LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

EPILOGUE

July 1989 to Present

BEHOLD, CHILDREN ARE A HERITAGE FROM THE LORD (Psalm 127:3)

            It was strange having Cat for a housemate, especially as I went through the grieving process. But it was such a blessing having her there! It was both sad and wonderful to hear little Debbie follow Naomi’s lead by calling Cat Mommy.

            Cat did something in raising our girls that some would not approve of. I myself didn’t approve at first. What she did was not tell the girls who was birthed by Becky, and who she herself gave birth to. She didn’t want one to feel favored over the other due to biology. But she did sell me on it with one simple point.

            “As sinners, we are all adopted into God’s family,” she explained.

            As I dwelt on that, I came to like what she was doing. Plus, she also suggested giving them the option of them knowing when they reached a certain age.

            When Cat first moved into our three bedroom condo, we were platonic roommates. I had my room, Cat had hers, and the girls shared the third. But as the wounds of my grief began to scar over, living with a woman I was extremely attracted to started to wear on me more and more.

            Unbeknownst to me, Cat had the same thing going on, but she didn’t show it until three days after the first anniversary of losing Becky. I came home to find her in her old Hooter’s uniform. My jaw dropped as she spread her arms open and grinned. “What do you think?”

            I plopped on the sofa, put my face into my hands. “Cat, you’re killing me!”

            “Hey now,” she scolded, placing her hands on her hips. “I may have gained fifteen or twenty pounds since I last wore this, but I think it distributed pretty well.”

            “Tell me about it. It’s also snugger than I remember.”

            “So you think I’m fat!”

            “No, no, no!”

            “I’ll have you know, muscle weighs more than fat. I may be a little heavier now, but I’m firmer and in better shape.”

            “I’ll say.”

            “You’ll say what?”

            “I’ll say it’s getting harder by the day to live in such close proximity to you.”

            “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked with a hurt look on her pretty face.

            I stood and gripped her shoulders. “Catlina, you have to marry me!”

            “Is that a demand?”

            “Yes!”

            “Well then, I guess I have no choice but to marry you.”

            “Do you mean it?” I asked happily.

            “I do,” she smiled. “Pun intended. But wouldn’t you like me to agree willingly?”

            “As in free will?”

            “Exactly,” she replied with a grin. Then she put her hands on my shoulders and pushed downward. I got the hint.

            I went to one knee and taking both of her hands in mine. “Catlina Clutterbuck, would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

            She knelt in front of me. “Yes, I would be honored, most honorable Mr. Burl. But you have to promise me one thing.”

            “Anything, my Princess, just name it.”

            “A little brother for little Debbie and Naomi.”

            “I’ll do my best. But what if we end up with nine more sisters for little Debbie and Naomi, and then your biological clock stops ticking?”

            “We’ll just have to keep going through the motions and hope for a miracle, kinda like Sarah and Abraham. Are you willing to do that?”

            “Am I ever!”

            Pastor Kenny Clutterbuck, Cat’s brother, had recently transferred to a church near Milwaukee. Forgive me Cheese Heads, but as a member of the Chicago Bears football team, I didn’t want to be married in Packer territory. So Cat and I got hitched on August 19, 1990, at an outdoor chapel in a park on the North Shore, with Lake Superior in the background. I also bought us a nice little acreage just outside of Two Harbors where we lived during football’s off season.

            Ten months after marrying, and not quite a year after promising to give our girls a little brother, Joseph Kenneth Burl joined our family. Nineteen months after that, Benjamin Loyd Burl was added. Two boys for the price of one promise. Over the course of the next ten years, we adopted two more girls and two more boys. We were a big fun filled family that shared lots of love and laughter.

            During the 2004 football season, I injured my right knee making an actual football play. Although a punter for sixteen seasons, I recorded four tackles, threw two touchdown passes, and ran for two touchdowns during my playing career. But it was my fourth tackle that ended my career.

            After having knee surgery on my kicking leg, and being only a few years from forty, I didn’t even try a comeback, I simply retired. It was wonderful! I had more time with my family, and I also drew close to God like never before. When my three oldest children decided to be baptized, I joined them.

            Cat was the first to hug my dripping wet body. There was a huge smile on her face as tears ran down her cheeks. She had been praying for years that I would take my relationship with Christ to the deepest level. She even let me know that she had guilt over my football career interfering with my walk with the Lord. For it was she that talked me into trying out for my college team.

            I had thought this guilt ridiculous. For it was my football career that gave our family no financial concerns. But when I retired, in my thirties mind you, I also took up painting again. I also talked Cat into painting again with me. We began doing Biblical themes. They became quite popular. After twenty years, and over a hundred paintings in circulation, I surpassed my total income as a Chicago Bears employee.

            I actually enjoyed it when Cat gloatingly gave me a big ‘I told you so. God has ways to take care of us, Mr. Golden Leg.’

            “It’s not a golden leg anymore, it’s an olden leg.”

            So, now back to where I started this tale of two loves. It had been thirty five years since Becky passed away. My daughter had asked me to tell her about the eighties, and the two women I was in love with. I had kissed Debbie on the forehead.

            But before I started, I looked to my left and noticed Naomi staring trance like at Becky’s tombstone. My two oldest daughters were now thirty-six years old. Although tempted a few times, they had never asked who Becky birthed and raised for their first year of life.

            Cat and I always paid our respects in remembrance of Becky once a year by visiting her gravesite. There was a big lilac bush behind the cemetery in an adjoining park. Becky had loved lilacs, so Cat always picked some fresh flowers from the bush to put on her grave.

            Since the girls had been adults, there was only a half a dozen times we all went together. Debbie always became sentimental, talkative, and inquisitive. Naomi always became wistful, quiet, and sad. If they knew the truth, I always supposed their behaviors would be the other way around.

            Cat came walking up to me and our girls. She had a bouquet of lilacs in her hand. She handed one of the flowers to Debbie. “Here, Sweety, you always loved the smell of lilacs.”

            “Thanks, Mom,” Debbie grinned, sniffed the flower, and put an arm around her sister. They nodded at each other. Then Debbie said, “Dad, before we get you to reminisce, we feel the time has come. Naomi and I want to know.”

            Cat and I looked at each other. Cat bit her lower lip, then smiled wistfully and shrugged. “Why don’t you do the honors, Honey.”

            I couldn’t speak, so I simply put my hand on Debbie’s cheek. Both daughters drew a breath and Debbie put a hand to her chest. The sisters looked at each other. Then Debbie looked at Cat, but Cat was staring at her daughter’s feet, much the same way Naomi had been staring at Becky’s tombstone.

            “Mom,” Debbie called. Then Cat looked up and into her adopted daughter’s eyes. Debbie stepped toward Cat and hugged her protectively. “I’m sure Becky would have been an excellent mother. But I love you with all my heart, Mommy!”

            “Oh!” Cat gasped. Then with a croaky voice she said, “I love you with all my heart too, my darling Daughter. You’ll always be my little Debbie.”

            Then the four off us were in a group hug. All eight eyes wet with love and remembrance.

THE END

            WRITER’S NOTE: Next week I will be starting a story called ‘Heavy Metal Miracle.’ It is the tale of a famous guitarist who finds redemption and love after years of sex, drugs and rock and roll. His biggest surprise is finding out he has a teenage son by a girlfriend from his youth.

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

CHAPTER 16

Sunday, June 25^th to Friday, July 7^th 1989

A TIME TO KILL, AND A TIME TO HEAL (Ecclesiastes 3:3)

            Cat was healing nicely two days after being stabbed twice in her abdomen, and having the side of her neck sliced. Thirteen stitches it took to close up the wound just below her head. Thankfully it wasn’t quite deep enough to do internal damage.

            That Sunday morning was the first since her emergency surgery that she was able to speak coherently. Becky and I waited outside her room while two detectives finished talking to her. We both thought her conversation with them would tax her too much to say very much to us. But not for the first time, I underestimated Cat.

            “Hi, guys,” she said happily with a wince. Then she asked, “How’s Naomi?”

            “She’s just fine with your grandmother.” Becky smiled warmly. “How are you?”

            “Oh, I can’t complain. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for Kickypoo.”

            My eyebrows raised. Both for her using her old term of affection for me in front of my wife, and also crediting me for her being alive. I looked at her I.V. and realized there had to be morphine or some other narcotic that quelled her pain, but also made her loopy. She explained the second thing that made my eyebrows raise when I asked, “How am I the reason you’re alive?”

            “The self-defense you taught me when we were an item.”

            “Really? How?”

            “When my attacker attacked me,” she said. Then she giggled, coughed, choked, winced, and drew a deep breath.

            “Cat, maybe we better leave you to rest,” Becky offered.

            “No, no, no, don’t go,” she whined, childlike. “I’m okay.”

            “You’re sure?” I asked.

            “Yes… Now like I was saying. When this masked creep grabbed me, my first instinct was to resist. That’s what got me stabbed in the gut. Then he tackled me and tried to slit my throat. I turned my head, and that’s when I calmed some and went with the flow. So when he went to slash my throat…”

            Cat groaned, closed her eyes, and clutched her bed sheet. As much as I wanted to hear what she had to say, I felt like she needed to rest and be quiet. I was about to say as much when a nurse walked briskly into the room. She said, “Oh, I see you have visitors. I’m Jenny.”

            “I’m Becky,” Becky said. Then I said, “I’m Loyd.”

            She didn’t recognize me as only a mildly famous punter in the NFL. But unfortunately, she thought she knew who Becky was.

            “You must be Catalina’s mother,” Jenny said cheerily. Then her face fell when Becky said no rather tightly. The nurse stammered. “I, um, I mean, Catalina told me just this morning that her only sister was, um, deceased.  And, well, you two look so much alike. Cousin maybe?”

            “Coincidence,” I said, and the two loves of my life looked at me skeptically. I don’t think I lied, but it did occur to me after my statement that the similarities between Becky and Cat were no coincidence. For I was first drawn to Cat because she resembled Becky, and both women knew it.

            The nurse quietly went about her duties taking Cat’s vitals. I felt bad that the mishap took the wind out of her sails of cheeriness. When she left, Cat continued the play by play of her attack.

            “Even though he had stabbed me in the stomach when he grabbed me and tackled me, shock and adrenaline must have kept the pain at bay. I was on my back, and he was on top. He came straight at my throat with this huge knife. Using his own momentum, which you taught me, Kickypoo, I knocked him to the side. And although the knife sliced the side of my throat, it didn’t go directly through my Adam’s apple. All the commotion got the attention of Riley.”

            “Who’s Riley?” I asked.

            “The retired police officer that was camping in her yard,” Becky answered.

            “Riley!” Cat croaked, then began to whimper.

            “Riley walked right into the killer’s knife,” Becky whispered. “Sliced right from the stomach into the chest. DOA at the hospital. The creep got away.”

            A big problem was Riley’s killer and Cat’s attempted killer was still at large, and it wasn’t her stalker, who was the obvious suspect. For he had as fool proof of an alibi as you can get. For the fool was in the county jail at the time of Cat’s assault.

            Since Cat had no other known enemies, it was a head scratcher for the detectives. But it turned out that the killer had the wrong woman. His deceitful heart that was desperately wicked was filled with jealousy, rage, and lust. Two types of lust, blood and sexual.

            Cat wiggled and squirmed in her hospital bed, anxious to be released. Both Cat’s and Becky’s daughters, who were both my daughters, were being watched by Cat’s grandmother. A third child of mine was in growing in Becky’s womb. We had yet to tell Cat, but now that she was doing so well, we broke the news.

