Pebble Beach - the Novel

Introduction and Brief Synopsis to Pebble Beach

2006-07-27T08:43:00.007-04:00

James Mason
Connecticut, United States
Email: ctatheist@gmail.com

Published writer: No
Freelance: No

Pebble Beach
Historical Fiction, Geographic Drama
Adult
148,000 Approx. Words

Please excuse formatting irregularities throughout the chapters listed to the right. Blogspot/Blogger has not gotten Microsoft Word formatting right since 2006 when these pages were first put here. Indents are missing, paragraphs spaced miles apart dotted throughout the chapters fonts changing colors and sizes not holding, etc.

The story’s thesis is the generationalstruggle, and final accomplishment, of the sons of the father, who by story’send overcome the social and magnetic pull of greed and corruption, to finallylive without guilt or grief.

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Father and son had never wanted to becorrupt, and had never felt greed before circumstances implanted these toxicideas in their minds. When the minddecides early that life is unfair, it becomes easier to play the game of lifeunfairly. As it is for the wanting boy,outside of a candy store with only a penny, when amounts of pleasure and wealthare seen through disappointed eyes glazed-over by a limited spending ceiling,the men of Pebble Beach, California, want to have more, and they play unfairlyto get more. But these men who exploitso many others, are aware of their immoral behavior, and some are aware thatthey outright steal, and that they gouge their neighbors. To ease their guilt, they seek cleansing byperforming good deeds, and tossing gifts downward to the community whichstruggles below.

This storyis narrated third person as an interpretation of the memories of O.W. Irwin, aneighty-seven year old, who is succumbing to the wasting of his brain byAlzheimer’s disease. The story begins, re-visits in several chapters, and endsin present time, in a modern managed living retirement apartment building inMonterey, California. Implied is thathis memories are pieced together by his Home Health caregiver, Jason, asrecollections escape at random, in confused verbal outbursts: memories of a boyborn to a young man in America’s heartland; memories of his father, a widower raising two sons, who transplants hisfamily to Monterey. A pattern ofcorruption is passed on to the son, and the son’s son, but through the wiseguidance of the mother, the pattern is broken at the family’s final home in Pebble Beach.

Within theadventures and trials of the Irwin family are several vignettes exploring side characters,whose lives cross over and walk upon the footpaths taken by the story’s maincharacters. Organized crime andhate-based violence are explored and used. Racism is prevalent, and is emphasized by a life long secret interraciallove between O.W.’s father and the family nanny. A shark attack kills a secondarycharacter. John Irwin’s oldest son islost at sea in a dramatic fishing boat capsizing. Changes in communities and people by bothWorld Wars I and II are illustrated. Prohibition effects the story throughout early chapters. The Depression era is integral. The structure and scenic details of Monterey are portrayed throughout the novel as my own inperson knowledge allows. Repeatedthrough the story are ethical struggles suffered by the novel’s twoprotagonists. For cultural andhistorical accuracy and to lend a feeling of insertion to the reader, occurringthroughout the novel is the inclusion of known music and film, technology andinfrastructure, and celebrities of the day known to have visited the peninsula.

Thank you for your time.
James G. Mason

Chapter 1 - O.W. and Jason

2006-07-27T08:31:00.007-04:00

Chapter 1

O.W. and Jason

Nineteen-Ninety-Six

In Monterey, a city by the bay on the central California coast, the darkness was still thick as dawn had not yet arrived. Out in the streets of the mostly residential city, birds were awakening and gradually adding more of their song to the shadowless night of the very early morning. Also breaking the silence, every five minutes or so, was the abrupt sound of a car door and an engine starting. These calls of the suburb were the solitary signals of early risers. The drivers had to commute from Monterey to Silicon Valley but the birds only had to commute from tree to tree. Both groups wanted the basics; food, sex, shelter, and big-picture lifetime accomplishments like procreation.

The commuter’s cars ripped through the morning fog at speeds unsafe. With cold metal and smooth painted exteriors, they tore the moist wind and passed the shores of the Monterey Bay on their left sides. Continuing on, over the Santa Cruz mountains, single file like ants through the redwoods and sequoias, their upholstered and heated cocoons cut their way under the forest’s canopy. If the trees could see them, they might feel pity for the plight of these metal things, for the trees will outlive them by a dozen generations, not having to go anywhere for comfort or procreation. The commuters, with their custom coffees sloshing on plastic dashboards, these resolute road warriors, had a lot of ideas that had motivated them out of bed at four-thirty in the morning. They each had vision, but few of them really knew what they were doing, because so few were secure that their dreams would result in the future of their choice. It was dog-eat-dog out there, up there, over that monolithic mountain pass, where someone else’s business plan held their fate.

On the second floor, in a small rented room, above the dark streets a young man named Jason heard the commuter’s morning callings each weekday as he yielded to a waking state. As for his car door slamming neighbors, he swore he wouldn't trade ten times the pay for their positions. Out of the weathered window frames of the small room, the low buildings and pleasant rolling hillsides of the small city could be seen, covered in pine, street lights marking the menagerie of roadways that turned and twisted. The building had been converted years ago into an eight room rental apartment house for single men, and its wood was at least seventy-five years old. It was rumored to have housed a large Italian family whose lifeline was the sea, that for them, began two blocks north at the docks. Inside the forty-eight square foot room, Jason was snoring loudly from underneath a pile of blankets, his body pressed against a wall. The color computer monitor on the small desk next to the window suddenly came to life and glowed bright blue, with a display in large letters and numbers in the center of the screen: “Good Morning Jason: 6:00 a.m. Tuesday, March 6th, 1996.” Before his senses alerted to reality, the phone rang, signaling with an annoying electronic chirp like a robotic bird. Jason rose up out of the pile of blankets and pillows, his reddish blonde hair jutting outward behind his head in a display of static cling in the shape of a party hat. Annoyed at being awoken, he threw one pillow against the wall and he kicked his legs to throw blankets off his body, and he rolled over to the side of his heavy wooden fold-down bed and picked up his phone that had been within arms reach.

“Hello?”

“Hi Jason it’s Judy, I hope you were awake.” Judy was chipper and wide awake.

“Barely, what’s up?”

Jason replied with a groggy voice. He could have cleared his voice before getting on the phone but he faked it, thinking it best that the schedulers at the office feel as if they were intruding when they called him before the birds were awake, before the sea lions over at Fisherman’s Wharf started their days work of males barking at other males. Judy continued, getting right to the point, Jason appreciated the abrupt end of small talk.

“We have had a loss of a regular for the day shift for, an Alzheimers patient. If this works out, this might be the regular patient shift you were looking for. We need you there just prior to seven this morning, write down this name, address and phone number.”

In forty minutes Jason arrived at the retirement home. The sharply contrasted beams of morning sunlight, in stripes with no two alike, carved their way through the atmosphere over the San Gabriel mountain range, across the Salinas valley, and fell on the pine-smothered enclaves and driveways of the peninsula. Freshly shaved, his hair still wet and combed, Jason wore a windbreaker over a casual golf shirt. White slacks and white “nursey” shoes completed his “fine young man working in health care” uniform. Carrying a small back-pack with some books, his lunch and vital-signs equipment, he paced across the parking lot, approaching an L-shaped cement apartment tower. Glancing upward, he noticed on the painted and aluminum-barred balconies of the residents within, lawn chairs, hanging plants, bird feeders, window safety decals on sliding glass doors, and little tables of glass and metal. Most of the balconies were bare, curtains closed or interiors barely lighted. This made sense to Jason. “Hmm, why go out if you can’t go out, or shouldn’t go out. Or perhaps it is shame and embarrassment, for just having to live here, that keeps so many residents off their balconies,” he thought. He entered the vestibule of the Park Place building at 350 Glen Woods Lane. He was seen on the video surveillance camera as automatic doors closed behind him and another pair of doors opened in front of him. He approached the front desk. This was a luxury apartment rental building for senior citizens, with one floor dedicated to “assisted living.” It was clear right away he had entered a corporation, “A Luxury Residence by Hyatt,” proclaimed large gold painted letters in back of the front desk. He was greeted by a pleasant, tall and bulky man, who to Jason’s surprise, had been expecting him:

“You must be Jason for Mr. Irwin. Do me a favor Jason, when you come back tomorrow, don’t wear those nursing looking things like those pants and those white shoes. It makes the other residents nervous to see medical people walking around. We’re here to help them pretend death is no where to be seen, if you know what I mean. You can wear jeans, tennis shoes, and a decent collared shirt and that would be fine.”

The security man smiled and showed Jason the elevator to the sixth floor. Jason swiftly walked off the elevator, then turned left towards the south wing, its corridor plush with red and gold patterned carpeting, dimly light by frosted glass twin-lamp wall fixtures casting their weak light spots on the flooring every ten feet or so. At the last door on the right side Jason lightly lifted the small metal door knocker handle above the peep-hole. Within moments the overnight aide answered the door and let Jason in. He was a Filipino immigrant, about twenty-five years old, who spoke some English. It was clear he was glad to see Jason, it meant he would not have to work a double shift. He introduced himself as “Mike.” He showed Jason the medications he was to give, the phone number list he was to call for various types of emergencies, and the patient’s “No Revive,” order. The name on the prescription bottles read, “Orenthal Winfred Irwin,” and “d.o.b. 07/13/1909.” There was little fresh air in the apartment, the heat was on and the air felt dry and stuffy. The smell in this apartment was a concoction of moth balls, Old Spice cologne, foot powder, and the lingering trace of coated medication tablets. Moth balls are never to be seen no matter how hard one looks for them, they shrivel-up and disappear, but they leave a residue, their smell travels with the patient from his wife’s laundry care and his and her mother’s laundry care, from decades beyond the grave and so on.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to the patient?” Jason asked of Mike.

“Oh no, he not there, he is gone. It makes no difference. Beside, he will think you are me when he gets up. He’s still sleeping. We let him sleep whenever long he want. When he get up, cereal, milk, maybe grapefruit, orange juice, and medication. He called “O.W.” by everybody.” Mike stated hurriedly, with no attempt to keep his voice low.

Mike quickly left and Jason made himself comfortable. He wandered into the kitchen and examined the food to see what O.W. had been eating. Mostly frozen dinners of macaroni and cheese dominated the freezer; in the refrigerator Ensure protein drinks, apple juice, “all the usual suspects,” he said aloud into the refrigerator. Spots of dried-up fluids were on every surface on the inside of the refrigerator, typical for this home-care situation, the aides do not really observe the insides, their supervisors do not look there, so why clean it? All the same stuff he had seen in all of the other “old man,” homes he had worked at. Jason situated his magazines on the table in front of the couch in the living room, a place he would spend most of his time, a place where the buttocks of every other home health aide had already made their permanent indentations. Jason could see that this care situation had been going on for at least a couple of years. This was evidenced by where the dust was, in the places where a regular house-cleaning person or the home health aide would never dust, like on top of cabinets, on top of picture frames. He could see this dust from the other side of the room. “Pretty thick,” he thought. Perhaps this explains the stuffy atmosphere in this two bedroom apartment. Jason put on his Walkman radio headset and found his local Public Radio station. He drew open the curtains to reveal a beautiful view of the Del Monte Forest pine trees. Swaying at their tops in the morning wind of March, they seemed to be as high as this seven-story building. He wondered why these curtains would be closed with this great view out there. He walked over to O.W.’s bedroom to see how he was. He was sleeping in a straight line as if he had to share his big bed with three other people, his mouth was hanging open as if catching flies, and his head sunk back into a downy pillow, as he breathed audibly. Jason smiled at seeing this sight of human comfort. People look so at peace in deep slumber, vulnerable and without a care, humbling to the casual observer.

