Between Heaven and Texas

by Marie Bostwick

  As she passed the rodeo ring, a voice coming through a crackling loudspeaker was announcing the preliminary rounds of the bull riding competition. In a hurry and with her vision partially blocked by the garment bag, she didn’t see the stray horseshoe on the path. She tripped, accidentally knocking the hat off a cowboy who was walking by, and landed in a heap in the dirt. Before she could get to her feet, a big, calloused hand reached down to help her.

  Mary Dell’s eyes traveled from the hand, down to a pair of black Justin boots, well-worn but polished, and up again to a pair of long legs in denim, past a shiny silver belt buckle as big as a pack of cards, to a slim torso clad in a clean white Western shirt, to a pair of broad shoulders and a handsome head topped with thick dark hair.

  In truth, she couldn’t tell if the cowboy was handsome, not at first. When she looked up, the sun was so bright in her eyes that she couldn’t make out his features. Sunbeams radiated out from his dark halo of hair, leaving his face in silhouette, but from the sound of his voice and the way her heart was pounding in her chest, she figured he must be handsome. And when he reached down to pick up his black Stetson from where it had fallen, then put it back on his head, blocking out the sunlight, she saw it was true.

  “Oh, my . . .” she said weakly.

  The cowboy frowned, his dark eyes concerned. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Mary Dell blushed. “Clumsy but fine.”

  “One of the farriers must have dropped that horseshoe. They should be more careful.”

  He picked up the garment bag, smiled, and handed it to her. His teeth were as straight as pickets in a new fence. And so white! She’d never seen a grown man with teeth so white.

  The voice of the rodeo announcer came crackling through the loudspeaker. “Oh, my! That one hurt! But it was a good try by J. D. Hooper from Corpus Christi. Let’s give him a hand, folks. Up next, we’ll have young Graydon Bebee from Lubbock . . .”

  The cowboy’s head jerked up as he heard his name. He touched his hat. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

  “Lubbock,” she sighed to herself as she watched him run off toward the rodeo ring. “I knew he was too handsome to be from around here. Too bad.”

  But it was just as well, she decided as she resumed her date with destiny, the first stop on the journey being the 4-H pavilion and a blue ribbon with a rosette. She couldn’t afford to be waylaid by distractions or detours today. And a man as good-looking as Graydon Bebee could be very distracting indeed.

  Taffy was too busy fixing Lydia Dale’s hair for the pageant to attend the 4-H fashion show, but Dutch sat in the third row, eating a deep-fried Twinkie on a stick and waiting for his daughter’s name to be announced.

  When it was, Mary Dell, wearing her red satin dress with a bow at the back and three rows of rhinestones at the neck, sleeves, and hem, walked across the platform. The skirt hit Mary Dell just below the knee, or would have, but for the six layers of netting underneath. She had used two yards of every color of netting available at Waterson’s Dry Goods Emporium to make the underskirting, which lifted the red satin and made it stick out at an angle from the waist, giving everyone a generous peep at the petticoat rainbow beneath. It was, in effect, a square-dance dress modeled after one she’d found in Grandma Silky’s closet, but Mary Dell had decided to make her version “more elegant.”

  As Mary Dell moved to the front of the stage, Dutch bolted down the last of the Twinkie and sprang to his feet, clapping and hooting for all he was worth. Dutch wasn’t the most capable provider on earth, but he loved his wife and children with his whole heart. He stuck his fingers into the sides of his mouth and let out an earsplitting whistle, so loud that Mary Dell didn’t hear the snickers from the rest of the crowd.

  As she executed a graceful pirouette in front of the judges, Mary Dell was positively beaming. Passing in front of her father, she blew him a kiss from the tips of her fingers. Dutch wiped a tear from his eye. The dress was awful, he knew that, but his daughter was beautiful, and he was proud of her.

  When Dutch reached into the back pocket of his jeans, searching for a handkerchief, he noticed another man a couple of rows away who was also on his feet, whistling and clapping as Mary Dell made her turn, a tall fellow with a black Stetson covering his dark hair and wearing a rhinestone-studded shirt in a shade of peacock blue he’d never seen on a cowboy. For a moment, Dutch thought the man was making fun of Mary Dell, but when he gave the fellow a second look, Dutch could see his admiration was sincere. That cowboy was applauding for all he was worth.

