Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 13:56:13 -0400
From: Sean Williams <williamscold@gmail.com>
Subject: Ben Leaves Bareacres Ranch Chapter 5

Ben Leaves Bareacres Ranch

Chapter 5



	"I think I made a major breakthrough in crafting your clone, man,"
said Ephraim, tossing me a beer.

	The sky was clear, the air was fresh.  The night was just like any
other night here.

	"I can't believe your Dad gives you access to his beer, Ephraim," I
said, shaking my head.

	"That's beside the point."

	I shrugged.  "Ok, what's the point?"

	"I think I'm close to unleashing your clone out on the world.  Then
you could get the fuck out of the ranch and stop depressing the shit out of
me."

	"Alright, so where is it?"

	"It's not ready for viewing yet," said Ephraim.  "The thing is, I
can't figure out how to make a brain yet.  I mean, the original one doesn't
have a brain, so it may be alright, but you know, I just wanted a brain for
completeness sake."

	I got up from the third step of the Standingbear's porch and walked
down to the field in front of the house.  From where I had been sitting, I
could see the battered baseball.  I don't know how long the ball had been
there: weeks, months, years.  In that spot.  It reminded me of Russ, so
when I got to it, I reached down, picked it up, and threw it as far away
from me as I could.  "What did you do that for?" asked Ephraim, standing up
and walking down to where I was.  He punched me in the shoulder.

	"C'mon, man!" I said, rubbing the spot where Ephraim had punched
me.  "What the fuck do you care?"

	"Language, my friend.  Language."

	"We're grown men."

	"What's going on with you?" asked Ephraim.  "You don't return my
phone calls.  You're pissed off all the time.  You need a haircut like
nobody's business."

	"What does that have to do with anything?"

	"Nothing," and then Ephraim paused for a minute, regaining his
place in the monologue.  "You're language stinks, for another thing.  One
thing I can say, your clone will have a mouth as clean as a
baby's... whatever.  I don't know.  So what's the deal?"

	"I have to get outta here."

	"So what else is new?  You threw my baseball to God-knows-where
because you have to..."

	"I mean, I have to leave now," I said.  I shrugged and then I
turned around and walked back to the porch.  "I'm packing my bags tonight
and I'll be off the ranch within the week."

	"What the hell, Ben?  Do your parents know?  When where you gonna
tell me?"

	"I wasn't.  I'm sorry, man.  I just needed to leave."

	"With Russ and Julie?"

	"No," I replied.  I'm sure I was shaking my head like a crazy
person with tics.  "Hell no.  Not them."

	"Every time I see you, it's with Russ," Ephraim remarked.

	I glanced over at him quick.  "What does he know?" I thought to
myself.  "What did he see?"  Nothing, I knew.  He was just making an
observation, and a true one, at that.  Ephraim was right, I had been
spending a lot of time with Russ in the last week and, considering how long
I had known Ephraim, it wasn't strange that he would bring it up.  In a
middle of nowhere place like where we lived, it was easy to keep things a
secret, but once things got out, they would never die.  If people knew what
I had done with Russ, with Ademar, it would be Ben the fag.  Russ the fag.
I had to leave and I had to leave now.

	"I'm leaving by myself," I said, finally.  "I have to."

	"You could've told me."

	"I know, but I thought that if I planned it out too much - if I
spent a lot of time thinking about - I would just talk myself out of it."

	"It's time to make a leap of faith, huh?" asked Ephraim.

	I glanced over at him and he wasn't looking at me.  I nodded, and
that was my only reply.




	It was almost midnight when I reached the ranch and my Dad was
standing on the porch, waiting for me.  "This shit has got to stop," he
said, walking towards my car as I hopped out.  He was speaking loud enough
that I heard him swear even with the car door closed.

	"It will, Dad," I said.

	He was standing about two feet away from me now, and so angry that
the sparse blond-gray hair on his head was standing straight up.  If
Ephraim had been there, he probably would have whispered to me that my
Dad's brain was sending spirit waves to his scalp to make his hair stand
up: an assertion based on ancient Injun knowledge, of course.

	"I'm leaving."

	My Dad's only response was to look away for a moment, and then turn
his head back to face me.  He was taken aback, but he didn't want me to see
him like that, even if for only a few seconds - he couldn't let the armor
down for even a moment, and he never would during the entire time that I
knew him - and he sort of shook his head and recovered himself, saying:
"You can't go back to school.  They won't take you back this late in the
year."

