Forever (13 page)

“Ladies and gentlemen, on my last night as Queen of the Wild Horse Stampede, it gives me great pleasure to introduce, in their final performance, Snakebite!”

Mark started playing the first notes. Scott and Joanie joined in as Kevin started to fill in the bottom. Then, at the appointed time, Donnie hit the beat. Mark stepped to the mike.

“Hotel California” started an all-Eagles set. Scott had lead vocals on “Take it Easy” and “Peaceful, Easy Feeling.”

The first set closed with Mark singing “Desperado,” with Scott on the piano. After the band walked off, Scott and Joanie came back out.

“We haven’t been home in a while,” Joanie said as they sat down on stools in front of two mike stands. “So we decided we wanted to keep playing while the rest of them are on break!”

“This is a little thing we cooked up at rehearsal the other day,” Scott added. “This is a song Snakebite has played quite a few times in the past. It really didn’t fit into any of the sets tonight, but we thought we’d give it one last play.”

They then broke into an acoustic version of “Stairway
To Heaven.” Scott sang the lead, with Joanie harmonizing. Usually it was the other way around, but Joanie rewrote the arrangement just for the night.

The second set was John Denver, Waylon and Willie, and Elton
John’s  “Country Comfort.” Scott had more lead vocals in the second set and he and Mark had a ball doing “Good Hearted Woman.”

“This might be the first time we’ve ever sung this sober,” Mark said as they started.

The crowd was fantastic. Just as many people stood, drinking beer, singing along and cheering as they danced. At the end of the second set, Scott came back out alone.

“They told me to come back out and fill,” he said, sitting down on the piano bench with his 12-string. “Where’s Roni?”

Scott looked off stage. Roni was standing in the wings and he was trying to wave her on. She just kept shaking her head and mouthing, “No, asshole” at him. Finally, Betsy and Joanie went over, took her by the arms and walked her out to Scott. She reluctantly sat down as the crowd cheered.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she whispered in
his ear as she covered the mic.

“
Umm, I’m going to sing to you.”

“Sing what?”

Scott smiled at her, then turned back to the crowd.

“When you’re stuck on an Army base, you end up with too much time to yourself,” he said. “And you start thinking about things, and the next thing you know, you’ve written a song.

He smiled at Roni. “And this,” he said. “Is for you.”

He counted it down, and began picking the 12-string.

“You always said you’d find me somewhere.

On a cold, snowy night, more than alone

You stepped into my pain and saved me.

You held me and told me it would be alright,

Then you said you’d find me again.

“Then I lost me and didn’t know where I had gone,

But you found me again, somehow.

Lower than low, sad as I could be,

You saved me again, and made me whole.

“Sailing on the wings of a bright blue bird,

You carried me into your love.

Now the miles are gone and the time’s ticked away,

I won’t be so hard to find.

“You were never not there, you were always my friend.

You said you’d find me somewhere.

Now you just need to look right beside you,

Because forever that’s where I will be.”

T
he song ended, the crowd cheered. Tears in her eyes, Roni leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “You wrote that for me?” she whispered. “I can’t believe you just did that.”

“Forever?” he asked.

“Forever,” she said.

“Boy, I hope so,” he said.

Kimmy walked out on stage. “How about a hand for my little sister, Kimmy Mitchell?” Scott said. The crowd cheered as Kimmy took the 12-string and handed a small object to her brother.

Scott started to sit back down next to Roni,
then slipped off the bench to kneel next to her. A murmur went through the crowd and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Maggie had her lens trained right at him.  He took a deep breath, pulled the mike to him and looked up into Roni’s now very wide eyes.

“Roni Rae McIntyre, will you marry me?” he asked. He opened the box to reveal a quarter-carat solitaire diamond he had picked out at the Fort Sam Houston Main PX just before flying home.

“Forever?” Roni asked, tears coming down her face.

“Forever,” Scott said, his eyes welling up.

Loud enough to be picked up by the mic, she said, “You bet your ass I will. Yes!”

The crowd exploded. Scott lifted her up off the ground with his arms wrapped below her butt. She leaned down, took his face in her hands and kissed him. He put her down and held her. Everyone was cheering. The band came running out to hug them. Amy, Kimmy and Rick all charged in from off-stage and Maggie literally leaped on from the front. Everyone was hugging and laughing and crying.

As things finally started to calm down, Scott picked up his Stratocaster, walked to a mike then looked back at the rest of the band.

“Did I fill long enough?” he asked. Another cheer went up as Scott played the first notes of “Sweet Home Alabama.”

It was a 45-minute all-Lynyrd Skynyrd set, with Scott on lead vocals all the way. Through “Tuesday’s Gone,” “Gimme Three Steps,” “Whiskey Rock-And-Roller,” “Call Me The Breeze,” “Simple Man,” and “Crossroads,” the crowd sang and danced and cheered and raised their long-necked Coors to the sky.

The band waved and went backstage as the cheering grew louder. Joanie huddled them all up. “Ready for the last song?” she asked.

“Let’s do it!” said Mark. “Let’s blow them out.”

To a sea of lighters and a couple of early sky rockets, Snakebite took the stage one last time. Scott stepped to the mike as the crowd screamed the obvious last number.

“FREEEEEEBIRD!!!”

“What was that?” Scott hollered.

“FREEEEEEBIRD!!!”

“Damn right, Wild Horse!” Scott shouted back.

Joanie sat down at the piano and began playing the dramatic chords starting the song. With the opening lines, Scott stated Snakebite’s good-bye.

