Samson and Sunset (36 page)

  Who knew? Love at first sight. I think
that lovemaking session was one of our hottest. It felt like the
first time. I felt engulfed in his love.

  ***

Thursday came and we were on the road for
home. Shay had taken me away to win me back and it had worked. Once
again I was putty in his hands. A love like ours doesn’t die.

  1978

  Outrunning Trouble

  I wasn’t glad to be home. I had really
enjoyed this trip to the Sand Hills and I could have stayed another
week. But picking up the kids at Mom’s was fun, especially when we
gave them their puppies. Kelly named her little Peke, Bugsy, and
Wes named his Keeshond, Fagan. Those two dogs were with us for many
years, they became part of the Westover family.

  After that, thank goodness, we had a
few normal years. The mid-Seventies turned into the late-Seventies.
As usual, we were hot and steamy every morning and night;
afternoons when we could work it in.

  Shay let me do a little design work. I
did a few doctors’ offices, some dentists’ offices, several
friends’ homes, as well as some strangers’. I enjoyed keeping
busy.

  One night after we showered, Shay
crawled in bed. “Aren’t you coming, babe?”

  I lay down on my back on the
floor.

  “No,” I said. “I’m going to do a
workout routine I’ve been learning. I’m going to do it every night
before I go to bed so I can stay in shape.”

  Shay was looking into the dresser
mirror so he could see me from the bed. “Good grief, woman, how
much better could your shape get? You mean I have to lie here and
wait for you?”

  “You can get down here and exercise
with me!”

  “Nope.” He lay back. “I get enough of
a workout all day long.”

  While I did my workout on the floor
Shay lay in bed, braced on his elbow, watching me in the dresser
mirror. I didn’t have a workout suit yet, so until I could buy one,
I did my workout naked. I think I did some erotic moves; standing
on my head, spreading my legs wide open, holding that position for
four or five minutes, kicking my legs up high over my head, dancing
up in a pivot, like a ballerina.

  After about twenty minutes, I jumped
in the shower, dried off, lotioned up and crawled into bed. In the
time it took me to type this sentence, Shay was on top of me. I
didn’t get a lot of foreplay, either. He was quite aggressive. I
think he climaxed in less than ten minutes… But of course he stayed
with the sexual foreplay until I got there.

  When he was lying on his back taking
some deep breaths, I said, “Shay, are you starting to get tired of
making love to me? You were so fast, and that’s just not you.”

  “Babe, I was watching you work out
naked for twenty minutes and I was so damned turned on, I’m
surprised I made it that long. I thought I was going to have to
start without you. This is one man who will never get tired of the
inside of your life, Callie Westover.” He rolled over and took me
in his arms.

  “Now I want to talk to you, Callie.”
He sat back and propped me up under his arm, my chin on his chest.
“Callie, guess what you bought today?”

  “I don’t know! What did I buy?”

  “You bought a trucking business! You
bought Westover Trucking, Callie. You now have eight semi-trucks.”
Shay grinned.

  I sat straight up in bed. “Where did I
get the money to buy this?”

  Shay had once told me that just one
truck costs around thirty thousand.

  “Well, most of it was paid for by the
settlement we got from the hospital mix up,” he told me. “But we
are going to have to tighten things up a bit around here for a
while.”

  “Are you going to drive?” I asked.

  “Once in awhile, but I’m going to have
drivers. I need to be here to help on the farmstead. I won’t be
gone much, Callie.”

  ***

The trucks he got were red. The rig Shay got
for himself was the most beautiful truck I’d ever seen, candy-apple
red, lots of chrome. It said
Westover Trucking
on the sides
in bold silver print. Shay maintained all the trucks himself, and
he didn’t let any of the drivers “deadhead”—no driver ever drove
back from a delivery very long with an empty truck.

  Shay was a good boss; if a driver
could supply half his own insurance, Shay matched him. He was easy
to work for, but if a driver scratched or didn’t respect the rig,
Shay gave them one warning and after that they were fired. He ran a
topnotch business.