	"I'm not going back to school," I said.  "I have no intention of
doing that.  Not right now.  I don't have the money to pay for it anyway;
my scholarship's gone."

	"You can't leave, like I said," said Dad, sort of turning his back
to me.  That meant the sham discussion was over.  He was closing the book
cover, or turning the page.  End of chapter.  "You can't leave," he
repeated.  "What would you do?"

	"I could be a male gigolo," I said.  When my Dad turned to face me
again, he found my eyes staring into his.  "I could hustle for money.
Hitchhikers.  Truckers.  Whoever comes by on the road."

	"That's not funny, Ben," Dad said.  "That's not fucking funny!  Who
taught you to talk like that?"

	"No swearing on the ranch," I said.

	"Don't play with me, boy.  You're not to old for me to..."

	"For you to what?" I asked.  "For you to take a switch to me?  Do
whatever you want, Dad.  Beat me to death if you want to.  I can't live
like this anymore, I won't."

	"Beat you to death?" Dad asked, looking away from me.  There was a
pause after that and if tumble weed could hiss as it rolled over the plains
of Montana then that's all that we would have heard.  "Maybe I should.
Your brothers aren't here.  Maybe I should beat some sense into you."

	"You'll have to kill me.  You'll have to just kill me.  I'll never
be whatever it is you want here.  Whatever it is you need.  It just isn't
me.  Just kill me."

	I didn't hear the door open, but I saw a glint of red out of the
corner of my eye and I realized that Mom was standing there, in the
doorway, watching us.  Even before I saw her face, I knew what she must
have thought: "I am like him" or, maybe, "He is like me."  I was not like
my father, not like my brothers or sisters, so I must be like her.  It must
have come from somewhere, that defiance that I felt.  In her, it had been
beaten into submission, but something in me would not submit.  There was
something inside that cried out for life, a totem spirit, an inner fire,
something that I had not been taught to understand, but which I knew must
be there because I felt it.  I felt it just as sure as I had felt that
electric shock between me and Ademar that first afternoon in the barn.
Sometimes you just know things, and the people around you aren't capable of
understanding any of it.  Ephraim said to me once: "I know there's a God,
because he kicked me when I was down."  I didn't get it, then.  I don't
really comprehend it now.  But Ephraim knew what he meant and, for him,
that's all that mattered.

	I could imagine myself with a pack strapped to my back, a tent and
several days worth of water inside, walking the road with no home to return
to and no destination.  As much as I yearned to leave home, as much as I
needed to do it (it had to be done), there was nothing in life I feared
more than being without a home.  Whenever I saw movies or television shows
with homeless people I would think: "God, I hope that never happens to me."
Life takes you strange places.  I don't know why I was marked out for this,
but I had to go and if that meant I would be homeless, then there was
nothing I could do about it.  Somehow I knew that things would end this
way.  Once the part of me that could not leave home began to fade away,
with that very first fuck, I somehow knew that I would just have to get up
and leave and my parents would not take me back once I broke away from
them.  Ever have a fear so powerful that you can't overcome it?  For me,
not having a home was that fear.  As much as I hated my brothers, as much
as I needed to get away from my father, the place that I shared with them
was home.  I needed home.

	"I can be your home," Ademar would say to me, a few days after this
rift with Dad - when I finally left Bareacres.  "Whatever happens, we will
deal with together.  I am your home.  You are not homeless if you're with
me."

	But, in the present, Dad said: "Be careful, Ben.  We are your
family.  You only get one of those.  Once you break with family, who do you
have?"

	Dad was right, obviously.  I was a Goodwin - and nothing that I
could do would erase that - but what if the Goodwins didn't want me?  They
wouldn't when they knew the truth: that I was gay.

	"Take a breather," said Mom.  Dad was about to say something and
she cut him off, something very strange in my family.  On Bareacres, Dad
was like the pastor at the pulpit in a Pilgrim church, dressed in all black
and with the fire of God's will behind him, or an old English judge with
powdered white wig and a face of stony conviction, the representative of
the King's right to rule over Man.  But Mom said: "Take a walk, Ben," and
Dad didn't overrule her.  She didn't take sides, and that played out in my
favor.  If Mom were to take a side with one of us, it wouldn't be me,
whether our personalities were alike or not.




