Samson and Sunset (2 page)

  One night, after we’d been dating
about six weeks, Dane took me to a party at his friend’s home. A
virgin in every sense of the word, I was completely naïve. I’d
never had a swallow of alcohol. His friends, Rick and Patricia
Newman, were married with a new baby son, and Dane kept picking up
the baby and playing with it. That just stole my heart. They served
drinks. I said no, he said yes.

  “Don’t you trust me?” he asked.

  “Of course I trust you.”

  Well, maybe just one, I thought. He
gave me something in a tall frosty glass and I drank it down real
fast to get it over with (didn’t want him to think I was a prude.)
Then my drink was empty and everyone else was still drinking
theirs.

  “See, you’re fine. Just have one
more.”

  I drank one more and everything seemed
fine, until all of a sudden I couldn’t feel my skin. I told Dane I
thought I couldn’t breathe. We went outside so I could get some air
and I guess he thought this was a good time to whisk me away and go
park. I had no idea what was happening, didn’t care.

  I was floating on air. The world was
great and I loved everyone and everything. We drove to the new
cemetery, where they’d just finished planting the trees.

  “Look,” Dane said, pointing to a tree,
around 8 feet tall. “Let’s park under the tallest one.”

  As soon as he cut the engine, he
started cuddling up to me. We did a little necking and I felt his
hands on my breasts. I moved them off saying, “No, no, no,” in a
sweet soft voice. He told me he wanted me. I told him I’d never had
sex and I didn’t want to do it here or now, but he kept unbuttoning
my jeans. Finally, he pushed me down in the front seat.

  “Just look at the stars,” he said as
he forced himself on me. “Count the stars, Kathrine.”

  Afterward, he took his t-shirt off and
held it between my legs to soak up the blood.

  “Wow, you weren’t lying about being a
virgin,” he said as he started up the car. Adding, “You can keep
the shirt.”

  Big of him.

  Three weeks later he found a girl from
the right side of the tracks. Well, as we said back then, the
rabbit died. I was pregnant. I called Dane up and told him. He
wanted to meet at Harbor Park, at 10 p.m., so no one would see us
together. We met at the designated time and place and he laid out
his terms. I call it plan A. It would be expensive, but he would
pay for the abortion, as his professor parents’ good name could not
be ruined. Then I laid out my terms: I would never, ever have an
abortion.

  “We don’t need you. You do what you
have to do, and I’ll do what I have to do for this baby and
myself,” I told him and left.

  He called me a week later and set up
another meeting; same time, same place. We went (baby and me) for a
second meeting in the park. Dane was there waiting. He’d come up
with plan B. Now remember he’s the guy with the great, wonderful,
intelligent family and I’m the idiot from across the tracks.

  “I’ll marry you,” he said grimly, “and
give the baby a name. But I won’t stay married to you, because when
I get married, it has to be to the best dressed, most well-bred
woman in town, and we both know that’s not you. When I marry I want
my life to be like Shay Westover’s.”

  “Who the hell is Shay Westover?”

  “Shay Westover, of Westover,
Nebraska?” he asked in disbelief. “You’ve never heard of him?”

  “No.”

  “Well, let me tell you, he’s got
everything! A big house, a boat, a lake, all the money you could
want and every girl in town. His family owns Westover, Nebraska…!”
(Which no longer exists on the maps, but it did in the ’50s, ’60s
and ’70s.)

  “So you see,” Dane said, “I want the
best.”

  I saw alright.

  Dane’s plan was for us to go out of
state and marry (that way his name wouldn’t be on a marriage
document in Nebraska.) We’d come right back, he’d leave the state
for a while, file for divorce, come back, and that would be
that.

  I’m sitting there listening to plan B
and I’m thinking to myself in my small mind, This man is going to
marry me, I’ll be going by the name Kathrine Dalton, the baby,
gender unknown, but already named by me Kelly Quinn, will also be
going by Kelly Quinn Dalton. Everyone knows everyone’s business in
this town and nobody is ever going to know he’s married? Gotcha!
Man, if he was that stupid, I wasn't saying anything. Kelly came
before me. We set the date to go to Centerville, Kansas.

