| |
Sadie grabbed a clue. Zack ran beside her to cross the parking lot toward the SUVs. Cameramen filmed from the front passenger windows. The two couples in front of them took the first two closest vehicles, so he and Sadie rushed toward the third. Zack sprinted around the car to the driver’s door and heard a car door slam shut. Sadie was already in the backseat. He jumped into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and turned toward her.
She tore the envelope open and yanked out their first destination with a folded map. “Says Cowboy Stadium.”
He spun around and shifted the car into reverse.
“You don’t need directions?” the camera guy asked while filming.
Zack shook his head. Dealey Plaza was close to Hwy 35, and it only took him a minute to get there. He drove up the on-ramp to find traffic crawling. Impatiently, he rapped the steering wheel. Although they’d made it out of the parking lot first, he doubted that’d do much good. Plus, some teams might get ahead by taking a different route.
“Come on, come on,” Sadie chanted. She’d never been what he’d call patient.
Zack kept his left hand on the steering wheel, his eyes on the road, and held out his right hand to the cameraman. “Zack.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw the camera lower. Zack glanced over and realized the guy looked young, like a teenager, with short hair spiked on the top.
He shook Zack’s hand. “Truman. How do you know where the stadium is, are you from Dallas?”
“I’m not, but I’ve been here a few times.”
“The high school team he coaches played here for the championship three years ago.” The pride in Sadie’s voice made him smile.
“Cool. What made you guys apply for the show?”
“Why do most people enter?” she countered.
Truman shrugged. “I’ve gotten a variety of answers to that question. Most say they did it for the money, some to challenge themselves, and others claim they wanted to see places they’d never been.”
“All the above,” Sadie said.
“I saw the footage of when the curtain dropped. You two seemed surprised to see one another. Does that mean you haven’t been communicating lately?”
Neither he nor Sadie responded.
After a couple of minutes, Truman placed the camera at his feet. “I understand you’re not willing to discuss your separation, but I have to ask you guys questions. It’s my job.”
“We understand,” Zack replied.
The twenty-mile trip took an hour and fifteen minutes. Once in the parking lot, Zack followed the Chasing Sunsets markers to a specified area. Three white SUVs were already there.
Truman had started filming as soon as they’d turned off the highway. More camera workers crowded the designated entrance. Zack threw the car into park and hopped out. Sadie was a couple of steps ahead of him. She turned toward him and held out her hand.
He’d held her hand so many times while they dated and since they married, yet never had her offered hand meant more. He gripped it, and they ran as fast as they could. The stadium entrance led to a tunnel that brought them to the field. It’d been converted into multiple goalposts areas where a football waited on a tee about fifteen yards away from the uprights. Each area had an official in uniform. A movement overhead caught his attention. He looked up to see someone ziplining across the arena.
Signs with KICKER and ZIPLINER in bold letters pointed in two different directions. It was a no-brainer which of them would do each task. He grinned at Sadie. “You got this.”
She’d begun playing soccer at the age of three and continued through high school. She pointed upward and shivered. “Be careful.”
He wanted to give her a quick kiss or a reassuring hug, but having no idea if she would accept or reject him, he chose to run toward the signs leading upward. The posters led him into the stands and through a maze of stadium seats. Once at the top, instead of checking on Sadie’s progress, he listened to instructions from the zipline operator with a headset as another worker helped Zack into the harness. The cable started in the nosebleed section and descended to the lowest seats.
The instructor asked, “Have you done this?”
“With friends.” While in college, he met his best friends in Colorado for a week during the summer, and they’d ziplined one day. “Nothing this long or high. Or with safety cables.”
The safety worker helping him suit up, made certain Zack’s helmet was secure. The other man clipped Zack’s harness to the large zipline cable. “Grab the handlebars and lift your feet.” The two men checked and re-checked the security lines and his harness placement.
“You can stand now.” The instructor pointed to the other side. “You’ll go fast at first. Your speed will automatically decrease toward the end. You don’t have to do anything except hold on. Any questions?”
He shook his head.
The instructor unhooked a stopper from Zack’s cable and spoke into his headset. “Ready. Over.”
At the man’s thumbs up, Zack lifted his legs. The next instant, he sped through the air, the rush exhilarating. He saw Sadie set a ball on the tee. When he’d gotten his first glimpse of her this morning, the circles under her eyes were the deepest he’d ever seen on her. From lack of sleep or something else, he wasn’t certain. He hoped this trip would erase or at the very least lighten them.
~
Sadie almost hugged Zack before he took off for the stands. When she’d held her hand out to him in the parking lot, it was the most natural action. She hadn’t planned to do it and couldn’t deny how much confidence his touch gave her.
After looking up once, she didn’t do it again. Just seeing the cables and people streaking across the stadium terrified her. She ran to the first unoccupied makeshift field and did a few lunges. It wouldn’t help if she pulled a muscle on her first day. Warmed up, she backed about six feet away from the football on the tee, then ran forward and kicked.
The ball took flight like a line drive, straight but too low. While she retrieved the ball, a loud whistle and cheer sounded from the left. Someone must’ve completed the task.
She set the football back on the tee and cocked it to the right. The distance on the last kick would’ve made it, now to nail the height. Her next try shot outside the posts. Perfect height and distance though. Her third try worked, and the official blew his whistle and held his arms up. The same signal she’d seen so many times at Zack’s games and on TV. They watched a lot of football in their house on the nights and days Zack wasn’t busy at work with his own team. He’d told her he never really considered another career. His stepfather had been a coach, and Zack knew he wanted to be the same since his junior year in high school.
