Little Town, Great Big Life

Little Town, Great Big Life

USA TODAY Bestselling Author

Curtiss Ann Matlock

www.mirabooks.co.uk

This book is dedicated to all my readers—to each one of you who has over the years bought and enjoyed the Valentine series of books. For those of you who have written me: your letters have touched me, inspired me, given me smiles. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing my Valentine people and their stories.

I am grateful to my agent, Margaret Ruley, and to sisters-in-heart Dee Nash and Deborah Chester for their guidance and support.

With this book, I say goodbye to writing my beloved Valentine. It has been a fine, adventuresome ride, but now it is time to change horses. It is, however, goodbye to the writing only. My characters are so real to me—Winston, Vella, Belinda, Corrine, Willie Lee and all the others—that I see them going on still in that small, sometimes dusty town somewhere in southwest Oklahoma. On quiet early mornings, I hear Winston’s voice over the radio…“Goood Mornin’, Valentinites!”

CONTENTS

PART ONE: EVERYBODY’S DREAMING BIG

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

PART TWO: IT TAKES FAITH, NOT EXPECTATIONS

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

PART THREE: BETWEEN BIRTH AND HEAVEN

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

EPILOGUE

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

Winston Wakes Up the World

IN THE EARLY DARK HOUR JUST BEFORE DAWN, a lone figure—a man in slacks and wool sport coat, lapels pulled against the cold, carrying a duffel bag—walked along the black-topped ribbon of highway toward a town with a water tower lit up like a beacon.

Just then a sound brought him looking around behind him. Headlights approached.

The man hurried into the tall weeds and brush of the ditch. Crouching, he gazed at the darkness where his loafers were planted and hoped he did not get bit by something. A delivery truck of some sort went blowing past. As the red taillights grew small, the man returned to the highway. He brushed himself off and headed on toward the town.

Another fifteen minutes of walking and he could make out writing on the water tower: the word Valentine, with a bright red heart. Farther along, he came to a welcome sign, all neatly landscaped and also lit with lights. He stopped, staring at the sign for some minutes.

Welcome to Valentine, a Darn Good Place to Live!

Underneath this was:

Flag Town, U.S.A., Population 5,510 Friendly People and One Old Grump, 1995 Girls State Softball Championship, and Home of Brother Winston’s Home Folks Show at 1550 on the Radio Dial

Looking ahead, the man walked on with a bit of hope in his step.

The man would not be disappointed. The welcome sign pretty much said it all. Like a thousand other small towns across the country, Valentine was a friendly town that was right proud of itself and had reason to be. It was a place where the red-white-and-blue flew on many a home all year through and not just on the Fourth of July (as well as lots of University of Oklahoma flags and Oklahoma State flags, the Confederate flag, the Oklahoma flag and various seasonal flags). Prayer continued to be offered up at the beginning of rodeos, high-school football games and commencements, and nobody had yet brought a lawsuit, nor feared one, either. Mail could still be delivered with simply a name, city and state on the envelope. It was a place where people knew one another, many since birth, and everyone helped his neighbor. Even most of those who might fuss and fight with one another could be counted on in an emergency. The few poor souls who could not be counted on eventually ended up moving away. It was safe to say that most of the real crime was committed by people passing through. This exempted crimes of passion, which did happen on a more or less infrequent basis and seemed connected with the hot-weather months.

In the main, Valentine was the sort of small town about which a lot of sentimental stories are written and about which a lot of people who live in big cities dream, having the fantasy that once you moved there, all of your problems disappeared. This was not true, of course. As Winston Valentine, the self-appointed town oracle, often said, the problems of life—all the fear, greed, lust and jealousy, sickness and poverty—are connected to people, and are part of life on earth the world over.

It was true, however, that in a place like Valentine getting through life’s problems often was a little easier.

In Valentine, a person could walk most everywhere he needed to go, or find someone willing to drive him, or have things come to him. The IGA grocery, Blaine’s Drugstore, the Pizza Hut, the Main Street Café and even the Burger Barn provided delivery service, and for free to seniors or anyone with impaired health. Feeling blue could be counted as impaired health. When you needed to leave your car at the Texaco to have the oil changed or new tires put on, the manager, Larry Joe Darnell, or one of his helpers, would drive you home, or to work, and would even stop for you to pick up breakfast, lunch or your sister. When Margaret Wyatt’s husband ran off and left her the sole support of her teenage son, people made certain to go to her for alterations, whether they needed them or not, and for a number of years every bride in town had Miss Margaret make her wedding and bridesmaids’ dresses. It was a normal course of events in Valentine for neighbors to drop groceries on the front steps of those on hard times, and for extra to go into the church collection plates for certain families; small-town people knew about tax deductions. Yards got mowed, repairs made and overdue bills paid, often by that fellow Anonymous.

And in Valentine, when an elderly man no longer had legs strong enough to walk the sidewalk, and got his driver’s license revoked and his car taken away because of impudent daughters and meddlesome friends, he could still drive a riding lawn mower to get where he wanted to go.

This good idea came to Winston Valentine after a fitful night’s sleep in which he had dreamed of his long-dead wife, Coweta, and been left both yearning for her and relieved that her presence had only been a dream. Their marriage had been such a contrast, too.

Now in his tenth decade, Winston was a man with enough experience to understand that life itself was constant contrasts. He lay with his head cradled in his hands on the pillow, studying this matter as he stared at the faint pattern caused by the shine of the streetlight on the wall, while from the other side of it came muffled sounds—creak of the bed, a laugh and then a moan.

In the next room, the couple with whom he shared his house—Tate and Marilee Holloway—were doing what Winston had once enjoyed with his Coweta early of a morning.

Remembering, Winston’s spirits did a nosedive. He was long washed-up in that department. In fact, he was just about washed-up, period, as Coweta had put forth in the dream. He was ninety-two years old, and each morning he was a little surprised to wake up. That was his entire future: being surprised each morning to wake up.

It was at that particular moment, when his spirits were so low as to be in the bottom of the rut, an idea came upon him with such delightful force that his eyes popped wide. A grin swept his face.

“I’ll show ’em. I ain’t dead yet.”

His feet hit the cold floor with purpose. Holding to the bedpost, he straightened and stepped out quietly. Then, moving more quickly, he washed up and dressed smartly, as was his habit, in starched jeans and shirt, and an Irish sweater. Winston Valentine did not go around dressed “old,” as he called it.

After a minute’s rest in the chair beside the bedroom door, he picked up his polished boots, stepped into the hall in sock feet and soundlessly closed the door behind him.

He had forgotten his cane but would not turn back.

The hallway was dimly lit by a small light. The only bedroom door open was that of Willie Lee. Winston automatically glanced inside, saw that the boy had thrown off the blankets.

The little dog who lay at the foot of the bed lifted his head as Winston tiptoed into the room and gently pulled the blankets over the child, who slept the deep sleep of the pure in heart. When Winston left the room, the dog jumped down and followed soundlessly.

Gnarled hand holding tight to the handrail, Winston descended the stairs, knowing where to step to avoid the worst creaks. He located the small key that hung on the old rolltop desk in the alcove.

Then he went to the bench in the hall and tugged on his boots. Seeing the dog watching, he whispered, “Go on back up.”

The dog remained sitting, regarding him with a definite air of disapproval.

“Mr. Munro, you just keep your opinions to yourself.” Winston slipped into his coat and settled his felt Resistol on his head.

The dog still sat looking at him.

Winston went out into the crisp morning, closing the door on the dog, who turned and raced back down the hall and up the stairs, hopped onto the boy’s bed and over to peer through the window. His wet canine nose smeared fog on the glass. The old man came into view on the walkway, then disappeared through the small door of the garage.

Munro’s amber eyes remained fastened on the garage. His ears pricked at the faint sound of an engine. The small collie who lived next door came racing to the fence, barking his head off. Munro regarded such stupid action with disdain.

Moments later, a familiar green-and-yellow lawn mower came into view on the street, with the old man in the seat. Munro watched until machine and old man passed out of sight behind the big cedar tree in the neighbor’s yard. The sound faded, the stupid collie lay down and Munro reluctantly lay down on the bed. All was quiet.

Winston headed the lawn tractor along the street. The cold wind stung his nostrils, bit his bare hands, but his spirits soared. He imagined people in the houses hearing the mower engine and coming to their windows to look out.

Halfway along the street, it came to him, as he noted the limbs of a redbud tree that had just begun to sprout, that only the calendar said spring. The morning was yet cold and everyone’s house shut up tight. No one was going to hear him racing along the street.

Crossing the intersection with Porter Street, he hit a bump and had to grasp the steering wheel to keep from bouncing off the seat. He saw the newspaper headlines: Elderly Man Ends Life Plowing Mower into Telephone Pole.

But he was not about to downshift like some old candy-ass.

He kept his foot on the pedal and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. He wished he had thought of gloves.

He did slow when he came alongside the sheriff’s office at the corner of Church and Main streets. Maybe Sheriff Oakes was in this morning.

No one came to the door, though.

Driving down the middle of the empty highway, he was forced to slow a little. His hands were growing weak on the wheel, the old arthritis getting the best of him. He turned onto graveled Radio Lane and bounced along until he finally came to a stop outside the door of the concrete-block building beside Jim Rainwater’s black lowrider Chevrolet.

He had made it. And in all the distance traveled, nearly two miles, he had encountered no other person or vehicle. It was a deep disappointment.

He got himself off the mower, and was glad to have no witnesses. He moved like the rusted-up Tin Man. Inside the building, he might have leaned back against the door, but just then Jim Rainwater, coffee mug in hand, appeared from the sound booth. Winston brought himself up straight.

Jim Rainwater’s eyes widened. “Well, hey, Mr. Winston. Whatta ya’ doin’ here so early?” Jim Rainwater was a tall, slim young man in his twenties, a full-blood Chickasaw, and of a solemn nature. In a worried manner, as if he had missed something important, he checked his watch. “You know it isn’t even six?”

“Hey, yourself. I may be old, but I can still tell time. I got up early…what’s your excuse?” He sailed his hat toward the rack, but it missed.

Jim Rainwater picked up the hat, saying, “I always get here by now.”

“You need a life, young man.” Winston shrugged out of his heavy coat. “I thought I’d start us an early-mornin’ wake-up show.”

“Now, Mr. Winston, no one has said anything to me about that. Have you worked it out with Everett or Tate?”

Winston’s response to this was, “Why do you always call me mister?”

“Uh…I don’t know.”

“You don’t call any of those other fellas mister.”

Jim Rainwater gave a resigned sigh. “Mr…. Winston, what is it you want to do?”

“Aw, boy, don’t get your shorts in a wad. I’m not gonna step on Everett’s toes. He can have his show at seven, but we need somethin’ before that. A lot of those city stations start mornin’ shows at five. We’re losin’ audience share.”

“This is Valentine, Mr. Winston.”

“So it is, and it is time for a change. There’s folks here that need wakin’ up. I’ll thank you kindly for a cup of coffee,” he added as he made his way stiffly into the sound studio and dropped with some relief into his large swivel chair.

Jim Rainwater returned with the coffee. Winston sipped from the steaming mug that bore his name, stared at the microphone hanging over his desk and felt himself warm and his heart settle down.

“We’ll start up on the hour,” he told the young man.

Jim Rainwater shoved the weather forecast and a playlist in front of Winston. Slipping on his headphones, Winston positioned himself and adjusted the height of the microphone. He spoke in a moderate tone. “Testing…one, three, six, pick up sticks.” Retaining his own front teeth helped Winston to come over clear, and Jim Rainwater corrected a lot of the graveling of his voice with electronics.

The hour hand hit straight up. The young man pointed a finger at him.

Winston put his lips to the microphone and came out with, “GET UP, GET UP, YOU SLEE-PY-HEAD. GET UP AND GET YOUR BOD-Y FED!”

Jim Rainwater jumped and grabbed his earphones. Dumb-founded, he stared at Winston.

For his part, Winston, imagining his voice going out over the airwaves and entering radios in thousands of homes of people just waiting breathlessly for him, continued happily: “It’s six o’clock, ’n’ day is knockin’. GET UP, GET UP, YOU SLEE-PY-HEAD! GET UP AND GET YOUR BOD-Y FED!”

CHAPTER 2

1550 on the Radio Dial

Joy in the Morning!

