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Giles
Giles was born in
a small town in Northern Germany soon after the close of WWII. His
father, a soldier involved in the reconstruction of Europe, had fallen
in love with a pretty fräulein and married her. Giles was the product
of this union and at age five, he moved to the United States with his
parents. His father had been a teacher before the war and when he
returned to the States, he took a job teaching high school mathematics
in a small town in Vermont. Giles grew up in a normal household with
parents that loved and supported his many interests. He joined the Boy
Scouts when he was old enough and went camping a good deal with the
group until he was about fourteen. He turned out for sports along with
most of the other boys in his school. Though he didn’t excel in any
particular way, he did play well enough to make the team and compete on
a weekly basis. He ran fast and did well in the backfield of the
football team, but he enjoyed baseball much more, even though he had
considerable trouble hitting the ball. He only played about half of the
time during the spring baseball seasons and in his junior year he
switched from baseball to track. There he did excel. He could run the
hundred-yard dash in just over ten seconds and ended up going to the
state track meet where he placed second. In his senior year he placed
first and thus landed a scholarship to the University of Vermont where
he went for the normal four years, earning a degree in English
literature. Upon the completion of college, he decided to wander the
country for a time before settling into a job or going on to graduate
school.
His parents
disapproved of this break in his education, but resigned themselves to
his having to follow his own path. It was nineteen sixty-nine and the
war in Southeast Asia hung over the head of any healthy young man not
in school. His parents were sure that he would be drafted and sent to
Viet Nam. He too had worries along this line, but figured that if he
stayed on the move, the draft board would never find him. He had worked
at various jobs during his last year of college, saving enough money to
hit the road in high style, compared to the many other youths that were
out traveling at this time. He planned to head for California, where
the sun, drugs and "hip" action had drawn so many of his generation.
The trip West,
was his first hitchhiking trip of any extent and it felt good to be out
on his own. Somewhere near Chicago he got a ride with a pretty brunette
a bit younger than himself, whose parents were out of town for the
week. She took him home to their multi-million dollar estate in the
country and proceeded to entertain him for the next several days. The
two of them swam in the private pool, ate and drank most of what was in
the house, and made ample use of the parents spacious bedroom. This
exciting interlude in the trip west ended prematurely however. The
girls parents came home early from their excursion and found all the
lights in the place on at three in the morning, the house a total mess,
and Giles in their bed with their daughter. He had barely made it out
of there with his belongings.
Several hundred
miles further west, leaning against a guardrail in North Dakota, he
thought back on the situation with a smile. It puzzled him how, even
though the girl’s father had been fairly upset at his being in bed with
his daughter, he made even more of a fuss at all the lights in the
house being on. ‘The guy must be a real energy conservation freak,’ he
thought, as a car approached in his direction.
He held up his
thumb as the car approached. It was a large American made station wagon
with what appeared to be Ma and Pa, and five children all bouncing in
the back, like you might expect to see in a cage full of young
chimpanzees. They didn’t stop and he was glad. He stood, however, at
this same spot for what seemed like an eternity. The sun crept across
the sky toward the west and finally set right on the center of the road
before him. Dusk drug on and on, as did the day and just as he decided
to wander off the road a ways to roll out his sleeping bag, an old
pickup truck rattled up next to him and stopped.
"Where you headed, son?" The driver said to him.
Giles didn’t really know, since he hadn’t planned anything further than
getting to California. He stared into the dark cab of the truck for a
moment and then took a step closer. "California somewhere," he
answered, finally.
"Well get in," the driver said. "I ain’t goin anywhere near California,
but I can take you a ways." He leaned over, opening the door.
Giles got in, shut the door and they were off. He tried to get a look
at the man in the darkness, but he could see nothing more than a
silhouette of his face. He appeared to be in his thirties, had smooth
coarse features like someone overweight, and wore a cowboy hat with the
sides of the brim pasted up against the crown. He had a squeaky,
high-pitched voice, but he talked very little. He did ask a lot of
questions about what Giles was doing, why he wasn’t in the service and
where he was headed, but when asked questions of a similar nature, he
was always evasive.
Presently he pulled a bottle of cheap whiskey out from under the seat,
took a drink from it and handed it to Giles. "Might as well settle back
and have a drink, kid. We gotta long way to go."
