Читать книгу Land Run - Mark Graham - Страница 9

Just before sunup, Marty Black grabbed his hoe and gloves from the weatherworn woodshed out back of his place. He tightened on the old, soiled gloves and moved unusually fast to the garden plot, anxious to start to work. He knew an early row of snow peas waited for him to harvest and another row of tomatoes needed planting. Early spring always felt good to Marty, and he loved the smell of the morning dew after and upon the evening rains. The storm season in central Oklahoma offered great hope to him each year—so much so that he would forget about the certain midsummer battle with heat and drought that lay ahead. But in the here-and-now, where he most liked to be, this was the best time and he would get to plant and harvest all at once.

He dug in and planted half a row before he decided to switch gears. The sun heated up early as he plucked the new snow peas, plopping them one by one into his tin bucket. His efforts turned his face red, and soon the sweat poured over his wrinkled face so much that he no longer bothered wiping it. This time of year allowed him to be old without really feeling old. But Marty listened to his bones more than he used to and took up a moment on the garden stool. He made the stool special for his wife, Ruth, because she was a woman and he figured she would need it. He found that funny now. He got amused at a lot of things he once thought or did.

Marty took advantage of these times when his body was spent well before the whole town of Willow Springs even had breakfast. He liked the quiet and pondered his Maker and all that He made and all that He was still making. Sometimes he would feel Him come on like a sudden warm breeze, a felt presence that was pleasant and familiar. Most mornings, they just enjoyed each other’s company. Marty didn’t like to talk much, and he knew that was understood. But if his thoughts got heavy, like this morning, the two of them would normally hash it out a bit.

“I got to tell you, I don’t like what happened to Rusty’s boy. It was a nasty way to go. You know that,” Marty started in.

“I know. I hate it too.”

“I’m not accusing you or nothin’.”

“Yes you are.”

Marty nodded at that and stretched up to pick through the tomatoes. These meetings made him a little nervous. It dawned on him that only two people made him feel this way after Korea: Him and Ruth, when she got those ideas to visit family.

“I just don’t get it,” Marty said.

“No. Don’t pick that one yet. It’s not ready.”

“I know you are good. I know it,” Marty continued.

“You have eyes to see.”

“Just what are you up to?” Marty asked.

“I am in the land.”

“What?”

“You have ears to hear.”

“What can I do?” Marty asked.

“Wait.”

Marty realized suddenly that Ruth was calling to him from inside the back screen porch. He lumbered up his six-feet-five-inch, old frame and walked back into the house. Once inside, he knew something was not quite right, but he couldn’t place the feeling. But the smell of breakfast broke his momentary daze, and he sat down to eat.

“You didn’t put your tools up.” Ruth put his plate and coffee down.

“That’s it.”

“That’s what?” Ruth asked.

“Nothin’.” Marty buttered his bread.

“Pastor Jake will be here any minute. I don’t guess you’re going to change.”

“Nope. We’re going to take the truck. You gonna need anything today?”

“No,” she answered and made her way slowly out of the kitchen and into the front room.

Marty liked his new pastor. The last one never went with him to visit the shut-ins. Marty never thought much of that until Jake asked to go with him a few times. He couldn’t say that he appreciated the company, but he wasn’t against it either. Marty always believed that God put people together for a reason. In these later years, he got comfortable with just trusting God and letting him do more of the reasoning.

“Pastor is here,” Ruth called from the living room.

Marty heard the front screen door spring creaking and snatched his truck keys from the kitchen wall on his way out. “Sorry ’bout the truck. I need to keep Ruth’s car clean. Okay? I might need to drive her to some female thing this evening.”

“That’s no problem, Marty. What’s the meeting about, garden club?” Jake asked as he piled into the pickup.

“I don’t know. Don’t never know,” Marty replied and noticed Jake looking a little worried.

“Okay. You getting your radio fixed?” Jake asked.

“What? I don’t have a radio. Pastor, that’s a hole in the dashboard. You know, where a radio would be.” Marty gave Jake a look that questioned his pastor’s intelligence.

