Blue Side of Lonesome

PUBLIC BETA

Note: You can change font size, font face, and turn on dark mode by clicking the "A" icon tab in the Story Info Box.

You can temporarily switch back to a Classic Literotica® experience during our ongoing public Beta testing. Please consider leaving feedback on issues you experience or suggest improvements.

Click here
JakeRivers
JakeRivers
1,057 Followers

"There is an old manager's quarters on a hill 'bout a quarter mile in back of the ranch house. It's nice but it has been in disuse for a number of years. David says you are handy with tools. What I propose is that if you clean it up and do any repairs necessary – I know the floor has to be sanded down and refinished, for example – you can stay there for nothing. You do the work and I'll pay for all supplies. Later, when and if you leave, I'll be able to rent it out."

We talked for a while about it and decided I'd come out the coming Sunday and look it over.

As she walked away she added, "Hey, David is going to be a great addition to our team. I'm sure he will be all conference and maybe an all American. Why don't you bring your running stuff and we can take a run after you look things over."

I did look it over and was really impressed. It was structurally in great shape but it would still be a fair amount of work. I was working about five to ten hours a week for the Rocky Mountain News and writing, as I felt inspired. I was currently working on a history of the Civil War in Colorado, particularly the impact of the battles of Glorietta Pass and Valverde on the failure of the South to make the inroads into the west they had hoped for. This was my first non-fiction effort and I was enjoying doing the research. I'd driven down to Glorietta Pass between Las Vegas and Santa Fe New Mexico to take pictures and visit places mentioned in the reference material I'd found.

So I had time to work on the house and I figured the effort would be a fair trade for free rent and utilities except for phone. The house was about forty by forty feet and the front was open, and about forty by twenty-five. In the back left was a kitchen, open to the big front room, which was fifteen by fifteen. The bedroom, on the back right was fifteen by twenty-five with a closet and bathroom on the side against the kitchen.

The house was on a hill about a hundred feet above the rest of the ranch and surrounded by cotton wood trees. It was shady with a view that went on forever. The house was built of logs up to the windowsills, about three feet. Above that it was framed with two by sixes. The Walls had a wainscoting of light colored pecan panels up to the windowsills with moldy wallpaper above. The floor was made with live oak planks and was stained a dark color that I didn't like. The kitchen cabinets looked like they were pecan also but they had been painted white.

We did go for a run and she had a well-marked trail around the perimeter of the property. At a quarter section I figured each side was a quarter mile making it a mile loop around. When Dana started the fifth loop I begged off. She had been running a much faster pace than I was used to. But I could see that living here and running with her might even make me a competitive runner in the forty to forty-five age group.

I spent three days taking off the old wallpaper and cleaning the walls and the rest of the house as good as I could do and decided to do the floor before I moved in. It took me a couple of weeks to sand it down and give it a couple of coats of a neutral varnish. It made the house look a hundred per cent better and much lighter. I figured I could do the rest of it after I moved it.

David helped me move in over a weekend, and as I had time I kept working on the house. I ordered a phone with DSL from Southwestern Bell and DISH to watch television.

I didn't think too much about Jenny as I was working on refinishing the house and trying to complete the book but as I got the hard stuff done and we edged into winter I had more time to try to figure things out. Winters could be brutal in Alamosa. At seven thousand five hundred foot elevation the low temperature was frequently less than thirty (or more) below with bitter winds blowing down from the mountains.

I kept coming back to what had happened with Jenny. I didn't really feel I still loved her but there was still the sense of that shared life we had lived together for a long time. David sometimes went up to Denver on weekends, if he didn't have a meet, to see his girlfriend and check out how his mom was. One time he came back with a box of stuff that Jenny had given him for me.

I looked through it and decided to keep some of the stuff – like several albums of photos documenting David's path from a baby to a man. I had always loved drinking bourbon, especially when we had been stationed somewhere overseas, like in Germany. I could buy it at the PX and it sorta made me feel at home whenever I drank it. A year ago I'd discovered Stranahans' Colorado Whiskey when visiting an old friend. It wasn't cheap – usually around sixty dollars a bottle – but it was one of the finest things to drink I'd ever had.