  After the contestants had changed into their regular clothes, their creations were hung back up in the display booths, and the judges pulled out their clipboards and gave the entries a closer look. When they got to Mary Dell’s dress, one of them commented that she’d never seen a better-constructed garment. The inset of the sleeves was perfect, the fit and tailoring flawless, the hand stitches on the hem as tiny and even as possible, and every single seam had been “frenched,” encased within an envelope of fabric so not a single raw edge was visible. The overall visual image was a nightmare, they agreed, but the workmanship was impeccable. After a lengthy discussion, they pinned a ribbon on Mary Dell’s gown and moved on.

  Mary Dell tried to look nonchalant as the judges made their rounds. But when they moved away from her gown, she rushed to the booth, eager to see her ribbon, sure that she had won the prize, that her real life was finally about to begin. But instead of the first-place blue or even a second-place red ribbon Mary Dell had expected, the judges had awarded her gown only a green ribbon—an honorable mention.

  Her shoulders drooped. She rubbed the green slip between her fingers. The fabric was a cheap nylon blend, not satin, not silk. It didn’t even have a rosette.

  A deep voice rumbled behind her, catching her so by surprise that she jumped. “Pardon me, ma’am. Hope you don’t mind my saying so, but you were robbed. That’s about the prettiest dress I ever saw.”

  Mary Dell quickly swiped her nose with the back of her hand and turned around. She nearly gasped when she saw the black Stetson, dark hair, and dark brown eyes, thinking the handsome bull rider had tracked her down, but a second look told her that this was not the same man. His build was the same, his hands just as capable looking, his teeth picket-fence straight, and he too was handsome. But his nose was a little longer, his eyes a little wider-set, his frame a little shorter, just an inch, and this cowboy’s shirt was peacock blue and studded with rhinestones instead of plain white. An improvement, Mary Dell thought.

  The cowboy touched his fingers to the brim of his hat and gave a slight nod. “I’m Donny Bebee, from Lubbock, and I was wondering—can I take you out dancing? You and that beautiful dress?”

  CHAPTER 5

  1970

  The nausea had passed, but Mary Dell was still locked in the bathroom, kneeling on the floor in her wedding gown. Her head was still pounding and so were Taffy’s fists, demanding that Mary Dell open the door that instant or so help her . . .

  “I just don’t know if marrying Donny is the right thing,” Mary Dell wailed.

  “Well, you should have thought about that before!” Taffy barked.

  I should have thought about a lot of things before.

  She should have been more forceful when she told Donny that she couldn’t leave the fairgrounds and go out with someone she barely knew. If she hadn’t been so disappointed by the judges’ response to her dress and her wounded pride so buoyed by Donny’s, she would have. Even though she was just a few months from reaching the then-legal drinking age of nineteen and the bartender hadn’t asked to see her license, she should never have ordered that bottle of beer, the first liquor she’d ever had in her life, and two more after that. And she should have left the honky-tonk at six and gone to the pageant, like she’d promised herself she would when they arrived. And she shouldn’t have let Donny hold her so close during the slow songs, crushing the red satin bodice of her dress against his peacock-blue shirt. And she defi
nitely shouldn’t have driven to Puny Pond with him to look at the moon. And she shouldn’t . . . Well . . . All the stuff that had happened after that, most of which she couldn’t even remember clearly.

  But she did recall how the moonlight had shone so bright in her eyes and how her heart was pounding again, just like it had when Graydon picked her up out of the dirt, and the ringing of bells in her ears. Or was it violins?

  It didn’t matter. Whatever it was, she shouldn’t have given in to it.

  The morning after her date with Donny was a Sunday. The family drove to the Methodist church like they did every week and sat where they always sat, fourth pew back on the left. Mary Dell bowed her head and promised herself and the Good Lord she’d never let herself get in that kind of situation again. And she didn’t. Not even when Donny came around later, begging her to go out with him again—not that she could have accepted his invitation even if she’d been so inclined. Taffy had grounded her for coming in late and for skipping Lydia Dale’s pageant.

