Chapter 2Dr. Charlotte W. Lane
Chapter 2
No Roots
October 1991
Dr. Charlotte W. Lane
C harlotte Lane drove through the tiny settlement of Crossroads, Texas. Like many areas in rural America, it was a town where most travelers wouldn’t bother even to slow and look for the town’s name. But this was her new home. She’d only visited it once while passing through on a research trip, but something about Crossroads had stuck with her.
All her life she’d lived in books, not in places, and she guessed here would be the same. What did it matter where she worked or lived? The minute she rested, she stepped into her real home: Fiction. Classics. Love stories. Science fiction. Mysteries. And her true love, Westerns.
She smiled a sad smile, thinking that she was like the town. Nothing to see. Small and ordinary. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Middle age.
When she was little, she thought her parents gave her a plain name to match her face. All through school they told her how smart she was. Not once had they said she was pretty. She was plain, and now she lived in a plain town. A plain main street. One water tower. Two churches across from one another, and the local sheriff’s office located beneath the local judge.
The summer weather had been hot and dry, leaving what had grown in spring already dead and turning brown.
Charlotte slowly passed a few dozen homes huddled together on short streets with bare trees out front. A ten-by-ten-foot shed of a post office, with a huge American flag waving at what had to be the center of nowhere. North, south, east, and west. The same view, no matter which direction you faced. Only four roads to escape.
She read that there was a lake nearby but she couldn’t see it. And judging by the dead plants, she doubted the place saw much rain. She heard there was a canyon out here somewhere, too, but that was nowhere in sight either. It was flat land as far as she could see.
“It would be hard to get lost in this town,” she said to her cat, Baylor, riding shotgun.
Charlotte made it a habit to name her cats wherever they were found. Denver, a midnight tomcat, moved in when she was growing up while her parents taught at the University of Denver.
When she moved to Sul Ross, she picked a white cat, named him Sul and lived with him while she got an undergrad degree. The day she packed to move, Sul decided to stay and disappeared. She waved as she drove away, but she didn’t see him wave back.
Five years ago, she picked up Baylor while teaching a summer class in Waco. She talked to him, but he usually appeared bored or irritated that she was living in his house.
Baylor didn’t even bother to look at her most of the time.
Charlotte gave up talking to the cat and mentally mapped the town. She drove ten miles an hour and took in Crossroads. If she was lucky the tour might last five minutes. The one main street had five open businesses. A café across from the post office. A funeral home with a TWO FOR ONE banner. A hardware store with overalls hanging in the front window and farm equipment spilling out the back. The bank was so small they probably had only one teller.
A short street behind Main had a two-door fire station and a clinic. Both looked more like storage buildings than emergency and rescue. The clinic had a five-foot sign that said OPEN 24 HOURS EXCEPT SUNDAY.
Half a mile down East Road was a big gas station. Charlotte thought of not bothering with it, but she decided she’d take the whole tour. Outside, the gas station had six vacant pumps. Inside there were restrooms, a lottery machine, and anything a traveler might need. Food, candy, hats, and stuffed animals.
As she walked down the back aisles, Charlotte was surprised to see canned goods, bread, wine, and even a long line of coolers with milk, ice cream, butter, and beer.
A man hovering near the 32-ounce drinks looked like he’d been living in the store for years. “Can I help you find something, sugar? I’m the owner of this place. I got anything you need. Got to drive thirty miles to find a Walmart to get something we don’t carry. I’ve even got a hot bar up at the front. Got corn dogs already fried, barbecue, and tamales.”
She thought about telling him that she was a vegetarian, but he really didn’t look like he cared. Besides, she was a frequent backslider on her belief. Now and then she’d have to eat a cheeseburger with all the trimmings. She considered she was only half wrong; after all, the cow was a vegetarian.
