Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online

It was an uncomfortable and quiet three-hour drive. The teasing and anticipation of a quiet day at Scott’s home the next day, most likely in his bed, had somehow been left in the dust, and they’d never rekindled either of them. Scott had spent most of the first few miles thinking his own thoughts, as he was sure she must have been contemplating hers.

As Sonja drove up the two-lane from Hawthorne toward I-94, Scott decided he had to break the silence. It was solving nothing. “Well, one thing is clear,” he said finally. “Now that we’ve broken contact with your mother, there’s nothing to say that we couldn’t just stay gone.”

“I suppose. Are you thinking the hunting cabin your dad mentioned?”

“Not really. Oh, it’s a possibility and it would do for a night or two if we had to, but the place is a dump, and I think it would get old pretty quickly. I think we need to find out from your dad how long your mother is likely to be around for. If it’s going to be, oh, three or four weeks, we could do a big driving trip out west.”

“That could be fun, if we could afford it. Where out west?”

“Oh, Yellowstone, the Pacific Northwest, Nevada, the Grand Canyon, Colorado,” he shrugged. “Just go as far as we can get to give it a quick once-over. I’ve never been out there and I’ve always wanted to do it. I don’t see any reason we couldn’t be gone a month, easy, and we could stretch it a little longer if we had to.”

“It sounds good, Scott, but what would we use for money?”

“We’d have to watch our pennies, but there’s some money I can get to. Under the circumstances I’m pretty sure my folks would help out, and I’m hoping your folks would, too. If we can make it back home, even for a couple hours, I’ve got camping gear. We could camp out at least some of the time and save a few bucks that way.”

“It’s possible,” she nodded, “but we’d still have to be back before school started.”

“Well, yeah, but not long. It sure would be a great trip.”

They drove on for several miles talking about the places they’d like to see out west. Sonja’s list was a little different than Scott’s, but it contained nothing he didn’t think would be a good place to visit. It was clear that the trip would take longer than the time they had to devote to it, even if they stayed gone until they had to be back at college.

But after a while their discussion of it trailed off. “You know,” he said finally. “On the one hand, it sounds like a great idea. On the other hand, I don’t know that we want to take off with this mess behind us.”

“True,” she replied thoughtfully. “It seems to me like we’d be running off and leaving our parents, especially my parents, holding the bag. I don’t know how much I want to do that.”

“Me, either,” he replied after thinking about it for a moment. “It’s not going to solve anything. Even if we did take off like that, the problem is going to still be there, even if she goes back to Israel.”

“Yeah. So here we are back where we were. While taking off like we were just talking about would be a great trip, there’s something else about it that just doesn’t quite hit me right.”

“I know,” he sighed. “I’ve been thinking about that, too. Look, we’ve both been pretty open about each other with our parents, right?”

“Well, up till the last few days, anyway. I’ve been thinking about that, how I’m going to let Dad and Gina know we’ve gotten more serious about each other. Don’t get me wrong, Scott. I want to take the next step with you, but to take off on a trip out west like that, just the two of us, I don’t think I’d like how it would look to either of our folks.”

“Yeah, even with the problem with your mother, it seems a little underhanded,” he agreed. “I doubt my parents would say much about it, I mean, considering the circumstances with your mother and all, but, well, it doesn’t feel right.”

“Same here. On top of that, we’d really be leaving Dad and Gina in the middle on this. I’m not going to say not to do it, since it sounds like a pretty good idea, but I don’t want to have to go sneaking around on them, either.”

They kicked it around most of the way, but didn’t come to any wonderful conclusions. While Scott kept his opinions to himself, more and more it seemed like while running had been the right thing to do this morning, at least when caught by surprise like had happened to them, running seemed like an incomplete solution.

She continued to drive the last few miles to her father’s house – the traffic was heavy, in spite of it being a Sunday, but she was familiar with it; this was her home country, after all. Scott hadn’t cared much for driving in that heavy traffic in the past, especially when he’d been a little unsure of where he was going. A couple times he’d made the mistake of hitting the miles past Ann Arbor after rush hour, and that hadn’t been much fun at all.

As they’d agreed, Scott and Sonja stopped at a payphone a few miles out from her house, just to make sure they were still safe. Her father reported that Scott’s father had called a few minutes before and that Zivah was still sitting in the white Dodge a few houses up the street from the house in Bradford. “All right,” he told Sonja after she hung up the phone. “That means we ought to be all right for three hours.”

“Let’s make it a little less than that, just to keep it on the safe side.”

