LJ Idol, Season 11 - Week 10
Title: The Goal
Topic: open topic
Vic has a plan. She doesn’t know how to execute that plan, so it might be more accurate to say she has a goal. I don't entirely trust that she knows what she's doing, but I don't have a better idea. She outlines the plan, I tell her what's wrong with it. But I can't plan on my own.
We’re in Cheyenne, despite the Union Pacific depot and our complicated history with the railroad. Vic is pointed north, to Canada, and I point wherever she does. If she’d listened to me we wouldn’t be here. We’d still be in Nebraska, probably. I don’t know what we’d be doing. Tempting fate.
We’re dressed like girls for once, in dresses and bonnets that belonged to someone else. I don’t know if we’re more or less conspicuous like this, or if we should have stayed in our trousers and shirts. Our hair is cropped short, and badly, but the bonnets should hide it. We have to look like cousins. We can’t look like outlaws.
Because we are. We robbed two coaches and nearly got a train, and if we’d managed the last successfully we wouldn’t be here. We’d have horses and a tent and supplies and we’d be off the road and on our way.
But we didn’t manage the train. Vic’s plan went to hell, as I told her it would. I was angry and then I was terrified and then I was worried and then I was terrified again, and I’m still terrified, and nothing she can say now will soothe me.
Why Canada? I asked her once, the first time she told me her grand plan.
Mountains, she said. Snow. It belongs to England, no one will look for us there.
No one’s looking for us now, I told her.
And no one was. We’d run from home and neither of our families had the will to chase us, or the money to find someone else to. It was a relief and a disappointment at the same time - did we mean so little to them? Did they not care?
We’ll be our family, Vic told me. Just you and me. It will be stronger for our choice in making it.
And what a choice I’ve made. I followed her through Kansas, to Nebraska, to the Wyoming Territory, eventually someday to Canada. I’ll follow her to the ends of the earth, if she asks.
She hasn’t asked. She never does. She doesn’t have to.
So here we are in Cheyenne, hiding behind stolen disguises to make Vic's goal. I ask the ticket clerk about the trains. I know exactly how much money we have, but I don’t know - neither of us does - what we’ll need when we’re finally across the border and in another country. I don’t know what we can spare, and this indecision renders me temporarily mute. Vic takes my hand.
Don’t worry, she whispers.
Her goal is enough for her. It always has been. Mountains. Snow. A place we can be alone, where no one will find us. A place where no one can tell us what to do. I have a goal too, set when we stole a horse and ran away, and reset over and over ever since.
I have only ever wanted to make a life that means I can be with her. That life is stagecoach robbery and wanted posters and a carpetbag full of other people’s things. But I chose it. I've stuck to it through everything that's happened to us. And because of that, because I have chosen to follow her into the vast unknown, I'll take everything that comes with it.
Topic: open topic
Vic has a plan. She doesn’t know how to execute that plan, so it might be more accurate to say she has a goal. I don't entirely trust that she knows what she's doing, but I don't have a better idea. She outlines the plan, I tell her what's wrong with it. But I can't plan on my own.
We’re in Cheyenne, despite the Union Pacific depot and our complicated history with the railroad. Vic is pointed north, to Canada, and I point wherever she does. If she’d listened to me we wouldn’t be here. We’d still be in Nebraska, probably. I don’t know what we’d be doing. Tempting fate.
We’re dressed like girls for once, in dresses and bonnets that belonged to someone else. I don’t know if we’re more or less conspicuous like this, or if we should have stayed in our trousers and shirts. Our hair is cropped short, and badly, but the bonnets should hide it. We have to look like cousins. We can’t look like outlaws.
Because we are. We robbed two coaches and nearly got a train, and if we’d managed the last successfully we wouldn’t be here. We’d have horses and a tent and supplies and we’d be off the road and on our way.
But we didn’t manage the train. Vic’s plan went to hell, as I told her it would. I was angry and then I was terrified and then I was worried and then I was terrified again, and I’m still terrified, and nothing she can say now will soothe me.
Why Canada? I asked her once, the first time she told me her grand plan.
Mountains, she said. Snow. It belongs to England, no one will look for us there.
No one’s looking for us now, I told her.
And no one was. We’d run from home and neither of our families had the will to chase us, or the money to find someone else to. It was a relief and a disappointment at the same time - did we mean so little to them? Did they not care?
We’ll be our family, Vic told me. Just you and me. It will be stronger for our choice in making it.
And what a choice I’ve made. I followed her through Kansas, to Nebraska, to the Wyoming Territory, eventually someday to Canada. I’ll follow her to the ends of the earth, if she asks.
She hasn’t asked. She never does. She doesn’t have to.
So here we are in Cheyenne, hiding behind stolen disguises to make Vic's goal. I ask the ticket clerk about the trains. I know exactly how much money we have, but I don’t know - neither of us does - what we’ll need when we’re finally across the border and in another country. I don’t know what we can spare, and this indecision renders me temporarily mute. Vic takes my hand.
Don’t worry, she whispers.
Her goal is enough for her. It always has been. Mountains. Snow. A place we can be alone, where no one will find us. A place where no one can tell us what to do. I have a goal too, set when we stole a horse and ran away, and reset over and over ever since.
I have only ever wanted to make a life that means I can be with her. That life is stagecoach robbery and wanted posters and a carpetbag full of other people’s things. But I chose it. I've stuck to it through everything that's happened to us. And because of that, because I have chosen to follow her into the vast unknown, I'll take everything that comes with it.