Praise for the novels of
Curtiss Ann Matlock

“This is a delicious read for a lazy summer day. It’s not overly sweet, and it has enough zing to satisfy readers thirsting for an uplifting read.”

—Publishers Weekly on Cold Tea on a Hot Day

“Ms. Matlock masterfully takes readers into a world full of quirky characters and small-town simplicity where they will wish they can stay.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Cold Tea on a Hot Day

“A wonderful cast and a perfect setting make for a gentle and reassuring story.”

—Booklist on Sweet Dreams at the Goodnight Motel

“Matlock’s down-to-earth characters and comforting plot will please many.”

—Booklist on Recipes for Easy Living

“Once again, Matlock delivers a gentle, glowing tale that is as sweet and sunny as its small-town setting. Readers will be delighted by this deft mix of romance and…slice-of-life drama.”

—Publishers Weekly on At the Corner of Love and Heartache

“With realistic characters and absorbing dialogue, Matlock crafts a moving story about a woman’s road to self-discovery.”

—Publishers Weekly on Driving Lessons

“This is simply a great read.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Driving Lessons

“This one will warm you.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Lost Highways

Curtiss Ann Matlock
Cold Tea on a Hot Day

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to many people who sustain me

each day, in my writing and in my life:

Leslie Wainger, Dianne Moggy and Kathleen Adler,

who have encouraged me and brought my books

to the bookshelves.

Writer friend Cait London, who has taught me

“Life moves on,” whether we’re ready or not.

Dear friends Lou and Barb, and my long-lost sister,

Sue, most especially on those days I would rather

have stayed in bed and covered up my head.

And the readers whose kind letters embolden me

to keep writing.

Thank you all.

One never knew about the deep secrets of ordinary lives.

—Tate Holloway

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

One

Another Day in Paradise

In the hazy glow of first morning light, a gleaming red Mercedes, a Roadster with its top up, sat on the side of the blacktopped county road. The engine idled gently, and headlights shone on the patchy grass and weeds.

The driver was slumped in the seat, comfortably, as if taking a nap. He was dead.

A dog lay with his head upon the man’s thigh. He had lain there for some time, out of loyal respect to a friend.

In a nearby tree, a meadowlark gave out a shrill morning call.

The dog, perking his ears, sat up and then went over to poke his wet nose out the window, fully open because the man had been driving along in the cool spring night with the passenger window down so that the dog could enjoy putting his face in the wind.

Fairly certain the man would no longer notice being abandoned, the dog hopped through the window with graceful ease and landed on the dewy wet grass.

After a moment of the sniffing the damp, pungent air, the dog trotted off in the easterly direction that the car had been heading. It was pleasant in the cool first light. A little way along he came to a fresh armadillo run over in the road. He sniffed it, but he was yet far above the depths of eating roadkill. An owl perched on a fence post was kind enough to tell the dog that a town, where likely he could find breakfast, was just over the hill.

Sure enough, when he topped the hill, a town lay before him. The dog sat and looked at it. The morning sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon and cast its pink glow upon this world of humans. Where families of buffalo once wallowed and great herds of cattle once crossed on their way to the rowdy markets in Kansas, there now existed a place springing out of the prairie with tree-lined streets and brick buildings and clapboard houses.

The dog had come to the town in the same manner that he went everywhere and to each of his humans, following the direction led by his heart. The day he had come to the large concrete parking lot and to the man with the glasses, he had known that was the place for him and the human for his dog’s loyal work of companionship.

Now, looking down on the town, he knew this was a new place for him and a new human awaited his ministrations.

The dog started down the hill, taking in the lay of the land and ready for any opportunity that presented itself.

The garbage trucks were starting on their first runs, and early risers all over began tuning kitchen radios to the morning weather report and going out on front porches to hang up flags in support of the campaign to keep Valentine’s distinction as the Flag Town of America.

Fayrene Gardner, who had come into the Main Street Café a half an hour early because she had been unable to sleep due to the excitement of expecting a visit from her first ex-husband, came out the café door and set the United States flag in its holder.

A few yards down the sidewalk, at the doors of The Valentine Voice, Charlotte Nation was doing likewise. Charlotte, who was a little dismayed to see Fayrene had beat her to it, thought it important for the Voice to get their flag out first, as they were a leader in the community.

Setting the pole in the slot with some haste, she hurried back inside to get a cup of coffee for Leo, Sr. before he got off on his deliveries. Since their circulation manager quit three weeks earlier, Leo had been handling the job. Charlotte was thrilled, as now Leo was there early each morning, like herself. He got all the other deliverers off, and then was the last to leave on a route of his own.

“Thanks, Charlotte,” Leo said, taking the cup she handed him and sipping. “Well, I gotta get goin’ now.”

“Yes…you do.” She followed him to the doorway and stood there as he slipped into the delivery van and drove off down the alley, watching with the eyes of a woman in love with a man she could never have.

Up on Church Street, Winston Valentine was glad to be able to manage the job of getting out the front door of his house with the aid of a cane, while carrying two folded flags under his arm. One of his lady boarders, a piece of toast jammed in her mouth, came after him.

He told her with poorly tempered impatience, “I’m all right, Mildred…you cain’t help me and eat toast at the same time!”

She had already dropped jelly on her ample bosom; Winston didn’t want her to get jelly all over his flags. He felt guilty for having the thought that she could in that minute drop dead and he would gladly step over her. He was relieved when she got more concerned about her toast and jelly than about helping him.

He got himself down the front steps and over to the flag pole in the front yard, where he raised the Confederate flag, followed by the Stars and Bars. He could still raise his flags, and once more all by himself, thank God, and he wasn’t yet pissing in his pants, so the day looked good.

Across the street, his neighbor Everett Northrupt, younger by better than ten years, was raising his flags, too, only the Stars and Bars of the U.S. of A. was on top and a lot bigger. Everett was from up North.

Both men stood at attention as music, a mingling of “Dixie” and “The Star Spangled Banner,” blared out from speakers from each man’s home. Winston, not wanting Everett to have anything on him, stood as straight as he could and saluted the flags and the day.

Then, as most days, he saw Parker Lindsey jogging down the street. Parker, a single fellow who no doubt had plenty of pent-up energy, would jog from his veterinary clinic at the edge of town, cut through the school yard and behind houses along a path that came out east of the Blaine’s house, then go down Church Street to Porter and make several jogs to get to the highway and back east to his own place. It was a distance of five miles. Winston played a game of judging the younger man’s state of sexual energy by how hard he was running when he went past.

“G’mornin’, Doc,” Winston called to him, remembering what it was like to be a virile man in his prime. He admired Parker Lindsey, who was going at a pretty good clip this morning.

“’Mornin’.” Puffing, Parker raised a hand in a wave and kept on going.

From the opposite direction came Leo, Jr., pedaling past with his teenage legs on his Mountain Flier. “’lo, Mr. Winston!” he said and sent a rolled newspaper flying into the yard and landing two feet away.

“Bingo!” Winston called back with a wave.

He bent carefully to get the paper, considering it exercise. When he came up, he saw a woman in bright pink on a purple bicycle pumping along toward town. It was his niece, Leanne, who sometimes jogged and sometimes rode a bicycle. A professional barrel racer, Leanne worked to keep her legs strong.

“’lo, Uncle Winston!”

Winston waved back, while averting his gaze from the sight of her. Leanne wore the skimpy attire so popular with women these days, and being her uncle, Winston did not consider it polite to stare. Leanne was a fine specimen of a woman. It was a little too bad she liked to display that around a lot. Winston felt women today had forgotten mystique. He liked to watch women on exercise shows on television, though.

Walking stiffly, but grateful to be walking, he went around the side of the house, where he clipped blossoms from his dead wife’s rosebushes. I’m keepin’ on, Coweta. He would miss his wife until his dying day.

Further up Church Street, Vella Blaine, wearing a lilac flowered apron and a big straw hat over her greying hair, was out in her backyard, snipping fresh blooms from her own rosebushes. She held each to her nose to inhale the delicious, soothing scent. Her very favorite were the yellow Graham-Thomas blossoms. She was so proud of her roses this spring.

Hearing a car, she looked up to see her husband behind the wheel of his big black 80s Lincoln as it chugged away, carrying him onward to his twelve-hour day at his drugstore.

Perry had not bothered to tell her goodbye. Again.

Gripping the stems of the cut roses so tightly that the thorns pricked her hands, Vella walked purposefully up the back steps and went inside to prepare a fresh pot of coffee for herself and Winston, who had, with the arrival of balmy spring, begun once more to join her for an early-morning chat. She got out the blue pottery mug Winston seemed to favor. In the mirror hung on the inside of the cabinet door, she paused to put on lipstick.

Down on Porter Street, the sun had risen high enough to shine its first golden rays on the roof of a small house dating from the forties that Realtors called a bungalow. In bed in the back bedroom, Marilee James, who was definitely not a morning person, was awakened by her eight-year-old son.

“Maa-ma…”

Marilee managed to crack an eyelid.

“Maa-ma…” He peered into her face, his blue eyes large behind his thick glasses.

Marilee tried to focus enough to see the clock. Willie Lee simply had no sense of time at all. He woke up when he woke, and slept when he slept, never minding the rest of the world…or his mother, who had not had a decent night’s sleep since Miss Porter had suddenly and fantastically thrown the newspaper management into her hands and run off with a husband.

Was that red numeral a five or a six? She was going to have to get a bigger clock. The thought caused her to close her eyes.

“Ma-ma, can I have a dog?” Willie Lee spoke in a whisper and slowly, carefully pronouncing each word, as was his habit.

“Not right this minute,” Marilee managed to get out with as hoarse a voice as she used to have when she smoked a pack and a half a day of Virginia Slims.

She gathered courage and stretched herself toward the clock. The red numerals came in more clearly. It was 6:10. Giving a groan, she rolled over and thought that she could not get up. That was all there was to it. She would not get up.

“I want this dog in this pic-ture.” Willie Lee shoved a book in her face.

Marilee, who could not respond in any way, shape or form, stared with fuzzy vision at a picture of a spotted dog in one of her son’s picture books.

Willie Lee, not at all bothered by not being answered, sat back on folded legs and said, “I will ask God for this dog.”

Marilee’s sleepy gaze came to rest upon her son, upon his head bent once more to study the picture book. His short white-blond hair stood on end in all directions, as was usual.

Her Willie Lee, who had put up a mighty struggle to enter the world and ended up with brain damage that cast doubt still upon his future ability to lead anything resembling a normal life without someone to watch over him.

Her heart seemed to swell and her heartbeats to grow louder…thump…thump…thump…echoing in her ears, broken only by the clink of dishes from the kitchen, where Corrine was no doubt readying the table for breakfast, as she had each morning since coming to stay with them.

With the aroma of coffee floating in to reach her, Marilee pictured the slight figure of her young niece at the counter. Likely she had to pull a chair over and stand on it in order to fill the coffeemaker.

Two of them, two little souls, depending upon only her, Marilee, a mere woman alone.

The idea so frightened her that in an instant she had flung back the covers and gotten to her feet, moving in the manner of generations of women before her who had struggled with the overwhelming urge to run screaming out of the house to throw themselves in front of the early-morning garbage truck. The saving answer to that urge was to propel herself headlong into the day of taking care of those who needed her.

“Let’s get you dressed, buster,” she said to her son, scooping him up, causing him to giggle.

“Time to get go-ing,” he said, mimicking her usual refrain.

“Yes…time to get going.”

When focusing on the needs of those around her, she did not have to face the needs clamoring inside herself.

“Here they are,” Corrine said and brought Marilee the car keys she had been searching for, as the child did each morning at seven-thirty—or any other time, really.

“Thank you, hon…now, let’s get goin’….”

The children trooped before her out the front door, and they all piled into the Jeep Cherokee for the five-minute drive to school, where Marilee let them out on the wide sidewalk in front of the long, low brick building.

The two, taller and very thin Corrine and shorter, slight Willie Lee, did not run off with the other screaming and laughing children but stood there side by side, forlornly watching her drive away.

Marilee, who caught sight of them in the rearview mirror, felt like a traitor abandoning her delicate charges.

Pressing firmly on the accelerator, she focused on the road and reminded herself that she was a working mother, just like a million other working mothers, trying to keep a roof over all their heads, and that her children needed to learn to deal with real life.

As she whipped the Cherokee into its accustomed place in the narrow lot behind the brick building that housed The Valentine Voice, she realized that she had been doing the same thing for most of seven years. Where did the years go? When had twenty-one turned into forty?

It was Miss Porter running off into a new life who had caused this unrest, Marilee thought with annoyance, hiking her heavy leather tote up on her shoulder. The next instant, having the disconcerting impression that she was beginning to resemble Miss Porter, she dropped the bag to her hand.

“My computer is down,” Tammy Crawford said immediately when Marilee came down the large aisle of the main room.

“Call the repairman.” Marilee threw her bag on her already full desk and picked up the day’s edition of the Voice. She had not had time to read it at home. She had not had time for weeks.

“Mrs. Oklahoma is going to visit the high school this mornin’,” Reggie said. “Principal forgot to call us…I’m goin’ right over there.”

“’kay.” Marilee didn’t think everyone really needed to report to her.

Charlotte strode forward with a handful of notes. “Here’s the first morning complaints of late papers…and Roger, that new guy they’ve hired up at the printer, wants you to call him…and here’s a note from the mayor for tomorrow’s ‘About Town’ column. City hall has lost those flags they thought they had left.”

Marilee took the notes and sank into her chair.

June, who was now working on their ad layouts since their top ad layout person had quit last week, came over and said, “I can’t read this note Jewel put on this ad. Do you think that is supposed to be a two or a five?”

“Call the Ford dealer and ask. I don’t think they would appreciate us guessing.”

“Okay. I can do that.” June generally needed to convince herself of action.

Marilee, giving a large sigh, fell into her chair and flopped open the paper to see how it had come out, and if she would need to be making any retractions and groveling apologies. She thought she was learning to grovel quite well.

“Another day in paradise,” she said to no one in particular.

The Valentine Voice

About Town

by Marilee James

For the one or two people in town who have not heard by now, Ms. Muriel Porter, former publisher of The Valentine Voice, and Mr. Dwight Abercrombie, who met last year on a Carribean cruise, were married yesterday afternoon in a small ceremony at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. Immediately afterward the two left on a world tour they estimate will take them upward of eighteen months. Following their world tour, the couple plan to settle in either Daytona Beach or possibly Majorca, Spain. Ms. Porter-Abercrombie wanted everyone to know she will always remain a Valentinian, however far she may roam.

