"I want you to just be a woman," he said to her. It confused her. She wasn’t quite sure what that meant but she tried to quit cussing as much. She was sitting in the chair behind the couch again while he was watching television. He was munching away on the hamburger that unbeknownst to him, had just wiped-up part of the kitchen floor. Ellie was disturbed she wasn’t disturbed as she watched him devour it. He dripped ketchup on the couch when he got up to change the channel. She noted it was time to trim her toenails. She went into the bedroom. Lying on the bed, as she had so many times before, she gazed at the sugar maple tree with the crooked branch growing outside their bedroom window. She tracked her life with the tree; the tree was living the far more interesting life of the two of them. It was May and the maple was almost completely leaved-out with its big greeny-green leaves. They were so fresh looking. Gazing at this tree, she could eventually fall asleep.

It was during yet another church meeting when she knew she was ready to tell Eddie she had decided. He came home, opened his can of beer, picked up the paper, and turned on the TV. She sat in the chair behind the couch for awhile; then she got up, stood in front of the television set and said this:

Three months later on an oppressively hot and humid day, Ellowyn was still sitting in the chair behind the couch watching Eddie watching TV. At least four fans were blowing in various directions and trajectories all meant to maximize air flow according to Eddie. She didn’t cuss anymore, at least as much. It didn’t matter because she had already packed the brown suitcases, two boxes of towels and dishes, a box of papers and books, and most importantly, Stewart’s dog food, bed, and bowls. It was all in her truck. While Eddie ‘fucked’ the television, Ellie walked behind the couch, between the chairs, onto the front porch, through the gate, and into her truck where Stewart, her collie mutt from the pound, stared straight ahead as if ready to go himself. She had left Eddie a note telling him that she’d be contacting a lawyer in the next few weeks. She didn’t know any lawyers but it seemed like the thing to write. Everyone on television did this. Oddly, she was finally leaving because she got the date wrong for a church picnic. Wearing the coolest sun dress she owned and sandals, she showed up at the picnic shelter at The Wendell County Park with her picnic basket. There was a group of khaki-laden people waiting there she didn’t recognize and instead of holding Bibles, they were holding binoculars. They were part of the local birding club.

A couple evenings later, she wrote a few checks on basically, what was Eddie’s checking account. He’d give her $40 a week spending money. The checkbook was for groceries. She wrote a check for $2,000. Eddie would shit but she didn’t care anymore. This would be enough to get a new place, some food, so she could get a job. Maybe she’d even buy a pair of binoculars and one of those field guides.

Now here she was, sitting in her little red pick-up truck; the one Eddie bought her years before. "Here I am,” she thought, “cruising away from my husband in the little truck he bought for me. Maybe he knew I’d need it someday for this very purpose." Stewart stared straight ahead. Ellie was glad he didn’t know he was being kidnapped. She looked across the cab, bubbled-up some tears, and blurted out something incoherent to him. Ellie grabbed his neck and kissed him. Stewart licked her face, whined a little (because he wanted out to pee), then sat, once again, staring through the windshield--straight ahead.

Ellie was on her way to her best friend’s house. Ellie had known Patty forever-long before she got married to Eddie. When Ellie called Patty to ask her for refuge, Patty said, "it’s about time, girl. I knew it, but damn you took your time leaving that loser." She was in automatic pilot. She pressed the accelerator to the floor and watched as the truck responded. This was all she wanted--the truck needed to go the direction she was heading and right now, it was heading towards her best friend and this definitely wasn’t Eddie. She looked across the cab at Stewart, tears forming in her eyes like clouds. “You don’t even know,” she said wiping her auburn hair from her green eyes. Ellie wondered if there would be a custody battle over Stewart.

She could feel the turbines of her brain slowly turning. Her heart was pumping so hard, she put her hand on her chest to push it back in. She was really doing it. She was leaving Eddie. She was trying hard not to let her emotions get caught up in the turbines. The turbines were all about action, escape, survival, desperation; and right now they were turning from sheer instinct but in time, the force of her emotions would slam against them and knock them out of their revolutions.

"I don’t know how to do anything," she told Patty that night while they drank beer.

Patty was intrigued and annoyed by Ellie’s new found obsession with birds. “What’s that? Binoculars? You’re going to look through them while I drive?” Patty asked completely baffled.

