The Sky Took Him - An Alafair Tucker Mystery

by Donis Casey

  “Why, Ma?” Martha said, sounding alarmed.

  “Why, certainly, Mrs. Tucker,” McCoy said, sounding perfectly delighted.

  In the dark, Alafair could just see their heads turn as they looked at one another. “Good, then,” she said, before any more discussion ensued. “Listen, kids. You can hear the music coming from downtown. Tonight’s the last night of the Founders’ Jubilee, ain’t it?”

  Martha looked back at her mother. “Yes, according to the paper, the street dance should be starting right about now.”

  Alafair sat back in the swing. “Y’all ought to walk down there and have a look before you call it a day. It’s not all that late. Besides, the next few days ain’t shaping up to be very pleasant. You young folks might as well have a little pleasure while you can.”

  Martha said, “Would you like to, Streeter?”

  He stood there for a fraction of a second with his mouth open in surprise before he answered. “Well, sure. Would you like to come with us, Mrs. Tucker?”

  “I don’t think so, Streeter.” She sounded just the littlest bit amused. “I’m taking myself up to bed.”

  Martha took McCoy’s hand as they walked down the stairs. “We won’t be gone long, Mama,” she called, as they headed for the street.

  ***

  McCoy was gratified at how easily, and even eagerly, Martha had acquiesced when her mother suggested that they take this last opportunity to enjoy the festival. He hoped it was because she relished the idea of spending some time in his company, but he was more realistically inclined to think that she wanted a break from the gloomy circumstances and the press of her relatives.

  In any event, he had no intention of questioning his good fortune as he walked Martha down Washington toward Grand. She looked achingly lovely, he thought, as she strolled next to him, her arm casually strung through the crook of his. The dark waves of her hair didn’t quite want to stay tucked into the roll at the back of her neck. Her cheeks were a bit flushed, whether from the exercise or from emotion, he wouldn’t speculate. They didn’t talk for more than a block, as she kept her thoughts to herself and he wondered how he could begin the conversation in the most innocuous fashion possible.

  He finally took the plunge. “Nice night, but damp. Feels like it might rain some more.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be keeping people away from the festivities. It sure has cooled things off, though. That’s nice.”

  “This has been a corker of a couple of days.”

  She slid him an ironic glance. “I’d agree with that statement. In fact I can’t remember so many life-changing events happening to one bunch of people in one five-day span since God created the world.”

  “Not even the flood?”

  “That took longer than five days.”

  “How about the Resurrection, then?”

  A brief smile touched her lips and was gone. “All right. I’ll give you the Resurrection.”

  “How are your aunt and cousin doing? Do you think they’ll be all right?”

  Martha shrugged. “Olivia is doing real good, considering. This whole thing was a horrible shock to her, but she’s a real strong girl, and I think she’s up to the challenge of building a new life for herself and little Ron. Aunt Ruth Ann is mighty sad and shocked. It’ll really help her to have Grandma and Grandpa here, when they finally come.”

  “When do you suspect you’ll be heading home?”

  “I don’t know, now. Before this business with Kenneth, I imagine we’d be getting ready to leave right now. I can tell Mama’s mighty eager to get home. She misses Daddy and the kids. But she always wants to be as much help as she can. Tell you the truth, she’s handled this trip a lot better than I expected her to. I figured she’d just barge right in and take over Aunt Ruth Ann’s life, but she’s stood back and let things alone a lot more than I’d have ever guessed.”

  “Really? It seems to me that your mother is pretty much the one who got right in there and made things happen.”

  “Well, that’s Ma. But what surprised me was that she took time to go to the fair and to go shopping with me, and wonder of wonders, let me buy something for her! She’s been reading that book I loaned her, and actually took at least one nap that I know of. I’ve been feeling like the trip has been good for her, but now Kenneth has gone and got himself killed, and I’m worried about what Mama will do.”

  “What could she possibly do about that, honey?”

  Martha shot him a look. “She’ll go to find out what happened to Kenneth or die trying. And that’s what just frets me no end. Do you remember that ugly business out at our place last year after my Uncle Bill McBride got shot?”

