Mornings in Two Pan

by B K Froman

  “Back then, we didn’t have the hospital in Joseph. We waited for Doc Latham. There was screaming, hot water boiling, and the usual hand wringing going on.” Miz Cliva gave Jiggs a frustrating stare. “But your father…” She shook her head. “Ox had such a tiring code of how things should be. While he was hanging around the barn, he noticed Lisette’s horse wasn’t there. He hooked up the trailer, picked up a crow bar, and drove to the Mosely place to have a man-to-man talk if Cal was still around.

  “Right away, he could tell something was amiss. We had hurried out of there, leaving the light on and doors wide open. When he looked in the back, he couldn’t miss the red trail across the dirt or the row of stones piled in the dried-up pool. The bloody shack told its own story, along with Lisette’s gun on the cabinet where I’d forgotten I’d laid it. He checked her pistol, and found a bullet missing. Our secret went from three people to four.

  “Ox turned off the light and closed the doors. He was on the porch when a truck drove up. Who would’ve thought the laziest lawman in the county would get in his car and drive over after the doctor had called? Doc Latham was raging when he saw Zinnia bruised, strangled, and miscarrying. He demanded that her husband be arrested immediately.

  “So when Topeka Butler’s headlights flashed across the Mosely shack, Ox was standing there with a gun, staring at him. As soon as the sheriff got out of the car, Ox confessed, ‘I shot Cal Mosely for stealing cattle.’ I suppose it was half true. Cal had rustled most of the ranchers in the valley. It was one of his few talents, and no one could catch him at it.

  “Butler being a brilliant lawman, said, ‘That’s the best news I’ve had in a year. Where is he?’

  “Ox looked around. ‘Restin’ out back.’

  “From the look on Butler’s face, the blood revealed Cal was resting a little more eternally than he had expected. The sheriff had this gesture he always did when he was thinking. He lifted his Stetson, smoothed his hair as though he was massaging his brain. Then he resettled his hat and did exactly what Zinnia had predicted. Nothing.

  “Maybe it was because Butler hated Cal. Or he thought he owed a debt to Ox because he’d let Albrecht hang himself. Frankly, I think it was because Butler didn’t want to do the paperwork. Whatever his reasons, he said, ‘The way I see it, you’ve performed a public service. So I’m gonna tell you what happened here. The coward beat the baby out of his wife and took off. The county can’t afford safaris in search of derelict murderers. If he ever shows up, I’ll arrest him.’

  “The sheriff’s investigation concluded with burning down the Mosley shack because it was a ‘fire hazard.’ He and Ox unleashed the water Cal had pent up. It covered the stones and put a current back in Starvation Creek. That was about as much work as I’d ever seen Topeka do in his whole life. Zinnia was right. That was as far as justice went. Whichever path we chose, Cal would be dead. We could make a fuss out of it, but we’d only be blackballing ourselves and our families.”

  “But…” Jiggs squinted.

  “It was 1957. Things were different then. The only forensic piece of equipment Butler had was a gun and an undeserved badge. Zinnia stayed out in the country with your family. She later told me that Butler declared Cal Mosley ‘Missing—unknown whereabouts’ in case anyone asked. No one ever has but you.” She gave him a sad smile.

  Jiggs looked out the window to see if the light had hung up. How could it be a normal day? The wave of the last fifty years was crashing over his head. “Last week I thought my family was upstanding members of this community. Now you’re telling me Ox took the blame for murder to protect Mom? No. I’m not buying it. He wouldn’t throw away everything he’d built up.”

  “If Butler had known that it was a woman who’d shot Cal, he wouldn’t have reacted the same way. Lisette would’ve been arrested. Eventually, she’d have been acquitted. But at what cost? Ox didn’t take the chance. He shouldered the responsibility.”

  “Why wouldn’t he tell me all this?”

  “And what would he say? ‘Your mom killed a man.’ Is that something you’d tell Nap about his mother if you didn’t have to? Besides, it wasn’t Ox’s secret alone.”

