by Lee Wardlow
My brother might be thirty-six and feeling like he was old right now, but he was still young. Carrying sticks of heavy tobacco on the farm had left him with a strong, hard body. His hair was still dark although by the time Mom was his age, she had started to turn silver at the front. His eyes were showing some creases at the corners from being in the sun so much. His skin darker, from the elbows down. He was a true farmer. His legs were white as an Ohio winter snow.
I shook my head and climbed behind the wheel. There were plenty of single ladies in Sherwood who would love to snap my remaining single brothers up. I worried about Heath though. What kind of mate would he make? A scary one. He was an intense man, ready to explode I was sure.
I backed out of the drive and saw Matt turn and go into his house. The big farmhouse had to feel empty to him. I snatched up my phone and pressed one for Disa. I didn’t have anyone but her on speed dial.
“Hey, where are you?” She asked.
“Where are you?”
“Sitting on your front porch,” she replied. There was no pressure, no question about where I had been. No anger that I was running late.
“I stopped by Matt’s house to see him. I’m sorry that I’m late.”
“No worries, Ben. I know he needs you. I thought you might have stopped at the store or your Mom’s after the doctor’s appointment, so I sat on the porch. I was enjoying the peace and quiet.”
“Well enjoy while you can because Miss Asia is a bit cranky from her shots.”
“I’m sorry. Do you want me to stay?” She asked. “Maybe it would be easier to deal with her without me.”
“I need you to stay,” I said. I hadn’t realized how husky my voice sounded until I heard Disa’s slight gasp. Her intake of air. I needed her. How did she feel about that?
“I’m here,” she replied. “I’ll be right here when you get home.”
“I can’t wait,” I replied.
Then we hung up and I drove through town to the outskirts of Sherwood down a long, gravel road that led to the trailer I shared with Seth and my daughter. I parked behind her car hoping that I could keep her here for no other reason than I loved having her warm body beside me. I loved feeling her soft curves next to mine while we slept.
I hopped out and she rose from one of the chairs on my front porch. Her hand wrapped around the post at the entrance to the porch. Then Disa smiled at me which made my heart slam against my ribs.
I lifted Asia out of the back seat and grabbed her diaper bag then I headed towards my woman waiting at the top of the stairs.
I ran up them to greet her and stood at her feet. Disa gazed down on me. She wasn’t small but not exactly tall either. I guess she was about average in height and weight. I tucked my arm around her waist and pulled her to me. Our lips were close. Our breath mingling but I just wanted to stare at her for a moment. Take in her beauty and count my blessings that she was willing to give me a second chance.
“Ben are you going to kiss me or stand there looking at me?” She asked in that slow, sweet, sexy voice she had.
“I’m going to kiss you dammit,” I responded, and I nodded at her, knowing how good that kiss would be. I nuzzled my nose against her nose. Her hands were flat against my chest. Her fingers moving so softly against the fabric of my shirt while she waited in anticipation of my lips on hers.
“Then do it Ben. Kiss me.” She was begging me. Her tone had changed from sweet to one of need.
I obliged her. I pressed my lips to hers and forgot everything that existed in the world around me including the baby carrier in my hand. I thought only of this woman’s lips brushing against mine and the feelings that they created deep in my gut. The yearning. The burning for her that she was causing in me.
No other woman had ever made me feel this way. Only Disa. She was tearing me apart inch by inch. Piece by piece. I wanted her, and she had to be able to feel how much.
Her lips continued to flutter over mine when I would have ended the kiss. I had to ask when she pulled back, “Have you been with anyone Disa?”
I know that she told me she hadn’t, but she was twenty-seven now. It was possible. She had been with Kevin for a year. She shook her head no. “Ben, I want to get married or at least know that this is the man I’m spending my life with before I give myself to him.”
“Then plan on that man being me,” I informed her.
