Although physically recovered from her ordeal, Gusta didn’t resume her carefree ways. After the last day of school, she announced, “I’m going back to Texas, back to the safety of snakes, scorpions, and lizards. But before I go, I’m going to throw a party, a real Texas hootenanny, and I want everyone in town there.”
Mary told Will that she was disappointed but not surprised that Gusta decided to go home. “When Gusta talked to me about it, she said, ‘I just don’t understand you Yankees. You’re as cold as your weather.’ She hastened to add that she didn’t mean us. I suppose it’s hard to behave like a Yankee when you’re a born rebel. She misses her sunshine and cactus plants. It seems that our Eden is her wasteland.”
“She loves you,” Will said. “I know that.”
“I’ve tried my best, and I hope I didn’t fail my brother, but she’s old enough to know her mind. She’ll be seventeen before she leaves for home. She means well, even if her ways aren’t ours.”
Gusta announced that she would hold her party on the Fourth of July. “A good day for a celebration,” she said.
Will knew that Gusta was writing letters south since the day school ended, and that she had made arrangements for food and entertainment to be shipped north from Chicago and Texas, but she didn’t reveal the details.
Will expected the party to be special, but he had no idea how spectacular it might be until Justin Jasperson told him that Gusta rented four rooms in his father’s boarding house for two nights before and one night after the Fourth. Then Esther Bohanning said that Gusta bought enough space in her father’s ice locker to stash a whole steer. What could that girl have in mind?
Summer days were busy days for everyone. They worked the fields during the heat of day and milked cows each morning and night. There was little time to talk with Gusta during the day, and Will was too tired at night.
Early on the first of July, Gusta said she’d spend the day in town, that she’d made arrangements for a livery driver to pick her up, and that she’d not get home until the next morning. Mary took the news so calmly that Will supposed she must know something the others didn’t. Whatever could his imaginative, dramatic, and exotic niece have in mind?
The next morning, Gusta and three men rode into the yard. Three strangers were reason enough for excitement—but black men? When Will greeted the men, he could see that his girls were flabbergasted. They’d never seen a black man before.
Catherine stood slack-jawed when Gusta said, “Please meet Mr. Allen, our pitman, and Jasper and Jacob, his helpers.”
Jasper and Jacob looked so much alike that Will knew they must be twin brothers.
“What’s a pitman?” Ruby said.
“He’s a master cook,” Gusta said. “Just you wait and see. You’ll never have tasted anything so good.”
Mr. Allen set his men to digging, and within two hours they had dug a pit three feet deep, three feet wide, and twenty feet long. Will couldn’t believe how fast they worked.
“Easy diggin’,” Jacob said—or maybe it was Jasper.
“Not like Texas hardscrabble,” the other said.
Before noon a second wagon arrived loaded with sacks of wood chips which the men unloaded into a crib-high pile and immediately set fire to it. “Why are they burning it?” Ruby said. “Why’d they bring the chips this far just to burn them?”
“You’ll see,” Gusta said. “Those aren’t any old wood chips. They’re mesquite chips. The best there is for cooking a Texas barbecue. You’ll be eating beef, cowboy style. You’ve never had anything so good. You’ll see.”
The chips flared and then smoldered until the next morning, when Jasper and Jacob shoveled the embers into the pit. Within an hour, a third wagon pulled into the O’Shaughnessy yard, this one loaded with the most beautiful beef briskets that Will had ever seen. More than a hundred pounds of brisket were laid on racks across the pit, about two feet above the hot coals.
“Where’d you get those?” Ruby said. “Did you bring them up from Texas?”
“Not Texas, Chicago,” Gusta said. “From the Chicago stock yards. The best I could buy.”
“They’ll burn to a crisp,” Catherine said. “We don’t eat until tomorrow.”
Gusta laughed. “Not when they’re cooked this way,” she said. “We call this hot smoking, just smoke and low heat for hours and hours. They’ll be tender as a baby’s hinder and sweeter’n sugared ham by noon tomorrow. Just you wait’n’ see.”
* * *
People began arriving mid-morning on the Fourth. The first carriage carried a bunch of exuberant men, and the second, right behind, was filled with musical instruments. Gusta called the family over. “This is Bob Wills and his orchestra, friends of mine, straight from Texas. You’ll love his music. He calls it Western Swing. I’ll teach y’all a new dance. He’s the best musician in Texas. Just you wait; y’all hear his name up here soon.”
Will listened with admiration. The music didn’t sound like what he played. When Wills played his fiddle, the melodies flew from his bow.
The party was like none that Will had seen. The barbecue was everything that Gusta promised, and the potato salad, mustard coleslaw, spicy pinto beans, peach cobbler, and sweet potato pie more than satisfied the three hundred townsfolk who had gathered. Will knew only a few of them. His girls had told their classmates to bring their families, and, before summer break, Gusta had announced in school that everyone was welcome. The lively music entertained the throng throughout the day, and those who left for milking returned for a late night encore. The young people, and many of the old as well, spent the day swaying their hips and tapping their feet to Bob Will’s Western Swing.
When the crowd was the largest, Wills stopped in the middle of a set. “Miss Gusta has something to say. We’ll continue the music after she’s made her announcement.”
Gusta strode forward looking as proud as a debutante at her coming-out ball. “Ladies and gentlemen. As y’all know, I’ll be returning to Texas soon, but I wanted to do something that you’d remember me by.”
Will saw Sharon elbow Catherine in the side and heard her say, “As if anyone could forget cousin Gusta. You’d forget her like you’d forget a twister that flattened your living room.”
