Thunder In Her Body

by C. B. Stanton

  Within 45 minutes, after much mulling and radio communications for permission, two of the tractors with the snow blowers on them were laboring slowly up the slope. Ten, twenty, twenty-five minutes passed as the groaning machines inched slowly up the uneven slope, then she screamed, “Over this way, over this way, over there!” and she pointed to some trees obscured by the blackness. Climbing down out of the cab with the vehicle still inching ahead, she fell flat into the deep show. Before the tractor driver could halt the yellow monster and come around to pick her up, she started clawing and crawling toward the stand of trees. She was screaming, “Blaze, talk to me. Blaze, Blaze talk to me. Call me. Blaze!”

  The tractor driver reached to pull her up by her arm out of the enveloping snow. “No-o-o-o-o,” she shrieked – a horrifying shriek - as though someone was about to brand her with a white-hot iron, “Don’t touch me – don’t break the connection. N-o-o-o-o” she shrieked again. The piercing sound unnerved the driver. He’d heard it in Iraq when one of his buddies stepped on a land mine and lay wounded with parts of his body blown away. She jerked away from his outstretched hands and pointed, “Over there! He’s over there!” The second big cat driver turned his search light over to where she pointed. There was nothing. “Over there she kept screaming! Over there!” and she kept pointing to the trees as she tried to bring herself upright. The two men pushed past her and struggled forward in the waist deep snow toward the spotlight-lit trees, with the one dog trying to get ahead of them. The dog stopped. He turned in a circle right next to a huge Ponderosa Pine, its rough trunk buried up to the second level of branches. He sniffed hard. Again he spun in a circle and started digging. Lynette began to scream – a scream that was heard over the roar of the engines of the tractors. “Blaze------!!!”

  The men began to dig furiously. The dog barked incessantly. The snow-covered, sturdy shepherd-mix dog pulled up a hat - Blaze’s muskoxen knit hat they bought in Anchorage, Alaska on their honeymoon. Trying with all she had, she surged forward, swimming, for her, in shoulder deep snow drifts; falling into depressions, clawing, beating at the snow, pulling herself to where she knew her husband was trapped. Beneath the hat was a deep, dark hole, then Blaze’s shiny, wet head reflected from the searcher’s flashlight. With tears and snot freezing on her face, her hair a mass of frozen mess and the buttons torn off the front of her coat, Lynette collapsed into the snow and began to sing softly, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me…he once was lost but now he’s found …”

  Blaze had taken a terrible blow to the head as the avalanche carried him downhill. Tumbling out of control, the surging mountain of snow slammed him into first one, then a second larger hidden boulder. The ski helmet shattered like a dropped ripe cantaloupe. There was nothing to protect his head but a soft, woven knit hat. The force and direction of the snow pushed him nearly 300 yards further down and the distance of a soccer field to the north of the slope where his companions were found. When he woke the first time, he was covered by feet of suffocating snow and couldn’t tell which way was up. He knew to spit, and gravity would pull the spit downward toward the earth, no matter which way he was suspended. Beneath where the spit landed was the tiniest bit of a tree limb. Digging sideways, he found the trunk of the tree and used it to scratch and pull his way upward for the slightest bit of oxygen. Once oxygenated, and with the snow out of all of his cranial orifices, he hunkered down against the rough trunk into a makeshift snow cave to protect himself against the blowing night wind. As a Seal, he had learned how to survive in all climates. This was a delayed test. Then he fell back into unconsciousness.

  Each time he lifted himself out of the debilitating haze into minimal awareness, he thought about his wife and son. He was determined to survive. He told her he’d never leave her. As the hours passed, he shivered from the cold, but there was a warmth within him as he thought about Lynette – how she wrapped herself around him as they snuggled together each night. He laughed at how hot they had been in that hotel in Beaver Creek – and how cold he was now. Where was that bear with all that warm fur now, he chuckled in his delirium?! And he thought about his handsome son – and the strong blood that coursed through his veins. He would live. He had to live. He had so much to live for. His body hurt everywhere, but mostly it was his head. It pounded and throbbed like a warrior drum being beat in a frenzy. Suddenly, the pain went away and again the blackness of unconsciousness overtook him. His body went limp and succumbed to the numbing cold of the frozen winter night. He was helpless and the unconsciousness rendered him unaware that in his condition, he would die that night. He could not call to his beloved Lynette. But, his last conscious memory was the words my wife.

