“Lemme go, lemme go!” he screams.
“No!” I flip him up so’s I got him like a baby, the legs up against me with one arm and his top half with the other, and he’s pitching like an alligator, but I hold on and carry him over to the rocking chair. He’s screaming bitch and old cow and a lot of other stuff, and I sit down with that bucking creature in my lap.
“I hate you!” he screams. “You are the biggest, fattest bitch I ever saw.”
“Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man,
Washed his face in a fryin’ pan.”
I begin to sing and bounce my knee in time just to wear him out.
“Combed his hair with a wagon wheel
And died with a toothache in his heel.”
Then I start really bouncing big, letting fly with the old knee so’s I’m bucking more than he is.
“Get out the way for Old Dan Tucker
He’s too late to get his supper.
Supper’s over and the dishes washed
and nothing’s left but a piece of squash.”
Well, we go through about six rounds of this—me singing “Dan Tucker” and bouncing my knee and him screaming dirty names and trying to get loose. Finally he slows down, exhausted, but I don’t let go because I know like any landed fish he’s got a few leaps left in him. So I switch over to “Yankee Doodle,” still bouncing some, still acting like we’re fighting. He’s feeling pretty heavy now, and by the time I get to “O Susanna” the poor thing is more dead than alive, and we’re both soaked with sweat.
“What do you want to hear?” I jiggle him like I’m trying to keep him awake. “How about ‘Jesus Loves me’?” I say.
“I hate it,” he says
“Well, I love it, so you’re going to hear it,” and I start in with “Jesus loves me, this I know…” and I’m singing and looking him right in the eye and he’s looking back like he’s seeing a crazy woman.
This poor creature in my arms ain’t got nothin’ inside to lift his heart, and he’s a dead weight in my arms. So I do “How Great Thou Art,” to pick me up. After that, “He Leadeth Me” and then, my grandmother’s favorite:
“I come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses.”
That one always makes me cry because I think of her and how she poured out her heart trying to make up for all that was missing in my life. And I cry thinking of my boy, Ronnie.
The hard case is lying still, a great big boy with his legs hanging down, and his wet face against my shoulder. I sing real soft now.
“Abide with me
Fast falls the eventide.”
Stephen sniffles and right as I’m closing down says, “Know what?”
“What, Stephen?”
“I never got to see a rodeo.”
“Aw, that’s a shame.”
Then he gives one last shuddery little sigh and closes his eyes, me still holding onto him, singing, same way as I hold on to myself.
§
Hillary O’Brian’s
Cadillac Voices
We are very fortunate to have as our Voice this week, the Editor-in-Chief of The Cadillac Courier, Mr. Eliot Tarman, who writes some startling news about the history of Cadillac’s founding.
AN UNFORTUNATE DISCOVERY
The city of Cadillac has long been proud of its name, which has a connection to Detroit, Michigan, but nothing to do with the luxury car. It was our innocent belief that we were founded by a direct descendent of Sieur Antoine di la Mothe Cadilac, (1658-1730) a French fur trader, colonial administrator in America and the founder of the city of Detroit.
Duane Will in his book, Oklahoma Towns, (Oklahoma University Press, 1985), had part of the story right:
CADILLAC, OKLAHOMA. Established in 1832 by Pierre Cadillac, the first postmaster in what is presently Ellis County. Located on the Butterfield Overland Mail route prior to the Civil War. In 1854 the name was changed to Okolona from the Choctaw word oka lobali, meaning “a place caved in or washed out by water,” but changed back to Cadillac in 1858.
But I’m sorry to tell you, Courier readers, that was not the whole story. Dr. William Normand Little in his History of Oklahoma, 1800 to 1940, (University of Oklahoma Press, 1953), casts a cloud on the founder of Cadillac who claimed to be a direct descendent of that famous fur trader. Dr. Little writes, “Pierre Cadillac may have emigrated from Canada in 1829, arriving in Indian Territory in 1831 or 1832 …. According to letters written by citizens of Cadillac in the 1840’s, Pierre Cadillac’s name originally was Abner Spottle. Neither French nor famous. Sorry folks.
