He packed his things while it was still dark, before the sun was even a suggestion in the sky. The early hour still held the summer heat, but there was a hint of cool air skimming the ground that presaged autumn. It was time to leave.
Jude lifted his straw pinch-front and repositioned it on his head. In a month, this hat would offer no protection where he was going, it would simply be fashion. Today, though, he was a cowboy still, getting ready to ride off into the sunrise. When he thought about it, it made no sense, so he declined to think about it. He was just doing it, doing what he needed to do, leaving everything and everyone he knew behind in a cloud of Kansas dust to try to carve out something more than the life he had here. No one understood why he was leaving the security of his job, of being rooted and home-grown, he just was. Jude simply knew it was what he had to do.
He looked out across the flatlands that went on for miles and caught an insinuation of dawn, a streak of purple where there had been black. If he could have seen himself, he would have seen that his mouth was drawn into the same thin, determined line as the horizon, that the furrow between his eyes was deepening beyond his years. As familiar and beautiful the fields and plains were, as content as he could make himself with his small fêtes and victories in this place, it wasn’t enough. It had never been enough.
There was something inside Jude that itched just below the surface of his skin. It wore at him daily, made him more impatient with his job as a teacher, with his students, who weren’t all that much older than himself. He saw them come and go, come and go, while he stayed just where he was; nothing changed for him, and he had begun to feel the pressure of time. Perhaps it was because so many things had come to him so quickly it had warped his sensibilities, for he was far from old, far from middle-aged, closer to youth than not. He’d been the ‘youngest’ this and the ‘first’ at that, and the ‘only’ to achieve so very many things. At the same time he’d always been discontent with himself and had a hair-trigger temper that often worked directly against all that he wanted to accomplish. And there was the other thing, the look in his eyes that needed to search and seek out that which was new and different. These plains may have birthed him, but his soul screamed for more.
Jude placed the last of his few bags into the back of his battered pick-up where they buffered his most prized possessions, a small collection of guitars and sundry instruments that were his pride and joy, his stock in trade, his tools that helped to build his life, and then he closed the tailgate and secured the cap. He turned from the truck to the house, dark and silent before him. All the goodbyes had been said the evening before. Mother, father, brothers, they had been supportive, happy for him, hopeful for him, yet they had shared glances between themselves, shaken their heads ever so slightly, shown their doubts in subtle ways that Jude had been keenly aware of. He was glad they were all asleep, that they weren’t there to see him off, because they had planted their doubts inside his head alongside his own, larger, more significant doubts, creating a tangled garden there that might have changed his mind, but there could be no turning back now. It would be breaking a promise to himself. Worse, it would ruin him, for he knew deep within he would lose the opportunity to soar on his own for good and for all. With that thought, his mother slipped silently out the back door, careful to not let the screen door slam.
They said nothing to each other for a prolonged moment, just stood and looked past the darkness into each other. Jude was small, like she was, unlike his father and brothers who were taller, stockier and homespun. He had her more wiry strength, whipcord arms and legs that could endure more than most that held harder, closer, faster, without reservation when they chose to hold. And he was darker, like she was, inside and out, with chestnut hair and eyes to match, but turned all shades of brown and red and gold when their emotions were engaged. Jude had her spirit, her curiosity, her desire to truly live life, and her romantic, passionate nature, but he also had her ability to hide it all, to swallow himself whole so that nothing and no one could touch him. It was only at this moment, while they stared through the darkness at each other that he recognized himself in her, and her in him, and that if he stayed here that strong life force inside of him that was her legacy would end up cramped and drained the way it was in her.
She embraced him without a sound and Jude knew what it was like, then, to be held close in order to be let go.
“You drive safe,” she told him, her voice barely a whisper. It wasn’t her words but her small, fine hands on his forearms that spoke volumes. They’d had their differences, he and she, their arguments, their stubbornness, their tempers that flared causing friction between them that often escalated to slamming doors and stalking exits. There had been times when they hadn’t communicated at all for long periods of time. But there was always love, always forgiveness between them, and here, now, that’s all there was.
She removed her hands and Jude felt the lack.
She slipped her fingers into the pocket of her robe and took out a handful of bills, crisp and new and tightly folded together, pressing them into his palm. Jude tried to give them back, almost ashamed at her gesture, at her generosity, for there was never extra in their house, only less. She was adamant, though, and forced the money into his hand.
“It’s mine,” she said, and her other hand, her empty hand, reached up and cupped his cheek. “This is mine, and I can do with it as I like. Take it, and go. Go now. Go.” She leaned into him and kissed his mouth, something he couldn’t remember her doing since he was a small child and was eager for her company and closeness. Her lips were chilly, then warmed as they lingered for only a second. “Go,” she whispered against his mouth. “Please, Jude, go now.” With that she quickly turned and went back into the house, as silently as she had come out of it, as if she had never come out at all.
Jude looked at the money in his hand for a long moment, and then stuffed it into his back pocket. He tugged on the tailgate of his old truck, a reflex he didn’t acknowledge, and got into the cab, turned the key and drove the truck around in a wide arc. As he passed the back door he saw her from behind the screen, a shadow that raised a hand and waved him off. He slowed, stopped, and raised his own hand; found he could smile even as tears made themselves thick in his throat. And even though he couldn’t see it clearly, he clearly understood, utterly knew, that she was smiling too as he rode off into the sunrise, and that she was, and would always be, riding with him.
