“He said it does that all the time. I asked him how that lost him two acres of land and he explained that his property line extends to the center of the river.

  “When the river is down and doesn’t go from bank to bank, his property line moves back and forth, as the stream snakes along the river bed.

  “Every passing storm changes the path of the stream, and therefore changes the property line. When the stream is closer to the Texas side, he loses land. When it moves closer to the Oklahoma bank he gains.

  “He said it all evens out in the end, though. When the spring comes and all the snow up north melts the Red swells and goes from bank to bank, and then he gets all his land back again. So does the owner on the Oklahoma side.”

  Lindsey looked at her and smiled.

  Her mother’s chatter piqued her interest, and she temporarily put the dark thoughts out of her mind.

  Sarah had no way of knowing, but she probably saved her daughter’s life.

  For now.

  She obviously finally got Lindsey’s attention, and took that as license to keep on talking.

  “The Partins had a swimming pool they never used, because it had a catfish in it almost as big as you.”

  “A catfish… as big as me. Sure…”

  “I promise, honey. They really did. You see, their land is rather flat, and it floods frequently.

  “It’s usually not a problem, because their house and horse stables are built upon a hill.

  “But their back yard and pool aren’t much higher than the river level.

  “One spring a couple of years before we met them the river flooded so bad their pool filled with river water.

  “After it receded, Sam noticed something swimming around in the bottom of it.

  “He looked closer and it was a huge catfish.

  “He was going to catch it and cook it, but Tina wouldn’t let him.

  “She took a liking to the fish and told Sam they never used the old pool anymore anyway, and that they should just let the fish live out his life there.

  “They named him Oscar, and he was the hit of every party and barbeque they threw. He kept growing bigger and bigger, and the last time I saw him he looked almost like an alligator swimming around the bottom of that pool.”

  “Well, what ever happened to Oscar after the old couple died?”

  “I don’t know, sweetie. We were gone, living in San Antonio, when Sam and Tina passed. We heard of their passing through other friends.

  “I don’t know what happened to Oscar. Maybe the people who bought the ranch ate him.

  “Or maybe they allowed him to keep the pool.

  “If you want I’ll ask your dad if he wouldn’t mind making a detour. It’s only a couple of hours out of the way.

  “I don’t know who bought the ranch, but if they’re friendly we can go ask them what happened to Oscar. If he’s still there maybe they’ll let you and Beth see him.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Mom. The world is a different place now.

  “A lot of people don’t like strangers just coming on their property.

  “They might think we’re there to rob them or to beg food from them. They might shoot first and ask questions later.”

  “You know, honey, you’re right.

  “I don’t like the way the world has changed, do you?”

  “No. It’s made too many people too violent. It’s even made murderers of some.”

  Her comment went right over Sarah’s head.

  Lindsey’s dark thoughts returned.

  But it was too late to jump over the bridge.

  They’d crossed over and were in Texas now, on flat ground once again.

  Sarah would never know how close she’d come to losing her daughter that day. They’d never discuss it.

  Had she known she almost lost her she’d have broken down and cried.

  Chapter 35

  Fast forward three weeks.

  The two previous days Lindsey hadn’t said a word to anyone.

  Well, other than to yell at her sister in the middle of the night for sticking her feet in Lindsey’s face as they both lay sleeping.

  “Do that again, you little bitch, and I’ll cut your feet off and throw them out of the tent. Then you can bleed to death.”

  That just wasn’t Lindsey.

  It was wrong on so many levels.

  In the whole of their lives Lindsey had never used such a vile term to describe her sister.

  She’d never threatened bodily harm, either.

  Well, except for the time when five year old Beth read Lindsey’s personal diary and Lindsey threatened to set her favorite doll on fire.

  She apologized the instant Beth burst into tears, and the two made up quickly.

  But some changes had to be made.

  Lindsey had been suffering from depression for quite some time now.

  After their latest clash Beth was no longer comfortable sharing a tent with her sister.

  She began sleeping with her parents, snuggled in between them, much like when she was younger and frightened by nightmares and crawled into bed with them in the middle of the night.

  That morning, the morning of the blowup, Sarah snuck off to find Lindsey’s backpack while the girls broke down their tent.

  She removed the pocketknife Dave had given her before their journey started.

  It was the only weapon Lindsey had; the only one she wanted.

  Now, in the event someone attacked her when the others weren’t around, she was completely defenseless.

  Sarah wondered to Dave if she hadn’t made a mistake by taking the knife.

  “Don’t worry,” Dave said. “I’m keeping an extra close eye on her during the day.

  “At night she’s tying her tent closed from the inside so it can’t be opened from the outside. And her flap faces ours. I’d hear anyone trying to get into it.”

  “That’s not what I’m worried about,” Sarah explained.

  “She felt troubled and isolated even before she blew up at Beth.

  “That was evident in the fact she wasn’t talking to anyone; she wasn’t sharing her thoughts and wouldn’t tell anyone what was bothering her.