	I walked into the barn and noticed that the ladder to the hay loft
wasn't how I left it, but I figured that one of the hands must have moved
it when they were bringing up the hay.  As I placed my hands on a rung and
stepped forward with my right foot to climb the ladder, I heard someone
say: "You could've shaken the ladder first... to see if someone was up
here."

	I saw Ademar's face peak forward from the loft and he made
something of a wry smile; he tossed some loose hay down to the barn floor.
It reminded me of how a dog knudges you with its head to get your
attention.

	"I guess you know everything," he said, as I stood where I was,
contemplating whether or not to follow through and walk up to the loft.
"Come up, Ben."

	"No, I'm not going to," I said, finally, releasing hold of the
ladder and walking back toward the barn doors.

	"Wait," said Ademar, scrambling down the ladder.  He leaped forward
from the third rung up and landed about three feet away from me.  He
reached forward and grabbed a shoulder with a long arm.  The motion spun me
around.

	"What?"

	"I need to talk," said Ademar.  "Let's talk."

	"I don't care about what you need, man," I said.  "I need to think
about me right now."

	"What do you mean?"

	"I know you're married.  There's nothing to talk about.
There's... there's nothing to say."

	"I know you know I'm married," laughed Ademar.  His mood was the
converse of my own.  "I'm just sorry I didn't say anything before.  We're
estranged, Ben.  It just didn't work out."

	"You don't need to tell me anything," I said.  "Nothing's changed.
You weren't going to say anything before, so you don't need to say anything
now."

	"Don't be that way," said Ademar.  "I know I gave you the cold
shoulder before, but that was only because I didn't know what to make of
the whole situation.  This is your Dad's place: I'm just a hand here.  I
don't have a right to fuck your life up."

	"Then don't."

	"Alright, I walked into that one."  Ademar shrugged, but he didn't
move from where he stood.  Attempt number one at pushing him away had
failed. I scrambled to think of another tactic, and it came to me, without
much deliberation.  I needed to resort to the tried and true.

	"I don't know if you're a fag, or if you're just in denial, but
leave me out of it."

	"Leave you out of it?" asked Ben, his dark Spanish face turning
red.  "Leave you out of it?" he repeated.  "Leave you out of what?"

	"Just... leave me out of your attempt at finding yourself, man," I
said.  "Go find yourself somewhere else."

	"Is that what you think I'm doing?  That's why you think I'm here?"

	"You're a grown man, you shouldn't be fooling around with someone
like me.  Don't you know who you are yet?  What you are?"

	"It's not going to work, Ben," said Ademar.  He reached forward
with both arms, beckoning me to join with him.  "Join me in a mutual
catharsis," he wanted to say, perhaps.  These were the words that writers
wanted to put in "The Care Bears" or "The Thundercats" but never had the
balls to do.  Or maybe they just knew that the target audience would have
no idea what catharsis meant.  I figured Ademar just wanted to let
everything go.  Just wash everything away with the hug of two musty men in
a one hundred year old barn.  "I know what you're doing, and it won't work.
I'm not going anywhere.  I've spent most of my life running and I don't
want to run anymore, Ben."

	I sighed and shook my head and left the barn.  I looked back
briefly as I walked across the field to the ranch road and I saw that
Ademar had traversed the distance to the door, where he watched me walk
away, but he didn't come after me.




	I didn't really pack, but merely threw various things together in a
bag.  I looked around and saw all of the books, clothes, and other pieces
of my life in the room.  I thought: "I should really get rid of all this
stuff," but I didn't have time.  I needed to leave right then and I
couldn't leave with the thoughts of what to do with all this stuff in my
mind.

	I hit the road.  It was late and as I walked out of the back door
of the house, I could see Mom making dinner in the kitchen.  Dad wasn't
back home yet, but as the smell of dinner wafted out of the tumbling down
house, I figured it wouldn't be long before Dad showed up.  He could be
three miles away and if he sniffed dinner, he would be at the house in five
minutes.  I wanted to get away before he saw me leave and today was my
lucky day.  The sun was setting and the grass of the lawn that stretched
from the front gate to the house appeared blue; the house looked gray; and
the road that led away was golden.

	I hit the road and it wasn't long before I was five or six miles
away from the ranch.  I had finally done it: gotten up on my own two feet
and ventured away from home, with no plan, and no where to go.  Maybe I
would do what I told Dad that I would: hustle for money.  Take all-comers.
I didn't really want to do that, but I had to do something to survive.  I
had to get away from Bareacres.  The place was killing the only part of me
that still wanted to live.

