Hell With the Lid Blown Off Page 2

  Here is how it happened that I fell in love with Ruth Tucker.

  One of the big regrets of my life has always been that I have no musical talent at all. I can’t carry a tune in a gunny sack, and when I go to sing in church, folks get the awfullest looks of pain on their faces. Never did learn to play an instrument, either, needless to say. But I love music. I love to listen to any beautiful sound, whether it be a lady with a fine singing voice or a chorus of birds on a pretty spring morning. It was that very love of music that set my life on a new course, just a few months before the United States entered the Great War. I was twenty-two years old.

  Every morning on my rounds I passed by the Masonic Hall over on Elm Street. On that particular June morning it was hot and sultry, and the windows were open just enough to let in the fresh air. Now, at this time of day there wasn’t generally anybody in the hall except for old Boot Murillo, the caretaker. So I was surprised when I heard piano music coming from the auditorium, and I stopped dead in the road to have a listen. I never did expect any mischief. The hall was always open and anybody could go in there for meetings, or to play checkers, or the like.

  No, it wasn’t the fact that someone was inside that stopped me in my tracks. It was the beautiful music wafting out of that window like a breeze from heaven. I knew the tune, and could have sung along if I’d had a voice to do it with.

  Flow gently, sweet Afton, beside thy green braes

  Flow gently, sweet Afton, I’ll sing to thee praise

  My Mary is sleeping beside thy green stream

  Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

  For the longest time I couldn’t move, waiting for that song to end. It crossed my mind that I was going to be late back to the jailhouse, which I never was, and Scott might wonder where I’d got to. But I couldn’t have left while that music was playing if I’d wanted.

  When the last note faded away, my body just sighed of its own accord, and my heart felt so happy that I was determined to find out who had given me such pleasure on a hot morning and tell him so. I walked around to the front door and went right in to the auditorium, where I saw a slim young woman sitting at the old upright piano over in the far corner by the stage. Her back was to me and she was paging through some sheet music, unaware that I had come in.

  I couldn’t see her face so it took me a minute to figure out who she was, though I could tell right away that she was one of Gee Dub Tucker’s sisters. Every one of the eight girls in that family had her own look–some of them tall, some short, some red, or dark, or blond, but there were three who had a bunch of wild reddish curls, and this was one of them. The older one of the three was married and living on a farm outside of town, and the youngest was still a little girl, so I realized pretty quick that this was the middle one, Ruth.

  I didn’t want to startle her so I cleared my throat, and she turned around on the piano stool.

  I was already walking toward her across the wide, wooden floor of the auditorium when she turned to face me. When she smiled, my foot just hung there in the air in mid-step for a second.

  She looked happy to see me. “Trent Calder! Good morning. Mr. Murillo told me it’d be all right if I practiced here for a while. I hope I’m not bothering anyone.”

  Now, I’d known Ruth Tucker since she was a child. A sweet little old thing, all leggy and coltish, and I expect that’s the way I thought of her until the instant she turned around on that piano seat.

  I still think of that moment to this day, the memory as clear as glass even as other memories of my life fade. The hollow sound of my boots on the wooden floor, the dusty, leaf smell of the air coming in through the window. The bright, russet color of those curls that she had wound into a knot at the nape of her neck.

  She had the strangest eyes. They were big and turned up at the corners, with red-gold lashes. But the thing that bowled me over on that day was that they were purple. She was wearing a blouse the color of ripe plums, and her eyes were a perfect match. It came to me that she was talking, and I figured I’d better listen in case she required an intelligent answer.

  “How are you, Trent? I haven’t seen you in ages.”

  I sat down next to her on the piano bench. “I’m just fine. Shoot, I just can’t figure out why I haven’t seen you around much lately. Where have you been keeping yourself?”

  “I can’t figure it out, either. Must be that you haven’t been paying attention, because I see you out and about all the time, strutting up and down the street with your six-gun on your hip, rattling the doors on the shops at sunset to make sure they’re all locked.” Her fingers danced over the keys and she glanced at me with those purple eyes. “Every afternoon, you sit for a spell in a chair in front of the jailhouse after dinner and try to look all official, until some little nipper comes along and you run off after him in a game of tag. Makes it hard to take you seriously as the steel-eyed lawman, you know.”

