Waylon was the last one to leave that evening. He helped get the piano back into the house and all the chairs loaded into a cattle trailer to go back to the church before he got into his truck and drove away. He turned the radio to his favorite late-night country music program just in time to hear Cody Johnson singing “On My Way to You.” The lyrics said that everything he’d been through from ditches to britches was simply taking him on his way to her. It seemed to have been written just for Waylon that night, and he kept time with the music by tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel.
He’d just rounded a sharp curve when a whole herd of deer started across the road in front of him. The squeal of his truck tires filled his ears, and the smell of hot brakes floated up to his nose. The deer scattered, and he let up on the brakes a little. Then one of his back tires blew out and sent him straight for a huge old scrub oak. He was looking out the side window, trying to swerve away from a big stump, when the airbags opened, and the seat belt tightened. None of that kept him from hitting his head on the side window hard enough to rattle his brain.
Steve Earle was singing “Copperhead Road” when everything began to blur. The lyrics of the song reminded him of the stories his great-granddad had told about outrunning the feds and the local sheriff through his moonshine-running days. His granddad had come home from Vietnam to take over the business. His dad hadn’t run moonshine, but he had inherited enough money from his father to buy a ranch on Red Dirt Road out in East Texas. His last thought before the whole world swirled away into darkness was that this was a helluva way to die.
Bonnie drove so fast down the rutted lane that it sounded like the fenders were going to fly off her old truck and land somewhere out there in the wildflowers beside the road. The scene of the accident was only a few hundred yards up from the Malloy Ranch turnoff, and right away, Shiloh recognized the truck.
“My God!” she gasped. “That’s Waylon’s truck.”
“What did you say?” the 911 operator asked.
“It’s my neighbor’s truck right on Highway 207 that crosses the Prairie Dog Fork of the Red River. Send an ambulance in a hurry,” she said.
“I’ve got one coming out of Amarillo, but it’ll be about thirty minutes before it can get there. I can patch you through to the EMT so he can give you some instructions,” the lady said.
What little tread was on the tires of Bonnie’s old truck took a big hit when she braked hard. When the vehicle had slowed down, she made a hard right-hand turn into the red dirt and brought the truck to a stop. Before she could turn off the engine, Shiloh had slung open the door, hiked up her dress, and was running toward Waylon’s truck. She reached it in time to see Waylon fall out of the driver’s side and wobble as he tried to stand up.
“He’s alive,” she yelled into the phone.
“Lay him out flat on the ground and don’t let him move,” the EMT said. “Is there something you can use to stabilize his neck? Is there anything like a blanket to keep him warm until we can get there?”
“I’ll check,” she said as she threw the phone at Bonnie. “Talk to them.”
“Got to get home. Granddad has to make a run,” Waylon muttered.
“What you are going to do is lay down flat and be still until the ambulance gets here.” Shiloh removed her sweater and held it against the gash on his forehead.
“Anything for you, darlin’.” He winced as he stretched out on the cold, hard ground. “Are you hurt?”
“Be still,” she demanded. “You’re losing a lot of blood, and you could have all kinds of injuries.”
His eyes fluttered shut.
Her heart thumped in her chest, and her pulse raced. She’d never seen a man die, especially one who she knew so well, and had even flirted with on more than one occasion. Her hands shook as she pressed harder on the sweater, his warm blood seeping through the thin fabric and oozing up between her fingers.
God, don’t let him die. She looked up at the stars. His breath rattled out of his chest and he coughed. Shiloh glanced at his mouth to see if there was blood there, and heaved a sigh of relief when his lips were clear.
“Don’t you dare die, Waylon Stephens!” she yelled at him. “Open your eyes and stay with me.”
“They say you’re doing the right thing.” Bonnie kept the phone to her ear. “Should I run back to the house and get a blanket?”
“Ask them how much longer until they get here,” Shiloh said.
“They say fifteen minutes. They’ve got the sirens going, and they’re taking the back roads to get here faster,” Bonnie told her.
“It would take you longer to get there and back than it’ll take them to get here,” Shiloh told her.
“Then here…” Bonnie peeled out of her jacket and laid it over Waylon’s upper body. “That might help a little.”
“Thank you,” Shiloh said. “You should get back in your truck and stay warm. There’s nothing more you can do, and you’ll get sick if you get a chill.”
