Samson and Sunset (35 page)

  “Hey, Shay, I think I want your
clothes off,” I said after a long, contented silence.

  “Yeah? Just
my
clothes? Are you
gonna take yours off too?”

  Shay was looking out toward the road,
and I was looking straight ahead at the beautiful field. The
prairie grass was about three feet high and rippling in the wind.
They mowed it in the spring, and again in the summer, then just let
it grow tall for the winter.

  “Shay,” I said suddenly. “I think I
saw something running out there in the weeds.” I pointed to the
field.

  “Probably did,” Shay said mildly.
“There’s a lot of antelope out here, could even be a deer.”

  “Well, whatever it is, it’s black,” I
said.

  We both sat there looking, putting our
hands above our eyes to shield against the sun and get a better
view.

  Suddenly Shay jumped over me, ran down
the steps and into the field. He ran out about forty-five yards. I
couldn’t figure out what he was doing, when all of a sudden I saw a
child jump up into Shay’s arms. I could see the child had black
hair. Shay put one arm on the child’s back and one hand on his
neck, the old “Shay hold,” and stood there talking to him. Then he
turned and came running real fast back to the house with the child
in his arms.

  “Callie, get in the house,” he
commanded.

  “Shay, what’s going on?”

  “Don’t talk, just listen: call the
operator, tell her to get the sheriff and have him come to the
Westover ranch. Tell him to go to the bunkhouse right away. We have
a couple of guys who don’t belong there and one of them has a gun.
And tell them to get some medical help—there was a shooting! Do it,
Callie, do it right now!”

  As I was making the call I saw Shay
use a skillet to break the glass on the gun cabinet door. He took
out two handguns and a high-powered rifle, checked them all to see
if they were loaded, then handed me a handgun with the barrel
pointing downward.

  “Callie, I don’t know what’s happing
at the bunkhouse, but this is Manuel, he’s Alberto’s son. Everyone
calls him Manny. You keep him here with you; the two of you stay in
the house. Callie, don’t let anyone you don’t know in. If some
stranger tries, use the gun the way I taught you.”

  “Shay, I still don’t know what’s
happening?” I said. “Where are you going? You’re not going to the
bunkhouse if someone is shooting!”

  “I’m going to leave the Impala here
for you in case you and Manny need to leave. Manny,” Shay bent down
and addressed the child, “I want you to stay here and take care of
Callie for me. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll take good care of her, Mr.
Shay,” said Manny. “But please help my papa. I think he was shot
somewhere, I saw blood on him.”

  “Shay, what are you thinking?” I
shrilled. “You can’t just drive the pickup to the bunkhouse and get
yourself shot!”

  “That’s not my plan, babe. If I drive
to the feed shed, we have a trapdoor in there that goes down
underground. It runs to the corrals and then to the bunkhouse. It’s
used during blizzards so the men don’t get lost. I’ll need the
flashlight, where is it?”

  “I think it’s by the night stand.” I
ran to the bedroom to look. “Yep, here it is, Shay. Please don’t go
playing hero, you should just wait for the sheriff —”

  But he had already grabbed the
flashlight and was out the door.

  Manny and I placed ourselves where we
could see if anyone tried to get in, staying down and out of sight.
It was like a nightmare. I couldn’t believe someone had been shot!
It was like the Wild West. There were about eight or nine ranch
hands down at the bunkhouse, I thought. If they couldn’t help
themselves, what could Shay possibly do?

  As I waited, my mind wandered back to
the news alert I’d heard on the radio on the way up. Two escaped
convicts with a gun: two men and a gun. I kept telling myself I
needed to keep a calm head. I needed to stay calm for Manny. So I
let all of Shay’s words soak in: if anything was going to happen it
would happen while I had a clear head.

  Keep a cool head, Callie, I told
myself. Somehow I managed.

  ***

After about forty minutes of tense waiting,
Manny and I heard the sheriff and several cars go flying down the
road towards the bunkhouse. They stayed down there quite awhile.
After what must have been over an hour of agonizing waiting, the
phone rang. I think I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey princess.”

  “Oh, thank God,” I breathed, feeling
faint. “You’re okay.”

  “I’m okay. Everything’s going to be
fine. I’ll tell you everything when I get back. Tell Manny his papa
will be fine.”