Twenty minutes later O.W. came wandering around the living room corner. From the couch near the balcony in the living room, Jason saw his walking cane first and heard some mumbling and was a bit startled by this sudden activity. Then O.W. came into his view. As he came around the corner from the bedroom hallway he was looking very bewildered and determined to find immediate answers to questions, of which Jason had barely heard him ask. O.W. had already put on his glasses, a heavy dark red robe, untied and dangling over his cotton pajamas and well worn morning slippers. Jason had not even heard him getting up. O.W. was a hunched over, barely five foot tall, mostly bald, old man, a man who did not know where he was, who Jason was, or most puzzling where was a person named “Ida?” Jason reacted quickly to orientate him and relive his anxiety:

“Good morning O.W. I’m Jason, how are you this morning?” Jason practically yelled towards him.

A bad habit of caregivers is to address all old patients at ten to twenty decibels above normal, as if it is a given that they are hard of hearing. Jason was not above that bad habit. He had startled O.W.. From across the room, O.W. quickly examined Jason head to toe, Jason could tell that O.W. had taken notice of his white pants and white shoes. “Ooops,” Jason thought, he was now a medical authority in O.W.’s mind, the man at the front desk was right. O.W.’s facial expressions changed rapidly. Like a practiced con-man or a Hollywood actor, he could contort his face in a variety of poses when asking a question. It was a cute characteristic for an old man. Without reply, O.W. hobbled over to Jason and sat in the upright chair next to the couch. He stood his cane up between his legs and grasped the top of the cane like a king would his scepter. Pulling the slack up on the pant-legs of his pajamas, he then adjusted his glasses and looked right over at Jason with serious intent. Suddenly Jason was the subject of an intensely important interview to be conducted by a very confused mind. The questioning began that Jason would later learn was a daily requirement to settle O.W.’s internal torment:

“Now let me, let me just say that I don’t know who you are. But I figure you are one of those care, ehh, medicine giving, uhh people who hang-out around here.”

O.W. pointed his finger at the apartment’s interior, left to right, to illustrate this apartment that he apparently was only barely familiar with.

“Did my son send you here? I need to call him and that, that wife, of his. This is not the home that I have been living in! Ida is not here and you seem to be some sort of doctor or something.” O.W. looked at Jason puzzled, his tone one of upset.

O.W. had made his opening statement. Using his cane for emphasis at the peak of an emotional point, several times he would lift it and quickly thump it down into the carpet.

“I’m not a doctor O.W., I was sent here by the home care agency. I haven’t met your son. This is the Park Place building, your apartment here.”

Jason replied in a much lower voice now, trying to keep his answers simple and his intonation reassuring. As soon as Jason had replied, O.W.’s expression changed from frustration to relief. He had quickly realized that Jason was capable of talking with him, and more importantly, listening to him.

“Oh, oh. You are not sent by my son John? He is the one who usually, usually sends people to do all kinds of things to me. Lets see now, I was sleeping and I was lying there and you were in here all that time? You are not a Mexican fellow are you? You’re from here like me and my son. The other guy that was here, I don’t know when, I don’t know when he left, but he was not like you.”

“No, O.W., I was sent by the people that John hired to care for you. I just now arrived here. I’ve never been here before. I’m not a Mexican person, I’m a white fellow like you and your son, yes.” Jason was making effort to appear straightforward.

Jason replied with a frankness that O.W. seemed to appreciate. It was now apparent that O.W. can comprehend conversation, at least in the current moment. Because this clear moment of conversation seemed so important to O.W., it quickly became important to Jason. Additionally, O.W. himself was very reactive to everything being said. It was a pleasure of sorts for Jason to satisfy the questions and to watch his reactions and his nodding, squinting, frowning, smiling, raising one or two eyebrows in interest, dismay, and sometimes puzzlement. O.W. definitely held an actor type of personality.

Alzheimers disease is perhaps the most cruel of all chronic and degenerative sicknesses. O.W. appeared to be in an early to mid-stage of the illness, when memory is lost day after day, only coming back in fleeting moments. The more firmly engrained memories, those of loved ones, of best friends, and of long lived places seem to hang-on more stubbornly, in this early stage.

Our memories are our lives, and without them we are nothing but bags of useless bio-matter made up mostly of water. Alzheimers is the label for the symptoms in the battle against the destruction of your life’s memories. At the end, your body gives up, having lost the support of its most important organ, the brain. O.W.’s brain was engaged in a losing fight against nothingness, against becoming only a bag of water that breathes. At the end of an Alzheimers sickness, perhaps as long as ten cruel years, the body fails miserably, as most functions of voluntary control are lost forever, and the brain stem succumbs to the wasting. Fortunately for the Alzheimers patient, at that point later in the disease, he or she does not care. They are incapable at that end stage of caring, mercifully incapable, of the knowledge of their own deterioration.

Does he deserve less dignity, respect, interaction or exposure to sights, sounds, warm and cold, wind and rain, touching, and tastes because he may not remember it five minutes later? No. Jason had decided this two years prior while caring for the last Alzheimers patient in his charge. There was no way Jason was going to spend eight or ten hours a day with an Alzheimers patient and not pay him these simple acts of respect. To Jason, in that diseased mind’s precious few moments of alertness, in a brief state of inquisition, in pain, in delight, or in sorrow or joy, he would appease O.W., and if before tomorrow’s beginning, Jason’s own empathetic efforts were lost in that weakened memory, then so be it. Jason’s conscience would know that he treated the human being that was left in O.W.’s mind to the best of his ability.

“I want to know why, why this place is not my home, my home in Pebble, my home is much bigger, this room is, is just tiny compared, compared to my home. Where is Ida?”

Again a stern look of inquiry, is now cast in Jason’s face, as O.W. demanded an immediate answer, to this complicated and serious question.

“Who is Ida O.W., was she your wife?” Jason tried to simplify the interrogation.

“Oh no, no no, Ida did all these sorts of things that you people are doing. Ida should be here right now!” With frustration he thumped is cane into the carpet.

He now had an agitated expression and looked straight forward at the inside of the front door. Jason understood this answer to mean Ida was the house help, a sort of maid, cook and perhaps a personal assistant.

“O.W. was Ida your maid or your personal assistant?” Jason asked.

“Yes, yes! Ida is usually here and I don’t know why she is late. By this time she is usually always here!”

O.W. replied with relief, adamantly stating the truth, as he knew it. Jason was not yet comfortable enough with him to give his tormented mind bad news about the present. News that Ida may be long dead or moved away. Either way it would probably greatly upset O.W., so Jason chose to wait.

A painting of about eighteen inches wide, framed and under dust-covered glass, was on the wall across from the couch where Jason sat. It portrayed a quaint Southern-style home with five or six bedrooms, which had a colonial design with Corinthian columns. There was a woman riding on horseback trotting toward the foreground from the right rear of the painting. She rode English with helmet and crop and was in a trot. Just to the edge and in the front left view was a Monterey Cypress pine tree, its lanky branches and low height, distinctive from all other trees on this Pacific Coast.

“O.W. is that your old house in that painting on the wall there?”

Jason pointed at the painting. O.W. quickly stood up, wobbled a bit

on his legs, and walked over to the painting.

“Yes! Yes that is my home, where is that home now? We all lived in Pebble Beach near the stables and that’s Con on her horse. Yep sure enough, hehe hee. She would ride it all the time. Yep.”

O.W. gazed at the painting, lifting his glasses for a close examination. His reaction to it spoke mountains about the house, that his time there was so happy and so comfortable, that just the sight of it in a painting invoked smiling and chuckling. He was smiling so much his old cheeks actually rose up to his eyes. He turned back towards the chair, grinning:

“Oh she loved that blue house! Nineteen-Hundred and Thirty-Six, I think. Morse himself and my Pa got me that place right after the wedding. Where is that house now? Why are we here in this . . . this little room and not over, over in, sitting in there, in my house?” With a stern thump of the cane his smile had left and his frustration returned.

“I don’t know O.W., does John, your son, live in it now?

“Oh, yes John Jr.. Where is John? He and that wife of his put me in here. Do you know where he is? I need to call him and see about all this, this mess. He must be at the office. I retired and they threw me a party. Where is the phone?”

“O.W. lets get dressed and get some breakfast and then I’ll see about calling John and you can talk with him. Sound good O.W.?” Jason suggested.

“Well OK, that sounds like a good plan. You are a different sort of fellow than the ones that I’ve seen hanging-around in here. You’re not a foreigner are you? You’re like me. I guess that’s okay.” He remarked grudgingly.

The two walked together to the bedroom where many choices of clothing hung neatly in the closet. Jason flipped through the tightly packed hangers in the dressing closet that was at least twelve feet long. It appeared that O.W.’s fashion stopped being updated sometime around the mid-1960s. There were even some clean pinstriped pants hanging neatly, and more ties than any man should want. Even in his dementia O.W. was good at getting dressed. He liked to choose colors carefully, vests and or sweaters, ties and shoes, he focused on fashion like a laser, taking more than an hour to get himself dressed. Jason was impressed. Later in the small bathroom, his grooming was as equally focused. He wanted privacy. He shaved with an electric razor, long and carefully. The buzzing sound from behind the closed door seemed to go on for twenty minutes. Outside the bathroom Jason listened carefully for any signs of a fall, or items crashing to the floor. In healthcare these tasks that are mundane but necessary to the healthy are referred to as “Activities of Daily Living,” or ADLs. In these activities it was as if O.W. did not have a degenerative brain disease at all. O.W. swung open the bathroom door and emerged fumigated by Old Spice, and he looked at Jason sitting on the couch and it was clear that he had completely forgotten where he was, who Jason was, what he had just done and what was the next activity. He looked over his clothing, picked off some lint, straightened out his tie and collar and the two proceeded into the kitchen for Corn Flakes and strawberries. O.W. wanted to help with something, so Jason directed him to some clean dishes that could be put away. While haphazardly stacking plates and cups in the cabinets, O.W. supplied some narration in the kitchen:

“In Salina my dad used to make me get all dressed up all the time. Me and Sydney hated to get dressed up, heh he he! It meant we couldn’t, you know, go out and get dirt on us after school, getting our clothes dirty was, well it would get my dad really mad. Hehh! You didn’t want to get my dad angry at you cause he’d make us stay inside and hit the books, even when we didn’t have any homework! Gee whiz!”