“Valentine will always be my home,” Ms. Porter stated. “My ties there are as necessary to my life as cold tea on a hot day.”

The new publisher and editor in chief of The Valentine Voice, Tate Holloway, will be arriving this weekend to officially take over the paper. Mr. Holloway is Ms. Porter-Abercrombie’s cousin and a veteran newspaper journalist with thirty years experience on a number of the nation’s leading newspapers.

An open house will be held in honor of Mr. Holloway on Monday at the Voice offices. Cake and coffee will be served courtesy of Sweetie Cakes of Main Street. Come by and welcome Mr. Holloway, or address to him your complaints.

Until Monday, I will continue as managing editor. All news stories should be reported to me, and you can call me at my home number, 555-4743, afternoons and until 8:00 p.m. Please save all complaints for Mr. Holloway on Monday.

Other important bits of note:

The first meeting of the Valentine Rose Club will be held tonight, 7:00 p.m., at the Methodist Church Fellowship Hall. Vella Blaine will head the meeting and wants it stressed that all denominations are welcome and there will be no passing of a collection plate.

Jaydee Mayhall has formally declared his candidacy for city council. Thus far he is the first candidate to declare intentions of running for the seat being vacated by long-time member Wesley Fitz-water, who says he is tired of the thankless job. Mayhall invites anyone who would like to talk to him about the town’s needs to stop by to visit with him at his office on Main Street.

Mayor Upchurch has ten Valentine town flags left at city hall, for anyone who wants to fly one outside their home or shop. The flags are free; the only requirement is a proper pole high enough that the flag does not brush the ground.

Two

Looking in the Wrong Direction

“How long has he been missing?” Principal Blankenship demanded of the teacher standing before her.

“Since lunch recess,” Imogene Reeves answered, wringing her hands. “I don’t care if he is retarded and looks like an angel. He knows how to slip away. He is not just wanderin’ off.”

The principal winced at the word retarded spoken out loud. There were so many unacceptable words and phrases these days that she couldn’t keep up, but she was fairly certain the term retarded fell in the unacceptable category. She checked her watch and saw it was going on one o’clock.

She headed at a good clip out of her office, asking as she went, “Has anyone spoken to Mr. Starr…checked the storerooms?”

It could very well be a repeat of that first time, she thought, calming herself. It had been Mr. Starr, the custodian, who had found Willie Lee the first time. That time the boy had been all along playing with a mouse in the janitor’s storeroom. This had been upsetting—a little fright that the mouse might bite and the boy get an infection—but it was better than the second time, when the boy had gotten off the school grounds and all the way down to the veterinarian’s place a half-mile away. That time Principal Blankenship had been forced to call the boy’s mother, because the veterinarian was a friend of the boy’s mother.

Oh, she did not want to have to tell the mother again. Marilee James wrote for the newspaper. This would get everywhere.

Imagining what her father, a principal before her, would have said, would have yelled, Principal Blankenship just about wet her pants.

The storeroom had been searched and the custodian Mr. Starr consulted; involved with changing out hot water heaters, he had not seen Willie Lee since the beginning of the school day. The closets were searched, and the storerooms a second time, and the boys’ bathrooms.

At last the principal resorted to telephoning down to the veterinarian’s office.

“I haven’t seen Willie Lee,” the young receptionist at the veterinarian’s told her. “And Doc Lindsey has been out inoculatin’ cattle since before noon.”

The principal, with a sinking feeling, went along the corridors of her small school, peeking into each classroom, searching faces, hoping, praying with hands clasping and unclasping, for Willie Lee to appear.

In her heart she knew that Willie Lee had escaped the school grounds a second time, but she did not want to think of such a failure on the part of one of her teachers. Or herself. And truly, she didn’t want anything to happen to the child.

She did wish he could go to another school.

At last, with pointy shoulders slumping, she broke down and spoke over the school intercom: “Attention, teachers and students. Anyone who has seen Willie Lee James since lunch recess, please come to the office.”

In Ms. Norwood’s fourth-grade class, Corrine Pendley heard the announcement of her cousin’s name. Face jerking upward, she stared at the speaker above the classroom door. Then she saw all eyes turn to her.

Her face burned. Bending her head over her notebook, she focused her eyes on the lined paper in front of her and concentrated on being invisible.

The teacher had called her name several times before Corrine was jolted into hearing by Christy Grace poking her in the back with a pencil. “She’s callin’ you.”

Corrine looked up at the teacher, who asked if Corrine had seen Willie Lee. Corrine said, “No, ma’am.” She wondered at the question. Maybe the teacher thought she was a little deaf. Or else she thought Corrine would lie.

Why didn’t everybody mind their own business and quit looking at her?

Bending her head over her math problems, she made the numbers carefully, trying to concentrate on them, but thinking about her cousin. Willie Lee was only eight, and little for his age.

He was slow, but this did not mean he didn’t know about some things. One thing he seemed to know was how to get away when he wanted to. Corrine wished she had gone with him.

Her anxiety increased. She felt responsible. She should have been looking out for him. She was older, and he didn’t have any brothers or sisters, just like she didn’t.

All manner of dark fantasies paraded through her mind. She hoped he didn’t get run over. Or fall in a muddy creek and drown. Or get picked up by a stranger.

Her pencil point broke, startling her.

Carefully, she laid the pencil down, got up and walked as quietly as possible, so as not to become too visible, to the teacher’s desk to ask in a hurried whisper to go to the rest room.

In the tiled room that smelled strongly of bleach, she used the toilet and then she washed her hands. She kept thinking about the front doors. When she came out of the rest room, she turned left instead of right and walked down the hall and right out the double doors. She did this without thinking at all, just following an urge inside.

All the way down the front walk, she felt certain a yell was going to hit her in the back. But it didn’t. Then she was running free, running from school and then running from herself, scared to death to have done something that was very wrong and would make everyone mad at her.

She would have to find Willie Lee, she thought. If she found him, no one would be mad at her. The sun felt warm on her head and the breeze cool to her face.

At that very instant, when finding her cousin and being a hero seemed totally possible, she looked down the street and saw her Aunt Marilee’s brilliant white Jeep Cherokee coming.

The Jeep’s chrome shone so brightly, Corrine had to squint. Still, she saw Aunt Marilee behind the wheel. Corrine stopped in her tracks, and her life seemed to drain right out her toes.

Likely she was going to get it now. And she deserved it. She never could seem to do things right.

The vehicle pulled up beside her, and the tinted window slid down. Aunt Marilee said, “Where are you goin’?”

Corrine, who could not read her aunt’s even tone or blank expression, said slowly, “They announced ‘bout Willie Lee being missin’. I was goin’ to find him.”

Her aunt said, “Well, that makes two of us. Get in. I have to go see the principal first.”

Corrine opened the door and slipped into the seat in a manner as if to disappear. Carefully, she closed the door beside her. In the short drive to the school parking lot, she tried to read her aunt’s attitude but could not. She had never seen her aunt look like this. She thought desperately of what her aunt might be thinking, in order to be ready for what to say or do.

But all Aunt Marilee said to her when they got to the school was, “Come on back in with me. You’ll need to get your stuff from class.”

Aunt Marilee went to Corrine’s class with her and told Ms. Norwood that she was taking Corrine home early. Corrine, who was used to moving from an entire apartment in just a few minutes and therefore was not in the habit of accumulating needless trifles, stuffed all her books and notebooks from her desk into her backpack in scarcely a minute. As she lugged it to the classroom door, she could feel everyone looking at her, but it didn’t matter. She was leaving, at least for today.

The heels of Aunt Marilee’s Western boots echoed sharply on the corridor floor all the way back to the principal’s office, where Aunt Marilee said to her, “Sit right here. I don’t want to lose you, too.”

Without a word, Corrine sat. Aunt Marilee disappeared into the principal’s office.

The secretary, who had bleached blond hair teased up to amazing heights, looked at her. Corrine looked around the room and swung her feet that only brushed the floor.

Aunt Marilee had not fully closed the door, but even if she had, the voices would probably have been heard. Aunt Marilee had the furious tone she used when she and Corrine’s mother got into their fights. Corrine imagined her aunt was standing how she did when she meant business: feet slightly apart and eyes like laser rays.

Aunt Marilee wanted to know how people supposedly educated in child development could not manage to keep track of one little boy who was diagnosed as learning disabled and not able to think above five years old. The principal answered that the school was not a prison and did not have guards.

“We are trying to mainstream Willie Lee to the best of our ability,” the principal said. “We do not lose normal children, who are taught to participate.”

Corrine held her breath, afraid that her Aunt Marilee was going to reveal finding Corrine halfway down the block. And maybe, since she had gotten away—since she had even attempted to leave—maybe she was not quite normal.

“We are doing the best we can with your children, Mrs. James,” the principal said in a low tone.

Corrine saw the big-haired secretary’s eyes cut to her, as if thinking, You’re one of those troublemakers. Corrine swung her feet and looked at the wall, feeling the empty hole in her chest grow until it seemed to swallow her.

“Arguing will not find Willie Lee. I apologize. Now, tell me when and where my son was last seen.” Aunt Marilee’s voice, sounding so very calm and firm, enabled Corrine to draw a breath.

“I’ll tell you,” Aunt Marilee said when they got back in the Cherokee, Aunt Marilee slamming the door so hard the entire vehicle rattled. “Willie Lee knew exactly what he was doin’. I don’t care how dumb people think he is.”

“He is only dumb in some things,” Corrine said.

Aunt Marilee didn’t seem to hear her. She started off fast, gazing hard out the window. “Oh, Willie Lee,” she said under her breath, and for an instant Corrine thought her aunt might cry. This was very unnerving to Corrine, who instantly turned her eyes out the window, looking hard, thinking that she just had to find Willie Lee. She had to make everything all right again for her aunt.

They drove slowly down to the veterinary clinic, looking into yards as they went. They went into the veterinarian’s office, where two people waited with their dogs, a yippy little terrier and a trembling Labrador.

The girl behind the counter told them that Doc Lindsey had been out most of the day, was at that moment tending a sick horse at some ranch but was expected back any moment.

Dr. Lindsey was Aunt Marilee’s boyfriend. Parker Lindsey, which Corrine thought was a lovely name. He was so handsome, too. Clean and neat, and he smiled at her and Willie Lee. He smiled at just about everyone, and had very white, even teeth. Sometimes, although she never would have told anyone on this earth, Corrine imagined having a boyfriend just like Parker Lindsey.

Aunt Marilee did not want to take the office girl’s word that Willie Lee wasn’t there. Corrine, who never took anyone’s word for anything, was glad to accompany her aunt and search along the outside dog runs and look into the cattle chutes and pens. Corrine even called Willie Lee’s name softly. He might come to her first, she thought, because Aunt Marilee was getting pretty mad now.

They got back inside the Cherokee and drove around a couple of streets surrounding the school. Aunt Marilee said that they should be able to spot Willie Lee’s blond hair, because it shone in the sun. They stopped and asked a couple of people they saw in yards if they had seen Willie Lee. At one falling-down house, a man sat in his undershirt on the front step, drinking a beer. Aunt Marilee got right out of the car and went up to ask him about Willie Lee, but Corrine stayed rooted in the seat, watching sharply. She made it a point not to talk to men with beers in their hands.

Then Aunt Marilee headed in the direction of home, saying out loud, “Maybe he’s on his way home.”

Corrine, who was beginning to get really scared for her cousin and for her aunt and for her whole life, scooted up until she was sitting on the edge of the seat, looking as hard as she was able.

It was a long walk to home, but only about a five-minute drive. Maybe Willie Lee knew the way, and he wouldn’t have to cross the highway or anything. Still, no telling where he might go, and again all sorts of fearful images began to race across her mind, such as cars running over her cousin’s little body, and snakes slithering out to bite him, or maybe a black widow spider like in the movies, or maybe a bad man would get him, or a bunch of big, mean boys.

At one point she said, “Willie Lee doesn’t like school. Some of the kids tease him and call him dumb and stupid, and it’s hard for him to sit still all day.” She didn’t want her aunt to make Willie Lee go back to school.

Aunt Marilee said, “I know.”

“I don’t like school, either,” Corrine said, quietly, in the manner a child uses when she has to speak her feelings but does so in a way and time that she believes the adult might not hear. Then her throat got all thick, and she hated herself for being so stupid as to risk making Aunt Marilee mad. She would die if Aunt Marilee got mad at her.

Aunt Marilee, her gaze focused out the windshield, said, “We’ll talk about it later.” And a moment later, she whispered, “God, help us find Willie Lee.”

They searched the streets on the way home, following the route Aunt Marilee took when driving them to and from school. Again Aunt Marilee questioned several people who were outside.

A man who was roofing a house said, “Yeah, Marilee, I saw him over there on the corner. I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize him as your boy. And I didn’t see what direction he went.”

At least when the man had seen him, Willie Lee hadn’t been dead yet, Corrine thought.

Aunt Marilee drove the rest of the way home, where she went immediately to the backyard and checked to see if Willie Lee might be there with his rabbits or up in his tree fort. Corrine climbed the ladder to look in the fort, even though no one answered when they called. “He’s not here,” she called back to her aunt.

Aunt Marilee went to the front yard and hollered, “Willie Lee! Willie Lee!”

There was no answer.

Aunt Marilee unlocked the front door and went inside and straight to the answering machine on her desk in the corner of the living room. There were no messages. Aunt Marilee immediately picked up the telephone and called the school, asking if Willie Lee had been found there. He had not. Next Aunt Marilee telephoned the sheriff’s office to ask for help.

Afterward, she snapped the receiver back on the hook and looked at Corrine. “He’s all right. God watches over all of us, and most especially little ones like Willie Lee.”

Corrine, who had reason to doubt God watched over her, thought her Aunt Marilee was speaking to calm herself. She felt guilty for the thought.

“Well, we’ve done all we can,” Aunt Marilee said, rising straight up. “We’ll wait here and let God handle it.”

Aunt Marilee let God handle it for about the length of time it took to make a pot of tea and fix a cup with lots of sugar for Corrine, and search for a pack of cigarettes, which she didn’t find, and then she went to telephoning people.

From the chair at the table, where she could look clear through the house to the front and watch her aunt hold the phone to her ear while pacing in long strides that pushed out her brown skirt, Corrine felt helpless and desperate.

Three

Your Life Is Now

Tate Holloway drove into Valentine from the east along small, bumpy roads because he had taken a wrong turn and gotten lost. He never had been very good at directions. A couple of his city desk editors used to say they hated to send him out to an emergency, because he might miss it by ending up in a different state.

