the day after her stomach was full of good home cooked cooking settle. Joshua answered for her. “Your here because your meant to be here.” She glanced over at him agreeably, and felt heart heart instantly feel light like a feather. Her eyes half lit up, and a soft smile easily glided over her mature face.