O.W. had a facial expression he reserved for reminiscing moments such as this, it was a hardly noticeable double-eye squint that seemed to look back, easily into time past, combined with a side of the mouth smile that showed he was content that the topic was in the past, yet yearning for it to be the present. As an aged old man in his last days, O.W. stood in the kitchen stacking plates, and he was also just as vividly in a place called Salina, Kansas, standing just three and a half foot tall, and getting his clothes dirty, and being made to do homework alongside his older brother Sydney.

Like a good waiter at a half decent breakfast diner, Jason gathered breakfast to the small dining table in the living room, medications laid out, orange juice, placemat, napkin, a bowl of sugar and the morning paper. The two sat down together and O.W. began stabbing with a spoon at his cereal and strawberries. He could not remain quiet, as if he had started something he had to finish:

“Yep, we were all in Salina.”

He ate some of his breakfast cereal, chewing, milk dripping down his chin, he looked straight at the wall in front of him, squinted a little bit, and smiled just a bit while swallowing.

“Is that where you were born O.W., Salina?” Jason asked as he reached for the newspaper.

“Yep, Salina, Kansas . . .” O.W. gave a far-away look.

Chapter 2 - Salina, Kansas

2006-07-27T08:29:00.005-04:00

Right at the start of that day John Irwin felt inevitable change in the air. It was fast beginning to look as though stability was a dream for other people to realize and not for himself and the boys. But he would not give up on attaining that dream.

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In the winter of nineteen-nineteen, Salina, Kansas was but a dot of a town on the rolling plains at the cold and windy center of a web of mostly straight dirt roads which divided wheat fields and ranches large and small. The roads were paths which connected one farm to another, one family of lives to another and one small town to the larger towns and cities. For strangers to the town there was an acute awareness that these roads extended over the horizon, to the strangers these roads purpose was only to come from and go to the small plains town. But for the prairie’s sons and daughters these roads were lifelines that held great importance, emotional investment, and a point of concern daily for those whose lives contain worry. For the prairie’s sons and daughters the roads were the way out. The long roads of intensity of feeling while leaving were the same shorter roads of return while coming back, if ever coming back.

In the center of Salina, at mid-morning on this bitterly cold day, very few people were out walking on Iron Street. On occasion, one or two cars or a motorcycle would slowly traverse the town in a wobbling motion, as the mud from the warmer and wet week before had now turned into miniature canyons created by hoof prints, and frozen tire and wagon wheel tracks on every street of Salina. Stove and boiler smoke and steam drifted upwards and expanded, and blended into the grayness of overcast already above every house and industry, in this approximately two-mile oval of structures on the plains of northern Kansas.

A two-story brick building in the merchant section of town was adorned modestly with a long sign above the first floor that read “First Kansas Home Trust Co.” The building was an unremarkable structure, typical of twenty other buildings in Salina. On the second floor, at the front of the building above the sign, behind the smoked glass panes that separated bookkeeping and accounting from the manager’s office, on the side wall sat a pot-belly wood stove providing supplemental heat for extremely cold days like this one. In the center of the room two unoccupied heavy wooden chairs faced a large desk. An incandescent bulb, its light directed downward by a circular green painted tin cover, hung low over the desk, illuminating brightly four opened ledger books, a fountain pen holder , a coffee cup, a wood and brass candlestick telephone, and the head and hand’s of an accountant. His visor, a blinder from the light, pointed downward over the hundreds of numbers that represented the futures of so many in Salina, including his own family’s economic future, and the future of the bank. O.W.’s father, John H. Irwin was hard at work.

John lifted his head from the books for just a few moments and closed his eyes to rest his vision. He sipped at his coffee. Then a knocking came on the glass part of his office door followed by a gruff male voice making a request:

“It’s Robert Kingsley, Mr. Irwin, may I see you for a just a few minutes?”

“Sure come on in Robert.” John directed and removed his visor.

Before Robert Kingsley had even passed over the threshold of John’s office, John recalled Robert’s numbers in his thoughts:

“Kingsley . . .principle: two thousand and seventeen dollars, four months behind, last payment fifteen dollars. Promised seventy this month.”

“Have a seat Robert.”

Standing, and pushing his desk chair back, John cordially offered a handshake from across his desk. The men sat down across from each other and smiles remained on each of their faces, forced, trying to maintain that “everything is okay,” pretense. It was not. Because a man doesn’t walk into the accounts manager’s office at a mortgage bank, in the middle of the day, to discuss good news. For John this was a crying shame, because he should be able to talk with Robert Kingsley, without a worry. He and Robert would drink together at least a couple of times a month. Many nights they would stumble out of the saloon together, sometimes falling flat down in the mud, one purposefully dragging the other down to the mud with him as a matter of mutual humiliation. Always they would get up laughing like madmen into the night air, drawing scorns from the shopkeeper’s families trying to sleep above their stores. Robert and John’s children were in the same primary school. Orenthal (“O.W.”) played with his boy Jacob. John was uncomfortable that this conversation was about to happen, but one thing was certain, Robert was even more uncomfortable.

“John it’s worse than I thought it would be this month, I just don’t know what to do. My wife Emma is scrubbing floors. My lower ten was flooded so badly this past summer I don’t think I can plant there this spring. I can give you ten bucks today.” Robert was uneasy, leaning forward in the chair.

“Don’t be ashamed Robert you’re not the only one. It’s happening all over Kansas, Illinois too, and Missouri. I’ll take your ten because I have to, but next month is crucial, because if the old man sees the farm loan book for this month, he’ll be down my throat for the next month’s payments and I won’t be able to stop a foreclosure. It kills me Robert. I’m sorry.” A small tear formed in John’s eyes and he wiped his eyes as if to remove dust from them.

“John you and I have known each other ever since you came to Salina. I was at your wedding.”

Robert pulled up a smile on the side of his face. John smiled simultaneously.

“I’m sure this is a spell of rotten luck, we’ll get through it.” John said.

John’s pessimism was as bad as it could get, he wondered if he was fooling anyone with his pretense of optimism garnished by fake smiles and relaxed poses.

“At any rate John, you and I must remain chums through all this, being you are here at the loan office, or not. I may lose a lot of my life, but losing people over this kind of thing is just not right.” Robert solemnly declared to John.

“I whole heartedly agree, Robert. Don’t you worry about that. I don’t make anything in this office personal; it’s all business, friends always, chums.”

Robert stood, and John stood and walked around his desk to escort him to the door. The men shook hands, a two-handed grasp of close kinship. Robert smiled, put on his hat and left without another word.

John sat at his desk chair and pulled on his visor and picked up his fountain pen and, he then held it in the air over the side of the desk for a few moments, and then placed it back in its holder. He spun his chair around toward the window overlooking Iron Street, and he watched a horse and carriage from the ice company making a delivery to the restaurant across the street, he smiled at the irony of selling ice in ten degree weather. He looked to the north end of the street and across where one of two of Salina’s primary schools were, and he took solace in knowing that his sons, Orenthal and Sydney, were sitting in there, happily unaware of the grown-up problems that their father was facing.

Salina, Kansas had seemed like a paradise of sorts for anyone whose goals in life were not accelerated, not greedy, not exploitative. But the growth of Salina that had seemed to be never ending, just a few years back, was now at a stand-still.

A looming economic crisis had been brewing in the past few years, and the tension could be felt in most families. But for John the tension was heightened, for he had recently been made aware of a betrayal of his own loyalty. A white-collar crime had been committed and John was unknowingly culpable, arguably complicit, he was innocent yet aware. He had been thrust into a pit of dishonesty, which his character was previously immune from, but now would have to deal with. Dealing with it might mean fleeing Kansas. For a single father of two boys, this crime he was aware of and this recession of incomes and spending, a recession from home-buying and capital investments, meant big change was needed. For the First Kansas Home Trust Company and its hardest working employee and Junior Partner, times were dismal. John loathed the impending march of a one family parade of failure towards greener pastures, and locations yet unknown. There was no choosing this fate, it was an inevitability that soured his stomach and put his nerves on edge. Moving the boys, was something he would never had considered just one year ago.

There had to be a break, an optimistic opportunity in sight, and so John kept his eyes and ears wide open for something, anything. There had not been a stranger in town in two weeks who was not a traveling salesman. One of the Main Street hotel owners had recently asked John for an extension on his loan, a man of impeccable honor, the last man he expected would default on a note. Folks were used to a new family getting off the train at least once a week, filling the platform at the station with their trunks, their kids running through town and peering into nearly every store’s windows. Usually these families’ hopes had been trampled upon in Chicago or St. Louis, New York or Boston by city dog-eat-dog cruelty, and they had sought the simplicity of just making a decent living, not striving for wealth and mansions or motor cars and all that is associated with a metropolitan lifestyle. It was these families that John Irwin had served for eight years since assuming the loan officer position. He had been arranging their loans, getting to know them, often finding a farmland or a house in town that was just right for them.

In the last three weeks John had answered the front door for two Fuller Brush salesmen. He had long ago figured out that if the traveling salesmen had made their way to Salina, they likely did terribly in Topeka, some having spent the last of their money on train tickets to the next westerly city rather than turn back to Chicago in defeat with self pity as a sack full of sample brushes draped over their backs like a bag of rocks. The last two desperate salesmen, that John had answered the door for, were war injured and outwardly gimpy, and so out of the pity confined within him, John purchased brushes from each of them. Fuller Brushes now filled the lower cabinet of the dry sink on the back porch, one or more brushes for every possible use; shoe cleaning brushes, hair combing brush, curly hair combing brushes, straight hair brushes, a dish cleaning brush, a clothes washing brush and a new kind of brush for scrubbing one’s own teeth. John suspected the whole brush thing was some kind of a flim-flam, but everyone else he knew bought them also, so there was no embarrassment in owning twenty brushes for twenty distinct uses. It was American empathy for the veterans that kept Fuller Brush and its salesmen on their feet. For John, having been unable to join the ranks of the army to fight in the big war, due to his own gimp leg, he could feel like a participant, in a small way, by buying for example a special door and gate Hinge-brush. “Flora would love having all these different brushes,” John thought to himself, imagining what his wife would think of another small part of his life. He smiled to himself as if she were beside him snickering at the “worlds greatest brush collection.”

John looked across the street again and up towards the bank. He smiled and recalled the day it was robbed.

