Heart of the Prairie

I took one of my own sleeping pills before going to bed that night.

The next day was Saturday, and my office was closed on Saturday afternoons. After I'd seen my last patient for the day, I got in my car and began the drive to Arrowpoint. I'd avoided it up to now because I couldn't bear to see the site where my beautiful Bonnie's life had ended. Now I felt I had no choice but to check it out for myself and try to understand what had happened as best I could.

Although I'd now lived in Oklahoma almost two years, I still wasn't used to the distances. Bonnie had thought nothing of driving to work every day from Millersville to Arrowpoint and back again. To her it was nothing unusual; to me it would have been a real burden. I guess when you grow up on the prairie your perspective is different.

But if this commute was so normal for her, I thought, why was that terrible night different? What could have possibly led her to her death on this long straight stretch of highway?

I consciously ignored the spot where I estimated the accident had taken place and drove on into Arrowpoint. I wanted to experience the return trip the way she had, so I went to Bonnie's office, made a u-turn in the parking lot and headed back out onto the highway. After a while I came to the bridge and immediately saw Nicole's point. There was no way anyone could speed through the repairs safely. If you weren't fully awake and alert, you were likely to wind up hitting one of the concrete barriers that enforced the lane change.

As soon as I cleared the bridge I stepped on the accelerator and sped up to 65. I checked my watch and made a note of the odometer when 60 seconds had elapsed. Then I pulled over, checked to make sure the road was clear and made another u-turn to go back to the site of the accident. It seemed to me that it would have been very difficult to drift off to sleep in such a short time.

Pulling onto the roadside, I got out and began looking around. Apparently the wrecker crew had done a good job: the only evidence of the accident I could find were some shards of broken glass and plastic, and a few strips of chrome body molding. Then something caught my eye in the grass, and when I walked over I found a small wooden cross inscribed "Bonnie Miller, RIP" and the date. I don't know who had placed the marker, but when I saw it all I could think of was the young woman I'd met in Arrowpoint. Once again, tears burned my eyes.

After a while I composed myself and started the rest of the drive back to Millersville with a heavy heart. After seeing the wreck site, I missed Bonnie more than ever, yet at the same time I was more disturbed than ever. I was now convinced that much of what I'd believed about her accident could not be true. "Oh, Bonnie, what happened?" I asked helplessly.

Over the next two weeks I found myself compulsively repeating the drive to Arrowpoint and back. I wasn't sure whether I was paying homage to my wife's memory or searching for clues to solve the mystery, but I didn't find anything to help with either quest.

After a number of fruitless trips, I decided I had to do something different. Accordingly, when I reached the office where Bonnie had worked, I parked, went in and asked to speak to Mr. Rogers, her supervisor. When I gave them my name, he showed up very quickly. I guess being the only doctor in a four-county area has its privileges.

Mr. Rogers offered his condolences and then sat chatting with me over a cup of bad coffee about Bonnie and her work. I guess he was trying to suck up to me because he kept praising her as an employee. "She was great," he enthused, "we would have loved to have kept her full-time, but I guess a doctor's wife doesn't need the hours," he added fulsomely.

I gaped at him. I'd thought Bonnie had a full-time job!

Trying to cover my astonishment, I asked him, "Refresh my memory, Mr. Rogers, how many hours a week was she putting in here?"

"Monday through Friday, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 every night, twenty hours a week," he rattled off the data. "She cut back her hours to half time just before you two got married. I guess she wanted a little extra together time in the morning with you," he said with a wink. Then he remembered he was talking about a dead woman, and he stammered and apologized.

I waved off his apology, thanked him for his help, and then headed on home with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Bonnie had always been protective of her job. I'd told her repeatedly that she didn't need to work, but she'd insisted. "I need my own money in case you kick me out," she'd say with a laugh, and I saw that as just another example of how strong her independent streak was. Now it seemed like something else, but what I wasn't sure.

When I got home I went straight to the box where her bank statements were stored. She'd kept her own checking account and used it for gasoline, meals at work and other incidental expenses. I'd always admired the fact that she wanted to be at least partially financially independent of me; now I thought there must be more to the story.

