Living The Dream: 16

Posted on May 14, 2017 by Sarah Leamy

As part of the ongoing Sunday installments of the novel. You can find the other chapters on here, posted each Sunday morning. Thanks!

DECEMBER: ONWARDS

Money was flying out faster than I’d hoped or expected what with those nights in motels, a week in Albuquerque, eating out. I worked on my budget while sitting outside on the porch. Angie was at school, one last project that she’s working on in the library. Jonnie was expected to show up later today. Nelson relaxed, fully at home on his blanket, soaking up the sun. I made a decision, a small one, but it was time to move on.

“I’m heading south in the morning,” I told them over dinner.

We’d made pizza together, chatting and listening to a local radio station. Their home was toasty and welcoming. I didn’t really want to leave but my restlessness kicked in, and kicked me out. Nothing too comfortable for me, not yet. The ongoing distractions of exploring a new city on foot had revitalized me yet kept me from my purpose: Deciding what was next. What to do about Mark. And the others.

“You’re more than welcome to stay,” Angie offered. “It’s so easy to have you and Nelson around, no trouble at all. In fact, you could stay here for the holidays on your own if you like. I’m going back home for a couple of weeks and it’d be good to know the place wasn’t empty.” She drank some water and offered Nelson a taste of ham from her pizza. “Well, think about it, no pressure.”
“Where are you thinking of going to? Not north I hope. More snow is expected this week, and they say it’s going to be a warm and wet winter.”
“Whatever that means.” I jokingly finished for him. “I don’t know but I like the idea of going across to Arizona, see Jerome and Sedona and that area. It’s probably only a day or two’s drive for us, we stop every hour or so. Anyway, I’d like to keep exploring, camping, daydreaming…”
“ – and deciding?”
“Yes, there is that. I miss the bus as well.”
“But you’re not ready to go back yet?”
Jonnie passed me a glass of wine and we all followed him onto the porch, our nightly routine. “I can understand that. Have you heard from Mark?”
I sipped the malbec and leaned back in an armchair. “Yep, he’s in L.A. having a blast, he said. He even got to play bass for some band one night. They’d had a car accident on the way to the gig and, well, he was in the right place at the right time. It’s a dream come true for him, so I can’t blame him, not really.”

Jonnie brought out the rest of the pizza and picked at a slice as we chatted away companionably. Nelson yawned. Angie petted his head, playing with the long soft ears.

“Well, you have to stay in touch with us, okay? I’ll miss you both. You’re always welcome back. And if you move back to Oliver, we want to come visit, right?”

“Right, I’ll let you know where I end up, we end up, that is. To new beginnings.” I raised my glass to them both with a smile.

“To new friends.”

“To pizza!”

Glasses clinked and Nelson sat up, hoping for food, that’s my happy boy.

SEPTEMBER: SHOW ME THE WAY

“What the hell? You’re joking right?”

Five DEA agents surrounded Mark. They demanded that he hand over his plants. Mark stood there in his shorts and boots, bare-chested and indignant. A couple of black SUVs blocked our Subaru in the driveway. Helicopters, four of them hovered overhead, passing back and forth as they had all morning. I stood on the porch, holding onto Frida who wouldn’t stop barking and growling when anyone came close.

“Your ID please, sir.” An officer stood in all-black clothes and dark sunglasses and he had a gun. He held out his hand to for the license.

Mark laughed, “Where do you think that might be? I’m practically naked here.” he turned and started walking over to me, when the officer stopped him forcefully.
“No sir, you can wait with me and your wife can fetch both your IDs.” He nodded in my direction.

“Girlfriend,” muttered Mark. He put his hands in his pockets and pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “They’re tomatoes,” he muttered under his breath once again.

Two officers followed me to my car and I pulled out our wallets and handed over the documents. One stood next to me silently and the other read them before handing them to his partner. Mark asked why they’d come to harass us.

“We were told your wife –“

“Girlfriend.”

“- had been talking about her pot plants at the coffee shop.”
“Her potted plants.” Mark said, and he looked over at our home. The patio was covered in hanging plants of all kinds. Mint. Toms. Lettuce. Onions. Creeping vines. Geraniums. Wildflowers. You name it, I’d planted it.

The man with my ID passed it back and headed for his boss without a word to me. He had a potbelly big enough to hold a drink if he’d leaned back just another inch or two. I tried not to think about it. I coughed under my breath.
“It’s who we thought.”
Mark smoked in silence. Frida whined. I shook. I wish I had my boots on, I felt vulnerable in flip-flops.

“I’m Detective Anders. Would you take us to your pot plants please Mark.”

The man had cropped gray hair and a belt full of his important toys and symbols. And a gun. He lifted his sunglasses briefly to make meaningful eye contact with Mark, who set off in the direction of the bus. I joined him on the porch. I quickly grabbed my boots and sat down. Mark stood next to our pots.

The officer didn’t move. “Well?”

Mark pointed out two tomato plants at the front door. “That’s all we have.”
The officer didn’t smile one bit but reiterated his request. The take-me-to-your-leader kind of an order. “We spotted some twenty pot plants near by and your home is the closest. I suggest, sir, that you comply with my requests. Take me to your plants.”
Mark sighed in exasperation. “We don’t have any. I don’t even know what you’re talking about, as if we’d grow pot plants on our property. That makes no sense. Neither of us smokes anything but this stuff.” He pulled out the cigarettes from his back pocket and held them out.

Another SUV showed up and drove past the other vehicles across my front yard. He pulled up next to us.

“Is there a problem here, Anders?”
“No sir, we were just taking them to the site. Would you like to come with us?”
“Not at all, I’m staying in the air conditioning. Speed it up though. We have another sighting a mile away.” He closed the window and backed out. Tire tracks everywhere. I’d have to rake this later.

“Come along. You can let your dog loose, Ma’am. My officers aren’t afraid of a little runt like that.”

He strode off without a glance at Frida snapping around his boots. I grabbed my hat and caught up with Mark. We followed them down the arroyo on the right, through the hundred-foot bed of coal dust, and past the burnt-out pinion, the result of a lightening strike was my guess. The midday sun wore me out but I kept up with everyone, all ten or us. Although I hated to admit it, taking that hike was easier than digging in fence posts for the chicken run. I spotted some orange paintbrush-like wildflowers on the southern slope. The ridge took us up and over into a neighboring meadow of cacti and silvery stunted shrubs. We walked over the scrubby grasses, along the riverbed and past trees dead and dying. The entourage stopped next to a clump of junipers. Mark and I looked around us.

“Where are we?” he whispered.

“Please, sir, if you have something to say, say it to the group.”
Were we in high school again? Mark said nothing. I coughed. He snickered. Frida found something and ran off. I heard her digging furiously.

“Stop that dog. She’s tampering with evidence.” They ran after her and someone pulled her out from under a tree by her tail. The poor girl yelped and raced over to Mark, jumping into his arms. She buried her head in his armpit.

“What had you found, girl?” he talked softly to her. She looked up briefly, saw Anders walking over, and whimpered.

“This way please, Ma’am, Sir.”
We looked at each other and followed him into a clearing. A bunch of tall bulky and bright green pot plants lay on the dirt. Pulled out by the roots. Each one was at least four or five feet tall, I’d guess, thick and furry.

“Wow. Those are huge.”
The agents watched us closely. I stepped up to poke one with my foot. “Are there more?”
“Why?”
“I’ve never seen anything like this.” I practically laughed in fascination. I bent down and picked at one. It stank. I picked off a piece and put it to my nose before someone yanked me back.

“That’s enough. Where are the rest?”
“Huh?” I stood up and brushed myself off. “You tell me. You brought us here. This isn’t even our land.”
“Nope, never been out here before, have we Jen? I like it. Is this on our property?” He asked Anders who had a bundle of Xeroxed maps in his hand. Mark went to look and unthinkingly took the top copy. It was of a map of our forty acres and both properties on either side. The road cut through ours in a pretty diagonal, across the two arroyos.

“Isn’t that us?” He held it out to me and I looked over his shoulder, or rather under his shoulder. My finger followed the road, the paths we usually took and found our campsite and the bus, somewhere in the middle. We’d placed it well, apparently. I nodded and handed it back to him. Mark passed it to Anders.

“That’s our place, right? Here’s the road, the bus, our gardens and the boundary where we walk the dog. See?” Mark in his innocence started to walk back the way we’d come.
Two of the officers blocked his path. They kept their hands on their hips.

“Unfortunately, sir, that might be true, but you two live right next to this large collection of illegal plants. We don’t believe you, to be blunt. Now, where are the rest? Someone who grows this many usually has at least another ten or more hidden nearby.”
“Couldn’t your helicopters see any?” I piped up.
Anders stared at me. “No, they didn’t.”
I shrugged and sat in the shade on a huge rock the size of a VW Beetle. Frida tried to join me but she kept slipping off the rocks. She sat at Mark’s feet instead. Anders watched us both carefully.

“Show us the path you use to bring the water out here,” he asked after a while.

“No, you show me.” Mark was getting braver and braver as time went on. I was quite proud of him. “Because there isn’t one and you know it. You know that this isn’t our doing. We’re too effing naïve, aren’t we? Oh, and to add to the equation, we haven’t lived here long enough. You might want to check your records before you try to pin anything on us. I only moved to Oliver, what, two months ago at most.”
Anders looked between Mark and I. He looked down at his paperwork.

“Is that right?”
We both bobbed our heads in agreement. He started to sweat.

“Damn. Who owns this bit? I’m going to get in such deep trouble for messing this up.”