  “But it was years ago. Surely by now…”

  “After keeping a sin buried for so long, it becomes a habit. It’s not natural to air it out and let it flap for everyone to see like dirty laundry. You have no idea what it’s like in this town to carry a name that is trailed by whispers, but Ox knew. He made sure you didn’t pay for the sins of his fathers—or your mother.” Miz Cliva folded her hands in her lap and nodded with a frown, urging Jiggs to comprehend.

  Silence settled in the room. Even the birds outside seemed to quieten. Jiggs rubbed his head, his hand stopping and holding the back of his neck. An ice cube in a glass made a tink-tink sound as it fell into a new position.

  After a while, she spoke so softly it was almost a whisper. “Children only know part of their parents’ lives and very little about the quicksand they’ve waded through. You seem to think this skull affair is all about you, Jiggs. I urged Ox to trust you and tell you. Your father took on Lisette’s burden. Actually, four of us are indebted to him. He bought the land and made sure our secret stayed kept. And then you dug up the skull.

  “I’m the only one left now. You have a choice: You may keep the conspiracy your father carried or you may reveal it to the community. It’s up to you. But either way, you’re one of the secret keepers of Two Pan now. Most of the old-timers are freighted with knowing the sins of others.”

  “But I’m still young. I’m only forty-five.”

  “Then you’ll have a long time to hear your neighbors’ stories and help carry their burdens. We never asked for this job. As I said, we’ve simply outlived the others.” She held up the tin. “You look a little peaked. Have a chocolate chip cookie, dear. Take several. They’re good for your heart.”

  *

  They talked two more hours until the doves cooed from the hackberry tree, heralding the start of the afternoon. Miz Cliva bagged a few cookies to send to Nap. As they stepped onto the porch, Jiggs looked up and down the street. “Does everyone in Two Pan have skeletons in their closets?”

  A corner of her mouth twitched. She looked at the sky with a private smile. “We only warehouse secrets, Jiggs. We don’t distribute them.” She pushed the cookies into his hands. “You look tired. Go home. Rest. ‘To everything there is a season…’ and grief about your father takes—as long as it takes.”

  He nodded and let out a breath. “Then there’s one more thing I need to do.”

  “The Past Is A Regret, The Future An Experiment”

  —Mark Twain

  JIGGS FLEXED HIS shoulders and leaned backward, his hand bracing the small of his back. He stretched as he watched Nap’s quarter horse trot toward him.

  “The message you left on my phone,” his son called out, “‘Meet me in the northeast corner of the ranch,’ sounds like a challenge to fight after school.”

  “You came anyway.”

  “Figured I could take you.”

  “You wish. Get down here and run this pickaxe.”

  “What’re we doin’?” Nap slid off the saddle and tied Face Punch to the fence post next to Curly Dogs.

  “Prying a hole out of the ground.” Jiggs held out the tool.

  “I can see that. Why?”

  “For your granddad.”

  Nap swung the axe, using the mattock side, chopping a chunk out of the clay. “Are we gonna dig him up and move him to this hole?”

  “Just his secrets.”

  “I’ve been thinking about Gramps. I sat in his house the other day. It still smells like him. Sometimes he was funny, but I don’t know what to think about some of the stunts he pulled. He could be a royal pain.”

  “The old man you knew wasn’t who he always was. That’s what he aged into.”

  Half-closing one eye, Nap looked at his father, taking inventory for a long moment. “You’re starting kinda early. Seems like after a pe
rson dies, people forget the crap they pulled. The deceased becomes a saint. If you’re gonna tell me Gramps was a great guy and all those years of faultfinding were some kind of tough love, I’m not buyin’ it yet.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. Keep going.” Jiggs circled his hand. “Make the hole a little longer and deeper.” He went to his saddle and untied a burlap bundle.

  Starvation Creek hadn’t been hard to block off. The pieces of skull had been easy to dig up. Under the large flat rocks, he’d found the long bones, including the calcified remains of a twisted foot. He had released the water again, watching it wash over Cal’s empty resting place and carry the memory of him downstream.

