Page 99 of In a Far-Off Land
I didn’t need much. Just one redhead and a second chance. Then I was back on the road, the one-pump station disappearing behind me, the road stretching out before me, bright and empty. I was used to being lonely—had been since that day I left thecoloniawith Dusty Clark. But that was nothing like the loneliness since Mina left.
I’d had a lot of time to think. Days and weeks with nothing but my regrets to keep me company. I’d done plenty I wasn’t proud of, those years with Dusty. Parties and drinking and pills. And women. I’d learned fast none of it led to any good. By the time I turned twenty, I’d seen too much ruin. Men ruined by drink, women ruined by men. Booze and cocaine turning good people into bad. After Maria Carmen, I’d vowed not to be like my father. I put it all behind me—the women, the pills, the hard drinking. Well, mostly. But I tried to do right. Then that night at the beach with Mina, I was the worst kind of heel.
If she didn’t want me, I could understand it. Heck, I wouldn’t blame her one bit. But I’d ask her—beg her, even—to give me a chance. The least she could do was listen to what I had to offer. Which—as I really thought about it and my palms turned clammy on the steering wheel—wasn’t a whole lot of anything.
The town was so small that if I’d blinked, I would have missed it. I tried to work up some hope that this was where she’d gone. But it looked to me like Odessa wasn’t the kind of town people came back to. It was the kind of town people left. A shabby diner with no cars parked outside. Beside it, the Odessa Picture House was boarded up, aFor Salesign flapping crookedly in the arched doorway. I parked in front of the bus station—just a tiny storefront with a single bench outside—and left the motor running.
There was nobody sitting behind the glass window. A handwritten note saidClosed.
I went back out to the empty street, unsure where to go next. The diner? Or maybe the dress shop with a frock at least five years out of date in the window? A dirty-faced kid came around the corner on a creaking bicycle. He stopped and pulled a stack of newspapers out of his basket, throwing them outside the door of the bus station. “You looking to buy a ticket, you’ll have to wait. Gus’ll be back by two o’clock.”
“Maybe you can help me.” It was worth a shot.
The kid eyed me, and I didn’t blame him. I hadn’t had a haircut since before the ranch, and I could have used a shave. Not to mention a bath. I probably looked like a bum just coming off a bender.
I pulled Mina’s photo from my pocket. “I’m looking for someone who lives around here. Goes by Minnie, I think.”
He leaned down to examine it, then glanced up at me in surprise. “Well, sure she does, mister. That’s Minnie Zimmerman.”He handed the photo back and swung a leg over his bicycle as if he was going to start pedaling.
I stepped in front of him, my heart jumping. “Where is she?” I said, loud enough to make his eyebrows go up to his widow’s peak. “I mean, do you know where I can find her?”
“Sure I do, mister,” the boy answered, as if I were daft.
I took a breath. “Where?”
“Oh. You head out of town here, then take a left ’bout two miles up. You’ll see the mailbox.” He raised his voice as I headed toward the roadster. “Better hurry,” he yelled out. “Wedding’s about to start.”
My heart stopped, then thudded into high gear.
Did he saywedding?
I clicked at the starter and the engine caught. No, no, no. Could Mina be marrying some farmer? Someone to take care of her and the baby? Maybe some kid who’d waited for her to come back? My thoughts jumbled, my tires squealed, and gravel flew.
Everything I’d said to her on this never-ending road, all my arguments and explanations, my lectures and pleas, dissolved like the dust behind me. My mind was a blank, except for a prayer:Please, let me not be too late.
Was it wrong to pray that way? Selfish, maybe? Especially since God and I weren’t on the closest terms. And maybe Mina wanted to get married. Maybe the guy was a good egg—a better prospect. Maybe I’d be a sorry excuse for a husband, a worthless father who’d never had a father. A half-Mexican bastard with nothing to his name. I might be the last person on earth Mina wanted to see.
I pushed the accelerator lever as far as it would go. If that was the story, so be it. But I’d come too far to give up easy. A couple miles out of town, I found the mailbox at the juncture to a longdirt road. Faded white letters spellingZimmerman. My stomach did a nosedive.
Fields stretched on each side. They were brown and untilled, and the scent of wet earth mingled with the smell of spring grass. Behind a line of spindly trees, I could make out a house, a rust-colored barn, and tall silos like the ones I’d seen dotting the countryside since I’d rolled into the Dakotas.
In front of the house, a line of parked autos blocked my way. Old Fords with boxes, a Plymouth, two newer sedans, and a wagon—an honest-to-goodness wagon with horses nibbling at the new grass.
I wasn’t in Hollywood anymore.
I parked behind the Plymouth and was out the door before the engine was done sputtering. I felt like I hadn’t taken a breath since the kid saidwedding, and I wouldn’t be able to until I saw Mina.
I followed the hum of voices and a beaten path to a pretty backyard filled with lilac bushes and people. Then I saw her, not five feet from me, turned to the side. I glimpsed her profile beneath a wide straw hat with a puff of veil, and my knees went weak. Actually weak. Her dress—pink and lace and down to her ankles—wasn’t what I’d pictured when I’d let myself picture Mina in a wedding dress. Neither was the groom... because he wasn’t me. He stood beside her wearing a suit so crisp it could stand on its own. His hand slipped around her waist, the gleam of gold on his finger.
I was too late.
I must have made a sound—maybe I said her name. She turned around.
She wasn’t Mina.
I felt like I’d stepped onto the wrong film set. This woman looked like my Mina, but the fringe of hair under her hat was goldinstead of auburn, her eyes cornflower blue instead of aquamarine. Relief washed through me, then the crush of despair. The kid had steered me wrong.
Not-Mina eyed me from the tips of my dusty spats to my wrinkled suit and overlong hair blowing in the breeze. “Hello,” she said, holding out her hand as if I were a guest come late. I took it in mine, feeling like the biggest fool, but she smiled, and again the resemblance to the woman I had sought for the past nine weeks hit me like a punch in the gut. “You’re looking for Minnie.”