IN ACTUALITY, WINSTON’S ASSUMPTION AS TO THE number of listeners was quite overblown. There were perhaps only two-dozen people with their radios tuned to the small local station. In the main, these were those whose cheap radios could not pick up the far-off stations, and mothers and school-teachers who listened while they drank strong coffee and waited for Jim Rainwater to provide the weather forecast and school lunch menu, followed by an hour of uninterrupted guitar instrumentals and alternative folk tunes of the sort that hardly any radio station played at any time, but which made a pleasant change from their little ones’ Disney radio or teenagers’ MTV.

At Winston’s shout, at least two people raced to turn off their radios, and three to turn up the volume, wondering if they had heard correctly. More than one person had been in the act of something they would not want anyone to know about and were jarred out of it.

One normally dour wife and mother, Rosalba Garcia, smiled a very rare smile, stamped out her cigarette and proceeded to the beds of her husband and three teenage sons, leaning over each head and shouting the singsong tune, “GET UP, GET UP, YOU SLEE-PY-HEAD!”

Inez Cooper, an early riser who was working on an agenda for the next meeting of the Methodist Ladies’ Circle, of which she was president, spewed her first sip of coffee all over her notes on that week’s scripture lesson about seeking peace. She jumped up to go tell her husband what Winston had done. Norman was also an early riser and out in his workshop. Inez got another shock when she caught Norman smoking a cigarette, which he was supposed to have given up three years ago, when the doctor told him that he had borderline emphysema and high enough cholesterol for an instant stroke. Winston had just ruined Inez’s morning all the way around. Norman wasn’t happy with him, either.

Julia Jenkins-Tinsley, early forties and an ardent jogger, had just settled her headset radio over her ears as she headed for the front door. Her overweight and much older husband, G. Juice Tinsley, was sprawled in his Fruit of the Looms on the couch where he usually slept these days, snoring like a freight train, and she was sick of hearing it. Winston’s voice hit Julia’s ears as she stepped out the door. She had the headset volume turned up and was about struck deaf.

Winston hollered out his reveille again at six-fifteen, like the chime on Big Ben.

Just after that, the phone rang back at his own house, where Corrine Pendley was already up and trying on her new, and first ever, Wonderbra, which she had bought, in secret, at a J. C. Penney sale, and viewing her sixteen-year-old breasts in the bra in front of her full-length mirror. At the ringing of the phone, she jumped, grabbed her robe and threw it around her as she raced to answer. In her mind, she imagined Aunt Marilee coming in and finding her in the bra. Aunt Marilee had ideas about what was age-proper, and she had been known to see through doors, too.

The caller was old Mr. Northrupt from across the street. “I want to talk to Tate!”

“Yes, sir,” was the only reply to that.

Checking to make certain her robe was securely tied, Corrine stepped out into the hall and almost ran into Papa Tate heading into the nursery, looking all tired and with his hair standing on end, as he often did in the morning. Handing him the phone, Corrine went to take care of her tiny niece, who was climbing over the toddler bed rails. She could hear Mr. Northrupt’s voice coming out of the phone. “Did you cancel my show? I think you could at least have told me. I didn’t have to find out by hearin’ Winston on there. Did you know he’s on there? Well, he is. He’s doin’ a reveille.”

Papa Tate calmed Mr. Northrupt down. “Winston’s just playin’ a prank. You still go on at seven.” He had to repeat this several times in different ways. Then Papa Tate hung up and told Corrine that he had changed his mind about the fun of owning a radio station.

Across the street, Everett Northrupt was not appeased. He stomped around, mad as a wet hen. He was the host of the 7:00 a.m. Everett in the Morning show. He liked that his show came right after Jim Rainwater playing a solid block of instrumental music, of a respectable nature. It was a perfect intro to Everett’s two hours of easy listening and intelligent commentary on the news and world at large. He considered his show an equal with NPR, and one of the rare venues in town for raising the consciousness of his listeners. Why, he had even interviewed by phone half a dozen state congressmen, one U.S. senator and a Pulitzer nominee (who happened to be station owner Tate Holloway).

Now old Winston was going to ruin all that. Winston stirred everything up with his rowdiness and wild musical leanings.

Emitting a few curses and condemnations as he pulled clothes from his neatly arranged drawers and closet, he woke his wife, Doris, who wanted to know what in the world was happening.

“It’s Winston…that’s who it is!” shouted Everett, jerking up his trousers. “Big windbag.”

His wife said, “Well, for heaven’s sake, shut up about it!” and threw a pillow at him.

Out at the edge of town, John Cole Berry was tiptoeing around his kitchen, attempting to slip out to a crucial early-morning business meeting without waking his light-sleeping wife, Emma, who was sure to want to make him breakfast. Emma thought food solved all problems. John Cole had just lifted the pot from the fancy stainless coffeemaker that Emma had recently bought, when some voice started yelling to get up and get his body fed.

Surprised, John Cole sloshed hot coffee all over his hand and the counter. He stared at the coffeemaker, a brand-new modern contraption that Emma had bought just the previous week, which did everything in the world, except make good coffee. It apparently had a radio in it. He went to punching buttons to shut it off. Why did a coffeemaker have a radio? Had Emma programmed it to say get fed? It would be just like her.

The radio, now playing music, shut off just as Emma called sleepily from the bedroom, “Honey…”

Grabbing his travel mug and sport coat, he slipped out the back door, leaving the telltale coffee spilled all over. He would tell her that he had missed cleaning it all. He could no longer see crap without his glasses. Somehow having the world by the tail at twenty-two had turned into the world having him by the tail at fifty-two.

Down in the ragged neighborhood behind the IGA grocery, seventeen-year-old Paris Miller, sleeping in the front seat of her old Chevy Impala because her grandfather had been on a drunken rampage the night before, had just turned on the car radio and snuggled back down into her sleeping bag. Her life was such that it was prudent to keep a sleeping bag in her car. All of a sudden a voice was shouting out.

Paris came up and hit her head on the steering wheel. Seeing stars, she fell back onto the seat, until, at last and with some relief, she figured out it was not her grandfather hollering at her. She thought maybe she had dreamed the yelling voice, because now Martina McBride was singing.

She snuggled back down into the warmth of the sleeping bag, dozing, until fifteen minutes later, when the yelling came out of the radio again. This time she recognized it as Mr. Winston’s voice. She started laughing and about peed her pants. Mr. Winston was always doing something funny.

She had to get up then, and the cold made her really have to hurry. She raced across the crunchy grass, into the musky-smelling kitchen, hopped over an empty vodka bottle and on to the bathroom. Glancing in the medicine-cabinet mirror, she was dismayed to see a bruise, good and purple, high up on her cheek, where she had not been able to duck fast enough the previous evening.

Down at the Main Street Café, owner Fayrene Gardner, tired and bleary-eyed after a lonely night kept company by a romance novel, a Xanax and two sleeping pills, was just coming down late from her apartment. Her foot was stretching for the bottom stair when Winston’s shout came crystal clear out of the portable radio sitting on the shelf above the sink, which happened to be level with her ear.

Fayrene popped out with “Jesus!” stumbled and would have plowed headlong into the ovens had not someone grabbed her.

Over at the grill, Woody Beauchamp, the cook, said, “Miss Fayrene, I’m gonna assume you’s prayin’. We wouldn’t want to give this visitor a poor impression, would we?”

Fayrene assured him that she had truly been praying. She was now, anyway, as she found herself gazing into the dark eyes of a handsome stranger, who had hold of her arm. Dear God, don’t let me make any more of a fool of myself in front of this handsome man.

The dark-eyed stranger grinned a wonderful grin, and Fayrene wondered if she might still be dreaming. Those sleeping pills were awfully strong.

Across the street, at Blaine’s Drugstore, which was on winter hours and not set to open for another hour, Belinda Blaine, who was not a morning person and not feeling well, either, was in the restroom peeing on a pregnancy-test strip. Somehow the radio on her desk just a few feet beyond the door, which she had not bothered to close, had been left on. (Probably by her cousin Arlo, when he had cleaned up the previous afternoon—she was going to smack him.) Hearing Winston’s familiar voice within two feet got her so discombobulated that she dropped the test strip in the toilet.

“Well, shoot.” She bent over and gazed into the toilet, trying to figure out the exact color of the test strip.

“Belinda? You in here?” It was her husband, Lyle, coming in the back door of the store.

She yanked up her reluctant panties and panty hose, while Lyle’s footsteps headed off to the front of the store. The panties and hose got all wadded together. Her mother swore no one should wear panties with panty hose, that that was the purpose of panty hose. As much as she hated to ever agree with her mother, this experience was about to convert Belinda to the no-panty practice.

Snatching up the test-kit box, she looked frantically around but found no satisfactory place to hide it. She ended up stuffing it into the waistband of her still-twisted panty hose.

“Of course I’m here. I was in the bathroom, Lyle,” she said as she strode out to the soda fountain.

Lyle was on his way back, and Belinda almost bumped into him.

She asked him where he thought she had been.

“Well, honey,” he said, with a bit of anxiety, “I saw your car out back, but didn’t see any lights turned on in front here, so I just wanted to check things out.”

Lyle was a deputy with the sheriff’s office next door. He had just gotten off night duty, and wanted coffee and to chat with her before he went home. Lyle listened to a lot of late-night radio when he was on patrol, which seemed to be encouraging morbid thoughts. Late-night talk shows were filled with a lot of conversation about scary things, such as UFO invaders, terrorist cells and, last night, the report of murderers who broke into the house of an innocent family up north and ended up killing them all.

Belinda, who made it a point to never listen to the news and really could have done without her husband telling her, ended up walking around with the test-kit box rubbing her skin while she got Lyle a cup of fresh coffee and tried to look interested in his report of world affairs and the idea of installing a security system at their home. Since she was already at the drugstore and had coffee made, she ended up opening early and got half a dozen customers coming in. At least Lyle had someone else to talk to, letting her off the hook.

All around a radius of the radio signal, roosters came out to crow, and skunks, armadillos and other annoying critters headed back to their dens, while early risers got up to let out the dog, let in the cat and look hopefully for the newspaper, which was often late. Word of Winston Valentine’s wake-up reveille spread, and Jim Rainwater began to take call after call, and to keep a running total of for or against.

Out front of the small cement-block radio station, Tate Holloway, who had received a number of telephone calls, and Everett Northrupt arrived at the same time. Everett, a short, rather bent man, was in such a state as to forget that Tate was the owner of the station and therefore his boss, and to jostle him for going first through the door. A man with a good sense of humor, Tate stood back and waved the older man on.

They reached the sound studio doorway just as Winston put his mouth to the microphone for his final reveille. “Gooood Mornin’, Valentinites! This is your last call. GET UP, GET UP, YOU SLEE-PY-HEAD. GET UP AND GET YOUR BOD-Y FED!”

This time Jim Rainwater over at the controls played a symbol and drum sound, and he and Winston grinned at each other. Jim had more fun working with Winston than he did any of the other volunteer disc jockeys.

Winston saw Everett Northrupt glaring in the doorway. His response was to lean into the microphone to say, “Well, folks, we’re leavin’ you now that we’ve gotcha woke up. Stay tuned for my good friend Everett, who will ease you into the day. Join me again for the Home Folks show at ten, and until then, remember Psalm 30, verse 5—For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; Weeping may endure for a night, but a shout of joy comes in the mornin’.”

The men, all except Everett, chuckled.

CHAPTER 3

Belinda Blaine of Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain

THE MORNING RUSH STARTED. TING-A-LING WENT the bell over the door. Brrring went the cash register.

“Mornin’, Belinda. Hey, Arlo. Get up, get up, you sleeepy-heads! I’ll take three lattes and two Little Debbies to go. Hurry up, I’m already supposed to be in Duncan.”

“Just a large coffee this mornin’. Black. Get up, get up, you sleepyhead. Get up and get your body fed! Uhmmm…second thought—I’ll take a honey bun, too.”

“Hey, y’all. Get up, get up, you sleeeepyheads! Oran, you got my wife’s prescription? I’ll be back in a minute…wanna get a coffee.”

“Two large Coca-Colas to go, and here, four packages of peanuts, too. I’m gettin’ my body fed. You know, it’d be great if y’all would serve sausage biscuits.”

“Whoo-hoo! Everybody get up, get up…and get your bod-y fed!”

“What is this all about?”

“Didn’t you hear ol’ Winston this mornin’? Well, he…”

Whatever happened in town, and of any interest anywhere, would be told and discussed first, or at least second, down at Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain. Built in 1909, it had escaped two tornadoes, a small fire and been in continuous operation by the same family since its beginning in a tent during the land run. It had been written up in every insurance magazine in the state, been filmed for two travel shows, included as a backdrop in one movie and featured in OklahomaToday magazine. The previous year Belinda Blaine had succeeded in getting the store on the state register of historic buildings. Now the building bore a bronze plaque that Belinda polished once a week.