He slowed his yellow BMW convertible when he came into the edge of town. He passed the feed and grain with its tall elevator, and the car wash, and the IGA grocery. Anticipation tightened in his chest. Right there on the IGA was a sign that proclaimed it the Hometown Grocery Store.

This was going to be his own hometown.

Driving on, he entered the Main Street area and spied The Valentine Voice building. He allowed it only a glance and drove slowly, taking in everything on the left side of the street, turned around at the far edge of town and took in everything on the opposite side of the street.

He had seen the town as a child of nine, and surprisingly, it looked almost as he remembered. There were the cars parked head-in on the wide street. There was the bank, modernized nicely with new windows and a thorough sandblasting job. There was the theater—it had become something called The Little Opry. There was the florist…and the drugstore, with the air conditioner that dripped. The air conditioner was still there, although he could not tell if it dripped, as it was too cool in April to need it. He imagined it still dripped, though.

There were various flags flying outside the storefronts: the U.S. flags, the state flag of Oklahoma, what appeared to be the Valentine City flag, and a couple of Confederate flags, which surprised him a bit and reminded him that people in the west tended to be truly individualistic. There was a flag with flowers on it at the florist, and at least one person was a Texan, because there was a Texas flag flying proudly.

Tate thought the flags gave a friendly touch. He noted the benches placed at intervals. One thing the town needed, he thought, was trees. He liked a town with trees along the sidewalks to give shade when a person walked along.

Back once again to The Valentine Voice building, he turned and parked the BMW head-in to the curb. Slowly he removed his sunglasses and sat there looking at the building for some minutes. It sat like a grand cornerstone of the town, two-story red brick, with grey stone-cased windows and The Valentine Voice etched in a granite slab beside the double doors.

Emotion rose in his chest. Tears even burned in his eyes.

There it was—his own newspaper.

It was the dream of many a big-city news desk editor to become publisher of his own paper, and Tate had held this dream a long time. A place where he could express his own ideas, unencumbered by the hesitancies and prejudices of others less inclined to personal responsibility and more concerned with being politically correct and watching the bottom line dollar. Newspaper publishing as it once was, with editors who spoke their fire and light, drank whiskey from pint bottles in their desk drawers and smoked big stogies, with no thought of the fate of their jobs or pensions, only the single-minded intent to speak the truth.

The good parts of the old days were what Tate intended to resurrect. Here, in this small place in the world, he would pursue his mission to speak his mind and spread courage, and to enjoy on occasion the damn straight wildness for the sake of being wild.

Yes, sir, by golly, he was on his way.

Tate alighted from the BMW, slammed the door and took the sidewalk in one long stride. A bell tinkled above as he opened the heavy glass front door and strode through, removing his hat and taking in the interior with one eager glance: brick wall down the left side, desks, high ceiling with lights and fans suspended. Old, dim, deteriorating…but promising. A city room, by golly.

“Can I help you?”

It was a woman at the front reception desk, bathed in the daylight from the wide windows. A no-nonsense sort of woman, with deep-brown hair in a Buster Brown cut and steady black eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses. Cheyenne, he thought.

“Hello, there. I’m Tate Holloway.” He sent her his most charming grin.

“You’re not.”

That response set him back.

“Why, yes, ma’am, I believe I am.” He chuckled and tapped his hat against his thigh.

She was standing now. She had unfolded from her chair, and Tate, who was five foot eleven, saw with a bit of surprise that he was eye to eye with her.

“You aren’t supposed to be here until Saturday.”

“Well, that’s true.” He tugged at his ear. He had expected to be welcomed. He had expected there to be people here, too, and the big room was empty.

“But here I am.” He stuck out his hand. “And who might you be, ma’am?” he drawled in an intimate manner. It had been said that Tate Holloway could charm the spots off a bobcat.

This long, tall woman was made of stern stuff. She looked at his hand for a full three heartbeats before offering her own, which was thin but sturdy. “Charlotte Nation.”

“Well, now…nice to meet you, Miss Charlotte.”

She blinked. “Yes…a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Holloway.” She wet her lips. “I’m sorry I didn’t say that right away. It’s just that Marilee said you weren’t coming until Saturday.” There again was the note of accusation in her voice. “We aren’t prepared. We are…” She looked around behind her at the room and seemed to search for words. “Well, everyone is busy working for the paper, just not here.”

“I’m glad to see that,” Tate said. “I didn’t expect a welcoming committee.”

A spark of suspicion about that statement shone in her eyes, before she blinked and said, “I’m assuming you know that Chet Harmon, Harlan Buckles and Jewel Luttrell have all quit in the last month. June Redman has taken on the layout, and she’s out gettin’ her mammogram this afternoon. She used to just work part-time, anyway. Imperia is out on some sales calls. Leo and Reggie and Tammy are on stories, and Marilee’s had to go find her little boy.” She paused, then added, “Zona’s here, of course.”

“Marilee James? Her little boy is missing?” He recalled the woman’s voice on the phone, deep and soft, like warm butter. He had been anticipating seeing her and felt a bit of disappointment that she wasn’t here. Actually, saying that he didn’t want a welcoming committee was a fib, as this woman recognized. Tate had anticipated being greatly welcomed…at least, he had expected to be received with some enthusiasm.

The woman nodded. “Willie Lee. He’s wandered off from school again. He’s eight years old but learning disabled.”

“I see.”

“He is sweet as the day is long, but he tends to drift away. And he is not afraid of anybody in this world. That’s the worry…so many strangers come down here these days from the city.”

He felt vaguely guilty, since he had just driven in from a city. “Well, I’ll just have a look around.”

The woman blinked, as if surprised.

Just then a door from an office down on the left opened. A person—a small woman—appeared, saw Tate, and stepped back and shut the door. It happened so quickly that the only impression Tate had was of a small, grey-haired mouse of a woman. The office had window glass, but dark shades were drawn.

Tate looked at the brown-haired woman, who said, “That is Zona Porter—no relation—our comptroller.”

Tate waited several seconds to hear more, to possibly be introduced to this woman, but just then the phone on the desk rang, and the brown-haired woman immediately snatched it up.

“Valentine Voice, Charlotte speaking.” She gripped the telephone receiver. After several seconds, she told whoever was on the other end, “I’ll have Marilee call you back about that. She’s had to go out after Willie Lee. He’s wandered off from school again.” Her eyes lit on Tate. “Oh, wait! Mr. Holloway, the new publisher, is here. You can talk to him. Hold on a minute while I switch you over to another line…yes, he’s the new owner, Ms. Porter’s cousin…. I know it isn’t Saturday, he came early. Now I’m switching.”

She said to Tate, “It’s the mayor. They’ve landed the detention center after all, and he wants to give you the story.”

He stood there staring at her, and she stared back. Then a ringing sounded from a room behind Ms. Nation.

“Go on and get it in Ms. Porter’s office,” the woman ordered, shooing him with her hand. “I have to keep this phone clear in case anyone calls about Willie Lee.”

Tate turned and strode down the wide reception area to the opened doorway, the office he remembered as his uncle’s. Two long strides and he reached the enormous old walnut desk. Almost in a single motion, he tossed aside his hat and answered the phone, at the same time pulling a pad and pen from the breast pocket of his brown denim sport coat.

His journalist’s instincts had kicked in. He was a newspaper owner, by golly.

The mayor, a meek but earnest man with extremely thin fingers and hair, drove Tate out to see the site for the new detention center that would employ a hundred people right off the bat.

There was a lot of controversy over the center, the mayor admitted. He stuttered over the word controversy. Tate listened to the man’s explanations and read a bit between the diplomatic lines. Many people didn’t want what they thought of as a prison in their midst.

The mayor drove him all around, giving him a guided tour of the town and surrounding area. He took him into the Main Street Café and introduced him around, and then over to Blaine’s Drugstore and introduced him to Mr. Blaine, the only person in the store at the time and who seemed reticent to break away from his television. His only comment on the detention center was, “They’ll need a pharmacy, those boys.”

After that Tate walked with the mayor, who shyly requested being called Walter, up and down both sides of the street, the mayor introducing him to various shop owners, who all said more or less, “Hey, Walter,” and slapped the mayor’s back fondly and got a warm backslapping in return. The mayor was generally beloved, Tate saw.

When he finally begged off from a supper invitation by the mayor and returned to the newspaper offices, Miss Charlotte was on her feet.

“I’m glad you are back. It’s after five o’clock, and time for me to go home. Leo took the disks for the mornin’ edition up to the printer. We didn’t think we could wait for you,” she added in the faintly critical tone Tate was beginning to recognize. “Harlan used to handle it. Since he quit, we’re all just sort of filling in for the time being.” There was an air of expectancy in that comment, too.

“That’s just fine. I didn’t realize it was after five. I’m sorry to hold you up.”

“I waited because I wasn’t sure you had keys. I didn’t want to lock you out.” She pulled a purse as big as a suitcase from beneath the desk.

Tate felt a little embarrassed to tell her that he didn’t have any keys. She strode out from behind her desk, and he stepped out of her way, having a sense she might walk right over him. She continued on into his cousin’s—his—office, reached into the middle drawer of the desk and pulled out keys that she handed over to him.

She was through the front door when he thought to ask, “Did they find Marilee James’s little boy?”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “No. I’m going over to her house now and take some fried chicken.”

The door closed behind her, and Tate watched through the big plate glass window as she walked away down the sidewalk and turned the corner. Miss Charlotte wore an amazingly short skirt and high heels for a prim-and-proper woman. And she didn’t walk; she marched.

He went out to the BMW that he’d left right there with the top down, his computer in full sight. He had figured a person could do that in Valentine.

Making a number of trips, he carted the computer, monitor and then a few boxes into his new office. After he’d set the things down, he stood smoothing the back of his hair. That he ought to be doing something to help in the search for little Willie Lee James tugged at him. He felt helpless on that score. There didn’t seem anything he, not knowing either the child or the town, could do.

He left the boxes in a stack and started to connect up his computer, but then decided he was too impatient to see his new home. He wanted to get a look around while the light was still good. He locked the front doors and was one step away when he stopped, remembering the small grey woman he had earlier seen appear. Was she still in there?

He didn’t think she could be, since Miss Charlotte hadn’t said anything about her. Still, the thought caused him to go back inside to check.

On the door glass of the office was printed: Zona Porter, No Relation, Comptroller. He did not hear sound from beyond the walls. He knocked. No answer. Very carefully he turned the knob and stuck his head in the door. The office, very small and neat, even stark, was empty.

Well, good. He felt better to have made certain.

Back at the front door again, he locked the door of his newspaper, wondering if one even needed to bother in such a town. Whistling, he strode to his BMW, where he jumped over the door and slid down into the seat. He backed the BMW out of its place and had to drive the length of town and turn around and come back to the intersection of Main and Church Streets. His cousin Muriel’s house, which he had bought sight unseen since he was nine years old, was on the second block up Church Street, on the corner. He heard Muriel’s clipped tone of voice giving him the directions.

The town was pretty as a church calendar picture in the late-afternoon sunlight that shone golden on the buildings and flags, houses and big trees. Forsythia blooms had mostly died away, but purple wisteria and white bridal wreath were in full bloom.

It struck him how he knew the names of the bushes. He had learned a few things from his ex-wife, he supposed. He experienced a sharp but brief stab of regret for what he had let pass him by. He had not cared about houses and yards during his married years; he had not valued building a home and a family.

Then he immediately remembered all that he had experienced in place of domesticity, and he figured his life and times had been correct for him. In fact, that was what Lucille had told him: “You need to be a newspaperman, Tate, not a married man.”

Funny, he hadn’t thought of Lucille in a long time. Her image was fuzzy, and her voice came only in a faint whisper from deep in memory. She had been a rare woman, but neither of them had fit together in a marriage. Set free, she had blossomed as a psychologist, mother, political activist.

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven, he thought as his gaze lit on the big Porter house that came into view—the Holloway house, he mentally corrected.

He thought of his season now, as he pulled the BMW to a stop in the driveway just outside the portico. His season had come to put down roots. He had reached that point, by golly, finally, at the age of fifty-one. It was a fact, he thought, that might daunt a lesser man.

His strides were long and swift. He took the wide front steps two at a time and unlocked a door that needed refinishing. It creaked loudly when opened.

He stepped inside, into a wide hallway. There was a pleasant scent of old wood. He walked through the musty rooms, the oak flooring creaking often beneath his steps as he gave everything a cursory, almost absent look, noting the amazing fact that Muriel had pretty much left everything just as it was.

When Muriel had decided to leave, she had definitely decided to leave.

He poked his head out the back door, the screen door that definitely needed replacing, then walked more slowly around the kitchen that had not been painted in twenty years. His cousin had not been a domestic type, any more than he had been. On into the dining room, where he unlocked the French doors and stepped out on the wraparound porch. By golly, he liked the porch! He was going to sit out here on hot afternoons and smoke his cigars and drink iced tea thick as syrup with sugar.

Just then his gaze fell on the wicker settee, where he saw a little boy asleep.

A little boy, a dog, and a big orange cat who regarded Tate with definite annoyance.

Four

Vast Stretches of the Heart

When Parker’s blue pickup truck, with the white-and-gold Lindsey Veterinary Clinic emblem on the side, came pulling up in her driveway, Marilee went running out to meet him. There was in the back of her mind the idea that he would be bringing Willie Lee.

She saw immediately that he had not.

“I heard about Willie Lee. Is he home yet?” Parker strode around the front of his truck toward her.

“No…all this time, Parker…” Her arms pried themselves from her sides, and she reached for him.

He took her against him and held her tight. Then, as he walked her back into the house, with his arm around her shoulders, Marilee told him of her conversation with the principal, of having searched the neighborhoods, of calling Sheriff Oakes, and of the helplessness of just having to wait. She did not mention the fear that was rising to choke her throat, that maybe this time Willie Lee was truly gone, a fear that had haunted her since the night she had delivered him early, blue and choking for breath.

“He is just out diggin’ in a ditch for crawdads or explorin’ ant trails or something that boys do,” Parker said with perfect reasonableness.

Recriminations for having felt the burden of being a mother echoed in her brain, bringing shame and self-loathing.

“He’ll turn up, Marilee. It’ll be okay,” Parker whispered in her ear as he again drew her close.

What was great about Parker was his solidity in any crisis. Probably it had something to do with being a veterinarian, facing life and death on a regular basis. He was not daunted by a crisis, but was, in fact, better in a crisis than at normal times. He could offer himself in a crisis, whereas during normal everyday times, he withheld himself and kept his affability around him like a shield.

