I slip past them to go out into the sunshine. The minister follows and thanks me for my songs. “Do you sing professionally?” he asks.
I wrap my arms around myself. “No, not yet. But I will soon.”
§
Hillary O’Brian’s
Cadillac Voices
More thoughts about our Oklahoma weather and a surprising revelation about a favorite old song.
SAND
Lately there’s been talk about Cadillac’s climate in Hillary’s column, and I’d like to speak up for myself and say I can take tornadoes and blizzards even the suffocating heat at midnight. But you want to know what just wears me out? The sand. It seeps in everywhere, around the windows, under the door and shakes off my little kids, their hair and shirts, gets caught in their pockets and between their toes. I’m not talking about dirt. It’s that dad gum, powdery sand that blows in the air. “Here comes Texas,” Mama used to say, squinting towards the west.
Woodie Guthrie was passing through Oklahoma during a sand storm, sky dark, everybody holding their noses like poison gas was coming. Thinking he was about to meet his Maker, Woodie wrote, “So Long, It’s Been Good To Know You.” I read that somewhere.
Big rollers like that don’t come anymore ’cause of better farming and more lakes, but when I see the sky around our place turn all sour yellow and hear that singing the sand makes as it scours the finish off our Dodge, I think about my grandmother saying how after a sand storm she’d sweep the dust off the rafters before shaking out the curtains. She’d wash each dish and every stitch of clothes, and then round up her six kids for Lifebuoy shampoos.
Estelle Barton
Ellis County resident since
1965
POWER BREAKFAST
2013
Wynona Blosser had always shown a terrible reverence for the power of money. Her excuse for why her son Floyd didn’t graduate from high school, ever have a steady girl, or find any line of work, was that his daddy never gave him the reins over at the bank. So now that Old Blosser was dead, she was just standing back waiting for her little Floyd to blossom into a shrewd businessman and civic leader.
Floyd himself hadn’t changed a bit since his daddy died. Thirty-six years old and the heir to millions, big old, soft Floyd still shambled around in the fancy clothes his mother picked out and acted embarrassed not to have jeans and a greasy windbreaker like the rest of us.
It was everybody else here at the coffee shop who’d changed. Used to be Murleen brought Floyd the mop when he spilled milk, and here she was this morning, straining the seams of an unusually clean waitress uniform, asking if she couldn’t get him a little more butter for his flapjacks.
And Peanuts Murphy, that balding curmudgeon, still fuming about the way the town fathers had tried to cheat him last week, said he was going to show everyone in town with a much bigger project. He was proposing himself and Floyd be partners in a development scheme to dam up the Fuller creek and build a high-end lakeside addition. This partnership was to be 50-50, of course: Floyd would put up all the money, Peanuts would do all the thinking.
I was disgusted. Everybody in Cadillac seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for Floyd to write that first misguided check and prove us all right about him. We figured this was the beginning of the end of the Blosser fortune, and while it was getting frittered away, we might as well stand up close, so some of it frittered onto us.
I am a good case in point. Truth to tell, the very first thing I thought of when I heard about old Blosser bending forward in agony in the barber’s chair, was the busted clutch plate on my pickup—$400.00 right there. Floyd missed my truck. So did I, of course. I hate bumming rides, and Floyd missed riding out to the creek to fish and shoot jackrabbits.
The problem was getting a word in edgewise. Peanuts, sweat glistening on his bald head, was bulling on about subcontractors and earth moving. Murleen wanted a life-long meal ticket, and the preacher, damn his greedy hide, had already proposed that Floyd might want to put aluminum siding on the parsonage—just as a memorial to old Blosser. Jesus!
Peanuts was talking “recreational use” when Floyd stood up from the table like he’d had a sudden call from nature. “R.J.,” he called over to me, “could I see you outside? Please?”
“Hold on now, Floyd,” Peanuts said, “we’ve got business to transact.”
“I know,” said Floyd, “but I’ve got to go right now.” And he got up with the paper napkin still stuck in the front of his shirt. I pulled the napkin out, dropped it on a table and pushed open the door for Floyd.
