The Widows of Wichita County

by Jodi Thomas

  Meredith slammed her aging blue Mustang's door three times before it stayed closed. Kevin had promised to fix it a month ago. But he had not, just as he had not done a hundred other things. Or was it a thousand by now? Things had been piling up since they started dating at sixteen and married five years later.

  It must be at least a thousand, she thought: the car door, the front lock, the garbage disposal… their marriage. Not that their marriage was crumbling, only cracked, Meredith decided. She had no doubt they both still loved one another. But sometimes, it felt uneven, like a table with one short leg, never in danger of falling, but irritating all the same.

  Meredith fought the wind as she hurried into the emergency entrance. She glanced back at the bank of dark, boiling clouds forming to the north. The storm was moving in quickly. She should be in reading circle, not standing in a tiny foyer with the smell of bleach and antiseptic death thickening the air around her.

  A swirl of dried leaves charged the automatic door as it closed behind her. She arranged her sweater once more and touched the ribbon that held her natural curly auburn hair away from her face.

  Shaking her head, she tried to figure out what Kevin had managed to do now. With all his sports activities and weekend drinking, the hospital was a familiar place. As a junior officer at the bank, he had no business being out at an oil rig. If he had ruined another suit, she would say something this time.

  Last summer, she had sat quietly as Kevin told his latest adventure to his friends. He had been looking over land near the south fork of the Red River when an old football buddy begged him to catch one more long pass.

  In the end, the buddy got his loan from the bank, and Meredith used half her paycheck for stitches across Kevin's forehead and the other half to replace the three-piece suit he used as "game clothes."

  I'm already working two jobs to keep us out of bankruptcy, she reasoned. Every year Kevin found more football buddies who remembered the great games over beer, and every year he found another job after he fumbled.

  Amid it all, he somehow managed to remind her of how she had been the lucky one to catch him. Right now she did not feel lucky. She felt frightened and tired to the bone of worrying about money… and guilty for even thinking about it when the only man she had ever loved might be hurt.

  "Morning, Mrs. Allen." A candy striper greeted Meredith where three short hallways merged. The center passage doorway had been closed and a sign, No Unauthorized Personnel, taped across the seam.

  The girl had that do-you-remember-me? look in her eyes.

  "Good morning, Kimberly." Meredith forced a smile. Kimberly had not changed in ten years. She had been a timid second-grader who grew into a hesitant woman. Her age and bust size were well beyond her youthful uniform, but the girl's insecurity clung to one more year of childhood.

  "I'm looking for my husband." When Kimberly did not answer, Meredith added, "Kevin Allen."

  Meredith glanced at the reception desk but, as usual, it was deserted. Paperwork was usually handled at the nurses' station, or in an emergency room while waiting for one of the town's three doctors.

  "This way." Kimberly hurried down the hallway marked with a number 3 above the entrance. Her head low. Her hair curtained her face.

  "Has Kevin been admitted?" Meredith hoped not. They could not afford a hospital stay. If he was laid up, she would take a few days of emergency leave and take care of him. Lately, everything in her life boiled down to how to save money, nothing more.

  Kimberly did not answer.

  "Has he seen the doctor yet?" With the center doors closed maybe the doctors were busy with a birth or a car wreck, and had not had time to get to him yet. "Were there others hurt in the rig accident?"

  The timid girl seemed to have gone deaf as well as mute.

  Meredith stopped her with a touch. "What is it?" The thought that Kevin might be behind the No Unauthorized Personnel sign worried its way into her thoughts.

  Kimberly shook her head. "I don't know nothing. I was just told to ask the widows to wait in the break room."

  "Widows," Meredith whispered.

  Kimberly shoved open a door at the end of the third hallway and waited for Meredith to step inside a room lined with vending machines.

  The blood in Meredith's head sought gravity, leaving her brain suddenly light and airy. She felt nothing, absolutely nothing, as she peered into the cavelike room at the other women who, with one word, had become her clan, her tribe. Widows.

