Cadillac, Oklahoma

by Louise Farmer Smith

  “No. My people are from Georgia. My sister and I ran away when she was nineteen and I was sixteen. I wouldn’t have stayed in Las Vegas except that she married a croupier and had three kids, and they and my son are the only family I’ve got.” She glanced at Jake before going on. “Things were so bad when we first got to Vegas, no jobs, everyone trying to take advantage of us, especially her—totally gorgeous. We made beds and washed toilets for the first year.” Victoria paused and looked out at the fence posts whizzing past.

  “My sister told me that the night before Peanuts and me got married I’d come to her and said, ‘I’ve met a rich guy and he’s going to take care of me back in Oklahoma.’ She cried and said don’t go, but she said I just ignored her and went off to The Tropicana, a place I’d never dreamed I’d get inside. I wish I could remember it. Two days later I woke up at home with a gold ring on my finger. She said when he brought me back to our place, both him and me were crying.”

  No one wanted to speak ill of the dead. The people who had known Peanuts were so relieved he was gone they felt guilty. As Victoria was introduced around town, an image began to take shape of a Stanley Woolmont Murphy, (no one had known his full name until the obituary ran in The Courier), a wonderful man full of civic pride. “Hail fellow well met,” old Donavan, the funeral director, said to Victoria. “Years ago he built a pool hall so the young would have a place to go after school,” the minister reported. “Good old Peanuts,” many said.

  Victoria teared up hearing the praise from her erstwhile husband’s townspeople, and this moved several of the women to offer her a place to stay and a tour of the town. Only Wynona Blosser steered clear of Victoria St. Buckingham, and a few people remarked on how uncharacteristic of Wynona this was, not to be at the center of things.

  After the funeral and while the Faithful Elders Sunday School Class served coffee and donuts in the Baptist church basement, Wynona Blosser found herself standing along the wall next to Victoria St. Buckingham.

  “Hi,” Wynona said when Victoria caught her staring. The widow looked low class, from that drugstore dye job right down to her cheap high heels.

  “Hi.” Victoria lowered her eyes.

  “I’m Wynona.”

  “I’m Vicki.”

  And then silence set in. Wynona wanted to make an excuse and move away, but that seemed rude. And there was something easygoing about this woman from Las Vegas. “That’s a nice dress.” Wynona said.

  “Thanks. My sister and I call it our church lady dress.” Victoria’s voice, low and wise-sounding, and her bald honesty caused Wynona to ask, “Would you like to go get a drink after this?”

  “When will it be over?”

  “It can be over right now if you want. Just go over to that elderly woman, Margaret Bailey, the one with the white hair. See her there. Tell her how much you appreciate all she and the other ladies have done, and how proud Peanuts would be to have his Faithful Elders Sunday School Class turn out for him like this. Then go over to the minister and thank him for the beautiful service. I’ll be out front in a black Mercedes.”

  Victoria put herself on autopilot as she did when she was at work. She spoke the Wynona words to Margaret Bailey and then to the preacher. They worked like a charm. The preacher seemed to welcome the idea that the party was over.

  Victoria let her head drop back on the leather headrest of Wynona’s Mercedes. “Thank you. Thank you.”

  Wynona had pulled out of the church parking lot in the direction of Antoine’s intending to show Victoria what a classy bar Cadillac had, but halfway there she made a swooping U-turn. “Let’s go to my house.” This felt like the right move although she hadn’t opened her home to anyone new in decades.

  Since her husband’s death six months ago, the house had changed. It was still its big old frumpy yellow brick self, but it felt cozier now. She’d eliminated the cigar stench when she threw out all the carpets, all the drapes, and all his clothes.

  The rooms themselves softened and enclosed her in a sweet-smelling embrace. She was alone, but at least there was no one there to make her feel misunderstood. Old Floyd had never denied her anything, but he treated her ideas as silly whims to be indulged because he had the money to do it. She felt more herself tonight than she had since her marriage.

