If Wishes Were Kisses: Six Beloved Americana Romances, a Collection (Small Town Swains)

by Pamela Morsi

  "Lay down!" she ordered.

  Now at breakfast with her father at the far end of the table, she was considerably more demure.

  "How is my extremely bossy wife this morning?" he asked as he bent down to plant a husbandly kiss upon her cheek.

  Cessy rolled her eyes, indicating the presence of her father at the table.

  Tom took his seat beside her and leaned closer to whisper for her ears alone.

  "We are husband and wife," he told her. "There is no cause to be embarrassed. And anyway, I believe that I am the one who has the most reason to blush this morning."

  She began to giggle almost naughtily, and Tom joined in. They were still grinning at each other when King Calhoun's booming voice interrupted their secret reminiscences.

  "I understand from Princess that your parents have still failed to answer your telegram and acknowledge your marriage," he said.

  Tom was momentarily caught off guard. He had vowed to come forward with the truth this morning, but he couldn't very well blurt it out with Cessy's father here.

  "Seems to me that's pretty dang rude," King continued argumentatively. "Princess and I are just plain folks, but at least we've got the good manners to respond to a message."

  "Daddy, please—" Cessy began, determined to defend her husband and his erstwhile and mythical kindred.

  Tom couldn't let her do it alone. "I ... ah ... I did hear ... ah yesterday," he interrupted.

  Cessy looked at him, astonished.

  "You received a wire from your family and you forgot to mention it to me!"

  "Ah . . . no, not from my family . . . from . . . from their lawyer," he said.

  "Their lawyer!" Cessy almost squealed the word. "My heavens! Are they going to try to have our marriage dissolved?"

  King Calhoun had obviously jumped to the same erroneous conclusion.

  "Who the hades do they think they are?" he bellowed.

  "No, it's not that," Tom said quickly. "No, it's not that at all."

  The kitchen quieted perceptively at that. Tom even managed a light chuckle at his new bride's hasty conclusion.

  "Don't be silly, sweetheart. I told you they are going to love you," he said. "I heard from their lawyer because they are not at home."

  "What do you mean they are not at home?" Calhoun asked.

  "They've gone for a trip, an excursion . . . ah, to the continent, Paris, London," he said. "They should be gone for ah . . . about six months."

  "Six months?" Cessy was astonished.

  "Why go to Europe if one has to rush," he said. "So we'll just have to wait to let them know."

  "Can't you send them a cable?" her father asked.

  "Ah . . . no, I mean not yet, they are still on the ship, of course," Tom said.

  Calhoun's brow furrowed. "Isn't that the reason they invented the wireless?"

  Tom was saved from having to come up with an answer for that by a frantic knocking upon the front door.

  "Mr. Calhoun! Mr. Calhoun!" a young voice called out, not waiting to be let inside. "Oil! They've struck oil on the 'P.'"

  An instant of complete and total silence filled Cessy's fine yellow house. Then everything broke loose.

  "Wahoo!" Calhoun hollered, rising to his feet in such a rush that his chair clattered to the floor.

  Tom felt the same surge of excitement course through his own veins.

  Cessy was on her feet as well. Hastily grabbing her hat and handbag, she was right behind her father as he headed out the door. The messenger, Mrs. Marin, and Howard were already in the backseat of the Packard when they got there. Everybody was talking at once, the excitement a palpable thing.

  "Crank her up!" Calhoun called out to Tom, and he obliged.

  The loud, shaky Packard sprang to life almost instantly as if it, too, could not wait to get there.

  Cessy scooted over next to her father, leaving plenty of room in the front seat beside her.

  "Sit here," she told him.

  "No, I'll just stay here," he said.

  "What? Don't you want to see the newest well?"

  "I'll just stay here," he repeated.

  "Get in," Cessy told him. "You can't miss this!"

  "Yes, I can," he assured her. "Please go on without me. Enjoy yourself."