            “That’s wonderful!” Cat responded enthusiastically. Too enthusiastically, for she winced in pain right after her face lit up with delight.

            “Easy, girlfriend,” Becky soothed, touching her leg. “I better call your grandmother and make sure our girls aren’t giving her too much trouble.”

            Becky turned to exit the room and go to the lobby for a pay phone. This was still many years before cell phones, and Cat’s room didn’t have a phone in it. Before Becky went through the door, she turned, took a few steps toward me, and gave me a quick peck on the lips. Then she mouthed, “I love you.”

            Feeling uncomfortable with this display of affection in front of Cat, I responded by simply tapping my heart. She squeezed my hand in understanding as we smiled at each other.

            “Be back in a few,” Becky said cheerfully as she briskly walked out of the room.

            But that was the last time I ever saw her alive.

            Remember Bruce?

            I’ll keep this short and sour, because it is anything but sweet. Bruce was deranged. He kidnapped Becky as she was talking to Cat’s grandmother on a pay phone. He did a poor job of hiding the gun he tried to conceal under Becky’s right arm. Yet he did a good enough job that he managed to leave the hospital before the security could stop him.

            Although security were able to give the police a description of his car, they failed to get his license number. So when the authorities finally discovered his vehicle at a secluded park, they also found Becky’s mutilated body in the back seat. He had raped and stabbed her multiple times.

            His corpse sat in the front seat. With a gun in his hand, a bullet in his forehead had exploded out the back of his head. Although he was right handed, the gun was in his left because Cat had broken it during their scuffle, when he apparently thought she was Becky.

            It turned out that he had been staying in an apartment across from ours in the Chicago suburb where we lived. He had been stalking Becky. When she went to stay with Cat for a few days, ironically because Cat had a stalker, it seemed to be the perfect opportunity to satisfy his depraved heart.

            Sadly, my wife’s brutal murder made me a household name. I was only a mildly famous football player. Yet it was this crime against Becky, rather than my athletic prowess, that garnered me fifteen minutes of worldwide, unwanted fame.

            I didn’t know that grief could make you physically ill. It especially tore me up when our daughter called for “Mama.” Thankfully, little Debbie had become very familiar with Cat. She stepped up to the plate big time and began mothering my motherless daughter. She also made me the most generous offer of my lifetime.

            It happened right after the funeral no less. The ceremony signifying the ultimate end to this carnal existence.  We were riding in the limo directly behind the hearse, taking Becky to the spot where she would be risen during the resurrection. With my mind weary with grief, fear and anger, Cat looked at me with her lovely green eyes bloodshot from weeping. She declared, “I’m gonna come stay with you in Chicago.”

            “Huh?” was all my dumbfounded tongue could respond.

            “I’m gonna be Debbie’s nanny,” she told me, rather than asking.

            “For how long?”

            She shrugged. “As long as it takes. Debbie needs a mother.”

            I stupidly thought she meant until I found someone to remarry. “That could take a long time. Right now I can’t even fathom getting married again.”

            She snorted a non-humorous laugh. “That’s not what I meant, Loyd.”

            She paused, put a hand on my knee, and fresh tears ran down her cheeks. “Don’t take this the wrong way, I don’t mean this romantically. But I love you very much, Loyd. You’re a special guy, and the father of my daughter. I don’t want you to be alone in this. And I want to be a mother figure for little Debbie. I love her with all my heart, and she’s my daughter’s sister as well.”

            Cat put her face in her hands and sobbed and groaned. Her sobs were for emotional pain. The groan for her physical. My own eyes were blurry with tears as I rubbed her back. I didn’t know how her generous offer was going to work out. But it was the first instance of healing the gaping wound on my heart. At that time I not only was taking life one day at a time, but one minute at a time. Just breathe.

            I became angry with God for quite a while. Nothing made sense. Unlike Job, I blamed God foolishly. But God’s compassion never fails, and His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22, 23). I eventually saw the light.

            In hindsight I can see how God’s generous Spirit was working in Cat to help and comfort me. For it was her influence that opened my blind eyes, seeing that God was the only hope in a fallen world.

            I took comfort, just like the scripture says, knowing that the next thing Becky would realize as she now rested in peace, was the second coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, when the righteous dead will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and from that point on, to always be with Him. What a wonderful promise! (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18)

            I also marveled, later in reflection, that something with such a painful ending, spawned a new beginning.

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

CHAPTER 15

Sunday May 8^th  1988 to June 23^rd 1989

TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON, A TIME FOR EVERY PURPOSE UNDER HEAVEN (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

            Becky and I didn’t waste any time. A week after she agreed to marry me, we were married on a Sunday morning by Chester, the minister of her friend with whom she had been doing Bible studies. He was a Seventh Day Adventist pastor, so the empty church held plenty of room for all ten of our small wedding party.

            Our honeymoon was postponed because I had to report to the Chicago Bears training camp. I made the team! I also made minimum wage for the NFL. But this was pretty good coin if you compared it to your average nine to five job. On Sunday September 4^th, my Chicago Bears beat the Miami Dolphins. My first NFL game!

            The next day, September 5^th, Catalina Clutterbuck went into labor. Thankfully, by air, Two Harbors Minnesota isn’t all that far from Chicago. Also thankfully, I had an excellent employer that chartered me a flight getting me to Two Harbors just in time to see our healthy baby girl born! My first child!

            To my surprise, Cat birthed our daughter in her grandparent’s home. However, her grandmother was a midwife. She also had another woman with her who was also a midwife as well as a nurse. Our daughter weighed eight pounds, four ounces. We called her Naomi Bella Burl. Naomi was one of Cat’s favorite female Bible characters, and Bella was after her grandmother.

            On Saturday, October 1^st, Becky gave birth to our daughter. Her first child, my second. Here’s an interesting side note, to me anyway. She was 33, I was 22, she was born in ’55, me in ’66, our daughter in ’88. Our baby girl weighed seven pounds, seven ounces. We named her Deborah Bonnie Burl. Deborah was after Becky’s favorite female Bible character, and Bonnie was after her mother.

            Some in the Chicago Bears organization had raised eyebrows when their punter needed to briefly leave to see his baby daughter be born, one month after he needed to leave to see his baby daughter be born. I felt blessed, as a rookie no less, to be able to see my children come into the world during the football season.

            Thankfully, Deborah arrived on a Saturday, and we had a home game Sunday, in which we beat the Buffalo Bills. Becky was living with me, in the bonds of marriage in Chicago. This birth was more convenient than flying up to the north shore of Minnesota to see Naomi’s entrance into the world.

            After getting married, Becky kept up her Bible studies and became a dedicated follower of Jesus. I say to my shame, that my football career kept me from taking Bible truth as seriously as my wife did.

            So when she was baptized on June 25^th, 1988, by Pastor Chester, the minister who married us, I was in attendance, but did not go down into the watery grave myself. It would be a decade and a half before I fully understood the concepts behind baptism, and the significance of being raised to newness of spiritual life as you are first dunked, and then pulled up out of the water as if resurrected.

            Another event happened to delay my spiritual growth. A year after Becky was baptized, the mother of my daughter was brutally murdered. The thing that took a while to click was her spiritual condition. The other mother of my daughter finally got through to me that the next thing the mother of my daughter would realize is the second coming of Christ as he was resurrected from the grave.

            Eventually I would see this parallel between baptism and the resurrection of the righteous. For we are made righteous when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior and choose to follow Him. This would lead to my own baptism, along with my two oldest daughters and one of my sons. Baptism is the way we honor Christ’s resurrection.

            I wept that day, after I came out of the watery grave. Mostly overjoyed at fully accepting Jesus into my life. Oh, I had always fancied myself an upright, moral individual. And I was not ashamed to classify myself a Christian. But by the time I was baptized, I had advanced from an admirer of Christ to a follower.

            There was another element to my tears. As I hugged the mother of one of my oldest daughters, I remembered the deceased mother of one of my oldest daughters. You see, in the year before the untimely death, the two mothers of my oldest daughters had become close friends.

            To this day their bond amazes me! Satan wanted to use their human nature to make them jealous enemies. But Christ put the Kingdom of God into both of their hearts, and they became spiritual sisters. They took joy in their daughters being half siblings. So when one of them perished from this planet far too early, the other ended up raising her daughter as her own.

            This is the part of the story that I haven’t looked forward to telling. I often have wondered how much Becky and Cat’s friendship had played a role in the violence that occurred toward the end of June 1989.

            I had been at Chicago Bears training camp, honing my skills as a punter, and a holder for the place kicker. On Monday, June 22^nd, Becky, our daughter, and our daughter’s sibling that was in the twelfth week fetal stage had driven up to the north shore to visit Cat for a couple days. Cat shared a bungalow with a girlfriend from church north of Two Harbors.

            It was a little bit isolated, and Cat’s roommate was going to be gone for a couple days, as she and her fiancée were attending the funeral of his father. I was little ill at ease with Becky’s insistence to go stay with Cat. You see, Cat had acquired a stalker.

            There was a restraining order against the obsessed, unhinged young man. Also, a retired police officer from Cat’s church was staying in his camper on the half acre lot where dwelt Cat’s house. Although I was tickled that the two loves of my life were friends, this was one co-mingling between the two that made me anxious. I said as much to Becky.

            “Why do you feel the need to do this?” I pleaded with Becky. “Cat insisted that she’s fine.”

            “Listen, Puntypooh,” Becky said with smile, using her private nickname for me. “I think at this point, I know Cat better than you.”

            “How can that be?”

            “Girl talk,” she replied a little flippantly. “Anyway, I get the clear vibe that she doesn’t like the idea of staying alone for a few days. But knowing Cat, she’s stoic and brave. Plus, she’s not alone since that cop she knows is staying on her property in a camper.”

            “That’s right, in a camper.”

            “Besides, P.P., you…”

            “Don’t call me that, you know I don’t like it.”

            She giggled. “Okay, Puntypooh.”

            I wondered if Cat told her that she used to call me Kickypoo during their girl talk.

            “Look, you’re away at training camp all week. I’d like some company myself. Plus, sitting on Cat’s porch, gazing through the trees at Lake Superior, and chatting the afternoon away is more desirable than being alone in our condo with only our baby to talk to. As much as I love her, Debbie isn’t a good conversationalist.”

            “Alright, alright,” I said, waving my hands in submission. “But you be careful.”

            Famous last words! The next day, I got a call that put my heart right into my throat.

            “Loyd, oh Loyd!” Becky’s voice sobbed hysterically into the phone receiver.

            The adrenaline surge I got felt like it might cause the top of my head to blow off. “Becky, what is it!”

            “Cat’s been stabbed several times!”

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

CHAPTER 14

Sunday, May 1^st, 1988

I AM MY BELOVED’S AND MY BELOVED IS MINE (Song of Solomon 6:3)

            “Did I hear you correctly? You want to marry me?” I asked Becky.

            “I do,” she replied, and then smiled sweetly. “Pun intended.”

            I stared dumbfounded at her. This was more than my feeble brain could take! I had spent most of yesterday afternoon with Cat. I had spent most of yesterday evening’s drive home thinking about both Becky and Cat, who were both carrying my child.

            But my thoughts had been out of balance. For I had just spent time with Cat. Not only had Becky turned down my original marriage proposal, she began seeing an old boyfriend she had become reacquainted with at her fifteenth high school reunion. So my preoccupation ratio had been about eighty to twenty, Cat. Maybe even ninety to ten. But now, here was Becky, apparently accepting my proposal of marriage from a few months ago.

