“Bring your gear along,” he said with no prior greeting. This wasn’t unusual for Chase.
“What am I doing that I need to bring gear along?”
Rusty raised his eyebrows.
“Maybe nothing.”
“Hey, I got a new bulletproof vest. Should I bring that along, too?”
“Wouldn’t hurt, might help.”
“Chase, I can’t go tracking for more than one day. I’m bringing my nephew, Patrick, along.”
“Is everything okay at the ranch?”
“Yeah, he’s just stranded down here because of the snowstorm. He’s been at our house stalking deer.”
“How’s he doing on the deer?”
“As good as can be expected. When we get there, though, I need to talk to you about his tracking. I need some advice.”
“Shoot.”
“I can’t discuss this over the phone. I’m supposed to be cooking dinner.”
“Can you give me some clue?”
“I’m not sure how to teach Patrick how to track. He does things I didn’t know how to do until years later. He needs guidance, but he has tremendous insight. He profiles as he tracks and reads the ages of tracks. Maybe not accurately, but he does it unconsciously. He has the talent, but he needs a teacher and I live too far away to do it. He asks questions about tracks he saw weeks ago and so far I’ve known the answers, but just the fact that he’s able to keep tracks in his head amazes me. And he has the trouble gene. He sent the police after a friend and he was nearly hauled off by a purse snatcher at the mall. Then he got stuck near the top of a tree, all just in this one week! What am I going to do?”
“Bring your gear. We can talk on a trail.”
It’s as simple as that. Chase was a man of few words and infinite wisdom in a few areas. His social skills were unpredictable and his manners were terse. His heart was big. His hair was long. He was a sixty plus year old hippie, but he could surf with the kids in San Diego and keep up with the best of them. Chase had retired from the police force so he could concentrate on his real talent, which was tracking. He had a heart for tracking, and he worried that it was becoming a dying art, until he met me. He’d kind of taken me under his wing, and when he found out Patrick had inherited tracking tendencies as well, we automatically fell under his watchful eye. I could count on his help, if not his presence.
After dinner I checked the suitcases, found a storage box and placed Patrick’s gifts on the bottom, out of sight, leaving Rusty’s parent’s gifts on top in plain sight. Then I grabbed my pack full of camping gear, my tracking tools, and my brand new bulletproof vest. I looked at the pile of everything we were taking to San Diego and knew there was no way we were taking the Jeep. We would have to take the Explorer. More room, more comfort, no four-wheel drive, no winch.
“We should be fine after we leave the foothills. The 18 and the 15 should be clear,” Rusty said.
I agreed, though we watched the news again that night to be sure.
“Have they ever had snow in San Diego?” I asked.
“Not that I know of,” Rusty answered. “It doesn’t get cold enough.”
When I put Patrick to bed that night he seemed apprehensive. “Are you sure Santa Claus will know where I am?”
“Yes, Pat, he keeps track of all the kids. It might be a little different there but Santa Claus will plan accordingly.”
“Is it far?”
“Not as far as driving from the ranch to here. You’ll get a couple more pictures colored on the way. Rusty’s family is real nice and they are really excited to have a kid there for Christmas. You get to be their honorary grandkid.”
“Do I hafta call them Grandma and Grandpa?”
“I doubt it. Start out calling them Mr. and Mrs. Michaels, but I bet they tell you to call them Bill and Bev. You know Cody and you know you can call him by his first name. And you will probably see Chase Downing there. Call him Mr. Downing until he tells you different. Rusty has a sister named Sandy. I don’t know if his other brother will be there or not, but his name is Tony.”
“Do they have a dog or a cat?”
“Nope, no pets.”
“What will I do there? Do they have birds? Do they have kids?”
“Sorry, Pat, I don’t know. We will find something to do. Have you ever gone tracking at the beach? There are a hundred different sets of tracks all in the sand.”
I read to him from one of the longer books and within two chapters he had fallen asleep.
“We lucked out,” I said, joining Rusty in the den. “He’s asleep.” I snuggled up to Rusty on the couch. “Today was a good day. I’m glad we got to play in the snow. I’m glad Santa Claus will make it to San Diego. I’m especially glad I’m married to you.”
