“Who, me? I’m Samantha Jones, but you can call me Sam.”
“Well, Sam,” Devro Rivers said, “You wouldn’t happen to be Eugene Jones’s daughter, would you?”
“Why, yes, yes, I am.” Sam smiled.
“Last time I saw your father, I bought a dairy cow from him that he had for sale. That cow produces the best milk I ever tasted.”
“Well, you know,” Sam began, “he used that money to put me through nurse’s training. That’s part of how I got here today.”
“You don’t say.”
“Small world, isn’t it, son?”
Devro wanted Dalton to stop gawking at the beautiful young nurse and engage in the conversation.
“Yeah, Dad, I guess it is. I’m Dalton Rivers, this eyeless gentleman’s son. So nice to meet you, Sam.”
Sam picked up on Dalton’s sarcasm for his father’s pushiness and said “So nice to meet you” before extending a hand. Dalton shakes her hand and is immediately surprised by Samantha Jones’s grip.
“Wow, you must have milked some of those cows yourself. You got a grip like a regular rodeo cowboy.”
“Don’t you mean cowgirl?” Sam corrects him. “And yes, I’ve been milking dairy cows since I was little bitty and still do. Sundays, when I’m off, I usually go milk after church. It’s a way for my family and me to spend time together.”
Dalton looks at his dad then back at Sam with a smile and says, “Well, I’m impressed. Can’t say I’ve ever met a woman that compares to you.”
This comment caught everyone’s attention and surprised even Devro, who had just lost the use of an eye.
“Say would it be to soon to ask someone on a date I just met under these circumstances?” Dalton asked with raised eyebrows.
“Not at all. I was hoping you’d say something,” Sam remarked.
Devro knew his son might have just met his wife.
“Can I pick you up later?” Dalton asked anxiously.
With the same amount of enthusiasm, Sam tells Dalton to pick her up after her shift ends near the front entrance of the hospital. Sam happily explains that a doctor will be in to check Mr. Rivers’s eye with further instructions on what is possible for treatment.
“I sure wish this didn’t happen to you,” Sam sincerely expresses her concern for Devro Rivers.
“Don’t worry young lady, God and I covered it years ago.”
“How is that?” Sam asked.
“I got married young, and God gave me two eyes just in case something like this happened.”
Sam soulfully laughs then looks at a smiling Dalton and says, “It was nice meeting you.”
Dalton concurred, saying, “It was a pleasure meeting you.”
With that, Sam leaves the father and son to check on the rest of her patients.
Not too long after Devro’s accident, he sold the Rivers cattle company and started a baseball organization. A year later, Sam and Dalton married.
Quail goes through the back door leading into his parents’ kitchen. He takes off his boots and coat while addressing his mother.
“Whatever you’re cooking smells good enough to eat.”
Mrs. Rivers, laughs as she says, “Come on, you goofball, get in here and eat while it’s hot.”
Quail enters the kitchen in his socks and heads toward a large pot of chili.
“Wash your hands before you eat in my kitchen,” Sam Rivers says with a joking sternness.
“Jeez, Louise, I’m so hungry I forgot.”
“Well, you’ve been working with cows and fiberglass all day, and I can tell for a fact you haven’t washed your hands once.”
Quail washes his hands and dries them on a towel. “Are you always going to talk to me like a child?” Quail asks his mother.
“Just as long as you act like one,” she rebuts without hesitation.
Quail gladly shovels chili into a bowl for the ease of his hunger.
After three large helpings, Quail gets up from the dining table in the farm-style house and walks over to the sink to clean his bowl and spoon.
“Was mighty tasty, Mom,” Quail says with a funny accent.
“Are you going down… Did you hear that?” Mrs. Rivers was interrupted by someone opening the front door.
The door slams loudly like the wind caught it. The sound of wet shoes clomps into the hallway leading toward the kitchen. Mrs. Rivers mouths “Who is that” to her son without making a sound.
Quail takes his eyes off of what his mother was trying to say and aims them at the doorway near the end of the hall.
“Hello?” Quail calls for an answer.
“Yeah, it’s me, Wayne.” Clomping into the kitchen, Wayne enters covered with mud from his waist to his shoes. “You all will not believe where I’ve been.”
“What happened?” Quail asks his older brother.
“Honey, how did you get covered in mud,” Mrs. Rivers anxiously asks her son.
“Well, I wasn’t paying attention,” Wayne begins. “I was driving back to the main road into town when all of a sudden I hit a patch of melted snow left over from the last storm. The snow must have just been slush because as soon as I drove over it, the car immediately slid into the embankment on the side of the road.”
Quail gets a little humor out of this when he mentions, “I told you to get a truck when you bought that car.”
Wayne ignores his brother, and finishes explaining his accident to Sam Rivers.
“So when I managed to get out of the car, I realized the wheels were submerged in mud.” Wayne pauses as he looks down at his mud-soaked pants and shoes. “I looked around for something to dig the tires out and noticed a stray pile of wood that had been dumped, so I grabbed a piece to try and dig with it. All I managed to do was cover my lower half with mud. After that, I decide to walk the couple of miles back here for some help.”
Quail and Mrs. Rivers both console Wayne for his bad experience. Mrs. Rivers goes to get Wayne some dry clothes while Wayne and Quail discuss getting his car unstuck. They decide the farm’s tractor should do the trick, but now that it was dark, they decided to rescue the vehicle in the morning. Mrs. Rivers returns to the kitchen with dry clothes for Wayne. Quail goes to the back door, where he puts his coat and boots on. Wayne was changing out of his mud-soaked attire while his mother dished up a bowl of chili.
“Mom, thanks for the chili. I’ll be back in a little bit.” When Wayne returns to the kitchen, he asks, “Did Quail go to milk?”
Mrs. Rivers explains that he had as she puts the bowl of chili on the table.
When Wayne finishes eating, he puts on one of his father’s coats to go down to the old barn and help with the evening chore. Quail had already milked five cows when Wayne got down there.
“Need any help?” Wayne asks.
Quail looks up from the cow he was milking at the moment and says, “Are there cow patties in the pasture?”
Wayne grabs a stool and positions the dairy cow that he picked to milk. They both work without speaking, mimicking each other with the sound of milk being squeezed from the cow’s udder ricocheting off the sides of the buckets they use to collect the milk in.
The Rivers are a traditional family