  She was ragging on me, I knew, but all I could think was that she had noticed me. Something jiggled in the back of my brain. “I thought you were off in Muskogee studying music! When did you get back?”

  She wasn’t about to let me off the hook. “Why, Trent, I haven’t even gone yet. I just went over to Muskogee last week to enroll at the Music Conservatory. I’ll be starting in the fall. For the past few weeks I’ve been staying at Miz Beckie’s off and on and helping with her piano students during the summer.”

  Miz Rebecca MacKenzie lived in a big, gloomy house just north of town, right on the road to Tulsa. Everyone called her Miz Beckie. She had taught piano to every church accompanist in the county, except for the Church of Christ folks, of course, who didn’t hold with such things. She had even taught Ted Banner, who played the piano every Friday and Saturday night at the Elliot and Ober motion picture theatre, and as rumor had it, at the Rusty Horseshoe Roadhouse on the other nights of the week.

  Miz MacKenzie was a good-looking woman with a neat figure and big blue eyes, always dressed to the nines in the latest fashion, even on days that she had no notion of leaving the house. She wore her silvery-gold hair pinned high on her head, like a crown. But even if she looked like a queen, she wasn’t haughty. No, not a bit of it. Her life’s mission was to donate money for public projects, or to help the poor.

  Miz MacKenzie sang like an angel, and taught singing as well as piano. Not to me, of course. We couldn’t afford music lessons, so I never learned anything. Even so, she gave all of us who grew up around there a gift that can’t be valued.

  “I’m surprised you remember me at all, much less remember that I’ll be studying music.” Ruth sounded a mite put out when she answered me. “All those times you’ve had supper out at the farm with us—who do you think it was sitting at the end of the table, passing you the mashed potatoes? Just one of the mob of Tucker kids, I guess.”

  I didn’t say it, but something had sure happened to her over those few months and it didn’t have to do with learning how to teach kids to play the piano. “Well, smack me with a two-by-four, Ruth. I deserve that tongue-lashing, because I must have been blind not to notice you. I promise to pay real close attention to you from this day on.”

  She glanced at me again, and her teasing expression faded. She stopped playing and shrugged. “Never mind. Things happen when they’re supposed to, I expect.”

  At least I was smart enough to note the change in her tone. I stood up, my hat in my hand. “I’d better get to work. Sure was nice to see you. Next time I get invited out to your folks’, maybe we can have a long talk and catch up.”

  She gave me a quirky smile, and I swear there was a look in her eye that said she knew things about me that I didn’t know myself and she wasn’t inclined to educate me anytime soon. “Maybe we can.”

  When I turned to leave, my mind was going like a rabbit with a fox after him. I hadn’t been out to the Tucker place for three or four weeks, and I was already scheming how t
o get myself invited to supper as fast as I could.

  How is it that the world can shift like that in the blink of an eye, and things that had been so ordinary and familiar become something you could never have imagined just the moment before?

  Wallace MacKenzie

  By the time Ruth returned to Beckie MacKenzie’s house late in the morning, the day had turned windy and the sky was full of shredded, scudding clouds. The late Mr. Wallace MacKenzie Senior had been a man of means, one of the founders of the Francis Brickworks, and had left his wife Rebecca well off. Her two-story Victorian house was a monument to Victorian excess with its turrets and gothic windows, portico and balustrade. The MacKenzie manse stood in all its curlicued glory just outside the Boynton town limits. Impossible to miss, and impossible to miss the visual declaration that a very important family resided here.

  Ruth had never quite understood why the MacKenzies had felt they needed all that space. Five bedrooms upstairs and servants’ quarters in the back by the kitchen, and even at the height of Mr. MacKenzie Senior’s working and family life, only three people at a time had ever lived there. And now only the widow was in residence. It must have been a lonely existence for such an outgoing woman. Ruth had once asked Beckie if she wouldn’t be happier in a smaller house in town, closer to the society of others and handier for her many music students, to boot. But Beckie wouldn’t hear of it.

