The Fourth Sunrise (6 page)

“‘
What would I hang my hat on?’ finishing her sentence.

“‘
Yes, could you still be a butterfly?’ she asked.

“‘
Possibly…But I would be one bitter butterfly.’

“
We both laughed. It was our turn to get our pizza. I ordered two slices of pepperoni and Christine grabbed a slice of plain cheese.

“
I said, ‘Plain cheese? You got to put some items on your pizza. Otherwise, you are just eating cheese bread.’

“‘
I like cheese bread. This isn’t my first rodeo, cowboy. I like cheese pizza. All that other stuff gets in the way of the true beauty of the pizza.’

“‘
Which is what?’

“‘
The perfect combination between cheese, the tomato sauce, and the bread. Adding more to it is just greedy. It’s already delicious.’

“‘
I think you make good points.’ I smiled at Christine. She had so much personality. It was refreshing, hearing a girl talk so much. She acted as if she didn’t have a worry in the world. She might have envied what I did for a living, but I envied that in her character. She seemed at peace with herself and that’s a rare trait, a trait that was always appealing to me. Maybe because I had so many brothers and sisters, chaos was just a way of life.

“
We grabbed a couple of sodas and made our way to the table area and sat down. ‘So, where is your friend from the diner?’ Christine asked.

“‘
You mean Douglas?’

“‘
Yeah. He seems like a real good guy.’

“‘
He is,’ I agreed.

“‘
He thinks you’re something else.’

“‘
That’s because he’s my best friend. I think the same thing about him.’

‘“
That’s great that you two are so close,’ Christine stated. ‘Is it hard with all the foolishness that is out there?’

“‘
Douglas has taught me to ignore the comments and to allow his ball playing do the talking. And if anyone truly has the skills to be a major league ball player, it’s him. He puts up with a lot of crap. He has more character in his pinky than most men have in their entire bodies.’

“
She wanted to know, ‘Where does he bat in the batting order?’

“‘
He leads off,’ I told her. ‘He is the biggest reason why I lead the league in RBI’s. It’s because Douglas leads the league in runs. I’m usually hitting him in.’

“‘
You two sound like quite a pair.’

“‘
Yeah, a pair of jokers,’ I said.

“‘
More like a pair of aces,’ she said.

“
I became embarrassed and decided to change the subject because I was never good at receiving compliments. Even when I was young, I didn’t know how to receive one, maybe it was because my own father never gave me a compliment.

“‘
What about your mother?’

“‘
She complimented me ten times a day. So the compliments that mattered to me were the ones I never got.’

“‘
That sounds a little ‘Greek Tragedy’ to me.’

“‘
Oh, you have no idea,’ I agreed. I could talk about myself all night, and I had learned that that wasn’t usually the smartest move with girls. Frankly, most girls didn’t know half of what Christine knew about baseball, but now she was diving into my family life and I thought it was a good time to get the focus off of me.

“
So, I decided to change the subject and focus on her. Plus, I had never got the reason she said she was a jack of all trades and a master of absolutely nothing. I had a lot of questions about this person who was sitting across from me. So, I said, ‘What is it that you do here? It sounds like you have lots of jobs.’

“‘
I’m the town’s fix-it, clean-it, mop-it, paint-it gal, because I don’t have one set job. I do a little of everything for a lot of local businesses. Most of the time, I work at a bridal boutique in town. I also work at the library, and sometimes I even help out at the gas station.’

“
I was surprised. ‘That’s pretty uniquely independent,’ I said to her.

“‘
I guess it’s nice to be trusted by so many people.’

“‘
What do you do at the bridal shop? Are there that many weddings in a town this small?’

“‘
Oh, you would be surprised. Mrs. Rogers, formerly Mrs. Calhoun, has been married three different times in five years.’

“‘
And that isn’t frowned upon?’ I asked, surprised.

“‘
Her husbands keep dying. She is a two-time widow at the age of 35. She knows how to snag a man up. To get three different men to marry you in five years…’

“‘
Is actually pretty amazing…’ I said, finishing her sentence.

“‘
And…especially considering the likelihood of her husband’s surviving past the age of thirty-five seems slim.’

“‘
That sounds like that is the most dangerous job in town.’ We both laughed.

“‘
What do you do at the bridal shop?’ I asked specifically.

“‘
I run the cash register and help ladies fit in dresses when they are twenty pounds heavier for the dress and they all swear they will lose the weight before they pick it up before their wedding date.’

“‘
Do they lose the weight?’

“‘
Actually, most of them do,’ Christine laughed. ‘Don’t get between a woman and her wedding dress. I’ve seen women starve themselves into the hospital trying to fit into a dress.’

‘“
That sounds really unhealthy.’

“‘
Try to convince a bride of that. It isn’t happening.’”

“
We talked about everything from where we went to elementary school to the president of the United States being assassinated just years earlier.

“‘
Where were you when you found out that JFK got shot?’ Christine asked.