His officers hung back, slowly melting into the trees around us. Frida headed for the freshly dog holes and stuck her face back in them, sighing loudly. I almost felt sorry for Anders. I came to look at the map he held. I recognized the driveway he pointed out as being the nearest. I said nothing.

He folded up his papers and looked around for his men. They’d gone back without him.

“How do we get back from here?”

He turned in a circle, desperately looking for someone to lead the way back. The clearing stood empty but for five dying plants and the rear end of a digging dog.

“We follow the little runt,” said my boyfriend with a sweet smile. “Frida, let’s go home.”

“Another pint, Jenny?”
“Hell yeah.”

We stood at the bar surrounded by locals, Dieselhead Danny being one of them. He’d been telling everyone about watching us with the cops and how suddenly they’d all just left, driven off, no charges, and no further searches. Or finds.

“They didn’t get the others,” he announced proudly. He kept buying us drinks. The tavern was pretty empty but it was a Wednesday afternoon. The tourists took over town on the weekends. After we’d found out that little detail, we had adjusted our drinking times suitably, still trying to fit in. Anyway, Danny kept slapping Mark on the back, thanking him for not mentioning the water hauling or anything like that.

“Oh, right, I’d forgotten about that. I just hated the way he called my dog a runt. He pissed me off.” Mark leaned against the stool I was sitting in and gave me a quick kiss on the ear. That third beer was doing wonders for his mood.

We’d got back to the bus with Anders in tow and had made ourselves a cold drink. All three of us sat on the deck and watched as Frida found a rawhide and fell asleep with it under her front paws. One SUV waited for him as he finished his lemonade and apologized in a roundabout way. Finally we were alone again. I got up and raked out the tire tracks. Mark took a sponge bath. Frida napped.

Half an hour later we drove to the tavern, under the watchful eyes of two helicopters. Mark gave them the finger. Frida panted. For once, I drove.

Danny wandered outside for a smoke and Mark joined him. I sat there alone for a while, I was glad the day was over. The bartender came over and handed me a pint of cold water.

“You’re looking a little rosy,” he said politely.

I snorted. “I know. It seems to be my New Mexico color, I’m okay, just a little flushed after this morning.”
He laughed out loud and grinned with me, and had no teeth missing. The job must pay better than most.

“Yeah, I heard. That was a close call, you realize that, don’t you?”
“Yes, that’s why I’m here. I need to forget how close a call. Does that happen a lot around here? It was crazy. Do you think the cops even know whose stuff it was? Is?”
“Probably, but I’d forget all about that if you can. At least now, you’ve made a friend for life with Danny. He’ll look out for you for as long as you live near by. He’s as loyal as a puppy if he likes you.”
Once a year apparently the cops come around, hoping to find fields of green. Instead they bust two or three people for having a handful of pot plants. After seeing the five ‘copters and twenty or so ground personnel, SUVs, even a couple of all terrain vehicles, I have to wonder how much that all cost?

As usual, Mark interrupted my deep thoughts.

“There’s a BBQ out on Alaska road on the weekend, and we’ve been invited. Want to go?”
“Sure. Whose?”
Mark grinned. “I don’t remember but here’s the address for us. Dusk onwards, and he said bring beer, instruments, and dogs, not bad eh? Frida’s first party.”
More importantly – it was going to be our first party in Oliver. We’d finally arrived.

Living The Dream: 15

Posted on May 7, 2017 by Sarah Leamy

As part of the ongoing Sunday installments of the novel. You can find the other chapters on here, posted each Sunday morning. Thanks!

AUGUST: GROWING YOUR OWN

“Your usual, Jenny?”

“Yes please.”

I sat at one of the stools at the counter and returned the morning’s greetings with the locals. They’d become used to my turning up Thursday mornings at the coffee shop. All had paper cups of coffee and lattes. The newspapers lay half read and conversation flowed from building stories, their weekend plans, and on to gardening. I perked up my ears and drank my medium dark roast. With cream.

“How are your plants doing?” asked one bearded sixty-something man to another.

“Pretty good, they budded out nicely, and they have grown tall and thick for once. It’s the best year yet, I’d say, although I don’t want to jinx us. But those rains sure helped my back, I’d prefer the rains do the work for me rather than haul five gallons at a time all day every day.” He knocked on the wooden slab of a table and grimaced.
They laughed and talked about fertilizers and soil amendments. I wanted to butt in but felt shy. The caffeine hadn’t kicked in yet apparently.

“I added more manure to the soil last winter and let it all soak in and break down for a good six months. I used to add straw as a mulch but it’s so bright and conspicuous that I buy bags of peat moss instead.”
“Yum Yum mix, I swear by it, that’s made all the difference to my crop this year. It’s expensive I know, but it works a treat.”

They talked about cuttings, clones, and trial and error and all the details showing some serious organic expertise. I just wanted a few tomato plants and some spinach. Too late now.

“Excuse me, can I ask you a gardening question?”
They looked at each other first before the one on the right nodded to me.

“I want to set myself up to grow some plants but it’s too late for this year, isn’t it?”
“What kind of thing are you thinking about?”

The man nearest me sipped his drink and leaned forward encouragingly. He wore the usual uniform of faded blue jeans, work boots, and a light colored long-sleeved shirt. The cowboy hat lay on his lap. His face was as lined as a dried out apple and his blue eyes sparkled to some inner joke.

I explained that we were new in town and –

“Pete’s?”
I nodded and sighed. “It seems everyone knows us but we don’t know a soul.”
The guys laughed, but kindly. “We get so many folks moving here, wanting to fit in, but after a season, or maybe a year, they end up leaving. We take our time before putting in much energy and that’s the truth.”
“Why?”

“Why what?”
“Why don’t many people make it for the long run?” I honestly didn’t get it. At the time.
He sat back. “It’s not easy, is it?”
I shook my head.

A man in coveralls and slicked back ponytail added his opinion by saying, “after that movie came out, tourists flocked here, looking for the dream of an artist town near Santa Fe, all hip and cool, and easy living. But it takes work to be here. Too freaking hot in summer, harsh winters, and incredible winds in the spring. The homes are either old run down shacks or you build it yourself out on the land. Either way, if you’re looking for suburbia, this isn’t it.”

I grinned. “That’s what we told Diana, the solar woman.”

“Oh yeah? She’s pretty mainstream, isn’t she?”

“Yep, she wanted us to build a suburban and expensive home with televisions and sound systems and microwaves and washing machines, the whole nine yards instead of just hooking us up with the old funky school bus we’re living in. She kept insisting that she knew best so Mark told her we’d do it ourselves.”
“And have you?”
“Well, no.” I admitted with a wry grin and a shrug, and that made them laugh with me.
Anne, the barista, told me that her brother, Ken, was a solar tech geek, and had sorted out a few homes in the area. He could help out. He had the right connections, as she said.

“If you want to get know us here in town, keep doing what you’re doing, and show up, hang out with us, talk to us rather than watch us as if we were a freak show.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
The whole café erupted in loudly as they all chimed in with their own stories of rude and naïve tourists and the stupid questions they ask. I was guilty of at least a few of them. I shook my head in embarrassment. The conversations died down and they soon forgot about me. Anne poured me a refill and started to chat about her own gardens and described the community garden in Oliver. Close by, I could walk over there with Frida if I wanted. The place was fenced in with homemade gates, stone pathways, and beds overflowing with healthy crops of all you possible imagine growing. Incredible for a desert garden, she finished.

“That place will inspire you. And, no, it’s not too late for some things. Do you have anything set up yet?”
I shook my head again. “Nothing. I haven’t even thought about where we’d put the garden.”
“Well, you’ll need some kind of wire or wooden fencing to keep out the rabbits. I’d suggest sunken beds to catch the rains rather than have the precious water run off and away. Do you want some catalogues and books?”
Anne sat on a stool next to me and wrote down a few ideas and the best nurseries to visit in Santa Fe for free information. I suddenly knew what I’d be doing for the next few days.

“Greens, there’s quite a few lettuces and stuff for the fall, you could get them in now. But I’d suggest that you start with some pots for whatever you want to grow this fall, and make a greenhouse or something if you want more than that. You can work on making the soil perfect in the actual gardens over winter. Get the manure, straw, better soil, and add your compost, that kind of thing. Spend the holidays digging in the shit, as my husband says. Digging in the shit.”

“Do you have the pick?” Mark hollered over the radio.

AC/DC rocked out, filing the valley with something he sang along to. I never did like them that much.

“I can’t dig more than four inches in this stuff, it’s ridiculous. Rocks everywhere I turn. Are you sure you want the garden here?”

He wiped his forehead with his bandana and propped the shovel against a tree. He stared forlornly at the area we’d chosen. Close enough to the bus for us to remember to water things, and also within walking distance to the car for hauling supplies as needed. The juniper trees protected the western edge because of those infamous spring winds. The one pinion in the middle would give shade to different sections throughout the day.

I stopped pounding in the metal T-bars. I’d done five out of twenty-eight. My shoulders killed me.

“Well, yeah, it’s the best place, right? After all we read and what Anne told us, this is going to be the easiest spot to grow what we want. Do you want to switch with me?”

Not that swinging a pickaxe would be any better, but you have to help when you can. Mark suggested a break instead. He turned off the radio thankfully.

“It’s that time already?”
He grinned and pulled out his cigarettes. “It is somewhere.” He walked over to the bus and grabbed us both pale ale and opened them. Frida followed him everywhere these days. She had a crush. I was jealous. They walked back and found a seat in the sandy shade. Frida came over and curled up against my legs, groaning in pleasure. An angel, she’d been an angel since the monsoons had stopped. I sighed and stretched out, lying down and shading my face with my hat. I rested the bottle on my belly.