  “Okay…” I hung up the phone with a
shaky hand and just sunk into the nearest chair.

  When Shay got back to the house he
told us what had happened.

  He had gone to the feed shed and into
the underground tunnel, working his way from there to the
bunkhouse. The stairs to the bunkhouse door went into the pantry,
and the pantry door was usually closed, as it was today. All the
doors in the bunkhouse had these little star-shaped cutout designs,
next to a little half moon—the builder had really put detail in to
the knotty pinewood. So once in the pantry, Shay was able to look
through the little star holes, and he saw a man holding a gun,
positioned like he was holding prisoners. His back was to Shay, so
Shay took off his boots and slowly opened the pantry door, holding
his gun on the gunman, ready to fire if necessary, while he slowly
tiptoed across the kitchen floor. Shay got all the way up to the
gunman without either man seeing him. He said the hands could see
him, and he could see relief on their faces.

  Then he put the handgun to the guy’s
temple and cocked it: the guy just leaned forward in his chair,
bent down and laid his gun on the floor. From there the hands
jumped into action and grabbed the guys; some of them took a couple
swings at the intruders.

  Shay said Alberto had been leaving the
bunkhouse just as the guys were about to open the door and come
inside. The gunman was startled and shot Alberto in the arm. The
intruders had let the hands tie a belt real tight around Alberto’s
arm, but otherwise held them at gunpoint. Manny was in the bathroom
when he heard the shot, and when he looked out through one of the
star holes in the door he saw blood, so he got the little window
open and squeezed out. He knew we were at the main house, so he ran
a long way through fields that were filled with sandburs. The poor
kid was barefoot, so his feet were full of stickers, but he never
stopped running.

  Alberto had Shay call his wife,
Cassie, and she said she would pick Manny up the next day around
noon, as Alberto was going to be in the hospital for a couple of
days.

  “Am I going to stay here tonight, Mr.
Shay?” Manny asked.

  “You sure are, little man,” said Shay,
grinning. “Wait a minute, after what you did today you’re a big
man! Guess we have to call you big man now.” He tousled Manny’s
black hair.

  “You’re going to be sleeping in a big
bed all by yourself, Manny,” I told him.

  A concerned look crossed his little
face.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  “I’ve never slept in a bed by myself
before,” the little guy said.

  “How come?” I asked.

  “There are too many of us, not enough
beds. So I sleep with my two brothers.”

  After I made two pizzas for supper,
got the kitchen cleaned and set Manny up on the sofa watching our
one television station, Shay walked out onto the porch. I saw him
walking around the front lawn area, so I went out and asked him
what he was doing.

  He looked over at me and said,
grinning, “I’m looking for an old crow, so I can eat it.”

  “Is that your way of telling me you
were wrong about the two convicts getting this far?” I walked up to
him, smiling. “Is that your way of saying your Callie was right?” I
grinned, remembering the scene it had caused on the trip up
here.

  “You know, we were lucky, Callie, they
weren’t violent men. One had committed armed robbery and the other,
forgery, the sheriff told me. They escaped in a laundry truck that
was headed this direction. They just wanted to wait until dark and
leave in one of our pickups.”

  At about nine, it was getting dark
out. I asked Shay to fill the tub and I found a big t-shirt and
some pajama bottoms so I could cut the legs off short for Manny to
sleep in. Shay asked the boy if he needed help taking a bath and he
said, “Hey, Mr. Shay, I’m a big man now, remember?”

  After his bath, I got Manny into bed,
found a book and sat beside him with one arm around his shoulders,
and read to him for a while.

  “You smell so good, Mrs. Callie,”
Manny said.

  “Well, maybe it’s my perfume.”

  “I don’t know, does your perfume smell
like a whole bushel of fresh oranges, ’cause that’s what you smell
like. Gee! I wish my mama smelled like you, Mrs. Callie. I could
just lay here and smell you all night!”

  I wondered if that was a hint that he
didn’t want to sleep alone. When I got ready to leave, he looked
concerned.

  “You’ll be able to stretch out all
over the bed,” I told him. “You’re such a big man now, we’re so
proud of you, Manny.”

