Chasing Shadows

by Wendy Meadows

  “Go on,” Sarah urged Amanda and hurried into the back of Nate's truck. “I'll be fine.”

  “Okay,” said Amanda, who made a pained face and then reluctantly jumped into the passenger seat with Mittens. Nate got his truck moving and managed to drive them to his farmhouse with any problems, even though he expected to see the gray BMW again.

  “Ah, home sweet home,” Nate said, turning off the main road and driving down a very long dirt driveway. A couple of minutes later, he pulled up to a large farmhouse glowing with bright lights; every light in the farmhouse was on. The farmhouse resembled George Monroe's farmhouse—even down to the wrap around porch. Yet this farmhouse seemed different somehow.

  “Very beautiful,” Amanda gasped and jumped out of the truck. “Los Angeles, get the bugs out of your teeth and look at this lovely home.”

  Sarah stretched her arms and crawled out of the truck, relieved that the gray BMW had not decided to make a second appearance. She felt tired, hungry and ready for a good night’s sleep, even though she doubted sleep would come easy. At least the sight of Nate’s farmhouse provided her some comfort. “You're an artist,” she said, glancing around at sculptures made of metal, cement, stone and other materials, sitting in the shadows.

  “Oh, not me,” Nate smiled. “My wife was the artist. I was the farmer. The work sitting around this here front yard belongs to her, not me.” Nate walked over to a beautiful little boy and girl carved out of wood. “When my wife was in her younger years...my, what her hands couldn't create,” he said and patted the wooden sculpture with sad hands.

  Sarah looked at Amanda. Amanda sighed. “So sad,” she whispered.

  Sarah nodded. “I know,” she whispered back and took Mittens from Amanda. She buried her face into the soft fur at Mittens’ neck, drawing comfort from the puppy’s contented snuffles.

  Nate patted the wooden sculpture once more and then walked away. “I live off my social security and retirement now,” he explained. “I knew someday I wouldn't be able to farm my land anymore so I put back money each month, even when food was tight on the table.” Nate pointed to his house. “Worked real hard to pay off this here house and land, too. Now I'm just waiting to say goodbye to it someday and go on home and be with Jesus. I reckon this land is getting tired of seeing my old face,” Nate managed to chuckle. “When the Good Lord says it's my time, then I'll say my goodbyes and go on home to my real home. This here old earth is just a strange place without my wife, even though at times it can seem very familiar. But, the seasons come and go and this old earth grows older by the day, just like you and me.”

  Amanda walked up to Nate and took his hand. “Before you're called home to Jesus, I’d like the privilege to know you more.” She smiled into his kind face and felt peaceful. “Now let's go inside and eat. I'm starving.”

  “The pinto beans and cornbread might be a bit late tonight, but better late than never,” Nate said and walked Amanda up onto the front porch. Sarah stood still in the night for a couple of minutes and listened to the stars whisper back and forth and the insects chatter. She felt a sweet peace walk up and stand next to her—a peace that she sometimes felt in Alaska when standing all alone in her kitchen, staring out into the backyard watching the snow fall with a warm cup of coffee in her hand. She loved the snow. She loved the way it seemed to carry her heart away into a wonderful and mysterious place that the world couldn't touch or harm. Sarah figured Nate felt the same about his farm. “You coming?” Nate called out.

  “I'll walk Mittens first and then come inside,” Sarah promised. Nate nodded and held open the door for Amanda.

  Sarah drew in a deep breath, looked down at Mittens, and forced a smile onto her worried face. “Well, girl, you sure didn't sign up for this trip, did you?” The puppy made a tiny grunt and Sarah kissed Mittens on her nose. “I wish we were back home in our cabin together having a nice cup of coffee for me and a nice cup of warm chicken broth for you. But,” Sarah said and coaxed Mittens over to a patch of field, “we have work to do before we can go home.” Mittens looked up at Sarah and then stretched her eyes up to the stars. The world sure was a strange place.

  Chapter Three

  Nate dipped a wooden spoon into a metal pot full of simmering pinto beans. “Beans and cornbread,” he said, and smiled the way only an old timer could, “sure fills the stomach well.”

