Seth and I sat on the road shoulder and just looked at his dead Toyota resting peacefuly in the center of the freeway. Cars skillfully dodged around it, and their drivers stared at us while they passed. I stood up and groaned.

“We don’t have enough money to fix it.”
“I know.”
I leaned up against the car. “What do we do?”
As Seth looked at me he squinted from the noon sunlight brightening his dark eyes, “All I can think of is to leave it here. Maybe if we get home by bus we can call a mechanic place and get them to drive back here and tow it.”
“We’d have to pay them a nice tip.”
“Yeah.”
“Seth, we don’t have enough money for all the bus rides it’ll take us to get back.”
“Eight dollars.”
“That’s right, only eight dollars.”
“We can get somewhere on it.”
“Well we’ve gotta eat and sleep somewhere.”
“I know, I know. We’re going to have to make do, we can’t live out here forever.”
I just looked at him and sighed, then stood up straight and stopped leaning on the car. “Alright. Come on.”
He eyed me for a moment, and then stood up when I gestured to him.

We began walking on the shoulder of the grease soiled cement freeway, and five miles later took an exit towards a crowded New York bus station. At least it wasn’t a city bus station. Seth dropped two bucks in the little money compartment, and told the bus driver to drive as far as it would take them.

As we took our seat, a young woman came in front of us and stood there while hanging onto a pole. She was beautiful, in her very early twenties, and wore the proper attire of that of a religious Indian, maybe Egyptian. Her eyes were sharp like a cat’s and were a bright hazel, lined and haloed in black. Her gold hoop earrings hung to her shoulders, and her hair fell out neatly from her scarfs and cloaks which were dyed in many patterns and several shades of pink. Clinging around her collar bone and then ending at her left hip was a burnt sky blue woven bag. When I looked up at her she moved her glance towards me and smiled.

“Hello,” she said in a romantic dialect. “I’m Delilah.”
I just grinned. “Josephine,” I said. Seth looked at me, then up at our new companion.
“Seth,” he told Delilah.
She let go of her post and squeezed in between us. “I knew you’d be here,” she said ecstaticly with a wide smile across her face. Her eyes began to glow and beam with delight. Her accent was almost like that of an Afgani when she spoke.
Seth and I were puzzled. “You knew?” He asked, “How?”
She calmed herself, and still with an eccentric smile on her face, she turned her head to him and laughed benignly. “Yes. You’re cute,” she grinned. Her excitment built up again and she started through her bag proudly.
Then I asked, “But really, how did you know?”
She stopped searching, and faced me in the same manner she did Seth, “Didn’t you ever see the Hunchback of Notre Dame?”
“What, are you like Esmeralda or something?”
She laughed wholeheartedly, “Oh, nooo, no. Esmeralda was merely a prostitute in disguise.”
“I never heard about that.”
“Well,” she scoffed, “That’s because she’s not your cousin thrice removed!”
“Oh sure,” I answered.
Her eyes lowered to a scowl, “Dare you doubt me child?”
I looked into them, frightend, and slowly shook my head.
Her scowl was removed and replaced with it’s former delightful grin, “Yes, you’re cute too!” and she resumed her treasure hunt. I sighed and looked over at Seth, just as she cried, “Ah, quite thrilling!” She held up a box of cards in front of her face as if holding an offering to God. Her eyes glowed hellishly as she began to remove one card. It was a tarot. She set the box down and holding the one card in both hands she giggled with pleasure. “Oh rapture!” She lowered the card to the point where Seth and I could veiw it. There was a bright healthy heart on it. She spoke, “I knew it, I knew it!” She then turned to me, “Child, I promise you, love will solve your quandries!” Then to Seth she said, “Oh, son, I promise you, if you give her that love you’re only helping yourself!” She smiled so widley I knew her face would burst as she placed the card back in the box and the box back in her bag.
She once again stood up and then turned to us. “Love is a miracle, children. And Josephine,” I jumped at the remark of my name, “Expect it twice.” She laughed childishly, and stepped off the bus as the last passenger stepped on.

