Cadillac, Oklahoma

by Louise Farmer Smith

  “Wait,” she said so softly I barely heard it.

  “What is it you want, lady?”

  “More than a plate of eggs!” she said loud and clear. I’d never heard a rough word out of her before. Was she saying I hadn’t been a good boyfriend. I hadn’t, of course. I didn’t even know when her birthday was. She was quiet again, rocking a little on the box obviously working up to something she was anxious about.

  “Just spit it out,” I said.

  “I just don’t want to be alone anymore.”

  I waited for her to go on and realized my mouth was open and I should say something.

  “I don’t want to be alone myself,” I said. “What’d you have in mind?”

  She tightened her grip on her ribs, pulling her T-shirt smooth against her little breasts. “I don’t want to just live together, be half way all the time.”

  She didn’t want to live together? Hell, we’d never seen a movie. My heartbeat had picked up to a steady gallop I could hear inside my head, so I couldn’t think of the right thing to say. “You want us to get married?” I blurted. She bit her lip. “Sure,” I said, the way I always say sure when I have no idea what I’m talking about. Get married? I didn’t know. I just wanted to wash down the cabinets and put the canned goods away and roll out the rug and move the furniture around until it suited her. But something was wrong with the way things were going. “I don’t get it,” I said. “We’re friends, but you don’t really trust me, so I can’t figure why you’d want us to hitch up.”

  “I trust you!” A big dent like a check mark appeared between her eyebrows.

  “Then tell me how your dad died.”

  Her face kinda flared and then tightened. “No,” she said. She seemed to be thinking about talking, but then she stood. “Thanks for all the help.” She was expecting me to stand too, but I slouched a little further in the chair.

  “I don’t talk about that,” she said. “Sorry.”

  I’ve never been the kind who went in for persuasion. Either a woman wanted me or she didn’t. But Rose was the one who brought up us getting together, and now she was letting all that go to hang onto some secret. I scratched my jaw. Maybe I didn’t know how to be persuasive, but I sure as hell knew how to be stubborn, so I took out my pocketknife and began to scrape my fingernails.

  She sat back down. “I can’t tell people about my dad’s— I’ve never told anyone.”

  “Not people. Just me.” It was getting late. In all our rush to get everything in the house, we hadn’t turned on any lights. She was completely in shadow, and I wouldn’t have known she was crying if I hadn’t heard her gulp for breath.

  “Talk,” I said softly.

  “Huh uh,” she sniffled.

  “Rose. Talk. My life depends on this.” Where that came from I didn’t know, but it seemed as true as anything I’d ever said.

  I heard another shuddery breath, then she leaned her elbows on her knees and said to the floor, “As he got older the run got harder and harder for him. He never went to a doctor, but I’m pretty sure he had emphysema. He smoked almost as much as he coughed. Going north was no problem, he said. He was rested from being at home. It was the way back, exhausted after unloading in Sarrat. That was the worst.” Her pinched little voice got steadier.

  “When I was sixteen, he taught me to drive and started taking me with him, showing me the route—where it was dangerous, where the police hid. I loved being away from home. This was a very easy life—just riding along with my papi, no little children to look after and no women to tell me what to do. After I got used to the route, he asked me to drive some on the way home, so he could rest.” Rose glanced up, but she couldn’t see me any better than I could see her. “I loved driving the truck, especially at night in the moonlight, singing softly along with the radio while my papi slept.”

  “One night just before my seventeenth birthday—” Her voice tensed up and I gripped the edge of the chair as she went on. “I looked over at him and saw that his seat belt wasn’t fastened. I should have stopped right then and fixed it, and I told myself I would, but I just kept on singing, thinking only of myself, on top of the world, driving that truck.” And then she stopped and I listened to her sob.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “There was an accident and he died. That’s enough.”

  “He was crushed!” Sobs shook the word out of her. “The truck rolled over,” she whispered. “I never told anyone about the seat belt.”