I usually didn't have more than a sip or two; I'd never really been much of a drinker. But as I started going through the box of stuff Jenny had sent me I left the bottle on the coffee table in front of the large stone fireplace. I had a fire going from two cords of Lodgepole Pine I'd cut up in the mountains. If you cut and sawed your own the price was great. It was mostly about four to six inches in diameter and burned great.

So sitting in front of the warm, bright fire and sipping that fine whiskey I ended my former life. I started with the letters. I didn't try to read all of them, but kind of jumped through a few at a time. These were letters I'd written when I was on temporary duty or was stationed for a while where there was no dependent housing. I'd read a letter remembering the time and place and with a too sad smile toss it on the hot coals. The fire would flare up like the passion of a spent love, then fade quickly away.

I guessed I'd had two small glasses of that best of the whiskeys – in my humble opinion – going through the letters. I started on the photo albums – staring at a picture then burning the memories that it brought back. The photos caused a fair amount of smoke and I had this hazy thought that when the smoke cleared my love for Jenny would be gone and I wouldn't feel the pain so much.

I got about halfway though the box and gave up, just throwing a handful of whatever crap represented memories I wanted to fade as fast as I could. The room got too smoky and I had to open the front door. When the smoke cleared I closed the door and threw a couple logs on the fire to make sure all the bitter memories were burned completely.

After the fire burned down to dying embers I tried for a last time to understand what had happened … or maybe why. I never did get a clear answer on what led to Jenny's cheating. I began to believe that she didn't have any more of a clue than I did. A line from one of Zane Grey's books, "Wanderer of the Wasteland," came to mind:

"I thought I was in love. I was a fool – mad – driven. It was only one of those insane spells that so often ruin women."

That was as good as anything I got from Jenny and I went with that. It seemed that the more I hunted for "truth and enlightenment" the nearer I came to being in Wonderland with Alice. Of course, the Stranahans didn't help me find my way though that "wonderland" anymore than burning the letters and photos had. Some things only got not so much better but less bad over time.

BLUE SIDE OF LONESOME

"I'm just on the blue side of lonesome.
Right next to the Heartbreak Hotel.
In a tavern that's known as Three Teardrops,
On a bar stool, not doing so well."

Jim Reeves

As winter worked its way through the cold days and nights, I pretty much finished what I envisioned doing on the house. I resurfaced the wainscoting and the kitchen cabinets, refinished the heavy oak kitchen table and chairs and painted the upper part of the walls. In talking it over with Dana, we decided paint would look better that trying to put wallpaper back.

There was some water damage in the bathroom and I wound up yanking everything out and redoing it from scratch. I found an antique tub and sink from an estate sale in Pueblo that looked great. I did the bathroom floor in large squares of Mexican tile and added a deck on the back of the house with a door from the bedroom. I wound up using the truck so much I took it back and gave David the Focus.

Dana lived in the big ranch house with her dad, Ben Ross. Her mom had died several years ago of cancer and her dad had taken it hard. He wasn't that old, in his early fifties but Dana said he just wasn't interested in much of anything lately.

"He does give riding lessons and boards horses; that does keep him busy. It's during the winter when things are quiet that I worry about him. I've tried to get him to date but he feels it wouldn't be right."

It turned out he went to Viet Nam in the last year of the war, and when he found out I had been in the Army for twenty years, he was happy to find someone to talk to. He had been a member of a LRRP (Long Range Reconnaissance Platoon) outfit and had some really hairy stories to tell.

As Ben wasn't busy during the cold weather, he started coming up to "help" me do some of the work on the house. He'd sit there and tell me about one of his escapades while I was painting or sanding or whatever the current task was. Of course, he would have a cup of coffee or sip a shot of my Stranahans. He got to like it so much he gave me a couple of bottles for Christmas.

One night we were sitting in front of the fire watching the paint dry, drinking from a bottle of Knob Creek he had brought up the hill with him. We had come to be close and I was down in the dumps, feeling like I was on the blue side of lonesome. He was easy to talk to, so before I realized it I had told him all about Jenny.

