Trailer Tracey

When you tell people you're nineteen and just got out of high school, they tend to look at you kind of funny. You know they're wondering what's wrong with you since most kids are seventeen or eighteen when they graduate.

I could accept that from most people, and if I explained why I was the age I was, I usually got sympathy. What was hard to accept was when I was applying for jobs. I'd fill out a job application and put my age and date I graduated from high school along with all the other information. Then I'd have to sit down for an interview.

The interviewers were all the same. They'd scan down my application until they came to my graduation date. Then they'd look back at the top of the application where my age was. Their eyes would narrow for a second or so before they looked up at me and smiled.

"Mr. Garner, why don't you tell me about yourself."

That question was probably a standard interview question, but I could tell they'd already made up their minds. Anybody who'd been held back a year in school probably wasn't someone they wanted as an employee. To most people, that meant either I wasn't very smart or I was really lazy.

It didn't help that I walked with a limp. Both my late graduation and my limp were caused by the same thing. I'd been driving home from a football game in October of my senior year, and a drunk driver had run a stoplight and T-boned my car.

I don't remember the accident, but the doctors said that's fairly common. What I do remember is waking up in a hospital bed and seeing Mom and Dad sitting there. I could tell Mom had been crying and Dad looked like he was about to. When I tried to move, I couldn't. That's when I saw the plaster casts on my left arm and both legs. I couldn't move my head but I couldn't see why.

I didn't get all the details about the accident until the doctor came by to see me the next morning. He said I'd been trapped in my car for almost an hour while the fire and rescue squad cut it apart so they could get me out. When the EMT's got me to the emergency room, I'd lost a lot of blood so they did enough surgery to stop the leaks so they could fill me back up. Then they did a CAT scan to figure out what was wrong with me so they could fix it.

What was wrong was I had a crushed left leg, a broken right leg, my left arm was broken in two places and I had a broken pelvis. I also had a broken vertebrae in my neck.

They worked on me for two hours to put my left leg back together with titanium plates and screws. My broken arm was a compound fracture so that required more surgery. The other broken leg was a pretty simple break. The broken vertebrae in my neck didn't damage my spinal cord, but it was bad enough the doctor thought he should immobilize it. My pelvis was broken in one place but the bone hadn't separated.

The end result was I came out of the operating room with a cast on my left arm, casts on both legs, and a neck brace that kept me from moving my head. The broken pelvis was worse. To keep the bones from moving, they'd put metal pins in the two pieces. Those pins stuck out of my skin and the bones were held in position by carbon-fiber bracing bars that connected to the pins.

After the doctor had explained all that, I asked him how long I'd be that way. He frowned.

"I'll be able to take the casts off your right leg and left arm in about eight weeks. Your left leg will take longer to heal so maybe twelve weeks for it. It'll be about the same for your neck brace. The pelvis break will take a lot longer depending on how fast it heals, but you should plan on wearing the bracing for at least four months. After that, you'll have to use a walker for another couple of months while you're going through physical therapy.

"I've already talked with your mother and father about this. You've been hurt pretty badly and I don't want you trying to do things too fast. I suggested they keep you at home until you're done with physical therapy and they've agreed. I want to see you every week for the first two months. Your pelvis fracture is stable and the bracing should keep it that way, but if it doesn't, I'll have to do surgery to put it back."

So, I ended up sitting out that school year. At first I thought it would be great. After the first week, it was boring as hell. I mean, you can only watch so much TV and daytime TV sucks anyway. By Christmas, I was watching reruns of reruns of movies that I'd already watched twice before.

I did try to keep up with school. At first, Mom brought my homework and tests home every day. I'm not stupid, but without a teacher to explain the material, it was pretty much a lost cause. We talked it over and decided my first priority was to get well and I'd repeat my senior year.

I healed a little faster than the doctor thought, and by April all I had was the pelvic brace. He took that off in May, and I spent the summer learning how to walk again. When I say I learned how to walk again, I don't mean walking like I used to walk. The doctor had told me my left leg might be a little shorter than my right, and that's what happened. I had a slight limp even with a thicker sole on my left shoe.

