Morning Glory (6 page)

"Well said," Tilly nodded.

"Thank you," Briar said.

"Doesn't change my mind one bit, and I'm entitled
to my opinion," Clara said. "Just be sure you're in
before ten, Mr. Nelson, or you'll find yourself living in
one of those tents out in Ragtown."

Briar set about eating. "I'll carry a watch with me at
all times."

"Surprised to see you at the table, Tilly." Bessie
changed the subject to keep the place from going up in
flames. Clara had sure enough met her match and it was
bound to be an exciting two months.

Tilly loaded her plate high with pancakes. "Ran into the new deputy. Clara says I need to start paying protection."

"Don't you do it! Kate Anderson would turn over in
her grave, girl. Lawmen have always been a hardship in
our business. Ten years ago, when I quit, Oklahoma had
just become a state and it's just got worse ever since."
Bessie dabbed her mouth with a white linen napkin.
"You got a good thing going. Your granny taught you
well. She and I had some good times back in our day"
"Granny spoke well of you," Tilly said.

Briar would have given his breakfast to a pack of
hungry hounds to know just what business they were
talking about, but he wasn't about to ask. If he did and
Tilly told him without a moment's hesitation that she
was a ... scarlet woman, he'd blush all the way to ends
of his toenails. Good Lord, just thinking about Bessie
and Beulah doing that was enough to make him choke
on a bite of sausage.

"Wasn't no one better in these parts than your
granny, girl," Beulah said. "Woman wasn't afraid of the
devil himself. 'Course she was married to Lucifer's
brother. That Melvin Anderson was a piece of work.
Only person on earth who could bring him to his knees
was your granny. Someday you'll meet a man who'll
fall in love with you like that"

Tilly shook her head. "Sweet Jesus, I hope not. I
don't think I could handle it."

"You're not supposed to take the Lord's name in
vain," Nellie chided.

Tilly just laughed.

Briar laid his napkin beside his plate. "Would you
ladies please excuse me? The meal was fine, Dulcie. I
look forward to supper."

"Fine young man," Bessie said after they heard
Briar's car engine start up and the noise disappear
down the street. "He might be the very one, Tilly."

"No, ma'am, I'm not interested in that one. Clara
can have him," Tilly said.

"I wouldn't have that spawn of the devil," Clara said
emphatically.

"Hmmm, seems that was what your grandmother
said about Melvin about six months before she married
him. She wasn't about to marry up with no eviltempered cotton farmer," Bessie said.

"History does not repeat itself in this household.
He's oil field trash and I'm not looking for a man anyway," Clara said.

Beulah playfully slapped at Bessie's shoulder.
"Leave the girl alone. We didn't meddle with her
grandmother and we won't meddle with her."

"I'd take him in a heartbeat," Olivia said. "I bet he'd
make real pretty babies."

Bessie gasped. "Why, Olivia! The way you young
people talk these days. Why, in my day, we'd have
never mentioned such a thing."

"You didn't pick your husband by looks and thinking
about how pretty babies would be with him?" Olivia
teased.

"No, honey, we picked 'em for how much money
was in their bank account," Beulah said, sopping up the
last of the egg yolk on her plate with a biscuit. "Now,
Bessie, let's go get busy on that altar cloth. It's going to
take a lot of good Christian work to get God to forgive
us for all our sins."

"Am I going to have to crochet altar cloths when I'm
old?" Tilly asked.

"Honey, with your looks and callin' into the profession, you'll have to do more than crochet. And besides
all that, me and Beulah ain't old. We still got time to get
forgiven. We're just being sure we can sit down with
your granny when we get up to the Pearly Gates and
have us a good visit. Way we see it is we're just buying
insurance with all our handiwork for the church."
Bessie patted her shoulder as she left the dining room.

Briar parked his car a hundred yards back from the
field where the new drilling would begin in a few days.
Hereford cattle grazed in the fields to the east, not at all
affected by the oil well business. Too bad one human
heifer back on Main Street in Healdton couldn't learn
something from the cows and not be so cantankerous.

She'd have you strung up by the ears and begging for
someone to shoot you to put you out of your misery if
she heard you even think about referring to her as a
heifer. The woman is a witch, not a female cow. Cows
are docile and tame. Witches are wicked and evil.

"Hey, Briar, we heard you were coming out to work on this one. Kind of surprised me," Cecil, the foreman,
called out when he saw Briar. "Teamsters should be
bringing the first of the loads any minute. We're hoping
to get all of it in three days. I wish the railroad would
get off their dead hind ends and get us a spur up here
from Ringling. Be quicker and cheaper."

Briar eyed the area. It had a good feel about it. "Sure
would. Is that the Anderson land?" He pointed toward
the cotton fields to the west.

"Yep, you're lookin' right at it. Tucker owns that
farm. Over there is Matilda's place" He pointed in the
other direction. "I heard you was boardin' at Clara's.
How'd you fall into that? From what I hear she's not
too keen on preachers or oil folks"

"You heard right. She hates everything that has anything to do with the oil well business. I'm only there by
a thread. If I'm one minute past ten o'clock gettin' back
there any night, she'll evict me."

"Strange one, that lady is. I heard she got jilted by a
preacher about ten years ago. The lady at the drug store
gave me the whole story one day when I was in there
for a lemonade."

"What was the story?" Briar asked, hearing the wagons coming down the road before he could even see
them.

"Seems this preacher was boarding with her and the
two of them fell in love. At least Clara thought so.
Preacher man told her that he had to do some business
up in Guthrie and he'd be back in one week to get her. They'd elope on the way to Louisiana where he had this
big house and lots of servants. Now any woman with a
lick of sense should've known a man wouldn't be
preaching a tent revival in Healdton, Oklahoma if he
was that rich. But anyway, she had her bags packed and
was waiting in front of the drug store the next week.
He didn't show up. And every day for a year, Clara
Anderson went to town at three o'clock. Winter and
summer alike. She sat down on that bench and waited
for a man who never did come back. People think she's
a little bit touched in the head," Cecil said.