            Although Becky turned down my first suggestion of marriage, we began to see each other secretly, mostly to avoid workplace gossip. I also had reluctantly agreed that we would be free to date other people. In other words, it was an open relationship. I don’t know how prevalent such a situation was in 1988, I’ve never been very hip. But it didn’t work for me.

            About six weeks into our clandestine trysts, she began to date her old boyfriend from high school. I tried not to be jealous but failed. I didn’t argue with her. I simply wasn’t a polyamorous person, so I stopped seeing her romantically. She had seemed glad, which only fueled the green eyed monster’s torment of me. Yet her reason was reasonable enough, for she too was not comfortable with polyamory. Not only that, her new old guy was eleven months older than she, rather than me being eleven years younger.

            Becky’s face fell due to my silence. “I take it the offer of marriage has expired.”

            “What? No, I mean I don’t know.” I couldn’t think of her beau’s name, but I knew it rhymed with on. “What happened to Don?”

            “You mean Lon. We ended things.”

            “Why, I thought you thought of your rekindling with him as some sort of second chance?”

            He had been divorced with two kids and had told Becky he was more than happy to play father to a third. This in turn had made her very happy. So what was the trouble in paradise? I inquired.

            “It was Catalina.”

            “Cat! How in the world did Cat influence you to break up with Jon?”

            “His name is Lon. Well, let’s just say she was the straw that broke the camel’s back?”

            “What camel?”

            Becky giggled. “The strange thing is, I’ve been doing Bible studies with a longtime girlfriend off and on since late last year. She gave me this same book that Catalina sent me.”

            Becky pulled a little book out of her large purse and handed it to me. It was called ‘Steps to Christ.’ I instantly knew what it was, for Cat had given me an identical copy during one of our spiritual conversations. I had yet to look at it. But what did that have to do with her breakup with Ron? I asked.

            “His name is Lon, not Ron. So this little book came in the mail in between Christmas and New Years. I thought it was like some kind of gift from this ministry called ‘Amazing Facts.’ They are the organization that we are doing these amazing Bible study guides through. So I just put it on the shelf and didn’t look at it until around a week ago.”

            “Okay, so what was it about this book that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and ended things with you and Von?”

            “Loyd, his name is Lon, with an L. It’s short for Alonzo. So, we were at a point in our reacquaintance where he thought it was time to have sex. To be honest, I did too. But due to the Bible studies and this little book I already had read because of my girlfriend, I didn’t feel like I should be having sex outside of marriage anymore. But I still hadn’t told Lon no.

            “So my carnal desires were battling with my spiritual. To be honest, I was leaning toward giving in to Lon’s, um, pursuit of my sacred spot. But I prayed earnestly about it. And, I don’t know, I just subconsciously found myself picking up this copy of ‘Steps to Christ’ that Catalina had sent to me. And that’s when I discovered that it was actually from her, and not the ministry I told you about. The words from her that I read seemed like an answer to my prayers. Go ahead, read it.”

            I opened the book and recognized Cat’s handwriting.

            “Rebbecca, Peace and love from the girl that reminded Loyd of you. This little book I’m gifting you is the first thing that has set me on the pathway to life. The Way the Truth and the Life, that is, my Savior, Jesus. This may sound bizarre, but I had a profound dream about you. Very vivid. In it you had a baby with Loyd. This baby was to make a huge, positive impact on countless lives. She also was to have siblings that she was close to. My point is, you should marry Loyd if he ever asks. Or you should ask him yourself. He’s a special guy. Very special! I know, you might think I’m weird, and you might be right. Anyway, I felt compelled to share my dream with you, spread a little love, and possibly some unwanted advice. Sincerely, I hope I’m your friend, Catalina Clutterbuck.

            I looked at the cover. I had seen more than one of these in the desk in Cat’s bedroom. This book set her on the path of life? By that I knew she meant Jesus, the title made that clear, plus she had said so. But when? Did she read this before she left Iowa or after she left? Becky said she received it about a week after Cat left for California. And what about this dream she spoke of?

            “Did you really start dating Catalina because she reminded you of me?” Becky asked, interrupting my contemplations.

            I looked at her. Her gaze was earnest. I shrugged, and then nodded. I wasn’t gonna lie, but this was an awkward topic of conversation. “That really shouldn’t surprise you.”

            “It does.”

            “The couple times you met her, you didn’t notice your similarities? You two look like sisters.”

            Now she shrugged. “I noticed. But I also thought she was prettier, and younger than me.”

            “You’re just as pretty as Cat, but obviously you have different personalities. As far as age goes, you know I think and feel that it’s just a number. Look at your leg, it’s spectacular!”

            She had been sitting with one leg crossed over the other, and the split in her skirt made a V that pointed high up on her thigh. She recrossed her legs and adjusted her skirt, so her legs were only visible below the knees. I inwardly scolded myself as a big mouth.

            Ironically, I had studied Cat, sitting on a large rock, on the shore of Lake Superior yesterday. Her own denim skirt had split, exposing most of her shapely leg.

            “My point is, thirty three does not make you an old woman.”

            “A twenty one year old husband would.”

            “The older I get, the less the gap will seem.”

            “Good point,” she said with mild sarcasm. “Just like our age gap now seems better than when I turned twenty, and you were eight and in the second grade.”

            “Third grade.”

            She laughed and her gaze was sultry as she smiled at me. “I’m selfish.”

            “No, you’re not. Why would you say that?”

            “Because I have become willing to rob a cradle.”

            I went to one knee and took her hand. “It’s not robbery if the ba… Person in the cradle asks you to take him.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Yeah. So, my sweet Rebbeca, who is carrying my child, and the Good Lord willing, will one day be carrying a second, third, fourth, and fifth.”

            “How long do you think my biological clock will keep ticking?”

            “Well, long enough to have half of what I said.”

            She giggled. “So our third child will only be half a person?”

            “You know what I mean. So, will you marry me?”

            “I think so.”

            “You think so? I was hoping for a yes.”

            “I need to know what went on between you and Catalina yesterday.”

            “It was good to see her,” I said with a shrug. Then probably too matter of fact I informed her. “She’s pregnant with my child.”

            Becky’s mouth fell open. I gave her time to process this bombshell. I had only found out myself three days ago. With a concerned look she asked, “How much age difference between hers and mine?”

            “Approximately a month,” I told her. She put her face in her hands. “So do you want to reconsider marrying me?”

            “Did you ask her to marry you?” she asked, looking at me.

            “Yes,” I admitted. “But she emphatically said no.”

            “So I’m your second choice?”

            “If you reread Cat’s letter to you, you’ll see that you’ve always been my first choice.”

            She bit her lower lip. “So, did she feel like she was second choice? Is that why she turned you down?”

            I shook my head. “To make a long story of a complex woman short. No, I don’t believe Cat was bothered by her similarities to you. Quite the opposite. The few times we talked about you, she seemed curious and intrigued. I never got the jealousy vibe. By some miracle, she found me appealing. She didn’t seem to care how or why I found her appealing.”

            “I don’t think it’s a miracle at all. I found you appealing from the first day I saw you. It was only our age difference, and the fact that I was still married that put you out of the question.”

            “Until now?”

            “Until now,” she smiled, then cupped my face in her hands and kissed my forehead.

            “That was a rather motherly kiss,” I joked, and instantly regretted it as her face fell. “Not because of our age difference! We just became engaged. I think you can kiss something other than my forehead.”

            Thankfully she grinned and laid a passionate one on my lips. I was delighted that one of the two women carrying my child had agreed to marry me. However, I still felt like I was living out an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone.’

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

CHAPTER 13

Saturday, April 30, 1988

HOW BEAUTIFUL ARE YOUR FEET IN SANDALS, OH PRINCE’S DAUGHTER! (Song of Solomon 7:1)

            I saw her there on the rocks! She was as beautiful as ever as she gazed out at the expanse of Lake Superior. She was wearing a knee length denim skirt, and her shapely legs were stretch out in front of her. She also had on a white blouse that seemed to glow in the sunlight, giving her an angelic appearance.

            Her auburn hair was pulled back into a ponytail. An open Bible was on her lap, and a pair of sandals were about a foot from her hip. When I approached her, part from her back and part from her side, I notice a wisp of hair that had broken free from being corralled by a hair tie. It is interesting that something like that is technically messy, yet somehow makes a girl look all the more lovely. How is that?

            I couldn’t move. I just stood there and watched her. I don’t know how much was fear, and how much was simply being entranced by her beauty. After a while she reached for her sandals and slowly put them on. As she did so, I recalled the numerous times I massaged her tired feet after her shift at Hooters.

            She stood, turned, and then froze when she saw me. Her hand went to her stomach as her mouth gaped open. Her blouse wasn’t a maternity garment, and you could make out her baby bump. My baby! Our baby!  My heart rate accelerated as a sentimental smile grew onto my face before I said, “Hello Kitten.”

            To my relief, she grinned from ear to ear and ran the short distance to me. She hugged me and as she said, “Hello Kickypoo.”

            I was relieved when she smiled, happy when she hugged me, and excited when she placed two soft kisses on my cheek and one on my neck. Then she pushed away, cupped my face in her hands, and smiled warmly as a tear leaked from her eye. “Oh how I missed you!”

            The words in my throat were urgent. But putting my lips on hers even more so. I kissed her hungrily. She giggled and pushed away from me again. So I let the words come forth. “Then why did you leave me?”

            Her face fell, and she looked away from me as she said, “I just had to.”

            “Why?”

            She looked at me, her lovely green eyes seemed to be anguished. “I’m no good for you.”

            “So you’re basically saying the old cliche ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’”

            She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I’m different, a loner. I have a history of being volatile. I’m no good for anyone.”

            “Shouldn’t I be the judge of that?”

            She shook her head some more, but not as vigorously. A good sign? She took hold of my hand and placed it on her stomach. “If you knew how to find me, I’m sure you know about her.”

            “You know it’s a girl?”

            “Not officially, call it woman’s intuition… So, Kenny called you a presume?”

            “He paid me a visit and spent the night at my place.”

            Her eyebrows arched in surprise. “He flew out to Iowa just to tell you I’m pregnant and living in Two Harbors?”

            “He said he wanted to meet the guy that broke down your barriers.”

            She snorted a sarcastic laugh. “Figures.”

            “Why did you lie to me, Cat?” I asked gently.

            She arched an eyebrow inquisitively. “You mean by not telling you about our baby?”

            “No, about your sister…You said what happened to your sister with date rape happened to you.”

            “What happened to her did happen to me,” she said bitterly, dropping my hand, looking away and hugging herself. Then her voice quavered. “Especially her taking her own life. She was a beautiful, fragile person. And feeling defiled by that… that… Guy broke her.”

            I hurt for the pain she would always feel for her sister. My voice cracked and my eyes welled. “I’m truly sorry, Cat.”

            She turned her gaze on me again. She smiled warmly as she pressed her thumb against the corner of my eye, squishing a tear that hung there. Yet she ignored the two streams running down her own cheeks.

            “No one feels and loves like you. You have empathy like no one I’ve ever met.”

            I kissed her on the mouth again and she let me. When we separated, I gently asked, “Why didn’t you tell me your supposed boyfriend at Whitney was a friend only? Why didn’t you want me to know that you were a virgin?”