  Sarah watched Nate stir the beans and looked around an open, vintage kitchen that felt soothing and warm. If she didn't know any better, Sarah would have sworn she had stepped back into the 1930s. The entire farmhouse felt like that. The furnishings, floors, and walls were authentic and not covered over with the kind of modern, cheap materials that greedy companies sometimes passed off as a substitute for old-fashioned integrity and workmanship. “I love your kitchen,” she told Nate.

  “My wife loved this old kitchen, too,” Nate replied and continued to stir the beans. “Yep, my wife spent a good deal of time standing right where I'm standing, cooking up a storm.” Nate chuckled to himself. “Poor soul always did burn the cornbread but I never made a fuss of it.”

  Sarah smiled and closed her eyes. In her mind, she saw a beautiful young woman pulling a burned pan of cornbread out of the oven and a handsome young man, tired from the fields, leaning against the back door and shaking his head but not saying a word. “You and your wife shared a very special love, didn't you?”

  “Still do,” Nate told Sarah and set the wooden spoon in his hand down on a brown plate. “My wife may be in Heaven resting with Jesus, but just because she's gone from me doesn’t mean the love we have for one another was buried under the ground. No ma’am,” Nate said in a happy voice, “my wife is just waiting for this old man to join her in the Father's Kingdom is all. Why, that old woman is up there free as a bird and more alive than you and me are right this second. She's just waiting, like me, that's all.”

  Sarah sighed. The love Nate had for his wife touched her heart very deeply. “How did you meet your wife?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Amanda jumped in excitedly. “Spill the beans, Nate and tell these two weary gals a sweet love story.”

  Nate smiled. He looked at Sarah and watched her take a sip of coffee and then looked at Amanda, who was pulling Mittens into her lap. He sure liked the two ladies a lot and felt a special connection to them after the strange events of this night. “Well,” he said, finding a spot at the round kitchen table to sit down in, “I met my wife right here in Prate many years back. My wife was a fugitive from the law, you see.”

  “Really?” Amanda exclaimed.

  Nate chuckled to himself. “Nah, just making sure you're paying attention is all.”

  Amanda made a silly face at Nate. “Don't make me pour my coffee down the back of your pants. I want the goods. Now start talking.”

  Nate winked at Sarah. “Well, my wife came into my life on a hot, dry day,” Nate began. Sarah and Amanda snuggled up to his story, Nate's warm voice making them feel like two happy girls cuddling up against a soothing fire. “My truck went and had a flat, leaving me standing beside the road wondering whether to walk into town for a spare or walk back here to this here farm for a nice drink of cold water first. As I was debating with myself, a truck came driving down the road and stopped to see if I needed help.”

  “Oh, and the driver of the truck was your wife, right?” Amanda asked in a dreamy voice.

  “Nope,” Nate said and patted Amanda's hand, “just old Mason Buckles. Mason gave me a ride into town and dropped me off at Old Man Rider's garage,” Nate explained and then paused. He tipped his ears toward the stove. “Beans will be needing water soon.”

  “Oh,” Amanda pouted, “don't stop now. Keep talking, please.”

  “Well,” Nate continued, “I bought myself a spare tire and started the long walk back to my truck and didn't get no farther than Whitfield Street before I saw a beautiful young woman sitting on the front lawn of a little white house, looking as bored as you could imagine. I walked up to her and said: ‘Now, wh
y are you sitting out here in this here heat looking the way you do? Don't you have enough sense to go inside where's it's cool?’”

  “You didn't,” Amanda gasped.

  “I sure enough did,” Nate said in a matter-of-fact voice. “My future wife was out baking in the sun, which told me she didn't have a lick of sense in her head.”

  “What did she say back to you?” Sarah asked.

  “Oh, she gave me a sour face and told me to buzz off down the road,” Nate answered Sarah. “My future wife wasn't a woman to be talked down to.”

  “Serves you right,” Amanda told Nate. “So what if your wife was sitting out in the sun? Maybe she was just outside enjoying the day?”

