Found by Jennifer Lauck Read Free Book Online Page A

complexity beyond my capacity for comprehension.
    While Richard seemed an impossible match as my father, he was an exact replica. Had I attracted him to me? Was there something unique in my chemistry that energetically vibrated with a character like Richard and if yes, why and how?

    It seemed so odd that life gave me a father (Bill) and then took him away, gave me another father (Bud) and took him away too, and then, gave me Richard. Richard instead of Bill. Richard instead of Bud.
     
     
    RICHARD AND PEGGY’S house was one level with three bedrooms and asbestos siding. A chainlink fence surrounded the yard and the grass was burned brown.
    I was given a place to sleep in the sewing room at the back of the house and Peggy enrolled me in school, a big challenge due to the fact that few records were available.
    I told her I had lived alone at the commune and dropped out of school but Peggy did not believe me. She made calls over the course of many days but found nothing. I tried to tell her, one more time, how I had only done a smattering of education—here and there. Again, Peggy rolled her eyes. She said I knew how to read and write. That kind of thing didn’t come from magic. There was no use in telling Peggy I taught myself to read and write. She wasn’t much for paying attention.
    After taking some tests to place me in sixth grade, a full year behind kids my own age, Peggy and Richard became my legal guardians. In a few weeks, my bedroom set arrived from L.A. Deb had sent it.
    My new life in Stead began.

ELEVEN
    THE LITTLE BOAT
    WHEN A HOLIDAY came around the calendar—Labor Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July—Peggy and Richard cut themselves out of Stead and set up an exact duplicate of their life in the woods. They brought their trailer, a cook stove, coolers of food, packs of cigarettes, and pots for making coffee. Kimmy came too and with her came all her baby stuff: playpen, diapers, high chair, and toys. The only thing they left behind was the TV.
     
     
    IT WAS LABOR Day and we were out in the woods. Richard was wedged in a fold-up chair, his foot near his nose. The canvas of the chair strained against his bulk and he carved at his big toe with his pocketknife. Kimmy was down for a nap. Peggy played solitaire at the picnic table.
    There was nothing for me to clean or cook. The campsite was all picked up. And for a change, they weren’t bossing me around to get cigarettes or make a pot of coffee.

    I pushed my hands into the pockets of my shorts and wandered toward the creek.
    Richard called out, “Don’t go far.”
    “All right,” I said.
    I had adapted by doing what I was told, keeping my mouth shut, and just getting along. For the most part, it wasn’t so bad and Peggy was kind to Kimmy. I admired her for that.
    A few feet down the trail, I spotted a pinecone the size of a football. I kicked it with the side of my foot and it rolled a few feet ahead. I caught up to the pinecone and kicked it again—harder this time—and it splashed into the creek.
    The forest smelled like pine and earth and things that grew and died all at the same time. The ponderosa pine trees stood tall and solid and their high branches held firm to a bounty of pinecones and long needles.
     
     
    ABOUT THREE MONTHS earlier, at the end of sixth grade, Peggy sent me on a trip to San Francisco to visit a distant cousin I didn’t know. The woman had a little girl, maybe seven years old, and I got the feeling that maybe, just maybe, I was being sent away—or perhaps the trip was a little test to see if another family would take me. I’m sure, given the right situation, Richard and Peggy would have passed the responsibility of raising me to someone else—like tired runners eager to pass off the baton. I was like a package no one had sent for. At least with Bud and Janet, they wanted a little girl. But Peggy and Richard? I sensed that the primary
incentive for my presence in their home was as domestic help and there was a pretty