Thunder.

The sun was a shocking, red ball in a sky full of charcoal clouds as she walked down a familiar dirt road. That’s how she felt walking into the square walls of her childhood church today; a pink cotton ball swimming in white. No one ever left Churchill. Unless they were pregnant with an illegitimate child or running from the Law. They stayed and married a cousin of a cousin. She was always a ruby in the pile of diamonds that surrounded her. She hit the road as soon as soon as she graduated and let the dust settle behind her without looking back. She did things. She saw things. Things that carved her inch by inch like the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon.  She felt the mist of Niagra Falls on her face, she was drenched in the Amazon River, and she got sick off of authentic Indian food. She knew what it was to live.

Human kind, generally, does not appreciate change or someone that shakes up their ideas like a can of soda pop. Their brains explode with the thought that something could be more than what they experienced day in and day out. This was especially true of the people in her small, childhood hometown. She was met with cold faces that had once looked upon her with such love and warmth. There were no welcome home banners or embraces. She was met with the judgmental glances that a tourist would be the victim of or the looks of pity a stray dog would receive. This was no longer a place she could call home. Her heart twisted at the thought. She was a gypsy. A homeless vagabond.

She knew everyone’s face and the stories that went along with them, so when she saw the tattered and dirty man on the side of the dusty road she walked, her radar went off like a home alarm system. Red, blinking lights surrounded him, warning her that this was an intruder. She knew what that felt like. Maybe that’s why her steps didn’t hesitate as she directed them toward the tree he was sitting under.

His face was cloaked in a fog of cigarette smoke and all she could see were his holey jeans and a bright smoldering tip against his lips. She sat down beside him and stared at his face. It was boney and his green eyes were sad. He didn’t turn his head but let her sit in silence examining him like a work of art.

“I could use a smoke.” She said. His head remained stationary, but he reached his long arms over to her and handed her, what she thought, must have been his last smoke the way he was slowly nursing it. She inhaled the vapor and blew it out slowly as her head swam in a deep sea of nicotine.

“I don’t suppose you have something to drink?” She asked. She couldn’t smoke without a drink. This was a rule she had come to live by. Remaining unaffected, he reached into his pocket and retrieved a flask that was marked with the initials L.A.T. She took it and sniffed the contents. Whiskey. A sad man’s choice of beverage. She sipped it and let the red hot liquid burn through her throat and down to her stomach.

“My name is Ava.” She said matter of factly. It was not polite to drink a man’s drink without introducing one’s self first. The man nodded slowly. Everything he did was slow and purposeful. “I know you’re not from Churchill, so who are you stranger?”

Only then did he turn his face to meet hers. He did not shy away from her gaze but stared intently into her eyes. She had traveled the world and had seen things that people wouldn’t ever want to see and she had never met someone that had looked at her that way. It was unearthly.

“I’m just passing through.”

“I didn’t ask you what you were doing. I asked you who you were.”

“That is a story that could take a day to tell.” He said, still sighted in on her eyes like a skilled marksman.

“I have time.”

“My name’s Tucker.” He said as he extended his long fingered hand toward her. She looked at the rough hand and noticed the dirt under his fingernails. Those were the hands of someone who was intimately acquainted with hard work. Her fingers were adorned with French tipped, pearly white nails. She sat on her hand and blushed with the Crimson of shame. He pulled back his hand unaffected by her rejection like he was used to it. She brushed a strand of sandy hair off her sweaty forehead awkwardly.

“It’s very nice to meet you Tucker.”

“And you, Ava.” He spoke so properly for a bum. “So, what’s your story stranger? Who are you?” He asked as he gently took his cigarette out of her free hand.

“I am a stranger. I was Miss Churchill and homecoming Queen but no one knows who I am anymore” She said sadly, taking the smoke from his hand again and smoking away the loneliness she felt inside.

“Being unknown isn’t so bad.” He said, as he gazed upon her face. “There are no expectations that way.”

This was truth that he spoke. Her heart was touched with the realization. They didn’t speak after that. They watched the sky, pregnant with rain, bring to birth a brilliant thunder storm that shook their souls. Words were insulting in such a holy moment. Ava’s life would be forever rocked by that thunder storm.