  “Oh, yes! Your mother went after the killer tooth and nail, didn’t she?”

  “Well, he was after Mary, and yes, she did. And nearly got herself killed in the bargain. And that’s not the only time she’s put herself in danger, either. Now she’s got that gleam in her eye again, and I’m scared to death for her.”

  By this time, they were walking through the fairgoing crowds. The Cheyenne tepees had been taken down, and the square had been transformed into a giant ballroom. Crushes of people were waltzing, two-stepping, and clogging across the courthouse lawn and in the streets to the accompaniment of a brass band. Multitudes of electric lights gave the square a surreal brightness.

  “That’s a pretty song they’re playing,” Martha noted. “I don’t believe I know that one.”

  “That sounds like “Todd’s Sweet Rural Shade.” My old Irish granny liked that one.”

  Martha smiled. “You sure know your songs.”

  McCoy took Martha by the hand and turned toward her. As naturally as walking, they melted into the river of dancers and began to waltz down Randolph.

  He sang along to the music.

  “Oh, come my fair and lovely maid,

  Will you consent to love?”

  She puffed, whether amused or irritated, he couldn’t tell, but he expected he’d best not push it.

  “We’ll help your mother, Martha.” He spoke softly into her ear. “You and me, we’ll do whatever needs to be done to keep your ma safe. Just don’t borrow worry, darling. Could be that Mrs. Tucker learned her lesson better than you think.”

  Martha’s breath warmed his neck as she sighed. “I hope so. She’s always surprising me. I thought I knew her pretty well, Streeter, but she said some things to me over this week that nearly made me swallow my teeth, things I never thought my mother thought about or even knew about.”

  “I had an experience like that with my dad, once. Seems we never know our parents as well as we think we do. I admire your mother a lot, the way she’s so competent. Her life can’t be a bowl of cherries, what with all you kids.”

  Martha had nothing to say to this. They were moving down Grand, now, and for a few minutes they simply allowed themselves to be carried along by the music.

  Martha stopped dancing. “I don’t want to be like my mother.”

  McCoy paused on the sidewalk and looked down at her, waiting, his expression mildly curious and concerned.

  A puzzled look crossed her face as she gazed up at him. She seemed to be more taken aback by this statement than he was.

  Finally she spoke. “I love my mother like crazy, Streeter. But she has no life of her own at all. Every single thing she does is for somebody else—mostly for us kids, or Daddy. And it seems to me that everybody just expects it of her. She doesn’t care a flip about what’s happening in the world. Not the war in Europe or votes for women or anything. She never reads, or goes anywhere but to church or to visit relatives, or takes any time for herself. She’s like an ox in yoke.”

  “She seems happy,” McCoy said.

  “I know. None of it bothers her in the least. I’d go out of my mind to have to live like that. I want to do something interesting with myself. I want to make a mark in the world.”

  “Why, honey, you are your mother’s mark on the world, you and your brothers and sisters. That seems to me l
ike a mark as deep as the Grand Canyon.”

  She laughed. “Oh, I know it. I don’t mean to belittle my mother, not at all. She doesn’t have to get rich or create a work of art. She is rich in the only way that matters to her, and her whole life is a work of art. She’s found her calling, all right. It’s just not my calling. Not all women are alike, Streeter, same as men.”

  McCoy’s golden eyes had brightened somewhere in the middle of this speech. Alafair had said almost the same thing to him. “Is this why you hesitate to consider my proposal?” he asked, when she paused.

  She looked away from him, troubled, and didn’t answer.

  McCoy considered telling her about his conversation with her mother on this very topic, but Alafair had warned him that Martha might not take it well, so he approached from another direction. “Martha, I don’t have any expectations that you’d have to act one way or another if we were to marry. I like to think I’m a modern man, with modern ideas. I’m looking for a partner in my life, not a servant.”

  “I like having a job,” she said, without looking at him. “I like working.”