Her bank statements verified what Rogers had told me. Every month, I could see where her paychecks had been automatically deposited into her account. I checked back over the last two years. Bonnie's paychecks had been cut in half shortly before we were married. She'd never said anything about it to me. I thought I would find some explanation when I looked through her cancelled checks, I saw nothing out of the ordinary. What had been going on?

I felt very tired as I walked back to my desk. When I found her business card, I called Nicole's cell phone. "It's Mark Robertson, Nicole. I don't understand what's going on, but I think you're onto something."

I told her what I'd found and she promised to return to Millersville as quickly as she could. Before she hung up, she said, "Don't do anything rash, Mark. Wait till I get there, please."

I now had even more questions than before and no one besides Nicole with whom I felt comfortable discussing them. All I knew for sure was that Bonnie had been keeping secrets from me, and while I didn't know what they were or, none of my guesses was very pretty.

The next day after my last appointment I found myself back in my car heading toward Arrowpoint. I had no idea what I hoped to accomplish, but I felt like I had to do something. The news I'd learned the day before was like a worm in my brain, and I simply couldn't sit still and let its aimless burrowing drive me mad.

The drive over to Arrowpoint was unexceptional, but while I was stopped at an intersection getting ready to head back to Millersville I heard someone calling my name. "Hey, Doc! Doc Robertson, can you give me a lift?" I turned in my seat to see Jared Porter waving his arms and running in my direction.

Jared was one of my patients, a healthy teenager from a good family. "What are you doing in Arrowpoint, Jared," I asked as he climbed into the front seat beside me, "and where's your car?"

He gave me big grin. "I'm dating a girl who lives here in Arrowpoint. My car's in the shop and she called to say she was lonely, so I hitched a ride. You know how it is when you miss your woman," he said with a leer. Then he suddenly realized what he'd said and his face turned pale. "Oh, gosh, Doc, I'm sorry. I was talking about my girlfriend. I wasn't thinking about Mrs. . . ." He lapsed into an abashed silence.

"It's okay, Jared," I said gently. "I'm just glad I could give you a lift. Your mother would be worried if you were stuck out on the highway." He gave me an awkward nod, grateful to be spared further embarrassment.

As I drove we chatted about school and his plans for the future. He made it clear that he wanted to get out of Millersville at the first opportunity. "There's nothing here for me," he declared. "I'm hoping to get into OU and then live in Norman or Oke City after I graduate."

"You wouldn't consider coming back to Millersville?" I asked.

"No way," he said with certainty. "All my friends feel the same way."

As we'd been talking, I'd been checking my rearview mirror and had spotted a truck that was rapidly overtaking me. Soon enough I saw it pull into the left lane to pass me. The teenaged boy behind the wheel looked to be Jared's age, and he gave a friendly wave as he pulled past us.

I didn't feel so friendly. I'd had my car pegged at 10 mph above the speed limit, and the other truck still passed me easily.

The thing about Oklahoma roads is that there are a lot of stretches where you can see for miles, and I could see another car coming toward us in the distance. As I watched, to my horror the truck that had just passed us suddenly pulled into the oncoming lane. A moment later, the oncoming car did the same thing, pulling into my lane so that the two of them passed each other in the wrong lanes at 70 mph. Then the car pulled back into the proper lane, and as it whizzed by me on my left, I saw the grinning face of a teenage girl.

As I'd watched the incident develop, I'd instinctively let off on the gas and hit the brakes. Now, with my heart pounding in my chest, I pulled over to the side of the road. I heard Jared laughing beside me, and I turned angrily to face him. "What the fuck was that?" I demanded.

"Hooo-eee!" he exclaimed. "Heart of the Prairie!"

"What are you talking about, Jared? Those two kids just missed getting killed!"

"Naw, they were fine. Didn't you see them stick their arms out the window?" he asked. He held his left arm up over his head in an arc, with the hand bent at the wrist and pointing down toward his head at a 45 degree angle.

I looked at him blankly. "Don't you get it?" he asked. He traced it out on the dashboard. "One driver's left arm goes this way, the other driver's arm does the same thing. Put 'em together and they make a heart -- heart of the prairie!"

I looked at him in astonishment. "Do all the kids do that every time they pass each other on the highway?"