            “I was hoping it would push you away.”

            I didn’t ask why, but there was one more thing I wanted to know. “Did you know you were pregnant when you fled?”

            She looked away from me and nodded.

            “Cat, did you try to get pregnant?”

            She smiled sheepishly and nodded again. I couldn’t help kissing her again before saying, “Help me understand.”

            “How can I make you understand me when I don’t understand myself? I didn’t want a relationship, but I wanted, almost had to have, this being that is part you and part me.”

            “Marry me, Cat!”

            She put her hands on my chest and shoved, not hard. “No, don’t. I can’t marry you.”

            “Cat, why? We’re having a baby.”

            I felt a wave of butterflies. Another woman was having my baby as well. I had to, what? Confess? Acknowledge?

            “Even if I was ready for a relationship,” she said. “I am finding peace with God here in Two Harbors. I also don’t want to live in Chicago. Congratulations, by the way.”

            “I haven’t made the team yet.”

            “You will.”

            “Woman’s intuition?”

            She smiled and shrugged. It was so frustrating, and emotionally painful, to be so close, and yet so far away from this woman I loved and adored. We quietly gazed at each other. Then she said, “I’ve experienced a new birth.”

            I frowned, thinking she was talking about our baby. Not understanding that she was speaking of a spiritual awakening, I recalled her grandmother being a midwife. I asked if that’s what she meant.

            She giggled. “No, silly. Before I came to Two Harbors, my brother baptized me. I’ve experienced a spiritual rebirth. I’ve given my life to Christ.”

            “Good,” I replied a little puzzled. After all the Biblical conversations we had during our half year together, I assumed she already had. Being a Christian in name only back then, I hadn’t recognized her anger toward God. Especially how she blamed God over her sister’s situation. But self-deception can come across so subtly.

            “And it was you who helped me, Kickypoo,” she told me sweetly as her face radiated joy. I thought about going to one knee and begging her to marry me.

            “I helped you? How?”

            “Our conversations about truth. I hope this doesn’t sound arrogant, but by trying to teach you what the Bible actually taught about things like the Sabbath, prophecy, and the dangers of spiritualism, it got me back into the Word of God. It had been about a decade since I truly studied the Bible. I used to every morning and night before my sister died. Then I became angry at the one source that could have helped me. For the most part, I put the Bible on the shelf until I met you.”

            “Oh,” was all I could seem to utter.

            “Once I was out in California, I humbled myself before God. I asked for forgiveness, I asked him back into my life. You see, God won’t force Himself on us. Satan does! But God pleads with us with the still small voice of the Holy Spirit.” (1 Kings 19:11-13)

            “You mean like what you once told me, He stands at the door and knocks,” I piped in. (Revelation 3:20)

            “Yes, Kickypoo!” she beamed. “And that is part of what I’m saying about the roll you played. I remember sharing that with you, because it stuck in my mind, and didn’t leave until I did something about it on that beach in California where I prayed.

            “So get this. Right after I pray, I open my Bible just randomly, and do you know what my eyes landed on?”

            I shook my head.

            “Hebrews 13:5, where it says, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ And then, not ten minutes later…”

            She gasped, put a hand to her chest, and whimpered as tears sprang from her eyes. Yet she smiled, and her eyes shone with pure joy as she gazed skyward. “Dear Lord, I love you, thank you for this opportunity to share what you did for me.”

            Dear Reader, I have never seen a more beautiful woman in my life! With Lake Superior in the background Catalina’s appearance was angelic, and it would be etched into my memory forever. But I had to know. “What happened ten minutes later?”

            “There was this older woman walking on the beach handing out pamphlets,” she told me. “She actually made me think of my own grandma. It was part of the reason I decided to come here to Two Harbors.”

            “What kind of pamphlet?”

            Cat opened the front of her Bible and handed me a sheet of paper. On it was a poem entitled ‘Footprints.’ I read it.

            ‘One night a man had a dream. He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the Lord. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand; one belonged to him, and the other to the Lord. When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the lowest and saddest times in his life. This really bothered him, and he questioned the Lord about it. “Lord, you said that once I decided to follow you, you’d walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life, there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why when I needed you the most you would leave me.” The Lord replied, “My precious, precious child. I love you and would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

            I looked from the paper to Cat. She said, “Wasn’t that beautiful?”

            “Just like you,” I told her.

            She went on to explain her conversion experience. I told her about my time with her brother. I also told her about my encounter with her grandparents. In particular her grandma and the broom. She laughed so hard; she doubled over clutching her stomach. I wondered what our baby thought.

            “Grandma was just testing you,” she told me after she gained her composure. “I know she’d like you if she understood what a man of integrity you are. Right now in her mind you are mostly the guy that knocked up her granddaughter out of wedlock.”

            Her calling me a man of integrity caused butterflies to flutter again. “There’s something I need to tell you.” So I told her all about Becky.

            To my surprise, it didn’t seem to faze her. She simply said, “Wow, so you’ll be the father of two children only about a month apart in age.”

            “Don’t I know it.” And then I asked, “Are you mad?”

            She shrugged. “How can I be? I ended things with you. Actually, you should ask her to marry you.”

            “I already did, and she said no.”

            With mock disgust, she said, “So I was your second choice.”

            “No, when I asked Becky, you were out of my life. All I knew, or thought anyway, was that you were somewhere in the big state of California. As a matter of fact, I thought you might be with your old boyfriend, who I now discovered is actually gay.”

            “Sorry,” she replied meekly.

            Cat and I talked the afternoon away. At five she invited me to have supper with her at her grandparents. Recalling Granny with the broom, I said ‘thanks, but no thanks.’ Since Cat made it clear that she wasn’t going to marry me, I drove the four hours back home.

            I spent most of the drive wondering how often I would see my two children if I made it onto the Chicago Bear’s roster. I would be residing by Lake Michigan. One child would be residing by Lake Superior, and the other child by an infinitely smaller Lake MacBride.

            When I arrived home, there was a message on the answering machine from Becky. She requested that I call her when I got a chance. Since it was only around nine, I called. She told me she needed to talk to me in person, and could we have a late lunch tomorrow? I told her that would be fine. She assured me that nothing was wrong with our baby, which eased my mind, but left me wondering what was so important that she wanted to talk to me in person.

            I arrived at Becky’s at 12:50pm. She wore a perky smile, which made me smile. Her dark red hair was in a ponytail, reminding me of Cat’s the previous day. She also wore a denim skirt, similar to Cat’s yesterday. Was I entering the Twilight Zone? Thankfully her blouse was light green. It went well with her red hair.

            “So, Becky, what was so important that you needed to see me in person?”

            “I understand you went to see Cat this weekend,” she said as she put a brown sandal on her foot that to my male mind looked identical to Cat’s. I think I was in the Twilight Zone. Their similar appearance was starting to feel like a bad omen.

            “I did.”

            “Did you ask her to marry you?”

            “I did.”

            “Did she say yes?”

            “She didn’t.”

            “Good.”

            “Good? I have two women carrying my child and neither of them want to marry me.”

            “Not true,” she said with a coy smile. She was putting on her second sandal as she said, “If your offer of marriage still stands, I accept.”

            As my brain fought to comprehend her words, my eyes stared at her sandaled feet. The sandals that in appearance ran to me, hugged and kissed me on the shore of Lake Superior yesterday. Life can certainly be a strange trip.

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

CHAPTER 12

Saturday, April 30^th, 1988

WHERE HAS YOUR BELOVED GONE, OH FAIREST AMONG WOMEN? (Song of Solomon 6:1)

            “What do you want?” The little old lady barked through a screen door a half minute after I knocked.

            “Does Catalina Clutterbuck live…”

            “Are you blind, don’t you see the doorbell?”

            “I tried it twice, ma’am. I didn’t hear it ring.”

            “Poppycock!”

            Poppycock? Pastor Kenny Clutterbuck, this little old lady’s grandson I presumed, had warned me with these words. “You’ve heard beware of the dog? Well, beware of grandma.”

            I hadn’t taken him all that seriously, but boy, he wasn’t kidding!

            “Ma’am, my name is Loyd Burl. When Catalina lived in Iowa, she…”

            “I know who you are. You’re the Tom cat that knocked up my little Kitten.”

            I smiled. “I call her Ki…” I stopped myself. What was I thinking! Actually I wasn’t, I was flustered.

            “What are you grinning about, you so and so! Get off my porch! Get out of my yard! Get out of my town!”

            I was stunned! I stood gap mouthed, staring at her through the screen door. Even through the shade of the screen, I could see a resemblance to Cat by way of mouth and nose. Her green eyes were the same color as Cat’s. But Cat’s grandma’s eyes were small and round, whereas Cat’s were large and almond shaped.

            Grandma looked like she would have been cute and pretty as a younger woman. I could see that even through the ugliness of her demeanor. My toes curled at the thought that we were having a stare down. But low and behold, we weren’t for she barked at me again. “What part of ‘get’ do you not understand!”

            Was I insane? For I stood my ground. But I had to see Cat! I began to plead with her. “But Ma’am, I need to…”

            The screen door burst open and this little lady, who probably wasn’t even five foot tall and maybe one hundred pounds, was wielding a broom. She swung it at me like a baseball bat, and I did something similar to a Heisman trophy pose as I tried to protect myself. It wacked my upper thigh, and it stung!

            “Ma’am, I…”

            “Get!” she barked.

            I surrendered. I turned and began to march away from her home. She followed and wacked me hard right in the seat of my pants. My hips thrust forward, and I picked up the pace.

            “Where do you think you’re going? Get back here!” she ordered.

            I stopped halfway down the sidewalk. Did I hear that right? I turned, almost in a karate stance as I braced for another blow from the broom.

            “Is that all the fight you’re gonna put up for the woman carrying your child?”

            “I don’t know what you mean, ma’am. Yes, I’m leaving right now out of respect for your command. But I will do everything I can to see Catalina while I’m here in Two Harbors.”

            “Bernice, you stop that now. Sorry about my wife, young man,” an old man said as he emerged from the front door. I had been hoping Cat would appear, but at least her grandpa appeared to be somewhat of an ally. He was about six feet tall and had a full head of silvery white hair. He was buckling a belt as he walked briskly toward us.

            He chuckled pleasantly as he said, “For Pete’s sake, you would have to show up when I was on the can. Kenny warned us that you might be coming.”

            He stuck out his hand to shake, and I gratefully took it, while at the same time wondering if he had washed it. I also wondered about grandma’s name, Bernice. Did it mean ‘un nice’ in a foreign language?

            “So, Catalina is expecting me then?” I looked at the house, the door, and the windows.

            “No,” Bernice replied. “We had reason to believe you are unreliable, so we didn’t tell her you might be coming.”

            “What reason do you have to think I’m unreliable?”

            “What reason!” Un Nice barked. “Why taking advantage of our granddaughter, of course. Getting her pregnant and then skipping town.”

            “I didn’t skip town, she did!” I defended, and then realized it appeared that I was criticizing their granddaughter. “I mean she, I, we…”

            “Did you or did you not…”

            “Bernice, stop picking on the boy,” Grandpa interrupted.

            His welcoming smile made me relax enough to take a sideways glance at Grandma. To my surprise, she chuckled and winked at Grandpa. Talk about a Jekyll and Hyde moment. She grinned at me with a twinkle in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Sonny, but I wanted to see how much spunk you had. I heard tell that you took on a half dozen college boys that were harassing my Kitten. But it doesn’t seem you could do much against an old woman with a broom. Would you care to explain?”

