The Fourth Sunrise: A Love Story Read online

  “I, on the other hand, was still a bumbling idiot! ‘Would you like to eat a soda?’ I said, trying to get the right words out of my mouth. ‘I mean would you like to get a bite to eat or possibly get a soda pop?’

  “She said, ‘Yes, please. I’m starving.’

  ‘“Well, what’s good?’ I asked. This was her town after all.

  ‘“At the fair? Everything. There’s a strict rule about Deltarado Days—if it can ooze cheese or butter, then it’s fair game for a snack.’

  ‘Is there pizza?’ I asked, because butter didn’t seem appetizing, but a cheese pizza with some pepperoni certainly did.

  “‘I’m sure we can find pizza,’ Christine said.

  “‘Then I would love a slice of pizza.’ I stuck my right arm out for her to take hold of it. She smiled at me and was a tad hesitant to be so affectionate, too familiar so fast, but she gave in to it and took my arm and held it with her two hands. It was the first time we touched. Just having her arms around my left biceps made me feel twenty feet tall. We took our time walking around the fair.

  “‘So what does a girl like you do in a town like this?’ I asked, as we made our way to the food row.

  “‘I do a little of everything. I graduated last year from high school. I was working for a hot dog stand, but that got tiresome, so now, I’m basically a community organizer for the city.’

  ‘“I graduated in May, also,’ I said.

  “‘And you’re already a pro baseball player?’ Christine asked, impressed.

  “‘They snatched me up quick.’ I spotted a pizza booth.

  “‘You must be pretty good?’

  “I led Christine to the booth that was serving hot pizza, and answered my favorite question: ‘Am I any good? I love baseball and some days, I can hit the tar out of the ball.’

  “‘And the other days?’ Christine asked.

  “‘It’s like trying to hit a BB with a toothpick. The truth was, I thought at the time it would only be a matter of days until I’d be called up to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers. I truly believed I was that good. But my bum shoulder had other plans for me. I’m hoping the Dodgers pick me up soon.’

  “‘Wow. The Dodgers. Are you a Dodger fan?’

  “‘It doesn’t matter. They took a chance and signed me. But yes, I’m a die-hard Dodger fan, ever since they came over from Brooklyn. I hate the Yankees, but if they would have signed me, I’d be playing for them.’

  “‘I guess, so much for childhood loyalty,’ Christine laughed.

  “‘I’m a Dodger fan, tried and true. And the fact that Dodger Stadium is only thirty minutes from my parents’ house back in California helps. But if the Yankees or the Cubs would have signed me, I would be all about them.’

  “‘Just because they pay you?’

  “It’s more than that. It’s like you’re taking a chance on each other. They take a chance on signing me and I take a chance of playing for them. Although I’m a huge fan of the Dodgers, I would have signed with the Yankees in a heartbeat if they were interested.’

  “‘They passed me over and the Dodgers grabbed me with the 22 pick in the first round. But if the Yankees would have grabbed me with their 18 pick, I’d be playing in the footsteps of the great Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig. No one says no to playing for the pinstripes. It’s baseball royalty.’

  “Christine stared at me while we waited in line for our pizza. ‘I never met anyone like you,’ Christine said. ‘I envy someone who can just be what they want to be.’

  “‘What do you want to be?’ I asked inquisitively.

  “‘Well, right now I’m a jack of all trades and a master of absolutely nothing.’

  “I highly doubt that that you’re a master of absolutely nothing? You could master whatever you want.’

  “‘How do you know that?’

  “‘I see strength in you. I see a woman who can be whatever she wants to be.’ Christine’s eyes sparkled as the words left my lips. It took me by surprise and made me excited and incredibly nervous at the same moment. This woman did something to me that no woman had ever done before. I awkwardly smiled and then took a moment to catch my breath. Then I continued the conversation at hand. ‘If you could be whatever you wanted to be, what would you want to do?’

  “‘The thing is what I like most is helping people. I would love to be a nurse or possibly a doctor.’