“R.J., can we go out to the creek?” Floyd asked when we got outside.
“Sorry, Floyd, the clutch is shot.”
“Let’s take a car then.”
“Axles’re too low. You know that.”
“I need to talk to you. I’m worried about the money.”
“Yeah. I know. Just keep it all. Don’t sign anything, especially with Peanuts.”
“I wasn’t going to. Peanuts is okay, but I like the creek.”
“Atta boy. Reach out and take what you want.”
“The problem is, I think I already signed something. I think the money’s all gone.”
“My god, Floyd, what happened?”
“Can’t we go out to the creek? How long will it take Buddy to put in a new clutch?”
“I don’t know. He ain’t even towed it yet.”
“Call him up. Tell him to go get it. Tell him I’ll pay.”
“But you just said all your money was gone.”
“Buddy doesn’t know that yet.”
I was amazed. Maybe Mrs. Blosser was right. Maybe her little boy was smartening up.
It was hard to believe that a stranger had gotten to Floyd before any of us hometown boys, but as he stammered out the story two days later while we sat on a log beside the creek, it became clear that’s exactly what had happened. Floyd stared at his shiny loafers and told how the day after the funeral, passing himself off as a financial planner, a man from Tulsa had persuaded Floyd to sign over 3.6 million dollars to be invested in some kind of securities. Floyd’s account at the bank registered empty, and he was too ashamed to tell anyone.
I asked if he had a copy of what he’d signed, and he pulled a little wad of paper out of the side pocket of his sport coat. He’d folded the thing about a dozen times, the way a grade school kid does, so I had a hard time opening it up without tearing it. I read it but couldn’t tell much. Floyd’s blocky signature was in three different places, and this guy, Giacometti, had also signed it, but these things aren’t my line.
“Is this all the money there was?” I asked.
“Daddy had been selling things, houses and his interest in the paint store and the barber shop to get cash for some deal, Mama said. So when he died, it was all there in the bank.”
“Oh, brother.”
“Everybody’s going to laugh,” he whimpered.
“Maybe this guy’s on the level. Maybe he’s out there making money for you right now.”
Floyd just shook his head. More than anybody else in town, he’d known he’d lose it. He wiped his nose with a clean white handkerchief. “I just didn’t think it’d be this fast,” he said. “I was going to give you a real good fishing rod and buy Peanuts a DVD. Murleen wants a diamond ring.”
“There’s one good thing—you’re not going to get tangled up with Murleen. Just tell folks your investments didn’t pan out and then shut up.”
“No, you tell them. I’ve got to tell Mama.”
“At least this will get Peanuts off your back.”
We left it at that. I only told one person, and I picked him very carefully. I waited until I ran into him coming out of the hardware store the next afternoon.
“Hello, Reverend Fletcher, how’re you.”
“Very well, thank you, which is always a blessing at my age.”
“I haven’t seen you since Blosser’s funeral,” I said.
“My, my what a tragedy—so y
oung, only 81, and such a generous man. He will be missed.”
“Yeah, it’s a shame about his money.”
“What do you mean, R.J.?” The reverend pulled his chin down and looked at me through his eyebrows.
“Floyd said it was just one bad investment.”
Fletcher’s nostrils flared, and he got a little green around the gills. “You mean Floyd’s lost all the money already.”
“Yep. Easy come, easy go, huh, Reverend?” I did feel a little mean, but I wanted to see the look on his face as he saw that aluminum siding go a-glimmering. What a dark thing my heart is.
That was around five p.m. At 7:30 the next morning we were gathered at the front corner table of The Busy Bee, and Floyd asked Murleen for some catsup for his eggs. She told him to get it himself.
And that would have been it, end of story. But three weeks later I got a very shaky-voiced call from Floyd who told me he’d just gotten some little pieces of paper from New York, and it looked like all his money was resting comfortably there in a brokerage house in his name.
I told Floyd to keep the news to himself, but he couldn’t bear not to have everybody slobber over him.
