Authoring Amelia Read online

  Authoring Amelia

  Authoring Amelia

  Lia Conklin

  Copyright © 2020 by Lia Conklin Olson

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-0-578-71507-0

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Amelia could no longer make out the landscape outside her window, though she had the vague sense they had passed through most of North Dakota. She looked at the other passengers mostly sleeping with their necks bent in various awkward positions—except for the man in the hat. She thought she remembered a hat like that tilted over her grandfather’s brow. Had his been brown? The bearer of this days-gone-by black hat was clicking away on his laptop. A writer, she imagined, or one of those businessmen who prefer a computer to a high-maintenance wife. Not too successful at either, she mused, or why would he be here among the woebegone salesmen, pension-less elderly, and penniless adventurers of the Greyhound bus line?

  She casually let her mind drift to the possibilities such a man presented. He had more than just glanced her way when she boarded the bus in Minneapolis. It was as if he had wanted to stare, but memories of his mother’s pursed lips made him look away. A handsome man like that could surely save her.

  Save her. Save her from what? From being completely alone in this world, her sole possessions a sack under her seat and the sixty bucks in her pocket? Except for her guitar, of course, squeezed between her knees like a security blanket. Or was he to save her from her destination? One she had chosen from a list of scrolling departures that flashed a hundred new beginnings, a hundred new lives.

  Amelia imagined the man with the hat leading her from the bus to a taxi and from the taxi to his suburban home, perhaps in Seattle. And then what? Would she keep house for him? Would they have a dog? Two and a half children?

  She shook her head as it dawned on her that above feeling lonely and scared, what she really felt was free. Free. Who would want to be saved from being free?

  She was surprised she felt this way. She hadn’t felt free as she watched them bury her aunt, looking over her shoulder to see if her father had finally arrived, careful to avert her eyes from the two mounds of fresh earth that after thirteen years now met the graceful contours of the hillside. She hadn’t felt free when her uncle, not bothering to look up from his watch, asked if she needed anything. She had answered “No,” but any answer would have been lost on him as he mentally calculated the timing of his trip back to Chicago. And she certainly hadn’t felt free as she watched the Houston TSA agents lead her father’s small, thin frame away. He had looked back at her from under his Honduran cowboy hat saying, “Go on ahead to the funeral. I’ll catch the next plane.”

  But he hadn’t caught a plane, at least not to Minnesota. He had never arrived at the funeral, even as she and her grandmother kept furtive watch. And he hadn’t communicated why. In fact, she hadn’t heard from him at all. What had the TSA agents wanted? Had they really detained him so long that he just skipped the funeral all together? Had he gone back to Honduras? She had lots of questions for him, but not so many that she would waste this great opportunity, the opportunity to be free of him. At last.

  The man with her grandfather’s hat shifted his head and caught her eye. He began to open his mouth as if to talk. That’s when she realized it was he who needed saving. Amelia smiled at him and turned away, looking out into the passing landscape obscured in darkness. Like my future, she thought. And her past.

  Chapter 2

  Amelia wasn’t sure how long she had slept, but when she awoke, there was a kink in her neck, and the man with the hat was gone. So, he wasn’t going to Seattle after all, she thought. As she stretched and massaged her neck, it occurred to her that she had no idea where she was or how far she had come. Making her way to the front of the bus to check with the driver, she caught her first glimpse of the landscape through the expanse of the bus’s windshield. Disfigured jagged buttes and juniper-spotted cliffs ascended on each side, the handiwork of the Yellowstone River that flanked I94.

  “We’ll be in Billings in a couple hours,” the driver said glancing up at Amelia, his eyes lifting no higher than the lettering on her T-shirt. “You got family there?”

  “Yeah,” she lied, turning away. No need to delve into details with a driver more focused on the stretched lettering of her T-shirt than on the road. “Thanks,” she called back with a quick glance over her shoulder, catching his eyes as they reluctantly left her backside to turn their attention back to the road.

  Back in her seat with her forehead pressed lightly against the window, Amelia let the Yellowstone River and its earth child, the Badlands, toy with her, flitting away from her to hide within the landscape, only to curl back to accompany her upon her journey once more. She did not tire of this flirtatious game of hide and seek. In fact, when the Conoco-Phillips petroleum plant burst forth directly in her path, she discovered that two hours had passed within the few minutes of her playful musings. She lost sight completely of her meandering friends as the bus veered to the left of the towering smokestacks to reveal instead Amelia’s first glimpse of Billings, Montana.