  I don’t think a day went by that Shay
didn’t remind me to be thrifty in all I did. I could stretch a
Sunday turkey dinner with all the fixings to next Saturday’s soup
or Thursday’s shepherd pie. I made so many casserole suppers that
Shay told our friends one night that not only was I the casserole
queen, but that I even threw the bread and butter in with the pan
along with the meal.

  I wasn’t sure I liked that remark. I
thought it made me look a little like a hillbilly hick. I clipped
every coupon I found, watched ads and caught all the sales. Mom and
I went to yard sales so I could find jeans and tops for the kids. I
felt I was really doing my part to help save money for the
business. According to Shay, it sounded like we were almost broke.
I guess that’s why the casserole thing just didn’t sit right with
me. I was doing my share to save, so that hurt.

  The day after the casserole queen
remark, while the kids were watching The Cisco Kid in the other
room, Shay and I were in the kitchen. I got out a separate dish for
every single thing; a roaster for the meat, a kettle for potatoes,
a salad bowl for the salad, a boat for the gravy, meat platter for
the cooked meat, a butter dish for the butter, a dish for the
dinner rolls, a bowl for the Jell-O, a tray for the vegetables. I
had the table covered with pans and dishes.

  Shay rubbed his chin. “What are all
these for?”

  “Well, these are the dishes I’ll be
using to make a lot of separate foods for you, Shay. May cost a lot
more money, but at least they’ll be in separate dishes, and, you
might be interested to know, so will the bread and the butter. I’m
giving up my crown as the casserole queen,” I said frostily.

  “Now don’t tell me my little princess
is pouting…”

  “That was a crappy thing to tell our
friends while I’m trying hard to scrimp and save money you don’t
have,” I snapped. “I do it to help you, Shay!”

  “Oh, princess, I was just
kidding.”

  “Well, I didn’t take it that way. So
now you’ll get everything separate.”

  “I like the way you do it. I love your
casseroles. But you know what I love the most? The thing you make
that I really crave?”

  “I have no idea, you’ve never told
me,” I said, unmoved.

  “It’s your meatballs and sauce. I
think you make the best meatballs and sauce in this world. You
should market them!”

  “Cool way to change the subject, Shay.
Just get out of the kitchen while you’re ahead.”

  He walked out the back door. Now we
had done a little snip-snapping at each other, so I guess one might
think we were arguing. About twenty minutes later Shay came back
inside. I was at the sink and he came over and smacked my bottom in
his loving way. I turned around and put my arms around his neck. He
picked me up, carried me upstairs and locked the bedroom door.

  “What about the kids?” I asked as he
set me on the bed.

  “Hell, they’re consumed with that
show. They don’t even know we’re here.”

  I think we emerged from the bedroom
about an hour and a half later. When I finally had supper ready, I
called everyone to the table.

  After the blessing and passing the
bowls around, Kelly, who, at this point was twelve, said, “Wessy,
don’t forget, you owe me five dollars!”

  “I won’t. I have it up in my room,”
Wessy said. He was ten, now.

  “Why do you owe Kelly five dollars?”
Shay asked, looking at Wessy.

  “Oh, when you and Mom were arguing in
the kitchen, I told Kelly you guys would be locked in your room in
about an hour and Kelly said she bet me five dollars you’d be up
there locked in your room in less than an hour, so she won.”

  Shay just looked at me. Our kids were
making bets about our sex life. Here we thought we had them
fooled!

  “Does it bother you kids that Daddy
and I still have a lot of special love time with each other?”

  “Heck no, “ Kelly said, “I like you
guys the way you are. My friends are always saying how cool my
parents are.”

  “What about you, Wessy?” I asked.
“Does it bother you?”

  “It’s a guy thing, Mom,” he said, “so
I’m on Dad’s side. I say he should go for it and get it while the
getting’s good!”

  I near fell off my chair with that
remark. I think both Shay and I were shocked at how grown-up our
kids where getting. I could certainly tell Wessy was Shay’s son—he
was a little lady’s man in the making.

  “Mom, Dad,” Wessy said, as if reading
the mood of the room, “I’m too old to be called Wessy. I don’t want
you to call me that anymore. Call me Wes like my friends. And never
mess up and call me Wessy again, especially if girls are around,
okay, Mom?”