Gusta continued. “Mostly, this is for Aunt Mary, Uncle Will, Sharon, Ruby, and Catherine. I knew there was nothing I could do that would mean so much as entertaining their friends and neighbors. Thank you, Aunt Mary, Uncle Will, and my cousins. I love y’all.”
Sharon hung her head while Ruby and Catherine rushed to hug Gusta.
“Just one more thing,” Gusta said. “Aunt Mary’s teaching me to be a lady. Notice that today has been uneventful.” She demurely curtsied to the crowd.
Will shifted uncomfortably, but smiled a bit, too. He remembered the day Gusta gave his mother a pitcher of fermented cherry juice to help calm her headache. It was probably the first time Gertrude ever tasted an alcoholic drink—and she thought it was wonderful until the next morning when her head felt like a busted melon. And then there was that night that Gusta returned home two hours after Mary’s designated curfew. Will smiled to himself. This day wasn’t over yet.
Everyone applauded. “A toast to Aunt Mary,” someone shouted. All raised their glasses and proclaimed, “Hail, Mary O’Shaughnessy. Hail to a lady.”
Pete Simmons and Adam Baxter exploded firecrackers all afternoon, but after Will cautioned them, they stayed at the crowd’s fringe. Still, Will kept an eye on them, and Catherine followed them around as they blew cans into the air and threw explosives onto the road. As the music drew attention away from them, the boys moved toward the barn. Will heard Adam say, “Let’s make some real excitement.”
“Yeah, what you thinkin’, Adam?” Pete said with a smirk.
Adam strolled toward the loft. “Have you ever seen how fast a cat moves when he’s got one of these sizzlers sparkin’ outta his butt? I think I spotted a kitten near the barn earlier.”
Will knew that Catherine heard them, too. She turned and raced toward Ruby, and he heard her shout, “Ruby, Pete and Adam are after our cats.” She explained what she heard the boys say, but before she finished, Ruby, fists clenched, raced toward the barn.
Gusta was performing rope tricks to the tune of “Ida Red” when a crimson-faced Ruby raced after Catherine. Will thought the boys may have bitten off more than they could chew when Gusta coiled her rope and raced after them. Ruby and Gusta were a force to behold. They wouldn’t shy from trouble.
Will followed behind Catherine and Ruby when they ran up the ramp to the loft, but he stayed back a bit.
Pete and Adam grabbed a cornered cat. “What do you have in mind, boys?” Ruby shouted at them.
They turned toward Ruby. Pete held the cat by the scruff of its neck but tried to conceal it behind his leg. “Nothing, nothing at all, Ruby,” Adam said as he edged away from Pete. “We just like cats,” he said with a strained laugh that faded into a wan smile.
“Yeah,” Pete agreed as he took the cat into his arms and patted at it. “We sure do like little kittens. I’ve got a bunch at home.”
Ruby edged toward Pete as Gusta approached, rope in hand. “What’s going on?” Gusta said.
“I think these boys have mischief in mind,” Ruby said. “Tell her what you heard, Catherine.”
Catherine began her story, but when she got to the sizzling part, Pete tossed the kitten to Adam who started toward the open door. As he raised his leg for a second step, a rope coiled around his foot, and with a quick jerk, Gusta tipped him forward and into the air. “Just like roping calves, boys.”
Before she got the words out, Adam, cat, and rope disappeared, as if an invisible hand had snatched them from the loft.
“She’s a sorcerer,” Pete squeaked.
Will knew immediately what happened, and he might have panicked if he hadn’t remembered that he’d left his morning chores unfinished.
“You tripped him down the chute!” Catherine screamed. “You killed him, Gusta!”
Gusta turned pale.
“Quick, let’s get down there,” Ruby shouted over her shoulder as she ran past Will and around the corner of the building. She was gone before the others moved.
Catherine split away from Gusta and Pete when they turned toward the milk barn below. “I’ll get Dr. Snyder,” she called.
Will knew she wasn’t keen to see a bloodied Adam.
When Dr. Snyder entered the barn, Will saw Catherine hang back, but her curiosity overcame her fear of blood, and she peeked around the corner. Adam sat upright on a pile of hay, but he was as pale as the whitewashed walls and as quiet as a kitten stalking a mouse.
“Take deep breaths,” Dr. Snyder said as he checked his ribs.
Although he appeared to be okay, Will could see that the fall had scared the bejeebers out of the boy. Will looked up through the chute and could see that hay surrounded the opening, having hid it from their view in the loft. Will was glad that he had been called away before he’d leveled the hay that Adam sat on. Without that big cushion, the outcome might have been quite different.
By now, half the revelers had gathered at the barn, but when they heard the story, they agreed that Adam had gotten his dues. As they walked back to the yard, Bob Wills and his orchestra played Dixieland music, and Will heard Mr. Allen comment to no one in particular, “This time, the reb’ won.”
Gusta didn’t look like a victorious soldier. Head down, she sidled over to her aunt. “I’m sorry, Aunt Mary. I so wanted to have one doin’s where I didn’t embarrass y’all.”
When Mary Pulled Gusta close and hugged her, Will knew that his wife wasn’t upset by the girls’ routing Pete and Adam. She’d complained earlier about the boys’ rowdy behavior.
Will felt a tug on his trousers. Catherine slipped her small hand into his big burly one and looked up at him. “I’m glad Gusta roped him. I think Adam got exactly what he deserved.”
Yes, Will thought. Catherine’s rebel cousin wasn’t about to leave without one last hurrah.