Eliot Tarman
Cadillac resident since 1972
SLOANE ON TRIAL
2013
Mother said if Minnie and Uncle Sloane could get anything out of it at their ages, it was okay with her if they lived together. But mother’s cousin Marvella said it was an insult to the memory of their spouses, and Minnie should, at least, drop out of the Bible Club until the matter was settled.
This all came up in the winter I turned twelve. I had been listening for years and knew this was not the first time in our family that a widower had decided to take in his widowed sister-in-law to keep house for him, and if the first case created a scandal, no one brought back word to us in Cadillac. I think they were mostly old folks in that little town, and old folks are sometimes more practical than younger adults like Marvella, who are scared that elderly persons might become sexually revived and benefit themselves at the expense of the family reputation.
I saw this fear fueling Cousin Marvella to tear out of my mother’s kitchen that winter morning to go get everyone straightened out. Now my mother wouldn’t criticize Marvella any more than she’d criticize Sloane or Minnie, but she did say, as Marvella was fighting her way into her fur-collared coat, “Perhaps we ought to let them sort this out themselves.”
“Alice, you know this sort of thing can just ruin a family. It’s almost, well—” she glared at me. “You know,” she whispered to Mother, “it’s almost incestuous.”
“Well—” Mother bit her lip. “He’s always welcome to eat over here, but with all these children I don’t have time to take stuff over to his place. And neither do you. So maybe—”
“Then he should hire a cook.” Marvella swept out, leaving the door open.
“I think that’s what he’s doing, in a way,” Mother called after her, then closed the door and rubbed her arms to warm up. She looked at me a little sheepishly. “Phoebe,” she said, “I’m sorry you had to hear all this.”
In about thirty minutes Marvella called to say that Sloane hadn’t even let her take her coat off at his place, and she was going to start the papers to get him declared incompetent. Mother said Marvella should sleep on that idea. Then mother made a couple of calls to Sloane and Minnie to invite them to dinner.
“What are the chances of you two getting married?” my father asked after we’d all finished our salads and started on the ham. I knew mother had put him up to this. Dad never had any ideas about people on his own.
“Zero,” Minnie said and pushed out her lower jaw just a tad, then went back to her green beans.
Minnie always seemed especially happy to be in our family, although I thought she’d married the dullest of the lot—Uncle Bob, one of Sloane’s older half brothers.
Mother had been the first one Minnie told about how glad she’d be with the new setup. She’d be getting out of her nephew’s place and having Sloane’s range to cook on. This particular appliance had a double oven with a light in both and a deep-well cooker which fitted down into one of the top burners. Minnie’s prune face was not one that could be said to light up, but I could tell she was crazy in love with that electric range.
She did plain cooking, plain housekeeping, and gave peculiarly practical presents to children at Christmas time, the kind of gifts we opened while trying not to look disappointed. My three-year-old twin sisters once got rubber doilies to paste on the bottom of the bathtub to keep bathers from sli
pping. I received a new toothbrush and dental floss.
After getting Minnie’s quick negative to Dad’s suggestion about a marriage, we all looked at Sloane. Even in his 80’s, he had style. Legend said he’d put himself through college and law school playing cards for money. Since his retirement from practicing law, he’d followed state politics and had closely reasoned opinions about the collusion of some churches and the Republicans. That’s what he called it, collusion.
Other than his staring spells, Sloane’s only failing seemed to be a sort of sloughing of the generations. More than half the time he called me by my mother’s name, which I didn’t mind since she was his favorite niece. With my mother this time lapse took a more peculiar form. He would sometimes take a dime from his pocket, place it in her palm, fold her fingers over it, then kiss her on the forehead.
We were all waiting to get Sloane’s answer to Dad’s question. Sloane seemed to be trying to read something off the grapes on the wallpaper. Finally, under the pressure of our stares he said, “Please pass the yams.”