  “Nope,” Nate corrected Amanda. “My future wife was outside baking in the sun because her folks were inside bickering up a storm and she didn't want to hear another word of it.” Nate reached out and patted Mittens on the head. The puppy was getting sleepy and starting to drop its head in Amanda’s lap. “My wife's daddy was a nasty drinker, you see, and a hard man to get along with, even when he wasn't hitting the bottle.”

  “Oh,” Amanda said and shook her head. “I hate alcohol. My husband isn't allowed near a whiskey bottle.”

  “Smart woman,” Nate told Amanda, “but my wife's mother wasn't so smart. That woman put up with a good amount of abuse before finally going to Heaven. She knew Jesus said you couldn't divorce your better half unless that person either died or cheated on you, so she remained faithful to her husband until the day she died.”

  “Old-timers were...special,” Sarah sighed. “Today, people run to a divorce lawyer at the drop of a hat.”

  “Don't you know it, don't you know it...shame, shame,” Nate grunted to himself. “Why my niece has been married three times and it don't look like her third husband is going to be sticking round much longer.” Nate shook his head. “Three times...how can a woman get married three times? Don't make sense in my mind. Man and woman are supposed to marry for love and make that love last for life, not a few months.”

  “I know,” Sarah sighed. The image of her husband floated into her mind. “But it’s complicated. People forget love is supposed to matter.”

  Amanda saw sadness enter her best friend's eyes. “Are you okay, love?”

  “Sure,” Sarah forced a weak smile to her face. “I don't have any other choice but to be okay.”

  Nate read Sarah's face. He saw hurt and anger, grief and pain, all mixed up into one vicious pill that wasn't going down easy. “Well,” he said and continued on with his story, in hopes that his words would make Sarah feel better, “I didn't buzz off. Instead, I sat right down on the grass beside my wife and asked her what bee had crawled into her bonnet? My future wife tossed her thumb at the house behind her and that's when I heard an ugly commotion going on in the kitchen. I reckon it was then that I kicked myself in the backside, figuratively speaking, of course.”

  “I bet,” Amanda said.

  “I had done gone and acted a fool without understanding the situation,” Nate reminisced. “My future wife was sitting out in the sun because her heart was breaking, not because she didn't have any sense to her.” Nate bit down on her lip. “My, was she pretty sitting on the grass, though...prettiest woman I ever saw.”

  “What happened after you realized the truth?” Sarah asked.

  “Oh, I sat silent for a few minutes and then asked my future wife if she wanted to take a walk with a dumb old rock,” Nate answered Sarah and chuckled to himself. “I didn’t have time to take no walk because I had chores to tend to, but I sure wanted to take a walk with her something fierce. And to my shock, instead of slugging me in the mouth, she agreed to take a walk with me. But only if I agreed to leave the spare tire in her yard and wash my hands first.”

  “Nate, Prate must have been even smaller back then,” Sarah said. “You never saw your wife before?”

  “Nope,” Nate said. “Man can't see a woman who just moved to town.”

  “Oh, I see,” Sarah replied.

  “Yep, my wife and her folks were new in town and old Nate was the first man to say hello.”

  “Fate,” Amanda sighed.

  “A blessing,” Nate smiled. “So anyway, me and my future wife took us a long walk down to Dove River and let our feet soak in the cold water for a bit. We talked some, about this or that, and then walked back to Whitfield Street. By this time my wife's daddy had wandered off someplace and her momma was in the kitchen cooking lunch. So I picked up my tire and said goodbye and walked on back to my truck...but I walked back the happiest man alive.”

  “That's it?” Amanda asked. “No first kiss in the rain...no holding hands...no valiant battle to win her hand?”

  Nate smiled. “Three days later I went back and asked her to marry me,” he told Amanda. “I reckon I was a bit crazy, and my wife sure thought so—and so did her folks—but I was bound and determined to marry the woman who completed the other side of my heart. I marched myself right up on her front porch, knocked on the door, and when her daddy answered I told him what my intentions were and waited to be shot. But glory be, ladies, the man was stone cold sober that day, and because he was in a hurry to marry off his daughter, agreed in no time at all.”

  “What did your wife have to say?” Sarah asked.

