At once, Amos came to stand beside her and said, “Of course you’re a Stuart, and you can do anything you put your mind to!” He put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. “If you really could go for a while, Maury, I think it would be wonderful. Leslie has always liked you, and the kids would like you too. It would be a fine thing.”
Maury hugged him, grateful for his warm support. She loved her father fiercely and responded to his approval. “All right then, I’ll go. That’s all there is to it.”
She cast a triumphant glance toward Jerry, who was leaning against the door, his handsome face half smiling. “I think it would be good for you,” he said slowly. “There’s one-holers and two-holers.”
Maury stared at him. “What on earth are you talking about?” she demanded.
“The outdoor privies! Some of them are one-holers and some are two-holers. You see—”
“I don’t want to hear anymore of that nonsense,” Maury said hastily. “I’d go even if I had to walk on my own two feet to get there.”
“Well,” Jerry said lazily, “no need for that. I’ll fly you down—” he turned to his father, saying, “if you’ll pay for the gas, Dad.”
“Where would you get a plane?”
“Tom Mackelhaney told me I could have use of the old Stedman.” He referred to an ancient two-seater, a crop duster. “It throws oil in the face of the passenger in the front cockpit.” He grinned again at his sister. “If you’re going to the oil fields it wouldn’t hurt you to get acquainted with a little of that stuff. I’ll pick you up at six o’clock in the morning.”
Maury stared at him. “You knew I was going, didn’t you?”
“You never could resist a dare.” He grew serious for a moment, then said, “I’m glad you’re going. I think a lot of Uncle Pete and I really think he needs the help.” He came over to her, hugged her, then kissed her smooth cheek. “You’re a good-looking gal,” he said. “Some guy’s missing a big chance with you. Hate to see a good woman wasted. Be ready at dawn and bring a sack in case you throw up. I don’t want you to have to clean that plane out, and I’m certainly not going to.”
“Will this thing fly?” Maury stared doubtfully at the plane that Jerry patted fondly.
“Of course it will fly.” Jerry gave her an insulted look. “With a pilot like me how could it not? Are you scared?”
Maury shook her head, her lips drawn into a stubborn line. “Just show me how to get into this contraption.”
“Well, it’s going to be quite a trick in that skirt.”
Gritting her teeth and struggling with the skirt, Maury managed to get into the front seat. Jerry clambered up on the wing and handed her a soft leather helmet with huge goggles. As she wrestled it on over her heavy mass of hair, he strapped her in. Then he got into his own seat and she heard his voice. “You sure you want to do this?”
“Yes!”
He started the engine, and Maury nearly leaped out of her seat at the roaring explosion. Jerry ran the engine briefly, then slowly taxied the plane out on the runway. The frail craft trembled as Jerry revved up the engine, and they went bumping along clumsily for what seemed like a long time. Finally Jerry shouted, “Here we go!” and suddenly there was no roughness. Looking out over the sides, Maury saw the ground fall away. She gripped the edge of her seat convulsively, expecting to fall at any second.
The air was freezing and the ground beneath was white with snow. Soon, however, Jerry began to point out parts of the city that she had seen from the ground. It looked so different from the air, and Maury forgot her fear. Finally he wheeled the plane around and began to gain altitude.
The roar of the engine almost lulled Maury to sleep—but it was too cold for that. After the first wave of fear left her she enjoyed looking down at the earth. Snow covered it and it was a beautiful white wonderland. Rivers made black, curling, serpentine forms, breaking the pristine whiteness of the snow. Mountains jutted up at the sky, and ahead white clouds dotted the blue horizon.
They had to stop frequently for fuel, but Jerry was in a hurry. “I know it’s cold and uncomfortable, but it’s quick,” he said. “This is the last stop. Can you make it, Sis?”
“Sure I can, Brother.”
He leaned over and kissed her cold cheek. “You’re all right,” he said and went back to rev up the engine.
They landed on a small field in Oklahoma. Jerry said, “Can you make it by yourself, Sis? I’ve really got to get back.”
“Yes, I’ll have someone call me a taxi.”
