by Carl Hamlin
Wanting to avoid dwelling upon her father, Sami took Jim by the hand. “Let’s go see if that couch is still so comfortable.”
They rose and walked into the living room and sat down. As soon as they had sat down, they engaged in a long kiss. They parted, then wrapped their arms around each other and kissed again. Jim drew Sammi closer and began to kiss her throat and nibble around her ears. She moaned in pleasure when he began kissing slowly down her neck.
He reached the collar of her red-checkered western shirt, and as he continued to kiss, his fingers began to fumble with the top button. Just as he had unbuttoned the top of the shirt, he moved his hand away.
Sammi smiled and kissed his forehead. “What you were doing – that would be okay.”
Jim sighed loudly. “Too fast. Just too fast.”
Sammi drew away and placed her hands on both sides of his face. “I think you must be special. I don’t know if that happens very often.”
She kissed him again. “I was feeling kind of vulnerable tonight. You could tell…. but you passed on trying to take advantage.”
Jim leaned back on the couch and drew her next to him. “I care too much. I want everything to be okay. I don’t want to scare you away, and I will never use you.”
Sammi laughed. “I appreciate your being such a gentleman. But I was getting really revved up. Probably a good thing you backed off.”
Jim laughed. “Ohhhh…don’t tell me now I could have scored.”
She shook her head and displayed a mock scowl. “Too late.”
Jim’s face turned pink. “Well…I really wouldn’t have been ready. I don’t have any…”
Sammi’s face lit up with a mischievous grin. “You don’t have any Viagra?”
Jim gave her a theatrical frown. “You…”
Sammi leaned over and kissed him. “Something tells me you’ll be ready in the future. And I’m not referring to any little blue pills.”
Chapter 3
As Jim and Sammi spent the following days preparing for the first guests to arrive, they found themselves sharing several meals and make-out times on the leather sofa. There was a good tension building, and neither could deny each had hopelessly fallen for the other, in spite of the small amount of time together.
Finally, the day of arrival was impending. Two sets of guests would come to the resort the following day. As they sat in the dining area as the evening grew late, Jim decided that all had been done but for seeing that nothing was out of order in the old schoolhouse. It reminded him to ask Sammi if she would want to do some of the tours of the old facility.
She seemed to be taken aback by the request. “Hope you don’t mind if I beg off on that…doing it by myself, that is.”
Though puzzled by the comment, Jim nodded. “Okay. No problem.” He seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. “I think we have it all covered.”
In spite of his best effort to stifle a yawn, Jim was succumbing to fatigue. “Gosh…I took Medallion out for a ride pretty early this morning?”
Guessing that she knew the answer, Sammi asked, “How early?”
Jim chuckled. “I was in the saddle at 4:30. I wanted to see the sunrise come up over the lake. I’ll do it again, but the next time I’ll take you…and a camera.”
Sammi rose and took her sweater from a hook near the door. “I’m a little out of practice, welcoming groups of guests.”
Jim rose and walked over to her. He leaned down and kissed her. “See you around noon?”
She turned the door handle. “It will be an experience.”
Jim and Sammi were just leaving the second bunkhouse after checking it out when a Toyota SUV pulled up and parked in a space between the two guest bunkhouses. There was luggage strapped to the top and covered by a blue plastic tarpaulin, and a luggage carrier was mounted to the rear bumper.
Three young women exited the car and stretched, and began looking around. Jim and Sammi walked up and introduced themselves to their guests for the next several days.
The young women explained that they were residents of the same dormitory suite at their university and had decided that it would be okay to postpone summer jobs for another week to take in some more rustic recreation, as they had become too accustomed to the noise and convenience of their city environment.
Cindy Braddock was an outgoing red-haired woman, the only native Missourian in the group. Tanya Howell was a willowy brunette from Chicago, friendly but more reserved and shy. The impish Debbie Stafford was a brown-haired beauty from Kansas, whose silver-rimmed glasses gave her a certain, attractive mystic.
Jim and Sammi helped carry their belongings into the bunkhouse. The small home had two bedrooms, each with two sets of bunk beds, along with a sofa-sleeper in the combination living room and kitchenette.
When everything was carried in, Jim and Sammi invited the girls to come to the house for a beans and franks dinner in the oversized dining room built on to the house just for hosting the resort’s guests. The Mason family was also expected to arrive shortly, so there would be many to feed.
On cue, a mini-van crept up the rough lane, and once it was parked, all on hand welcomed a set of thirty-ish parents, a young girl, an adolescent boy and a another little girl of pre-school age. Everyone pitched in and the van was unloaded in matter of minutes.
After an afternoon of guests settling into their houses and wandering around at their pleasure, the dining room was a din of voices as the Mason family and the trio of college students joined Jim and Sammi for the ranch-style meal.
The youngest Mason girl seemed to quickly become the center of attention as she entertained the rest with her mannerisms and still shaky grasp f the English language. Debbie Stafford was quick to interact with her and teach her a song about horses, and mentioned that she had a little sister close to the same age.