            I cleared my throat, surprised that she knew of that incident from more than half a year ago. “Well ma’am, those guys threatening us deserved a pummeling. A grandmother protecting her granddaughter’s honor didn’t.”

            “What he’s leaving unsaid is that he could pummel a dozen Bernices with a broom if he really wanted to,” Grandpa declared with a chuckle.

            Hyde was back in a flash as her face became stern once again. “So are you acknowledging that my granddaughter’s honor needs protecting?”

            “No ma’am, I mean, well, I guess it could seem that way, but, you know…”

            “You guess? Did you or did you not impregnate my granddaughter?”

            “Well, the information I received would suggest that that is possible?”

            “Information from who?”

            “Kenny Clutterbuck, your grandson.”

            “You say it’s possible. What’s that supposed to mean?”

            “Ma’am?”

            “Are you suggesting my granddaughter had intimate relations with another man or men besides you?”

            “No ma’am, not at all!”

            “Then why is it only possible and not likely that you are the father? More than that, why is it not true?”

            “Well, ma’am. It has been several months since I have seen Catalina, so I cannot account for who she has been seeing. Once again, it seems that from talking to your grandson, Catalina had not been completely truthful to me about her, um, background.”

            “So you believe that my granddaughter might be promiscuous?”

            “Well, I suppose it is possible,” I said, and then she jammed her hands on her hips. “I mean, no ma’am! I don’t believe she is.”

            I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation! Not only were my toes curled, I felt like my knees could start knocking together like the handwriting on the wall from the Bible. (Daniel chapter 5:6)

            “Let me tell you something…”

            “Bernice, that’s enough,” Grandpa said calmly, yet with authority, cutting her off. “This young man traveled all this way to see Catalina. I assume to do the right thing and ask the expecting mother of his child to marry him. Am I right, Len?”

            “It’s Loyd, sir,” I began by correcting my name. At least he got the L right. “And yes, I would marry Catalina in a heartbeat… If she would have me that is.”

            I thought of Becky, another woman carrying my child, whom I also would have married if she had agreed. My head was beginning to hurt.

            “If she would have you? That’s a cop out if I ever heard one,” Bernice ridiculed.

            Speaking of cop, this was beginning to feel like a ‘good cop bad cop’ interrogation. Can you guess which was which?

            “Well she does have to agree to it, Sweet Pea. Am I right, Larry?”

            “It’s Loyd. sir,” I corrected. At least he got an L and a Y right this time. I glanced at Bernice’s sour expression and wondered at his term of affection. “Yes, of course she has to agree. And if she seems pleased to see me, I will indeed pop the question. So may I see her please?”

            I glanced at their front door, hoping Cat might have heard the commotion. She wasn’t there. I looked at the upstairs window, hoping to see her lovely face. She wasn’t there.

            “She’s not here,” Bernice said cooly.

            Not here! I went through all this with her grandma and she’s not even here? I thought worst case scenario. Did she returned to California?

            “She likes to go to the pier on the Sabbath, and read her Bible,” Grandpa told me.

            I frowned. It was Saturday, and back then I still thought of the Sabbath as Sunday, the day recognized by most of Christianity. But it is not the day the Bible tells us was instituted at creation (Genesis 2:2 and 3). It is also the fourth of the Ten Commandments, the Ten Commandments being the one part of the Bible God wrote with his own finger.

            Sunday keeping began through corrupt religion, most predominately beginning with the emperor Constantine in the 4th century. Nowhere in the Bible is there any change to God’s Ten Commandment Law. As a matter of fact, God does not change (Malachi 3:6). Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

            “She likes to go to the end, by the lighthouse if it’s not too crowded,” Grandpa continued. “If it is, you will probably find her on the rocks.”

            “The rocks?”

            “You’ll see them, just to the east of the pier.”

            “Why are you helping him? He’s not a believer,” Grandma scolded her husband. “Do you want our Kitten to be yoked with an unbeliever?”

            “He’s the father of our great grandchild, Sweet Pea. And Kitten told Kenny that he’s a seeker of truth. That’s good enough for me.”

            Grandpa told me how to get there, bless his heart. In my haste to leave, I tripped over a bush and almost fell on my face. I heard Grandma snort. “An NFL football player my foot. I’ll have to see it to believe it.”

            “He’s a punter, not a player,” I heard Grandpa say… Oh well, did it really matter? Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

            I found the pier with no problem. I was surprised at how far out the little lighthouse was. My brisk pace turned into a jog. Then as I closed in on the lighthouse, I saw red brown hair hanging just past the shoulders sitting just past the lighthouse at the end of the pier. I now ran the remaining steps.

            “Cat… My love!” I bellowed as my hand touched her shoulder.

            But it turned out to be his shoulder. For a mustachioed man turned his gaze upon me. Above his mustache was a large hook nose. Above his large nose were beady brown eyes that looked surprised and did not seem pleased at all with my hand on his shoulder, or my declaration to him. His upper lip was hidden by hair, but his lower lip moved and formed the words. “Get your hand off me, dude!”

            I removed my hand as though burned. “Sorry Man, I’m looking for my girlfriend.”

            “She must be one ugly chick if she looks like me,” he replied mildly.

            “Actually, I came up fast, I was running. She’s actually very… Oh never mind, once again sorry man.”

            “Forget about it,” he said with a wave of his hand.

            Forgetting about it wasn’t to be. I doubt he would forget himself, or the half dozen people that witnessed the episode and were smirking. A couple were actually guffawing. I didn’t care, it would have been funny to me also if I wasn’t the dope calling some strange, odd looking man “my love.”

            Oh well, love, especially young love, can make you dopey. But I was high on hope. I would simply look for Cat at the rocks Grandpa suggested. As I walked the other way, I began to softly say to myself. “Oh where oh where could my Cat be, oh where oh where could she be?”

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

CHAPTER 11

Thursday, April 28^th, 1988

A FRIEND LOVES AT ALL TIMES, AND A BROTHER IS BORN FOR ADVERSITY (Proverbs 17:17)

            “Loyd.” Pat, pat, slap. “Loyd, are you all right?”

            My eyes opened and looked into Cat’s concerned green eyes. Not a Cat, but my Cat, Catalina Clutterbuck. But then it dawned on me. It wasn’t Cat gazing down at me, but it was her brother. What did he call himself? Oh, it was Pastor Kenny Clutterbuck.

            The Pastor part puzzled me. He looked too young to be a pastor. But what did I know? I didn’t even understand why I was laying on the floor and he was slapping my face. “What happened?”

            “You seemed to have fainted,” Pastor Clutterbuck told me.

            “That can’t be. I’ve never fainted.”

            “As the saying goes, there’s a first time for everything.”

            I couldn’t have fainted. He must have hit me. Yes, he hit me! Right after he told me Cat was pregnant! Cat pregnant? Me the father? He was defending her honor; I couldn’t blame him. But how could I be so unaware? For I was a not only a black belt, but a second degree black belt. “Are you a martial artist?”

            “A what?”

            “Did you hit me?”

            “What? Oh, no, no, no, I wouldn’t hit anybody. Like I said, you fainted. It can be quite startling to be informed that you’re going to be a father.”

            “Don’t I know it,” I mumbled as his words also reminded me of Becky.

            “Excuse me?”

            “Oh, never mind,” I said as he helped me to my feet. “Where are my manners? Come in, Pastor. Have a seat. Would you like something to drink?”

            “Just a glass of water, please.”

            “Yeah, me too. I’m thirsty.”

            “You know, dehydration is another cause of fainting.”

            “I didn’t…” I began to say, but apparently I did.

            The springs groaned when he sat on the sofa which was at least about old as I was. I think it used to be beige. I handed him a glass of water, and he thanked me. I sat across from him in a beat up old recliner. I think it used to be light blue.

            “I must admit, this feels kind of awkward and confusing, Pastor.”

            “Please, first of all, call me Kenny. After all, I am gonna be an uncle to your son or daughter.”

            My head swam again, but not enough to make me, well, faint. I didn’t understand, I don’t faint. ‘Apparently you do,’ my mind’s ear could hear Cat say.

            “So Cat’s alright?” I asked. “But… you say… pregnant?”

            “Correct on both accounts. And, like I said, she’s currently staying with our grandmother.”

            “So where’s your grandmother?”

            “Where we mostly grew up, Two Harbors, Minnesota.”

            “Forgive me for asking, but how can you be sure that I’m the father?”

            “She was deeply in love with you, Loyd. But I assume you got to know Cat quite well. She’s not one to talk about feelings, or one to reveal personal information. I didn’t find out your name, or exactly where you and she had been living, until after she left for our grandmother’s. Do you know how I found out who you are, and where to find you?”

            “Please enlighten me.”

            “Grandma called me the other day to tell me about witnessing a rare instance of gleeful emotion from Cat. It happened when Cat discovered that you had been drafted by the Chicago Bears. Grandma informed me that your name was Loyd Burl from Whitney college. I caught the next flight to this area to pay you a visit on Cat’s behalf.”

            I spoke with all gentleness. “Why didn’t Cat come tell me on her own behalf?”

            “Cat’s stubborn. She has some notion that she led you into sin, and she doesn’t want to burden you with a child. She thinks you’d have a much brighter future without her.”

            “Preposterous,” was all I could mutter. Kenny gave me a minute to process everything.  “So… apparently you believe otherwise?”

            “Loyd, beyond believing you had a right to know about your unborn child, I just had to meet the man who moved Cat in such a profound way. Forgive me for being quite graphic, but I had to meet the man that didn’t take my sister’s virginity but led her to persuade him to accept her offer of it. But let me be clear. I do not condone premarital sex.”

            The more we talked, the more baffled I seemed to become. It was also weird having a discussion with a pastor about sexual relations, and the sexual history of his sister. “Kenny, Cat didn’t lose her virginity with me.”

            I told him about her being date raped at her high school prom, and also her boyfriend who was from California. I watched his lip tremble, and then tears leak from his eyes. I regretted having to inform this man I was really beginning to like what happened to his sister. But what he revealed to me stunned me more than I had stunned him.

            “Loyd, what you just told me about the date rape didn’t happen to Cat,” he said with a severely choked up voice. “It happened to our sister Abby… A month later… She committed suicide. Sweet, quiet little Cat was barely a teenager, only thirteen years old. It goes without saying that she took it hard. Very hard.”

            Pastor Kenny put his hands on his face and wept. I felt tears sting my own eyes, and then trickle down my cheeks. I don’t know why I did it, but I sat next to Kenny on the old sofa and put my arm around him. He slowly pulled his hands away from his and looked at me as if I had two heads. I suddenly felt embarrassed at this display of emotion with someone I had known for only about twenty minutes. I quickly wiped at the tears on my own face and stood.

            “I now see what Cat saw in you,” he told me with a smile of solidarity.

            I shrugged and felt confused. “Sorry, I, ah…”

            “No, no, don’t be sorry. Cat said you were different. But she meant that in a positive way. Just so you know, for the first time in years, I saw something like joy on Cat’s face when she talked about you while she stayed with me.”

            We looked at each other for a moment, then he looked at his shoes. I looked at my shoes. After a minute I gently said, “That’s awful about your sister Abby. But what about the boyfriend from California?”

            “Long story short, Cat didn’t meet him at Whitney college. He was a childhood friend. His parents divorced when he was young. His mother was from California and met his father when he was in the military and stationed out there. But his dad was from northern Minnesota.”

