Into the Fire

(continued from 11/27/09)

Hutch drove up to Mick’s barn to see if Nelson might want to grab some dinner. He was about to stop when he saw what he thought must have been Bob’s truck parked outside the barn. He decided to head to his motel and gather up some of his stuff to take to his new home. He liked that the place was furnished. The furniture was well-used but he could tell it’d been cleaned. The good thing was Mr. Raleigh told him he’d just put a new bed in the place the day before Hutch arrived and made a point of telling him it was a Sealy Posturepedic. Hutch looked forward to sleeping on a good bed especially when his back would get to hurting him after shoeing a few tough ones or shoeing a few too many in one day. He wasn’t getting any younger, but he wanted his career to last as long as possible. It just gave him such satisfaction. When he corrected a problem, there were no better words to hear than “Nobody’s been able to fix that except you”.
The rain stopped by the time Hutch pulled up to his unit at The City Motel. Still cloudy with a darkening sky. He would’ve preferred just to shower and go to bed, but he forced himself to haul out the boxes he intended to take over to the duplex. Then he went to the office to give the manager his check out date.
Showered and dressed, he headed back out to his truck unable to keep from thinking about his wife and how much he missed her. He did wonder if she’d somehow reconsidered and not filed the signed papers but sincerely doubted it. Her final words to him rang painfully in his ears, “You know, Hutch, right now I could say to you I never want to see you again and almost mean it.” The tears were there in her pretty blue eyes. As much as she’d tried to hold them back, she couldn’t, but she saw the tears in his eyes as well. He continued to wonder if there was any way on earth she might have thought it over after he left and . . . well, what was the point of thinking about it now? He redirected his focus back to moving, but his mind didn’t cooperate for long.
Just as he pulled into the small carport at his new home, Nelson pulled up in his silver Toyota pickup.
“Hey, horseshoer,” he greeted him.
“Mr. Foreman, to what do I owe this pleasure?” he jived.
“No pleasure, man. Just neighbors.”
Hutch laughed. “You eaten yet?”
“No. Give me 20 minutes to clean up.”
Hutch unlocked the unit and returned to his truck, methodically unloading his stuff. It felt dreary moving into a place alone. He liked married life—or his version of it, he guessed. Obviously he didn’t have a clear understanding of what it took to stay married, and he cussed himself.
His Mom and Dad were steady but seemed kind of distant. He was well aware of their love for him and his brother and sister. Both his brother and sister wanted to go to college, and his parents sent them. He’d always been the one who loved the animals; the one who nursed the hurt birds, loved on the two dogs, the two cats, the turtles, the fish, and anything else that found its way to the Hutchinson household. His brother Robert was the math whiz, always trying to invent things. He laughed to himself as he remembered the go-cart Robert made with the “convertible top” so he could drive it in the rain or sun. Trouble was when he took off down the steep hill one afternoon in the rain, the convertible top flew off behind him and smashed into his friend Curtis’ go-cart sending it and Curtis flying into the wet grass. That was the end of Curtis’ go-cart and the end of Robert’s convertible.
His sister Sally was the home economics queen. She could cook and sew anything, and she thought she wanted to be a home economics teacher until Benjamin Crosser swept her off her feet in September of her sophomore year of college. They were married before spring quarter started. She ended up working in a fabric store where after only three months she became the assistant manager. Benjamin completed his studies and became an electrical engineer. Both he and Robert worked for the same firm and made the big bucks.
Sally cried when she found out Hutch was leaving. She couldn’t believe her brother was getting divorced because she knew how much he loved Susan. No woman even came close to snagging Hutch until he found Susan. She knew her brother wasn’t perfect—that he’d been a drinker and a carouser and sometimes a pretty bad actor, but he’d always been good and dependable with the horseshoeing, and when he met Susan nearly everything changed. Sally felt overwhelmed at their wedding because she knew how much he had to love this girl for him to settle down and get married. Susan was the only one for Hutch.
“Hey, you look like you’re a thousand miles away,” Nelson remarked as he walked over to find Hutch leaning up against his truck.
“Yeah, just about.”
“You know you’re going to have to call that girl.”
“What girl?” he asked, puzzled.
“The one you claim is divorcin’ you.”
“I don’t think I could take gettin’ hung up on right now. Ready to go?”
“C’mon. I’ll drive.”

(excerpt from For His Glory; sequel to Hope Of Glory)