They had an enjoyable first time together, but all were eager to ride. Jim took the Mason family to the stables and outfitted them for horseback, including a special safety rig to allow the youngest child to ride with her mother. The college women went with Sammi, and they took off to ride down to the lake.
By the time they all returned the guests were ready to turn in. it had been a big day of travel, then hiking and horseback riding. It was the general mood that it could get no better.
Jim sat on a bench on the front porch sipping coffee. Monday morning had brought a heavy rain that, according to the forecasts, was going to be scattered light showers.
The pouring rain had become a cloudburst. Jim looked at the weather radar on his phone, and saw that the weather would not clear for at least two hours. He called both guesthouses on the walkie-talkie radios, and invited everyone over to the dining room for lunch.
Sammi arrived late in the morning, after Jim had called to see that she had looked out the windows. There would be no horseback rides or hikes that morning.
As noon grew closer, Jim and Sammi shoved some frozen pizzas into the oversized oven, and then set a dozen plates around the long table as the guests poured through the door under umbrellas or jackets pulled over their heads. A tray was passed around so that all present could chose from cans of soda, bottles of tea and lemonade and bottles of water.
The young women joked in self-chastising comments about sleeping in too late, and the family from the other bunkhouse regaled the gathering with a recap of the hike they had taken around the lake that morning, and of the wildlife they had encountered.
Tim and Sammi watched in satisfaction as the two groups with little in common began to interact so well. Cindy joked with the Masons’ nine-year-old girl that they shared the same red hair. Sammi could not resist taking a photo of the teenager holding the little girl on her lap as she asked her about school and her home in Springfield. .
They also chuckled at their whispered recognitions that the fourteen-year-old Mason boy seemed to be smitten with Tanya, and surmised that a crush was developing.
The lunch wound own and the Masons said that they were going t
o spend the rainy afternoon playing games in the bunkhouse. Jim reached into a closet and retrieved an armful of lightweight rain ponchos stored for just such a day.
The family covered themselves, and then scampered back to the house. The trio of college girls looked out the window as the family trotted away. They laughed about how cute their daughter was and spoke with admiration for how nice the entire family seemed to be.
Jim glanced at his watch, then through the window. He could see that no break in the rain clouds was at hand. “Well, would you ladies like to see what a rural school used to be like?”
All three nodded or uttered, “Sure”. The rest of the ponchos were handed out, and then Jim and Sammi led the group to the old schoolhouse just sixty feet away. He ran ahead and had the door open before the others reached the worn, concrete front step.
As soon as they had entered and began to hang the wet ponchos on ornate old black hooks on the wall, the young women began to laugh and emit sounds of surprise. The musty smell from the wood floors and overhead beams added to the atmosphere of another time and place. There was some modern audio-visual equipment in place for the riding orientations and historical presentations, but that did not take away from the ambience of the aged structure. The room was equipped with very old individual desks with Formica-like surfaces.
They walked around the edges of the room looking at the historical items. None knew what the butter churn was, and all were clueless as to the identity of the washboard.
Jim walked to center of the classroom. “First of all, you may notice that this school was built entirely of wood. That may not have been safe in the Hank of a fire, but that was what the community had to work with at the time. There was not much money for something like a school, because it was built during tough economic times. This is still a struggling area. A formal education was hardly the highest priority for the people who lived there when the school was built by volunteers using donated, even used lumber. Those were the days of the Great Depression.”
He walked to an empty area along the outside wall, and pointed up to a Franklin stove. Next to it was a stack of manufactured fireplace logs for those occasion when the building was used on a chillier day. “Each room had a wood or coal stove, depending upon which was donated.”
Debbie spoke up. “Did you go to school here?”
“Uh, hm. Until I was seventeen, and we had to move to St. Louis. Of course, Sammi went to school here too, for her entire education.” He turned and grinned. “Of course, she was ten years younger than me. She was just a little neighbor kid.” All the women laughed.
“I know that this looks like an odd-shaped building, and it is. Everyone entered through that front door we came through. This was the high school classroom.” He pointed to a door in the corner. “That door led to the room for five though eight.” He turned and pointed to another door at the opposite side of the room. “That one entered the classroom for grades one through four.”
He halted and seemed to reminisce as he looked around. “At the most, there were sixty students in the entire school. There were three teachers, and one served as the principal as well. I’ll show you the office, too. But those doors also open into a hallway that leads to that office. It’s right next to the short hallway that takes you to the little restrooms that were built on in 1947. Before that, there were outhouses.”
Debbie and Cindy cringed and laughed, but Tanya shook her head and muttered, “Uhg.”
Jim pointed to a window. “Remember what I said about how this was built? All these old windows were salvaged from a tavern that burned down in 1927. Some of the beams overhead were from a barn that was blown down in a tornado that same year.”
Cindy laughed. “How did those windows last so long with kids around?”
Jim laughed. “There were spares. I was involved with a ball going through one of them. I can explain the aftermath of that little incident when I show you the office, if you catch my drift.”