“Did you bring any cigarettes?” she asked.

“No. Why would I have cigarettes?” He looked startled.

“Parker, don’t you keep any, just in case?”

“I quit three years ago, and so did you, remember?” he said with a righteousness that Marilee thought uncalled for in the situation.

Annoyed, she almost asked him to go get her a pack, but then the phone rang.

Phone calls had been coming in from people as they heard about Willie Lee. Each time Marilee would jump to answer, hoping it was the sheriff calling to say Willie Lee was found. After three more such calls, she waved at Parker to answer.

Then Charlotte Nation drove up in her little red Grand Am. Marilee, sitting at the window, watched Charlotte unfold her long legs out of the car and come swiftly up the walk, her arms loaded with brown bags. Charlotte had brought containers of fried chicken and potato salad from the Quick Shop that had put in a delicatessen.

Marilee looked at the food and felt sick; it was like funeral food.

Charlotte reported that June had managed to correct both the Ford and IGA ads in time for Leo’s delivery of the disks to the printer for tomorrow’s edition. And that their new publisher, Tate Holloway, had arrived before schedule.

“He did?” Vaguely, Marilee tried to be concerned about this.

“Don’t worry about him,” Charlotte said, giving a dismissive wave. “He took it upon himself to come early, so he had to take what he got. And when Willie Lee comes home, you are going to be worn out, so sleep in tomorrow morning and just come on down when you get ready.”

When Willie Lee comes home…

As Charlotte’s Grand Am pulled away from the curb, Marilee, who felt the need to keep vigil out the front window, was dismayed to see her mother’s Cadillac pull in. The car bore a front license plate that said CCoopers, which was advertising of a sort for the discount appliance store owned by her mother’s second husband—Carl Cooper—one of those stores that plastered the television with cluttered and tasteless ads. What this did for Marilee’s mother, however, was give her the fame she craved.

Watching her mother, a small woman with Lady Clairol blond hair who walked in short, quick strides, Marilee had the thought to run and hide, but like one inextricably caught, she kept sitting there.

Her mother had come to talk about Marilee helping her get new tires for her Cadillac, because her husband could not be counted on to do this to her satisfaction.

“Carl won’t take the time,” she said, having launched immediately into her request. “He insists on just goin’ down to the discount tire warehouse and getting the cheapest ones slapped on there…and he doesn’t pay attention if they balance them or not.”

Marilee jumped in to say, “Mother, I can’t talk to you about this now. Willie Lee is missing.”

Upon being told of her grandson’s disappearance, her mother became very agitated. Her entire countenance became one of doom, so much so that to look at her made Marilee have trouble breathing.

Her mother then launched in with comments of a dire sort. “Anything could happen to him out there, all these perverts in the world.” And, “The boy is too friendly, doesn’t know a stranger. I hope he didn’t get in a car with somebody.” Then, “You never should have sent the boy to school anyway. He isn’t capable of regular school,” and, in a whisper that really wasn’t one and that Parker heard very well, “You should marry Parker, and then you could stay home with the boy.”

Invariably her mother called Willie Lee the boy.

“He has a name, mother. It is Willie Lee.”

“Well, I know that,” her mother said, looking confused and hurt and more fearful than ever. Marilee felt like a toad but did not apologize.

Parker, who could stand no conflict, said, “Norma, would you like more coffee?”

Marilee turned and went and shut herself in the bathroom, where she stared at her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror for a long minute, asking all sorts of unintelligible questions of herself and God.

Finally, her spinning brain settling somewhat, she opened the medicine cabinet and began a thorough search. Surely she had some pills left in here from the time when Stuart had walked out on her. Surely she did. Oh, Lordy, she felt like she was coming apart.

A knock sounded at the door. Marilee, wondering if word had come of her son, whipped the door open to see standing there her tall and sturdy Aunt Vella.

“Hello, sugar. I’m sorry, I’m not Willie Lee.” Her eyes, all sympathetic, went beyond Marilee to the sink strewn with the stuff out of the medicine cabinet. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for any of my old pills. I don’t have any, though. I threw them all out.”

“Well, yes, you did. I was here that day. Now, I’ve brought you what you need—a big chocolate shake.”

“Chocolate?”

“Yes, sugar…it’s in the kitchen.”

“Bless you.” Marilee threw herself on her aunt, who hugged her tight and then kept an arm around her all the way to the kitchen, where her mother saw and frowned. There had always been animosity between Marilee’s petite mother and her statuesque Aunt Vella, who was her father’s sister.

Marilee disengaged herself from her aunt and sat down, taking up the large paper cup and spooning the thick shake into her mouth. Her Aunt Vella and Uncle Perry owned Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain, and Aunt Vella knew exactly how Marilee liked her chocolate shakes, with an extra squirt of chocolate syrup.

Then Marilee saw that Corrine had her own shake, too. Corrine’s black eyes met Marilee’s for an instant, in which Marilee summoned forth an encouraging smile from the place mothers always keep them. She had forgotten about her niece and wanted to make up for it. The child had enough of being forgotten in her life.

Corrine quickly looked away, though, as if needing to protect herself.

“Well, I have to go,” Marilee’s mother said. “I have to get Carl’s supper.”

“That’s okay…there’s nothing you can do here.” God forbid Carl’s supper be interrupted. Marilee breathed deeply.

“You call me as soon as you have news…and I can come back down.” She was edging toward the door, and turned and told Parker, “Good seeing you, Parker—you call me if Marilee needs me.”

Parker nodded politely, wisely not committing himself.

“Vella, it was good seein’ you.”

“Norma…”

Different as night and day, the two women managed to tolerate each other.

For a second Marilee’s mother hovered uncertainly, and then she patted Marilee’s arm and stroked Corrine’s dark hair away from her forehead, saying, “Honey, can’t you clip your hair out of your eyes?”

Marilee saw Corrine quietly keep sipping her milk shake, while beneath the table her legs swung about ninety miles an hour.

“Well, I’ll get with you this weekend about the tires,” Marilee’s mother said before leaving.

Marilee played the straw around in her milk shake and suffered guilt at the thought of telling her mother to cram the tires up her ass.

Vella, feeling the need to be polite and thoroughly cover the annoyance she always felt in the other woman’s presence, hopped to her feet and escorted her ex-sister-in-law to the front door. And needing to make certain the woman did indeed get out the door. It was, Vella thought as she saw her ex-sister-in-law get into her car, a great failing on her part that, after all these years and the death of her brother, Norma Cooper should still have the power to irritate the fire out of her.

When she returned to the kitchen, Parker was massaging Marilee’s shoulders and joking with Corrine, producing a rare smile from the child. Although she had always found Parker Lindsey vaguely wanting, Vella thoroughly admired the way he could lighten a moment when he put his mind to it.

Marilee said to her, “Don’t you have the Rose Club meeting tonight?”

“Yes. And I’m going. There’s plenty of time. Perry can get supper over at the café, and I can go straight to the meeting from here.” Perry always took himself off to the café, if he came home and she wasn’t there and no supper was on the table. Then he would come home, turn on the television and fall asleep in his La-Z-Boy.

She went to the counter to unpack a grocery sack from the IGA, where she had bought chocolate cookies and bananas. In her estimation a person could live on bananas for a meal and cookies for desert. She noted then on the counter a big bucket of fried chicken and a container of potato salad. With a small slice of alarm over possible food poisoning, she put the potato salad in the refrigerator.

The phone rang, and all of them jumped. Parker was the first to reach the receiver hanging on the wall. “James house,” he answered in an uncharacteristically clipped tone.

They all stared at him, not a breath being breathed. He said, “Hmmm…okay,” and hung up then said, “That was Neville. He said they haven’t found Willie Lee, but they have talked to five people who saw him this afternoon. He was definitely heading this way home.”

Marilee wished she had talked to the sheriff herself. Hearing his voice would have been something. Then she imagined the sheriff telling her that they were searching all the drainage culverts.

“Where is he?”

They all stared helplessly at her. She swung around and pushed out the back screen door and down the steps to the yard, hardly realizing what she was doing.

Please, Lord, bring my baby home. I will do anything. Please, Lord…just please. How will I bear it if you take him from me? If anything happens to him…

Thankfully, those in the kitchen knew her well enough to let her go alone. She went to the foot of the tree that housed the little fort Marilee and Willie Lee had built together and looked upward. She did not cry. She never cried in a crisis. As she saw it, crying had never changed anything, and if she cried, then all would be lost.

She went to the rabbit cages and realized it was way past time the two rabbits inside were fed their evening meal. She got their food from the garage and filled their dishes, changing their water, too. She thought how Willie Lee loved animals. He seemed more comfortable with them than with people.

As she stood gazing at the rabbits, a squeal sounded…the familiar squeal of the gate in the back fence.

She whirled around to see a man coming through the gate. A tall man…Charlotte had said Tate Holloway…

Then she saw, standing beside the man, her much smaller son.

“This boy says he lives here,” the man said.

“Oh, my…Willie Lee!”

It was not until that instant of seeing the small boy’s figure and then her eyes falling on his upturned face that she realized she had truly begun to believe she would never see Willie Lee alive again, and that what she had been wrestling with all these hours was the inner imagining of his limp little body being pulled from some muddy ditch.

But here he was, his blond hair standing on end and his blue eyes peering out from his thick glasses, regarding her calmly.

“Hey, Ma-ma.”

She had scooped him against her. He pushed away and put a hand on her cheek, looking deep into her eyes.

“Why are you cry-ing, Ma-ma?”

“Because I missed you…” She was crying so hard that she could hardly speak. “I didn’t know where you were, and I’ve been so scared, because you were lost.”

She hugged him close again.

“I was not lost,” he said, again pushing away to look at her with his dear blue eyes blinking behind his glasses. “I was com-ing home.”

“Oh, honey…” She caressed his dear, unruly hair, so glad for the feel of it. “It is a long way from school. You shouldn’t come home all by yourself.”

“I was not all by my-self. I had Mun-ro with me.”

For an instant of confusion, Marilee thought he meant the man, but then he was reaching to bring forward a dog. A shaggy, spotted small type of shepherd.

“Mun-ro,” Willie Lee introduced happily.

The man was Tate Holloway, which was a little surprising, but not so much, because Marilee had recognized his deep Southern drawl. He explained that he had been looking around his cousin’s house and had discovered Willie Lee sleeping on the wicker settee on the porch, with the dog and a big orange cat that had, as Mr. Holloway put it, “skeddaddled faster than a hog skatin’ on ice.”

Tate Holloway’s voice was as it had been when Marilee had spoken to him on the phone, all deep and smoky, and he drew his words out like he purely enjoyed each one on his tongue.

“Bub-ba,” Willie Lee said, turning concerned eyes up to her. “I was going to feed Bub-ba, but his food is all gone, and he ran away from us.”

Understanding dawned as to what had brought Willie Lee home by way of the back gate. “We’ve been going through the gate each night to feed Bubba on the back step,” Marilee explained. “Bubba is—or was—Ms. Porter’s cat. We’ve been feeding him until you came. She said you got the cat with the house.”

Willie Lee said, “Bub-ba needs food.”

“We’ll let Mr. Holloway take Bubba some of this chicken,” Marilee told him.

They all sat around the big oak table in Marilee’s kitchen, eating the meal friends had brought earlier. It was very much like a party. Marilee kept Willie Lee sitting on her lap, where she could repeatedly touch him. On one side, within touching distance whether she wished it or not, sat Corrine, who seemed to grin an awfully lot for her, and on the other side, with his arm often on the back of Marilee’s chair, sat Parker. Aunt Vella hovered, a good hostess attending everyone. Marilee soaked up this time of contentment, of safety after threat.

“I was going to call you,” Tate Holloway said, having gone over the story a second time and embellishing with how Miss Charlotte had taken him to task for coming before his scheduled Saturday arrival and how surprised he had been to see a boy on his settee.

“I had your telephone number, but Willie Lee here—” he winked and pointed at Willie Lee with a chicken leg “—said he would show me the way over. I sure wondered where he was goin’ when he led me into those cedar trees, but by golly, there was the gate right in the midst of those ramblin’ roses, just like he said.”

Marilee, putting warm chicken meat in her mouth with her fingers, watched the man and her son grin at each other. Tate Holloway had a charming grin.

“I knew the way. I was not lost,” Willie Lee said. Then he looked at Marilee, squinting with one eye behind his thick glasses. “Well, oncet I was lost, but Mun-ro led me home.”

Taking a roll from his and Marilee’s plate, he slipped from her lap and went to feed it to the dog lying on the spiral rug in front of the sink, as was the right of a dog who had protected her son.

Marilee, approving of how gently the dog ate from her son’s hand, felt a sinking feeling. “Honey, Munro may belong to someone. He has a collar.”

Willie Lee said, “No…he was look-ing for me, to come live here. I told God I want-ed him. Re-mem-ber?”

Marilee glanced at Parker.

“I don’t think I’ve seen that dog before,” Parker said. “But not everybody ‘round here brings me their pets. Most, but not everyone. And he doesn’t have any tags…may not have had a rabies shot,” he added as caution.

Everyone looked at the dog, who blinked his kind eyes.

Tate Holloway said, “You just can’t separate a boy and a dog, oncet they’ve chosen each other,” and winked at Willie Lee. “Plain secret of life is a good dog.”

Now Marilee knew where Willie Lee had picked up saying “oncet.”

“How come you to name him Munro, Willie Lee?” Aunt Vella asked.

“That is his name.”

At this good sense, all of them chuckled, except Corrine, who had begun to help Aunt Vella clear the table and who informed them, “It says Munro on his collar.”

When they all looked at her, she added, “It’s printed in white. M-U-N-R-O.”

Parker took a look, pulling the collar out of the dog’s hair. “Yep. Munro.” He petted the dog.

“Who told you his name?” Marilee asked.

“Mun-ro told me,” Willie Lee said practically, stroking the dog.

“Did he tell you if he has had his shots?” Parker wanted to know, giving Marilee a wink.

Willie Lee looked at the dog and then said, “He does not want shots.”

They all chuckled. Marilee looked closer at the dog, who smiled happily back at her. She had to admit the name fit him perfectly.

The sheriff and friends and neighbors and Marilee’s mother had been alerted that the crisis was over, and Willie Lee had been returned home safe and sound. Vella, who had made a majority of the telephone calls, left to go to her Rose Club organizational meeting. Now that all was safe and sound, she was in a hurry, backing her Crown Victoria with racing speed.

Tate Holloway decided he would walk home on the sidewalk. “Think I’ll see a bit more of the neighborhood,” he said.