Giles took the bottle, swigged down some of the vile liquid and handed
it back. The man took another drink and handed it back to him. This
repeated itself several times before Giles passed and the fellow waited
for a while before offering the bottle to him again. This time Giles
had several more pulls on the bottle and then passed again. He noticed
that the whiskey tasted less offensive this last go-around and was
looking forward to another drink when the cowboy passed him the bottle
again. It wasn’t long before Giles was drunk. The headlights of the
approaching cars were doubled up and blurry as they went past. He was
dizzy and began to feel like vomiting. He sat there, spinning in the
passenger seat, trying to hang on for dear life. He didn’t want the
cowboy to see how drunk he was, but he was sure he would have to
throw-up soon. It was cold outside and when he cracked the window for
some fresh air, it blew an icy wind across the cab giving the driver a
chill. He begrudgingly rolled up the window when asked and hoped
against hope that he wouldn’t get sick.
Presently, the queasy feeling in his stomach subsided and he began to
feel sleepy. He leaned back in the seat, closed his eyes, braced
himself against the whirlys and within several minutes fell fast asleep.
It was still dark when he opened his eyes, but he couldn’t feel the
gentle bouncing of the pickup truck along the asphalt. He had a
terrible headache and he needed a drink of water. It wasn’t until he
rolled over on his side and hit his head against a rock, that he
realized he wasn’t in the vehicle at all. He sat up, felt around in the
dark, putting his hand on his packsack lying next to him and breathed a
sigh of relief. The thought of losing his belongings brought a chill to
him even before the cold air registered in his confused brain. He stood
up and tried to look around at where he was, but there was only a dim
glow off to one horizon and it offered little help in making out his
surroundings. He sat back down, wondering where he was and why he was
here. Had the driver of the pickup truck come to where he must turn
away from Giles’ path and let him off while he was still too drunk to
even remember? Maybe the fellow had merely gotten tired of his company
and dumped him along the side of the road. Giles couldn’t tell. All he
knew was that he felt awful and he was cold. He shivered in the
darkness as he fumbled around with the leather thong that tied his coat
to the outside of his packsack. After much effort, he managed to remove
his coat from the pack and he quickly put it on.
Reaching into his shirt pocket, he took out a pouch of tobacco and a
packet of cigarette papers. His dexterity with rolling cigarettes was
poor in the best of conditions and in the dark, it was even worse, but
he managed to twist up a cigarette of sorts and lit it. As he sat
smoking, wondering why he had taken up the nasty habit, he noticed the
light on the horizon was getting a bit brighter. ‘It will be morning
soon,’ he thought. His head hurt and his mouth was dry as cotton. He
still felt like he might throw up and the crisp Montana air was
possibly the only thing that kept him from it. He leaned back on his
few belongings, pulled himself up into a tight ball against the cold
and closed his eyes, hoping that when he opened them again, he would be
somewhere else.
When he did open his eyes again, he was in exactly the same place as
before. The only difference was that it was lighter out and his
hangover was even worse. The whiskey he had drunk with the cowboy had
dehydrated him and he couldn’t shake the awful taste in his mouth. He
heard a coyote howl in the near distance and then another. Soon there
were several coyotes calling back and forth to each other. He
envisioned them calling out his whereabouts and planning to move in on
him from all sides. He had with him a hunting knife and opening the top
flap of his pack, he took it out and put it on his belt. This made him
feel some safer, but he still felt no match for what sounded like a
dozen or more of these cunning predators.
As it got lighter, the coyotes ceased their howling and he could see
that he was in a dry hilly area with a few trees scattered amongst the
rocks and dirt and sparse grasses that sprang up here and there. A
small paved road lay several hundred feet from where he sat. He stood
up, which made his head hurt even worse, picked up his pack and made
his way, on wobbly legs, to the deserted road. With the sun about to
rise, he pointed himself West and began to walk along the edge of the
narrow pavement. The morning sun soon took the chill from the mountain
air and before long he had taken off his coat and retied it to his
pack. He walked for several miles, wondering from time to time, if he
would find his way out of this place before he died of thirst. This, he
knew was ridiculous, but he couldn’t get away from the vision of some
old prospector spread out on the desert sand with buzzards circling
overhead.
When he had all but given up, he heard a car approaching from behind
him. He turned to see a two-tone blue and white Ford sedan speeding
toward him. He held up his hand, not like a hitchhiker, but more like a
wave from some lost soul stranded on a desert island. The car went past
him, then slamming on its breaks, slid to a stop and backed up to where
he stood. A woman in her thirties with a cigarette hanging from her
lips leaned across the front seat and looked him over for a moment
before speaking.
