Thunder In Her Body (22 page)

Lynette returned several of her students’ requests for phone consultation, spending as much as forty-five minutes to an hour with each.  She felt she owed them that.  She wanted them to do well, to be successful.  If anything she could share with them would boost them to that point, she was willing to do it.  In between calls, she completed arrangements for a future three-day workshop, faxed confirmation copies of her contract to the host company, spent time on the phone with Clare and generally enjoyed having days with Blaze.  He was busier than usual in his office, making phone calls, jotting down notes, leaving the ranch for short periods without her and staying near her as much as time permitted.  They napped lazily together when possible.  They strolled out into the meadow with the dogs and watched them chase ground squirrels or bound up into the air to taste a butterfly.  They fought for the last spoonful of Blue Bell in their shared bowl of ice cream.  It was a peaceful time for them. On Thursday night, she introduced him to “a single girl’s big night.”  At 7:00,
Last Resort
; at 8:00
Grey’s Anatomy
, and at 9:00
Scandal.
  She was addicted to the racy drama,
Scandal. 
That was the way she usually spent her Thursday nights, when she dog-sat the little Dachshund, Chili Dog, for a friend.  But on this Thursday night, with unbuttered popcorn, a beer for Blaze and some diet fruit punch for her, they watched her favorite shows together.

“You don’t drink very much, do you?” Lynette observed aloud, at the end of one program and before the beginning of the next.

“Don’t need to,” he replied.  “I drank enough to last two lifetimes when I was trying to get over the mess my life was in when I was with Beverly, and for a couple of years afterward.  A real wise man intervened in my life and helped me see what I was doing, or trying to do, and I backed off the hard stuff.  I enjoy the taste of beer.  I usually have one with a meal, or like tonight, when I’m relaxing.  But there’s nothing to be found in the bottom of a bottle but misery,” he said in an emphatic manner.  There was a long pause.

“How about you?  I’ve never even seen you drink a beer.”

“I’m not partial to the taste of beer.  It tastes bitter to me.  The taste of alcohol has no allure, except in eggnog or maybe a strawberry daiquiri every now and then.  I do like the taste if it’s disguised in something really quite sweet.  Probably in the past six months, I’ve had two daiquiris and, oh yes, a margarita one night with friends at a wedding shower.  I can go for months without ever touching anything hard.  A psychiatrist explained my aversion to alcohol back when I was married.  Even though I was only ten when my mother divorced my father, I watched my father destroy his life and our family with alcohol.  He once threw a full beer bottle at me when I disturbed his drinking.  He knocked me out cold !  I thought my mother was going to kill him that day.  She reared back and hit him with her fist.  She knocked him clear across the little kitchen.  I can still remember the sound the pantry door made as he bounced off it and slid down onto the floor.  He drank himself into an early grave at age 49.
The psychiatrist said I chose to go the direct opposite so as not to repeat the same pattern.  Frankly, I don’t like the feeling of being out of control,” she shared thoughtfully.  “Feeling light headed, trying to focus – that doesn’t do anything for me.  Besides I’m crazy enough without throwing alcohol into the mix, haven’t you noticed?” she laughed.  She was thoughtful for awhile.

“I guess I never learned to drink, which is not a prerequisite for anything.  Once when I was married, we were playing bid whist with our neighbors.  They made some killer whiskey sours and because they tasted like strong lemonade to me, I drank three or four real fast.  All of a sudden the cards kept falling out of my hands.  I’d pick them up, re-sorted them and they’d topple from my hands again.  My fingertips had gone to sleep.  I was high and didn’t know it.  John and Shannon laughed their asses off.  It looked like a Jerry Lewis routine,” Lynette finished, herself giggling.

“Then if I want to ‘take advantage of you’, I should ply you with liquor,” Blaze teased with a wink.

“Baby, you can’t take advantage of me.  I’ll give you anything you want, anywhere, anytime, anyhow,” she smiled, lasciviousness dripping from her words.

“You know I’m gonna take you up on that, don’t you?” he said with a sly smile.

“You don’t seem to mind other people drinking, though, do you?” he asked a bit more serious.

“Nope, I believe in self-determination.  If a person wants to drink, that’s their choice.  My choice is whether I want to stay around them when they become obnoxious.  And most of the time, I don’t.”    She paused, deep in thought, deciding whether to go on.       “Life is so precious.  It’s so good.  Each day is a blessing.  It’s a shame to screw it up.  God gives us so much to work with.  Angels, in the form of friends and people who come into our lives ever so briefly; guides to lead us through unusual times.  I believe strongly in divine intervention.  Life is good, honey.”  She wiggled her toes further up under his bottom as he sat at the other end of the couch.  He smiled at his precious lady.

LYNETTE SPOILED HIM THAT WEEK that Aaron was in Austin with Clare.  She made him migas for breakfast one day, waffles with little sausages imbedded in them covered with hot maple syrup, another day.  She fried pork chops and served them with fluffy, cheesy eggs, biscuits and fresh squeezed orange juice.  One morning, she served him a big bowl of cereal with lots of seasonal fresh fruit and home-made banana bread.  Always, of course, there was coffee, thick, strong, roping coffee.  She cooked for him and the ranch hands.  Though they enjoyed their private meals together, it didn’t make sense to fix a big pot or skillet of something, and not invite the guys.  On a cool spring night she made a huge pot roast with carrots, onions, chunks of celery and lots and lots of potatoes cooked slowly in lots and lots of gravy.  She served it with yellow corn bread and topped the meal off with home-made peach cobbler, her specialty.  Maurice and Hawk were impressed and Blaze was proud and surprised. She’d told him she didn’t cook much.  He took that to mean that she didn’t know
how
to cook! The guys ate themselves almost sick, and though Blaze was no stranger to the kitchen himself, her pot roast with that thick, rich gravy was like heaven to all of them.  A few nights later she fixed up a mess of mustard, turnip and collard greens with big chunks of smoked ham.