  “‘A doctor. That’s an impressive goal. I think what you’re a master of is your goals. Don’t sell yourself short. Goals are how we see our world. I was just lucky to get a chance early on. Your goal requires a lot more years of training. Frankly, I admire what you want to do a hell of a lot more than I admire what I do. I get to hit a ball and call some pitches for a living. You are choosing to save lives.’

  “Christine smiled at me. ‘You’re an old soul.’

  “‘How so?’ I asked, trying to wrap my mind around what she meant.

  “‘You see things most boys our age couldn’t even begin to comprehend. You take the time to see the world. I like that a lot.’

  “‘I’m just letting you know that you’re still in the caterpillar phase. You’ll be a butterfly soon enough. Heck, I’m still not a butterfly yet.’

  “‘Yet? You already know, when will that be?’

  “‘Yup, when I put on the Dodger blue.’

  “‘I know you’re athletic and talented, and I have no doubts you’ll make it, but, let’s say something happened?’

  “‘What would I hang my hat on?’ finishing her sentence.

  “‘Yes, could you still be a butterfly?’ she asked.

  “‘Possibly…But I would be one bitter butterfly.’

  “We both laughed. It was our turn to get our pizza. I ordered two slices of pepperoni and Christine grabbed a slice of plain cheese.

  “I said, ‘Plain cheese? You got to put some items on your pizza. Otherwise, you are just eating cheese bread.’

  “‘I like cheese bread. This isn’t my first rodeo, cowboy. I like cheese pizza. All that other stuff gets in the way of the true beauty of the pizza.’

  “‘Which is what?’

  “‘The perfect combination between cheese, the tomato sauce, and the bread. Adding more to it is just greedy. It’s already delicious.’

  “‘I think you make good points.’ I smiled at Christine. She had so much personality. It was refreshing, hearing a girl talk so much. She acted as if she didn’t have a worry in the world. She might have envied what I did for a living, but I envied that in her character. She seemed at peace with herself and that’s a rare trait, a trait that was always appealing to me. Maybe because I had so many brothers and sisters, chaos was just a way of life.

  “We grabbed a couple of sodas and made our way to the table area and sat down. ‘So, where is your friend from the diner?’ Christine asked.

  “‘You mean Douglas?’

  “‘Yeah. He seems like a real good guy.’

  “‘He is,’ I agreed.

  “‘He thinks you’re something else.’

  “‘That’s because he’s my best friend. I think the same thing about him.’

  ‘“That’s great that you two are so close,’ Christine stated. ‘Is it hard with all the foolishness that is out there?’

  “‘Douglas has taught me to ignore the comments and to allow his ball playing do the talking. And if anyone truly has the skills to be a major league ball player, it’s him. He puts up with a lot of crap. He has more character in his pinky than most men have in their entire bodies.’

  “She wanted to know, ‘Where does he bat in the batting order?’

  “‘He leads off,’ I told her. ‘He is the biggest reason why I lead the league in RBI’s. It’s because Douglas leads the league in runs. I’m usually hitting him in.’

  “‘You two sound like quite a pair.’

  “‘Yeah, a pair of jokers,’ I said.

  “‘More like a pair of aces,’ she said.

  “I became embarrasse
d and decided to change the subject because I was never good at receiving compliments. Even when I was young, I didn’t know how to receive one, maybe it was because my own father never gave me a compliment.

  “‘What about your mother?’

  “‘She complimented me ten times a day. So the compliments that mattered to me were the ones I never got.’

  “‘That sounds a little ‘Greek Tragedy’ to me.’

  “‘Oh, you have no idea,’ I agreed. I could talk about myself all night, and I had learned that that wasn’t usually the smartest move with girls. Frankly, most girls didn’t know half of what Christine knew about baseball, but now she was diving into my family life and I thought it was a good time to get the focus off of me.