In June, I turned eighteen, but it wasn't a very happy birthday. I was supposed to have graduated and have a job by then. Instead, I had another year of school ahead of me, a year of school with kids I'd teased to death about how I was going to graduate at the end of the school year while they still had two years to go. I wasn't looking forward to that.

It turned out worse than I thought. A month into the school year, I found out I had a nickname -- Gimpy. Nobody actually called me that to my face, but that's what they called me when I wasn't around. My cousin, Julia, was a junior that year and let me in on that little secret.

The other thing was girls in my class didn't want to have anything to do with me. The girls my age didn't want to have anything to do with me either. Julia told me why. She said no girl would want to go out with a guy who walked with a limp.

Well, I made it through that year, limped up on the stage to get my diploma, and then limped back down. Mom and Dad congratulated me. I was just happy it was over and I could get on with my life.

Getting on with life meant getting a job so I could buy a new car and get a place of my own to live. It wasn't that living with my mom and dad was terrible. It was just that every time I left the house, one of them wanted to know where I was going and what time I'd be back. I was an adult now, and I didn't need watching over.

Before the accident, I'd been seriously considering enlisting in the US Air Force. I'd spend four years in the Air Force and learn a skill at the same time. What I wanted to do was start my own business. Now, there was no way I could pass a physical, so a job meant working for somebody just like my dad did.

I started filling out applications for every place in town and it wasn't long before the reality of my situation became obvious. Dad had told me that no company could legally refuse to hire me just because of the accident. I suppose that was true, but if they didn't interview me, they didn't have to refuse to hire me.

That's what happened to about nine out of every ten applications I filled out. After I'd called eight of the businesses and got the same line -- "I'm sorry but we've filled that position and are no longer searching for employees" -- I figured out what was going on.

I guess I couldn't blame them. Billy Taylor had been held back a year when we were in eighth grade, so he was in the class I finally graduated with. Billy was doing pretty good to be able to read simple stuff and do simple math. I wouldn't have hired Billy to do something as easy as flip burgers.

The interviews I did get always ended up the same way. I'd sit there and answer questions from a man or a woman who looked and acted like they were just going through the motions. After the interview they'd say, "We have several applicants to interview for this position. We'll call you when we've made a decision".

After a month of not getting any return calls, I decided I probably was going to live with Mom and Dad for a long time. My only hope was to get my ass in a junior college and learn a skill that would prove I wasn't a dumb-ass. I figured if I had good enough grades from junior college, they'd have to accept that I limped a little.

Junior college was a problem in itself. To enroll, I needed to pay tuition and buy books. That took money Mom and Dad didn't have. To get the money myself I'd have to find a job. Where I was, was with no job, I couldn't get the money for more education and without the money for more education, it was going to be really hard to find a job.

Dad tried to help by talking to people he knew who ran businesses, but it was Mom who finally came up with an opportunity for me. She didn't like it at all, but we were all out of ideas.

"I saw Tracey Miller's mother at the grocery store. You remember Tracey, don't you -- the girl who was a senior when you were in the eighth grade. Well, she just got divorced from her husband and Lord knows why, but she wanted to stay on the farm she inherited from her father. I mean, women aren't supposed to be farmers. They're supposed to be housewives and have children. If they do go to work, they're usually clerks or cashiers or beauticians, not getting filthy every day by raising sheep and growing tomatoes.

"To tell you the truth, I think Tracey's husband divorced her because she's not very female. It wouldn't surprise me if she had another woman move in with her, if you know what I mean. Alice says when they were in high school, Tracey seemed to like hugging other girls, so maybe she is that way. To each his own is what they always say, but it's just not natural for a woman to be like that.

"On top of all that, she lives in a house trailer. Her mother said Tracey and her husband bought the house trailer when they moved out there and had planned to build a house but they never got around to it. Never got enough money is probably more like it, but she lives in the same house trailer by herself now.

