She waited for him by the blazing fireplace, half naked on the bear skin rug. Wearing only a red garter belt and matching corset, she loved their warm rustic cabin by the lake.
Her old man worked on the rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. A true blue rough-neck just like his daddy before him, Blue was a half-blood Choctaw and English. A big man about 6 foot 4 inches, he packed muscles everywhere from working rigs all his life. His first leave in months, he readied himself to ride back to see his sweet Caroline in their cozy cabin by the lake.
He faced a 300 mile trip to the Carolinas, and his candy apple red 1964 Panhead chopper rested under an oily tarp in a rig tool shed waiting for her master. Blue painted the Panhead after the color of Caroline’s ruby red lipstick to always remember why he worked hard.
Late into the night on Christmas Eve, he cut a quick dusty trail on the old chopper to make it home before the dawn of Christmas day. He left the Gulf burning rubber under the sliver of a moonlit night. Hooking along a southern highway headed north, he figured about 80 miles an hour. He’d slice through 4 to 5 hours, with two gas stops.
About 200 miles into the trip, the Eastern seaboard faced a nasty blizzard push ashore. He pulled the Pan into a wet, wind-swept gas station to top her off. Cold and damp to the bone, he pulled the Santa suit out of his saddlebags. It’s all he had to enhance his layered protection. Slipping it on under his dripping chaps and over his 5-Ball racing leather vest, he looked the part of a weathered biker Santa.
Caroline waited patiently for the half breed Indian with anticipation. She kept the fire in the stone hearth stoked, while gazing desperately out the cabin window. Snow flurries blew sideways as blizzard conditions engulfed the coast. Suddenly scared, she wondered would Blue make it home for Christmas?
She grabbed a thick furry robe and put on some soft music by Neil Diamond. Nervously listening to his greatest hits, Caroline knelt by the frosty window and waited. Suddenly, through the roar of the winter storm winds she heard the faint rumble of fishtail pipes in the distance. Thunder claps closer and closer, she strained near the fogged glass to listen for that powerful sound in the storm.
Blue squinted through his steamed wet riding glasses and hunted for the line on the asphalt highway. About to freeze his nuts off, he peered through the sideways flying sheets of snow for her road sign giggling in the wind. What is it about love and romance, about the touch of a woman that drives a man to risk life and limb to conquer the unimaginable to be by her side?
Leather gloved hands frozen to the bars, he slid up to the thick wooden door of the cabin sideways and nearly lost control of the old Pan. Still upright, he kicked the side-stand down, shook off the snow, put on his Santa hat and stomped into to the cabin.
“Have you been a good girl this year?” Cold Blue Santa said.
“Why don’t you come down here and find out,” Caroline hauntingly whispered. The song Sweet Caroline filled the room.