  “I’m saying…” Jiggs toted the bag to the digging, “that Ox kept his history close to his vest and spewed his opinions all over us. That doesn’t change, but I’ve finally pried the secrets out of his life, and I’m telling you, he was more than the man we knew.”

  “How so?”

  “That should be deep enough.” Jiggs kneeled, untied the bundle, and placed the contents into the hole.

  “Are those human bones?” Nap stared.

  “They’re from a man named Cal Mosely. To do this right, I suppose I should say something over him.” Jiggs stood, studying the bones. “So, Cal, here’s how you ended up like this. Your neighbors were Ox and Lisette Woolsey. Dad was a hard man who protected his family. Mom was a strong woman who righted a wrong.”

  He scooped up a shovelful of dirt. As he told Cal’s story, he filled the grave. When he’d finished, he slapped the shovel against the clods, shaping them into a mound.

  “I can’t believe it.” Nap helped him stack rocks on top. “I never would’ve suspected Gramps of that kind of concern. I knew he was angrier than usual before he died, but I thought it was old age, not because you’d dug this up. So why aren’t you turning the bones in like you’d planned?”

  “It took a while to get it through my hard head, but I understand why your granddad was right. He was protecting his family.”

  “I would’ve left this guy in the creek.”

  Jiggs gave him a quiet look. “Everybody deserves a decent burial, especially the family’s skeletons.”

  Nap slapped the dust off his hands. “Is Miz Cliva relieved you’re keeping the secret?”

  “She simply shrugged and said, ‘Do what you think is best. I don’t feel guilty. Some men need killing.’ All of this would’ve been easier if Ox had trusted me enough to tell me about his past. At least it might’ve helped me see why he was so hard. Why he did things the way he did. Why he grew into treating folks rough.”

  “But that’s not who he was; and it didn’t happened that way.”

  “Nope. He didn’t talk to me—or most anyone else.” Jiggs stared at the clouds, their ragged pink edges wisping away as they moved to the east. “With the history he was towing, I suppose he was doing the best he could.”

  “I wish we’d had more time to work that out.”

  “Yep.” Jiggs glanced at his son. He wanted to tell him that death cut short a lot of conversations. That by the time a person had gathered enough sense to ask the right questions, the guide was usually gone. Life was mingy that way, making a person scratch for his own answers. But Nap wouldn’t understand—not yet. It was one of those hard-knock lessons. “I suspect our opinions of Ox will change as we run into our own problems and see how we measure up. For now, we know him by what he left behind.”

  “The Rockin’ W?”

  “Yeah, but I meant he left his thumbprint on two good men.”

  “I suppose so. What do the good Woolsey men do now that we’ve buried the family skeletons?”

  “I believe we let go of the problems we can’t change.” Jiggs gripped his son’s shoulder. “That means you should try not to make the same mistakes as your father.” His eyes cut away to the horizon. He gave Nap’s shoulder a squeeze followed with two solid pats before letting go.

  To the north, the hum of an airplane carried across the miles. They stared until it disappeared over Idaho. Jiggs shifted and tapped his shovel on the rocks. “Well, rest in peace, Cal. Your neighbors won’t bother you anymore.”

  They tied the tools onto their saddles and mounted without speaking. To the south, the Eagle Caps watched over them. To the west, the light glowed in a sepia hue as it angled across the acres of Ox’s legacy. “I’m guessing we’ll have more time tonight.” Jiggs checked the light. “Enough to catch a baseball after chores.”

  “Maybe Harriet will be the backstop, she likes to chase things. Are you gonna get rid of her, now?”

  A smile played across Jiggs’ face as he looked at his son—his legacy. “No. I figure Ox was right. Every ranch needs a quirky cow that makes you laugh.”

  “Today she was mooing at a squirrel that was throwing acorns at her. I had no idea dairy cows were so goofy.”

  Jiggs laughed. “Well, here’s something else you didn’t know…your great-great-granddad was fifteen when he left home to avoid the German army…”

  The horses plodded to the beat of the story. Jiggs spoke of Bruno; then of Albrecht; and finally of the miners, madams, and misfits in the Woolsey family.

