In The Most Unlikely Place

         In the mist of the morning she sat on her deck, hands wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee. The leaves were changing, and the air was becoming crisp. She drew the baggy lumberjack coat in closer, watching the errant breeze lift and fly stray leaves around her backyard. Away in the distance someone was burning corn stubble, and the good campfire scent of it came to her like a memory. She rocked a little in the porch swing, lost in the simple pleasures, until a cold nose thrust underneath her hand brought her back to the present. She smiled down at the spaniel, letting her hand find the sensitive itchy spots behind his ears. He closed his eyes in bliss, leaning his whole weight upon her leg.

         “You’re a tramp.” She said. “G’wan.” She pushed at him halfheartedly, and he rolled over and offered up his tummy instead. She grinned, shaking her head at him. “Get lost, Jake. Just be careful. The psycho hunters are out again. Someone might mistake you for a real hunting dog and try to steal you.” Giving in, she rubbed his tummy with one foot while she lingered over her cup.

         Finally, glancing at the time, she rose with a sigh. The dog slunk away, flopping on his blanket near the back door and watching her with reproachful eyes. It was that time again. Annie pushed the toffee-colored hair out of her eyes, reluctant to give up her solitude for the workday that awaited her. She knew from experience that once through that door, her time, her peace and quiet, was gone. She was loath to face him.

         “Aren’t you going to be late?” From the entry came the dulcet voice she knew too well. There was no avoiding it; she was caught. She let her face be hidden behind the curtain of her hair, bowing her head in appropriate contrition. “Well?” David quit fiddling with his tie in the mirror and came to stand before her, blocking her escape into the bedroom. He grasped her chin with fingers that were hard enough to make her gasp.

         “I’m okay.” She said. “I was just having a cup of coffee. I’m... I'm going to be quick. I won’t be late again, I promise.” Annie twisted her face from his hand, not missing the irritation that flashed in his eyes.

         “See that you don’t. You need to learn a little responsibility, Anne.” He turned from her, patting his blond hair into blow dried perfection. “By the way, your disgusting dog has brought something dead home again. Please see that it is taken care of.” His eyes were on himself again, and the fixed calm on his face as he stroked the hairsprayed waves with slow, singleminded pleasure made her recoil. She was reminded of a child caught playing with himself, one with no sense of guilt or shame.

         She slipped off into the bedroom, out of sight, out of mind. Dawdling in front of the closet as long as she possibly could, she heard the door open and close. She held her breath, listening for the Beamer to rev and be gone. When it did, she felt like Atlas at the end of a hard day, the world at his feet.

         Without thinking, she paired a comfortable pair of jeans with a turtleneck and a flannel shirt, and with a quick comb-through of her errant hair, she was on her way. She snagged the truck keys off the rack with one hand and her travel mug in the other and hustled out the door. A quick glance at her watch told the whole truth. She was late again.

         Jake whined, making pitiful-dog faces at her as she hopped into her two-tone truck with the primer spots. He put his big paws up on the door, claws scraping down the paint with the same fingernails-on-a-blackboard noise that had driven her crazy when she was a teacher. “Stop it, idiot.” She said, sticking her head out the window and pushing at him. “You’ll scrape up my nice paint job." She tousled his ears. "Besides, I’ve got to go to work. Work, you know. Stuff you never do.” She pushed him down, needing to get going.

         She pulled out and headed for the highway, shifting gears like a pro. She was just hitting third when a brown and white streak in the rearview mirror caught her eye, following her cloud of dust and straining to keep up. Annie groaned, slamming her head back against the headrest. There was no way she was making it on time if she had to take the idiot home. She pulled over to wait for him. With a big slobbery grin, Jake launched himself into the truck bed and settled himself on a couple of grain sacks right behind her window. She sighed. She would have just enough time to drop him off at David's sister’s on the way if she hurried.

         She pulled up to the stop light, cussing the fact that they always seemed to be red when she needed them to be green the most. Drumming her fingers on the wheel, she noticed the car full of kids sitting at the light next to hers. She was amused, despite her irritation. They were obviously entranced with Jake, and he with them, the traitorous slob. There were three in the back seat of the station wagon, piling on top of each other to get closer to the window. Towheads, the lot of them, and stairstepped by the look. They stretched out fingers to pet him across the distance between the rigs, hanging out the window, giggling. The man behind the wheel of the station wagon was apoplectic, trying to keep an eye on the light and drag the kids back into their seats. She saw that he had one by the belt loop, squalling. Annie smiled. He needed about four more arms. Jake was in heaven, and more so when one produced a half-eaten hot dog. At last, the light turned green, and with a commiserating wave and smile, Annie pulled ahead while the car full of kids turned right.

