Welcome to Oddville

The fam­i­ly reunion was being held in Mason County, Kentucky. Brayden was excit­ed to attend and con­nect with his bio­log­i­cal fam­i­ly. Raised in Illinois by his adop­tive par­ents, he had always won­dered what his par­ents were like; were they nice? Why did they put him up for adop­tion? After grad­u­at­ing col­lege, he decid­ed he was ready to seek those answers. 

The first call was terrifying. 

Both of them were still liv­ing and were eager to speak with him. He made the call with the ones who would always be Mom and Dad by his side. As soon as his birth moth­er, Ava, heard his voice, she burst into tears. Brayden and his par­ents cried, too. It was a beau­ti­ful con­ver­sa­tion with both his birth moth­er and father. He dis­cov­ered he had bio­log­i­cal sib­lings, a broth­er, and a sis­ter. His par­ents were only six­teen when Ava found out she was preg­nant. Her dad was a preach­er and very strict. He sent her to live out of town with fam­i­ly and demand­ed that the child be put up for adop­tion. He tried to ensure that Ava and her then-boyfriend, Brad, were for­bid­den from see­ing each oth­er. Fate had oth­er plans and as soon as they were of age, Ava and Brad eloped and have now been mar­ried for 25 years. Ava is a school teacher and Brad is a loan offi­cer at a bank. The two chil­dren, Megan and Caleb, both go to col­lege at the University of Kentucky. They had been pray­ing for the day that their first­born might call them. 

 The con­ver­sa­tion went bet­ter than Brayden could have ever imag­ined.  His adop­tive par­ents were thrilled that he now had clo­sure from the ques­tions that had always lin­gered in the back of his mind. He could now dis­cov­er his ances­try and get to know the fam­i­ly that was denied him. There were sev­er­al phone calls and many pic­tures exchanged. Brayden had his dad’s build but his mom’s green eyes. His dad was a mem­ber of the swim team at his alma mater, just like Brayden.  He and his sis­ter looked very much alike and shared the same sense of humor. When Brayden was invit­ed to the fam­i­ly reunion, he was both thrilled and overwhelmed.

“I know that meet­ing every­one at once may be too much,” Ava admit­ted, “but it is so beau­ti­ful there.  The fam­i­ly mem­bers are won­der­ful and so excit­ed to meet you. It would be a nice halfway point, too!”

Brayden agreed. Ava and Brad had moved to Columbia, South Carolina from Kentucky sev­er­al years ago for Brad’s job. The trip from Illinois to their home in Columbia would require a week of vaca­tion time. The plan had been for them to meet in the spring with Brayden fly­ing over once he accu­mu­lat­ed more paid time off. A trip to Kentucky would be an easy enough dri­ve and would only require a long week­end.  It was decid­ed that he would attend and final­ly meet his bio­log­i­cal family.

As Brayden pre­pared for the trip, his dad pulled out maps to show him short­cuts and traf­fic bypass­es. Brayden was amused by the intri­ca­cy of his trav­el plan­ning. “Dad, that’s why we have GPS!”

“GPS can fail. What if you find your­self in an area with­out service??”

“I’ll pull over and ask for direc­tions.” He pat­ted his dad on the back. “I appre­ci­ate it though, Dad. I love you.”

“I love you, Son. Take these maps with you just in case, ok?”

“Yes, Dad. I will.” 

As much as he loved mak­ing a con­nec­tion with Ava and Brad, no one could replace the ones who raised him. They were his for­ev­er fam­i­ly. Nothing would change that.

With his car packed, and Dad’s maps in the glove com­part­ment, he hugged his par­ents good­bye and promised that he would both be care­ful and let them know he made it there safe­ly. He appre­ci­at­ed their sup­port more than they could ever com­pre­hend. He pulled out of their dri­ve­way and felt the surge of excite­ment as he began his road trip to Kentucky. The GPS in his car read six hours and forty-five minutes.