Then I took her hand and guided her to the trailer door. She didn’t respond, and I wouldn’t push her, but I was serious about that statement. I had given Disa up once. I’d be damned if I was doing it ever again.
Chapter 13
A baby was crying.
I heard it in my head, but the fog wouldn’t clear. Asia had been fussy all night long until we gave her baby Motrin right before bedtime which was usually eleven but with the shots making her fussy, it was more like midnight.
“Shit,” I mumbled. My arm was draped over Disa. She had stayed with me and right now, was wearing my t-shirt which I found to be sexy as hell riding up on her hip baring her underwear clad bottom. She had kicked off the covers.
I rolled to my back and gazed at the clock. The big red numbers read four am. Asia had slept longer than usual. I got up and went to the bedroom where my daughter was in full blown meltdown. Seth and Disa had slept right through it.
I picked her up and snuggled her against my chest. She instantly quieted. “Baby girl, what’s the matter?” I asked.
She was sucking on her fist. Her little sleeper was wet so were her sheets. Somebody was going to have to get up after I changed her so that I could change the sheets. With one arm around her, I unsnapped the sleeper and disposed of it in her laundry basket. Then I kissed her. Her small head rested in the crook of my neck and I was lost in the emotion of loving her. I rocked back and forth for a moment, eyes closed just loving on her.
Then Disa’s hands on my bare skin caused me to jump. She chuckled. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Everything all right?”
Her voice was thick with sleep and even deeper and huskier than usual. I kissed her temple. “Everything is fine. Asia’s sheets are wet.”
“I’ll change the bed, you put some clothes on her and fix her bottle,” Disa suggested.
“You sure you don’t mind?” I asked.
“I don’t.” She kissed Asia’s forehead and went to the closet where I told her she would find the second set of sheets. I went to my bedroom with Asia and a clean sleeper. I changed her and re-dressed her and was shaking a bottle when Disa joined me. She snugged next to me with her head on my shoulder while I fed Asia.
“She’s so beautiful Ben.”
I gazed at Disa, grateful she gave me a second chance because it could have gone the other way, but she was like this. Kind and forgiving. “What?” She asked growing uncomfortable beneath my gaze.
“You’re beautiful,” I told her.
She leaned closer and her lips brushed across mine. Then she laid her head against my shoulder once again before she yawned big. She was tired. We talked about the idea of me seeing an attorney. I tried explaining how I felt about it. I watched her chew on her lip.
“Could she just walk back in and take her?” She finally asked me.
“I don’t know,” I replied.
I looked down on Asia. My tiny child fit in one arm. My heart swelled as I gazed on her and tears flowed down my cheeks. “Ben,” Disa said. “It’s fine.”
“I made so many mistakes,” I told her. “I never want her to know that I didn’t want her.”
She put her arm around me and kissed my shoulder then my cheek. “Ben, that was before you knew her, or she seemed real to you. It is understandable that you felt that way. Asia will never know.”
I nodded. Disa wiped the tears from my cheeks. Her fingertips glided softly across my face. “I find it hard to forgive myself. I saw Jasmine right before she had the baby and I was fascinated by her growing belly knowing my child was inside her.”
Disa laid her head on my shoulder and I
knew I was talking about things that might bring her pain. “I’ll stop talking now,” I said.
“No,” she replied. “I love hearing you talk about how you feel about Asia.”
Our eyes locked on each other. “Disa, it was all about the baby too. I wanted to talk to Jasmine about working together to raise the baby, nothing more. I would have made sure that both she and Jasmine were taken care of, but I knew I couldn’t be with her.”
She nodded. I wasn’t sure that she believed me. I felt this feeling in my gut that twisted my insides. I had hurt her once badly when I walked away. When I slept with Jasmine, I did so again. I wanted her to believe me. To know that these words were my truth.
“Disa, I realized in those early morning hours when I dropped off Jasmine that I had never stopped loving you. That’s why I kept going from woman to woman, searching for you in them.”