  11:03 a.m.

  County Memorial Hospital

  Black mascara tears trailed down Crystal Howard's tanned face as she stepped into the break room. She looked around with a watery gaze. In a town the size of Clifton Creek, everyone knew everyone. They might never have spoken, but Crystal had seen pictures in the paper, or passed them in a store, or stood behind them in line at the bank. Strangers were people with out-of-state license plates, the women before her were home folks.

  "Shelby's been in an accident!" Crystal said to no one in particular. She ran a thumb beneath the stretchy material of her watermelon-colored body suit that fit her curves like a second skin and tried to pull the garment lower over her hips. "He may be dead already, and they're not telling me. I've a right to know. I'm his wife."

  "We understand." A tall, silver-haired woman's low voice seemed to fill every inch of the room. "Our husbands were also in the accident. We're all waiting to hear something from the doctors."

  "Only one survived," added a woman a few years older than Crystal. "I'm Meredith Allen, Kevin's wife, and this is Helena Whitworth. J. D. Whitworth and my Kevin were at the oil rig when it exploded."

  When Crystal just stared the woman continued, "Helen's husband, J.D. planned to invest in the rig. For some reason, my Kevin went along for the ride this morning."

  Crystal looked down at Meredith's offered hand. People in Clifton Creek were never friendly to her when Shelby wasn't around. She knew what they said about her, marrying a man thirty years her senior. She'd been a waitress with nothing to her name, and he was a rich engineer, newly widowed. No one would believe they married for love even if Shelby had been willing to shout it from the courthouse roof.

  Crystal took the hand. Meredith Allen did not look like the type to listen to gossip, much less spread it. She probably hadn't heard any of the colorful stories about her and Shelby. Crystal found it hard to imagine this woman walking into Frankie's Bar, wearing an ABC sweater, and sitting down to have a drink.

  "I'm Mrs. Shelby Howard," Crystal said, daring anyone to comment. She'd been married five years, had her hair bleached blonde at a fancy salon and bought her clothes in Dallas. She had endured three surgeries to mold her body to perfection, but she still felt like street trash. She was prepared to fight every time she met someone new.

  "I know your husband." The silver-haired lady stepped forward. "Though he was a few years younger, I went to school with him. He's friends with my husband, J.D. I'm Helena Whitworth."

  Crystal tried to pull her jersey jacket closed across her workout clothes. She suddenly wished she'd had time to change. The gym fashion didn't belong here. She swiped a palm across her cheek and stared at the makeup on her hand. Not only was she dressed improperly, if she didn't stop crying she would be without makeup. Shelby was sure to yell at her.

  A third woman, Crystal hadn't noticed before, moved away from the shadows. She was tall, but then everyone towered over her five-foot-two-inch frame.

  The woman pulled a cloth handkerchief trimmed in lace from the velvet folds of what looked to be an English-style riding jacket. She held the linen square out to Crystal.

  Refusing the offer, Crystal added, "Oh, no. I couldn't."

  The woman didn't lower the handkerchief. When Crystal met her gaze, she was struck by the natural beauty before her. Huge dark eyes. Long black hair. Breeding that came with generations of old money.

  Crystal took the handkerchief and stood up straighter, wishing she had her four-inch heels. "You're not from around h
ere, are you?" The question was out before she knew she'd spoken, but no one looking like this woman ever grew up in Clifton Creek. She reminded Crystal of a picture of Snow White she had seen in an old children's book.

  "I-I am Anna," the woman said in a way that made the words sound foreign. "I-I am the wife of D-Davis Montano. The oil rig was being built on our land. I-I have been told Davis was there when the accident happened." Her words stumbled over each other. "A-a nurse said they found his wallet in the pile of burned clothes collected from the emergency room floor."

  Crystal nodded, trying not to say anything else to the foreigner. Everyone in the county knew Davis went all the way to Italy for a wife, but few people had ever seen her. Several of the single girls around town were upset when he married. Davis raised racehorses on the good pasture land he inherited. He had traveled to Europe for a new bloodline and had come back with a stallion and a woman.