The wolves closed in. Murleen shined up her act with a new hair-do and some clothes that would have made a saloon girl proud. Peanuts got my boss, Karl Stolt, to draw up plans and estimates for the dam on assurances that Floyd would, when the time came, sign anything Peanuts told him to. Reverend Fletcher put Floyd on the church Building Committee. And Mother Blosser brought in her contender for the wife of the heir, the grandchild of a friend of hers. She moved Gretchen into their house and made it clear that nature could take its course. Floyd was bewildered. We spent a lot of time at the creek.
“Reach out and take hold,” I said. “Decide what you really want, and go for it.”
Talk is cheap. I felt sorry for him, but I also couldn’t resist making things a little worse. The idea came to me in a flash, and I leaned over to Floyd who was sitting there on the log, with his arms around his knees like an oversized six-year-old on a slop jar. “Floyd,” I whispered, “if you’re really going to haul off and refuse to sign the contract for the dam like you’re saying, then I think you ought to invite your Mother and little Gretchen to join you for breakfast at The Busy Bee. Just for moral support.”
“Really,” he said, amazed.
“Really.”
“You come too, okay?”
I wasn’t the only one with a flare for drama. When the morning of the showdown came, Peanuts brought a kid with a camera and my friend Hillary from The Courier. He also brought my boss, Karl Stolt, a ham-fisted guy who always had breakfast at home. I didn’t offer any pleasantries. We all sat down at the long table in the front window and waited. I hoped this would be quick since I was hungry.
When Gretchen walked in, towed by Wynona Blosser, I knew I was in the presence of the kind of slim, washed-out young female you almost never see anymore. Gretchen stared around The Busy Bee with parted lips and vacant eyes, a real empty cup, one of that vanishing breed who respects anything that’s bigger or older than she is just so long as it’s male. The perfect woman for Floyd.
Mrs. Blosser, ruddy with rouge and clanking with gold jewelry, guided Gretchen, almost transparent by comparison, to the seat next to Floyd. I was sitting on the other side of Floyd, our backs to the window. Karl Stolt, Peanuts, and a lawyer named Wallingford faced us. Except for taking a light reading off Peanuts’ forehead, the photographer and the reporter waited motionless in the corner.
Murleen wore a tight, white dress that came half way down her thighs. And slung kitty-cornered across her lumpy hips was a turquoise Indian belt, heavy enough to carry six-shooters. She seemed anxious about what her role might be, and armed with the coffee pot, she hovered. Our sheriff, Jake Hale, who liked to eat in peace, took one look at the big set up and left.
The first one to make a move was Wynona Blosser. She stood up and shook hands with Peanuts, Stolt, and Wallingford and paid each one some flimsy compliment about knowing his sisters or admiring his rose bushes. It was at that point that it first crossed my mind that she might not be entirely against flooding forty fertile acres in order to have lake front property for expensive houses.
She sat back, real proud to have gotten us clods off to a gracious start. I wanted Peanuts to say, Sign here, so that Floyd could say no, like he wanted, and we could all order breakfast. But Wallingford began to drone on in that legal talk that puts everyone to sleep. You just have to let those guys run down, so I waited and kept checking Floyd’s face. He had that same shut- down look he used to get from algebra. But Wynona kept piping up with uh huhs and absolutelies. She really liked this stuff, and she may have even understood it. I couldn’t say. My stomach growled.
I realized then that this deal might be a dumb idea for seventeen different reasons, but if the Widow Blosser found it entertaining and socially to her advantage, well we might as well sell those guns we’d been shooting jack rabbits with and buy ourselves some boats.
Finally Wallingford was winding down. Peanuts snapped the button on his ballpoint and placed his fingers on the edge of his papers, ready to push them across the table to Floyd. Stolt kept rocking his elbows on the table. He’d had a belly full of party-of-the-first-parts, and he’d looked at the Coca Cola clock about thirty times. I knew he was counting every minute that he wasn’t riding herd on his crew.