  “So, I decided to change the subject and focus on her. Plus, I had never got the reason she said she was a jack of all trades and a master of absolutely nothing. I had a lot of questions about this person who was sitting across from me. So, I said, ‘What is it that you do here? It sounds like you have lots of jobs.’

  “‘I’m the town’s fix-it, clean-it, mop-it, paint-it gal, because I don’t have one set job. I do a little of everything for a lot of local businesses. Most of the time, I work at a bridal boutique in town. I also work at the library, and sometimes I even help out at the gas station.’

  “I was surprised. ‘That’s pretty uniquely independent,’ I said to her.

  “‘I guess it’s nice to be trusted by so many people.’

  “‘What do you do at the bridal shop? Are there that many weddings in a town this small?’

  “‘Oh, you would be surprised. Mrs. Rogers, formerly Mrs. Calhoun, has been married three different times in five years.’

  “‘And that isn’t frowned upon?’ I asked, surprised.

  “‘Her husbands keep dying. She is a two-time widow at the age of 35. She knows how to snag a man up. To get three different men to marry you in five years…’

  “‘Is actually pretty amazing…’ I said, finishing her sentence.

  “‘And…especially considering the likelihood of her husband’s surviving past the age of thirty-five seems slim.’

  “‘That sounds like that is the most dangerous job in town.’ We both laughed.

  “‘What do you do at the bridal shop?’ I asked specifically.

  “‘I run the cash register and help ladies fit in dresses when they are twenty pounds heavier for the dress and they all swear they will lose the weight before they pick it up before their wedding date.’

  “‘Do they lose the weight?’

  “‘Actually, most of them do,’ Christine laughed. ‘Don’t get between a woman and her wedding dress. I’ve seen women starve themselves into the hospital trying to fit into a dress.’

  ‘“That sounds really unhealthy.’

  “‘Try to convince a bride of that. It isn’t happening.’”

  “We talked about everything from where we went to elementary school to the president of the United States being assassinated just years earlier.

  “‘Where were you when you found out that JFK got shot?’ Christine asked.

  “‘I was catching for my junior high school team back in California. We were playing against another junior high school. A kid yelled out from the dugout that the president had been shot. One of the parents had a transistor pocket radio and the news spread like wildfire.’

  “She shuddered. ‘That is an awful way to find out.’

  “‘It was just the second inning and they should have stopped the game, but didn’t. They were trying to verify that it was real and not misreported or a hoax. Nobody wanted to believe such a terrible thing had happened, so there was a lot of denial until things started coming out on more and more radio and TV stations. We had to wait almost two hours before we found out the details and we played through the game, most of us choked up and scared. What about you?’

  “‘I was in Dallas when it happened.’

  “‘What were you doing there?’

  “‘My family was visiting some cousins in Dallas. I wasn’t at the location where it happened. We were about two miles away, watching it from our local television station.’

  “‘That sounds like a great day gone really bad.’

  “‘It was. I don’t follow politics too much. I couldn’t tell you if he was a good or bad president. All I knew was the president of the United States was shot a couple of miles from where I was staying. It was really scary.’

  “‘That is pretty outrageous that you were so close.’ I paused and took in her statement. ‘Trust me when I tell you he will go down as one of the greatest presidents of all time. Nixon has me worried. I think he is going to win. There is something I don’t trust about him. I can’t put my finger on it.’

  “‘Are we seriously still having a political conversation?’ she asked.

  “‘I take it that it’s not your favorite subject.’

  “She said, ‘My mom is Democrat and my dad is a Republican. So, I hear a lot of this at home.’

  “‘What would you like to talk about?’

  “‘I’d like to talk about how delicious the pizza is.’ Christine winked at me to let me know things were okay.

  “‘Then let’s discuss toppings,’ I joked.

  ‘“Don’t get me started about toppings.’”

  Chapter Five

  Present Day – Delta, Colorado - Coffee Shop, 11:00 p.m.

