Danny Ray (Ray Trilogy) (16 page)

By the time the season started for the Cowboys, Danny could keep up with them without his legs giving out on him and gasping for air.

Lisa went
home to New York for the summer but kept in contact with Danny while he went through his training. She enrolled in Princeton for her sophomore year of college. Now that Danny wasn’t there, she told him, she had no incentive to stay in Oklahoma. When their games began she bought season tickets and came to every game that she could get away. They would meet after the game and she would go home the next morning.

He could always count on his family coming and then there was also Lisa. Life had been so good. His bank account grew by leaps and bounds considering he had never had a job that paid much more than minimum wages. He only took out what he needed to get by. That nest egg was growing for him to buy his farm.

The Dallas Cowboy manager had placed him on a two year contract with an amount that caused Danny to swallow a couple of times real quick when he first heard the amount. With that amount he could easily buy back his farm and still build a new house if he was careful how he spent his money in the meantime.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The wind blew against the car as Angela drove home from the flower shop. She really liked her job. It gave her a chance to continue in the line of work
for which she trained in college. At this time there seemed no monetary value in it. She could have moved away from home and worked in some scientific laboratory. She expected she could have carved a life for herself and been relatively happy, but somehow it never appealed to her. She knew that she needed to make some kind of decision before long.

She had worn her long wool coat that almost reached to her ankles and as she stepped out of the car she was thankful that she had the foresight to wear it this morning. It seemed like the
re was no relief in sight according to the weather man.  She walked over to the mailbox to see if her parents had gotten the mail.

She opened the box and reached in for the letters inside along with three grocery ads and some other
pamphlets. It looks like all of these advertisers would run out of stamp money after a while. Everybody she knew threw most of it in the trash anyway. She hurried into the house to get out of the wind which threatened to tear the screen door out of her hand before she could close it. She tossed the entire contents on the kitchen table then spread it out to see if she received an answer to her portfolios.

There it was
! She grabbed the long awaited letter and quickly went to her room to digest the contents. Either they did or they didn’t. She dropped her heavy coat off her shoulders and took a deep breath as she sat on the edge of the bed. Yes, this was the one she most wanted.

The
gray envelope with the scrolled embossed gold lettering purported the name, AFFINITY Talent and Model Agency, the same name of the modeling agency for which her friend worked.

B
efore she slipped her finger in and ripped open the letter she breathed a little prayer. The letter read, ‘Due to your reference from Teresa Meyers, one of our very successful models, you are requested to meet in our office for an interview.’

Angela read no further,
she squealed and went in search of her mother, Aimee. If she could come through the interview successfully, she could begin to make enough money to fund the initial costs of her business.

Aimee read through the letter slowly with Angela peering over her shoulder. She needed to be at AFFINITY on the tenth of January at nine in the morning. The agency was located in Los Angeles, California. They used models for acting in television, advertising, trade shows and
, of course, fashion.

Angela’s stomach was doing
flip-flops. Her friend Teresa Meyers worked in fashion. Angela would like fashion but as a beginner, she would take anything she could get as long as she earned sufficient money. She knew it was very juvenile but she crossed her fingers and kissed them.

Aimee said, “I’m proud of you Angela, I hope you are very successful.” She reached for a platter of fried chicken, and asked, “Will you take this chicken to Danny? Since he gave us his roosters, I thought that the least I could do was fry up a couple for him.”

Angela’s face fell. The last thing she wanted to do right now was go see Danny after he had so blatantly dropped her and dated another girl without even a word of explanation. Not that they had promised to each other but at least he could have said that he was through dating her or something. In her opinion it was something of a betrayal. For her mom, though, she would suck it up and be nice.

She went back to her bedroom and changed into some jeans and a sweatshirt. She kissed the interview invitation and placed it on her bedside table. In the kitchen she bundled up the chicken and placed it in a sack then headed out the door to her car.

Danny sat at his kitchen table sorting through the mail wishing it didn’t take so much of his time. As soon as spring came he intended to break ground on his new house. Maybe by that time all of these people would forget about him and find somebody else to adore. He shook his hand trying to work out the writer’s cramp. If he worked fast maybe he would be finished with this pile before another bundle of them came in the mail again.

Frisker barked and then a knock sounded at the door. He opened the door and to his surprise Angela stood there smiling holding a bag of something. “Hi, come in out of the cold.”

“Thanks, I will. Mom sent you some fried chicken from the roosters you sent her,” she said holding out the bag.

“Thank goodness. I was afraid that you were bringing me more mail,” Danny laughed wiping his forehead.

“So, you’re still buried under that, huh?” Angela replied.

Danny sat the chicken on the kitchen cabinet and indicated with his hand, “There it is
, the endless pile of mail. I thought if I worked really hard I might dig out from under it by bed time.”

Angela offered without stopping to think, “Would you like for me to help you?”
She wanted to bite her tongue after she said it.

“I should turn you down due to the fact that I wouldn’t want to wish it off on my neighbor, but since you offered. Well, sure, I would be grateful.”

Angela shook her head at him and rolled her eyes. “With a little organization, it won’t take long. You write the notes and I’ll address envelopes.”

“Okay, boss. Let’s get ‘
er done.” Danny popped off.

Within thirty minutes they had over half of the
m done. “All you need to do when we get them finished is take them to the post office for them to stamp them with their machine and ‘ta-da’ all done.” Angela said dismissing the job with a flippant wave of her hand.

