Dying Embers

Finally I had to ask, "Mary Kate, where did you learn how to drive a truck?"

"Sam, I can do a lot of things you have no idea about. But a woman has to have her secrets."

We finally got to the Pioneer Hospital in Prineville. I wound up staying for two days then I had to stay home for three weeks before I could go back to work. The first week I was to stay off my feet as much as possible. After that I could use a wheel chair.

Mary Kate could see me fretting as she drove me home. "Now what's troubling you?"

"Well, shoot, Mary Kate, I guess I'll have to get a nurse to come out and help me.

"Why can't I take care of you?"

Blushing, I replied, "Oh hell, you heard what the doctor said. I'm not supposed to get out of bed for the first week. That means … "

"That means you'll have to have your bedpan emptied and someone to clean you up, fix meals and feed you. Sam, emptying bedpans is another of the things I know how to do that you didn't know about. I took care of my dad for the last few months before he died. Hell, you don't have anything he didn't have."

Looking over with another of her perfectly done smirks, she mumbled something that sounded a lot like, " … except dad was probably a lot bigger than you are."

She couldn't have said that, could she? She must have meant he was bigger than me, but hell, I'm six-four. I turned my red face to the window and admired the view the rest of the way home.

~~~~~~

It turned out to be both better and worse than I expected to have Mary Kate fussing over me. She worked out an agreement with Carla to take a week off from the restaurant. The following two weeks she would work dinner and Colleen would fix my dinner and keep me company.

The bedpan thing turned out not to be a problem. She left me alone to do what I had to do then would take the pan and empty and wash it. She brought me what I needed so I could clean myself up. Yeah, I didn't have a lot of privacy but she turned out to be so matter-of-fact about it that I wasn't too embarrassed.

The good part was Mary Kate spend a lot of time talking to me. She was a very complex woman and I found out quickly I didn't really know much about her. She was over-the-top intelligent, knowledgeable about many things I wouldn't have expected of an eastern girl and she had a wickedly sharp sense of humor.

She had this way of skewering my preconceptions about myself with a few well-chosen words. She would see my discomfort and look properly repentant. She had this way of, I guess, relaxing her eyes. It wasn't exactly relaxing but that was how I perceived it. They would go round and a softness would come to her face, a quiet vulnerability. I had this sense of her as a volatile mix of hard competency and soft innocence that drew me in to the core of her being.

The closeness of her being around me, bending this way, leaning that way showed me a beautiful woman of around forty that had a body that belied her age. I started the week in lust and moved rapidly to in love. Now, at the end of the week, it was something beyond and far more complex than either lust or love.

She talked freely of her past and answered my questions … up to a point. Some areas of her personal life, even basic questions like, "Why did you come to Oregon?" would instantly change her eyes to more of a darker shade of gray with glittering points of steel. She would usually leave the room right after and stay away for an hour or so.

Once, towards the end of the week when the pain in my ankle had subsided somewhat, I asked about her husband. I mostly was trying to find out if she was in a relationship with someone or not. Hell, I had a vested interest in knowing the answer. The shutters came down over her eyes and she started to pull away. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down.

"Mary Kate, talking with you is like walking through a mine field. You can be laughing one minute and exploding the next. I'm not very good at hiding my emotions so I'm sure you know I have feelings for you, strong feelings."

Here she averted her face and tried to stand up. She sat back down and put her hand on my cheek. So softly I almost couldn't hear her, she replied, "Sam, I know your feelings. I haven't encouraged you but I haven't really discouraged you either. I guess I'm at fault for that and I'm sorry.

"I do have some problems and I don't know how to solve them. Please don't ask me to … please give me some time. You have helped us so much and been so nice – you deserve more than I can tell you, just …"

And with that she ran from the room crying. Later, after she had dinner with Colleen, she came back up. Her eyes were red but she was wearing a brave smile. I patted the edge of the bed next to me, inviting her to sit.

"I do understand what you said. I was asking because I care and you can't make me stop caring. Talk to me when and if you can but promise me that if you need help - of any kind – come to me.

"I want to tell you my story. I need for you to understand who I am. It's not a pretty story and I'm afraid of what you will think of me. But I can't lie to you, not ever. And not telling you what I have to say would be a form of lying."

She sat there, on the edge of my bed while I told her my story. Holding her hand in mine I told of the years of happiness with Jean, the slow but steady sliding apart and the final, ugly ending. I didn't spare myself: I told her of how I almost killed Arturo, the still murky, in my mind, fire and the years I'd spent institutionalized and under treatment.

I tried to let her see how my feelings had hardened as to relationships with women, of how I felt I could never trust anyone. I spoke of the few dates I'd had but the aversion to the intimacy sex would bring. I'd been chaste since my last time with Jean.

All this time Mary Kate had been looking at anything but me. I couldn't tell how she was taking all that I had said. I had a sinking feeling that I had shot myself in the foot with my need for honesty.

With a sense of desperation, I finished, "Mary Kate, that first time I saw you, that rainy Saturday morning when I first looked in your eyes, something happened to me – something that had been hard and ugly broke or dissolved and I felt like I was falling into your eyes. I saw something change in you; you knew that you had done something to me."

Letting go of her hand and looking away from her, I added, "I'm sorry, Mary Kate, I wish I could be a better person for you, the one to give you what you need, to make you smile more."

She sat there for a long time, not moving. Finally, with a soft sigh, she turned to me and taking my head in her hands, she gave me a soft, tender kiss. Pulling back she looked at me, searching for something in my eyes. With a heavier sigh, one expressive in its sadness, she stood and started to walk away.

Almost as an afterthought, she turned and kissed my forehead and murmured, "You're a good man, Sam. I just wish …" and she got up and walked away.

