by Bryan Mealer
* * *
After the funeral, Bertha broke down. She refused to get up one morning, then lay in bed for three days, eyes open, catatonic. Allie and the sisters took turns bathing her and pressing cups of water to her dry, cracked lips. “They were so in love,” one of them remarked. Then one night, John Lewis was in the room and said, “My god, look at her.” Bertha’s face had drained pale and her eyes were gathering clouds.
He ordered Allie to bring him a mirror, which he placed beneath Bertha’s nose and it didn’t fog over. “I think she’s dead!” he cried.
But Bertha didn’t die, no matter how hard she tried. After a few days she was up on her feet, and not just on her feet, but alive with more energy than usual. A kind of wild, full-moon energy. As the family puzzled over this miraculous recovery, my grandfather Bob appeared and announced that he was getting married.
* * *
It happened like this: during the days when Bud was laid up in the hospital, there was a shortage of preachers. Or one preacher, in particular—Brother Deavers from the Baptist church in Forsan, who’d baptized Bud in Moss Creek and delivered the Sunday sermons the family attended regularly. But when told that Bud was critical and required prayer and counsel, the preacher balked.
“I shouldn’t risk my preaching voice,” he’d said, assuming Bud’s condition was contagious. So another preacher was summoned in his place—Brother Homer Sheats from the Church of God in Big Spring. Sheats’s ministry to the sick included a singing duo, in the event a person wished to leave this life in the guiding comfort of a hymn.
The pastor’s wife, Velma, comprised half the duo. The day they visited Bud, they also brought a girl from their congregation, whom they introduced as Opal Wilkerson. She was sixteen, plump, with wavy hair and a raw, plains-swept beauty. Like Sister Sheats, she adhered to the rigid codes of the Pentecostal church. She wore no makeup or jewelry and kept her matronly dress below the knee. But her voice, a muscular clear soprano, bespoke the many splendors of the Kingdom.
As they began to sing, her voice lifted the old, familiar hymns—“Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”—and infused them with power. The voice filled the room where Bud lay dying and traveled down the long hospital corridor where it beckoned all those who could hear and lured them to the doorway. Something besides her voice gave the songs new resonance. They seemed to emanate from a place of untroubled joy, a bright force that invigorated those around her. No one in the room was as bewitched as Bob, who’d been sitting in the corner the whole time.
He’d seen her before, working at the laundromat where he sometimes dropped his clothes, and he knew her twin brothers from the oil rigs. He’d filed the encounter in the hospital room away in his mind, and after Bud died, he tracked her down. He stood outside her house and waited for one of the brothers to come home, then made his position known.
Opal fell hard and fast. Bob was older and had seen the country and told many stories about his travels. He owned a car and had money in his pocket, and he was a first-rate cutup. During the early days of courtship, all they seemed to do was laugh. And then, there was his irresistible darkness—his quick and profane temper, the occasional smell of liquor on his breath, and the sadness over a dead mother and brother that would bubble up and send him into a mood. With as few words as possible, he’d revealed to her some of that pain and she absorbed it without injury. Behind her hazel eyes was a fortitude the Depression or wind couldn’t shake. And it was in those eyes that Bob Mealer saw his future and salvation—his talisman against the family’s hellbound luck.
Two weeks after they started dating, they drove down to Allie’s house in Beeville, where some of the family had gathered, and Bob broke the news of the engagement.
“What are you waiting for?” someone asked. “Why not get married now?” Bob waved it off until Bertha, who’d finally left her bed, volunteered to pay for the whole thing. As restitution for Bud’s untimely death, Shell Pipeline Company had quickly awarded Bertha a modest settlement. Everyone knew her to be generous; even in the hardest of times, Bertha and Bud never hesitated to loan a few dollars, or bring a meal to a family in need. But now, in her manic state, Bertha was spending like tomorrow would never come.