  Jesus, she’d been only sixteen and had carried this for maybe twenty years. Finally I said, “Why don’t you get up off that box, and we’ll put the kitchen things away.” I gave her a hand up and took her easy into my arms. She rested her cheek against my chest, so her tears leaked into my shirt. Holding that little thing was like a shot of morphine. I wasn’t going to ask her if she was sure about me. There wasn’t going to be any more serious talk tonight. After we kissed, she stepped away from the box, and I knelt down and slid my pocketknife gently through the packing tape.

  §

  Hillary O’Brian’s

  Cadillac Voices

  This insightful piece was slid under The Courier’s door over the weekend. Thank you, whoever you are.

  FRANKNESS

  I have noticed that in an Oklahoma woman frankness is not a virtue. It counts for the same thing as rudeness or selfishness. What gets a great deal of credit is sweetness. In Oklahoma it is good to be sweet, whereas in the East, I’m told, the word means stupid. Of course, if an Oklahoma girl had her choice, she would choose beauty, that being prized above all else. She won’t admit it, but the first thing an Oklahoma woman will tell you about another woman is whether she’s beautiful. “Walter’s new wife isn’t beautiful, but she is sweet.”

  But frankness is a flaw. “One always knows where Maude stands,” my mother used to say—meaning Maude should keep her thoughts to herself. If a lady is asked for the truth, she should create some gossamer distraction to waft in the face of the questioner, some veil from which all lament has been wrung.

  When I’m asked, “How are you coping since your mother-in-law moved in?” The proper answer is, “It’s so handy now we have the hospital bed. When I hold the baby up, grandmother smiles at him like she knows who he is.” This sort of evasion has the added advantage of discouraging friendships with frank people who might lead one into the path of self-expression.

  What I must never say is what, for me, would be the First True Things: I married the wrong man. I am disappointed in my children. I am dying of loneliness. There will be no stars in my crown for blurting out such ugliness. My line is: I sure am lucky to have this lovely man and these lovely children and live in this really, really lovely big town. Over time, of course, I fear, such diaphanous puffs of meringue will cause my teeth to rot, and my daughters to despise me.

  Anonymous

  CADILLAC SHERIFF

  Just as Ellis County Sheriff Jake Hale was fishing another donut out of the bag on the floor of his patrol car, his cell phone rang. He recognized the number of the Juvenile Detention Center. “Hello, Mr. Baird,” he said to the Director.

  “Sheriff, we got an urgent situation,” Baird wheezed into the phone.

  Between Baird’s mouth-breathing and the crackly cell phone the County had issued Jake, this was going to be like talking to Darth Vader. “I’m on my way,” Jake shouted and shut off the phone. Likely another runaway. The place was like a sieve. And why not. It used to be the Methodist orphanage, and the security installations had never caught up with its being a holding pen for juvie felons, hard luck minor offenders, and whackos awaiting decisions from psychiatrists. He’d rousted them out of the cotton fields surrounding Cadillac and tracked them down in the lower bowels of Ellis County.

  Jake speeded up, turned on the cherry, but resisted firing up the siren. Sirens just got people excited.

  As he drove up the long driveway onto the detention center grounds, Melvin Baird waved to him from the high ground around the flagpole. Jake got out
and waved back as Baird, thin as a rail and hunched, skidded down the slope to meet him. “Sorry to get you out so early, Sheriff, but we’ve got a real bad situation. A transfer has a gun.”

  “Yeah?” Jake took out his cell phone and speed dialed his deputies while Baird continued to talk.

  “He shot a long-time employee, and he’s holding a girl in the cafeteria.”

  “Jesus!”

  “I know.”

  Baird pointed to the windows along the side of the cafeteria, a low building that faced across the central yard to the administration building.

  “Can we see them?”

  “No. At least I couldn’t looking across from my office. But the boys claim he ran into the kitchen pantry off to your left.”

  “Any windows to that?”

  “No.”

  Jake moved toward the end of the building out of sight from the windows. With Baird close behind him he looked sidelong inside to see the deserted tables, scattered cereal bowls, and overturned chairs. “You said there was a girl, a hostage? Where’d he get a girl around here?”