"You look like you could use a ride, kid," She said, puffing on the
cigarette.
"I sure could," Giles said, removing his pack from his shoulders.
"Where are we?"
"Montana," she said, opening the door and leaning the seat back forward
so he could put his packsack in the backseat.
"Where in Montana?" He asked, climbing in and shutting the door.
"We’re about ten miles out of Flatwillow. Where are you going?"
"I don’t know," he answered. "I’m headed for California, I guess."
"How’d you get here? This is kind of a long way from California," she
mused. "Where’d you start from?"
"Well, I started in Vermont about a week ago. I thought I’d stay north
until I got to the West coast and then head South from there."
"This is pretty much off the beaten track," she said, throwing her
cigarette out the window and taking another one from a pack sitting on
the dashboard. "You take a wrong turn or something?"
He told her the story of the day before, finishing up as they pulled
into Flatwillow. The town consisted of a single main drag that ran
straight through town with most of a dozen businesses scattered along
it and several side streets where the residents of this small burg
lived in small homes with large yards. Giles expressed his need for
something to drink and she pulled the car over to the side of the Main
Street in front of a small cafe.
"I think it’s time for some breakfast, anyway," she said, turning off
the car, and yawning. “I’ve been up since about three o’clock. I guess
I could do with something to eat. How about you? You got any money, or
you like most of these young kids on the road, bumming around without a
dime to their name."
"Oh, I got money. I’ve been working for a while to save up for this
trip," Giles informed her.
She looked over at him and smiled. "That’s good," she said, opening the
car door. Looks like you got some gumption. What’s your name? I’m Sally
Gunther."
Giles smiled at her, opened the door and got out. "My name’s Giles
Randolph," he said.
Together they went into the restaurant and sat at a small table near
the front window. A young woman about Giles’ age waited on them and
they ordered. Giles picked up the glass of water she brought him,
tipped it up and drained it straight away.
"You were thirsty," Sally said pushing her glass toward him. "Here, you
can have mine too. I never drink water in a restaurant."
"Thanks. Man, that whiskey sure did make me thirsty." He drank half of
her water as well and set the glass back in front of him. Sally asked
him questions about Vermont, telling him how she had always wanted to
visit New England, especially in the fall, when the trees were in the
height of their color. She showed considerable interest in the area and
his family. She sighed when he told her that he had five brothers and
sisters, all younger than he was.
"Oh, That sounds so fine, to have a big family like that. I always
wanted to have brothers and sisters, but I was an only child. In fact,
my dad ran off with some other woman, when I was ten and I haven’t seen
him since."
"I have a picture of all of us on our front porch. Do you want to see
it?" He asked reaching for his wallet.
"I’d love to," she said.
He took the picture out of a plastic sleeve made for pictures and
handed it across the table to her. Almost by accident, he happened to
glance in the main part of the wallet where his folding money was and
nearly fainted. Where, the day before, he had had three hundred and
fifty dollars there was now a single ten-dollar bill. He gasped. He
looked harder, hoping that his eyes were playing tricks on him. He
stuck his fingers into the wallet, feeling around for what by now he
knew wasn’t there. He turned white, dropped the wallet on the table and
looked across the table at her, unable to utter a word. She hadn’t
noticed his distress, but instead sat looking at his family picture,
smiling broadly.
"You sure have a nice looking …" She stopped as she looked up and saw
the look of horror on Giles’ face. "What’s the matter? You look like
you just died or something."
Giles still didn’t say a word. He picked up the wallet, opened the
money compartment toward her and then dropped it again. He leaned
forward, put his elbows on the table, buried his head in his hands and
moaned, shaking his head back and forth. "That guy robbed me," he
finally said. "That son-of-a-bitch stole my money. That’s why I was out
there in the middle of nowhere."
"You mean the cowboy that got you so drunk?" She asked.
"It had to be him," Giles answered. "Money doesn’t just get up and walk
out of your wallet. That bastard got me drunk and rolled me. Jesus
Christ, I’m screwed now. I don’t even have enough to get back to
Vermont. I can’t go back there anyway."
"Why’s that?" She asked.
"I’ll get drafted," he said, raising his head and looking at her.
"Are you running from the draft?"