##

Two months ago the most exciting to thing to have happened to Salina in years came and went, when the outlaw Henry Starr came into town and scared the heck out of the sheriff, his deputies, and most men in the downtown area. Starr and his gang had parked their car right across from the Salina Savings and Loan on Ohio Street. In a career spanning more than fifteen years, Starr and his various gangs had robbed more than twenty banks, more robberies than James Younger and his gang, more than the Dalton gang. But Starr’s face was well known, in part because of his moving pictures about his exploits, three in all, produced in Hollywood and starring him. But word was he was robbing banks again. He was with three other men and with no timidity they all had their guns strapped onto their thighs. But they did not even look at the bank, instead they went into the restaurant, sat down and ate, paid their bill and left town. During their hour in the restaurant, the sheriff had gathered men with shotguns, perched them on rooftops, adding three in the shops across from the restaurant, and five inside shops near the bank. In the moments before Starr and his men exited the restaurant, grown men urinated in their pants, in certainty of a shootout that afternoon before Henry Starr and his men had driven off so casually. But true to how creative Starr’s methods of operation had been in the past, the gang came back two hours later, parked in front of the bank, spent five minutes inside and left without firing a shot, and having stolen over six-thousand dollars. The boom in tourism that followed was as if harvest season had arrived. People and reporters came from all over the region to see the bank, talk to the witnesses and take photographs. A newsreel company showed up and made a short about the robbery. For about three weeks income was generated and everyone ate. Bills were paid, and there were smiles in Salina. The general populace took glee in the danger of the bank robbery. The dime novels and the moving pictures showed of romantic portrayals of famous gun slingers and aided in this fascination to the point of near acceptance of the actions. Salina and its neighbor to the north, Fort Riley, had known some of the most famous of the past, like The Hole in the Wall Gang, Jesse James and Wild Bill Hickock. Now the drama returned with the Starr Gang. John saw an irony, but it was lost on most folks. The robbery of a bank’s funds which belonged to the citizenry, actually generated a lot of income for the town; perhaps even more than what Starr and his men had stolen.

##

The pace of life in Salina was predictable to the point of tedium. The chores and daily living needs of each and every person in town could almost be timed with a pocket watch. A few of the old timers sitting on the benches in front of Seitz’s Drug Store in the afternoons would do just that, checking their watches as a local passed by the store as if checking their own sense of time and reality. An observant town’s person knows when farmer Smith needs a new bag of grain feed, when Mrs. Crotchet goes grocery shopping, or when the smokehouse two blocks away changes flavor from mesquite to hickory. If the train is late, or a bad boy gets the cane over at the school, everyone in town knows who and when and why.

John got up from his desk chair and walked across his office to the light switch next to the door, he turned the knob to shut if off and watched as the glow dimmed to darkness in the bulb. If John was going to sit and stare out of his window, he was going to do it in the darkness, where townspeople who know him, won’t notice. He took his chair again. This time his eyes and mind toured two photographs that sat on a shelf behind him. The first picture was of Flora and him. Flora was sitting, wearing her best Sunday dress and a flowery hat tilted to the side just a bit. She had rouge and lipstick and looked like a grown-up China doll. He was proudly standing up and beside her, both his hands on each of her shoulders. John and Flora were smiling in this one. He remembers Flora had insisted on smiles for this one photograph. He looks at the area of his neck in the photograph and remembers the metal contraption that secured him in position for the photographer. The other portrait on the end of the shelf was of the boys. Sydney was seven years old in this photo and Orenthal was about six. They were both smiling. Sydney’s smile was blurry because he was misbehaving, as usual. John’s gaze returned to the photo of Flora and himself. The memories of his early life began to flood his mind as he gazed, lost onto the tinted black-and-white photo. John stared deeper into the eyes of the young man that was him from a decade past. Could the small happy eyes of his own image tell him something back? Could John determine some wisdom from his glass-plate reflection of years now behind him?

In moments John no longer saw the photograph he stared at, rather he saw before him a moving picture show of a young boy being dragged by the arm, down a busy Chicago street by his father, who was steadfast, bitter, anxious to get home to start drinking. He was remembering his father and a cruel life back in Chicago. In keeping his early memories, John knew the contrast of life in the fast paced and unpredictable big-city, to that of the life of the rural Midwest. He was raised a lone son, by his father on the south end of Chicago, who was widowed after John’s mother was hit by a streetcar when her heel became caught in the rail. His father told him the story once, one night while drunk and he never repeated it:

“There must have been fifty people that saw her stuck in that rail! Every damn one of them watched and walked by, every damned one of them will go to hell for not doing a damn thing to help her! They said it all happened too fast and the driver was not even looking. Damn them all to hell! I was not even fifty feet away in the dry goods store buying whiskey! Damn them all to hell.”

John’s father never took him to church. He had no need, and “neither do you,” he would tell John. However the concept of Hell was a convenient and comforting belief for him to adopt, because it was where all those people who let his wife die would end up, eventually.

For obvious reasons John’s father, Orenthal J. Irwin, the name John would later give his youngest son, was a very bitter man. “O.W.,” he was called for short. He was an accountant at the Chicago Cattle Exchange Company at the nearby Union Stock Yards, and he was an evening alcoholic. To conceal his drunkenness, he would always drink at home, by lamplight. Through all his drunkard nights he would never let John’s education or discipline lapse. He would attend all school functions. He never missed packing a good lunch for John. John had to be at the top of his class in mathematics – it was imperative as the son of an accountant. Together they lived in a tenement building with eight other families, and the building was the scene of ruckus almost every night and day. Fighting could be heard between wives and husbands, and every other conceivable mix of family. Common was the sound of dishes being thrown and broken, or a thud of a person’s body, usually a woman, being thrown against a wall, usually followed by silence that was followed by a disturbing type of relief felt throughout the building. There was not peace there; be it from the ever present feeling of tension from domestic violence and despair surrounding the home, or whether it was the unrelenting clapping of horseshoes on the cobblestone street out front, or the frequent steam whistle of a train engine at the yards less than a mile away, or the annoying laughter or anger of drunks partying in the alley way. The neighborhood was a constant calamity, a circus of disturbance, a hell for the solemn and peaceful at heart. There was definitely “no joy in Mudville,” young John used to exclaim, his favorite phrase almost every time he approached the building with his dad. John’s father would regimentally force him to do homework every night by lamp light. When John reached the age of eleven, with his father’s influence, John was given a job working at the Union Stock Yard, in the yards, all weekend, every weekend. To John this was not unique or fortunate for him compared to other people, this was just life as far as he knew it, and as far as he knew for everyone like him. Stickball in the street was a precious time that John cherished, and because he had little time to play, he would remember almost every game fondly. There was an orphanage directly across the street from John’s tenement building. His father would often point to its dark brick walls and iron fencing as a threat to be used as disciplinary leverage against him, as probably did most other parents in the neighborhood.

Sometimes there would be a stick ball game in the street in front of the orphanage and John would see the boys behind the fenced in play-yard, and now and then a nun would walk over, and she would whack one of them with a stick or sometimes they would even beat a boy with their fists and hands. In this boyhood, young John walked on eggshells, living in fear of upsetting his father. To young John it seemed that every few months he would get a barrage of slappings and spankings of punishment for exercising his freedom, for choosing to excuse himself from his father’s strict schedules of homework and housework, or the grueling hours at the Union Stock Yard.

At the very grown-up age of sixteen, in the sweltering peak of the summer of eighteen ninety-one, John had grown to so deeply resent his life in Chicago that he found his courage to leave. It was as if the idea of leaving were a pail of water that had been his burden to carry, and it had overflowed and the spill was his freedom, and the law of gravity dictated a splash-landing to spread and quench the ground beneath his feet. He ran with a small bundle of belongings wrapped in a bed sheet and slung over his shoulder. With fear and the feeling of his father’s angry eyes behind him, he ran until he was out of breath and then ran until his lungs hurt, then he ran further until his legs felt like wet bath towels ready to collapse underneath him. He ran south down that cobble stone street away from the smells and sounds of that ghetto. At the train yards, out of sight, he ran on the dirt between trains, westerly, a small figure of a boy on a mission of self preservation; he found concealment in the freight and livestock cars. A mile from the main depot he climbed into an open cattle car, and when a long wait for his fear to subside had passed, he fell asleep in fresh yellow straw. Afraid to leave the car he had chosen, he waited almost a full day for the train to move. For young John it was a matter of chance to have climbed aboard a west bound train towards Denver.

To avoid the infamously brutal rail yard goons who would patrol the stopping trains for hobos or “jumpers,” he leaped off the train into the bushes a mile or so outside of Jefferson City, Missouri. Having no experience jumping off a train, he badly broke his leg in so doing. Later after his leg healed, John would smile when remembering this adventure, because he had jumped off to avoid getting his legs broken by the goons at the rail yard. “Go figure,” he says in conclusion, every time he tells that story. For three days, and before his leg bone was set, he limped and at times crawled through woods, over creeks, and across an occasional wheat field. At the end of this painful trek he was finally found and taken in by a hog farming family named Worley, outside of Jefferson City. John’s story would usually end:

“I was never in my life so happy and relieved, to be kissed in the face with the big wet sloppy tongue of a hound dog as I was lying there in that wheat field that day. Until that dog started licking me I thought I was going to die right then and there. I truly was on my last leg.”

He stayed with the Worley family for two years. He would read them the newspapers and books that he would borrow from the local school. He taught their two young daughters their alphabet and numbers. He befriended their farm help, a young black man, not much older than he named Charles Monroe. They had become best of friends. John would tell Charles about books he had read, what things mean, history, geography, and how Charles could make money from buying and selling hogs. John recalls fondly later teaching Charles to read by drawing letters and words in pig-dung with the end of a stick, on the barn walls. John found a calling of sorts in bringing literature and other knowledge to the Worley family and to Charles. It was the Worley’s gratitude of his presence that brought about a change in the bitter and tough city-raised young man. Before him was a family who trusted him, nearly without condition, as soon as they had met him. They never inquired as to how he broke his leg but he was glad to tell them. It seemed a given that John would repay them in any manner he could. In two years time he may have carried ten-thousand buckets of water into the house and over to the hogs, or into the kitchen. At the pigsty he shoveled the weight of a thousand hogs. He read for hundreds of hours to everyone in the family and to Charles.

There was innocence at the foundation of this family that young John had not observed in anyone he had ever met in Chicago. The Worley’s language was a conglomeration of short statements and questions, slang and emotion conveying sounds uttered in quiet or thrown across the house, or across the farm. With such a true intent these words and sounds were bantered, so that the recipient need not listen closely to fully grasp the meaning, he only needed to hear the tone of the message, or see the face of its conveyor. To John in his first few months on the small hog farm, the feeling of being drenched in honesty was almost uncomfortable. After a time John grew to understand that in this household there were no lies, no misleading and no taking advantage of others. Deceit required complexity. Believable lies depended upon weaving concepts together in sentences that complimented each other. John realized that telling a lie to Frank Worley, or to his wife Joanne or their young daughters, would be like contaminating a can of white-wash with a drop of black paint. The Worleys were dirt poor and mostly illiterate, ignorant of culture and politics and history. He had realized that his entire mind and body had been wound-up like a steel spring, on the defensive, for years, and from everyone in his life in Chicago, from his father, from his co-workers at the stockyard, from his school masters and his peers at school.

If there was a lesson from his time spent living the simple and sustaining lifestyle on the Worley hog farm it is “trust and you will know peace.” He realized that fear of being deceived, or robbed, is as corrupting as the act itself. The frequency of the occurrences of the thief who steals from you, the liar who deceives you, or the greedy man who takes from you in plain view, does not diminish your life. It diminishes theirs far more. In trusting your fellow man there is far more value than what ever might be stolen, or whatever deception may be played upon you. If you live in a place where you are surrounded by others who are repeatedly deceiving you, the answers to solve this dilemma may lie far more in yourself than in them, or that place where you have chosen to live.

