Chapter 14: Miles from the Outhouse

We lay quietly in each other's arms and drew what comfort we could from each other. Then Serendipity happened with a bang. Just as we left the motel and started to get in the rental car I saw an older model motor home with a For Sale sign in the rear window go by. It traveled slowly down the street.

"Quick, get in the car," I told Rachel. She didn't answer me, just opened the door and got in. I started the engine and sped after the motor home. It had just turned the corner a block ahead of us.

"What is it, Forrest? What are we doing?" Rachel hadn't noticed the old motor home.

"I think our new transportation has just turned the corner down there." I laughed and sped up.

When we caught up with the motor home I honked a few times and pulled in to the curb. The driver, an old man in his sixties pulled in behind us. "Hello?" he asked when I came back to his side of the motor home. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong," I answered him. "We just might be interested in your motor home if the price is right." I smiled and waved at Rachel to join me.

"Well get in," he smiled at me. "I'm always ready to talk a deal."

We walked around to the passenger side and entered when he opened the door for us. I checked out the interior. It looked almost brand new, even though it was obviously a very old model. "How does it run?" I asked.

"Well, with just shy of fifty thousand miles on it, it ain't really broke in real good yet. Ruth Ann and I bought it brand new twenty-seven years ago and took our vacation every year and drove around the state."

"How much?" I asked. "We would like to take immediate possession of it."

"I was askin' twelve for it, but if you have the cash, I'll take ten." He paused and added, "Ten thousand."

"Be right back." I hurried to the rental car and grabbed the money out of the console where I had stashed the balance of the five thousand dollars I had taken for my own use. I counted out thirty-five hundred dollars and hurried back and told him, ""Here."

"There isn't ten thousand dollars there," he argued.

"Nope, and you won't get ten thousand dollars for this motor home and you know it. It's in beautiful shape. It looks great and the engine sounds tight. But, as you just said, its over twenty-five years old and would bring maybe seven thousand dollars on the open market if you were lucky. You know this and so do I." I wasn't being cheap, but I didn't want him to feel he could cheat me. My in line wheeler dealer instincts took over and do a little wheeling and dealing, just for practice.

"Okay, what's your best offer?" I noticed he hadn't tried to return the handful of hundred dollar bills to me.

"Do you have the title with you?" I asked.

"It's at home, just a few blocks away from here." He choked down on those hundreds like he was hungry and they were his dinner.

I smiled and told him, "Okay, here's the deal."

He relaxed a little. "You get the other thirty-five hundred dollars when you sign the title over to us. My wife will hand you thirty-five hundred more when we have the title in our hands. Agreed?" It felt great to call Rachel "my wife." The small smile on her face told me she liked it too.

He grinned and shook his head up and down. "You got a deal." He nodded some more and added, "Let's go."

"Hon, would you follow us to his house in the car?" I looked at Rachel and she nodded. I saw she had applied lipstick, a bright purplish red. It clashed with her hair and complexion big time. It also changed her looks dramatically. My beloved had many heretofore hidden talents, as I began to learn.

After Rachel returned to our car the old man pulled away from the curb and drove home real careful like. I looked back and saw the rental car as Rachel followed us. I turned my attention to the motor home. I couldn't believe our luck. This was perfect for us, old and anonymous. "How fast have you driven in this?" I asked him.

"Fifty on th' freeway," he answered flatly. "I never been in a hurry in anything I do and I don't drive in a hurry either." That explained the physical condition of the engine. This well-maintained vehicle was perfect for us.

He pulled up in front of a small, well cared for home located in the middle of a block of other small and well cared for homes Rachel parked and joined us. We three walked up to his house and he opened the door, "Honey" he called, "We got guests, better get decent." He turned and smiled, "She don't like to be surprised."

In a couple of minutes a grandmotherly woman bustled into the living room where we stood waiting. "Well, hello," she greeted us, "Are you the folks who bought our house?"

"Naw, I just sold 'em old Betsy." He grinned proudly and added, "For seven thousand dollars, too."

We made a little small talk, and then she brought out the title to the motor home. "We have it registered in Wisconsin because of the taxes in this state. My sister lives there." She handed the title to her husband.

He signed it and handed it to me. He looked at me expectantly and I said, "Honey, give the man thirty-five of your hundred dollar bills. She dug into the bottom of her bag and brought them out. She counted out the bills she and gave them to him. After she returned the remaining hundreds to her purse she asked, "You folks just sold your home?"

