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“Well, okay then,” I said, kind of
stunned.
      ***

    The next two weeks were a blur. We went out
every single night—movies, dancing, dinner, taking a blanket to the
park and just lying on the grass and looking at the stars. All this
time in my safe little world, he didn’t even hold my hand. Now,
wait just a minute—maybe I’m not desirable!
      One day Shay called and told me his
parents were leaving on the Amtrak to go see his grandmother in
California. They would be gone two weeks, and he would be
ramrodding the whole Westover operation. Some of his friends wanted
to water ski that Sunday—with wet suits, since it was winter. He
said he’d come and get me. I said okay.
      He picked me up that Sunday as
planned, and we got to the lake about 1 p.m. There was plenty of
beer flowing, which made me uneasy. Deep water and booze—didn’t
seem like a good combination to me. Around 3:30 Shay and his best
friend Kevin went on a beer run. I wanted to lie on the blanket and
sunbathe. Just as they were returning, there was a huge thud out on
the water. Kevin’s girlfriend, Karen, was waterskiing, and had
fallen. The stupid idiot driving the boat, drunk, had whirled the
boat around too sharply and hit her.
      Someone got her out real fast and
Kevin and Shay jumped out of the car. Karen couldn’t breath and
said she thought she was hit in the throat. Kevin carried her to
Shay’s car, Shay grabbed my arm, threw me in the front seat and we
were off to the nearest hospital. Kevin was saying, “Hurry, Shay,
hurry!” Five miles of loose gravel road. We must have been going 80
miles per hour, then we hit the two-lane highway 34 and I looked
over and Shay’s speedometer read 110.
      “Well, this is where I get off,” I
said, feeling faint. “Let me out. I told you I can’t handle speed.”
I panicked and began fumbling with the door handle. “Let me out! I
need to get out!”
      Poor Shay, he was holding me down with
one arm and keeping control of the car at the same time. We had
three patrol cars with sirens blaring behind us as we crossed the
overpass. Shay never slowed except for a few corners, coming up
under the emergency room entrance. He stopped the car, jumped out,
ran in, and help came running out immediately. We were all still in
our swimsuits.
      The officers got out, walked up and
said, “Just wondered what your hurry was, son. That was some
driving.”
      Shay gave them a quick, respectful
nod, then turned around and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Don’t you
ever try to jump from a moving car again, do you understand me? You
would have been killed. I was responsible for Karen. It was my boat
and my lake. I’m also responsible for you when you’re with me.”
      He was very upset. I nodded,
shaken.
      Well, it turned out Karen was okay, so
Shay settled down pretty fast, but I was still in shock. I told him
I wanted to go home.
      “We’ll go back and put the boat away
first. I have to check on everyone’s chores and then I’ll take you
home.”
      I noticed the water was a little
higher when we got to the boat. The water was touching my blanket
where I’d left it on the beach. No one said anything, but I saw
Shay and his friends exchange glances. The water was rising.
      A Day’s Work For A Day’s Food

      We took the boat to the grounds and
put it in the storage building. Anywhere else, this would have been
called a ranch, but in Nebraska, they were called farm
homesteads.
      The Westovers lived large. They had a
big house, a circle drive, several smaller houses on the property,
the workers’ houses, the bunkhouse, machinery buildings, a
helicopter hangar and take-off pad, a seasonal pool and tennis
court, the lake—big enough to ski on. Livestock barns, a milking
barn, horse barns, corrals, lots and lots of land surrounded by
lots and lots of water, fields, cattle and corn (lots of corn.)
      Most of the land south of Hudson, when
you exited off Highway 34, belonged to the