They tell me in Europe the farmers used to put their rakes on their shoulders and go into their fields in bands, returning at sunset to the village. Their women shared the well, the oven, the comfort of laughing together at the men. But my great grandmother, thanks to the Homestead Act, floated alone within violent oceans of land.
Hazel Matlock
Cadillac resident since 1954
COUSINS
My cousin, Veronica Jane, is that sort of thirteen-year-old person who thinks she’s a cheerleader even though she definitely is not. She’s got a mother who is a great shopper, so all her clothes fit just right and look new, and she puts this little twist in her walk that flips her skirts and gives the impression that she’s going steady with someone over at Cadillac High although she definitely is not. I know.
She says things like, “Guess where I got this”—some stupid little charm her daddy gave her. And “Guess who I was with Saturday night”—even when she was just at Grams with her folks watching Wheel of Fortune. How dumb does she think I am?
The worst happened last Christmas when Gram gave her some little white drum major boots and a baton. This was absolutely pointless because Cadillac Junior High doesn’t even have a marching band. But Little Miss Cutie Pie was in ecstasy—picking up her feet and stomping ’em down in those white boots like she was down at O.U. or something. It was the coldest Christmas Oklahoma had had in thirty years. So we couldn’t play outside, and all we got all over Gram’s house was boot stomping and hip twisting. Gram gave me a quilted bathrobe, and said it made me look like Jessica Lange. But everyone just went right ahead watching the baton girl. It was right after Christmas that I began to leave the notes.
The first ones were nothing—just little experiments—a line or two poked into her locker: HI YA CUTIE. I made it look crude and heavy like boy’s writing and used plain white paper from the art room.
Veronica Jane is not bright. She has the body of a mosquito, but the brain of a gnat. There was no problem fooling her. Last period she has gym, and I’m upstairs in home ec near the lockers.
She showed me the first few notes when we walked home. Our houses are less than a block apart.
“Oh, goodness,” I said the first time. “Are you going to tell your Mom?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” she said kind of sing-songy, wagging her chin and shoulders and hips all at once. She said she knew who the guy was, and I begged her to tell me, so she had me where she wanted me. She thought.
I kept leaving notes three or four times a week. Then I figured things were going too smooth, so I turned up the heat a little. WHY DON’T YOU EVER SMILE AT ME? I wrote on a piece of white construction paper. We were supposed to be making skirts in home ec. But you know how that goes with 32 girls in the class—bring in a pattern and material, then stand in line to get it okayed by Mrs. Chishom. Then pin the pieces on the cloth and get in line again. Then cut it out and get in line—anyway it’s all stupid and takes forty times too long to make a skirt, but there’s plenty of time to talk and write notes, and Mrs. Chishom will let anyone go anywhere during class just to get rid of a few. Sharon Black once got a bathroom pass and went out for a hamburger and a malt at the Jiffy and came back just as the bell rang, and naturally Mrs. Chishom just said thank you when she turned in her pass.
It was wonderful to see the way Veronica Jane began to smile at the boys last winter. I swear I saw her massaging her cheeks to get the kinks out of her sore muscles.
“Has your cousin lost her mind,” Crethie Mashburn asked me, “the way she keeps sticking that smirky grin into every boy’s face?”
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said and added, “poor little thing.”
YOU, YOU ARE THE ONE, the next note said.
Veronica Jane had a little smile on her face on the way home.
“Heard from Romeo?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m getting kind of tired of those silly notes,” she said. She lied.
Every Sunday after church, since time began, we all eat at Gram’s. Our whole family, Veronica Jane and her folks, and Aunt Minnie, of course, who used to live with us before she moved to her brother-in-law’s big place. After dinner everybody is just supposed to lie around while Gram cleans up. The men watch TV or talk about their cars, and my Mom and Aunt Malti, Veronica’s mom, talk about how awful it is that Gram won’t let them in the kitchen or who had on what at church or how cute Veronica Jane and I used to be when we played together as babies. Urp.
