“How could you not know that? How could you not know that, Dalhart? What did I not do that you don’t know that by now? You hurt me. You hurt me. I wanted to hurt you back, but you didn’t care enough about me to hurt. Why did you call now? Why all of a sudden now? I’m married.”
The silence was deafening.
“No, I’m not, cabron,” she finally said, “but I should be. I haven’t even seen anyone, and I should have been dating every truck driver passing through here. Did I call you cabron? I don’t want to see you.”
“Do anyhow. I don’t deserve it, but do it anyhow. I want to marry you. I want you to come here to Texas and marry me.”
“Why should I come to you?”
“Because I don’t deserve it. But I’m in school again. I can’t come out there. I didn’t only just now graduate like I told everyone in Gallup. I’m actually finishing up my master’s degree and soon will start my doctorate. I live in an old wooden shack made in World War I. It’s south of the Texas A&M campus. It has a dining room that’s part of the living room, a bathroom, and two bedrooms. I have a mattress on the floor that would be so cozy to share with you. Do it. Share it and my life.”
I heard her chuckle. “Pendejo. My God. Yes, I’ll marry you, Dalhart. Of course, I will. That’s exactly what I want with my life. To spend it with you. I love you, Dalhart. I love you so much. You hurt me so badly. I can’t believe you waited for over a month to get hold of me. You were so unsure of yourself while you were here in Gallup. You sound like you know what you want now. I love that it’s me.”
“It is, Carmen. I’ve never been so sure of anything.”
“Then it was worth the wait and the hurt,” she replied. “I think you’re stupid, but I sort of understand.”
“I talked it over with my mother,” I explained. “She and my sister are going to drive out there to pick you up. Bring whatever you need. For sure bring your birth certificate. We’ll get married as soon as we can. We’ll settle in, find you a job, get the license, and live happily ever after.”
“Can I find work out there?”
“Of course, you can, silly. I can’t support you anyway. I need you to help support me. How’s that? You’ll be the money winner. I get by, but barely, and have to pay for college too. So, ha.”
“So, then, I’ll make all the decisions. Wear the pants in the family.”
“As long as we’re family,” I said in as corny a way as I could.
“Yeah, mi amour,” she answered, “as long as we’re family.”
“I sold Desperado,” I moaned. “I needed the money, especially after getting sick. I have a two-door sedan though. I already had it. I just didn’t bring it to Gallup because I couldn’t live in it.”
“Desperado was ours,” she said pouting. “We made love in it for the first time. It should be a museum.”
“I know,” I sighed. “Don’t make me feel worse. But you can have the car. I get around on a bicycle.”
“We can’t make love on a bicycle, silly boy.”
“Carmen, before you come out, go by Kerr Construction and tell Jose all this. Tell everybody. Doug and Ira too. I never introduced you to them. Tell them they’re invited to the wedding. They ain’t gonna come to it, they’re too busy and it’s too far, but make them pretend they will.”
“I don’t know any of these guys,” she said.
“Just go to Kerr Construction and find Doug. Ask for Jose and Ira too. It’s important.”
I loved the thought of my mother and sister making the same drive I had made at the beginning of the summer. A summer that changed my life.
The three of them got to know each other on the ride back from Gallup. Carmen spent the night with them in a motel, her first night in College Station. I had a mattress in the guest bedroom of my shack, but it wasn’t big enough for all three of them. Everyone knew where she was going to sleep when they left, but we cherished the games one must play to respect family.
“A picture of Monument Valley,” Carmen noted as she entered my shack for the first time.
“I found this poster when I was buying a textbook I needed,” I explained. “Can you believe? Made to order. I tacked it on the wall in our living room here as our major artwork. It was the last straw, actually. I pined over you every day, but when I saw this poster is when I finally broke down and called you up. And asked you to marry me.”
She walked over to the poster and gave it a kiss.
“That weekend in Monument Valley was our honeymoon, you know,” she said while staring at the poster nostalgically.
I nodded. “And now we have the rest of our lives,” I said.
****
I look back at what I consider the best summer of my life. And it led directly to a wonderful life with Carmen and our three boys. I’m a tenured professor now. I’ve written books and articles from my case studies. I have possessions and comforts. I haven’t saved the world, not that I ever meant to. But I have my memories. And I know the people from these memories are the ones who taught me the most.
A word about the author...
A native of Harlingen, Texas, Larry Lee Farmer grew up on a cotton farm. He attended Texas A&M but dropped out to enlist in the United States Marine Corps, where he attained the rank of sergeant before being honorably discharged after three years. He worked as a computer programmer in Houston and as a civil servant for a US Air Force Base in Frankfurt, Germany, and traveled and worked in Europe for two years, which included flying to Israel in October 1973 to aid the Jewish State in the Yom Kippur War. He was also in Greece in the summer of 1974, when the war between Greece and Turkey erupted over Cyprus, and he was stuck on the Greek island of Ios for part of that war until he managed to catch a boat to Athens just in time to watch the Greek military dictatorship fold.
Back at Texas A&M, he finished his Bachelor's degree in Business Management and then returned to Europe and also Israel, where he lived for almost a year. Later he taught English and was a model in Taiwan, after which, while still in the Far East, he acted as a stand in and stuntman in the Hollywood movie Inchon, starring Sir Laurence Olivier. He then returned home to get a master's degree in agricultural economics at Texas A&M. With that in hand, he joined the US Peace Corps and served for three years in the Philippines. He also worked for several years as a computer programmer for the Swiss government. While in Switzerland, Larry was a country singer as well as a coach for the national championship American football team Bern Grizzlies. Since then he has been working in the IT department of Texas A&M. He has three children.
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