Only a few of them were left when Angela picked one up with a New York address
, someone by the name of Lisa Marvel. She cocked her head to the side and remarked teasingly, “Well, look at that. Fan mail all the way from New York.”

Danny reached over and
took the previously opened letter, “That’s not fan mail. That’s from an old girlfriend I knew in college.”

Surprised Angela sat dumbfounded as she watched him caress the envelope. From the look on his face she could tell he still had feelings for this person. Then Danny offhandedly, but almost reverently said, “She said she might come out for a visit.”

Angela ducked her head. She felt like a knife had been driven through her heart. Danny still sat there ogling at the letter. Angela stood up and told him, “Danny, I need to get back home now.”

Like he wa
s breaking out of a trance, he stood up startled and walked her to the door, “Oh, Angela, thanks for helping me. You were so much help.”

As an afterthought, he said, “Oh, and thank your mother for the chicken, I didn’t expect her to feel obligated to cook some of it for me.”

“She didn’t feel obligated, she’s just a nice person,” Angela remarked as she went out the door. She wanted to call him a jerk, but he was so clueless he probably wouldn’t know what she was talking about.

While
Angela drove home she wondered if Danny ever felt anything for her other than that tall girl that lives next door. Back in the summer it seemed like they had something good going but obviously it was only in her mind. When she got home the family had already eaten supper but she didn’t care. She wasn’t sure that she could get anything to do down right now anyway. Ted wasn’t home so she could talk to her parents without interruption. She went into the bathroom and washed her face with a cool washcloth then went in to discuss her plans with her parents.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Christmas at Laura and Art’s house turned into a festive affair this year. Since Jeremy, Nora, and Lauren were spending the holidays, Danny helped Art put extra decorations.
Lauren always made the holidays extra special with her open enthusiasm of everything Christmas. It was such a joy to watch the excitement on her face at every new ornament or yard display she discovered. She was the grandchild Art always wanted. He doted on the child spoiling her completely except she just took it all in stride and gave as much in return. Her Grandpa Art was a very special person in her life.

This year proved to be no different. Art bought a lighted Santa and reindeer’s display for the roof and made a Manger scene for the front yard to add to all the rest that he put up every year anyway. He was excited for her to come see it. Laura had been planning for days all th
e dishes she wanted to make for Christmas day. Already she had bowls of homemade candy, fudge, and cookies set aside.

Danny, Art and Laura kept a vigilant
watch out the front window on Christmas Eve until finally they arrived. Lauren burst out of the back door of the car as soon as she could to run and hug her Grandma Laura, Grandpa Art, and Uncle Danny.

Lauren grabbed Danny around the waist and hugged as tight as she could. He squatted down and gave her a kiss. “How’s my Cookie?” Danny’s pet name for her, because she always asked for a cookie when she was at their house.

Lauren laughed and said, “I’m just fine, Uncle Danny. How are you?”

He gave his usual answer to her, “Pleased as a peacock.”

She was too excited to be still for long, so she ran to examine the Nativity Scene and ran over to it and touched every item reverently. Her smile made her face seem to glow. Her long blond hair swung across her back as she scampered from one thing to another. It made all the work worthwhile because she took such pleasure in them. She squealed in delight as she pointed to the Santa and reindeers on the roof. “Look, Mom, Santa already knows where we are,” she said jokingly.

Art smiled from ear to ear with a proud Grandpa smile and put his arm around Laura’s shoulder hugging her to him.
After finally getting settled, the family gathered in the living room where Art had started a fire in the fireplace for a nice cozy winter’s night. Laura sat some sandwiches and cookies on the coffee table for everyone to munch on while they visited. Lauren sat on the floor eating her sandwich slowly edging toward the Christmas tree with all the gifts under it.

Danny said, “Jeremy, do you remember our first Christmas after you and Nora started dating?”

“I sure do,” Jeremy smiled remembering. “You and I went hunting a Christmas tree.”

“
Yes,” Danny continued. “Everybody thought we were going to the woods, in fact, so did I, to cut a tree but you knew all the time that you had a tree at the nursery you planned to bring over.”

Jeremy laughed, “Too bad that limb broke.”

Nora sat up straight and looked at him, “Jeremy Littlefield, are you saying that you broke that limb?”

“Now, if I recall correctly,” Jeremy held up his hand defensively, “I told you that the limb broke in shipment, do you remember that?”

Lauren watched the adults talk from her chosen seat on the floor near the tree. Watching her parents carefully she rose up on her knees and reached over to the coffee table and got a cookie of each kind and sat back to enjoy her treat.

Nora sat back still giving him the eye that she wasn’t fully convinced.

“Well, that’s true,” Jeremy declared trying to keep a straight face but still had a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “It wasn’t broken that badly but it still was broke.”

Nora opened her mouth and pointed at him, “I was right! Mom, did you hear that? Danny did you see him break that limb?”

Laura just held out her hands and shrugged. Danny shook his head and said, “I didn’t see him break the limb.”

“In self-defense, your family was so poor back then. Your Christmas decorations that you had looked so worn and pitiful, I had to do something to help you. In comparison we had so much and you had so little, it broke my heart. If I hadn’t broken that limb your dad would have never accepted that tree.”

They all sat back and nodded, muttering that he was right.

“We had never had Christmas lights outside like that before and all those ornaments your mom sent over were awesome,” Danny acknowledged.

“Danny, do you realize that back then you were about the same age as Lauren is now?” Laura pointed out.