The Flying Cutterbucks
Page 1
Advance Praise
“Not many novelists have the courage to place today’s political maelstrom into the center of the lives of her characters, but Kathleen Rodgers has done just that in The Flying Cutterbucks. When the history of this time is written, Rodgers will be one of those novelists who wasn’t afraid to talk about what the late 2010s was really like. She tells her story with warmth, compassion, and a clear vision that satisfies John Gardner’s call for today’s writers to write ‘moral fiction’.”
—MARK CHILDRESS, author of Crazy in Alabama and One Mississippi
“When national politics triggers a buried family secret, the Cutterbuck women do what they do best, persevere. Their story is the story of a resilient American family, fragile in its unmitigated loss, triumphant in the ties that bind. With a pageturning narrative and an authentic sense of place, The Flying Cutterbucks will make you laugh and cry, while never forgetting the voices of Jewel, Aunt Star, Trudy, and Georgia.”
—JOHNNIE BERNHARD, author of Sisters of the Undertow
“In a world that’s been turned upside down following the 2016 presidential election, the women of The Flying Cutterbucks pull together through the uncertainty, trying to find hope for the future.”
—MICHAEL COLE, “Pete Cochran” on The Mod Squad, and author of I Played the White Guy
“With a cast of strong women characters—mother, daughters, sisters, friends—this novel about truth-telling is set in a small town in New Mexico after Donald Trump is elected. It’s the perfect backdrop to this exploration of ending the silence and secrets women keep.”
—JILL SWENSON, retired journalism professor
“Rodgers draws the reader into the world of fifty-something Trudy Cutterbuck, who returns to her childhood home of Pardon, New Mexico—to help her aging mother, but also to figure out her own life, and grapple with some secrets she’s been hiding for decades. Set around the time of the 2016 presidential election, The Flying Cutterbucks tells a compelling story that links the characters’ personal lives to the larger events swirling around them. A wonderful book!”
—DEBORAH KALB, writer, editor, and book blogger
“Mixing raucous hilarity and rakish commentary with a deft hand, Rodgers introduces readers to The Flying Cutterbucks, a military family of willful, spirited women. Recently retired from her job as an airline stewardess, Trudy has returned home to Pardon, New Mexico, to see after her mother Jewel, an aging beauty queen whose husband, a pilot, has been MIA in Vietnam all these years. Readers will laugh and cry along with The Flying Cutterbucks as the women try their darndest to heal old hurts while remaining open to new adventures.”
—KAREN SPEARS ZACHARIAS, Gold Star daughter, author of After the Flag has been Folded
“In our sad state of political discord and growing accounts of #MeToo, Kathleen Rodgers has an unflinching ability to write stories that matter. The Flying Cutterbucks is a WOW of a book. The Cutterbucks, a Gold Star family, have a major skeleton in the closet as a result of a sexual assault on one of the women when she was still a girl. As this internal wound continues to eat at their souls, the family also combats the ugliness of targeted racism in their community and a national administration devoid of progress toward inclusiveness. Kathleen, however, eloquently gives readers pleasure, too, as they get to know this family of strong women—including a bit of romance—and the beauty of New Mexico, their home.”
—ANITA MARTIN, Postcards & Authors, book blogger
“Kathleen M. Rodgers’ book, The Flying Cutterbucks, is a rousing, timely novel of hope and solidarity among women in a family wounded by the tragedy of war and the trauma of sexual assault. Their resilience gives testament to the power of forgiveness, and the heroism among sisters.”
—KATHLEEN KENT, author of The Burn
“Settle in for an insightful, entertaining read! Accentuated with vivid detail, The Flying Cutterbucks, immediately draws the reader into the heart of the Cutterbuck women and their experiences. Current events are woven together with mystery, family history, and reassuring nostalgia. This is compelling storytelling that keeps the reader engaged to the very last line.”
