Samson and Sunset

 
Title Page

Praise for Samson and Sunset

DEDICATED TO MY WONDERFUL PARENTS

Acknowledgements

1963-1964

The Wrong Side Of The Tracks

Water Rising

A Day’s Work For A Day’s Food

Five Little Magic Words

Thrills, Chills And Lies

1965

Motel Angel

The Threshold

The Auction

The Big Caper

Wild Woman

Christmas

The Arrival

1966

The Tanning of The Shrew

Parting Gift

The Surprise

The Straw House

Sexual Healing

Hard Liquor

1967-1968

A Cool Head

Marie

Sleeping Angel

Brownies

Missing

Distractions

1970

Above The Bones

Safe

A Love Like Ours

1978

Outrunning Trouble

Like A Thief In The Night

Look Me In The Eyes And Swear It

The Dance

1979-1980

The Discovery

The News

The Hand Of Grace

Take Me Home

Starling Darling Chapter One

Starling Darling Chapter Two

About the Author

Samson and Sunset

by

Dorothy Annie Schritt

Second Edition

SAMSON AND SUNSET © 2013 by Dorothy Annie
Schritt. All rights reserved. Created in digital format in the
United States of America. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from
the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents either are the product of the author's
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales
is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-0-9918565-0-3

Cover art by:

JIM WARREN

www.jimwarren.com

Thank you for allowing me to use your
beautiful painting, “Together Again.”

Edited by:

Wendy Reis
www.wendyreiseditingandproofreading.com

Digitally formatted by Contented Press
www.carolmcleod.net

Praise for Samson and Sunset

  “Samson and Sunset by Dorothy Annie
Schritt is an emotionally charged story populated by characters
that are sure to grip readers hearts and not let go until the very
end. The front cover is stunning and will stand out on crowded
bookstore shelves. The back cover copy is titillating and will
compel people who like physical passion in their stories to pick up
the book and start reading... The characters are extremely well
drawn and sympathetic. All the dialogue is natural and true to each
character.” (Writer's Digest)

  Finalist, 20th Annual Writer's Digest
Self-Published Book Awards (2012)

  DEDICATED TO MY WONDERFUL PARENTS

  John and Martha Schritt

YOU HAD NOTHING

BUT YOU GAVE ME EVERYTHING

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank the following people
who helped breathe life into this book: My Soulmate, Gene Meakins,
Elaine Beistline, Phil Beistline, Corina Woodville, Michelle
Reeves, John Blomberg, Kelly Richards, Jill Meakins, Stacy Denman,
Alizabeth Denman Cochrane, Katherine Woodville, Micheal McLeavy,
Mary Sebers, and Jaralee Aby .

  1963-1964

  The Wrong Side Of The Tracks

  A delivery table, I couldn’t believe I
was on a delivery table. This was the last direction I thought my
life, at 21, would take. I wanted nothing more than to be a wife
and mother, but I didn’t plan for it to happen so soon, and
certainly not under these circumstances. I thought if I were having
a baby, there would be a father. Oh, there was a father, but not
one that was pacing up and down in the waiting room with great
expectations of our first child, a precious little gift from God.
No, the father was a man who married me just to give this child a
name, not for the sake of the child, but the sake of his parents’
good name. How did I know all this? He told me.

  Life plays many dirty tricks on us and
Dane Dalton, the father of my baby, was one of those dirty tricks.
To Dane Dalton I was a fish—easy to catch, easy to throw back. In
the short time that I had dated Dane, he told his friends, “I know
this fish that will give us money to buy a case of beer—the catch
is, we’ll have to drag her along with us.” Then he would call me
and ask me to go riding around. He knew I had a checkbook, and I
was generous to a fault. If Dane asked me for money for a case of
beer, I’d be more than willing to give him the money. After all,
they were of legal age to drink. I got this little tidbit from one
of Dane’s close friends after our marriage. A marriage that only
lasted three hours, the three hours it took to drive from
Centerville, Kansas, home to Hudson, Nebraska.

  “Push, Kathrine,” the doctor was
saying. “Just a couple more pushes and we’ll have a baby.”

  Dane was from the right side of the
tracks. I was from the wrong side. That information alone seemed to
make people think I was easy. I remember shopping for baby clothes
in downtown Hudson one time, carrying this little baby in my womb.
It was misting very gently and Dane and several of his friends rode
by on motorcycles.

  “There’s a whore!” he shouted at the
top of his voice as he passed me.

  Now I was glad it was misting rain, it
masked the tears rolling down my cheeks.

  Dane knew I was no such thing. He
damned well knew he was my first.

  “Push, Kathrine, I see the head. All
right, we’ve got her. We’ve got her… A beautiful, perfect baby
girl.”

  I craned my neck to see her, but they
whisked her away to clean her up. I sighed and lay back, exhausted.
As I lay there, recovering, I began to think about my life and how
I’d ended up here.

  I was born Kathrine Anne Mitchell,
July 5th, 1942, in a small house in a town called Hudson, Nebraska.
My grandparents had emigrated from Russia, although they were
German-blooded. Years before, Katherine the Great had promised good
German farmers that if they came to Russia to farm the land they
wouldn’t have to go to war. They were called Germans from Russia,
or Volga-Germans.