John would exclaim at the end of what is come to be known by Sidney and Orenthal as “the Worley Story again.”

“If you can’t trust all the people around you, why you’re just sitting in a big kettle of poison and there is a sign on the wall of the kitchen that says GET OUT OF THE KETTLE. So that’s how I lost my city-slicker attitude and I never got it back!”

Two years passed at the Worley farm and changes were apparent due entirely to John’s presence. For the girls, they had entered school and were showing great promise having already learned to read and spell before starting. Mr. Worley was smiling more often due to John reducing his workload and having brought his knowledge to the household. With her extra money and time, Mrs. Worley bought a Singer sewing machine and was making clothes for everyone, and was inventing clothing the family didn’t really need. John and Mr. Worley secretly hoped her wool and cotton creations would not find their way to their backs. Strange creations like coats with pull-over hoods sewed onto rear of the necks, and winter coats with wooly mittens connected to a string and sewed into the sleeves. Charles Monroe could not doubt that John had bettered his own life, for he now owned two hogs of his own and he and his mom and pop and little brother were as proud as could be.

In the afternoon on one warm spring day John was eating lunch on the front steps of the Worley house when Mr. Worley came out and sat down beside him.

“You know, I usually can tell when something is good enough to call a job a job well done.” He said matter-of-factly, looking towards the barn and the fields.

John smiled from the corner of his mouth, as if he knew exactly what Mr. Worley was saying, but he did not really. He hurriedly scooped up his beans and placed his plate down. John responded:

“Yeah, especially if you’ve done that thing once or twice before, so you know what done looks like.”

It was quickly obvious that Mr. Worley had specifics in mind, but that he was unclear of just how to say it. Mr. Worley sat down on the porch steps beside John and was looking over at John’s face to gauge his reaction, a clear indication to John that this was not going to be casual afternoon porch conversation. Mr. Worley continued:

“What I’m talking about is when you set-out to do something you have to have a picture in your head of what it would like if it were already done. Then when that picture looks kind of what you wanted it to, well, you might just be done. Like when we set out to grade that hillside better so the rain water would flow down from the troughs, we used our heads and we weren’t just guessing when we knew it was finished, because at the end of the day, it looked damn well like it would work and sure enough last fall that side of the pen was dry enough to walk through.”

Now John was getting it. Mr. Worley was trying to tell him it was time for him to move on. A sweeter man than Mr. Frank Worley, John had never known and may never know. This talk on this afternoon, as simple as it may sound, would be a moment in his life he would never forget. Unforgettable because Mr. Worley had begun to seem as a father to young John. As Mr. Worley continued with his message, tears began to form just on the edges of John’s eyes.

“You see John it was two years and two months ago that me and Noser found you lying in the mud with a piece of bone sticking out of your right leg, not 300 yards past that field over there. I’ll be honest, I thought for sure you were one of those free-loaders running from somebody. But every man, or in your case a boy, deserves a chance, and boy you haven’t let us down. Me and the Mrs. and the girls, Charles too, feel like you’re one of us. If you really were one of us, you know, like us dirt farmers living by the scruff of our necks, well then you’d stay around here all of your life. But you’re educated and a smarty pants with good ideas. Hell, you could move to Jefferson City and be the Mayor one day, if you wanted to.”

John responded looking upwards at the unusually serious face of Mr. Worley.

“I know what you’re saying it’s time for me to move on. Except I’m not going to be a Mayor because they look terribly silly wearing that sash that says Mayor and those silky top-hats.”

John had quickly lightened the air of this conversation. They both had a chuckle before Mr. Worley continued. Mr. Worley stood up for a moment and reached into his back left pocket and produced a folded up and tattered newspaper. He sat back down and handed the paper to John. It was a section of the Topeka Daily Capital, from Kansas, more than a hundred miles away to the west. John unfolded it to a classified add that Mr. Worley had circled in pencil.

“I’ll have you know, it took me a while, but I read that advertisement myself, after I found this paper at the Barber, I’m pretty sure is says “Accountants Wanted,” at the top there. Now, because you’re so good with numbers and all, I figure this is something you should go after. You see, I’ve got a picture in my head of a job done, and in that picture you’re wearing a suit and tie, and you’re clean and shaven and driving a fancy carriage, maybe even one of those horseless carriages. You have a white house with those fancy columns and little kids and a real pretty woman. That’s my picture of a job that needs to be done and it’s time for you get started on it.”

Staring at the paper but not reading it, John sat silent, just looking downward at the already yellowing newspaper just two days old. At first he felt shunned and disappointed, even a little afraid that his life was about to change again. He felt sadness that he would have to leave the Worleys and Charles and that he might not see them again. Mr. Worley broke the silent pause:

“Boy this is not a permanent thing, we want you to visit us. You’ve got to watch the girls grow up. You’ve got to see Charles farming business get bigger. It’s just that there’s getting to be no work in all of Missouri. Why, Jefferson City has started having bread lines and soup kitchens to feed all the city folks coming out here for work. Kansas has more work. I hear-tell there’s even some homesteading lands out there still, if you can make the land work that is. But I fancy you in town or in a city, you know, like a man known about to folks.”

Two weeks later John was hitch-hiking to Topeka to apply for work at the Kansas Pacific Railway Company as a bookkeeper. In two days John arrived, hungry and tired. By sundown on his first day in that relatively big city John had been hired. By eighteen-ninety-six he was promoted to the manager of the accounting department and with that promotion he suddenly had five men under him, who used to be his friends. To capitalize on further sprawl westward by families and businesses, the entire office was soon transferred further west to the city of Salina, Kansas.

Nineteen-Nineteen

In his office at the First Kansas Home Trust Company, John was staring out over the street again. Some twenty telephone, telegraph, and electricity wires cluttered his view to the other side of the street. He could see the ice company carriage had made its delivery and rode off, and its position had been replaced by the Kowalski Brothers Meats and Fish Co., using their Model-T Flat Bed. Flora loved their catfish dish, he thought, sometimes ordering it one visit after another. John smiled and his eyes began to well-up with tears. She would always pander to her slightest desires, like ordering the same catfish dish over and over again, even though there were twenty other plates to choose from. John looked at her face in the portrait. Her hair had been reproduced perfectly he thought, black like coal, wavy like ripples in a pond. He picked up the framed photo of the two of them and swung his chair back to face his desk-top, pushing one of the ledger books aside to stand the portrait up firmly in front of him. Just left of center, he picked up his ink fountain pen, paused and once again, and placed it back in its holder, too distracted to work. Flora’s eyes were haunting him from the silver-oxide-coated tin plate behind glass on his desk. Emotion rose inside of him, and a tear formed in his eyes and he remembered those earlier days, in the beginning that belonged to them both.

Chapter 3 - Flora

2006-07-27T08:23:00.003-04:00

Nineteen-O-Seven

It was warm and pouring-down rain in Salina, Kansas. John Irwin was passing documents to the secretary in the cramped offices of The Kansas Pacific Railway Company. It was then that she came into the view for the first time in John’s life. The lacy frills at the bottom of her dress dusted the unworthy floorboards and concealed her forbidden feet. Ankles and feet that must have been too beautiful to be allowed to be exposed to any man. Angelically, she seemed to float in behind her father who was finalizing a purchase of government grant land from the railway. On the second-floor accounting department of pine-wood veneer cubicles, desks and typewriters, paper and ink, her tiny graceful steps did not even cause the usual creaking of the floor boards caused by other visitors, because she was too gentle, or because she was too light, too precious for wood, or maybe because some wonderful natural magic disguised her sounds? She was seventeen years old, with skin like the middle of white coral. Shy, her eyes barely lifted to see the eyes of any other men in the office, who were all looking at her. She was daintily smiling as if attending a formal tea party. In this setting she was as a happy bluebird in the dreary winter, or as a fresh red apple on a lifeboat at sea. John was introduced to her father, Alfred Jenkins, and he in turn introduced his daughter, the lovely Flora Jenkins. The moment when Flora first looked into his eyes, it was like a bolt of emotion had been cast at him and had stopped him from thinking, from speaking, and almost from standing. At that moment he was a boy again, helpless, sweating, unable to look solely at the customer. John bowed and delicately kissed her hand that was covered by white silky gloves, stealing the opportunity to be lost in her light brown eyes. For a moment, from beneath her breast level, he smelled her, and the female chemical shot into John’s mid-brain like a jolt of electricity. His compulsion began, his obsession was seeded, her face and her eyes had become to him as a keepsake like a gold locket that must not be lost, must not be forgotten and if needed he would devote nine tenths of his available memory to storing an image of her. How could John Irwin, from this moment on, live without her?

It was two weeks before he would find the courage to ask her out to dinner and the picture show. John had never courted a girl or a young woman. Always an excuse seemed to take priority. There was never time or he was always either filthy or dog tired when out and about the town. Additionally John could not stand competition among men for the affections of a pretty girl, and he did not like that a pretty girl was so rare, so hard to find. There always seemed to be ten men gawking at once when he did see one. A pretty girl that John had ever noticed in his past was usually the only one around, or accompanied by an older man, or a protective father. John borrowed Mr. Worleys philosophy; “have an image of a job that needed to be done.” At this time in John’s life, Flora was the sharply in-focus figure, front and center in that image, in which all else peripheral to her was blurry and could be later negotiated.

For days that had seemed to John like months, after her visit to the office he was noticeably distracted, stopping and starting his work every few minutes, having to recheck his own numbers. His nights alone in his room, at the boarding house on Country Club Lane, were agonizing as they were filled with running thoughts of the beautiful Flora. His favorite thoughts were comparing her to foods, chocolate mostly, often cherry cordials, filled with delight, visibly delicious on the outside, formed perfectly around the sweet fruit inside that was her. Flat on his back, John would stare at the ceiling, at the flicker of the flame in his bedside lamp, dreaming wide awake of Flora. He would sometimes fall asleep fully clothed with a smile on his face.

Flora Jenkins lived happily with her parents and her little brother on their cattle and sheep ranch about twelve miles north of Salina. They recently acquired a Model T Ford from Sears and Roebuck and were one of only a few folks in town to have one. Mr. Jenkins had to ride horseback to St. Louis to pick it up and then drive it slowly home, with the horses tied to it and trotting behind, scared out of their iron shoes of the new black monster. Every Sunday the Jenkins would let the whole town know they had the new motor-car by driving to church in it. It would bang and sputter its way through town, scaring horses, causing birds to fly off in a panic, and splattering mud. During their trip through town folks would come to the windows of their homes and pull aside the curtains to see the motor-car. Kids would stop in their tracks and yell at Mr. Jenkins to honk his squeeze-bulb horn. Since her father got the motor car, church wasn’t so bad for Flora, who normally found it to be tortuous, because now the ride there and back was novel and fun. Flora would physically fight her little brother to sit up front in the Model T, and she did not mind that the sibling battles demeaned her maturity as a young woman, but it was the “T,” and her dad only took it out on Sunday for church, even though it had become the most exciting thing in her life. If there was one flaw with owning the “T” it was, that within several hundred feet of the church, the Jenkins had to pile out of the car, Mr. Jenkins would shut off the engine, and all four had to push the motor-car into the church lot, so as not to scare the many horses belonging to the other parishioners. The first day Mr. Jenkins drove it to church, he drove right up into the parking lot and all hell broke-loose. Horses ran, carriage brakes were broken, one carriage wrecked against a tree and one horse had to be shot dead. The cost was not so much to Mr. Jenkins’ wallet that day as it was more to his humility and his standing in town.

