After breakfast, they continued south through Michigan. The bad weather was either ahead of them, or hadn't caught up with them. Whichever, it was clear, dry, and not overly hot or humid, and it was a pleasant ride through farmland interspersed with forests of red pine. There were lots of ponds and lakes along the way, and not as much traffic as one would expect on a bright summer day. They rode for some time without much talking.
"Are you feeling okay, today," Sam asked, eventually. "You seemed to sleep well."
"I did. Did you? I heard you leave my room early this morning. Did you get any sleep, at all?"
Sam chuckled. "I think I might have been asleep before you were. I woke about three o'clock, with the newspaper still on my lap. That's when I left you, and went back to my room. I got another couple of hours sleep before breakfast."
"Well, thanks for staying, even if you didn't turn out to be much of a watchdog." She was quiet for a moment. "I've been remembering a little bit more - about people, not much about events. I remember Shirl at the diner, sitting up at the counter like she owns the place."
"Which she does."
"I know, but she acts like she couldn't care less if anybody came to eat. She's just so bored-looking."
"And yet she gets to the cash register pretty quickly when somebody starts to leave!"
Emma gave a little laugh. "She isn't really mean, is she? I mean, I remember her as a little crabby, but mostly nice. When we were talking yesterday - well, when you were talking about Emma to Andi - you mentioned the back booth. Shirl doesn't like anybody sitting in them, right?"
"Well, she doesn't want just individuals to sit in the booths - or even couples, sometimes, if the place is busy. Maud used to always wait until Shirl went outside, then would let you sit in a back booth, with your notebooks, or whatever you were working on at the time. Maud would come and sit with you on her breaks. I don't think Shirl would ever have thrown you out, but she liked to chew on Maud about it."
Emma smiled, more to herself, Sam thought, than at him. "I also remembered Dwayne."
"Dwayne, the poacher," Sam contributed.
"He isn't a poacher..." Emma started to object, but then remembered. "I guess he really is, but just rabbits. I remember he used to make me carry his sack of them."
"Dwayne is not only a poacher, he is also an abettor - at least, where you were concerned. He would help you do any crazy thing you wanted to do, but I know he was your rescuer on more than one occasion, too. I can't help liking him for that."
"Is it okay for a sheriff to like a poacher? Isn't that against the 'lawman's code,' or something?"
Sam grinned at her. "Maybe I can overlook the poacher aspect, and just remember what a good friend he's been for you. Also, he's a darn good mechanic. By the way, you don't know, but he owns the repair shop, now. When Abel Slaw retired, Dwayne bought it from him. I think he's doing really well with it."
"That's good. I think I remember that I like him a lot." She paused. "Sam, this is really strange and confusing. I don't know anymore if I'm Andi learning new things, or Emma remembering old ones. I feel like I should just automatically know all this stuff. Now that the memories have started, why don't they just all pop back into place?"
"I don't know, Em. I can't begin to imagine how it must feel to you. You've been Emma a long time, but for two years you've been Andi, who is just as strong a personality as the original. There's bound to be some conflict. I guess all I can suggest is that you just keep taking it slow, and let things come back to you as they're ready."
"I guess that's right. But, now that it's started to come back to me, I'm very impatient."
He was quiet for a minute or two. "Can I suggest something different? Can I ask you about some of your Andi memories? There are a couple of things about the last two years I'd like to know more about. Would that be too hard for you?"
It was Emma's turn to take a few moments to think. "I guess it would depend what you wanted to talk about."
"Okay, that sounds fair. Let me propose a couple of topics, and you can say yes or no. The first one is about your interest in animals."
"That sounds harmless enough. What do you want to know?"
"Well, you mentioned liking to be with the man at the livery stable, and you helped with horses. Mary Dark Hope told me about your coyote rescues. I can picture you getting interested in such things - except, maybe not the coyotes! - but I can't recall that you even had a pet, before."
"There was the hotel cat."
"Yeah, but that wasn't really your pet. That was part of the hotel fixtures. How did you get so interested in animals?"
"I don't know. I think I just saw a need, and I tried to take care of it. With the coyotes, I was all alone in the mountains, and I'd find them lying in the snow, with their legs caught in steel traps. It just seemed wrong, so I did something about it."