Parker went with Marilee to see their new neighbor out the front door. It occurred to Marilee that in all the years she had worked for Ms. Porter and lived just beyond the rose-lined fence from the big Porter home, the woman had never even once visited her home. Here, in the first hours of his arrival, Tate Holloway had not only visited, he had returned her beloved son and eaten a celebration meal with them.

Streetlights were on now, sending their silvery glow up and down the street and casting shadows into yards.

“Thank you for the delightful meal,” Tate Holloway said, stopping at the foot of the steps and turning to look upward at Marilee and Parker on the edge of the porch. “And for this fine fare for Bubba,” he added, lifting the plastic bag containing the leftover chicken pieces.

Marilee said, “Thank you, Mr. Holloway, for returning Willie Lee.”

Tate Holloway grinned. “Well, now, I think it would be more accurate to say that Willie Lee led me over here.”

He gazed at her with that grin.

“And I’d prefer it, Miss Marilee, if you would call me Tate,” he said in his deep, slow East Texas drawl.

His eyes that seemed to twinkle, even at this distance, rested on her. There was a contagious inner delight in Tate Holloway.

“All right. Tate. I’m glad to meet you.”

“I’m glad to know you, Marilee James, and your family. I won’t be a stranger…you can count on that.”

Marilee gazed down at the tall man who grinned up at her, until Parker slipped his arm around her and said, “We are sure grateful for you bringing Willie Lee home, Tate.”

Tate’s eyes shifted to Parker. “Ah…yes, well, sir…I’m just glad things turned out so fine. Good night.” With another glance at Marilee and a wave of the little bag of chicken, he was off down the walkway.

Marilee’s eyes followed, seeing that his fine, white-blond hair caught the light and shone like sun-warmed silk, and that his shoulders were strong, his torso lean, and his strides long, in the way of a man who is all muscle and purpose.

Then Parker was turning her from the sight. They walked back into the house with his arm around her shoulders. Just inside the closed door, in the dimness, he drew her to him and kissed her.

“Your Willie Lee came home safe and sound, just like I said,” he reminded her.

“Thank you for being here, Parker.” She was very grateful.

He pulled her against him and kissed her neck. She felt him wanting a lot more, but she could not give any thought to it right now. She was too busy clutching to her what she had feared she had lost. There was no energy left at this moment to consider her relationship with Parker.

She tucked Corrine and Willie Lee into bed.

“Honey, we will have to run an announcement in the paper about finding Munro,” she told Willie Lee, taking off his glasses and setting them on the night table.

“He is my dog now.” He put his hand on the dog, who lay beside him.

“He has a collar with his name on it. That means someone bought it for him. Someone who cares for him. What if you had lost him? Wouldn’t you want whoever found him to do their best to get him back to you?”

Willie Lee frowned, and his lower lip quivered. “Munro found me. I did not find-ed him.”

“We will run an ad in the paper for two weeks. That is the right thing to do, the most we can do.”

Willie Lee turned on his side and clutched the dog to him.

Marilee kissed him and considered not running the ad. Maybe just the Sunday paper.

She kissed Corrine and turned out the light, then went to the kitchen to prepare the coffeemaker for the morning. She thought it a wise course to tone down the strength of the brew that Corrine made. Maybe lessening her caffeine intake would help her nerves, which seemed so on edge these days.

At the moment of stretching her hand to the light switch, her eye came to rest on Willie Lee’s picture book lying on the edge of the table. The book he’d had that morning, when he had been trying to show her the picture of the dog.

She took it up and thumbed through the pages, until she came to the one with the dog picture that jumped right out at her.

She scanned the print below, which was a description of the dog. An Australian Shepherd, it said, bred for herding sheep. The dog in the picture had his tail bobbed. Marilee had seen similar dogs in the rural areas.

Taking the book, she went to the open door of the children’s room, where the dog lay on the rug beside Willie Lee’s bed. The dog opened his eyes and looked at her. His tail thumped.

In the dim light cast from the bathroom, Marilee consulted the book, then looked again at the dog.

She would check again in the clear light of day, she thought. So many wild things could occur to a person in the night and be cleared up in the light of day.

When the morning came, Marilee found that Munro did look remarkably like the dog in the picture book, although, he was darker.

Her eyes followed the dog and her son walking through the kitchen. No matter the dog’s appearance, she thought, her son had asked for a dog and been given one. She wondered what she would ask for…and wished she could believe it would be given.

Five

The Beauty of the World

It was bare first light of his first full day in his new town when Tate, dressed in brand-new, grey sweatpants, brand-new, bright-white T-shirt with the words Just Do It emblazoned on the front, and brand-new top-of-the-line jogging shoes, came out on his very own front porch.

Tate had jogged intermittently off and on for years, and had profited from it, too, but now he wanted to really make it routine. He was in the prime of his life and wanted to honor that by making the most of himself physically and mentally. That was the spirit!

Stretching his arms wide, he sucked in a deep breath. Ahh! The brisk morning, quite different from the heavily humid air of Houston.

He jogged down the steps and out to the sidewalk of the quiet street. As he turned along Porter Street, in the direction of Marilee James’s house, the yellow cat, Bubba, streaked out from beneath a lilac bush and joined him, bouncing along behind Tate, looking like an orange basketball with a tail.

Tate wanted to see Marilee’s house clearly in the light of day. He wondered if she was an early riser.

He had a sudden fantasy of her being on the porch and seeing him, jogging along manfully, her waving and him waving back. He smiled at his fanciful notion, although he did experience a little bit of disappointment when his gaze found her front porch, white gingerbread trim, and empty.

Not only was all quiet at the James house, but along most of the street. At the house on the corner, a young man wearing a UPS uniform was chinning himself with bulging arms on a beam across the middle of his porch ceiling. He dropped to his feet, headed for his car at the curb, casting Tate a wave as he came. Friendly fellow! Tate waved back.

Turning up First Street, heading for the commerce area of Main, Tate slowed. He had begun to breathe quite hard. He sure didn’t want to have a heart attack on his first day in town. He glanced back and saw that Bubba had deserted him.

Tate continued on, a sort of jog, meeting two ladies who were race walking, pumping arms, talking at the same rate they were walking. They exchanged swift hellos with Tate.

On Main Street, a woman was unlocking the door of her shop—Sweetie Cakes Bakery painted across the window. She nodded and slipped in the door. Further down the street, he looked across at The Valentine Voice building. By golly, it was his!

He was walking now.

Just then Charlotte came through the front doors of the Voice, surprising him somewhat, and put up the flag, setting it quickly and returning inside before Tate got close enough to holler a good morning.

He was perhaps breathing a little too hard to offer a hearty good morning.

For the past two weeks his attention and time had been taken up with his move to Valentine; that he had not been routinely jogging was telling on him now.

At the corner of the police station, from where he thought he smelled coffee brewing, he turned up Church Street, heading for home. The golden rays of the sun now streaked the horizon.

Funny how he had not realized that the street went up a hill.

Ah, there was another jogger coming toward him. Tate felt the need to push himself into a jog. Didn’t want to be out jogging and not doing it.

A minute later he was sure glad he was jogging, because the young man coming toward him turned out to be not quite so young, and to be Parker Lindsey. By golly, he looked all youthful male in a sleeveless shirt and jogging shorts that showed tanned hard thighs.

The two approached the intersection.

“Good mornin’.” Tate raised his voice and refused to sound breathless.

“’Mornin’,” Lindsey returned, cruising along at a good clip. He even wore a sweatband around his forehead, like a marathon runner.

Tate put some strength into his jog. He might have a few years on Lindsey, and a lot of grey in his hair, but where there was snow on the mountaintop, there was a fire in the furnace. He thought of the old saw as he continued on across the intersection toward his driveway, intent on at least jogging around to the back of the house, out of view.

Just then he saw, coming along down the hill, a shapely blond young woman in a skimpy exercise outfit, jogging and smiling at him. He might have stopped to talk to her, but the young woman’s attention was captured by Tate’s older neighbor on the opposite corner, who came from her house in walking shorts and shoes, waving and calling the blond woman by name.

The town was a haven for health enthusiasts!

He continued up his driveway, which had much more of an incline than he had before noted, and around to the back steps, where Bubba now lay, sunning himself. The cat gave Tate a yawn.

“I feed you…no comments.”

Tate dragged himself in the door and sank down upon the floor, going totally prostrate on the cool linoleum.

Marilee sat holding her coffee cup in both hands and thinking that she should have made it stronger. She had gotten used to Corrine’s brew and seemed not to be able to function well on a weaker variety.

Across from her, Corrine, looking for all the world like she was about to be shot, played with her food. Willie Lee, who ate slowly, asked if Munro could go to school with him.

“He will be lone-ly with-out me,” he said.

Marilee, watching Corrine play the fork over her egg, thought, there are only three weeks left to the school year.

“I think we can have the ending of our school year today,” she said, suddenly getting up and taking her plate to the sink. “You two do not need to go back this year.”

She looked over her shoulder to see their reactions.

Willie Lee’s eyebrows went up. “I do not have to go to schoo-ool to-day?”

“No, not today, and no more until fall. We’ll see about it then.”

Corrine was looking at Marilee with a mixture of high hope and sharp distrust on her delicate features.

“I’ll call Principal Blankenship and see what we can do about you finishing your work at home,” Marilee told her.

The relief that swept the girl’s face struck Marilee so hard that she had to turn away and hide her own expression in her coffee cup. She thought of her sister, Anita. Corrine’s mother. She had the urge to toss the coffee cup right through the window.

Then Willie Lee was at her side and tapping her thigh. “Mun-ro needs breakfast.”

Looking into his sweet face, Marilee smiled. “He does, doesn’t he.”

“I can give him my egg,” Corrine said.

“Please, make him toast, too, Ma-ma.”

“Yes, darlin’…I’ll make toast for Munro.” She looked at the dog, now eating the egg very gently from Corrine’s plate.

Marilee’s reasoning mind told her to force the children to go to school and face what they would have to face sooner or later, a regimen and self-control, and those few cruel and mean and inept people one will come across on many an occasion. Life was a tough row of responsibility to hoe, and the sooner the children, even Willie Lee, learned this, the better.

She all but took out a gun and shot her reasoning mind. It wisely shut up.

Thinking of both the principal and her new boss, who she would now ask to let her work at home, she got herself dressed nicely in a slim knit skirt and top in soft blue, accented with a genuine silver concho belt from her more prosperous days of no children and a husband who earned quite good money as a world-renowned photojournalist. She managed to talk herself into doing a thorough makeup job and brushed her hair until it shone.

Then she sat at her cherry-wood desk to telephone Principal Blankenship and secure from the woman the promise that Corrine would be kept with her grade. The principal was surprisingly agreeable, even eager, at the idea of releasing the child, whom she all but labeled troubled straight out.

“Corrine has perfect straight A’s,” the principal said. “Her grades are not a question. She is a very bright girl. That is not at all her problem in class. I’m sure we can accommodate you in order to help Corrine have the rest she needs.” Then she tacked on, “Ah…I have the name of a child therapist you might want to consider.”

For Willie Lee, the principal promised to consult his teacher about work that might possibly help him. Marilee, who had from her teenage years been unable to shake her faith in her own mental capacity, told the principal not to bother Mrs. Reeves. “I’m going to pick out a curriculum for Willie Lee.”

The principal definitely disapproved of this action, labeling it risky, but stopped short of pressing, no doubt fearful Marilee would change her mind and bring the children back to school.

Marilee thanked Principal Blankenship for all her help and hung up, sitting there for some minutes, her hand on the telephone, gazing at nothing, until she realized she was gazing at a pattern on the Tibetan rug that fronted the couch. She remembered, then, buying it in Calcutta, on one of hers and Stuart’s trips. Her gaze moved about the room, noting a painting on the wall that had been purchased in New Orleans, and a pottery vase picked up in the Smoky Mountains.

Her eyes moved to the small picture of her ex-husband that she kept, still, on her desk.

Stuart James grinned at her from the photo. She picked it up, remembering how handsome she had found him the first time she had laid eyes on him, remembering how wonderful he had made her feel when he touched her body. Stuart was a man who greatly enjoyed making love.

Into these deep thoughts came the sound of childish voices. She blinked and got up, following the sound to the back door.

Willie Lee and Corrine, with the dog between them, sat on the back stairs in the dappled morning sunlight that shone through the trees. They did not hear her footsteps, and she was able to watch them for some minutes through the screen door.

Corrine was talking to the dog, right along with Willie Lee. And she was actually smiling.

“Ma-ma…Mun-ro needs to come, too.” He spoke as if scolding her for not remembering the dog.

Marilee looked at her son and then the dog. “Okay, Munro…get in.”

As she backed the Jeep Cherokee from the drive, she gave thanks for the all-purpose vehicle. She supposed she might as well accept that the dog was destined to go everywhere with them. He could, in Valentine, America.

A new vehicle, a yellow convertible BMW, was parked in the block of spaces behind The Valentine Voice building. The top was down, and with a raised eyebrow, Marilee peered into the vehicle, noting the soft leather seats. Obviously, coming from Houston, Tate Holloway was unaware of how serious dust could be in this part of the country.

The two-story brick building that housed the newspaper had changed only marginally since it was first built in 1920. The back area of the first floor, which had once housed the printing press, had been converted into a garage and loading area. Printing was now done by a contract printer who did a number of small-town newspapers; The Valentine Voice was one of the last small-town dailies in the nation.

The front half of the first floor was pretty much as it had been built. The original bathroom had been enlarged and a small kitchen sink area added. Several offices had been made by adding glass partitions, one of which had dark-green shades all around and a door with a dark-green shade. The name on the glass of the door read: Zona Porter, No Relation, Comptroller. Everyone respected that Zona preferred privacy. One could go in and speak to Zona in the office, but Zona rarely came out. Had a bathroom been installed off her office, Zona would not have come out at all. She had her own refrigerator, coffeemaker, cups, glasses, tissues. She did not care to touch things after other people.

E. G. Porter’s original office remained at the right, with tall windows that looked out onto the corner of Main and Church Streets.

Entering through the rear door, Marilee felt a little like she was leading a parade, with the children and the dog Munro trailing behind her.

Leo Pahdocony, Sr., a handsome dark-haired Choctaw Indian who wore turquoise bolas, shiny snakeskin boots and sharply creased Wranglers, was pecking away at the keyboard of his computer and talking on the telephone at the same time, with the receiver tucked in his neck. He gave her a wave and a palm-up to Willie Lee.