The original black fans turned slowly from the tin-lined ceiling winter and summer, lemonade and cold sweet tea were still made from scratch and sundaes were still served in vintage glass fountain dishes at the original granite counter. Old Coke, Dr. Pepper, headache powder and tonic signs graced the walls, along with a number of autographed pictures of notable people who reportedly had dropped in, such as Governor “Alfalfa Bill” Murray and Mifaunwy Dolores Shunatona, Miss Oklahoma 1941 and the country-music stars the Carter Sisters, Hoyt Axton and Patsy Cline.

The Patsy Cline one was a fake. Fenster Blaine, who had been working all alone one day in 1962, decided to tear the photograph from a country-music magazine and sign it himself, and tell everyone that Patsy had come in. A number of people at the time had recognized his handwriting, but as the years had passed, the photograph remained on the wall and the truth was lost.

The store was a favorite hangout for teens after school and the first place that parents allowed their young daughters to go when beginning to date. It hosted Boy Scouts and Brownies, the Methodist Ladies’ Circle and Baptist Women on a regular basis. Romances had begun, marriages had ended, business and political deals, large and small, had been struck, at least three holdups had happened, along with several heart attacks, fist-fights and two deaths.

Pharmacist Perry Blaine, Belinda’s father, had been gone several years now, but a good replacement had at last been found in Oran Lackey, who could not only dispense modern medicines, like Viagra and Cialis, on an up-to-the-minute computerized system, but he also knew the ages-old art of compounding medicinals such as cough-suppressant lollipops and natural hormone creams, just as Perry had done. Because of this ability, the store was growing an ever-enlarging mail-order business and even made some veterinary medicines. They also carried vitamins, herbs and homeopathic remedies, all of which were coming back around in popularity.

Vella Blaine had installed Oran in the apartment above the drugstore, enabling him to be available day and night. Some people wondered why in the world Oran would take on such a job, when he could have gone with Walgreens over in Lawton and not had to work nearly so hard. Oran, who had been a medic in the army and gone through some tough times in Somalia and Afghanistan—fights hardly anyone back home knew about but which had left him with chronic fatigue and a bad limp—was a shy, solitary man who did not like the bustle of a large pharmacy. He came from Kansas City and had absolutely no family. He had found one when he came to Blaine’s Drugstore. Not only the Blaines but the entire town needed and wanted him. He knew all of his customers by name, and was privy to many intimate details of their lives. He had on numerous occasions saved people money and possibly from death by his careful monitoring of their medications. He had embarrassed quite a few doctors and made them hopping mad because he found their mistakes. He had, very quietly and as only Belinda knew, put one unscrupulous doctor out of business.

Most people had pretty much forgotten that Vella and Perry had two daughters. Their eldest, Margaret, who had grown up the favored and really beautiful one, had left town some twenty-three years ago in the Ford Mustang her parents had given her as a high-school-graduation present. She had gone all the way to Atlanta, which she apparently considered far enough away and where she had built a good career as a travel specialist. Margaret had come home only three times. The last time had been when Perry Blaine had died. She attended the funeral and the reading of the will, got her inheritance in cash and picked up a few mementoes her mother thought she should have and left again, this time going all the way to a new home in Miami.

Belinda was the daughter who had stayed. Except for a year and a half away in college—she had quit during her sophomore year—she had lived all her life in Valentine. This was not something she had planned, although she did say, and without apology, that she never had desired to live anywhere else. She had begun working in the store at nine years old. She thought it silly to go out and struggle to find a job when she had a perfectly good one handed to her. Belinda had never possessed much ambition, and she was not ashamed of this. She considered herself a smart woman, and found ambition highly overrated.

Belinda’s keen intellect—she had surprised everyone by being valedictorian of her graduating class and the second highest in academics for the entire state that year—combined with a blunt nature, had tended in her early years to discourage male attention. She had seen the unhappiness in her parents’ marriage and calculated that her chances of following in their footsteps were high, so she felt she would do best to avoid such a union. Also, she did not care to change herself to accommodate a man, and this, as far as she could see, was the foolish thing that women kept doing.

Then one fall evening, as she was driving home, Lyle Midgette came by in his brand-new police car and pulled her over for speeding, and actually gave her a ticket. None of the other officers, not even the sheriff, ever gave her a ticket. Lyle was such a pleasant, even-tempered man that no insult she threw at him affected him. And even further, after that he went to following after her like a puppy dog.

Lyle had moved up from Wichita Falls to take the deputy position in the sheriff’s office. He was a man dedicated to law enforcement, something of the complete opposite of Belinda, who lived by her own rules. He was also a Greek god in his tan deputy sheriff’s uniform. The instant Belinda saw him, against all of her good sense, she had fallen into such lust as she had never known. For Lyle’s part, he often said that the minute he laid eyes on Belinda, he fell in love.

Belinda asked him if he did not mind that she was of a womanly shape. He said straight out, “Oh, that’s what I like. You remind me of my mother.”

Another woman might have been offended. Belinda was practical. She asked to be introduced to his mother, who lived all the way down in Wichita Falls—another really good thing, as far as Belinda was concerned.

As it happened, Lyle was the only boy after four older sisters, who all spoiled him so much that he had not had to walk a step before the age of three. And his sisters, as well as his mother, were all full-figured like Belinda, which proved to her that humans were given to liking what they knew, just as she liked the drugstore.

At the time of their meeting, Belinda, having existed primarily within her mind, had little idea of her sensual, womanly side. That changed with Lyle’s abundant attentions. She quickly came into full bloom. One day she found the Home Shopping Network, Delta Burke lingerie for womanly figures and Nina dyeable pumps, and her life changed forever. Valentine was fifty miles from a mall, but everything that you could want—and that you might not want others to know you bought—came right to Belinda via Buddy, the UPS driver.

As it turned out, having known and served most of her customers for all of her life, Belinda already knew their most intimate likes and dislikes. She began buying for them as well as for herself, and pretty soon she not only had a good personal shopping business going but was supplying the drugstore with all manner of unique specialty and gift items. She installed an entire perfume counter with locally hard-to-find scents such as Coco, Interlude and Evening in Paris. She stocked the favored brand and color dye for every woman in town who did her own hair, and every preferred shade of cosmetic and fingernail polish. The store’s profits soared. Belinda discovered yet another talent—making money hand over fist, and with little effort at all.

Three years ago, Belinda had finally allowed Lyle to talk her into marriage. They had a small but lovely church ceremony, and in the end Belinda was secretly thrilled. But she insisted on keeping her own name. She felt to change would cause all manner of complications at this late stage of her life. Everyone knew her as Belinda Blaine of Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain, not to mention that she was of a size to wear a DD cup bra. The name of Midgette just did not fit her at all. It didn’t even fit Lyle, who was six-two, but one could not change what one had been born with. One could only seek to make the best of it.

When Winston came into the drugstore, everyone went to clapping and cheering him.

Winston made a courtly bow. “Thank you…thank you. I commend your good taste.”

At his voice, Belinda laughed right out loud, so rare a happening that she received a number of curious looks.

Winston said, “I guess I accomplished somethin’ this mornin’. I got a full laugh out of Miss Belinda Blaine.”

“Oh, yeah, you made me laugh,” she said, with the image in her mind of dropping the pregnancy-test kit in the toilet.

As Winston held court at his usual table, surrounded by a knot of other gossipy old farts, Belinda brought him a cup of coffee and a sweet roll.

When her mother had left on her European vacation, she had said to Belinda, “The store and Winston are in your hands. Don’t let either of them die on me while I’m gone.”

Her mother had meant it as a joke, but they both knew there was a kernel of truth in the sentiment. The store and all who came in it made up their lives.

The day became quite dreary, and the midmorning lull started early. She had sent Arlo to the storeroom to unpack boxes. All was silent from there. The low drone of the television sounded from the rear of the pharmacy.

Taking a feather duster, Belinda strolled along the health and intimate products section, whacking here and there, until she came to the pregnancy-test kits. She scratched the back of her head.

They had three different brands. It had been the $6.99 one that she had dropped into the toilet. The $9.99 product guaranteed to give easy-to-read results.

Could she read it in the toilet, should she drop it? She really hated flushing money away.

Just as she reached for the box, the bell rang out over the front door. She snatched back her hand as if from a flame and went to whacking the duster. At the end of the aisle, a familiar figure passed.

“Emma! Hey, girlfriend! What are you doin’ out this mornin’?”

“I’ve got to get my hair color.” Emma pointed at her head as if for evidence.

“Well, come on over and get a cup of coffee on the house,” Belinda called, and headed for the soda fountain counter.

What a treat! Emma Berry was her best friend, although somehow the two of them had not seen much of each other the past winter. Emma was deeply into her art—she designed greeting cards and stationery that sold in the drugstore—and into her family, which had increased with a new daughter-in-law the past fall.

And things had just sort of changed, as things often did…but in that instant of seeing her friend, Belinda thought: I will tell her.

Emma brought the box of L’Oréal light ash blond to the cash register and dug money out of her purse with pretty manicured hands.

Belinda handed back change, saying, “Latte or coffee? On the house.”

“Oooh, latte.” Emma scooted her small frame up onto a stool at the counter. “I only like yours.”

Belinda stuck a large cup beneath the aromatic, steaming machine, while Emma chattered on about needing caffeine because she had been up that morning since half past six, when, over the radio alarm in the new coffeemaker, she heard Winston shouting and then found out that John Cole was already heading off to work.

“Don’t put any whipped cream on it. Did you hear Winston this mornin’?”

Belinda, who had paused with the whipped cream can pointed, said, “Oh, yes, I heard.” She brought the steaming cup to Emma at the counter. Her thoughts were in something of a tangle, wondering why anyone would want a coffeemaker with a radio in it at the same time that she tried to figure out how to bring up the subject of her worries.

“I’m afraid he’s gonna have a heart attack,” Emma said. “Can I have a spoon?”

Belinda handed her one. “Winston? Well, we all are. He is ninety-two.”

“No. John Cole. Really? I didn’t know he was that old. He’s workin’ twelve- and fourteen-hour days…again,” Emma added with pointed annoyance.

Belinda thought, John Cole…Winston…John Cole again. Conversation with Emma was apt to be a little convoluted.

“I’ve learned by now, though, that I cannot control him,” Emma said, aiming for resignation, although she did not quite reach her mark.

Belinda agreed, and the two women tossed around comments about how everyone had their own lives to lead, the sort of practical statements that everyone knows but forgets when trying to help other people live their lives.

Then Belinda leaned forward on the counter. “I’ve been goin’ to call you.”

“You have?”

Belinda nodded, then found herself averting her gaze. “Uhhuh. I…” It was just silly. She should not speak of it.

Just then the bell over the door rang out. Both women looked over. If Belinda had not already stopped talking, she would have then, because the person who came in was Gracie Berry, Emma’s daughter-in-law.

Emma waved and called out, “Hi, honey!”

Belinda felt her spirit dipping as she watched the women hug.

“We’re drivin’ down to Dallas,” Emma told Belinda. “Gracie has a meetin’, and afterward we’re goin’ shoppin’.”

“Ah-huh,” said Belinda, her gaze moving back and forth between the two women.

It was somewhat astonishing how much the women, not at all blood kin, favored each other. Emma was fair and Gracie dark, but they were of the same petite size, and possessed of the same sort of innocence and liveliness.

Belinda offered to put Emma’s latte in a foam cup to go and asked if Gracie would like something to drink.

“Thank you. I think I would like a latte, too.” Gracie had a very polite and precise way of speaking. She was from “up north,” as everyone said, a beautiful, very stylish young woman.

Belinda turned to the rear counter and focused on carefully filling the foam cups and putting on the lids.

She waved away Emma’s offer of payment. “You two have a great day.”

“We will…thanks!”

Standing there with her hands flat on the counter, Belinda watched through the glass as the two women disappeared down the sidewalk. Then she gave a great sigh. She felt like a tiny speck on the great big planet.

Fayrene Gardner came blowing in the door, then paused to shake her plastic rain cape.

“Hi, Fay. Wet out there?”

As expected, the woman shot Belinda a frown. She hated the short version of her name.

“Hello, Belinda.” Spine straight, she looked forward and flounced—there was no other way to describe Fayrene’s walk—her skinny frame directly to the pharmacy counter, calling in a faint and wavering voice, “Oran?”

