by Mark Dunn
“Amen,” said Tyson’s mother, who seemed naked to her son without a pan of shelling peas or a half-mended work shirt in her lap.
“Now your ma and me, we been talkin’ things over—talkin’ ’bout hard things we gotta do to get us all through this bad time. And there was a thing that got decided, and I gotta say that your ma ain’t for it, even though she’s agreein’ not to throw herself agin’ it.”
Tyson’s pa looked over at Tyson’s ma, as if expecting a nod of concurrence, but there wasn’t one—only an almost imperceptible movement of the head from side to side as if she had suddenly been seized by pangs of private, profound grief.
“Have any of you children told anybody of your younger brother Wink’s recovery from the high fever?”
Tyson and his brother and oldest sister shook their heads, while his next oldest sister said, “No, we ain’t, Pa. Warn’t more than two day since the fever broke and he got his little self back on the mend.”
“I wisht that he ha’n’t,” said Tyson’s father, his eyes searching for something that could not be found. “Would’ve been an easier thing if he’d a been taken by the Lord right there upon that sickbed.”
Tyson understood why his father had said this. Wink was an idiot boy who could hardly do a thing for himself. Most children with a mind like Wink’s would have died early on—would have died in the womb, for that matter—but Wink did not. He showed a remarkable resilience in spite of his deficiencies, and now extended his special facility for survival to beating back an illness that by all rights should have claimed him.
Tyson knew what his father planned to say next.
“Now it’s a good thing that you ain’t told nobody how your little brother pulled through. ’Cause we got to say now that he died. We got ourselves a lot of mouths to feed on this sorry little farm, and his is one mouth too many, ’specially considerin’ that Wink ain’t gonna do nothin’ from here to the end of his days that’ll be of help to this family. Why, you take Tie here. He was collectin’ them chicken eggs ever morning when he was scarce older than Wink!”
“And droppin’ a goodly number of ’em,” responded Tyson in an underbreath.
Ignoring the commentary, Tyson’s father pressed on. “It’s a hard thing we gotta do, but it’s what’s done in nature when a runt comes along without a fighting chance. And our little Wink is worse than a runt. He’s a runt with the mind of a frog or a turtle, and ever bite of food what goes into his little turtle mouth is a bite that don’t go to fillin’ the empty bellies of all you other young ’uns. Now I ain’t lookin’ for your say-so; I brung you all together this evenin’ just to let you know what’s what. And to tell you that tomorry mornin’, my brother Henry, he’s a-comin’ to take Wink down to Dead Indian Lake and drown the boy and then bring his little body back here and we gonna put him on the sickbed and tell the doctor he was taken with the fever.
“I tell it to you, children, because you got to keep the little ones away, both when Henry, he comes, and then when the deed is done and Henry bring him back. Do you hear what your pa is a-tellin’ you?”
There were nods in the midst of all the tears now flowing from the eyes of the three females upon the porch, while the eyes of the paterfamilias and his eighteen- and seventeen-year-old sons were similarly glistening.
The word of Tyson’s pa was law and there was no arguing against the course he’d chosen. And Tyson’s bachelor uncle was the man for the job. He had an empty place inside him that allowed him to come to his brother’s farm and do all the killing without compunction. Henry Tyson was a valuable asset at hog slaughter time.
The next morning, after a sleepless night for all those who had gathered upon that porch, a night spent by Tyson’s mother whispering sad valedictions to her baby boy, the oldest four of the Tyson brood rose early to take all but the youngest of their siblings on a turkey hunt in the grassland.
It wasn’t long into the turkey hunt—a hunt that at best would offer only a distant sighting or the sound of faraway gobbles for all their efforts with slingshot and rude bow and arrow—that Tyson made known to his older brother and two older sisters that there was a sickness in his stomach and an urgent need within him to return to the house. And no, he would not be talked out of it, even under the hard looks of disbelief, and all the dread and fear that came from thoughts of their father’s wrath when Tyson came home sooner than expected.
