by T. K. Chapin
“Sure, you say that now. But wait until she decides to not bring you some food or wipe your butt or whatever else you have her doing.” Kane looked back at Micah. “Bible doesn’t talk about that!”
Micah’s eyebrows furrowed and he cleared his throat. “Megan should never be viewed as an enemy, Kane. She’s his wife. Maybe your hatred against marriage is why you still haven’t landed a solid lady.”
Kane shook his head, “Did you forget I got those digits from that bakery chick? We got a date this coming Friday night.”
“What’s her name?” I asked.
He pulled out the napkin she wrote her number on. “It doesn’t have a name.”
“What, no name? You don’t remember it?” I asked.
He laughed. “No I don’t remember!”
Megan peeked back into the room, “Do any of you want anything to drink? We have cola and lemonade in the fridge.”
“I’ll take lemonade,” Ted said from behind Micah. Everybody else declined. Megan nodded and vanished again downstairs.
Ted peered past Micah at my cast and said, “So what did they have to do in the surgery?”
“Attach the muscle back to the tendon…” I said.
He shivered a little. “Sounds crazy man… Do you worry they left some tools in there? I heard about some crazy stuff on the news a while back about them doing that kind of thing.”
“Shut up, Ted,” Kane said. “You watch too much TV.”
Ted shook his head at Kane as he said, “No man… It really happens!”
“Well, I’m not really worried about that kind of thing,” I said. “I’m more worried about the recovery time… I can’t lift a cup of coffee for even the first month!”
All their eyes widened at the same time. Micah said, “Denise and I will keep you in our prayers, Brother.”
Kane said, “The station feels really strange without you around to keep everyone in line. Alderman forgot to mop the apparatus room yesterday and when the Cap was doing his inspection he noticed it. Oh man… you should have seen the Cap, he was flaming mad!”
“Bet Alderman felt stupid,” I said.
Micah nodded along with Ted.
Kane continued, “The Captain ripped into him pretty bad about it. Talking about how he’s one of the vets around there and how we all look up to him… It was brutal.”
“How’d you guys hear about it?” I asked.
Kane smiled. “We were at the top of the fire pole listening in on the conversation between them…”
“That’s no surprise for my father to get like that,” Megan said coming into the room. “He’s been that way forever. I remember once when I was a kid I spaced making my bed one morning and he lectured me for an hour about how responsibility and duty comes before playing. Then he grounded me for the rest of the week.”
We all shook our heads at the story. I said, “He’s rough at times, but he’s a good man.”
“You say that because he’s your father-in-law,” Kane replied with a grin. “We all know you don’t like him, Taylor.”
“I know that too,” Megan said smiling.
“Father-in-law or not,” I said. “I’ve got a lot of respect for that man that dates back to before he got that title of Captain.”
“Yeah…” Kane replied, nodding.
“He gave me a chance when I didn’t deserve one. He put his name in for recommending me when I was just a young buck, and he didn’t even know me,” I said.
“It’s too bad he hates you now for marrying his daughter,” Ted added.
“I don’t think he hates him,” Kane said.
“No, he’s right, he hates Cole,” Megan said, nodding as she handed Ted his cup of lemonade.
I smiled over at her.
“Hate to break up this bro fest you all are having, but I need to help Cole take care of some stuff before dinner time rolls around,” Megan said weaving between the guys. She didn’t verbalize the word ‘bath,’ but it was still embarrassing.
I went red in the face. I felt so weak, so incapable, and the worst part of what Megan did in that moment was she did it in front of the men that look up to me at the station. They weren’t just friends. They trusted me with their lives. “Megan…” I said as I pushed her hand away from my shoulder. “Just give me a few more minutes to talk.”
“That’s okay,” Micah said, raising a hand. “We were about to get going anyways.”
“Yeah. We need to get back to the station so I can get my car and head up to Colville to see my Mom tonight,” Kane added.
“Oh wow, two hot dates in a row?” Ted said with a laugh. “Tonight your Mom and tomorrow the nameless bakery gal.”
“Shut it, Sherman,” Kane said, shooting a sharp glance over at Ted.
Ted raised his hands. “Just playing, just playing.”
Micah leaned in to me a little and said, “Take it easy and get plenty of rest, Cole. And do not hesitate to let us know if you need anything.”
“Thanks for coming by,” I replied as Megan went for my hand to help me up. The guys all funneled out of my room and back down the stairs to leave.
As I heard the front door shut, I asked, “Why’d you have to embarrass me like that?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Cole… why’d you fail to mention they were coming over? The house was trashed when they showed up… you know I hate that! Plus, it’s not like I said you needed a bath, just that we needed to take care of some things… Jeez.”
“They don’t care about the house, Megan. They have families of their own. They understand.”
“You should have seen the way Ted looked at the toys strewn across the living room. It was mortifying!”
“Ted’s just a weirdo; he always gives those looks.”
“Whatever, I didn’t appreciate it!” Megan retorted. “You think you’d be a little nicer to me since I’m helping you here.”
“Got it,” I replied.