  “She must have been somebody’s visitor.”

  “So early in the morning?”

  Baird took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead and the back of his neck. “I haven’t done all the investigating I like to do when we have an incident. Interviews and so on. But the gun—”

  “Where’re the rest of the kids?”

  “We put them with the staff in the gymnasium.”

  “How’s the guy that got shot?”

  “It was a woman. She’s at the hospital. Wounded in the arm.”

  “Who’s the kid with the gun?”

  “Darrell Sturm, fifteen-year-old, male Caucasian.”

  “What else?”

  “Sorry. He’s only been here two weeks. A transfer from Custer County because of him having an uncle in Cadillac. We’re trying to reach the uncle right now.”

  “What’d the kid do?”

  “Sold drugs.”

  “What kind?”

  “Marijuana.”

  “How’d he get the gun?”

  Baird’s hands went up like he was stopping traffic. “We have absolutely no idea. No idea. He certainly didn’t have it with him when he was registered two weeks ago. And he’s had no visitors. We’re absolutely sure of that. The uncle hasn’t shown up at all. We never have guns in here. Nothing like this has ever—”

  “How many outside doors?”

  “Main door on the right end and the kitchen door around the other end.”

  “Loading dock?”

  “No, no. You just walk right in. I wish I could tell you more about him.”

  The place, so deserted, could have been any school. The gym stood beyond the playing fields. The day was overcast and heavy. The rope hitch clanged against the flagpole. Jake had been on a real high last night with Judianne, that feeling of being a guy who could handle anything. He hadn’t been able to imagine the right woman until he’d seen her. She was married at the time, but he’d waited for her to get out of that. But this morning that belief in their future had quickly drained into that pit he called What I Have to Offer Her. No raise in ten years. His shabby house at the edge of town, surrounded by the parking lots of K-Mart and Krispy Kreme, sank deeper into the weeds every day. He’d barely been re-elected last time. “A lightweight,” his opponent called him.

  “Back when I came here,” Baird was saying, “our biggest problem was boys getting into fistfights. What the County sends us these days comes in worse and worse.”

  “I’m familiar. Who’d he shoot?”

  “Lena Brandt, an aide, an elderly woman. Been here longer than I have. She’s the big gal who ran the little snack house for the boys. Everybody liked her.”

  “Any other shots?”

  “No one else has been hurt.”

  “I’m counting bullets.”

  “No other shots. As far as I know.”

  “You wouldn’t know what kind of gun it was?” Jake asked and watched Baird’s lower lip pull down. “That’s okay.” He glanced at his phone. “My deputies are on the way. We’ll tape off the area, so we’ll have control. Then I’ll go in and see what I can do.”

  “Do you have a bullhorn?” Baird asked.

  “I don’t like bullhorns. You keep everybody in the gym including the staff. Don’t call anyone else. If that uncle shows up, have him come to me. The best way will be the simplest. The kid’s probably scared and waiting for us to get him out of this. You stay in the gym with everybody else.”

  As Baird worked his way toward the gym in a wobbly jog, Jake’s cell phone rang. He looked at the incoming number. Oh Lord.

  “Hello, Mr. Mayor. What can I do for you this morning? … Yeah, I’m on top of it….. The Guard? Criminy, Walter. We’re not going to call in the National Guard for one little guy. Besides, what’s left of our boys are still in Afghanistan. How’d you find out about this situation? … I didn’t know your niece worked here …. Look, if anybody else calls—” Jake looked up to see the very man he was talking to walking toward him across the yard, cell phone at his ear. Jake waited until they were face to face, and the mayor had lowered his phone, then Jake said, “I’m hoping to handle this very quietly, Walter. And alone.”

  Two men in tan uniforms trotted up. “Okay, you two,” Jake said, “There’s a kid in the cafeteria with a gun. He may have a girl with him in the storeroom on the left end. I want yellow tape around this whole building, twenty feet out. And across the drive. Absolutely no trespassers. I don’t care if the Governor shows up. Then one of you at each of the doors.”

