In The Eye Of The Beholder

Zelda Martin & Harry B. Sanderford

A cowgirl in a yellow sundress crouches behind a big rock on the beach, reloading.  Her name is Sal and right now she's no one's pal.  She's madder'n a bull with his nuts in a vise.  She takes aim again at Sam, that son-of-a-bitch who's running away as fast as his bow-legs can carry him, zipping in and out of the surf to make himself harder to hit.  Sal knows that Sam knows that the sun's in her eyes, so she can hardly see.  Why is the sun in her eyes, you ask?  Because the no-good sidewinder has her wide-brimmed cowgirl hat and her fringed leather vest, skirt and boots in that bag he's got slung over his back.  A girl lets down her guard for a few minutes, to take a nap on the beach, and what happens?  She wakes up in a goddamn yellow sundress  for chrissake, while the guy she thought she could trust is hightailing it down the beach, probably headed for the nearest pawnshop.

 Sam’s not heading for any pawn shop. He’s booking for cover so he can hideout until Sally either simmers down or runs out of bullets. As long as they’ve been riding together, Sam has accepted Sal’s hard drinking and her ornery fighting. Her temper has a hair trigger and her fury, if unleashed upon someone who does not happen to be one’s self, is a spectacle unparalleled and a marvel to behold. He's turned a deaf ear to her coarse language and for the most part a blind eye to what would charitably be called her rough exterior.  Sam was the one cowboy on the whole planet who saw something beautiful in Sally. He loved her just as she was warts ‘n all and I mean we’re talkin’ real warts here, hairy ones, not no dang metaphorical warts.  She sure was pretty in that yeller sundress...well, at least 'fore she woke up, he thought diving behind a trash barrel as it caught a ricochet.

DAMN!  That was my last goddamn bullet!  What's wrong with me? she thought.  I never miss!  She stood up and threw her empty pistol as hard and far as she could, in Sam's general direction.  And then, she became aware of a strange sensation creeping up through her chest, her throat and then her eyes, and then some kind of salty, watery stuff was squirting out of her eyes and down her cheeks.  What the hell?  It's...it's...TEARS!  Christ almighty!

"SAM!" she screamed.  Come back here, you ornery polecat!  And bring me my real clothes.  I feel like a candy-ass whore in this stupid sundress!”  She started ripping off the dress and running through the wet sand toward the trash barrel, where Sam stood, prepared to run in either direction, toward her or away from her, depending on the look in her eye as she got closer.

Running naked up the beach Sal was a kinetic study of the female form fashioned from phone books.  Her pigeon toed gate rocking her head left and right  was the saving grace that kept her pendulous breasts from blacking both eyes.  Sam saw Bo Derek in the beach scene from 10.  

Sal was still too far away for Sam to hear her shouts but he took her getting naked on the beach and running towards him, (plus the fact that she’d stopped shooting at him) as a good sign and decided to shuck his own duds and meet her halfway.

At this point, the laws of Physics took over.  Two hefty Masses approaching one another at increasing Accelerations resulted in a Forceful collision that sent them smack down hard, into the sand and surf, where they commenced to rolling back and forth in each other's wake.  When their heads cleared, they scooted toward each other like two sand crabs in heat.  Sam pulled Sally to her feet and gasped in pleasant surprise.  The friction from the coarse sand had scraped every one of those hairy warts off of her, making her even prettier than he had thought possible.  Standing there together, the setting sun haloing Sal’s wild thatch of red curls, Sam felt he was the luckiest man alive. He sensed Sally had cooled off and he knew this was the perfect time. So he dropped to one knee and asked his gal Sal for her big ol’ cracked and calloused hand in marriage.

Sam had become something of an expert at misreading Sally’s moods. If he’d been better at it he might have ducked instead of catching her haymaker square on his left ear. The blow sent him cart-wheeling back into the surf, sucking about half the Atlantic Ocean up his nose as he sank to the bottom looking up through the wavering water at the funhouse version of his sweet saddle-tramp Sally. Seeing her through this new lens was something of an eye opener for Sam as he layed on the bottom watching her pitching and stomping and fussing. Her antics were those of a dance he’d seen before and of which he knew the progression. Right now she would be calling him a sidewinder and if she had a chaw she’d punctuate the accusation with a brown spurt of tobacco before swinging wildly at the air in front of her. Sam grinned, a bubble escaping his mouth as Sally pantomimed his predictions up above.  Sam didn’t know it but he was looking  at Sally in a way he never had before. Objectively. And you know what? She still rocked his world.

Still smiling, Sam closed his eyes and pictured Sally coming down the aisle toward him, wearing a purty, white bridal gown.  He was having himself a nice little picket fence underwater daydream as he headed towards the light. But, the next thing you know, he was upchucking ocean face down in the sand and gasping for a breath while Sally rode him bareback.  Once it was apparent he might survive, She rolled him over, kissed him smack on the lips and looked him dead in the eyes as she told him in that tender way of hers, “You ain’t getting’ off that easy Buckaroo. I accept!”

Get moreof Zelda's rockin' Zs right here: http://z-to-u.blogspot.com/