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Grover Cleveland Anderson died a week before Christmas, passing over at first light. Mack refused to leave his side in the last hours. He talked nonstop in those last minutes, hoping his grandfather had enough consciousness left to understand what he was telling him.
“We found your buddies, Pa. You didn’t leave them behind. Beulah Land is yours again, Grace is there waiting for you. It’s done with now.” When Pa drew his last breath, he was thankful it was a peaceful one.
Chapman’s Funeral Home came out and dug a hole between Grace’s plot and Bill and Jack’s. George Folsom drove his International tractor over before the graveside service and mowed the grass underneath the two hickories. Mack used a weed whacker to trim up around the tree trunks and stumps. Eying the gravesite, he sensed the irony of the situation. A man might lay claim to a piece of land, he thought, but in the end, it was the land that claimed the man.
There wasn’t much of a turnout at the funeral. Old friends had become few and far between with the passing of time. Mack saw Nonny sitting with George Folsom at the church and then afterward at Beulah Land. He’d been thankful her eyes were clear and bright, which he hoped against hope meant she was sober and sound. She said her condolences to his mother and aunt, but only nodded his way. He figured that was only proper given she had come close to committing self-annihilation because of the mess his good intentions had wrought.
Right before the funeral, Mack talked Bessie Anderson and her sisters into buying the duplex, on the condition Walker would put a door between the two units. Walker complied without batting an eye, saying “It can always be closed up when the old sisters give up the ghost.”
When Mack expressed a concern that his cousins might not get their money out of the place, Walker dismissed it, saying, “A fool’s born every minute, ready to pour good money down a hole.” After Mack learned the Anderson sisters had no children and the property would fall to a television minister, he didn’t give the matter another thought.
He had finished up the duplex sale that morning as well as a couple of other loose ends. Two boxes of fresh ammo lay on the front seat along with an amended deed to the home place. He’d put the home place in joint tenancy with his mother and aunt, with rights of survivorship. In addition to Beulah Land, they were now as much the owner of it as he was.
Driving straight back, he laid the deed to Beulah Land on the kitchen table, along with an amended copy of the deed on the home place. He carefully positioned the documents between their two coffee mugs and used boxes of shotgun shells as paperweights to keep them from blowing away. He debated hanging around long enough to witness the expression on their faces when the impact of joint tenancy sunk in, but the day was getting short and the road was long. Time to pull up stakes, head for the big and wide.
He loaded his gear into the back of the Bronco, gave the place one last look, and headed for Beulah Land where his mother and aunt were tending to some business of their own. He spotted them under the hickories as he pulled into the dirt track, laying out wooden stakes on the ground.
“Everything go all right with the lawyer?” Ruby asked as he walked up.
Mack nodded. “Left the deed to Beulah Land on the kitchen table. As for that duplex, both units now belong to the Anderson cousins. Bessie and her sisters seem real satisfied with the place, plan to move in soon as Walker puts the finishing touches on it.”
“Hate like everything I’m gonna lose them as customers. Still don’t see why they can’t drive out here to get their hair fixed.”
“That was part of the deal, Mama. Would you rather see them get sued for property damage or get killed in a car wreck? Worse yet, kill someone else?”
Mack had decided not to share with his mother and aunt what Bessie had told him about the night Grace was killed. They had been sheltered from the truth all these years. It didn’t make sense to expose the grisly details now. To his thinking, worse crimes than his grandfather’s were committed every day. Land swindles. Crooked realtors. Governments turning boys into killing machines. And living with the memory of that night had been a harsh enough sentence for his grandfather to serve.
“Water under the bridge anyway,” he told his mother. “The Anderson cousins already surrendered their driver licenses.”
“Well, guess they can just walk across the street there, and they’ll get a senior discount. Still and all, sounds like blackmail to me.”
Sister straightened from her work and gave Ruby a look. “You’re a fine one to be talking blackmail,” she snapped.
Mack did not push for an explanation. He still felt bewildered that the Turners had signed over Beulah Land to his mother and aunt. But in spite of his probing, neither of the two would divulge the particulars of how that deal had come to pass. All they would say was Tootsie had turned over a new leaf in her old age. He had laughed at that, but let the matter drop. Some questions were better left unanswered.
“What you doing there, Sister?” Mack watched as the little woman picked up a small rubber mallet and began to pound one of many stakes into the ground.
“Marking off a place for myself. This here’s my spot, right next to Grace. She was a seamstress, too.” She waved toward two other stakes. “Those are for Will and Ruby.”
“Will? You mean, Dad?”