	Few cars drove down the main county road as I walked along; our
neighborhood was quiet.  Occasionally, a couple cars would zip by, one
after the other, and I imagined that they slowed down and the drivers
turned to look at me, to see who I was.  They didn't, but in my imagination
they did.

	I kept on walking and I didn't keep track of the time.  Soon, the
orange-blue sky became navy blue, and then pitch black.  I knew that I had
walked at least ten miles and I suddenly panicked.  "Where am I going?"  I
asked myself.  "Where am I going to sleep tonight?"  I was walking in the
opposite direction from where the town was and it hit me that there was no
motel for me to sleep anywhere near where I was.  It would be another
twenty miles before I reached a town and that would be at least six or
seven more hours of walking.  And did it really matter?  I didn't have any
money for a room anyway.

	"Darn, I should have brought my tent!" thought I, to myself.  It
goes without saying that none of this was planned, but at least if I had
brought my tent, I could have had someplace to sleep, even if it was out in
the wild.

	I heard the tumble of tires on the road behind me and I knew this
meant that a car was heading in the direction where I was headed.  I didn't
care, I didn't turn to look at it as it approached, and I was surprised
when the car slowed down as it neared me.  The car came to a stop ahead of
me and I reached it a few seconds later.

	"I knew it was you as soon as I turned the corner back there," said
Ephraim.  He pulled the latch forward on the front passenger door and it
slowly creaked open.  He drove an old Lincoln, the rustiest car in the
neighborhood.  I named it Buster when he first bought it two years ago.  He
overpaid for it: three thousand dollars cash, for a car with a broken
odometer and half of its parts rusted from harsh country winters.

	I hopped in the car.  "Don't take me back home," I said.

	"Your parents called over to my place," said Ephraim.  "They wanted
to know if you were at our house.  Your Mom thought I kidnapped you."

	"Damn Indians, kidnapping people!"

	"Why would I kidnap YOU?" asked Ephraim.  "You're not a white
woman."

	In spite of the mood I was in, I couldn't help but laugh.

	"They probably thought you traded me at the swap meet for a six
pack of Labatt Blue."

	"No one drinks Labatt Blue, Ben," said Ephraim.

	"That's why it was a joke."

	"Oh, that was a joke?" asked Ephraim.  "You could've warned me:
'Joke in FIVE...FOUR...THREE...' "

	"Don't take me back home, Ephraim."

	"I have to.  Your pulling all of this into this."

	"I'll call my Mom as soon as I get the money," I said.  "I'll tell
her that you and your family had nothing to do with any of this.  How could
they blame you guys anyway?  That's stupid."

	"I know, but they have to blame someone.  They're not going to
blame themselves, at least not your Dad.  And you don't really have lots of
friends around here anymore, Ben."

	I shrugged.

	"Why now?  You've wanted to leave Bareacres as long as I've known
you.  Why now?"

	"If I don't leave now, I may never leave."  I drew in a raw breath
through clenched teeth; it came out like a hiss.  "This place is eating my
soul.  I know you understand what that's like, Ephraim."

	"I can get where you're coming from, friend, but, no.  I don't
really understand it."

	"Ephraim," I said, sighing and looking over at him.  "I'm gay."

	"I know."

	"And you don't care?"

	"It has nothing to do with me, does it?" asked Ephraim.  "You don't
want to finger my butt do you?"

	I'm sure the face that I made when he said that wasn't pretty.  All
I said was: "No, I don't want to do that.  I just.  I guess I needed to
tell someone.  It was hard to say that."

	"We don't have to talk about it.  It's not really any of my
business."

	"No, it's not.  I'm still the same person."

	"Except that you like wearing pink tutus behind closed doors."

	"God, what did I just start?"




	The next thing I remember after that was lying in bed and dreaming
about the open road.  I didn't have the dreams that I used to have: walking
away from the creaking gate to the ranch road, charging hill after hill and
turning around and looking back only to see that there was the house, right
where I had left it, no further away than it had been when I had begun.  I
saw someone walking along an endless road with the sun in a constant state
of setting or rising.  Just the sun fixed in place with an orange blue wave
sky in the background.  I don't know if this man was me leaving home, or
someone that I followed.  It might have been Ademar, or it might have been
Russ.  It might have been someone that did not exist.

