Her first hair cut.

Jessie and her father had never really "fit in." And it didn't seem like they would be too long in a town before Dad had their old, green, Astro van, packed with their few, meager belongings, their white, 6x12 trailer, full of tools, hooked up, and they were rolling down the road.

But something felt different about Kingsberry. Perhaps it was from her first waking moments as they drove in that fall morning. The sun, glistening from every hard surface on the ground as it melted the night frost. The leaves that were still clinging to the trees in all their fall splendor, as if to wrap the county in a warm, red and orange blanket, comforting it's residents before the winter. The roadside was adorned with wonderfully aged split railed fences, that seemed to merely decorate borders of properties, but offered little in the way of actual protection. And occasionally behind the trees the livestock fences would poke through, and offer glimpses to the horse properties and small family farms neatly tucked into the landscape. It may have been new to her, technically, but the town was as familiar as home, and seemed to have been plucked right from a Hallmark movie.


It had been six months since that day, and she still expected to wake up in the van every morning, but was always pleasantly surprised by her alarm clock that greeted her at 5:05, regardless of day or weather. Twenty-five minutes was all she ever felt she needed in the morning. It was just enough time to throw on her Carharts, make some coffee (for her father, she couldn't stand the taste of it), and have her banana and wheat toast with raspberry jam. Then, time to leave Miss Asburey's basement, they were renting in exchange for farrier services, and out to the barns to start tending to whatever work they managed to contract for the next seasons. Her father, Nelson (who felt like that was a grandfather name and went by "Nels") was starting to show the signs of age and a whiskey binging lifestyle he had been trying to neatly conceal. But hiding his "road wear" was something that, dusty work cloths and his tattered Dale Earnhardt 3 cap, were no longer able to do. He moved slower, his hands were getting clumsy, and he rarely made it out the door on time. This was the second town where Jessie had started picking up the slack, and so far she felt as though she was doing it better than last time.


The daughter of a "career farmhand" left Jessie with few ties to her femininity, her long hair, she always felt, was her identity as a woman. Livestock didn't much care if your lips were glossy, perfectly blended blush never did much for "critters" as Nels so frequently called 'em. Her hands were rougher than most boys, and she had a nervous habit of nail biting. Her hair, she always left long, to remind herself of who she was, and bothersome as it was at times, she had never imagined making it any shorter.


As consistent as alarm clocks that are properly set can be, they still tend to fail when the power goes out, today was that day. She woke to find her faithful alarm clock blinking twelve, and she could hear Miss Asburey, upstairs, loading her cloths washer, a sound she had only heard once before, and that was at 9 in the morning. She rushed to get dressed, and to the next room to wake Nels, who had long stopped setting alarm clocks and was completely dependent on Jessie's two knock wake-up rap on the door. In a flustered rush they headed out the door, ready to start apologizing for today's wrecked schedule, and as Nels often said "Hurry every chance you get." It was an hour drive down the I-5 to the Blankenship farm, just outside a little coast town Washington tried to forget. And with their late start, they were greeted with a morning traffic jam from a semi-truck, whose poorly secured load shifted when the driver avoided a deer, and successfully blocked 3 lanes of traffic. It was a slow creep past the flares, sheriff's deputies, and big-rig tow truck, but they were back up to the speed limit after 20 or so minutes of stop, start driving. They were finally able to move at a consistent enough speed to cover some miles, and both start mentally preparing for which job they might skip, and re-prioritize their day.

Noon had come and gone and it seemed like the Blankenship boy, Danny, had harassed Jessie about everything from her punctuality that morning, to her wavy hair, that Danny was calling a "misplaced horsetail." Any other day, and Jessie may not have even heard it. She liked Danny, and the best way she could show it was to give him a hard time, and ignore anything hurtful he might say in returning the favor. But after a failed alarm clock, missing breakfast, and the traffic jam, Jessie's thick farmhand skin had wore thin, and she did what any girl might do after being repeatedly insulted, she cried. It was the crying that reminded her most of all she was a girl, because as the warm tears ran down her cheeks, a memory rushed in. And she could see her mom, kneeling by Jessie's bedside wiping her tears away with her hair, and singing Jessie her very own verse to "Jesus Love's Me." She was comforting Jessie, after she overheard the screaming that would follow Nels' return most Saturday nights. "Jessie, I always want you to remember, you are Mommy's girlie-girl, and even if I'm not with you, I love you big as the sky."


She hid behind the shack the Blankenships called the "cow garage" a building just big enough for their 1982 flatbed f-250. Her tired defeated frame resting against the graying side of the building, she grabbed her hair that draped over her left shoulder wiped her own tears, and looked at that big blue sky. Memories like that didn't help her really feel stronger, and she still wrestled with the thought of her mom actually looking down on her from above. Bittersweet was a poor analogy to her feelings wrapped around memories of her mother. What would start as a loving memory would be drowned by the feeling of abandonment, and the questions that fill the minds of suicide survivors. She looked back down at her hair, angry with herself for this moment of weakness, she rushed back to their van, opened the tool box, grabbed their sharpest shears, and started to cut her hair off at the pony tail. The work shears were woefully, inadequate for her thick, dark hair. And with every, hair-pulling stroke from the shears, she felt a little satisfaction. As if each time she felt pain from the shears pulling more than cutting, it was a pat on the back to her forward progress. And then the moment when she was totally through, she pulled her hand from behind her head to see what she had done, the satisfaction had instantly melted to regret. Her most prominent, visual link to her femininity now laying in her hands. "Was this how impulsively Mom had ended things? Could it have been this knee jerk?" The questions seemed to knock the strength from her knees and she steadied herself with her now opened and empty palms on the floor of the van. She had to deal with the reality of her day still, and that she had a lot of work to do yet. She picked herself up, slammed the doors on the van, and rushed back to the cow garage to get the flatbed so it could be loaded with the next day's hay. She couldn't waste anymore time on her "feelings" today, and she gave little thought to what response she would get. But it would be the response of Nels that would surprise her the most.