But, as it turned out, Tyson had no intention of returning to the house. Once out of sight of his brothers and sisters, he ran all the way to Dead Indian Lake, praying that he wouldn’t arrive too late to stop his uncle from the murderous act that his own conscience, regardless of the consequences, simply could not abide. Yet, as Tyson put it to his friend Ames, “the hand of fate had swooped down too soon. The boy was dead, his tiny body being carried limply in the arms of my uncle—a man who felt no pity for the boy a’tall. It was like he was carryin’ the carcass of some animal he’d slain for the table that night.”
At this point, Tyson could no longer continue with his story.
Ames didn’t ask for the end of the story through any of the days and nights that followed. In fact, he wondered if this was a memory that should have been kept locked away forever. Perhaps Tyson had only shared it to cement the bond of close friendship that existed between the two inmates. For that, Ames thanked Tyson in his heart, and the two quiet men never went to such a dark place again.
Four years later Ames was released from prison. Upon the day on which he was to become a free man, the two friends shook hands and the sadness of their parting wrung each of their hearts.
“Still goin’ up to Tulsa?” asked Tyson, once he had regained his voice.
Ames nodded. “My brother-in-law has a good job working in the oil field. He thinks he can get me on there. Now you take care of yourself, Tyson. And I aim to write to you, and you sure as hell better find somebody to read them damn letters to you, ’cause I ain’t gonna waste my time writin’ ’em otherwise.”
Tyson nodded.
“And I’ll see you on the outside when you get out.”
Ames didn’t get a job with his brother-in-law. But he did get a job—a lot of jobs, in fact. All those years of incarceration had delivered unto Gordie Ames a wanderlust even stronger than that which enspirited all the other young men of Ames’s age, many of them veterans of the Great War. Ames hitchhiked all over Oklahoma and Kansas and northern Texas and took most of the jobs that were offered to him before finally settling down in Alva, Oklahoma, and marrying one of the daughters of a cook at the Northwestern Oklahoma Teachers’ College and getting himself hired on as building custodian for the school’s ornately Moorish “Castle on the Hill.”
Ames continued to write to his quondam cellmate for the next several years, just as he had promised, though only once did he get a letter in return. It was a letter that told a thing or two more about the story that Tyson had been unable to finish—the one about Wink. It had been dictated to the warden’s comely secretary, who’d taken a decided liking to Broderain Tyson.
The reason for the original letter was this: Ames had met a young man in Elk City whom Tyson had every reason to know. The man worked as a busboy in a diner there—Crutchen’s Diner. Though diminished in his intellectual capacity, he performed his job well, was marginally communicative, always in good spirits, and beloved by both his fellow workers and by the diner’s regular customers. Ames had overheard the man being called by the name “Wink.” Racked with curiosity, Ames had asked a waitress if there was more to the man’s name than that simple nickname.
“Always known him just as Wink,” she said, “but I’ll try to find out.” The waitress returned to Ames’s table shortly thereafter. “Nobody knows. When Mr. Crutchen brought him here all them years ago, Wink was just a toddler.”
“Where’d Mr. Crutchen find him?”
“Ain’t you one with all the questions?” asked the waitress with a grin. “His brother, a sheriff up in Dewey County, brung him down.
He was a foundling—left by the roadside, as it was told. They called him Moses for a while. Like Moses and the bulrushes. Mr. and Mrs. Crutchen, they sort of adopted him—didn’t have no trouble with the fact that he was slow. Why do you wanna know so much about Wink?”
Ames had no answer for the waitress, but Tyson had one for Ames. The answer was this: that he had lied about what happened that day at Dead Indian Lake. That he had lied because of the shame of that day. Tyson had gone to save his little brother Wink even if it meant tucking him under his arm and hopping a freight train with him. His father and mother hadn’t looked for a special place for the boy when he was born; the looking would have been hard in western Oklahoma at any rate, there being no orphanages or asylums around for children like Wink. But Tyson was determined to find a home for the little boy, no matter how long it took—once he had rescued him from their homicidal uncle.