I always bring a book and try to stay out of everybody’s way. But Veronica Jane just flits around the house, perching here and there like a canary getting petted by this relative and that one. Gram practically paid us to play together last year. “You’re lucky to have such a sweet little cousin. When you’re grown up, why, I bet you’re just like sisters,” she’d say to me. Then Gram would mention how Veronica Jane was an absolute double for Shirley Temple, whoever she was. To make Gram happy I tried to teach Veronica Jane to play Monopoly, but she just kept saying that this wasn’t real money. Hopeless.
I forgot to leave notes for awhile, so the next one said, SORRY I HAVEN’T WRITTEN, BUT I’VE HAD TO HELP MY BROTHER FIX HIS CONVERTIBLE.
Now I knew this was getting tricky. Romeo was now the younger brother of someone who drove a convertible. That had to limit the possibilities to just two or three boys, but I went ahead and dropped it in her locker on the way to the bathroom during Chishom’s class.
“He drives a convertible,” she whispered.
“Who does?”
“The boy who leaves the notes.”
“Oh. Has that started up again?”
“Of course. I hear from him every day. I don’t tell you everything, Miss Smarty,” she said staring hard at each car that passed.
“He must be pretty dumb,” I said.
“Dumb. What do you mean?”
“To be old enough to drive and still be in junior high, he must have been put back at least twice.”
“No, no. It’s his brother’s car. He wasn’t put back. He drives it on the weekends.”
“I hope he doesn’t go to jail.”
“No, no—just around their property.”
“He drives round and round the house?”
“No, no, it’s a big ranch. He drives around their ranch. That is perfectly legal. Isn’t it?”
“Oh sure. Their own property. Not the city streets.”
YOU NEVER WEAR THAT BEAUTIFUL PINK BLOUSE ANYMORE, I wrote while Chishom was checking side seams and everybody who wasn’t sewing or asleep was standing in line. I took a chance and slid the note under Veronica Jane’s locker door after the bell rang. This was all getting too easy.
Veronica Jane ran home as fast as her mosquito legs could carry her. I said I just couldn’t keep up. There was no rush. Mother’s church circle had had their rummage sale the Saturday before, and I had folded up Veronica Jane’s pink blouse myself and put a twenty-five cent sticker on it. I saw a dumpy woman from the country buy it.
I watched Veronica Jane running home to try to save that blouse and knew that this was just the beginning of the things I could make her do.
I THINK YOU’D LOOK GREAT IN PIGTAILS.
Veronica Jane’s hair is kind of wispy and not very long. She does it up in pin curls every night, then fluffs it out as much as possible in the morning. I thought she’d never try braiding it, but next day, sure enough, her head looked like an onion—all those little blond wisps slicked back with water into two of the most pitiful, scraggly pigtails you ever saw.
“Your cousin looks bald,” Crethie Mashburn said.
“We’re all real worried about the poor little thing,” I said.
We were finally getting around to hemming our skirts in home ec. It had taken an entire marking period to get all 32 zippers in and school was nearly over. I had let up on old Veronica Jane for a while and just slid in an occasional flattering note to keep her on the string while I thought of one last trick before school was out. I started hinting that R
omeo wanted a date.
I’D LIKE TO SEE YOU IN THE MOONLIGHT. That sort of thing. Finally there were only three days left.
MEET ME UNDER THE HORSE APPLE TREE AT 9:00 O’CLOCK FRIDAY NIGHT.
This tree, Mother called it an Osage orange, was in the corner of the school grounds behind the football field. In the fall the big green pulpy apples fell on the ground, making a considerable slippery mess that everyone avoided. Right now they were probably just big, stupid green oranges no one could eat. I knew she’d never have the nerve to go there, but I liked the idea of her stupid Romeo picking such a gunky place.
I’d forgotten all about this and was lying on my bed Friday night reading when I heard Aunt Malti come in crying that Veronica Jane was missing. I jumped into my shoes and dashed out the back door while Mom and Dad were trying to quiet down my aunt. Believe me, I never, ever thought she’d go. I ran so fast that when I came around the edge of the bleachers I was gasping and had to stop and rest my hands on my knees. I was only a little ways from the tree and could just make her out there in the dark under the strange branches. She was facing the other way and her arms were wrapped around her like she was cold, even though it was real warm. She looked tiny, like a little child, lost. I walked toward her as quietly as I could. Suddenly she turned and when she saw me, she froze. There in the dark, like someone playing statue, she didn’t move a muscle. I didn’t move either.