“You people need some soul food,” she exclaimed as she boiled and stirred foods in the kitchen.  “Call the guys up for supper around 7:00,” she told Blaze with a gleam in her eye.  With the greens, she made candied sweet potatoes, fresh fried corn, baked pork ribs, and salt water corn bread - some real down-home, southern cooking. Blaze helped her set the table, then he tucked a kitchen towel into the neck of his shirt. No thin napkin would do.

“I’m about to do some serious eatin’,” he declared. Almost unable to help clear the table because he was so full, Hawk playfully got down on his knee, as if to propose, and he playfully kissed the hem of her blouse.  “Please don’t ever leave here,” he almost innocently pleaded with Lynette.  “Watch it now.  Don’t get too close,” Blaze admonished jokingly, as Hawk touched the fabric.

“Damn,” he commented to Aaron one evening on the phone.  “I know how to pick em,” he said in jest.  “She’s smart, practical, loving,” there was a pause in the conversation as Aaron must have made a lewd comment.

“Un-Huh,” Blaze responded in a muffled tone.  She knew what the question was on the other end of the phone.  “And she can cook too!” he boasted.

Again, Aaron repeated his command.

“Marry her.  Damnit, marry her.  I don’t know how we lucked up on these two angels but I ain’t getting no younger and neither are you.  Just ‘cuz Clare and I are gettin’ hitched right away don’t mean that you two can’t.  Hell, maybe we can have a double ceremony, who knows!” Aaron added.

Blaze took Lynette back up to his side of the ranch the next afternoon.  It was a beautiful early June day.  Except for a couple of fence posts, you couldn’t tell where Aaron’s property ended and Blaze’s began.  It just seemed like miles and miles of ranch.  The guys could easily move their joint herd from ranch to ranch with no trouble at all.  The properties were just one huge expanse of real estate as far as the eye could see. Blaze drove the truck up onto a low rise with a view to dazzle.  From this vantage point they could watch Blaze’s six horses grazing in the meadow.  There was a full view of the mountains, and Sierra Asombroso loomed everywhere to the west.  Sitting down comfortably, they just surveyed the wonders that God had provided.
  Blaze turned to Lynette, brushing a few wispy hairs back from her face and said, “Before the God of my understanding, and in my heart, I have married you, and I could live the rest of my life with you just like this.  But, that won’t protect you, that won’t legitimize you before the world.  So can I protect you, can I make an honest pair of us, will you do me the honor of marrying me, before human witnesses?  God already knows you are the wife of my soul,” he finished, looking at her very seriously.

“Oh Blaze, yes I’ll marry you, before witnesses.  Yes, I’ll continue to be your wife.  And I’ll live with you and love with you until the Creator calls us home,” she said fighting back tears.  He grabbed her and the force of his weight tumbled them over, and they rolled around in the bright spring grass until he rested quietly on top of her.  They kissed until their lips got tired.

“You know we could do the wild thing right here.  There’s not a soul around for miles,” he said mischievously.

“Sweetie, with our luck there’d be a spy satellite right over head, and the guys and girls down at the Air Force Base would have a lot to talk about at dinner,” she laughed.

“Then, as Bonnie Raitt says,
let’s give em something to talk about,”
he sang as he hastily unfastened his belt buckle.

Talk about a
roll in the hay
, that was a tumble in the grass, and Lynette had trouble afterward finding her legs.  As he often did, he left her limp, weak, and satisfied. Finally standing, she brushed the grass and debris from her clothes and tried to repair herself.  She looked around, hands on hips, at this marvelous place.  Then started waving her hands in the air, and she shouted at the top of her lungs, “Did you hear that Survivor, we’re getting married?  We’re getting married again!” and she put the emphasis on “again.”  She spun around to Blaze.

“Survivor, that’s his name,” she said, pointing down to the horses.  “His name is Survivor,” she repeated.  She didn’t know where that name came from, but it was the right one for him.  Blaze smiled in approval.

They hopped in the truck and rode down to the horses where they brushed them and played with them.  Blaze tried to boost her up on Survivor, but without a stump to stand on and a saddle horn to grasp, the effort didn’t work, and it spooked Survivor a bit.  Lynette gently rubbed each horse, and talked to each one, but she whispered in Survivor’s ear and told him he was her favorite.
  In months to come, she would ride Survivor.  He would become her favorite steed even though she rode them all at one time or another.  Blaze found a saddle to fit her short body and proved to be an excellent teacher.  The only times that Lynette had been on a horse was down in Big Bend National Park, in Texas when her children were in elementary school.  She, her then husband, and the children rode down to the “window” with a guide.  In the corral, at the beginning of the ride, she had to stand on a stump to mount Old Geronimo, a horse she swore had a back as wide as a Chevy.   When the group reached the “window,” an opening in the Chisos mountains that framed the valley below just like looking through a window, she dismounted and ate lunch with the bunch.  Trying to get back up on Old Geronimo became the comedy scene of the day.  The wrangler and guide kept trying to boost her back up into the saddle, but she couldn’t pull herself up high enough with the stirrups.  Each time she tried to mount, the saddle slipped more and more to the side of the poor horse until most of the saddle rested on the horse’s ribs.  Talk about side-saddle!!  Finally, while several people bent over in raucous laughter, and her husband and children, all with long legs, made terrible fun of her, the wrangler, grabbed huge hunks of her butt, and literally threw her up into the saddle.  It was a humiliating experience, but she survived it, and the embellishment, as her family told and retold the story!