Page 10 of Property of Baffle
“My father, Ted Bushing,” I started and laughed again.“It’s like they were both perfect caricatures of the worst kind of people in their world.He was so Godly that he taught many of the women in his church how to call to the almighty and feel the Holy Spirit enter them, if you get what I’m saying.”
“Did you discover his dalliances for the Lord when you were seventeen?”
I giggled delightedly.“Dalliances for the Lord,” I repeated and then devolved into full-on belly laughs.“Oh man, I wish I’d used that one on him before I left.And to answer your question,” I said as I swiped a tear from the corner of my eye, “no, it was years earlier when I caught him with my art teacher in his office.”My eyes met Ricks and he reached over to grab my hand for comfort.“On the plus side, I got an A in that class so I’d keep quiet.”I huffed out a groan of frustration.“Not that I needed it.I was the best student in the class.”
“Humble, too,” Rick teased.
“That was me being humble.My teacher couldn’t touch my talent, either.Sometimes, I think that’s why she hooked up with my dad.I only found them in that position because she told me they were meeting about me and I went to spy.”
“How old were you?”
“I had recently turned fourteen.”
“That bitch set you up to see that shit when you were fourteen?”Rick’s anger was equally endearing and amusing to me, though I tried to keep the smile off my face.“You didn’t answer why you were kicked out, though.”
“Nope, I didn’t, but we’re supposed to be going tit for tat and you’re woefully behind, Rick.”
“I like that you call me that.”
“What?Rick?”He nodded his head.“Well, what does everyone else call you?”
“Most everyone else calls me Baffle or brother.Sometimes the woman who is like a surrogate mom to me calls me son or she full names me if she’s pissed.No one really has cause to use my government name or any part of it other than her.”
“Huh.”
“What’s that?”
“I always wondered if you guys really used your road names all the time or if that was just Hollywood bullshit.”Rick gave me an amused eye-roll.
“Probably don’t take a lot of what you see on TV to heart.”
“So, none of it is accurate?”
“Didn’t say that, but if you have questions, I’d rather answer them for you because every club runs their shit differently.”
“I guess that makes sense.You mentioned a surrogate mom.What about a real one or your dad?Were they in the picture?”
“Until I was thirteen.”He paused an seemed to swallow down his emotions before he continued.“My dad killed my mom in a jealous rage when he was too high, drunk, or both to even understand what he’d done.”
“Oh my God!Rick, you let me go on-and-on about my shitty parents and-”
Rick cut me off.“We all have our own burdens in life.Yours made you find your way on your own at seventeen.Mine left me without parents at thirteen.”He shrugged as if he was truly indifferent to the situation but I knew better.
“What happened to your dad?”
“He’s in prison and he’ll never get out.”
I wanted to hug the thirteen year old boy inside of him who must have been devastated.I settled for squeezing the hand of the man lying beside me.Then I bit the bullet and dove in to tell the part of my story I’d never given anyone else who was close to me.
“I graduated three months after I turned seventeen.”
“So you’re a brain?”
I shot him a “not even close” look and shook my head.“I did summer school to get ahead every year from the time I was in seventh grade.My mother insisted.Anyway, the day after I graduated, my parents introduced me to a man who was set to take over his own church somewhere near Odessa, Texas.They had already planned my wedding to him.They wanted to marry me off so I could be a miserable, hypocritical, judgy bitch just like my mom while my husband slept around with the women I had to put on bake sales and pot lucks with.I was not about to live my parents’ life on repeat, especially with a man who was only a couple months away from turning forty.”
“What the fuck, Nell?”
“That’s what I said to my parents, quickly followed by, ‘Hell no!’and then I left them to smooth things over with my betrothed.”I turned so that I faced Rick before I finished telling my story.“My Aunt Candice must have gotten wind of the plan somehow.She had been estranged from the family for years, so I only saw her in secret.She showed up, swooped me off to a friend’s house, and they took me to Flagstaff to stay with another friend of theirs.”
