When Seeking Adventure

Loraine Bonny’s physical pain had finally pulled at the threads of her emotional procrastination, as she sat outside of the chiropractor’s office with her head in her hands. The weight of her grandfather Edwin’s recent death, until today, was the most enveloping feeling she could ever remember experiencing. Loraine made her way through the foreign Sierra Vista chiropractor’s office still trying to wrap her head around the encounter she had just experienced at the Food Co-Op, which she was certain had changed her life for forever. She wondered how much longer she would have gone on living complacently if the office in her home town hadn’t closed permanently due to Covid-19 restrictions. For the first time in a week, she allowed herself to relax as the heating pads weighed heavily on her back, sending floods of pain and anguish throughout her body and psyche. She was scared of her aging body, she was upset with her granddad for dying, but mostly, she was mad at him for allowing her to live so plentiful, in ignorant bliss, while so many were starved, impoverished and without basic needs.

Loraine had been a star athlete in her home town of Bisbee, Arizona, captain of the basketball team due to her being only a couple of inches away from 6 feet tall. For the majority of the year, her and her grandparents would spend their week days traveling across Arizona and New Mexico salvaging materials and their weekends were spent recycling, fixing and cleaning their findings. Whatever they didn’t resell for a profit, or give to their neighbors in need, they would build into something beautiful on their acres upon acres of land on a beautiful mountainside in Bisbee, Arizona overlooking Mexico on one side and Arizona on the other. This property was once a safe haven, a comfort and a world of wonders to be discovered and created. Now, it was empty and nothing but a burden to her by herself.

Loraine had spent the last week brushing away her emotional unease, distracting herself with any issues she could find to fix around her family property. Every which way she turned there was something falling apart, something too big to fix on her own, she missed Granddad. The barn door had been knocked off its tracks, some bugs had gotten into the lettuce and arugula patches, the garden needed a new fence, the compost bin needed dumped and there was some unknown leak causing the farthest greenhouse to sink into the ground. This forceful attempt at ignoring the inevitable, necessary paperwork to finalize the knowingly unrewarding details of her granddad’s estate was most definitely the cause of her bodily pains. As Loraine’s tears soaked the paper sheet that separated her face from the massage table, she was coming to realize that she had happily lived the last thirty years of her life completely in the dark and the world desperately needed her to wake up.

The night before, she had spent tossing and turning in pain and this morning she had woken up stiff all over. She decided that she needed to make time for her, to love and give self-care, starting with a massage and a re-adjustment. She had done some yoga, chugged a few cups of water, fed Aisha, the last Arabian horse her grandma Jody had trained before she passed and Loraine made her way to the Sierra Vista Food Co-Op to fill up on water before her appointment.

As she lifted her water jugs into the back of Edwin’s F-150 Ford pick-up truck and slipped her mask into her pocket, she caught a glimpse of a video call from the person in the car next to her. It was a young woman, maybe twenty years old in the passenger seat, speaking with a group of young women with African accents and broken English. She was assuring them that she would send them more money as soon as she got paid. Loraine sat there for a few moments pretending to check her messages and remove items from under her feet to hear more from the distant lands of Africa. She did not want to appear to be eavesdropping, so she drove to her chiropractic appointment knowing these three things; the seven orphans on the other line were lucky to eat one cup of rice each per day, they were worried about having a roof over their heads come the end of the week and they had no access to writing utensils or paper. How could a family not have a single pencil? Her eyes began to water for the first time since she arrived back in Arizona to handle Edwin’s estate and she parked the truck and opened the flood gates of her heart.

By the end of the massage and adjustment Loraine wiped her tears, thanked the therapist and the doctor for what felt like a spiritual experience of necessary release and drove home to go face her ghosts. She stood at the door to her grandparents’ room, feeling like a child again she ran her fingers along the edges of the faceted crystal door knob, squeezed and turned. The same creaking sound in the door that kept coming back after Edwin supposedly kept fixing it, sounded like music to her ears. The last bit of sunlight in the afternoon sky peeked through the burlap curtains and brought to life the particles floating through the air and focused on the adult-sized rocking horse Granddad had made for Gamma. Gamma Jody had named the rocking horse after the first being that ever stole her heart, Nahla. She would joke with Edwin that Nahla was her first true love and not him. Loraine remembered trying to climb onto wooden Nahla on her own, maybe twice, before Granddad made one that could accommodate her little child body. She rocked that little rocking horse until she couldn’t fit on it anymore and then Jody let her use wooden Nahla whenever she felt the need to be a kid again.