"Weren't you afraid of the coyotes? I mean, even a pet dog can get pretty upset if they're hurt."
"I guess I was a little concerned the first time or two, but usually they just looked hurt and lost. I had real trouble learning to open the jaws on the traps - I'm not really strong enough - and I thought being so close to them for so long would provoke them. It didn't. Sometimes I'd just get the trap a little bit open, and they'd pull their leg out and walk away. Sometimes, they were really hurt, and then..." She stopped, and looked at him. "How does the 'sheriff's code' work in this situation, where I might have done something illegal?"
He smiled. "Maybe I'll forget I'm a sheriff for a while, and just be a very understanding father."
"Okay, remember that. No handcuffs. If the coyotes were really hurt, I gave them pain medicine, that I stole from a drug store in Santa Fe. I had the money, but I didn't know how to explain what I needed drugs for. First, I went to a vet, and told him a story about my old rheumatic dog. He didn't believe me, I'm sure, but when I reminded him that I was only looking for information, not drugs, he told me that codeine would be the thing to use. I stole some of that, and some needles to inject it into the coyotes." She paused. "I actually got caught by Mary on my last theft. That's how we met."
"What did she do?"
"She fixed me an ice cream sundae."
Sam laughed. "Well, that's a new form of justice. I'll have to try that next time I catch a thief stealing codeine for coyotes."
Emma smiled at the memory. "She has a key to the drugstore, and the owner lets her come in for a milkshake or sundae any time she's in town. When she first discovered me, she thought I was a druggie, but she wasn't afraid. When she found out what I was doing, she was thrilled... Well, not at first. She didn't believe a girl would be out in the snowy mountains by herself, rescuing coyotes, but when she started to believe it was true... Then, she was thrilled. Anyway, she ended up fixing a sandwich for me, and then we had our sundaes. I went home with her, and never went back to the mountains. Pretty soon, we started on the trip I told you about."
Sam shook his head. "Wow, that's some story. And the coyotes never tried to bite or attack you?"
"They never did. If they seemed in bad shape, I'd give them codeine, and then haul them to a cave I'd found. I'd light a fire, and just let them rest until they were ready to leave. One time, I fell asleep in the cave, with a coyote. When I woke up, it was gone."
"Amazing. So, was that your only animal adventure until you got to North Dakota?"
"No, when we got to Wyoming... Wait, I'm I still exempt from criminal prosecution, aren't I? If I'm not, then I can't tell you about interrupting the work of a government trapper, holding him at gunpoint, and tying him to a tree."
"Emma!"
"It's true. We were camped in the Medicine Bow Mountains. Well, not really camped. We just threw our sleeping bags on the ground, and went to sleep. When we woke up, we found an animal control guy pulling baby coyotes out of their den, and killing them. He'd already killed two, and another one was too badly hurt to live. I was going to kill it - shoot it - and I found out I couldn't do it. Poor 14-year old Mary, who'd never fired a gun in her life, had to do it!
"There were still some young ones alive in the den. We tied the trapper to a tree, so the mother coyote could come back, then made a telephone call from down the road, telling where the man was tied up. Then, we drove on to Idaho."
"My god, Em, that one is hard to overlook. Weren't you worried about getting caught?"
"I guess I really didn't think of it. I just wanted to save the coyotes. Anyway, we heard some people talking about it, later. Well, laughing about it. The trapper said that he had been attacked by a whole motorcycle gang. He wasn't believed, but I guess he sure wasn't about to say that two girls tied him up."
Sam tried not to smile, but it was hard. "That really is far over the line, Em. You could have really got in trouble for that one. Lucky you didn't. So, was that the end of your crime spree?"
"No, Jules was next, although I think we could be forgiven by almost everybody for that one."
"Jules! The Labrador. I forgot about Jules! Em, I was supposed to tell you that Mary has Jules."
"Oh, good! So the veterinarian was okay, after all. I was suspicious of him."
"No, you were right about him. He was a crook. He was taking in people's dogs, telling the owners that the dogs had died, then taking their pets to a dog-fighting arena out in the hills."
"Oh, no! So, we rescued Jules from the dog-fighters, then gave him right back!"