His wife, Reggie, a petite redhead who handled news in the schools, churches and most of the photography, popped out of her swivel chair and came to greet them with delight. Reggie, who had for the past five years been trying to conceive another child, extended her arms to capture the children in a big hug. Corrine managed to sidestep her way to Marilee’s chair and sat herself firmly, but Willie Lee, always loveable, let Reggie lift him up and kiss him.

“You gave us a scare, young man, running off,” Charlotte told him, coming forward with messages for Marilee.

Willie Lee said, “I did not run off. I was coming home.”

“Uh-huh. Good thinking.” Charlotte turned her eyes on Marilee. “Tammy phoned. She’s got a horrible toothache.”

Marilee saw that Charlotte was thinking the same thing she was: that Tammy had a job interview elsewhere. Without Miss Porter’s money pouring in, no one expected the newspaper to continue much longer than a year, if that.

A pounding sounded from the office of the publisher. Marilee looked at the closed door and noticed that Muriel Porter’s name plaque was gone, leaving a dark rectangle on the oak.

Pounding again.

“He’s hangin’ pictures,” said Imperia Brown, smacking her phone receiver into the cradle. “It’s drivin’ me crazy. I’m outta here.” She grabbed up her purse and headed for the front door.

Charlotte strode over to the large, gilded frame of the newspaper’s founder’s portrait now propped on the floor against the copy machine, and said to Marilee, “He took down Mr. E. G. first thing.” Charlotte definitely disapproved.

“Might be one of us next,” Reggie said.

Marilee and Charlotte cast each other curious glances, and Reggie said she wondered if Ms. Porter might not be feeling her skin crawling at the removal of her daddy from the wall.

“I’ve been halfway waitin’ for the wall to cave in, E.G. having his say from the grave,” she said.

“The walls are apparently holding,” Charlotte said, “and he’s hanging them with all sorts of pictures. He has one of him with President Nixon. I don’t know why he’d want to advertise it,” she added.

“He has one of him with Reba,” Reggie put in with some excitement. “He did a feature piece on her for Parade Magazine.”

Reggie had every one of Reba McEntire’s albums. She suddenly grabbed up a pen to hold in front of her mouth like a microphone and began singing one of Reba’s songs. This was something she often did, pretending either to be a singer or a television commentator. Reggie was every bit pretty enough to be either; however, she could take clowning and showing off to the point of annoyance, as far as Marilee was concerned. Right then was one of those points, and Marilee felt her temper grow short as Reggie kept jutting her face in front of Marilee’s and singing about poor old Fancy.

“Reggie, would you keep an eye on Corrine and Willie Lee for me?” she said, thus diverting the woman to more quiet childishness, while Marilee went to their publisher’s solid oak door and knocked.

The sound of hammering drowned out her knock, and she had to try again, and when still no answer came, she poked her head in the door. “Mr. Holloway?” She was unable to address him as Tate, being at the office.

He turned from where he was hanging a picture. “Marilee! Come in…come in. Just the person I’ve been waitin’ for. You can come over here and help me get this picture in the right place.”

It was a picture of him with Billy Graham, black-and-white, as all the photographs appeared to be. He placed it against the wall and waited for her instructions, which she gave in the form of, “Higher…a little to the left…a little lower. Right there.”

Having, apparently, a high opinion of her ability to place a picture, he marked the spot and went to hammering in a nail.

In a flowing glance, Marilee, wondering how an accomplished journalist of Tate Holloway’s wide experience would manage in tiny Valentine, took in the room. The sedate, even antiquated office that had belonged to Ms. Porter was gone. Or perhaps a more accurate description was that it was being moved out, as pictures and books and boxes full of articles, a number of them antiques, were in a cluster by the door. Next to that, in a large heap, lay the heavy evergreen drapes, which had been ripped from the long windows, leaving only the wooden blinds through which bright light shone on the varied electronic additions: a small television, a radio scanner, a top speed computer and printer, a laptop computer, and one apparatus that Marilee, definitely behind the electronic times, could not identify.

The major change, however, was to the big walnut desk, which had been moved from where it had sat for eons in front of the windows, facing the wall with E. G. Porter’s portrait. Marilee had always had the impression that Ms. Porter would sit at the desk and look at her father on the wall and worship him. Or maybe throw mental darts at him.

Now the desk sat in front of that wall, looking away from it, and behind, where E.G.’s august portrait had hung, was an enormous black-and-white photograph of Marilyn Monroe in the famous shot with her dress blowing up.

After eyeing that for a startled moment, Marilee’s gaze moved on to the clusters of photographs already hung—the ones of Tate Holloway with Reba and President Nixon, and ones of him receiving awards, and with soldiers, and a curious one of a boy plowing with a mule. She stepped closer for a better look at that one. Next to the faded snapshot of the boy and the mule was one of a lovely blond woman in the front yard of an old house, her arms around two boys.

“That’s my mother,” Tate told her, coming up behind her. “With me and my brother, Hollis. I’m the older, skinnier one.”

“And that’s you, plowing with a mule?”

“Yep. Farmin’ in East Texas in the fifties. My mother took that picture. Mama liked to take pictures.”

He had come to stand very close behind her. Close enough for his breath to tickle her hair.

“This is Mama in front of the house me and Hollis bought her.” His arm brushed her shoulder as he pointed at another photograph. “And this is how my daddy wound up.”

He tapped a photograph of a mangled black car stuck to the front end of a Santa Fe Railroad engine.

“I like to see where I’ve come from and how far I’ve journeyed and remind myself where I don’t want to go,” he said with practicality. Then, the next second, “You smell awfully good, Miss Marilee.”

That comment jerked her mind away from the horror of the mangled car. She turned, and her shoulder bumped his chest, because he didn’t move but stood there gazing at her with a light in his clear, twinkling blue eyes that just about took every faithful breath out of her lungs.

His gaze flickered downward, and hers followed to stop and linger on his lips.

The next instant she stepped quickly away from him and said as casually as possible, “And just what does that picture mean in your journey?” She gestured at the photograph of Marilyn Monroe.

“Well—” he sauntered to the desk and laid down the hammer “—I like the touch Marilyn gives the place.”

“What touch are you going for, exactly?”

“Oh…I think a photograph like that sets people off balance, for one thing.” He folded his arms, and his strong shoulders stretched his shirt. “And it is lively. I might come in here feelin’ a little too serious about myself and things in general, and I’ll look up there at that beautiful woman—” he looked up at the picture and grinned “—with a laugh like that and those legs goin’ to heaven, and it makes me remember the true secret of life.” He gave a little wink.

Marilee took that in and took hold of the solid walnut back of the visitor chair, feeling the need to have the chair between herself and Tate Holloway.

She looked at him, and he looked at her in the manner of a man who was intent on having what he wanted. It was both flattering and unsettling.

Breaking the gaze, she said, “I need to discuss my job here.”

His eyebrows went up, “Well, you go ahead, Miss Marilee…as long as you aren’t about to tell me you’re gonna quit.”

Marilee reacted to this with a mixture of gratification and annoyance. There was something very commanding in the way he spoke, as if he would not allow her to quit.

“Do you want a raise?” he asked before she could speak. “I can spare twenty more a week—okay…I’ll go to thirty.”

“I don’t want a raise…but I’ll take it.”

“I won’t force it on you, if you don’t want it.”

“I want it. I only meant that a raise wasn’t what I was going to discuss, but now that you’ve offered, I will take it.”

“Well, since it isn’t a question of a raise, there’s no sense in talkin’ about it.”

“But we are talking about it now, and I’ll take it. My workload has greatly increased since Harlan and Jewel left.”

“Okay, twenty dollars a week it is.”

“You said thirty.”

He cocked his head to the side and regarded her. “What was it you wanted to discuss about your job, Miss Marilee?”

Keeping her hands pressed to the chair back, she told him of her decision to remove her children from the final weeks of school and therefore her need to work from home. That she had been so bold as to take the raise before explaining this, and the glint in his eye that showed admiration, gave her courage.

She explained that until this year, when she had enrolled Willie Lee in school, her arrangement with Ms. Porter allowed her to often work from home, and she had managed very well.

“I have made arrangements with a high school girl to help me in the summer,” she told him, “but until school ends, I will only have her occasionally in the evening hours.”

“Well now, I don’t see any problem at all with you workin’ from home,” said her new boss and publisher. “I already have laptop computers coming for everyone, and we’ll be installing a networking system so that any of us can work from anywhere in town, or in the nation, if need be.”

Marilee thought that The Valentine Voice was suddenly on a rocket, being blasted into the twenty-first century.

Moving purposefully, her boss went to stand behind his desk, placed his hands on it and leaned forward. “I want you to keep this to yourself for a few days. I’ll tell everyone shortly, but for now, I’m just telling you.” He paused. “We’re going to have to cut the paper to a twice weekly.”

She took that in.

He said, “I don’t imagine that comes as any shock to you.”

“No…it doesn’t.” It saddened her, but it was no surprise. Everyone knew that Ms. Porter had been subsidizing the paper for years, and Marilee, having taken over for Ms. Porter, had consulted a number of times with Zona and knew the great extent to which that subsidizing had run.

Tate Holloway eyed her with purpose so strong that he leaned even farther forward. “It is my intention to get this paper to be payin’ for itself. I’m out to build somthin’ here, Miss Marilee. And I’m going to need your help to do it.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“I’m countin’ on that, Miss Marilee…. I sure am.”

Gazing into his twinkling baby-blue eyes, Marilee kept tight hold on the chair back, as if holding to an anchor in the face of a rising, rolling sea.

Six

Maybe She’s Human

Marilee came out of Tate Holloway’s office and closed the door firmly, then held on to the doorknob for some seconds. Behind her, through the door, the low tones of music began—Charlie Rich singing from Tate Holloway’s stereo.

Pushing away from the door, Marilee wrestled with high annoyance at her new boss. Tate Holloway was way too full of himself.

The next instant Reggie was sticking a pen in front of her face, saying, “Tell us the news, Ms. James. Are we all goin’ to be swept out to make way for new employees to go with the new publisher?”

This had been a major worry of Reggie and Leo’s, both being employed at the same place. Mainly it appeared to be a great worry of Reggie’s, since Leo wasn’t given to worrying over steady employment. Before coming to work at The Valentine Voice, he had held various positions in automobile sales, insurance, cattle brokering, photography, trucking and a half-dozen others, several for no more than a week or two before either quitting or being fired. While Reggie defended her husband as trying to find himself and being a victim of too much feminine attention, it had been fact that he had not been able to keep a job of any secure endurance, until he had landed the one of sports reporter at the Voice. He proved excellent at it, and the one time he had shown any inclination to quit, Reggie had come in behind him and finagled a job of her own, thereby being on the scene to make certain he kept his position.

A part of Marilee’s brain tried to be sensitive to all of this, but seeing everyone’s eyes, even Willie Lee’s and Corrine’s, turned in her direction made her very irritated.

“Don’t put that thing in my face, Reggie. I need both my eyes.” She pushed Reggie’s hand aside and strode to her desk and began shuffling through files to take home.

“Okay. So are you pissed off because you do not want to tell us that we are all about to be fired?”

The breathlessness of the question struck Marilee, and she looked up to see Reggie’s thoroughly uneasy eyes. The precariousness of all their positions came fullblown into her mind, and she felt sorry for her short temper.

“Of course we aren’t all going to be fired. Who would he get to replace us? The paper can barely pay for itself now.” Just a mild fib. “He can’t afford to be hauling in a whole new crew of Pulitzer prize winners to Valentine. Right now he’s dependent on us. We are all he’s got.”

She felt as if she were withholding from her friends, being unable to tell the entire truth about the change from a daily to twice weekly. Darn him for confiding in her.

Turning from this dilemma, and from Reggie’s searching eyes, she said, “He said it will be fine for me to work at home,” and went on to briefly explain about Willie Lee and Corrine not going back to school. “I want to be home with them, like I used to be with Willie Lee, and this will work fine, because Mr. Holloway is getting us all laptop computers and a networking system.”

“Wow,” Reggie said. “Guess there’s more money than we thought.”

She jumped from Marilee’s desk and went over to hug Leo, who said quite practically, “Doesn’t mean money. Just good credit.”

“I finally got my machine working how I like it,” Charlotte said, frowning. She had gotten so furious with the technician who had first set up her computer that she had refused to allow him to touch it again, read the manual front to back and now knew enough to maintain her machine herself.

Marilee, who was gazing at her typed up notice for Lost and Found, crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the trash. The dog was Willie Lee’s now, she figured, and she was going to let it be.

“Let’s go get some ice cream,” she said to the children. “You, too, Munro,” she added, when Willie Lee opened his mouth to remind her.

With Willie Lee holding one hand and Corrine the other, and Munro running along beside them, Marilee headed directly to where she went whenever she felt her spirits in disarray—to her aunt and uncle’s drugstore.

Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain had been in business for over seventy years, in the same spot on Main Street. There was a rumor that the outlaws Bonnie and Clyde had once gotten lemonade and bandages from the distant relative of Perry Blaine who had opened the store in 1920. Perry had taken over from his father in ’57, when he had come home from Korea. Things had been booming in Valentine in the fifties, with oil pumping all around, and farming and cattle going okay. That same year Perry had installed the sign with the neon outline that still hung between the windows of the second story.

Ever since the fateful summer of ’96, when it had been featured in both the lifestyle pages of the Lawton paper and then on an Oklahoma City television travel program, Blaine’s Drugstore had received visitors from all over the southern part of the state. People, enough to keep them open on Friday and Saturday evenings in the summertime, came to order Coca-Colas and milk shakes and sundaes in the thick vintage glassware. Some of the glasses were truly antiques, and to keep the visitors coming, once a year Vella drove down to Dallas to a restaurant supply to purchase new to match. She would covertly bring the boxes into the storeroom and place them behind the big boxes of napkins and foam to-go containers.

When taken to task by her daughter Belinda for perpetrating a hoax, Vella said with practicality, “People like thinkin’ the glasses are old, and they would rather not be apprized of the truth. Besides, they will be antiques in another fifty years—and I sure pay enough for them to be looked at.”

As Marilee and the children entered the store, the bell above the door chimed out. Immediately Marilee was engulfed by the dearly familiar scents of old wood, simmering barbecue and faint antiseptic of the store that had not changed since she was a nine-year-old child and so often came running down the hill to escape the sight of her father sitting in his cracked vinyl recliner, beer in hand and glassy eyes staring at the flickering television, and her mother in the kitchen gone so far away into country songs on the radio that she would not speak.

“We have come for ice cream,” Willie Lee said as he went directly to his Great-Aunt Vella, who was sitting at the rear table, with glasses on the tip of her nose so she could more easily read the IGA ads in the newspaper spread wide before her.