The next day, Bob strutted into the Karnes County courthouse wearing a new three-piece suit and cowboy hat, and Opal wore a long white gown with a pretty blue star stitched on the chest. Afterward, Bertha sprang for the honeymoon. She and John Lewis drove the newlyweds down to Corpus Christi in Bud’s car, along with Frances, who managed to talk her way into the back seat. Bertha paid for motels and T-bone steaks, even a boat ride around the bay. Every time Frances asked for an ice-cream cone, someone stopped the car and got her one.
When the wedding party ended, Bob managed to keep a boot in the door of good fortune. He landed a job with Continental Oil and moved his teenage bride to Wink, just shy of the New Mexico line. They rented a shotgun shack in a poor-boy camp and began to raise a family.
But for Bud’s children, the Great Depression had only begun.
6
Bertha’s transgressions … Little Jimmie arrives … a patriarch breathes his last … Frances grows up …
After the funeral and wedding party, Bertha took the kids back to Forsan and told them to start packing. “We’re moving to Big Spring with your aunt Ahta. I can’t stand it here another minute.”
She remained delirious with grief, alternating between laughter and tears. She even cursed God. “Why couldn’t he take Grandpa instead?” she asked Frances. “Tell me why?”
Bertha rented their house to another oil field family, who were happy to find a home in such a boom. Frances and the kids packed what possessions they owned, and before long, a truck appeared outside to take them to another place.
Bud’s sister Ahta and her three children—Fudge, Ruby, and Jearl Dean—lived along West Highway 80 in a part of Big Spring called Jones Valley, known for its flophouses, tourist courts, and prostitutes. They were staying in the same house she and her husband Elijah had bought before their divorce, which still left Ahta heartsick. And although Bertha was Elijah’s sister, she and Ahta found kinship in their respective anguish. Now fortified with Bertha’s bankroll, they sought therapy in the bars and honky-tonks around Big Spring.
The kids, meanwhile, were left to do as they pleased. And since no one made them go to school, they filled their days with make-believe. They pretended to be Buck Jones and the Rough Riders pursuing cattle rustlers up the dirt hill, or a pirate gang on the high seas. Ahta’s roof doubled as their crow’s nest. Then John got the idea of digging a hole into the attic with a claw hammer where they could hide and search for plunder.
The game that Frances loved to play the most was called Going to California. California was the farthest place anyone she knew had ever gone; it was where her daddy had traveled on his adventures to pick cotton and fruit, and where Buck Jones and the Rough Riders patrolled the lawless hills. Besides West Texas, California was the only place a true cowboy would ever be caught dead, and Frances fancied herself a true cowboy.
Going to California meant loading the red wagon with a jar of water and simply walking west, down the highway and across the pastures until her feet got tired, or the sun began to sink and the fear of coyotes sent her home. Sometimes Frances designed her route to pass by Grandpa’s house, which was nothing more than a shack across the highway, where John Lewis had moved after Fannie and Abe’s house burned down. Often Grandpa was off working someplace, so Frances climbed through a window and helped herself to whatever was in the cupboards, which was never much. In fact, in the weeks since her father’s funeral, Frances had hardly seen Grandpa at all. And when she had, he appeared much older than his sixty-six years. For one thing, he’d let his mustache grow long and bushy. His health had also declined. Carbuncles festered along his neck and back—a condition that had plagued him for years, only more so now. And instead of his long, purposeful stride, he appeared to shuffle, h
is long legs swelled up with dropsy. It was clear that losing Bud had drained the last bit of vinegar right out of him.
To make matters worse, a few months later, he came home from work to find his own house had burned down. No one knew how the fire started. Everything he owned was gone, along with whatever mementos or records he’d kept of Julia, who’d been dead now nearly two decades. This, along with earlier tragedies and disappointments, propelled my grandfather Bob to finally give name to the Mealer Luck.
* * *
Bertha’s living arrangement with Ahta proved temporary, and within a few weeks she and the kids were moving again—this time to a tourist court down the highway. Like a lot of tourist courts, which predated motels and catered to the auto traveler, this one featured a dozen tiny cabins clustered around a common area, with outhouses located in back. But the buildings were so poorly constructed, that whenever it rained, the manager issued buckets to catch the water that poured through the roof.