"Anyway, her mother was telling me that Tracey was looking for somebody to help her out but she couldn't find anybody that wanted to work that hard for what she was able to pay. I told her you were looking for something. It won't be much, but maybe it'll get you started. Your dad says if you have experience at almost anything, it'll help you get a real job.

"I told Tracey's mother I'd talk to you and see what you thought. She said Tracey will be home every day except for Thursdays when she buys her groceries and Saturdays when she goes to the farmer's market to sell her vegetables and you should just go out and talk to her if you're interested."

Well, I didn't think much of the idea of working for a woman and I didn't know anything about raising sheep or growing vegetables, but at that point, any job was better than no job. The next Monday, I borrowed Mom's car and drove out to Tracey's farm.

Tracey's farm was way the hell and gone from everything else, and to get to it, I had to drive up almost a half mile of gravel lane. One thing was for sure. Tracey wouldn't have to worry about neighbors watching what she did. There wasn't another house closer than five miles. When I got there though, I kind of liked the setting.

Tracey's farm looked to be about a fourth of around two hundred acres inside of an oxbow formed by a small river. The river made kind of a natural fence to keep in the sheep I saw grazing in a fenced pasture and also was a place for them to get a drink. The other fenced in part was a field of tomatoes that were about waist high. The rest of the oxbow was mostly a field that was grown up in grass and it looked like somebody had baled that grass into hay. There were stacks of rectangular bales of it stretched out in a row beside the fence for the sheep.

The only buildings on the property were a small barn for the sheep, the house trailer, a small camping trailer and an outhouse that looked about ready to fall down.

The house trailer didn't look like much, but then, house trailers always look a little weird because they're just long metal boxes. It had those crank-out windows all along the side and four of those big propane bottles were sitting on a concrete pad beside the hitch. It had a wood deck at the front and back doors and a couple of lawn chairs were sitting under a big oak tree that shaded the trailer.

The little camping trailer looked about big enough for a bed and maybe a place to put some clothes. The hitch looked like it was broken, the wheels were rusted, and both tires were flat. There was a small flock of chickens walking around it and sometimes they went under it. I was thinking the place was about as redneck as you could get.

I knocked on the door three times before I heard a woman's voice yell, "I'm out here in the barn". When I looked at the barn, the woman standing there confirmed my suspicions about the redneck thing.

I really didn't remember Tracey all that well. One of the things I didn't remember was the copper-red hair she had tied back in a ponytail. I also didn't remember that she was kind of pretty, but when I was in the eighth grade, I wasn't thinking about girls as much as I was thinking about playing baseball.

She'd have been more than just kind of pretty if she'd been dressed better. It was a pretty cool day for July, but still warm enough I was starting to sweat by the time I got to the barn. Tracey looked like she was sweating too. She had on baggy jeans and an oversized T-shirt, and the T-shirt had some wet looking stains under her breasts and armpits. She was a little shorter than me, maybe five six to my five ten. Tracey didn't look skinny, but she didn't look fat either. She just looked nice and soft and female. If she'd worn something a little nicer, I'd have said she was better than most.

Tracey pulled a strand of red hair away from her face and then smiled.

"You must be Mark Garner. Mom said you might be coming out. Well, here's the long and short of it. I can pay you eight dollars an hour and I'll expect you to work hard eight hours a day with an hour off for lunch. If I need you to work more, I'll pay twelve dollars an hour. That might happen a few times, but don't count on it.

"I know that's not as much as you'd make at Walmart or one of the other places in town, but I have some fringe benefits they can't give you. Things on a farm have a way of happening when you least expect it, so I'll need you here all the time. You can live in my little camping trailer and I'll take care of feeding you.

"The camper is kind of a mess right now. My pig of a husband bought it to take hunting and fishing. He lived in it after I threw his sorry ass out of the big trailer and he never cleaned anything. It'll be a decent place to sleep once you clean up all the beer cans and pizza boxes and change the bed sheets. I'd have already done it except I haven't had the time. Let me show you what you'll be doing."

Tracey motioned me into the barn and over to a wheelbarrow.