  “What’ll you have?” Wynona asked as she and Victoria walked into what Wynona called her boudoir—a second story sitting room attached to her bedroom, a place to entertain one’s closest friends. She seated Victoria in the downy lap of an overstuffed yellow-flowered chair with a large, matching footstool. After handing Victoria her bourbon and taking a swig of her own, Wynona sat down in a matching chair and put her feet up on the footstool beside Victoria’s.

  Victoria, who had been off-balance since coming to Cadillac, began to relax after her second drink. She was far from home. She’d never been in a private home this grand, but sitting in the early evening shadows with a generous woman was deeply familiar. She and her sister had kept this ritual even when the kids were still at home. After the kids were in bed, the women would sit and sip their drinks and murmur to each other, or say nothing because everything had already been said between sisters. Then Victoria would go to work.

  Wynona sipped slowly, wondering what they were going to talk about.

  “It looks like you’ve had a wonderful life,” Victoria said.

  “I’ve been trying to get out of this town since I was a girl, but yes, comparatively speaking—” Wynona stopped herself and regretted what sounded like condescension.

  “Sure, comparatively speaking,” Victoria said.

  “I’m, I’m sorry to—”

  “Oh, hush. I’m not offended. Everything is comparative. I think about that all the time. When I’m down, I say, Victoria, at least you don’t live in a leaky trailer. At least you aren’t in some crummy women’s prison. At least you have indoor plumbing.” Victoria glanced at her hostess over her glass. “That last was a joke. I’ve always had indoor plumbing.”

  As Victoria drank more, her voice got lower, more dusky and beautiful to Wynona’s ear. They sat quietly, two widows of men they didn’t miss.

  “Maybe you wonder about me.” Victoria said. “You know, a gal from Sin City.”

  “Oh no, I mean there are a lot of honest jobs in Las Vegas.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t pay as well.”

  Wynona felt a prickle of heat on her arms. “Jake said you worked in a bakery.”

  “The Cheesecake House is no bakery. Of course the traffic’s way down for a woman my age. I live with my sister’s family.” Victoria sounded relaxed and her Georgia drawl was growing thicker.

  Victoria felt relieved to have come clean with her hostess, and Wynona struggled to adjust to the level of candor that now pervaded her boudoir. Finally she sighed with the realization that what she’d wanted tonight was a stranger to talk to. “I ought to tell you how Peanuts died,” she said.

  “What? You know what happened?”

  “Yeah. I know.” Wynona was immediately sorry she’d started this.

  “So, what happened?

  “I should tell the sheriff, but I feel like it’s too late.”

  “Go on, tell me.”

  “You don’t know how scared I am.”

  “What have you got to be scared of?”

  Wynona felt her eyes sting.

  “Don’t be afraid. Just tell me what happened to Peanuts?”

  Wynona paused to prepare her thoughts. It was almost dark in the room. She began very quietly. “Peanuts wanted to sell his property in the middle of town. The city offered him a price he didn’t like. I had told the mayor it was too low and would insult Peanuts, but he thought we ought to start low, and the city manager said his figures couldn’t justify starting any higher. They both are scared to death of being accused of squandering the people’s money, so the offer was made in a flat out way. Nothing to invite a counter offer. I don’t know how that meeting got so out of hand, but Peanuts left very angry, and
the upshot was that he wouldn’t even consider talking to us again. He felt he’d been disrespected and was going to make us sorry by not selling at all.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Vicki, I wanted the city to have that land like I’ve never wanted anything else. I didn’t care how we got it or what we had to pay. I wanted Cadillac to have a beautiful center, a park, something for everyone, something we could be proud of.”

  “So?”

  “So he wouldn’t deal with anybody. But I felt that if anyone could change his mind or at least his mood, it was me. He didn’t like me, but I knew that I was the one person he would believe if I told him we’d pay four million. And sometimes a woman can put things gently and turn a man around. You know what I mean?”

  “Sure.”