—ROSA WALSTON LATIMER, award-winning author
“Rodgers skillfully spins a poignant and necessary story about grief, buried memories, and the struggle to come to terms with the past. With sensitivity and an insider’s awareness, Rodgers honors the resiliency of military wives and children. Moving and deeply affecting, The Flying Cutterbucks will make you cry, laugh, and salute the courage and strength of women. Rodgers’ remarkable Cutterbuck family will stay in your heart long after you finish the last page.”
—ANN WEISGARBER, author of The Promise
“Kathleen Rodgers weaves a story that is part mystery, part romance, part social commentary—and all heart. Readers will enjoy each twist of this compelling tale as it winds its way along the gravel backroads and small-town streets of rural New Mexico, pursued by the shadows of long-held family secrets.”
—TERRI BARNES, author of Spouse Calls: Messages From a Military Life
“Whenever a writer with such skill and sensitivity as Kathleen Rodgers publishes a novel, we must, for our own sake, read it. The Flying Cutterbucks is a profound and moving portrait of family, friendship, and forgiveness.”
—ALLEN MENDENHALL, Editor, Southern Literary Review
“In The Flying Cutterbucks, author Kathleen Rodgers has written the 21st century version of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women with a wonderfully engrossing updated twist. The Flying Cutterbucks is a testament to Rodgers’ extraordinary skill as a writer, sweeping you into a compelling story with vivid characters that are so well written as to feel as if you are there with your neighbors and friends. Bravo!”
—DWIGHT JON ZIMMERMAN, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“In The Flying Cutterbucks, Kathleen M. Rodgers has created a family of close-knit, funny, wise, resilient women and the people who matter to them. If waiting is a kind of strength in this novel, action is another, and this book is a call-to-action for our current time: action through empathy, advocacy, and even simple presence. I loved spending time with the Cutterbuck women, who have the kind of strength, compassion, and humor that make Kathleen Rodgers a terrific writer and this novel a joy to read.”
—ANDRIA WILLIAMS, author of The Longest Night
“The Flying Cutterbucks excels in depicting haunted lives and a renovation process that involves more than a house. It shows how the women reconnect and become closer as each recognizes in the other a different method of coping and survival. This results in a strength that finally moves beyond alienating each other and protecting themselves from the world.
The Flying Cutterbucks is a powerful story of women returning from the dead (in a manner of speaking) to finally recover not just from assault and secrets, but from the lasting patterns, habits, and the alienation that stemmed from it. It will immerse readers in a world of discovery, recovery, and revised family lives, and is highly recommended for readers seeking an evocative, compelling story of family relationships and change.”
—MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
The Flying Cutterbucks
a novel
Kathleen M. Rodgers
©2020 Kathleen M. Rodgers. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-948018-78-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020935682
Excerpt from essay “No Place For Self-Pity, No Room For Fear”
The Nation, March 23, 2015 ©Toni Morrison.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
The characters and events in this book
are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing, Inc.
www.WyattMacKenzie.com
Contact us: info@wyattmackenzie.com
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal."
TONI MORRISON
from “No Place For Self-Pity, No Room For Fear”
The Nation, March 23, 2015
Dedication
To the fearless women in my life:
My sisters, Laura Doran Gulliford, for letting me tag along to the library early on where you devoured chapter books, and Jo Lynda Doran Rivera, whose passion for dance inspires all of us.
We come from a hardy line of women who persisted and took risks.
In loving memory of author Drema Hall Berkheimer. When I butchered words, you gently corrected me and loved me anyway. As Terry and Tom said, “You’re a little girl again, running down a Red Dog road with Sissy…into the sunshine.”
And to Arlene Guillen,
Jo’s best friend since second grade.
Days before Drema slipped away, the Muse whispered, “When one door closes, another opens.” And now here we are, helping each other write our stories.