	That was the next thing that I remembered, after talking to Ephraim
in his Lincoln, until someone shook me awake.  In fact, it was more of a
fist repeatedly jabbed into my shoulder, gently.  I opened my eyes.

	"I heard what happened," said Russ.  He was sitting on the edge of
the bed, facing the window.

	"What happened?"

	"Your friend Ephraim picked you up on the road," said Russ.  "Your
Dad doesn't know the story.  He thinks you just went into town again and
he's pissed."

	"He's in a constant state of being pissed," I said.  "That's
nothing new."

	"This is like another level of pissed, Ben.  I think he feels like
he's losing his grip on you."

	"He is.  He lost it a long time ago."  I sat up and shrugged.  I
wasn't wearing a shirt and I felt cold, so I hugged myself.  My shoulders
were red from the chill in the room, until I warmed them.  "I have to get
out of here.  I don't care what happens, and I don't care where I end up.
I just have to get as far away from here as my feet can carry me."

	"You could have planned it out, Ben.  There's no reason why you had
to just grab your sack and walk on the county road."

	I looked away, at the clock.  It was four in the morning.

	"If you needed a ride," Russ continued, "I could have given you a
ride someplace.  Don't do that, again.  Just get up and walk away.  Think
about the rest of us."

	"You think I'm selfish?"

	"I didn't say that."

	"But you implied it," I said.  I reached over to the bedside table
and grabbed my shirt.  I put it on and, try though he might to look away,
Russ couldn't seem to take his eyes off of me.  I looked up at him, after
my shirt was on, and he had a guilty look in his eyes.  "I'm sorry if you
think I'm selfish," I added, "but what do you want me to do, Russ?  This
place is killing me.  Being here is destroying my will to live.  I have to
get out."

	"Then let's plan something."

	I laughed.  "Russ, just let me get back to bed.  I have to deal
with Dad in the morning and I'm probably gonna be tired anyway, but getting
some shut-eye wouldn't hurt.  So..."

	"I'll go," said Russ, and he stood up.  "Come here," he said.

	I stood up reluctantly, and Russ pulled me into his arms.  He held
me close and rested his head on my shoulder.  He wouldn't let me go and I
didn't know how to feel.  It felt good, but it felt bad.  I felt like Russ
was carrying me somewhere I shouldn't be going: that Goodwin culpability
just wouldn't die.  Russ let me go and then he placed his hands on my face.
He kissed me.  I didn't return the kiss, but I didn't pull away.  "Don't do
that," he said.  "Don't just leave."

	"I have to leave.  The ranch... I just have to leave."

	"Promise me that you'll let me know before you go next time."

	"I can't make any promises," I said.  I got back in bed and turned
my back to Russ.  There was silence for a few seconds and, shortly after, I
heard the door close softly as Russ left the room.




	I wouldn't make a promise that I couldn't keep.  I knew that I
couldn't keep it.  As soon as my family's guard was down, I would try to
leave again.

	Dad pulled me aside the next morning and had a long talk with me.
He told me that he was disappointed; that I wasn't the son that he wanted.
None of us boys were.  He wanted someone to grow up and be like him: fat,
narrow-minded, and stuck to a place where he probably shouldn't be in the
first place.  I knew he wasn't a bad guy, my Dad was the sort to help out
others in need, but it wasn't the same when it came to his family.  He
couldn't escape the rectitude that had been bred into him.  Guys from his
generation were all condemnation and endless thoughts of carnal sin.

	I thought a lot about things like that.  Did the Goodwin's belong
in Montana in the first place?  Maybe we should just give the land over to
the Standingbears and go back to England or Ireland, or wherever our
ancestors were from.  I knew that would never happen but in my mental haste
to be free of Bareacres, my mind went strange places.  It took roads that
led nowhere.

	So, I had a long talking-to from Dad.  I remained on the ranch for
another two weeks.  Ephraim came to see me almost everyday.  He brought a
television and placed it in my room, pushing all my old football gear off
of an old low dresser, onto the floor.  We sat up there nights and watched
the few channels we could get.  I didn't tell Ephraim that I would leave as
soon as I got another window, and that I wouldn't say goodbye when I left,
but he knew.  That's why he came.

	And Ademar was more talkative than he had been of late.  I don't
know if I was shaking, or I had a look in my eyes, but everyone seemed to
be treating me differently.  I didn't know how to process any of it.  I had
always felt unwanted, like the spare son, or the accident, but it felt like
people didn't want me to leave.  I could not say if that was because they
needed my help on the ranch, if they couldn't imagine things without me -
if they were afraid of change - or if there was another reason.

