I know you don’t want to talk about the weather, but
it was a factor. Icy conditions, up and down the Eastern Seaboard and points
inland, as well. Traffic had halted in many states.
A truck-stop outside Athens turned into a haven for a
wide assortment of vehicles, and displaced drivers and passengers of all types.
Most were families, solo truckers, delivery, and business people, a girls
basketball team…a handful of drifters …and homeless folk, with nowhere else to
go. Like I said, “…all types.”
Eighteen hours, and counting, in the dead of night.
Kitchens always open, plenty of assistants offered, and were taken. But
provisions are getting slim, considering ‘rationing’ if this keeps up, and it’s
supposed to.
One of those ‘kitchen girls’ was this girl, Evelyn
Fields – “Evie” to us. She’d been traveling alone, headed to St. Louis, to
start a new life. She was a “handsome girl” – fit, strong, sinewy – not soft,
never soft. She was a bundle of energy, which I took as ‘a nervous tension
relieving itself’. It served her well, and she was a big help.
She finally wound down, and with the kitchen quiet,
she decided to take that break.
If I’d known better, and I did, I think she stepped
outside, to have a hit or two. I don’t know ‘what’. Maybe just fresh air, but,
whatever, it was well deserved.
I did not see her consume, but a couple of the
‘drifters’ came inside, through those same doors, coughin’ a lung, and laughing
hysterically. The cloud followed. Some of the parents took issue, but held
back. The moments ‘dissipated’ without incidence.
Was she part of it? I don’t know. People get tired,
stop paying attention, try to find some private space, in a situation like
this. You just have to. Each trying to find the solitude the occasion called
for. In a couple more hours, it’ll be daylight, and we’ll see what the weather
brings.
When it did roll around, and things started to get
boisterous in the kitchen, it didn’t take long for someone to miss Evie. Word
spread fast…lightning fast, and, no…no Evie. Where could she possibly go in
this weather? How would she get out?
You couldn’t. You were stuck.
It wasn’t much later than that "alien abduction" story
started. It went on for years.
Town changed, and truck stop’s history. Some just,
plain, forget. But then the dog found the bone…don’t blame me for it, it
happened. A fellow walking his dog, a pincher… big dog…bounding over the
country side, goes down this rabbit trail, and came to a screeching halt.
Evelyn Fields.
Scavengers have had their way, but DNA matched to a
rib bone. So it could be yards…or some square-miles, to cover. Immediate
results did not render hope and an extensive search seemed senseless.
At least there was something we could lay to rest,
meager as it was.
Goodbye, Evie.
V
