Samson and Sunset (30 page)

  “Well, let’s do some fun things and
try to keep your mind occupied,” Shay said. “We could take a family
vacation!”

  “I don’t like being away, you know
that. Let’s just do fun things here at home,” I said.

  “Okay, princess, we will.”

  ***

We had a lot of friends out to our house
through the fall months, playing games and having television
program night parties. The holidays came and everything was
routine. We carried out all our traditions, each holiday, as usual.
I won’t lie; the holidays were hard for me. Shay’s sister Becky had
a new baby son, so when I held him I thought of Rie-Rie, but by the
grace of God I made it through Christmas.

  ***

One Sunday afternoon in early spring, Kevin
and Karen came over. Yonnie was watching the kids, so we took
Kevin’s car and went riding around. The guys sat in front and the
girls sat in the back. Kevin ended up driving us down to the lake.
The major part of the water, where they water skied in the
summertime, was frozen over.

  One thing I liked about Shay was how
manly he was, especially for being so loving and tender towards me.
But every virtue has its vice, and the downside to Shay’s bravery
was that he was always looking for a thrill. He liked to walk on
the edge.

  “Hey, Shay,” Kevin said, let’s drive
out on the frozen part of the lake.”

  “Okay, fine with me,” Shay said.

  “Oh no, not me, stop right now and let
me out,” I yelled.

  “Yeah, Kevin, better let Callie out,
she doesn’t like things like this. She really doesn’t.”

  Karen wanted out too, there was no way
we were going out on that deep frozen lake. I wouldn’t have walked
out there let alone gone out there in a car with several people in
it.

  “Shay, don’t do this,” I pleaded.
“It’s just stupid and you know it.”

  Shay just gave me a
don’t-worry-about-it-babe grin and drove onto the frozen lake. With
Karen and I standing on secure ground, the guys made their way
toward the middle of the ice. I could see they were having trouble
getting traction. They went real slow and got out quite a way. All
of a sudden, you could hear all of these sharp crackling sounds.
Not one big crack; but lots of little breaks, one after the other,
after the other.

  I know the guys heard it, because they
stopped and rolled the windows down fast, (good plan, in case they
went into the water.) They were trying to move but Kevin’s car just
spun its tires on the ice. We saw the doors open and the guys
stepped out very slowly at the same time. I held my breath. The
guys started walking very cautiously, working their way back to the
edge of the lake.

  Then we heard Shay yell, “Run like
hell Kevin!”

  I knew how fast Shay was; he grabbed
Kevin’s arm and literally dragged him after him across the ice.
They no more than reached the ground’s edge, when the entire center
of the lake went in like a crater. If the guys hadn’t reached the
shore when they did, they would have slid backward into the deep
ice hole. The car disappeared. There was a big slosh of water about
eight feet high as it all went down. Hell, the whole lake of ice
fell in toward the center. Without Shay’s directions to Kevin to
get out and walk slowly as far as they could, then hightail it
right at the last second, they would be gone.

  “Did you see that ice hole?” asked
Shay, kind of awestruck.

  “Ice hole my foot,” I yelled, angry
and scared as hell. “
Ass
hole, you mean. I see nothing
amazing about this—damn stupid way to almost die if you ask me.
What about Kevin’s car?” Not that I had any sorrow for his loss,
self-inflicted as it was.

  “We’re going to have to wait until
tomorrow and see if a crew can locate it. It’s insured isn’t it
Kevin?” said Shay.

  “Well, if you file for insurance,
Kevin, be sure you file it under Stupidity.” I looked around. “Now
we have to walk four miles home in this cold.”

  “No we don’t,” said Shay. “There’s a
pump house just over there.” He pointed to the right into a field.
“There’s a phone in every irrigation pump house. We just need to
walk over there, call, and someone will come get us.” He looked
pleased with himself. Well, he was the only one.

  We walked to the pump house and sure
enough, hidden behind the pump in a wooden box was a phone. We
called Joe and he came and got us. I have no idea how they got
Kevin’s car out. It was one of those things I didn’t ever want to
know. After such a shocking afternoon, I was glad to get home to a
warm fireplace. The guys each had a beer and Karen and I got some
chili and sandwiches ready.