The trip was going smooth­ly. Brayden crossed over into Kentucky and was enjoy­ing the beau­ti­ful scenery as he rode down the inter­state. The weath­er had been per­fect which made for an incred­i­bly enjoy­able dri­ve.  He checked his GPS, two hours and thir­ty min­utes. He also noticed his phone bat­tery was in the red.

“Shit.” He real­ized imme­di­ate­ly that he had for­got­ten his charger.

Brayden’s imme­di­ate pan­ic soon gave way to com­mon sense. He would stop at the next exit and pick up a charg­er. He was also get­ting hun­gry so a break was cer­tain­ly in order. Getting off of the inter­state, he merged onto a high­way and began look­ing for a con­ve­nience store and maybe a ham­burg­er joint. With noth­ing but farms in sight, he soon saw a city lim­its sign… Oddville.

“Interesting name,” he said to him­self. “Hopefully they have a gas station.”

Oddville appeared to be trapped in anoth­er time. Mostly locat­ed on rur­al farm­land, the homes that Brayden had come across were decades old. He was begin­ning to won­der if he would find any kind of store or gas sta­tion when he saw what appeared to be a farm machin­ery store. All of the machin­ery was used and avail­able for resale, noth­ing new that Brayden could see. He pulled up to a small white barn that he hoped was the office. As Brayden walked in, he was greet­ed by a pleas­ant-look­ing man with a round face and a gray beard.

“Hello there, young man! I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you around here before. Can I help you?”

“Hey there! Yes, please! You’re right, I’m not from here. I was on my way to Mason County and my phone bat­tery had got­ten too low. I for­got my charg­er and need to buy a new one and some gas too. I also wouldn’t mind a bite to eat if you could direct me to a place.”

The man stud­ied Brayden. He seemed a lit­tle con­fused. “Well, I can’t help you with your charg­er thing. We keep things pret­ty tra­di­tion­al around here. I can get you back to the inter­state though and there should be a gas sta­tion at the next exit.”

“Are you say­ing you don’t use cell phones? Really?”

“No, sir. Never seen much use for one. Let me show you a short­cut to get you back on the road. Go about a mile down this high­way ‘til you get to the cov­ered bridge.  Just after cross­ing that bridge, turn left on 28. Go about five miles and turn right at the white church. Turn left at the first road and fol­low it to 80. Another left and you should see the interstate.”

“Thank you so much.” Brayden held out his hand. “My name is Brayden, Brayden Coldiron. What was your name?”

“Jeremiah, my name is Jeremiah.” He shook Brayden’s hand and smiled. “Be care­ful dri­ving. We have a din­er around the cor­ner if you want to stop for a bite. Ma has the best pie around.”

“Your moth­er runs it?” Brayden was fas­ci­nat­ed at the idea that Jeremiah’s moth­er might be run­ning a restau­rant. She would have to be in her eighties.

“Oh no! My mama passed on sev­er­al years ago. Ma’s name is Sarah, we just all call her Ma.”

“Oh! Okay, got it. I should prob­a­bly wor­ry about get­ting gas and then eat. Thank you though! I appre­ci­ate your help!”

“Anytime.” Jeremiah waved good­bye and went back to what he was doing as Brayden walked back to his car. 

Jeremiah’s short­cut sound­ed com­pli­cat­ed, but Brayden had lit­tle choice at this point. Feeling sat­is­fied and relieved, Brayden pulled away from Jeremiah’s shop and drove down the road toward Highway 28. 

It wasn’t long before Brayden could feel the pan­ic ris­ing in him again. It didn’t feel like he was any­where near the inter­state and his gas gauge was read­ing dan­ger­ous­ly close to emp­ty. As he made the last turn, he real­ized he was back at Jeremiah’s. How in the world did he man­age that?! Sheepishly, he walked back inside.

Jeremiah ambled in and chuck­led. “What brings you back in here?”

“Apparently, I did not fol­low your instruc­tions cor­rect­ly. It appears I’ve gone in a circle.”