~~~~~~

The second week brought a lot of changes. I was able to be in a wheel chair and that gave me a lot of mobility. Mary Kate was there during the day and Colleen would fix me dinner and sometimes watch old movies with me.

I even got her to watch "The Quiet Man." I'd told her the story of how Maureen O'Hara's character in that movie was my first love and what a coincidence it was that her mom had the same name and almost the same color hair. She had the grace to at least blush when I mentioned the name.

After the movie was over she said, pensively, "She does look a lot like mom, doesn't she?"

Looking over at me, she asked with a laugh, "Are you going to fall in love with another Mary Kate Danaher?"

I'm not sure how I looked when she said that but her eyes opened in sudden awareness.

"My God! You already love her, don't you? No, don't answer, I can see. Wow! So that's why …" she trailed off, looking at me kind of funny.

Hmmm. I wonder what she was going to say? Deciding this was my chance to fish a little, I asked, "Uh, has she said anything about me?"

She gave me a frank look, and responded, "Well, she did say that you … well, that you are sweet."

That wasn't too bad. I hope what she had really said wasn't that I was a good friend. That's the kiss of death.

The following week our relationship changed. Oh, there was something going on below the surface, but we acted upbeat and friendly. Almost like really good … friends. Damn!

Then one morning when the spring sun filtering through the tall trees warmed the air, I rolled my wheel chair outside and we had coffee on the front porch. Mary Kate had a bunch of papers in her hand – computer printout – that she waved around but never actually looked at.

"I've enjoyed working at the restaurant with Carla – and she is really a dear - but I'll never get Tom paid off with what I make there. I need more money: I want Colleen to go back to Amherst for college. It's important to me that she gets the best education she can.

"Also this will let me pay you back for some of what you have done for us. I want to start paying rent for the cabin. I've looked into everything and I know it will work. It will get my daughter back into training and it will be fun to have some horses all around here. There won't be too many people coming – we will have to fix a parking area and an outdoor restroom changing area, but …"

"Umm, Mary Kate. I hate to interrupt but whatinthehell are you talking about? Just what is 'this'? And I don't want a parking area and I don't want a lot of people coming out. I like my privacy. I like living alone."