“If the time gets tight and we want to stay a little longer, we can always call Dad and see if she’s still there. The thing that has me worried is that some neighbor will see her, wonder what’s going on, and call the cops. That might get her moving.”

“Let’s not risk it.”

While the last few days had been the first time Sonja had met Scott’s parents, he knew hers well, from several trips up to see her last summer, a few times on campus, then about every other week since school started. A couple times this summer when he and Sonja had something interesting to do in the evening, he’d even stayed overnight, so it was very familiar when Sonja turned into her driveway in the subdivision near the corner of Telegraph and Elizabeth Lake Road.

From the outside her house seemed like any other in the older, cookie-cutter subdivision, but Scott knew that inside it was something of a cultural mishmash. Her father Bob, while he may have been of partially Japanese descent, had little practical knowledge of Japan, although he liked to think he did, and there were a few things here and there that suggested Japan. However, it was Sonja’s stepmother, Gina, who really set the tone of the place. Though Gina was as American-born as her stepdaughter, she came from an Italian family which had really held onto its culture. She still had a lot of it, considering that her sons, Sonja’s half-brothers at twelve and ten, were named Dominique and Alphonse, although they were usually called Dom and Al.

Gina’s culture was especially reflected when it came to cooking. While Scott’s mother was no slouch as a cook, Gina had the touch when it came to Italian food, so Scott had enjoyed some of the best eating of his life at her table. What’s more, she looked the part, nearly as dark as Sonja, though she’d put on more than a few pounds, or at least so she said. She was a fun person, and Scott had enjoyed her immensely. In spite of the gravity of this issue, Scott was looking forward to seeing both of them again.

Sonja stopped in the driveway beside the house. “Well,” she said. “Here goes nothing.”

“I don’t expect much of a problem here,” Scott observed as she shut off the engine.

“I don’t either, but who knows what the hell is going to happen,” she sighed nervously. “Let’s get it over with.”

They headed for the back door, and Sonja didn’t bother knocking when she walked in, Scott trailing behind; they came in just as Bob came in the kitchen from the other direction. “Anything new?” she asked as soon as she saw him.

“Not since you called a few minutes ago,” her father replied. “Honey, I’m sorry this had to happen. I mean, we pretty well knew it was going to happen sooner or later, but still . . . ”

“Yeah, you’re right,” she agreed, “but the problem is still, what do we do now? Do you have any idea how long she’s going to be here?”

“She has four weeks’ leave; that much I do know. She has to be back in Israel on the eleventh, but she also said she could extend her leave another couple weeks or more if she had to.”

“Shit,” Sonja snorted. “That means she could still be here when school starts. That could mess things up royally.”

“Afraid so, honey,” he sighed, “and, I’ll tell you what, while in general I still like your mother I’m not sure I want her hanging around here for a month or two, especially in the mood she’s in. At least with her here, we know where she is, but it’s a pain in the butt with the boys. They’re off with friends, since I didn’t want them hearing what we might be talking about, or knowing you’d been here.”

“Thanks, Dad. Dom and Al may be good kids, but I don’t think they could keep their mouths shut if Mom started in on them.”

“Me either. That’s why I arranged to send them off after you called. Sonja, like I said, I’m sorry this had to happen, but I can’t think of anything else to do. It’s the same issue it’s always been, it’s just here, now. You can run and hide, or you can tell her no and watch her go through the roof.”

“I’ll tell you I’ve thought of the second more than once,” she admitted. “I sure didn’t want to do it at Scott’s house and have a big scene in front of his parents. I mean, they know about it, but they didn’t deserve to be sucked into the middle. I even hate to have Scott in the middle of it, but I guess he is, now.”

“I told you, Sonja,” Scott said, speaking in the house for the first time, “I don’t want you to face this alone. I love you, and I’ll be with you if I need to be.”

“It has potential,” Bob nodded. “Zivah might not fly off the handle quite as much with a stranger present. Maybe you could tell her that Scott is your fiancé, and he’s opposed to letting you go, too.”

“It might work, or it might make things worse,” Sonja sighed. “Although you might as well know, while we haven’t actually worked anything out, that’s getting closer than it was before.”

“You’re getting married?” Gina smiled, visions of a wedding obviously in her eyes.

“Well, no, at least not yet,” Scott interceded, “but we’ve agreed that the possibility exists. That’s more than we’ve ever done before.”

“I thought that might be happening,” Gina smiled. “I’ve seen it in you kids for quite a while.”

