Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Rachel
C had insisted on checking up on me last night even after I’d texted him when I arrived at Tabitha’s.
He texted me three more times. He was sweet, without being creepy. When I got back home around 5:30 a.m., there was a bouquet of wild flowers waiting for me in my bedroom. I made an offhand comment to Jessie as she fried eggs this morning in the kitchen to see if she knew that he’d managed to slip in and out of the house for the last two nights, but she seemed oblivious.
Seems the wrangler is stealthy. But the note he left with the flowers made it darn well clear that I needed to get used to his kind of attention. And I have to say, it’s pretty nice when someone thinks you’re so special.
Chores never stop, not around here, so the morning was filled with routine. Only today there was this aching inside me. A longing that needed to be filled and I kept playing little snippets and scenarios in my mind of when and how Chad and I might be able to be together again.
Noon now, and the lunch is packed and loaded and I hold it on my lap as I start the truck. I throw Clifford into gear, Johnny Cash comes through the speakers heading out to the back hay field with a stomach full of butterflies.
Only as I get closer, the butterflies disappear to be replaced by a clenching sense of something else.
You never hear voices over the engine and cranking sound of the huge hay baler. Unless someone is screaming, like they are now.
I slam on the brakes on the pickup as I get to the clearing where I see the enormous machine, flinging the door open and leaving the engine running. The box of food tumbles to the ground, but I don’t care, I jump out of the cab and go. Screams ring out across the field and in my ears as I run toward the noise. My heart’s in my throat. I know something’s wildly wrong, but it’s like I’m moving in slow motion, the intensity of whatever is happening already pumping adrenaline through my veins.
“Pull…help. Pull me…don’t let go. Please!” Enrique’s voice rising above the machine noise.
I come around the huge green machine, my adrenaline shooting sky high. Chad stands on on the wheel well, reaching down, Enrique pressing hard against the turning arm of the intake.
Enrique’s stuck.
“Rachel!” Chad’s voice is a desperate plea for help. “The emergency stop isn’t working!”
Every muscle in my body pumps with fear. There is a lever down at the back of the machine that’s supposed to shut down the engine without having to climb up into the control cab at the top. The screams tell me whatever is happening is bad, the sounds coming from Enrique are drilling holes in my ears.
“Help pull, Rachel. Now!”
I scramble up the huge tires, flailing for handholds and onto the back of the machine full of the fresh cut hay. Enrique is caught by his shirt and the giant, rake-like feeders are working his body closer and closer to the point of no return.
Fire burns in Chad’s eyes as every muscle in his arms struggles in vain to pull Enrique’s free arm back from the sucking machine. I can’t see if his arm is already inside the machine. There’s already blood on Enrique’s head from the rakes spinning and bumping against him.
Chad holds his arm, fighting desperately to save Enrique’s life. His face grimaces in pain and effort, teeth clenching, sweat giving his features an unreal sheen. The sun beats down and the screams mixed with the intense siren of the powerful machine shoots arrows through my heart.
Enrique’s slipping, closer to the intake. Chad calls my name, but there is no room for me to help pull. The ladder going up to the cab has long rusted its bolts, so you have to pull yourself up to get to the main controls. I don’t have that kind of strength. I stand on the top of the loose hay and out of the corner of my eye I see a wooden handle.
I don’t remember thinking, just acting on reflex, like a cat chasing a mouse. I grab the wooden handle, knowing the hard iron pitchfork is on the other end. I fall down onto my stomach, lean over the intake, the bits and pieces of hay spraying up into my face, sticking in my eyes. But I don’t care, I just let them cover me as I drive the pitchfork with all my strength into the spinning gears.
The screaming of Enrique and Chad is met with the screeching and grinding of metal. The towering monster of a machine jerks and clanks, the spinning rakes stopping in mid-spin.
“The red button. Chad, you have to hit the red button up there. You’re going to have to let him go!”
The wild-eyed look from Chad pierces my gaze as I scream at him. I see the flash of doubt in his eyes as his hands still grip with all his force onto Enrique’s arm. It only takes a split second for him to realize the pitchfork has stopped the spinning, but we both know it won’t last long. Already the wooden handle is shaking and the gears of the mighty machine are fighting against the intruding element.
He needs to let Enrique go, jump down then back up to the control panel and hit the full stop button while he can. It might be the only window.
Like a rocket, Chad’s long hard body leaps from his place next to Enrique, taking in the ten feet of space between him and the lifesaving stop button like an Olympic pole vaulter. The grinding of the gears howls in our ears, the wooden handle of the pitchfork quivering like a reed as the machine works with all its might to drive out the offending piece of metal that has stopped its forward motion.