Patty reached the limit of her already limited patience at bird stop 4. She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel while Ellie peered at what she excitedly declared was a "hairy woodpecker".

They had a close call. They almost killed a large piece of carpet but they didn’t realize it until they stopped to look. Ellie screamed, Patty swerved, and now they both felt stupid staring down at what had been called “a dead dog”, “a dead horse”, “a dead cow” or even “a dead body”.

The day at the lake was glorious. The kind that could have been designed; by who, they weren’t sure but they were grateful. The clouds looked dream-like to Ellie and Patty even noted the lazy flight of a gull.

Ellie swung around and noticed a truck like hers on a nearby dirt road. It was lurching forward, as if on its last wheels. With this came a sudden flashback.

"Bastard," Ellie said out loud.

The weekend people were not there yet so the beach was nearly empty. Patty spread out the same blanket they had been using for years. There was a wine stain in the northwest corner, a chocolate stain in the middle, and a hole starting down south. Stewart immediately selected the northeast corner of the blanket. Ellie looked at it thinking they needed a new one. She crossed her legs and looked to the horizon. She lay down and closed her eyes. Just like a little kiss, a cool zephyr caressed her face. She fell asleep as Patty was opining about her own pending doom. The last thing she said to Patty was she couldn’t understand why Patty hadn’t cried yet.

When she awoke, there was a bottle of champagne poking its head out of a toy sand bucket, a beach flower of some sort lying next to it, and a note held down by a little beach stone that said "Stewart and me are walking towards Scampers Bay. Come find us or wait. We need to celebrate. P."

Ellie lay on her side for a long time, lulled into that dreamy state a beach can lull one into. She was surprised to see tiny wells forming in the sand. "My God. I’m crying. Am I crying or are my eyes just watering?" She sat up and pulled the champagne out of the bucket. It wasn’t cheap champagne. It must have cost Patty at least ten dollars. "Dear Patty. Dear, dear Patty. What do people without friends do when life is hard for them? Where do they go?" She wondered. She could not sit and cry. She got up and walked through some tall grasses and dunes. Once over a sandy rise, she saw a little marsh. She walked to the edge of it.

Patty insisted on popping the champagne even though Ellie wanted to wait. Without glasses, they had to guzzle it from the bottle. It’s nearly impossible to drink champagne from a bottle.

They both defiantly stared back at a small group of people watching them as they passed the champagne bottle back and forth.

Prior to emptying the bottle of champagne and somewhere between getting to the motel and the beach, they had already emptied a couple beers, each. Pleasantly drunk, they decided to walk down to Cutter’s Beachfront Motel instead of driving. The walk was about a mile. Once they entered town, Ellie decided she needed to find a phone book so she could look up a local birding club and call someone about the bird.

Patty dragged Ellie from the gas station though paroxysmal hysteria can slow anybody down. Stewart tagged along behind them stopping occasionally for the random asphalt hors d’ oeuvre which right now, was part of a hot dog bun.

When Ellie awoke, it was dark. Something in the air had changed. Ellie felt like she was in some kind of time warp. She felt sick. A wave of depression rolled over her. She began to cry and coiled her body like a snake. She heard the lock on the door and it opened. It was Patty, Mama Patty, with their suitcases.

"El, are you okay? You feel sick?" Patty sat next to her. “I went to get the car. Some lady getting off work here gave me a ride.”

They were practically locals. They had been coming to Shadow Lake since they were kids. The two girls never really pushed their families together since it seemed like their parents didn’t get on all that well. Instead, Patty’s folks would stop by, honk twice, and Ellie would pile into their car or vice versa. Sometimes Merle, Patty’s father, would call George, Ellie’s father, for help with his ‘67 Chevy pick-up but the women never really warmed-up to one another; Ellie’s mother, Marilyn, managed a medical office 60 hours a week while Patty’s watched TV 60 hours a week.

Cutter’s was slow which meant it was around 7:00 p.m. It would be busy as a beehive by nine. Long ago, they snuck into the bar that was there before it became Cutter’s. It was called the Long Anchor. They were 14 and each had been served a beer. It was one of the most exciting events of their lives--to sit at the bar and drink a beer with the adults--a rite of passage. But when they tried ordering a second round, they were kicked out.

"So what did you two do today?" Travis asked.