The dirt courtyard and parking lot were busy with families coming and going, many from New Mexico, Colorado, and Oklahoma, people fleeing the dust and heading back to family farms in the east. Others pointed west to California, their cars piled with furniture and pee-stained mattresses strapped to the roofs. Truckers stayed there, too, stealing a few hours of shut-eye before returning to the road. In the dark hours of the morning, their engines stirred Frances from her sleep and she dreamed it was time to send her daddy off to work.
In the weeks since they’d left Forsan, Bertha hadn’t once mentioned Bud, even though his absence possessed her like a spirit and sent her fleeing from the house. One evening she returned while the kids were seated around the radio. All of them looked up, astonished. A strange man was standing there holding their mother’s hand. He was tall and dark-haired, and shuffled nervously in the doorway.
“This here’s Virgil,” Bertha said. “We just got married.”
Virgil Patton was a roughneck Bertha had met at a bar called the Bucket of Blood. He wasn’t the man of any woman’s dreams, but he seemed nice and did his best to ignore the kids as much as possible. But just as soon as he came into the picture, he was out again. Frances never knew why, but living with a grieving, depressive woman and her four kids in a one-room cabin probably wasn’t Virgil’s idea of romance. One night he just disappeared and never came back.
When the divorce papers arrived, Bertha sank even deeper. One day, in an act of desperation, she loaded the kids into Bud’s Ford and went looking for Virgil, driving a hundred miles west across the thorn-choked plains to his parents’ house in Monahans. Virgil wasn’t there, but his folks invited the family in. They gave the kids something to eat in the kitchen while they tried to console Bertha in the next room. At one point Frances heard her mother begin to cry, then say, “I might as well kill us all, just drive onto the tracks and wait for a train.”
Frances hardly had time to react before Bertha was coming out, telling the kids it was time to go. Frances wanted to plead for help, grab hold of something and not let go. In a minute, they were back in the car and Bertha was driving down the highway. Frances stared ahead at her mother, searching her eyes in the rearview mirror. Just west of Big Spring, they approached the T&P tracks. The front wheels crossed the rails and slowed. Frances reached for the door to jump. But before she could pull the handle, the car rolled toward home.
* * *
They moved again after that—to another tourist court down the road called the Buckhorn. Shortly after getting settled, Bertha found a new boyfriend, a man named Joe Alvis, who went by the nickname Red on account of his ginger hair. He was older and had a job on the highway. When he went out at night, he liked to dress neatly in a crisp shirt and slacks.
Red hardly came near the kids, other than to pick up Bertha to go dancing. They often stayed out all night and Bertha returned the next morning in a buoyant mood. A few months into their relationship, Frances noticed that her mother was actually starting to act normal. There was, however, a small episode that threatened to derail this progress. One night Bertha fainted and had to be hospitalized. The doctor, considering her history, said she was suffering from hysteria and sent her home to rest. Within a week, though, she was feeling better. Her cheeks filled with color and Frances noticed she was even adding weight.
Several months later, on June 18, 1937, an electrical storm swept over Big Spring. Long streaks of lightning split the purple sky and charged the dry summer air. Frances lay in bed with Flossie and Leamon trying to sleep (John was staying with Fannie and Abe) when, from the other end of the room, came a shrill cry. Frances shot up and saw Bertha sitting on the floor clutching her stomach. She was breathing heavily and soaked with sweat.
“Oooooooh,” her mother wailed, then flopped onto her back, seized with pain.
“Run get help,” Bertha said, breathless. “Run get Ruby, tell her to bring the doctor.”
Frances threw on her shoes and ran out the door still wearing her gown. Ruby was Bertha’s fifteen-year-old sister, who’d arrived recently from Alabama. She lived with another family about a mile down the highway, then up another road. Frances took a shortcut through the field to get there, using the electrical storm to see the prickly pear. The wind blew sand into her face and for a brief moment she staggered, just as a lightning bolt flashed fifty feet from where she stood. By the time Frances got to Ruby’s, she was so rattled she barely got out the words.