"I never had a problem like that, Jack, but I've lived some … enough to know there are no short cuts or magic tricks that makes things better. Hell, I ain't got over Martha's dying yet and there are days I think I never will. I know Dana worries about me but it's just so damn hard. You will work your way through this. I can see you are a strong man … too good a man to be pining away for a woman that done you wrong and don't deserve you."

He looked into the fire for a minute, then continued, "Say, are you interested in Dana? I mean as a woman?"

That sure came out of left field and caught me totally off guard. The truth was, I had started paying more attention to her. She was certainly attractive, pretty even. She was almost as tall as I was with a slim, wiry build. I'd talked and ran with her enough I knew she was flat out smart and easy to get along with. Several times while I was supposed to be working on my book, I'd catch myself looking out the window daydreaming about her. She hadn't shown any overt interest in me so I never asked her out – just kept it at the daydream stage.

Like he was reading my mind, Ben continued, "She's a cute enough gal, but she acts like she's not interested in men. She was married right after she finished college. She was hired as the assistant women's cross-country and track coach at CSU Fresno. She met a guy and she thought she loved him. Two weeks after the honeymoon they got into an argument because he thought she was flirting with another guy. He wound up giving her a black eye and a cracked rib.

"She didn't do anything about it but she swore to herself that no one would ever do that to her again. A month or so later she was cooking his eggs when he started shouting at her that she was doing it wrong. He shoved her against the stove and slapped her hard. She grabbed the skillet with her bare hand and hit him as hard as she could in the face. She burned her hand bad and broke his jaw and burned his face with the hot oil.

"She called 911 and they sent an ambulance and the police. It turned out he was still married in Missouri and wanted for spousal abuse and jumping bail. They held him for Missouri to pick him up. Dana had the marriage annulled and moved back here. As far as I know she hasn't dated anyone since. I figure she has lost her confidence in her ability to tell whether or not a man is good. So rather than take a chance that she might be wrong, she just doesn't try."

I thought about that for a minute – it explained her occasional standoffish manner. I had an idea that might work for everyone. She had told me that she wanted her dad to get out dancing or something and he had also told me that's what she had told him.

"Ben, how about this? I'll suggest that she asks the two of us to go dancing with her as a way to get you to go out. You would do that for her, wouldn't you? I'll ask her to make like it's her idea with the reason being that she wants to get to know me better."

We did it that way and it worked out perfect. One of the hotels had a country band come in on Friday and Saturday nights. The next weekend found us at the San Luis Bar at the hotel. Ben was happy since he got Dana to go out. Dana was happy because she had tricked her dad into going out. I was happy as it was my idea and really did give me a chance to get to know Dana better and let her see that I was a nice guy.

The band was actually quite good. Ben found a girl that he had gone to high school with and danced with her most of the night. The way he was smiling assured me that he was feeling no pain. I did dance with Dana enough to please me but the baseball coach was there and he kept cutting in. I didn't like that but I didn't know what to do about it. He seemed like a pushy jerk but Dana didn't complain so I put up with it.

Dana seemed a bit friendlier after that. When she came up to help me or look things over she would stay a little longer and have some coffee or tea. One evening when she stopped by, I was fixing dinner and she invited herself to stay.

"Dad's gone out to dinner with that woman he connected with when we went dancing. I don't really feel like fixing something for myself. You don't mind, do you?"

"No, of course not. I have plenty of salad and it's easy to throw on another steak. Not to mention that if you don't help me with the wine I'll end up drinking it by myself."

We had a good time, finding things to laugh about. It was good for both of us. My blue loneliness, my self-doubts about whether I'd done something to cause Jenny to do what she had … all that was somewhat in abeyance that night.

As Dana was leaving, she hesitantly said, "I had fun at the dance. It would be fun to do again."

Not being a dummy, I quickly responded, "Sure, let's go this Saturday night. That work for you?"

With a quick nod she was gone in the night.