"Yeah, I guess that's one way to put it. When Mary started back to New Mexico, she stopped at the vet to retrieve Jules, and was told that he had died, and been cremated. For some reason, she didn't believe him. She went back to the place where you'd found Jules..."
Emma interrupted. "He was chained up by the road, obviously starving. That's how they get the dogs ready for fighting. Anyway, we talked to the woman who lived there - she's the wife of one of the dog fighters - and told her we were from the SPCA, come to take the dog. She didn't believe us - I don't know why she wouldn't believe two young kids were from the SPCA! - but she decided to help us, anyway. She cut the dog's chain, and we left him at the vet's to be treated. Dumb move!"
"Well, it turned out okay - better than okay. Mary went back to the woman, and told her what she suspected. The woman knew from her husband where the dog-fights took place, she and Mary went there, and - after some intrigue - managed to kidnap Jules and another dog, and get them away from there. Based on Jules obviously being alive, and your photo of him with the vet, the vet lost his license. Last I heard, he and others may go to jail over his stealing pets and the whole dog-fighting venture."
"My god," was all Emma could say.
"What Mary wanted me to tell you, when I caught up with you, was that you can come and get him, anytime you want."
Emma didn't respond, but there were tears on her cheeks.
They rode along in silence for a while, both digesting what they had been talking about. Sam re-opened the conversation. "So, after Jules, your next animal adventure was at Kingdom, where you got to know the guy at the livery stable."
"No, first I stole a donkey. That's how I met the livery stable guy - Jared - when I took the donkey to him."
The look on Sam's face might have been considered one of disbelief, but he'd already heard too much to dismiss her information, outright. "You stole a donkey?"
"Well, there was some later discussion about whether I actually stole him. But, yes, I found him tied to a fence, hitched to a cartful of wood and fertilizer, looking pretty sick, and with open sores from being tied up. Nobody was around, and there was no house or barn in sight, so I just unhitched him, and walked him to town. I was told that Jared had stalls for horses, so I took the donkey there." She looked sideways at Sam. "I named him Sam."
Sam didn't respond, just gave her a questioning look.
"Jared and I were trying to pick a name. He suggested Duke, then I suggested Silver. Suddenly, I had a little vision, or something. I just remember a dog, and I wondered if it was some kind of flashback to my real life. The name 'Sam' seemed to go with the dog. Maybe the vision wasn't of a dog, but of a certain watchdog who always looked out for me? Anyway, I named the donkey Sam."
"Always a good name," Sam conceded. "So, now you've got to Kingdom, with a donkey..."
"Well, I really liked the first people I met, and then Jim Purley offered me a job at his ranch, helping with his horses and looking after things when he was away. He and his partner, Tom Rio, are both widowers, and they do a little racing with their horses. Well, I took the job after exaggerating my experience..." Sam gave her his usual look. "I mean, I probably exaggerated. After all, I didn't know how much experience I'd had with horses, did I?"
"Well, Garrett County, Maryland, isn't exactly boots-and-saddle country."
"But I didn't know about Garrett County, did I? Anyway, I proved pretty early that I didn't even really know how to get on - or off - a horse, but they kept me on, anyway. I think I gave them a lot of laughs. But I really did like them, and the place, and the work. And the pig farm was nearby."
"The pig farm. That's what started the trouble, right?"
"I was fascinated with the pig farm - obsessed with it, really. I hated the very idea - pigs kept all their lives indoors, barely able to move, until they were eventually taken to be slaughtered. And yet, very much against the advice of Jim and Tom, I got a job working there. I even took a trip to the actual slaughterhouse. Everything was horrible. I saved two pigs... Well, I stole two pigs, don't ask me why. When we're talking about thousands - hundreds of thousands! - of slaughtered pigs, how can two matter? I don't know, I just felt I had to act each time.
"Well, Klavan's - that's the company - Klavan's was suspicious of me and my motives and intentions. When I started talking to other people, including a lawyer in Bismarck - they actually hired someone to kill me. Me, one girl! What was it I was supposed to do against them?"
"They hired someone to kill you? How do you know?"
"Because he tried. He isn't someone who misses, either, but he did. The bullet barely grazed my cheek."
"They didn't tell me about that."
"Because they didn't know. I didn't tell them. I did what you would probably call an 'Emma;" I went looking for the shooter, and caught him, myself."
