#15

"These boots were most definitely not made for walking," Mrs. Doodlebug says to herself. It is the 100th time she has said this out loud since she left Oregon a month ago, walking everyday from sun up until dusk. She says it to herself because there is no one else around in these farmlands of northern Texas. She is passing a man-made lake that is dried up and sandy, thinking about a drink of water or ginger ale which would be her preference.
Mr. Doodlebug disappeared 5 weeks ago, he never came home from work, never called or sent a message. Mrs. Doodlebug flew into a panic, she was frantic for information about his whereabouts and crazy with anxiety until her own friends shyly suggested that perhaps he had left her for another woman, or more likely, another man which would be the better situation since then it would leave no fault on Mrs. Doodlebug; maybe that’s just who he is, who he was throughout their entire marriage. Wasn’t the fact that his suitcase was gone and all three pair of his reading glasses were missing from his nightstand proof enough? This suggestion of infidelity seemed ridiculous to Mrs. Doodlebug and only reinforced her belief that something terrible had happened to Mr. Doodlebug.
It was more likely to her that the Russians had captured her husband. Mr. Doodlebug was a smart man and there was no question that he was completely capable of working for the CIA. Likewise, Mrs. Doodlebug was a smart woman and had the investigatory skills of a cat. She would find Doodlebug and bring him home. With pure confidence and stamina, Mrs. Doodlebug packed her leather suitcase, stepped into her boots and began to walk in search of her husband. She was determined to walk all over the country to find him, carrying with her a picture of him taken at their seventh anniversary party; he looked so handsome in his sweater vest. Now it had been a month and she was in Texas, sweaty and exhausted, hungry and weary but not discouraged in the least; perhaps because she believed so strongly in their love or perhaps because it hadn’t yet occurred to her that if the Russians really did kidnap her husband, he would most likely be in Russia.