The Winding Road

Couple kids on a road trip...important questions are asked...but are the answeres found?

Carson’s palms were damp and her knuckles were white around the steering wheel. Her legs were relaxed, her right foot on the gas while she nodded her head in time to the music and Anne’s commentary. Six hours down, she thought, smiling.

            “I don’t care what Lady Gaga wants to do next year, babe.”

            “You’d rather listen to me talk about SaMAN Ronson and Lindsey Lohan?”

            “Even they get boring after a couple stories. Just let me know when they break up or get married.”

            “You’re so pessimistic. What about Rihanna?”

            “She’s cute. What’d you say if I cut my hair like hers?”

            “Mm...that could be cute. But I like it longer. You look so girly, it’s adorable.”

            Carson swallowed down the lump in her throat before she flashed the older woman a dirty look. She would show her girly. Her eyes back on the empty, winding road. Back to Anne. To where Anne was looking, her freckled cheeks stretched in a smile. Anne’s hand had been venturing intrepidly across Carson’s thigh, but as soon as Carson spotted it, it slipped innocently back to Anne’s lap. Back to the empty, winding road.

            “Behave.”

            “What? No one can see us. There’s no one here. Anywhere. Where are we?”

            Cornfields to the left, the cornstalks crushed by the harvest. Woods on their right, the tall, naked trees sunk in who knew how much murky flood water. Tall thin sentinels, but what were they guarding? It reminded Carson of a lake she had seen when she was little, with more thin, naked trees with white bark. They looked like they hadn’t leafed in years. She had thought it was a tree graveyard, then. Like an elephant graveyard.

            Anne’s eyes were hazel now, her thin eyebrows raised in expectancy. Carson could still remember the first time she had actually noticed the colour change. All winter, they had been brown, but as the spring sun made a cameo in February, there was a hint of yellow-green.

            “See the cornfields, still?”

            Anne nodded.

            “Just pretend we’re in Kansas.”

            “What? We better not still be in Kansas! We have been driving too long to still be in Kansas, woman.”

            Smiling smugly, her eyelids half closed, Carson said, “Pretend.”

            “I’ll pretend alright...” Anne muttered, looking out the window at the drowned trees.

            “Don’t have too much fun, baby.”

            “Mm.” Anne raised her eyebrows suggestively then turned up the music.

            Carson took a deep breath and let her fingers relax enough to tap a rapid tattoo on the steering wheel in time with the music. Dadadum dadadum dadadumdum... She was just beginning to settle into the relative silence, to let her eyes zone out on the road, when a part of her snapped. If she didn’t do it now, she wouldn’t be able to do it later. She reached into her pocket.

            “Annie, will you marry me?” Her voice was barely a squeak, and cracked on “mar.”

            “S**t, son!”

Carson’s mouth dropped a little in shock and she could feel burning the corners of her eyes. She wanted to throw up. The little box stayed in her pocket. She would return it after the trip.

            Anne’s face was pressed on the glass as she pointed. “Jesus is Our Salvation,” she read off of a sign with big red letters. The sign was posted just behind a little fence, rising up like a baby billboard. Carson prayed to any Jesus of Salvation that Anne hadn’t heard her.

            “Do you believe that?” Anne asked other woman, twirling one tight curl around her finger thoughtfully.

            Not right now, Carson thought as she tried to compose herself. “I don’t know. About Jesus. Sure. Do you?”

            “Well, I have to.”

            “Have to? Why?”

            “You know why.”

            She knew why. Anne’s brother had died when she was younger. She had to believe in something.

            Carson just nodded, fighting to keep her jaw and fingers relaxed. When she saw the next sign, though, she had to laugh. A yellow caution diamond had the word “CHURCH” stamped across it in bold, black letters.

            “Dude. Are they warning us away?” Carson could barely believe the irony.

            Anne gawked, craning her long neck to see. Such a fine, beautiful, delicate neck, with little brown-red curls brushing against it.

            “Beware the church, babe. In the olden days they would’ve burned people like you and me.”

            “Really?”

            “Mmmhm. Or if not burned, persecuted pretty badly.”

            A second later, the church they had been prepared for came into view. It looked more like a junk collector’s house, or one of those metaphysical bookstores with all of those odd ornaments and rocks. There were more gnomes and fairies—or things that looked close enough to them—that Carson was sure the “Presbyterian Church” sign on the building had been misplaced. Or it was put on backwards, and on the other side it read “Variety Garden Oddments.”

            “Are you in the mood for a service?”

            “No, keep driving. We’re almost there, right?”

            “We’re in Kansas, remember?”

It was hard for Carson to pretend everything was like it was before. Her confidence was shattered and she couldn’t convince herself that Anne hadn’t heard. She felt awkward, trying to smile when she could barely swallow the lump of tears in her throat. Pretending wasn’t easy around Anne anymore. She hated wanting to cry. But if Anne noticed Carson’s discomfort, she didn’t let on. Carson mourned alone.

            When the first violins streamed through her radio, Carson cranked up the volume, but before Etta James could finish her first “last,” Anne punched off the radio.

            Carson looked over in the sudden silence, aghast. “Baby, come on!” She turned it on with a button on the steering wheel.

            “Pleeeeaase? Not that, not now.”

            It was their song, the one they had made dreams for. After so long, and now that they were together, at last, she didn’t even want to listen to it. Carson was crushed. She had heard. She had to have. And it was a no, obviously. Why else wouldn’t she want to listen to it?

            “Mmkay,” she said softly. She turned it off as Etta rejoiced the end of her lonely days, afraid that her own were just beginning.

            There were trees on both sides, now, tall trees that instantly cooled the car and made Carson feel like they were driving down a secret pathway. But on the left side, she could still see broken cornstalks through the trees. The trees on the right were thinner, too, and she could see the dead husk of a half-collapsed barn. It was—had been, rather—red, just like her old picture books. Carson kept her eyes focused on the road, even though she could feel Anne’s eyes burning into her.

            Then Etta James was singing again and Carson felt the warm weight of the older woman’s smaller hand on her own. Carson glanced to the hand’s owner.

            “Yes.”

            And life is like a song...at last. Carson stopped the car. “Yes?”

            “Yes!”

            “Wow.” The skies above are blue. She could barely dare hope.

            “Wow?”

            I found a dream that I could speak to...“Yes, wow!” Carson pulled the small velvet box out of her pocket and kissed Anne full on the lips.

            I found a thrill to press my cheek to...

Reviews

[MockingJuliet]

AWW this was just so so sweet and honest. I adored it. :)

[moon manmad]

what a heartwarming story, especially since I was thinking through most of it that carson was doomed...thanks for the happy ending. this was well written and believable, with only minor mistakes that I know you'll catch on the rewrite. good job.