Shake the Trees by Rod Helmers Page B

building gave the cattle relief from the sun in the short summer and protection from the snow and cold wind in the winter.
    After driving Dustin to the bus, which stopped on the highway at the end of the dusty two-mile-long ranch road, Sandi headed back to the maternity ward.  Her tasks there essentially involved checking on the health and well-being of the prospective mothers and newborn calves.  Her father had assigned her those duties ostensibly as rent for the cabin.  But she knew how the old man’s mind worked - it was all to remind her about the circle of life after her husband died. 
    She understood the unspoken plan and it probably helped.  It was hard to keep thinking about death when new life was celebrating its entrance into the world just outside your front door.  The newborn calves - kicking up their little hooves on spindly awkward legs - always brought a smile to her face.  Even through tears.
    Sandi cleaned up at the cabin before stopping by the ranch house on the way to her “town job”.  Among ranch people a job in town was just that - no further description was necessary.  It was a way to make ends meet.  But Sandi enjoyed her in town job more than most.  Next to her Dad, her boss was also her best friend.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sandi shot back as she stared across the kitchen table at her father.
    “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.  You two have been doing this dance for going on four years.  It’s about damned time.”
    Sandi looked down and became serious.  “Why? 
    “Why what?”
    Why have we been dancing?”
    “Why him, or why you?”
    “Why him.”
    “I’d like to talk about why you first.”
    “I figured.”
    “How long has it been since you buried your husband, Sandi?”
    Betty Rimes was across the kitchen preparing some part of one of the meals she would serve that day.  She’d heard enough and picked up a frying pan air-drying in the plastic drainer next to the sink.  “Rodger Rimes, I’ve been married to you for nearly fifty years, but I swear to God I’m gonna come over there and put a knot on that thick overgrown skull of yours.”
     
    Sandi had married Joe Johnson a little more than one year after she graduated from high school.  He was a cowboy like her Dad, and everybody thought they made a perfect couple.  Dustin came along in a couple of years; there was never enough money, but always plenty of happiness and joy in the little family.  Joe loved the outdoors and loved to rodeo.  He actually made a good bit of money riding the bulls.  At least until he landed wrong on a sunny Saturday afternoon and nearly severed his spinal cord at the base of the skull.  He would have died immediately if there hadn’t been an ambulance and skilled medical personnel a few yards from where he lay.  As it turned out, that wasn’t a blessing.
    Rodger Rimes was very close to Joe.  He loved him nearly as much as Sandi did.  The way he looked at it, he’d finally acquired a son who wanted to ranch.  And they were a lot alike.  Rodger knew what he would want for himself under those horrible circumstances, and he knew what Joe would want as well.  Rodger insisted that the neurologists and Sandi assemble in Joe’s hospital room, and fully explain the dire situation.  Joe could not breathe on his own - a ventilator did that for him.  All he could do was blink.  No one offered any hope that his condition would ever change for the better.  Joe was trapped in a slowly deteriorating body.
    Rodger Rimes shocked Sandi and the doctors when he asked Joe if he wanted to live that way, and then asked Joe to blink once for yes and twice for no.  Joe blinked twice.  Rodger told him he’d be back every day.  And he did come back.  Every day until the doctors and Sandi agreed to unplug the machines.  It took almost three months.
    “Who are you mourning for, Sandi?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, you sure as hell aren’t