"Yep," the old man answered. "We are headed to Jamaica to live. It's a lot cheaper there and we can fly to Florida or Texas if we have an emergency." It struck me this was perfect. Evidently they didn't recognize me and they were going where they probably would never see news of us, anyway. We made our goodbyes and left.

"Sweetheart," I told her, "Follow me to a bus station or a truck stop. I want to leave a confused trail behind us. This time we'll disappear for good until we want to be found." Rachel gave me a hug and got in the car with Duke.

I started the engine and checked the gauges. The fuel in the tank barely registered on the needle. Diesel was the first priority. I checked my mirrors before I pulled away from the curb and steered the big old bus down the street. It seemed top heavy. Then I realized the water and fuel tanks were all either empty or almost so. I drove to the first service station with a diesel pump. Since there were two fuel gages I knew we had two tanks. I wanted both tanks filled. The filling process took nearly a hundred gallons. I checked the oil and the coolant. Everything looked great.

Rachel watched me service the motor home. "What now?" she asked.

"Now we rid ourselves of the rental car and head on down the road." It was just before sunset and I wanted to pull in at an RV rest stop. We needed to fill the water tanks and stock up on necessaries, such as food, changes of clothes and anything else we might need. First we had to get rid of the rental car, though.

From the fuel stop we drove in a northerly direction. My first destination was Wisconsin. There I intended to disappear completely. I had plan. But first we had to ditch the rental car. Before we left the fuel pump, I moved the moneybag to the motor home.

We drove to a Hyatt Hotel and parked the car way off in the corner behind the hotel. Because I was suspicious of how they located us so quickly; I checked the outside of the rental car. I found a small lump of rust with a three-inch wire dangling down. I pried it loose with my pocketknife. I knew it was a small transmitting device. This is how they found us so fast.

Somehow they, our unknown enemies, figured out we planned to go into hiding after Chicago. I wondered if our house was bugged? It was a given that Ralph, Bill and Posey wouldn't betray me and they were the only ones who knew our plans. I sighed and decided it made no difference now since our motor home purchase was totally spontaneous. Oh well, I thought to myself. We returned to the motor home as Duke followed along; this was all great fun to him.

We went to the first onramp to access I-294 and drove due north. With the fuel tanks full, the motor home handled much better. Rachel sat quiet in the passenger seat and watched the road pass under us at a steady sixty-five miles an hour. By the time we reached Racine we both were ready for bed.

"Hon, there's a KOA ahead, let's pull off there and stop for the night," I told her.

"Well, okay," she said in a subdued voice.

She sounded strange. "Sweetheart, are you all right?" I asked her; worried she was ill or something. It turned out to be "or something."

"Yes, I guess," she answered.

"Sweetheart, what is it? Are you sick?" I started to get worried.

"No, I am not all right, Forrest Eden, I'm scared," her voice quavered.

I navigated the off ramp and pulled over to the side as soon as I could. I stopped and set the brake. "Hon, don't be afraid. Nobody has any idea where we are. We are as anonymous we could possibly get. They won't find us."

"Forrest, you dumb head, this is our wedding night and I'm scared, can't you understand?" Her voice was unsteady.

"Oh." There was no way I could reassure her. "Honey, I love you."

Her head bowed, she answered, "Oh, Forrest, I love you, too." She seemed to calm down a little then.

In silence, I put the big vehicle in drive and steered to the KOA office and stopped. I registered under the name of Jones and pulled into the space the man on the desk pointed out to me. We hooked Duke on a leash and went for a walk. As soon as we were away from the campgrounds, I slipped the leash off and let him run. While he sniffed and did dog things I placed my arms around my bride and did new husband things. I kissed her and held her close. What was supposed to be a "rest stop" lasted three nights. On the morning after the third night we were reluctant to drive away. Our non-honeymoon was a revelation to both of us.

All through high school I bedded a few other girls with Rachel's reluctant knowledge. Up until we became serious the previous year, I saw nothing wrong with friendly sex. I was a horny guy and Salt Lake City had more than its share of horny girls, mostly Mormons in the area where I lived. I learned early about the wards' Saturday night singles parties. Rachel didn't believe me when I told her LDS girls liked sex as much as anybody else.