         Suddenly, she was aware of a furry blur in her peripheral vision. The smallest child was still hanging out the wagon’s window, waving the hot dog, and Jake was going for it. She turned to holler at him, and was just a millisecond too late. There was the confused blur of a big rig, forward motion, and the deafening blat of an air horn. Her confused mind couldn't take it in immediately, her reflexes taking over, jerking the wheel of the pickup to avoid the truck, the sound, the lights. Heart hammering, her body jittering with the adrenaline rush, she looked back over her shoulder. The truck was catty-corner across the lanes, and a big man was climbing down from the cab. He was surprisingly agile for his size, her brain registered in that moment before she noticed what he was running to. The brown and white bundle beneath his wheels looked like a dirty bag of rags, limp and broken. Her breath was driven from her, her eyes trying to deny what they saw.

         Her trembling fingers pushed at the door handle, fumbling until she got it open. She flung it wide and ran to him. "Jake!" She cried, anguished.

         As she ran across the lanes, heedless of the traffic that had backed up behind them, the big man looked up from the broken dog. Eyes widening, he leapt out into traffic, arms flying up in the international signal for 'stop', sure that the crazy woman from the beat up Ford was going to get herself run over, too. He sure as hell did not need this kind of trouble on the tail end of a run. Not here, not now. He winced as a Taurus spun by on the right, its horn blaring. It sprayed gravel from the shoulder; he could feel the bits splattering his jeans in peppershot painful bites.

         The little blonde crazy woman had fallen on her knees next to the dog, her trembling fingers running over the battered coat. He felt a wave of shame, pity, and irritation, all covered with a veneer of fear that they were spread out all over the intersection here at one of the busiest times of the day. Keeping an eye on the traffic, he moved to the side of the truck where the lady knelt beside his wheels. He put a hand on her shoulder, startled by its thinness beneath the deceptively baggy clothing. "Lady, I'm so sorry..." He began, "But we've got to get out of the road..."

         It was suddenly too much for Annie. She turned on him, a terrier pushed to the biting point, grabbing him by the edges of his denim jacket and shaking him. “Dammit!” She snarled. A fleeting look of satisfaction crossed her pretty face, but her voice caught on the word, and the tears suddenly broke loose from their moorings. Another car screamed by them, horn blaring, and she flinched, flinging her arms up around her face. Her face worked like a child’s, and her suddenly-boneless arms dropped to her sides. She had come undone.

         Not knowing what else to do, he pulled her gently against his broad chest, and rubbed her back with soothing hands. He felt it when the strings holding her together snapped, and his awkward caresses made her cry harder. The trucker looked down at the little creature folded against him, her bright hair spilling against his chest, with equal parts fear, irritation, and wonder.

         The traffic spinning around them brought him back to cold hard reality in a speedy way. It was a hazard, and priority number one. He walked her back to her truck on the side of the highway, then set about moving the rig out of the intersection. Chasing the gawkers off, he picked up the body of the dog and laid him carefully in the bed of her pickup. He was glad for the busy work, taking his time while he performed the ablutions for what appeared to have been a perfectly good Springer Spaniel.

The woman watched him out of the corner of her eye as she blew her nose with a fast food napkin, trying to brush away the evidence of her recent outburst. He was relieved that she appeared to be pulling herself together, but dawdled, placing the tarp just-so over the dog's body. Dammit...just bite the bullet and get it over with, Mercer... He walked slowly over to where she stood, hands in his pockets. It had been far easier for him to hold her than to speak to her face to face. And here he was, the man who had run over her dog and made her cry. What the hell was he supposed to say?