“You are?”
“Yes, if we have kids are they going to catch us kissing in the snow?”
“I hope so.”
“And what’ll we do if eleven o’clock rolls around and they’re still not in bed?”
“Then I’ll just kiss you good and hard and start taking your clothes off and they’ll go to bed out of embarrassment.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Hey, they need to learn the facts of life. The fact is Daddy loves Mommy. Let me see your hands.”
We were snuggled pretty tight, so it took some squirming around to bring my hands around in front of me. He took my hands in his and inspected them, then brought my hands to his lips and began kissing my fingertips.
“How do they feel?”
“They’re fine. Why? Do you think I need to test them out?”
“Yeah, I think you need to make sure they feel everything like they should.”
“Think I can find a willing test subject?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
My stomach fluttered just at the thought of running my hands over Rusty.
“In the den? With Patrick in the next room?”
“No,” he said softly. “Under the Christmas tree. You said it was magic to lie under the Christmas tree.”
I peeled myself away and led him into the living room. Turning on the Christmas tree lights I lay underneath the tree, looking up through all the lights, watching the bright red and cozy green reflections of the lights dance off the ornaments.
I pulled Rusty down onto the floor. “Look up, right through there. It looks like fairies could dance. It looks like Christmas spirit formed into light.” He lay there on his back gazing up through the tree, so I straddled him and slipped my hands up under his shirt. Oh, yeah.
“Skin,” I said. “This is skin and hard muscle.” I let my fingers dance and tease over the muscles. “Hair,” I said. “I feel hair and more skin.” And more muscle. I brushed the stubble of his beard. Traced his lips. He reached up and kissed my finger as it passed by. “Kisses, I feel kisses.” I knew it wouldn’t take long and he’d have to test out his fingers, too.
Okay, Cass, this is just a ruse so you’d make love with him under the Christmas tree. So, make love to him. Touch him. Oh, yeah. I slipped off him and gave him a deep kiss. A shiver went up my spine and the kiss became more insistent. To hell with the fingers. I needed contact, full body contact. I pulled off my t-shirt and started undoing his buttons. As I made my way down his shirt, his hands were making their way up my body. It seemed to me that men’s shirts were designed to torture women with their little buttons and minuscule buttonholes. Time consuming little buttons, especially hard to handle with raging hormones. He grabbed the shirttails and pulled it over his head. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
A tumble under the Christmas tree. I wondered if Santa ever took a tumble with Mrs. Claus under their tree. Of course he did. It was Christmas at the North Pole year around, right? So he must have. Christmas just wasn’t the same without a tumble under the Christmas tree.
My fingers felt fine. Everything felt wonderful but I thought my vision was going hokey. While the lights were dancing all around us my feelings seemed to merge with the lights. With amusement I realized our timing matched the twinkling of the lights above us. I let it flow into me and through me, marveling at all the many forms Christmas spirit could take.
Next thing I knew, daylight was streaming through the windows. Yikes!
“Rusty! Damn it. Put some clothes on! It’s morning, and we have a kid in the house.”
I yanked on my pants, t-shirt, grabbed my underwear and made a run for the bedroom.
“Huh?” he said behind me.
I returned more calmly once I realized the house was still quiet.
“We need to get ready to leave. Come on. Finger test is over. Everything feels great, but it’s morning. I’m going to shower.”
“Do you need help?” he asked, still sounding drowsy.
“We need to get on the road and it’s going to take longer to get there with Patrick along. You can’t expect a six-year-old to sit still for three hours. We’ll have to stop to stretch and then we’ll have to stop again for lunch. We need to drop Shadow off at the kennel. Come on, we have a lot to do.”
“Okay,” he said, “I’m moving.”
I showered first, then picked a pair of newer jeans and a cute sweater. Jesse called it a boyfriend sweater. I thought Rusty would like it, and it was a little on the dressy side so I felt dressed up for Rusty’s parents.
Patrick woke up and I made him take a quick bath then laid out his clothes and made all the beds. After feeding Shadow I packed up his food, leash and toys for his stay in the kennel. I went through Patrick’s room making sure everything had been packed for the trip to San Diego and his return trip home again.
