#I tossed out 40+ full buckets of water in the past hour my back HURTS 😭

[ansgar-martinsson]

Fair Winds and a Following Sky - Part 12

Nowhere Oklahoma, One and One Half Years Ago

It was a dry winter, or so he’d been told. Dry, he supposed, meant mild; as the weather was more like autumn or spring in his estimation, than a true winter. He’d never spent a winter in the Southern United States before, but he knew that the winter there paled in comparison to the dark, Swedish winters he was accustomed to.

Which was why he never once complained about working in the barn, why he never once balked at mucking out the stables or feeding the horses, or even putting the great beasts through their daily winter paces. There wasn’t much he could have done construction wise around the ranch. Most of it - the barn, the porch decking, the siding, the garage door - was done, anyway. 

His work there was essentially complete. And yet, for numerous reasons, he stayed.

It was six in the evening, an hour after sunset. The sky was a grayish haze yet - the day was over, but it was not quite night. He, as he was every night for the past few months, was in the stable. It was warm there, heated by the hay and the horses; and he enjoyed the sounds of the breeze through the corridor, the whisper of the straw, and the whickering of horses.

He had just finished brushing Condor’s Flight, one of Anna’s prized racehorses, when he heard tires in the driveway followed by the slam of a single car door. It didn’t sound at all like Anna’s Chevy.  If he wasn’t mistaken, it was the distinct sound of a newer model BMW, which, from his knowledge of the local trucks, SUVs, and beaters with heaters, was quite odd.

He dipped his hands into a trough of warm water, wiped them with the towel that hung from the tack post, pushed the man door open and stepped onto the edge of the pathway. In the beam of a pair of bluish headlights, he saw the shape of a woman - shorter, stockier, thickly dressed - definitely not Anna.

The woman called out. “Boy! Come here.” She gestured wildly in the air with one hand, beckoning him to her as she took quick, shuffling steps toward him. In spite of her demands, he remained in place, his hands on his hips. “I said, come here boy.”

“I’m sorry, madam,” he replied, “I tend not to answer to ‘boy.”

“Ooh,” she sang, “a proud one, huh? Well,” she stepped forward, pulled off one of her gloves and held her hand out to him. “Let me try this again, hm? I’m Bessie Travidge. Folks call me ‘Mama.’ Supposing you can too, call me Mama.”

He sighed behind a tight-lipped smile. “A pleasure, Mrs. Travidge,” he shook her hand, his grip tight and firm. “I’m Alan Easterberg.”

“You’re the help,” she perked. “I know all about you, boy.”

He curled his lip and sneered. “Madam....” 

“Sorry, sorry,” she held her hands up. “Don’t mean to insult y’all.”

He grinned, showing his teeth in an irritated rictus. “How may I help you, Mrs. Travidge?”

“Oh, do call me Mama, will y’all?”

“How may I help you... Mama?” he repeated, the name dripping like venom from his lips.  “Anna isn’t home right now. She’ll be returning shortly if you’d like to wait inside.”

“Oh no,” her eyes widened. “I ain’t here to see Fair Sky.”

He cocked his head. “Then why are you here?”

“To talk to you, for sure.”

He blinked. “Me? What could you possibly want with me?”

She peered at him, then, her aspect morphing from one of blithe friendliness to a hard, stern facade. “I’m here to talk to you about your leavin’ this place. Quick like.”

“I assure you I have no intention of leaving, not yet at least,” he replied cooly. 

“Don’t matter your intention, boy....”

“Don’t call me boy....”

“Mm hmm,” she guffawed sardonically. “Don’t matter much your intention, sir,” she emphasized. “You’re leaving and quick like.”

“I assume, madam, that there is an ‘or else’ hanging at the end of that.”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

He widened his stance and crossed his arms over his chest - mainly in an attempt to show dominance, but truthfully in an attempt to hide the damnable shaking of his hands. He pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes, also a show of strength mixed with the desire to conceal the fear swimming in the blue. “And that ‘or else’ is?”

“Or else I tell them where you are.”

“Tell them where I am,” he repeated slowly, as if trying to decipher the ramblings of a maddened child. “Tell whom?”

She chuckled, lifted one hand, and with the other, she ticked off her fingers. “Well, the police for starters, then the CIA, FBI, Interpol, and some fellas from the Swedish Secret Service what came round to my office last week.”