	"How far back does the trail behind the house go?" asked Ademar one
day.

	"It goes about three miles.  Not in a straight line.  It leads to a
stream and an abandoned barn, and then it loops around to the county road."

	Ademar smiled and didn't say anything.  I noticed that he had been
working on the ranch with his shirt off a lot recently.  It had gotten
warmer, as the weeks had trudged along, but not warm enough that he didn't
need a shirt.  I thought that he wanted to keep me interested; there was a
part of me that thought Ademar wanted to keep a hold, his power, over me.
Those were selfish thoughts, I guess.  Was it just vanity, the thought that
"everything that Ademar does is to get my attention"?  Ademar would tell me
months later, with a smile: "Gay guys always think everyone's checking them
out."

	"You're gay, too," I would say then.  "Even though your married.
Your talking about yourself, too, asshole."

	Ademar shrugged.

	And so two weeks passed with me waiting for a chance to break away,
with Ademar walking around Bareacres shirtless and sweaty, and Ephraim and
I hanging out in my room pretending to watch the programs playing on a beat
up old television.  Life became less burdensome, but that part of me that
needed to leave never faded away: it pulsated with life, it made me sweat
at night, and wake up startled thirty minutes before my alarm went off.
There was a part of me that didn't want to leave Bareacres at all, there
was the Goodwin in me that only had significance in this place, but that
spirit - though it struggled for its own voice - grew weaker every day
until it died.

	I thought that Bareacres was pushing me away, in my rambling
thoughts of endless, sweaty nights.  "Leave," it said "Leave now."  But the
Goodwin said: "I only have meaning here.  I am nothing anywhere else."

	"You stole this land," said Bareacres.  "Leave."

	"But I am only something here.  I am soulless anywhere else."

	And thus did my mind ramble.  It rambled like that until, one day,
I awoke with a start at four in the morning, before the sun came up, and
knew that the time had come.

	I had secretly packed a bag filled with three days worth of
clothes, my favorite books, and a couple pictures to remember the family
by.  My favorite book was a work of fantasy called "The Tombs of Atuan" and
I actually cried when I packed it, a week before.  I dressed quickly - I
didn't take a shower as I didn't want to wake the rest of the house - and I
grabbed my bag, soundlessly closed the door to my room, and left.

	It was still dark when I left the house.  I thought I saw someone
standing on the path behind the house, but I figured it was just my mind
dreaming up people I might never see again.  As I entered the path,
however, I found that there was someone there and this person, whomever it
was, restlessly tapped their foot on the grass - their thumbs tucked into
their belt loops, in front of a thick and weathered leather belt.

	"I can carry your bag," said Ademar, reaching forward with his hand
to grab the duffle bag slung over my shoulder.

	"It's okay," I said, shaking my head.  "I can manage it."

	"So it's time, huh?"

	"How did you know?"

	"I didn't," said Ademar.  "I couldn't sleep and I walked all the
way here from town.  I guess it was just meant to be."

	And so Ademar and I took the path until it looped back to the
county road.  "Hitchhike?" I asked, as we began to walk the road, the dawn
perhaps fifteen minutes distant.

	"No cars," said Ademar.

	"I hope no one thinks Ephraim kidnapped me again," I said, shaking
my head.

	Ademar put his arm around me and said: "All they have to do is stop
by Ephraim's place and see that your not there, Ben."

	We walked like that, arm and arm, for perhaps five miles, and then
we heard a car come up behind us, the first car that we heard on the road
that morning.  We let each other go.  "This might be fEphraim," I said,
turning around and looking at the oncoming car.

	The car was a Mercedes and it came to a stop about ten feet ahead
of us.  I heard a resonating click as Russ flipped the automatic doors
switch to unlock them.  Russ hopped out and grabbed my bag and Ademar's and
threw them in the trunk.  Ademar and I got into the car, and Russ hopped
into the driver's seat.  The driver's side door closed with a loud slam,
and Russ drove off.


	THE END

	[That's all folks.  Thanks to those of you that e-mailed me.  It
was hard to write this story because parts of it were very personal, but
kudos to those of you that were patient and made it this far!  All the best
to you in that journey we call life.  Sean.]

	[COPYRIGHT 2011]