  The mayor cleared his throat. “I don’t need to remind you, Jake, that one person has already been shot, a county employee, no less. What’s your plan?”

  “My plan is to wait until the kid gets hungry and offer him a Big Mac. Okay? Now if you could just—”

  “I’m staying.”

  The back of Jake’s neck prickled. He was used to people being stubborn. Usually his size and the badge were enough. And now, over the mayor’s shoulder, Jake saw a guy in white shorts and T-shirt walking toward them from the gym. Matthews, the Baptist minister.

  “Hi, Sheriff, I was here for basketball practice,” the reverend said. “Anything I can do?”

  “You might go collect all the cell phones in the gym.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for that. It seems like every member of the staff made at least twenty calls in the first ten minutes.”

  “Jesus! Pardon me, Reverend.”

  “I’ll go back and see if I can calm everybody down, maybe get a constructive discussion going.”

  “Thanks.”

  Before he even turned around, a new Lincoln pulled up the drive. “Wait, Reverend Matthews, wait up!” the driver called. A trim man in Hawaiian shirt and a crown of silver curls got out and ran across the yard. He gave quick nods to Jake and Mayor Mashburn.

  “Percy Pikestaff, minister at The Living God.” he said to Reverend Matthews and laid his hand on the taller man’s shoulder. “I’m so glad to catch you here. My wife just called me about this tragedy. I’m calling our phone tree right now. If you could get your people out, we could have a huge impact. Circle this whole building in the powerful arms of prayer.”

  Jake’s stomach took a queasy lurch. “No! Cut that idea right now. We don’t want any people here. A crowd is the last thing we need.”

  “This wouldn’t be like a mob. These are all Christians.” Pikestaff turned back to Reverend Matthews. “This is the chance of a lifetime to prove the power of prayer. Are you with me, Reverend Matthews?”

  Matthews slowly shook his head. “The sheriff’s right about a crowd. Besides,” he raised his eyebrows, “a good deal of my congregation has already gone over to The Living God. They’re probably already on your phone tree.”

  Pikestaff cut off a quick smile, walked up the slope to the flagpole and took out his phone.

  “Shit,” Jake said. “What do they believe
out there at The Living God?” he asked Reverend Matthews.

  “Oh, they’re a mix, Baptist, Church of God, probably some Methodists. And a lot of folks who’ve never been to church.”

  “He’s cutting into your congregation, huh?”

  “People want to belong to something big,” Reverend Matthews said, “I’ll see what I can do in the gym, maybe something active, although the kids are likely too keyed up to play anything with rules.”

  Jake frowned at the mayor, who showed no more signs of leaving than Reverend Pikestaff had. The mayor, who was probably hoping to get his picture in the paper, just shrugged, his sport coat rising and falling beneath his big ears. Jake looked away and felt one of those damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t days rising before him. The bark of a faulty muffler alerted him to the arrival of a small red pick-up. Oh hell. Where were the deputies with that yellow tape? Jake ran toward the truck hoping to reach it before the small woman in blue jeans and flying red hair got out of the cab. The mayor followed.

  “Christ Amighty, Judianne,” Jake whispered, leaning down beside the door of the truck. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “This is my morning for literacy testing, Jake. I told you that last night. Besides, I know this boy. I tested him last week.”

  The mayor had his nose in the window like she was his girlfriend. “Judianne, it’s not safe here. The shooter is right there in the cafeteria.”

  “Don’t say shooter, Mayor Mashburn,” Judianne said. “We’re not on television. His name is Darrell. He has a third grade reading level, but he’s smart. He may be ADHD, too. Let me talk to him.” She swung open the door and stepped out of the truck.

  Jake grabbed her shoulders. Judianne bridled. “Look, Jake. He’s little. I’m little. One of you big mooses goes in there, he’s likely to shoot you in the nose. I was with him just last week, talking. I’ve got rapport. He told me he likes comic books.”