Bleeding Green by Anne James Read Free Book Online

whom she was the caretaker. This shunning continued for more than two horrible years, until even her mother knew it was best if she moved away from the farm.
    Laurel rolled the window down about an inch. Cool, crisp air blew into the truck. She sucked in a deep breath letting it out with a whoosh. The sound of the tires eating up the pavement returned her to the present. Thinking of the pain the disciplinarian action had caused her two children was almost more than she could bear. Guilt, shame, horror, all were hers to carry to the grave. Would she ever be free of soul-sucking, joy- depriving guilt?
    The monumental decision to move to Pensacola, Florida, with her daughter, Amelia, had been made seven years ago. Building a home and getting a job as a park ranger for the State of Florida had all been huge undertakings—the many ordeals that accompanied such a move from the security and familiarity of being an accepted woman of the blessed to an outcast in the world. She had to make a living. Thank God, the park ranger position had opened for her at Grand Lake. Or did she thank God? Was all of this part of a divine plan or was it just random living and applying oneself to life? Questions that were occupying more and more of her time.
    The loneliness of settling in a new place was enormous. Adjusting to a new way of life. The divorce from her husband had been final two years before her move to Pensacola. All the changes combined with finding a career were just a tip of the iceberg in this new life.
    Having had no affiliation with any religion for the last several years was allowing her mind to expand. The narrowness of the Christian beliefs that had been ground into her as a child were beginning to crumble, such as the rigid belief that the Lord, meaning Jesus Christ, was only in this one particular holy place of the Protestant faith, The Meeting. How had she accepted this belief all these years? She hadn’t, but she had embraced parts of the Brethren’s doctrine as a way of life. The life she had been born into, a life as full of security and comfort as hot cross buns on a chilly morning. A community that lived together, worked together and worshipped together. Why did humans have such a need for a herd mentality? Knowing the answer, she shook her head in affirmation. Belonging. A tribal need to be a part of a group. Safety. Security. The huge problem with this bucolic, pastoral way of life brought together by the farming community was exclusiveness. By adopting this way of life, she and all the other people in The Meeting had made themselves separate from the world. God knew what would befall one of them for such worldly actions as voting, participating in scholastic sports, associating with friends outside The Meeting. She remembered the guilty giggling with her cousins when she was a little girl at all the awful ways they could choose to go outside the fold.
    Her father’s mother, Grandma Gordon, had introduced this belief into her life as a new bride from east St Louis when she had married Victor Gordon in the late 1800s. As a married couple, they raised their nine children on the Illinois farm, conducting Sunday worship service in their living room. Hence, The Meeting, was brought to that part of Illinois. The matriarch of the Gordon clan.
    Noticing that her fuel gauge read a quarter of a tank, she took the next exit and pulled into a Shell plaza. As she nudged open the driver’s door, her aching joints and muscles made themselves known. Perhaps it was time for some caffeine—a coffee frappe from the MacDonald’s attached to the gas station.
    After fueling the truck, Laurel, considered whether she was in the mood for music or more soul-searching ruminating. Realizing that the jarring effect of facing a place on earth that had been knit into the very fiber of her being and then becoming an outcast where she had to remake herself and gain a new identity took over the need for music. She was in the mood to reflect and