Flora had a boyfriend, Ernest Bleckley, whose father owned the Carriage House in Salina, and a hotel in Wichita. She found him to be a bore. She thought Ernest to be a spoiled brat, a favored son to his father, who provided him with favors and gifts to keep him happy and busy. Additionally, he was shorter than she was, and this difference shattered all fantasy images of her ideal man. He would wear a fancy suit everywhere he went, as if he were the Mayor or some prominent figure. He would bully almost anyone he came in contact with whose stature was even slightly less than he, he would unfairly chastise restaurant waiters, hotel clerks, shop clerks or shoe shine boys. Flora found him offensive but her father was strict about approval of men callers, and he would never approve of the virile and handsome men of gusto and masculinity that she would rather be courted by. She would rather date one of several of her father’s ranch hands, with whom she had spent many days with around the ranch, branding the new stock, and riding on drives to bring the cattle to the train station. Flora had become an accomplished cowboy who could lasso with the best cowboys, or throw a knife at a fence post from twenty-yards. On any given weekday, Flora, was a champion Tom-Boy.

It took several days of contemplation of courage and fear, but soon enough John began asking around town about Flora, and he began to formulate a plan to win her over. He dreaded that eventually he would have to let her know he was interested. Perhaps fear of rejection made this initial stage seem a mountain to have to climb, for if he could just gain her acceptance, for even one date, that would be a conquest of his own fear. George Hawkins was a bookkeeper in John’s office and he lived just one mile away from the Jenkins’ ranch. George would know something about her, and so with ulterior motive, John invited George to a formal sit-down lunch at the restaurant across the street. At lunch, after a half an hour or so of chit-chat about office politics, the weather, the new Wright flying machine, the city fire brigades efficiency and lack of it, and the town and Salina in general, John broke it to him:

“George you know Alfred Jenkins and his family don’t you?”

“Know them! I practically grew up with them. I used to work on their ranch summers. My dad and Mr. Jenkins and I used to go hunting in the winter together, lots of times. I remember one Christmas when Mrs. Jenkins was sick in a real bad way, we didn’t think she was gonna make it. Me and my family went over there Christmas day and made supper for everybody, the hands included. Mrs. Jenkins pulled through a couple of weeks later. That little girl of theirs was like a Chinese firecracker, always running around, hanging with the boys and the ranch hands, a Tom-boy, you know the type? Hell she used to try to go hunting with us, imagine that!”

Perfect opener to get to the real topic John was interested in, his eye brows raised up and he leaned in toward George and began speaking in a quite voice as if planning an overthrow of the kitchen:

“She is what I was wondering about. Did you see her in the office the other day? She’s the prettiest thing on two legs I’ve ever seen. I can’t get her off my mind and I don’t know how to start with her.”

“Have you not ever courted before John?” George inquired and smiled at John.

“Never. There’s never really been a woman around that I was very interested in.” John replied with deception to cover his own history of shyness.

“First you’ve to get her to stop seeing Bleckley, Ernest Bleckley that is. I’ve seen him riding her in a fancy carriage past my house almost every Saturday evening for months now. Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if marriage was just around the corner for those two.”

John expressed a mild frown as he chewed his steak and onions. George paused, ate some salad, raised one eyebrow and then offered a new contribution to the subject:

“One thing you would have going for you is that Bleckley is a brat, a spoiled brat. In school he got used to the cane almost once a week and you know, well you wouldn’t know being relatively new to town. But there was a fire about eight or nine years ago wherein the wood-mill on the south end of town caught fire, and the one whole corner of it was burnt down before the fire department could put it out. Well, word was that he and two other boys were seen watching the fire from up in the trees across the street, it was about ten o’clock at night and they were all smoking cigarettes! Word is, they probably did it, but nobody could prove it and his dad wouldn’t let the sheriff talk to him. But he acts more like a gentleman now, especially since he’s courting Flora. But I think her dad hates his guts but tolerates him because the little brat will inherit his dads businesses. He’ll get both the business here and the hotel down in Wichita. Imagine that!”

John frowned with disdain that this wonderful woman he has barely known and now cared for deeply would end up with a free-loader, someone whose life story and hardships reflect an almost opposite to his own. For a moment so small it could not be measured with a clock, John thought to himself that maybe this speaks to the character of Flora herself.

“No, it couldn’t, she doesn’t know about him, or hasn’t considered that his character is far less than what she is worth. She’s still young and innocent.”

That evening John came to a decision. His “plan,” would be not to have a plan. He would outwardly present Flora with a new choice in suitors. Having heard a rather slanted portrayal of Ernest Bleckley, he now felt superior, a better man than he. A wiser man than John might have given more weight to the fleeting consideration that Flora may not care to hold measure to the character of the man that she is courting. Or, a wiser man may be open to the premise that Ernest Bleckley is far from the man described by George; a silver-spooned and spoiled boy. But for John, having a direction to move in quelled his nervous stomach of love ache, and eased his mind to know something of who is who. He would go with it as himself, and if the situation turned-out to be different, he would adapt and he would win Flora over in a more conspicuous, more honest, manner than she may be used to.

As he lay in bed John’s newly found calm and confidence became shattered with panic. He now began to worry about his wardrobe, his hair style, a new hat, a horse and carriage of his own. Or maybe his own model T! Now he was feeling less superior to Bleckley as he took stock of his possessions and compared them to what Flora had by-now, became used to. John pondered:

“Is the quest for love and a mate a corrupting influence? If I try to present the façade of a man of material worth, I'm being dishonest. But can I win her over honestly, by presenting myself as I am? Or, am I just fooling myself? I’m a man of two suit’s and three ties and one hat, two dozen kerchiefs, no horse of my own, no carriage, who rents a room in this boarding house. Am I demeaning Flora by assuming she needs to see a comparative list of material goods? I have eight hundred and seventeen dollars and thirty cents in the Salina bank. I guess that’s a lot.”

Three days later on a Thursday afternoon, under large puffy clouds, with a warm early spring wind in his face and hair, John trotted out to the Jenkins farm on a rented chestnut mayor. Straw hat level on his head, aligned perfectly with his brow, a faintly pinstriped brown suit with a tanned leather vest and a new necktie pulled so tight to his throat that breathing was a purposeful act. The shining hook and chain of the pocket watch his father gave him on his sixteenth birthday glimmered proudly as John held his posture upright like a board reaching for the sky. A bouquet of Daisies and Blue Lupines was carefully tucked in a rifle holster behind him on his left. John hoped these colors would please her. Flora had Daisies on her dress when he had met her in the Railway office, and her dress was a light blue, much like the Lupines. He fought with himself whether or not to bring her chocolates, he had bought a Whitman’s box at Seitz’s drug store, but left them at the boarding house when he realized they might melt before he got them to Flora. John had decided to be more impressive than a chocolates bearer. In his vest pocket was a small gift box, wrapped with a pink bow. Mrs. Jacoby at the Salina Mercantile and Exchange Company had assured him this was a good choice and would swoon any lady.

To avoid the embarrassment of a bad first impression, John took all the precautions he could think of. Never in his life had he wanted so desperately to impress, but only had his face, his body, and his voice and words to do so. At the livery that morning, he had insisted on the brown horse over the recommended black, so it would match his suit. Before leaving the stable, to the amusement of the livery owner, John practiced dismounting and mounting his saddle, off and on several times. His mustache perfectly trimmed and waxed just slightly. He shaved his face just one hour prior, so slowly and carefully that he could not possibly have cut himself. Three tightly folded handkerchiefs in his suit pockets for mishaps like manure on the shoes or mud on his clothes or a sneeze. Two peppermint candies at the ready for minty pleasant breath. John’s shaky nerves were concealed by his body’s bobbing up and down on the horse, as he trotted ever closer to his confrontation with his own weakness.

As the Jenkins ranch came into view it was a relief to John to see that the gate was already open and he could ride straight through. He could see that two women were on chairs on the front porch of the rather large Jenkins house. It was more like a mansion, up on a knoll with a carriage path that circled around to the front of the house, two stories with shutters painted clean white and lace curtains in every window. John’s heart was pounding so hard he feared it might stop of exhaustion. As John reached a distance of about one hundred feet from the porch he saw the two women talking to each other and looking at him. Pressed suit and tie, flowers clearly visible on his horse, John could be identified as a gentleman caller from a mile away. He wondered if Flora was excited to see who it was. John gracefully removed his hat as he rode close enough to the see Flora’s and her mother’s faces. Suddenly a young boy came running from around the side of the house toward John. The boy almost caused John’s horse to buck. Smiling excitedly the boy ran up to the reins, grabbed a hold and nearly yelled upward to John:

“You’re a gentlemen caller, come to court my sister aren’t you Mr.?”

So much for introducing his intentions. John blushed immediately. The speech he had rehearsed in his room, in front of a mirror, for this most delicate of moments was now moot. His hat in hand and smiling slightly, John dismounted, removed the flower bouquet and with full knowledge that Flora and her mother were now standing in front of their chairs looking directly at him, he returned the boys innocent and happy greeting preceded by a delighted quick laugh:

“That is correct son. My name is John Irwin. You look like a fine and fit young man who knows what is going on. What do they call you?”

The boy held the reins closer as John’s horse wriggled, the boy took a cube of sugar out of his overalls front pocket and quickly fed it to the restless animal, then responded to the new and friendly stranger:

“I’m Jeremiah A. Jenkins sir, I’ll take your horse around back and feed and water her for you. You’re the first gentlemen since grumpy ‘ol Bleckley to see my sister! Good luck with her! My Pa says she’s like a Stallion what just ate hot-peppers! She don’t . .”

Mrs. Jenkins then took two quick steps forward on the porch, took off her hat and abruptly raised her voice at young Jeremiah:

“Jeremiah it is properly “are you not!” Now you watch your tongue and mind your own business! Now get busy taking care of this gentlemen’s horse or I will ask you to pick-out a good willow switch!”

Jeremiah smiled up at John once more then proceeded to tend to the horse. Mrs. Jenkins and Flora stood at pleasant attention towards John. To John these moments seemed trapped in time, frozen and detailed in the moment, but in later memory a blur of motion. So nervous and so determined to get this right, this was to John, the greatest interview of his life. The walk to the front porch steps was grueling as the air around his legs became molasses to wade through. He felt a thirst unknown to him in his life and began to worry he would not be able to speak. Stopping a few feet short of the front porch and smiling once at Flora, who returned his gesture with a friendly slight curtsey followed by a smile and a nod, John quickly focused his attention on Mrs. Jenkins who curtseyed ever so slightly. The matriarch waited a few patient moments as if playing her part in an ancient rite, waiting for her turn which would follow John’s presentation. John presented himself, flowers and hat held close to his lower chest, a shine of fresh sweat on his forehead, he reached out to Mrs. Jenkins to give her the bouquet and conferred upon her solely, without looking back at Flora:

“Dear madam, My name is John Irwin of Salina. I assisted Mr. Jenkins with a Railway land purchase a little more than three weeks ago. As I am the manager of accounting for the Kansas Pacific Rail Company. At the time I was blessed to meet your lovely daughter at my office. I have rode out to your splendid home on this glorious day in the hopes that you, and Mr. Jenkins, would allow me to ask Miss Flora if she would do me the honor of a courtship.”