  Billings turned out to be more picturesque than the Conoco-Phillips’s smoke-stacks suggested, set in the foreground of what Amelia later learned to be the Bighorn and Pryor Mountain ranges. It also turned out to be more city than country with its hand-standing skateboarder statue bidding, “Welcome to Billings.” She was momentarily disappointed by this bronze, baggy-jeaned teenager juxtaposed upon the tumbleweed town of her imagi
nation, but looking towards the mountains nestled in the haze of the morning, she decided there was sure to be remnants of the Old West outside the city limits.

  As she descended the bus steps, the driver offered to treat her to breakfast. She stood mute for a moment, calculating which was more distasteful, the driver or the roadside café, finally deciding they were both too greasy. Of course, she didn’t say that to the driver but instead gave him a conciliatory smile for his gesture, quickly realizing the effort was lost on him as he never looked above her neckline.

  Chapter 3

  So, this is freedom, Amelia thought as she sat down on the curb a few blocks from the bus terminal. Her stomach growled, and she realized she wasn’t so free that she didn’t need to eat. She almost regretted turning down the free breakfast—almost—but remembered the sixty bucks she had in her pocket and knew she had made the right decision. It wasn’t much, but it was more than she had had when she left her grandmother’s house two days before. Her uncle had been too preoccupied with his own life to be concerned about hers, but her grandmother, even in her grief, had been kind enough to give Amelia fifty bucks. She had probably thought Amelia was going back to Honduras where fifty dollars was much more than a month’s wage. Maybe she would have been more generous had she known the truth.

  As it was, Amelia had made good use of the fifty dollars. She had bought a used guitar at a secondhand shop, having left her own in Honduras. Then she had sat down in the downtown Minneapolis Nicollet Plaza and begun to play.

  It was at times like this that Amelia realized how lucky she had been to have learned to play guitar and sing as a young girl before her father had whisked her off to Honduras. In Honduras, she had continued to play, learning all kinds of Mexican and Spanish music. Honduras itself had been wiped clean of most of its culture, except for some Mayan fabrics that found their way to market. But music, in all of its forms, was still greatly appreciated, and for Amelia, it had been her salvation. Music had carried her through her grief, as well as helped her belong to her new community. It had also helped to put frijoles and tortillas on the table after heavy rains had washed away their crops. Now it would help her start a new life once again.

  She had made over a hundred dollars that day in Minneapolis, as well as an impression on several Latino men who considered a fair-skinned, blue-eyed singer of Mexican music quite a novelty. Amelia was used to that. Being a novelty had made her a hit with the boys in her preparatorio school in Honduras, though only one stole her heart—among other things.

  The loose change and bills scattered throughout her guitar case had given her enough for a ticket to Billings, the next bus to depart from the Minneapolis bus terminal. Besides, she had always dreamed about the West, and now here she was, sixty bucks still in her pocket and a guitar over her shoulder. The day was full of possibilities. But first, breakfast.

  Chapter 4

  Over breakfast at a Café that may or may not have been less greasy than the one she turned down, Amelia thumbed through the employment ads. She was excited to see that there were still parts of the old West in this twenty-first century city.

  Wanted Ranch Hands. Exp. w/ horses & cattle nec. Willingness to work hard & long hrs. Weiland Ranch, S. of Billings. Ref. Required. Call (966) 342-5698.

  Amelia carefully tore out the ad. It was exactly what she wanted. Sure, she didn’t really have experience with horses per say, but she had ridden their burro more times than she could remember. It couldn’t be that different. And sure, goats weren’t exactly cattle, but how different could four-legged, hoofed animals be?

  Looking at the phone number, she began to regret not buying the burner phone she had seen for thirty dollars. She hadn’t considered that she would need a cell phone. Why would she? She hadn’t used one her whole twenty-one years on the planet. But here she was contemplating a number she could easily tap into a cell. Or she could just ask to use the phone at the counter, she thought. Either way, on a cell phone or the antique counter phone, the result would probably be “Thanks, but no thanks.” In fact, she mused, wouldn’t going to the ranch in person be a better way to make a great first impression? Or maybe the only way to make any impression at all, considering her lack of experience, burro or no burro, and her inability to provide a reference.

  The waitress at the café wasn’t sure how far the ranch was but decided without looking up from her Glamour magazine that if it were in the Bighorn Mountains, it would be “a ways out.” She motioned vaguely towards the mountains with a lazy hand that caught a cup of coffee on its way back. From the café’s grease-smudged windows, the mountains looked like gentle pilings of fresh cut hay, a far cry from the lush green Honduran mountains that had been Amelia’s home for the past thirteen years. She couldn’t judge how far they were. Maybe it would take a few hours by bus in Honduras with all its stops and starts and give or take a flat tire, bottoming out on a rutted mountain road, or waiting for a lazy Brahman bull to cross. She thought that a bus from here would possibly take over an hour…with maybe only a dawdling cow or two to prolong the journey.