Like a woman, Mary Kate focused on the last thing I said, ignoring the rest. With her hands on her hips in an aggressive posture, she asked, "So do you consider Colleen and I … people? Don't answer that! Do you like having us here?"

"Well, sure!"

"There you go then. Everything should work out great. The rest is just details. Let me know if you have any questions." With that she walked back to her cabin, printouts unfurling in the light breeze. I never did get a look at them.

Now I fully realized what I had been doing for the last few years. I was hiding from women and obviously that was the right thing to do. I wondered if I put ice on my ankle more often I might be able to go back to work earlier.

What her printouts and planning turned out to be was three separate but intertwined things. One part was that I would start boarding horses. It turned out that this was a very lucrative thing to do and the girls would take care of everything. Well, almost everything.

"Maybe you could make a gravel lot big enough for about a dozen trucks and horse trailers. Oh, and we need another corral, a bigger one please. There was one other little thing – oh, yes, it would be sweet of you to muck out the stalls for us."

There's that "sweet" word again. Maybe sweet was just another word for work. Damn, muck out the stalls?

The second thing was that Colleen was seriously into dressage and Mary Kate had found a guy that would train Colleen for free if he could use our facilities for training.

"One other thing, one of the corrals needs to be set up for dressage – I'll give you a list of what we need. My daughter is so excited – she does have a chance for the Olympics, you know."

I wanted to ask her how, if in fact she was hiding, she could stay hidden if she was in the Olympics. I was beginning to think Tennyson had it right:

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do & die.

Even the part about the "valley of death" was sounding more and more likely. Do people still say, "Woe is me?" It does have a nice ring to it. The beginning of a protest was forming on my lips but Mary Kate was nothing but quick.

"Sam, just remember, we are doing this for you. No, don't say thanks, I know how you feel."

She knows how I feel? Hell, I don't even know how I feel.

Of course, there was still the third part.

"You do remember what I told you about my training horses, don't you?"

Uh, she told me that?

"Since we will have everything else set up I'd like to start training again. I'm really quite good. And it will add a lot of money to our partnership."

Our partnership? Huh?

"I did tell you about the horse, didn't I. I found one that is exactly what Colleen needs for her training and a pretty gray mare for me with the cutest stocking feet. And, Sam, I found a grulla gelding for you that you will like a lot!"

Whatinthehell is a grulla? I could guess what a gelding was – poor thing!

"Uh, Mary Kate, what was that about a partnership?"

"Oh, the papers are all drawn up. You keep all the land and buildings but you get tons of tax write-offs. All the other stuff will be fifty percent yours and twenty-five per cent each for Colleen and myself. She will do all the paperwork and billing on her computer. You did get the DSL installed, right? You're so sweet!"