“Guess I should’ve talked with you about it,” Ruby intervened. “You know how your daddy always wanted a place and . . . Well, it seems only right to bring him here. Come spring, I plan to move him, headstone and all. You’re not upset, are you?”
“Not a bit. I think he’d like that. You decide on a headstone for Pa yet?”
“No, I just don’t know what to put on it—what he’d want put on it.”
“Seems to me he took care of that right there.” Sister pointed at Grace’s marker. “Nonny said at the funeral she’d clean it up if we wanted.”
“Not sure that’d be a good idea,” Mack said hesitantly. “We troubled Nonny enough. Besides, I don’t figure it matters no one else can read it. Those words Pa put on it was meant for just him and Grace. I’m inclined to just let it stand like it is.”
“That would suit me just fine. You, Ruby?”
“I don’t know. Grace caused a lot of heartaches.”
“Now Ruby,” Sister said. “Grace had a lot put on her, especially there at the end.”
“I suppose.” Ruby took a deep breath. “Well, guess even sane people are entitled to go a little nuts now and then. And she sure didn’t deserve to die the way she did.”
Hearing the change in his mother’s attitude toward Grace, Mack knew that a door had opened. His mother was looking forward, not back. He turned toward the road where a pickup pulled in and parked beside his Bronco. “That George Folsom?”
“Yes, he’s here to talk business with me.” Ruby combed her hair with her fingers, shook hands with the old man as he walked up, and led him towards the back of the property.
Mack looked at Sister for an explanation.
“She’s negotiating to have a fence put around the family plot, set it off from the back pasture. We’ve arranged for Luther Winslow to drill in alfalfa come spring. I think Pa would approve of that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.” Mack watched his mother mark a line for a fencerow with a can of bright orange spray paint. “Mama’s in her heyday, isn’t she?”
Sister raised her eyebrows. “Goes without saying. She likes being an independent businesswoman. Never owned a thing in her life and now she does. We both do.” Sister smiled at Mack. “Feels real good, being a landowner.”
“It’s long past due.”
“Better late than never.” Sister hefted the hammer in her hand again. “If you want to be planted here, you better pick a spot. Ruby’s putting most of the land into horse hay to pay the taxes.”
Mack looked at a stake that had been placed near his parents’. “I figured that one over there was for me.”
“That one next to Ruby? That’s Whitey’s. Ruby picked out his spot herself.”
“Whitey!” Mack grinned and looked at the old white dog stretched out next to a stump. When the old dog heard his name, he twisted his sides in pleasure and pounded his scrawny tail whump, whump on the ground. “Well hell, just stake me out there next to Whitey.”
“All right then.” Sister wrote his name on a stake with a felt-tip marker and pounded it in the ground next to the dog’s.
Mack sobered as he watched the wooden picket bite into the soil. Ordinarily, it would be the sign of an ending, but in his line of work, a stake in the ground meant new construction.
“Well, that’s it,” Sister said, looking around. “We’re all accounted for.”
Mack gave the little old woman a peck on the cheek and walked to his mother to say his goodbyes. “It’s time for me to go, Mama.”
“I wish you could stay, son, but I know you can’t.”
Mack saw a change in his mother, not just in outward behavior, but inward too. For the first time ever, he knew that she truly understood why, all those times past, he’d had to leave. Giving George Folsom a handshake, he left the congregation to handle Beulah Land.
*****
Mack pulled to a rolling stop at the Y in the road, hesitating. He knew taking the northern route would get him on the Indian Nation Turnpike faster. In spite of that, he turned south toward McAlester.
Questioning his sanity, he steered the Bronco to the Ace Hardware. He left a few minutes later carrying a plastic bag holding a deadbolt and window-lock replacement. Driving to the old part of town, he pulled up at the old storefront on Choctaw Street that now housed the homeless shelter.
Seeing Nonny’s Jeep sitting alongside the building, Mack sat a moment, thinking about the wisdom of his being there. Climbing out of his Bronco, he tried the Jeep’s doors and found them locked. As he glanced hesitantly toward the back door, the voice in his head said, You’ve come this far . . . Inhaling deeply, he walked to the kitchen where he figured Nonny would be working and found Chester handling duties instead of her.
Noticing him peering around the doorframe, Chester said, “Soups on, Mack. You hungry, go on out front. Plenty for everyone.”
“Thanks, but I need to hit the trail.” Mack slipped inside the back door. “Got a call from the guy I work for out in the Panhandle. He got the contract on a big job at the college in Canyon, little town west of Amarillo. New dormitory going up. I’m heading out right now.”