Jeremiah wiped his hands off with a rag. “Don’t feel bad. That’s easy to do. Why don’t we go get a bite to eat at Ma’s and we’ll go over it again. I can give you enough gas from the back to get you to the next sta­tion. You need to eat though.”

Brayden didn’t have time to sit down and eat but if Jeremiah was going to give him some gas, he should show his appre­ci­a­tion. “Only if you will let me pay.”

“Let’s go. We’ll work all that out lat­er. It’s a short walk.”

Brayden was sur­prised as he had not seen any­thing that resem­bled a restau­rant or din­er the entire dri­ve. He fol­lowed Jeremiah up the road. 

“Everything here looks frozen in time,” Brayden observed.

Jeremiah thought for a moment. “I guess it appears so. Things don’t change much around here.” Jeremiah paused. “We like the old ways.”

“I see that. I’ve only seen one church in town. Must be a small community!”

“One church is all we need…Redemption Road Church. No need for con­fus­ing things. I’m sure you feel the same about your church.”

“We’ve nev­er gone to church. I guess I would call myself an agnostic.”

“What’s an agnos­tic?” Jeremiah seemed shocked.

“It’s a per­son who believes in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a god or intel­li­gent cre­ator with­out the need for a religion.”

Jeremiah was silent for a moment. “Hmph. I’ve nev­er heard of such.”

Brayden chuck­led. He found Jeremiah’s old-fash­ioned ways endear­ing “I haven’t seen any stores around.”

“We don’t need stores. So many of us raise our own food. We just take care of each oth­er. Seems to work well.”

“Sounds lovely…reminds me of the Amish.”

“The who?”  

“The Amish. They’re a group of peo­ple who share a reli­gion and reject mod­ern conveniences.”

“Hmph. Never heard of them. Sounds like my kind of peo­ple though.” Jeremiah noticed Brayden’s tee shirt. “That’s an inter­est­ing shirt you have there.”

Brayden looked down at his Metallica con­cert tee with the Master of Puppets album cov­er on the front with rows of white cross­es. “Oh yeah, it’s a music group I like. This was the cov­er of their album. What kind of music do you like, Jeremiah?”

“I don’t lis­ten to music. So, I guess the singing of the birds.” He smiled at Brayden.

Brayden smiled and con­tin­ued walk­ing. He hoped they were get­ting close to the din­er. He hadn’t real­ized how hun­gry he was till now.

Jeremiah point­ed up a grav­el road. “Almost there. I bet you’re hungry!”

“Yes, sir. I am!”

They were approach­ing a small, white farm­house. Jeremiah opened the screen door for Brayden and motioned for him to walk inside. As Brayden entered, he noticed that all of the patrons were men. Most didn’t seem to notice the new stranger and those that did gave a qui­et nod. They sat down at a wood­en table as a friend­ly-look­ing woman approached them.

“Hello there, Jeremiah! Who do you have with you today?”

“This is Brayden. He seems to have tak­en a wrong turn but needs a good meal before con­tin­u­ing his jour­ney. Could we get two spe­cials and a slice of your spe­cial pie for my friend here?”

“Coming right out.”

“What’s the spe­cial today?” Brayden had yet to see a menu.

“Ma fix­es a dif­fer­ent hot meal every day. Whatever that is, that’s the special. 

We will know when it comes out. You won’t be dis­ap­point­ed though.”

Brayden smiled and looked around. He had nev­er been in a restau­rant quite like this one. This whole town seemed strange. Ma brought out plates of food for each of them and Brayden began devour­ing his meal. He had not real­ized just how hun­gry he had been! After they fin­ished, Ma brought him a slice of but­ter­scotch pie, the meringue sat tall and fluffy on top. Jeremiah’s eyes danced as they locked onto Brayden’s, lean­ing toward him he said, “Best pie you will ever eat.”

“Looks like it!” Brayden enjoyed every bite. He looked around and noticed the room sud­den­ly felt dark­er. He began feel­ing light-head­ed. The room was spinning.

Watch for the excit­ing con­clu­sion next week...