by Arlene James
They were both giddy with triumph, and let Drew and Cindy talk them into a celebratory dinner. The two couples had prayed together every evening before he and Drew went about their business. They had also attended worship services at the arena that Sunday morning before the last performance and were well on their way to becoming fast friends. After the leisurely meal, however, it became obvious to Chandler that Bethany was too tired to make the drive back to Buffalo Creek, so they waved goodbye to the Shaws and stayed one more night in Lovington.
They’d given up their room that morning, so they had to switch motels. That was no problem, even in a town of only 9,500 permanent residents. Until they ran into an unexpected fellow guest.
Chandler was lifting the bags out of the backseat of the cab while Bethany waited at the front of the truck when a car playing loud music pulled up and a door opened. Chandler groaned inwardly when Patrick Kreger practically fell out onto the pavement. Laughing uproariously, he lurched into a semi-upright position and sent his pals off with shouted instructions.
“You better be back here to get me by ten!”
Loose-jointed and lanky with a long, lean face and smiling gray eyes, Kreger somehow looked less substantial than he was, both physically and mentally. Whirling around, he started for the building, only to halt when he clapped eyes on Chandler.
“My man!” he crowed, throwing wide his arms. “Get your dancing boots on, boy. We’re celebrating!”
“No, thanks,” Chandler said, turning away with the bags. Obviously, the celebration had already been going on for some time.
“You got to!” Pat insisted, stumbling forward to throw a chummy arm about Chandler’s shoulder. His dark hair fell haphazardly across his forehead, and Chandler wondered where the man had left his hat this time. “You did it, old son,” he slurred. “You won big, and so did I!”
“Funny,” Chandler said, stepping away to escape the stench of alcohol, “I didn’t realize you were even entered.”
“Huh. There’re other ways to make money on the rodeo,” Kreger said, wagging a finger. “Bet on the big man, I told ’em. Not only has he got the goods, he’s one of those blessed Chatams. And, brother, did you ever come through.”
It made Chandler ill to think that his old partner had bet on him. It seemed that Kreger was quickly spiraling downward. Chandler was surprised to feel some responsibility. Not only was he no longer around to pull his old partner out of trouble, but he also had obviously made no impression on Kreger with his Christian witness. He’d thought he was showing Kreger how to live by following him around and rescuing him from one mess or another. Now he knew that he’d only abetted Kreger’s downfall. He suddenly wondered how many opportunities he had squandered. Why hadn’t he just told his friend about Christ? Oh, he’d laid out his beliefs more than once, and Kreger had even paid lip service to the idea of Christianity, but that had been long ago. Chandler was ashamed now that he’d settled for that.
“Pat,” he said kindly, “you need to sober up and think about what you’re doing.”
“Good old Chandler,” Kreger drawled, “still trying to be my conscience. It’s a wonder I never knocked your block off.”
Bethany stepped around the end of the truck then, saying nervously, “Chandler?”
“It’s okay. Nothing to worry about,” he assured her calmly.
Beside him, Kreger’s smoke-gray eyes were bugging out of his chiseled face. “Who’s that with you? She’s a looker even if she is knocked up.”
Chandler dropped the bags and slammed Kreger against the truck before he realized what he was doing. He didn’t know who was more surprised, him or Pat. Obviously, Chandler thought, he was having a little more trouble forgiving than he’d realized. Still, a point had to be made.
“That’s my wife you’re talking about,” he said sharply, “so you watch your mouth.”
Kreger’s jaw dropped. “W-wife!”
“That’s right. And don’t you forget it.”
Chandler stepped back, rolled his shoulders to ease the tension and picked up the bags again. Kreger was still plastered to the side of the truck when Chandler reached Bethany’s side and glanced back.
She slid her arm through his, saying, “Let’s go in. It’s kind of chilly out here.”
“Downright frosty,” he agreed, though it was probably sixty degrees. The evening chill had less to do with the weather in the high desert than the company. He sent Kreger a hard look before picking up the bags and walking inside with Bethany, carrying their luggage and his regrets with him.