ELECTION DAY
2020
JEWEL CUTTERBUCK tried to control her trembling hand as she picked up the remote control and pointed it at the television. Mr. Grumples, her sister’s cat, purred and jumped up on Jewel’s lap. Instead of shooing him away, she welcomed his warmth on this chilly November night. As she waited for election results to come in from around the country, her thoughts hopscotched from who was going to be the next president of the United States to the dark and disturbing secret her eldest daughter had shared with her the previous day.
A noise came from the kitchen. Glancing sideways, Jewel saw it was only the big yellow dog pushing her food dish around. Nothing to fear there. Settling back into the sofa, Jewel turned her attention to the news and waited.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1: Trudy Returns
CHAPTER 2: Twirler Girl
CHAPTER 3: Talk About Town
CHAPTER 4: Graffiti and Graves
CHAPTER 5: Dub
CHAPTER 6: Georgia
CHAPTER 7: Hit the Bricks
CHAPTER 8: The Blue Door
CHAPTER 9: Skillet Shopping
CHAPTER 10: Face Mask and Latex Gloves
CHAPTER 11: Carport Door
CHAPTER 12: Stranger to the Ground
CHAPTER 13: Our Lady of Assumptions
CHAPTER 14: Ghost Town
CHAPTER 15: The Conquistador!
CHAPTER 16: All Souls’ Day
CHAPTER 17: Demolition Day: Dust Will Fly
CHAPTER 18: News from the Turquoise Phone
CHAPTER 19: Eject! Eject! Eject!
CHAPTER 20: Coyote Yellow
CHAPTER 21: Secret Agent
CHAPTER 22: Dancing with a Three-Legged Dog
CHAPTER 23: The Dating Game
CHAPTER 24: An Old Activist
CHAPTER 25: Walking in Her Footsteps
CHAPTER 26: Riddle Talkers
CHAPTER 27: Woman in the Lexus
CHAPTER 28: Women’s March on Pardon & Pussycat Hat Headquarters 2017
CHAPTER 29: Bullies, Bricks, and Good People
CHAPTER 30: Flying West
CHAPTER 31: Three Years Later
Acknowledgments
Book Club Discussion Questions
CHAPTER 1
Trudy Returns
Pardon, New Mexico
October 2016
“SISTER, DID you hear what the Orange Cheese Puff said? It’s all over the news.” Aunt Star’s crotchety voice crackled from the tiny speaker of the cellphone into the stale air of Jewel Cutterbuck’s cluttered living room. “He was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women’s lady parts.”
Trudy swiveled in the worn recliner and gazed across at her mother, Jewel, an aging beauty queen who’d let the contents of her household pile up around her like sand dunes. For Trudy, the sound of Aunt Star’s voice functioned as both a welcome and a warning.
Jewel frowned at the cellphone in her hand like a stink bomb had gone off. “Good God, Star, what will the man say next?” Jewel sat on one end of the sagging gold velvet sofa, flanked on both sides by Spanish-style end tables from the seventies.
“He used the P-word, Sister! All the networks are talking about it.”
Jewel’s jaw dropped as she scooted forward and placed the phone on a stack of books on the ornately carved coffee table. “You mean like meow?” She covered her mouth with a delicate hand freckled in liver spots to stifle a giggle.
Trudy bolted out of the recliner, letting the back of the rocker thump against the textured wall. The song made famous by Tom Jones crooned in her head. Bending over the coffee table, she cupped her hands on her knees and blurted into the cell, “What’s new, Pussycat?”
Aunt Star roared with laughter on the other end of the line. “Lovey, is that you? When did you roll into town?”
“Hey, Aunt Star. About five minutes ago.” Trudy glanced up at her mother and winked. “Momma Jewel and I were just discussing what to have for supper.”
“You girls should splurge and go to Furr’s Cafeteria. They serve everything but alcohol.”
Jewel leaned forward on the sofa, jutting her chin toward the phone. “Star, Furr’s closed two months ago. I’m going to miss their baked fish and banana pudding.”
Star sighed on her end. “Sister, I sure hate to hear that. Next thing ya know, Pardon’s going to dry up and blow away, especially since the base closed.”