"No, not really. I just figured that if I stayed on the move for a
while, they wouldn’t be able to send me a notice. And then when I’ve
had some fun, I would just go back to Vermont and see what happened."
He looked around with a frantic look on his face. "I wonder if it’s too
late to cancel my breakfast. I can’t afford it now."
The waitress was just coming out of the kitchen with two steaming
plates of hotcakes. He put his head in his hands again and moaned.
"Don’t worry. Breakfast’s on me," she said reaching over and putting
her hand on his arm. "You just eat up and we’ll figure something out."
"What’s to figure out? He said looking up. "I’m broke. That’s all there
is to it."
"Maybe not, or at least maybe not for long." she said smiling.
The waitress set a plate in front of Sally and then in front of Giles.
"I’ll be right back with some syrup and your toast," she said, turning
to leave and then turned back. "What kind of jam do you want?" She
asked.
"Strawberry," Sally said, giving her a smile.
The waitress left for a minute and returned with the toast, jam and
syrup, setting it on the table. "Can I get you anything else?"
Sally had started to butter her pancakes and looked up. "Oh yeah, can
we have another glass of water and a couple cups of coffee?"
"Certainly," she said and went behind the counter.
"You better butter those things before they get cold," Sally said
pointing to his cakes.
He lethargically buttered his cakes and looked up at her as he picked
up the syrup. "You don’t have to buy me breakfast. I still have ten
bucks," he said. "Damn, I can’t believe it. That guy left me ten bucks.
I wonder why he didn’t just steal it all. I don’t know what I’m going
to do now."
"Well, I think I can offer you a choice, if you want it."
"Any choice would be welcome at this point," he said. "What you have in
mind?"
"My husband and I own a little over six hundred acres over near
Missoula. That’s where I’m headed. And we were just talking about how
we need more help, but we haven’t done anything about it yet. Do you
think you could work cows?" She leaned back in her chair, folded her
arms in her lap and looked at him. She could see the puzzlement on his
face build and she smiled slightly.
"Shoot, I don’t know anything about cows," he said, taking a bite of
his pancakes.
"There’s not too much to know. They’re big, fairly dumb, and they’ll do
most anything you don’t want them to. They need to be fed, fences need
to be kept up and then there’s a bunch more general chores. It’s not
too hard, but it’s steady. We’d pay you of coarse and we have an old
bunkhouse out back by the barn we could fix up for you to live in. What
do you think?"
"I don’t know what to think. I go from prince to pauper in about two
minutes and then you offer me a job. Taking a job sure shoots the hell
out of my plans to go to California, but I guess they’re dead anyway,
without any money. Sure, I guess. I might as well. I don’t really have
too many choices at this point."
"Oh, I don’t know. Seems like there’s a lot of you kids out on the road
with nothing these days, but I can’t imagine they’re having as much fun
as they’d like you to believe."
"Yeah," he said, smiling for the first time since he noticed that his
money had been stolen. "I suppose I could work for a while and then
head for California. Where’d you say your farm was?"
"Ranch. It’s a ranch. We call’em ranches out in Montana," she said
grinning through a mouthful of pancakes. "It’s just outside the little
town of Florence, South of Missoula." She paused for a moment to finish
chewing and then resumed. "We’d expect you to stay through the summer.
There’s about sixty acres of oats and barley to come off late in the
summer or early fall. We take the hay off a couple of times during the
summer. In fact, first cutting will get mowed here soon, depending on
the weather. There’s always something to do or fix, fences mostly, but
there’s lots of other stuff too. Nobody ever gets bored around our
place. We’d give yah three bucks an hour, a place to stay and you'd eat
your meals with us. I don’t mean to brag or nothin, but I am a pretty
good cook."
"That’s pretty hard to pass up. I could still spend the winter in
California. While you folks are up here in the snow." He laughed and
looked up from his plate to catch her watching him. "Yeah, I’ll take
it. You think your husband will hire me?"
"Now what makes you think he does the hiring?" She said, cocking her
head to one side and putting her hands on her hips, still holding onto
her fork.
He really looked at her for the first time. Before he had seen her, but
she hadn’t completely taken form. She looked to be about thirty-five
years old, but at the same time she, didn’t show any certain signs of
any age. With clear skin that took on the slight texture of a smooth
leather glove and a straight thin nose sprinkled with just a few
freckles, she seemed even younger to him than he knew she must be. Her
large hands perched on narrow hips and connected to well muscled arms
followed by strong shoulders, showed that she worked hard regularly.
