Runabout (14 page)

}The two brothers laughed uproariously together for several minutes, until tears had formed in Luther's eyes and Arthel was holding his chest.

}"Sure to the world, Arthel, I leave you for a minute and you get yourself into a peck of trouble."

}"It's the kind of trouble a fellow could get used to. Would you have guessed that under that sweet little white dress Maybelle was wearing a bright pink petticoat and pink ribbons on the ruffles of her bloomers?"

}"Bloomers! Now, Arthel, that's getting much too dangerous," Luther said with as much caution as laughter. "It's not your time of life to be thinking about ladies' underwear."

}Arthel shook his head. "When a fellow starts thinking about them, I suspect it's time to start thinking about them."

}"I suppose it's all right for you to be thinking," Luther said slowly, "but remember you've got college and all that. Wouldn't want some gal to trap you. So thinking about it is all that you ought to do."

}Arthel's grin was broad. "Big brother, I am eighteen years old. When it comes to the ladies in my life, I can do whatever it is I decide to do. And I do it without need of your permission."

}

}The Briggs brothers were not the only ones to see the dawn that morning. Tulsa May Bruder watched from her window seat, her knees hugged to her chest, her eyes thoughtful. Her serviceable muslin gown was gray from many washings, patched at the elbows, and the embroidery at the yoke was picked with broken stitches, but it was as comfortable as an old friend and she refused to send the dress to the rag bag. Her hair was unbound and hung past her waist like a thick, wavy orange shawl. The early morning sun made its length shine like strands of gold.

}She took turns in her observation. She would stare out the window a while and then rest her chin upon her knees to contemplate her bare feet. Neither sight really captured her attention.

}She had not slept well. She'd stayed up late to write her story on the festival, hoping the effort would tire her out, but it hadn't worked. Even after Doc Odie's humiliating public jilting, Tulsa May had been able to lose herself in sleep. She'd simply closed her eyes and told herself that things would look better in the morning. Taking the worst and making something good of it, was the one thing with which she had great experience. But last night there was no bad news or sad thoughts to keep her awake. It was simply some strange unsettlement within her: as if there were a room in her heart that had been closed up so tightly and for so long that she'd plainly forgotten that it existed. Last night, she'd taken an unexpected peek through its doorway. She was scared.

}A creak of a door and the groan of floorboards warned Tulsa May that her father was making his way down the stairs. His office was directly below her room, and as she sat in total silence, she frowned, waiting for the sounds of him entering the study to work on his sermon.

}But the study beneath her remained quiet and Tulsa May could faintly hear the sounds of her father's steps on the basement stairway. She smiled and released a long-held breath. He was going to work out in his gym. If she hurried, she could be dressed and gone before he ever knew she was awake. The last thing she wanted this morning was to have a "little talk about her carryings-on last night."

}With the wild rush of a younger girl, she jerked a clean dress out of the wardrobe and threw it across the bed. Hastily—and certainly unladylike— Tulsa May washed her face and hands, brushed her teeth, and slipped into clean underwear. Dressed, with her shoes in her hand, she sneaked out of her room and tiptoed down the stairs. She was out the back door and halfway down the well-worn path at the back of the house before she tied the sash at her waist. She put her shoes on while sitting in the privy. It was only then that she realized she hadn't bothered to put up her wildly tangled hair. She searched the pockets of the dark blue day dress for hairpins, but didn't find even one.

}With a shrug, she rose to her feet, adjusted her clothing, and headed out. Pulling her hair together and combing it with her fingers, she made one loose braid and stuffed its red masses into her straw hat as she walked the back alley toward Briggs Park. It was a path she knew well.

}Since the diphtheria epidemic of 1906, when she, only little more than a girl, had begun taking care of Miss Maimie Briggs until her death, Tulsa May had dutifully taken this path at least once a week to visit Miss Maimie. Faithfully but not cheerfully. Tulsa May visited Miss Maimie as if she were swallowing a home-cooked tonic, very unpleasant to taste, but undoubtedly good for her.

}Tulsa May did it to keep herself humble. While her father praised her quick mind to the skies, and most of the ladies in town shook their heads and assured Tulsa May that she had "sweet ways," Miss Maimie had been a good deal more blunt.

}"I hope you aren't hoping for a splendid match," Miss Maimie had said one unpleasant Saturday afternoon. "If you manage to make any match at all, it will surprise most people in this town."

}Tulsa May had neither felt very hurt, nor taken offense at this sentiment. She knew that her mother and most of the ladies in the town felt the same way. Tulsa May actually
admired
Miss Maimie's acerbic tongue and the way she used it to manipulate people. Not that she, herself, would ever aspire to so cold-bloodedly control others, but as a curiosity, Tulsa May found Miss Maimie's approach to personal relationships quite entertaining.

}Unfortunately, there were times when Miss Maimie's perception was too acute.

}"You don't come to see me, miss," the old woman said. "You spend half your time over here visiting my chauffeur."

}Tulsa May had answered with a smile on her face. "I'm not your employee, Miss Maimie. I visit of my own free will and can therefore spend that visit in any manner I choose. Besides," she continued quickly, "Luther is more than your chauffeur. He's your grandson."