After a million small details were finally done, we settled in the Explorer, ready to go. We picked our way out of the foothills noticing more and more foothill residents had given up waiting on the snow to clear. We dropped Shadow off at the kennel and took Route 18, heading east to join I-15. We stopped at Ontario Mills and took Patrick to the Rain Forest Café.
“The fishes are real but the other animals are stuffed,” he announced. “I like the rain, though. You get the storm without getting wet. Can I buy Wyatt a t-shirt from here? He’d like one with that funny looking frog on it.”
“Sure, that sounds like a good idea,” I answered.
We had just finished our lunch when all the servers suddenly stopped as a waiter rushed through the restaurant carrying a plate held high. “Volcano!” they shouted one at a time as the dessert sped by and was plunked down right in front of Patrick. He looked at it in wide-eyed amazement. The dessert looked like a huge chocolate volcano. Fudge lava overflowed onto the plate. It was more chocolate than Patrick had eaten all year. I looked at Rusty and he just grinned.
“You know, he’s going to make himself sick on that,” I said.
The waiter handed Patrick a long thin spoon. Two minutes later Rusty and I helped him finish it. Rusty ate most of it. Patrick and I had to quit.
“Chocolate wimps,” Rusty called us, but he was right, we were chocolate wimps.
We continued down the I-15 until we reached La Jolla and then Rusty left the freeway and drove through the beach town until he found a small beach with a sea wall protecting the shore. This looked like a place where we could let Patrick run around and track as much as he liked. Patrick had been to the beach years ago, before he’d been old enough to track and now he found it fascinating.
“Look!” he said excitedly. “Here’s a family just like mine! A mom, dad and two little kids. Only I think the kids are younger because the tracks are smaller, see?” He placed his foot next to the track and his shoe was a little bigger.
“I bet if you took your shoe off it would be about the same size,” I observed.
He took off his shoe and did another comparison then followed the family of tracks with one shoe off and the other one on.
“I think it’s a girl, not a boy,” he decided.
I agreed.
“The one my age is a girl and the one littler than Wyatt is a boy and the dad is fat. Or he’s carrying something big. Probably both. I bet it’s an ice chest full of beer. Mom says beer makes guys fat… Dad’s not fat though.”
“Rusty’s not fat, but he doesn’t drink much beer.”
We pulled into the driveway at Rusty’s parent’s house by mid-afternoon and Bev rushed out to greet us.
“It’s so good to see you!” she squealed. And then to Patrick, “Look how much you’ve grown! You’re getting so big!”
“You just saw him in July,” I said.
“I know, but six-year-old boys grow fast. If you put them up to a growth chart every day you get to make a new mark.”
“I’m in first grade!” Patrick said proudly. “I can read!”
“I bet you can,” Bev said. “Do you like school?”
“Most of the time, but they make us read baby books.”
“I doubt that. Maybe they just need some books that are interesting to small boys.”
“I think he decided he wanted to learn how to read because I promised to buy him a survival guide when he was big enough to understand it. He’s going to be able to read one long before he’s old enough to try a survival trip, though.”
“Take Patrick up to the attic. I dug out some of the kids’ old games and toys. He can stay up there and you two can have the spare bedroom.”
After taking one look at the attic I knew there was no way Patrick would be sleeping up there. It was wall-to-wall toys, but that held little appeal for him. What caught his eye immediately was a huge erector set. The pieces from several sets had been collected in a big plastic bin and for Patrick that was heaven. He looked through the pieces, not quite understanding their purpose but definitely seeing their potential.
He looked through the bookcases and picked a western book that looked like something his grandpa would read.
“Bev,” I said, “it’s nice of you to do all this for Patrick but it’s better if Rusty and I stay up here. If it was Patrick’s room he’d play all night.”
“Nonsense, I can’t let you sleep up here with only a mattress on the floor.”
“It’ll be fine, really.” Rusty and I can play all night, I thought to myself. “I worry that Patrick might try climbing down the ladder to the pool. He’s good at stuff like that. He got stuck in a tree when I took him bird watching. He followed a little bird all the way to the top. It took me climbing up there with ropes to get him down. I’d feel better if he slept in the bedroom.”