After my sponge bath, I watched the end of my western before joining the family for dinner. By the time I joined the boys at the table, Bradley had already dumped his cup of milk over his head in the high chair and Justin was crawling under the table trying to hide.
“Get up to the table, please,” I said, exhausted as I took a seat.
“Why?” Justin whined. He started the ‘why’ kick a few weeks ago. It was cute before I had to be on bed rest and I only saw him for a few minutes here and there. But on my first day home I realized quickly that ‘why’ made up a large part of his vocabulary. And thus Megan’s annoyance over the question made a whole lot more sense after being home. Every chance he got, he’d ask it.
“Because I said so. Please get up to the table.”
“Listen to your Father,” Megan said from the kitchen.
He climbed up into his booster and sat. “In, in?” Justin said, raising his hands wanting someone to latch him in.
“Just a minute,” Megan said to him.
“Da do it?” he asked.
“I can’t bud, I’m hurt.”
“Got owie?” he asked, his eyes wide.
I nodded. “Sure do.”
“Da-da got owie!” Bradley shouted from less than a foot away from my ear.
“I’m okay now. I just need to sleep, boys,” I replied.
“Airplane!” Bradley shouted as a lingering jet overhead could be heard.
I smiled. “Yep, that’s an airplane.”
Megan brought over my plate of Micah’s famous Chicken Alfredo. My taste buds jumped with joy as the plate got set in front of me. Over the last few days, Megan had been so busy with dentist appointments and doctor visits that she was not able to make a single homemade meal. The frozen TV dinners and corn dogs were not really hitting the spot for me. “Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t thank me, thank your friends,” she said with a bit of an annoyed tone.
“Why are you upset? They know you’re overwhelmed with stuff at home.”
“Overwhelmed? This is my job, Cole.” She said as s
he wiped Bradley down of milk. “I’m not overwhelmed… this is my life.”
“Look, they were just trying to help.” I picked up my fork and shook my head. As I began to eat, Megan cleared her throat at me. “What?” I asked.
She looked over at Justin and said, “Let’s pray. Go, Justin.”
Setting his fork down, he folded his little hands and said, “Der Je-us. Dank you fo this food, bess it to our bodies, bess da cook, amen.”
Brad shouted from his high chair, “Amen!”
I smiled as I began eating my food.
“I’m sorry,” Megan said suddenly with a sigh. “I shouldn’t have gotten upset about the guys coming over. That wasn’t right of me.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’m going to try harder to make more home-cooked meals,” Megan said, nodding.
“Okay,” I replied. “I’m fine with whatever, Honey.”
She smiled at me. “Did you want to watch that movie tonight after the boys go down? You know the one with the princess who runs away from her castle or whatever?”
“Defiance?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah, that’s it!”
“I don’t know… I’m pretty tired.”
“Oh, okay… You need your rest. Just forget it. It’s fine.”
“Thanks for understanding.” Glancing over at my wife as she smiled, appreciation swept through me. She did it all and then some. She cooked, took care of our kids and loved me no matter how able-bodied I was or wasn’t. I could tell she could see right through me with the boys the last couple days. She knew I didn’t have the most patience in the world with them and she worked around it, making sure they didn’t bother me too much during the day while I lay in bed. She was absolutely the best thing that ever happened to me in my life.
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Prologue
Each of us has moments of impact in life. Sometimes it’s in the form of love, and sometimes in the form of sadness. It is in these times that our world changes forever. They shape us, they define us, and they transform us from the people we once were into the people we now are.
The summer before my senior year of high school is one that will live with me forever. My parents’ relationship was on the rocks, my brother was more annoying than ever, and I was forced to leave the world I loved and cared about in Seattle. A summer of change, a summer of growth, and a summer I’ll never forget.
Chapter 1 ~ Jess
Jess leaned her head against the passenger side window as she stared out into the endless fields of wheat and corn. She felt like an alien in a foreign land, as it looked nothing like the comfort of her home back in Seattle.
She was convinced her friends were lucky to not have a mother who insisted on whisking them away to spend the entirety of their summer out in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Washington. She would have been fine with a weekend visit, but the entire summer at Grandpa’s? That was a bit uncalled for, and downright wrong. Her mother said the trip was so Jess and her brother Henry could spend time with her grandpa Roy, but Jess had no interest in doing any such thing.
On the car ride to Grandpa’s farm to be dropped off and abandoned, Jess became increasingly annoyed with her mother. Continually, her mother would glance over at Jess, looking for conversation. Ignoring her mom’s attempts to make eye contact with her, Jess kept her eyes locked and staring out the window. Every minute, and every second of the car ride, Jess spent wishing the summer away.
After her mother took the exit off the freeway that led out to the farm, a loud pop came from the driver side tire and brought the car to a grinding halt. Her mom was flustered, and quickly got out of the car to investigate the damage. Henry, Jess’s obnoxious and know-it-all ten-year-old brother, leaned between the seats and glanced out the windshield at their mom.
“Stop being so annoying,” Jess said, pushing his face back between the seats. He sat back and then began to reach for the door. Jess looked back at him and asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to help Mom.”
“Ha. You can’t help her; you don’t know how to change a tire.”
