If Wishes Were Kisses: Six Beloved Americana Romances, a Collection (Small Town Swains)

by Pamela Morsi

  "He'll do better to run all the vagrants and lowlifes out of town," another declared.

  "I'll not have some outsider telling me where I can go and when I can be there," a third man vowed.

  Gidry raised his hands to quiet the crowd.

  "The gentlemen of the Commercial Club have already discussed this at length this morning," he said. "We think we have come up with what is a very practical plan."

  "You all talk and we pay!" Larson declared with challenge. "It’ll ruin our way of life and cost us a pretty penny, I'll bet ya."

  "No, Mr. Larson," Gidry said calmly. "It won't bring any unwelcome change to the way that we live. And will also not involve assessing any tax burden upon the good people of the community."

  There were sighs of relief in the crowd. Solutions without a price to the populace were always welcome.

  "So what is it?" Ollie asked. "What's the big answer the Commercial Club has come up with?"

  Gidry turned to a small, unfamiliar man in a plaid coat.

  "Ladies and gentlemen of Chavis County," Gidry said, "please allow me to introduce to you Mr. Arthur D. Sattlemore, a representative of the Big Texas Electric Company."

  The stranger held his bowler hat in his hand and seemed a bit nervous at the prospect of addressing a crowd.

  "Mr. Sattlemore is going to talk about the latest innovation in combating burglary and pilferage, residential electric street lighting."

  There was a startled gasp from the crowd. Pru sat up straighter.

  Gidry was still speaking.

  "Within the next four years, these last before the new century, the darkest, dimmest corners of our fair Chavistown will be glowing with the brightness of modern electricity even on the cloudiest moonless night."

  The gentlemen of the Commercial Club clearly expected an enthusiastic round of applause. They were doomed to disappointment. Most of those in the crowd were stunned to speechlessness. The streetlights on the four corners of town square were a necessary evil, but to light the entire town day and night. Was such a thing even possible? And, if possible, was it in any way desirable?

  "It’s unnatural!" Pru whispered worriedly to herself.

  She glanced around to see if anyone had heard her exclamation, or if anyone shared her concern. The Commercial Club was going to light up the whole town. All that electricity in the air couldn't possibly be good for people. However would they sleep at night if there was no darkness.

  "What will such a thing do to our gardens?"

  Prudence Belmont asked herself the question and from that moment was determined to get an answer.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gidry lingered on the courthouse steps as the crowd dispersed. He felt strangely deflated. The meeting had not gone as well as he had hoped. Installing residential street lighting appeared to him as such a fine, unintrusive answer to the problem, he'd assumed that everyone in town would be as enthusiastic about it as he was.

  Judge Ramey simply waved away his concerns. "Oh, that's just what you get in politics."

  "I'm not interested in politics," Gidry told him.

  The old judge laughed. "Not that many folks are," he assured him. "But it's like professing a disinterest in your elbows. If you're just sitting around doing nothing, it's easy not to care about them. But as soon as you see something that needs doing or fixing, you find that a lack of elbows can be a genuine detriment."

  "I just want to do something to help the town," Gidry said.

  "If the town was just streets and buildings you could do that," Ramey said. "But the town is people. And people and politics are two sides of the same coin. There is no nation, congregation, or quilting circle small enough not to be affected by it."

  "Lighting just seems so obviously better than policing," Gidry pointed out. "Is it because it is me? Because it is my idea that people are opposed to it?"

  The old man shook his head. "When it comes to politics," Ramey told him, "there is always going to be a certain number of againers."

  "Againers?"

  The judge nodded.

  "No matter what you come up with—they're going to be against it," he explained. "If you wanted to hand out twenty-dollar gold pieces on Main Avenue, there'd be some folks opposed to the idea."

  Gidry was thoughtful.

  "Can those people, the againers, can they cause enough dissension to derail a project?" he asked.

  "Not by themselves," the judge assured him. "Ollie Larson on his soapbox may get a lot of attention from people, but folks don't necessarily agree with him."