Charlotte bought a Diet Coke and a small bag of popcorn. It was time to move along and find the house she’d bought from the town’s only Realtor. As she headed off to first locate the school, she had to laugh. She must be crazy. She just uprooted her entire life, her career, and probably her sanity. For all she knew, everyone in this town was as crazy as the old man who’d just tried to sell her a day-old hot dog.
It was Miss McBride, the Realtor, who’d contacted her when she’d taken the job as the new high school English teacher. Miss McBride said she had the perfect house for Charlotte. Near school. Red door she couldn’t miss. Furnished. Special price for teachers.
In the oil boom days of early Texas, school districts offered free or discounted housing to get teachers to come to isolated locations. Maybe Miss McBride found one still standing. Or maybe the house was so bad, the one Realtor in town always started there.
Charlotte slowed so she could find her new home. Third house from the school. Red door. After teaching at Texas A&M in College Station, one of the biggest universities in the U.S., this place seemed like a porta-potty.
But she couldn’t stop smiling. She turned down West Road and saw a sign that announced the school zone. Behind the sign stood Crossroads’s only K–12 school. Three stories of red brick and glass. But this town had something College Station didn’t.
Peace, she thought.
The three-story school put her in mind of a mother hen with little houses around like chicks. A gym, an outdoor covered patio, a football field, and slides and swings for the younger grades. Bike racks for the middle grades and a parking lot full of more pickups than cars.
For years she’d taught English at the graduate level. The pace had been fast and exciting until one day she’d shattered and decided to take time to breathe. The truth was she’d been teetering on the brink of a breakdown for a while.
She’d started her teaching career at a little high school. She’d loved it but everyone had encouraged her to climb. She took summers of grad classes until she moved to a small college. Then a few years later A&M called. She was proud of the climb, but moving around left her with no friends, just colleagues.
Somehow, while she was following her career, she forgot about living her life.
Over the past five years, many of her Western Literature classes at A&M had been replaced with creative writing courses or film studies. Enrollment was low. The West was outdated and students didn’t find it interesting.
She’d been forced to teach topics she had no interest in nor expertise. The stress of learning new areas of study had slowed her writing and her research, and in an effort to find a temporary escape, she’d taken a much needed sabbatical to reclaim her passion for the West. And Crossroads had seemed the perfect place for that.
Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion here. It would give her the time she needed to reset. Research, write, and maybe even help her relocate her love for higher education.
“If you knew how the story would end, would you read the book?” she whispered to herself. “Would you even start the path if you knew where the road would lead?” She looked up as if the answer might be just above her.
“I would,” Charlotte said to her old black cat asleep in its crate. After all, she’d loved A&M before all of the changes. “I’ll love the fight and growth, and the challenges will remind me I’m still alive.”
Maybe she would suit up and battle again. Or would she turn another way? After all, there were four directions.
She passed the school windows decorated with a banner that announced WE WELCOME GRADES FROM KINDERGARTEN TO SENIORS: GO WRANGLERS. Twice she circled before she found a small street called Campus Road.
Red door, three houses down from the school, with an old van parked out front. The Realtor hadn’t lied.
The chubby young woman in her thirties climbing out of the van must be Miss McBride.
She had a name tag as big as her left breast. The moment she saw Charlotte, the only stranger in town, she started jumping up and down like a former cheerleader.
Three days ago, Charlotte had changed her life. First, she took the job as the high school’s English teacher. Then she said yes to a chatty Realtor. House unseen. Now she was in the middle of nowhere, unsure of what she’d gotten herself into.
Miss McBride had claimed a dozen times she had the perfect house for Charlotte. In fact, she swore it was a miracle it had come open a week ago. The Realtor repeated it was a small cottage in need of paint, with a charming red door.
She added that the place also came cluttered with old furniture that she called “mid-fifties.” No grass on the tiny yard, and a sidewalk made up of concrete crumbs. What looked like pumpkins growing in the abandoned flowerbeds.