She wanted to talk about it as soon as they got into the room, but he didn’t see what good that would do. Kreger was his past. She was his present. Matthew was his future. Besides, she was clearly exhausted, and they had to get up early in order to make it back to Buffalo Creek in time for Bethany’s appointment with her obstetrician, which was scheduled for three o’clock in the afternoon.
“Let’s just get some sleep,” he told her.
Nodding, she went about her business in near silence and was out, so far as he could tell, almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. Chandler, however, spent a restless night, his delight at winning tempered by his run-in with Kreger.
He hated to see what his old friend had come to and hated the anger that still burned in his own heart, but change was a choice, one they each had to make for themselves. At least, Chandler thought, he had help. He had the awesome power and gentle—sometimes not-so-gentle—guidance of his Lord God.
Who, he wondered sadly, did Kreger have now?
Finally giving up the fight, Chandler rose before 5:00 a.m. and had them on the road within twenty minutes. Bethany, bless her, did her best not to hold up the process, but Chandler made sure to stop often. It was a near thing, though. They barely had time to drop off the horses at Dovey’s before barreling across town to the doctor’s office.
Chandler sat in the waiting room, one of only a pair of males in a building full of pregnant women, plugging numbers into his financial plan via his laptop. Seventeen thousand gave him a nice cushion, but it wouldn’t pay for the upkeep of the horses, entry fees, even reduced, and travel expenses for very long, let alone rent and self-employment taxes. The cost of gasoline was eating him alive, what with his constant trips back and forth to Stephenville to practice with Drew. If he was careful, though, these winnings would see him through to the end of the year. If he was blessed with more winnings… That he could only leave in God’s hands. At least he had a little breathing room now.
When Bethany came out after seeing the doctor, she seemed a bit subdued, and that immediately concerned Chandler. So, as he was walking her up into the truck, he asked if everything was okay.
“Oh, yes. It’s just that I have to register at the hospital soon.”
He knew what that meant, and he couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t thought of it before. So much for his financial plan. “In other words, you have to start paying on the hospital bill.”
“I’ve saved for it,” she told him, smiling. He wasn’t fooled a bit. She’d been paying the doctor on her own. She couldn’t possibly have the funds for the hospital bill.
Well, Lord, he thought, I guess when You give me money that means You’re preparing me for what’s coming. So be it. We’ll use Your plan.
He drove her straight to the hospital, wrote a two-thousand-dollar check as a down payment and signed a paper agreeing to pay the same for a period of months to cover the estimated costs. Bethany cried about it on their walk across the parking lot.
“This is so unfair. I never meant for this to happen to you. Why didn’t I realize this would happen to you?”
“Here now,” he told her, reaching around her to open the passenger door of the truck. “No reason for tears. This is what a husband and daddy does.”
She turned and threw her arms around his waist, laying her cheek in the hollow of his shoulder. “Oh, Chandler! You’re so good to me. That’s why I—”
His heart stopped. Everyth
ing in him hoped, believed, that she was about to declare her love. Hovering on the very verge of elation, he stood poised to exult. Suddenly he understood what really mattered. Losing the ranch and all that money, having to live with his elderly aunties, burning up the highway between Buffalo Creek and Stephenville, winning, what anyone else thought—none of that mattered. Getting himself right with God, that mattered. This woman in his arms, she mattered. His family, especially Bethany and Matthew, they mattered. Nothing else.
I finally understand, Lord, he thought, holding his breath, waiting for the words that would make his world come right at last.
“I—I’m so grateful,” she finally whispered.
The disappointment was crushing. It felt as if a six-hundred-pound steer had rolled over him. And then kicked him in the head, for good measure.
After a moment, Chandler realized that he was patting her awkwardly. Clearing his throat, he croaked, “No need for that.”
He dried her tears with the tail of his shirt before driving her home to Chatam House and the separate bedrooms that summed up their marriage—and his foolishness—very neatly.