Of course Tyson didn’t have the chance. He reached the lake, thankfully, before his uncle had done the deadly deed: before he had forced the boy below the surface of the water, had held him down until all the oxygen had fled his tiny lungs. Tyson reached the lake at a time that worked to his baby brother’s benefit. Yet the uncle would have none of Tyson’s appeal on behalf of Wink. He was there to do the job assigned to him. According to the incensed uncle, Tyson was a kid who was listening to his heart at the expense of his whole family.
There was a scuffle as Tyson reached down to pick up the boy, who sat upon the grass, playing with a twig. There was a hand that took up a rock. There was a rock that was smashed into the side of a man’s head. And there was sudden stillness from that man. Then there was a sheriff who came and took the baby boy into his own custody and delivered him into the arms of his wife, and then delivered Tyson to a Dewey County jailhouse cell.
There was a trial. The father and mother, abetted by the compassion of a jury of hungry, impoverished fellow sharecroppers—“there but for the grace of God” hardscrabble folk—were acquitted, but were forced to give up custody of their little boy Wink.
There was another trial. This one sent Wink’s seventeen-year-old brother not to reformatory school, but to jail—specifically to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, from which he would not be released until the year 1928.
1928 would be a very good year for Broderain Tyson, known as Tyson to his friends and fellow prisoners, Tie to his family, Honeybunches to his newlywed wife, and Brother to his youngest brother Wink, with whom he would be happily reunited. This year saw another reunion as well, between two former prison cellmates, who over time had become the best of friends.Wink would never be told how his life had been saved. Even if it had been carefully explained to him, he wouldn’t have fully understood. And yet there was something in his regard for his brother—a look of intense esteem and affection—that gave Gordie to wonder if perhaps there was a sense there—a feeling that Wink somehow knew that Tyson had once done a very good thing for him, a thing for which he should be forever grateful.
Or perhaps it was merely the affection that one brother will feel for another when all impediments to allegiance and devotion have been removed—something that Gordie Ames fully understood. For it worked the same way with friendship.
Yes, it worked the very same way.
1917
PRINCIPLED IN MASSACHUSETTS
When the magazine was first published in 1831 it was called A Boy’s Companion. It offered articles and stories of interest to young male readers. In 1857, the magazine began to cater to a readership of both boys and girls. Its name changed to The Young People’s Companion. In 1892, the magazine reinvented itself yet again and became The Family Companion, with pages devoted to every member of the family. There was even a section, titled “Remember When,” that revisited the halcyon days of America’s innocent youth (while deliberately avoiding mention of slavery, child labor, female indentureship by marital contract, and institutional discrimination against immigrants).
Dennis Bailey had written for The Family Companion for the last ten years. His office was on the fifth floor—the editorial floor—of the Family Companion Building, perhaps the most striking sandstone structure in all of Boston. The building was a commanding Romanesque edifice of arched doorways and windows, and elaborate oak woodwork that made Dennis, himself nearing the venerable age of forty, feel as if he were some titan of Boston finance rather than a mere scribbler of short stories.
Because it was a family magazine, the incredibly popular periodical had an editorial policy encouraging its writers to avoid pieces of an overtly political nature. Its editor-in-chief, Douglas McCalley, had agreed with his friend, former president Theodore Roosevelt, that there was far too much muckraking going on among the nation’s periodicals. “Best to leave political commentary to other, far less family-friendly magazines.”
However, this policy changed in dramatic fashion on April 6, when President Woodrow Wilson, scarcely a month into his second term in the White House—swept into office in large part through application of the chest-thumping isolationist slogan, “He kept us out of war”—asked Congress to declare war against Germany. On that day, America—and The Family Companion—committed itself hook, line, and sinker to the Franco-Anglo cause.
Dennis Bailey wasn’t happy. Several weeks later, after having read the Memorial Day editorial that McCalley planned to run in Thursday’s pre-Memorial Day issue of the magazine, Dennis called down to McCalley’s office and asked for five minutes of his employer’s time.