That night, the doctor got to Bertha just in time to deliver a healthy baby boy, whom Bertha had been keeping a secret. With thunder rumbling outside, the child filled his little lungs and howled against the storm. Bertha named him James Lamar Patton. “The funniest case of hysterics I ever seen,” she said.
* * *
Of course, Jimmie was Red’s baby, despite having Virgil’s last name. He even had bright blue eyes, like Red, and a mop of blond hair, once it started to grow. And for a time, Red showed interest in helping raise the boy. He moved in with the family and they found a new place to live. It was a small, yellow, two-bedroom house on Highway 80, with a bedroom for the kids and one for Bertha and Red, plus a small kitchen with a woodstove. The bathroom had once been modern, but scavengers had ripped out the toilet, tub, and sink, and torn up the floor to get to the pipes. The family used an outhouse instead, while water came in buckets from a tourist court next door. The rent was five dollars per month.
Now with Jimmie in the picture, Bertha went downtown and registered for relief. The government gave her three dollars per week, which went toward milk and basic food items. And on occasion, she helped at the laundromat across the highway, which brought in a few dollars more, but the hours were never steady. She wasn’t qualified for much else, and even if she had been, there were few jobs available to women in those days.
Several months after having Jimmie, Bertha fell back into her spells. She stayed out all night, not telling Red where she’d been, then played solitaire all day while the hungry baby screamed. The care of Jimmie quickly fell to Frances. She prepared his bottles, put him down for his naps, and changed all of his diapers.
By now it was fall, nearly eighteen months since her father’s death, and Frances hoped to re-enroll in school. She was meant to start the sixth grade. But the more her mother drifted into psychosis, the more it became clear that Frances was stuck with Jimmie.
Once every few weeks, she sent Leamon down to the house of an old classmate named Mary Ellen to borrow magazines. Mary Ellen loved to read as much as Frances, and knowing that Frances couldn’t attend school, she was sympathetic. She sent copies of Silver Screen and Picture Play, with Jean Harlow and Bette Davis on the covers, plus Amazing Stories, which featured the space adventures of Buck Rogers.
Frances’s reading annoyed Red. Whenever he came home, he expected things, such as water heated for his bath, a plate of supper, and hot coffee. Frances could never move fast enough, could never pay close enough attention to Red’s needs. “Always with your fool head in a book,” he complained.
One afternoon Frances put a pot of beans on the stove for supper, then went back to her reading. Just that morning, Mary Ellen had loaned her a most incredible book—about stowaways on a rocket ship to Mars—and all day Frances couldn’t take her face out of it. She was still engrossed in the story when Red walked in the door.
“Damnit, girl,” he shouted. “Can’t you smell that? Them beans are burning up.” Red was right. Frances had forgotten all about the beans, and sure enough, there wasn’t a drop of liquid left in the pot. A whole pound of beans, ruined. Red stomped over to Frances and yanked the book out of her hand. Later, he burned it in the stove, and Frances never learned the fate of those stowaways.
* * *
It only took a year for Red to get fed up and leave. One day Frances came home to find him in the doorway, holding a cardboard suitcase.
He told Bertha, “Don’t you blame Murl Dean and these kids. It’s you I’m leaving.” Then Red was gone forever.
Red’s exit from the family presented a brand-new nightmare. For several days Bertha haunted the house like her own ghost, staring into walls, saying hardly a word. She left at night and returned in the early hours, sleeping in strange tormented fits.
One morning the kids awoke and discovered a big breakfast on the table. As they dug in to eat, their mother told them about a dream she’d had the previous night. “You were lined up in a row,” she said, “and your heads were cut off.”
Frances put down her fork. The minute Bertha left the house, she sprang into action.
“Everybody in the bedroom,” she said, and scooped up little Jimmie. Once they were safely inside, she and Flossie pushed the dresser against the door to create a barricade.
Bertha returned home a few hours later and called for the kids. They sat huddled on the bed and didn’t make a sound. When Bertha realized what was happening, she banged on the door and tried to open it, but the dresser wouldn’t budge.