“How about we build one of those little window boxes with a window on top? Like a mini greenhouse? We could set that up and prop it next to the porch steps.” Mark continued to talk about that and other ideas. He wasn’t enjoying the preparation part of this gardening business. He mentioned how we needed to make an actual outhouse soon. Our shallow dumping hole was filling up fast. That meant more digging though.

“What about the compost toilets?” I reminded him.
Off he went, describing the different options we had, the store bought, the homemade style and the humanure kind. I half-listened and sipped my beer. He could work it out and let me know. I didn’t pay too much attention. He did most of the work, not me.

“Do we have the pallets for a compost pile?”
“Weren’t you listening?”
I sat up and grinned. “No. Were you talking to me?”
He threw a stick at me and hit Frida on the butt. “Very funny. I was saying, to Frida apparently, that for the humanure toilet we could go ahead and use the pallets we have and build us compost box this afternoon. We only need four and I think we found five or so. I have the baling wire to tie them all together. We can empty the buckets in there and cover it with straw. I’m glad we got a few bales today, some for this garden of yours and one for me and my shit pile.”

Mark finished his beer and toasted me with the empty bottle. “Your round, my dear, yes, I’d love another.”

He gave me an easy going smile and scratched at his goatee. The new shaver had kept the rest of him clean cut but what with the facial hair and how he had let his hair grow wilder and curlier than before, this was a new man. The outdoor work had made him a shade of toast and peanut butter. I still stayed on the pink side of the scale; a Tuscany rose as I claimed. I liked the sound of it even if Mark teased me, but he was the one with the farmer’s tan, not me. My pinkness was through and through. I’d even stopped bleaching my hair, and the dirty blond and brown roots had grown into a reddish mop with white tips.

I picked at the dirt and swore under my breath. I jabbed at it with the shovel. I kicked rocks away with my new work boots. I sweated and dripped and got two beds dug before giving up. I added a bag of peat moss, a bucket of manure from the horse-lady in town, and stirred it all together before covering it with a layer of straw. It looked good if nothing else.

Mark finished the fence posts and gave up. He wandered over to the pallets and propped them into a square, tying them upright with the wire. He spread some straw a couple of inches thick across the bottom and emptied out a bowl of table scraps. He smiled up at me proudly and pointed.

“Our new compost pile. Food and feces. Can’t you imagine what your mom will say when we point her towards the buckets to use?”

“I don’t think I want to explain what we’re doing. Can we make it easy on her and leave the sawdust in a container next to the toilet with a little sign or something? Less of a lecture on the benefits of recycling our waste, let’s just make it quick and easy for her. You know, something that says ‘Pee here, cover it with this, close lid.’ Not that she’s planning on visiting that I know of. God, I hope she doesn’t surprise us again.”

I stood next to him and stared at the pile. It was pretty sturdy and didn’t fall over when Frida jumped up trying to get to the scraps. He nodded happily as Frida kept trying to push her way to the leftovers but failing.

Mark picked up his tools. “What next?” he asked me, as we headed back to the bus. “Chickens?”

Living The Dream: 13

Posted on April 23, 2017 by Sarah Leamy

As part of the ongoing Sunday installments of the novel. You can find the other chapters on here, posted each Sunday morning. Thanks!

JULY: WET DOG

“Frogs? Do I hear frogs?” I murmured in my dreams.

Mark woke up with a startle. “Frogs. What the hell?” He jumped out of bed, almost knocking Frida to the floor. She yelped and sat on my lap as I tried to work out what was happening. Outside the sky was a dark grey with the sun only just lightening everything up enough to make out the basic blackened shapes and silhouettes. He pulled on his jeans and boots.

“Come on. It’s raining.”

It was true: That thundering sound wasn’t an imaginary waterfall, rain was slamming down upon a metal roof. I stood up excitedly. At last. Monsoons. Mark called out to Frida and they charged out the front door. He was laughing out loud and running around, with our pup barking and howling along. I got dressed and stood on the steps. It was pouring. Torrential rain, they’d not been kidding when describing the monsoons. The driveway was flooded, the trash bags floated under the trees. I ran down the steps and stood arms spread out and head turned up to catch the raindrops in my mouth. Within minutes I was soaked through. I took my shirt off and stripped to my skin. What was the point of wearing anything? This was a shower like none before. Mark laughed and copied me and we ran around in only our boots, thoroughly naked we skipped through the storm.

“Let’s try to find the frogs.” He stood and turned slowly, listening intently. “That way, I think.” He pointed to the west and I followed, holding his hand as we slipped. Frida kept stepping in front of me, asking to go back. I sent her out from under my feet. I ran with rain pouring off me. A stream, or a waterfall gushed in the distance; I couldn’t make out where. Mark jogged ahead, stopping occasionally, and then changing direction slightly. He stopped next to the arroyo. That dry sandy beach of ours now had a river running full speed down the embankment, taking branches, rats’ nests, and who knows what else with it. The rushing water was so loud he had to shout. I still didn’t catch what he said so he pointed.

On the banks I spotted the frogs. Tons of them, all echoing each other to some internal rhythm, one moment deafening, and the next a silent pause before they started up the chorus again. These were the voices that had woken us both up. I stared at them, absolutely thrilled and fascinated by their shapes and sizes. Where did they come from? Did they live in the dirt all year, waiting for this? The rain slammed into us continuously, I was drenched, my hair stuck to my head, and water ran into my eyes. I blinked.

“Want a bath?” Mark stuck his mouth next to my ear. He nodded down stream at our beach.
I grinned, “we might as well, we’re already wet.” I followed him down the rocks and he found a spot that curved up and past three huge rocks, making a pond. We curled up against each other and shouted sweet nothings.

“Where’s the tent?”
I walked next to Mark as we headed home to warm up and make breakfast.

“I don’t see it. Do you?”
The sandy campsite was now a sodden mess of twigs, our trash bags, and a couple of cardboard boxes that had lodged themselves in the bushes. No tent. We looked at each other and then downstream. Mark nodded once and set off into the mud. He searched down the arroyo for some ten minutes before he came back with a piece of fabric in hand. Emerald green, wet, and muddy.

“Was this it?” He held it out to me to inspect.
“It could be. But what about our clothes? Did they wash away too?”

“I don’t know. What else did we have in there? Oh, my ties and nice shirts were in a sports bag, a box of photos and letters, some books, oh and that box of vinyl too, damn. Could it really wash away something that heavy? Come on let’s go, it’s your stuff too, you know?” He paced impatiently, scratching his beard.
I waited a moment and offered, “We’ll look for everything when it stops raining, okay? I’ll help.”
Mark looked around helplessly once more and shrugged his shoulders in defeat. He held my hand though as we paddled through the streaming rain. The door stood open, as we’d left it. Mark went in first as I took off my boots and hung them out to dry. The sun peaked out from behind dwindling cloud cover.

“What the hell?”
The bus was wrecked. Furniture overturned. Fridge open. Books scattered and at least one was half-eaten. A pile of puppy shit sat in the middle of the hallway.

“That dog of yours.” He looked around furiously. We couldn’t see her. I called and called but Frida didn’t come out. I stepped back into the bedroom. The covers were shaking.

“Mark? Come here, will you?”
“What is it now?”
I pointed at our bed.

“Oh baby,” was all he said. He sat on the edge and started talking to her soft and low, calling her name, talking to her as I had that first day. She stopped shaking and the lump under the sheet slowly wriggled towards his voice. Her head stuck out and she stared up at us both dolefully. Her big amber eyes blinked. Her ears were flat to her skull. Her terrier brush-like fur was soaked and droopy. She shook as I folded back the sheet and reached for her.

The rain slammed against the roof of the bus suddenly, one last attempt before the sunshine returned, and she flinched but came out finally and sat between us, leaning into the warmth of our bodies and craving our touch. I looked at Mark over her head. He shrugged.

“Now what?” I echoed.
“We clean up, one of us does, and the other can stay with her. I guess we don’t leave her alone in storms any more.”
I stood up. “I’ll make us some coffee then, you stay here. Here’s a towel for you both, catch.”

We spent the morning enjoying the rain, the dog, and finally, remembering to enjoy each other. Mark made us a fire in the woodstove, as I still didn’t do a good job with that. Coffee in bed, we chatted about the solar and what we should do. Mark decided that we could work it out ourselves. What’s so hard about it, right? A panel, an inverter, and some batteries. Yep, we could do that for ourselves. Frida had finally left us alone to curl up on her own bed but one eye kept watch at all times.

The driveway was a muddy river. The porch had held up, and the bench had stayed dry enough for us to sit outside and we listened to the buckets overflowing, drip-by-drip, all from off the one little tin roof. We now had ten five-gallon buckets of our own water – it was a pretty satisfying for a start in self-sufficiency. The rains finally stopped but the clouds hung around. The mountains hid from sight in a lingering dense fog.
Mark went back inside, putting away mugs and coffee pot, and generally cleaning up after me. Frida came outside and joined me on the bench. Mark listened to the radio, only to come tell me that another big storm was on its way.

“This afternoon,” he said as he sat next to us, looking around the mud pit we called home.

“Is it time for a motel?” I offered with a grin, tying on my boots, hoping he’d agree.
“You want to bail on us? Go back to your townie ways?” He teased.

I nodded. “Yep, no shame in that as far as I’m concerned. It’s just for a night, it’s not like I’m giving up and moving back to the city, you know. You’ll quit before me.”
There was an uncomfortable pause before he laughed me off and stood up. “All right then, let’s go.”