  "So we needn't be concerned?"

  Judge Ramey was not so certain.

  "By themselves the againers are not much of an impediment," he said. "The real danger comes from people with convictions."

  "Convictions?"

  "Those folks who look quite honestly and openly at the same things that you do and interpret what they see entirely different."

  "What do you mean?" Gidry asked.

  "I mean that people can disagree about things for perfectly valid reasons," he said. "And determining who is truly right or truly wrong on the subject may very well only be decided with certainty when we get the chance to ask God face-to-face."

  "What possible exception could anyone find to merely lighting up the streets to keep criminals from stalking in the dark?" Gidry asked. "It's a very good idea."

  The old judge chuckled.

  "I agree with you," he said. "But believe me, we’ll soon find out that a lot of folks don't, and we'd better be ready to defend our very good idea with every possible scrap of knowledge and clear thinking we can come up with."

  Gidry prepared himself to do that through the rest of the afternoon. With the cotton gin in full noisy operation once more it was impossible for a man to do much more than make explanatory gestures to his fellow workers and keep his thoughts to himself.

  The ginning was kept up at a frantic pace. Farmers would drive their wagons up underneath the scales in the overhang area between the gin and the seed house. The wagon would be weighed with its full load. Then a large tubular pipe attached to a reverse fan inside the gin sucked the cotton from the wagon into the maze of troughs in the rafters above the gin stands. The empty wagon was then weighed and the difference noted in that farmer's tonnage of gross weight cotton.

  The ginning process separated the cotton lint from the seed, the latter representing about two-thirds of the gross weight. The method, called by some cat clawing, was to have the multi-toothed gin stand gently pull at the cotton tufts to separate them as if the claws of a mischievous kitten had hooked them out. The lint was then compacted and baled into five-hundred-pound blocks that could be more easily sent by rail to the mills that spun and wove it into sturdy, marketable fabric.

  To be ginned, the cotton needed to be dry. So as wagons waited their turn, farmers cast a nervous eye toward the sky, fearful of rain. The necessity of avoiding wet weather pushed the entire ginning processes into a perpetually anxious hurry.

  Among the noise, the heat, the hard labor, and the people, Gidry's thoughts were a worrisome jumble. He kept his eyes upon everything and helped out where he could. He supervised the weighing, and watched for bog-downs on the gin floor. When a belt wore through on the machine level, he hurried down there to be an extra pair of hands in replacing it. And once a bale was compressed and wrapped, he was another strong back to get it down the platform and loaded for the rail cars.

  The only other person involved in so many different phases of the process was young Sharpy. Gidry watched the little boy scurrying here and there running errands and saw himself as a youngster. Acquiring the knowledge that he had today by being involved in the work when he was still just a child. Sharpy worked with a happy heart, unlike Gidry as a child. He had not truly minded being with the other men, but he had resented his father for insisting he help. And the older he got, the less obliging he had become.

  How grateful Gidry was now that he had been forced to learn so much. He would neve
r have been able to run the gin without his father if he had not spent every summer of his youth learning about its operation.

  As the light waned it became necessary to quit for the day. The workers, quiet both with weariness and the pleasant cessation of the gin's infernal noise, lined up at the office door to collect the day's wages. Outside the farmers held their wagons in line as they unhitched the teams. The more affluent would find a night’s lodging at the hotel or one of the local boardinghouses. Those who were poorer would camp with their wives and children in the vacant area on the far side of the railroad tracks.

  After everyone had left, Gidry totaled up the day's work and noted it all with date and observations, his own handwriting so distinctive from the previous entries written by his father. As he replaced the ledger in the top drawer, he could not fail to notice the stack of dirty postcards. He had acquired more of the tawdry things that morning.

  He had intended to stop by the tailor's to get measured for some more suitable town clothes, but as he'd passed by Tavers Shoemaking he recalled how the foul mouthed little boy scampered barefoot across the hulls and bolls that were strewn throughout the gin.

