I look up to the sky as I leave my house at 5:45 AM Friday November the 18th and don't see any stars which tells me it is very cloudy. The cloud cover must be the reason there is no frost on my truck or the blanket that covered the windshield. I begin the sixty mile drive to the construction site where I'm a journeyman electrician. Lanie, my wife of six years, won't be home until 7:30 AM from the twelve hour shift she had to work in the ER of our local hospital. I hate that she has to work alternating days and nights every other week as an RN since the new administrator at the hospital changed everything around six months ago. I'm thirty miles down the road before I realize I left my cell phone on the charger in the living room of our double wide. I proceed to work and hope that Lanie understands when I don't call her when I leave the jobsite for the day. I can't call before then knowing she'll be trying to sleep to be able to go to work that night.
The building we are constructing isn't under roof so when the rain comes at 10 AM, we all rush to the company's storage trailer to get out of the weather. The foreman checks the weather forecast on his computer about 10 till 11 and sees that the rain has settled in for the day. He gives us our paychecks and tells us to go home. I drive toward home and stop at my bank to deposit my check in our joint checking account keeping out the hundred dollars I'll need for the next week.
I see a strange car parked in the drive behind Lanie's and wonder who and why someone is at our house at that time of day. I pull into the drive that leads to the barn lot beside our double wide and cut across the open field between it and our home. I unlock the back door as quietly as I can and hear the oh-so familiar squeal that Lanie makes when she's coming. I step softly into the kitchen and look through the window in the wall that separates the dining room from it. I can see Lanie riding a chocolate colored man in the mirror of the dresser beside our queen sized bed. She calms from her orgasmic bliss and lays on the man's chest where they begin to kiss and talk to each other. I can't hear what they are saying and when they begin to untangle, I ease over to the side so I can still see them in the mirror but hopefully they won't see me. Lanie gets on all fours and the man gets behind her to take her in that position. I see it is Dr. Carter, the new ER doctor that the new administrator hired to try and get more of the black population to come to the hospital's ER.
I turn and slip out the backdoor closing it just as softly as I opened it. I don't realize that I'm crying until I reach the cab of my truck. I sit and cry for five minutes before the thought that they might finish and Lanie would see my truck came to me. I turn in the barn lot and drive away from our once happy home. As I pass my mother-in law's house a mile from the double wide, I almost lose it again. Since the death of both my parents, she has been my second mom. I will not only lose a wife, but also another parent in the divorce. I drive to the bank and withdraw five hundred dollars from each of our joint accounts. I drive to the neighborhood I grew up in and sit in my truck outside my old home place and remember how happy I had been when I introduced Elaine Granderson to my family when we became serious in our relationship. I then begin to think on what I'm going to do.
After about an hour of thinking and crying, I decide on a plan. I call my foreman and ask him to call Elaine and tell her I have to work over because the excavator had torn out the underground temporary feed to the building and the other trades would need it for Saturday. I tell him I will explain everything on Monday and he agreed to do the favor for me. I drive to the three liquor stores in our town and get as many empty boxes as they have.
I return to the double wide at 7 PM knowing Elaine is at the hospital. It takes me two and a half hours to pack all my work clothes in the boxes. I lift the hatch on the protective shell on the cargo area of my truck and load my tools into the bed up next to the cab, strapping them in so they won't slide around. I load my clothes, a couple pairs of sneakers, the extra pair of work boots, and my dress shoes into the bed of the truck. I throw in a sleeping bag and an inflatable mattress at the rear of the bed then back my truck up to the pop-up camper we had used for hunting and fishing trips. I break down and cry when I realize I've lost the best buddy I've ever had after the camper is secured to the truck. I drive away from the home I had envisioned living in for the next fifty or sixty years for the last time.
"Hello, is that you Dar? Where are you and why is the camper gone?" Elaine asks me the next morning when I call her cell phone from the pay phone of a convenience store thirty miles away.
"NO! You don't get to call me that, you black cock slut! How long have you been fucking Dr. Carter, Elaine?"
"What, what are you talking about, Dar? I'm not fucking Dr.Carter!" Elaine manages to say after her gasp from hearing my black cock slut remark.
"SO, I guess that was your evil twin I heard coming on his cock yesterday about 12:30! Or maybe you're like Sybil and have multiple personalities and one of them was fucking him in our bed! I read your little note on the table. I guess I spoiled your plan to humiliate me by having me eat his come out of your pussy before I got sloppy seconds. How many times has that happened, bitch?!"
"NO Dar! I would never have done that to you! I always cleaned myself extra well and douched before you came home!" I hear her gasp again as she realizes what she has said. "Dar, baby, I love you and only you. Please, it was only sex for God sakes! Dr. Carter doesn't mean a thing to me! Please come home and let's work this out between us! I promise it's over between him and me anyway! I won't do anything like this again, I promise! Please Dar, come home!"
