Once she was well out of Chicago, in open country, the beauty of the wheat fields caught her eye, mile after mile, as the gentle breezes moved them. She stopped in the early afternoon, and pulled over to take some pictures. She used a camera she’d brought along, and took a few with her phone to put on Instagram.
She felt peaceful as she saw the fields stretching to the horizon as far as the eye could see. There was a gentle solitude to it that wasn’t painful for once. After she posted some of the photographs on Instagram, she got in the car, turned the music louder, and drove on. There was a message from Deanna on her phone, and she didn’t bother to listen to it. She knew it would be about the benefit. It occurred to her that her daughter needed to learn how to let go of things, and so did she. Deanna was so intense. Maddie was just serious, but she didn’t bludgeon people the way Deanna did. It wasn’t an appealing trait in anyone, and made Deanna unpleasant to be around.
As Maddie got back on the highway, it was late morning in California and Ben saw the beautiful images of the wheat fields. They were different from the photographs she usually took. There were no people in them, no sense of suffering, and he had a feeling that she was at peace when she took them. He couldn’t tell where she was now, somewhere in the Midwest in an agricultural area, and he wasn’t sure where she was headed. He thought that maybe she was trying to prove something to herself, that she was not the lost soul and rapidly deteriorating elderly person that Deanna had told her she was. His mother was searching for something. What, he didn’t know. When he checked her Instagram again late in the day, he saw a field of wildflowers that were a symphony of blue and yellow. Happiness exuded from the pictures, and a kind of unbound joy. It was an explosion of color beneath the bright blue sky, and he felt happy seeing them and sensed that she had been happy when she took them, instead of just wanting to give others pleasure. He hoped she found whatever it was she was looking for, either a person or inner peace, but he had a feeling she was on the right track now. He didn’t try to call her, and left her on her journey without intruding. He wanted Deanna to do the same. Maddie had earned it. She had done so much for them. She needed something for herself now.
Maddie stopped at a motel that night, after driving for ten hours. She was tired but relaxed. The room was simple and clean, with no frills and an old TV. They charged her fifty dollars for the night, and she lay on the bed and looked around. She had stayed in a variety of places on her travels, in tents, in cabins, sleeping in the back of supply trucks in war zones, in huts or even barns with farm animals, in India and Pakistan, Tibet and Nepal, in Somalia and the Sudan. She had been in some of the poorest countries in the world and in palaces and here at home in America. The room was small and bare. It reminded her of a monastery she’d stayed in in Spain, where they took in pilgrims. It had what she needed, a bathroom, a shower, a bed, clean sheets, and in this case, the luxury of a TV. She turned it on and saw that there had been a shooting at a university in Mississippi, and she turned it off again. There was nothing she could do about it. She didn’t want to see the tearful faces of shocked students mourning their friends, heartbroken parents, or bodies being taken away. She was on a mission of her own, and all she wanted right now was peace, and to heal her own wounded soul.
Deanna had taken away something important from her after she broke her ankle. She had robbed Maddie of her faith in the future, her confidence that everything would be okay. What Deanna had foretold was a descent into hell, the worst that Maddie could imagine, a loss of health and intelligence, purpose and freedom. Maddie couldn’t imagine anything worse except the loss of her children. But the prospect of losing herself was frightening too. She needed to get away to find herself again, in a place where Deanna and her dire predictions couldn’t reach her. She knew she couldn’t let those dark things happen to her. She had run away when she left New York, but in the stark motel room, driving through the heart of America before that, and seeing the men she had once loved and no longer did, she had begun to find herself again. The broken ankle didn’t matter to her, and it wasn’t bothering her now. What was much more dangerous was that Deanna had tried to break her spirit and had overwhelmed her with fear. Maddie had started the trip longing for someone to protect her, and in the peace surrounding her, she remembered that she could protect herself, and she didn’t intend to lose that again.
There was a truck stop near the motel, and she walked there to buy herself a sandwich, brought it back to the room, and ate it. There was no sound except the distant hum of trucks on the freeway, which lulled her to sleep after she finished eating and took a shower.
She woke in the morning, after a sound sleep, as sunlight streaked into the room. She dressed and left the key at the front desk. No one else was up yet, and she went back to the truck stop, had breakfast, then set off again. It was a gorgeous day. She saw that she had a text from Ben when she left the truck stop and opened it with some trepidation. She wondered if he was going to try to track her down. She didn’t want them chasing her. She needed this time to herself.
“Beautiful pictures, Mom. I love you” was all he said. He asked no questions and she was relieved. She didn’t want to lie to him, or tell him where she was going and what she was doing.
“Thank you, I love you too,” she answered, and drove off with a lighter heart.
She kept up a good speed on the road. She knew she had another ten hours of driving ahead of her if she wanted to get to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, by that night. It was the largest town closest to Andy’s ranch. The ranch was forty miles out of town, according to her GPS. It was away from all the tourists and city slickers who came to Wyoming to say that they had been on a ranch, and to admire the magic and grandeur of the Teton mountain range. Maddie had been there with Andy years before. He’d taken her to the rodeo with him, she loved the honky-tonk of it, mixed in with the genuine aspects. The clowns, the steer ropers, the men who rode the bucking broncos hoping to win some money, the teenagers riding their horses, the rodeo queen on her best horse in her fanciest rodeo gear, wearing too much makeup and an earnest expression. She had taken wonderful pictures. And Maddie had cried when they sang “The Star Spangled Banner.” It actually meant something there. But no matter how much she loved it, she was still a tourist, even with him, and she couldn’t see herself living that life forever, any more than Andy would have survived on the streets of New York. He would have been a lost soul forever, and she couldn’t do that to him. He needed to exist in his natural habitat in order to thrive, and so did she. Wyoming wasn’t it for her, no matter how beautiful it was or how much she loved him, and he loved her.
The terrain grew slowly more rugged, and the air cooler as she drove through the day. She had stopped to take pictures again along the way. There were bluffs and red clay hills where she could easily imagine Indians roaming, native villages, and war parties. She sat in the shade of a tree for a while and admired the scenery. There was nothing ominous or aggressive about it. Everywhere she looked, she had a sense of peace and beauty.