  With the sun almost up and the owner just arriving at the shop, Gidry had quickly purchased what Mr. Tavers assured him would fit a good sized youngster of about six years of age. Initially he hadn't known how he would get the proud child to accept the gift. But it had fortunately not been much of a problem. The rascal had shown up with a half dozen postcards, more vulgar than the last Gidry had seen, and had gladly traded them for the handsome new shoes.

  It was not a particularly good idea simply to leave them in the desk. He gazed for a moment at the one on top of the stack. A short limbed rather plump young woman sat bare breasted upon a fainting couch. She stared straight into the eye of the camera, the smile on her lips suggesting lascivious satisfaction.

  Did Prudence Belmont look at her lover that way?

  The thought, coming from out of nowhere, startled Gidry. What on earth was he thinking about? He didn't bother to answer his own question. He needed to get rid of the blasted postcards. They were definitely not something he could keep in his office.

  But neither could he take them home with the two women spending so much time there. What if Aunt Hen or Mrs. Butts happened upon them!

  He needed to burn them with the rubbish. Out of sight, out of mind. Wasn't that what people said? He would burn the bawdy things and be done with them. But he had no time to watch a fire tonight. Dry weather was good for ginning cotton, but it was dangerous for prairie grass. Not even the tiniest blaze could be taken for granted.

  He set the dirty postcards back in the drawer, careful to turn them picture side down, and rose to his feet. It was late and he was tired. He would think of what to do with them tomorrow.

  Gidry secured the door, replacing the peg formerly in use with a new spring shackle padlock of solid bronze. Young Sharpy might well be in charge of guarding the place, but he hoped to keep it shut tight enough that the little fellow's brave heart would not be needed.

  He walked up Third Street to the courthouse, where the four gas streetlamps glowed hazy and yellow in the night. He crossed the square to Main Avenue and headed toward his home. Once away from the center of town, the street was so dark that the overhang of trees barely cast a shadow from a sliver of moon. He tried to imagine this street, his street, lighted and safe. Free of places for evil to stalk and hide. In truth, he couldn't quite picture it, the electricity turning night into day.

  But as he neared his home, he got a small example. Aunt Hen's house was as brightly lit as a beacon upon the street. The tiny cottage did not boast the wonders of Mr. Edison's lightbulbs, but from the look of the place, every coal oil lamp and candelabra was burning. And the distinctive chatter of a gaggle of ladies could be heard all the way to the corner.

  Gidry shrugged. It must be some sort of sewing bee or quilting party, he surmised.

  But at this time of night?

  Chapter Sixteen

  An emergency meeting of the Ladies' Rose and Garden Society was called at the home of Henrietta Pauling. Aunt Hen was not at home, occupied as usual with the tending of her sick neighbor, a fact that caused no small amount of tittering behind her niece's back. Pru, however, had no time to be overly concerned with her aunt's unconventional behavior. She had felt so strongly about the threat to the town's gardens and gardeners presented by the Commercial Club that she had rashly insisted that waiting until the next day was simply not possible. That, she decided very soon, was likely a mistake. The group virtually never met at night, as that would have been an inconvenience to the husbands of the membership. Pru's unconcern for spouses highlighted her concern.

  Having served a huge community meal at midday, Pru made no attempt to provide refreshments beyond tea and coffee. She considered even those bows to convention completely unnecessary. This was no social occasion. This meeting was earnestly serious.

  Mavis Hathaway, as parliamentarian, tapped decisively upon her saucer with a demitasse spoon.

  "This meeting will please come to order," she said firmly. As the room quieted, she turned to Prudence. "Madam president."

  The two women nodded formally to each other as Mavis returned to her seat and Prudence gathered her notes and placed them upon the foldout parlor desk that served as makeshift podium.