  The winds swirling mercilessly around the mountain at that elevation were too strong to call in a helicopter, so Blaze was slowly taken back down the mountain in the jerking and lurching snow-plow. Up in the heated cab of the tractor, with his head wrapped in a bandage and neck supported by a bulky brace, Lynette wrapped first one, then a second blanket around him, then she wrapped herself around him and kept kissing his ice cold face. She heard a cheer over the remote radio as the driver announced that they had found Snowdown and were bringing him down. After securing the padded neck brace properly in place, the EMS paramedic bundled Blaze up under heat-warmed blankets then took vital signs as Lynette rode in the ambulance with Blaze. By the time they made their way down the twelve-mile ski road, and the fifteen additional minutes to the County Hospital emergency room, Blaze was trying to sit up, and joked groggily with the paramedic. In a spate of absolute vulgarity, so uncharacteristic for him, he joked with slurred speech that he didn’t worry so much about his feet or his hands freezing, he kept his hands tightly covering his dick because with a wife like his, that was the most important thing to protect! The paramedic looked embarrassed and didn’t know whether to laugh or not with Lynette right there. She smiled softly at the man who loved her so much and placed the tips of her fingers gently on his cold lips. He touched them with the tip of his tongue, before his head involuntarily leaned back into the pillow and his weary eyes closed.

  CHAPTER 35

  ¤

  Another Generation

  Having fallen in love with the Crystal Bend area, and loving being close to her expanded family, Janette, who could work anywhere she was with her computer, IPad and SmartPhone, decided to work out of her permanent home, the condo. She didn’t want to be as far out as the ranch proper, but she liked being within a 45 minute drive from it. She sold her town home in Austin, for quite a nice profit. She’d invested wisely in a retirement plan and it was her intention to retire from the insurance and computer industry at the ripe old age of 55. She’d been a top money earner, All of her working career, and she managed her investment portfolio with great skill, making comfort in her older years more than just a possibility. Janette would not have children. On her mother’s side of the family, there had been a pattern of “female problems” often leading to hysterectomy, and Janette had fallen victim to that malady at age 40. Though she’d gone through a series of boyfriends in her life, a couple pretty serious, she didn’t marry until she was almost 50. Like her mother, who was just passed 45 when she found Blaze, Janette found a really good looking Apache man - a Lipan Apache named Hawk!!

  Discouraged by Janette’s lack of reciprocity toward his not-so-subtle advances, Hawk had married a pretty Native girl in a hastily arranged courthouse ceremony, but divorced quickly after realizing he’d made a bad choice. He had one son by her, Sebastian, not too much younger than BC. The two boys became daily playmates and best friends. In fact, Lynette had two raucous boys around the house most of the time. BC needed playmates and Hawk’s boy was an ideal candidate. Hawk’s wife was too young and immature to care for the boy, so he was raising him on the ranch. A caring and loving father – Hawk was a really good man. In many ways, he reminded Lynette of what a young Blaze must have been like. Oh, how she wished sometimes that she’d known Blaze in his youth. She
could have spared him all that pain and she would have given him beautiful babies, each and every one his.

  Aaron and Blaze brought a huge double-wide manufactured home onto the ranch, and had it set up down near where the bunk house was located, with all the conveniences. That was Hawk’s home when he was married, and after his divorce, he, Sebastian and Maurice enjoyed the comfort of the somewhat plush and roomy structure.

