My Knight in Shining Armor

Chapter XXVII

I was on a horse, waiting for a rodeo event—it seemed to be the regular horse race. I had a confident feeling—I was confident in the ability of my horse, but there was still the pre-race anxiety.

I rode out toward the starting gates. I looked down the line to see who else was racing, and I smiled when I saw the man next to me. He looked to be about my age, give or take a year. He had white-blonde hair that he kept shaggy and unkempt, and he had icy blue eyes. There was a certain pride in his look and in the way he held himself.

I was grinning "Dallas!"

He winked and waved at me. "Heya Penny! You ready..."

Someone was shaking me awake. "Penelope, you've got to get up. Get up, or I'll have to drag you."

I stretched my arms and accidently hit the young man in the face. I was suddenly awake, apologizing profusely. I had forgotten that I was Penelope (Penny?) and that he was my Steve, my cousin.

Steve was suddenly dragging me out of my bedroom and down a hidden, small flight of concrete stairs into a cold, dark, damp cellar. Steve had been smart—he brought blankets.

"What's going on?" I asked sleepily.

"We're in a tornado warning area right now. You should go back to sleep, though. You can use my legs as a pillow—I forgot one."

"How can I sleep through this!?"

"Calm down, Penny. Nothing's going to be different if you sleep or if you're awake. You might as well sleep. I'll even tell you stories about your life and your friends and family if you promise to get some rest."

"But what about you?" I yawned.

"Don't worry about me. I'm not the injured one."

Reluctantly, I laid my head on my cousin's legs, and draped a blanket over myself. The sound of the wind and the rain was much harder to hear in the cellar, but it was just as cold and almost as damp inside as it was outside.

Steve got started on his stories. "Well, you grew up in a family of boys. You had two loving parents, and four older brothers—Kenneth, Gregory, Rodney, and Eugene. Kenny died in war, but it's highly possible you have another brother. You grew up in rural Kansas, away from big cities..."

"...I sure am!" I nodded, adrenaline hyping me up.

"Well, you won your last event, so I'm confident in your riding—"

"I won?"

Dallas laughed. "Yeah! You didn't hear?"

I shook my head, and opened my mouth to say something else, but the race was just about to start. Suddenly, we were off, our horses speeding down the course.

I urged my horse to go faster. I was neck-and-neck with Dally, who was grinning wildly, knowing he was inching in front of me. I leaned closer to my horse. "C'mon, boy. Faster!"

I woke up when Steve tried to gently move my head from his legs onto his blanket. "Is everything alright?" I whispered

"The question is, are you alright?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Why do you ask?"

"You were talking in your sleep. You were real restless—I was gonna check on the weather, so hopefully you could get back in your bed. I thought maybe you'd sleep better if you were in your own bed."

I sighed. "I had a crazy dream about a rodeo. I wish I could've kept sleeping."

Steve nodded. "I know. As I said, you were talking in your sleep. That wasn't just a dream, Penelope. That was a memory."

With that, he got up and went warily up the steep stairs, leaving me and my racing thoughts alone. I tried to remember what happened before and after that event, but I didn't even have the full thing. I knew that there was a guy that was riding his horse pretty recklessly or something at the end, and obviously I'd won another event. But I just couldn't remember.

Steve came back down the stairs. "We're good—you can come upstairs. Go get a couple more hours of sleep."

I nodded and went to my room. I tried to fall asleep again, hoping to remember something else, but I just couldn't. Reluctantly, I gave up, and looked around my room again. I spotted the box I'd found the previous day and opened it carefully.

There were a lot of things in the box. I found a record case labeled "Rockin' Records." There were a couple bandanas, a few rodeo medals, a ton of photos, an old pair of sunglasses, and some loose change.

Steve came into my room after he noticed my light was on. "Whatcha doin'?"

I didn't look up at him as I looked through the contents of the box. "Trying to remember."

"You know, that dream you had? I'm gonna tell you what happened afterwards."

"Alright."

"Well, you were in that horse race," Steve started. "A guy cut Dally off—"

"Dally?"

"Dallas Winston. That's what we call him. Anyway, Dally was able to get out of the way, but the guy did the same thing to you. Your horse got spooked, and you got thrown off. You broke your neck and got paralyzed from the waist down. But you kept on racing—you became a hometown hero, a motivation to everyone."

"Really?"

"Yeah. That's something everyone—especially Dally—liked about you: you were diligent and never gave up."

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Author's note
Well, there's one more chapter for y'all tonight. I was speed writing and I think I actually went insane doing it. I definitely had a good writing spurt there.

Your friendly neighborhood greaser, signing off...
Stay gold y'all ⭐️