  My father’s parents lived in a little
mud hut in the side of a hill. They had nine children and one milk
cow. One night some Russian townspeople, drunk, and having fun,
came down the hill and shot their only milk cow. A few weeks later,
the Russian police came to the door and wanted to talk to my dad’s
grandfather who had been a scientist in Germany. They took him away
and his family never saw him again. As my father told me, you
didn’t question the Russian police, the family always assumed they
sent my great-grandfather to a Russian gulag. My dad’s father,
Fredrick, went to work for a rich Russian farmer. One day when the
farm overseer was whipping the horses with a leather whip, my
grandfather yelled at him to stop! He did, but he turned the whip
on my grandfather and beat him in front of his four sons, including
my father who watched in horror. The next day, the four boys, my
father age four at the time, lay waiting to jump the overseer. They
beat him horribly and dragged him into a field, then ran home and
told their parents what they had done. Fearing they may have killed
him, my grandparents took the family and fled that night, working
their way through the countryside, until they had enough money to
come to America in steerage. Their youngest child, my Aunt Anne,
who I was named after, died on the ship. She was only three years
old at the time of her death.

  My mother, Marie Minnie was from
Hanover, Germany. Mom came to America when she was 10 years old
with her mother and four siblings. My mother’s father had been
killed in WWI in the trenches, so it was a long journey for my
grandmother alone with five children, crossing the Atlantic Ocean
in steerage. After spending two weeks on Ellis Island, they were
allowed to enter the USA. They headed for their new home in
Nebraska to live with relatives.

  I had one older sister, Martha Marie.
Even though we didn’t have much money growing up, Martha and I
always considered ourselves very lucky; our parents were extremely
loving and supportive.

  In Hudson, the railroad ran down the
center of our town—west was upper, east was lower, known to the
townspeople as the right and the wrong side of the tracks. As a kid
I used to stand on the tracks and wonder who decided which side was
wrong.

  By high school every girl I knew had
the perfect guy she wanted in her mind. Mine was at least six feet
tall, dark-haired and handsome—a real head-turner, as we called
them. He’d have a nice car and be a catch. I never gave up on what
I wanted. Dane Dalton was the one boy I liked in high school, but
he was from the Upper Side and never gave a poor girl like me a
second look.

  When I graduated high school in 1960,
I worked so I could go to the Bette Bonn International School of
Fashion and Design in Lincoln. I didn’t have time to date, and I
never saw anything out there I’d want anyway.

  I mostly kept to myself. I had God and
my inner Indian spirit (I know ‘Indian’ isn’t the politically
correct term these days, but I think it’s just so beautiful and
romantic.) I was raised Christian and I’ve always spoken with God
and loved Jesus; but I’ve also always felt the presence of an inner
Indian spirit. I feel sure I lived an Indian lifetime. Of course I
never told anyone this. It was just something I’d always felt.

  One evening I was home from Bette Bonn
and I went with my best friend, Susie, to a community dance at the
Winston Ballroom. I wore a turquoise, multi-striped cotton skirt
with a matching jacket, a white turtleneck, and white bobby socks
with white canvas Keds, as was the fashion. While Susie was dancing
and I was sitting in a booth, an older guy, probably in his
mid-forties, came up to me and said:

  “Young lady, do you know you resemble
Marilyn Monroe?”

  I was a sun-worshipper, tan and tiny
(5 feet 6 inches tall and 102 pounds,) with a mass of curly blond
hair that I wore in a short bouffant. I sort of laughed in
response—this had to be a pick-up line—but later (especially after
I started bleaching my hair blonder) many people did say this to
me. I always saw myself as a plain Jane. I didn’t think I had any
especially defining features.

  “Would you like to dance?”

  I whirled around to tell the older guy
no, but there in his place stood Dane Dalton, my high school crush.
He was wearing tight blue jeans and a nice grey sweater, his brown
hair neatly combed, his grey eyes looking right at me. He smiled
and I near fell to the floor. He’d buffed up and grown at least
five inches in the four years since I’d seen him last, standing now
about five foot eleven.

  “Is your name Dane Dalton?” I
asked.

  “Yes. And you’re Kathrine
Mitchell.”

  I nodded. He asked me to dance and I
accepted. We made small talk as we danced. I asked what he’d been
doing since graduation; he said he’d been in the Air Force for the
last four years. He asked if I was seeing anyone, I told him no.
After dancing for a little while, he escorted me back to my seat
and that was it. But it made my night—Dane Dalton knew my name.

  Several nights later there was a knock
on my door. When I answered I had to do a retake. There was Dane in
blue jeans, a plaid preppie shirt, a hunter green sweater and biker
boots—his jean jacket tucked under his arm. He gave me a little
grin and asked if I’d like to go to King’s Drive-Thru for a Cherry
Coke.

  “Okay,” I said, a little flustered.
“But you’ll have to come in while I get ready.”

  I introduced him to my parents; not
much reaction from either side. I hurried and put on jeans, white
Keds, and a white blouse with the collar pulled out at the neckline
of my bright red sweatshirt. We wore a lot of ghtre a red in
Nebraska, the official color of the state football team, the
Nebraska Huskers. It worked out well for me, as red was my favorite
color.

  We drove to King’s in Dane’s 1940 Ford
Coupe. It was a simple night out. I didn’t sit close to him; wasn't
that kind of girl. Years ago I’d set morals for myself and vowed
I’d be true to my decisions.