“You’ve come to the right place then, mister,” said Winston Valentine, who was sitting across from their aunt and who nudged an empty sundae dish that sat in front of him. Being yet spring and midmorning, the place was empty except for these two.

“Hel-lo, Mis-ter Wins-ton,” Willie Lee said.

“Hello, Mister Willie Lee.”

Willie Lee extended his hand, as Winston had taught him, and Winston shook the small offered hand with great respect.

Marilee saw that Winston’s big, gnarled hand, when it released Willie Lee’s, shook slightly. The blue veins showed clearly when he used that same hand to push his tall frame up from the table.

“If you ladies and gentleman will excuse me,” he said, polite as always, “I have to walk on home and make sure Mildred has not drowned Ruthanne in her bath this mornin’. The nurse has the day off.” He checked his watch. “They ought to be done by now.”

Mildred Covington and Ruthanne Bell, two elderly ladies, shared Winston Valentine’s home. Since Winston’s stroke the year before, a home health nurse came in to check on all three of them three times a week. Aunt Vella had once told Marilee that on the days the nurse did not come, Winston, after making certain the women had breakfast, tried to leave home at midmorning, so as to not be present when the women were getting bathed and dressed; Mildred seemed to have a penchant for running around naked in front of him whenever she had the chance.

“Winston’s really aging now,” Marilee said, watching the old man lean heavily on his cane as he went out the door. He was eighty-eight this year, and only since his stroke had he slowed any.

“There’s more life in him than many a man I know,” Vella said, and in a snapping manner that startled Marilee a little. It only then occurred to her that her Aunt Vella was not getting any younger, either; no doubt it was distressing to her aunt to see a dear friend declining and heading for the border.

Marilee found the fact depressing, as well. She felt as if her life were going down a hole, and she could not seem to find the stopper.

“Now, what’s this about my darlin’s wantin’ ice cream?” Aunt Vella asked.

“We want sun-daes,” Willie Lee told her and scampered over to haul himself up on a stool at the counter.

“We’ll have three chocolate sundaes, please,” Marilee said, slipping onto a stool.

She set herself to getting into a better mood. Children learned by example and picked up on things easily. She did not need to add to any of their numerous wounds by being in a poor mood.

“Me and Mun-ro want va-nil-la,” Willie Lee said. “Cor-rine says dogs should not ev-er have choc-o-late.”

Marilee only then remembered the dog and looked down to see him already curled beneath Willie Lee’s feet, as if knowing that he would need to be quiet and unseen to remain.

Aunt Vella took a cursory look around the end of the counter, then said, “We surely can’t leave Munro out.”

“No, we can-not,” Willie Lee said.

“Is your choice chocolate, too?” Aunt Vella asked Corrine.

Corrine frowned in contemplation.

“I’ll give you another minute.” Aunt Vella went about lining up four dishes and making the sundaes—cherry for Corrine, it turned out. While doing this, she threw conversation over her shoulder, telling about the Rose Club meeting held the previous evening—“We had ten people!”—and how they had already voted as a first project to plant roses around the Welcome to Valentine signs at each end of town.

“Winston and I are goin’ up to Lawton tomorrow to buy bushes,” Vella reported, feeling increasing excitement with the telling.

She had been very pleased with the respectable turnout of people for the first rose club meeting, and felt a glow that her idea of a rose club had proven out. Especially after Perry had rather pooh-poohed the idea as frivolous. She almost had not pursued the idea, after his attitude, but it had turned out that a number of people, such as their mayor’s wife, Kaye Upchurch, had liked the idea immensely. While Kaye Upchurch could be on the frivolous side, she was truly knowledgeable about what was good for the town. Her enthusiasm for the Rose Club’s place in the community was heartening.

Vella was also becoming more and more excited about going up to Lawton with Winston. She had never been anywhere with Winston, outside of her own backyard or here at the store.

“We’d like to get the bushes in the ground soon. It’s already so late to be planting,” she added, bringing her thoughts back to the moment. “We could very well get a repeat of last summer and all that heat. Winston thought we could install some sort of watering system by the welcome signs,” she said, focusing on a plan. “If the city doesn’t want to pay for it, Winston said he would.”

In Vella’s opinion, Winston was a little free with his money, and this was both quite amazing and refreshing. Her husband Perry pinched a penny until it gave up the ghost. Vella thought she needed to take lessons from Winston in being more free and easy. She did not want to spend her remaining years being as controlled as she had spent her entire life to this point.

Marilee, only halfway listening to her aunt’s conversation, other than to observe that the Rose Club seemed to make her aunt very happy, watched the loose skin at the back of her aunt’s arm wiggle, while her biceps worked sturdy and strong. Marilee had lately been trying to exercise the backs of her own arms, which were the first thing to go on a woman; she was amazed that her aunt was so strong, though, despite the sagging back of her arm.

Then Marilee found herself looking over the counter, at the age-spotted long mirror, the shelf of neatly lined and glimmering tulip glasses, the modern licenses in dingy frames, and the yellowing menu with the Dr Pepper sign at the top. The drone of Uncle Perry’s television reached her from the back room of the pharmacy, where her uncle would be sitting in his overstuffed brown chair.

Aunt Vella brought a dish of ice cream around the end of the counter and set it down for Munro. “I didn’t think he needed whipped cream or a cherry,” she said, then stood there, watching the dog, as they all were.

“I sure hope this doesn’t give him a headache,” Vella said, as the dog began to lick the cold sweet ice cream with some eagerness.

“He likes it,” Willie Lee pronounced quite happily.

“Hmmm…”

Aunt Vella went back to put the finishing touches on the people’s sundaes; they definitely got whipped cream and a cherry. She then set the children’s sundaes on the granite counter, with a “There you go, sugars,” pronouncing the word as shu-gahs in a way that caused a particularly strong pull on Marilee’s heart.

As her aunt scooted a sundae across toward her, Marilee looked at it and suddenly realized she was sitting on the last stool at the far end of the counter, right where she had always sat as a child when she came running into the drugstore, dragging Anita by the hand. Aunt Vella would lean over the counter, dab at Anita’s tears and ask, “What can I get for my two shu-gah girls today?”

Marilee would be choking back tears but would manage to get out quite calmly that she and Anita would like chocolate milk shakes, please. Her Uncle Perry always called Marilee a little lady because she never yelled or screamed or cried. There were so many times when she wished she could yell and scream and cry.

Now, as then, she took up the long-handled spoon and smoothed the chocolate syrup around on the vanilla ice cream. She liked to let the ice cream get a little soft and then mix it with the chocolate syrup. She would have to admit to being addicted to chocolate, but after having taken tranquilizers for too long after her heartbreak with Stuart, she thought chocolate a fairly harmless aid to getting along in turbulent times. Chocolate tasted good and felt good going down, and it did not make her brain so fuzzy as to spin out of the world.

As she spooned the chocolate and vanilla ice cream onto her tongue, she looked across and caught hers and Corrine’s reflections in the wide old mirror. Corrine’s dark eyes, for a moment, met hers in the mirror, before looking down at her sundae. Marilee watched Corrine’s reflection, the bend of the dark head, the way she tilted it slightly, looking for all the world like her mother at that age.

Marilee’s gaze returned to her own reflection. It struck her quite hard that here she was staring at middle-age and still employing the same coping skills she had employed as a ten-year-old girl.

“You’ve been workin’ way too hard,” Aunt Vella said. “You just need a little boost. You should take a potent mixture of B’s for three months, and it wouldn’t hurt for you to start taking calcium…you need to start thinkin’ about keepin’ your bones. Every woman’s bones start to fade after thirty-five.”

Marilee had followed Vella over to the pharmacy shelves, where her aunt perused the bottles of vitamins and herbs, while the children occupied themselves twirling on the stools at the counter. Actually, it was Corrine being twirled by Willie Lee. She held on to the stool with her thin little hands, while Willie Lee got a kick out of spinning her around. Corrine was always so patient with Willie Lee. She displayed strong mothering instincts with him, and very often she did things for him that he was capable of doing for himself. Willie Lee allowed this, in the pleasing way he always went along with people.

“You worry about them too much. They’ll be fine. They have God, just like you do. He cares for you. Trust Him.”

At her aunt’s statement, Marilee looked over to see that the older woman had noticed her wandering attention.

“Then who looks after the children who are abused and forgotten all over the place?” Marilee asked, more sharply than she had meant to.

“I don’t know,” her aunt answered in the same fashion. “I’m not smart enough to know that. I only know what I know, that there is a God who cares for us, and that worrying never solved a thing. Change what you can, accept what you can’t, and leave off worrying. It just wears you out.”

Marilee sighed, her mind skittering away from a discussion she didn’t wish to get into.

“I couldn’t stand it anymore,” she said. “I took them out of school for the rest of this year. Corrine looks like she’s going to face the firing squad each day she goes to school, and Willie Lee just keeps runnin’ away. Maybe I’m not even addressing the true problem…. I know I’m not…but it just seemed the one thing I could do.”

“Good. You changed something. And there aren’t enough days of school left to worry about it, anyway.” Vella was peering at the labels on the vitamin bottles through her reading glasses at the end of her nose. “Do you have the kids on vitamins?”

“Dailies.”

“Not enough.”

Marilee watched her aunt set about deciding which vitamins would be sufficient for the children. She felt an anger well up inside.

“Can vitamins fix a brain damaged by birthing?” she asked. “Or a heart broken by an irresponsible mother who prefers to drink rather than take care of her daughter?”

Vella’s dark eyes came up sharply. “No one prefers to drink. Anita is sick, Marilee, just like your daddy was.”

Marilee could not address this. She felt guilty for feeling so angry at her sister. Even as she thought about being angry, the anger began to ebb and slip into sadness and guilt, which she hated worse. The guilt threatened to consume her. She kept thinking there ought to be something she could do to help her sister, but everything she had tried had failed. She could not look at it anymore.

“Mrs. Blankenship thinks Corrine needs a therapist,” she said, the words falling out almost before she realized.

“Half of America needs a therapist,” Aunt Vella said, “but where do you find a sane one?”

Marilee had to chuckle at this, said so seriously. She gazed at Corrine, who was now twirling Willie Lee on the stool. “I think a therapist is worth trying, but I just don’t know how I can afford it.”

“Children have an amazing ability to survive. Don’t discount it.”

“That’s another question,” Marilee said, her gaze coming back to her aunt. “What’s goin’ to happen if Corrine gets really sick? How will I pay the doctor bills? My doctor charges sixty dollars a visit.” The limit of those could plainly be seen. “She isn’t my daughter, so I can’t put her on my insurance.”

“Oh, my heavens, don’t go makin’ up worries that likely won’t happen.”

Marilee looked at her aunt.

Her aunt looked back and said, “We’ll help you, Marilee. You know that.”

“I know it, but how far can we all go? You know perfectly well a catastrophe could bankrupt us all without insurance.”

Aunt Vella said very quietly, “Have you thought about adoption?”

“I’ve thought about it.” Marilee felt guilty for admitting what seemed a very bad thought. “But I don’t think Anita would willingly go along with it. I could press it. I could take her to court and prove she isn’t able to care for Corrine, but what would that do to her?”

“You can’t take on Anita’s burdens for her, Marilee. She has to own up to being responsible for her own actions. If she’s going to be a drunken sot, she’ll have to take the consequences. You don’t help her by letting her off. Maybe if you pressed, Anita would have more reason to try to get herself straight.”

Marilee clamped her mouth shut. Discussing this was making her too depressed. She did not have faith in Anita, certainly. And now she was having doubts about having faith in herself. She was sinking into a full decline when the bell above the front door rang out.

It was Fayrene Gardner entering the store. She came swiftly toward the pharmacy counter and presented Aunt Vella, who stepped forward, with a prescription. Fayrene, sniffing loudly, was clearly distraught.

“We’ll get this straight away,” Aunt Vella said and immediately stepped through to the back room, calling, “Perry…we need this filled. Perry!”

Fayrene noticed Marilee, who just then found she was staring, feeling connected by her own distress.

“Are you all right, Fayrene?” Marilee asked, feeling the need to say something, and hoping Fayrene wasn’t about to confess to having fallen victim to some horrible disease.

“Men,” Fayrene said vehemently. “I wish they’d all drop dead.”

Marilee wasn’t certain what to say to that, and became more uncertain when Fayrene’s face crumpled and she went to crying into a tissue. Feeling comfort was required, and needing to give it, Marilee reached out a hand to possibly take hold of the woman and provide what assistance she could.

But Fayrene pulled herself up tight and called, “Vella, I’ll be back to get it after lunch,” then pivoted and strode out of the store, again holding a tissue over her mouth to block a sob.

“Well, mercy,” Aunt Vella said.

“I don’t think I have ever seen Fayrene in such a state,” Marilee said.

“I haven’t, either.”

“What was the prescription? Is she really sick?”

Vella stepped back to the pharmacy area, then returned and said, “Tranquillizer. A good one,” she added with approval.

Marilee felt quite fortunate in that instant. Or perhaps it was more accurate that she no longer felt quite so alone, after having witnessed another person in despair. It reminded her that life was difficult, and this was a plain fact that, once recognized, made living if not smooth, at least not quite so shockingly distressing. It pointed up that people did continue to live on, no matter how often the will to live seemed to be challenged.

And at least she herself was within the control of chocolate. Her eye fell to a Hershey bar in front of the prescription counter, and she quickly grabbed it and threw it in with the vitamins Aunt Vella was now sacking.

“I might need that tonight,” she said. She thought maybe she ought to take a chocolate bar over to Fayrene.

When they came out of the drugstore, Corrine went skipping over in the direction of the florist next door. In fact, to Marilee’s eye, it seemed Corrine was drawn to the tubs of colorful spring flowers on display outside as if by a cord. But when just a foot away, the girl suddenly stopped and turned back to Marilee, in the manner of correcting a wrong action.

Marilee, who had herself entertained a first thought that flowers were an unnecessary extravagance, said with purpose, “Would you like some flowers? I think I would.”

As she spoke, she walked to the tubs of mixed bouquets that a few weeks ago Fred Grace, Jr. had begun setting out in front of his florist shop.

“If it works for Wally-world, it’s sound,” Fred told everyone, referring to the big Wal-Mart chain of stores. Within a week he gleefully reported that impulse buying had doubled.

“Which ones do you like?” Marilee asked the children.

Corrine, not quite meeting Marilee’s gaze, shrugged her small shoulders. Her eyes slid again to the flowers.

“I need some daisies,” Marilee said, reaching for a bouquet. “Absolutely need them.”