“Josie,” asked Seth, “you don’t know her either?”
“Not one heck of a clue.”
We looked at her out the window when the bus passed. She was still smiling when she looked up at us from outside.
“Well,” Seth said appearing human after this happening, “weird people get on buses.”
“She was the first to leave.”

One night, Seth and I hopped onto our fourth bus. He reached into his pocket and pulled out lint, and from the look on the drivers face, lint wouldn’t pay to get back to New Jersey. There were only fifty three miles left, so we had to walk them. That’s all. Just walk.

The thing was that people get tired, hungry, thirsty and scared. I was all of that and more, and when we reached a large city in our destination state, lost and completely frightened, I’d had enough.

The city lights were almost all out, and we took lodge against the wall of a closed laundromat. There was a tarp canopy above our heads, and a few flood lights were on with moths buzzing endlessly around them. Cars zoomed by quickly, and their drivers turned their heads to stare at us. I felt like I was in New York City, because that’s what this city seemed to be a replica of. Then, when the motion began to slow down and become just a mere woosh of activity every few minutes, I realized that we were alone here. Seth and I, alone.

It began to rain. First a small pitter-patter. Soon thunder roared after us, and lighting threatend us incessantly. I started to sob when I conceived the fact that we wouldn’t be going home anytime soon. I then lunged my arms around Seth’s neck and buried my face in his shoulder.

He held me tight and I could tell that he was trying to keep him self from crying. He let go and pushed me away a little. I looked up at him, my eyes glassy and exhausted, and stared at him, as if asking why he wouldn’t keep me. That’s when he frightened me.

He wasn’t sobbing, but he had streams of tears coming from the corners of his eyes. He looked hurt, and he seemed like he was trying to say something, but the words wouldn’t come out. He looked at me, then at his hands.

“Josie...please, I hate to see you like this.”
“What am I supposed to do, Seth? Be happy?”
“No, you can’t be...but I wish you were.” We gazed at each other for a while, speechless. He eventually moved closer to me, looked me right in the eye, and timidly, yet bravley said, “Josephine...Josie, I’m in love with you.”
I stopped breathing.
He just kept staring at me, waiting for a response. The rain beat down on the inspecting ground, and he sat straight up. His body language said that he gave up. He couldn’t give up. I loved him too.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
For a moment the only sound was the beating of my heart, breaking and rejuvinating my soul all at the same time. Then I reached over, pulled him close to me, and kissed him in the only way I knew how.

When we pulled apart, he looked me square in the eyes, and the little boy Seth came out when he smiled sweetly and laughed silently.

I wrapped my arms around him liked I’d done so many times before, only this time I did it with love and compassion. We leaned up against the wall behind us, and fell asleep in each others arms. We’d deal with our problems in the morning. Seth loved me, and I loved him.

I loved Seth.

***

The next moring the sun was out, cars were honking, and businesses were opening their doors to the customers of a new day. When the owner of the store we’d camped near saw us, he looked concerned. He was a kind old man, a little thin, and with bright, smiling, trusting blue eyes, and laugh lines instead of wrinkles. His hair showed aging, but was still a gold blonde, even though some of it was missing.

“How long have you two been here?”
I yawned, “Since last night. We’re trying to get to Newark.”
“Newark? We’ll you’re just about there! Why don’t you come inside and have a cup of joe with me?”
Seth and I agreed to one and walked inside, taking a seat at a table of what we soon found out was a laundromat and cafe in one.

Mr. Barber (although he told us to call him Charlie) brought us each a mocha latte. It was warm and homely, giving me kind of a Christmas aura. He sat with us and began some small talk.