“Right. Makes sense. So how have you been?”

“Fine.”

“Know where they live?” Jake asked.

“Yep.”

“I heard we’re supposed to visit a member with a bad foot. You know he’s been shut up in that trailer for two months?”

“Yep. He don’t leave that trailer much anyhow.”

Unlike Jake, Marty found the arid landscape along their way interesting. It was going to be a long, quiet ride. It was June now, and already the official color of town was brown—brown buildings and brown grass. This was only slightly offset by the rust-brown leaves that colored the scrub-oak trees. The land was flat, and Marty was taller than half the trees about. Yet, there was something about this land, these people, and its history that Marty loved. It was hard, self-reliant. And in summer, with the heat, people melted—not a lot, but enough. He never did know how the town got its name. No one ever saw a willow tree and only the ditch down Hays-Barton Road could double for a spring. And even then it had to rain pretty hard to not have it dry up by the end of the next day.

Willow Springs kicked it in high gear at the start of summer. They passed by armies of little league teams engaged in battle, and each war lasted until it got dark. But Marty had traveled enough to know his town wasn’t like the typical small towns around the country. Willow Springs just kind of sprawled out with houses popping up here and there. There was no town square and courthouse, no monuments or cannons. Aside from the occasional remaining house, no structures tied this community to a staunch past. Though the town was older than the state, it was a young state. Oklahoma became a state in 1907. That fact had not greatly impacted the culture past thirty miles from Oklahoma City. Willow Springs had all dirt streets until 1960, and they got their first and only streetlight in 1987. Some of Marty’s older friends could still be seen shopping at Barrow’s Grocery Store packing pistols in leather holsters on their sides. And people still smoked anywhere they darn well pleased. That was the character of Willow Springs. The folks did what they wanted, and they never wanted much.

Marty and Jake rode the rest of the trip in silence. Finally, they were a mere cloud of rusty dust blowing through a clearcut off Brumley Road. They pulled up to the cattle guard gate. But the man didn’t have cattle or family. He was alone there with his recently messed-up right foot. He never told anyone how he got hurt, so Marty had to choose from three different stories he heard of the accident. He liked the one about his having a bowling ball fall on his foot. It was impossible, of course, because bowling implies leisure. This man was single and self-reliant his whole seventy-two years. As they carefully climbed the three steps of the front porch, Marty wondered at what he might see, at just how bad his foot was going to look.

“Who is it?” A voice boomed from inside.

“Pastor and me, Marty.”

“Come on.”

Both men winced at each other once they entered the room. The smell inside was incredible and like nothing Marty had ever experienced. The man enveloped by his recliner, looking like just a small head at the end of a runway of legs. Marty could tell that Jake wanted to throw up, needed to throw up. And he was real glad his pastor was a talker like this man was. It seemed to him that Jake was conversing almost manic-like as a way to keep from puking. Like the opposite of holding his breath but with the same goal. But maybe, he thought, after the long quiet truck ride, he was just bustin’ at the seams to chat.

“We’re real sorry about your foot. Is there something we could do for you?” Jake asked.

But Marty was already at it, picking garbage off the floor. The man’s dog had destroyed the kitchen. The trashcan was on its side, and the contents were strewn all over the kitchen and into the living room. Every part of the trailer had piles of poop lying about indiscriminately. The carpet was visibly damp with urine and some other liquids, probably from the kitchen. The stench was unbearable. The man had either built up a tolerance, Marty thought, or lost his senses.

“Don’t worry none ’bout that, Marty. I can’t let Sam out as often as I use to. Not his fault.” He found energy enough just then to lean down to pet his dog.

“No problem,” Marty replied.

“You got food, pastor?” the man asked.

“Uh…” Jake squirmed a little in the torn, green, vinyl chair. He was careful to avoid rubbing against the duct tape.

“Ruth would have brought chili, Marty. Ruth gonna visit sometime?”