"Emma!"
"He was a paid sniper - didn't know who actually hired him, didn't know why I was the target, didn't care. When he missed, I guessed he would try again. He did. I figured out where he was shooting from, got there before him, and got the drop on him. I told him I wouldn't turn him in if he would help me figure out what Wayans wanted. You know about Wayans?"
"The one who got shot at the ranch?"
"The one who had been stalking me since Idaho Falls, wanting some kind of information he thought I had. Of course, he didn't know I had amnesia, and wouldn't know what he was talking about. But after kind of passive following me for a year - keeping track of where I was - he suddenly became insistent that I give him the information, or else. The 'else' was that he would shoot Sam, then would shoot Jim's horse, Dakota, and then shoot me. I sent Gra... the sniper - to find out who Wayans was, and what he was really up to."
Sam pulled the truck off the road, shut off the engine, and stared at Emma. "And you thought that a sniper for hire - who had been hired to kill you - was going to help you with your stalker problem? Why?"
She gave him a sad half-smile. "Why do I do half the things I do, Sam? Whether I'm Andi or Emma, you've told me - I rush into things, without fully considering the consequences. I guess that's what I did, then, but I just felt he would help me. He did. He found Wayans for me, but couldn't get any information out of him.
"I tried one more time to figure out Wayans, and arranged to meet him - to presumably tell him what I knew. Of course, I didn't know anything, but I thought I might get him to say enough to let me figure out what he was after. I didn't think he'd kill me, as long as he thought I had the information he wanted. I was right about that, but I didn't think about him shooting Sam or Dakota. I didn't consider that when I brought them with me to the meeting. He actually started to shoot one of them, when I ran at him to stop him. At that same moment, somebody shot him."
"Your sniper friend?"
She didn't respond to that. "I tried to get the sheriff to think somebody had tried again to kill me, and hit Wayans, instead. He didn't believe that a sniper who was that good would have missed me, if he was shooting at me. He was pretty upset that I couldn't - well, wouldn't - tell him anything more.
"The shooter left the area after that, but he warned me that whoever had hired him would almost certainly send somebody else to finish the job. They did. The sheriff caught the new one - thanks to some anonymous information from Gra... - my friend - but it was all circumstantial, and they had to let him go. I'm pretty sure that my friend, before he left, made some threats to people he thought were involved in the plans against me. Maybe I would have been okay after that, but there was no way to be sure, so I decided to leave Kingdom.
"So, Harry Wine was dead, and hadn't told me anything about my past. Wayans was dead, without my knowing what he might have known. When I met you on the road, I had been thinking that there was absolutely no way for me to learn who I really was, and that's why I was considering ending my 'vision quest.' You see?"
"Yes, Em, I do see. That realization must have been amazingly tough."
"Well, I know who I am, now. At least, I'm beginning to know who I am. I somehow think the whole Wayans thing was a mistake - that there wasn't anything about me that he knew. I mean, we pretty much know my whole life now, and there's just no room in it for Wayans.
"That just leaves Harry Wine. I wish I knew how he got me, and I guess nobody but him could have told me that."
"Unless you can, Em. More and more, I'm thinking the one day and night with him were the real cause of your amnesia. You have a lot to remember, and that may be part of it."
She was silent for a moment. "I know we talked about that possibility before, and you thought maybe I wouldn't want to know. I know why you say that, Sam - and thank you for wanting to protect me - but I really think I need that information."
They rode along in silence for some time, after that. "Do you want to talk about Harry Wine, at all?" Sam finally asked.
She only paused briefly. "I will, if you want to. What did you want to know?"
"I'm not sure. I think I got the details pretty straight from Mary. Are you all right with what happened?"