  Much as Blaze did when he was in the Navy, Hawk saved a good portion of his monthly wages. He was a thrifty man and accumulated a hefty bank account from his wages on the Whitehall Ranch. Over time, and mentored by Blaze and Aaron, he bought property, sometimes at courthouse sales. He invested more in houses than land and with his carpentry and plumbing skills, he could renovate a home and flip it for a considerable profit. He and Maurice formed a part-time company and did really good business. As Crystal Bend grew in population spreading farther north, and then east, through land previously owned by Blaze, they had almost more work than they could handle. They prospered by honesty, hard work and a good business sense. Blaze and Aaron hired on some new hands to help with the ranches, as Hawk and Maurice concentrated more on their restoration and re-sale business.

  Hawk grew handsomer as he got older. His features sharpened and there was a confident, positive air about him. Ever since Lynette and Janette came into the lives of the men at Rancho Whitehall, Hawk had made no attempt to hide his feelings for Janette. What was difficult for him to understand was her dedication to her career. It was that, more than anything, that allowed her to keep him at bay. When he married and divorced quickly, she somehow felt that she was to blame. She never shared that feeling with anyone. But he knew why he had settled for the first marriage, and it did have to do with Janette. She was simply not available at that time, and he wanted someone of his own to come home to. His feelings for his young wife did not approach what he felt for Janette, but he was a good husband. Going on with his life, becoming successful, and still carrying the torch for her, she began to see the wonderful man that he was and maybe what she’d missed by waiting later in life to open herself to his affectionate advances. Carefully, he began wooing her in earnest, until she succumbed to his kind and loving ways. When they married, it was at the Satellite Hill Ranch, and with some alterations, they tried to duplicate a small portion of the marriage ceremony that Lynette and Blaze had twenty or more years before. As a wedding present, Lynette gave Janette and Hawk the title to the condo – paid off, free and clear. They lived there for awhile until he found a really lovely home in Crystal Bend near the Meadows Golf Course, which he carefully and completely renovated before they were wed. He moved his bride into it just days after their marriage as a special present to her. The view from their front window, was a breathtaking, full shot of the expanse of Sierra Asombroso, including its subordinate peaks. Hawk was careful to pick a home where nothing, no building of any sort, would ever obscure their view of the mountain. Another generation would look out reverently to this wonder of nature.

  Years earlier, when BC and Hawk’s son, Sebastian, were about five years old, Lynette and Blaze took them to the area where about an acre of Blaze’s trees had burned more than a decade or so ago. It was from some of those trees that Blaze had built their log home. They showed the boys how to plant the Douglas Firs and Ponderosa Pine seedlings. All four of them, with Clare happily joining in, crawled around on their hands and knees replanting an area of the forest that Blaze hoped his son and Sebastian would live to see grow to mature, soaring trees. In details that these young boys could understand, he explained how trees took in carbon dioxide and gave back oxygen to the planet – how very important it was for the forests all over the earth to be preserved. He even described how dense forests way far away in the Amazon Region affected life as near as Crystal Bend. Blaze always taught what he believed, the connection of all things.

  CHAPTER 36

  ¤

  BC’s Growing Up Years

  BC grew up to be a smart, unusually handsome, strapping young man. An inch shorter than his father, he had the same chiseled Indian features and was the spitting image of the photograph Lynette found of Blaze when he joined the Navy. He’d inherited his mother’s dark, almond eyes and his complexion was somewhere between the honey gold of his father’s, and the creamy olive skin of his mother’s. They often remarked as he walked toward the house, what a beautiful boy they had made, and what a fine man he was growing into. He was loved totally from the day he was conceived, but Blaze and Lynette were always aware that there was a world beyond the ranch that would not protect or shield him from trouble or disappointment. He received healthy doses of love - and discipline. His father taught him respect for all living things and the most precious, was a woman. He showed him how to treat a woman by the way he treated his wife. It was a daily lesson of love, care, understanding, patience and most of all, respect. On the rare occasion when BC felt the need to be a little lippy with his mother, Lynette took him down a peg or two without hesitation. BC knew that whatever she told him, stood double, because it carried the weight of his strong, beautiful mother – and his father. Even though he was a child of love, and privilege, he got away with very little. He had to work for his allowance, as both of his parents had done as children. He had to learn the meaning of a dollar – that it didn’t come easy. He had to learn about honesty, integrity, truth, trust and character, and Blaze was a stern, but loving taskmaster.