  Cessy stared at him in disbelief, but Calhoun couldn't wait for another word. He slipped his growling automobile into gear and they went roaring out of the yard in a great rush. Cessy turned around in the seat to look back at him, her expression incredulous, until they were out of sight.

  Tom stood alone in the silence of their noisy departure for a long moment. Then he jumped straight up in the air, screaming.

  "Wahoo!"

  He began dancing around the yard, singing a tune of his own making at the top of his lungs.

  "The 'P' came in, the 'P' came in, the P. Calhoun Number One came in! We did it! We did it! We did it!"

  He spread his arms wide and turned in a half- dozen circles, screaming his delight toward the sky, and then fell back in the grass, laughing.

  The "P" had come in. All that hard work, all that sweat and grease and mud, all that heat and heartache, it had all paid off.

  The crew, his crew, had been first.

  Tom sighed.

  He wished so much that he could have been there. He wished he could have been standing on the derrick floor when the rumble became a roar. He wished he was there now. There with all of them. Everyone who was a part of it, all of them together.

  He sat up on the grass and shook his head. He just almost had to be there. He hated watching them go, watching Cessy and King and even the servants go while he had to stay behind. It was his well, not solely his of course, but he'd been a part of it. And as the boys had said, the first well is like the first love, a man never really forgets it.

  Now that it had come in, his first well, he was relegated to sitting quietly at home.

  He couldn't stand it. Tom rose to his feet and began walking the large expansive lawn as if he were a prisoner and this were his cage. He had been part of this well. Bringing it in was as much his victory as it was King Calhoun's. Not being there to see it sat bitterly upon him.

  It was as if it were his birthday and he was the only one not invited to the party. But there was no way that he could show his face at the "P." Or rather there was no way that he could show Tom Walker's face.

  Cedarleg and Ma would both be there, as well as the entire crew and all the drillers, pushers, and dressers that knew him as Tom.

  King and Cessy would be there, too. And they knew him only as Gerald.

  Tom finally took a seat on the porch and gazed in the direction of the Topknot. He couldn't see a thing. He couldn't hear a thing. He simply could not bear it another minute. He would lose himself within the crowd. No one who knew him would even realize that he was there.

  Convincing himself that it could work, Tom hurried back into the house to get his coat and hat. Then, eager and excited, he headed out in the direction of the "P."

  The slick black fortune was still spewing up high as the crown block and obscuring the top of the derrick when the Packard pulled up at the site. In the early days of oil drilling, before they'd developed control values and occasionally now to show off to investors, gushers were allowed to run for days and waste thousands of barrels of oil that way. But the experienced men of the "P" were already busy trying to clamp down the flow and directing it into the tank pipes.

  Cessy was charged with energy and excited as always. Her father had been bringing in oil wells since she was a little girl, but the excitement never failed to thrill her.

  Mrs. Marin was clapping as if it were a theatrical performance. Howard jumped from the automobile while it was still moving, seeming to forget all his hard-won dignity as a household servant and ready to share the enthusiasm of the good old days with his former compatriots.

  "Ain't she something!" King exclaimed with pride.

  "Really something, Daddy," Cessy agreed. "I only wish that Ge
rald were here."

  Her father gave a less-than-sympathetic shrug and hurried away from the automobile and up to the rig.

  Cessy left the Packard and followed him through the crowd. It was an almost carnival-like atmosphere. All the workers from every rig had temporarily shut down their operations to come and watch the "P" being brought in. Their wives and families had eagerly joined them and many of the townspeople as well.

  Everybody was talking at once. Everyone offering their own version of the exciting events.

  "They hit pay sands at just under seven hundred feet," one young man reported to her.

  "At the rate it's pouring out of there," another told her proudly, "this one is sure to make five thousand barrels a day just on its own."

  "The Five is almost at the same depth and it's along the same rock strata, they'll be breaking it wide open tomorrow if I don't miss my guess."

  "I knew this one was gonna make good," one old fellow assured her. "All that salt water and stink in the beginning, it's the perfect omen, to my thinking."

