Big John Paladin on Fatherhood:
J.J.
Okay, so you were a surpriseâ¦and Iâm not exactly father-of-the-year material. Heck, Iâve faced worse scenariosâlook at my love life. On second thought, wait until youâre older. A lot older. The point is that the instant I saw you, I felt this situation was right somehowâthat we were rightâregardless of what we all had to go through to get here.
You have my word that Iâll do everything possible to give you the lifeâthe homeâyou deserve. Maybe make you proud of your old man in the process. Hey, miracles happen.
Problem is, I donât know diddly about babies. Iâve figured out what end the fuel goes in and where your oil pan is, but after that itâs a case of the blind leading the blind. Got a plan, though, and her name is Dana. At the moment sheâs a bit miffed at me. Canât blame herâlike I told you, your old man isnât any prize. But Iâm nuts about her, son. Always have been. Youâll love her, too.
P.S. Weâre going to be a family, J.J. I promise.
He wasnât ready for this. He wasnât ready for any of it. Even so, John Paladin carried his ten-day-old son out of Dusty Flats Community Hospital with the same brisk step that heâd entered, and tugged his Stetson and blue denim jacket farther over and around the baby to protect him from the driving wind and rain.
âHang tough, pardner,â he muttered, squinting against the sharp needles that still managed to angle under the wide brim and prick at his face. âItâll get worse before it gets better.â After hearing what he had inside, and considering the prospects for their future, it seemed about the only thing he could promise.
The wind lashed harder at them. Damn, but it was cold, he thought, and it wasnât even November yet. By the look of things, he and every other west Texas cattle rancher had a heckuva winter ahead of them. If they didnât float away first. âDusty Flatsâ his soggy boots. The community had already surpassed its yearly rainfall average back in August; no telling what the rest of fall would bring.
But at the moment he had more important things to worry about, and he no longer had the stamina to take on more than one calamity at a time. It was just as well that there was nothing he could do about the weather; right now he faced the challenge of a lifetimeâgetting his boy back to the ranch, then changing and feeding him.
All right, so he figured he could handle the first task, regardless of the gusting wind that kept trying to knock him off his feet. But the restâ¦the rest turned his insides into quivering jelly.
It was all those instructions the nurses had spewed at him like that last adding machine heâd had that would churn out a half mile of paper whenever it got stuck in some crazy mode. Sure, he understood that theyâd needed their bit of fun. Even as heâd been walking through the front door theyâd determinedly escorted him like some military color guard, calling out advice and loading him down with enough booklets and junk to keep him reading until Thanksgiving. But he wasnât in any shape to retain any of that bookâlearned nonsense. His mind was already so cluttered, heâd forgotten half of what heâd been told. Besides, even a grown man could starve to death if he had to read through the pamphlets jammed in his pockets before he was allowed to cook himself something to eat. A tiny scrap of stuff like his boy would be plumb out of luck.
Worst of all, though, were the directions about changing the kidâs diaper and giving him a bath.
âDonât you worry about a thing, Big John. Youâll get the hang of it.â
âNow, Big John, itâs not as though youâll have to worry about him kicking or biting like one of those beef critters of yours.â
âThereâs just something about them being your own that makes it easier, Big John.â
Bull. Not one of those women had listened, really listened to what heâd been trying to tell them. What did any of them know about how it was going to be for him? The way he figured it, caring for babies was as natural to women as stringing a barbed-wire fence was to him. But he knew nothing about fueling up anything this small, let alone dealing with cleaning out the rascalâs oil pan or anything.
From inside the wool cocoon and the down vest heâd wrapped the boy in, he heard a tiny protest. Jeez, he thought, could the kid be suffocating? Maybe everyone had been wrong about covering his face. Or maybe he was holding him too tight and smushing his toothpick-fine bones. Maybe the wind was getting at him and sucking the very breath out of the little guy. Blast it all, the head nurse had been rightâhe should never have taken the boy out in such conditions in the first place.