  On the day of our wedding we went to
the western Saddle Motel to get dressed. As I came out of the
shower, Dane threw me on the bed, saying, “You know, baby, it’s all
too bad. You’re so pretty and actually… you are awfully
innocent.”

  Then he forced himself on me, saying
we had to do it before the wedding, as he didn’t want to consummate
the marriage. I cried at first; then I got real quiet. I was
praying. God, I said, if this is not the right thing for this child
and me, please give me a sign. I waited and looked, but there was
no sign, I just kept feeling God was telling me he had my back, so
on to the church we went. Every word I said at the altar of God was
spoken in truth from my heart and soul. I couldn’t speak for Dane
or judge him. I went into marriage with Dane Dalton with the
complete belief that what God had joined together, no man could put
asunder.

  I wore a white dress, white heels and
a white hat with a veil. Mom had given me some beautiful, fresh-cut
flowers from the garden. We got married and drove the three hours
home in silence. I got out of the car at my parents’ house. Dane
shut the door and drove away.

  A few weeks later, his parents
summoned me to their home. Dane, coward that he was, saw to it that
he wasn’t present. I’m sure Dane thought if I had to face his
parents alone, they could have terrorized me into an abortion. Mr.
and Mrs. Dalton, the two professors, sat across from me in two
chairs. I sat on their sofa.

  “What do you want?” Mrs. Dalton asked
coolly.

  I stared them down. “I want nothing
but my baby, so if that’s all you wanted to know, conversation
over.”

  Apparently that was all they wanted to
know. The meeting had clearly been an intimidation tactic. Boy, did
they get a wrong number. They looked like two people with egg on
their faces as I left their home, never to return. Hard times for
this little child and me, and she wasn’t even born yet.

  Apart from being called a whore that
day on the street from his motorcycle, the only other time I saw
Dane before Kelly was born was one night when I walked in the dark
to the West Side. He was in his garage working on his ’40 Ford
Coupe and I hid across the street behind a big tree, tears dripping
from my eyes, watching him. I held my hand over my stomach.

  “There’s your daddy,” I told Kelly
softly. “Isn’t he handsome?”

  ***

The judge awarded me child maintenance and
separate maintenance because I was a separated mother. I said I
didn’t want anything, but he said I had no say in the matter. After
that I got a good job working for my attorney while I was pregnant.
With my maintenance money and good job, I rented a big house on the
right side of the tracks and moved Mom, Dad, and myself in while we
awaited the arrival of the baby.

***

Susie and I were always riding around
together. I guess I was Susie’s driver (she had no car.) She always
wanted me to drive her around looking for this guy she liked, Shay
Westover. Yes, the same Shay Westover whose life Dane Dalton just
had to have. On one of our drives in search of this Shay Westover,
we found what Susie was sure was his car in a driveway. No heads
were showing.

  “Go on,” Susie begged. “Go over and
see if it’s him. Please? As a favor to me?”

  I told her, “Absolutely not.”

  A week after that we were circling
through King’s Drive-Thru, when my car stopped right there in the
center drive. There was a big fancy car behind us and they started
honking. Wearing tight blue jeans, a cute maternity top with 3”
heels and being the feisty gal that I was, I found myself jumping
out of the car and stomping up to this guy’s window.

  “Knock it off,” I said, “can’t you see
I can’t get my car started?”

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll just get out
and push your car across the street. We’d be glad to give you a
ride home or wherever.”

  I said that would be fine. They pushed
my car out of the way and one guy parked the big fancy car in a
drive-through spot. This car was something—must have had a lot of
expensive work in it. My family detailed cars, so I knew.

  “My name’s Shay Westover. What’s
yours?” asked the guy who’d been driving the big car.

  “That can’t be of any relevance to
you, I’m clearly pregnant. You might want to walk through King’s
with another girl,” I said with a sharp, sassy voice.

  I sort of stepped back so he might
catch a glimpse of Susie, who was trying to catch his eye.

  “Gosh!” he said, grinning, not taking
his eyes off me. “Did you inherit that smart mouth or just develop
it? Because, woman, I want to walk through King’s with you!”

  And he did. Walked right next to
me.