  He and Nap would converse through the night. And in the wee hours of the morning, they’d still be talking of ear chips, robot cows—and the future.

  *

  Mornings break clear and cool in the far corner of eastern Oregon. The sun crosses the sky, shining on a girl riding a brown mare, her hair flying straight in the wind. A boy on a blue roan almost catches up to her laughter. The sun passes a house with a maple tree. Crows sit among the leaves, commenting on the forts two young boys are building in the hay. By evening, it travels over the pines. Below them, tilted headstones rest in the shade. Above, a breeze sighs through the branches.

  The slanted light turns dusky and golden. Birds still themselves on their night roosts. Screen doors bang shut for supper. Time hesitates for a moment with the promise that there is still something left to the day. Gentle counsel to hold on, that all is changing. Then the sun slips to the other side of the world.

  It’s what makes the folks of Two Pan a little creative, a little eccentric, and a little sleepless—into the night.

  ***

  Jottings

  “Where is Two Pan?” Readers familiar with eastern Oregon ask. Their faces have that sincere look used for confessions and hospital conversations. “Really…” they nod. “You can tell me.”

  Okay. Sure. Mention Oregon and most folks picture green mountain forests sweeping west into the Pacific Ocean. A wide strip of the state is full of tourists, waterfalls, open-air markets, and coffee shops.

  The other two-thirds of the country is the “dry side.” The land of few people and even fewer roads. Black nights, bright stars, and crisp, mountain breezes make people lose their urban veneers and examine the cracks in their souls. There’s something about eastern Oregon.

  Folks familiar with the country have their favorite, secret spots. They’ll be glad I didn’t draw maps and give directions, so everyone could check them out. Instead, I shared my favorite place. A fizzled-out gold town with cows, cranks, and plentiful homespun advice. Folks generally tell it like it is, and if that doesn’t work—nature herself has a way of pushing the living toward what they don’t want to face.

  Where is this speck of sage, spotty cell phone service, and miles between gas stations?

  Well, it’s sort of secret, but you can get there if you start at page one.

  Welcome to Two Pan.

  *

  The development, design, and editing of this book would not be possible without: C. Walter, Ernest Knorring, William Vause. and E.T. Place This book was escorted into print with the insight and patience of Ken, David, and Greg. Thanks.

  Hats off to the guys at the parts store, the cow-tail store, and the mercantile. (You know who you are—and I only believe half of the lies you’ve told me.)

  B.K. Froman lives in an eyeblink of a town in Oregon w
ith 14 moles and 34 mounds of dirt in the yard.

  More humorous stories about change …

  Check out: Before Morning Breaks for more smiles about the world we live in.

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  If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review, or check out the other books in the Two Pan Series.

  Book 1: Mornings in Two Pan

  Book 2: The Lights of Two Pan

  Book 3: Women and Thieves of Two Pan

  Books can be ordered through most online retailers, or support your local bookstore and order the series in paperback versions.

  And now …for a sneak peek …

  A Sneak Peek: Book Two

  The Lights of Two Pan

  SOMEONE IN TWO PAN is awake tonight, just like you. Maybe you’re standing at the grocery store reading this rather than some rag on how to lose twenty pounds in two weeks. Hopefully, you’re lazing in a hammock while the moon rests on long rollers of a warm water ocean. Perhaps you’re sitting in a doniker in the Rockies as a single star blazes to its end. God forbid you’re trying to rest in some uncomfortable chair or hospital bed waiting—afraid to hope.

  Wherever you are, it doesn’t matter. Day or night. Or a continent away. Someone in Two Pan is awake with you right now.

  It’s not a city like New York that never sleeps. It’s just that someone in Two Pan isn’t sleeping.

  In daylight, it’s easy to see the residents juggling the uneven pieces of their lives, but come evening, you’d best look for a bit of light to see their struggles. A bare bulb hanging from a tree limb over an open truck hood. The lamp of a bedside vigil, outlining a window. A lantern casting half-shadows across faces in an open field.