Wyoming Nights (3 page)

D
arlene and George Patterson married when she was a mere 22 years old and fresh out of college.  An acceptance letter to Princeton School of Law in hand, she embarked on a passionate cause that set a course for her life. George and Darlene.  Darlene and George.  Throughout the 25 year marriage, she had never been unfaithful to him.  As far as she knew, he had never been unfaithful to her. The men in her office did not flirt with her because she wasn’t that type of woman.  She was all about the business.  The work she did mattered for the preservation of the land, oceans, lakes, and rights of animals.

Flirting was not in her repertoire.  Men being sexually aggressive with her was not in her comfort window. Making out in public like teenagers was not something that a lady would do. Neither was Cornell.

Cornell Woodmore was a 58 year old horn dog. All day Saturday, every free minute he got, he was all over her.

The man was handsy.

The man used his tongue like a weapon of mass defluxion.

That man pulled up every technique in his arsenal to try and get her into his bed.  Finally, feeling defeated he whispered in her ear, “I understand if you would want to wait until your friend is not with you.  You are only four hours away, I can come to you.”

“Really, is it only 4 hours away?”

“Yes.  When would you like me to come for a visit? Stay the night and make love to you like you deserve?” He huskily asked her.

Her eyebrows arched at his words while his finger lazily stroked her arm as she stood at the register. She paid for the things she wanted out of his store and loaded them into the rental car.  Darlene also loaded in Krysten and the stacks of soap, candles, and jars of preserves into the vehicle.

“I will call you Cornell,” she told him as she pried herself away from his magical lips.

Two toots of her horn, she pulled away from the curb.  They drove in silence to Philadelphia.  Instead of going to the airport, Darlene continued to drive all the way up the corridor into Fredericksburg.

“Gurl, don’t you have anything to say about that sexy ass man?”

“No,” she said as she signaled and changed lanes.

“He was all over you.  Did you give him a little something something last night?”

“No, I did not.”

“Gurl, the way he was acting with you, did you smear some Darlene sauce on a cracker and got that man hooked?”

Darlene’s eyes left the road and looked at her friend. “That is just nasty,” she said. “I never realized how filthy your mind is...you should consider some counseling!”

“Gurl, I should consider counseling you on how to get some on the sly.  That man was hot for you!”

“It was too much.  He was too practiced, too used to getting what he wanted,” she said.

“And he wanted some of you real bad,” Krysten said with laughter.

“He likes the chase, not the woman.  I am certain no one has probably told him no,” she responded.

They rode awhile longer in silence.  As they crossed the Virginia state line, Krysten turned in the seat to face her gal pal. “Had I not been with you, would you have slept with him?”

Darlene’s answer was quick, “No.  I would not have.”

“Why?  Didn’t he turn you on? He turned me on and I don’t even like men!  I would have rode his ass like a broke back pony,” she said as she massaged her large breasts and rolled her shoulders.

The frown that covered Darlene’s face was nearly audible. “Why am I friends with you?”

“Because I keep you sane,” she said as she reached into the back seat and grabbed a bag of peanut brittle. “Plus I’m really cute and smart.”

“Yes, you are,” she said softly. It did not take long to make it home. “Krys, can you go get your car and meet me at the rental car office so I can take this vehicle back.  I need to gas it up first.  See you then okay?”

Her thoughts were about to drown her as she swam through a sea of unlabeled emotions.  Sexually, Cornell woke her body up.  Mentally, he left her flat.

Richard, mentally, would have given her a run for the money, but physically there was nothing there.

This was never an issue with George.  The two of them simply clicked. The slimness of her dating history didn’t really give her a reference point to compare men.  Cornell turned her on and off in the same breath. He did make her think.  Not so much about sex, but something else which niggled in the back of her head.  A puzzle was being unfolded before her as the purpose for her new life was coming into view.

It is right there within my reach. 

I need to get a clearer view of where I am going
.

D
arryl Mackman knew exactly where he was going.  On Sunday afternoons, Monday mornings, and Wednesday evenings, he walked the beaches of Orlando with his metal detector and a small hobo bag.  In the bag he collected sea shells, driftwood, and other items that seemed to be of some value to him. 