"And Matilda and Tucker?" Briar asked.

"Strange birds but not that strange. Tucker runs cattle and grows cotton. Matilda grows corn and runs a
few cattle," Cecil said. "I asked around, but there's not
much to tell. They've been here since dirt and are wellthought of in town."

Briar could now see teamsters bringing the equipment he'd had shipped by rail. "Neither one of them
married?"

"Not a one of the three. They're all only children. All
their parents are dead and gone. They mind their own
business and don't seem to give a hoot what anyone
thinks of them. That Clara is pretty as a picture. I don't
think she's touched at all. I think she was mad instead
of in mourning. Probably sat there waiting to see if he
came back so she could murder his sorry hide."

"Could be. She's a mean one, all right. You asked
Tucker about the oil on his property?" Briar eyed the fence separating the two farms. Just on the other side of
that barbed wire was probably the richest lode in the
whole Healdton oil field.

"Sure did. Soon as I signed for this one. Went over
there and sat on the porch with him for an hour. Told
him what I come for. He offered me a glass of cold
sweet tea and we talked all about cotton and cows, and
he refused me. Said he wasn't having oil wells on his
place," Cecil said.

"What's your opinion? All men want to make a dollar?"

"Opinion is that they are so wealthy they don't need
the money and so weird they can have their own ways."

Briar nodded toward the first of the line of wagons
pulling up to a stop. "Guess it's time to really go to
work."

Cecil picked up a pair of heavy work gloves and
shoved his hands down into them. "You might as well
go on back home. We can sink this well. Everything so
far has been shallow and this is one rich field. And the
Andersons ain't going to sign leases with no one so you
are wasting your time."

"Probably, but it's good for the boss to get his hands
dirty every now and then. Keeps him in touch with reality, and I'm already paid up for two months at the
Morning Glory Inn. Can't see myself staying away
from Libby that long, but I kind of like this area. I'd
like to get to know it better," Briar said.

`Briar, you're the only man I know of who'll work as a roustabout for his own company" Cecil shook his
head.

"Man keeps his finger on the heart of the company
that way," Briar told him.

Clara dusted the whole house. It didn't erase the
anger. She put on a day dress, hitched up the tail, tucking it under her belt, and filled up a bucket with water.
She dropped down on her knees and scrubbed the
kitchen floor while Dulcie washed clothes in a brand
new wringer washer out on the screened back porch.
The floor was spotless-the mad was still there. She
tied a scarf around her dark hair, picked up a rag and
bottle of dusting oil and went to the attic. It had been at
least ten years since anyone had climbed the steps at the
end of the hall. She had to brush away the cobwebs just
to get through the narrow passage. Once at the top, she
attacked the layers of dust as if St. Peter would write it
down as a pure sin and wouldn't let her visit with
Granny Anderson if there was a speck left.

Still, the fury raged on.

She checked the watch pinned to her shirtwaist pocket and at 4:00 went downstairs to the bathroom where
she drew herself a tub full of hot water. Stepping out of
her work dress, slip, corset and underpants, she caught
her reflection in the mirror. Dirt on her nose. Smudges
on her forehead. Wrinkles around her nose accentuated
even more by the filth all over her face. No man would
ever want an old maid like Clara Anderson. Probably never did. She'd been a fool once to think that Percy
loved her. She wouldn't make that mistake again.

"Now what brought that on?" she asked the tired
woman in the mirror.

The attraction you have for that oil man, her conscience answered bluntly.

"I do not," she sputtered aloud.

She eased into the tub full of hot water and bubbles.
Leaning her head back against the back of the tub, she
shut her eyes. A vision of Briar sitting at the kitchen
table filled the dark void. Not breathtakingly handsome
like Tucker, but rugged good looks that made her think
about things she thought she'd buried when Percy left
her holding a suitcase and a broken heart.

Tired from a whole day of fighting with herself, she
dozed, not waking until she heard the schoolteachers
coming up the stairs. She hurried out of the water, dried
herself and peeked out the door, thankful they had gone
into their rooms. Probably to preen for their male
boarder. She wrapped a thick towel around her breasts
and tucked the ends under her arm and tiptoed across
the hall to her own room.

She slipped into a corset, covered it with a white
cambric underskirt trimmed with tucks, embroidery
insertions and a full ruffle. She wondered why designers made such fancy, frilly underthings for women. It
was never seen. Well, almost never. Menfolks, she
understood, did see it in the right situation, as in marriage. But they wouldn't appreciate all the work that went into the tiny embroidered flowers on her underskirt. They'd just be interested in putting it on the back
of a chair or else throwing it on the floor.

The dress she chose for supper was two years old.
She'd ordered it from the Sears catalog and it had been
all the rage then. She hadn't ordered anything new
since. It was a navy blue messaline with a yoke of
tucked net, trimmed with embroidered lace and matching cuffs. The skirt was draped at each side with a panel
back where it buttoned invisibly with messalinecovered buttons. She hitched up her skirt tail and
climbed up on a chair so she could see her whole reflection in the mirror above her dresser.

"An old maid trying to impress a man," she mumbled.

Dulcie called from the bottom of the stairs. "Miss
Clara, supper is about ready to go on the table"

"I'll be right down," she yelled. "I am not trying to
impress anyone and I sure don't have time to change
this late," she whispered as she hopped down off the
chair and found her Sunday shoes.

It wasn't until she sat down at the head of the table
that she realized she'd forgotten to go to town for the
mail that day. The village had been robbed of its idiot
and it was all Briar Nelson's fault.