  “Here’s what happened. I was downtown late helping Floyd Jr. go over loan applications. He’d gotten so behind I was embarrassed to face people. It was nearly midnight then, and he was pooped, so I told him to go on. Later, as I was finishing up, I looked down from the window and saw Peanuts on the side street haranguing a couple of guys. I ran to open the safe and took out $50,000, which I stuck way in the bottom of my big leather bag. I got to the sidewalk in time to see Peanuts, totally smashed, getting into his car. I rapped on the passenger-side window and asked if I could speak to him for a minute. He wouldn’t even roll down the window, just began to swear at me. He was frantically trying to get the key in the ignition, and I swung open the door and jumped in. Where I got the nerve I don’t know. I felt desperate, like getting him to sell was all I’d ever wanted. He hit the gas and we roared down Main, side-swiping a small pickup on our way, Peanuts cussing up a storm and yelling at me to get out of his car, but he was going so fast—if I’d jumped, it would have killed me.

  “‘Listen to me!’ I screamed. ‘That fool city manager insulted you. I apologize. Look at what I have for you. It’s in your interest.’ Of course, he was yelling too, so I don’t think he heard much. He was blind drunk, barely staying on the road, much less in his lane. We were out east of town by then on a country road. What would people have thought if we’d both died in that old Impala? Me and Peanuts running away with $50,000 of the bank’s money?”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “I was going to give it to him as earnest money, but when I started rummaging in my bag for the cash, he saw this, swerved, and we hit a tree. He lurched out of the car yelling, “Don’t kill me,” and ran down a slope and then over the edge of the gorge. I heard a scream, then nothing but rocks thumping and bushes tearing away.”

  The room was quiet except for two women breathing.

  “God,” Victoria whispered. “What’d you do with the car?”

  “I drove it back to town, parked it in his driveway and walked home. Even though it was the middle of the night, there must have been someone who saw me. It’ll be a miracle if no one turns me in.”

  “But it was an accident. That’s all.” Victoria let out a little sigh. “That’s all, Wynona.”

  Wynona leaned her head back on the chair and let the tears run into her hair. This is what she’d been blindly headed for when she invited Victoria home: understanding. They were quiet together for a while until Victoria raised up to face Wynona.

  “Sorry to say it, but I think you need to tell this to the sheriff. He’s a good guy and has seriously tried to find out what happened.”

  “I don’t know if I can. I didn’t check on the body. I’ve withheld evidence. About a death.”

  The next morning Victoria and Wynona entered the sheriff’s office accompanied by Tim Ragan, the best defense lawyer in Oklahoma, who had flown his own plane into the Cadillac airstrip at dawn.

  After giving her statement, Wynona called Hillary O’Brian at The Courier and told her she would come in as soon as she got back from the airport. Jake made no promises or even predictions about what the penalties would be and called the judge, who said he would schedule a hearing.

  Wynona felt strangely passive. Normally so hard-driving, she was glad to let events take their course. Her dream of a town green for Cadillac was going to be realized; Victoria had agreed to sell for $3,000,000 and this buoyed Wynona enormously. What felt equally and strangely inspiring was that her own role in the town was bound to change. The monolith of the banker’s wife would crack now that she would be seen as a woman who took a desperate risk by confessing.

  After leaving the sheriff’s office, Wynona drove Victoria to the bank to withdraw the contents of all three of Peanuts’ accounts, $859,743. Victoria deposited half in a new account in her own name. And half she stuck in her purse in the form of a cashier’s check. With Tim Ragan’s help they drew up a contract for the sale of the land. Then Wynona drove Victoria to the airport. Ragan took off in his own plane.

  At the gate Wynona hugged Victoria and said, “Make sure the broker you get is on the level. We’ll talk more about our project after you get home. You should stay with me for the groundbreaking.”

  Wynona watched Victoria disappear into the security line, then stood at a window and waited for the plane to take off. Nothing would be the same now. Some of the people of Cadillac might sympathize with her. The majority would either laugh at the banker’s widow for getting in a car with a drunk, or would want to put her in the state hospital, but she knew the truth, and the truth was she’d jumped into that old Impala for love of beauty.