         Annie looked up at him as he came over to her. The poor man looked extremely uncomfortable. She felt a pang of guilt at causing him trouble. If she hadn’t stopped to put Jake in the truck this morning, he wouldn’t be here all tied up with her problems when he probably had some kind of time schedule to keep. She remembered hearing about how truckers had such horrendous delivery schedules that they could barely stop to sleep and eat most of the time. She certainly didn’t want to be responsible for costing him such a deficit in time that he missed a deadline, or God forbid, missed some vital sleep and killed someone on the road.
         The trucker looked down at his feet, saying the first thing that crossed his mind.
         “I’m sorry.” They both said, nearly in unison.
         She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. She looked down at her hands, spotted with dirt and dog blood. “Poor Jakie.” She whispered, realizing that now she was all alone.
         The trucker fidgeted silently, and she slowly lifted her gaze to him. “Hey,” He said, his voice gentle, “I am really sorry. I just couldn’t avoid him. He was just….there.” He watched her nodding in acceptance, and she blinked rapidly. God, she wasn’t going to cry again, was she? He pulled at his pockets uncomfortably, then came up with a brilliant idea. “Come on, let’s get your rig out of the way and I’ll buy you coffee over at the truck stop.” He nodded at Luke’s across the street.
         “Oh, no,” She said, “I couldn’t keep you any longer. I’m sure you have deadlines…”
         “I’m empty.” He jingled the keys in his pocket. “And I’m hungry. Even guys like me have to eat sometime. I’ll buy you lunch. It’s the least I can do.” He thought for a moment. She probably wasn’t used to truck stop food. She was awfully skinny. Maybe she ate that tofu crap, or whatever. “I’m sure they have salads or something.”
         Annie sighed. Coffee did sound good right about now. The wind had become biting while they stood outside, and she could use a few moments to warm up. She could use the payphone at Luke’s to call work. It was extremely late for her shift by this time, and she really didn’t feel like going in and dealing with it today. She had some sick leave coming. She jolly well deserved a day off in a circumstance like this. “Okay, you sold me. I’ll meet you over there.”
         He climbed up into the cab of his big rig, watching as the old pickup turned around and headed in to the truck stop. He sniffed. There was a funny smell in his truck. He sniffed around, finally realizing that it was coming from him. His hands, in particular. He brought one to his nose, and the smell of vanilla rose up to him. It must be her. She smelled like a cinnamon roll, one of the big, gooey frosted kinds that he loved to pick up for breakfast at the truck stop restaurant. The smell of her brought back the feel of her in his arms, up against him, and he was suddenly assaulted by a wave of desire. He sat there a moment, shaking his head a little, until a horn sounded behind him. What was he thinking?! "What a guy." He muttered to himself. "Classy, Mercer."
         When he pulled in, she was in the parking lot with a big Navajo blanket, the kind people used for seat covers, pulling it up over the body of the dog in the back of the pickup. He settled his truck in big rig parking, and came in, feet dragging. Now that he’d gotten himself into this, how the hell was he going to talk to her over lunch? She was already seated when he came in, and to his surprise she was sitting at the counter. He had her pegged for a booth girl. He slipped in beside her on a stool, trying hard to look unobtrusive.
         “Hey, Neil!” Shelley, his favorite waitress, spotted them immediately. “Got yourself a live one finally, eh?” She came over and slipped an arm around his big shoulders, eyeballing Annie critically. “This one’s pretty. You must be one lucky guy. You meet her on the road?”
         Neil raised his eyebrows. “You could say that.” He mumbled. “Gimme a couple coffees, one of my usual, and whatever the lady wants.” He glanced up to see the dog lady smiling at him a little, and he had to get out of there. “I’ll be right back. Gotta use the phone….” He thumbed in the direction of the pay phones, and was gone.
         Shelley stood with one hand on her hip as she and Annie watched him go. “Well, we’ve certainly put a bug in HIS shorts today!” She smiled at Annie. “What’ll you have, honey? Shall we charge up some surf and turf on Neil’s tab?”
         Annie ducked her head, blushing, and smiled, shaking her head. “How about a side of biscuits and gravy, and one of those big cinnamon rolls?”
         Shelley nodded, then paused writing and scrutinized her with tilted head. “You know, Neil’s a good guy. Pretty quiet till you get to know him. He’s good people, though. He’s been driving for that trucking company for years. He’s one of my better customers. Good tipper, nice guy. What more could a gal ask?”
         Annie just nodded, wrapping her hands around the hot cup of coffee, letting the curtain of her hair fall around her face.
         Shelley leaned over a bit, keeping her voice low. “Honestly, if you’ve got an eye for him, you could do a lot worse. He’d do you right.”
         Annie looked at her askance. “No! No, you don’t understand. I…I’m not…” How the heck to explain this one? “I just met him…I had sort of an accident, just out front on the highway. He was kind enough to…to help me out.”
