free hit counters
Chapter 47
The redeye out of Vegas wasn't crowded at all; Jennifer had a three-seat window block all to herself. Predictably, she took a window seat; she liked to look out at the lights spread out below. Crossing most of the country on the flight to O'Hare, they tended to be
scattered, and sometimes there was a nearly total blankness below them. She was on the plane's manifest as Jennifer Evachevski, and she only had to use the "Oh, Wow! Do you REALLY think I look like Jenny Easton?" gag once, in a shrill Brooklyn accent so obnoxious that she
wasn't bothered. Somewhere over Utah, or maybe it was Colorado, she fell asleep, and didn't wake up until the jet began its letdown for Chicago.
From there on, it wasn't a problem at all; no one even asked, and apparently no one even thought that she might really be what she looked like. After all, what would a glamorous Hollywood star, a recording star, be doing on the North Central 737 flying between
Chicago and Camden?
Which is not to say that she didn't get some attention, but it was the same attention that any pretty woman traveling alone would get; all of it was easy to brush off.
What really made the trip worthwhile was being asked for three pieces of identification at the rental car counter in Camden. Jennifer produced them readily, and they were accepted without question. That made it even better; it proved to her that Jenny Easton was still
in California.
It was a familiar drive up to Spearfish Lake. Once outside Camden, the traffic wasn't bad at all, but Jennifer was just a little uneasy, mostly because she was a little out of practice at driving. She made a mental note that she was going to have to drive in California
more, rather than just letting Blake do all the driving. Maybe Blake made it too easy to be Jenny Easton.
But it was so nice to drive out of the Camden suburbs on the four-lane, and watch it turn to two-lane near Moffatt, just about the time that the fields and clusters of houses turned to the forests and swamps and lakes of the north woods she'd longed for over the past
few months.
The reality of coming home didn't reach her until she made the left turn onto the state road near Coldwater, and hit the barren home stretch going up to Spearfish Lake. It was right along in here that she had first become Jenny Easton, or at least first realized that she
would have to become Jenny Easton. It had been on her first trip to Nashville, in the old Hornet, the one she'd taken to test the waters, see what sort of reaction she would get, when the realization struck her that "Evachevski" wasn't the sort of name that would go over very
well in country music. She hadn't stayed in country music long; while her first big hit, "Smoke Filled Room," had gone gold on the country charts, it was really too torchy to be country, but fortuantely she had a contract with a label that had broader interests than just country. It
was eight summers before, almost to the day, that she'd started that trip; a long eight years, indeed.
Jennifer had promised herself years before that she was going to retire when she was thirty. That was three and a half years off, and sometimes she wondered if she could hold out. But those were Jenny Easton thoughts, and she had to remind herself that Jenny was
back out on the coast, somewhere.
She flipped on the radio in the car; it came on with some local station, playing a polka. She found herself singing along with Frankie Yankovich, "Roll out the barrel, we'll have a barrel of fun . . ."
If Linda Ronstadt can do a miriachi record, she thought, I ought to be able to do a polka record. Boy, wouldn't Knox strip a gear when he heard about that! Now, that was a Jennifer thought, the Jennifer she liked to remember -- mischevious, needling people's
pretensions, the Jennifer that was in control of herself, of her own destiny, capable of handling anything.
The miles flew by as she headed up the state road to Spearfish Lake. The radio station playing on the car radio was rather eclectic; it followed Frankie Yankovich with Fats Domino, and then Hank Williams, Junior, but when it segued into the familiar lead for "Fever",
followed by her own voice, she hit the "search" button on the radio. ". . . and now, Nathan Chamberlain with the farm markets," the announcer said.
It was good to be home. "Sows up a quarter, barrows and gilts down an eighth" was music to her ears.
Though she was anxious to see everybody, Jennifer knew it was not a good day to stop by the Record-Herald to see her mother. It was a Tuesday, and Tuesdays were always bad, and would be worse, following a Monday holiday. She had a lot of friends at the
Record-Herald, and she knew that if she walked in there this morning, that everything would come to a screeching halt for an hour or more, and what the people there lost during the day, they'd make up during the evening. She thought she'd go in tomorrow, instead, mail day,
maybe pitch in to get the paper out -- help with the inserts, like she'd done in high school, or maybe run the Saxmayer. It would feel good to do something productive. She could shoot the bull with everybody, and not feel like she was dragging things to a dead stop.
Though Jennifer's parents knew she was arriving, it hadn't been clear until the last minute when she would arrive, and she'd told them not to do anything special. She made her first stop at the Appliance Center; her dad was in the middle of trying to sell a dishwasher,
but everything came to a screeching halt for a hug and a kiss, and a quick, noncomittal report on the trip. She helped her dad out by saying, "I've got one of these, and you can hardly hear it. It does a darn good job for the price," and was rewarded by hearing the customer say
they'd take it. Once her dad had the order written up, the store was empty for a while, so they just sat and talked for a while, mostly catching up on what had happened around Spearfish Lake.
"You can go on out to the club, if you like," Gil told her, "But we're staying in town for a couple of days. Brandy and Phil are home, so we decided we'd better stay in town."
"Brandy's home? Great! Do you know how long it's been since I've seen her?"
"Why don't you slide on home and see them?" Gil suggested. "They're only going to be in town for a couple of days. In fact, they've been hanging around in hopes of seeing you. Brandy's got a couple of days she's got to get in on Rod's new dig, then they're driving
out to Colorado for some research project."