"I told you not to call me that! You're right about one thing; you won't do anything like this again to me because I'm gone!" I slam the handset down onto the cradle and start walking to my truck and ignore the ringing of the phone behind me. I'm sure it's Elaine trying to call me back.
I drive to a camp ground ten miles from the jobsite and pay cash for two nights. I'm at the foreman's trailer at 7 AM Monday morning and tell Rick the whole sordid story between crying jags. Rick and I go and retrieve the tools I had left at the jobsite and I tell him to have the company mail my last check to my old home. I climb in my truck and head south toward Florida.
I stop at a camp ground in Georgia when my eyes get too heavy for me to drive any farther. I get the camper ready and fall into the sleeping bag and surprisingly fall asleep right away. I awake with the first rays of sunshine breaking over the horizon. I have to wait until 8 AM to pay for my night's stay. I'm on the road by 8:15 and drive until I reach another camp ground outside of Orlando. I pay for a week's stay and set up my camper. I don't sleep much at all that night and am out in my truck at day break. I go to nine small electrical contractors before I find one who will take me up on my proposal. I explain to all of them that I'm hiding from a cheating wife and don't want to be found. I will work for fifteen dollars an hour cash money and twenty dollars an hour for overtime. The contractor who finally agrees with the deal is still paying his cheating whore of an ex-wife alimony from his divorce and is more than happy to help me.
I work for him from December until April and decide to move on. I have ten thousand dollars in cash when I decide to leave and head farther west. I call my brother, David Glazer; collect from the camp's pay phone.
"Hello David, it's your brother, Darryl. How's everything going with you and your family?"
"Dar! Where the hell are you?! Lanie is going insane and nobody knows what happened between you two! Dar, Lanie's four months pregnant and the double wide is about to be foreclosed on. You need to come home now and straighten this mess out!"
"Where I'm at is not important! What has Elaine told everybody about me leaving?"
"She said you all had a big fight and you left with the camper to cool off. She thought you'd be back in time to go to work by Monday. She fell apart when you didn't come home that Sunday. The holidays really sucked around here with you gone and Lanie moping around crying one minute and cussing you out the next. Come home, Darryl."
"I'm not coming home to a cheating, lying whore; Dave. I caught her fucking Dr. Carter that Friday before I left. They didn't know I was there. Dave, you know I've never lied to you so you have to believe me. Elaine is on her own."
"But what about the baby, Dar? What if it's yours? You're not the kind of man to abandon your own child."
"It could also be Dr. Carter's if she's four months along. That's how long I've been gone. I'll not support her and another man's bastard kid. I only called to let you know I'm still alive."
"Darryl, I'm begging you to call Lanie! She's in trouble! Don't you care even a little about her? Please call her!"
"Okay, I'll call her. Is her cell phone number the same?"
"Yes, she's kept it hoping you'd call! Thank you, Dar, and I believe you on why you left."
I drive toward Alabama and stop at the welcome center to use the pay phone.
"Hello, you black cock whore! It's me, the poor bastard whose heart you ripped in two when you cheated on him!"
"Darryl, where have you been the last four months? Nobody knew where you were! Darryl, I miss you and I need you to come home. I'm pregnant and the bank's going to foreclose on the double wide."
"Do you miss me or the money train I was before I caught you cheating on me?! I'm not telling you where I'm at, where I've been, or anything else. Have you started divorce proceedings yet?"
"NO! I don't want a divorce! I love you and want you back! I'll do whatever you need me to do if you'll come home!"
"I want to ask you a question and I want an honest answer from you, Elaine. How many times have you gotten laid in the last four months?"
"Why do you need to know that? I told you it was over when you called that Saturday morning."
"Because I've gotten laid zero times in the last four months! The first couple of months I had to drink myself to sleep and sex didn't even enter my mind. Now whenever I get the urge, I dredge up the memory of hearing you come on another man's cock or the sight of you riding him in the mirror beside the bed and the urge goes away like a snap. Now answer me!"
"About four times, Dar!"
"I told you you can't call me that anymore! I'm not your Dar! You threw the right to call me that away when you gave another man what you promised only to me! I'll make you a deal! I'll come back to East Tennessee in five months if the baby you're carrying doesn't come out black AND if you can stay celibate for the next five months. You'll have to have someone I trust verify you've been celibate though because I can't believe a word that comes out of your mouth right now. We got a deal?"
"What about the double wide and my doctor bills? Darryl, please I need you, I miss you, and I want you. I can't help it if you don't believe me, the sex with those other men doesn't compare to the sex I had with you. Please come home now!"