“You!” she whispered.
“Come home now, Veronica Jane. Your folks are worried.”
“You.”
“Shucks, Veronica Jane. What are you talking about?”
“It was you all along.”
“Look. I’m sorry.”
“Sor-ry?” she whispered, her mouth and eyes wide open.
“I just—it was just—”
“Sor-ry?” she croaked and hurled one of those hard green horse apples at me. I ducked but it hit the top of my arm. She reached up to get another one.
“Wait!” I was backing up, and she was coming toward me.
“Sor-ry?” She zinged another horse apple into my hip. Wow! Like a baseball. “I hate you!” she screamed. She was out in the moonlight. I was running.
“I said I was sorry!” I turned and faced her. “You were so stupid.”
“Stupid?” She ran with all her might and pushed me. I went down hard, bit my tongue and slid on the wet grass. I jumped up and faced her. She was bawling like a two-year-old now. “Don’t call me stupid! Don’t ever call me stupid! You think you’re so smart. That’s all I hear from Gram! Your grades and your brains!” She ran and slammed me down again, and before I could get up, she dropped down hard straddling my stomach. She was crying and trying to pin my arms down.
“Wait,” I yelled. “Gram never talks about me. It’s you. You all the time—Little cutie pie!” I struggled up and pushed her off. “You spend all your time looking in the mirror. Weren’t you even suspicious about the notes? Didn’t you ever wonder?”
She rolled away from me and sat in the dark with her arms wrapped around her knees. “I hate you,” she whispered. She looked pitiful hunched over there in the wet grass. She’d been so easy to fool.
I just sat there tasting the blood in my mouth. I spit a couple of times. It was dark now. A dog barked a block or two away, but other than that, it was real quiet there on the football field, nobody saying anything.
Finally I said, “I guess we ought to get on back. They may call the police and get Gram out of bed, and then she’ll have a heart attack.”
“Let her, the old battle ax.” Veronica Jane said through her teeth. I was surprised. I didn’t know she had it in her to say something like that.
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
She looked surprised now. “I thought you were her—”
“Her favorite? Naw, that was always you.”
Finally she got up and came over and pulled me up. I smoothed down her hair, and she had a look at where the horse apple hit my arm. Then we walked slowly around the football field once, taking our own sweet time, before we started back.
I kept thinking about next year. Eighth grade was going to be hard for her—science and math. Kids can be so mean.
§
Hillary O’Brian’s
Cadillac Voices
I ran across this old clipping in the archives of The Cadillac Transcript, the paper that preceded The Courier, and noticed some familiar family names. Older residents might find their grandfathers here.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
May 15, 1917, Cadillac, OK Sunday afternoon almost every citizen of Cadillac turned out at the depot to bid farewell to seven Cadillac High School seniors who enlisted in the army. Losing no time in volunteering to serve their country, the day after their graduation these boys climbed on the train for Camp Doniphan, the massive training camp set up on Ft. Sill to assemble, house and train our boys before they ship out for Europe. Mayor Wills, a veteran of the War Between the States, made a speech congratulating the boys on entering “the glorious tradition of taking up arms in defense of liberty.” The high school band played “Yankee Doodle” and the Methodist Women’s Circle threw rose petals on these, our next heroes.
Less than three months after our President declared war on Germany, these young men and hundreds of others throughout all the counties in Oklahoma have valiantly joined the forces of what President Wilson called the “war to end all war.”
“I figure the Germans asked for it,” Wilbur Bagby, one of the volunteers was quoted, referring to the marauding German submarines that have begun to attack our ships along the merchant routes between the United States and Great Britain.
“Them Krauts won’t have a chance. All us are sure shots,” said Carl Heiligman. “I’m itching to get me a uniform,” he added.