It was with some arrogance that he confessed to Krysten and Darlene over a late lunch in Orlando on that Friday afternoon that he had turned his hobby into a business. “I started out with a bag of seashells.  I made a mobile, then a mixed media art piece on the beach one afternoon and somebody paid me $50.  That’s how I got started,” he told them with pride.

Darryl was a good looking man.  He was the same height as Darlene, which put him at a whopping five feet eight, he was rather thin, but muscled, his bald head was shiny, he had deep complexioned skin and his brown eyes were thoughtful.  He was a widower who lost his wife to cancer. 

“It’s funny really, that no one seems to understand how a black man grieves. Women believe you should get re-married right away, your kids want you to spend all of your time with their kids, and no one understands the sadness of things unsaid,” Darryl told them.

“I understand it all too well.  It has taken me 4 years to get back up and try to forgive myself for not telling any of them often enough how much I loved them,” she told him.

Krysten said nothing as the two talked. The conversation between Darry and Darlene took on a tone that was not her expertise and she excused herself to go to the ladies’ room.  She did not return to the table.

As night time eased in, Darlene and Darryl walked along the beach, not hand in hand, but thought in thought as they communicated about how to move forward in life.

“Come over here, let me show you my shanty,” he said to her. It wasn’t a crude little building, but more of a beachside store front that he could close up in the evenings.

“I am closed this evening because you are here, but on the weekends, I do pretty well selling my art,” he said.  “I couldn’t work anymore after Lois died. There were too many memories for me. You know what I mean?  I knew what time each day she would call, so I would set my schedule to make sure I was free...we would have lunch every Thursday... I couldn’t go back in that building....back to that life...I had to find a new purpose.”

“So your purpose is now collecting seashells to make art?”

Darryl punched her playfully in the arm. “No, I am going to open an art gallery kind of thing.  Right now, I am building up my inventory.  I am making friends with some of the other local artists and I am going to rent them booth space or do commission pieces... a place on the beach.”  He stared out at the water. “It is going to be nice,” he said with a smile.

Darlene asked, “May I inquire as to how long Lois has been gone?”

Without looking at her he said, “Two years, four months, 16 days, and twelve hours.”

“Does your family worry about you, wandering the beaches, being alone all the time?”

“My family worried about me when my wife was alive, because I worked all the time, or I was always in meetings, never spending enough time with my children, and barely saw my grandkids,” he said as he looked over at her.  “The funny thing is Darlene, I am more accessible now than I have ever been, but they no longer want to be around me.”

A tug came at Darlene’s heart so strong that she reached out and touched his arm. “I am sorry,” she whispered.

“No need. I have recently stopped feeling sorry for myself and focused on what I wanted to do with the next 25 years of my life.  My kids know me through my wife, because I worked all the damned time to make money to buy braces, and pay for lessons and team sporting events that I rarely got to see.  Irony is mean and spiteful.  I worked hard to give them a great life filled with opportunity and for it, they don’t know me.  The man my children see now, they think is some crazy person who is suffering a mental breakdown.”

Her hand was still on his arm. “Are you suffering a breakdown?”

His smile was bright enough to cast a new light in her world. “I have never felt better. I always wanted to be an artist.  My kids don’t know that.  I always wanted to have a gallery.  They don’t know that either.  I had to go back to who I was before Lois in order to find Darryl again. When I found him, I found peace.”

After last week with Cornell, she had a personal question for candidate number three. “Darryl, have you found a way to be intimate again with another person?” she asked.

“Why? Are you offering?”

She laughed. “No...I was curious, that’s all.”

He turned to face her.  It was possibly the most alive she had felt in many years as he placed his hands on the tops of her shoulders and stared deeply into her eyes, “Darlene, sex is sex. Intimacy is intimacy. One does not preclude the other,” he said to her.

A spark shot up her leg as she gazed back into his eyes, “and if you had a preference...”

He pulled her into his arms and held her tight against his svelte body. “I am a grown ass man. Intimacy is far more important at my age than sex.  I enjoy sex as well, but it is not as important as going to bed at night and sleeping all night, whether I am alone or with someone.”

“Thank you,” she told him as she held onto a man she had just met, but felt as if he had been sent to deliver her a message. She was paying close attention.

