Ribbon in the Sky

by Dorothy Garlock

  “Good Lord!” Dorene rolled her eyes. “I want a lot of things, snookums, but a horse isn’t one of them.”

  “Don’t call me that. My name is Henry Ann.”

  Dorene rolled her eyes again. “How could I possibly forget? Where’s your daddy now?”

  “In the field. Are you goin’ to tell him good-bye?”

  “Why should I traipse way out there and get all hot and sweaty? He knows I’m going.”

  The deep felt hat Dorene put on her head fit like a cap. She was careful not to disturb the spit curls on her cheeks.

  “You could thank him for the money.”

  “He had to give it to me. I’m his wife. Your daddy don’t like me much or he’d not have made me live out here in the sticks where I was lucky if I saw a motor car go by once a week. Work is all he thinks about. You . . . and work, I should add.”

  “He likes you too. He just didn’t want you to cut off your hair like a . . . like a flapper, rouge your cheeks and wear dresses that show your legs. Daddy says it’s trashy.”

  “Oh, yeah, he likes me,” Dorene said sarcastically. “He likes me so much he wants me to walk behind a plow, hoe cotton, slop hogs, and have younguns. I’m not doin’ it. I’m goin’ places and seein’ thin’s. And that’s that.”

  “I like it here. I’m never going to leave,” the child said defiantly.

  “You may think so now. Wait until you grow up.”

  “I’ll like it then, too.”

  “Stay then. Eat dirt, get freckled and wrinkled so no man will have you but another dirt farmer. It’s city life for me.”

  “Are you goin’ to the city in a motor car?”

  “We’re goin’ to Ardmore in a motor car and take the train to Oklahoma City. I’ve . . . got things to do there.” Dorene put her foot on the chair and straightened the bow on the vamp of her shoe. The child watched but her mind was elsewhere.

  Yeah, I know. I heard you tell Daddy that you’ve got a little boy back in the city. You’ve got to go take care of him!

  Dorene picked up her suitcase and went through the house to the porch. A touring car was parked in the road in front of the house. A portly man with a handle-bar mustache got out and came to take her suitcase. He wore a black suit and a shirt with a high neck collar. His felt hat tilted at a jaunty angle on his head and he smelled strongly of Bay Rum. He looked from the barefoot child to Dorene.

  “This one of yours?”

  “Fraid so, lover. She’s only six. I had her when I was sixteen, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I’m seven. Almost eight.”

  Dorene glared at the child as if she’d like to slap her; but when she turned to the man, she was all smiles.

  “This is Henry Henry. Ain’t that the most godawful name you ever heard of, Poopsy? I named her Henry Henry after her daddy. It was all my doing.”

  “No doubt,” he muttered.

  “I pulled one over on old Ed and got it on the birth certificate before he knew what was what. He ’bout had a calf! Lordy! He run the doctor down before he could file it and got ‘Ann’ stuck in between the Henrys. Ain’t that rich?”

  The man frowned. He looked from the child to the mother thinking there was a resemblance and hoped for the child’s sake it was only skin deep.

  “I like my name. No one else has one like it.”

  The child spoke quietly and with such dignity that the man felt a spark of dislike for her mother. He’d dump her right now, he thought, if it were not for the favors promised when they reached Ardmore. The ride was little enough payment for a couple hours in the sack with this hot little number, especially when he was making the trip anyway.

  “Let’s get goin’.”

  “I’m ready, Poopsy.” Dorene failed to notice her friend’s reaction and gave him a bright smile.

  He looked at the child again, then quickly away, picked up the suitcase and headed back to the car.

  “Are you going to kiss me good-bye?” Dorene hesitated before stepping off the porch.

  “Not this time.”

  “My God!” Her musical laugh rang out. “I can’t believe I’ve got a seven-year-old kid who acts like an old woman. I hope to hell when you do grow up, you’ll have sense enough to kick the dust from this dirt farm off your feet.” She stooped and kissed the child’s cheek, and then hurried across the yard to the car, the fringe on the bottom of her dress dancing around her knees.

  Henry Ann stood on the porch and watched her mother step up onto the running board and into the car. The man cranked the motor, detached the crank, threw it in the back, and slid behind the wheel. Dorene waved gaily as the motor car took off in a cloud of dust.

  I’ll not be like YOU! Henry Ann thought. I’ll never go off and leave my little girl no matter how much I hate her daddy. You won’t be back this time . . . and you know what? I don’t care!

  1932

  Clay County, Oklahoma

  The bus was an hour late but it didn’t matter to the man who leaned against the side of Millie’s Diner. He wasn’t meeting anyone. When the bus finally arrived, the passengers poured out and hurried into the cafe to sit on the stools along the bar for the thirty-minute supper break. Converted from an old Union Pacific railroad car that had been moved to Main Street ten years ago, the cafe, one of two in town, had only two things on the menu this time of day: chili and hamburgers.