Then I took her to an LDS singles dance and let her learn for herself. She was shocked at the antics of some of the girls. "Let's go outside and wander the parking lot," I told her.

About the third or fourth couple we saw making out big time, Rachel grabbed my hand and said, "Take me home." I thought we were through, that she never wanted to see me again. The next day she called me and demanded we become a couple and see no one else. I agreed and kept my word.

Now here we were on our honeymoon, almost two years later. "Forrest," Rachel said as I got us headed down the road.

"Yeah, Babe?" I kept my eyes on the road.

"I was dumb. I'm sorry I cheated us out of so much pleasure. But I believed what my parents said about virginity and saving it for my wedding night."

"Ah, what are you getting at, Rachel?" I had a horrible thought she wanted to start playing around.

"Well, if I had let you do it with me back in high school, you wouldn't have been with all those other girls and I wouldn't have been so jealous. You don't know how many times I cried myself to sleep while I thought of you with all those other tramps."

My trip down memory lane ended and I concentrated on my driving.

As we drove along, we learned the old couple who owned the motor home before us had given it every creature comfort they could imagine. Under the counter next to the sink was a small washing machine capable of laundering two pair of pants or four shirts. There was adequate bedding and clean sheets for all our needs.

The fifty-gallon propane tank was full. We found the propane water heater barely adequate for a quick hot shower or a slightly more leisurely warm shower, which we opted for together. (Of course.) The small propane refrigerator worked great so all we needed to do was to stock up with food.

We needed to put more miles behind us in order to disappear completely. We drove straight through to Racine and put Phase Two of my great plan into action. I wanted to keep everything simple. The simpler the plans were, the less there was to go wrong.

We bought two computers, a state of the art Dell desktop and a good laptop. Then we chose a fax, printer and telephone unit all in one. As an afterthought we also purchased and small TV. Then we shopped for two cell phones. I prepaid for a thousand minutes on each under assumed names. When those minutes were used up we would toss the old phones and buy two new ones and get another thousand minutes under another name.

"Honey, you take all the fun out of shopping," Rachel told me.

"Babe, we're not shopping to have a good time, but to get the tools we need for our survival. We aren't on a fun outing; we're trying to hide from our enemies."

Then Rachel lost control and began to sob. "Oh Forrest, I know that. It's just that you're always so serious anymore and I ... Forrest, can't you lighten up just a little?" She looked away from me.

"I'm sorry. I'm scared, too, and I try not to show it. I have this great foolproof plan that I devised. Now that we're about to put it into action, I'm afraid it won't work."

I hugged her close and whispered in her ear, "I'm also afraid you might get hurt because I did the wrong thing."

We traveled in a westerly direction, parallel with I-94. We stayed off the major highways and made our way toward Minnesota. When we stopped we always parked the motor home well away from where we made our purchases so nobody would connect it to what we bought. I realized I was probably overly cautious, but until we had new identifications I wanted to remain as anonymous as possible.

Stop and think, how more anonymous could we be than just two friendly people in cheap clothing who drove an old motor home? The ones in the new sports coaches and double decker luxury motor homes looked down their noses at us in our elderly old Ithaca and promptly forgot us. Rachel bought a tint to change her hair to a deep chestnut from its beautiful reddish gold. She clipped it short into a pageboy. My dishwater blond hair had a burr cut and I wore a tractor cap, an off shade of green.

Tennies were common enough so I didn't worry about my footwear being distinctive. We bought our clothes at either Wal-Mart or a thrift store. We looked like just another pair of rootless young people who might or might not be married, wandering where the road took us, working only when we had to.

Finally, when we found the place we were looking for, I began the serious part of disappearing. I created two new identities good enough to stand up under all but the very closest scrutiny and probably even then. Neither of us had ever been fingerprinted. The one time the police had me in custody I was taken to the hospital before they got around to fingerprinting me. As soon as the town we stopped in had rolled up the sidewalks for the night I got busy on the computer. First I started the little Onan generator we bought. I could have worked off our batteries with the voltage inverter I purchased a few days before, but I wanted to keep the batteries fully charged just in case.

A box of stationery called "Parchment" was perfect to print authentic looking documents on. The cell phone was connected to the computer and I began a web search for certain types of people. I wanted someone who had a social security card that hadn't been used for at least a year. The birth month didn't matter but the birth year did. The person had to be close to my own age and with my general description. Height and color of hair were the most important.