  Wiping her face with the linen of Anna Montano's handkerchief, Crystal decided she might be little better than white trash, but at least she was from around here. Pretty Snow White Anna wouldn't belong here if she lived to be a hundred. In fact, when she died and was buried in the Montano plot, she'd still be the foreign wife Davis had brought home.

  Pacing to the door, Crystal crossed her arms over her ample chest. "My Shelby's still alive. Isn't he? They didn't tell me he was dead. They just said to come to the hospital. They wouldn't have said that unless he was still alive." She looked at the older woman she'd seen in the paper a hundred times. Shelby had always pointed her out and called her "one fine lady."

  "Isn't he, Mrs. Whitworth? My Shelby's still alive? Don't you figure?"

  Helena visibly softened, as if responding to a child. "We don't know. All we've found out so far is there were five men on the rig when it exploded. Four are dead. One is badly burned, and I don't think his chances are good."

  Crystal looked around. "You mean all of us are widows except one?"

  "That's right, baby doll," came a husky voice from the doorway as a fifth woman entered the room.

  11:25 a.m.

  County Memorial Hospital

  Randi Howard closed the door to the tiny room and leaned against it with all the drama of a breathless heroine in a B movie. "The newspaper and a TV station from Wichita Falls were pulling in when I parked. They say it's hailing between here and the city, but those folks are like roaches, they can live through anything."

  When no one commented, she continued, "There's also more cowhands and oil field workers than I could count hanging around in the lobby. It's busier than Frankie's Bar on payday. I had to fight my way through, then convince some nitwit girl dressed like a peppermint that I'd been told to show up here." She brushed raindrops from her westerncut jacket. "We're in for one hell of a storm, gals. This hospital is probably a good place to wait it out."

  She scanned her audience of four and shrugged off any acting she might have planned. "I guess folks dying in this county from anything other than old age is big news."

  "What are you doing here, Randi?" Crystal's tone held an edge that was not entirely unfriendly. "I thought you were working the day shift now."

  "Didn't anyone tell you? My Jimmy was with your Shelby on the rig." Randi twisted her dyed, gypsy-red hair into a braid.

  Crystal frowned. "I should've guessed he'd be there. He's always shadowed his uncle Shelby. Jimmy knows more about Howard Drilling than either of Shelby's kids. If there were problems on the rig, Shelby would have wanted Jimmy right there with him, learning all he could." She glanced at the others. "Shelby says Jimmy's been at his side since he was a boy."

  Randi nodded and took a seat, propping her red Roper hoots on an empty chair. She pulled out a pack of Marlboros, looked around and reconsidered. So, she thought, these are the newly widowed. An old woman, a foreigner, a Pollyanna who had to be a schoolteacher and darling Crystal who was almost thirty and her husband still called her baby doll.

  In truth, she envied Crystal more than disliked her. They had been friends in their single days, sharing everything including boyfriends. The bubbly bleached blonde snagged the rich old Howard while Randi only caught the poor nephew. Oh, old man Shelby always made sure Jimmy was paid well, but Shelby's kids treated her and Jimmy worse than hired help. Which, she had to admit, was better than the way they treated their daddy's second wife, Crystal.

  Randi looked directly at Crystal, catching only a glimpse of the girl she had once thought of as a sister. "I might as well tell you, you'll find out soon enough in this town. I was packing to leave Jimmy when the sheriff stopped by our trailer. I quit my job and sold everything I couldn't fit in the back of my Jeep. I've got to get out of here while I can still breathe. I was meant for something more than singing a few songs once a week during talent night. There's a whole world out there that thinks of more than oil and cows. There's got to be. What was it we used to say, `so many men, so little time'?"

  Crystal smiled with lips a little fuller than they used to be. "I thought it was so many margaritas, so little time?"

  "Well, either way, it's time I moved on. I don't want to grow old and die here, still thinking about what might have been if I'd only been brave enough to go take a look."