"Well, I'd never shot anybody in cold blood before - at least, I don't think Emma did, either. I'm not sure he was really threatening us at the time, so it probably wasn't really self-defense. He made some comments about the three of us - him, Mary, and me! - having a good time together, but it was just the cockiness of his whole behavior. We'd caught him taking naked photos of a little boy, and he suggested that the boy had fallen in the mud, and he had just given him a bath! He freely admitted that he had raped me - well, he admitted he might have 'taken advantage!' - and that it had been him that picked me up that evening. When I tried to get him to tell me how he got me, he talked about me being the only survivor of a bus and semi-truck collision in Colorado. Then he told me the bus was from an orphanage in Utah - that's what the initials 'A. O.' were supposed to stand for. I was sure neither was true, but I checked them out, later. Then, I suggested he had killed a girl - and later, her father - in supposed boating accidents on the river. He claimed they were just 'bad luck,' but people who know the river, and knew how skilled the girl was, had always been skeptical. When he told me that the girl hadn't been 'as good' as me in bed - after he had said how disappointing I had been! - I'd had enough. I shot him - with his own gun, that I'd taken from his car in Santa Fe.
"I guess - as you might say, as usual - I wasn't concerned about myself, and don't feel I shot him because of anything he did to me. I was afraid that Mary or Reuel might get mixed up in any investigation, so I just slipped away. I never talked to Mary again, but I called Reuel, and told him what happened. I did worry about somebody else getting blamed, but Reuel didn't think that would happen. There was just too long a list of people who might have wanted Harry Wine dead.
"Anyway, I left, got a waitress job in Idaho Falls, and stayed there for a while, before going to Montana."
"And you're okay with all of it?"
"Andi is. I'm not sure about Emma. I guess we'll find out about that, at some point."
***
They continued south through Michigan, got some lunch near Ann Arbor, and moved on toward Toledo. "One thing I've had on my mind," Sam began, after a while, "Is about 'A. O.,' the initials on your backpack. I know that you - Emma - bought that pack at home, just before your bus trip. The initials aren't sewed on, or embroidered, or anything. They're part of the pack, probably the initials of the manufacturer. If we investigated, we'd probably find it was 'American Outdoors,' or some such thing."
Emma just stared at him, then looked down at the pack, sitting by her feet. "I must be amazingly stupid! I've had that pack with me every day for two years, and I guess I've never really looked at it. You're obviously right. It's just a logo."
"Em, you had absolutely nothing to go on - not one clue to your existence. The initials gave you something to relate to. You knew you weren't Andi. You knew you don't have a family on Long Island, or a brother in Alaska. Still, it gave you something to latch onto. I'm glad you had that."
She looked back at him. "I guess, but it seems so brainless, now. Good grief!"
***
Sam had something else on his mind, but he didn't see any reason for - or value in - bringing it to Emma's attention. It was just - like a lot of us - Sam didn't like things he couldn't explain. One of the unexplainables was "Andi's" hair color.
During the first year he looked for her, most people he talked to mentioned Andi's hair. It was described as "long and pale," "almost transparent," "silvery-blonde," "lighter than corn silk," and "ethereal." (He had to look up that last one. The dictionary said ethereal was "extremely delicate and light.") When he had last seen her, Emma certainly had light blonde hair - not yellow-blonde, like a lot of female hair - but none of those adjectives came close to fitting. When he finally saw her a year later, her hair seemed quite a bit lighter than he remembered, but she'd been out in the sun and wind for two years. Even considering that, it was not "ethereal."
Sam had heard that stress or trauma could cause new hair to come in gray or white. That's why it was sometimes noted that American Presidents seem to look "older" after a year or so in office. But he also knew that, once your hair emerges, it can't change color - well, it can be affected by sun or wind, but hair is like your fingernails. It's pretty much "dead" when you first see it. Stories about hair turning white overnight are just stories. New hair just emerging could be affected by your wellbeing, but he was pretty sure it took at least five years to replace all the hair on your head. Even if Emma had suffered a great enough trauma to cause new hairs to be much paler than her original, it wouldn't show up as a major change in just a couple of months. Similarly, it wouldn't "change back" in just a month or so.
There was no question that "Andi" and "Emma" were the same person. What had other people seen that he couldn't see? It irritated him a bit. Then, he smiled as he had another thought. If Will and Mill (Emma's brother and his friend) were handling this in one of their crackpot plays, they would simply have a deus ex machina (or Do-X Machine, as they called it!) appear, and say "don't worry about it. Anybody who looks at Emma will see whatever they want to see. There, no problem!"
***
It was still fairly early in the afternoon when they approached Toledo, but it was too far to make it all the way home. Sam opted to take the road nearer the Lake Erie shoreline, rather than to continue south to catch the Interstate. They found a quiet motel near a good restaurant at Sandusky, Ohio, and stopped there for the night.