  “Now that we’ve taken Beth out of her tent she surely feels even more isolated.

  “Any chance of her opening up to Beth, and whispering at night about what’s been troubling her… well, that option ended the moment we took Beth away from her.

  “We’ve taken away her sounding board.

  “And there’s more than that.

  “She hasn’t mentioned the knife, but surely she’s noticed it’s missing.

  “Now, in addition to feeling alone and isolated, she almost certainly feels we don’t trust her.

  “Even worse, she has to feel more vulnerable; maybe that we don’t love her enough to allow her to protect herself.”

  “Honey, she threatened her sister. If she’s honest with herself she has to understand there would be some ramifications to that.”

  “Yes, I know. But I also know that you’ve made idle threats you never intended to carry out. Not to me or the girls, but to others who’ve deserved it.

  “So have I. Of course Lindsey will occasionally when she’s upset at someone. Even her sister.”

  “So what do we do to fix this?”

  “Let’s take turns walking with her. Talk to her about non-threatening things. Eventually she’ll start talking. She’ll have to at some point, because she’ll get tired of hearing us drone on and on about nothing.

  “When she finally starts talking we’ll tell her how much we love her.

  “We’ll tell her how proud we are of her for the role she played in helping everyone survive the bunker. And how proud we are in general. How she’s exceeded every expectation we ever had of her.

  “Then I’ll apologize for taking the knife from her.

  “I’ll tell her I panicked when I heard her use language I never thought she’d use, directed at Beth.

  “I’ll tell her I freaked out, that taking the knife was wrong of me, and that I want to return it to her if that’s okay.

  “I’ll tell her she was never in any danger. That we were watching her extra carefully while she was unarmed, day and night.

  “And I… or you… whoever she’s opened up to… will tell her we’d like to give Beth back to her at night whenever the two of them are ready.

  “We’ll remind her that Beth rolls around when she’s sleeping. That sometimes she ends up upside down and sticks her feet in our faces too.

  “She’ll find humor in that. Maybe enough humor to decide she can tolerate it if we can.”

  That was several days before. Since then Lindsey constantly had someone at her side, talking about anything and everything.

  On the day they crossed the bridge into Texas, and Lindsey actually carried on a conversation with her mother… about a huge catfish in a swimming pool, of all things, Sarah thought she’d made a breakthrough.

  It didn’t last for long, but it happened.

  If it happened once it could happen again.

  As they pushed their shopping carts past the tiny town of Mineral Wells, Texas, Sarah took a chance.

  “Lindsey, I’d really like to know what’s been bothering you lately.

  “And please, for the love of God, don’t say ‘nothing.’

  “I want to help. I’m desperate to help. But I can’t help if I don’t know what’s bothering you.”

  Lindsey thought for a moment, trying to find words to explain what she was feeling.

  But what she was feeling was unexplainable.

  She finally drew a deep breath and blurted out, “I hate my father and what he’s become. I want him to die.”

  Chapter 36

  There’d been relatively few times in her life when Sarah was at a loss for words.

  Dave Spear loved to tell a story at cocktail parties about an incident that took place early in their marriage.

  Sarah was invited to Dave’s promotion ceremony at the Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego. He’d just been back from Iraq for a short time and this was his first formal function at his new duty assignment.

  It was most of his unit’s first opportunity to meet Sarah, and she happened to have a dreadful case of laryngitis.

  Now, Dave had led his own squad the entire time he was in Fallujah. That normally wasn’t done for sergeants, for most sergeants don’t have the experience or wherewithal.

  Dave had plenty of both, and proved himself time and time again.

  Now, after he was back on American soil, the Corps decided to promote him to a rank more commensurate to the duties he’d been performing.

  Being a staff sergeant in the United States Marine Corps is a big deal. Many enlisted men and women never make it that far.

  Moreover, being a staff sergeant indicates a position of trust. A staff sergeant frequently has to make the same life and death decisions as commissioned officers, but get neither the pay nor the glory for doing so.

  When the stuff hits the fan in a combat situation, somebody has to make the gut-wrenching decisions about how to proceed.

  Sometimes the right decisions are made and the good guys live to fight another day.

  Sometimes a bad decision is made and good men die.

  It is sometimes said in the Corps that after the dust settles the officers take the credit for what goes right.

  The enlisted leaders take the blame for what went wrong.

  And while that might sound cavalier, every man who’s ever worn a uniform in combat knows it’s rooted in truth.

  So any time someone makes staff sergeant it’s a big thing. A promotion party is thrown. A general who doesn’t have a clue who the young sergeant is appears out of nowhere. He slaps the sergeant on the back, says some kind words about him, and pins his new insignia on him.

  Then he disappears again and forgets the new staff sergeant ever existed.

  It’s the Marine Corps way.

  But the United States Marine Corps is still the finest fighting organization ever created.

  Bar none.