“Now?”
“Yep, why not? It’s stopped raining. I’ve drunk three cups of Joe and I’m raring to go. So let’s go, right?”
I grabbed my backpack and cowboy hat as I closed the door behind us. Frida followed me closely, still scared.

“You drive.” I threw him the keys with a grin.
“No, you drive. I’m tired of driving all the time, it’s your turn.” Mark whined as he picked up a guitar and followed us.
I raced to the car, jumping over some puddles, splashing through others, and claimed the passenger seat. Frida ran after me and climbed into the back seat. Mark stood there, staring at us all warm and dry, and climbed in with a shrug and then a brief smile. He nodded to himself.

“Okay, okay, girls. I’ll drive. You wouldn’t know how anyway.”

“Hey, do you need a ride?”
Mark pulled up next to this figure stumbling along Harold’s Way in the mud. He turned. I tried not to gag. His eyes were both swollen shut, his mouth dripped a fine trail of blood and his face was a mass of eggplant bruises. He held his right arm close to his torso. I looked at Mark, shaking my head frantically. Too late, the man was coming up to my window. He leaned down. Frida growled from her back seat.

“That would be great. I’m trying to get to the clinic in town.”
“Okay.”
Neither of us knew what to say exactly. We drove slowly through the mud, occasionally slipping off to one side or the other. Thank God for four wheel drive. Finally I had to ask,

“Hmm, are you okay?”

The man turned to face me. I wish he hadn’t. Frida leaned next to me, none to happy with sharing the car. She grumbled deep and low.
“It looks worse than it is. Are you two the ones out by Dieselhead?”
Mark nodded as he drove. “Yeah, why?”
“Well, don’t tell him that you picked me up.”
“You mean, he did this to you?”
“No, but he arranged for me to leave town. He wants me gone.” The man shook his head and mud flew everywhere. Luckily he’d stopped bleeding. His jacket was soaked through and his jeans were caked in layers of clay and sand. He smiled at me and I saw beyond the yikes-factor. He had a friendly open grin, with only one tooth was missing.

“Thanks for picking me up. I don’t know that I’d have made it out of there on my own. Most people drive past me.”
I had to wonder why but I didn’t ask. Not directly. “Really?”
He turned back to watch where we were going as he started to talk about living in Oliver. He’d been in town for some eight or so years from what I could gather, and never as a popular man. “To start with, they thought I was a Narc. Now they think I’m going to steal whatever’s lying around.”
“Are you?” Mark sounded quite firm, most manly for a second.

“No, I’m not. And you just helped me out more than you can imagine. I’d not do anything to you, or your place, honest.”
I believed in his messed up logic. I think we’d just paid our insurance dues. He told me about the trailer he’d rented being burnt down in an accident in March, and since then he’d been couch surfing around the area.

“But I think I’ve run out of places to stay. Did you say you have a space? Extra studio or something? I could trade you.”
Mark said that no, we’d lost our tent on the floods, had our own place, but thanks for offering. It was all quite polite of him considering the situation. The car started sliding to the right as we crested the one small hill. I clutched Frida a little too tightly and she yelped. We drove down an embankment and into a riverbed. A creek rushed past my door. Great. The car stalled out. It started to rain again. Great. Mark gave me a look of frustration and stepped outside to see what we could do. Not much by his helplessness of his shrug. I opened the door, stepped shin deep into cold water, and joined him. Reluctantly. Our wandering hitchhiker sat inside and stared at us through the glass. I turned my back on him. I whispered to Mark. He went back over and asked the guy to get out and help us.

After checking it out from all angles, Mark had a plan. The three of us searched the road for loose rocks and stacked them around the tires and made a ramp back onto the road. It kept on raining. Frida started to whimper again so I put her in Mark’s seat with a scarf of mine to suck on. She watched me through the window.

The ramp was built. Mark got in. He started it up. The car didn’t move. I fell in the mud. Like I said, it was great.
We all sat in the car not knowing what to do.

A Dodge truck drew up beside us and stopped in the middle of the road, and the Hitchhiker flinched but said nothing. A young couple – did I really just say that? They were in their twenties at least, but anyway they both climbed down and introduced themselves, telling us how they lived a few miles past us, way out at the end, and rarely came out. They were pretty friendly, nice, you know? Three young kids peered out the truck windows. Frank and Debbie were homesteading, home schooling, and basically staying home. We were lucky; it was their regular trip to Santa Fe, bad weather or not, they always drove to town once a month. He pulled his cowboy hat back on and shrugged on a denim jacket. With leather gloves, Frank took out a ten-foot chain and tied our car to his bumper. The Hitchhiker hung back, being very low key for a man with a smashed in face; you’d almost not notice him. Debbie climbed into their truck and with only a second glance she pulled us out. Mark whooped it up in glee and Frida barked in distress. I let her out and she ran over to Mark to make sure nothing was wrong with him. He petted her as he took out his wallet to pay our saviors.

“What? No chance. We’re neighbors, that’s what we do. Help each other out.”
“Well, can we invite you all over sometime?” Mark offered.

Frank held out his hand, “We’d be honored to do just that. We’ll stop on by some afternoon with the kids. Do you both have kids?”
“Not yet,” said Mark.
“No plans,” I said.

Frank smiled at us both a little uncertainly. He unhooked his chain. “Well, okay then, you can follow us out to the highway if you like. And you’ll see us again. Pleased to meet you both.” He shook our hands. Debbie pulled on her sunglasses and gave us a wave as she waited for Frank to climb into the Dodge. She slowly drove off and waited for us to catch up.
I looked around. “Where is he?”
“Who? Oh, right, yeah, where is he?”
I looked over at the car and Frida had jumped back in through a window. I walked closer to check on her. She was alone. Our hitchhiker had disappeared. So had my wallet.

Living The Dream:6

Posted on February 26, 2017 by Sarah Leamy

As part of the ongoing Sunday installments of the novel. You can find the other chapters on here, posted each Sunday morning. Thanks!

JUNE: BACK TO SCHOOL

“In that? You want us to live in that?”

The bus stood in the middle of a circle of Junipers, facing southwest. The tires had sunk into the dirt but still held air, barely. The windows were so dusty and dirty that I couldn’t see much inside, only that there were boxes and furniture by the looks of it. The paint job was, shall we say, of a hippy nature? It was a kid’s idea of a color co-coordinated rainbow, with cartoons of the mountains and sky behind and above us, probably a stoned kid at that. What would my mom think?

I found a picnic bench hidden nearby with flagstones and rocks the size of my head scattered across the ‘yard’. Piles of pallets and empty milk crates lay over to another side. Empty beer bottles hung from branches. It was a mess. I didn’t like it. I was tired after we’d walked the whole landscape for hours looking for the damn thing, only to find it hidden in a small dip in the endless ridges and riverbeds near the driveway’s end. Near our fire-pit, that is. It was not on the far side as the bartender had told Mark. Forty acres are much bigger than you’d imagine, by the way.
I was tired and cranky, or rather potentially cranky if I didn’t get my way, the way back to the kitchen. Mark opened the front door, the passenger door to be technical, and peered inside.

“Phew, it stinks.” He stepped off the steps and pulled me back a few feet. “I’m going in, but if you hear me scream, don’t worry, it’s only the rats. I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t go in. Don’t be stupid. I’m hungry. Come eat with me and we can deal with this in the morning, okay?” I whined, I’ll admit it, I whined like a five year old.
“I want to open all the windows, that’s all. Go ahead and I’ll be with you in half an hour at most. I promise.” Mark gave me a kiss and sent me away to eat.

Once back at camp, I pulled out the last of the bread and cheese. I sliced the spring onions and cut the avocados into halves. I poured out more water for us both. I sat on a sandstone boulder shaped like a banana. I ate for ten minutes straight and immediately felt happy again. It was gorgeous here.

We’d created ourselves a home-base in a sweet looking dry river bed, near the only green leafy trees and a couple of wild flowers. Mark had made us an outdoor kitchen area, using the table and chairs from his dad, finding a shaded spot for the cooler and stacking my grandma’s plates and dishes on display across the rocks. He’d put a plank across a couple of branches for the coffee can and kettle. He’d even dug a rather shallow outhouse for in the mornings. I’d have to wait on the dogs, he said, and anything fancier than the pit toilet. One thing at a time, right?

This place, this land of ours was absolutely beyond anything I’d ever imagined. To think we hadn’t even explored the property fully. It was somewhat embarrassing, but oh well, eh? There was so much to do and I didn’t know how.

That first time we’d visited the area, it had snowed so very lightly that the whole world looked fresh and soft, and that was in April. I couldn’t believe it snowed in the desert. Mark and I were visiting New Mexico for my 32^nd birthday and we’d heard about this funky artsy town in the hills, and we had to come see for ourselves. We’d parked at the north end of town by the general store and had walked around for an hour or so. It doesn’t take much more than that, however long you look at all the galleries. On the way back to the rental car, I’d spotted the sign: Ocean View Properties.

I’d poked Mark and pointed it out to him. “Well, someone has a sense of humor. Let’s go in, want to?”

The great boyfriend that he is had smiled and opened the door for me. Two hours later, we’d driven up and down the back roads, checking out all the options. We came to one last piece of vacant land. The realtor was about to give up on us, I could tell. After showing us six other places, Doug no longer offered all the gossipy news of each and every home we passed. He drove in silence. I chatted nervously.

We traveled along one winding gently sloping dirt road for miles. On either side, homes were half hidden in the rolling hills and empty valleys. The sun was setting and the sky lit up with such an array of yellows, gold’s, with layers of sienna, burnt ochre and even purple. I was craning my neck out the window to see more when Doug pulled up at a chained driveway. He stopped but left the engine running.