By the time the vocals and everyone’s solos ended, the song stretched over 15 minutes. Nobody wanted it to end, but finally it did. The song ended, and with it, Snakebite. Donnie, Teal, Kevin, Betsy, Scott, Joanie and Mark all held hands and took a bow. Then, they raised their arms and bowed again. Mark took the mike one last time.

“Thank you Wild Horse, thank you Cheyenne County, we’re Snakebite and we thank you!”

The crowd cheered one last time then turned around to watch the fireworks. The gang in the band and their friends all took a seat on the stage. Roni was sitting between Scott’s legs and just kept staring at the diamond on her hand.

“You should probably ask my dad for my hand in marriage,” Roni said, half-joking.

“I already did,” he said.

She turned around and looked had him, puzzled. “You’re serious. When?”

“Yesterday.
When we went in to sign everything, I decided I would go ahead and do it,” he said.

“What did he say?” she asked.

“He approved,” Scott said.

“My parents love you,” Roni said. “I don’t think they’d be surprised.”

“Oh no,” Scott said. “I don’t think he was surprised at all.”

“When did you decide this?” she asked.

“That morning in St. Robert,” he said. “I looked at you laying there asleep. You looked so beautiful and so happy. I knew then I wanted to wake up to that every day for the rest of my life.”

“Scott McIntyre,” Roni said. “It has a nice ring to it.”

“Uh-huh. You just keep thinkin’ that there hon,” Scott said, throwing in a little dopey drawl.

Scott wrapped his arms around her. If forever hadn’t started before, it had now.

****

CHAPTER 15

Monday was a blur. By the time Scott and Roni reached the ranch Sunday night, it was nearly 1 a.m. After a few hours of sleep, they were back in town for the pancake breakfast at the library.

Roni rode with the Trail Club in the parade, while Scott was on the fire truck with the wrestling team. They smiled and waved, but as Scott told Coach
Connel, even that was exhausting.

Thankfully, after the parade, there was a lot of down time. Roni and Scott loaded Satch into his trailer, hooked it up to the
Sarge and hauled him back to the farm. After four days at the Fairgrounds, the dark gray stallion seemed overjoyed to exit the back of the stable and into the pasture to run.

Around 1 p.m., after Scott backed the trailer into space next to the stable, he and Roni both felt exhaustion just wash over them. It had been three of the greatest days of his life, but he was physically and mentally exhausted.

They trudged up to Roni’s room and Scott kicked off his shoes and flopped onto the bed. Roni did the same. Within a minute they were both sound asleep.

Scott’s eyes popped open again about 5:30. Roni was already up and he could hear her talking to somebody downstairs. He got out of bed and went to see what was happening.

Rick and Maggie were sitting on the couch as Roni sat in the big chair opposite them. He could hear Brooke talking on the phone in the kitchen.

“About time, Footer,” Maggie said as he sat down on the floor in front of Roni and she draped a leg over his shoulder.

“That didn’t feel like four hours,” Scott said, yawning.

“I’ve been up for an hour,” Roni said. “Brooke came home,
then Rick and Maggie got here about an half-hour ago.”

“I was just going to come up and get you,” Rick said. “You can sleep when you’re dead, bud.”

“We’ve been talking about wedding stuff,” Roni said, playfully patting his head.

“Which one?”
Scott asked.

“Both!” said Maggie with a big smile.

“What do you think about New Year’s Eve?” Roni asked Scott.

“I’ve always enjoyed New Year’s Eve, Cowgirl,” Scott said.

“To get married on,” she said.

“Really?”
Scott asked. “Well, we’d always know there’d be a party somewhere.”

Brooke laughed as she walked into the room. “That’s exactly what I said, Scott,” she said. “Wherever you go, everyone would be having a kick-ass party.”

Roni leaned over and hugged him around the neck. “We have a wedding date!” she said.

Scott went home to sleep after the fireworks. Tuesday would be a family day for him. Sarge was in the shop getting a tonneau cover installed.

His 10-day leave was now halfway over, and he’d barely spent any time with his family, and the next day he and Roni were taking off on their trip.

He took Kimmy to the batting cage at the high school after breakfast. She had a terrible undercut at times, constantly trying to hit everything out to left field. Mark and Amy met them there later and he hit her about 100 ground balls while Mark filled in at first base and Amy shagged for him.

After a rare lunch with the whole family, Scott and Donna went to the store to pick up supplies for the trip. On every vacation or car trip Scott could remember, his mother packed the vehicle as if they were the
Joad family headed west. It was as if she kept forgetting Howard Johnson’s existed.

“Mom, seriously, we don’t need all this.”

“No, honey, it’s fine. I want you guys to have enough. You’ll be on the road for three days.”

“In Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, not Mongolia, Mom.”

“You’re taking the food.”

It wasn’t health food
, either. Summer sausage, cold cuts, wedges of Swiss and Cheddar cheese, dip, a 12-pack of Coke and tiny six-pack of orange juice for the cooler. The food bag in the cab of the truck was filled with chips and candy. Donna was making three dozen chocolate chip cookies to send along.

For dinner, the Mitchells and Mark met the
McIntyres at Dooley’s Steak House out on the highway. Over T-bones, shrimp and Dooley’s famous onion rings, they discussed the Stampede and wedding plans.

After dinner, Kat pulled Scott aside for a moment.

“I’m so happy for you guys,” she said. “Ever since everything happened, you’ve always been there for her, even when she pushed you away. I’m sorry you lost so much time.’

“It’s OK Kat,” Scott said. “I love your daughter very much.”

Kat hugged him. “You guys will have very pretty babies.”

“One thing at a time, Kat!”

“This,” Donna said, “is why a car would have been better.”