Once Charlotte let her talk, McBride was like a book on tape. “It may not be the prettiest, but you must always think on the bright side, dear. The front yard could be props for Halloween decorations. Halloween is just around the corner. What a fun time to move into your new home.”
Charlotte told her she didn’t celebrate that holiday.
When McBride was silent, Charlotte thought she heard a sniff.
She tried to cheer up the Realtor by suggesting that it wasn’t really a holiday.
Miss McBride rattled in her squeaky voice, “Everyone in Crossroads celebrates and that makes it real. After all, it’s on the calendar.”
Charlotte thought about reminding her that St. Patrick’s Day was also on the calendar, but Miss McBride didn’t even pause to take a breath.
“Coach Biggers, our dearly departed teacher and coach, died last week, but he loved Halloween. He had his Dr. Seuss costume pressed yearly so he’d be ready. And, dear, don’t you worry, he’d already bought his treats.”
Miss McBride added, “He died of a heart attack, so he won’t mind you passing the candy out.” She raised her voice. “One piece per child, please. We don’t go overboard on sweets. One of the PTA rules.”
Charlotte held her smile in place and reminded herself that she’d moved here to start over. She could pass out some candy and pretend to enjoy the costumes.
Miss McBride continued. “Coach Biggers taught at the school for forty-five years. He’s the only English teacher and coach anyone remembers. He was loved, funny, and dedicated, even left his house to the school to sell to his replacement. But the young girl who helped change over the deed to the house said most of the students thought he’d been dead for years, still standing in front of his blackboard. Can you imagine?”
Charlotte didn’t like knowing that she was stepping inside a dead man’s house. She hoped he was happy in the hereafter with no papers to grade. She preferred to think that they were both moving on.
Crossroads had one of the few openings in her field, so she had taken the job and the house for the price of the back taxes. How bad could it be? The high school needed someone fast to fill his shoes, so the house was a steal. Biggers had left all of his belongings for the next resident to clean up. But the part about keeping all the furniture seemed more a curse than a blessing.
After McBride handed her the key and left, Charlotte sat in the gravel driveway of the spooky little house, in her parked car loaded down with everything she owned in the trunk. For several minutes Charlotte just looked at the school a few lots down from the red door.
“This will work,” she whispered to her cat. “I can walk to school every morning.” She might even come home for lunch.
As the sun disappeared, Charlotte picked up her worn leather work bag, a purse almost big enough to fit her fat cat, and what she’d bought at the gas station. She squared her shoulders and marched up the three steps.
Charlotte stepped into the small living room that was exactly what she’d expected. A huge desk. Bookshelves on three walls. Worn rugs. An old box TV that probably stopped working a dozen years ago.
She walked through the four rooms, all the same size. The bedroom was the only room bare of old Biggers’s personal things. Someone—maybe even Miss McBride—must have cleaned it. No clothes or sheets or pictures hanging around.
The kitchen cupboards were stuffed with canned goods. There was an ancient coffeepot and some old, chipped dishes. The bathroom could have been roomy enough, but the washer and dryer took up half the space.
Charlotte stared in the mirror over the sink and fought back a tear. She was tired, road-weary, and afraid. She looked more fifty-three than forty-three. She’d walked away from her colleagues, her job, and her home. Halfway through her life and here she was starting over.
She’d thought about telling everyone she was only leaving for a few years. But she’d hated all of it. Life had melted into Groundhog Day. Lectures, reading, eating alone, grading, meetings, more grading, and sleep.
She’d never stepped out of her routine. Her young dreams had faded away. She felt like she was on a merry-go-round, and she might change horses but she was still circling around.
Her life had become one old record that kept playing. All her studying and teaching and watching the same shows and listening to the same sermons and taking the same trail around the same park.
But her biggest fear was that she’d move to start over and make her new world exactly what her old life had been.
What if she couldn’t change?
She stared at her reflection. “I will transform. This time I’ll try to remember to live.”