Sloane Benjamin Willard was asked why he was volunteering. “I can’t let my friends go off without me. They might get into trouble.” He grinned, and indeed there was a smile on every face at the depot.
FIRST MOVE
For Beatrice, the summer session at Cadillac Community College had a ragged ending. She’d been sitting alone in Dr. Devlyn’s classroom for nearly forty minutes, wearing her student look—jeans and a sweater, her hair pulled to the back of her neck in a rubber band—trying to decide whether to stick her head in his office to ask him to sign a copy of his new book. This should have been easy for her, a well-fixed widow with lots of social skills. She thought she could approach anyone. She looked again at her watch.
Suddenly, tall and grave, he stood in the doorway. “Mrs. Patterson?”
“Oh, Dr. Devlyn.” He had a narrow face and soft gray eyes. Not taking her eyes off him, she reached into her bag.
“Is there something I can do for you?” he asked.
She swallowed and half stood, blocked by the desk arm, her hand still in the bag, gripping her copy of The Singing Heart. He reached out to catch the tipping desk chair, which hung now against her lap and the back of her legs, making her a stooped, six- legged creature. She let the book drop back into the bag. “No. Thank you, though,” she said and sat slowly, letting the chair legs back onto the floor. What is wrong with you? she asked herself.
He dropped his arms to his sides. “In that case—” He shrugged and made an awkward step backward. She had decided he’d probably married young before he developed any easy ways with women, then was divorced and marooned here in Cadillac, trapped without instructions on how to break out of his wrapper.
She sat a long time letting her breathing calm and her cheeks cool, as his spirit slowly faded from the room. What was going on? She used to have everything under control. Her mother put a lot of stock in that—sitting properly, knees together, keeping your opinions, if you had any, to yourself. “The worst thing a woman can do,” Mother used to say, “is to embarrass her husband.” Beatrice had buried Harold, having never embarrassed him during their twenty years together. Nor had she encumbered him with the details of her life. In twenty years had he ever looked clo
sely at her?
The course, Nineteenth Century Women Poets, was over. She took out Dr. Devlyn’s book and opened to the first page.
The first flakes of snow drifting out of the gray New Hampshire sky commenced a winter-long sadness in Anna Robie. Eventually the snow would cover the stony pastures and fill in the rutted roads, cutting her North Country family off from town and church and neighbors. Winter, which she once called “that brutal king,” forced her “eyes into the gorge.” And yet it was in winter, exhibiting all the signs of chronic desperation, that Anna Robie produced her most profound and lyric work.
The last two classes of the course had been devoted to Anna Robie, whose poems, diagonally inscribed across the pages of an almanac in a tiny squarish hand, had only recently been discovered in an Orford, New Hampshire, farmhouse. The new owner of the house had passed the almanac on to his friend, Sam Devlyn.
A contemporary of Emily Dickinson, Anna Robie had encoded in lyric blank verse the harsh details of drunkenness, violence, longing, and death. Dr. Devlyn created a seamless fabric of interviews, town records, agricultural and weather data, interwoven with the poems themselves. He had discovered that Anna had one year of school at Amherst Academy in Massachusetts before returning to New Hampshire to marry at age eighteen. He wrote that the sixteen poems grouped under the title, “Suspension of Life,” were written between the death of a baby son in January 1842—a year of record cold according to other diaries—and the May thaw, when the Robies dug the infant grave found among other tiny markers surrounding Anna’s stone.
Dr. Devlyn said his book wasn’t a real biography, just a glimpse from the distance. But, oh, Beatrice marveled at the attention with which he brought from total darkness into a gentle candlelight the life of this woman, born 1812 and, after bearing nine children, dead in childbirth at age 38. Beatrice had read the book through in a weekend, and when in the dark hours of a Sunday morning she got to the last page, she flipped back to start over, not wanting to break the spell of bleak beauty. How could he, a man, know this long dead woman so intimately? What drew him to the details of Anna Robie’s life—the curve of her knife around the apple, the blue shadow of death beneath her children’s eyes, her fear that loneliness would freeze her heart?
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