  So, it’s a big deal when a Marine sergeant gets promoted to staff sergeant. There’s a lot of hoopla and fanfare.

  Dave was decked out in his dress blue uniform, with all its bells and whistles. The one guaranteed to melt the resolve of every woman ever born.

  Sarah was splendid in a formal dress, also Marine Corps blue and sequined and split to the hip. She caused many young Marines in the room to drool, though they’d never let Staff Sergeant Spear see them.

  The couple mingled and hob-knobbed, as is military tradition, and Sarah’s inability to speak hindered them very little.

  All was going swimmingly until Dave made the mistake of trying to make a joke.

  A joke at his wife’s expense, about how peaceful and quiet it had been around the Spear house in recent days.

  He’d attempted to make it funny, but it wasn’t. It came across as cold and callous and Sarah took it as such.

  So much so that she drove the high heel of her left shoe directly into his foot.

  Dave, the big tough Marine who’d seen two tours in combat, screamed like a little girl running from a spider.

  Luckily for both of them Sarah never again had laryngitis.

  This, when hearing Lindsey’s harsh and seemingly unjustified words about wanting her father dead, was the first time since the promotion ceremony that Sarah was absolutely without words.

  She came to a complete stop.

  Her jaw dropped.

  Not because she was trying to speak, but out of shock.

  Lindsey, unwavering in her feeling, locked her gaze on her mother’s face, almost as though daring her to challenge her words.

  The challenge never came.

  Sarah was just too overcome to do anything.

  She stared directly into Lindsey’s eyes, determined to defend her husband, but she knew not how.

  It was important, although she didn’t quite understand why, that she have the resolve not to look away first. It was almost as though she had to win a battle of wills to preserve her husband’s honor.

  But she couldn’t. Lindsey was more certain in her assessment that Dave should die than Sarah was in her belief he shouldn’t.

  And she still didn’t know or understand why her daughter would say such a thing.

  But Sarah dropped her gaze first. Then she felt instantly ashamed.

  Lindsey, for her part, was ready and willing to explain herself.

  But she wouldn’t rush it.

  She realized the words she said hurt her mother. Caught her off balance. Made her confused.

  And were quite possibly out of line.

  But then again, her mother asked how she felt and she told her. She told her exactly how she felt.

  Had she said any other words she’d have uttered an untruth.

  She did hate her father. She did wish he were dead.

  Now, when her mother recovered her composure, she owed it to her to tell her why.

  Chapter 37

  “I grew up thinking my father was an American hero,” Lindsey started.

  “Do you remember in first grade, when they did a big presentation at school before the PTA meeting, and the theme was ‘Show and Tell’?”

  Sarah nodded her head.

  She remembered very well.

  “I took my father. My father. All the other girls took a dolly or a piece of jewelry their grandmothers had given them.

  “The boys all brought model cars or fishing lures. Except Billy and Bobby Frederickson. One of the Fred twins brought his turtle, the other brought his frog.

  “They thought they had the best presentations of all.”

  “Then my father walked on stage with his blue and red uniform, with all his colored ribbons and medals, wearing his white Marine Corps hat and his sword.

  “He stood at perfect attention as I walked around him, describing how the United States Marines were around since the country was born and they’d fought on every continent in the world and how the red on the uniform signified all the blood they’d shed for our nation.

  “And I finished my presentation by saying there were plenty of Marines around, but that this one was special, because this one was the best Marine in the whole wide world, because this one was my daddy.

  “Then, still at attention, he picked me up and kissed me and put me back down, then did a left face and marched right off the stage.”

  “I remember,” Sarah said. “I remember as though it were yesterday. I was sitting in the audience, bawling my eyes out, and watching your father. I was expecting him to start bawling too but he was a rock. He never flinched.

  “It went off just as the two of you planned and when he marched away and you stood at attention on stage watching him leave and saluted him, the audience was in stunned silence.

  “Then after a few seconds someone in the back stood and started clapping. One by one everyone else stood and joined him and they gave you a standing ovation for five minutes.

  “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Your principal told me after the PTA meeting that she’d been doing Show and Tell presentations for thirty years, and no one ever got a standing ovation before.

  “I think I was more proud of you that night than any mother has ever been proud of a daughter before.”

  “But it was all a lie, mom.”

  It would have been easy for Sarah to argue with her daughter.

  Many mothers would have.

  Many mothers would have merely shot their daughters down and silenced their concerns: “Don’t you dare speak of your father in such a manner. Show some respect. Whatever you think your father did or why, you’re wrong. Dead wrong. End of discussion, now you apologize this instant!”

  Not Sarah.

  She was certain that Lindsey was reading something wrong. That she’d misinterpreted something. Had misheard something. Misunderstood something.

  The Dave she described wasn’t the Dave Sarah knew.

  Something was amiss, and merely shutting Lindsey down, though it might be the easiest way to resolve the issue, would do nothing to clear things up.

 

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