She had thick blond hair tied back with a leather thong, into a
ponytail. Blue-green eyes pierced the short distance between where the
two of them sat, holding him frozen momentarily as he began to feel
like he was staring.
She glanced away as the waitress approached, finally bringing them
their coffee. He looked back at his plate, taking with him a clear
image of her full dry lips and the realization that what he had seen,
was all her. Just her. She had added no paint nor rouge nor lipstick to
these graceful but sturdy features and it fit her well.
"I’m sorry it took so long to get your coffee," the waitress said,
setting the cups on the table. "I had to make another pot." She turned
and returned to the kitchen, leaving them alone again.
They finished their pancakes in silence. Sally hoped that she had made
a good decision. She knew nearly nothing of this young man, but she had
a hunch he would do well. He looked strong enough for the hard work and
he seemed to be honest. If he could throw out the anchor long enough to
finish the harvest, she figured everything would work out. He was a
college graduate and that seemed to bother her a little, but at least
it indicated that he should be smart enough to handle the job. When she
finished her cakes, she started on her toast.
"What did you study in college?" She asked.
English literature, mostly," he said, looking up. "But I took some art
and writing classes too. And all the other stuff you have to take too,
but mostly liberal arts."
"You’re not a liberal are you?" She asked facetiously.
"Well, I don’t know. I guess I’m more of a liberal than a redneck," he
answered.
She laughed. "Well, you hang around with Tom and I for a while and
we’ll make a redneck liberal out of you." She paused, took a bite of
toast and resumed with her mouth full. "It’s settled then. You come to
Florence with me, Tom will work your butt off, I’ll feed you till your
fat and we’ll both add a little redneck to that liberal education you
got." She took another bite and leaned back in her chair, looking at
him.
Her eyes had a penetrating aspect that seemed to bore a hole right into
him and spread out, like bloodhounds looking for a scent to follow.
They were like two parallel beams of translucent green light, holding
him transfixed between where he had been and where he was going. He
thought back to Chicago and the free wheeling pleasures he had had
there. They seemed to fade away like smoke off the end of a cigarette.
He pulled up a picture of the cowboy that had robbed him, but it too
drifted away into the distance and disappeared. Even the farm, or ranch
he was going to, was like a picture of forested mountains with the
center clouded and foggy, where the ranch should be. Try as he might,
he couldn’t get away from right here, right now, and the feeling that
he was pinned down by this beautifully plain, older woman. She looked
away to the street outside and then picked up another piece of toast.
He was relieved, sat up a little straighter in his chair and resumed
with his breakfast.
"We have a long ways to go before we get home," she said. "I don’t like
to drive in the dark and we’re going to cut it pretty close. I guess I
have a touch of night blindness. I suppose we’re still about twelve
hours or so from Florence."
"Where are you coming from?" He asked, shoving the last bite of toast
onto his mouth.
"The little town of Circle, back there," she said motioning in the
direction they had come from. "My mom lives there." She chuckled.
"She’s the town hair dresser. She runs a beauty parlor out of her
house. Cuts everybody’s hair, men and women. She’s got the only one in
town and there’s only one other town for twenty-five miles. If we were
back there right now, I’d have you trimmed up nice and neat, like the
rest of the rednecks around these parts." She laughed out loud, as she
said this. "Actually, most of the rednecks are pretty scruffy, but they
do have short hair."
Giles’ hair was shoulder length, thin and blond. Her comment made him
feel a little self-conscious and he brushed it back as if it would be
less noticeable.
"You’ll see. You’ll want it short before too long," she said, smiling
at him and reaching to pick her purse up off the floor, where she had
set it when they sat down. "I guess we better hit the road."
Giles reached for his wallet. "Here let me help with that. I still have
ten bucks left."
"You keep it. I’ve got this."
"Hell, I’m employed now. I can even afford it."
"That’s right, but your job includes room and board, so I guess
breakfast’s on the boss. That’s me," she said, turning to the counter
where the cash register sat. She then turned back quickly. "You better
not let Tom know I said that. We still want him to think he’s the boss.
Everything goes a whole lot smoother when he feels in charged." She
laughed again and took several dollars out of her handbag, giving it to
the waitress.
They left the restaurant, got back into the Ford and drove out of town.
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