“Well, I can do that! You’re a taxi!” he laughed.
“You fool!” Maury threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly, whispering, “Thanks, Jerry.” She released him and looked up into his green eyes, so much like her own.
He looked down at her and said, “We green-eyed, good-looking Stuarts have to take care of each other, don’t we?”
He clapped her on the shoulder and winked playfully, and then turned and walked back to the airplane.
Maury watched him take off, and when the plane was a mere dot in the sky, she turned and walked inside a small hangar. It was cold inside, but in the manager’s office a wood-burning stove glowed with a cheery appearance. “I need to hire someone to take me to my uncle’s,” she said.
“Might cost quite a bit.”
“I can pay,” Maury said coolly, “but I’m in a hurry.”
The manager called out, “Harry, this lady needs to be hauled somewhere. You take her, will you?”
Harry turned out to be a loquacious Oklahoman who wanted to know everything about Maury. He fancied himself a Romeo and made himself totally available. “While you are here, you and me could go out and see the sights. What do you say?”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Sure you will. Here’s the number. Just call the airport. I’ll show you a good time, Sweetheart.”
He followed her instructions, which she had gotten from Jerry, and soon pulled up in the middle of what seemed to be the most desolate land that she’d ever seen. A ramshackle house of some sort stood at the bottom of a half-finished oil derrick, and everything looked incomplete, worn out, and depressing.
“How much?” she asked.
“Have to have three dollars. It was a long trip.”
She gave him four dollars and said, “Thanks!”
“Don’t forget—you got my phone number. We’ll have us a hot time, Baby!”
Maury picked up her suitcase and started up the path to the house. When she was ten feet away, Pete came out. She remembered him instantly, though she had not seen him for several years. “Uncle Pete!” she greeted him, putting down her suitcase as he came to her and put his arms around her.
He leaned back and shook his head. “You look good, Maury! A sight for sore eyes!” Doubt came to him and he shook his head again. “I ain’t sure about this. It’s awful rough here. You ain’t used to it.”
“Well, I’ll get used to it,” Maury said firmly. “Come on now, where are the kids? I haven’t seen them since they were in diapers.”
She stepped into the house—which was a depressing experience. It was the very barest, minimum sort of shelter, and little housekeeping had been done. She ignored the wallpaper, which was old newspaper that was peeling off in spots, and she turned to face the two youngsters who stood regarding her with wide eyes.
“Well, this is Stephen and this is Mona. Kids, this is your cousin Maury.”
Stephen, at the age of ten, was a small copy of his father, lank and with a head of shaggy black hair that needed cutting. “That’s a funny name,” he said loudly.
His sister, Mona, two years his junior, immediately slapped at him. “Don’t talk like that, Stephen. It ain’t polite.”
An argument ensued and Pete at once said, “You kids hush up.” He turned to Maury, saying, “Give me your suitcase. We fixed a room for you—it ain’t much, but at least you’ll have a little privacy.”
“That was our room. Now we’ve got to sleep
in here,” Stephen grumbled.
“You hush!” Mona said. She came over and touched Maury’s coat gently and said, “I hope you like it here. Do you like to play dolls?”
“I love to play dolls.” Maury nodded. She looked over at the boy, who had a mulish look on his face. “I’m sorry to take your bedroom, Stephen, but maybe I can make it up to you.”
“Sure you can,” Pete said hastily. “I’ll go see if Leslie’s awake. The doctor left some sleeping medicine that just knocks her for a loop.” He disappeared through one of the two doors that broke up the back side of the larger room. Soon he reappeared and said, “Come on in—she’s awake.”
Maury went inside and was appalled by the room. It was piled high with dirty clothes, and the smell was terrible. “Hello, Aunt Leslie,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”
Leslie Stuart had been a pretty girl once, but whatever disease had come had thinned her down so that her cheeks were hollow and her eyes were almost hidden in the crevices of their sockets. “Hello, Maury,” she whispered. There was a glaze over her dark brown eyes and the drug had slowed her reactions down. “I’m sorry you had to come. Haven’t been able to take care of the house.”