The lanky pharmacist came shooting out from the back. “Good mornin’, Miss Fayrene. What can I do for you today?” he asked with such a tender and delighted expression that Belinda had to turn away, rolling her eyes.

Shy Oran loved bold Fayrene, who was way too dense to see it. Or if she did, she discounted the man’s feelings. She never was interested in a quality man. Thank goodness, was Belinda’s opinion. Occupying herself straightening the nearby perfume counter, she listened without any shame nor reaction to Fayrene’s annoyed glances.

“I think I need…” Fayrene looked at Belinda and dropped her tone lower, causing Oran to lean over close. Belinda heard about every other word. “…to…off…sleepin’ pills…some natural…I could…”

“Well, yes,” Oran said soothingly and with some eagerness. Since he had come to work at the drugstore, he had been trying to help Fayrene, who kept getting dependent on one prescription drug after another.

Finding the sight of the two together annoying, Belinda left the perfume counter and went to the soda fountain register, opened it and began counting the cash, something she often did to settle herself.

Going out the door, Fayrene called out to Belinda, “When you speak to your mama, you be sure and tell her how much we all miss her.”

“I’ll do that.” There were some people you just wanted to smack.

Only seconds on the heel of that thought came the sound of squealing tires and a scream.

Belinda hurried toward the door, but Oran was already ahead of her and sprinting outside with his paramedic bag swinging from his hand.

Belinda saw Fayrene’s legs on the wet pavement and people coming from everywhere. She ducked back into the drugstore, got an umbrella and hurried out again to hold the umbrella over Fayrene and Oran and a man she did not recognize, who came from the café.

Talk about never a dull minute.

The phrase was repeated half a dozen times during the lunch hour. The conversation was now divided between Winston’s morning reveille, the rain, which had entered the picture, and Fayrene getting hit by a car. Between making three chicken-salad sandwich lunches, four hot barbecues and a number of jalapeño-cheese nachos, Belinda downed two extra-strength aspirin for a headache that had reached pounding proportions. Glancing over at Oran, who was still sitting at a table drinking his second hot coffee, she shook two more aspirin into her palm, grabbed a small glass of ice water and took both to him.

“Doctor, tend thyself.”

He had really been shook up. Luckily there had only been a tiny bit of blood on Fayrene’s skinned knee, and Oran had been able to press a bandage over it almost without looking. Belinda thought the torn fabric of Fayrene’s pants had shook him up the most. That and the handsome stranger who had come to lift Fayrene and carry her back to the café, leaving Oran staring after them.

Oran gazed at the pills in her hand as if he didn’t know what they were, but then he took them. Handing her back the glass of water, he gave her a crooked grin.

As Belinda returned behind the soda fountain counter, a voice hollered out for service over at the pharmacy. She was relieved to see Oran’s lanky body rise and hear him answer in an exaggerated drawl, “Keep your shirt on. This ain’t New York City.”

“Was Fayrene hurt bad?” asked Iris MacCoy, who was waiting on an order of half a dozen barbecue sandwiches and the same number of fountain drinks to take back to MacCoy Feed and Grain.

“No, ma’am,” said Arlo, passing over two sizable cardboard carry containers. “I put in extra bags of potato chips.”

Arlo’s gaze lingered on Iris’s chest, which was where most men’s eyes lingered. Iris was a stunning woman. Belinda knew that Iris was over fifty years of age, and had more refurbishment on her than a 1960 Corvette.

“Well, I saw the whole thing,” said Julia Jenkins-Tinsley, scooting her small frame up on a stool, sitting half on and half off. Julia was postmistress and a woman who lived life in perpetual motion.

“I had just come out of the P.O. on my way down here. The car didn’t hit her—Fayrene hit it. She ran right out in the street. She had her hood up to protect her hairdo—you know how she is about her hair. She was no more lookin’ where she was goin’ than the man in the moon. She never is, and is always crossin’ in the middle of the block. Maybe this will teach her a lesson. We have crosswalks for a reason. Here’s your mail.”

Julia passed a wad of mail held by a rubber band across the counter to Belinda. “I saw you hadn’t come by your box yet today. I know you are just swamped here with your mother on vacation. Thought you might want to see you got another postcard from her, but she didn’t really say anything. Just that she’s havin’ a good time, and what she writes every time—Love to Valentine.”

Iris said, “That pavement is really slick from the rain. We haven’t had any all winter, and now it’s just dangerous out there. I about slipped comin’ in here. And, Belinda, I just love your reports from your mother. Please tell her I’m missin’ her.”

At this, Belinda gave a polite nod.

Iris gave her and then everyone else at the soda fountain a feminine little wave as she left. The eyes of the three men followed her, and old Norman Cooper, of all people, jumped up and ran after her, saying, “Let me help you get all that to your car, Iris.”

Belinda found the postcard. It was an aerial photograph of Paris, France. She took it over and stuck it on the bulletin board, below the previous two, one from New York City, another from London.

Julia, looking up at the menu on the wall as if she had not seen it every day of her adult life, finally said, “I guess I’ll have a chicken salad on lettuce, no bread, and a sweet tea with lemon—two slices. I can do the sugar. I jogged an extra mile this mornin’. Make it to go. I need to get back. Norris didn’t come in today.”

As Belinda turned to get the order, she noted that Julia’s gaze dropped to her hips with a distinctive disapproving look. Julia went at keeping in shape as if it would give her a ticket to heaven.

Belinda knew that she had something Julia would never have: six years of youth, womanly breasts and total guilt-free eating of anything she wanted.

“Did you see that guy who picked up Fayrene and carried her back to the café?” Julia asked.

“I saw him, but I haven’t heard who he is. Jaydee said he thought maybe the guy missed the bus to Dallas…that he saw him earlier in the café. Lucky for Fayrene.” She glanced over to the pharmacy, where Oran was waiting on Imperia Brown, who had all three of her children down with the flu.

Julia said, “No…he’s some guy Woody brought into the café this mornin’. Where Woody met him, nobody seems to know, and Woody won’t say. You know how he can be—that inscrutable old wise black man routine.”

Belinda, closing the plastic container of chicken salad and resisting licking her finger, asked if the stranger had a name.

Julia eagerly filled in with all she knew. The man’s name was Andy Smith, and he had a very cool British-type accent but was from Australia. Bingo Yardell had asked him. Bingo had also asked what had brought him to town, but he had been distracted working the counter and had not answered. “He knows how to brew a proper cup of tea. Bingo Yardell was in there havin’ breakfast this mornin’, when this woman came in off the Dallas bus and ordered a cup of hot tea. She made a big deal out of the café needin’ to have china teapots, not those little metal deals. I have thought that, too, ever since Juice and I went to New York for his grocers’ convention and stayed on the concierge floor. Every mornin’ the hotel served a layout, and they had tea in china pots. It really does make all the difference. And this Andy fella was able to make the woman a proper cup of tea.”

Belinda set the woman’s foam cup of cold tea on the counter. “I doubt there’s a large call for hot tea over at the café.”

“That’s what Fayrene said, but Carly said she serves it right often to customers over there in the cold months—mornin’s like this one was, a cup of hot tea is nice. Tea has a lot of anti-oxidants.” The postmistress put her mouth to the straw and sucked deeply, as if eager to get antioxidants that very moment.

“It’s got somethin’ everyone likes.” Belinda cast an eye to the cold-tea pitcher. All the talk was making her want some.

“Well…” Julia laid the exact change on the counter and picked up her lunch. “I gotta get back. I’ll be listenin’ to your report this afternoon. I like to hear about your mother’s trip. Be sure to tell her to keep writin’ home…and tell her to write somethin’ interestin’ on the postcards.”

“Wait a minute, and I’ll give you her e-mail address so you can write her yourself.”

“Oh, Lordy, I don’t mess with that e-mail. I work for the U.S. Postal Service. You just tell her for me, ’kay?” The woman went out the door.

Belinda said under her breath, “I don’t have another blessed thing better to do than send messages from ever’body and their cousin to my mother.”

Nadine called with an excuse again. Her voice, as usual, came so faintly over the telephone that Belinda strained to hear.

“I’m sorry I missed the lunch hour, Miz Belinda. I had a flat tire.”

“I really need you tomorrow, Nadine,” Belinda said with a sternness that she hoped would motivate. She could fire the young woman, but a replacement was likely to be worse.

As she wiped up the counters and appliances, she heard in memory her mother’s voice: I am so tired of this store, you can just shoot me now.

Belinda had never believed her mother when she said this. It had always seemed that the store was her mother’s life. Both her parents had seemed happier at the store than anywhere else. It had been at home with family that all the problems went on.

Belinda, too, loved the store, and had for the past couple of years wanted her mother to turn over the full running of it to her. Be careful what you ask for.

She would have bitten her tongue off before admitting it, but after ten days of running it alone, she was thinking, I am so tired of this store, you can just shoot me now.

Belinda tossed her apron on the stool and headed for the storage room, where she found Arlo sitting, as she had known he would be, on a box, reading a comic book. He didn’t bother to jump up, simply cast her a questioning expression. She told him to go take care of the soda fountain and that he needed to slice another lemon. Then she called him back and gave him the comic book he had laid aside.

Following him out of the storage room, she went to her office, which was nothing more than a partitioned area sandwiched between the back door and the restrooms. She had it fixed up nicely, though, framed art on the walls, and the most stylish in desks and computer setups—although the very day her mother had left for Europe, she’d had Arlo exchange her modern desk for her mother’s old heavy one. This was the desk that had belonged to Belinda’s father, and, before that, the two uncles who had founded the drugstore.

Now the desk belonged to her, Belinda thought, sitting herself behind it. At least until her mother returned.

The radio was already on from that morning. She turned the volume up slightly and pulled her carefully typed notes in front of her.

Each Wednesday, Belinda did a radio advertising spot for Blaine’s Drugstore called About Town and Beyond, in which she told all the social news and light gossip, and ended with a health or fashion tip. The following Sunday, the same piece she gave over the radio would appear in print in the Valentine Voice.

Even Belinda, who was not easily surprised, was amazed at the things people would tell out of the great desire to hear their name on the radio or see it in the newspaper. It was curious that these same people would readily talk about the intimate details of a relationship to all and sundry, but would not for love nor money mention trouble with constipation. Speaking publically of sex was acceptable and speaking of constipation considered dirty. What a world.

Jim Rainwater’s voice announcing her upcoming spot came over the airwaves, followed by an advertisement for the Ford dealership out on the highway. Belinda opened the desk drawer to get a piece of gum.

Her eye fell on her mother’s package of cigarillos.

She hated it when her mother smoked them. But now Belinda quite deliberately pulled out one of the narrow little cigars. She searched back in the drawer, finding a box of matches. She put the cigarillo between her lips, struck the match on the box and lit the tobacco, puffing expertly.

Belinda had smoked for a couple of years in her early twenties. She was one of those few very fortunate souls who did not get addicted. One time a cousin had done a study of the family and found that not one Blaine woman could ever be said to have had an addiction of any sort, excepting having the last word.

The cigarillo’s pungent taste caused a few coughs, but she took another puff and blew out a good stream of smoke. She could see what her mother saw in smoking one of these.

Just then the telephone on her desk rang. Jim Rainwater said, “Ten seconds.”

She brought her notes in front of her, turned off the radio and took one more good puff. Through the telephone receiver came the drugstore’s theme music and Jim Rainwater’s voice. “This week’s About Town and Beyond, with Belinda Blaine of Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain, your hometown store.”

“Good afternoon, ever’one.” Her voice was a little husky from the cigarillo. She liked it.

“This week over here at Blaine’s hometown drugstore we have fifteen percent off all Ecco Bella natural cosmetics, a buy-one-get-one-free special on vitamin C for those late-winter colds and a superspecial of buy two little travel packets of aspirin and get a third free. Many of you may remember—my daddy used to say that there was no better a remedy than aspirin.

“Now, for our Around Town news. Willie Lee Holloway and his dog, Munro, took the title of Best in Show the past Saturday at the Women’s Auxiliary Annual Community Dog Show, for the fourth straight year! I won’t say who said it, but there was at least one jealous whiner who said Munro should step down.

“Munro, honey, you just go on competing as long as you are able. Don’t let people who are jealous hinder you.

“And now, I’m sorry to give the news to the ladies, but our favorite UPS man, Buddy Wyatt, has become engaged. The fiancée’s name is Krystal Lynn Howard, and she is manager at McDonald’s on the turnpike and also attends junior college as a business major. The wedding is tentatively planned for late September.