“This is the last property I have for sale,” he’d said, not even bothering to get out the SUV. I flew out and skipped up the dirt path. I stepped around the No Trespassing sign painted on an old truck tire. I did a three hundred and sixty degree once over and decided.
“We’ll take it.”

Mark climbed out at that and looked at me, “are you sure, honey? Shouldn’t we look around at least?”
“Nope, we’ll take it, as it is. How much is it?”

Footsteps suddenly loud in the silence woke me. I squeaked in surprise. Mark washed his hands in the bucket of water and put the cold wet fingertips on my neck with a grin. I squealed in delight this time.

Later on that evening, as Mark smoked and smiled contentedly, I made us a plate of cheese and bread, a collection of all our picnic foods. I sat on one boulder, him on another. Stars and planets peeked out from a slight cloud cover. I sighed and lay back, staring overhead.

“Have you ever seen so many stars?” I asked quietly. I put on a green fleece jacket.
“Nope, you?”
“No, not even when I visited Canada with Mom. It rained where we were in Ontario. This is incredible. I wish I could take a photo of it and send it to her.”
“There’s postcards for that, you know?” Mark passed me the water bottle after taking a swig for himself.

The silence grew. Mark had fallen asleep again. I stumbled across the hundred feet to the campsite and found the flashlight. I picked up the sleeping bags and came back down into the creek bed, the sandy dried up, never seen water in the last century, creek bed. I covered Sleeping Beauty with the bag and sat back. I opened another bottle of wine. The nights were too good to miss.
I planned my new home. A stone house, built like a tower perhaps? We could use the sandstone and flagstone from on the land. Or a yurt, like in the Steppes of Russia, or wherever they came from? I wonder how much they cost. No, a wooden cabin, that would look great. We could also use straw to build, that’s the in-thing these days, to build a good “Green” and sustainable home, we could use straw. Do they grow it in New Mexico? Adobe, of course, that’s a good local building material and we do want to do it right. I’d like us to fit in.

Mark could make the bricks for us. Yeah, I like that idea, Mark’s homemade adobe bricks.

“Bandanas?”
“Check.”

“Gloves?”
“Check.”
“Trash bags?”
“Check.”
“Rake and shovel?”
“Check.”

“Dustpan and brush?”

“Check.”

“Bleach and a bucket of water?”

“Check.”

“Okay, open the door.”

Mark walked in slowly. He motioned for me to follow. Neither of us spoke for a good five minutes as we took it all in. The bus was indeed a home. Or rather – it had been a home. The first few feet were taken up with an old faded plaid sofa and a small shelf unit. After that, there was a sink, and then a small fridge, a little two-ring gas burner, and even a handful of brightly painted wooden cupboards. I pushed aside some of the boxes and crates and kept on exploring in silence. On the right, a small room opened up into a shower stall and place for a compost toilet. The last ten feet was a bed frame with a moldy mattress. Under the platform there were more cupboards for storage. I was duly impressed.

“Not bad,” I muttered.

Mark came up behind me and put his arms around me. “What do you think? It’s worth fixing up, isn’t it?”
I looked back along the thirty-something feet of this school bus. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. He made it into a real home, didn’t he?”
Mark nodded. He pointed out the woodstove tucked away near where the driver’s seat used to be.

“Central heating,” he laughed. He walked back to the front door. “Ready?”
“Yep.” I straightened my shoulders and stood tall. “Let’s do it. Let’s get this place cleaned up.”
I set to work. I started from the driver’s end of things and Mark worked on the ‘bedroom’, pulling out the mattress through the rather small emergency exit door. I focused on one square foot at a time. I swept up around the wood stove and scraped off the old ashes and sticky rat poop. Scraped. It doesn’t come up easily; it takes muscles to clean up that shit, so to speak. I knelt down on clean newspaper and slowly but surely got rid of each pellet. I filled one trash bag before I even got to the sofa. Under the cushions I found coins, a pipe, some papers, an old Santa Fe Reporter from the Nineties, oh, and a hairbrush. Pete had gray hair apparently. All went into the trash. I brushed the sofa down and washed it with bleach water. Not bad, I’d use it after another such wash or two. The stains had wiped away and the rose color shone more brightly. I sat on it before I remembered it was wet. When I moved the couch away from the walls, I didn’t find the horrendous piles I’d expected. Only a few more newspapers and a six-pack (empty) were lying there. I swept more. I moved down into the kitchen area. I opened the fridge and wished I hadn’t. It stank. I took a moment and tried again.

Mark was whistling to himself at the far end.

Old milk, eggs, some dried up bacon and what I presume was bread all flew into the trash. I fetched the bucket of bleach water and spent a good half hour scrubbing off the mold and leaving the fridge open to air out. I tipped out the drawers without even needing to look first. The cupboards were the same, open, scrape, trash, and then bleach. One by one. Mark started to sing some county ballads. Not a bad voice, I’d not noticed that before. I attacked the cook stove next. The grease had been burnt on so long ago that I got Mark’s pocketknife and simply scraped what I could.

“I think we’ll need to soak this somehow. Any ideas?”

Mark wandered over to see what I was up to. “Hmm, that’s pretty nasty. What do you think about tossing it and getting something new? I don’t think those cost that much.”
“Really? Under a hundred?”
“Yep, more like fifty.”
I grinned in relief. “Want to help me unhook it?”
Mark went and got his new wrench set and we got the damn thing out and into the trash pile. A two-ring burner doesn’t weigh much; it’s an awkward shape in a plastic bag. The stack of full bags was piling up into quite a heap.

“Break?”
“Yep, that sounds good.” He jumped out the back door and I met him under the canopy of trees. We sat quietly in the shade for a moment. I watched my friend lie down on the sandy ground with a huge smile on his face. He closed his eyes for a minute. He laughed softly.

“What would our friends think of this? Funny eh? I can’t imagine James or even Michael getting dirty like we are. They’d wait for us at a motel and order pizza.”
“Yep, they probably would. Although that sounds kind of good right now.”
Mark looked over at me lazily, “really? You’d rather be at a motel than here?”
I shook my head. “No, but the idea of going and getting clean and watching bad TV later this week sure does sound appealing. Can we? Make a date for once this is all done?”
“And go stay in town for a night? Okay, I think we can afford that. You ready for more?” He asked, half propped up on his elbows.
I stood up and reached out my hands and pulled him upright. His shirt was stained with god knows what, and his curly hair stuck out in all directions.

“Time to scrape more shit, my dear?” and he gave me a sweet gentle kiss before grabbing his gloves and the broom. He grinned widely at me as he stepped inside the bus.

I’d never loved him as much.

“Shall we paint it?”
I passed him a beer and nodded. “That’d make it all seem super fresh, wouldn’t it? Yeah, when we’re in town tomorrow let’s pick up some paint and brushes. What colors do you want?”
Mark sipped and looked over at the empty shelves and cupboards. He shrugged. “Since the outside is so crazy looking, can we pick one or two colors for inside and keep it at that? Maybe even just paint the outside a pale gray or green or something?”
The wind picked up and a few clouds were forming in the distance. The sky became ominously dark all of a sudden. I took a sip, ate some chips, and pretended I hadn’t noticed the storm coming in.

“Gold or light yellow with a white trim inside? To make the place seem bigger than it is? It’s only what eight feet wide and thirty feet long. That’s not a big home for two of us, is it?”
He motioned to the valleys and mountains around us. “This is our home. The bus is where we sleep and store our stuff, that’s all. I’d like to set up a better kind of outdoor kitchen. One that really works, you know, not that there’s anything wrong with our temporary one, but make it really nice, you know? A roof and tables and chairs and cupboards and all of it but without any walls. What do you think, Jenny? It wouldn’t be hard to do.”
“Sure, I’d like to sit outside for coffee in the mornings like we did today. That was incredible. The silence was almost disturbing, wasn’t it?”
Mark relaxed for a second before jumping to his feet. “I have something for you. I got it in town the other day. Now where did I put it?” He wandered over to the Subaru and rummaged around in the back seat. He came back with this hands hidden. He told me to close his eyes and put out my hands. I did.
“What is it?”

Scratchy six inches long dried sticks? What the hell? I opened my eyes. “What is it?”

“Sage. A sage stick for you. I was told you light the end with some matches or something, it gets real smoky, and you wave it around to clear bad energy or something. I thought you could do that to the bus for us. Go clean it up with your magical self.”
I looked up at Mark in surprise. “But you don’t believe in that stuff.”
“I know, but you do.”

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Living The Dream: Chapter 3

Posted on February 5, 2017 by Sarah Leamy

DECEMBER: CAMPING

The sun woke me. Nelson poked his nose under the covers and scooted closer against my shivering sleeping bag clad body. He sniffled contentedly as his warmth seeped through the layers of blankets and I laughed. The sun peeked over the mountain, and steam rose from the lake in front. The frost on the windows shimmered as it faded and dripped. The fire pit beckoned.

“Coming out, Nelson?” I sat up and grabbed the jacket and hunter’s cap. Nelson claimed the pillow instead and wagged his tail. “Okay, okay, you just warm yourself while I make the fire, get the coffee going and fry up some eggs, is that it?”
Thump. Thump. Nelson smiled his doggy smile as I opened the door and climbed out. The only problem with the 4Runner? You can’t open the tailgate from inside. I can live with that though.
Ravens flew overhead, crowing to each other as they swooped and soared in the light breeze. I shivered but poked at the embers. I added some old pinecones, yesterday’s newspaper, and a handful of small sticks. The fire took within minutes. I set the grate over the rocks and prepped the coffee pot. With chores done, I settled back on the tailgate.