"You'd think sheep would have enough sense to not crap where they sleep, but I guess not. That's good though in a way. I pick up the manure and wet straw with a manure fork and pile it out by my garden. It rots down over the winter and in the spring I spread it on my garden and then till it in. Makes really good fertilizer."

I was trying to seem interested without proving I was stupid.

"You get enough fertilizer for that whole field of tomatoes?"

Tracey shook her head.

"Oh, hell no, but I don't put it on my tomato field. If you fertilize tomatoes too much, they grow up all vines and no tomatoes. I just put it on the garden I raise for myself and some other vegetables to sell. Makes the best tasting veggies you ever tasted.

"The other thing you'll have to do is help me weed the tomatoes and my garden. It has to be done every day or else the weeds'll take everything and I won't have anything to sell or to eat. Weeds'll grow faster'n my ex's dick when he saw me naked."

I must have blushed then, because Tracey laughed.

"That shock you? Well, get used to it. I say what I think. Always have and always will. If you can't handle that, this job probably isn't for you. Still interested?"

Well, since it was the only job offer I'd had since graduating, and since it included a place to live even though it would be like living in a sardine can, I was still interested. I did have to get the answer to one question though."

"Missus Helm, I'd like the job, but I need to know one thing. There's a reason for it, but most people don't want to hire a man with a limp. I don't want to take this job and then find out you don't like having a man with a limp."

Tracey frowned.

"Now look here, Mark. We need to get something straight. I don't need a man who can run a foot race. I just need a man who can work. I wouldn't care if you had six toes on each foot and three eyes as long as you can do what I need done.

The other thing is, don't ever call me Missus Helm again. I'm not a damned missus anything, not anymore. You call me Tracey and I'll call you Mark. Fair enough? When can you start?"

Well, that was a problem since I didn't have a car. I explained that to Tracey and she smiled.

"Thursday is when I go to town to buy groceries. You meet me at Walmart about ten with your stuff and I'll bring you back here in my truck."

Mom dropped me off at Walmart at a quarter 'til ten and I camped out by the door to the grocery section with my big gym bag of clothes and other stuff. I probably looked like a homeless guy because people kept staring at me when they went in or came back out. It was five after ten when Tracey walked up with a smile on her face. She had on baggy jeans and an oversized T-shirt again, and her hair was still in a ponytail.

"Hi Mark. Let's put your stuff in my truck and then we'll do some shopping."

I pushed the cart while Tracey tossed stuff into the basket. She asked me what I liked to eat for breakfast and I told her I usually had cereal. She frowned then.

"Cereal won't get you all the way to lunch on a farm. I better buy some eggs. My hens haven't been laying as well lately. I think they probably need a rooster."

She put a dozen eggs, a pound of bacon and a pound of sausage in the cart and then smiled.

"Bacon and eggs with some potatoes from last year's garden will give you enough to get to lunch. I usually have sandwiches and potato salad for lunch. How about you?"

Tracey bought sliced turkey, sliced ham, and sliced roast beef. She said she made her own potato salad.

When we walked out of Walmart, we had all that in plastic bags in addition to five pounds of hamburger, two chickens, and a bunch of other stuff Tracey said she needed.

When we got back, we carried everything inside her trailer. I'd never been inside a house trailer before, but Tracey's was pretty nice. It was a little weird because there was a hallway down one side instead of in the middle between rooms, but the living room was pretty big and the kitchen was big enough it had a table that would seat four. Everything looked really clean too.

Tracey said she'd fix us a lunch while I started on the camper. She handed me a box of big trash bags.

"I have another box if you need more, but these'll give you a start. Oh, and don't use the toilet or shower because they aren't hooked up to anything. You can use the outhouse at night if you don't mind the spiders, and the toilet and shower in my trailer during the day."

The camper wasn't as bad as Tracey had let on, but it was still pretty filthy. I picked up half a trash bag of beer cans that were strewn on the floor, on the little counter with a tiny little sink and a two burner stove, and stacked under the little table. There were a bunch of pizza boxes too, just like she'd said. I filled another trash bag with those and was taking it and the bag of beer cans outside when Tracey yelled from her trailer that lunch was ready.