The official reached into his back pocket and pulled out an envelope. She neared the man and waited for Zack while watching the others kick. A few people stood by their umpires, while others struggled to make their field goal. She counted only six couples. Were the others ahead or behind them?
Two minutes later, Zack jogged onto the field from the end zone and came up alongside her, breathing hard. Heat rushed through her when he put a hand on the small of her back
The official handed them the envelope.
Sadie ripped it open. “Chapel Creek Ranch. It gives an address in Sanger. We need the map.”
They ran out of the stadium side by side.
Truman waited near the car and slid inside when he saw them.
Sadie navigated from the backseat. She’d rather sit next to Zack or drive because sometimes she suffered carsickness in the back. A small cooler and brown sack, that hadn’t been there when they left Dealey Plaza, perched on the seat next to her. She opened the cooler and pulled out water bottles and sandwiches. Chips, apples and protein bars filled the sack. She placed a sandwich and bag of chips on the console between the two front seats and slipped a water bottle into the cup holder. “Lunch is served. There’re also protein bars and apples.”
She didn’t need to ask if Zack was hungry. She assumed he’d eaten breakfast about the same time she did and would be famished like her.
“Truman, would you like some?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I’ll eat at the Ranch. Thanks though. I don’t think prior participants ever offered me food. I appreciate it.”
An hour later, they turned onto the tree-lined drive to Chapel Creek Ranch. They drove through an open black laser gate that depicted a knight on a horse. A wooden railed fence separated the dirt pathway from the vast acres of plush grassland. Dozens of majestic horses were in the meadow, some running, some grazing—a most peaceful scene.
Zack parked by the four other Audi SUVs. Truman followed and recorded them as they ran. They took the pebbled path toward the buildings where signs with arrows pointed left for KNIGHTS and right for STABLE HANDS.
“I’m good with either,” Zack said.
“You be a knight.” It made sense. He’d always been her knight.
~
Sadie tracked the markers until she came to a stable. Once through the entrance, it took her eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darker inside. One central hallway with a high roof split the middle of the barn. She hurried along the passageway, able to view the spacious stalls and horses on both sides of her thanks to the walls made of wood and iron bars. Three animals hung their heads over the half door on their enclosures. One even nickered when she passed. At the end of the aisle, men and women waited in chairs, some in ranch clothing and others in the same uniform as the officials from the stadium. A man in a cowboy hat and jeans stood and came forward. “I’m Ned. I’ll be your trainer.”
“Sadie.”
“Good to meet you.” He led her to a tack room filled with riding equipment. A woman official trailed them. Although Sadie had never ridden a horse, she knew a little about them by watching The Kentucky Derby, The Belmont Stakes, and The Preakness races once a year.
Ned pointed to the leather horse halters and lead lines on the wall. “Pick one. We need to walk Horatio into the paddock out back before we muck his stall and set out fresh hay.”
She snatched a black set off the wall and followed Ned.
“The Medieval Times Dinner Tournament started in Spain and then came to the United States,” he said.
Knowing she might be asked to answer questions about different challenges at some point, she listened intently.
“Chapel Creek Ranch has the largest PRE breeding facility in the US.”
“PRE?” she asked.
“Pure Raza Espanola. It means of Pure Spanish Descent. Most horses in the show are Andalusians, like the one we will be taking care of today.” He stopped at a stall with a beautiful white horse. The inside was spacious with hay on the dirt floor and a trough for food and one for water on the wall. “Andalusians are known as the horse of royalty. They’re elegant, highly intelligent, and easy to train. We also have Friesians, Thoroughbreds, and Quarter Horses.”
Ned opened the half-door. He made a motion with his arm. “Good morning, Horatio. Let me introduce you to Sadie.”
The animal stretched his front legs out before him and lowered his head in a bow. He actually bowed!
“Sadie, I’m sure you know this, but never walk behind a horse.”
“Right.” She wasn’t scared, more like timid. She’d never been this close to a horse—not to mention such a sizable one.
“If you’ll grab the stool by the door to stand on, I’ll show you how to get the halter on him. He’s a stallion, used for breeding now.” Ned rubbed the horse’s neck.
She picked up the stool and crossed the stall. After setting it down, she lifted her hand and rubbed his neck as Ned was doing. “Hi, boy.”
The steed stilled, perhaps sensing her hesitation.
“You’re a beautiful white horse.”
“He’s technically a gray,” Ned explained. “The skin underneath his hair is gray, not pink. That distinguishes him from a white.”
“Fascinating.”
“Horatio performed for twelve years. His specialty was dressage.”
She’d watched dressage, where horses appeared to be dancing, on the Olympics. She never understood why they didn’t all get the same score. To her, it’d seemed like they’d done identical things.
“He’s a docile fellow. Aren’t you?” Ned motioned with his hand in a different gesture.
Horatio bobbed his head in agreement.
Sadie smiled. Hours ago, she’d believed smiling beyond her.
Once they got Horatio outside, Ned meticulously coached her on what to do while she mucked the stall. Her official approved on her first check. Then they inspected the animal for injuries—none to report, thankfully. Her last duty, to the stallion’s delight, was to give him a shower. His long flowing mane was difficult to wash, and he shook the water off of his body often. She would swear he’d done it to tease her.
By the end she was laughing and completely drenched, having spent the most delightful afternoon being charmed by a horse.
“Be the attitude you want to be around.” ~ Tim DeTellis