I’d woken only the once during the night. Well, Nelson woke me. Another nightmare, I guess. He’d nudged his wet nose in my face until I took a deep breath and woke. Thump. Thump. I recalled reliving my memories of Mark and living in the hills together, walking along the arroyo to the school bus. The overnight solstice party at Andrew’s home with all that live folk music. Louise’s dogs greeting me on my weekly volunteering visit with her rescue. My heart broke to think I could lose all that.
I shook myself free of the images and tied my hair back into a loose ponytail. The coffee pot farted its readiness and I used the jacket sleeve to grab and put it onto the campsite’s concrete table, my new kitchen. I moved aside a crate of canned soups, snacks, teas, and cooking supplies. I poured out a mugful and added cream and honey. My days always start in such comfort if I can help it.

Nelson groaned softly then jumped out and ran down to the lake and drank deeply. Then he peed into the lake.

“Hey, bud, you hungry?”

Nelson bounded up, ears flat and tail wagging, and I passed down a full bowl of kibble. I’m constantly amazed at how much this boy can put away.
“What should we do today, then? Head west? Or simply find somewhere warmer than here? Like Arizona, you think? I wish I hadn’t forgotten the map at that tavern but oh well eh? I can fake it. The truck will take us wherever we want, and in comfort too, right boy?”

Nelson burped and sat down at my feet, staring into the hills around us, as if looking for someone.

“I know, I know, I miss Frida too.” Nelson looked up at me, hearing her name, but his ears drooped and he lay down across my boots unhappily.

In the bus together last summer, Mark had liked to sleep in with the dogs, but not me. Up and out early for me, sitting on the porch, watching the birds cruise the neighborhood, listening for the coyotes in the hills. Grabbing my journal, I wrote a few phrases remembered from the day before, just my passing thoughts, little reminders of sights and sounds on the road, just the two us, a girl and her dog. Those short interactions at the gas stations. The conversation with Salty Dan at the tavern in Farmington, meeting his wife, and talking of books we’ve loved. Finding the cemetery at the end of the national forest road, one that was in memory of firefighters who’d lost their lives protecting a nearby village. The eagle in the ponderosa. The snakeskin on the boulder at the signpost for this campsite. I made notes about Mark too, his comments that still hurt, and the ones I could answer now, too late I know. I carried this book with me, in the jacket, with a notebook of tasks to be taken care of if I decided to stay in Oliver. If I decided to make a go of living alone in the bus in a small community like that. I didn’t yet know, didn’t know if I had it in me. To go back or to see everyone again.

I stood and gulped back the last of the coffee.

“Ready yet, fella? Ready for a walk?”

Living The Dream: chapter two

Posted on January 29, 2017 by Sarah Leamy

JUNE: MEETING THE NEIGHBORS

“Maybe walking to town wasn’t such a great idea.”

We huddled in the shade of a half dead tree. Mark’s nose was lobster red. My tongue stuck to my lips. The heat was relentless. I’d not slept well. Mark had a hangover. What a perfect first day in New Mexico, eh?

We’d spent the morning making plans, what to buy, what we needed, where to set up the tent – that kind of thing. Oh, and ice, we needed ice. I’d suggested walking to Oliver.

It hadn’t seemed that far in the truck, going as slow and steady as we’d driven, I’d figured a few miles at most. Now though was a whole different perspective.

We passed the dead dog again. For some reason, we both walked up close and examined the body closely.

“A boy,” said Mark with authority. He poked the body with a stick of dried cactus. I’d kept back in case it stank. It didn’t. My curiosity drove me nearer. I noticed the tuxedo style of white chest and black body. White paws on three feet. Thick dense fur and a long scrawny tail, the dog was pretty odd looking I have to say. I nodded wisely.

“Yep, a boy.”

We carried on walking for another ten minutes before taking a break. The water bottle was empty by then. I noticed that Mark’s navy blue shirt had large wet rings under his armpits. Mark looked at me strangely when he noticed me staring. “I hear something.”
“Uh huh.” I rolled my eyes.
“No, seriously. I can hear a car or a truck or something. Come on.” He stepped back out into the full day sun. June at midday was not going to be my favorite time of year, I decided. I followed my boyfriend and we started walking once more. The thought of a beer at the tavern kept me going, sort of. The trees no longer seemed as dead and useless as yesterday, I saw them as potential time-outs and craved sitting under each and every one. I noticed the range of colors but had no words to describe them. I’d need to get a thesaurus for the eighteen shades of brown.

A beat up old diesel truck pulled up behind us but I stayed under a juniper tree. Mark chatted away and within minutes I found myself sitting between him and the driver. Danny. Danny the Dieselhead, he told us to call him.

“So you two bought old Pete’s place, did you?”
He took me by surprise. “Yeah, how did you know?”
“Well, you’re not locals for one. Why else would someone be stupid enough to walk down here in the middle of the day? It’s fucking hot out there.” Danny laughed harshly and spat out of his window. “Smoke anyone?” He offered a roll-up.

I shook my head. I’d stopped smoking tobacco eight months and three weeks ago. Mark’s hand shot out and took it from him with a thanks. He lit it. It didn’t smell like tobacco to me. I sat back to get out of the way of the smoke. My boyfriend was getting high with someone we’d just met and I wasn’t too happy about this. I kept my mouth shut though. For now.

They started talking about Oliver. Danny drove slowly, swerving this way and that to miss the rocks and boulders that we’d simply driven over the day before. He told us that even though Oliver, NM claims only three hundred residents, there are some four hundred locals in the hills and valleys surrounding the place.

“Like us.” I piped up.

Danny stopped talking. He looked over at me in my jean shorts and new red tee shirt with the Zia symbol. My sunglasses were high on my forehead and my short bleached blond hair stuck to my ears.
“Yep, like you, right.” He turned back to Mark. “Do you have any guns?”
Mark hiccupped, “Yes.”

“No.” I said just as quickly.

Danny looked between us, raising his glasses. “You might want to say yes, if any one else asks you. It keeps the riff raff away.”
I coughed. Mark knew what that meant; Danny was not exactly an emblem of the thriving middle class by any means. Bailing wire and duct tape held the truck together. The seats were worn through and covered by old blankets, themselves held together by dog fur. Dog fur.
“Are you missing a dog?”
“You mean that black and white boy back there?”
I nodded.

“Yep, that was mine. He never did listen. The coyotes got him last week.”
“How?” I couldn’t help but ask. He seemed so nonchalant about it all.

“Well, every night they’d come a calling, howling in the arroyos and picking off the hares and the critters near by. Old dumb dog of mine wanted to run with them for the last three years, but I’d get him in the kennel by nightfall. Until last week. I was in the city. Santa, that is. I got home late. The damn dog was gone. Poor bastard never learned, did he?”
I stared out the window. Note to self: keep dogs in at night.

Mark asked where Danny lived, was it nearby? Danny slowed down to a crawl even my Grandma could have kept up with and he pointed out behind us. Into the barren blank land that I was to call home.

“Yep, there, there she is. My home. Built it myself I did. Took me some twenty years, but she’s done now. Well, not quite but almost. Brick by brick, I made them myself.”

It took him that long? Not us, Mark wasn’t going to be some slacker. A year at most, that’s what I figured. I looked hard, I did, but I didn’t see a home out there. Mark kept trying to find it, is that it? Is that it? Danny finally stopped the truck and made us get out. He stood on a rock and pointed back towards our place.

“There. See that twisted juniper tree, hugging a pinion, with a huge boulder to the right?”
He waited patiently as we stared and stared, as if I could make out which tree but then Mark found it. He described it to me, “Straight ahead, thirty degrees north, down four inches, there is dark grey rectangle. See it? That’s the roof, I think.”
Danny slapped him on the back. “Well done. Not bad for a tourist.”
“We’re neighbors,” I exclaimed excitedly.

Danny sighed. “Yeah, but don’t come over asking for a cup of sugar. I’m not that kind of neighbor. I don’t like visitors, not generally. The dogs don’t like it neither.”
“Dogs? You’ve got more?”
“Oh yeah, they keep on having pups, you know how it is.”
I bit my tongue. Danny was our new neighbor. Anyway, we needed the ride to town. Damned if I was walking any more today.

Danny dropped us off at my Subaru in the parking lot of the general store. Mark wanted to get the shopping done, coffee, bacon and eggs, two bags of ice and all of that. I pointed out that it’d all go off by the time we got home.

“Oh, right. So beer first and after that shopping?”
I gave him a hug; he was so smart sometimes. I opened up the car and sat down. Then back up. Fast. The seat burnt my thighs. The water bottle on the back shelf had drooped. The M&M’s were slime. We cranked open all four windows and stood back.

“Walk to the tavern?” Mark suggested.

“Yep, let’s leave it like this. Oh, and add it to the list that we need the window shades.”
Mark took out his notebook and wrote it on page three of the things we needed. I took my bag and off we walked. It’s a half-mile from one end of town to the other. The sun shone. Tourists passed us and smiled. Kids biked down the road with dogs chasing at full speed.

Life was great but for these facts: My head hurt. My skin burnt. My knees wobbled. My new Nikes pinched my feet. I needed a cold drink, preferably alcoholic.