         The waitress glanced out the window at Annie’s pickup. “Looks okay to me. Those big old Fords can take a lot of lickin though.” She laughed a little, shaking her head and warming up the coffees of the other patrons at the counter.
         Annie dawdled over her coffee, thinking how nice it was to just sit with nowhere she had to be, nothing that had to be done. Neil slid onto the stool beside her. For long moments they simply sat, letting the silence stretch between them like an ungulfable void.
         When the food came, the waitress teased Neil as she served out their breakfasts. “Hey, Neil. You didn’t tell me you were a hero in your spare time.” Neil’s amicable face looked blank. “You know, rescuing damsels in distress from fender bender situations?” She peered more closely at him. “Close your mouth, big guy, you’re going to catch flies. What the heck happened out there? You clip this nice lady’s rig with your big old boat?”
         Neil ducked his head guiltily, plucking at his omelet with a fork as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. “I hit her dog.” He mumbled.
         Shelley blinked her eyes, momentarily out of things to say. “Oh. Well, I better get back to my other tables. You kids be good.” With a swish of her apron, she was gone.
         Neil tucked into his omelet with the dedication of a working man. In short order, he was left sipping coffee while Annie worked on the gigantic cinnamon roll. He sat back and observed her eating the huge thing with delicate bites, a small smile playing around the corners of his mouth at the thoughts the rich spicy-vanilla scent evoked. Well, that was twice he had been wrong about her since he’d met her on the road not quite an hour ago. She set to the heavy truck stop food like she’d been born to it. He wondered where she intended to put the spare calories it afforded her. She certainly didn’t have an ounce of fat to her. Not like him, he thought, eyeballing the spare tire he carried around in front of him perpetually. It was a hazard of driving. Too many miles, too much fast food.
         Annie finally sat back and groaned, laying down her fork. The cinnamon roll had beaten her, once again. She looked up at him and grinned. It was a cute grin, he thought. A little kid's grin, like Meg Ryan's. “I’ve never been able to eat it all. Not for lack of trying, of course. These things are divine.” She ran a hand through her wavy hair, tousling it. She waved weakly at the waitress. “Box, please?”
         Neil thawed somewhat. “I don’t seem to have a problem finishing one.” He said. “I see how you couldn’t, a little thing like you. You’d end up looking like me if you did it very often.” He patted his expanse of flannel shirt with a wry smile. “They are great, though. Best anywhere.”
         She laid a hand on his arm. “Really, thank you so much for….taking care of things for me. I really appreciate it.”
         He blushed a bit. “Well…it was the least I can do, seeing as I’ve been the cause of all your problems today.”
         Annie uttered a bitter little laugh. “Not even close. You’re the least of my problems. I mean, except for poor Jakie.” She sighed. “I’m going to miss the idiot. He really was my best friend.”
         Neil looked at her for awhile. “You mean a gal like you doesn’t have tons of friends? Girlfriends, sisters, old boyfriends, a husband?”
         She sighed again. “Mmmmm...well. I live with someone. That’s another story, though.” She was quiet, and it hung on her like a stone caul. “I’m really going to miss Jake.”
         Neil thought that there was more here than was being said, although she said more than she wanted to beneath her carefully chosen words. For once, the aching sensation in his chest was on someone else’s account. He supposed that it was time for him to speak some profound and comforting words of wisdom. At length he just said whatever came out of his mouth. “Thank you for having lunch with me.”
         Her smile was just reward. “Thank you for asking me. Do you have to go soon?”
         He shrugged his shoulders. “Not particularly. I have awhile. You?” She shook her head. “You don’t have to be home soon or anything? Won’t he be missing you?”
         She snorted softly. “He’d probably be thankful I wasn’t there. I don’t want to go home yet.”
         His nod was calm acceptance. “So, what do you do when you’re not out having lunch with lucky truckers?’
         “I’m a secretary for Capitol Cattle Company. They won’t miss me today. I do the books and answer the phones, which to be completely honest, don’t ring really often around there." She was quiet a moment again, oddly.
         He was puzzled. "Secretary's a good job." He said, then stopped. He could feel that his answer subtly displeased her. There was something else swirling in the air just between them. "You don't like it?" He said at length.
         "Mmmmm." She said again, her eyes deliberately away, focussed out the window. "It isn't my real job. I used to be a teacher."
         


To be Continued...tune in shortly...any and all feedback appreciated (this is an old, revamped story and probably needs much more editing before the crud is dissected from the diamonds to my satisfaction) All reviewers reviewed in kind!

Thank you so much for taking the time to read!