“Well, I am going to try.” Henry climbed out of the car and shut it forcefully. Jess didn’t want this summer to exist and it hadn’t even yet begun. If only she could fast forward, and her senior year of high school could start, she’d be happy. But that wasn’t the case; there was no remote control for her life. Instead, the next two and a half months were going to consist of being stuck out on a smelly farm with Henry and her grandpa. She couldn’t stand more than a few minutes with her brother, and being stuck in a house with no cable and him? That was a surefire sign that one of them wasn’t making it home alive. Watching her mother stare blankly at the car, unsure of what to do, Jess laughed a little to herself. If you wouldn’t have left Dad, you would have avoided this predicament. Her dad knew how to fix everything. Whether it was a flat tire, a problematic science project or her fishing pole, her dad was always there for her no matter what. That was up until her mother walked out on him, and screwed everybody’s life up. He left out of the country on a three month hiatus. Jess figured he had a broken heart and just needed the time away to process her mom leaving him in the dust.
Henry stood outside the car next to his mother, looking intently at the tire. Accidentally catching eye contact with her mother, Jess rolled her eyes. Henry had been trying to take over as the man of the house ever since the split. It was cute at first, even to Jess, but his rule of male superiority became rather old quickly when Henry began telling Jess not to speak to her mother harshly and to pick up her dirty laundry. Taking the opportunity to cut into her mom, Jess rolled down her window. “Why don’t you call Grandpa? Oh, that’s right… he’s probably outside and doesn’t have a cell phone… but even if he did, he wouldn’t have reception.”
“Don’t start with me, Jess.” Her mother scowled at her. Jess watched as her mother turned away from the car and spotted a rickety, broken down general store just up the road.
Her mom began to walk along the side of the road with Henry. Jess didn’t care that she wasn’t invited on the family trek along the road. It was far too hot to walk anywhere, plus she preferred the coolness of the air conditioning. She wanted to enjoy the small luxury of air conditioning before getting to her grandpa’s, where she knew there was sure to be nothing outside of box fans.
Jess pulled her pair of ear buds out from the front pouch of her backpack and plugged them into her phone. Tapping into her music as she put the ear buds in, she set the playlist to shuffle. Staring back out her window, she noticed a cow feeding on a pile of hay through the pine trees, just over the other side of a barbed wire fence. I really am in the middle of nowhere.
Chapter 2 ~ Roy
The blistering hot June sun shone brightly through the upper side of the barn and through the loft’s open doorway, illuminating the dust and alfalfa particles that were floating around in the air. Sitting on a hay bale in the upper loft of the barn, Roy watched as his nineteen-year-old farmhand Levi retrieved each bale of hay from the conveyor that sat at the loft’s doorway. Each bale of alfalfa weighed roughly ninety pounds; it was a bit heavier than the rest of the grass hay bales that were stored in the barn that year. Roy enjoyed watching his farmhand work. He felt that if he watched him enough, he might be able to rekindle some of the strength that he used to have in his youth.
While Roy was merely watching, that didn’t protect him from the loft’s warmth, and sweat quickly began to bead on his forehead. Reaching for his handkerchief from his back pocket, he brought it to his forehead and dabbed the sweat. Roy appreciated the help of Levi for the past year. Whether it was feeding and watering the cattle, fixing fences out in the fields, or shooting the coyotes that would come down from the hill and attack
the cows, Levi was always there and always helping. He was the son of Floyd Nortaggen, the man who ran the dairy farm just a few miles up the road. If it wasn’t for Levi, Roy suspected he would have been forced to give up his farm and move into a retirement home. Roy knew retirement homes were places where people went to die, and he just wasn’t ready to die. And he didn’t want to die in a building full of people that he didn’t know; he wanted to die out on his farm, where he always felt he belonged.
“Before too long, I’ll need you to get up on the roof and get those shingles replaced. I’m afraid one good storm coming through this summer could ruin the hay.”
Levi glanced up at the roof as he sat on the final bale of hay he had stacked. Wiping away the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, he looked over to Roy. “I’m sure I could do that. How old are the shingles?”
A deep smile set into Roy’s face as he thought about when he and his father had built the barn back when he was just a boy. “It’s been forty years now.” His father had always taken a fancy to his older brother, but when his brother had gone away on a mission trip for the summer, his dad had relied on Roy for help with constructing the barn. Delighted, he’d spent the summer toiling in the heat with his dad. He helped lay the foundation, paint the barn and even helped put on the roof. Through sharing the heat of summer and sips of lemonade that his mother would bring out to them, Roy and his father grew close, and remained that way until his father’s death later in life.
“Forty years is a while… my dad re-shingled his barn after twenty.”
“Shingles usually last between twenty and thirty years.” Roy paused to let out a short laugh. “I’ve been pushing it for ten. Really should have done it last summer when I first started seeing the leaks, but I hadn’t the strength and was still too stubborn to accept your help around here.”
“I imagine it’s quite difficult to admit needing help. I don’t envy growing old –no offense.”
“None taken,” Roy replied, glancing over his shoulder at the sound of a car coming up the driveway over the bridge. “I believe my grandchildren have arrived.”