When we arrived in the junction of Rifle and CO 13 state road it was late in the evening. The extended presence of twilight of the summer months helped and we stopped at the truck stop for supper. It was a great relief for all of us cooped up in the pickup truck. We ate a sumptuous meal of steak, baked potato and a pecan pie. There was no conversation except for pass me salt and hot sauce. As usual I had no specific inclination to inquire about our future and then many other items usually crowd our mind when we are moving to an unknown part of the world. Now, I was still holding on to the, 'going with the flow in the river of life' attitude.

Anton and mom got busy with the maps and I slipped outside the diner without a reason as if some mysterious power had taken over my mind and brain was locked into an autopilot mode. There was nothing but a vast open space and few trucks in a resting state. Few streetlights in the parking-lot were giving some visibility. I wandered of away from the entrance area of the dinner. Anton's truck was visible and yet I was walking away from it. I must have reached closer to the road... 13, and suddenly automobile lights came on and blinded me.

"Where do you think you are wandering off?" A female voice came out of the vehicle. I shielded my eyes, and the flashing light switched to a subdued parking light mode. I saw a female trooper stepping out of the cruiser.

"Do you have any ID on you? She demanded."

"No; my purse is in the truck" I said pointing out to the vehicle.

"Get in!" She ordered and I complied.

Looking through her rear window mirror, she chuckled.

"Tourist?"

"No, we moved here to Meeker." I replied.

She drove me to the truck and said while approaching, "You better watch out and don't get out and walk around like you are in a city park. Wildlife is active in this part and that included two legged ones." Then she asked me my name and I gave her.

By the time, Mom and Anton also showed up and then they chatted with her while and I just walked towards the truck.

For some reason, I felt that cop had some special interest in me. You know how I usually reacted to the looks of any other curious individual, Most looked confused when assessing my body and behavior to determine my gender. I contributed to that by living in a natural way my psyche dictated. At that age I did not understand the necessity to wear a mask that society demands you to wear, if one wishes to fit in, and later, I got used to my persona and did not have a society to fit in with. Today, I am what I always has been. However, the looks I received from that female cop, were different; there was some sort of tenderness and friendliness expressed and that confused me. I thought of her for some time but then I got back to observing my mother's face. I realized that her grandiose dream of having a nice home with friends and the long-term relationship etc., Were fading. In the twilight surrounding farmlands without the standing crop appeared to her, like she has arrived to live in a God-forsaken farming Village. Watching welled tears in her eyes, I felt sorry for her for the first time. I too shared her feelings of betrayal by the destiny.

After a long and straight dirt road that linked the farmhouse to Colorado state road 13, we stopped at a silhouette of a structure that appeared like a cowshed rather than a house. The only source of light was the headlights of Anton's truck. No one had imagined a need to have something as a source for light in case electricity was not turned on. Apparently, good number of months had passed since the Colorado authority located Anton in West Virginia and the news of his uncle's death and probate business has reached him. Obviously, the utility got disconnected and that included the water. In short, the large mansion that mom had been imagining, did not look like habitable at that moment. The difference in the breathable atmosphere between our former home on Taylor Mountain and this place was the foul smell floating on the wind. There we lived with the Chemical discharges from several plants, and here, cows and pigs supplied the Methane.

Anton and mom got out to inspect the premises and I watched them trying to enter the building. After failing to open the locked building, they walked around the building to see if there was another way to get inside. At the same time, an automobile turned into the driveway, and flooded the scene. The brightness of light blinded me for a moment and when the light changed to a lower intensity parking light, a young woman came in my view.

I wondered if she had anything to do with the property. In the darkness of night, I could only see her figure as she approached the truck and, in a few minutes, when she reached near the truck, I recognized her. It was the woman in the police uniform that I had an encountered half an hour ago. Now she was in her regular outfit of a Blue-jean and a light jacket. Since I was in the backseat of the truck, she failed to notice me sitting in the dark cab, however, I could see her in the wide mirror of the driver's side. Her untied hair do, and long strands were dancing on the breeze and out the uniform, she appeared as a young and delicately high school senior female.
As she passed by the truck, I called her out:

"Are you the one responsible for this property?"

"Oh my God!" She exclaimed and turned towards me.

"I did not think anyone sitting inside the vehicle in this cold. Where are your parents?"

Before I could respond, Anton yelled to her as he came around the corner of the barn with mom behind him:

"Are you from the Sheriff's office?"

"No; I just stopped by to see if everything is okay; I patrol this area and check the abandoned properties to keep drug dealers from making it a transaction place."

Mom and Anton came forward and then I got ignored and kept out of their paw wow. In few minutes both the parties returned their respective vehicles. Anton turned the truck around and followed the policewoman's Old's station-wagon.

