I’ve always loved characters. Those who really know me might have experienced some of the voices I’ll do or characters I’ll get into. We love a good bit.

I’ve always had a great sense of what crafts the self and how to bring that person to life. Maybe I’m tapped into other lifetimes. Maybe I’m just an artist. How did the great writers of the ages see a person in their mind and make them real?

Story time

Today, I’m thinking about a woman I might design.

She’s beautiful and pretty, but an acquired taste. She’s somewhere in her late 40s. I’ve never been very good at guessing people’s age, but she’s wrinkled just enough and sits in her bones like she’s done this a few times before. She’s of European descent, but you’re not quite sure where she’s from. Either way, she’s a good American mutt now, and like all American mutts, she’s a patchwork of everything this land ever was and still wants to be. A little dust and diesel, a little hymn and holler. Her blood’s mixed like the soil—Irish laughter, Italian temper, Scotch thrift, maybe a whisper of Cherokee or Navajo somewhere way back, told over coffee and pie but never written down.

She’s got the kind of beauty that doesn’t come from mirrors but from miles. Sun-browned skin, hands that know work, eyes that don’t flinch from weather. She drives with the windows down and sings to old songs, believes in loving hard and well-trained dogs, in saying thank you and meaning it. There’s no pedigree to her, no pretense, just the hum of something honest, wild, and whole. The kind of woman you meet once and think, so this is what America makes.

She lives somewhere in rural Montana, or Colorado, or Idaho, or Wyoming. You’re not sure because you only met her once. She’s part elusive, part wanting everyone to keep a tab on her. And you want to keep a tab on her too. There’s something about her that makes you want to be one of the ones to know her, even if just a bit. She’s the type to have been your homecoming princess and the same one smoking cigarettes in the high school parking lot. She’s rugged and knows she can do anything, and somehow, you know it too.

I imagine I find her off the road. I’m alone, in the same way she is. Not truly alone but too independent for our own good. I’m in my RV. Traveling across the West before the winter hits. I’ve left Grandma’s house because I can’t handle the snow in my RV, and the girl using my car broke it and then wouldn’t fix it, so I have to keep moving. I’m upset about it, but what are you supposed to do? This is a no pity zone, and we just figure the next thing out.

I’ve been driving to Arizona for warmer weather. It’s getting dark, though, and I have to stop for the night. I’m too tired to try and find a campsite to put the RV on, so I’ll rent a cheap motel for the night with a bar across the street. I don’t drink, but I like to be around people after a day driving an 11-foot boat that shakes the whole time. It’s a little patch of neon light in the middle of nowhere.

The sign buzzes as I pull up. Two stories, doors that open straight to the parking lot. There’s a vending machine with half the bulbs out and a Coke can stuck in the slot from last summer. The kind of place that smells faintly of bleach and old air-conditioning, where the towels are thin but folded neat, and you can hear the highway hum through the walls.

Across the street, the bar glows like a heartbeat. An old Coors beer sign flickers in the window, a few trucks out front, the muffled pulse of a jukebox on its last leg inside. It’s the kind of spot that holds time differently, where nobody’s in a hurry and everyone’s got a story they’re not quite telling. I lock up the RV, pull my jacket tighter, and walk toward the noise and warmth, just to remind myself I’m still part of the world.

I see her at the bar right as I walk in. There’s a few other weathered men hanging out and her talking to the bartender. The guys all watch me walk in. I hate when that happens, like I’m on a stage, but I smile and nod, and find my way to the bar.

I slide onto a stool a couple seats down from her, pretending to study the bottles behind the bar. The place smells like spilled beer and old wood, like a hundred nights that ended the same way. The jukebox hums low, something twangy and sad, a steel pedal in the chorus.

She doesn’t turn all the way toward me, but I can feel her noticing. There’s a steadiness in her, a kind of calm that comes from not needing to prove anything. It makes my nerves feel young.

She’s not like other women. More man than most men, but still a softness you know you have to earn. There’s something magnetic about her, and even in her stoicism, you feel an openness.

I sit at the bar wishing I could just order a tea, but I’ve done that at bars before, and they basically ask me to leave. I order a lemonade, and she glances up just enough to notice.

“Are you really drinking a lemonade here?” she asks.

“I’m just a little fruity like that,” I say.

She smiles and gives me a chuckle, sets her head down. Nodding, approving, or judging, it’s hard to tell. “You don’t see that every day”, she says.

I don’t know how to follow up, so I just watch the bottles again. There’s a long pause where the music hums and the men laugh across the room. She studies her glass like it’s a map.

“You passin’ through?”

“Headed south. Trying to miss the snow.”

She half-smiles. “Smart. Snow don’t care how fruity you are. It’ll bury you either way.”

That line sits between us for a while. I can tell there’s something in what she said, but it’s about more than weather.

“You from around here?” I ask.

“Been here long enough to know better.” She takes a slow sip. “I’ve moved around a bit, too. But life’s funny. It wants you to stop movin’. Then the world starts comin’ to you instead.”

She finally turns to look at me fully, and it’s like getting caught. Not hostile, just real.

She squints as she looks at me, “You look young to be runnin’,” she says.

“I’m not running.”

“Sure you are.” She grins, and there’s tenderness in it. “We all do, just some of us get good at callin’ it something else.”

I want to tell her about the car that broke, the mold in my house, the man I fell in love with but who’s still in school, the jobs I don’t have, the cold nights, or the way the highway feels like both freedom and failure. But she already knows. You can tell she’s lived through every version of that story.

Instead, I ask, “Do you learn something from staying?”

She leans back, considering. “That peace don’t come from changin’ your view. Comes from makin’ friends with the part of you that’s never satisfied. The one that swears it’d all be easier somewhere else.” She looks at me then, slow and sure. “Winters teach you that. You stop wishin’ for warm and start learnin’ how to keep the fire goin’.”

That hits harder than I expect, and I freeze a bit. I think she notices, because she softens then, her tone like a lull after thunder.

“Everything that’s yours finds its way to you,” she says. “Keep life simple. Just let it find you.”

Then she sets down her glass, tosses a bill on the counter, and stands. Her coat smells faintly of cigarette smoke and cedar.

“You’ll be alright,” she says with a sweetness in her voice, and for the time, she sounds sure.

When she walks out, I don’t follow, but I watch her leave. The music keeps playing some old country song about going, and I feel the weight of her words landing. I feel a thread pull taut between us. God showing me what happens if I keep walking long enough to love where I end up.

Love,
Val

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