Chapter 3- Tomlinson
It was strange to think of the unexpected twists a man's life could take. Up until a year ago, Tomlinson would have jumped at the opportunity to spend the weekend with Alexa and her friends.
It was probably exactly what he needed, but when the dropped him off outside the Hampton town limits with the August afternoon heat bearing down hard, he waved good-bye, feeling strangely relieved. Maintaining a facade of normalcy had been exhausting.
Since leaving Colorado five months earlier, he hadn't voluntarily spent more than a few hours with anyone, the lone exception being an elderly dairy farmer just south of Little Rock, who let him sleep in an unused upstairs bedroom after a dinner in which the farmer talked as little as he did.
He appreciated the fact that the man didn't feel the need to press him about why he'd just appeared the way he had. No questions, no curiosity, no open-talking. In gratitude, Tomlinson spent a couple of days helping to repair the roof of the barn before finally returning to the road, backpack loaded, with Zeus trailing behind him.
When the exception of the ride from the girls, he'd walked the entire distance. After dropping the keys to his apartment at the manager's office in mid-March, he'd gone through eight paris of shoes, pretty much survived on PowerBars and water during long, lonely stretches between towns, and once, in Tennessee, had eaten five talk stacks of pancakes after going nearly three days without food.
Along with Zeus, he's traveled through blizzards, hailstorms, rain, and heat so intense that it made the skin on his arms blisters; he'd seen a tornado on the horizon near Tulsa, Oklahoma, and had nearly been struck by lightening twice. He's taken numerous detours, trying to stay off the main roads, further lengthening the journey, sometimes on a whim.
Usually, he'd walked until he was tired, and toward the end of the day, he'd start searching for a spot to camp, anywhere he thought he and Zeus wouldn't be disturbed. In the mornings, they hit the road before dawn so no one would be the wiser. To this point, no one had bothered them.
He figured he'd been averaging more than twenty miles a day, though he'd never kept specific track of either the time or the distance. That wasn't what the journey was about.
He could imagine some people thinking that he was walking to outpace the memories of the world he'd left behind, which had a poetic ring to it; others might want to believe he was walking simply for the sake of the journey itself. But neither was true. He liked to walk and he had someplace to go. Simple as that.
He liked going when he wanted, at the pace he wanted, to the place he wanted to be. After four years of following orders in the Marine Corps, the freedom of it appealed to him.
His mother worried about him, but then that's what mothers did. Or his mother, anyway. He called every few days to let her know he was doing okay, and usually, after hanging up, he would think that he wasn't being fair to her.
He'd already been gone for much of the past five years, and before each of his three tours in Iraq, he'd listened as she'd lectured, reminding him not to do anything stupid. He hadn't, but there had been more than a few close calls. Though he never told her about them, she read the papers. "And now this,l his mother had lamented the night before he's left. "This whole thing seems crazy to me."
Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. He wasn't sure yet.
"What do you think, Zeus?"
The dog looked up at the sound of his name and padded to his side.
"Yeah, I know. You're hungry. What's new?"
Tomlinson paused in the parking lot of a run-down motel in the edge of town. He reached for the bowl and the rest of the dog food. As Zeus began to eat, Tomlinson took in the view of the town.
Hampton wasn't the worst place he'd seen, not by a long shot, but it wasn't the best, either. The town was located on the banks of the South River, about thirty-five miles northwest of Wilmington and the coast, and at first glance, it seemed no different from the thousands of self-sufficient, blue-collar communities long on pride and history that dotted the South.
There were a couple of traffic lights dangling on droopy wires that interrupted the trafflic flow as it edged toward the bridge that spanned the river, on either side of the main road were low-slung brick buildings, sandwiched together stretching for half a mile, with business names stenciled on the front windows advertising places to eat and drink or purchase hardware.
A few old magazines were scattered here and there and made the sidewalks swell beneath their buiging roots. In the distance, he saw an old-fashioned barber pole, along with the requisite older men sitting on the bench out in front of it. He smiled. It was quaint, like a fantasy of the 1950s.
On closer inspection, though, he sensed that first impressions were deceiving. Despite the waterfront location- or maybe becuase of it, he surmised- he noted the decay near the rooflines, in the crumbling bricks near the foundations, in the faded brackish stains a couple of feet higher than the foundations, which indicated serious flooding in the past. None of the shops were boarded up yet, but observing the dearth of cars parked in front of the businesses, he wondered how long they could hold out.
Small-town commercial districts were going the way of the dinosaurs, and if this place was like most of the other towns he's passed though, he figured there was probably another, newer area for business, one mostly likely anchored by a Wal-Mart or a Pigly Wiggly, that would spell the end for this part of town.
Strange, though. Being here. He wasn't sure what he'd imagined Hamption to be, but wasn't this.
No matter. As Zeus was finishing his food, he wondered how long it would take to find her. The woman in the photograph. The woman he'd come to meet.
But he would find her. That much was certain. He hoisted his backpack. "You ready?"
Zeus tilted his head.
"Let's get a room. I want to eat and shower. And you need a bath."
Tomlinson took a couple of steps before realizing Zeus hadn't moved. He glanced over his shoulder.
"Don't give me that look. You definitely need a bath. You smell."
Zeus still didn't move.
"Fine. Do what you want. I'm going."
He headed toward the manager's office to check in, knowing that Zeus would follow. In th end, Zeus always followed.
YOU ARE READING
The Lucky One (Louis Tomlinson Fan Fic)
Fanfiction**Slow updating** After U.S. Marine Louis Tomlinson finds a photograph of a smiling young woman buried in the dirt during his tour of duty in Iraq, he experiences a sudden streak of luck, winning poker he's and even surviving deadly combat.