Saturday morning she visited his beach shanty and even purchased a small painting adorned with broken shells that fit nicely into her purse.  She sat on the beach with him for nearly two hours, listening to the soft missive of the waves upon the sand, hearing everything, understanding only a portion, and thankful for the opportunity to be where she was.

I am getting clear of my grief.

Darryl wasn’t the right man for her nor was the way he lived his life, but he had taught her something important during her time with him; she needed to go back to who she always wanted to be.

That was the thing Darlene she needed to find again.

That is the Darlene who needs to live.

D
aniel Wilstrom had always loved the outdoors and loved the land that he worked diligently to protect.  Everything from the trees, to the streams and the animals that called the parks of Wyoming home he worked persistently to safeguard.  He took pride in caring for the top portion of Medicine Bow National Forest. In his mind, it had to be some of the most beautiful acreage and countryside in the world with its vast valleys, canyons and steep snowy ranges.  He loved the area so much, he bought a small five acre spread right outside of Saratoga, Wyoming, knowing that once he turned 55, he was going to retire in the area.

He purchased the land which had the North Platte River running through his backyard.  Any morning that he was in the mood for some fish and grits, Daniel would grab his pole and head out the back door.  In less than 15 minutes, fresh fish was on the table.  This morning, however, he had to take a minute to check on his house guest, Sophia, a baby fawn.  He rescued the little lady when she injured her foot and was unable to keep up with her mother.  He was aided in her care by Sheila D., his Border Collie.

On a normal workday, Sheila D usually rode shotgun with him as he made his rounds, but since the arrival of the fawn, her mothering instincts kicked in and all she wanted to do was fawn over the fawn.  She was a good dog.  It was difficult to believe that some family had abandoned her a few years ago at a camp site.

Since her arrival, Daniel had worked hard to pull the house together.  It was more of a very large cabin that felt more like a home.  Much of the wood he used to make the furniture inside as well as shelving, braces and structures, came from loose wood he located in the forest on his rounds.  Loose and fallen branches in the forest were great for homes for woodland creatures, but during the dry seasons, those same pieces of wood became kindling.  Log by log he built the cabin. All in all, he loved the structure.  He loved Wyoming and he truly loved his life.

It had taken longer than he expected to get the buildings up on the property.  Between the barn, the workshop and the covering for the carport, he hadn’t had much time to put in the garden.  The first attempts at creating one resulted in a feeding bed for rabbits and groundhogs.  This sat well for Sheila D who took pride in catching a rabbit each day which Daniel would use to make a hearty rabbit stew.

This month, he was working on the smokehouse.  It only took one elk, one good sized deer buck and a couple of rabbits to stock the storehouse with meat for a year.  As soon as he secured himself a wife, he planned to get a couple of hens for some fresh eggs and life would be grand.  He had a vision.  He had a plan.  He only needed the wife to go along with it.

He was starting to give up hope.  He joined AHusband4u.org nearly three years ago, but none of the women took to kindly to being out in the middle of nowhere Wyoming without any shopping malls. They sure as hell didn’t appreciate getting up in the morning to either go get eggs from the backyard or fish for some protein. 

Thus far, in the past three years, he had sent a plane ticket for two potential spouses to come out for a visit. Chatting with them online had been a different experience for him, but it worked.  The first one was a brawny woman with sparkling brown eyes.  He found it very disappointing when she showed up and was sitting on the left side of crazy.  Each conversation they had, she was either referring to sexing him in an unusual manner or the government was trying to scan her brain.

He happily took her back to the airport.  The second was a milder spirited woman that looked like she just stepped out of a store on Rodeo Drive. Everything was dusty to her.  Everything was dirty.

“Are you planning to paint any of this wood?” she asked with her nose upturned.

“No, it has a stain on it to protect it, and I really love the natural wood,” he said to her.

“Oh,” was her only response.  As he thought about it, that was also her last response to him.  She said nothing else the entire time she was there.

This time around, he was smarter. He spent nearly six months talking to Darlene Patterson.  He knew her name.  He knew her work.  He knew she loved the land. Daniel couldn’t wait to meet her. It was at his suggestion that she was bringing along a friend on this visit.  Before, when the other two ladies had come out to inspect him as a potential husband, he sent for one of his sisters to come for a stay as well, that way, the ladies did not feel unsafe being alone in the middle of nowhere with him.