On either side of the two-lane highway were small old wooden houses made into galleries and stores. A thrift store. Rugs. Art. Art. Art. More art. Cowboy boots. Art. Stone work. Art. And one coffee shop. I craved beer not coffee after our little adventure. We kept on walking.
“How’s the hangover?”
Mark laughed easily. “Not bad actually. I don’t know why I felt so crap. I used drink much more than three glasses of wine in Washington. It must be because I was tired from driving or something. How are you feeling today?”
“Apart from hot and tired? Pretty good. I can’t wait to sit down with the locals and talk to them about living out here. I wonder if anyone knows we’re new here?”
Mark shook his head. “Well, I don’t reckon they’ll take to us that quickly, you know. They don’t know us from Adam, or the rest of the tourists. Hey, isn’t it July the Fourth next weekend? I wonder what they do to celebrate here.”
We crossed the road with two yellow and orange local mutts and followed them up the steps and into the tavern. Yes, the dogs went inside too.

Living The Dream. Chapter 1.

Posted on January 22, 2017 by Sarah Leamy

JUNE: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

“Are we there yet?”
Mark hung tightly onto the steering wheel, and pumped the brakes nervously. “I hope so, Jenny, I hope so.” He downshifted just to be on the safe side.
The mountain dropped down steeply in front of us. The road practically melted away in the midday sun. Rocks slipped out from under the U-Haul. Stones and the gravel skidded away with a lurch. Mark swore under his breath. The dirt road was barely one car wide. Boulders blocked the path. I climbed out to move the biggest ones. The sun beat down and the air conditioner cranked out as best it could but it barely kept up. We drove downhill at two miles an hour. Gringo Gulch appeared before us, a steep empty canyon with only one homestead half-hidden in the distance. The gravel slid from under us again. The brakes started to smell. Mark’s curly hair lay flat against his forehead and his arm glowed with sunburn.

“I knew we should’ve come out at least once more. This is crazy, Mark, crazy.” I pulled out my camera and started clicking away.

“Are you getting cold feet?” He asked, patience worn thin. “This was your idea to start with. Let’s move to Santa Fe, she said, let’s buy that land we saw – only the once, mind you – and just move, she said.”

I opened the window and took in the desert heat, the pinions and the junipers, and the wildlife. My cowgirl denim shirt stuck to my back.

“It’s not like we can go back, is it? The school will have replaced me already and you were just…” I put my camera down. “Sorry. I’m tired. I didn’t mean it, okay?”
Mark sighed. “I was just a musician? Is that it? Thanks.” He reached for his cigarettes.

“What’s that?” I threw my apple at a snake crossing in front of us. “A rattlesnake?” I missed as it slithered onwards and upwards, glancing across as we crawled past. I shivered. We didn’t have snakes in Olympia.

“I’m glad we only got the twenty footer. Can you imagine driving anything longer down here?” Mark lit up and drew in deeply. The brakes squealed one last time as we reached the bottom of the valley. Not one person in sight. Deserted. Desert.
“Are you sure this is the right way?”

Mark flicked ash out the window. “Well, when I looked on Google this was the shortest route. We came a different road last time, I guess. But remember that the realtor said your Subaru would do fine out there, right?”

“But I’m not driving this way, that’s for sure, I’d hit every rock. Didn’t he take us down a long flat smooth road, that’s what I kinda remember? There were miles and miles of slow curves and lots of homes in the distance, right? What was it called?”
“Harold’s Way, I think.” Mark kept driving steadily as he checked the maps again and said, “Yep, this is the short cut, the direct route. I don’t know, Jen. We might want to bring your car the other way tomorrow. I’m glad we left it in town.”

We kept on slowly driving, desperately searching the landscape for the driveway, or a sign of some kind. It’s not like there was anyone to ask for directions. We drove on in silence. Beside us, a dried up riverbed followed the lowest point, and we ended up crossing rocky sandstone ledges every few hundred yards. Dead cacti lined the path. Dead pinion trees. Dead dogs.

“Is that really what I think it is?” Mark had noticed it too. We both stared at the swollen black furry body in the middle of the tracks. “I wonder what killed it?” he continued as he steered around it with a slight bump.
“And whose was it? Should we put up a sign at the store?” I looked back out the window uneasily.
Mark rolled his eyes. “Are you going to get out and check its tags? Do you really think it has a city license on a nice leather collar? This is the Wild West, remember, Jenny? We’re not in Kansas any more.”
“We never were in Kansas, you dope. No, drive on. I just want to get home.”
Blue sky beat down on us as we crawled along Gringo Gulch at four miles an hour. With not one cloud in the sky, the canyon was painfully bright and barren. The rise and fall of the hills and creek beds obscured any homes or signs of life. It was bright, too bright for my blue eyes. Where were my sunglasses? The junipers bunched together in clumps with dead straw-like grass scattered over the dirt. I didn’t see a single flower. How weirdly beautiful it all was to me though. I looked all over, my head spinning around and around, noticing branches full of crows and ravens, the incredible silence, and then we rounded yet one more corner.

“I recognize it. This is it, right?”
Mark stopped the truck. He threw his cigarette butt out his window and looked around.

“I think so. I think so. Let’s go see, shall we?”
In front of us, the road split north and south. On the western edge, a driveway, well, a dirt track led out onto towards the mesa, the valley that is, which sprawled all the way to the mountain range far away. A For Sale sign lay flat on the mud embankment. The dirt track had a chain strung across from two wooden posts.

Mark opened his door and climbed down, stretching his six-foot skinny white boy frame, and reaching high with arms outstretched. His jeans hung low and loose, with a white tee shirt neatly tucked in, and his black boots shone. He suddenly shouted out at full volume.

“WE’RE HOME.”

He turned to me, grinning a wicked smile so huge and happy. “We did it, Jenny. We bought land. It’s ours. All ours. We’re free, Jen. We’re free.” He spun wildly round and round.

I ran to him and jumped into his arms, crashing us against the U-Haul, kissing him deeply and suddenly we’re both yelling aloud, home, we’re home. The echo came back at us, welcoming us here. A huge pitch-black crow flew up off the gatepost, crowing at us to shut the hell up.

I laughed. We’d done it. I wasn’t going to give up this time.

“Where are we going to sleep?”
I looked around at the pile of stuff we’d unloaded. The ramp to the back of the U-Haul was down, and twenty cardboard boxes were stacked neatly under a tree, next to a five-gallon container of drinking water and a cooler of food and beer.

I spread my arms wide. “I don’t see an RV, do you? We did buy 40 acres with an RV, right? Or am I missing something here?”
The heat was relentless. Where was a cowboy hat when you needed one? My face burnt up. I strode around, steaming.

Mark, however, sat on the ground on the shady north side of the truck with a small plastic bottle of water resting on the dirt between his boots. He grinned up at me. He shook his head and held out his hands to me.

“I’ve no idea where it is, but yes, there’s an RV here somewhere, that was part of it. We can look tomorrow, okay? But, hon isn’t it great? We can sleep under the stars tonight. I haven’t done that since I was a kid. I wonder if we can see the Milky Way from here?”
He passed me the water and I drank deeply. I shook my head and told him we were too far south for that. Was I thinking of the Northern Lights? I sat next to him and poked him in the thigh.

“So we’re sleeping rough tonight, are we Cowboy? You’ll make us a fire and protect me from the roaming bands of thieves?”
Mark hugged me to him. “Sure will, little Missy, I sure will. And you’ll be making me my dinner of beans and beef over the fire-pit, won’t you?”
“I was thinking of some red wine, the French loaf and that brie we have.”
Mark snorted. “Yeah, that’s probably more like it. But we can make a fire and sit on the rocks and stay up all night, can’t we? I’ll push the worst of the stones out the way and we can pull out the sleeping bags right here. What do you think?” He sounded like a ten-year-old on summer vacation with his best friend. “We can tell scary stories.” He stood up, energized and ready to go again. He brushed the sand off his nice blue jeans.
I laid down, pleading a headache, and I watched as he made us a fire-pit, placing the rocks in a circle, finding a couple of flat flagstone-like pieces for seats, and he wandered out of sight, fetching branches and kindling. I fell asleep.

We’d come with nothing practical, that’s all I can say, nothing but the bare necessities of tent, camping gear, and sleeping bags. Plus a truck full of my grandparents’ furniture I’d just inherited. Fifteen boxes of Mark’s books and his drum set and bass guitars. I’d brought my own guitar I never play, but planned to make the most of living out there, finally able to practice in peace. We had a laptop and our two cell phones. Some clothes, I admit to, but mostly they were Mark’s. I’d bought the land. Mark would build us a home. That was the plan, to live in the RV as we build a home.

The red wine flowed through me easily and freely and I discovered the joys of peeing outside.

“Look the other way.”

“I can’t see you over there. Remember? It’s pitch black from where I am. What time do you reckon it must be? My god, look at all those stars. Do you know any of the names?” Mark kept talking, to hide the splashes, or from pure wonder, I didn’t know. I walked back to the glow of the fire and squatted down opposite him.

I looked at my watch. It was only ten thirty, early for us. I poured out another beaker’s worth of wine. Trader Joe’s best three-dollar vintage was perfectly doable out here, and anyway, I couldn’t see the label, and we had no guests. That made me think.
“Do you think we’ll get visitors out here? My mom? What would she think about peeing like I just did?” I couldn’t picture it.
“Wait until morning when you need a number two,” Mark reminded me with a smile in his soft voice.
“Oh my god, that’s right. Is there an outhouse? Or did you dig us a hole or something?” My voice squeaked embarrassingly. I coughed to hide it.
Mark laughed hard, and told me about how we’d be using buckets, making a compost toilet with straw and sawdust and I tuned out, figuring he’s just teasing his city girlfriend. Then I realized something.