  “I must be near the ghosts of my happy past, Ruth dear,” she had declared.

  Ruth entered the house through the kitchen door at the back, and before she removed her hat, put the basket full of fresh greens that her mother had sent onto the counter. She made a half-hearted attempt to wipe her dusty shoes on the doormat before giving it up as a lost cause and taking them off.

  Beckie’s daytime housekeeper, Marva Welsh, was already seated at the kitchen table, shelling peas into a bowl. She looked up at Ruth and smiled a greeting.

  “I was wondering where you might be, Miz Ruth. Did you stay the night at your mama’s?”

  Marva Welsh was a Negro woman of thirty or so, small and pleasingly rounded, with a gentle manner and a frightening competence in the arts of housewifery. She was the wife of Coleman Welsh, master carpenter and brother of Sugar Welsh and Carlon Welsh, who was himself a skilled handyman and the husband of Georgie Welsh. Georgie was Alafair’s sometime chore helper and neighbor. It had occurred to Ruth that if it weren’t for the Welshes, many of the white citizens of Boynton would be sitting in filth, starving, with their houses falling down around their ears and their gardens gone to seed.

  “I did, Marva, but I came into town early this morning. I’ve been practicing my piano over to the Masonic Hall. Here. Mama sent a mess of greens for Miz Beckie’s dinner.” Ruth held up the dishtowel-covered wicker basket by the handle.

  She set the greens on the table, where Marva uncovered and inspected them with approval. “Why, thank you, honey. They’ll be mighty fine for dinner with some dumplings.”

  Ruth smiled. “I’ll go tell Miz Beckie I’m here. I’ve got Claudia Woodstock coming in for a lesson in a while.”

  “You better put your shoes back on, sugar.” Marva’s head was bent over her bowl of peas, but her voice held a hint of amusement. “Miz Beckie’s got company.”

  999

  “Miz Beckie, I’m back,” Ruth called. She walked down the hall in her dusty shoes, toward the sound of voices at the front of the house. She was pleased to know that the garrulous Beckie had company. It made her feel less guilty for spending the previous night at her parents’ house and leaving her friend alone.

  She stopped at the sitting room door, dismayed when a young man stood up from the wing-backed chair in front of the fireplace and gave her an impish grin. Wallace was home.

  Ruth had known Wallace MacKenzie the Third since she was a child. He was Beckie’s darling, and his own estimation of himself was just as high as his grandmother’s. He was a handsome fellow, everyone agreed about that, tall and fair, with sharp blue eyes. His blond hair was long on top and parted in the middle, falling nearly to his cheekbones on either side and cupping his cheeks like wings. Ruth suspected that Wallace wanted to cultivate a resemblance to some romantic English poet and enjoyed the fact that people thought him an intellectual. Which he decidedly was not.

  Wallace had come to live with his grandmother after the grandfather died. So she wouldn’t be so lonely, they said. But Ruth was of the opinion that his parents in Muskogee had had enough of him. Whatever the reason, the arrangement had suited everyone.

  Except for Ruth. His overblown personality annoyed her no end. Fortunately, he had been studying medicine at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee for a couple of years, so she seldom had to put up with him. He loved to make a show and fancied himself quite the charmer. When he did manage to make a rare visit home, Ruth was careful not to find herself alone with him.

  Beckie’s already cheerful face was positively celestial. “Ruth, lass! Look who’s finally decided to favor his old granddam with a visit!”

  Ruth mustered a feeble smile. “Good morning, Wallace.”

  Wallace stepped forward, grabbed her shoulders, and gave her a wet kiss on either cheek in grand Continental style. She resisted the temptation to scrub her face with her sleeve as he held her at arm’s length for inspection. “Ruth, I promise you get more beautiful every moment you live. Gran tells me you have a beau, that old classmate of mine, Trent Calder!” He released her and clapped his hands over his heart. “Say it isn’t so, or whatever shall I do?”

  Ruth’s mouth dropped open, and she shot Beckie an exasperated look. “Wherever did you get such a notion?” She could feel her cheeks burning.