“Ummmm…” For a moment, she found herself distracted by the cigarillo, for which she had no ashtray. “I want to assure everyone that Fayrene Gardner, who ran into a car this morning while crossin’ Main Street in the middle of the block, only got a scraped knee, praise God. She was well tended by Blaine’s own druggist and paramedic, Oran Lackey.

“Now, for Beyond. For those of you who may have been dead and escaped hearing, my mother is vacationin’ in Europe, along with Lillian Jennings. Here is her latest letter home:

“Bonjour, mes amis,”

(A number of listeners were a little awed at Belinda’s fluid pronunciation of the French; Belinda frequently watched a foreign language show on PBS.)

“We arrived yesterday afternoon at our destination at last. Things are different over here. I saw armed military at the airport. I’m talking machine guns…or whatever they are called these days. I could not decide if I felt more secure or worried that I might at any moment be gunned down. People are very friendly, though.

“My daughter Margaret did us proud—this place is as beautiful as she had promised. We are about fifteen minutes from Nice. That is Neece for those of you who may not know. It is on the Riviera, playground for the rich and famous. Oh, at the airport, Lillian thought she saw Frank Sinatra, but I kind of doubt it. How would we even recognize him at his age? Is he dead yet?

“The weather is real nice in Nice, slept under blankets but already getting warm today.

“Au revoir,

“Love, Vella Blaine, who does not wish anyone was here.

“That’s it from Mama…. Now, I want to speak a plain word about constipation. Don’t turn the dial. Ladies, regular eliminations of body waste is the best beautifier for complexion, hair and attitude. Increase your energy and your sexual stamina, too, by getting yourself regular. Come see me down here at Blaine’s Drugstore, and I’ll fix you up with some natural remedies. There is just no need to suffer.

“That’s it from Blaine’s Drugstore, providing the best of the old and the new, and we will always beat the big discount drugstores on price. Back to you, Jim.”

“Thank you, Miss Belinda,” she heard him say just as she clicked off, and in a tone that made her think he was red as a beet.

She saw she had dropped ash on the desk and remembered why she disliked smoking. It was just dirty. With relief, she found an ashtray in the rear of the center drawer, then relaxed back in the chair for a couple more puffs, since she did have it lit.

“You look like Aunt Vella, sittin’ there.” Arlo’s head poked around the partition.

“I presume you didn’t abandon the cash register just to make that observation.” She vigorously tamped the cigarillo into the ashtray.

“Huh?” He looked confused.

“What did you want?”

“Oh. Yeah…Inez Cooper is out here at the herbs and vitamins. She wants to know if there’s somethin’ she could slip her husband to make him stop smokin’.”

“Tell her I’ll be right there.” She tossed the package of cigarillos into the trash can, followed by the ashtray.

Passing the soda fountain counter, she told Arlo, “Soon as you get a chance, I want you to switch the desks back around. Put Mama’s desk back in her place, and move mine back into my office.”

She could tell she had confused him again.

CHAPTER 4

The Great Compromise

AFTER TWO DAYS OF TATE GOING BACK AND FORTH across the street between the houses of the two old neighbors and using all his negotiating skills, the matter was settled. Winston and Everett would share hosting of the new Wake Up show for an hour each morning. This could be managed mostly because Willie Lee would join them. Willie Lee’s presence always encouraged people to be on their best behavior.

Corrine stood with her aunt Marilee in the yellow light on the front porch. Each with a baby on the hip, and each disgusted about the early hour.

“You all come right back after the show and get a proper breakfast,” said Aunt Marilee. “And don’t go eatin’ a bunch of doughnuts. Remember your cholesterol, Tate…your sugar, Winston. Don’t you make Willie Lee late for school.”

Corrine, ever vigilant over her younger cousin, put in, “Somebody tie Willie Lee’s shoestring.”

To which Willie Lee hollered back, “I ca-n do it!”

Willie Lee and Winston exchanged looks. Winston well understood the boy. Willie Lee was mentally handicapped but not a baby, and not deaf, either—as so many tended to treat him in his old age.

Corrine and her aunt Marilee continued to stand and watch as the men and boy and dog got into the Bronco that Papa Tate already had warming up. Doors slammed. The Bronco went backing out, and then Aunt Marilee hollered, “Watch out!”

Although Papa Tate no doubt could not hear her with the windows rolled up, he had already slammed on his brakes, avoiding hitting Mr. Everett’s Honda Accord backing out of his driveway so fast that the rear end bounced two feet when the tires hit the street. Then the Honda roared off ahead of the Bronco.

Aunt Marilee looked at Corrine, and Corrine looked back at her. With sighs, they went back in the warm house, turning out the porch light.

At the radio station, Everett had gotten into the sound studio and sat himself in the executive chair at the microphone. He cast a wave to Tate, who bid him good-morning.

Winston took note of the situation. There were two more rolling chairs, both smaller and against the wall. Winston had never sat in either. He was a big man, and required a big chair.

He turned and went to get a cup of coffee, then returned to stand in the studio doorway, sipping it. Everett studiously kept his gaze on some papers in front of him. Tate was leaning over and having a discussion with Jim Rainwater at the controls. Willie Lee had taken one of the chairs against the wall, as he usually did, with his dog’s chin on his still-untied shoe. He grinned with some excitement at Winston, who shot him a wink.

A check of the clock. Two minutes to on-air.

“Tate…could I speak to you and Everett a moment?”

Tate turned. Everett sat there, blinking behind his glasses.

Winston said sweetly, “Just a minute before airtime, Ev.” Tate turned his gaze to the other man, causing him to reluctantly get up and come out of the room.

“I just want to say thanks for the opportunity, Tate, and thanks for joinin’ us, Everett. I know we’re gonna have us a time.” As Winston spoke, he eased himself around the men and slipped through the studio door, and headed directly for the big armchair at the microphone. In one movement, he plopped down and put the headphone to his ear with one hand, reaching for the microphone with the other.

“You dang…” Everett was beside himself.

“Thirty seconds,” said Jim Rainwater.

Everett pulled one of the smaller chairs over and took hold of the microphone. Winston did not let go. The two glared at each other. Tate threw up his hands and walked out.

Jim Rainwater counted, “Five…four…three…two…you’re…on.” His finger pointed.

Winston jerked the microphone toward him. “Goooood mornin’, Valentinites! Rise and shine. GET UP, GET UP, YOU SLEE-PY-HEAD. GET UP AND GET YOUR BOD-Y FED!”

For the last part, Everett joined in, his face jutted so close to Winston that they about rubbed whiskers. The result was the call coming out sort of like an echo: “GET-et YOUR-or BOD-od-Y-ee FED-ed!”

“You’re listenin’ to the Wake Up call with Winston…”

“And Everett!”

“And Willie Lee and Munro!” Willie Lee had squeezed in between the two old men. Munro let out a bark.

“Wa-ake UP, ev-ery-bod-y!” said Willie Lee happily, followed by another bark from Munro and Jim Rainwater’s sound track of a trumpet playing reveille.

The audience share had increased tenfold over the past two days as word had spread about the reveille and the feud. People all over town tuned in just to hear the amazing Wake Up call from one—now four—of their own. Truckers picked up the radio out on the highway, and there were even a few listeners from as far away as Kansas and West Texas, people who experienced the early-morning show out of Valentine via skips in the signal.

Many listeners had their radio volumes turned up in order to join in with the reveille. The Dallas route bus driver, Cleon Salazar, was one of these. He sang out, helping to wake himself up and jarring a number of his dozing passengers.

Deputy Lyle Midgette, a perpetually cheerful soul, also joined in, repeating the words at the top of his voice as he drove home, windows wide and cold air snatching his breath.

Woody Beauchamp, an equally cheerful soul, reached over the pan of hot biscuits just in time to turn up the volume on the radio and holler out. His new friend, Andy Smith, jumped and almost fell back out the door, while upstairs in her bathroom, Fayrene Gardner stamped on the floor.

Rosalba Garcia stood ready with a pot lid and wooden spoon. At the yell from her radio, she went calling out and banging over the beds in her all-male household. At the discovery of the empty bed of her youngest, she was alarmed, until she looked under the bed and found that, after two mornings, he had anticipated her actions and gone to sleep underneath, with pillows and quilts as insulation. Not to be thwarted—this was the son born in America and she meant him to go to college—Rosalba dragged him out by his ankle.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there were a number of listeners who deliberately tuned out, or at least down. These people wanted to hear the pertinent information of the weather and road conditions, school lunch menu and sales at the IGA, but they did not want to be jarred out of their skins, nor did they want anyone else in their household to be awakened.

Having gotten Aunt Marilee back to bed with both tiny tots, Corrine went all over the house, making certain every radio was turned off. Then she fell gratefully back into her own bed for another half hour’s sleep before getting up for school. One needed sleep when one lived in a nuthouse.

Across the street, Doris Northrupt sighed peacefully, giving thanks that her husband was gone, and that she could sleep to midmorning, when he would return. Retired life was good.

Julia Jenkins-Tinsley used the new iPod she had purchased the previous day; however, she couldn’t get it to work, so she had to jog listening to her own breathing in the cold morning air.

Inez Cooper turned her kitchen radio off in midreveille. “Idiots,” she said, as she counted her husband’s morning pills into the little medicine cup. She stuck in one of the quit-smoking herbal pills Belinda had given her. Norman would never notice an extra pill. She had gone all over his workshop and found two packages of hidden cigarettes, which she had torn up into the trash. Now, with firm determination, she set a small pamphlet about quitting smoking next to the coffeemaker.

Out at the edge of town, John Cole Berry was filling a travel mug of coffee and remembered just in time to punch the button that silenced the radio on the coffee machine. Standing there, sipping his coffee with both relief that Emma still slept and anxiousness about the busy day ahead, he felt a tightness come across his chest. He did not have time for Emma’s worries to transfer to him, he thought, taking up his jacket and slipping from the house. He was able to catch the reveille fifteen minutes later on his truck radio and have a good laugh.

Having slept a peaceful night in her own bedroom, Paris Miller was putting on her eye makeup while listening to her boom box set to low volume. She smiled at the Wake Up call. She loved sweet Willie Lee and Munro, and Mr. Winston, too, who had always been so kind to her. Sometimes she imagined her grandfather was like Mr. Winston; he could be, if only he would stop drinking. Turning off the radio, she tiptoed to the kitchen, carefully closing the door to her grandfather’s room as she passed. She prepared the coffeemaker, and set out an orange and a packaged sausage biscuit, all in readiness for her grandfather when he got up. If she could just love him enough, he would quit drinking.

Two miles away in her king-size bed with the leather head-board, Belinda slept soundly beneath fine Egyptian 1200-count cotton sheets and down comforter, head cradled on a soft pillow, with earplugs and a violet satin eye mask. A few feet away to the right, on the night table near her head, was a small decorative plaque, which she had purposely placed there the previous night. It read: Today I will be handling all of your problems. I do not need your help. —God.

Belinda had found the plaque stuffed in the back of a cabinet while searching for a bottle of aspirin. She had thought that she was only too glad to dump all of her problems on anyone who would take them. And with that, she rejected all responsibility if Arlo did not open the store on time, and she herself would get there when she got there.

She was still asleep past all three reveilles and did not hear the telephone ringing.

Lyle did, though, as he came in the back door. The caller was Arlo, saying that he had overslept and was sorry. Lyle went in and saw his beautiful Belinda sleeping peacefully, and was a little hesitant about awakening her. While fearless in the face of armed robbers, dangerous illegal-alien smugglers and desperate crack dealers, the deputy was definitely wary of waking his wife. After gazing at her a moment, he solved his problem by turning around and going down to the drugstore himself. Any mistake he could make behind the soda fountain counter could not be as great as waking a soundly sleeping Belinda Blaine.

Despite all the years he had been with Belinda, he had never in his life worked the soda fountain counter. Belinda never would let him do anything. But opening the door was easy, and he had help from a few customers to get the coffee and latte makers going.

Andy Smith, who needed shaving supplies and who had heard that Blaine’s Soda Fountain had the only latte in town, and that it was good, hopped over there to get a cup. He was a little disconcerted to find a deputy sheriff, with a gun protruding on his hip beneath the white apron, waiting on him.

“Hi, man. I’m Lyle Midgette.” The tall man with boyish eyes offered his hand with a friendly grin. “What can I get for ya’?”