Dad looked at Mom for help.
“Oh, it was just a thought,” she said, smoothing her damask napkin, taking full responsibility for the unpopular suggestion.
Sloane put down his fork and rested his long fingers on the table edge. “Perhaps, if we found Marvella another husband,” he said, “we’d be acting more to the point.” Then he gave me a sidelong glance, and his bristly eyebrows shot up as though he’d just made a joke.
That night in bed, I listened across the hall as usual, and I heard Mother say, “Herb, I think he’s half doing this just to get Marvella’s goat.”
“Well, he’d better be careful,” Dad said, “because as the child of his only full brother, she’s his next of kin, and she could make real trouble.”
She did, of course. Everyone in the family began to get stiffer and talk less and less, at least to us kids. All I could find out was that Sloane had to go to court to prove he wasn’t insane. That little dent between mother’s eyebrows appeared, and it stayed there.
“Can I go to court?” I asked Sloane three days before the big day. He was settling down with the funnies after Sunday dinner. Mother had already said no.
“Why Phoebe, I was counting on you to sit with me,” he said, smiling, the only one who hadn’t stiffened up.
“Mother said court wasn’t a place for children,” I said.
“She’s right, of course. Leave them home—just you and Herb and Alice come.”
I remember thinking, it was magnificent being twelve.
Some of the older women in the family were in an agony of shame over Uncle Sloane’s impending sanity hearing—not of course so much the suggestion that a member of our family was possibly insane, something we had faced before, but the real shame came from the nature of the evidence against him, his deciding to have Minnie live with him without benefit of wedlock. Two of my father’s unmarried aunts left town to stay in Enid with their widowed sister until this embarrassing episode passed.
Minnie herself, was not, however, of this delicate constitution and showed up in court that morning wearing a new poncho she had crocheted herself.
Sloane looked quite handsome in a dark blue pinstriped suit and polka-dotted tie. He and I sat with his lawyer, Horace Medberry, on the front bench. Dad came up and hunched down in front of us. “Now Sloane, you understand what we’re here for?”
Sloane looked down at my father.
“This is a hearing before that judge up there.” Dad pointed to the front of the courtroom
“I know that’s a judge, Herb. I’ve been in court before.”
“Well, Alice and I just wanted all this to be fresh in your mind.”
Uncle Sloane looked toward where Marvella and her lawyer sat. They were talking with Alfred Truitt, our family doctor. Dad then gave another worried look at Horace Medberry, Sloane’s lawyer and lifelong friend, who sat quietly dozing on the other side of Sloane. Dad went back to sit with Mother.
I noticed that Sheriff Jake Hale was standing against the wall at the back of the courtroom. This made me anxious that he was there to escort Uncle Sloane to the state hospital when this was over.
We all waited a while longer for the judge to stop conferring with the bailiff. Nobody said anything except at one point Sloane slapped the bench we sat on and said, “Oak.” Then he stretched to the side to put his hand in his pants pocket. “You want something for the collection plate?”
“No, sir,” I said.
The judge called the hearing to order and asked Dr. Truitt to speak first.
He allowed as how he’d known Sloane Willard and his family all his life and had been his doctor for almost fifty years. He kept darting looks at my mother. I turned to see her sitting with her hands clasped on her knees and her mouth pursed.
“Do you find Mr. Willard’s judgment competent to lead his own affairs?” the judge asked.
“All I know is, he has spells.”
“What kind of spells?”
“Spells of inattention, confusion.”
Marvella began to mutter: “The poor old man is 82 years old and losing his mind! You’ve seen it happen.” She glared at the doctor. “Tell him!” she whispered, but we all could hear.
Judge Saunders cleared his throat and asked, “Do you believe Mr. Willard is sufficiently impaired to need care in the state hospital?”