"Oh, no," he said, quickly, "not all the kids, just the sweethearts. It's a way to say 'I love you.'"

I said nothing more to Jared for the rest of the drive. I couldn't -- I was in shock.

It was late when II dropped Jared off at his parents' house. When I got to my home, a rental car was parked out front, and Nicole Claiborne was waiting inside with the window rolled down. When she saw me, she gave a big smile, held up a bag and said, "I brought dinner with me." Then she saw the expression on my face and her smile vanished.

Once she'd spread the food out on the dining room table and we'd begun to pick at our plates, I started to describe what I'd witnessed that afternoon and what Jared had told me. She shook her head in disgust. "Never underestimate how stupid teenagers can be," she said. Then the light bulb went off in her head. "Oh my God, that's what happened to Bonnie!" she exclaimed. "She deliberately pulled into the other lane, expecting the oncoming driver to make the same maneuver!"

"Exactly," I said, "only the other driver didn't know the game."

"Because he wasn't the right person," she finished my thought. Then she shuddered. "That explains what happened to Bonnie's arm," she said, and I couldn't help but picture what would happen to an arm stuck out the window in an accident at that speed.

I shook off the image and went on. "But if Taylor Johnson wasn't the right person, who was?" I asked.

Nicole was way ahead of me. "That's the wrong question," she said. "The real question is: why did Bonnie think it was the right person?"

We stared at each other. "The truck!" we shouted simultaneously.

"Taylor Johnson was driving a truck that Bonnie thought she recognized," Nicole went on breathlessly. "She wanted to give her lover a sign: the heart of the prairie. Only it wasn't him." She shook her head sadly. "It was all just a terrible mistake, a stupid accident that didn't have to happen."

When Nicole used the term "lover," I felt the hurt again, but now a new emotion began to grow: anger. But I choked it back because there was more I needed to know. "So how can we find out who Bonnie knew that drove a truck like Taylor Johnson's?" I asked.

"I should be able to find that out on line from the Department of Motor Vehicles," she said, and went to get her IPad. When she returned she was already checking the database. "Okay," she said, "I found the registration for Taylor Johnson's truck. Now all I have to do is see if its specs match any other trucks in the area."

"Good luck with that," I said cynically. "Everybody and his brother has a pick-up truck out here."

"That's true," she said, "but we're looking for one that Bonnie would have been able to recognize from a distance. So what would have been the distinguishing characteristic that would have made her think she was passing her lover's truck?"

I tried to think logically rather than emotionally. "It would have had to be color," I said.

She smiled at me like I was a bright pupil in her classroom. "Exactly," she said, "and guess what: Taylor Johnson's truck was painted yellow, not a color you see very often these days. In fact, according to the DMV there's only one yellow pick-up truck of that make and model in Miller County and it's registered to one Holden Calloway."

"Who's that?" I asked dumbly.

"Let me check another database and I may be able to tell you," she said. After a minute she looked up at me with triumph. "According to this he's a 28 year-old male who lives in Arrowpoint."

"Shit, that's the same age as Bonnie" I said. "Give me a minute -- I think I know where to find something that may help us." I disappeared into the attic, and after rooting around a while, I returned with a book in my hand. I gave it to Nicole. "It's Bonnie's high school yearbook," I said quietly.

As she held it in her lap, I turned the pages to the senior class photos and went down the list until I found Holden Calloway's photo. We were looking at a nice-looking, slender boy with a goofy haircut and an ill-fitting suit.

"So?" she asked after she'd looked at the picture.

I flipped over another page and ran my finger down it until I came to Bonnie's picture. Even though she looked so young, I could still see the woman she was to become. But that wasn't what I pointed out to Nicole. Underneath her picture were the following words scrawled in ballpoint pen:

I love you, Bonnie Heart of the Prairie 4 ever Holden"They were high school sweethearts," Nicole whispered.

"Maybe it didn't stop in high school," I said.

Nicole looked up at me. "There's still something that seems strange to me. I could understand it If Bonnie were meeting Holden Calloway in Arrowpoint. But why would she expect to pass him driving back from Millersville?"

She set the high school annual aside and grabbed her IPad again. When she looked back up at me, her eyes were wide. "I don't understand -- this can't be right," she said. "This says that Holden's employer is the Miller ranch!"