"Great!" Jennifer replied. "I'm glad I caught them home. It really bothered me that I couldn't make it to her graduation."
"It was a pretty good program," Gil replied. "This time next year, plus a couple of months, and all you kids'll be gone. The house is really going to seem quiet."
"Maybe I'll have to move back in with you," Jennifer suggested. "I'll go home and see them. I wouldn't mind taking a nap, anyway. I was up late last night, and didn't get much sleep in the air."
In the driveway at home, the familiar Evachevski home of her memories, there was a three-on-three basketball game going on. Jennifer parked the rental across the street, and just watched for a second. It was apparently guys against girls, Phil Wine and Josh Archer
and Danny against Brandy and the Ashtenfelter girls.
Jennifer got out of the car, and quietly walked across the street, watching. Though every one of the guys was taller than any of the girls, it seemed pretty clear that the girls were having their way. Brandy had something to do with that, of course, but the Ashtenfelter
girls were contributing their own fair share. It struck her as a little odd that the Ashtenfelter girls would be here in town, but not odd enough to comment on. "Who's winning?" she asked finally.
"Jennifer!" Brandy yelled, and all of a sudden the ball was forgotten about in midair, and for a while there, it was all hugs and kisses and tears. It was good to be home.
Somehow, the party moved up onto the porch. Phil was the only one of the six that hadn't known Jennifer long before there had been a Jenny Easton; she'd only met him a couple of times, but they'd liked each other. Phil was a farm boy from Arvada Center, southeast
of Camden, and the fact that Jennifer Evachevski was Brandy's sister was more important than anything else Jennifer might have been, so he fit in nicely. He offered to go and get cokes for everybody, while the catching up on old times began.
One little mystery cleared itself up, as soon as everybody sat down: Josh and Amy sat down next to each other on one end of the couch, and Marsha and Danny shared the porch swing. The thought brought a smile to Jennifer's lips; Danny and Marsha had known
each other since they were babies, and had fought with each other about as long. Now, all of a sudden, they were good buddies. Amy and Josh were sitting pretty close, too, which solved the mystery of why the Ashtenfelter girls were in town. "What brought this on?" Jennifer asked.
"Brought what on?" Danny said.
"You two and you two," Jennifer replied, pointing.
"Oh, Josh and Amy had a date last month, and Marsha and I went along for the ride," Danny smirked. "We've been running around a lot together since."
"It must have been some date."
"They won't tell you," Brandy said. "I had to find out from Mom. Let's just say that it's a first date that none of them will ever forget."
"Hey, it's no big thing," Danny protested. "Anybody would have done it."
"Yeah," Brandy said. "But it just wasn't anybody that did it, you guys did."
"Well, what happened?" Jennifer asked.
"You know Ed Sloat? Works for the railroad?" Brandy asked. Jennifer nodded, and Brandy went on, "Josh and Amy wound up running CPR on him for about twenty minutes, while Danny and Marsha kept Jill Sloat from bleeding to death. Like I said, it's not a first date
that'll be easy to forget."
"Everybody makes such a big deal out of it," Danny said. "We just did what we had to do."
"Yeah," Brandy said. "And these kids have been the fearsome foursome ever since. You never see one of them but what you see the four of them, unless Danny or Josh are working."
"What are you doing?" Jennifer asked as Phil came back and started handing out ice-cold cans.
"We've been working at the railroad, for Mr. Ellsberg," Josh explained. "Just part-time. Trainee brakemen, mostly, but that includes cleaning grubby old engine parts, too."
"That makes me feel old," Jennifer said. "I remember when getting a job for Mr. Ellsberg meant you were going to be bag boys at the Super Market. What's Tara up to this summer?"
"She's a camp counseler at some girl scout camp in southern Michigan," Danny said. "I don't remember what the name of it is, but she calls it `Mosquito Valley'."
"How about Garth and Michelle?"
"They were up last weekend. They're working his tail off down there in Milwaukee, and he says he doesn't think that he's going to be able to make it up this weekend. Maybe next weekend. He'd really like to see you, too."
"I suppose there's still no chance that Mom's going to be a grandmother soon?"
"Nope. At least not for a couple years, if Michelle has her way," Brandy said.
"I was talking about you and Phil, too."
Phil smiled. "The less said on that topic, the better," he said. "There have been some rather pointed suggestions."
Jennifer smiled to herself. She knew that Brandy and Phil had what might best be called an "unconventional" relationship; not an open one, but . . . different. She let it go. "Yeah," Jennifer sympathized. "I've had a few, myself."
"Well," Brandy said. "You're certainly still in the race to be the first to make Mom a proud grandparent. So, what's been happening with you?"
"Have you been reading the newspapers? There's nothing happening with me that hasn't been in the newspapers. Of course, nothing about me that's been in the newspapers has happened the way they say it did, either."
"I saw in the Inquirer they had you hooked up with Bruce Willis," Amy commented.
"Amy, somewhere in Los Angles, there's a woman under the age of seventy that the Inquirer hasn't had hooked up with Bruce Willis, but as soon as they figure out who she is, they'll take care of it." That was a bitter, cynical statement, Jennifer thought, sorry she'd
said it. She realized she'd have to watch herself. Leave Jenny in L.A. where she belongs, she thought to herself.
She lounged back in the chair, took a sip of her coke, and let Spearfish Lake soak into her once again.