“You just don’t worry about that, Aunt Leslie. That’s what I came for. I was sick of teaching school, so this will be like a vacation for me.”
Some vacation, Maury thought grimly. She was sitting at the table late one night after the kids had finally gone to bed. She had been in Oklahoma for only five days, and it seemed like every bone in her body ached. She had never lived under primitive conditions before, and now she was learning how difficult it was for the very poor to just stay alive. Washing clothes, for example, was a nightmare. It consisted of building a fire under a huge, black pot that Pete had rigged up, and stirring them with a stick. Her hands, she noticed, were raw from the harsh soap and the freezing December wind. She saw that her nails, which she had always kept immaculate, were cracked and broken.
She wanted to lean her head down on the table, but she seemed to hear Jerry’s mocking voice telling her she was too soft. Defiantly, she straightened up, saying, “It could be worse.” But there was an honesty in this woman and she added, “But I don’t know how!”
Leslie was very ill; Maury saw that now. She had not tried to talk to Pete about it, for it was not necessary. She saw the look of worry in his fine gray eyes and did not want to add to his burdens. He was engaged in a tremendous struggle to drill an oil well almost single-handedly. She had watched enough to know that it was a gargantuan task that kept him busy sometimes as much as twenty hours in a day. He had to patch up old equipment, and he spent much time out scrounging for things he could not afford to buy. What he did find was worn out and practically useless, but he moved stubbornly forward, improvising with what he had.
“He’s quite a man,” Maury whispered to herself, thinking of Pete. He was still out working on the rig. She could hear his hammer ringing on metal, and she made light of her own hardship. Finally, she got up and began to heat the stew on the woodstove. When he came in, she said, “Uncle Pete, sit down and try to eat something.”
Pete’s face was lined with fatigue and pinched white with the cold. He pulled off his gloves awkwardly and held his hands over the stove, then slumped down in the chair. “Sounds good to me.” His voice slurred with weariness. He ate the stew slowly and then drank bitter black coffee fixed just the way he liked it.
Maury sat down beside him, nursing a cup of coffee that lacked the cream Maury had considered a necessity until now. “Did the kids behave themselves?” he asked, rousing himself.
“Yes, they did. When they got home from school, I helped them with their homework.”
“I bet they hated that.”
“Stephen did, but Mona’s a darling.”
A grin touched Pete’s lips. “Steve’s like I am—he needs education with a two-by-four.”
They talked for a while and finally she asked, “When are you leaving to go to the reunion?”
“I’m not going.”
Maury stared at him with shock. “But you have to go—you all promised.” She referred to the promise that all the sons and daughters of Will and Marian Stuart had made when Will had died. She’d heard it over and over again from Amos. “We all promised that every Christmas—no matter what—we would be there.” It had become a tradition with them.
“Why, you’ve got to go, Uncle Pete!” Maury urged.
“No money and no time.” He looked helpless for a moment, strong man that he was, and finally said, “I just can’t quit, Maury. I’ve just got to bring this well in. It’s the only hope I’ve got.” He looked down at his rough hands and shook his head. “I’ve got to do something for Leslie and the kids. She needs a doctor, and they need everything.”
Maury did not argue, but the next day she took time to go to a store where she made a collect phone call. She finally managed to get her father on the phone.
“Dad,” she said, “Pete says that he’s not going to go to the reunion.”
“Why, he’s got to go,” Amos’s voice crackled over the phone.
Maury had made up her mind. “Wire me some money and I’ll get Uncle Pete a ticket on a train to Arkansas. I’ll have him there even if I have to knock him out and drag him.”
“All right! Tell Pete not to worry about the money. We’ll take care of it. We Stuarts have to stick together.”
After a little more talk, Maury hung up. She felt a lot better. “At least,” she said, “I know this is right. Uncle Pete deserves something.” She felt a warm glow of pride, knowing that getting her uncle to the reunion was her doing. But she thought of the pile of dirty clothes at the house, and wearily turned to go face the grim realities of life at a wildcat oil rig.