            “Okay fine,” I interrupted, feeling impatient. “But how do you know he and Cat weren’t, you know, an item?”

            “For one thing Cat wouldn’t lie to me. And for another, and I’ll divulge this since you don’t know him, he’s gay, and for a while, Cat was his mask. They pretended to be a couple but actually weren’t.”

            “No offense, but why would Cat lie to me, but not to you?”

            “Cat has tried to be asexual, and she has been very successful at it. That is, until you came into her life. There are two instances of deceit that she confided in me after she came to stay with me in California. She felt guilty for letting people think a gay fellow was her boyfriend. And she felt guilty about lying to you by claiming what happened to our sister happened to her.”

            “Why would she tell me that? I don’t get her deceit at all. Most women try to downplay their sexual past, not embellish it.”

            “It was Cat’s way of trying to push you away. She was trying to discourage you from, shall we say, wanting her, desiring her. Forgive me if this sounds crass, but Cat tends to be a man hater. At least with the type of guys that leer at women.”

            “I don’t get that either. I mean, did you know she was a waitress at Hooter’s?”

            “Yes.”

            “So what gives? Forgive me for stereo typing, but Hooter’s waitresses strike me as anything but women who wouldn’t want men to, put it mildly, desire them.”

            “Au Contraire, my dear man. There’s three reasons she worked there. One, she felt safe from being attracted to the type of guys that patronized an establishment known for its sexy women. Two, the friend that convinced her to work there said the tips were great. And three, my feisty sister is ornery, and I know she enjoyed being a tease. However, the first two she acknowledged, and the last I deduced.”

            We looked at each other for a long moment again. Then I asked, “I still don’t understand the nature of your visit. I mean, is there something beyond thinking I had a right to know and shaking the hand of the guy that impregnated your sister?”

            For the first time, this ultra calm man seemed agitated. It occurred to me that the last thing I said was tacky. However, it was only a quick clenching of his jaw that indicated displeasure, as well as an ever so slight edge to his voice. “Let me be clear. It was not a congratulatory wanting to meet you. It was a ‘what type of guy could break down the seemingly impregnable walls of my sister.’ But there is one more thing. Actually two.”

            He eyed me cautiously, as if he was reconsidering divulging the one more thing. So I asked, “What is it?

            “I was hoping to convince you to go see her. I thought that request was something better done in person.”

            “Well, you don’t have to do much convincing. I’d love to see her! Especially with her carrying my child!”

            I felt my toes curl. My words reminded me again of a second woman carrying my child! Oh the ironies of life. I hope this doesn’t sound immodest, but I never, ever thought that with my value system, I would end up being the father of two children only about a month apart in age.

            “Wonderful!” he said with a smile and a hand clap.

            “So you think she’d take me back?” I asked excitedly, as I sat up straight.

            “No,” he replied immediately with a head shake.

            I instantly deflated. Then I said a little more disgusted than I intended. “Well, why do you want me to go see her then?”

            “I’m just being honest about the odds. Do I think she’ll want to be involved with you? No. Do I think it’s possible? Yes.”

            “If it’s no, will she want me to be involved with our child’s life?”

            He sucked in air through his nose and looked at the ceiling. “Have you ever been to the North Shore, Loyd?”

            “What North Shore?”

            “You know, northern Minnesota, along Lake Superior?”

            “I haven’t.”

            “My point is, Cat is loving it in Two Harbors right now. She ended up here in your town because she studied art briefly at the same school you went to, Whitney college.”

            I knew Cat was an amateur artist, as was I. Yet for some reason, we never really shared much of our work with each other. Now, ironically with her out of the picture at the moment, I was about to get a healthy sample.

            “We’ve come to another of the reasons why I paid you a visit,” the good pastor told me. “I’ll need to go to my rental car for a minute.”

            I paced several laps around my apartment while I waited for him to return. When he did, he carried three large sketch pads. We sat, and I looked at them in awe. Cat was far more talented than I.

            “I happened to see her put these in the garbage before she left,” Pastor Clutterbuck said.

            There were many pencil sketches, but only three that were colored with oil pastels. One of me kicking a football with a cheering crowd in the background. One of me tending a wounded bird on the left side, and me releasing the healed bird on the right side. Did the bird represent her? If so what exactly did it mean?

            But it was the third colored picture that got to me the most. It was she and I as an old couple, on a two seat swing that was attached to a big tree. My arm was around her shoulders, her head on one of mine. I chuckled that she had made me bald. But then I dropped the pad and wept when I read the caption at the bottom.

            It read: A lifetime of happiness after a century of love, the summer of 2038.

            I felt a strange loneliness as I sobbed. One mother carrying my child refused to marry me. The other fled over a thousand miles away. I felt a gentle arm go over my shoulders. Pastor Clutterbuck was weeping along with me.

            “I think we’d really hit it off as brothers-in-law,” he told me.

            “So… You think Cat might marry me if I ask?” I tried again.

            “No,” he said without hesitation. “But you should at least give it a try.”

            A realization came to me. The date on Cat’s painting was fifty years from this coming summer. Yet Kenny’s ‘no’ about her saying ‘yes’ to marriage was still echoing in my head. Either way, I had to find Cat. I simply had to see her.

            “I’m going to perceive by the look on your face that you’re going to Two Harbors,” Pastor Clutterbuck said.

            “I am. I have class tomorrow as well as my job, but I will leave as soon as I punch out. Do you want to go together?”

            “I’m sorry, but you’re on your own. I fly out tomorrow morning.”

            “This truly was a business trip.”

            He shrugged. “I suppose it was.”

            “Do you have to a place to stay.”

            “I was gonna get a motel.”

            “You’re welcome to stay here.”

            “Thanks!” he said with a grin.

            I grinned back and shook his hand. “Thank you for your trouble.”

            “No trouble, my pleasure. But one more thing. You’ve heard beware of dog?” he said, and I arched an eyebrow. “Well, beware of Grandma.”

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

CHAPTER 10

Thursday, February 4, 1988

FOR WE KNOW THAT THE LAW IS SPIRITUAL, BUT I AM CARNAL, SOLD UNDER SIN (Romans 7:14)

            “So you’re sure I’m the father?” I asked.

            “Like I said, one hundred percent,” Becky told me.

            My brain felt like it might start oozing out of my ears. I had multiple thoughts and emotions reeling in my head. Fear, love, confusion, hate for what Bruce had done to her pretty face, and the urge to pay him a visit, but mostly I was stunned. “How do you feel about it?”

            She showed me a big smile, but then winced, and touched her lip. Then she spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone, even though we were alone. “Now that I’ve had time to process everything after the shock of, well, the way Bruce and I broke up, I’m ecstatic.”

            “Yeah? Why?”

            “Well, you know I’ve always wanted a baby. And with you as the sperm donor, how could he or she not be adorably cute? The only thing that gives me pause is being a single parent.”

            My mind rankled at the term, sperm donor, but then flipped to single parent. With sudden inspiration, I went to one knee and took a hold of her hand. “Becky, will you marry me?”

            She probably looked as stunned as I did when she told me I was going to be a father. Then she smiled, knelt in front of me, and very gingerly kissed my mouth. But then her words contradicted her actions. “Loyd, that’s very sweet, but no.”

            “Why? We’ve created a life together! I want to be involved in his or her life.”

            “Loyd, that’s wonderful! And I want you to be! But marriage? No.”

            “Once again, why? Becky, I love you!”

            She smiled, winced, but continued to smile as her eyes welled with tears. “I love you too, Loyd. You are a very special young man, but I’m twelve years older than you.”

            “Eleven.”

            “Are you, or are you not twenty-one?”

            “I am.”

            “I happen to be thirty-three. If you subtract twenty-one from thirty-three, you get twelve.”

            “Well, when I turn twenty-two, you will still be thirty-three for six more months.”

            “Five months and twenty-three days.”

            I chuckled, and my mouth opened to speak. But thankfully, I didn’t let the words come out. They were going to be, ‘Now you sound like Cat.’

            Instead, I said, “My dad is nine years older than my mom.”

            “It’s different when a man is older.”

            “That’s sexist.”

            “No, it’s reality.”

            We knelt there for a silent minute, holding hands, and gazing fondly at each other. Then Becky said, “Can I ask you something.”

            “Of course, it’s all part of premarital counseling.” She giggled, and then patted my cheek. For some reason the affectionate face pat made me feel much younger, even childlike. “What did you want to ask?”

            “The night we conceived… How much was motivated by alcohol?”

            “To be honest, I don’t know. My desire for you wasn’t motivated at all by adult beverages. But because of my religious beliefs, premarital sex makes me uncomfortable.”

            “So do you regret what we did New Year’s?”

            “It’s hard to regret one of the most exciting times of one’s life. On the other hand, I did feel a sense of guilt, not only for premarital sex, but for engaging with a woman who was, well, engaged to someone else… Do you regret New Year’s?”

            “Not now. At first I felt guilty for cheating on Bruce. But then I discovered he not only lied, but he lied about a very serious thing. I also discovered he had a propensity to be abusive and violent.”

            I told her about him stalking me, and also my promise to hurt him if he hurt her.

            “Please don’t exact revenge on Bruce. I already took care of it.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “He surprised me with his first two punches, but before he could land a third, I put my knee very hard in the place that can no longer produce children. As a matter of fact, he might still be laying there.”

            “Good for you,” I replied with a chuckle.

            “One more thing,” she said with hooded eyes, and a smirk from the corner of her mouth that wasn’t injured. “After breaking up with Bruce, I was able to relish the memory of our night.”

            It is odd how most of us have personal rather than Biblical boundaries as well as limits with our morals and values. It would still be several years before my behavior and character would be molded and shaped by the Bible alone, rather than a hybrid of religious teachings mixed with personal views.

            An example of this would be my love life in the 1980’s. I had a strict policy against casual sex. Yet with the intention of a committed relationship, I became willing to have premarital sex, even though I viewed it as sin. It is the reason why we call people living together out of wedlock, “living in sin.” Of course now a days it is so commonplace, I don’t know how prevalent that term actually is anymore.

            It is true that I entered the fling with Becky under ‘casual’ circumstances. Even in my state of inebriation, I knew that it was likely to be a one night stand. And one night stands were a huge violation of my value system. But I was carnal, sold under sin, even though I thought of myself as a righteous dude. So my lust overruled my principles. However, the person I lusted after, I also loved. In my mind that gave me a pass. Plus, I had already given in to premarital relations with Cat. Once you sin, it’s easier to do it again.

            “I relished the memory of our night together as well,” I said, gazing at her fondly.

            Her eyes smoldered as she returned my gaze, and her tongue came out and licked her wounded lip. I’m sure she was just trying to sooth her sore lip, rather than trying to look sexy, but for me, it was the later.

            “So if you relish the memory, and I relish the memory, why don’t we proceed to the bedroom and make some more memories?”

            Why not indeed was my first thought? My second was the fact that she had no intention of marrying me, despite the child we created. “That sounds wonderful, Becky, but a moment ago you refused my intent to marry you. So is this just gonna be, you know, casual? I don’t know if I can do that. As much as a side of me wants to.”

            Her countenance went from sexy to stunned. “Look, Loyd, I love you. I really do. But the reality is, I don’t want to turn forty one day, and still have my husband be in his twenties.”

            “That makes no sense to me. I should be the one concerned about our age difference, but I’m not. As a matter of fact, I’m already thinking of giving our child a sibling.”