  “Well, shoot fire, Martha, go on and work. You don’t need my permission. In fact, if Mr. Bushyhead is such a knucklehead that he’d let go of the most important person at the First National Bank of Boynton, then come and help me run McCoy Title Company. Be my partner in business as well as life.”

  She didn’t answer, and she still didn’t look at him, but her cheeks flushed and a slow smile grew on her lips, and for the first time since he had so forcefully and inconveniently fallen in love with this impossible woman, he felt a bloom of real hope.

  “Speaking of Mama…,” she said.

  His brain was so a-roil that her words didn’t mean anything to him at first. “What?”

  She nodded toward the street. “Look there, Streeter, I just caught sight of Mama. I thought she said she was going to bed.”

  McCoy looked to where Martha had nodded, across the intersection they had just crossed, back on Grand. All he could see were people, intent on each other, dancing in front of the shops on the sidewalk, bathed in artificial light from strings of bulbs festooned between poles around the square. “I don’t see her.”

  She pointed. “Over there, in front of Klein’s. Wait ’til those people get out of the way.”

  A woman in a big hat passed, and suddenly he saw what Martha was pointing at, and guffawed. “Why, honey,” he managed. “That’s you!”

  Before he even spoke, Martha realized what she had seen and turned several shades of red. Her own reflection was staring back at her from the dark display window of Klein’s Department Store. The irony of it struck her like a blow and laughter spewed out of her. “Mercy! I’m feeling a bit disturbed, Streeter,” she said, after she caught her breath. “Buy me an ice cream. I need to ponder this a while before I go back to the house.”

  Saturday, September 18, 1915

  Pee Wee Nickolls stood next to his truck on the long, sloping rise that overlooked the oil field and peered at the automobile coming toward them down the road from Enid. All the previous summer, an automobile traveling down that road would have announced its approach for miles with a giant column of red dust. But the gentle rains of the last couple of days had laid down the dirt without turning the highway into mud, greatly improving the driving conditions.

  Pee Wee absently removed a pouch of tobacco from his pocket and rolled himself a cigarette as he squinted against the bright sun into the distance, then struck a match against his thigh and fired up his smoke.

  The automobile pulled off the road in front of him. The man in the nice suit, McCoy, stepped out from beside Zip and helped the two dark-haired women to get out of the backseat. Pee Wee had been expecting McCoy and Martha. But he had not expected Alafair.

  Pee Wee took a final deep drag and ground the cigarette under his heel before he approached his visitors. He tipped his hat to the ladies and shook hands with McCoy.

  Both Zip and Pee Wee were dressed in their oil field attire of a flannel shirt and corduroy trousers tucked into high-topped boots, or in Zip’s case, leggings and heavy shoes. They looked quite a bit different than they had when they called on Olivia yesterday, Alafair noted. “How’d your blast go this morning, Mr. Nickolls?”

  “Well, ma’am, we haven’t done it yet.” He slammed his hat back on his head to punctuate his irritation. “When we got back from Enid late last night, we found out that somebody had made hisself at home and broke into every building, hut, and doghouse on the property. Looks like a tornado went through. Of course, all the hands were in Enid at the dance and the watchman was sleeping like the dead and didn’t hear a thing—or so he says. The guard dog was gone, and we figured he was shot, but he showed up this morning, all wobbly. Poisoned, I expect. We’ve been setting things to right ever since we got back, trying to figure out what got took.”

  “Oh, my, did you call the law?” Martha said.

  “I sent a man back to Breckinridge to wire Sheriff Hume, but he ain’t showed yet.” His good eye narrowed. “Seems y’all were right about Collins looking for something.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” McCoy cautioned. “Best not go off half-cocked. We’re just guessing about Collins. Have you found anything missing?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry to say. There were two five-quart cans of nitroglycerin in the magazine when we left yesterday. I’d prepared one for the blast, and it was ready to transport up here to the well. We found that canister had been opened and the explosive drained off.”

  A moment of ominous silence followed as everyone pondered the implications.

  Finally McCoy ventured a comment. “That points to somebody other than Collins, I think. I doubt if he’d be hunting for a canister of nitro.”