The voice of the machine is joined by the wrenching sounds of someone knowing they are going to die. The pitchfork shoots out of the gears like a bolt of lightning.
Chad’s arms flex as he pulls his body weight up, his hand grabs on to the door handle at the top of the machine. He’s at the control panel and slams his hand down on the emergency stop. If I had known when I got out of the truck what was happening, I could have tried my best to climb up myself and stop the machine, but I didn’t think fast enough and Chad vaulted up there ten times faster than I could have.
In a split second the machine falls silent, and the only sound left in the world is Enrique’s screams. Every instinct tells me not to look, it’s too late, but I don’t listen. I have to help him. His wife and children have become part of our own family.
How could we ever tell them Enrique was gone?
I slide down the back of the trailer, bouncing hard, hitting my head on one of the metal poles holding the baler onto the hay truck. Enrique’s small body is still pinned onto the intake, blood flowing from a gash in his head.
He’s still screaming.
The miracle dawns on me. A dead man doesn’t scream.
My skin prickles and my eyes burn and itch from the sprays of hay. But I am filled with the release of panic and heart pounding joy to know he’s still alive.
Chad gets to Enrique just as I do, pulls his white t-shirt over his head, catching his cowboy hat in mid-air and putting it right back on his head. Every muscle and vein in his neck and torso pumps, flushed with the power of a superhero.
“Put this on his head. I’m going to cut his shirt.”
Chad throws his white t-shirt my way applying it to the gash on Enrique’s head, watching the red blotches seep and spread over the white fabric.
“You’re okay…” I say gently next to Enrique.
His brown eyes blink, darting back and forth, wondering what is real and what might be imagination.
Chad pulls his knife from his front pocket, flips it open with one flick of his thumb. The silver metal glinting in the sunshine. Then there’s the sound of fabric tearing, like a pirate cutting a sail, and Chad frees Enrique from the loose fabric of the blue and red plaid shirt entwined in the metal jaws of the green machine. He was twisted in there so close, if Chad had let go of him for one moment, the machine would have taken his arm and then his life.
“Oh, God, Jesus, thank you! Thank you!” Enrique falls back from the intake, mumbling and crying. Chad helps him down onto the ground where the wheels of the giant machine have sunk into the soft earth and I follow behind kneeling down and saying a little prayer of thanks.
Time is moving slow. I stare at Chad and his blue eyes pierce the space between us, our breath unsteady and my mind filled with a loud buzzing.
“You okay?” Chad’s hand reaches out and touches the side of my head, his fingers rubbing against my cheek, slick with sweat.
I breathe hard, but I nod. “Yeah.” The words come only with each breath. “You?”
“Yeah.” He smiles, his perfect white teeth shining behind his upturned lips. His beige cowboy hat still sits snug on top of his dark hair.
Jeans, no shirt, cowboy hat, mud on his chest, sweat shining – we just saved someone’s life together…stick a fork in me ‘cause I’m done.
“God…Oh thank you…thank you!” Enrique calls out to the sky. I’m not sure if he’s talking to us or not.
“It’s okay. You’re okay.” Chad’s deep voice reassures his friend.
The white t-shirt fills with an ever growing red circle. Chad reaches down and lifts Enrique to his feet, a huge wave of guilt washing over me as I can’t keep my eyes from admiring every pulse of his six-pack abs and hard, broad pectoral muscles. The tendons in his shoulders strain as he lifts Enrique from what could so easily have been his end. Adrenaline pulses in my veins, and the thrill of the moment has my mind filled with thoughts of my hands all over that hard body.
“Come on, let’s take him back to the house.”
I keep my eyes on his sculpted body as we load Enrique back into the truck and turn it in a wide arc as we head back to the farmhouse and Jessie.
We don’t say a word on the drive back. I think Chad is still reeling from what’s just happened, and I am too, but I’m also horny as hell. I keep stealing glances at him as we crunch over the hard dirt.
Jessie’s cool as a cucumber when she sees Enrique limping out of the truck cab, listening as Chad and I try to recount the event.
“Oh, well now,” she says when we’re done, “you do just about anything to get yourself out of a bit of hard work, now don’t you?” She smiles and escorts Enrique inside the house.
Chad and I are left standing outside the back door in a stupor.
“He’s gonna be alright. You two clean yourselves up and go on back out there. Everybody still needs to eat and that lunch ain’t about to fetch itself!”
Jessie takes everything in stride. A tornado could touch down and she would just be telling everybody to go on and pick up the mess before supper time.
Chad and I look at each other as she hums and walks Enrique indoors, cool as a summer breeze. My mouth is still hanging open.