  Knowing most everybody, Cessy offered smiles and greetings at almost every step. And to her dismay found that in her current circumstances as newly wed, she was commanding almost as much attention as the oil well.

  "We heard you got yourself married up."

  "What's your name now that you're wed?"

  "It's hard to believe, our little Princess, married at last."

  "I remember when you were toddling around the wells, fat-cheeked and rag-bottomed."

  There were words, well wishes, and congratulations all around. Cessy had not thought about herself being the center of attention. But the gusher being named for her, and the subject of her recent hasty marriage being the main focus of local gossip, it was natural that her name would be very much on everyone's lips.

  "And where is this husband of yours that we've all heard about but none of us have ever seen?" Ma asked.

  "He is ... he is otherwise involved this morning," Cessy heard herself lying and was not at all pleased.

  She didn't want to make excuses for Gerald, but she could hardly tell these people, whose very lives were punctuated by moments like these, that her husband had no interest in her oil well or its success.

  "Well, that's too bad," Ma commiserated. "I know how Cedarleg would hate to miss something like this. And it wouldn't be half the fun for me if that old man wasn't here with me."

  Cessy nodded and gave the older woman a loving hug.

  "Come up to the derrick with me," Cessy begged her. "You know how I hate being the only woman up there."

  Ma chuckled. "But you never hate being the one in charge."

  Cessy shrugged with unconcern. "But I'm so good at it," she declared.

  The two women worked their way through the crowd, speaking to one person here and another there, until they reached the area of the rig and masculine hands helped them up to the derrick floor.

  Control of the oil flow had been established. The wet, black soup poured directly into the sump tank behind the rig. Cessy had never minded losing a dress to oil splatter, but the unpredictable force of the underground pressure was dangerous. At Sour Lake an unrestrained well had blown the crown block off the top of the derrick.

  Acting immediately, Cessy took control of the festivities. A speech would need to be made, the workers recognized. She began lining the men up in the way she considered most appropriate. The driller and the tool pusher would stand on either side of her father. The crew of rig builders to his right, the tank builders to his left. Various pipe fitters, haulers, and roughnecks were positioned according to Cessy's interpretation of their importance and value.

  "Where is your tool dresser?" Cessy asked Cedarleg.

  "The feller quit me," he answered. "Just days ago he quit me to marry up some local gal."

  "He's probably here," Ma said, her eyes scanning the crowd. "As hard as he worked and this being his first, I know for sure that he could never stay away."

  "You talking about that Walker?" King Calhoun asked. "Get him up here. He deserves to take his bow as much as the rest of us. And I've been looking all over town for him."

  "You still trying to find refinery money?" Cedarleg asked him.

  "It's that or leave this oil in the sumps indefinitely."

  Cedarleg tutted with disapproval. "That's too dangerous for my blood," he said.

  The earthen pits known commonly as sumps were dug out to serve as oil reservoirs. A foot or two of water at the bottom prevented the oil from seeping into the ground. And planks laid across the top kept it from evaporating. But the air space below the planks was often a trap for volatile gases.

  "Too dangerous for me," Cedarleg repeated. "The whole dang Topknot would be about as safe as a tinderbox. A machine spark, a careless cigarette, or a strike of lightning could set it off in a twinkling."

  "I don't like sump storing any more than you do, Cedarleg," King told him. "But it's store it or pump it back into the ground. Without a way to process it, it's not even worth trying to carry it away."

  Cedarleg chuckled. "Mr. Calhoun, I watched you strike it rich a couple of dozen times," he said. "But I swear to gumption, this is the first time I've ever seen you, or anybody else strike it poor."

  "Well, maybe if I can find your friend Walker, I can talk him into helping us out," King said. "He's young and if he's smart as you say, he'll be looking for a way to get ahead in this world."

  Cedarleg whistled. "You don't know the half of it. That boy's got dreams that are frightening to behold."

  "Big ideas, huh," King said.

  Cedarleg nodded. "He puts me in mind of you, Mr. King Calhoun, when you were of a similar age."