We talked a lot longer that night. We'd learned so much, but there were still more questions whose answers seemed tantalizingly out of reach. I slumped down on the couch, my head beginning to pound, and turned to Nicole. "I'm too tired to think about this any more tonight. I've got to get some sleep." I looked at her steadily. "You're welcome to stay here if you want."

She gazed back at me carefully. "Are you asking me to . . .?"

"No," I said, "My emotions are still too raw. But right now I feel like my whole life is unraveling, and everything I believed was a lie. I just. . . it would be nice to have a friend here, if it's not asking too much."

I took the master bedroom while she went off to one of the guest bedrooms. But sometime during the night she came into my room and crawled under the covers. I was glad because I really needed someone in the midst of all the pain, and lies and betrayal. She seemed to need me as well and we clung to each other like two survivors of a shipwreck. Eventually we both dropped off to sleep.

I was fixing breakfast the next morning when she appeared in the kitchen, wearing her "dress for success" suit. While I fixed her a plate, she asked, "How are you feeling this morning, Mark?"

"Not that great," I told her frankly. "I've gone from being a widower who just lost the woman he loved to a man who learned that his wife probably never loved him at all. I keep bouncing between sorrow and anger, and I'm honestly not sure how much more I can take."

As she listened, I was touched to see tears in her eyes. "So that's what 'empathy' looks like," I thought in wonder.

"Thank you for staying last night," I told her. "The more I've learn about what's been going on, the more I've felt like I didn't have a friend in the world. It's been pretty lonely. Having you here helped."

She came up to me and held me. "I'm glad I could help, Mark, but you need to know that I stayed because I wanted to, not just because you needed me."

After a minute I released her. "What are your plans now?" I asked. "Can you stay?"

"No," she replied, "I'm going to have to leave, and I ought to do so before we give your neighbors too much to gossip about."

"It's probably too late for that," I said, "but it doesn't matter anyway."

She looked at me carefully. "What are you going to do, Mark?"

"Don't worry," I assured her, "I'm not going to do anything stupid. I just need to get the answers to the last few questions."

She started to say something, but then changed her mind. "I've got to return to Oklahoma City today," she said. "Now that we've confirmed that Bonnie's death was accidental, you'll be getting the insurance money deposited in your account."

I nodded, although under the circumstances the money meant nothing to me. I'd figure out what to do about it later.

"I'd like to know what you find out," she went on. "I mean, after it's all over. I'd really like to . . . if you want to. . ." She stopped, uncertain of what to say.

"I understand," I said.

She looked as though she wanted to say something more, but instead she came over and kissed me gently on the lips. "Good luck, Mark," she said, and then she left.

I felt a pang as she drove away; I'd felt better having her with me. But I had to take the next step alone, and now the anger that I'd suppressed began to build. Checking the clock again, I made my preparations and then got in the car.

I didn't want to risk going on the Miller property so I parked on the side of the road a mile or two from the entrance. When I saw the green truck coming I started my engine and then, at what I judged to be the last safe moment, I pulled out in front of him. His frantic maneuver to avoid hitting me caused him to drive off into the ditch. I angled my car in front of his truck so he couldn't easily pull away and then hopped out of my car.

He stared out of the window at me with astonishment that changed to fear when he recognized me. "Get out of the truck, Holden!" I yelled. "Get out or I'll smash the window and drag you out!" I repeated, brandishing the tire iron I held in my hand.

I thought I was going to have to carry out my threat, but then his shoulders slumped and a look of resignation came over his young face. He unlocked the door, pushed it open and slowly emerged to stand beside his truck. He didn't look like he had grown any since his high school photograph. I must have been four inches taller and thirty pounds heavier.

"Go ahead and beat me," he said sullenly. "You can kill me if you want -- it doesn't matter to me. You can't hurt me any more than I hurt already. She's gone and I'll never see her again."

I grabbed him by the arm. "I'm not going to hurt you if I don't have to," I told him. "I just need you to come with me and answer some questions."

I marched him over to my car and shoved him in the passenger's seat. He seemed apathetic now, but I kept the tire iron where I could grab it easily, just in case his mood changed.