Her eyes watered. “Ben, you could have had me. I was yours from the moment, your lips touched mine.”
I adjusted Asia so that I could hold Disa too. She held Asia’s bottle. I kissed her temple and thanked somebody for giving me this second chance. I didn’t deserve it, but I was grateful I had it and I wasn’t going to let her go again.
“Disa, I told you that I love you. Did you hear me?”
She nodded. Her eyes raised to my face. “Keep telling me that, Ben. I want to hear it, but I need some time. I need some trust between us before I say those words to you.”
I was disappointed for sure, but I understood. I would tell her every day that I loved her if necessary until she trusted me.
**
My first day back at work was a tired one. I explained to Tim that Asia had shots yesterday. She was back on track as far as sleeping and only getting up every three to four hours. He clapped me on the back.
“Welcome to fatherhood,” he told me. “You think you’ve licked one thing and something else pops up.”
“Thanks,” I told him.
“Coming to the Operations Meeting?” He asked.
“Just grabbing my reports. I’m right behind you,” I told him.
My brain was scattered through the meeting. My focus was on the woman who was still sleeping in my bed when I left for work this morning. Disa had a shift tonight so I wouldn’t see her when I got home.
We would have nights like this. She usually worked four nights a week and Thursday, Friday and Saturday night were included in that most times. That was nearly a full-time job without working another day for my dad which she did.
That is when I realized that Tim’s boss, Jake Hanson was speaking to me. “Sorry, Jake. What was the question?”
Jake was single and intended to keep it that way like some other men I knew in the Hatfield family. He rolled his eyes at me. “Hatfield, I was asking about the key performance indicators on the new process you implemented recently.”
I moved aside several papers and read off the results of the last two weeks. Our productivity had improved at least seventy-five percent, on the floor. I can’t say mine had but everyone else was doing a bang-up job.
The quality control indicators were good as well. We hadn’t made more mistakes even though we were moving more product through the plant.
“That’s great news. We have a new contract in the works with Helmut-Harker. I need to be able to show them we can handle their orders. Your work on the production process, improving productivity is just the shot in the ass we needed. They will be impressed.”
He was arrogant. Cocky. He was me, ten months ago before a nineteen-year-old girl told me she was pregnant with my child. I hadn’t lost my edge. I hadn’t lost my drive to be better at work. To achieve and set my sights higher and higher but I had lost the cockiness. I liked myself a lot better now.
“I guess the kid hasn’t ruined you,” Jake declared.
My instinct was to lash out. She was my daughter, not just a kid that he referred to with derision. I smiled instead and replied, “No, Asia hasn’t put a dent on my ability to be a good production supervisor here, Jake.”
“Good man,” he replied. He ran his hands through his hair and let it fall back into place. Casey Martin, our receptionist/his secretary practically swooned. I rolled my eyes staring down at the papers in front of me.
One day, god willing, Jake wouldn’t learn his lesson about life wrapped up in a nineteen-year-old girl who had tricked him. It was a painful way to learn you aren’t all that and not fair to the child involved.
**
On Saturday morning, even though she was exhausted Disa dragged herself out of bed and came to the trailer to stay with Asia, so I could meet with Samson Hallows about establishing custody of my own daughter.
Jasmine had been gone for three weeks. No one had heard from her in that time and we didn’t know where she was. Besides being Jenny’s boss, Samson was a friend of my father. He handled all his affairs including his personal ones for him and his kids. Me, another kid needed help.
He had been there for Walker too when he was arrested not that he listened to him. Walker spent five years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. It still baffled me that he wasn’t willing to listen to legal advice or Dad before he gave up five years of his life to prison and three more to supervised probation. Eight years of his life gone that could never be recovered but now, he had my sister Danni and a daughter that he adored. Life was good for Walker right now.
I gave my girls a goodbye kiss and headed into town. Sherwood was like every other small town. It had a center where most businesses were thriving because the next town was twenty or more minutes away but those businesses couldn’t employ the entire town so there were many who lived here and drove long distances, or they lived in poverty because they scrounged for work.
