Debra Clopton - Dream a Little Dream

What had Molly been thinking? She could have lost her life all for a picture of his house. He knew facing a mountain of solid bull muscle just by crossing a cattle guard wouldn’t have been a priority on her list of things to do for the day. Surely she’d seen the big brute? Who could miss two thousand pounds of bull out in broad daylight? Or maybe Sylvester had been standing over the hill where she couldn’t see him.

He wondered if she was having nightmares. Though she’d seemed fine on the ride into town after he’d rescued her, he wondered. Sometimes adrenaline got a person through a close call. Lowering his hammer, he let his gaze wonder out across his pastureland.

A Christian man, no, any kind of man worth his salt, Christian or not, would step up and see if she was okay.

Especially the man who knew he had a bull with problems.

Before church on Sunday morning Molly was sitting in her apartment lost in thought.

After her maddening encounter with Bob the brute on Saturday, she’d met with his insurance adjuster alone. He had given her an assessment of the damage to her poor darling car. Her little Bug had taken a beating from that bull-headed bull on the hood and both side panels. The adjuster had assured her the news was good, that Sylvester’s damage was actually minimal. Some new doors, a little bodywork, a new paint job and her car would be as good as new.

Easy for him to say. New paint jobs were never as good as the factory. Everybody knew that, but it served her right for trespassing. What had she been thinking?

About a story.

Everything in her life was about a story. It was true, but she liked it that way. Still, it seemed a sad fact that she’d stood in the middle of the street taking pictures of her car as it was being towed away that day. But the photos were for “just in case.” Just in case she got over her fright and an idea for a story should arise from this incident. That was the way she was wired. Many would argue that her wires were really messed up.

Who was she kidding? She felt no real desire to look for an article angle. Looking at the car had brought all the trauma of the experience back to her. She sucked in a long breath and forced the thoughts away. She refused to think any more about the bull attack. She couldn’t. She had just a few days left to get her column in for the week, not to mention the magazine articles that loomed in a consecutive wave of deadlines. She’d scrapped the follow-up on Bob and now she had nothing.

Nothing.

For a girl with endless ideas, the fact that she had no desire to write was unbelievable. She always wrote, had always created several ideas at once.

Specifically, she’d been writing columns about Mule Hollow for almost a year. Now suddenly for the first time in her life she was drawing blanks.

She hadn’t had an idea since the attack on Friday—the day Bob told her to stop writing about him.

For the past two mornings, as she’d done most mornings since her arrival in Mule Hollow, she’d risen at five o’clock, dressed quickly, strapped on her backpack and jogged to the edge of town. She’d taken the well-worn path she’d created across the open field where town gatherings were held, past the grove of mesquite trees and finally stopping at her special spot—a flat rock on the top of a knoll overlooking a sweeping valley. There she’d sit. She loved watching the sunrise, bringing with it inspirations—the sparks that ignited her creative mind.

Until now.

Until she’d been given the order to halt all tales of Bob.

She hadn’t completely realized exactly how much her column about Mule Hollow had truly revolved around him.

Why was that?

This morning, after not sleeping most of the night, she had sat on the floor in the middle of her apartment surrounded by weeks and months of copies of her column. And lo and behold, to her surprise, the maddening man had been right.

Completely, unexplainably right.

He had been in the papers more than the President!

Monday morning came and Molly remained distracted and disgruntled, still drawing blanks. Even at church the day before she’d been in a fog, unable to focus on the service. Especially when there was a noticeable vacant spot in the choir where Bob usually sang. The man had a voice like Tim McGraw and he used it for the Lord. Wow! Just one more big check mark for why he was such a great guy. But it still didn’t explain why he’d appeared in her articles so much. There was, after all, an entire town full of great guys sitting in the church sanctuary. True their voices weren’t as good as Bob’s, but they were nice guys looking for love. So why hadn’t she plastered their names all over her articles as much as she’d plastered Bob’s?

Still boggled in the brain and running late on her routine, she crossed the street and walked over to the tiny Mule Hollow convention center to see if she needed to lend a hand before finding somewhere to settle and try to write. The center was really two older buildings on Main Street that the town had renovated into one large space. By city standards it was nothing more than a big room. For Mule Hollow, it was a convention center. Today they were decorating for Dottie Hart and Sheriff Brady’s bridal shower on Friday. The wedding was less than two weeks away, and as far as the two of them were concerned, that was two weeks too long.

An inspiring story, Molly was pleased to have had a hand in the match. It was her articles that basically inspired Cassie to start hitchhiking her way to Mule Hollow, which led Dottie to give her a lift, which brought both of them to town. Dottie had met Sheriff Brady and the rest was history. The only bad part for Molly was that Cassie had followed Bob around. Followed, not stalked as Bob had called it. And though things hadn’t worked out between them, Bob had befriended the young girl and now there were no hard feelings. At least not between Bob and Cassie. Obviously, the same didn’t go for her and Bob.

Still, she didn’t quite get it. He was happy for Brady and Dottie, he was friends with Cassie. But he was angry with her for writing the articles that were responsible for the wonderfully romantic web that God had used to get them all together.

True she’d gone overboard expounding on Bob’s worthiness as a potential husband, but she’d done a good thing for everyone else.

She was sorry she’d given him more fame than he wanted. But he would live. And maybe God would use it for good. If she focused on the positive aspects of what she’d done, then maybe she could get past this momentary stumble her creative mind was going through.

Taking time out this morning from her usual routine to help decorate for the shower would be a good way to relieve the stress that was blocking her flow. It could also provide fodder for the story she would write about the upcoming wedding. Readers were eating up the happily-ever-after wedding stories.

“Molly,” Lacy sang from her perch on the top of a twelve-foot ladder. “Just the woman I need. Sheri just jogged over and told me I have a walk-in waiting on me for a color repair. Can you finish tacking these streamers up? As soon as I fix whatever this woman has done to her hair I’ll be back. Although Sheri said this was a job for a magician not a beautician so it may take a while.”

“And who says you aren’t a magician?” Esther Mae called out from her chair in the center of the room.

“Yeah,” added Norma Sue with a snort. “Anybody who saw Esther Mae’s red triple decker before you got a hold of her would know you’ve got some great tricks up those sleeves of yours.”

Esther Mae harrumphed and Norma Sue gave her an innocent look. “Hey, I’m still waiting for it to go poof and turn back into the pumpkin that it was.”