  "My dear ladies," she addressed the membership, "I do hope that most of you have had opportunity to look over the tracts and leaflets that I have made available to you. I am convinced from our discussions this afternoon and prior to this meeting that we are of one mind on this subject. And the literature agrees with us. We cannot under any circumstances allow the residential lighting project proposed by the gentlemen's Commercial Club to come to pass."

  Prudence paused waiting for any words of dissension. There were none. Even Bertha Mae's group of followers could not find anything in the proposal to dislike.

  "But how are we to stop it?" Edith Champion asked. "When it was presented on the courthouse square, it was already worked out, the entire negotiation complete."

  "Perhaps we can come up with a petition," Miss Ramey suggested.

  "A petition!"

  Clearly the word scandalized more than one of the ladies.

  "Don't be ridiculous, Alice," Mrs. Hathaway scolded. "We are not suffragists. We will not degrade ourselves in that manner."

  "We are women," Ethel Peterson agreed. "And as such we have no vote, no voice, no say in how the gentlemen manage the community."

  "But we have our opinions," Pru said. "And I believe that ours are equally valid."

  "The opinions of females," Bertha Mae pointed out, "are almost as welcome to men as scabies in summer!"

  Her words brought a scattering of laughter through the group as well as murmurs of resigned acceptance.

  Cloris Tatum nodded solemnly. "As long as the only opposition is ladies, nothing will be done."

  "But however will we get the men on our side?" young Mrs. Peterson asked.

  "We could refuse to cook so much as a bean or bake as little as a biscuit until they take notice," Mrs. Johnson suggested, with a degree of seriousness.

  "Quicker yet would be send them all to bed down on the back porch until they change their way of thinking," Eula Whitstone said, chuckling. "The whole matter would be set to right in less than a week!"

  Her words were met with screeches of scandalized humor.

  Mavis Hathaway, however, gave her a censuring glance.

  "Eula! There are maiden ladies among us."

  The older woman refused to accept the scolding.

  “Then I suspect they must allow us to take care of it for them," she said.

  Pru's cheeks were a vivid scarlet, but she did not allow embarrassment to intimidate her. "I believe that we could lure men to our cause," Pru told them. "Not by shirking our ... our natural places, but by simply winning them over by reasonable discussion."

  The women ceased their giggling to l
isten.

  “Today we were not ready for an intelligent interchange of ideas," Pru told them. “Today we were caught off guard. But I believe that I can formulate our feelings into an interesting presentation. We can ask for another meeting where we can present our side of the story."

  "Do you really think that they will listen?"

  "I think they will listen," Pru said with certainty. "And I think that some of them will agree."

  "And once some of them agree," Cloris finished for her, "we will no longer be merely ladies in opposition to the plan. We will be a group of citizens."

  "So we need to have another meeting," Mavis said.

  Pru nodded. "Yes, we need to have another meeting as soon as possible. Are we agreed?"

  There were nods all around.

  "He won't allow us to speak."

  The words captured the attention of everyone in the room.

  "What on earth do you mean, ‘He won't allow us to speak'?" Pru asked, her expression incredulous.

  "Mr. Chavis won't allow us to speak," Alice Ramey confided. "Mr. Honnebuzz asked him about it, and he indicated that he was not interested in our opinion."

  It was well known that Stanley Honnebuzz was keeping company with Miss Alice. A gentleman of the law, like her father, he seemed the perfect suitor for the young woman. For some reason, and to her father's obvious dismay, Alice continued to hesitate.

  "With the gin in operation and the cotton being shipped, Mr. Honnebuzz says that everyone is far too busy to care about having another meeting."

  "But this is our community, too," Pru said. "We may not vote, but we have a right to a say."

  "Mr. Honnebuzz says that we have no rights at all," Alice told her. "The lighting project is a gift of the Commercial Club, no taxpayer money is to be spent. When someone gives a gift, you can't put specifications on it, you just have to accept it."

  Tiny mouselike Mary Dixon sighed thoughtfully. "And I suppose he is correct in that. It certainly would be rude."