Dad’s pub was at the end of town, overlooking the river. Boaters had a place where they could pull up to the docks and come inside. Ike’s was well known around the tri-state area to many boaters on the Ohio River. The food was good, but the atmosphere was the most important part of it.
Dad had maintained the original feel of the pub from sixty years ago complete with initials scratched into the tables of lovers long gone. Pictures hung on the wall. Some of our family, some of the townspeople. Dad felt a sense of community far greater than he did to his family.
Getting him away from that pub required a marriage, birth or death. It was almost an impossibility which was part of the reason that his marriage had ended to Rachel. He could never put her first.
I tended to be like him and recognized that about myself. I was working on changing. I drove through town and saw people I had known for years, since I was a small child. They were standing on the street corner shooting the breeze and I knew that I was where I belonged.
Sherwood might be poor. We didn’t have the most popular restaurants. We didn’t have large grocery stores and department stores, but we had heart and it had taken me twenty-eight years to come to the realization that there were many things important in this life like my family and my friends. Disa and my daughter, Asia.
My job was not consuming me as it had. I still performed far above expectations and I had goals for advancement, but it would not consume me any longer. After the meeting yesterday, Tim had clapped me on the back as we walked back to our offices. He told me he was proud of me.
He went on to explain that he was proud of the work I was doing for the plant, but he was talking about the changes that had come over me since Asia’s birth. He was proud of the man I was becoming. It had meant a lot to me because I respected Tim.
I had always loved this little town of Sherwood. Unlike my best friend Jackson Hand, I never wanted to leave but I still didn’t appreciate the kindness of a stranger. The caring showed by friends when my grandfather passed away. I stood at his funeral and was filled with regret that he was not seeing firsthand the positive changes that I was making in my life because of my daughter.
His disappointment in me, haunted me. All I could do now was try to keep doing right by Asia
and make him proud in spirit. I had lost my chance to do it in person.
I realized what a great man he was while we stood in the funeral home for four hours which shocked even my mother. Granddad was loved and appreciated. So many wanted to pay their respects that the line didn’t dwindle until nearing the last hour.
As I got closer to Samson’s office, I thought about the exception he made for me. The man played golf every Saturday. He didn’t have hours on Saturday because Samson believed in a work life balance. He didn’t usually take criminal cases either, but he did as a favor to my dad when he represented Walker.
When he defended, Drake Martin he did it as a favor to his wife who was the sister of Drake’s other cousin Bobby Mackintosh. Connections got you favors in small towns, Dad always said. Today, Samson was showing up in his office for me, so I didn’t have to take off work. His golf game would take place later. Then the rest of the day, he spent with his wife.
I turned into the parking lot that was once a side yard next to a small, red, brick ranch house that Samson had converted into an office. I stopped the truck in the lot that was empty except for Samson’s Escalade. He wasn’t a flashy man but for this one expensive vehicle that he treasured. Adelaide his wife had scratched the paint at the Dollar Store. Everyone in town said he went fishing for the day to avoid saying anything to her because he was so livid but the only thing he loved more than this truck was Adelaide.
I walked up the sidewalk to the front door and headed inside. Glasses perched on the end of his nose, Samson appeared in a pair of golf shorts that were like my dad’s ugly polyester, plaid shorts. They were fashionable in the sixties not after the year two thousand. I wanted to roll my eyes but refrained.
Samson approached with a folder flapping in the breeze of his wake. He stuck his beefy hand out to me. “Benjamin how are you son?”
“Mr. Hallows, I’m good.” We shook hands then he guided me to his office. Samson sat behind a large, expensive oak desk and waved me to one of the cushy, real leather, guest chairs across from him. The outside might seem simple, so you wouldn’t expect the extravagance of the inner office, but Samson had spared no expense in making his space comfortable.
