I left my home after lunch on 1 November 1975. 

I ate a turkey sandwich on white bread. Daddy got the ingredients from the gas station. 

Outside it’s windy. My hair whips around my face and across dry yellow grass that comes up to my knees. I squat down and tuck my pants into my socks to protect from ticks, and readjust my satchel from left shoulder to right. 

I walk along the big road, the one that trails off from Main Street but it’s the same road, just no buildings on either side anymore. Just grass. Just the wide open where I don’t see anyone. 

Daddy and I drive back and forth from the site, to home, to the gas station. It’s all in one big line on the big road. He doesn’t like to turn except going in and out of the places he’s going to or coming from I guess. I sit up front even tho I’m pretty sure I’m too small, all my church friends sit in back. But my daddy doesn’t have a back, he has a big truck and sitting in back would mean sitting outside and I don’t want to sit outside on account of the big smokestack on top of the truck cab that bellows noxious blackness and we make trails wherever we go. 

Daddy doesn’t know I left. I don’t want him to. I’m gonna walk down this road until I find what’s beyond the site. That’s as far as I’ve ever been. 

I’m proud of how I done it, too. So casual. I finished my plate, cleaned it and put it aside the sink to dry. Daddy was in the shower. I just walked right out the door! So casual, so clean! I didn’t panic or nothing, just acted normal. 

I packed my bag before I went to sleep last night. I went to my closet and got my favorite dress. It’s blue and green with all these little flowers all the way around. It has spaghetti straps so I got my favorite sweater, too. Summer time is fickle. The sun fries us during the day then abandons us at night. If the sun is made of fire then the moon must be made of ice. One big cube that melts and freezes again. My sweater is striped with all kinds of colors, purple and blue and yellow! Green too. I have to be careful though because the threads catch easily so I won’t wear my bangles I found, even though I love them so. They’re too loud anyways. May as well wear a cow bell! Daddy would hear me go out the door and down the driveway and sus me out right away. He knows I’m up to no good even before I do most of the time. He says it so much. That I’m a trouble maker and a pain in the ass and I talk too much or don’t talk nice enough. I don’t think he talks nice either but he doesn’t listen to me. 

I stared at the bangles and decided to just put one on. It can’t make any noise all alone.

The dirt under the grass is dry, it’s getting all over my sneakers. I walk on the road. It’s gravelly and crunchy even though I think it’s supposed to be smooth pavement. I’ve seen towns on TV that have smooth black roads all over the place connecting rows of houses to each other, lots of green lawns and mailboxes. I guess they forgot about this one.