Dr. Truitt folded his arms and looked at Marvella. He took a breath like he was about to say something, then stood up, and I thought he would make a speech. But without being dismissed, Dr. Truitt squeaked open the door to the witness box and walked out of the courtroom. The judge watched him go as though it weren’t any of his business where the prime witness in this case was off to. There was a murmur in the court and Marvella herself stood up and pointed at the doctor as he walked out the door, jabbing her finger in the air as though to show the judge what was happening. The judge called Minnie to the stand.
“State your name?”
“Minnie Willard.”
“And your age is?” the judge asked.
“Sixty-five,” Minnie said.
Mother rolled her eyes.
“And what is your part in all this?” the judge asked Minnie. She blinked and jerked her head back and forth in her clucky hen way. “Why, I am the sister-in-law, the housekeeper. I thought you knew that!”
“Yes, I know, but what do you expect to get out of all this?”
“I expect to get out of my nephew’s house. His wife is the worst—” And Minnie was off on the subject of the woman’s housekeeping. Before she could get to the part about the electric range, the judge got her turned off and called Uncle Sloane to the stand.
I place my hand on the bible, say “I do so swear,” and sit down in the witness chair. But this is all backwards. I should be standing, pacing back and forth in front of the judge, defending my client. Where is my client? I can hear the judge saying, “Mr. Willard, would you tell us your side of things?” But there is little to say except, I have suffered great losses.
I gaze out at the almost empty courtroom. Margaret? There she sits in the back, our boy beside her. Her shiny hair is swept back from her wise brow, her smile warm as sunshine. I could use your help, dear wife. But then they are gone. Losses. Maybe the young are scarred more deeply by loss, but it is the old who stagger under the weight of its accumulation.
“Uncle Sloane! The judge is talking to you.” It is Marvella, my niece.
I turn toward the judge. “I’m 82, your honor.”
Marvella reared up. “You see, your honor, you see. I am trying to save the poor old man from himself!”
“Sit down, Marvella.” I sounded like a tired parent.
“You can’t talk to me like that,” she said.
“I’m sorry, your honor, Marvella is my brother’s child. I’m afraid she’s cross today.”
The judge blinked and leaned up on his elbows to speak softly to me. “And what, Mr. Willard, would you say has made her
cross?”
“Why sir,” I said, “I suspect it’s because she’s embarrassed about my domestic plans and believes all our lives would benefit from her having power of attorney. Perhaps you and I could agree that I’ll put a little notice in The Courier saying Marvella Ketcham should not be held responsible for the arrangements at Sloane Willard’s house.”
Judge Saunders clicked his gavel and said this case was dismissed. Marvella set up an awful fuss, but the judge ignored her and invited me and Horace to walk down to the hotel for lunch. Jake waved from the back and gave me a thumbs up. I invited him to join us, but as usual Jake had to go back to work. Minnie said she had to go pack if she was going to move in time to cook supper, so I asked Herb and Alice if they’d drop her at her nephew’s place.
With a faint smile Alice said, “I guess we’re out of the woods for awhile, Uncle Sloane.”
Phoebe looked puzzled. “Uncle Sloane, what really happened?”
§
Hillary O’Brian’s
Cadillac Voices
There has been very little criticism of the Homestead Act which peopled Oklahoma with hard-working farmers and others seeking their own plot of land. That may be because the lot of women was rarely mentioned.
WIND
They say the wind drove my great grandmother mad. But I know the wind alone won’t do it. A woman had to be lonely first, cut off from the folks she left in Nebraska or Pennsylvania. She had to have a dream for the future—a tow-headed child sitting at a spinet, his music lit by a lamp with a hand-painted globe. That would do it.
Let her carry that vision with her into the dugout. Let her call upon that picture as she pulls the tarp around her and her children, huddled like animals in the ground. Let her cling to the box that holds the tiny pins for Latin and Elocution. Let her remember rose water and Sunday School picnics with angel food and strawberries her mother cultivated back of the cistern.
Let her hold these images as she stands on a dry prairie she cannot see the end of, forty miles from the nearest church. That would do it.
Cadillac, Oklahoma Page 13