Chester wiped his hands on a tea towel. “You come by to say your farewells to Nonny? She’s out front.”
“Yes and no.” He paused. “Would you give this to her. It’s some things I noticed she needs.”
Chester took the bag. “Sure thing.” He gave Mack another look. “That it?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” Mack noticed the man was grinning again. “Well, maybe I’d like to get a look without her seeing me. Just to see if she’s, you know, okay.”
“Take a peek then.”
Mack saw Nonny wearing a long white butcher’s apron, ladling soup into bowls. He studied what he could see of her face, which was mostly a profile, but it was enough to see that she was looking straight into the faces of the people in line. He also noticed her hands were trembling a bit, but not bad enough to be deemed unsteady.
Backing away from the door, he turned to Chester and said, “Well hell, she’s putting herself out there.”
“You the reason?” Chester said, laying slices of day-old white bread on a platter.
“Me? No, I can’t take credit. She’s got an independent streak big as Texas. But I’m glad for it, whatever the cause.”
“Me, too.”
“Think she’s gonna make it?”
“One day at a time, Mack.” He grinned. “But I’m an optimist.”
“She’s got a lot of grit in her craw.”
“Hard to keep a good woman down.” Chester extended his hand.
“That it is.” Mack loosened his grip and made to pull his hand away, but when Chester hung on, he waited.
“’Quaint and curious war is, you shoot a fellow down, you’d treat if met where any bar is, or help to half-a-crown.’”
Mack blinked. “Afraid I didn’t catch all of that.”
“Thomas Hardy. He wrote a poem about a hundred years ago about a man who went off to war to kill the enemy. After he got back home, he speculated if he met the same guy in a bar, he’d probably buy him a beer, maybe loan him a buck.” He turned loose of Mack’s hand. “War’s hell, isn’t it, Mack? Screws with your head. Take care of yourself, kiddo.”
“You too, pard.” Mack hesitated at the door, then turned to face Chester again. “Next time I’m in town, I’ll buy you a Bud.”
“We’ll have to sneak off, not let Nonny know what we’re up to.”
“There’s this little bar out on the highway . . .” He hesitated, taking note of the scar on Chester’s head. “But it’s mostly good old boys that hang out there.”
“Salt of the earth,” Chester said, grinning. “Make it sooner rather than later. You better beat it now. Nonny’s probably close to being out of bread.”
Without further adieu, Mack left. He hadn’t done exactly what he had set out to do on this trip, but it had ended well. The people he had upended had righted themselves and were looking forward, not back.
Retracing his path down Choctaw Street, he headed toward the interstate. Forty-five minutes later, he was doing the speed limit and then some on the Indian Nation Turnpike, trying to make the best of the daylight remaining in the short winter day. A much-needed job that would put money in his pocket waited at the end of the road. Though they set him back a bundle, the improvements he’d made on the home place were worth every penny. But he’d have to keep an eye on that roof, he reflected. A warranty wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.
As the country rushed past, he glanced in the rearview mirror, sensing something inside was settling. Rolling down his window, he let the rich smell of wet earth and fresh air flush out the staleness. Though barren now, the monsoons would come soon and the country would become a mass of green. Hardwood trees would fill the space between the short-leaf pine, and the underbrush would become so thick, a man couldn’t see a foot in front of his face.
A jungle . . .
Even as the thought entered his mind, he corralled it. If he’d learned one thing on this trip, it was life was a coin toss. Some days would be winners, some not. The biggest loser was the person who lived in fear of flipping the coin.
Lu Clifton writes adult novels set in Oklahoma and Texas Panhandle, with a mingling of Native American cultural beliefs and traditions thrown in. She became interested in those cultural traditions while tracing her mother’s Choctaw roots. She was born in and spent her early childhood in southeastern Oklahoma, then moved to the Texas Panhandle with her family. She completed an associate degree at Amarillo Junior College in Texas and a B.A. and M.A. in English at Colorado State University. She now resides in Illinois.
Writing for adults and children, she is a member of the Oklahoma Writers Federation, Mystery Writers of America, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. The first book in the Sam Chitto mystery series, Scalp Dance, was a finalist for the 2017 Oklahoma Book Award in Fiction and the second book, The Bone Picker, was a finalist for the 2018 Oklahoma Book Award in Fiction. She has three middle-grade novels in print. Her middle-grade novel, Freaky Fast Frankie Joe, received a Friends of American Writers Award for Juvenile Fiction in 2012, and Seeking Cassandra won the 2017 Oklahoma Book Award for Young Adult Fiction.