“Aw, Aunt Cassidy, that’s no fair.”
“You can play up here all day but at night it’s time to sleep. You can take a toy or a book to bed with you but it’s to sleep, not play, especially on Christmas Eve. Santa Claus won’t come until you are sleeping. Now, I have one, very important rule for you. You cannot go out the back door. The backyard only has a swimming pool in it. No toys, no space to play. It’s too cold to swim and pools are dangerous for little kids. So… no going in the backyard for any reason. Got that?”
“Yes Ma’am, I’m not allowed in the backyard.”
“Good, and you don’t have to be so formal with me. A simple yes or no is fine.”
There was a great big thump as the front door opened and Cody came through carrying his red bicycle. Patrick’s eyes got big with delight.
“You’ve got a bike!”
“Yeah, I’ve got a bike,” Cody said, giving him a high five. “Don’t tell me you don’t have one, every kid should have a bike.”
“I don’t have a bike because there’s nowhere to ride one,” Patrick answered. “We walk to the ranch and the highway is too busy. So I don’t have a bike.”
“Aw dude, we’ll see if you can ride this one. Do you know how to skateboard?”
“No, we don’t have cement at home. But Santa’s going to bring me rollerblades!”
“Cool! Then you can rollerblade on our street. Just don’t go too fast down the hill because Mrs. Rathburn hates calling 911 to get kids out of her rosebushes. Last kid broke his arm. The kid before that broke his ankle. Every kid in the neighborhood has landed in those rose bushes at one time or another. She especially hates it when kids do that in the fall when she is trying to grow the perfect rose to enter into the county fair. She always gets the perfect rose grown and then some kid knocks all the petals off it.”
“I didn’t break anything when I went through her rosebushes,” Rusty said. “I dented her aluminum siding with my hard head.”
“That was you?” Cody asked. “The dent’s still there. When I did it, I had quick reflexes and skidded my bike sideways and plowed a perfect trench right through her yard. She made me rake it all back out and sprinkle fresh grass seed down.”
“When I went down that hill,” Bev added, “I didn’t make it to the rosebushes, I went face first into the yard and skinned my nose on the ground.”
We all stared at her in surprise. Rusty’s mom had landed in Mrs. Rathburn’s yard too? Wow.
“How did you do that?” Cody asked his mom.
“On rollerblades. My wheels locked on a tiny rock and I just went flying!”
“When?” Patrick asked.
“Oh, it was a long time ago. It’s been two, maybe three years.”
“Well, Patrick, looks like we have a tradition to live up to,” I said.
“Oh no you don’t,” Rusty and Cody said in unison.
“Has Mr. Chase landed in the rosebushes?” Patrick asked.
Cody looked over the group like he was wondering whether or not Chase would want this story told. “Yeah, he nearly killed us both. Tommy York called Chase an old man. Then Chase bet him he could skateboard down the hill and make it back up without falling. To make it hard he had me kneel down towards the bottom of the hill. He was going to skateboard down the hill, send the skateboard under me and jump over, turn the board around and then come back up. I’d seen him skateboard. I knew he could do the hill, get the board through the hole, and jump over me. What I didn’t count on was Chase coming down on the wrong end of the skateboard, sending it up into my ribs and then rolling through Mrs. Rathburn’s yard. He put a little dent in her siding, right next to Rusty’s.”
“Oh, Cody, you should have stopped him,” Bev said.
“Nobody can stop Chase once he decides to do something.”
“What did Tommy get for winning his bet?” Patrick asked.
“Nothing. He got scared and ran home and we didn’t see him for a week. But he doesn’t call Chase an old man any more.”
“But he is an old man,” Patrick said.
“Kid, only his skin is old, the rest of him refuses to age.”
“Did Mr. Michaels land in Mrs. Rathburn’s rosebushes?” Patrick asked.
“I don’t know, we’ll have to ask him at dinner,” Rusty answered. “I doubt it.”