"That's so sweet of her." Mom spoke to her man and that's all I heard about the arrangement.
After fifteen minutes or so, we reached the town, and both vehicles pulled in a driveway of a small house. That's where I learned that the woman had offered to lodge us in her home for the night. That one level cottage size dwelling had a living room, and a bedroom facing east. The common bathroom was built in front of the bedroom. A small utility room at the west side, away from the bedroom, adjacent to a narrow kitchen appeared to be the only place available for my sojourn. I didn't think of her comforts at that moment because she had gone to freshening up. Returning to the room, she came up to me with extended hand to introduced herself:

"I am Candice; people call me Candy."

As a lifelong habit, I did not give her my name but took her hand for a limp handshake. She held it for a longer time than anyone else had done in similar situations. Most barely held my fingers and let go as soon as they grasped it as if they suspected I would give them a contagious disease. Candy held my hand long enough for me to realize how soft and a delicate touch it was. I never had experienced such an unusual sensation that passing through me. I generally avoided eye contacts with people when introduced to anyone unknown. That moment, I looked up to Candy's face and our eyes mate. She was smiling and the eyes had a compassionate look that I had not seen before in anybody else's. I involuntarily smiled and then, to my surprise, she took me inside the loft, without letting go of my hand. In the room I noticed there a queen size mattress without the general bed sheet or a body covering stuff.

"You and I have to share this bed, if you don't mind and I don't snore; I hope you will be able to sleep." She spoke gently.

I shook head in acceptance and let my armor of stoic attitude drop off my persona. I felt things were going to change here in this God-forsaken country home. In my Mobile Home bedroom in West Virginia, nobody came in, and Pappy had an electric bell installed near my bed so he could get my attention if he needed me. Under the circumstances, I got used to sleeping in my underwear and wrapped myself in a bathroom robe if I had to go out to get something from the kitchen. That night I was facing a challenging situation. I had no pajama with me, just the robe. In my life, occasion to share bedroom never came and here, in that cramped quarter, I was to share a bed; a new experience for which I was not emotionally prepared.

Today when I think about that night, I can explain my confused state of my mind and the reaction to the thoughts of the tender physical touches of another female. As a grown woman, I understand that situation better than I did in my teenage years. I am sure it is the lack of prior experience caused that confusion. The first love a newborn experiences, it seems comes from the planting of mother's first hugging and kisses with her holding the offspring to her breast. If this is true, then in my case, I don't think my mother and I went through that bonding experience. I told you about the circumstances of my birth and the ill treatment mother received from her mother--a stubborn woman with the firm belief in Christian view of the original sin of Eve; grandma did not want another Eve with an illegitimate child on the way, to come inside her sanctified home. A child herself, it must have been a natural reaction that my mother looked upon my arrival as a beginning of an end of her immediate problems; now she doesn't have to be dependent on others to provide for her. Grandma had arranged for the delivery with a Black woman who lived on the East end of the river. She was to deliver the child and give it away to someone in one of the Southern States. What a hypocrisy; oppose abortion as a sin, but turn back on the newborn and mother with the righteous fervor, to face a life time poverty and all the pains and sufferings that go with it!

That much for the exalted and admired virtue of motherly love that mustn't have visited mom's tormented Psyche. In some lonely moments of my life, sitting on the bank of Kanawha river, many a times I wondered about what stopped mom from getting rid of me as soon as she knew about my presence in her womb? Perhaps, she was broke, ignorant, or both; perhaps had no one to guide her to a clinic.

"Man survives it all! Man is a creature who gets used to everything, and that I think, is the best definition of him."Wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky in Notes From a Dead House."

The definition applies to all genders equally, if you reflect upon the remark Dostoevsky made about the co-prisoners in the Russian Gulag. We all are prisoners of our circumstances and fate and yet we get used to our life and perhaps, we are indeed defined by what we get used to. I don't know anyone else agrees with it or not, but I know my life, and I know how I got used to everything.

Well, I got sidetracked again; my habit of approaching a subject philosophically does that; let me continue from where I left at the makeshift bedroom and Candy.

I went in the bathroom, finished the toiletry and went under the warm shower. My mind, however, was still trying to understand what Candy was pursuing. No other police of any gender ever took interest in me as an individual, and not even a troublemaker, weird female that looked more like a male. Why sudden, and bit subtle soft feelings on display now? What made her to offer her one and only bedroom to strangers and make herself uncomfortable by sharing bed with me in a closet like loft? I was tired and getting sleepy, so left those wondering thoughts for another day and got out of bathroom in my gown and panty. I never needed bra, because of lack of sufficiently grown mammary glands the other girls of my age had. I used loose tank-top for sleeping in the colder days and nothing in the other seasons. That was the privilege of having a bedroom for yourself exclusively. That night, I did the same by habit and it was quite let, to wake Anton to let me get back in the truck to get my stuff.

I returned to our bedroom and realized, the room was dark, and bed was occupied. I got in the bed and my robe slipped off my shoulders, as it did not have a belt to stay wrapped around. I pulled the cotton bed-sheet up to my neck and realized that I was sharing it with Candy. Despite the unusual arrangement,and her warm body touching mine, I fell asleep in minutes. Soon after that my dream state took over the reality of awake state and I reached the peaceful realm of Mother Nature, and the Raven. I will tell you about this aspect of my hidden world in the next chapter.