  She felt bad about that. She should have been there to support her sister especially since, to everyone’s shock, Lydia Dale had not won the county crown. She’d blown the question-and-answer portion of the competition and finished as first runner-up.

  Taffy was, by turns, furious, brokenhearted, and confused over the outcome. She couldn’t understand why Lydia Dale had drawn a blank when asked what sights and attractions she would recommend to someone who was visiting the county for the first time. They’d gone over the question at least three times in rehearsals.

  But Mary Dell thought she knew what had gone wrong.

  Donny’s brother, Graydon, had been in the pageant audience that night. Mary Dell figured that when Lydia Dale had spotted that tall, handsome cowboy sitting right up front, everything she’d practiced and all her good sense flew clean out of her head. Mary Dell understood how that kind of thing could happen to a girl.

  After the pageant, Graydon asked Lydia Dale if she’d like to go for a ride on the Ferris wheel. He’d been coming around ever since. He and Donny took temporary jobs at the Baker ranch—temporary because Graydon would be shipping out for Vietnam soon.

  For a girl who’d blown her shot at immortality and being crowned the Queen of all Texas, Lydia Dale was awfully chipper—in fact, she was downright giddy. Lydia Dale and Graydon went out almost every night, and she urged her sister to come along, to make it a double date with Donny, but Mary Dell declined. She didn’t trust herself. Or Donny.

  It wasn’t that she thought he was a masher or anything. They’d lost their heads, both of them. But she didn’t want to take the risk of it ever happening again. She resolved to put Donny Bebee out of her mind completely. For a month or so, she did. Until she started feeling sick in the mornings.

  She knew from the first that she was going to go ahead and have the baby. Mary Dell’s theology was as straightforward as she was. She figured if God had decided to make a baby, there must be some good reason for it, and far be it from her to thwart the plans of the Almighty. But that was about the only thing she knew for sure. She felt so alone.

  After a couple of weeks, she confided in Lydia Dale, but swore her to secrecy.

  But Lydia Dale wasn’t very good at keeping secrets. She told Graydon and he, in turn, told his brother. Upon hearing the news, Donny drove to the nearest Sears department store, bought a little ring with a diamond chip from the jewelry counter, drove to the ranch, and asked Mary Dell to be his wife. At the time, she’d felt relieved, but now she was afraid she’d made a terrible mistake.

  “Momma, just tell Organza to play the songs one more time. Please? I need to think this through!”

  She sat down cross-legged on the bathroom floor, hearing the sound of more footsteps and more female voices as her sister, grandmother, and great-aunt joined Taffy in the narrow hallway.

  “Where’s Mary Dell?” Lydia Dale asked in an urgent half whisper. “Everybody’s getting restless. Uncle Dwayne opened the bar. He’s standing in the back drinking bourbon. Looks like a lot of the men are thinking about joining him.”

  “Not that,” Taffy groaned. “Remember what happened the last time?”

  Taffy, sounding almost hysterical, yelled through the keyhole. “Mary Dell, did you hear that? If Uncle Dwayne gets drunk and tries to rope one of the bridesmaids, I will never forgive you! If Marlena Benton were to hear about something like that, I’d never hear the end of it. You have got to come out here and get married right this second!”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Grandma Silky said in an exasperated voice. “No, she doesn’t. What do you care about Marlena Benton anyway? She sure doesn’t care about you.”

  Silky moved next to the door and shouted, as if trying to make herself heard across a mile-wide canyon rather than two inches of a hollow-core door.

  “Mary Dell? It’s Granny. Now you listen to me, honey. Baby or no baby, you do not have to marry Donny Bebee. Not unless you want to. Do you want to?”

  Silky pressed her ear to the door, listening for her granddaughter’s answer. After a long moment of silence, she heard sounds of rustling silk and the toilet lid being closed and, finally, a metallic click as Mary Dell unlocked and opened the door.

  “I don’t know what I want,” she said, looking into her grandmother’s eyes. “I really don’t. I’m sorry. Guess I got the whole family into this mess, haven’t I?”