Was it Trudy’s imagination, or did her mother’s whole body change when Aunt Star mentioned the base? The place where Trudy was born, the last place they’d waved goodbye to her father after he crawled up the ladder to his jet and flew away into oblivion.
Jewel pulled off her knit cap and fluffed her crop of silver hair. “There’s talk they’re going to repurpose the base. Maybe move the municipal airport out to the old airfield. Turn the quarters into affordable housing.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Star huffed. “Heck, it took Pardon years to even get a McDonalds.”
Jewel rolled her eyes and made a “yapping” sign with her hand. She lowered her voice and muttered under her breath to Trudy, “Just because she’s the oldest by one year, that makes her the authority on everything.”
Trudy hoped her aunt didn’t hear her mother’s snarky comment.
“Well, at least we finally got a Walmart,” Jewel said, trying to humor her sister.
“And you call that progress?” Star shot back.
Ever since Aunt Star had moved to Las Vegas, New Mexico, a quaint little town nestled in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, she got her digs in about Pardon.
While Trudy went to work tidying up the magazines and books, she leaned toward the phone and joked, “Aunt Star, the biggest problem with Pardon is it missed Route Sixty-Six by about a hundred miles.”
A dry chuckle erupted from the other end of the phone. Jewel gave Trudy a big thumbs-up and mouthed “Good one” before she pulled her knit cap back down over her head and burrowed back into the sofa.
Aunt Star’s voice burbled out of the phone again. “So how’s my favorite stewardess?”
Her question caught Trudy by surprise. “Didn’t Momma tell you? I retired.” Trudy glanced at her mother who gave an exaggerated nod.
“Lovey, you’re too young to retire.”
Trudy straightened her tall frame and searched around the room for another pile to attack. There were so many. “I’ll be fifty-eight the end of this month, Aunt Star. I’ve been flying since I graduated high school.”
An assortment of rocks lined up on the windowsill caught Trudy’s attention. The heels
of her brown leather riding boots clicked on the terra-cotta tile as she ambled over to the large picture frame window facing north. She looked out across the strawcolored Bermuda grass stretching from the front porch to the four-lane highway that ran east to west in front of Jewel’s place. A few pale blossoms still clung to the giant yucca plant in the center of the yard next to a black lamppost. Trudy reached over and flicked the light switch and nothing happened. Hopefully, it just needed a new light bulb. She would check on that later. A few feet off the porch, a New Mexico state flag along with a POW/MIA flag snapped in the October breeze, their metal clips clanging against the tall pole.
Picking up a smooth gray rock, she turned it over and read the inscription “Red River, NM Feb. 1958” scrawled in black marker. A souvenir from her parents’ honeymoon, a treasure Trudy once cherished. But today, with a pang of sadness, she realized: Even then, her mother was hoarding things.
She turned when Aunt Star’s breezy sigh filled the room. “Criminetly, Trudy. It seems like yesterday you moved to Dallas and started flying for Southwest.”
“Tell me about it,” Jewel piped up, flinging off a yellow and brown afghan from her lap and tossing it over the back of the sofa.
Trudy wondered when her mother had taken to wearing knit caps indoors and velour lounge pants instead of her usual tailored slacks and silk blouses, her trademark attire long after she’d sold her housecleaning business and taken up volunteer work at the hospital.
At the bookcases on the west wall, Trudy paused to stare at multicolored spines with too many titles to take in all at once and too many dusty knickknacks standing guard in front of the books. The whole house needed a thorough cleaning. Jewel may have owned her own business built from scratch in the late seventies, hiring single mothers like herself who needed to put food on the table. But when it came to cleaning her own house…well, she was like the plumber with leaky faucets or the cobbler with holes in his shoes.
After Jewel made a comment about how time flies, Trudy swiveled and walked back toward the phone. “How are you doing, Aunt Star?” Even after all these years, Trudy still pictured her aunt in a crisp white nurse’s uniform.