“I have, too,” Bob agreed. “I’ve just been wondering how long it was going to take the both of you to wake up to it. And, at least with your mother, it might work. You could, uh, tell her a little more than the truth, and if you were careful about it, it wouldn’t quite be lying. It might buy you a little time.”

“It’s a possibility,” Sonja agreed.

“Look, we all have to face up to facts,” Gina said. “You’re sure she saw you back around your home, right, Scott?”

“She about had to have. She tailed us across town, and we didn’t manage to break contact with her until a friend blocked the street behind us with his semi truck.”

“Then she also knows that you know she’s after you. And she has to know you’re hiding from her. She’s bound to come back here sooner or later. How about if we just come out and tell her that the two of you are getting lost and plan on staying lost until she leaves?”

“Might work,” Bob nodded. “Of course, that doesn’t stop her from moving out of here, and maybe laying in wait for you here. Or, in your home town, Scott, or even when you get back to campus. In the long run, it doesn’t solve anything.”

“It’s going to be pretty plain that the two of you are ducking her,” Gina said, the voice of reason once again. “I mean, you can probably play footsie with her for another couple days, but the longer we go the harder it’s going to be to make it work without us saying something. I mean, about all we could say is that we know you’ve gone somewhere. Maybe we could tell her we think you might have eloped or something.”

“That might work,” Bob put in. “Although if she didn’t buy it, you might have to do it. On the other hand, as I understand it married women aren’t as easily drafted as single Israeli women. I don’t know, but I’d imagine it would be even more so if the woman was pregnant.”

“I’m not quite ready to go that far, at least just yet,” Sonja shook her head. “I want to get though college first. Maybe sometime after that Scott and I might consider having kids.”

“What you tell her and what she knows might be two different things.”

“I don’t want to try to get cute with her and lie to her,” Sonja replied. “I don’t want to have to lie in the first place, and she’d be too likely to catch us at it.”

“Well, yeah,” Bob agreed. “You sure have a point on that. What’s more, Gina and I wouldn’t be any better about it than you would be. I learned that a hell of a long time ago.”

“So we’re back where we started,” Sonja shook her head. “Except that now it’s not planning for what might happen sometime, but figuring out what we’ve got to do right now. I still . . . ” she was interrupted as the phone rang. “That might be some news,” she said as Gina headed for the phone.

All of them were quiet for the next few seconds as Gina picked up the phone. After a moment, she said, “Scott, it’s for you.”

“Don’t know if this is good news or bad news,” his father said without preamble, “but she’s gone now. The cops were there. Apparently some neighbor got suspicious about her sitting in her car and called them. I don’t know if she’ll be back, or what. She could drive past at any time without stopping to see if Sonja’s car is here.”

Scott thought about it for a moment. “Don’t know what that means,” he said finally. “She might be on the way back here, or she might not. I guess all I can say is to keep an eye out. We’ll get back with you when we know what we’re going to do.”

He hung up the phone and gave a capsule summary of the conversation. “I was afraid something like that might happen,” he said finally. “Small towns are like that. Unless he spots her again and calls back, we need to think about being out of here in something less than three hours, if we’re going to try to keep avoiding her at all.”

“You say that like you think maybe we ought to confront her with it when she comes back here,” Sonja shook her head.

“I don’t want to say that, but it’s an option that has to be considered. We’ve all said that running probably isn’t going to solve anything. All it does is put off the confrontation that’s going to happen sooner or later anyway. Frankly, my thinking is that if it’s going to happen, it’s probably better here than anywhere else.”

“You’re probably right on that,” she sighed. “I still don’t want to have to deal with it.”

“Then maybe we’d better get hot on that trip out west we were talking about.”

“What trip is this, Scott?” her father asked.

“We were talking about what we could do to say out of sight if we had to make it for a long period. A long, random driving trip out west would manage that perfectly even if it doesn’t fix things. We’d be pretty tight for cash and I’d have to make a stop at the bank in Bradford tomorrow, or at least get my Dad to do it and get the money to me somehow. We don’t actually have to go to the bank in Bradford. There’s a branch in Hawthorne. We’d still be tight on cash even with that, but it strikes me as better than spending the next month at my dad’s dump of a hunting cabin.”

“Well, if push came to shove, I could help with that, I suppose,” Bob replied, “but you’re right, it probably wouldn’t solve anything in the long run.”

“How would you get your stuff?” Sonja asked. “I mean, clothes, the camping gear you were talking about.”