  “He might be hunting for a way to shut us down.” Pee Wee had obviously been thinking hard about the situation. “If an explosion put us out of production, he’d have a free hand to go to looking around. Or maybe scare Miz Crawford into signing her share over to him. There was enough nitro gone out of that can to leave nothing of this well but a smoking hole.”

  “If that was why the nitro was taken, why didn’t the thieves go ahead and blow up the well when they had the chance?” McCoy asked.

  Pee Wee shrugged. “We drove in pretty late. Maybe we interrupted them before they could do the deed.”

  Alafair didn’t say it, but another possibility had occurred to her that didn’t make her happy in the least. If something happened to Pee Wee, his interest in the well would go to Olivia. All the handier for someone intent on getting his hands on the entire operation. She resolved to share this unsavory thought with the sheriff as soon as he showed up.

  “Well, I reckon we’d best get on with it,” Pee Wee said. “They’s a bunch more to eyeball, Mr. McCoy, and not much time to do it. If y’all ladies will go with Zip, he’ll take y’all down to the office and let you get to going at the books. Zip, show Miss Tucker where I keep the books and set her at my desk.”

  “Yessir, Pee Wee.”

  The party turned as one and eyed Alafair, unsure of what to do with her. Her eyebrows peaked.

  “Don’t y’all worry about me.” She leaned back on the fender of Zip’s truck. “Martha or Zip can put me to some useful task, or else I’ll just stay out of the way.”

  ***

  There was nothing that Alafair could do to help Martha with the books and ledgers that Pee Wee had neatly arranged on a shelf behind the rickety table he had christened his desk. The equally rickety, bare-board shack that served as the oil field business office had already been inventoried and restored after the break-in, so Alafair was deprived even of the opportunity to clean up. Martha shooed them away with a suggestion that Zip show her mother around the field for an hour or so, and perhaps they could discover some other mess to set right.

  Alafair was reluctant to take Zip away from some more useful occupation, but the youth was so eager to show off the drilling operation that she gave in—gladly. There
was no telling what one could see when one kept her eyes and her mind open.

  As soon as they walked out of the office, they were greeted by a dog that appeared out of nowhere. He was a medium-sized, black-and-white mongrel who looked healthy and well cared for, but he was perhaps the ugliest dog Alafair had ever seen. He was some kind of bull terrier mix who appeared to have had more than his share of misfortune. The left side of his head was caved in, and he was missing his left ear and much of the fur on the left side of his body. His bottom jaw was lopsided, and his tongue lolled out one side, and when he walked, his back half seemed to want to go in a slightly different direction than his front half.

  Zip was delighted to see him, though, and the dog was delighted right back at Zip.

  “My heavens!” Alafair exclaimed, in spite of herself. “I expect this is the critter Pee Wee mentioned last night.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Miz Tucker, this here is Muddy, our watchdog.” The animal reared himself up on his hind legs and propped his front paws on Zip’s chest, affording the boy an easy angle for an ear rub. “My, I’m glad to see him up and about. Why, last night, we couldn’t find him at all. I was afraid the burglars had done him in, but he showed up this morning, sick as…well, a dog. He just crawled under the shed and wouldn’t come out, ’til now. Pee Wee reckoned the thieves slipped him some bad grub to put him out of commission while they ransacked the place.”

  Muddy lowered himself to the ground and trotted over to Alafair, interested in checking out the stranger. He didn’t seem to be much of a threat. Alafair thought herself more likely to be drooled upon than bitten. She held out her hand for Muddy to sniff. He evidently approved of her, because he sidled up comfortably and trotted along beside her as Zip led the way back up the path to the road overlooking the field, where the truck was still parked.

  “This dog don’t look very vicious, for a guard dog,” she observed.

  “Oh, he is, Miz Tucker. Why, ol’ Muddy can take your leg right off if he’s a mind to. He knows you’re a friend, is all. Ol’ Muddy has got the magic eye when it comes to telling friend from foe. That’s why the thieves had to get him out of the way last night. He’d of ripped them limb from limb, wouldn’t you, Muddy?”