“‘
I was catching for my junior high school team back in California. We were playing against another junior high school. A kid yelled out from the dugout that the president had been shot. One of the parents had a transistor pocket radio and the news spread like wildfire.’

“
She shuddered. ‘That is an awful way to find out.’

“‘
It was just the second inning and they should have stopped the game, but didn’t. They were trying to verify that it was real and not misreported or a hoax. Nobody wanted to believe such a terrible thing had happened, so there was a lot of denial until things started coming out on more and more radio and TV stations. We had to wait almost two hours before we found out the details and we played through the game, most of us choked up and scared. What about you?’

“‘
I was in Dallas when it happened.’

“‘
What were you doing there?’

“‘
My family was visiting some cousins in Dallas. I wasn’t at the location where it happened. We were about two miles away, watching it from our local television station.’

“‘
That sounds like a great day gone really bad.’

“‘
It was. I don’t follow politics too much. I couldn’t tell you if he was a good or bad president. All I knew was the president of the United States was shot a couple of miles from where I was staying. It was really scary.’

“‘
That is pretty outrageous that you were so close.’ I paused and took in her statement. ‘Trust me when I tell you he will go down as one of the greatest presidents of all time. Nixon has me worried. I think he is going to win. There is something I don’t trust about him. I can’t put my finger on it.’

“‘
Are we seriously still having a political conversation?’ she asked.

“‘
I take it that it’s not your favorite subject.’

“
She said, ‘My mom is Democrat and my dad is a Republican. So, I hear a lot of this at home.’

“‘
What would you like to talk about?’

“‘
I’d like to talk about how delicious the pizza is.’ Christine winked at me to let me know things were okay.

“‘
Then let’s discuss toppings,’ I joked.

‘“
Don’t get me started about toppings.’”

Chapter Five

Present Day – Delta, Colorado - Coffee Shop, 11:00 p.m.

“
We sat there for hours talking and laughing, and really living every moment of it. I had never had this sort of connection with any other person in my short life. I was enjoying this so much that the time had gotten away from me. I was breaking the team curfew rules, after all, and there was the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that my escape had been revealed.”

Sharee interrupted my story and brought me back to the present day reality, where my once-young heart had become old and jaded. Those fresh feelings filled with hope and determination had been replaced with lost opportunities and broken dreams.

Although I had been having a wonderful time reminiscing with Sharee, she was a constant reminder of me being stood up. I couldn’t understand it. Christine, it seemed, wasn’t going to be showing up this time. And my heart truly ached at the thought that she had forgotten me, once and for all.

“Did you get caught?”

“
Huh?” I said absent-mindedly.

“
That night. Did you get caught sneaking out of your room?” she asked again.

“
Oh, I’m getting to that, don’t be impatient.”

Chapter Six

July 1968 – Delta, Colorado - Deltarado Days, 1:30 p.m.

“
I looked across the table at Christine. She looked so graceful. She reminded me of Audrey Hepburn in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
but with longer hair. How she would not have a thousand guys waiting to be at her side at this moment was beyond me. All I knew was, I was having a slice of pizza with an angel.

“
Christine caught me looking at her and looked away. I could tell she might have felt uncomfortable. ‘So, you live with your parents?’ she asked.

“‘
I sure do. When I’m not traveling or staying with the team. During home games in Albuquerque, I stay with a nice older couple. They have a great swimming pool.’ She smiled at that.

“‘
How about you?’ I asked. ‘Do you have any siblings?’

“‘
Nope, just me.’

“‘
Wow, I’m one of seven kids. My parents believed in being fruitful and multiplying.’

“‘
Well. I’m glad they kept going until they made you.’ That statement made me blush. I liked this girl a lot. ‘Where do you fall in the birth order?’

“‘
I’m the oldest boy. I have two older sisters. So, I’m third.’

“‘
Where did you grow up?’

“‘
California. Indio, California.’

“‘
Is that near Los Angeles?’

“‘
More or less. Please don’t ask me if I’ve seen movie stars.’

“‘
That was my next question.’ Christine laughed.

“‘
It usually is. Most people think movie stars just walk the streets, eat at delis, and roller skate at the park constantly.’

“
I looked across at Christine and she somehow she got a piece of pizza cheese in her bangs. I looked her in the eyes and asked, ‘Do you trust me?’

“‘
I don’t really know you.’

“‘
Okay, let me rephrase that. Do you trust me enough to close your eyes for five seconds?’

“
Christine looked at me and grinned. She was a bit nervous, but she said, ‘You want me to close my eyes?’

“‘
Yes, just for five seconds. But you can’t know the reason why?’

“
She grinned at me and said, ‘I can trust you for five seconds. Not a second longer.’

“
Christine closed her eyes and I quickly reached over and plucked the cheese out of her bangs. I brushed up against her forehead with my fingertips when I did so. Christine kept her eyes closed much longer than five seconds.

“
Then she did something that surprised me even more when I nicked her forehead. She said, ‘Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.’ Then she opened her eyes.

“‘
Wow, you trusted me six times longer than you had to.’

“‘
That’s about right,’ Christine said.