Suddenly Mrs. Blosser took over again. “I know none of us wants this to be just an ordinary development. The quality of the detail in these houses must be the very finest. Kitchen cabinets, for instance. And this town could use a new country club, which would make a wonderful center of the development.”
This was too much for Stolt. He slammed down his fist. “Are you gonna sign this or not!” he shouted at Floyd. Murleen, always sensitive to the direction of the wind, was standing behind Stolt. “Sign it!” she said with a swagger of the holster belt.
Floyd looked at his mother, who gave him back a forty-caliber smile that caused his head to sink a little further into his chest. Peanuts shoved the papers across and put the pen in Floyd’s left hand. I waited for Floyd to turn my way. I would at least have given him the raising of my eyebrows: Is this really what you want? But his gaze wouldn’t rise off the table. He was ashamed. I heard him inhale. He straightened the papers and looked for the big X’s to which Peanuts was directing his attention.
But before he put the pen to the paper, Floyd stopped, statue still. I don’t think the man was breathing. Then there was a tremor in his body, like a very mild earthquake that shakes every particle just a little. His head was rising up from his chest. I looked across his lap to see his right hand resting on Gretchen’s narrow thigh. Not just resting, actually. He had a good grip on her around the inside near the knee. I leaned forward to see her face. She was looking straight ahead, wide eyes on the high beam.
“Peanuts,” Floyd said slow and tight, “you are my friend, but I don’t want to dam up the creek.” With that he screeched back from the table. I thought he might haul Gretchen out by the thigh, but he released her, and the two of them rushed out, leaving Mother Blosser to cover their backs. And I have got to hand it to her, the lady did a real fine job.
Peanuts reared back into Murleen and the coffee pot. “Sonovabitch! Floyd, you get back in here!” The coffee went mostly on Wallingford, who was trying to save himself and his paperwork. The photographer was snapping wildly and Hillary was grinning. Peanuts headed for the door, but Wynona blocked it. She may have been entertained by legal talk, but the sight of her cub standing up to the lawyer, the contractor and the developer put fire in the lioness’s eyes.
“Sit down!” she roared at Peanuts. “Floyd has spoken.”
Wow! Floyd and Gretchen were off, probably looking for a spot where he could get another good grip on her. Stolt headed out through the kitchen. Wallingford still sat at the table, mopping off the contracts with a handful of paper napkins, and Murleen, with coffee on her tits, p
osed for pictures.
Mrs. Blosser had backed Peanuts into a chair. The poor man was livid. Twice in ten days his big plans had fallen through. There would be no living with him now. I figured it was not a good day to show up to work for Karl Stolt, so I just sat back and ordered some eggs and hash browns, those being, at the time, what I wanted to reach out and grab hold of.
§
Hillary O’Brian’s
Cadillac Voices
The arts are alive and boiling in Cadillac.
POET LAUREATE
Who told you people you needed a poet laureate? And who told you this was the way to find one—run a contest and let the president of the garden club choose the winner?
They’ve asked me to compete with a couple of jingle writers, a Hallmark alum and the composer of Hop-a-long hymns. This is not proper competition for a man who has published his work in Poets Carnival.
I am ashamed to admit how pleased I was when the dean of fine arts at CC College asked me if he could advance my name for Poet Laureate. I fell all over myself, not even asking Laureate of what. We poets can get excited over crumbs—like my sonnet in The Courier printed next to a recipe for Apple Pan Dowdy.
Now this. Do I send a villanelle just to make sure I will be misunderstood and can retire with hauteur when I lose? Or shall I grovel—write some rhyming suck-up in praise of the prairie?
I am tortured.
My wife tells me I would be tortured if I lived in Boston and published in The Paris Review.
It’s true. But humiliation is my muse. This insult is like kindling. I will catch, flare, and warm the cheeks of Madame President of the Garden Club. One takes one’s audience where one finds her.
Herbert Ashcroft Wiley
Cadillac resident since 1990
A COMFORTING VOICE
2013
Cadillac, Oklahoma Page 7