  Mary Dell spread out her skirts and sat down on the commode with her shoulders slumped. Silky hurried into the bathroom followed by Taffy, Lydia Dale, and Velvet—five women in one room, packed so close that the scent of their perfumes melded into a sickly-sweet smell, like leftover funeral flowers, so overpowering that Mary Dell’s nausea returned.

  Aunt Velvet, who was nearsighted from so many hours spent poring over books, slid her glasses to the end of her nose and clucked her tongue.

  “There, there,” she said as she patted Mary Dell’s shoulder. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s the Fatal Flaw, that’s all. All the Tudmore women have suffered from it.”

  Taffy made a face. “That’s ridiculous. I wore white on my wedding day.” She sniffed. “Because I deserved to.”

  “More like because I nailed your bedroom window shut once Dutch came back from Korea looking so good in his uniform,” Silky muttered. “Don’t think everybody doesn’t know how it is between you and that husband of yours, Taffy. Every time Dutch looks at you sideways, you just about fall over backward.”

  Taffy colored a bit, lifted her chin, and continued without acknowledging the comment. “Well, Aunt Velvet doesn’t suffer from any ‘fatal flaw,’ ” she said. “She’s always saying how, if she had to choose between the worst hound dog on earth and the best man in Too Much, she’d take the hound any day of the week.”

  “But that’s because a careful study of our family history helped me identify and overcome the Fatal Flaw,” the older lady explained. “And that’s why I have stayed away from face powder, lipstick, and hair dye, and only wear black or gray dresses. No darts, no belts, no hemlines above my calves. By rigorously following this formula, I’ve successfully kept lust and suitors at bay. And,” she said with a self-satisfied nod, “I’ve been a happier woman for it.”

  Taffy rolled her eyes. “Fine. Then how do you explain Momma?” she asked, gesturing to Silky. “Momma and Daddy never . . .”

  Silky cleared her throat, looked at the floor, and gave her head a quick shake. Taffy stopped in mid-sentence, turning suddenly pale.

  “Momma! Are you telling me that . . .”

  Silky sighed, as if disappointed by her daughter’s density.

  “Taffy, your daddy and I got married in May. You were born in November. Didn’t you ever stop to do the math? Oh, don’t look at me that way,” she said irritably. “I was young and stupid once too. Anyway, that’s all ancient history. What matters now is Mary Dell.”

  Silky crouched down on her haunches and took Mary Dell’s smooth, pretty hands into her rough and wrinkled ones. “
Honey, do you want to marry Donny?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Grandma, how long did you know Grandpa before you married him?”

  “Not long. We got married pretty quick.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “Hooty fell out the back of a pickup and broke his neck before your momma’s first birthday. But, for as long as it lasted, we were as happy as most folks.

  “Listen, baby girl, I’ve made mistakes, plenty of them. Everybody does. But I’m not sorry I married your grandpa. And I’m not sorry I had your momma.”

  She squeezed Mary Dell’s hands and glanced up and winked at Lydia Dale, who had been listening to all this with an anxious expression.

  “I like my life. And no matter what you decide to do today, when you’re my age, you’ll like your life too, if you just make up your mind to do it. See if I’m not right. You’ve got good instincts, honey. You just need to follow them.”

  Mary Dell sighed heavily and chewed on her bottom lip. “I just wish I knew him better. Donny seems nice. . . .”

  “Oh, he is!” Lydia Dale exclaimed, squatting down next to Silky so she could be at eye level with her sister. “He must be! He’s Graydon’s brother, isn’t he?”

  Taffy crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t see that as much of a recommendation. If Graydon Bebee hadn’t gotten you all distracted at the pageant, you might be Miss Texas by now!”

  “Momma,” Lydia Dale answered evenly, “I love Graydon. And the second he gets back from Vietnam, I’m going to marry him. We’ve made up our minds, so you’d just better get used to the idea. As far as what happened at the pageant . . .” Lydia Dale looked at her mother and swallowed hard, as if trying to decide whether to speak her mind or hold her tongue. “That wasn’t Graydon’s fault. I answered that question exactly the way I planned to.”

  Taffy’s eyes bulged. For a moment, she almost looked as if she might faint.