“Uh, nice to meet you. I’m Andy…Smith.” He shook the man’s hand. “I’ll have a latte, if you please.”

CHAPTER 5

Growing Up

“WEAR A COAT!” CALLED AUNT MARILEE FROM the kitchen.

“O-kaay!” returned Corrine, who was in the foyer and had no intention of complying. She leaned into the hall mirror, put on lipstick. Aunt Marilee was not likely to approve of either the lipstick or the Wonderbra underneath Corrine’s blue sweater. Her aunt was bound and determined that Corrine was not going to follow in the footsteps of her mother, who, as Aunt Marilee put it, “has lived a life more difficult than she had to.”

Aunt Marilee was Corrine’s mother’s older sister. Corrine had come at a young age to live with her aunt because her own mother had had “difficulties”—those being men, drinking and destitution. Aunt Marilee had been known to say, “Put men and drinking together and you get the third without a doubt.” Corrine had never known a father, until Papa Tate.

While her own mother had been for some time “on her feet,” as it was said, had a solid job and a stable relationship with a prominent, well-to-do man, and she and Corrine got on well, Corrine chose to remain with Aunt Marilee and Papa Tate. For one thing, that Corrine’s mother had still not married but lived with her boyfriend drove Aunt Marilee nuts. The main reason, however, was that Corrine could not bear to leave her aunt. Her own mother said that Corrine and Aunt Marilee were two peas in a pod. Corrine supposed this was true, and oftentimes did not like it. But she knew that Aunt Marilee needed her in a way that her own mother never had.

“Love you,” she called out to Aunt Marilee as she grabbed up her backpack and raced out the front door in her blue sweater.

“Good morning,” said Rosalba, coming up the steps.

“Good morning,” Corrine answered, halting her racing and walking more sedately. Her gaze surreptitiously went to the side, down Rosalba’s legs to her feet, watching her movements. Corrine tried to move the same. Rosalba was a sexy woman. And she was probably the only nanny-housekeeper who wore fishnet stockings and high-heeled pumps. No one could figure out how she could go all day in those shoes.

A big gleaming blue tow truck waited in the driveway. The door flew open, and her friend Jojo extended her hand. Corrine grabbed it, put her foot on the chrome step and hauled herself up into the tall vehicle. It was not easy to remain a graceful lady doing that.

Over behind the wheel, her friend’s elder brother, Larry Joe, said, “How you this mornin’, Miss Corrine?” and winked at her.

“Just fine,” she said. Stupid. Couldn’t she think of something more clever?

The big truck backed out and started off for the school. Corrine, her gaze on Larry Joe’s hands on the steering wheel, tried to think of something to say.

“Did you hear Granddaddy and Everett this mornin’?” Jojo asked.

“No. After we told them goodbye, me and Aunt Marilee went back to bed.”

“You must be the only ones in town. They were really funny. Willie was good, too,” she added loyally. “He’s speakin’ more clear.”

Jojo Darnell was Winston’s real granddaughter and Corrine’s best friend. They shared a love of horses.

Larry Joe Darnell, who had been driving them to school most mornings that year, was Winston’s oldest grandson, manager of the Texaco, a hunk, twenty-four and the love of Corrine’s life.

Corrine said, “Yeah, I know. It’s that new speech teacher they hired at the first of the year. Aunt Marilee says she’s a miracle worker.”

“You mean Monica Huggins?” Larry Joe said.

“Uh-huh,” Corrine replied, wondering at the left turn Larry Joe took onto Porter. That was not the way to school. She saw him looking over at her with a curious sparkle in his eyes. Larry Joe had these blue eyes that just shone out from his face. “Do you know her?”

“Well, that’s who we’re pickin’ up this mornin’,” put in Jojo.

Corrine looked at her, saw a pointed expression on her face.

“I’ve known Ms. Huggins for a few years,” said Larry Joe as he drove on down the street and pulled into the driveway of a small bungalow. “I went to junior college with her brother. I got her car in my shop….” He shoved the shifter into Park and hopped out. The truck rumbled.

The teacher came out the red front door. Larry Joe met her on the walkway and gave her a quick kiss. Corrine felt Jojo elbow her, but she kept her gaze straight ahead. She didn’t want Jojo to see her face.

Larry Joe escorted Ms. Huggins over to the driver’s side of the truck and helped her get in to sit right next to him.

“Good mornin’, Ms. Huggins,” Jojo said.

Corrine didn’t say anything. The lapse did not appear to be noticed. Jojo and Larry Joe were busy talking to the teacher.

“I don’t know,” Jojo said, in answer to Corrine’s question about how long Larry Joe had been seeing Ms. Huggins. “We just found out about her last night, when he brought her home to supper.”

Corrine quickly stuck her burning face into her locker in a search for books. She could not bear to reveal herself to Jojo, who knew that Corrine had a crush on her older brother, but her friend had no idea as to the depth and breadth of it. Jojo was several years younger than Corrine. She had not yet been in love.

Jojo, a loyal friend, said, “I don’t think Mama likes her. I heard her tell Daddy that she does not think Ms. Huggins is Larry Joe’s type.”

“What type would that be?”

“Well…I don’t know. But Mama said that Ms. Huggins does not seem like the type to like a pot of beans…whatever that means.” She frowned in puzzlement.

Corrine understood and agreed, although what she said was, “I think Ms. Huggins is older than Larry Joe.”

“Two years—I asked her—and you’re only sixteen.”

The comment stabbed. “So?”

“Well, Mama also said it was about time that Larry Joe was finally interested enough in a woman to bring her home for supper. It looks sort of serious. And, well, he can’t wait around for you to grow up.”

“So who’s wantin’ him to?” Corrine slammed her locker closed. “I gotta see Ricky Dale before class. Catch ya’ later.”

Thankfully, her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Ricky Dale, was standing right across the hall.

It was just bizarre.

She could hardly remember ever seeing the woman, and then suddenly, on this day, every time she turned around, there was Ms. Huggins. What was up with that?

Then—as Corrine was finishing lunch late, because she had stayed longer cleaning up in art class—she saw Ms. Huggins on the far side of the lunchroom with Mrs. Yoder. Seeing the two teachers rise and carry their trays to deposit at the counter nearby, Corrine remained seated, waiting for them to pass behind her.

A napkin came flying off Ms. Huggins’s tray and skittered on the floor beneath the tables.

“They pay people to pick that stuff up,” said Ms. Huggins, and went on out of the room.

Corrine got up to deposit her tray and trash, and ended up going around to pick up not only Ms. Huggins’s napkin but a couple of others. She knew that Mrs. Pryne, the cleaning lady, had bad arthritis, but indelibly written in her mind was Aunt Marilee’s voice saying: “Clean up messes wherever you can. Let it begin with you.”

At times that voice was just the ruination of her life.

Aunt Marilee picked her up from school. Willie Lee had left earlier, with his girlfriend, Gabby.

“Can I drive?”

“Well, sure, honey.” Aunt Marilee scooted over rather than get out.

“Hey, shortcake.” Corrine grinned at little Emily, who giggled at her from the car seat in the back. “Is Victoria home with Rosalba?”

“Yes. That woman is a pure answer to prayer.” Aunt Marilee’s face lit with delight, then she sighed a long sigh. “But I cannot imagine how she does it all day in those heels. I really can’t. Oh, I need you to go by Blaine’s on the way home. I’ve got to consult with Belinda.”

“Okay,” said Corrine, quite thrilled with the prospect of more driving and the opportunity to say, “I might as well go on by the Texaco, since we’re goin’ that way.”

“We need gas?”

“We’re down to half a tank.” Almost.

Corrine glanced at herself in the rearview mirror. She had not dared to put on fresh lipstick. Thankfully Aunt Marilee did not seem to notice any difference in her chest, which really was not so reassuring.

“Aunt Marilee?”

“Hmm?” Her aunt dug around in her purse.

“How much older than you is Papa Tate?” She was pretty certain she already knew the answer.

“Ten years. Why?”

“Oh, I just thought of it today,” said Corrine, sitting up a little straighter and shaking back her dark hair. Her hair and her eyes were her best features; even Aunt Marilee, who was knowledgeable about such things, said so.

“Well, I cannot find my credit card,” said her aunt, with her head nearly into her purse. It was a large tote-bag size and had everything in there in case of emergency—moist wipes, tissues, first-aid kit, crackers, tea bags, collapsible cup. Corrine had even seen a pair of panties in there. Aunt Marilee pretty much believed in emergencies, and counted being ready for them on the same scale as righteousness.

“We can just charge the gas to the account,” Corrine told her.

“Well, yes. We can do that.” Aunt Marilee brushed her hair out of her face and sat back with a deep breath.

What did age have to do with maturity? Corrine wondered. That was an enormous, unanswerable question.

As Corrine pulled up to the gas pumps, she looked over to see Larry Joe coming out from the garage, wiping his hands on a rag. She felt this silly grin come over her face, and she dared not look at her aunt, but she did catch sight of herself in the side mirror. She wet her lips.

Larry Joe almost never waited on cars anymore. Usually Dusty or Rick did that. They even washed the windshields. The Valentine Texaco was one of the few gas stations that still provided such service. Lots of men who went there all the time pumped their own gas, but ladies always waited. Corrine had heard Larry Joe talking with Papa Tate and saying that women made the majority of purchasing decisions. It was well-known that he had been the saving of the Texaco when he took over managing it from old man Stidham. Aunt Marilee had said it was due to both service and cleanliness. The women’s restroom was now spotless.

In fact, Corrine was delighted that Aunt Marilee got out to go use it (and check it out to see if it was holding up), leaving her alone with Larry Joe. He set the gas running into the tank and then stood there, talking through the driver’s window. He spoke first to Emily in the backseat, getting her to grin and show him her bottom teeth. Then he asked Corrine how old Emily was now, and she told him a bunch of things about her baby cousin. At least it was a topic that she knew, and he seemed interested. Larry Joe was something of a kid magnet, Jojo said. The idea, in that moment, was a little uncomfortable.

Aunt Marilee came back and complimented Larry Joe all over the place for the good shape of his ladies’ restroom. She went on at great length about it, so that Corrine wanted to crawl under the seat. As Aunt Marilee slipped into the car, she said under her breath, “You just can’t encourage a man too much.”

When the tank was full, Corrine followed Larry Joe inside, while he wrote out the ticket, and while she stood there, Rick came in. He grinned at Corrine and let out a low whistle. “Whoa, chicky, lookin’ fine today!”

Corrine was both thrilled and embarrassed.

“That’s her aunt Marilee out there in the car,” said Larry Joe, pointing with the pen. “You’d best watch yourself.”

Rick winked and went on through to the garage.

“Here you are, Miss Corrine.” Larry Joe handed her a yellow slip of paper, then touched the brim of his ball cap. “Thank you for your business. See you in the mornin’.”

“See you.”

She wondered if he watched her walk back out to the car. She was able to casually glance back as she opened the car door. Larry Joe was not looking. He was over in the garage beneath a car with Rick, deep in conversation.

Disappointment and frustration caused Corrine to press harder on the accelerator than she otherwise might have.

“Watch out when you pull into the street!”

“I am watchin’, Aunt Marilee. I’ve been drivin’ for a year now—and I am not the one who has had a wreck and a ticket.”

To this, Aunt Marilee responded in a dozen different ways, and all the way to the drugstore, including how it was her car and when Corrine got her own car (which they would not let her do until starting the next school year), she could drive any way she wanted. She also had to instruct Corrine on how to pull into the head-in parking place.

Corrine was thinking, Let me in the convent now, just to get away from an overprotective mother. Would they let a Methodist in?

Help Wanted.

The sign was in the drugstore window. Corrine looked at it, and then again at the back of it when she got inside the store.

“Hi, sugars.”

Miss Belinda sounded more like her mother every day, something that Aunt Marilee often commented on, but then she would say, “Don’t say it to Belinda. She won’t appreciate it.”

Belinda did not look at all like she was related to her mother. Aunt Vella was dark eyed, tall and statuesque, and Belinda was light eyed, short and voluptuous. One day Corrine had said that Belinda was a voluptuary, like Elizabeth Taylor. Belinda had been so thrilled with this description that she had forever after seemed to favor Corrine.

Belinda told her now, “Sugar, you go on over to the soda fountain and get yourself a Coca-Cola or anything you want…and can Emily have a peppermint stick? Just get her anything she won’t choke on.”

As Corrine headed away with her baby cousin, Aunt Marilee said, “I tell you, Belinda, I am fixin’ to spontaneously combust with these hot flashes, or else slap somebody, and the doctor I saw today was no more help than the man in the moon….”