“For you, Bailey,” came McCalley’s jaunty response, “I’d be willing to give up nine, maybe even ten minutes of that precious commodity.”
McCalley was a jovial man who tried to see the humor in things. America’s sober involvement in the Great War—“The war to end all wars,” as President Wilson, a man given to meaty aphorisms, had called it—required that McCalley be a bit more sober himself. It was a behavioral change the sixty-one-year-old editor struggled daily to achieve.
The two men shook hands with the strong grip that bespoke their ten years of manful friendship. McCalley slapped his most popular writer of muscular fiction upon his sinewy back. “Been a while since our paths have crossed in this brick beehive of ours. Let me see your nose—not whittled down too much from application to that literary grindstone.” McCalley laughed and tried to coax a smile from his favorite staffer.
There was a glimmer of something agreeable in Dennis’s solemn countenance. But it quickly faded.
“Have a seat, Bailey. I enjoyed very much your story about the rescue of that lad from the ore conveyer. It was a ripping yarn—terribly good. You have a knack for writing just what our male readers, young and old, wish to read.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And I’m sure that you have something even more exciting in store for next week’s issue.” Dennis wrote for alternate issues of the weekly magazine. Some of his stories, like “Ore Bucket of Death,” were relatively short. Others, like the nautical tale “Shipwreck of the Sophronia Bordeen,” which had been published in the March 1 issue, ran over five thousand words and was greedily snatched up by the Famous Players-Lasky film company for immediate motion-picture adaptation.
“I just finished a first draft of a story about a young man compelled to enlist in the American Expeditionary Force.”
“Excellent. And will we see him upon the field of battle? Put some years and a thick moustache on him and we’ll call him Teddy Roosevelt. TR wants in this fight, you know. He’s going to petition the president to reassemble the Rough Riders.”
“Not a lot of room for cavalry horses in those trenches, sir.”
“True, true. I’m not quite sure just what it is that the colonel has in mind, but you can be certain it will be heroic. So the young man in your story, he goes off to war and what happens? Are you sending him over with the first infantry regiment?”
Dennis shook his head. “In actuality, Mr. McCalley, I’m not sending him over at all. His wife pleads for him to stay home with her and their ne
wborn baby, and in the end he accedes to her wishes and exercises his exemption.”
“Oh. Well, we certainly can’t have that.”
“Why?”
“It sends the wrong message to our readers. The Family Companion is going to be behind this war one hundred percent. That means the stories we publish must also come out in support of the thousands of men who will be fighting under the American flag.”
Dennis cleared his throat. “My young man will be very supportive. He’ll buy Liberty Bonds and whatnot, but he won’t go off and run the risk of leaving his wife a widow and his new son without a father.”
“Hundreds of thousands of our French and British brothers have made that ultimate sacrifice with commendable dignity, Bailey.”
“Dignity, Mr. McCalley? Most of them died gruesome deaths far from the loving embrace of their wives and children.”
McCalley, who had been sitting behind his desk, now got quickly to his feet, knocking a framed photograph of his own family to the floor. “Bailey, dear boy, you astonish me. I had no idea that you possessed anti-American tendencies. Nothing you’ve ever written for this magazine has led me to believe you to be anything but a true-blue, red-blooded American patriot.”
“This war is folly.”
“Perhaps, then, you should be writing for The Masses.” McCalley, having rescued his family’s portrait from the floor, wiped the dusty glass with the elbow of his suit jacket. He returned it to his desk.
“Why? I’m not a socialist. Although I do find much to agree with in what Mr. Eastman and his colleagues have said about our involvement in this war. Like Eastman, I don’t wear patriotic blinders. Where some see only the flag, I perceive opportunities for imperialistic land-grabs and financial aggrandizement on an unprecedented scale. Industrialists in Europe are growing fat and rich as a consequence of this war. The same will happen over here. The French troops have had their fill of it. They’re deserting their battalions in droves. I don’t, by the way, see you publishing that fact in our magazine.”