  “Is it always this dramatic around
here?” Karen asked.

  “You have no idea,” I replied. “If
there isn’t some kind of drama happening on its own, someone has to
create it.”

  ***

In February I asked Shay if I could help him
with some of the farm chores, hoping to fill sad gaps in my day. I
figured if he took me along on some of his chores, the days
wouldn’t be so long. Finally, one afternoon I got him to take me
with him. He had to get hay from the loft up in the barn to take to
the field. Now surely this was something I could do. Seemed simple
enough. Shay parked the truck right under the big open window on
the second story of the barn.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “We have to climb the ladder in the
barn to the loft and fill the back of the truck with hay,” said
Shay.

  I climbed up first, with Shay pinching
my ass all the way up.

  “Stop it,” I laughed. “I could have
fallen, you pervert.”

  Shay was up the ladder and in seconds
I was on my back, soon unclothed. So many different compromising
positions to follow in the next hour, a true roll in the hay.

  “Well, Shay Man,” I said afterward,
zipping up my jeans, “teach me how to load the truck with hay.”

  “This is a pitch fork, Callie,” he
said, showing me. “You hold your right hand here, and your left one
like this. Then you get as much hay on the pitch fork as you can
and just throw it down into the truck bed.”

  “I think I can handle that.”

  Shay turned around to do something and
I went right to work. When he turned back around, he stood there a
second, and then he said, “Callie, where’s the pitch fork?”

  I pointed down to the truck.

  “Down there. I put as much hay on it
as I could, like you said, and then I threw it down in the back of
the truck.”

  Shay shook his head and started
laughing. “Princess, you are such a city girl!”

  Well, that was my last day doing
chores. Guess he didn’t know a good hand when he saw one, I thought
to myself.

  ***

Speaking of good hands, we had one of the
best. Shay was a good judge of character. He was all business when
it came to running the farmstead, but he had a kind heart toward
his hands. Rolland, one of the crew, told Shay about his
brother-in-law who’d lost his whole family in a car accident and
needed a job; he was about fifty-years old and didn’t speak any
English, but he had a good heart. Rolland told Shay his name was
Louis and he was a real hard worker. Louis was living in a homeless
shelter in Omaha. He usually followed the crews that picked
vegetables, but it was the off-season, and he was in need of a
job.

  My sweet Shay told Rolland that he
would send Steve, our chopper pilot, to Omaha to get Louis. Rolland
could accompany Steve. Louis was so appreciative of the job, and a
bunkhouse to live in. He was an exceptionally good hand. There was
nothing he wouldn’t do and he didn’t have to be told, he just knew
what needed to be done. Sometimes when he saw Kelly and Wessy, I
could see tears well up in his eyes. Louis loved our kids. He
called Kelly “little green eyes,” and Wessy, “little
hombre
.” He loved watching Kelly play with Starling. Louis
was a hard worker and a fast worker. Sometimes when I saw him
working, I felt like he was working so hard, it was like he was
running while he worked, trying to run from the pain in his
heart.

  One evening in March, I didn’t get
home from shopping in Hudson until 5:30 p.m. I had stopped at Mom
and Dad’s to get the kids, and the kids had cried until I let them
stay. Shay and I were good parents, but I’m sure people thought my
parents had the kids too much. Still, I loved sharing Kelly and
Wessy with them. The kids were Mom and Dad’s whole life. They
adored them and the kids felt the same. I knew how the kids felt—I
had felt that way all my life. I didn’t ever like being away from
Mom and Dad. They had so much love to give and they also gave the
kids their time.

  I always said Mom and Dad were
‘professional parents.’ Someone once asked me what that meant, and
after thinking a minute, I said, “They never traded our time, my
sister’s and mine, for money. Mom was there twenty-four hours a
day, seven days a week. That’s a professional mother.”

  Shay came in, showered and walked into
the kitchen saying, “I don’t smell anything cooking, isn’t supper
ready babe?” Then he asked, “Where are my little rug rats? Oh, let
me guess, they wanted to stay at Grandma and Grandpa Mitchell’s,
right?”