The men talked longer than Marty liked, but he could not think of a way to leave gracefully. Finally, he just stood by the front door until they noticed him. They never did, but eventually they were asked to leave because the man said that Sam needed to get some rest.

Marty hoped the trip back would be as quiet as their coming but could tell that Jake was uncomfortable. He looked over to see Jake start to say something and stopping himself several times.

“Here’s the thing. That was just awful, Marty.”

“What’s that?”

“Everything. The smell mostly. What was that?”

Marty just nodded.

“I’m not judging the man, not really. It’s just that he didn’t even seem embarrassed. I don’t get him.”

Marty nodded again.

“I don’t know him like you do. But you had to smell that.”

Marty nodded one last time, and they rode for nearly fifteen minutes in silence before he spoke.

“He sure does love that puppy.”

There was a plot of land off the main stretch of Mustang Road that Cort Johnson needed to check out. He was a board member of the newly formed industrial trust committee for Willow Springs. The town had formed the committee in an attempt to focus efforts in attracting new business to town. The city manager and a handful of very important people were going to lock in land for sale to prospective businesses with plans to encourage early stage development through tax incentives and other such stuff that only Cort and a couple other folks knew about. Cort tolerated Willow Springs. He only recently relented to the idea that he might one day live and die in the same place he was born. He often thought of just moving one town over, to Stible, just to make a kind of statement. His wife, Jules, loved Willow Springs and was obsessed with bringing culture to the town. She opened and closed a boutique, a tea room, and art gallery—none of which ever took root. Now she was in negotiations with her husband’s bank to fund a children’s theater group. Cort found life too complicated and chose long ago to just focus on his ledgers. Just keeping everything in the black was his loftiest ambition. And without other talents or hobbies known to him, work became increasingly enticing.

As he drove by the land site, his cell phone rang. It was Jules, but he answered it anyway.

“Yep.”

“I called the bank, they said you left early,” she said.

“I got to meet Ted and some guy.”

“Fine,” she said.

“I’ll be home right after but probably going to eat there.”

“Eat where?” Jules asked.

“Spurs, Jules,” he replied, “I know what you are calling about, and I don’t have an answer yet. The rent on that place is high.”

“You know this town needs entertainment. Some of these girls will be pregnant in three years if they don’t get an outlet, something positive.”

“Honey, you really think three matinees of Oklahoma is going to replace condoms?” Cort was tired. He was going to mention the Barrow Rodeo that went all summer long but remembered that something seemed to happen there every Tuesday night. Often, it would be something he would read about in the paper on Wednesday mornings.

“Stop talking like that, Cort. I’ve really prayed about this and know it is what the Lord wants us to do. If you would pray about it, you might be more enthusiastic too, maybe even nicer to me.”

“Yeah. Look. Don’t go there. I don’t pray. I work. Someone has to work. God, or whatever, has his job, and I have mine.”

There was silence on her end of the phone.

“Jules,” he said and was again answered with silence.

“Jules, I was just making a joke. Please stop. Look. I’m sorry.”

But Jules had hung up. Cort closed his cell phone and drove on toward Spurs Restaurant. He was always baffled that apparently God was consistently at odds with his thinking and seemingly so concerned with his little Willow Springs world. He knew that he got married in a church but never expected it would follow him around for the rest of his days.

Ted Levin and another man were talking in the back booth of Spurs. Ted was the councilman of the Fourth Ward. As he approached, Cort could see that their conversation was not a lively one. Ted saw Cort and stood up, placing a quick smile on his face. “Cort, this is Frank Howard with Howard and Associates. His firm is in Tulsa.”

“Hello,” Cort said as friendly as he could muster up.

“Hi. Nice to meet you. You got a nice town here. Been talking to some locals today outside the IGA. That’s the best place to get a feel. Democracy at its best. Everyone has to eat.” Frank laughed.

The man appeared to Cort to be watching for Cort to look enlightened, drawn into the philosophical and sociological implications of his statement. “Sounds good. Y’all order yet?” Cort asked.