            She bit her lower lip and gazed at me with vulnerable eyes, instantly looking sexy again. “You are?”

            “Yes, and it would be best to raise our children in the bonds of marriage.”

            We looked at each other in silence for a long moment. If our brains were wheels, they would have been going a hundred miles an hour. Then she said, “Look, how about this? After our child is born, then I’ll consider marriage. If you get me pregnant again, I will marry you.”

            The raging hormones in my twenty-one year body insisted this was fair. Passion ensued, and as we slowly made our way to the bedroom we hungrily kissed. But before our second intimate encounter proceeded, Becky stopped us. She breathlessly asked, “One more thing, Loyd, for the time being, can we keep our relationship secret?”

            I didn’t know what this meant. I didn’t like what it insinuated. But hormones had completely energized my carnality, so I simply agreed with a quick “yes.”

            So began a closeted relationship with the mother of my child. At work we resumed as normal work buddies. But a couple nights a week we privately rendezvoused at her place. But there was soon to be trouble in paradise.

Thursday, April 28^th, 1988

            What an eventful week so far! The highlight was the NFL draft, with me being selected by the Chicago Bears in a supplemental draft after the main draft. The lowlight was Becky going to her fifteenth high school reunion and becoming reacquainted with what she called a boy that was a friend. But now that he was a man and divorced, would he still remain a friend?

            I didn’t understand why her gleefully recounting how they talked the night away made me jealous. Maybe because I intuited that it was going to be a problem down the road. Maybe it was that now that her pregnancy was obvious, she blamed it on an anonymous guy she knew that she had a fling with. True enough, I guess.

            But my biggest thrill that week came with a pair of eyes I saw in my peep hole. You may be wondering why that would be a bigger thrill than the Bears. Well, as wonderful as my job prospect was with the Bears, I still needed to make the team, the possibility of which I had doubted.

            But the eyes I saw after the doorbell rang were Cat’s green eyes. Not a cat, but my Cat, Catalina Clutterbuck. The thrill that I felt rebuked me for being jealous over Becky’s rekindled friendship with a person of the opposite sex. But when I excitedly opened the door, I discovered the person standing there was a man that bore a strong resemblance to Miss Clutterbuck.

            He had a friendly looking face, framed with light brown hair, and it became even friendlier as he stuck out his hand to shake and asked, “Loyd Burl, I presume?”

            For some reason as I grasped his hand in greeting, I spoke like, I don’t know, James Bond or something. “Yes sir, it is I. And who might you be?”

            I felt my mouth drop open when he replied. “I’m Pastor Kenny Clutterbuck, Catalina’s older brother. She had been staying with me in California for a couple months.”

            Had been staying with him? Was she in trouble? I inquired as much. “Is Cat alright? Where is she? How is she?”

            “She’s fine,” he said easily. “She just went to stay with our grandmother. She used to be a midwife, so she figures she could help her prepare.”

            “Midwife? What does that mean? Prepare what?”

            “Well my new friend, it means she’s pregnant. It seems you’re the father.”

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

CHAPTER 9

New Year’s 1988

DO NOT LUST AFTER HER BEAUTY IN YOUR HEART, NOR LET HER ALLURE YOU WITH HER EYES (Proverbs 6:25)

            Have you ever been thinking about someone, and they just seem to appear?

            With about five minutes left until midnight at the Pyramid Club, two cute girls were jockeying for position to share the first kiss of the New Year with me. As pretty as they were, I didn’t really want to kiss them. I suspected that they were drawn to my notoriety as the best player on Whitney college’s football team. This is a rare thing for a punter to be, and not a good sign for a football team.

            Carnally speaking, it would have been very pleasant kissing either one of those girls. Doubly pleasant kissing both. But I say with all humility, I also didn’t want two girls fighting over me. I think I’m being humble anyway. However, one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis, once said, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘The funny thing about humility, is as soon as you think you have it, you have lost it.’

            Also, I was still heartbroken over Catalina Clutterbuck breaking up with me ten days previous. And I was still reeling from a passionate kiss I shared with co-worker, Rebbeca, eight days ago. As a matter of fact, it was she with whom my mind was preoccupied. Becky, as she was commonly known, was the beautiful woman with whom I had had a severe crush on for over three years.

            At our company’s Christmas party, I briefly had a mistletoe hat placed on my head by a male co-worker. Although I immediately removed it, Becky, to my surprise, snatched it out of my hand and placed it back onto my head. A second later, her lips were on mine. Although her breath smelled like an ashtray, it was wonderful to have my lips actually connected to that pretty mouth. She could have just eaten a piece of Limberg cheese, and I still would have kissed her. Well, maybe… Actually, no, I don’t think so.

            “Jake, I’m sorry!” she had said breathlessly as she pushed away from me.

            The kiss lingered for around ten seconds, and it took most of that time for my brain to comprehend what was happening. As soon as it did, I was just about to try kissing her like they do in France, when she shoved herself away from me. All I could think to say was, “Why?”

            She was blushing but giggled. “The last thing you probably want right now is to be kissed by an old hag. I had a glass of spiked punch, and it must have went to my head.”

            “Old hag! You’re anything but!”

            She snorted a laugh. “Loyd, I’m almost old enough to be your mother.”

            “Hardly! I’ve never heard of an eleven year old girl giving birth.”

            “I said almost,” she giggled. “Come on, we better get to the party.”

            I grabbed her hand, pulled her to me, and kissed her aggressively. Thankfully, she looped her arms around my neck and for a brief second we actually did kiss like they do in France. Then disappointedly, the door between the office and warehouse clicked open, and Becky pushed away from me so hard that I stumbled backward.

            The vibe between Becky and me at the office party was strange. It was awkward, it lustful, it was tense, it was filled with longing. I bided my time, and when the opportunity arrived, I asked her to talk in private. But once alone, I panicked and didn’t have anything to say, so I just tried to kiss her again. But she stopped me with a sad smile.

            “Loyd, we got carried away earlier. But the reality is, you’re on the rebound, and I’m engaged,” she said dead serious, as she attempted to show me her ring. It wasn’t there. She had taken it off at the warehouse desk, chucked on the surface, and apparently forgot to put it back on. She gasped, and then ran to the back of the warehouse, practically sliding up to the desk. She sighed her relief, picked up the ring, and put it back on.

            I had followed her, reluctantly willing to help her find it. Watching her put it on, and then hold it out in front of her to gaze at it, certainly put a damper on the mood to try kissing her some more. When she was done admiring it, she smiled warmly at me, held out her right hand to shake, and asked, “Friends?”

            “Friends,” I replied, returning a smile and shaking her hand. Then joking, but not really joking, I said, “But if you ever want to be lovers, just say the word.”

            She smiled, kissed me on cheek, and walked back to the office. She had left five minutes later, and I figured I wouldn’t see her again for more than two weeks, as she was going to be on vacation. I was beginning to wonder how awkward things would be when we began working together again. Was it possible to go back to normal? What was normal? How many ‘friends’ have kissed passionately?

            “Hey, you,” a sultry voice said, blending in with the noise of the nightclub as a slender hip covered by a short black cocktail dress bumped into mine.

            “Hey, yourself,” I grinned excitedly as I gazed into Becky’s large, lovely green eyes. I always marveled at how similar Becky’s and Cat’s eyes were, both in color and the almond shape. Not to mention they both had silky auburn hair. But it was these similarities that drew me to Cat in the first place. “I thought you were going to Florida despite your,” the word almost got stuck in my throat. “Fiancée backing out.”

            “Well, the girlfriend that was gonna go with me backed out also. Her grandmother died.”

            “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

            She shrugged. “Oh well, it wouldn’t have been any fun going alone, so I cancelled altogether. Soooo, I decided to go out with a couple old girlfriends to celebrate New Year’s and my birthday.”

            Becky introduced me to her two friends that she had known since school days. The three ladies had clearly been drinking, and one of them gave me an example of why they call intoxicating drink ‘conversation lubrication.’ “Becky was hoping you’d be here.”

            “Annie!” Becky scolded with a frown, slapping her friend on the arm. Then turning to me. “I just told them that you said this was a fun, lively place. Plus we were close by.”

            I’m ashamed to say I had several drinks in me myself, and my inhibitions were on the low side. Yet I was sober enough to want to avoid awkward standing around and looking at each other.

            “Becky, will you do me a favor?”

            “Depends,” she replied with a coy smile.

            “Come to the dance floor with me.”

            I took her hand and led our way to the dance floor. Now, I wasn’t a good dancer, I’m still not as a matter of fact, but it was an in-between song. By that I mean some were dancing slow, and some were gyrating by themselves, albeit facing a partner. I could dance slow.

            I put a hand on Becky’s waist, and she looped her arms around my neck as if we’d done this a hundred times. I told her about the two girls that were saying that they wanted to be the first to give me a New Year’s kiss.

            “I can’t say that I blame them,” she said, smiling warmly.

            The music stopped, and the DJ’s voice led the countdown to 1988. “Five, four, three, two, one.”

            Several air horns blew, and confetti fell onto the dance floor. I smiled mischievously and said, “I’m afraid we have to kiss.”

            I had intended just a simple, quick peck on her lips, but Becky tightened her arms around my neck, intensified her coy smile, and said, “Have to or get to?”

            The kiss wasn’t overly passionate, yet it was definitely more than friendly. Feeling embarrassed, I said, “Sorry that wasn’t Bruce.”

            She gazed at me with hooded eyes. “Sorry that I wasn’t Miss Clutterbuck.”

            I shrugged. “Cat’s not here, and she’s not gonna be. She told me to move on.”

            Becky mirrored my shrug, continued her coy smile, and said, “Bruce isn’t here either.”

            Once again I’m ashamed to say I had a pretty strong buzz, so my mind reeled to comprehend a hidden meaning, or not so hidden meaning.

            I took her left hand and lifted it into view. The diamond from her engagement ring sparkled in the dance floor lighting. As people toasted, hugged, cheered, and kissed around us, Becky pulled off her engagement ring and put it into her purse. She looped her arms around me again, and her lips brushed my ear as she whispered into it.

            Her warm breath was more intoxicating than the adult beverages I had consumed. Albeit in a different form. “You told me eight days ago that if I ever wanted us to be lovers to just say the word. Well, I’m saying it.”

            I wondered if she could hear me gulp. “What are you saying?”

            “Word, silly.”

            “What word?”

            “You told me if I ever wanted to be your lover to just say the word. So since Bruce bailed on me not only on my birthday, but the promised trip to Florida, I want to accept your offer.”

            “Becky, you’re engaged,” I feebly tried. It was odd, for we were still whispering in each other’s ears. It looked like we were slow dancing, but there was no music. Thankfully the whole place seemed to be celebrating rather than paying us any attention.

            “I am not married at the moment,” she said, and then nibbled on my ear lobe.

            This made me giggle and squirm, but I managed to say, “You’re going to be.”

            “That’s not your problem. If you didn’t intend to keep your promise, you shouldn’t have made it.”

            “Was it a promise?”

            “You bet it was, young man.”

            Why did I tell her that? Yet I was so glad I told her that! Why did she call me young man?  Yet, as much as I loved her, I couldn’t just use her for sex. I told her as much.

            She snorted a laugh and surprised me by using my old nickname. I wasn’t even aware she knew it. “Pretty Boy Loyd, who will be using who when you fulfill your promise?”

            I sighed with resignation but grinned happily. “A promise is a promise.”

            “You’re apartment is close by, isn’t it?”