"Only about 300 miles home, now," Sam observed at dinner. "We should get there in early afternoon. Are you excited, or worried? Any new memories?"
"I don't think I'm worried about anything. I just wish I remembered more. I have a feeling that the country we've been driving through the last couple days is much more like 'home' than what I've been seeing the last two years. Is it?"
"The short answer is yes, but just in a general way. You want me to give you a quick little history and geography lesson? You'll eventually remember all this stuff, but maybe a preview would be good."
"Okay, I'm game."
Sam sat two napkins on the table, placing one about halfway on top of the other, and turned diagonally to the first. "Now, this top napkin is what most of Maryland looks like - a big block of land, somewhat triangular-shaped. But, there's more to it. I'm going to take this teaspoon, and lay it so that the handle touches the west corner of 'Maryland.' If we follow the handle 'west,' we eventually come to the bowl of the spoon. All by itself, out there, but that's still Maryland. You remember that shape?"
"Yes. It's always looked weird for a state, even when I remembered more, I'm sure."
"Well, we're headed for that little spoon bowl. That's Garrett County, Maryland, where we live. I'm the sheriff of Garrett County."
Emma regarded his "map." "So, why is that part of Maryland, instead of... what would that be? West Virginia?"
"I'm glad you asked, so I can regale you with my knowledge of Maryland history. When the original colonial charters were granted by the King of England, the descriptions were wrong. By the original descriptions, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was in both Pennsylvania and Maryland. To correct that, two surveyors were brought in to draw a correct line between the two colonies. The names of the two surveyors - Mason and Dixon - and their 'line' became famous in another context by the time of the Civil War, but the original intent of the Mason-Dixon Line was to establish the boundaries of the two colonies. Maryland lost quite a bit of land to the north, and ended up with a strip of land - the spoon handle - that in some places is only a couple of miles wide."
Emma thought about that. "Okay, I see that for the north boundary of Maryland, but what about the south - and this little glob of Garrett County?"
"Clever girl! Why isn't Maryland bigger - wider - to the south? Because the original south boundary of the colony was the Potomac River. That's why it's kind of a wavy, scallopy line. Here at the spoon handle, the river is very close to the Mason-Dixon Line, but then it dips south and flows around 'the little glob' you mentioned - Garrett County.
"It seems like it must be an administrative headache for the Maryland government to have to deal with this weird outline. Things like elections must be confusing, particularly since most of the people in Garrett County are more like West Virginians than they are Baltimoreans. I've wondered why the states - well, all four states: Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania - didn't get together a couple hundred years ago, and create more logical boundaries. Maybe it had to do with Maryland wanting to keep control of the Potomac River far to the west, like that. It certainly developed into a significant transportation corridor.
"So, that's your history lesson. 'Want a brief geography lesson to go with it?"
"Sure, teach away."
"Okay. Garrett County considers itself mountainous - well, all the country around it considers itself mountainous. You've been in the West for two years, so you know what mountains are really like. We have lots of hills - well, we have lots of 'contour' - hills and hollows. Here's an old folk song." He sang, quietly.
"From here on up, the hills don't get any higher. From here on up, the hills don't get any higher. From here on up, the hills don't get any higher, but the hollers get deeper and deeper.
"Well, it would be better if Burl Ives sang it, but you get the idea."
She laughed. "I think I know who Burl Ives is, but I think you did very well. 'Hollers' for hollows? That's kind of like the people at Cripple Creek calling it 'Crick.'"
"Right. Well, I think that's a pretty good description of Garrett County - high hills and deep 'hollers.' As far as what it actually looks like, there are still some pretty good forests, but most of it is more civilized with lots of little towns and small farm fields. Very pastoral."
"It sounds nice. I think I probably like it."
"We'll see, tomorrow. Well, we better give them back their table." He picked up the two napkins, and put the teaspoon on one of the plates. "I guess the waitress doesn't need my map."
They paid their bill, and walked back to the motel. "I think I'm about ready to crash for the night. Are you okay? Okay. Well, it's a pretty easy day tomorrow, so I guess we can just get going whenever we get going. Knock on my door, or I'll knock on yours.”
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