Seconds took hours to go by, and minutes were an eternity. Shiloh kept demanding that Waylon keep his eyes open and talk to her. Most of the time, he focused on her face, but he didn’t say anything at all. She wondered what kind of work his granddad had done that he had to make a run, and why it was important for Waylon to get home to help him, but she didn’t ask. The EMTs had said to keep him as quiet and as still as possible.
Finally, Shiloh and Bonnie heard the sirens and saw the flashing lights as the ambulance came around a curve in the highway. As soon as the vehicle stopped, the two EMTs seemed to be everywhere at once. They loaded Waylon onto a flat board, secured his neck with a brace, removed Shiloh’s sweater and applied gauze to the gaping wound on his forehead.
“I’m going with him,” she announced when they had him inside.
“Sorry, ma’am, it’s not allowed,” the older of the two men said.
“It is tonight,” Shiloh told him as she hiked up her dress and got into the ambulance. Bonnie threw her phone toward her and said, “What should I do?”
The doors were closing when Shiloh caught the phone and yelled, “Bring me my purse and a change of clothes, and get Rusty to follow you in my SUV so I’ll have a way to get him home.”
She had to pull her knees to the side to give the EMT room to start an IV, take Waylon’s vital signs, and check his eyes. “Okay, Derrick”—she read the embroidered name tag on his jacket—“tell me he’s going to be all right.”
“I hope so, but the doctors will have to check him out for brain damage, concussion, all kinds of things. He’s got a nasty cut on his head that’s going to probably need stitches,” Derrick said above the high-pitched whine of the sirens.
“Hate needles,” Waylon muttered, his first words in several minutes.
“So do I.” Shiloh reached around Derrick and covered Waylon’s hand with hers.
Driving on Texas roads was one thing. Driving in the Palo Duro Canyon was quite another with its curves, and hills, and valleys. Shiloh was glad when they finally came up out of the canyon just south of Claude, and the ambulance driver could go faster. She had flirted with Waylon at church and social gatherings, had even danced with him a couple of times at the Sugar Shack, the canyon’s only honky-tonk. Now, she wished she’d stepped right up and asked him out. The opportunities had been there, and she wasn’t shy, but she had a thing about rejection. Probably a deep-seated emotion brought on by her father not wanting her because she was a girl.
The driver made a hard left onto Interstate 40 and kicked up the speed even more. In just a few minutes, he was pulling up under the awning, and then he and Derrick were rolling Waylon into the emergency room.
“You can wait right here.” Derrick motioned toward the seating area.
Shiloh gave him a dirty look and went right on through the double doors with him and the other guy. They did one of those one, two, three, counts and shifted Waylon onto a bed. He grimaced when they removed his cowboy boots.
“Foot hurts,” he said.
“We’ll get it seen about real soon,” Shiloh told him.
A nurse with a no-nonsense expression pulled the curtain to the cubicle back and motioned for Shiloh to leave. “We’ve got to get him out of that suit so we can examine him. You need to leave.”
Shiloh narrowed her eyes. “I’ll step outside the curtain, but as soon as you have him changed, I’m coming back in.”
“Are you related?” The nurse eased his black jacket off and was unbuckling his belt.
“No, I’m his girlfriend,” Shiloh lied.
“Then I’ll call you as soon as I’m finished,” the nurse said.
Waylon chuckled, and Shiloh shot a look his way that said he had better not tattle as she slipped around the curtain. Things were a little foggy in his mind. He remembered something about a song about Red Dirt Road—no, that wasn’t right. He lived on a road like that growing up over in—it took him a while to remember that had been over near Kiomatia, right on the Red River.
A doctor in a white coat pushed the curtain back, and said, “Well, son, what hurts?”
“My head and my ankle,” Waylon answered.
“Let’s get some tests run to see about both of those.” He flashed a small penlight in Waylon’s eyes, then gently felt his ankle. “I think you have a mild concussion and a sprained ankle, but the tests I’m ordering will let us know for certain. I want to be sure that you don’t have any cracked or broken ribs from the seat belt. Good thing you were wearing one, or you might’ve been thrown through the windshield. While we’re waiting, let’s get that head wound taken care of. I think we can use some glue and Steri-Strips instead of stitches. The nurse will clean it up, and then I’ll do my magic.”
