Bettie Rae And The UPS Driver
Verleen Tucker
Word Count 938
Bettie Rae lives on an isolated ranch out on CR 132A. The wavy roof of the long, low-slung original barn, shaped by a century of snowfall on a mountain where winter is the longest season, is the time barometer for the ranch. In a natural clearing of a conifer and aspen forest stands a two-story house, white with red trim, and red outbuildings. Not a farm implement, cast-off tire, or loose piece of barbed wire is anywhere in sight. Everything is neatly tucked away into the barn, a large shop, and several sheds that have been built here and there over the decades. Without ever going inside, I know that, after use, tools are returned to the same hook or placed in the same drawer where they’ve been stored for two generations. Maybe three.
Weathered barrel planters of bright-pink, yellow, and white fake peonies signify that Betti Rae’s gardening days have long since passed. She is a reserved woman, tall with silver-gray hair, who nods and waves as she picks the package I’ve left up off the porch, never offering me much more than weather-related comments. Under a threatening sky, late last fall she came out on the porch and, unexpectedly, told me the house was one hundred years old. She said she had lived in the house since 1948.
“Eighteen,” she said as the wind blew the ends of her bobbed hair across her face. “I’ve lived here since I was eighteen. I married Gordon’s dad and have lived here ever since.”
I did the math. She is Dad’s age. Born in 1930.
“When the county came in and gravelled the road in 1956, we thought we were really something,” she said. “Before that, when the weather was bad, we stayed home. The roads were impassable.”
I thought about long winters on this mountain without any escape into town or even a nearby ranch and the words ‘cabin fever’ took on a deeper meaning.
“The ranch will go to Gordon when I’m gone. He’s the only one left,” she said. “His older brother went to Vietnam.”
I suddenly felt the chill of the fierce wind and zipped my jacket tight to under my chin bracing myself to hear the terrible news that the older brother had been killed in action in Vietnam, but that was not what happened.
“He was never the same after that war.” She spit the word that out like a chaw of rotting tobacco. “Drinking. Drugs. He was a mess when he came home from that war. He finally took his own life.” She put her hand to her mouth perhaps to hide her downturned, quivering lips. “Yes, Gordon will get the ranch.”
A huge snowflake hit my cheek. The kind that, combined with a lot of other huge snowflakes, can make the long road back into town, even with gravel on it, impassable. I hated to leave her and struggled for the right words. I offered a weak, “Well, Gordon loves the ranch” before climbing into my UPS truck and driving out the winding driveway to the main road.
This spring Bettie Rae has gone back to being the quiet woman who comes onto the porch and waves. I’m back to being a UPS driver, moving quickly in and out of my Sprinter van and then out of her drive as I make my way out of the ranch yard and back onto 132A. I drive the road back into town these days, notice the aspen coming in fresh green and that, after a mild winter, Oak Creek has little runoff this year. I swerve here and there to miss the young garter snakes crossing the road at irregular intervals and think of a woman who lives on a perfect ranch with a less-than-perfect history. I wonder what made her open up so completely on that fall day six months ago. I wonder what it is about my face, my persona that made her offer so much.
Writer? Do I have Writer stamped on my forehead? Or maybe it was simply an old woman living on a high hill noticing the heavy storm clouds swirling overheard wanting someone, anyone, to talk to before another isolating winter set in again.
Verleen has been published in Blue Lake Review. Her work in Summerset Review was nominated for Best American Essays. Her novella, “The Trail to Cloud City” was published in the anthology, The Mountain Pass. Retired, Tucker lives in Steamboat Springs, Colorado four blocks away from one of the best ski mountains in the world. Her favorite time is spent with her two grown sons and their families, the arts, and anything that involves the Great Outdoors.