  Crystal knelt beside Randi, taking both her hands. "You can't leave, Randi. Shelby says Jimmy is doing real well. He'll be in charge of all the drilling soon. You know Jimmy's crazy about you, girl."

  Randi shook her head. "I swore nothing would stop me from leaving this time. I'm aging by the hour in this town." She glanced at the machines, hoping one said Coors across the top. "Jimmy loves me, I guess, but that ain't enough. No one in this place seems to understand… life here is sucking the marrow from my bones." She closed her eyes, fighting back tears. "God, I hope he's dead."

  Silence crystallized, as though speaking her thoughts had somehow made it possible. The four other women in the room forgot to breathe.

  Randi opened her eyes. "If he isn't, I won't be able to leave him hurt and burned," she mumbled, more to herself than anyone. She was not a woman who thought of apologizing for anything she said. "And I won't survive much longer here, just sitting on the porch waiting for sundown."

  She raised her head, knowing her words were cruel, but realizing they were true. "If Jimmy's alive, this accident just signed my death warrant."

  2:55 p.m.

  County Memorial Hospital

  Anna Montano sat quietly at the table, watching the women before her. The rain rattling on the roof provided background music to her thoughts. In Italy, women in crisis would be crying and wanting the family close. A priest might be sitting with them, and their hands would hold prayer beads. In Italy, worry and grieving were emotional passings, shared with family. But these Americans only talked and waited. Unlike Anna, they had not seen the fire and the smoke filling the sky above the oil rig. They still held hope close to their breasts.

  She closed her eyes and tried to forget what she had seen this morning. Black smoke rising, polluting the morning sky with tragedy's omen. The ranch hands, hurrying to the scene, would not allow her to come with them. But when the first ambulance had left the ranch, Anna followed in her car. She knew her brother Carlo would be upset that she had not told him she was leaving. He considered watching over her part of being Davis's foreman. But today she had not cared and, besides, he had all he could handle putting out the fire.

  She could have waited at home. She knew the news would only be bad. But for once, Anna had not wanted to be in her private world at the ranch. Now, curling into herself in the uncomfortable plastic chair, she realized that for the first time in a long while, she did not want to be alone.

  Loneliness was nothing new to her. She rode alone each morning, helping to train the horses. Since childhood, horses were as much a part of her life as family, sometimes more so. She worked alone in her small studio and, more often than not, ate alone both noon and evening while Davis and Carlo went somewhere on ranch business.

  Anna thought of herself
as no more than a bird in a cage filled with toys. One day someone would leave the door open. The only question haunting her thoughts was would she be brave enough to fly away?

  She and Davis had run out of anything to say to one another after their first anniversary, when she still was not pregnant. If it had not been for her love of horses and his love of the money they brought, he probably would never have spoken to her at all. But, from time to time, he needed her advice. He needed her skill. Carlo might know horses, but Anna had an instinct about them. Over these past five years Davis Montano had learned to trust that instinct even though he valued little else about her.

  Davis was not unkind. He was never unkind. But, she realized after the first year that he had married her to breed children, and she had failed him. Honor and duty were words that described her marriage, not love.

  To her surprise, no tears came as she faced the possibility of his death. She married Davis the week after she had turned twenty-one, and they had been little more than strangers. For her, he provided an escape from an overprotected life in Italy. She arrived in Texas with her big brother, who was hired as foreman. Between Carlo and Davis, Anna found littlr freedom in the land of the free. Even the trips she had taken with her mother to hear the great symphonies of Europe were now gone.

  "Would you like a soda, dear?" The older woman broke into Anna's thoughts.

  "N-no, thank you." Anna liked Helena Whitworth. She wore honesty like a tailor-made garment.

  "I could use a beer," Randi grumbled. "How long are they going to keep us waiting?" She and Crystal had been talking about the days when they had spent most of their nights boot scooting at Frankie's. "Surely this place has a happy hour." Randi laughed to herself and began another story that started as the others had, "Remember that night at the bar…"