Shade: Chapter 1

Shade

Chapter One
A man and his young daughter drive silently down an empty country highway in an aging Toyota; their earthly belongings piled in the truck-bed. News radio was playing earlier but there hasn’t been a signal for the last hour. The father has short-cropped brown hair and his irises appear almost black. He wears an untucked, red, flannel shirt, worker’s denim, and cheap tennis shoes. Every few minutes he glances over at his daughter. Long, lemon-colored hair, kid jeans, and a Disneyland sweater; she faces the window.
“Ten or eleven?” he thinks to himself, searching his brain for her birthday.
Passing through empty fields of grass, the road eventually brings them into the mountains. It’s a narrow two-lane but there are no other cars on the asphalt today. The once-blue truck sways gently around the turns, pushing rubble beneath the guardrail and into the pine forest below. On a particularly sharp turn, his daughter turns from the window to reveal her turtle-colored face before puking on the dash.
“Oh, shi--shoot!” he censors himself as he slowed to a stop.
As he wiped up the mess and his daughter changed into a clean sweater, he implored, “You’ve never been carsick before. How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay,” but her face still had a twinge of green to it.
“Hmm, okay. I’ll drive slow.”
She still seemed to feel ill as the town came into sight. The snow-topped welcome sign was painted in white letters:
SHADE
A Place To Rest