  At age 15, the boys submitted to the rite of passage into manhood on the Apache Reservation. Blaze was so proud of his son, and Hawk’s son also. He was teaching them respect for tradition and pride in their Apache blood, but also how to live in the larger world. As he had, and did, he wanted them to walk comfortably in both worlds, and that took discussion and physical examples. They were enrolled in scouting; and they learned to play football, baseball, soccer and polo. They rode horses with fine saddles, and they learned to ride bareback. They were members of the 4-H club and the Future Leaders of America. They learned to communicate in the Apache language and to honor at least some of the historical traditions. From the time they were little scrappers, they learned about the beauty of horses or the grading of cattle, and how to clean up behind them! Ranching was hard work and the fathers worked their sons hard.

  When BC turned 16, someone put the notion in his head that he should automatically get a brand new pick up truck. After all, some of the other rich kids got one on that birthday. His dad asked him how much he had saved toward such an expensive gift and he took him around the area to look at the prices of new trucks. For his birthday, he did get a truck – a 4 year old, one owner, Chevy. By the time they drove up to the front door of the house, he had a clear understanding why he was not ready for something so new or expensive.

  The day the Tribal Police called Blaze and reported BC speeding and showing off on the reservation, Blaze took his keys away from him, snatched the alternator out of the truck, and confined him to the ranch for a month, except for going to school. On top of that, he had to ride the county school bus for that month. That was the greatest humiliation of all. When Blaze put his foot down, there was no need to whine to Lynette. As they were in body and spirit, they were one in rearing their beloved son. Blaze never had to lift his hand to BC except once, when he was older. When needed, he talked to him, reasoned with him, made him do things that would emphasize the example he was trying to impart. Blaze was a living example of what a man should be. He was a skilled father, a loving father. Had he learned these ways from the elders, or the father that raised him and Aaron? Wherever his lessons on parenting came from, they were excellent.

  When the puppies, Suzie Q, Rusty, Alaska and Yukon, finally died of old age, Blaze, Lynette, BC, Clare and Hawk’s son, Sebastian, all went out onto the land and had a proper burial for each of them. It was the same with the horses. Everything will eventually die. Everything needed a proper burial. And so they grieved, and wept, and Blaze taught them to remember all the joy these animals had brough
t into their lives. He taught them about the circle of life – the interconnection of all living things. And though he and Lynette did not attend church on a weekly basis, he taught the boys about the Creator – He That Made Us All. He instilled in them a reverence for what cannot be seen; and an understanding for possibilities. Again and again he instructed them on their responsibility to Mother Earth, and about stewardship of this great gift. Conservation was a word used frequently in the Snowdown home. Though he and Lynette saw to it that the boys attended Sunday School, and had some important, and fundamental religious education, they taught them that when they were surrounded with nature, they were in church. All that God had made was an expansive temple, to be honored, to be protected, to be respected. They showed them the simplicity of worship sitting quietly beneath a tree; for it is in the quite of a heart that God can be heard the clearest. They taught them to be strong, yet humble, and the strength that grows within humility.

  Thanksgiving dinners became bigger and bigger as the families grew. Blaze and Lynette stepped back each year and marveled at what a beautiful family they had growing around them. And they never underestimated the strength of what love could build. In time, Lynette and her daughter, Veronica, reconciled. They tried to make up for the time lost.

  The only time Blaze ever raised his hand to his son was the day he found out that BC had gotten a young girl pregnant. It was the summer just before his senior year in high school. BC was seventeen. Blaze hit him, and the blow knocked him clear across the marbled island in the kitchen.