Waylon barely nodded.
“Keep the neck brace on until we get those pictures,” the doctor told the nurse.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
Shiloh pushed around the curtain and came back to stand beside him. She took his hand in hers as they took care of the gash on his forehead. He tried not to squeeze her hand, but dammit! It hurt like a bitch when the nurse cleaned the wound. He kept his eyes glued to Shiloh’s face. Her beautiful dark hair had been pinned up for the wedding, but now it had fallen down over her shoulders. The red roses that had been scattered through the curls were wilted. Her pretty dress was stained and dirty, and her black rubber boots were muddy.
“Sorry,” he said.
“For what?” she asked.
“Your dress,” he muttered.
“Honey, this is just a dress. It can be cleaned or thrown in the trash. What matters is that you aren’t dead.” She squeezed his hand.
She had called him honey. He was sure of that, but he couldn’t be her sweetheart. That much he was sure of. He was Waylon Stephens, of the moonshiners over in Red River County, Texas. Shiloh Malloy was way out of his league.
He closed his eyes, but she leaned down and said, “Don’t you close your eyes. You can’t sleep until the doctor gets done with you, and if you’ve got a concussion, I’ll be waking you up every hour until twenty-four have passed, so get ready for it.”
“Sleepy,” he said.
“Me too, but we can sleep later,” she told him.
Dawn was pushing night out of the way when the nurse finally came into the cubicle with a whole raft of papers in her hands. “Doc says his preliminary exam was right on the money. Sprained ankle and a slight concussion. He will need someone with him for about a week. No heavy lifting, no hard work, crutches for at least a week. I’m sending him home with a list of things he can’t do, and those that he can.”
“I’ll stay with him, and see to it that he behaves,” Shiloh said.
“I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself,” Waylon protested.
“Yep, you can, in a week,” Shiloh told him.
“You can have someone with you, or we can keep you here,” the nurse said. “It’s your choice, Mr. Stephens.”
“I’ll go home,” he grumbled.
“And you’ll be good?” the nurse asked.
“Yes, he will, because I give you my word,” Shiloh told her.
“I’ve got cattle and chickens and—”
Shiloh put a finger on his lips. “I can take care of all that. It’s only for a week, and if I need help, I’ll call Rusty and Bonnie.”
“How’re we getting home?” He didn’t want to tell either of them that the only thing he could picture in his mind was a little frame house set back in a grove of pecan trees. Back behind the house was acres and acres of corn that granddad used to make shine.
“Rusty and Bonnie brought my SUV up here. It’s waiting in the parking lot, so let’s go home and get the morning feeding chores done,” she said.
Even the nod he gave made his head throb worse. “All right, but you don’t have to…”
She patted him on the shoulder. “That’s what friends and neighbors are for. I’ll go bring the van up to the doors.”
The nurse helped him get dressed and rolled him outside in a wheelchair in time to see a beautiful sunrise out there at the end of the horizon. His suit would never come clean again, but thank God, they didn’t have to cut his boot off, since they were the ones that he saved for Sunday and special occasions.
When he stood up, the sunrise blurred, and he had to grab the door handle of the van to keep from dropping. The nurse told him to sit down in the passenger seat and then she pulled his bum leg up and put it inside.
“The doctor will see you on Friday. Your appointment and his address are in this file,” she said.
“We’ll be there,” Shiloh assured her.
The nurse shook her finger at Waylon. “No driving until after he sees you.”
“You got to be kiddin’ me,” he moaned.
“I’ll see to it.” Shiloh nodded.
Waylon waited until they were past Claude before he said, “All right, we escaped that place. You can drop me off at my ranch, and go on home. I’ll get in touch with someone to tow my truck…”
“What we’re going to do is go to your ranch, get a shower, and make breakfast. Then I’ll let you sleep an hour while I take care of the morning chores. That’s as much as you need to worry about right now. Your truck is already at the body shop. Rusty and Bonnie took care of that last night, and called the insurance company listed on the papers in your glove compartment.”
“You don’t have to do this.” He used the lever on the side to lean the seat back a little.
“I’m not arguing with you anymore,” she said.
Good God Almighty! It was going to be a long week.