  Distances appeared to be deceiving in this new territory as Amelia soon discovered. The ranch was at least two and a half hours from Billings, the city bus driver said, and there was no public transportation.

  “You’ll have to take a taxi, but I warn you, they’ll charge an arm and a leg. Or, you could take an Uber” he added, “but still pretty pricey. Of course, you could hitch it. Safer in these parts than most, but not the most desirable option for a young, admirable lady such as yourself.” He winked down at her from his perch in the bus. “Then again,” he assured her grinning, “you wouldn’t have much trouble hitching one. Your thumb alone’s prettier than the cattle the men in these parts are courtin’!” He laughed at his wit and Amelia responded in kind, feeling her encounters with the folk on her trip were gradually improving…very gradually.

  Amelia wasn’t so naïve that she didn’t know the dangers of hitchhiking, but her remaining fifty-five dollars assured her it was the only way. She thought one last time about making a phone call to the ranch and protecting herself not only from the danger of the trip but also its unknown outcome. Yet, what was freedom, she thought, if you couldn’t pursue your own options and create your own possibilities? She felt sure that once she got to the ranch, her efforts would be rewarded. What could hitching a ride with some chatty townsfolk hurt anyway?

  Chapter 5

  Reservation folk were who they turned out to be: four young Crow Indian men in the back of a battle-worn Chevy S10. Three other Indian men sat in the cab, jabbing their heads through the missing partition with an occasional look at the road ahead. Amelia had just reached Interstate 90 and was positioning her thumb appropriately when this crazy, tan-gray-green pickup came skidding to a stop a few yards ahead. As she looked at the dark, shiny-haired heads that jerked forward and careened back, she felt like she was home. These were Honduran boys. She had only seconds to contemplate how odd it was that she would feel that way. During the thirteen years she had lived in Honduras, she had felt like a prisoner—a prisoner of gender, culture, religion, and most of all fate. And now here she was, running with winged thumbs to this jalopy whose tailgate hung open-mouthed, inviting her to her old home and new freedom.

  As she reached the tailgate, four dark hands reached forward to secure her wrists. She was comforted to look up into four pairs of deep, dark eyes. This was familiar. So too was the pickup that sputtered forward, tossing her like an untethered chicken on a flatbed truck. She righted herself just as four brown hands once again came forward to help. She loved those hands. She sat back on the tire hub that had been vacated for her and laughed. As the pickup ground into third gear, the wind lifted her blond hair from her shoulders and carried her poignant notes of glee and relief across the plains. Three heads jabbed back through the cab window to join four pairs of quizzical eyes already observing her upturned laughter and yellow, dancing mane.

  “Oh,” she finally gasped, freeing o
ne hand from its firm grip on the pickup box to wipe tears from her face. “I’m just so relieved!” She said. They looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. She wondered if they had ever known how she felt at that moment and decided they probably had.

  “I’m Amelia,” she said offering her free hand to all the hands extended her way. The three heads nodded from the partition, and she waved and nodded back. “I’m heading towards the Bighorn Mountains,” she explained, “to a ranch called Weiland. Do you know the place?”

  They all nodded and passed with their glances the ancient story of land lost and annexed.

  “How close can you get me there?” she asked when their eyes returned to hers.

  “Close enough,” replied the young man with the “Caught Dead in Billings, Montana, 2016” T-shirt, the outline of a tomahawk appearing from behind the gold lettering.

  “Maybe too close,” grinned another, showing even, white teeth in contrast with his dark recessed eyes. They all laughed at some hidden meaning that Amelia could only guess.

  One of the heads that poked through the window, having somehow caught the conversation over the rumble of the engine and rattles and thuds of each unabsorbed bump and rut along the highway, asked, “Why ya goin’ there?”

  “Applying for a job,” Amelia shouted back. “Thought it’d be cool to work on a ranch for the summer. I’ve always dreamed of living out West. Such a sense of freedom out here.”

  “As long as you’re the cowboy,” grinned the toothy one. They all laughed heartily, albeit good-naturedly. Amelia found herself reddening. Not only did she know a lot about native history, she thought her own past somehow connected her to the disenfranchised, the forgotten. She was embarrassed to discover that in spite of her own history, she spoke as white as her skin.

  “I’m Darian,” said the tomahawk T-shirt kid after he finished laughing.