Born the year Amelia Earhart flew across the Atlantic Ocean, Edwin Bonny was a creative, innovative and gentle man. He spent his early childhood in Maine and fell in love with “the lady, Jody Loraine” during his time in the Army. She could hear Edwin’s voice in her head, melting as her name would roll off of his tongue like soft butter churning. Granddad would always say that he had done enough time in the military to acquire the habit of waking up early, being able to make something out of nothing and to appreciate the sunshine falling on his sweetheart’s face. When he had ‘barely’ made it home at the end of the Korean war, he decided to literally and figuratively hang his boots up and spend his life by Jody’s side; wherever she went, he would follow.

Gripping Nahla’s handles and envisioning her hands atop of Jody’s, Loraine caught a glimpse of something out of place in their room that she knew better than the back of her own hand. She arose from the rocking horse and walked over to the bureau to soak in the view of something she had only seen glimpses of in the past. The supple, full grain leather of the little black book felt ever so soft and warn as she rubbed it along her cheek, letting it come to rest against her forehead as she breathed deeply through her nose. Fabricated memories flooded the inner workings of her mind; Jody hanging Edwin’s retired Army boots outside of their front door, the two of them giggling as they stacked rocks between concrete to build the walls of this house, the tears falling as they held each other after their only child died giving birth and the entirety of Loraine’s life. "Jody Loraine" was stamped finely into the cover and the pages were woven into the leather with thick, coarse strands of black hair from what Loraine could only assume were that of Jody’s beloved horse, Nahla.

Making her way to her own bed, Loraine stumbled down the halls with excitement as she opened the first page to see in Edwin’s handwriting, "How to be a Superhero." The first few pages were full of ideas, dreams and plans the two of them had written down together, some had become more elaborate with “see page…” and most of them had been crossed off. A few of the remaining items on their list included; "#7 – Love each other until we are both dead,” “#18 – Go to Africa with a savings and feed as many children as possible,” “#22 – Build a commune for those in need.” She grabbed a pen and crossed out #7.

The sun had gone down and she had lost track of time. The book had receipts, pictures and tickets to music venues, parks and even plane tickets to different countries. Getting tired she skipped to the back of the book, hoping to see their last entries. The last item tucked inside the book was a piece of leather that had obviously been cut out from the back cover of the book and placed as a marker. On the piece of leather was finely stamped "Loraine." Her vision became blurred and she had to wipe her eyes to be able to continue reading.

The first page in Loraine’s chapter, the final chapter of this journal, was titled "When Seeking Adventure," but there was nothing in the following pages. Loraine furrowed her brows and frantically searched through the last few empty pages until a piece of folded paper dropped out of the book. It appeared to be a treasure map of their property! “X” marked many spots along the property and Loraine ran for the door. She grabbed her boots, a shovel and her new little black book on how to become a superhero and began the adventure she didn’t know she was seeking.

With every “X” she came upon an old memory where something was off and marked with a tiny “X.” The first spot she came to was where she learned how to ride a bike. Granddad had shouted, “use the breaks!” as Loraine ran the handle of her bike into the little brick shed. She went to the shed and looked along the cracked edge where her handle hit and noticed a leather string sticking out from the crack. She had to adjust the position of a couple of bricks to pull out a leather satchel containing a handful of gold coins ranging from 1900-1940’s! Loraine squealed with joy and frantically viewed the map for the next “X.” It was where they buried Gamma. A giant boulder amongst tiny boulders stuck out like a sore thumb and in very small writing, on the back of the boulder was an "X," and buried there a few inches into the dry soil was another satchel full of coins! Then, the hillside where she buried her childhood dog, then the abandoned riding lawn mower she would ride on with Grandad! With every turn of the oddities, she uncovered satchels of gold coins.

Once she had found all of the mapped hidden treasures, she called her friend who was a coin collector and quoted her at around $20,000 worth of gold coin. Loraine called her neighbor to ask them to feed Aisha for a few months. She packed a check on bag with her passport and clothes and a carry on full of empty notebooks, pencils and a little black leather book with a few things left to check off.