He learned a great deal about Frank over dinner. It seemed to Cort that the man was under some kind of truth serum or maybe hopped up on cocaine. He was a land man for Carlton Oil before the bust in the early eighties. Then he finished law school, but he could not leave his love of land acquisition. Cort figured that he must have used the word acquisition at least fifty times. There was something about that word that really impressed Frank. As of late, he had a big contract doing right-a-way work for Continental Telephone, getting tower sites and land for cable line runs. Frank said he learned a lot with it, said that he had big hopes for the government’s untapped powers of eminent domain. Cort still preferred this one-way conversation to his living room, where Jules would sulk and tell him in a sigh that she was fine.

Ted helped the conversation to finally turn to the Montgomery land.

“Frank, you seen the Montgomery place yet?”

“I certainly have. Rusty Watson sent me some aerial photos. Nice little spread.”

“We think so too. Don’t we, Cort? This town needs the recreation and a draw to some right kind of folks, folks who will need a club to congregate at and a gated community.”

Ted had caught a vision and was spreading the good news. Cort found him to be almost evangelistic about the land deal. Cort was a banker and liked money as much as anyone but was cautious. He had only met a handful of straight arrows in his years of banking. It seemed that most everyone that came across him was a gambler, and he hated risk. That was the dance, the drama of small-business finance. You had to be good to get Cort Johnson to ride the roller coaster with you.

“Elijah Montgomery owns that place. Been in his family since forever. He is a nice man and the town loves him. Most folks anyhow. Thing is, the Industrial Trust Committee has sent him several letters with offers. Ted here even spent some time with him at the nursing home just getting to know him,” Cort said.

The lawyer jumped in, saying, “But he won’t budge. I know the type. And heard some talk down at the IGA. I even went to his church Sunday, asking around.”

Cort could tell that Frank felt he had finally got the interested look he wanted from him. The lawyer seemed to him to be the kind who liked to rip the wings off flies, watch them squirm.

“Mr. Howard, is the ITC paying you? Ted, we don’t have the investors lined up yet. You and the council forking over traffic ticket money to this guy?”

“Don’t worry, Cort. In fact, I won’t officially work for the town or the ITC. I’m just kind of a drifter.” Frank said and then winked and added, “Drift in and drift out. We can work out all the details later, probably in Tulsa.”

His wink froze Cort. He could take small talk, rudeness even. But the wink was a call to arms. He wouldn’t go as far as the bus stop with this guy. Things at the table got a bit quiet.

“That reminds me of something Mr. Elijah said.” Ted laughed ingenuously. “He goes on a bit. You know, he is eighty-eight years old. Elijah likes to quote that Kenny Rogers song and says, ‘You got to know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em.’”

“Those old farts are something, huh, Cort?” Frank said, throwing a broad smile.

“I hear that Elijah is still pretty sharp,” Cort replied.

“Of course he is. Let me get this, guys. It’s been great.”

It was dark when Cort stepped back outside the restaurant. The evening blackness gave Cort that uneasy feeling of leaving a movie theater after dark, when the world he saw was not what he expected because it was not the world he left. What to do about old Elijah Montgomery? Rusty sent this guy photos? he wondered to himself.

He hoped she would call but never expected it. The cell phone didn’t reveal who called, but somehow he just knew it was her. Rusty didn’t want to answer it but couldn’t take a chance on her not calling again. It had to be important. His wife never said anything overtly about divorce, but he could see it coming. This is it, he thought. This is where God is going to rub my face into the mud he made of my life. That was the thought that made him ready to answer. He wasn’t going down without a fight.

“Yes.”

“Hi, Russell,” she said.

“Yeah. Hi. Your number says unlisted. Afraid I would call you? I didn’t.”

“I know. No. Not you. Just anyone. I just wanted to see how you are doing.”

“Fine,” Rusty relented.