“Don’t mean to be a wet blanket,” Chandler said to his aunts at the dinner table that night. “But it’s been a really busy few days.”
Magnolia traded glances with her sisters before putting on a smile for their nephew. “Of course, dear.”
“Congratulations, again, and sleep well,” Hypatia said from her chair at the head of the dark, ornately carved dining table.
“Good night!” Odelia called gaily as Chandler disappeared into the hallway. Bethany had gone up perhaps half an hour earlier. She hadn’t even waited for dessert to be served, though Hilda had baked her favorite butterscotch-glazed chocolate cake that day.
“The weekend seems to have taken a toll on our newlyweds,” Hypatia murmured after a moment.
“Bethany did look a bit peaked,” Odelia worried aloud. She seemed uncharacteristically subdued herself today, dressed in filmy pale gray with black bows, about a dozen of them, from the enormous one atop her head to those that dangled from her earlobes and ran down the front of her dress.
“Chandler will see to Bethany,” Magnolia stated with absolute certainty. She did not doubt that her nephew and his wife cared for each other. Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure that they realized that fact themselves.
“Humph.” Garrett pushed back his chair just to the left of Magnolia and got to his feet, tossing his napkin down beside his plate. While Bethany and Chandler had been away, he’d taken his meals with the rest of the staff, but tonight his sister had wanted him at the table in the formal dining room when she’d announced Chandler’s big win. Garrett had been as congratulatory as everyone else, but he obviously had an issue. “Ask me, she shouldn’t have been dragged off to that rodeo.”
“But she wanted to go, dear,” Magnolia pointed out.
“No doubt she did,” Garrett conceded. “That doesn’t mean she should have.”
Magnolia disagreed, but she didn’t argue the point. Garrett’s brotherly concern was entirely reasonable, if a bit shortsighted. He seemed to think that the marriage was set in stone. The sisters were not so sure.
Garrett left the room. The sisters sat in their places, calmly eating last bites and drinking last sips while his footsteps faded down the hallway. Finished with her meal, Hypatia placed her heavy cutlery just so atop her dessert plate, while Odelia fussily folded her napkin. Magnolia simply waited until she couldn’t wait anymore.
“So, what do you think?”
Odelia looked up, shaking her head mournfully. The black bows swung from her earlobes like clock pendulums.
“Patience,” Hypatia counseled. “They are acting more and more like a committed couple.”
“They have been spending a good deal of time together,” Odelia noted hopefully.
“And Chandler did say that he wants Bethany to give up her job now,” Hypatia noted.
“Something she obviously has no intention of doing,” Magnolia pointed out.
She suspected that they had not been told everything that had taken place that weekend, which was as it should be. Much of marriage was private, after all. More worrisome than that was the problem of Garrett and what he might feel compelled to do if this marriage did not “take.” Oh, she didn’t expect violence, per se, but Garrett’s record implied that it wouldn’t be pretty if Chandler and Bethany split and Bethany was less than happy about it.
Sighing, Hypatia said, “I just wish Chandler didn’t have so much on his plate.”
“Poor thing,” Odelia opined. “His best friend cheats him, so he loses his home, his father thinks he got Bethany in a family way before he married her, and the marriage isn’t even really a marriage.”
“Yet,” Magnolia put in. She had determined to remain doggedly optimistic on the subject. “It may not be a real marriage yet.”
“But at least he won!” Odelia finished happily.
“Obviously,” Hypatia said, with a decisive nod, “God is at work.”
“We can only wait,” Magnolia counseled, “to see what He will do.” Meanwhile, she would continue to pray. Ah, well, prayer was always a good thing.
One step forward, two steps back, Bethany thought, sighing as she neatened the papers on her desk. It had been a busy day. Tuesdays always were, but that didn’t keep her from dwelling on the lamentable state of her marriage.