  Nate chuckled. “My wife knew I'd be coming back and had her suitcase already packed. I took her to the preacher man that very day and home to this farm that very night. And from then on we were inseparable...soul mates forever. Now, I'm not saying our marriage was easy. No ma’am. I spent many hours out in the fields working from dawn to dusk and my wife spent many hours learning how to be a wife to a man who tended to the land. We just...sorta had to figure each other out a little and work out the kinks...but in time we fit together like a soft hand in a smooth glove.”

  “You met your future wife, insulted her, walked her down to some river, and then came back three days later and married her,” Amanda said and shook her head. “I guess in those days things were different.”

  “Nah,” Nate smiled at Amanda, “folks today, if they knew what love was? They wouldn't wait years to get married by a preacher man. No time for courting and fussing and all that. Back in the old days, when a man knew he loved a woman he didn't wait a second, he just came right out and told her. If the woman felt the same toward him, then they went and got married. If the woman didn't feel the same, the man moved on without whining to the wind.”

  “It took close to two years for my stubborn husband to propose to me,” Amanda complained. “Mr. Nervous was the kind of bloke who didn't want to ‘rush’ our relationship. Why did made me wait for something I knew was going to eventually happen is beyond me.”

  Nate chuckled to himself again, stood up, and walked over to the kitchen sink. “I bet you would have slugged your husband if he made you wait another day.”

  “I would have,” Amanda promised.

  Nate filled up a green drinking glass full of hot water and added it to the pot of beans. “What about you, Sarah? How did you meet your husband?”

  Sarah tensed up. “Oh, at a private party,” she said and stumbled over her words. “I...a lady who I...uh...saved...invited me to the party as a way of saying thank you.”

  “Saved?” Nate asked.

  “Yes, I...” Sarah paused and shook her head. “A gunman entered a grocery store...I ducked for cover...I grabbed a lady who was in danger and pulled her down to the floor with me. Once she was safe, I grabbed my gun and managed to shoot the gunman...it wasn't anything, really. Any cop would have done the same.”

  “Yeah, but you were the cop on the scene,” Nate told Sarah and nodded his head at her. “You're a good cop. And a mighty brave woman.”

  “So is Amanda,” Sarah said and turned the attention to her best friend and began telling Nate about how brave and daring Amanda had been during their Alaska cases. “She saved my life more than once. I owe this woman my life.”

  Amanda blushed. Nate tilted his head at her. “
Is this all true?” he asked. Amanda humbly nodded. “I never took you for a coward,” he smiled at Amanda. “I figured you had a grizzly sleeping inside of you.”

  “Well, maybe I was a tad daring in my exploits,” Amanda admitted, “but I was also very, very scared…and cold...blimey, was it ever cold.”

  “Freezing,” Sarah emphasized. “And speaking of freezing, that reminds me. My poor coffee shop is collecting dust right now. Amanda, when we get home I have to dust off the coffee pots and open up shop for a few hours.”

  Amanda grinned and shook her head regretfully. “Sure, love,” she said.

  Sarah stared at Amanda. “What's that supposed to mean? Wait...I know. It's my coffee, isn't it? I make my coffee too strong.”

  “A tad,” Amanda confessed and winked at Nate. “My friend here makes her coffee strong enough to put hair on the butt of a bald seal.”

  “Is that right?” Nate laughed and stirred the beans. “My wife sure made her coffee strong, too. Why, there were times that I went to work so wired up that I wasn't sure which way to turn.”

  Sarah smiled. “Seems like me and your wife have something in common.”

  Nate pointed at Amanda. “You and her both,” he said. “You all three have good hearts resting in your souls. That's a rare find in today's world. Folks today, men and women, are too busy worrying about them little phones they carry around rather than getting married and raising a family. That niece of mine keeps her face stuck to her little phone tapping out these little messages and chatting with a hundred people at once...too busy being busy with her phone to understand her life is empty.”

  Sarah began to reply but before she could, someone knocked on the back door. Sarah jumped to her feet and snatched her gun up. Nate shook his head and put his finger to his mouth. Amanda pulled the puppy closer to her chest. Outside, the stranger knocked on the back door again.

  “Who's knocking on my back door this time of night?” Nate called out.