            “Yeah, a few blocks away.”

            Eight hours later I awoke to find Becky gone. It turned out one of her friends picked her up at the crack of dawn. She had left me a note thanking me for the night, saying she had no regrets. Then telling me to have no regrets. Then she said that as much as possible, we should go back to being work buddies when she returned from vacation. Surprisingly, we pulled it off, for the most part.

            Then one day in early February, Becky called in sick. Even though I didn’t recall her ever calling in sick before, I didn’t think much of it. After all, it was cold and flu season. But when I arrived home after work, my message machine was flashing. It was Becky requesting me to come see her at her place. I granted the request.

            My pulse quickened, and my mouth gaped open when I saw her. She had a black eye, that was swollen shut, and the left side of her lip was puffy with blood residue. “Becky, what happened!”

            “Well, after a visit to my doctor, I very happily told Bruce that he was going to be a father. But instead of sharing my joy, he very vulgarly asked who I had been sleeping with. You see, even though he said he was very eager to have a couple more children, it turned out he had gotten a vasectomy after his third child was born.”

            “I see,” I replied as realization flooded my brain. “So… Am I the father?”

            She took my hand and smiled fondly at me through her puffy lip. A little breathlessly she said, “Yes, you are. One hundred percent, guaranteed.”

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

CHAPTER 8

December 21, 1987

LOVE IS AS STRONG AS DEATH, JEALOUSY AS CRUEL AS THE GRAVE (Song of Solomon 8:6)

            The darkest day of the year was the darkest day of my life. I sat on the corner of my bed and read the note Cat had left on her pillow in the middle of the night for the umpteenth time. Like the mystery that she was, she addressed me by the nickname we had in common with each other in the very beginning. It was Pebble for me, and Pebbles with an s for her. The thing that was odd about her using this moniker, was that we hadn’t used them since our first couple of times seeing each other.

            She almost always called me K.P. in private. It was short for Kickypoo. It was a combination of two things. My paternal grandmother was a Kickapoo Indian, which came to light as we got to know each other. And I was a punter, which obviously is a type of kicker. Cat was absolutely giddy about the parallel between ancestry and what turned out to be my occupation.

            My pet name for her? It was Kitty, which derived from Kitten, which derived from Cat, which derived from Catalina. Although she had addressed me as Pebble in her Dear John letter, she had signed off as Kitty.

            “Dear Pebble. As you read this, I am on my way to California. I need is a new start in life. What you need is a new woman, a special woman, because you’re a special guy, Pebble. Selfishly, I’m a better person for our lives having crossed paths. Selflessly, I need to let you go, because I should have never engaged you in a relationship in the first place. I should have never enticed you to make love when you were trying to be a proper gentleman. But I was so incredibly drawn to you, Pebble. It only brought to light just how ugly my own soul is. It is a curse to be pretty on the outside, while being ugly and unstable on the inside. Please don’t worry. I simply need the mountains, the sea, and the Bible. I’m going to say when, not if, I get right, I will live a life of service to our Lord. Alone except for God. Move on, my love. Please move on! I’m truly sorry! With all my love, the woman briefly, and wonderfully known to you as Kitty.”

            I didn’t know grief could make you physically ill. Although Catalina hadn’t died, I was mourning the loss of her. I was also tormented by the green monster of jealousy. I did not forget that her boyfriend before me was from California. But it wasn’t only her dumping me that disturbed me. After our relationship had turned intimate, with the lack of clothes this involved, I discovered on hidden parts of her body that she had been a cutter.

            This revelation had startled me and unsettled her. It was strange how I could tell that she both wanted me to know and didn’t want me to know. Her pain hurt me to the core, especially as I held her as she gently wept as she tried to explain the reasons why she harmed herself.

            Then two nights before I received this Dear John letter, I probably made a mistake. There was one item that I had never seen removed from Cat’s body. It was an inch wide watch. In postcoital, I had gently taken her hand, and began to unfasten the timepiece.

            “No, no, no,” she had said with a playful giggle, yet her eyes looked frightened.

            “Yes, yes, yes, my lovely Kitty,” I returned with good humor. “This has been the only obstruction for me to see all of you.”

            I had meant seeing all of her physical body in her birthday suit, obviously a joke. In hindsight, she saw my statement as pertaining to her person. She put the back of her hand into my palm, and I unfastened the watch. When it separated from her wrist, it revealed a thick dark purple, pink scar, multiple times bigger than the dozens of thin hidden scars from cutting. It almost looked like her hand had been severed at the wrist and sewed back on.

            “Oh, my beautiful Kitty, what did you do?” I asked without thinking, and not hiding my shock.

            Violent sobs erupted from her, lasting a few minutes. I squeezed her hand as she squeezed mine. As tears ran down my own cheeks, I prayed her cries were releasing the demons that tormented her.

            When it was over, she calmly ran her thumb over a line of tears on my cheek and licked them. “This is why I love you. You have empathy like no one I have ever met.”

            But then the night before the Dear John letter, I woke up to hear her rummaging in the bathroom. Then it was quiet. I went to check on her and found her staring at a handful of pills. She was so entranced at her hand and the dozens of tiny objects they held that she hadn’t noticed I had pushed the door open a good foot.

            “Catalina?” I tried softly. The way she jerked, you would have thought I shouted. A few pills rattled on the floor. “Honey, we need to get you help.”

            “I was flushing them, I promise,” she said. And she did toss them into the toilet and push the lever. I know, you’re not supposed to flush medication down the toilet. But this was 1987, and we were young and dumb.

            I hugged her and whispered. “Let’s get you help.”

            “Help!” she barked as she pushed away from me. “From who? The last idiot I went to prescribed those sleeping pills I just flushed. What kind of a quack gives somebody with suicidal tendencies a bottle of sleeping pills?” 

            The bad news. The last words I heard from Cat’s mouth before she left me were ‘I should have never been born.’

            The good news. When I finally heard from her several months later, she gleefully told me ‘I’ve been born again!’

Wednesday, December 23, 1987

            At work, when I returned from my afternoon deliveries, I smiled for the first time since I read the breakup letter two days previous. It was a forlorn looking elf sitting at the warehouse desk in the back of the building. Her back was to the desk, and she smoked a cigarette and bobbed her foot aggressively as a plume of smoke emerged from her pretty lips.

            It was the foot bob that made me smile. For she was wearing a green shoe that had a big curl at the toes that looked like the emblem on the Los Angels Rams football helmet. A green skirt with green and red striped tights, red sweater, and a green fedora with a big white feather completed the costume. Kristen, another gal from the office, was dressed identically to Becky. Roger, the plump service manager, was dressed like Santa. At our five o’clock Christmas party, the trio handed out presents. I got a flashlight.

            “You don’t look like a very jolly elf,” I told her.

            “Santa’s jolly, elves can be cranky.”

            “Hey now, that’s not the Christmas spirit.”

            “Oh, yeah? You’re one to talk.”

            “Huh? What do you mean?”

            “What, you don’t think it’s noticeable when Mr. Happy-go-lucky mopes around all week?”

            “Oh, so you noticed I’ve been kind of down the last couple of days?”

            “Ya think!”

            I told her all about Cat and the Dear John letter.

            “Oh, Loyd, I’m so sorry.”

            I shrugged. “It is what it is. I’m just glad I saw you in that outfit. I was starting to feel like I was never gonna smile again.”

            To my surprise, Becky lit another cigarette off of the old one. I had never seen her do this before. She was a light smoker, having started and quit off and on numerous times.

            She called smoking her stress relief. I understood her sentiment, but now that I was older and wiser, I had taken to running as stress relief. I hadn’t had a cigarette since before football season started. In the fifty five hours since my breakup letter from Cat, I probably had run more than twenty miles.

            “So what has you all mopey today?” I asked.

            With a sarcastic smirk, she said, “You noticed.”

            “Ya think,” I replied with her own comment about me. We both chuckled, despite our combined unhappiness.

            “So, as you know, Bruce asked me to marry him over Thanksgiving.”

            I glanced at the ring on her left finger and concentrated hard on not making a face. It was hard enough being newly dumped by Becky’s younger doppelganger. So I didn’t like being reminded that Becky had planned to yoke with that smarmy, creepy Bruce. Bruce with his mustache, shirts unbuttoned halfway down to show off his thick carpet of salt and pepper chest hair, adorned with gold necklace. Then the cherry on top, his mid-life crisis Corvette.

            “So, Bruce’s oldest is getting married New Year’s Eve,” she continued. “As nice as I’ve tried to be to his kids, they don’t like me, especially his oldest. But I didn’t realize that the dislike was so strong that she doesn’t want me at her wedding. But I get it. Her mother is going to be there, and I am, well, the reason they got divorced.”

            “What? How can that be? I distinctly remember you telling me he was divorced when you first started dating.”

            “I know,” she said with a shrug. Then took a long pull on her cigarette and exhaled a long plume of smoke. I eyed the bright red of the lipstick on the filter. It matched the red parts of her elf costume. I almost asked for a drag, just to touch where her luscious lips had been. But she continued and the words got stuck in my throat. “So he claims he told me they were going through a divorce, but not divorced yet. I guess it was a lack of communication.”

            “I see. Can I ha…”

            “But then his divorce wasn’t finalized until October,” she interrupted. “That’s what? Nine or ten months after he and I start dating? I don’t why I agreed to marry him!”

            She pulled off her engagement ring and tossed it onto the desk. I felt a moment of satisfaction, but then ruined it by asking, “Why did you?”

            She snorted a laugh. “Well, he is rather sexy, and, well, fun… If you know what I mean.”

            I didn’t want to ponder what she meant, and her overall comment almost made me throw up in my mouth.

            “Plus, my biological clock is rapidly ticking. I really, really want a couple children. Bruce said because of work he missed a lot of his kid’s growing up, and he’s anxious to start a new family and being an involved with our kid’s lives.”

            “But what about his current family, and the fact they don’t seem to like you?”

            “Yeah, I know,” she said, sighing unhappily. She took long drag on her cigarette, but talked before exhaling, causing little puffs of smoke with each word. “Oh well, nothing’s perfect in life, right? Just like my birthday being ruined along with being dissed at the wedding.”

            “What do you mean?” I asked, even though I happened to know her birthday was New Year’s Day, and the wedding was New Year’s Eve in another state.

            “He had promised me when he proposed that he we would celebrate by taking an extended weekend in Florida for my birthday… I don’t know, maybe I’m making a big mistake by marrying him.”

            She angrily snuffed out her cigarette in an ash tray, and as we both began to walk to the office, I almost told her that I thought she was. But then Tim Mansfield, a balding, pudgy salesman, came walking toward us wearing a baseball hat with mistletoe attached to it. He blocked Becky’s path and pointed to it.

            Becky giggled, and I would remember her words that followed in a few years when the TV show ‘Home Improvement’ aired. She said, “I don’t think so, Tim.”

            But a more vivid memory happened just seconds after this declaration. Tim grinning, complained in mock disgust. “A lot of good this mistle toe does. Apparently you still need to be movie star handsome like Loyd here.”

            Tim removed the hat from his head and stuck it on mine. Then he disappeared into the warehouse restroom. Chuckling, I took it off, and took a couple of steps toward the office when I felt Becky’s hand grasp mine. She ordered, “Wait!”

            I faced her dumbfounded. She looked left, she looked right, she grabbed the mistletoe hat and jammed it back onto my head. Before I could comprehend what was happening, her lips were on mine.