Last week had been wonderful. Chandler had seemed relaxed, attentive, smiling, and he’d won! She was so happy for him and so proud to be his wife. The hospital bill still mortified her, but he had been so generous and good about it.
“That is what a husband and daddy does.”
She closed her eyes, remembering the thrill of delight that had swept through her at those words. And then she’d gone and ruined it all by almost blurting that she loved him.
He had to have known. Why else would he have pulled back like this? She’d felt it at once, and though she’d tried to recover by saying that she was grateful instead, he had instantly put emotional distance between them. Oh, he’d been polite, solicitous, even, but it was as if they lived on opposite sides of a wall now. She’d tried to breach the barrier by bragging on him at dinner that night, but he had seemed uncomfortable with the praise.
Disheartened and exhausted, she’d excused herself early and gone up to their suite. He had come up a little later and gone straight to his room with only the barest, “Good night,” and he’d hardly spoken a word to her since.
What could she conclude except that he didn’t reciprocate her feelings?
A cramp suddenly tightened Bethany’s abdominal muscles, making her gasp. Hub crossed the foyer, pointing a young mother with a toddler on her hip toward the provision room, where she would be allowed to pick up disposable diapers and clothing for the child, having finished her parenting class. As soon as the girl, for she couldn’t have been more than seventeen, had passed out of earshot, he turned back to Bethany’s desk.
“What’s wrong?”
She shook her head, but the cramp was taking its time. She gripped the edge of her desk with both hands and tried to breathe until her abdominal muscles finally relaxed. “I-It’s nothing.”
Hub frowned. “It doesn’t look like nothing.”
“It’s just the Braxton-Hicks,” she assured him, taking a clean breath and offering him a wobbly smile.
Clearly not convinced, he asked, “Should I call someone? Your doctor? Your brother? Chandler?”
“I’m fine,” she told him. “And Chandler’s in Stephenville today.”
Hub made a face. “A married man has no business being on the road like this all the time. Who is this Drew Shaw that he keeps running off to see, anyway? Another Pat Kreger, probably.”
Bethany snorted at that. “Hardly. Drew and Cindy Shaw are sweet, Christian people. The four of us prayed together before every go-round last weekend. And Cindy’s expecting a baby in early November, so we have a lot in common. I think they�
��re wonderful.”
Hub’s expression had gradually eased as she’d spoken, but all he said was, “Hmm.” Then, “What’s a go-round?”
Smiling inwardly, Bethany told him. She told him a lot more after that, including details of the Cowboy Church service and how magnificently Chandler had performed that weekend. Hub tried to appear only mildly interested, but he didn’t fool her. He was soaking it all up like a sponge. Amazed that father and son had never sat down together and discussed these things, she prayed that before this marriage ended, she would see them do it. That, at least, would be something good that Chandler could take from their time together as husband and wife.
Sitting on the tailgate of the truck on Thursday evening, Chandler watched the sun sink slowly in the west, painting the dusky-blue sky in shades of yellow-gold, orange and red. He was tired to the bone, worn to an absolute nub, and he had a rodeo to get to.
He didn’t want to go. For the first time in memory, he just did not want to think about getting on the road. Yet, he couldn’t stay. If he didn’t get away from the very woman who drew him like a lodestone, he was going to shatter into tiny pieces. It hurt to be in a room with her, to breathe the same air that she breathed, and no matter how much he prayed, it didn’t change.
The whole thing had him confused. It was as if God had made her just for him. What woman could be better suited to or more understanding of his lifestyle? Who else would be so sweet and patient with all his traveling? He supposed it was too much to ask that she love him, too, especially after all she’d been through, but that didn’t keep it from hurting.
The door opened and closed behind him. Bethany came out onto the stoop beneath the porte cochere, her arms folded as if against a chill.
“Dinner in half an hour,” she said hesitantly. “Stuffed pork chops.”
Chandler slid off the tailgate and shoved it closed. “Sounds good, but I’ll have to pass. Tell the aunties and Hilda that I said thanks and that I apologize for not staying.”