“Oh, hell, that’s easy,” Scott snorted. “We call my folks and tell them to get the stuff together. We’re pretty good friends with our neighbors across the back yard, so we could have my folks take the stuff there. We could pick it up like it was a NASCAR pit stop, fifteen seconds and on the way. Even if your mom was sitting out front, she’d never see a thing.”

“If she’s not sitting out front she might be driving around town,” Sonja pointed out. “She might see us that way.”

“Still not a problem,” Scott replied. “We could have Andy pick it up at my neighbor’s, and we could meet him out at his place. We wouldn’t have to go into town at all that way.”

She was silent for a moment. “Well, I don’t like it,” she said finally, “and I don’t like it for all the reasons we talked about. But right now it seems better than the alternative. I suppose I’d better get packing.”

“It’s not a huge rush,” Scott told her. “We’ve still got two, two and a half hours we know we’re safe, even if she drove straight back here. Somehow, I don’t think she’s going to do that, not right away. She’s got too good a line on us as it is. She might hang around for a couple days in hopes we’ll show up.”

“Knowing her, that seems likely,” Bob said, “but she can be unpredictable, too. You’d better plan on doing it the safe way. Let’s continue this conversation upstairs so Sonja can get packing.”

“I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes,” Scott told her. “I probably ought to call my folks back and get them packing my stuff, too. Then I’ll track down Andy or somebody to get it from them.” He glanced at his watch and added, “If he and Diane had the night I think they had, he’s probably still asleep.”

“The way they were acting yesterday, you’re probably right,” Sonja grinned. “What’ll you do if you can’t find him?”

“Oh, hell, there’ll be somebody. Maybe Emily or Vicky. Maybe one of Mom’s or Dad’s friends. We’ll just have to work it out. We’ve got more time on that end than we have on this one. You go get packing.”

Scott turned to the phone and called his father, who answered almost instantly. “We’re still working on what to do,” Scott told him. “But there’s a chance it could turn into being gone for several weeks, at least till the heat dies down. I need you to pack up some stuff for me, and we’ll work out some way for you to get it to me.”

“It’s that serious?” his mother asked, obviously on a different phone.

“It’s looking that way,” Scott admitted. “One of the options is taking a big trip out west until after Sonja’s mother has to head back to Israel. I don’t know how well that’s going to work, but we at least need to be ready to do it.”

“Too bad you can’t just face her mother down and tell her to go to hell,” Chuck suggested.

“It’s an option and I’m not sure it’s not the best option, but Sonja doesn’t want to do it, at least yet, so we have to be ready to do it another way, and that’s the best we’ve come up with so far. Let me tell you what I need packed up, and we’ll work out how to get it to me.” Scott went on to discuss his idea of moving it out through the back yard and having some friend of his pick it up, then gave a list of what he thought he would need – clothes and camping gear, mostly, although there were still a few other specific items.

“We can do all that,” his father said finally. “It shouldn’t take more than an hour or so. We’ll call around and get someone to pick it up, and when you call again we can tell you where to get it.”

“I appreciate it, Dad. I wouldn’t go to all this trouble if I didn’t think Sonja was worth it.”

“I doubt you would. She’s a nice girl, and I wouldn’t mind seeing you wind up with her. It’s just a darn shame she has this problem.”

“That’s exactly how I look at it.”

“You’re the ones who have to sort it out I’m afraid, but if there’s anything else we can do, let us know.”

“Sure will, Dad. We’ll be here for probably something under two hours before we’re on the road again. Talk to you later.”

Scott hung up the phone, with the intention of going upstairs and helping with the packing, but noticed Bob was still in the kitchen with him. “Scott,” he said. “I sure am glad Sonja has you to help her with this.”

“Well, I wish the hell she didn’t have to go through it, but I guess it’s my job to help.”

“You’re a good and loyal friend,” Bob said. “She hasn’t had very many of those in her life, I’m sorry to say. Scott, I hope this whole thing doesn’t put you off of her.”

“If anything, it’s just getting us closer. I know this is her problem, well, hers and yours, but I’m trying to help her deal with it as a couple.”

“I can see that. I guess I should have been more firm with Zivah, but, well, Zivah is pretty strong willed. I never was able to deal with that the way I should have.”

Scott shook his head. “You know, we’re getting set up to head west, and I’m still not sure it’s the best idea. I keep thinking that we need to put a stop to this shit.”

“We?”

“Well, I’d like to be involved. I don’t know what I could add, but she needs to know someone is backing her up on this.”

“Right, and someone with a little more authority than just being a friend. Maybe Gina had something there. Let’s go up and talk with the women.”

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