One thing she intended to teach Corrine was a hard-learned lesson she herself had experienced, and that was that beauty was a necessary part of life. She felt society in general had forgotten this, and that fact might just be a major cause of wars. Often, against every cell in her body that told her to be frugal, she would buy flowers or a pretty picture, because she felt her very life might depend on it.

“You can both choose a bouquet for yourselves,” she told the children as she examined the bouquet she had chosen, peering at little purple things that looked suspiciously like weeds.

Willie Lee wanted Marilee to pick him up so he could see better, which she did, and he gleefully pulled a bouquet of red carnations from one of the tubs.

“Cor-rine, you like yel-low,” he said.

Corrine chose very slowly and reverently a bouquet of yellow daisies and white carnations.

“Oh, those are lovely, Corrine.”

“Mun-ro needs flow-ers, too.”

“He can enjoy ours,” Marilee told her son.

Her son sighed heavily and bent to let the dog sniff his flowers.

Pulling a twenty-dollar bill out of her purse, she had Corrine help her figure out the total cost of the three bouquets, which Corrine did with amazing speed. Then Marilee handed the bill to Corrine and told her to go inside and pay Mr. Grace.

Corrine hesitated, and Marilee wondered if she had asked too much of the painfully shy girl, but Willie Lee spoke up and said, “Mun-ro says he will go with you, Cor-ine,” and indeed, the dog stood ready at the girl’s side.

Corrine turned, and Marilee watched her niece’s oh, so slight figure disappear into the store. She felt like hurrying after her, to be there beside her, guarding for any type of hurt that might come her way.

Then, peering through the window while trying not to appear to be peering, Marilee saw Corrine walk up to the cash register and hand up the money to Fred Grace. Munro stood right at Corrine’s leg, his head next to her knee, looking upward, too. Fred handed down Corrine’s change, and then out Corrine and Munro came, a smile playing at the girl’s lips.

“Thank you, Aunt Marilee,” she said softly, depositing the change in Marilee’s hand.

“Thank you, Corrine. And Munro.” She and Corrine grinned at each other.

The three of them, accompanied by the dog, started down the sidewalk. Marilee, seized by a warm happiness, felt certain they were all walking straighter and marveled at the power of a handful of colorful flowers. The few people they passed along the way smiled, and one man tipped his ballcap.

The colorful flowers gave way to a spontaneous idea.

“Let’s grow our own.” Marilee looked at the children. “Let’s have a garden.”

Willie Lee gave back an enthused, “Yes,” and Corrine raised an eyebrow, as if wondering if it could be done.

At the temporary plastic greenhouse set up at MacCoy’s Feed and Grain, they ran everywhere at once, picking out flats of pansies and the biggest marigolds in the world. Corrine liked the blue cornflowers. Then the tomato plants looked so perky, and the idea of sweet homegrown tomatoes seemed so inviting, that Marilee got a half dozen of them.

The revolving stand of crisp and colorful seed packets caught Willie Lee’s attention. When Marilee went to pull him away, she selected several packets.

Into the back of the Cherokee went containers of perky little plants, seed packets, bags of fertilizer, a new shovel for Marilee, and two small-size shovels for the children, all paid for with the ease of a card. Felt like she wasn’t even spending money.

They sped home, where the first business was to get their cut flowers into vases of water. Marilee, determined to make everything a learning opportunity, showed the children how to cut the stems slanted to soak up the water and taught them as much as she knew about how flowers took water up their stems.

Afterward they trooped out to the backyard and hauled out shovels and their tender plants and seed packets. Watching Willie Lee attack the ground the best he could with his small shovel, Marilee found her hopes resurface for being able to teach her son simple skills that would enable him to function on a more or less adequate scale with everyday living in the world. Perhaps he would not ever be able to read or to count sufficiently, but learning to plant and grow and cut, and to clean up after himself, would see him a long way when his mother was no longer available to care for him.

Seven

Points of View

“What’s for supper?” Parker asked after giving Marilee a kiss on the cheek.

“I have no idea.”

Sprawled on the couch, having been gazing blankly at the television news, she felt incapable of any endeavor involving getting up and moving around.

“We dug a garden today. Shovels, half the backyard.” At least it had seemed like half.

“Why didn’t you go rent a tiller?” He shifted her legs over and sat beside her.

“I didn’t plan to make it fifteen by fifteen. I just wanted a small garden for the children to grow some flowers, but then I saw the tomato plants, and they came in a container of six, and then Willie Lee saw the cantaloupe seed packets and wanted to grow those—they always put seeds in packets with beautiful pictures of perfect fruit, without all the hard work and bugs. I was just as bad as Willie Lee—I got carried away and bought zucchini seeds because of the picture, and I didn’t remember the awful bugs until I was on the way home. Anyway, I figured before planting the seeds, we needed to get the ground turned and let it sit there for the grass to die.

“I don’t know. It just seemed to…mushroom,” she ended lamely.

She really was unclear as to how she and two children had gotten into digging up a good portion of the backyard. Thinking of it now, she was amazed at the accomplishment, and as Parker began massaging her legs, she told him all about the activity with the children, painting word pictures of their funny antics for him. She had enjoyed digging in the dirt, had gone at it with a vengeance, for which she was now paying.

“Why weren’t the children in school?” Parker asked, having now worked himself upward to leaning over and nuzzling her neck.

Marilee, vaguely aware of his scent and the warm, moist touch of his lips on her neck, realized she had not told him of her decision to remove the children from school.

“I took them out of school for the remainder of the school year,” she said, now experiencing a rising certainty for the decision.

Parker quit nuzzling her neck and sat up. “You took them out of school?”

“Yes, there are less than three weeks left of the school year anyway.” Seeing the disapproval bloom on his face, her certainty faltered. She realized two things at once: she had counted on his approval, and she had not been paying sufficient attention to his manly attentions moments earlier. No man was ever happy to have his advances ignored.

She felt at fault and annoyed at the same time. She was tired and not in the mood to deal with his male needs, nevertheless, this seemed a poor attitude on her part, so she sat up and tried to work up the stamina required of her.

“I believe that more than anything they can learn in the few remaining weeks of school, the children need to be secure and reassured,” she said. “They need to be home for a while.”

“What about your job?”

She saw he was determined to focus on obstacles, instead of swinging immediately into support.

She went on to explain her reasoning for her actions, which had begun to sound truly logical and reasonable when she had told it all to Aunt Vella, yet, in the light of Parker’s expression now, Marilee had to work hard to keep on track.

“Tate doesn’t have a problem with me working at home. He’s giving us all laptop computers. Hooking them up on a network. I had already planned to try to work half days at home during the summer, anyway.”

She thought that despite whatever Parker might be thinking behind his frown, her enthusiasm to proceed with what she saw as a viable healing endeavor for her children remained intact. She became more annoyed at Parker for not immediately grasping this concept.

“I know there is a curriculum available,” she said, continuing to explain her plans for educating the children, “and I’ve heard of some support groups that I want to investigate. I’m going to draw up something for them to study every day. Especially Corrine. She is really smart, and one of her problems at school may have been boredom. Would you discuss ideas with me over supper? I want to start putting a plan in place for the summer.”

If she could get Parker involved, he would come around. And, while she considered herself fully intelligent, she thought Parker better at critical, organized thinking. He could be, if he would apply himself, a great deal of help.

Parker, however, gave a remote shrug that Marilee did not find at all an acceptable reaction. She told herself not to be surprised. Parker could get into a very remote mood, as could every man of her experience.

But here she was more or less inviting him into her life, and he was not responding with any small bit of gusto. She supposed she wanted too much from him, and she felt at fault but couldn’t figure out why, other than that her plans had brought on his disapproval. She felt herself getting all jangled inside, and angry because of it.

When the telephone rang, she grabbed it, as if grabbing some remedy for the conflicting moment. Unfortunately, she heard her mother on the other end of the line.

“Marilee? Marilee, this is your mother.” Her mother had the habit of saying her name twice.

“Yes, Mom.”

Her mother wanted Marilee to take her car for new tires tomorrow.

As Marilee listened to this, Parker stepped close and whispered, “Ask her to take the kids for the evening.”

Marilee, amazed that he would suggest such a thing, scowled at him. “I can’t do it tomorrow, Mom. I can on Saturday.”

Why couldn’t she take it tomorrow, her mother wanted to know.

“Ask her…” He encircled her from behind and whispered in her ear about how they could drop the kids off at her mother’s house.

She wiggled away from him and tried to think of how to put her mother and the tires off until Saturday without getting into a long explanation of having taken the children out of school. She finally got the arrangements straight, promising to go up to Lawton on Saturday morning for tire shopping.

“I have to go fix supper now, Mom. I’ll see you Saturday.” She hung up with a hard click and looked at Parker, who had turned from her and was stroking the back of his head.

“You know I do not leave the children with my mother. She does not want the care of them. She won’t half watch them, and I am not going to leave them up there at her house, with her husband drinking every night.” She wondered what in the world had gotten into him to suggest such a thing.

“Marilee, I want us to go out to dinner. The kids will be okay at your Mom’s for a couple of hours. So what if Carl gets drunk? He doesn’t bother the kids.”

She gazed at him for several seconds, knowing he could not understand that taking them to her mother’s was the same as setting them adrift for a few hours on a vast, turbulent ocean. The thought of it scared the daylights out of her.

“Corrine has had enough of that,” she said flatly.

She averted her gaze, biting back all manner of words she was certain she would regret. She could not sort out what she truly felt. Likely she was overreacting, as was her habit. She just had to get some sort of control of herself.

“How ‘bout gettin’ a baby-sitter for the kids, then?” Parker asked.

“I am too tired to shower and dress, much less call to get a baby-sitter on last-minute notice,” she said, unwilling to move in body or mind. “Besides, I have my pieces for Sunday’s issue to write tonight.” She would have to be writing more at nights now, and she thought him shortsighted not to get this point.

“But I can make hamburgers,” she offered, swept with the urge to make up for her stubbornness, “and you can sit at the table and talk to me while I cook.”

This would mean energy spent on cooking, which she should save for her writing job. How much easier if he would have been just as pleased with a can of soup thrown on the stove.

But hamburgers were Parker’s very favorite food, as long as there were buns to go with them—Parker would not eat a hamburger on plain bread. Marilee was fairly certain she had buns in the freezer, and she wanted him to talk with her about the children. She wanted him to understand. She wanted him to share.

He did not fall into the plan with enthusiasm, but he did fall in and follow her into the kitchen, where he went straight to the refrigerator and pulled himself out a canned cold drink, while she peered out the back door to check on the children, who were playing in the dirt at the corner of their newly turned garden. At least Willie Lee was digging in the dirt for some reason, with Munro lying in it and watching. Corrine was sitting nearby in a yard chair; Corrine was a neat person who seemed to avoid dirt.

Seeing the children thus apparently contentedly occupied, and finding hamburger buns in the freezer, Marilee’s spirits revived somewhat, and she had hope that she could set everything right with Parker by serving up both a good meal and the correct, upbeat attitude.

She set about winning him over as she went about preparing supper. She told him of her plans for the summer with the children. She hoped to better prepare them for school in the fall, and to enable herself to take a more forward part of their education, even when they went back to school. She felt she had been expecting too much from the school, a place made for the masses, to deal with the special particulars of her children’s needs. It was her responsibility as a parent to see to those particular needs.

Parker, who had settled himself at the table with his cold drink, waiting for his supper to be served, replied to her remarks with “Hmms” and “Yes, I guess you can do that,” all basically cautionary in nature, and all much less than satisfying.

Finally Marilee said, “Parker, I really would appreciate some support here.”

To which he replied with raised eyebrows, “I’m listening.”

“But you do not seem to be putting forth helpful ideas,” Marilee said. “I do want your ideas, Parker.”

“I don’t think you want my ideas. You already have your mind set.”

She gazed at him, telling herself not to overreact. One thing that she felt always got her into a lot of trouble was her habit of getting so emotional. Both Stuart and Parker had often accused her of this, and she determined at that minute not to give Parker ammunition.

“One thing you need to think about,” Parker said, “is what Anita might think of you takin’ her daughter out of school.”

“Anita wasn’t seeing that Corrine got to school half the time,” Marilee answered, stung to the core. “And I don’t see that she is here, making any of the decisions.”

“Anita is still her mother. You’re makin’ all these plans for a child that isn’t yours. You’re gettin’ way too involved, Marilee. You are referring to Corrine as your child. What if Anita shows up tonight at the door and wants to take her daughter with her? What are you goin’ to do then?”

“I don’t know,” Marilee said. “I’m just tryin’ to deal with ‘right now’ the best I can. I won’t worry about ‘then’ until it happens.”

Now that he had brought the concern to the front of her mind, she experienced fear of exactly that happening. This made her angrier at him for making her more fearful.

“And I don’t know what you expect me to do. Should I just drop Corrine? Not look after her to the best of my ability? Well, who is goin’ to do it, then?”

Clamping her mouth shut, she turned to the stove to remove the hamburgers from the hot pan before they burned. She herself was burning pretty good and didn’t want to say something she would regret.

Parker didn’t say anything more about it, and Marilee found this good thinking on his part.

The atmosphere at the supper table proved strained, despite all Marilee’s good intentions for happiness. She and Parker were patently polite to each other in front of the children. Corrine’s dark eyes moved from Marilee to Parker in a furtive fashion, and seeing this, Marilee brought up the subject of their gardening and the fun they had enjoyed. She managed to get Corrine to smile.

It had been a good idea, Marilee realized. The children had rosy faces. They had been outside, where they needed to be in the spring, and she had the sudden inspiration that tomorrow she would keep them outside most of the day. There were a lot of things she could teach them outside. So many things that must be experienced and could not be found in books. Being stuck at desks in school had no doubt been a major problem for them. They were souls who at this time needed to be out in the sun. And she could give them that.

The thought so pleased her that in a flush of warmth for everyone, she looked at Parker and smiled. He saw and smiled in return.

Marilee and Parker were alone in the lamplight in the living room. After supper Willie Lee had, with the innocence of an untroubled mind, simply lain down on the kitchen rug beside Munro, closed his eyes and gone instantly to sleep. Marilee had put him to bed in his underwear and simply wiped his hands with a damp rag; he had not awakened. Corrine was in the bath.

Parker wanted to make out.

“Corrine will be coming out of the bathroom any minute,” Marilee said, pushing away from him after a particularly stimulating kiss that in truth she was reluctant to end. But the idea that Corrine might see them in a sexual encounter, even one with all their clothes on, was unnerving.

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