The current bane of Aunt Marilee’s existence was menopause, with doctors coming in a close second.

Between her mother, who Corrine had more or less taken care of instead of the other way around, and then living with Aunt Marilee and helping with her mentally handicapped cousin, Willie Lee, and then with the babies, and adding in Aunt Vella and Miss Belinda, Corrine knew far more than the average teenage girl about the intimate details of womanhood. She was able to assist in instruction in health class at school. Many times the girls at school, even those in senior class, sought her out for answers that their mothers were too embarrassed to tell them about boyfriends and sex. With Aunt Marilee’s latest trials, Corrine knew more about menopause than any other young woman of her age should be burdened with knowing.

And that she was in love with a young man of twenty-four would be considered surprising? What could be considered surprising was that she had loved Larry Joe since the age of thirteen and knew that she always would.

Corrine thought all of this as she made herself a Coca-Cola vanilla float, at the same time keeping Emily’s quick hands out of everything within her one-year-old reach. While she was going about this, a man came in and wanted a sweet tea and an order of nachos to go.

Corrine instantly seized the opportunity. “I’ll get it, Miss Belinda,” she called out.

Miss Belinda’s hand came up above the shelves, waving. “Okay, sugar. Thanks. We’ll be there in a minute.”

Corrine made the man his order and even took the money, which she placed at the cash register.

When she sat down at a table with her float and Emily, she thought about the sign in the window.

Help Wanted.

It was time she quit working for free.

Corrine caught sight of her own and Aunt Marilee’s reflections in the dark dining room windows as they got supper on the table. Gathering courage, she told her aunt about her idea to work at the drugstore.

Aunt Marilee looked at her with wide eyes. “You want to go to work?”

You would have thought she had said she wanted to fly to Mars.

“Yes.” She had all the arguments ready. “You have Rosalba to help you now. I need to be responsible and earn my own car insurance. And Blaine’s will be perfect for me. I already know how to do everything. And Miss Belinda is your cousin. And she could use my help with Aunt Vella away.”

“You want to go to work?” Aunt Marilee repeated and dropped into a chair.

“I’m sixteen. Lots of the girls are already workin’. Paris has worked since she was fourteen.”

Papa Tate walked in and snitched tomatoes out of the salad.

Aunt Marilee said, “She wants to go to work.”

“I heard.” His eyes met Corrine’s. He was caught in a tight spot.

Later that evening, Aunt Marilee came into Corrine’s bedroom and put her arms around her and said, “You are growin’ up,” and cried a little, as if Corrine had caught some rare disease.

Corrine, patting her aunt, wondered which one of them was growing up. Or if, indeed, anyone ever really did grow up.

CHAPTER 6

Ahead of Her Time

WHEN THE TELEPHONE RANG, BELINDA WAS curled on the end of her couch, half a glass of wine at hand, fire in the fireplace and Rod Stewart on the stereo. She was reading about menopause in Prescription for Nutritional Healing. It was the same book that she had consulted to help Marilee that afternoon. The book was continually kept open on a stand at the pharmacy for the convenience of customers. After reading in it and talking with Marilee, Belinda had about convinced herself that she was not pregnant but into early menopause. She had experienced hot flashes for two years. This was not at all surprising to her. She always had been a woman ahead of her time.

“Hello, Belinda? This is Corrine.”

“Well, hello, sugar. How are you this evenin’?”

“Fine.”

Belinda stopped in the middle of a sip of wine. Oh, Lord, don’t let the girl be in trouble.

Her mother had for years taken many an after-hours call from teenage girls, and a couple of boys, wanting to know how to get rid of some nasty infection or a surprise pregnancy. It was amazing how young women today were as ignorant of their bodies as young women had been some hundred or even fifty years ago. Parents, supposedly modern in thought and accepting of all manner of “alternate lifestyles,” still did not speak plainly to their children at an early age about normal sexual behavior. They let their children learn the way everyone had learned for generations: from movies, television and the stupid kid up the block—and none of it accurate, healthy information. Basically, modern young women were not modern in regard to any of it. They could smoke weed and get a tattoo and let a boy do all sorts of things to them, but by heaven, they didn’t want to know about their own vaginas and uteruses. They were too busy paying attention to boys during health class to pay attention to what they needed to learn, until they got a crash course. It was said that experience was the best teacher.

In cases of pregnancy, Vella Blaine had a rule about referring the girl to a good counselor that she knew, who would help navigate the decision-making process. (Belinda had the urge to jump up and look for the woman’s card, which her mother had given her for this express purpose.) For any nasty infections, Vella gave private instructions for remedies, or a referral to a good physician.

Three times in the past few years, Belinda had received similar inquiries. She had referred them to her mother, but now, with her mother’s absence, she saw plainly that she would be the one to have to step up to the plate. She did not care for the idea. It was all just awkward and annoying. She had the wild thought to give out the phone number of her mother in France.

Thankfully Corrine ended Belinda’s worry in the next instant with, “I was callin’ about the help wanted sign I saw in the drugstore window.”

“Oh.” Belinda brightened and took a fresh breath.

“Is that for full-time or part-time?”

“Well, sugar, at this point I will take any good help I can get. Are you interested?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Honey, you are hired!” Belinda raised her glass with joy.

“Well, I first need to know the hours and what you are payin’.” Politely but firmly said.

“Of course you do,” replied Belinda instantly. She’d always liked Corrine, and the girl’s statement just increased her opinion, which was that the girl was highly intelligent and a go-getter.

On the spot, Belinda quoted a salary twenty-five cents an hour more than she had planned to offer.

The headlights of Lyle’s patrol car pulled in the drive right at 8:55 p.m.

When on night duty, Lyle liked to take a break around nine and come home for a snack, either a health drink or for a more intimate snack of a different sort. Any of his nightly stopping in, however, had to come before Belinda settled herself in her beautiful bed, with her reading, everything from the Bible and Bible commentary to the Wall Street Journal and the day’s financial reports printed from the computer to the biography of some highly successful person, either current or from history. Sometimes Belinda had all of that in the bed with her. One thing was certain—she disliked, for any reason, to be disturbed from what she called her nightly reading, meditating and consciousness raising.

She would tell him, “Sugar, you have your health routines, and I have mine.”

Lyle’s consisted of lean meats, vegetables and fruits, special protein drinks, lifting weights and running.

Clearly one focused on the mind and one on the body. Belinda thought them a perfect pair.

Already showered and wearing her favorite Delta Burke rose-print satin gown, Belinda met Lyle in the kitchen, anxious to tell him the good news about Corrine. She had just gotten started when she found herself scooped up into his arms and carried so quickly into the bedroom that her head spun.

“You haven’t started readin’ yet, have you?” he asked.

“No, sugar,” Belinda said, just as he entered the bedroom, where the bedside lamps and candles were lit but the books were still stacked on the night chest.

In inspiring movie-scene fashion, Lyle smiled a delighted, sensuous, promising smile and laid her as carefully as a fine jewel upon the bed.

Belinda found herself once more grateful and amazed by the gift she had been given in her man. Truly, as the scriptures said, a woman was made for a man, a fact Lyle proceeded to prove.

Twenty minutes later, Lyle, his shirt still off, made a protein drink in the blender on the kitchen counter. Belinda, all soothed and happy, gazed at his broad, muscular back while she enjoyed a cheese Danish and remembered to tell him about the good fortune of hiring Corrine Pendley.

“She’s goin’ to work each afternoon after school, and close the store twice a week.” She licked her fingers happily. “Now all I need to do is find someone to open the store a couple times a week and work mornings. At least three days. That will sure take a load off.”

“Honey, I’ll be glad to help,” said Lyle, glancing over his shoulder. “I really liked openin’ the other mornin’. I did.”

Belinda, who thought, Ohmyheaven, said, “Sweetie, you have a job. You do not need to stretch yourself by workin’ in the drugstore. You are the head sheriff’s deputy. That is demanding enough.”

“When I’m on nights, I’m never tired when I come home, anyway. I have to unwind, and I just sit around for a couple of hours watchin’ TV. I’d just as soon open the store for you. When I go on days, I can still open, and I can close, since the store’s open later.” As he spoke, he got out his carry mug and poured his drink into it, snapping on the lid.

“I appreciate the offer, sugar—” she sidled up to him, rubbing her hands over his back “—but we can surely get by the two months until Mama comes home. And you are a sheriff’s deputy, and that’s important. You know you don’t work firm hours, either. What if you’re caught up arrestin’ somebody right when the store needs to open or close? You can’t just tell them to wait.”

“I can cuff ’em to a pole and come on to the drugstore,” he said.

Belinda tried to judge the seriousness of this statement. He looked serious. She replied, “Well, maybe you could do that, but we are not goin’ to jeopardize what we just enjoyed—I’m not lettin’ you waste energy on a second job workin’ in the drugstore.” She smiled seductively.

He looked away as he put on his shirt.

Belinda started clearing the counter, remembering the previous morning, after Lyle had opened the store and worked the soda fountain counter with Arlo for an hour. She had come in to find coffee and latte splashes and spills all over, the barbecue pot set on high, a half-eaten banana set aside, and could not walk across the floor without sticking to it. The receipts did not add up to what was in the cash drawer. Lyle never could count change, and he had simply piled a lot of money to the side of the cash register.

“You just think I can’t do anything,” Lyle said.

“What?” She looked over to see him near the door, hat in hand. “I do not think that.”

“Yes, you do. You don’t let me do anything for you.”

“I do so. Who does the mowin’ around here? And…the grilling. And keepin’ me safe.” There, that last one was important.

“I mean that you don’t let me do anything for you, Belinda. You could hire a guy to do everything I do for you.”

“I am hirin’ people to work in the store.”

“It’s not the same. You just don’t let me help you in a special way. And you and that store have your own marriage.”

He actually pointed with his hat, then plopped it on his head and left.

She hurried to the door and called after his shadowy figure, “Well, who was it just in the bedroom with me, then?”

He did not reply.

She stood there and watched his patrol car leave, wondering what had just happened. It was not like Lyle at all to have a complaint or cross word. She had never seen him so perturbed.

Belinda carried her purse into the master bathroom and plopped it on the long counter.

Pausing, she turned back to lock the door, just in case. Then she dug down into the bottom of her purse and pulled out a new pregnancy-test kit—another $6.99 one. She hiked up her thigh-high gown, positioned herself over the toilet and took careful aim at the test strip. It might have been easier for a smaller-breasted woman. And, darn it, she should have drunk a whole glass of water with the sweet roll.

Brrrnnnggg!

The telephone on the wall right beside her ear rang. The test strip slipped out of her fingers.

It could not be. She could not have done it again!

The phone rang again.

She gazed at the test strip floating in the water.

The phone rang yet again. She snatched up the receiver.

“Hell-o!”

“Belinda? Sugar, is that you? It’s your mama. Over in France,” her mother added, as if Belinda might have forgotten where she had gone.

“Yes, it is me, Mama. What other woman would be answerin’ my home phone at ten o’clock at night?”

Her mother, who had at the age of seventy quit living by anyone’s normal hours, said, “Oh, is it ten o’clock there? I must have miscalculated.”

Belinda knew her mother had not bothered to calculate whatsoever.

Her mother continued, “However, is that any way for a daughter to speak to her mother?”

Her mother launched into a lengthy lecture on Belinda’s less-than-cordial attitude, for which Belinda immediately apologized, because her eye had fallen on the pregnancy-test box and she imagined her mother seeing all the way from Europe. She did not think it a stretch of the imagination that her mother had such power.

Her mother then wanted to know how everything was going at the drugstore, and had Belinda been listening to Winston’s new early-morning radio show? Her mother’s awareness of Winston’s escapades was the perfect example of her mother knowing everything, even over in France.

Just then, with her mother’s voice in her ear, Belinda tucked the telephone in the crook of her neck and snatched up the pregnancy-kit box, folded it into a small shape and stuffed it down in the bottom of the wastebasket.

After hanging up with her mother, she went to the kitchen and drank a full glass of water. Returning again to the master bathroom, she shut and locked the door and turned off the phone.

Digging down again into her purse, she pulled out yet another home pregnancy-test kit. After all, Belinda was both the owner of a drugstore and a practical woman who anticipated contingencies.

Opening the box, she removed the test strip and set it on the counter. Then she brought a plastic bedpan from the closet, along with a set of medical collection cups. A drugstore owner had plenty of equipment. She expertly pulled off one collection cup, put it in the bedpan and set the bedpan atop the closed toilet.