I sat long and lonely in front of the fire that night. My thoughts were initially on Dana but I couldn't help but slide back to why I was thinking about her in the first place. I didn't feel a closeness or attachment to Jenny much anymore but I couldn't help but remember in flights of poignancy the special moments we had together now and then.

Did I miss her? Well, yes and no. I didn't miss the woman Jenny had become at the end … no, not at all! But in the total time of our life, the end was an aberration of unpleasantness in a sea of fond memories. As I thought it over – drinking tea instead of whiskey – I could feel some of my bitterness slipping away. I realized the hate and anger I had been carrying made me less of a person – someone I didn't really like.

With that I went to bed and two-stepped though my dreams of dancing with Dana.

LOVE AT A TRACK MEET

Winter slowly moved towards spring as my body and soul just as slowly evolved into something new. It was nothing like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly or the ugly duckling into a beautiful swan. I'd always run: in high school, through the Army years and later after we moved back to Colorado. But now I was running harder and longer than I'd even done in high school.

I would frequently do a road loop of ten miles and now I had it down around six minute pace, an hour for the ten miles. I ran with David a couple of times at Plachy Hall on the campus on the indoor track. I did a half-mile right at two minutes, about four seconds slower than my high school time. I'd never been really overweight, but since moving to Alamosa I'd dropped down to a hundred and fifty five, which really slimmed me down at my five ten height.

My soul – I guess what I considered to be who and what I am – was also changing. I was going through life at a slower, calmer pace. I used to be known for having a short fuse. Now I accepted life as I found it. This wasn't a sudden or complete transformation. It took me a while not to be irritated whenever I happened to think of Jenny and I still thought evil thoughts when someone cut me off on the highway.

Writing as a stringer for the Rocky Mountain News didn't really work out so I was down to being an author as my livelihood. I was worried at first but with two new contracts I became quickly optimistic. I'd finished my Civil War history book and sold it for a nice advance and a contract for two more. I'd also packaged several of my romance short stories and sold that with a contract for a sequel and strong interest in my writing a romance novel.

Dana was around more and more through this period. We would take turns fixing each other dinner, usually on Friday nights. About twice a month we went out for dinner and dancing, which we both enjoyed a lot. She still was very demonstrative – maybe holding hands while we were walking or a quick kiss goodnight. I knew she liked me but she had this deep reserve I couldn't penetrate.

We ran together as often as we could; it helped at first having someone kick me out into the cold but as my body and mind adapted I grew to look forward to the long runs in the snow. At first she would run me into the ground but as I got in shape I could run with her at any distance and at any pace.

David was doing well in school. He was getting high grades in all his classes and had finished third in the conference cross-country championship and was also named all conference. He was a good-looking boy, actually a nice pleasant young man. He was popular across the various groups he was involved with and always seemed to have a cute sweet young thing on his arm. It was nice not to have to worry about him.

He did go up and see Jenny about once a month but he had learned that I didn't want to hear about her. From the things he did say I guess they weren't very close but he did keep up the contact with her.

Dana did continue to have problems with the baseball coach, Rich Collins. A couple of times when I'd left the table while we were dancing he came by and tried to get her to dance with him. She always gave him a point blank refusal but that didn't stop him from trying. I asked her if he ever bothered her at the school.

"Yeah, he does things like walking into my office and sitting down even if I am on the phone. He keeps trying to talk to me and get me to go to dinner with him. He also "accidently" touches me sometimes and acts like it was an accident."

"You should report him – that's clearly sexual harassment."

"No, I don't want to do that. He's well known and has a lot of contacts. He's been here for a long time and I've just started."

One night after having been out dancing we stopped back at my place to have a glass of wine. One turned into two and we wound up sitting on the sofa with her on my lap. I gently kissed her and after a few minutes it turned passionate as we both started using our tongues. I put my hand on her breast and lightly stroked it eliciting a small moan from her. I slipped my hand under her sweater and found she had no bra. I slipped my hand over her breast, lightly rubbing her nipple with my thumb … and she froze and after a brief hesitation just stood up and walked out.

JakeRivers
JakeRivers
1,057 Followers