There was a longer silence than Rusty wanted there to be. He didn’t want time to think. He didn’t like time to think before he acted on anything. That wasn’t his training. He was trained to act while knowing. And thinking only brought questions and doubt that he normally could not afford.

“Okay. I heard you went to Mexico,” she said.

“A couple times. Look. In a few months you’re gonna see a lot of money run through our account. After that, you should see a few million get stuck there.”

“Okay.”

“This is the biggest one ever. It’s a major golf course community. More units than you can shake a stick at,” he said.

“Okay.”

“What do you want from me? This is it, the grand slam,” Rusty said, finally stopping his mad pacing back and forth.

“It’s not going to make it better, Russell. It just won’t. You’re not ready to talk, are you?”

Rusty could only repeat his question again in his head. What does she want from me? I left the boy by the pool, and it can’t be undone. And killing myself will only signal defeat. All that’s left to me is to sap all the money I can from this hated town and move on. Get her back and move on.

“I need to go to bed. Just call me when you can I guess.” She hung up.

He went into a kind of coma for a moment after she hung up the phone. But it was more personal than her hanging up. Somewhere deep in his being, he was grateful to her. But he wanted rather, on some level, to be abused. If she had only cursed him, yelled maybe, then he could feel it, the retribution he deserved. If he could just be made to feel worse than he already did, something total and final, then he would know what he should do. But she didn’t do that, and Rusty knew that just wasn’t her. She probably forgave me, he thought, and that only cheapened his self-loathing. He wondered if that was why she didn’t tell him; no one knew him like she did. He would still get to wallow in his mess but was forced to go on living. Well, he thought, I sure as hell am not going to do it sober. Then it hit him. Call her back? How?

It rained most of the night, and the pounding of golf-ball-size hail woke up Elijah in the last part of the downpour. He rather liked the storms. This morning he thought back to his childhood, as he did most of the time. He would say that is where he learned most of what he knows but only recently understood what he had learned. He reached for his walker and made his way around the two-hundred-year-old bed that was passed down through his family. Elijah pressed his body along the walls on his morning journey to the bathroom. The poorly painted, dirty walls of his nursing home dorm room were plastered with memories, the very best ones—mostly of his wife of fifty years and in particular the battalion he served in WWII, also some ships that took him island-hopping in the pacific. Elijah was finding that at his age, you get honest. Everything around him came closer to who he really was and to what his heart had always prized. For him, it was his war and his girl and Montgomery Farm, his land.

At breakfast, Elijah was freshly appalled. He was a cook for the Marines for twenty of his years—the best years, to his mind.

“You’re trying to kill me.”

“No we ain’t, Mr. Elijah.”

“You know I was a cook for twenty years in the Marines.”

“Yes, Mr. Elijah. We know,” one woman answered, picking up trays.

“My granddaddy was a slave, lived to a hundred and four. Died in forty-five.”

“Sorry to hear that, Mr. Elijah. I lost my grandpa too.”

“Well, that’s a debt ever’ one has t’ pay. We goin’ anywheres today?” Elijah asked.

Elijah eventually found his way to the front porch of the home. He rocked there most mornings after breakfast. He liked to watch the people go like crazy to get to work or wherever—in such a hurry to get to the cemetery, he would say. He rocked. He also didn’t want to miss one inmate’s daily last-ditch effort at self-reliance. The man was in his late nineties, short and stocky, and loved to walk. He came to this country when a boy from Italy, from some town Elijah never bothered to pronounce correctly. He had said that he worked at a tool and die factory in Ponca City his whole life. He would talk to Elijah about all the other types of work he did over the years to support his wife and the kids and how he made it through this world by himself. Elijah thought about what his pastor said, how impressed he was with the people Elijah’s age. There was something about the WWII and Korea generations. They really lived for their kids. So they were happy to be in a home so as not to be a burden to their children. But some worried so for their grandchildren because they saw that they taught their own kids, by their own experience, that they should live for themselves. The day care and nursing home businesses were now booming.

The man made a break for it.

“Good luck!, I think this could right be your day.” Elijah attempted to yell.