Cindy reached her hands to her bottom. “Ooohh. I think I understand what happened.” Her friends arched their eyebrows and giggled nervously.
Jim led the group through one of the doors, and then they walked through another. It was lined with around twenty tiny desks hooked together in four rows of five. The seats were hard wood slats and the sides were made from ornamental iron. The old blackboard was broken at one edge, but the alphabet on the wall above was no worse for the passage of time. A fading color chart still hung on the wall. Debbie walked to a closet door and opened it to find several sleeping bags and pillows. Sammi walked up and pointed to the contents. “A couple of times over the years, guests have asked to sleep outside as part of a hike. And some have gotten mixed up and ended up here a night early.”
There was a modest and plain desk in the front, and behind it a plain wood chair. The only real difference between this and the high school room was the size of the desks.
Jim led them through the narrow hallway and into the final classroom. This room had individual desks, an assortment that did not match in any way. Some artwork was on the wall, the early attempts at watercolor landscapes. Below one of the paintings was a wall-mounted pencil sharpener. The musty smell of chalk had never left the room.
The ceiling was graced with simple light fixtures that had obviously been installed some time after the building was constructed. Metal channels that ran up the walls and to the lights guarded electrical lines. In this room, the old black wood stove was still in place.
Jim stopped and basked in the memories. “I had this great teacher for three of my years in this room. She told about her husband’s time in the Army Air Corps. That was how I got interested in going into the Air Force. I was going to be a pilot, and then decided instead to go into police work for Uncle Sam.”
He pointed to the door. “Let me show you the office.” He herded the group to the hallway, but noticed that Sammi was hanging back. He turned to look, and saw that she seemed distracted. “I’m going to go on back to the main house. I have some things to do before supper.”
Jim nodded, and wondered what had so suddenly seemed to make the always- cheerful Sammi seem sullen. He walked on ahead to the office, where the three young women were already looking around the room. Cindy’s attention was captured by the Ford Motor calendar that was displaying the month of June with a 1990 Mustang convertible.
The room contained a broken bookcase, along with one small desk and one modest armless wooden chair, making the room seem somewhat empty. However, pictures of some of the past students and teachers lined the walls. Jim gestured with a sweep of the hand. “It was emptied out, but some things were brought back in so that visitors could get a feel for the place. There were two desks, a larger one for the principal, and a small one like this for a secretary, who also served as a teacher’s aide. If a teacher had to leave the room, one of them would sit in. “Or, when the principal had to address a problem.” He pointed to the back wall.
The girls turned and gazed at the rod and two paddles that hung from nails. Jim heard a couple of gasps, then the same nervous giggles he had heard earlier.
Tonya walked over and ran her hand across the surface of the larger paddle. “Why are there two paddles?” The other young women approached as well to examine the relics that were not a part of their growing up, although they knew what they had been used for.
Jim walked over and pointed. “Well, the small one was for use on younger kids. Or, if it was decided to give an older student some extra embarrassment along with a sore butt, it was used with the student over the principal or teacher’s knees for an enhanced form of a spanking. You can see, it’s thinner than the large one. It was made to sting a lot, but not produce as intense a pain.”
Debbie looked at the larger board and shook her head. “And you got it? With this one?”
Jim laughed. “Of course I did…most of us did.”
Debbie laughed. “Girls, too?”
Jim chuckled. “Here they did, at least. Gender equity wa
s applied to young backsides on a regular basis.” He walked over, took the rod from the nail, and smacked it on the desk, making all three of the women jump. He laughed and continued. “Life here was not a pampered one. We had to study hard, or leave school early and work to help out our families. As for these items….” He pointed again to the rod and paddles. “We were raised to be held responsible for our actions. I know things have changed here, like they have everywhere, but it’s the way it was.” Jim began to walk away, and then stopped. He pointed again to the tools of correction on the wall. “Those things did indeed hurt. But my parents told me that what was more painful is to try and live your life dodging responsibility, because you can never be happy unless you have a strong conscience and a willingness to listen to it.” He pointed again to the trio of guidance tools. “Sometimes, those were used to remind us to listen.” He exited the room as the girls followed, but they looked back at the wall with eyes like saucers and meek smiles on their faces.
Two nights later, Jim had just finished checking on the horses for the night and was nearing the front porch of the house when he saw the headlights of two vehicles making their way up the long lane. As it neared, he could see that the one in the lead was larger than a car, and as they turned to navigate the wide circular driveway, he could see that it was the red Suburban owned by his old friend Billy Walton followed by the Toyota SUV that Cindy Braddock had driven to the resort with her friends along.
Billy and Jim had gone to school together until Jim had moved away, but Billy had stayed around. Now he was the owner of the Towne Carry-Out, several miles up the road on the edge of town.
Billy hopped down from the Suburban, but as for the next vehicle, no doors opened right away. Even in the modest light of the starry night, Jim could see that Cindy, Tanya and Debbie were chatting furiously in an animated conversation complete with a flurry of hand gestures. Finally, Billy walked up to the SUV, rapped his knuckle on the windshield and waved for the young women to get out.