She looked at everything with satisfaction.

Then she positioned herself and filled the little collection cup.

She dipped the test strip into the warm liquid.

It was easy to read.

She was pregnant.

A chill swept her. With a precise motion, she rose, set the test strip on the marble counter and got her robe off the hook on the back of the door. She tied the robe snugly, then leaned toward the mirror, studying her face.

Suddenly her head spun and her legs turned to water. She sank down on the side of the large tub, where she put her head in her hands and cried.

CHAPTER 7

1550 on the Radio Dial

The Hank Williams Sunday Morning Gospel Hour

IN FRONT OF THE BATHROOM MIRROR, WINSTON ran an electric razor over his craggy cheeks. From a small black portable radio on the nearby glass shelf came his own voice.

“Good mornin’, folks, and welcome to the Hank Williams Sunday Mornin’ Gospel Hour.”

He mouthed along with the words. He thought he sounded mighty fine.

“And, yes, Hank Williams, Sr., is still dead, but we’re resurrectin’ some of his gospel tunes for this special show. This program is recorded, meanin’ when you hear this, we’re all doin’ something else, but right this minute our own Felton Ballard is here in the studio to sing for you. Many of you know Felton from the Saturday evenin’ singings over at the First Baptist. He plays these tunes in the original style, just like ol’ Hank sang ’em. We’re mighty proud of Felt. He starts off here with ‘I Saw the Light….’”

Winston hummed along with the tune. Felt sang it well. They had recorded the show back last winter. Miracle of modern life, the way music and voices could be recorded, and then all manner of changes made. Had not been like that back in his day, no, sir. Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn—they all went to the station and sang into the microphone before getting recorded.

Winston was not a fan of recording. It hindered him from adding in the clever things that came to his mind when he was listening on a Sunday morning in the bathroom.

“Well, folks, I want to tell you that our Sunday gospel hour today is brought to you thanks to Tinsley’s IGA, the All Church Pastors Association of Valentine and the Burger Barn. And you can hear Felton Ballard playing Hank Williams’s gospel live at the First Methodist Church this Sunday, where a special nine-thirty service is an entire singing service. Everyone’s invited.

“Up next we got ‘Are You Walking and a-Talking with the Lord?’ What a lot of people don’t know is that in his short career the original Hank Williams wrote some fifty gospel songs. Isn’t that right, Felt? You’re somethin’ of an expert on this, I understand.”

Felton answered, “Yes, sir. My wife sometimes sings with me, like Audrey sang with Hank…and Hank recorded a series of gospel albums as Luke the Drifter. I guess they thought it wouldn’t fly with his real name, with all his drinkin’ and carryin’ on.”

“Well, I can recall that he always sang one or more gospel tunes with Little Jimmy Dickens in his Grand Ole Opry appearances. This one is for all of my friends out there who remember the Grand Ole Opry in the old days. Go ahead, Felt.”

The music started, and Winston could sing along with this song, too. He remembered that this one had been a favorite of Coweta’s.

Suddenly he looked around and saw Coweta racing toward him in the garage, where he was tuning up the Ford. Her little black shoes flew over the ground. “Oh, Win! Look at this. Birdy sent it. Can we go? Oh, let’s! Won’t cost us nothin’ to stay with Birdy. Just you and me. Mama can take care of Freddie.”

The yellow playbill floated up before his eyes. Blurry. He had to squint, and then it came in plain: April 1,1951, Robinson Memorial Auditorium, Little Rock…Star! Hank Williams! and His Drifting Cowboys…also Lefty Frizzell…

Coweta’s dark eyes shone like they could, pulling him in. He and she had just come out of a big fight, and he was in that place where he would lasso the moon for her. She knew it, too. That’s how it played out for them again and again. Took them thirty years to see it, and some more to start doing anything to break the cycle.

Somehow, just as she could always work a miracle, she had made the phone call and gotten them tickets. “Yes, I did. Row five. Don’t ask what they cost.” She laughed, and the skirt of her dress swirled as she raced up the stairs to pack.

He shook his head. He never had been one to worry over money. It was her who worried over it.

“Not that time,” she said now, grinning at him right there in their bedroom. “I loved that Hank Williams.”

He never could understand it. “That Hank was so scrawny, he’d blow away in a good wind.”

Coweta smiled. There was a pink glow around her, pretty as could be. She said, “We had us a good time. Remember?”

“Yeah. I remember…we had to drive through five hours of sleet and rain and the windshield wipers actin’ up.”

“Oh, Winston. You never remember the important things. Like you held my hand, and we danced after, all alone. Why don’t you remember that?”

“That was near fifty years ago,” he defended. “I was born before ol’ Hank, and have lived far after him, and I got a lot clutterin’ my brain.” He pointed at the playbill in her hand. “I’ve outlived ever’body on that poster.”

“No, honey, you haven’t.”

“No kiddin’—really?”

“Now, why would I kid about such a thing? Don Helms was in the Drifting Cowboys then, and he is still alive—and playin’, even. He’s younger than you.”

“Isn’t ever’body?” Winston said, a little sadly. Then, “I’ve outlived so many, Coweta. Just so much has happened in my life. I can’t piece it all together half the time.”

“I know, honey.” Her hand came over his, so pale and soft against his leathery skin.

Then he heard her humming. It took him a second to recognize the tune—Hank’s “I’m Going Home.”

“Mis-ter Wins-ton…Mis-ter Wins-ton.”

It was Willie Lee, standing right in front of him.

Why, he was now sitting on his bed. He didn’t remember sitting on the bed.

Willie Lee’s eyes blinked behind his thick glasses. Looking downward, Winston saw Willie Lee’s smaller hand, soft and white, lying on his own.

“I’m okay, buddy. Just caught in some memories.”

“Yes. You are o-kay,” the boy said confidently.

Willie Lee knew these things, so Winston felt reassured.

“Moth-er says we need to go to church ear-ly. It is rain-ning. I will get you-r coat.”

The boy fetched Winston’s blue sport coat from the butler chair and held it up for Winston to slip into. Winston checked himself in the dressing mirror before following the boy from the room. As he went out the door, he paused and glanced around, looking for signs of Coweta.

There were none. She had been gone a long, long time now. As were so many who had made up his life.

Over at her small house, Paris Miller peered out her bedroom window through hard rain pouring from the roof and washing over the glass. It ran in the ditch that divided the yards. Behind her on her boom box, a voice sang out an old country tune. “Please make up your miinnd…”

She was actually contemplating going to the Methodist Church. That was the only church she had ever been able to go into alone. She had gone to the Good Shepherd with a friend, and she liked that they were real friendly, but the thought of being there on her own with them jumping up and running around made her nervous. The Methodists were a quiet bunch. She could slip in, sit in the back and hardly be noticed. She had done that before, enough so that the usher—Leon Purvis, who slicked back his gray hair—no longer tried to get her to fill out a visitation form. When the final closing hymn was sung, she would slip out again.

She wondered what she hoped to get out of it. She usually did feel a lot better afterward, but then she would come home, and her whole life started all over again, not a thing changed, no matter how hard she prayed.

She heard a plunk and looked up. A wet stain was spreading on her ceiling, where many had been before. She needed to get a pan to catch the leak.

“What in the hell are you listenin’ to?” Her granddaddy had come in his wheelchair to her door.

“It’s a special Hank Williams gospel show today.” She did not know that she hunched her shoulders and sort of winced.

“Hank Williams? What in the hell you want to listen to that old stuff for? Turn that mess off….” He rolled himself away, mumbling.

She turned off the radio, stood there a moment, then hurried to get boots, purse and coat. No one had to dress up to go to the First Methodist, especially this special singing, as they called it. Lots of women came in jeans. There were farmers who came from the field in their overalls.

Pausing to glance around, she saw everything in a blur of drab brown-gray. She had a sense of desperation, and felt that if she did not get out and around color and sound and people, she was going to choke to death.

“Where you goin’?” her granddaddy asked.

She hesitated, her eyes moving to the bottle on the table. “I’m runnin’ over to a girl’s house for a few minutes.” And she was out the door, ducking in case the bottle came flying after her.

What flew after her was him hollering, “Bring me back a six-pack of—”

The back door closed, and she raced away to her car, hopping over the puddles.

As she backed out, a car pulled up in front. One of her granddaddy’s drinking buddies. The tightness in her throat grew so great she had to gasp for breath.

She pulled into the Quick Stop for five dollars’ worth of gas and ended up helping LuAnn wait on a flood of customers driven in there by the rain. Everyone was talking about it, and depending on circumstances and temperaments, people moaned about the dreariness and inconvenience, or gave happy praise for coming green lawns and May flowers.

Over at the First Methodist Church, a few of the smokers, who usually had a quick cigarette on the front lawn before service, snatched a couple of puffs in the shelter of a large cedar tree. From here they watched the men with umbrellas, who ran to meet those arriving and hold cover over the women and girls.

Jaydee Mayhall, feeling guilty, stamped out his butt, and hurried to get the umbrella out of his own car and help. He began right then planning to put up an awning over the church walkway.

Parking was directed by men in slickers and ball caps. There was an unusually large crowd—many who only came on Easter and Christmas, as well as Baptists and Assemblies of God and the Good Shepherds from out on the highway who loved to sing, and a couple of brave Episcopalians. Vehicles filled the church parking lot, the grassy yard where the church played baseball and up and down both sides of the street.

Bobby Goode, who lived just south of the church, had the idea to make some money by charging three bucks a car to park in his circle driveway and spacious front yard. His wife’s response to this idea was to have a fit and tell him that if she saw one rut on her front lawn, his funeral would be the next event at the Methodist Church. She said that he could let people park in the driveway—for free.

She said nothing about not taking what people offered, though, so when Rick Garcia parked his big-wheel mud truck in Bobby’s driveway and waved a five at him, Bobby took it quick, and directly after the truck, Bobby waved in two little foreign jobs that he got parked bumper to bumper. He held out his hand and received eight more dollars.

Across the street, Inez Cooper punched off her radio right in the middle of “Wait for the Light to Shine.”

“If we wait for the light, we’ll miss the singin’,” she said to the radio. The cloud cover had kept it so dark that at nine-thirty in the morning the streetlights still glowed.

She called for her husband, Norman, to hurry up. Unfortunately, she immediately caught the scent of cigarette smoke on him. “I cannot believe you. Go wash your hands, at least, so’s maybe not everybody will smell it. And hurry up. You’re gonna make us late.”

Norman did as he was told, while Inez put on rain boots and carefully color-matched a green umbrella to her suit. When he reappeared, she stepped onto the porch, opened the umbrella and was halfway down the walkway when she realized that Norman was lagging behind, like he always did. She hated that, and of course it was because smoking cigarettes was cutting down his wind, which she told him. He did not answer, nor did he speed his steps. She had to pause again at the curb and wait for him. “Would you get under this umbrella? You are gettin’ all wet…you’re gonna catch your death.”

At that moment, Juice Tinsley’s car stopped. The car window on the passenger side came down, and Julia called out, “Can we park in your driveway, Inez?”

“Well, no…no, that’s not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just not. I don’t want people parkin’ up and down my drive—we may need to get out later. Come on, Norman.”

Bobby Goode popped out into the street and directed Juice into his driveway. He said, “I’m takin’ donations for parkin’.”

Juice pulled a couple of dollars out of his pants pocket, then hurried after Julia, who had removed her shoes and was already halfway across the churchyard, running barefoot with her Bible held over her head. Juice idly wondered if maybe rain would not hit the Bible, a holy book. His gaze slid over to Norman Cooper.

The men’s eyes met for a second of understanding neither could ever put into words, and then each looked straight ahead, heading for the church steps. Iris MacCoy was just going up, and Norman hurried to walk beside her.

Woody Beauchamp’s old black Plymouth came slowly down the street. It was so old that it had the great rear fender fins, and so well cared-for that the rain made tiny beads on the shiny finish. Seeing two cars pulling into a curved driveway, Woody followed. At first he wondered if he had made a mistake, but he recognized a couple of his customers from the café getting out of the cars ahead. Then Bobby Goode was there, waving him up a couple more inches. “Bring her on out of the street.”

As Woody got himself out from behind the wheel, Bobby had his hand out. Woody shook it and said, “Thank you, brother.”

Andy Smith got out of the passenger side and, in his lanky walk, came around the front of the Plymouth. Woody wore a good felt hat, but Andy’s head was bare.

“You got to get you a hat, boy,” said Woody.

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