The old man was headed for the plaza, for the IGA. He was intent on, as he would say, “Getting my own Dad-blamed food.”

Elijah always kept his old, wooden canes across his lap as he rocked. He prayed for his friend to make it to the store next time while humming something from his childhood. There was a lot he knew and could tell folks, but no one listened. But the Lord listened. And for that he was grateful. He prayed himself to sleep as two attendants pushed the old man back into the building.

It was Jake’s turn to clean the kitchen. The room looked like a kind of Moose Lodge for roosters. His wife, Amy Lynn, loved roosters. There were small and large ceramic roosters strewn about the counters. The wallpaper was populated with them. And a serious-looking army of roosters lined up around the room on the wall border running along the ceiling. But Jake was most comfortable in there. They gave his home balance. He had four daughters.

Amy Lynn was giving the little ones a bath while the oldest helped her dad out in the kitchen.

“Dad, you know I’m a ‘tween? That’s when you’re in the double digits but not a teenager yet.”

“I had never heard of that, kind of like being a Webelos Scout, not quite a full Boy Scout?”

“What?” she asked and moved to dry a glass.

“Nothing. That’s neat. How was your piano lesson today?” Jake asked.

“Cool, I guess. You know why I can play a song from memory after I play it once?”

“Cause you’re as smart as your dad?” Jake answered.

“No. Miss Franklin said I play without the work of other kids because I hear the music, I play by ear.”

“Sweet!”

He walked to the pantry and felt her eyes on him connected to a sudden awkward silence. Jake turned to see what the matter was.

“What?” he asked.

“Dad, you are way too old to say, ‘Sweet.’”

The girls were in their respective rooms and bunk beds by nine thirty. The popcorn and drinks would be made by nine forty-five. Since they started budgeting for cable, it would be the History Channel or the Food Network. It really depended on who was the most tired that night. Amy Lynn had changed quickly and was curled up next to Jake on the couch. Tonight, he could tell it would be she who would give in. She never imagined she would live this life and love it. Jake was watching her and remembered how Amy Lynn was hotly pursuing a career as a businesswoman when they first met. Amy Lynn had just graduated college among the top of her class. She was in seven honor organizations, three in which she was an officer. They were so different that Jake never thought he had a chance with her. He now marveled at her radical change in goals. She homeschooled their children, sometimes giving oral instruction while grinding her own wheat to bake fresh bread. She made sure that her milk and eggs came straight from a small farm that pasture-fed their animals. She liked that this supported the humane treatment of animals and provided food untouched by corporate shortcuts. He found her to be just as driven as she ever was and still so very different.

“Some folks were going on about your sermon this morning,” Amy Lynn said, grabbing another handful of popcorn.

“Good stuff?”

“You didn’t tell me how the visits went. Someone new to town?” she asked.

“We never actually made it to that visit. Our first call was like a hundred miles away. It took too long to get there and back.”

He pressed the mute on the remote, staring off at a place across the room.

“Oh. Was that the man with the hurt foot? I really should take him a meal.”

“Of course you should.” He laughed.

“What?”

“Nothing. He is fine, I guess. Well, not really. I think his foot is healing though, and that’s good.”

“Good. You ever notice that all you ever see on that channel of yours is something about Hitler or the Nazis? I will never understand your fascination with that stuff. Good night, honey.”

Amy Lynn stopped and turned back to Jake.

“Please don’t stay up too late. I need your help while I run to the library in the morning.”

“Yeah. I learned something out there today, something about grace. God loves his puppies.”

Amy Lynn looked at him curiously. Jake saw she was about to ask him what he meant but then thought better of it. Jake didn’t think he could bait her into deeper waters of theology but thought it worth trying.

“That’s nice. Can you tell me more about that tomorrow?” she quietly demanded.

“We’ll see, depending on how this war turns out,” he replied. Jake smiled and turned back to the TV.

Before shutting her door, she trailed off with, “We win.”

“Not fair!”