  Last to leave the bus were a woman and a skinny teenage girl who slouched along behind her. The contagion of haste seemed not to have touched the woman as she patted the top of a ridiculously small flower-trimmed hat firmly down on her head and walked behind the bus to where the driver was unloading a straw suitcase and a box tied with a rope.

  Cupping the bowl of his pipe in his hand, the man watched the free swing of her legs beneath the calf-length skirt, the grace of her slender body, the tilt of her head, her curly brown hair and heavy dark brows. He noticed the brows because most women had taken to plucking them to a pencil slim line that, to him, made them look bald-faced. He knew who she was. She wasn’t a kid. He judged her to be at least five years younger than his own age of twenty-eight.

  He shrugged her from his mind and headed for the lot behind the grocery store where he’d parked his ten-year-old Model T coupe. He kept the car in tip-top shape and when it was washed and polished, it looked as if it had just come out of the show room. He treasured it next to his two-year-old son.

  Stopping, he knocked the ashes from his pipe on the sole of his boot, and put it in his pocket. Sooner or later he might have to sell the car. That would depend on whether or not he had a fairly good cotton crop and what price he could get for it. But for now he’d put off having to make the decision by offering to install a new motor in the grocer’s truck.

  * * *

  Henry Ann Henry thanked the bus driver and picked up the straw suitcase. The girl reached for the box.

  “We can leave the box at the store and come back for it later.”

  “I can carry it. How far do we go?”

  “A mile after we leave town.”

  “That far? Well, I’m not leavin’ my stuff. Somebody’d steal it.”

  “Mr. Anderson wouldn’t let that happen. But never mind. Let’s go. I want to be home before dark.”

  The few people passing them along the street nodded a greeting to Henry Ann Henry and curiously eyed the girl with her. Henrys had lived in the Busbee area since the town’s beginning. Ed Henry, Henry Ann’s father and the last male to carry the name, was a hard-working dependable man who had made the mistake of marrying Dorene Perry. According to the opinion of most folk here, the Perrys were trash then and the Perrys were trash now.

  Ed Henry had adored his sixteen-year-old bride but had never been able to make her happy. She so despised being a wife and mother that she had bitterly named their baby girl Henry Henry. After all, it was his child; she hadn’t wanted her. Dorene had left him and their child a few years later. Ed had not filed for divorce, and it had not seemed important to Dorene to m
ake the break official.

  Henry Ann was used to her name and liked it even though she’d had to endure a lot of good-natured teasing at school about it. She believed that her father was now secretly glad—

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a motor car coming up behind them. She urged Isabel to the side of the road and kept walking. The auto slowed and inched up beside them. It was a Ford coupe with a box on the back. She had seen the car go by the house several times but had never met the neighbor who owned it.

  “Do you want a ride?” The man was big, dark, and held a pipe clenched between his teeth. He was hatless. His midnight black hair was thick and unruly, his eyes dark, and his expression dour. “You’re Ed Henry’s girl. I’m Thomas Dolan. I live just beyond your place.”

  “I remember when you moved in. I met your wife.”

  “You can have a ride if you want. If not, I’ll be getting on.”

  “We’d appreciate it.”

  “Put your suitcase in the back and climb up here. Careful. I’ve got a glass lamp back there.” I’m hoping it’ll last longer than the last one. Glass lamps aren’t made to bounce off the wall.

  Isabel waited for Henry Ann to get in first so she’d not be next to the man. He started the car moving as soon as they were settled in the seat.

  “How is Mrs. Dolan?” Henry Ann asked politely.

  “All right.”

  “She’s very pretty.”

  He grunted, but didn’t reply. An uncomfortable silence followed.

  “We have a quilting bee twice a month at the church. I’d be glad to take Mrs. Dolan if she would like to go.”

  “I doubt it.” After a long pause, he added, “She don’t go to church.”

  “Oh . . . well . . .”

  The awkward silence that followed was broken when he stopped in the road in front of the Henry house and Isabel asked, “Is this it?”

  “This is it. Thank you, Mr. Dolan. Tell your wife I’d be happy to have her pay a visit one day soon.”

  “Why? You didn’t get much of a welcome when you called on her.”

  “How do you know?” Henry Ann replied testily. “As I recall, you weren’t even there.”

  “I know my wife.”

  Black hair flopped down on Dolan’s forehead and hung over his ears. The shadow of black whiskers on his face made him look somewhat sinister. His dark eyes soberly searched her face. If she could believe what she saw in his eyes it was loneliness . . . pain.