His heart was a caged lion. It pulsed and strained and pounded against his chest. His mind went cold and he seemed to have lost his stomach altogether. Yet, he fought hard not to show any of his discomfiture. Fought to keep his mask firmly in place, but time and emotional trauma and lack of practice made it fragile, paper thin, full of deep fissures. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said clearly. “There’s no reason any of those people would be looking for me.”

“Because you’re just a carpenter, ain’t that right?”

“That is correct,” he averred. “I think you must have me confused with someone else.”

“Does the name Rufus Valentine ring any bells with you?”

Crack.

He swallowed hard, struggling to keep his jaw from clenching, his eyes from watering. “No,” he lied. 

“How about Isak Pettersen?”

Crack.

He blinked. “No.”

“Ansgar Martinsson?”

Jesus Christ, he thought. She knows. She fucking knows.

“I’m afraid I have no idea who that is.”

“Well,” she smiled, serpent-like. She paced in front of him, back and forth over the short width of the gravel walkway. “He is a very important fella, he is. The CEO of some big international company, got his sticky fingers in projects in just about every country on this planet.”

“What does that have to ---”

“Quiet now, boy,” she barked. “Just hush yourself for a spell and listen to me.” 

His nose flared and his eyes hardened, but he stayed, he listened. There was nowhere for him to go, regardless. “Go on.”

“Turns out,” she continued, “he up and disappeared ‘bout a year or so ago. Left New York City one morning, and ain’t been heard of since. Folks have been looking up and down for him, and nothin.’ They want him back, you see. Guess he’s, how’d they say it? He’s vital to ongoing government operations or something like that. What’s more he’s wanted for assault, they say. Somethin’ about tearing up some bar in Pennsylvania and threatening this Valentine fella with a gun. Should I go on?”

He remained silent. 

“See, and they’re gettin’ real close to finding him, they say. He was good, real talented at slippin’ away, at hiding. Didn’t leave much of a trail. But the FBI, they’re dang good at what they do too.”

Shatter.

“Apparently they are,” he said. He knew full well that to say as such constituted an uncontrovertable admission. He sighed and fluttered his eyes with deep-seated annoyance. “So, what do you want?”

“Told y’all. I want you gone,” she demanded. “Pack up your shit, get in that rust bucket Bronco of yours and high tail it out of here. And don’t come back.”

“Why don’t you just turn me in? Just tell them who I am and where I am?”

“’Cause I don’t want no trouble.”

He cocked his head, squinting. “For Anna?”

“No, for my family. I don’t give a rat’s ass about that injun bitch,” she spat. “I don’t want the Travidge name dragged through whatever mud you’ve been wallowing in. If they ask me, I’ll deny ever knowing what I know or ever seeing y’all. I’ll deny we had this conversation, but you gotta skedaddle. Now.”

He nodded slowly, understanding. “What if I refuse?”

“My boys are out by the car,” she indicated with a lift of her chin. “Brian’s been itchin’ to have at y’all again after the beatin’ you gave him this summer. He ain’t drunk now, and that’s all I’ll say about that.”

“And if I don’t leave, how will you turn me in without, as you say, dragging your family through the mud?”

“The FBI loves an anonymous tip, don’t it?” She tapped the side of her nose and winked. “Easy as pie.”

He licked his lips. “I see. What about Anna?”

“What about her?” 

He closed his eyes in thought. The last thing he wanted was for this woman... this Mama... to know that he and Anna had been intimate, that they’d forged some semblance of a relationship, that maybe, just maybe, he was falling for her. “Nothing,” he clipped, shaking his head. “Nothing at all.”

“So I guess you’ve got a choice don’t y’all? You can either leave, disappear again, and get home to Sweden on your own terms -- when you want, how you want -- or you can go by force, in custody, and under the watchful eye of the press. Your choice, Bucko.”

And later that night, he made his choice. And because of that choice he loathed himself even more, if that were possible.  Like Faye, he packed his bag, tossed it in the back of his car, and left. Left in the night. Left without discussion. Left without saying goodbye. He vanished from Anna’s home, her bed, and her life. 

But unlike Faye, at least he’d left a note. 

He wondered, as he turned his Bronco toward the Eastbound Highway 40 on-ramp, whether Faye had hurt as much, or had cried as hard as he did when she left him.