  I realized he was still rubbing his
little feet. After looking at them, I was shocked to see that the
poor little guy still had some stickers in his skin. I got a pair
of tweezers and pulled the leftover burrs out. Then I put a
soothing lotion on his feet. I saw him look toward the doorway. As
I looked up, there was Shay, barefoot, leaning on the doorsill with
a cup of coffee in his hand, wearing his tight blue jeans and a
light blue western shirt, un-tucked. He was smiling at me. Gosh,
that man just took my breath away every time I saw him. He was so
damned handsome.

  “What?” I asked him.

  “Princess, I love watching you with
children. You’re not complete unless there’s a child in your arms.
That’s when you’re a happy woman. You were born to mother,
Callie.”

  “Mr. Shay,” Manny said. “You’re the
strongest, bravest man I’ve ever known. I’ll bet you’re not afraid
of anything are you?”

  “Well, Manny, everyone is afraid of
something, it’s what you do with the fear that counts.”

  “What are you afraid of, Mr.
Shay?”

  Shay thought for a minute, then he
said, “Well, I think the thing that scares me the most is when
Callie goes shopping and takes my checkbook. That really scares
me!”

  We all laughed, I tucked Manny in, and
Shay and I were off for our showers. That night we showered
separately. When we were in bed and I was lying there in Shay’s
arms, I felt so safe.

  “Shay, do you think the little guy is
scared? He’s had quite a day,” I said. “If I were his age, I would
be so afraid.”

  Shay let go of me and got up,
returning with Manny in his arms. He put the child between us and
Manny was so happy, holding Shay’s right hand and my left hand.
Shay had his other arm across the top of the pillow, playing gently
with my hair. We all did the ‘good night’ thing about four times,
you would have thought we were the Waltons, then off to sleep, all
three in the king bed. What a day! So much for ‘calm.’

  ***

The next day, Manny’s mother came to pick him
up. He hugged me tightly for a long time. “I’m going to miss you
and Mr. Shay,” he said through tears.

  Shay and I stood there, arm in arm,
waving goodbye.

  “You know, Callie,” said Shay. “I
think he loves you. You gave him so much of your time, you made him
feel safe and happy. You gave him time he didn’t have to share with
anyone else, my princess.”

  Shay picked me up and carried me into
the house. “I’m going to ravish your naked little wonderful
luscious body for hours, ’cause, woman, now I have you all to
myself.”

  ***

Gracious, what a man! First he gave us both a
sensual shower and dried us off, lotioned me and brushed my hair.
Shay loved it when my hair was wet—it had a natural curl and with
his fingers he would make it curly while it dried.

  He carried me to the bed, swaying back
and forth like he was rocking me, humming a lullaby. He lay over my
body, his arms under my shoulders and his hands under my head,
elbows braced, holding himself up, he looked down into my eyes and
kissed me, slowly moving his mouth downward; gently kissing my
neck, then my breasts, slowly running his tongue around my
nipples.

  “Woman, you taste so damn good!”

  Oh, that man just rattled my cage.

  “Shay,” I said.

  “Yes, princess.”

  “I don’t want you to think this sounds
dumb, but I really want an answer to what I’m going to ask
you.”

  “Haven’t I always told it as it is?
What’s your question?”

  “Shay, when did you know you were in
love with me?”

  He lay there looking into my eyes.
Then he said, “If I tell you, I don’t want you to let it go to you
head.”

  “Shay, you know I’m not like
that.”

  “Well, princess, remember the night
your car broke down at King’s Drive-Thru and you jumped out of your
car in three inch heels, tight blue jeans, and a cute little
maternity top? Your platinum hair glowed under the neon lights.
You
glowed. I didn’t know who you were or anything about
you, but you just sucked the breath right out of me. I knew I
wanted you. I think I fell in love with you when you yelled, ‘Knock
it off, can’t you see my car broke down?’ You had my heart right
there at King’s Drive-Thru,” he said sincerely.

  “When did you know you were in love
with
me
?” he asked.

  “I fell in love with you the second I
walked up to your car at Kings Drive-Thru,” I said. “Your beautiful
face, your eyes, your features, I couldn’t believe you were real.
You just took my breath away, right then and there. I had to force
myself to yell at you, and that is the truth.”