  §

  THE COURIER REPORTER

  2013

  From Hillary O’Brian’s point of view The Courier offices reeked of men. Not just decades of their sweating deadlines. The Essence of Courier, as she called it, was mostly due to the ever-present cigar smoke that seeped from under the editor’s door and had soaked into the floors, woodwork, and obsolete furniture. The editor’s own office, cluttered and dusty, was more unpleasant than the outer office space where she worked with Duffy, a nice old hack. Mr. Tarman, the editor, had been limited by the Board of Health to smoking his stogies at his desk behind a closed door. The big glass windows looking onto the office were so coated with smoke that, as Hillary observed, “It’s eternal evening in there.”

  Hillary instinctively inhaled before entering. “Mr. Tarman, you said you wanted to see me.”

  “Yeah,” Tarman said and shuffled the newspapers, memos, and empty coffee cups searching for something on his desk. “This town green story has blown up now that there’s been a death, and I’m giving it to Duffy.”

  “But this is my story.”

  “Look, lady, it was a story about a big city garden when I put you on it. Now we’ve got a banker who has confessed to concealing evidence.”

  “That’s right. Wynona Blosser called me just before she put the widow on the plane back to Las Vegas.”

  “She called you?”

  “Yep. She said we would talk more as her case progressed.”

  “Wynona Blosser called you?”

  “This is my story, Mr. Tarman, and it’s just going to get bigger. The dates for the cleanup and groundbreaking haven’t even been set. Judianne McCall, the wife of the mayor’s lawyer, told me that at the meeting last week to finalize the sale of Murphy’s land, there was talk of testing the soil for toxicity, but when I asked the city engineer if they were going to do it, he said it had been agreed at the meeting that it wasn’t necessary.”

  Tarman shifted his cigar to the front of his face where his brown teeth clenched it for hissing inhales. “Well.” But before he could go on, he erupted in deep, bulky, wet coughs. “We’ll see how it goes,” he wheezed.

  Hillary also was coughing, but she stopped long enough to say, “I want my own column.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. I never gave Duffy a column. You two are the reporters.”

  Hillary went back to her desk and automatically opened her laptop, but she put her hands in her lap. She was proud that she’d held onto her story, but she needed this job to grow. It was part of her survival plan.

  The Cadillac Courier was the only newspaper in
a booming town with a community college, which had been covered only once since she’d arrived at this job three months ago, and that was Duffy’s story about a student who rammed his motorcycle into a hedge of rosebushes and strangle vine, having to be extricated by firemen. No articles on new professors. No articles on the college’s mission or funding. Furthermore, there was the Juvenile Detention Center on the edge of town, everyone pretended didn’t exist. It must be bursting with stories. The merchants and restaurants never got feature pieces. City government was Tarman’s sole focus, especially when it impacted the schools or sewer system.

  “Duffy,” Hillary said. The other reporter raised his shaggy head and smiled. “What do you know about circulation?”

  “Mr. Tarman keeps track of that.”

  “But what are the numbers? Is the paper’s readership expanding or shrinking?”

  Duffy shrugged. “He keeps all that to himself.”

  “Can I ask him what it is?”

  “Oh gosh.” Duffy’s eyes widened behind the thick lenses of his glasses. “I wouldn’t do that. I mean, really. He wouldn’t like that.”

  “Really. Hmm.”

  “You’re new here,” he said.

  “Would R.J. know about circulation? Of course he would. He sells the advertising. He’d have to know.” R.J. was almost as new as she was, also in his thirties. His job here was very part time. He supported himself with odd construction jobs and could be seen hanging out at the Busy Bee Café. He was the right kind of handsome, easygoing guy to sell a few ads for the paper.

  Hillary closed her laptop, grabbed her bag and headed out to find R.J. Bagby. He was there with Floyd Blosser, the banker’s son, sitting at the table in the Busy Bee’s front window.

  “Hi, guys, what’s for breakfast?”

  “R.J.’s going to take me fishing down on Fuller Creek,” Floyd said.

  “Ah,” Hillary said. “What are you using for bait?”

  “I already bought the worms.” Floyd started to reach under the table to show her.