Tessie D

I moved to Brownwood earlier this month to work as the office manager on a small dairy just outside of town. 

I worked on the same farm where I worked last summer and saved enough money to buy a car—a gold 1986 Ford Thunderbird. It’s the nicest car I’ve ever driven, and the guy who sold it to me seemed surprised when I showed up with the cash. I didn’t even haggle. He said it ran good, and it seemed to. But I barely test drove it down the street and back. I wouldn’t have known to look for it anyway, and I didn’t even think to take it somewhere to get it checked out first. I was afraid to bring Daddy or even ask him for help since he’d try to find something wrong with it to talk me out of it, just so that he could persuade me to give him the money instead. So, I just bought it and drove it home without telling anyone what I was going to do first. 

The next day, I drove over to the temp office in Stephenville and got a job. I didn’t really care what the job was as long as I wasn’t picking canteloup or throwing hay bales in the field. I needed a place to live, so I looked through the Comanche newspaper at the library and found a room with a twin bed and a dresser to rent with three other girls who go to school at the nearby Baptist college. I came home and told Momma and Daddy that I’d gotten a job and would be moving to Brownwood at the end of the month. I wondered if they’d be mad that I sprung it all on them at once, but since I’d already had and lost a baby, I didn’t figure that I needed to ask their permission. 

I packed up my clothes and books, loaded them into the car, and drove off last Saturday morning. Daddy waved at me from the table when I was walking out the door but never got up. Momma and Annie hugged my neck and stood in front of the house, watching me drive away. And, that was that. They all probably just went back to their regular lives after I left. I doubt anyone will miss me much. 

I drove out of town, headed south. The narrow, two-lane highway stretched out in front of me, the land was flatter than home with fewer rolling hills. Stubby mesquite trees and tufts of yellow indiangrass and little bluestem, no more than silver spikes, dotted the pastures in between the caliche mounds. 

I turned up the radio. 

Oh, my life is changing everyday

In every possible way

And oh, my dreams

It’s never quite as it seems

Never quite as it seems

I know I felt like this before

But now I’m feeling it even more.

Driving from Dublin to Brownwood is a little over an hour with little to see in between. I’d only been this way a few times—always on school busses to basketball games or track meets. Most people, if they’re leaving Dublin are headed north to Fort Worth. The town had a small mall with a few department stores and an arcade, but the only reason anyone ever seemed to talk about Brownwood was if they were driving through and stopped at Underwood’s BBQ cafeteria to get beef steak and cobbler. Downtown was the same as any other small Texas towns that seem forgotten by time and everyone else: Square brick buildings with rows of small, boarded up, dusty windows that lined both sides of the street. 

The chapel on campus is beautiful, but the rest of town looks like most other towns in Texas: 

But, it is more cheerful than where I’ve come from. 

Nobody knows me here. I’ve made friends with my roommates. I’m a little older than they are, but nobody has said anything. When they talk to me, it’s not sarcastic or patronizing. They don’t know anything about me, and I don’t tell them about the past two years. I just let them believe whatever they want, and I don’t correct them.