  When he drove us home, he wanted me to
ride in the front with him, but I said,

  “No, no, no, I'm fine in the back.”
They took us to Susie’s house and let us out. Shay was around six
feet tall, with dark, wavy beautiful hair and gorgeous brown eyes.
He took my breath away, but I'd seen the ugly side of handsome
men.

  “I still didn't get your name,” he
called through the open window as we stood outside Susie’s
house.

  “And I still didn’t give it!”

  “Still a smart mouth I see,” he
grinned and drove away.

  Water Rising

  Kelly Quinn Dalton was born December
13, 1963. My parents were completely supportive of Kelly and me. It
was a great Christmas—packages under the tree, toys for the baby
from Santa, what joy.

  Since the time of Kelly’s birth, Dane
Dalton had taken up with his friend Rick Newman’s wife, Patricia,
the mother of the baby Dane had played so sweetly with the night he
told me to count the stars. Rick Newman came over to talk to me
about them often. He was devastated. Rick had a lazy eye, I don’t
know if he was born with it or had injured it, but it wouldn’t
track. He told me he was thinking about getting surgery for it.

  After Kelly’s birth, I filed for a
divorce, and was awarded child support and alimony. What a relief
to be out of the Dalton family.

  ***

Sometime in early March, when Kelly was three
months old, Susie called me up and asked me to go to a party with
her that Saturday night. I told her I’d go. Parties weren’t really
my thing, but I knew she needed a ride. Besides, it was fun being
able to dress up again in skirts and heels after nine months of
maternity clothes. I didn’t have any baby weight and my hair was
now platinum blond. Natural? Hell no!

  We arrived at the party about quarter
to nine. There were lots of people there. Susie ran into a boy she
liked pretty early on and ended up going for a drive with him,
saying he could just drop her home afterwards. Well, great. There I
was, dressed to the nines (red patent leather heels, a fitted light
blue denim skirt with red piping and a matching top, plus a long
strand of red wooden beads) and no one would talk to me. All the
girls had written me off as the slut from the wrong side of the
tracks because of my fatherless baby. I felt embarrassed to be
sitting alone with all the girls shooting me snide looks when they
passed me—but I made myself do it. I’d gotten dressed and come all
the way out here, might as well stay a while.

  As I was sitting on a bar stool,
feeling kind of sad and shy, I spotted this guy across the room. I
noticed he held his beer can in a real unique way, sort of wrapped
his hand around the can, thumb up, his hand on the outside. He was
looking at me and then he moved slowly across the room in my
direction. I heard a girl say, “You’re going to go talk to
her
?” right as he reached me, with a grin I’d seen once
before.

  “Hi, do you remember me?” His voice
was deep and warm.

  “You’re that little Westover boy who
helped me the night my car broke down.”

  “Oh, now I'm a little boy. Still have
that smart mouth I see!”

  Some drunken idiot pulled my hair at
that moment and asked if it was real. I jumped up and grabbed
Shay’s arm. “You’re taking me for a ride to get me out of
here.”

  “What are your terms?” he wanted to
know.

  I told him. “I hate these parties. I
have my own car. You know first hand I have a baby, and you’re
never ever getting sex from me. How do you like those terms?”

  “I think I can live with them, if you
can.”

  “You know, there’s really no point, I
guess…”

  “Wait a minute.” He caught my arm. “I
was bored myself. Since now we know the terms, want to just ride
around for a while, no strings attached?”

  “Well. Okay then. But no strings.”

  I sat over on my side, as far as I
could get to my door. Guess I was getting ready to make my big
escape. After all, I was in a car alone with the legendary Shay
Westover!

  After riding around for about an hour,
just listening to the radio without much conversation, Shay asked
if I’d like to go to a bottle club called The Black Hat. They
didn’t serve alcohol after midnight in Hudson, so after 12 p.m.
people went to bottle clubs. They served steaks and hamburgers and
you could bring your own booze if you liked.

  I told Shay I didn’t drink, but I’d
go.

  “I pay my own way, no strings,” I
reminded him.

  “Fine by me,” he said.

  Right as we walked into the dining
room, I spotted Rick Newman at the jukebox.