John did not divert his eyes from the face of Mrs. Jenkins. Still in a memory blur, not sure of what or how he had just spoken to this seemingly proud woman, he felt an absence of confidence and completely unsure of what her answer would be. Mrs. Jenkins immediately smiled with delight as if being entertained at the circus. John smiled, immediately more at ease now, but still he did not remove his attention from Mrs. Jenkins. She replied approvingly:

“Yes my husband did mention you. He stated rather impressively that “ . . the Kansas Pacific has an astute and very efficient accountant by the name of Irwin.” It is a pleasure to meet you sir.”

“Your husband made a very careful and studious purchase in those lots Mrs. Jenkins, his fortitude must be a source of comfort to all of your family.” John replied in a kind gesture.

Mrs. Jenkins showed her sensitivity to the matter at hand, sensing that John was as nervous as a dry bail-of-hay in a barn fire, she expedited the process for his sake:

“As for your inquiry Mr. Irwin, you have the advantage in this initial conversation in that my husband and myself already know of you. We already know that you are a man of hard work with an education that would provide a stable life for our daughter. I will forfeit my decision to my daughters free will in this matter of your courting. As for Mr. Jenkins, I will inquire to him about the matter of your courtship of our daughter, when he returns from the auctions in Topeka later this week. But I feel sure in telling you that his answer would agree to my own, we have an understanding about these matters. I will retire to my drawing room at this time and let you and Flora discuss your very well presented proposal.”

Mrs. Jenkins extended her hand for homage and John stepped up two steps onto the porch and gently planted a kiss on her forehand. John watched Mrs. Jenkins head towards the screened front door. Still a dream to John, the conversation that had just occurred he could never recall in detail, but at this moment he knew it was a positive sign. John did not look at Flora, yet, still giving Mrs. Jenkins his full attention even has her back was turned to him. Mrs. Jenkins stopped and looked again at John, as she stepped through the doorway and into the foyer:

“I’ll have Thelma bring you two some fresh mint tea. Again Mr. Irwin, it has been a pleasure to meet your acquaintance.”

“Kind madam, the pleasure has been mine and I hope that we can see each other again very soon.” John replied.

In a brief moment Mrs. Jenkins cast a look of intent at Flora while replying to John:

“Oh I am sure that we will Mr. Irwin, good day sir.”

Flora was gracious at once:

“It is a pleasure to see you again Mr. Irwin, won’t you please have a seat, less your
behind parts are too bruised from riding and you prefer to stand?”

A smirk was on her face as if toying with the new boy. John ignored this humorous punch thrown by the young and rambunctious Flora and sat gently on the other front porch chair, he placed his hat flat down on the porch beside him. John opened conversation:

“Thank you for seeing me Miss Flora. I’m very glad to see you again. I would like to say that your mother is a most sure woman and I can clearly see where you adopted your beauty.”

“I take it then that your behind is in fair shape since you so quickly sat down Mr. Irwin.” Flora stated jokingly as she waved a paper fan at herself.

“I bounce in stride purposefully when I ride Miss Flora, it greatly lessens damage to my, umm, humility.” John had almost said “ass,” as if in the saloon.

“Oh Mr. Irwin you do have a sense of humor! For a moment there I thought you might have taken offense to my quip at your personal being.”

“Not at all Miss Flora, I like to think I have a mild temperament to all types of attacks, be they in jest or even of the rude type. Besides, it was pretty funny.” John replied.

“And may I inquire as to how you have learned this temperament Mr. Irwin?”

“Well I guess it was working at the Cattle Exchange in Chicago when I was a boy. You see the men there were, well, not exactly gentlemen and teasing each other with humor and insults was the normal way to pass the time around there. So I got used to it pretty quick.” John looked to Flora for acceptance.

“My that must have been some interesting times Mr. Irwin! I have never been to Chicago but my father did take us all to St. Louis for the worlds fair last summer and we stayed overnight in Wichita. Why we were gone from this old place for about ten whole days, I’ll never forget it. I saw the most wondrous things there.”

Flora was wearing a yellow bonnet, and she reached her arm back and daintily pulled it off, rolled it up and clutched it with both hands. She began squeezing it with both hands, she was nervous too, and John hoped this anxiety was not any of his doing. Her raven silky hair was up and tied with a thin yellow ribbon. John was smiling, trying not show his teeth, because they were crooked and embarrassed him. Just then Thelma came stomping down the hallway from the kitchen and seemed to burst through the front screen-door as she carried a silver tray with two glasses, two large chunks of ice in each one and a pitcher of tea with mint leaves floating on top. How did they get ice this far out of town from the ice plant? John thought to himself as Thelma poured him his tea first, then Flora’s.’ Thelma was a young and pretty black woman who was about the same age as Flora. She wore a long blue cotton dress, with high sleeves, with a kitchen apron tightly around her waist, and her hair was tucked underneath a lacy white bonnet.

“Mr. Irwin would you like some lemon in your tea?” Thelma offered.

“Why yes thank you very much, you’re so kind Miss . . Miss.”

Having just been asked who she was, Thelma’s disposition went from servile to delighted at the speed of a steam-liner.

“My name is Thelma Leed sir. I’ve been with the Jenkins for all my life as has my Ma and my Pa and their Ma and Pa before them. We don’t get many guests out here and it sure is a pleasure to have a gentlemen caller, and a handsome one at that!”

Thelma smiled big and looked back at Flora as though she had just planted a fruit tree for her. Apparently Thelma was catering to the approval of John as a suitor by Mrs. Jenkins who must have said something good about him while back in the kitchen. Grinning, Thelma quickly returned into the house before John could return the flattering banter.

A black woman does not flatter the sexuality of a white man in Kansas, nor anywhere else, nor does a white man apply a compliment towards a black woman. The ramifications are too taboo to even begin to have discussion. Thelma would not have been able to get away with calling John a “handsome man,” in any other context but out here on the front porch and directly in front of Flora. It would be as if a man called a female goat “mighty fine looking,” as the goat strolled into a saloon. But if the goat were in a barn stall then that term would pass unnoticed. The front porch was the barn stall, it was acceptable, and it did not strike John as unsuitable one bit.

“Did you know Mr. Irwin that last year at the Worlds Fair in St. Louis, over a dozen nations had an exhibit and every U.S. State had an exhibit as well, but just before the Fair began the Missouri house and its exhibit burned to the ground. Very puzzling don’t you think Mr. Irwin?”

Flora stated this trivia, perhaps seeking a more intellectual conversation with this newly interested man in her life. John played it safe in case she was inferring a superstitious cause of the fire, John loathed superstition:

“Well I never heard that. That is either one dandy of a coincidence or somebody was not too pleased about the Fairs being there. Did they ever find out how it happened?”

“Well the papers said that it was workmen’s lamps, they were working feverishly to finish the display and were working by lamp light to get it done in time.”

“A good lesson in patience if I ever heard one Miss Jenkins.” John then sipped from his tea.

“You may address me less formerly Mr. Irwin. We are known to you and you us. After all, you and my father have done business and after today you are known as a guest of this family, “Miss Flora,” would be fine.”

“Why thank you kindly, Miss Flora. I like the sound of that, you may call me John when we are informal such as this. All my friends use my first name to me, except the bookkeepers under me, at the Kansas Pacific.”

“Oh I had almost forgotten Mr. Irwin, errh, John, you are a boss among men, how impressive that is!”

“Oh it’s not such an impressive position. There is no less work for me and I carry the burden of blame should something go wrong.”

“I suppose that would be a rather heavy weight to bear on a daily basis. How did you come to live in Salina, John?”

“I was transferred here from Topeka by the Kansas Pacific Railway to run the accounting and exchange office here in Salina, it was moved from Topeka because the owner wanted to open a restaurant for passengers to rest and eat, right where our old office was, just off the track platform. I was a bookkeeper for them in Topeka, for a few years, before being promoted, then sent out here.”

“Where about is your family John, are you alone here?”

“My father lives still in Chicago, he is an accountant also, he works for the Chicago Cattle Exchange Company, at the Union Stock Yards. I have not had correspondence with him since leaving Chicago.”

Wishing to hide his shame for having run-away from his father, John was hoping that Flora would not want to know more. He watched her eyes to see if she had presumed it was source of shame for him. John is a person with less than stable family origins who has placed himself in a region of the country where stigma sticks to the shamed like gypsum gum, and gossip spreads like wild-fire, mostly with unwarranted merit. This is a land of cohesive families that generally do not break-apart without approval of the patriarch, or certainly do not leave each other without word, and don’t shame each other with their behaviors. When they do, the shame of those related becomes the secret of the entire clan, the secrets become the thick coat of plaster on the many interior walls of each home, only to be seen from the inside and never to leave and bring shame to others, and to be painted over and over again as the years pass and the memories fade.

“Perhaps your father and yourself will converse in the future John?”

With a gentle nod she reassured him as if she knew his future.

“I see that as a definite possibility for the future Miss Flora. I take it you have always been here at this very large and well kept ranch. Tell me, do you enjoy being a cow-girl?” John smiled, obviously not needing a serious answer.

“Actually I have always loved cattle ranching since I was a tiny girl. Why I’ve even been on three cattle drives with my father and the hands, those are the best of times. Of course, we don’t drive the cattle anymore, oh we take fifty or a hundred head at a time to Salina, and they all board cattle cars on wooden ramps and ride away all mooing like a bunch of prisoners making an escape. Sometimes I could swear they were looking at me on my horse as their train pulls away, it’s all rather comical if you consider it. Do you not think so John?” Near laughter Flora sipped from her tea and looked to John for approval.

“You know, I would not be surprised if those cows were trying to say good bye to you Miss Flora. Perhaps they were. There is much to learn in animal science still, they may be smarter than we think!”

“You may be right. But I tell you, the way all we people treat them, I hope they are not of higher brain function. Because if they are they are planning our demise in a grand scheme!” Flora pointed her finger to the air smiling with a devious face.

John’s eyes followed as her arm raised up as if to proclaim the beginning of the end of humanity at the hooves of all cow-dom. Within himself John heard his own voice:

“I do love this woman. My God she is a delight, a princess, a jewel of rarity, I must have her, there is no turning back now.”

John and Flora burst out in laughter. Barely ten minutes together and they are now at ease. John decided this is the perfect moment to reach into his vest pocket and produce a gift box with something just for her.

“Miss Flora I would like you to have this small gift as a measure of my intentions and my honor regarding yourself.”