We heard the rest of the tales of Mrs. Rathburn’s rosebushes during dinner. Bill returned home from the golf course and Sandy came for dinner. The dining room table was filled to capacity. It normally sat six, and that made the little dining corner behind the stairs cozy. The extended family had increased it to seven and that made it downright cramped. We may have been overcrowded but at least it created a warm and friendly atmosphere.
“Do you remember that Barbie bicycle I had when I was five years old?” Sandy asked.
“No,” all the guys said, but Bev brightened immediately. “Yes! And you looked so cute on it with your brown pigtails flying in the breeze.”
“The day the training wheels came off that thing I landed in Mrs. Rathburn’s rosebushes. I was head to toe scratches.”
“Oh, yes, I remember now,” Bev said. “You were mad because you lost the little glittery license plate off your bike. We never did find it.”
Everybody looked at Bill.
“Well, Dad,” Cody said, “we’ve heard all the stories except yours.”
Bill sighed. He thought about it, but didn’t want to admit he’d also landed in Mrs. Rathburn’s rosebushes.
“I didn’t land in the rosebushes,” he finally said, “I landed in the hedges on the side of her house.”
“How did you manage that?” Cody asked.
“I was chasing a teenager up the street. She had been part of a group of kids that vandalized the school a few years ago. I was on her tail and keeping up pretty good. Some of the other guys were lagging behind. Suddenly the kid turns on me and does this fast kickboxing maneuver and I went flying into the bushes. She took off and I was struggling to get up out of the bushes. All the other guys saw the bushes thrashing around and aimed their guns at me, yelling at me to stand up quietly with my hands behind my head. It was embarrassing.”
“Did Mrs. Rathburn come out and yell at you?” Sandy asked.
“You know Mrs. Rathburn. She isn’t a bad lady. She came out, saw all the policemen in her front yard and just said, ‘What is this world coming to?’ and then went back inside.”
Patrick looked around the table and smiled smugly. “This is an interesting family,” he finally said.
“If I remember right, that’s what Chase said when he first met your family,” Cody added. “Did you bring your hat with the gopher snake hatband?”
“Yeah, but I only wear it for dress up and Aunt Cassidy said you probably don’t dress up for Christmas dinner.” Then he brightened and added, “Do you want to hear how I got the hatband, though? Aunt Cassidy killed the snake on a survival trip because she had to eat and then she saved the skin for me. My dad made it into a hatband for me. Isn’t that cool? You want to see it?”
Sandy’s complexion turned green. Bev’s eyes got big. “Oh, you poor dear, reduced to eating gopher snake. You must have been starved.” Bill sat back with his hands folded over his chest. He filed the story away, knowing one day he’d understand this odd little daughter-in-law of his. Cody seemed to be enjoying the women’s reactions. Patrick left the table and ran out to the Explorer to retrieve his cowboy hat from the box in the back. He returned wearing it tilted at an angle, a mischievous cowboy glint in his eyes. Too bad he couldn’t sing. He was such a good looking kid that all the girls would faint if he became a country star.
“Oh, my, would you look at the boy! We need to go to the mall and have your picture taken in that hat! Your mom will love it! Sandy, do you want to go to the mall after dinner?”
“Sure,” she answered.
I put Patrick in his outfit for dress up occasions and the two women went nuts.
“I know just the place to go!” Sandy said. “They have this backdrop with aspen trees and they have a saddle prop.”
Patrick looked at me for help but he knew he’d been the one who had started it.
Just before Bev and Sandy left to have Patrick’s picture taken I warned them, “Don’t let him out of your sight for a second, and if he points out a bad guy, he means it. Run in the opposite direction.”
“She’s not kidding,” Rusty added for emphasis.
As they disappeared down the walk, I asked Rusty, “Do you think one of us should go too?”
“Nah, they can handle him.”
“But can they handle what happens when he goes to the mall? Remember last time I took him to the mall? Maybe I should go along.”
“That would just double the trouble. They’ll be fine.”
“You don’t think we should warn them?”
“We already did, they’ll be fine.”
“Okay, I guess we can use the time to bring in his presents and hide them. Then I’ll take a little time for myself and stop worrying about the trouble he may be getting into.”