  “Right,” I said, “I haven’t started
supper yet, so go watch TV and have a beer while I get it ready. It
won’t take long.”

  Shay slipped past me toward the den,
smacking my ass with one of his love swats on the way. I stood
there a second thinking to myself, ‘We have the house to ourselves;
I should give Shay something special for supper.’

  Then I moved the chairs away from the
kitchen table he’d built in the center of the room. I moved the
flowers from the table to the counter, undressed, and lay down in
the middle of the table. All I was wearing was a bunch of grapes I
had nestled between my legs. I had another bunch of grapes in my
hand to feed to Shay.

  “Oh, Shay, darlin’!” I called in an
enticing voice. “Supper’s ready.”

  “Already? That was quick,” he said as
he got up off the sofa.

  I would have given anything to have
had a camera when he walked in. The look on his face was
priceless—pure surprise and delight.

  “Wow,” he said, “it’s a princess
buffet.”

  He circled the table, slowly, several
times, like a wolf around his prey. “Gee, I don’t know what I want
first, the salad bar, dessert, or the main course,” he said with
his Shay smile.

  What a few hours that was! My body was
sore for days from that granite tabletop (no give!) But the sore
bones and muscles were worth it. Later, Shay ended up taking me to
Westover for a burger. Then home, hot shower, and a few hours of
enjoying a good old soft bed.

  It seems like Shay and I did nothing
but make love. But like all couples we had our ups and downs. Oh,
we had our arguments. We just never ever let ourselves go to bed
without making love. I think the very worst fight that Shay and I
had was one summer day when he had the boat and the pickup parked
out front. His buddies were coming over and they were all going
water skiing. Well, that pissed me off, as girls usually showed up
at the lake. After arguing about the fact that I thought he should
stay home with us, I ran out the front door.

  I was still Little Fire Pants Callie
with my temper, and I really was a spoiled brat. I picked up a rock
from my flowerbed, about five inches in diameter, and threw it at
the side of Shay’s new boat. The boat was fiberglass, so the rock
didn’t dent it, but it really scratched the side.

  Shay came out of the house, grabbed my
arm, threw me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and
carried me upstairs. I was getting a little worried I might be
headed for another spanking. He took me to our bedroom and stood me
on the floor. Then he got his pocketknife out. Now I was really
wondering what was up.

  Well, I had just had a new matching
bedspread and drape set made, and Shay took that knife and cut a
circle, about eleven inches round, in the center of the
bedspread.

  “How do
you
like it, Callie?”
he asked, throwing the piece of fabric at me. “Having someone
destroy something that’s yours? Now you take the afternoon to think
about that. I’m going boating, and we’ll talk when I get home.”

  He stormed out, leaving me
openmouthed, just staring at the hole.

  That night I begged Shay to buy me a
new bedspread to replace the one he’d cut.

  “You buy me a new boat and I’ll buy
you a new spread, you spoiled little brat,” was his reply.

  After about six months of making the
bed and filling the hole with the round piece of fabric like a
puzzle, Shay gave in and bought me a new bedspread. But I never did
anything like that again. His “eye for an eye” method certainly had
the desired effect on me.

  ***

Around the first of May, most of the snow had
melted and the river was running deep and fast from all the run-off
water. We were out riding around in the Impala with the kids, when
Shay said he’d love to raft down that fast river from the lake to
Nine Bridge Road. Hell, that must have been at least ten miles.

  I was hoping he would change his mind.
But after Shay had driven home, gotten his rubber raft, taken it
down to the lake and inflated it, I was beginning to realize he
meant business, which I guess I’d known all along.

  “Now, Callie,” he said, “I’m taking
off from here. You wait a little while and then you and the kids
pick me up at Nine Bridge Road, that’s the big bridge,
princess.”

  “Are you crazy?” I asked. “You have no
idea what’s in that churning black water. Trees, barbed wire washed
down from the farms, trash—anything could puncture the raft. Shay
don’t do this, I’m not picking you up. This is insanity!”

  “Hush,” he said, “or I’ll take you
with me.”

  Well, that did shut me up. I knew he
might just try something like that.