CHRISTMAS IN THE OZARKS
Snow had laid ragged white strips on the hills that held the Stuart house. At three in the afternoon tiny granules had begun to fill the air, and now the flakes—as Owen Stuart looked out the window—were getting larger. He was a big man with broad shoulders, a reminder of the days when he had been a prizefighter. He wore a blue sweater, and from the right sleeve a gleaming steel hook extended, a memento of the Great War. He turned and spoke to Logan, who was standing beside him staring out the window. “I have about a million memories of this place,” he said. “Do you remember the time we shot the black bear? Right over there where the old barn used to be?”
“Yup,” Logan said. “I was only seven and that varmint just about scared me to death.”
Gavin Stuart rose from the rocking chair where he had been looking at old photos and came to stare out the window with them. “I’ve always been sorry I didn’t get to see that,” he remarked. “It must have been exciting.” Gavin was still a fine-looking man at thirty-nine. His wife, Heather, had stayed home with their children, Phillip and Sidney, as Phillip was ill.
The three men stood talking quietly until Lylah Stuart came in from the hall to announce, “It’s time to eat! Come and get it before we throw it out.”
Her name was Hart now. Her husband, Jesse, was sitting over at the library table that had come from the old Methodist parsonage. He was writing, as he usually was, but looked up, grinning. “Just bring it in here and wait on me like a good wife should.”
“That’s right,” Amos said, and grinned. “Movie stars ought to wait on their worthless husbands.”
Lylah Hart was a beautiful woman—at the age of fifty-one she looked no more than thirty-five. She had auburn hair and violet eyes that were deep-set and wide-spaced. She was, in fact, a star of movies, and she had produced a successful picture entitled The Gangster. It had been a thinly disguised screen biography of Al Capone. Now she looked over at her brother Pete and thought of the time he had shot Hymie Holtzman, who was trying to kill Amos. She ignored Amos’s teasing and went over beside Pete. Putting her arm around him, she said, “I wish you’d hurry up and get that oil well in. I could use some money for my business.”
Pete gri
nned at her thinly. “Just get some big star like Rudolph Valentino to star in your movie like you did for The Gangster.”
“Well, in the first place he’s dead,” Jesse Hart said. Jesse had crisp brown hair that was slightly curly and a neat, short beard. He leaned back in his chair and stroked his square face thoughtfully. “And in the second place, he’d be wrong for the role.”
“Who’s big in movies these days?” Owen demanded. “I can’t keep up with these pictures. Besides, most of them aren’t worth seeing.”
“You preachers all think like that,” Logan said. “And I guess you may be right. There’s some pretty raw stuff.”
“More reason for making good ones,” Lylah said strongly. “Come on in and let’s eat.”
But Owen was still staring out the window. “I remember the morning you left to go to Bible school, Lylah. Remember that, Amos?”
Amos laughed aloud, humor dancing in his eyes. “I guess I do! You and I caught her smoking out behind the barn.”
Lylah’s eyes flashed. “Let’s not start telling stories. I might have a few to tell on you two.”
At once Jesse straightened up. “Let’s have them,” he urged. “I’m always needing scandals on the famous Stuart family.”
Lylah went over and grabbed him by the ear, pulling him protesting out of the chair. “Never mind that—you come along and eat.”
They were soon gathered around the table and it was Owen who asked the blessing. “Well, there it is. The best meal we could put together,” Anne said. She and Helen and the other women had worked on the meal all day long.
“It’s a good meal!” Lenora Stuart spoke up. She was wearing the black uniform of a Salvation Army lassie. An accident while horseback riding had crippled her years ago, but her work in Chicago with the Salvation Army brought her satisfaction. Christie was the youngest of Will and Marian Stuart’s children. She had married Mario Castellano. “I wish Mario and the kids were here. All he ever wants to eat is Italian food.”
“How’s Mario doing?” Amos inquired. He had an interest in Mario’s family, the Castellanos. Nick, the eldest brother, had taken Amos in when he was practically starving, but since then, the two had gone in different directions. The Castellanos had grown powerful in the gang world. Only Mario had managed to escape. He had fallen in love with Christie and had firmly turned his back on the family business—bootlegging and the rackets.
A Season of Dreams Page 6