“If I have to shit in a bucket, I want a dog.”
“Huh?” Mark scratched his chin; the day’s stubble was itching already. “I thought you didn’t like dogs?”
“Well, I do now. And a donkey.”
Mark choked on his wine and spat it into the fire. I pulled my leather jacket closer to me as the wind had picked up.

“Forty acres and a mule.” I explained. “And a dog, a nice big hairy friendly dog.”
“For the buckets?”
“Yep, if you want a compost toilet, that’s the deal, okay?”
He stood up and reached for my hand. “Deal.”
We shook.

The night ticked way and I wobbled off into the shadows every few hours. We talked about how this all came to be, the incredulous looks our friends had given us as they waved us off last week. Mark lay down and climbed into this sleeping bag, saying so quietly I almost didn’t hear him, “damn, it’s beautiful here, isn’t it? And it’s so empty and silent, I can’t believe it.”

We listened in awe. Here the world turned on a sigh.

“No-one telling us what to do.”

“No bills.”
“No permits.”

“Nothing, no traffic, no cop cars, nothing like a damn city with its never ending noise and rules.” I pulled out my camera. “This is the life, Mark, it really is pretty magical here.”

I stumbled up hill. Falling over rocks and into cacti made for a slow progress. Finally, I stopped and I turned slowly three hundred and sixty degrees. The silhouettes of trees and shrubs filled the landscape eerily. I saw neither houses nor lights. I’d heard no traffic all night long. Only in the far distance, the interstate showed some stream of cars’ headlights as they drove north to Santa Fe and beyond. I heard nothing but for a coyote. Suddenly I laughed aloud. I’d heard a coyote. I stood stock-still and stared into the darkness, willing one to come up close to me. I’d read all about this kind of stuff on the drive across Idaho and Utah. A power animal is one that comes to you repeatedly. They have messages for us if we listen. I planned to do just that.

I waited for the coyote to come back.

“What the hell was that?” I whispered as I poked Mark with my boot. He murmured in his sleep. I poked harder. “There’s something out there.” I hissed at him. “Do something.”

“What?” he sat up fast and looked at me. “What? Oh, my head. Why does it hurt? I didn’t drink that much, did I?”
“Who cares about that, Cowboy? You’re meant to protect me. I heard something in the boxes, in our stuff. What is it?” I poked him once more and for good measure I grinned sweetly in the darkness.
Mark sat there in his brand new sleeping bag around his waist. His nice clean white tee shirt looked rumpled by sleeping on the sandy ground. So much for him trying to smarten up, damn musicians are scruffy buggers. He stood up, shedding his bag as he stretched, groaning slightly. I turned on my flashlight and passed it to him. He tucked his tee shirt back in and grabbed a fleece sweater from my pillow-pile. With another of his easy-going smiles, he told me to wish him luck. I blew him a huge wet kiss and sent him off to be the ‘man’. I watched the light flickering up and across our belongings as he looked for signs of life. He said nothing but kept moving closer. He checked the cooler and the boxes of books first. He went round back and into the U-Haul. I lost sight and sound of him. I sat huddled in my sleeping bag and cuddled my knees against my chest. I poked the fire and put on another log. I waited nervously.

“I think I know what it was.” Mark came back over to my side of the fire, bringing his bag with him. He spread out next to me and lay me down, spooning me through REI’s idea of a comfortable bed.
“What was it? A coyote? An owl? What?”
“A rat. A pack rat to be precise.”
I sat up quickly. Mark told me that he’d seen pictures of them in Mother Earth magazine.

“Oh, and they’re pretty cute by the way.”
“Cute? A rat is cute? And it’s in my stuff?”
“Our stuff. But yeah, it was cute and settled in for the night. We can do something about it in the morning okay Jen? Not now, I’m tired and it’s pitch black out here.”
“But how are we going to kill it?”
“We?” he asked, teasing from behind me, out of reach.

“Well, you, how are you going to kill it?” I giggled as he snuggled closer.

“And so spoke the vegetarian pacifist? What about your love of animals? What about those power animals? What if this is one of yours?”
“Ha, ha, very funny, just don’t let it any where near me tonight, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m on duty right now as I…” and with that he fell asleep. I lay there and listened intently. The flashlight stayed close by. I flinched at every whisper and rattle. I kept the fire bright. I finished the bottle of wine alone. Like I said, Mark slept soundly, the bastard.

Living The Dream

Posted on January 15, 2017 by Sarah Leamy

DECEMBER: NOT ALL WHO WANDER

“I know. I know. I’m lost. I don’t know where we are either.”
Nelson stared at me with those odd eyes of his, one blue and the other amber, unblinking, waiting for more. I shrugged and rearranged the cushions behind me. I propped myself up with a sigh next to him.

“It must have been last night, at that tavern in Farmington. I bet I left the map on the table or something. I didn’t see anything in the motel room when we left, did you?”
Of course he didn’t. He’d already been waiting in the 4Runner. As usual, he’d been impatient to hit the road.

I sipped my cold coffee and stared out the truck’s windows with a smile. I’d already folded the seats down and installed a memory foam mattress, cushions, and a thick pile of blankets and sleeping bags. We were living in style these days.
A blue-gray lake filled a valley’s basin, it was small by most standards but for New Mexico, not bad. Mountains surrounded us filled with ponderosas and cedar, native grasses, and shrub oaks. We’d walked the hills and explored various animal tracks earlier, picking up dead and down wood for the night’s campfire. Empty, the land felt empty yet loved and I saw no one. No one to ask for directions. All I knew was that we were somewhere in the Apache reservation, on a campsite next to a lake. I’d paid the five bucks in the envelope and settled in for the night. I still couldn’t find the damn map though. I figured we’d just drive west in the morning, sun to our backs, and follow these dirt roads through the wilderness until we came back out into the Carson National Forest.

Nelson sighed and licked my hand. His pale tongue rasped against my dried skin. I reached over and petted this friend of mine. A husky mix, I wasn’t sure what he’s mixed with, but he’s tall and rangy, shaggy caramel fur with a classic husky face. He’s not the wanderer though, more of a nervous Nellie, hence the name.

I stroked his head. “I don’t know where we are either my friend, but it’s not bad eh? Just the two of us? No more arguments with Mark, no cold school bus to wake up to, just us for a while.”

I finished the coffee and set the mug on the tailgate. I scooted out and stood in the cool evening air. I pulled the coat closer and called Nelson to me. Reluctantly my dog jumped down and stood next to me. He took a drink from the ever-present water bucket and then stared at me. I nodded. He ran to the lake and stopped, with paws only slightly wet, he drank his fill. The real deal, water from a lake, is much tastier than from a 5-gallon container a few days old.

I grabbed his bowl, filled it with kibble, and poured on some oil from the skillet. I hunkered down next to the fire pit and lay the paper, kindling and sticks in a pyramid. Lighting the flame, the fire crackled and took. The wind had luckily died down with the sun. I knew how to judge the fire risks these days. Nelson ate fast then wandered back to the water’s edge.

The campsite was barren, with not a soul in sight, and only a distant owl softly announcing the night to come for company. Clouds filtered out the last of the day’s winter sun and I shivered. Nelson stayed in sight, paddling carefully, and poking among the rocks. Like I said, he’s not the usual husky. Timid boy. Loving boy. He stays close to Mom. I sat on a boulder, enjoying the growing darkness.

I opened the cooler and pulled out a cold pilsner, one a day, that was my limit. It would be a challenge after those last few weeks with Mark, fighting, partying, and all with the background of Thanksgiving. Mom had even come and gone, oblivious of what was really happening in my happy home, well, maybe she knew. Mark announced one morning that he was leaving too. He left the next day.

Happy Holidays.

The fire flickered and embers cooked my potato. Nelson lay on the tailgate, happily watching me cooking, his own belly full, and bed warm and comfortable. That’s one thing I’ll admit to – I’ve learned how to camp in style, in comfort. Only what, six months ago was it that we moved into the bus? That I left the city life? Incredible really, I’d had no idea what I was getting myself into. How could I?

I sipped on a beer, poked the fire, pushing the potato off to the side, and using tongs, rolled it onto a plate. Nelson perked up. More food coming he knew, since I was not one to eat much these days. Nelson sighed in contentment and nudged my knees. I reached for his big head and scratched behind his ears.

“Yep, not bad eh? Not bad, this is living the dream, my friend, living the dream.”

The lake shimmered in the moonlight, clouds lingered, and the fire warmed us. Yes, not bad at all. I can do this. I can do this, with or without Mark. I hope.

Googling your own books is fun!

Posted on March 28, 2015 by Sarah Leamy

Createspace estore. https://www.createspace.com/5266256

In Santa Fe, NM: http://www.santafe.com/authors/sarah-leamy

On youtube, you can see videos of my home, animals, land rovers and even an interview! https://www.youtube.com/user/sarahleamy

Well, that should keep you going for a while, right? Thanks for looking! Take care, s

Radio Interview podcast for Living The Dream!

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Sarah Leamy

Honey Harris at KBAC just posted the link to the podcast from yesterdays interview. I haven’t listened yet. I thought it best to just post it first! Thanks Honey, KBAC and SantaFe.com for all your support over the years.

http://www.santafe.com/kbac/podcast/author-sarah-leamy-talks-about-her-new-book-living-the#.VQGSsI75fCY

Sarah Leamy

Essays, articles, and images

Tag Archives: fiction

Living The Dream: 16

Living The Dream: 15

Living The Dream: 13

Living The Dream: Chapter 3

Living The Dream: chapter two

Living The Dream. Chapter 1.

Living The Dream

Googling your own books is fun!

Radio Interview podcast for Living The Dream!

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