  Boy, they had grown up. It was Shay
and I who still acted like two teenagers. Just the other day I had
been at the sink washing dishes, looking out my window, watching
Shay on his back working on the underside of one of the semi
trailers, and I was getting turned on just watching him. That man
spewed sex in everything he did. There was at least two feet of
space above him under that truck, and it gave me an idea.

  I dried my hands and went out the back
door. Hell, we were alone and the kids were in school. I went to
the trailer and crawled underneath alongside Shay in just my
underwear and socks and a loose button-down shirt.

  Shay looked sideways at me. “What are
you doing, Callie?”

  I crawled on top of him. “I’m here to
inspect your semi! I want to see if your screwdriver is working
correctly?”

  Shay lay down his wrench and grinned.
“You’ll just have to check it out for yourself to see if it passes
your inspection.”

  We made hot passionate love under that
trailer. I think sometimes we forgot we were old enough to have
kids at all.

  ***

One night Mom called me and told me Daddy had
been sick all day. She said he had been feeling dizzy, and asked if
I could take him to the doctor the next day.

  I said, “Of course.”

  We didn’t get good news. They found a
spot on Daddy’s lung and thought it might be cancer. So Shay,
Kelly, Wes, Mom, Dad and I went to Omaha to the big medical center
so Dad could get a biopsy.

  It was confirmed: he had lung cancer.
I can’t even bring myself to write about it. My life seemed to end
right there. I was devastated. I couldn’t think straight. They said
he had about six months to live. This was my greatest fear. Death
had caught up with me again.

  We had lost Grandma and Grandpa
Westover several years ago, and that had certainly left a hole in
the family, and in my heart. Now here it was again, death knocking
at my door.

  Without Shay, I don’t know what I
would have done. Kelly and Wes cried a lot, they didn’t care who
saw their tears. They loved Grandpa John so much. I was so
heartsick I’m not sure I was able to console them. I can only hope
that Shay was there to console their little broken hearts. I was
numb again.

  I spent a lot of time with Dad the
next week or so, and the two of us shared many tears. Dad had
things he wanted to say to all his loved ones, but, while he loved
to hug, it was hard for him to express himself. So I one day I got
a pen and paper and told him to say whatever he wanted to each
person and I would write it down for him. He liked that idea and
said what was in his heart. I was so happy that he was able to
leave each and every one of us a letter telling us how much he
loved us and would love us forever.

  ***

One afternoon a friend of mine was paying me
a visit and she told me about a clinic her mother’s friend had gone
to down in Mexico. She said her mother’s friend had very good
results. Armed with the lady’s address, I went to her house to talk
to her and got some good information. But, oh dear, I thought; it
probably cost a fortune. How could we afford it when we were
pinching pennies as it was? When I left the lady’s house I went to
the library and did some research. Everything I found was doom and
gloom. I was heartsick.

  That night I bathed and spent at least
an hour crying in the tub. Afterward, I dried myself and crawled
into bed. I was whimpering like a baby and Shay pulled me over to
him and held me close.

  “Shay,” I said softly, “there’s this
clinic in Mexico… They might be able to save Daddy, but it costs so
much money.”

  “How much are we talking, Callie?” he
asked, stroking my arm.

  Shay was so patient with me. The fact
is Shay loved my dad. The two men had had their differences, but
they had come through them respecting each other. Like the time
Shay left me standing in a blizzard, pregnant; Daddy called Shay
out on things like that. My dad made Shay accountable for his
actions in a way that Sterling didn’t.

  “I’m not sure, Shay, but I’ll bet it’s
hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

  Shay held me as I sobbed like a little
child. Then he said, “Callie, I have the money.”

  “What?” I asked. “How could you have
the money?”

  “I have my trust fund, and we still
have some from the hospital settlement.”

  “Shay, you’ve had me struggling the
last few years and here we have the money? How could you do that to
me!”

  “Now, Callie, do you want to be mad at
me for saving money, or do you want to be happy that I have the
money to take your dad to Mexico?”