}The old woman's eyes had narrowed. Nobody, absolutely nobody, ever dared remind Miss Maimie of her kinship with the handsome blue-eyed half-breed who bore her son's name.

}For a moment Miss Maimie hesitated. Then a thoroughly unkind gleam came into her eyes and she smiled too sweetly at Tulsa May.

}"I understand that young Luther is your
friend,"
she said.

}Tulsa May had felt her throat go dry. "Yes, he is."

}Miss Maimie nodded. "I guess a girl like you has to take what she can get. Of course, your heart shows in your eyes every time you look at him." The old lady sighed loudly. "Unrequited love is
so
romantic."

}Even now, years later, Tulsa May could almost hear the acid in the old woman's words. Yet each word rang with truth. Tulsa May stopped at a stone and pine bench beneath a cottonwood tree on the edge of the park. Through the budding trees of springtime, she could still make out the rooflines of the fine big house. Miss Maimie was long gone, the Briggs Mansion was now the Millenbutter Hospital, and no living being knew Tulsa May's heart. Except Tulsa May herself.

}Leaning forward, she propped her elbows on her knees and rested her face in her hands.

}Your heart shows in your eyes every time you look at him.

}A girl like you has to take what she can get.

}She watched a tiny trail of ants making their way through the grass in front of her feet. How they knew where to go or how to get back was one of God's mysteries. Why a woman would fall in love with a man she could never have, was another.

}Tulsa May couldn't say when she first knew she loved Luther. There had been no bolt from the blue, no decisive moment of change in her feelings.

}Oh, she'd had a crush on him right from the start. What girl in Prattville didn't? Every dreamy-eyed maiden in town sighed when he walked past. That thick dark hair, the vivid blue eyes and broad dimpled smile were not something that the young female heart could ignore. She remembered once passing Indian clubs with Sissy Maitland during a Prayers and Posture Meeting for Young Ladies.

}"He is the most beautiful man that God ever created," Sissy said wistfully.

}"He's not a man at all," Tulsa May quickly corrected her. "He's only sixteen, barely older than us."

}Sissy had shaken her head. "He's plenty enough of a man for me," she declared. "Besides, those Indian boys grow up faster. They are out killing buffalo or whatever when white boys their age are still in the schoolroom."

}Tulsa May gave a sharper twist to her throw of the club, and almost managed to hit Sissy in the head.

}"Luther is not an Indian boy and he's certainly never hunted a buffalo!" Tulsa May declared hotly.

}Sissy agreed, but for all the wrong reasons. "He is so good-looking that you can almost forget he's got mixed blood. But when you see that little brother of his ..." She shook her head. "Well, you know ..."

}Tulsa May's jaw tightened now as she continued to stare at the trail of ants at her feet. Sissy had married Cleo Guttmand and moved to the oil fields in Shamrock. Luther had never given the small-minded girl so much as a second look, and Tulsa May was glad. But she knew her own feelings at the time were almost as shallow.

}All her life she'd known that there was more to people than their outward appearance. She prided herself on being someone who looked beyond the exterior, where all folks had their good points as well as their failings. So she was determined that she would really get to know Luther Briggs. Once she knew his faults, that would cure her of any idealized girlhood fancy.

}It had not been easy. That broad dimpled smile was given as often in discomfort as genuine warmth. Though affable to all, Luther Briggs was not the kind of young man to allow anyone to see inside him. Walls of reserve had been built by rejection and responsibility. But Tulsa May had been relentless. And when he came to trust her, she had finally been allowed to view his heart. What she had discovered, she had fallen in love with.

}She sighed heavily and used the pointed toe of her shoe to dig a giant crater in the ant trail at her feet. The line of ants hesitated momentarily, bunched together as if discussing the sudden change in the geography and plotting a new strategy. It was less than a minute before one intrepid insect began to skirt the edge of the crater and rediscover the rest of the familiar trail.

}Tulsa May loved Luther Briggs, but she knew today as she had so many years ago that her love would never prosper. And to reveal it would end a treasured friendship.

}The clomp and clatter of a buggy coming up the road drew her attention, causing her to peer wide-eyed through the stand of trees. She couldn't see the road or who approached, but on Sunday morning at daybreak the most likely person traveling to the hospital would be Doc Odie.

}Tulsa May pulled her hat down farther over her long half-braided tail of carrot-colored hair in horror and jumped to her feet. Doc Odie had often complained of her untidiness. It would be so humiliating to be caught in a public park with her hair undone. Anxiously, she hurried down the deserted alleyway back toward the parsonage.

}Once she had been very serious about marrying Odie Foote, and she had carefully tried to gain his approval. She was not proud of that fact. She had always insisted that she didn't need a man to make her life worthwhile. All the feminists of the day were certain that marriage, for women, was a form of legal slavery. But she wanted children, a little family of her own. And if the ladies of the movement could manage that without marriage, they were much braver than she.

}Still, she wondered how she could have ever considered marriage to Doc Odie. She would have been expected to give up writing for the newspaper.

}"It is unfeminine."

}And she would not be allowed to own a car or drive.

}"Far too dangerous."

}Her interest and opinions on politics and current events would have to be kept to herself.

}"A woman's brain is simply not structurally large enough to grasp the complexities."