“So, ya’ll are headed to Newark?”
“Yeah,” Seth said, “The car broke down in the middle of the highway when we only had eight dollars left. We’ve been having to walk since we got to the New York and Jersey border, and we ended up spending the night outside your door.”
“Well I’m glad to have some company. I can get you there in a jiffy. My brother heads the taxi department down the street. You two can go over there and tell him Charlie sent ya, and he’ll hook you up with a swell driver on him.”
“Oh, thank you so much,” I said gratefully standing up with Seth. “I don’t know how we can repay you.
“Well don’t. That’s how,” Charlie laughed.
Seth and I left our cups on the table and Charlie took them to the back. When he returned we each gave him a hug for his benign hospitality, and then we took a saunter down the street to the Barber Taxi Department.

With the help of his brother Frank and our driver Pete, we were on our way home in a matter of hours.

We got there at ten that evening, and all that did was make me want to go back.

***

Seth put his arm around my waist as we walked up the small sidewalk of my dreaded yet familiar home. Crickets chirped endlessly around up, wind blew briskly through our ears.

“Think anyone will be mad?” I asked.
“I don’t know. We’ll see when we get up there.”
When we got to the door, I began reaching for the knob when he grabbed my hand and pulled it back quickly. “What’s wrong?”
He stood silently for a moment. “Do you hear that?”
“Huh?”
“Listen inside your house.”
I heard it. My dad shouting feircley, my mother crying out in hopeless pain.
“Oh, God, Seth...what am I supposed to do?” My arms cradled beneath his, I started to cry again, much in the manner I had done before.

This time he didn’t say anything. He pushed me back and then behind him.
“Jos...stay out here.”
“What are you doing...no, don’t, Seth, please!”
He turned and faced me angrily, “Josie, let me save you. I love you, Josephine Michaels, I love you more than life itself, and I’m going to marry you one day. I don’t want to lose my life, and my life is you, to some unforgiving, chauvinistic hell on legs like Paul in there, you hear me? I’m not going to let you get hurt,” and with out an answer, he turned around and I saw him abruptly rotate the knob of the door to where it opened, where my mother stood invalidly in the middle of our living room.
My father looked over his shoulder, and before he knew it Seth lunged at him, a cry of anger escaping his throat.

My drunken step-father was limp and under the influence of alchohol, and while Seth straddled him, he punched and beat his face into dirt and dust. When he stopped, breathless, his face already gleaming with hard sweat and blood from a throw Paul had given before he was taken to the ground, he began to mumble almost inaudible words through his clenched teeth.

“What’s your problem. You need help, and if you don’t make it out of this house, then that’s all the help you’ll ever get. I can’t believe someone could do this to a woman. Look at her.” Seth took Paul’s face in his hands and turned it stifly towards my mother. She was standing up, her strawberry blonde hair was long and beautiful, and surrounded her face. Her blue eyes weren’t as blue as the sky anymore like they’d once been. They were the color of ice...of ice that was still frostbitten by a bitter, unforgiving cold. The tears were from that ice melting because hell had found its way in, and was burning her soul from end to end. In her mind was a cupid land of sorrow and grief: a world of what if’s and could have been’s.

Seth’s dark eyes became demanding and intrepid as they stared into Paul’s. “She’s beautiful. You met her once and you married her because she was beautiful with a heart warming personality. You knew she had a child and you would help raise that child. Wouldn’t you.”

Paul layed there looking up at Seth in fear.
“Wouldn’t you!?”
He nodded.
“You’re not raising your daughter here, Paul. She’s raising herself. Your wife, that wife you vowed to love and to cherish, that beautiful Laura, she’s raising Josie alone. You’re worthless.” He still sat there, motionless. “Josie...call the police...and an ambulance. I think I got this covered.”

Paul didn’t even struggle. He just lay there, given up and knowing there was no place after this. One officer questioned me. The other three handcuffed my father and took him outside, and a few paramedics mended the mild cut on Seths forehead and the broken arm my mother had suffered weeks ago, as well as some bruised ribs contracted just the other night. As this went on, I told myself, “That Delilah girl was right. So there are miracles in this world, and I just got one whole double-whammy. Seth told me he loved me, and the chaos is over. I have a life now. It’s just a meandering thought now as to when I’ll choose to begin to live it.”