Darlene would arrive tomorrow and he was anxious. He had elk steaks marinating, potatoes and he even secured some early peas to balance out the meal.  A final walk through was done to the house to make certain everything was where and as it should be.

Sheila D walked along beside him.  “I’m just making sure everything looks good.  We want this one to stay ole’ girl,” he told the dog as he patted her head.  “Speaking of that, you need a bath and a trim to make sure you’re presentable,” he said as he looked in the mirror.  He could use the same himself.

D
aniel woke Friday morning full of energy.  He shaved, scrubbed himself, the dog, and bathroom until everything looked shiny like a fresh new penny. Sheila D didn’t like that he was leaving and not taking her with him. The drive to Laramie was an hour and a half.  Darlene had mentioned she would rent a car to drive to his place, but he insisted upon picking them up.  For him it was important to gauge her reaction to being driven out to the middle of nowhere, plus it would give the weekend a head start.

He arrived at the airport in his best jeans, nicest shirt and brightest smile.  It did not take long to spot the two black women. Daniel threw up his hand and waved to them.

“Gurl, I told you that man was all kind of yummy,” Krysten said.  “Look at those broad shoulders, tight hips, kissable lips and that perfectly trimmed beard for mustache rides,” she said.

Daniel stood still as he stared at the woman. “You know I can hear you, right?”  He asked Krysten.

She only leaned in to Darlene, attempting this time to whisper, “...and he has good hearing too Gurl.”

“You’re funny,” he said to Krysten as he smiled. He turned his attention to the second traveler, “You must be Darlene.  It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Please excuse my friend.  I think she has been touched by Satan,” Darlene said as she accepted his warm hand for a shake.

“We have a bit of a ride back to my place, so we should get moving.  Is this all of your luggage?”  He asked as he looked at the two carry-ons.

Luggage secured, Daniel helped the ladies into his Jeep Cherokee as they drove back.  Instead of taking I-80 back to Saratoga, he opted instead to take Hwy 130 through Medicine Bow State Park.

“Ladies, this is where I work,” he told them as he pulled over to the side of the road.  He made a point of showing them the sagebrush flats. “My ranger station is closer to the house in Saratoga, but these are the lands in which the legislation you fought to enact, protects,” he told Darlene.

A huge smile covered her face when he said, “There are lots of hiking trails, fishing, and gaming in these areas now.”

“It’s beautiful here,” she said softly.

“There is so much more to show you,” he said.  “Ladies, let’s continue.”

Darlene had a million questions as they rode into Saratoga.  Her breath was stolen as he pulled up in front of the cabin.  She wasn’t certain if she should be looking at the house or the gorgeous backdrop of natural beauty which surrounded it.

“Come on inside ladies,” he said as the dog bounded off the porch to greet him.

“This,” he said as he held the dog’s collar. “Is Sheila D,” he told them.  “I couldn’t use the E. since it is a registered trademark.” He clucked his tongue and she took off running around to the back.

Daniel opened the front door to let them inside of the home.  “I am still working on the place.  It needs rugs, drapes, matching dishes...you know, those intimate touches, but I do have three plates, and I will get the grill going and make us some dinner,” he said. “But before I can feed you ladies, I have to feed my other two women. The bathroom is down the hall, the room where you will be staying is to the left.  Get comfortable, I will be back inside in a few.”

They watched him scoop chow from a bin for the dog as he took it out onto the back porch.  Minutes later, he came back inside to grab a can of milk off the shelf, and a large baby bottle that he mixed the milk in with water and a shot of what looked like a vitamin and headed out the back door.

Krysten watched him closely. “Gurl, you think he has a baby Sasquatch back there or something?”

Darlene’s heart melted when he walked to the makeshift pen and the fawn came up to him. He sat on the ground as the animal climbed into this lap and nursed greedily on the bottle.

“You like this one don’t you?” Krysten asked.

Darlene’s eyes never left Daniel as he finished his task, started the grill and played with the two animals while he waited for the fire to get hot enough to cook the meat.

“Yeah, there is something about him,” she said softly.