  “We sat there for hours talking and laughing, and really living every moment of it. I had never had this sort of connection with any other person in my short life. I was enjoying this so much that the time had gotten away from me. I was breaking the team curfew rules, after all, and there was the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that my escape had been revealed.”

  Sharee interrupted my story and brought me back to the present day reality, where my once-young heart had become old and jaded. Those fresh feelings filled with hope and determination had been replaced with lost opportunities and broken dreams.

  Although I had been having a wonderful time reminiscing with Sharee, she was a constant reminder of me being stood up. I couldn’t understand it. Christine, it seemed, wasn’t going to be showing up this time. And my heart truly ached at the thought that she had forgotten me, once and for all.

  “Did you get caught?”

  “Huh?” I said absent-mindedly.

  “That night. Did you get caught sneaking out of your room?” she asked again.

  “Oh, I’m getting to that, don’t be impatient.”

  Chapter Six

  July 1968 – Delta, Colorado - Deltarado Days, 1:30 p.m.

  “I looked across the table at Christine. She looked so graceful. She reminded me of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s but with longer hair. How she would not have a thousand guys waiting to be at her side at this moment was beyond me. All I knew was, I was having a slice of pizza with an angel.

  “Christine caught me looking at her and looked away. I could tell she might have felt uncomfortable. ‘So, you live with your parents?’ she asked.

  “‘I sure do. When I’m not traveling or staying with the team. During home games in Albuquerque, I stay with a nice older couple. They have a great swimming pool.’ She smiled at that.

  “‘How about you?’ I asked. ‘Do you have any siblings?’

  “‘Nope, just me.’

  “‘Wow, I’m one of seven kids. My parents believed in being fruitful and multiplying.’

  “‘Well. I’m glad they kept going until they made you.’ That statement made me blush. I liked this girl a lot. ‘Where do you fall in the birth order?’

  “‘I’m the oldest boy. I have two older sisters. So, I’m third.’

  “‘Where did you grow up?’

  “‘California. Indio, California.’

  “‘Is that near Los Angeles?’

  “‘More or less. Please don’t ask me if I’ve seen movie stars.’

  “‘That was my next question.’ Christine laughed.

/>   “‘It usually is. Most people think movie stars just walk the streets, eat at delis, and roller skate at the park constantly.’

  “I looked across at Christine and she somehow she got a piece of pizza cheese in her bangs. I looked her in the eyes and asked, ‘Do you trust me?’

  “‘I don’t really know you.’

  “‘Okay, let me rephrase that. Do you trust me enough to close your eyes for five seconds?’

  “Christine looked at me and grinned. She was a bit nervous, but she said, ‘You want me to close my eyes?’

  “‘Yes, just for five seconds. But you can’t know the reason why?’

  “She grinned at me and said, ‘I can trust you for five seconds. Not a second longer.’

  “Christine closed her eyes and I quickly reached over and plucked the cheese out of her bangs. I brushed up against her forehead with my fingertips when I did so. Christine kept her eyes closed much longer than five seconds.

  “Then she did something that surprised me even more when I nicked her forehead. She said, ‘Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.’ Then she opened her eyes.

  “‘Wow, you trusted me six times longer than you had to.’

  “‘That’s about right,’ Christine said.

  “‘What is?’ I asked.

  “‘My leap.’

  “‘What leap?’

  “‘My leap in thinking that you are a really great guy.’

  “‘It’s a leap?’

  “‘Of course it is.’

  “‘But you think I’m a great guy?’

  “‘So far I do,’ Christine stated.

  “‘Only my mom talks that way about me.’

  “‘I doubt that. You seem like a real sweet guy.’

  “‘Maybe my grandma thinks that highly of me, but you three are rare,’ I teased.

  “‘What are your parents like?’ Christine asked, staring intently at me.

  “‘Well, my mom is probably the most caring woman I have ever known.’

  “‘How so?’

  “‘She loves all children as God’s children. I mean there are people who say that, but my mom lives it. She runs youth camps and her one mission is for each kid who comes into contact with her is for them to know they are loved.’