  Calhoun laughed. "That bad? Well, I got to find this fellow for sure."

  Cedarleg turned to peruse the crowd himself. "He's got to be here somewhere. This is his first well, you know a fellow can't stay away from that."

  "Yeah," King agreed. "He's out there somewhere, the whole town's out there, except for my new son- in-law, of course."

  "There he is," Ma said, spotting the man in the crowd. She began waving him forward.

  "Where?" Cessy asked.

  "Doggone it," Ma complained. "I thought he saw me. But he's like ducked down or some such. Do you see him out there, Cedarleg? Near that scraggly growth of cow vetch?"

  All four of them followed her direction, looking from face to face.

  "He's got on his nice coat, the one he bought from the Nafees' peddler man," she said.

  "I don't see him," Cedarleg said.

  "I don't see him now, either," Ma said. "But I'd swear he was there."

  "Maybe he's embarrassed to come up," Cedarleg said. "I was pretty hard on him."

  "Hard on him about what?" Ma asked, and then answered her own question. "You mean about wanting to steer clear of us?"

  "I was really put out with him at the time," Cedarleg admitted.

  "I told you that wasn't him," Ma said. "He'd never been like that, it must have been his wife's doings or he'd have never talked that way. I know that young man and he's better than that."

  "Better than what?" Cessy asked.

  "Oh, Tom was thinking himself too good to bring his new town gal around to meet Ma," Cedarleg explained.

  Cessy's eyes widened and she took immediate offense on Ma's behalf.

  "Well, then we are definitely not holding things up a moment longer waiting on such a fellow," Cessy declared. "Daddy, get everyone's attention."

  King Calhoun nodded to her in agreement. He turned and raised his hands, causing the boisterous, milling crowd to still and quiet.

  "My dear friends," he greeted them. "And I call you my friends because after all that we've been through together, that is what we are."

  Applause erupted though the crowd.

  Cessy couldn't help but smile. These people worked hard under dangerous conditions and in places where they were neither welcomed nor appreciated. They often complained about the lack of amenities, the root
less life, and the hardships endured by their families. But King Calhoun, oil millionaire, seemed willing to share those hardships with them and they loved him for it.

  Cessy loved him, too. Her father was a fair and honorable man and he always made her so proud.

  "The day I saw this crusty little knoll up here," he announced to the crowd, "I said to old Marv Hotchkiss, the geologist, I said there's oil under that ground, Marv, I can smell it from here."

  He cocked his head slightly and gave a slight rise of his right eyebrow. "I know a lot of you wondered why God would give a man a nose this big, well that's why."

  There were hoots of appreciation for the fine joke.

  "Well, you all know Marv," King continued. "We been friends for a lot of years. But he don't trust my hunches no better than he trusts me at poker."

  Several of the men offered their opinions on the same subject.

  "Marv, he don't believe nothing that he can't prove by science," King said.

  Nods and murmurs of agreement swept through the crowd.

  "So when he made his sampling and said this hill was one of them salt domes like Spindletop"—her father shook his head—"I told him, well if it's good enough for Patillo Higgins, it'll suit King Calhoun just fine."

  The shouts and cheers that greeted his words were nearly deafening.

  Cessy clapped right along with them, happy, proud, excited.

  From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of someone. For an instant she thought that it was Gerald and her heart lightened. She wanted him here. She wanted him with her now and always.

  But of course, she was mistaken. Gerald hadn't come to the well and certainly if he had, he wouldn't be out in the crowd but standing at her side where he belonged.

  Chapter Eighteen

  He hadn't been able to stay away. And he was not sorry. The excitement and the sense of belonging and accomplishment that Tom felt that morning out at the "P" was something that he would never forget. Tom Walker had a part in that. It was Tom Walker who'd helped to make that happen. It was a sense of his own value that he couldn't quite adjust to. He couldn't quite accept it.

  Which was one of the reasons he found himself alone the following afternoon on the river road that led to the Methodist Indian Home.