  Beckie beamed back at her, unrepentant. “I’m not blind, Ruth dear. I see how you look at him as he walks his patrol, so serious and manly.”

  “Trent and I are friends.” Ruth’s acknowledgment was begrudging. “But I’d hardly call him my beau.”

  Wallace shook his head, but there was a twinkle in his eye. “Then there’s still hope for me! I can’t imagine that a jewel like you would prefer a fellow so tall and skinny and redheaded that he resembles a lit match. If you do, I’m desolate, but I suppose there’s nothing I would be able to do but rail against my fate.”

  Beckie emitted a ladylike tinkle of laughter. Ruth was torn between feeling insulted on Trent’s behalf and amused at Wallace’s apt description of her friend.

  “I thought you were spending the summer traveling with a college chum of yours,” she said.

  He gestured toward his vacated armchair, inviting Ruth to sit down. “I was. I am. And here he is.”

  To Ruth’s surprise, a dark young man stood up from his seat on an ottoman next to her chair. She hadn’t even noticed him.

  He inclined his head toward her. “Randal Wakefield, ma’am.” His voice dripped with Southern gentility. He was shorter than Wallace, but just as elegantly turned out in a smart dark suit with a belted jacket and plus-four trousers. His brown eyes were warm and friendly, and Ruth liked him instantly.

  “Glad to meet you, Mr. Wakefield.”

  “Randal, please.” He grasped her hand briefly before he sat back down.

  “Randal and I are on our way to Colorado,” Wallace said. “Randal insisted that we take a detour through Oklahoma so that he could meet my grandmother. Seems that he had to see with his own eyes this paragon of whom I so often speak.”

  Beckie clasped her hands in front of her face, her blue eyes wide. “Randal is such a fine young man, Ruth! Of course, I am disposed to like anyone who brings my darling Wallace home for a visit!”

  Randal placed his hand over his heart. “You are too kind, Miz MacKenzie.”

  Wallace tossed his mane out of his eyes. “I hate to leave so precipitously, Ruth, but for some reason, Randal insists on a tour of Boynton before luncheon, even though I’ve warned him that there’s nothing worth seeing.�
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  “Well, now, Wallace,” Randal protested, “it would be unspeakably rude to leave this lady’s company just as I am making her acquaintance.”

  “Oh, don’t change your plans on my account!” Ruth’s response sounded hasty, even to her. “We will have plenty of time to visit over the next few days.”

  Wallace leaned over and kissed Beckie on the cheek. “Since we have Miz Tucker’s permission, we’ll take our leave, Grandmother. I don’t expect this will take long, and we’ll be back long before Marva finishes cooking dinner.”

  Beckie MacKenzie

  “Isn’t this the most wonderful thing, Ruth dear?” Beckie said, after the young men had excused themselves.

  “You must be very happy to see him. How long is he going to stay, did he say?”

  The woman’s face crumpled briefly as she pondered his departure. “Only a few days, I’m afraid. But you know young men. They must have their adventures. Besides, it may happen that we are drawn into the European war, and if that occurs, who knows what will happen? I feel that Wallace and his friend want to enjoy themselves while they can.”

  “Won’t you worry if Wallace goes for a soldier?”

  “If war comes, my Wallace will do his duty. America will gain a fine, brave officer if he is called, you can be sure of that. It’s in his blood.”

  Beckie’s father was born a Highlander, and according to her, he had also been a surgeon’s assistant in the British Army and was a great hero in some European war. After which he had immigrated to America and become a surgeon for the Confederacy. Ruth doubted there was anybody in the county who hadn’t heard Beckie’s tales of his deeds and adventures, for she’d recount them to perfect strangers if she got the chance.

  “I believe you have at least one brother of age, Ruth dear. Has he told you his plans should war come?” Beckie’s expression made it plain that she thought all young men were bound to do their patriotic duty.

  Ruth turned her head to look out the window. “My mother doesn’t like war talk, ma’am, but if it happens, I think he would enlist, yes.” She didn’t say what she thought about that.