With that she sped off in another burst of high-octane energy. What the hell was DSL, anyhow?

~~~~~~

My ankle finally got to the point where I could go back to work. I did everything Mary Kate asked me to do without too much protest. The parking area was nothing. I got that done in an afternoon. I had the money to set everything up. Money didn't mean anything to me – I'd spent hardly anything I made since I started working after the stay in the facility (that's what the occupants called it.) I mean I was driving a 52 Dodge truck. How frugal can you get?

I didn't have to do too much of the mucking. We were much more successful than we had planned, and had to hire a full time hand for the mucking and such. I was gone most of the time during the week and some weekends. When I was home I'd walk around trying to look important and pretend I had some idea of what was going on. I did pout a bit but no one noticed – I guess I'd have to work on a new and improved pout.

Watching Mary Kate and Colleen ride was amazing. They were both incredibly graceful and quite and looked quite charming doing anything on a horse. As the weather turned into summer, the three of us would take rides up into the wilderness area. Of course, Colleen needed another horse – the other one was just for "training." I'd forgotten how high maintenance it was having girls around the house.

I started looking on it as more of an investment – in several ways – as the summer came to a close. I was sitting on the porch nursing a beer one afternoon when Mary Kate came up and plopped herself on my lap, in front of God and everyone. It would have been okay, but she was excited and kept wiggling around, and … well hell, I guess I was getting excited too.

She had some more spreadsheets that Colleen had put together – that girl was a real whiz on the computer – and this time I got to look at them. There were some pretty impressive numbers and I was having an equally impressive reaction to her wiggling around. She finally noticed and had the grace to blush. She jumped up and started running back to her cabin. After a few steps she stopped looked back at me, a speculative look in her eyes.

"We're doing okay, aren't we?"

She looked at me a bit more; then with a laugh she turned and ran on to her cabin. She'd left the papers behind so I gave them a closer look. Damn, she was even paying me for the cabin each month now. All I had known was that after the initial spending of my money there were some regular, healthy deposits into my account.

Colleen was starting to enter, and win, some local dressage events. In September she won a regional competition in Portland and the Olympic coach talked to her afterwards. She came over to us almost too excited to speak.

"I've been invited to the Olympic trials next spring! The coach thinks I have a great chance."

I kept having a nagging feeling that with this visibility, Colleen and her mom were going to be easy to find, if in fact they were in hiding. I talked to Mary Kate about it later that night.

"I know, Sam. I knew there was a risk but it's so important for her. She would have been heartbroken if she had to stop."

She went on and told me the whole story. Her husband was a real estate promoter and was the link for payment to various local officials in San Diego County for bribes from the mob. Colleen was cleaning the den and had accidentally knocked her dad's briefcase to the floor, spilling a stack of papers. She was picking them up to put back in the briefcase when her dad, Joey, came in and saw her with the papers. Mary Kate heard him shouting and ran into the den just as Joey had slapped their daughter hard enough to knock her to the floor.

"I grabbed an ashtray and hit him over the head as hard as I could. Colleen was okay and told me to look at the papers. I did and I was scared to death. All I could think about was running. We grabbed some clothes, the brief case and all the cash we could find in the house and started driving. This was about ten at night. We kept driving for three days on back roads just using cash and generally heading north. We wound up on your drive, stuck in the mud."

I put my arms around her and held her tight.

"Oh, Sam, I've been so scared! I don't even know if he is alive. He was still breathing when I left."

She was still upset that night and asked if she could sleep with me. Like, I was going to say no?

In the early morning hours when the gray outside matched the sleepy gray of her eyes she came to me and we loved for the first time. It was slow and gentle, with pauses for me to kiss away her tears, a perfect marrying of the best of emotional and physical love. Her body was lovely, showing some age – I teased her when I found a gray hair mixed with her copper colored pubic hair – but it was perfection in my admittedly, prejudiced eyes.

ALL THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES

Colleen did make the Olympics. We planned for all of us to go in late summer. I gave her credit – I'd never seen anyone so focused or work so hard to attain something.

Mary Kate and I slept together when we could. She was too embarrassed to do it openly but I thought Colleen was more observant than she realized. I kept my peace though and accepted the gift of her love with grace and humility … and no conditions. As we became more used to each other her wicked sense of humor became part of our love play. I don't know that I had any particular expectations but this wild pixie was a total surprise. She would laugh or cry at the strangest times. I just held her tight and smiled as she fought her demons.

The several horse businesses were going great. We were coming to have a wide circle of friends, truly nice people – what my dad would have called "real down home folks." I'd given up operating the heavy equipment and traveling around the area at the various work sites. I took over as manager of the lumberyard in Prineville and assumed responsibility for the heavy equipment inventory: all the buying, selling, leasing, maintenance, etc. I didn't do the work, just made sure it all happened to a plan. I knew more about this part of the business that any three of the other guys.

Life was as good as it could get for us except for the lingering threat of Mary Kate's husband. I tried to get her to contact the authorities but she wanted to, "… let sleeping dogs lie."

I understood her concern. She felt it was better not to try to change a situation because it might cause problems. The county sheriff, Bill Haslett, was a fishing buddy of mine. We were both the lazy, beer drinking kind of fishermen that got our fish from the supermarket.