John then held out towards Flora a small blue velvet covered jewelry box, three inches wide and about eight inches long with small brass hinges on the back. Flora’s eyes raised up in anticipation like a child, she put down her tea glass and her bonnet:

“Why Mr. Jenkins how kind of you indeed! I do not know what you heard of me but there is a vicious rumor that I never deny a gift. Well this rumor is absolutely true. You are scoring early points Mr. Irwin!”

Flora daintily picked the box out of John’s hand and brought it close in her lap. She un-tied its thin ribbon and swung open its top lid to reveal an ivory hair comb with a highly ornate carving on its handle.

“Oh my goodness, it’s marvelous Mr. Jenkins, it is just beautiful. So precious and unique. I adore it Mr. Jenkins. I shall wear it now.”

Flora pulled the thin ribbon from her hair. John, grinning like a ten year old with his first fish catch, watched as she prepared her hair for his gift. With seemingly erotic and fluidic motion Flora’s hair fell to half way down her back, and she swung her head to and fro to untangle the loose strands that had gathered together under her ribbon and bonnet. In that moment the late afternoon easterly sun shine of yellowish orange caught the transparent edges of her long brunette hair. John was transfixed in the wonder of her. Flora straightened her posture upright and reached back her arms behind her head, with one hand holding the comb. John gazed briefly at the fleshy soft and pale underside of her arms as if he was appreciating a renaissance marble statue of a partially nude goddess. She rolled her hair up her back and ever so gently tucked it into a soft roll, and she slowly affixed her new comb, and then made a few motions to place her hair properly centered on the back of her head. John’s mind took a picture of a job well done.

“It looks very nice on you Miss Flora. The white of the ivory flatters your dark hair perfectly.” John was nearly at a loss for further flattery.

“I think I shall wear this the very next time I go into to town. If feels so light, as if it is not even there Mr. Jenkins. You must have a had a female assistant to select this beautiful piece for you Mr. Jenkins. Who was it?” Flora asked teasingly.

“Well let me just say, I pointed at it, a lady confirmed it was a good choice, and that was all the affirmation that I needed.”

“My mother will be very impressed, she is the only woman I know of with an ivory comb and she won’t let me borrow it. But not anymore John! I wonder if I should lend it to her if she may ask?” Gloating, Flora’s face was blushing.

“Miss Flora, I would be greatly honored if you would let me escort you to dinner and a moving picture show this Wednesday evening to come.”

John presented his most humble face as his smile was gone and replaced with uncertain anticipation of Flora’s response.

“Oh Mr. Irwin, I think that would be very pleasant and I accept your invitation.”

Flora reached over and softly covered John’s hand with her own. John was shocked and may have even pulled his arm back slightly, but could not remember. Flora removed her hand after a just a couple of seconds. Out of the corner of his eye, John saw something move behind the window inside the house, he turned his head briefly to see what it was, the corner of the lace curtain behind the window dropped fast. It was either Thelma or Mrs. Jenkins, or both of them being voyeurs of the matchmaking in progress on their front porch. The relief John felt at this moment could not be contained on his face. Flora smiled graciously upon seeing his seriousness change to that of the accomplished male that John now had become. This new ego boost was unusual for John, a first date, the approval of a stern mother, the kindness and welcoming of Thelma, the whole afternoon had gone too well, like a story that John had hoped it would be.

With the motions of a formal ceremony, John bid farewell to Flora with one leg on the step below the front porch. Jeremiah was bringing the horse around with perfect timing, as if someone advised him a few minutes before. Holding his hat John mounted up, Flora and Thelma stood together on the porch awaiting his departure with reverence. John switched his hat to his right hand and tipped it to Thelma and Flora, then downwards to Jeremiah who was chewing on something and smiling up at John:

“Kind ladies, until the pleasure is mine again. Jeremiah you are a good kid. You tell your dad for me, that I said you could come and see me at my office anytime you are in town, alright?”

“Sure thing Mr. Irwin!” Jeremiah smiled widely.

John trotted off through the Jenkins ranch gate and around a corner, and he looked back to ensure could not be seen. He smiled so largely that his face might have cracked, and he took off his hat and waved it at his face to dry his sweat, he nudged his horse with his heels to pick up the trot. Ten minutes later, after he was sure he was at least a mile away, he let out a “Yahoooo!” John felt his right hand, and to his mind it still felt warm where Flora had touched it. At this moment, on this road back to Salina, John Irwin the accountant for a railway, was not a kid in a candy store, he was not a sailor on leave, he wasn’t a miner who struck gold, because all of those metaphors were material, John was experiencing immaterial joy that he would never feel again in his lifetime. He was a miner, happy without gold, a kid happy outside the candy store, a sailor happy without leave. All their joy at once swelled up in him. He could hardly handle his horse, and he did crack his face, for his facial muscles were sore the next day.

With Flora gently on his right arm, John’s greatest fear upon entering Roches Dining Room on 9th Avenue, was that he would spill his food or his drink at dinner. Earlier that morning he had the maid at the boarding house starch his clothes beyond foldable amounts and so he looked as stiff as a board. Flora was of course her beautiful self, smiling and holding her head so poised and so proper. John felt truly privileged to be in her presence on this night. He wondered when and if the topic of his competition, Mr. Bleckley, would come up. He did not look forward to it. He hoped it would not even have to come up at all. Dinner was splendid, Flora had the fish, John the steak, Flora drank four glasses of white wine, John two whiskeys and a glass of iced water. After dinner, her arm under his and tipsy with alcohol and their bellies full, they walked a pleasant two blocks to the theatre.

The Salina Playhouse had been hosting the Edison Vitascope Theater for three weeks and the show was due to leave and go on to Wichita next week, not returning for another year. John had seen a flip-card motion picture machine in Chicago with his father but never a big picture on a wall, and never a moving picture that lasted more than ten or twenty seconds and actually told a story. Flora had seen the moving picture Kit Carson while at the Worlds Fair, in St. Louis the year before, and so she knew what to expect. They stopped on the sidewalk outside the theater to examine the full color poster displayed under glass: The Great Train Robbery! Featuring Bronco Billy as Butch Cassidy! In large bold letters across an image of cowboys with guns, chasing forward in a flurry of trail dust, guns blazing upwards. The dramatic subtitle read “A faithful duplication of the genuine “hold ups” made famous by various outlaw bands in the far west!”

Standing there at the poster, Flora’s eyes still affixed at the wonder of it all, John dropped his little surprise:

“You know, I have not told you but I used to work for the Kansas Pacific Railway at their office in Topeka right about the time that this very train was robbed.”

John pointed to the train shown on the poster.

“No, are you going to tell me you were on that train? Did you see Butch Cassidy and the evil Hole in the Wall Gang?”

Flora’s eyes lit up wanting a yes answer from John, like “yes I was in grave danger.” Or maybe she would have liked “yes I was shot nearly dead by Butch Cassidy.” No such luck for John this night:

“Oh no, not that close. I worked as a bookkeeper across the street from the offices of the Union Pacific Railway, they owned the tracks and that very train, and we leased tracks from them. The man who did the payroll, was on the train, and I used to have lunch with him now and again. We saw each other all the time!”

“Well go on, what did he say about Butch Cassidy and the Hole in the Wall Gang, were they mean, were they all gruffly and bearded and smelly and spitting tobacco and shooting people?” Flora was as excited now as John had hoped she would be.

“Nahh, I don’t really know, you see my whole office in Topeka was transferred out here to Salina, several years before this happened in, I think it was 1900. But it might have been me, had I gone to work for the Union Pacific!”

“Oh my John. That’s a terrifying thought.” Flora said with menacing glee.

“She called me John, by my first name, she’s really comfortable with me!” John observed with barely contained joy.

The moving picture before The Great Train Robbery was The Life of an American Fireman, which showed a house on fire from the inside of the house. John was amazed, the “ooohs and ahhhs,” from the audience lent an air of further excitement to the fires. Flora had cuffed her face to hide her sight from the danger more than once. Several children in the audience had started crying out for their mothers. An actress was rescued from within the flames by a dashing and tall fireman and the audience cheered and applauded towards the screen images. Instinctively John and Flora also applauded the brave fireman as if the image would appreciate the accolades. After the short film the lamps came on in the front of the stage and partially lit the inside of the theatre. The talking and exclaiming rose up from the audience immediately. Flora had tears in her eyes from the emotion of seeing the daring rescuers on screen. John smiled but restrained himself from making fun. Flora dried her tears. A young man wearing a funny red suit with a little round cap came walking down the isle carrying a large tray of goods:

“Get your delicious Molasses or Vanilla popcorn balls, roasted peanuts, one cent, one cent each, popcorn balls!

Just then another young man entered the theater with another tray:

“Lemonade, icy cold and oh so sweet, lemonade, one cent, glass of lemonade, one cent!”

“Miss Flora are you not too exhausted with emotion to enjoy a popcorn ball and some lemonade?” John had leaned slightly toward Flora and asked with some humor.

“Oh of course not Mr. Irwin, that film was surely dramatic, but not so that my desire for delicious candied goods is diminished! Why when I was in St. Louis, I escaped the escort of my father and mother and I found one of those steam carts and sat down and ate five of those popcorn balls. That’s a secret to kept between yourself and me. I’ll have a vanilla ball and a lemonade, thank you Mr. Irwin.”

The management allowed about ten minutes of vending, crunching and sipping in the audience while an automatic player piano to the side of the stage entertained with modern Rag; Chrysanthemum and the Palm Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin, a rather risqué choice of music for a small town like Salina. The feature film began and Bronco Billy was introduced by a frightened train passenger as the principle villain. Immediately John pulled his popcorn ball to his mouth, bit into it and the ball jumped out of his hand, and as if on its own locomotion, it rolled onto the floor, and wheeled itself a good ten feet down to the stage where it rested under the ledge of the front of the stage. John looked at Flora to see if she noticed, but it was too late, she was already looking at him and smiling like a Chesire cat at his accident. John and Flora looked forward and down at the popcorn ball, John considered getting up to get it, Flora whispered to him:

“Do not dare, please Mr. Irwin!”

Behind the black curtain of the projector booth a man watched for the gunshots with a drum and stick to add a fearful percussion to each gunshot. Bronco Billy shot the trains engineer and the audience made their “ohh and awww” sounds and a few men in the audience said “oucchh.” Flora looked at John and they exploded with inappropriate laughter at the silliness of John’s popcorn ball sitting by its lonesome self where it remained for the evening. At the very last scene of the film Bronco Billy looked right at the audience and the camera zoomed in for a close-up, Flora’s eyes were peeking through her fingers of both hands and Bronco Billy raised up the end of his revolver and pointed it right out at the audience, he then fired a shot and several people jumped out of their seats, children screamed, women screeched, men had forcefully pushed their backs into the rear of their chairs as if to back up from Billy’s menacing threat on screen.

The carriage John had rented for the night from the livery, was a handsome surrey with twin reflecting kerosene lamps, and John was very glad he had learned to drive one while living with the Worleys, because he had to back it up onto the avenue from the front of the playhouse. He had worried for the embarrassment he would incur should he tip it or even have to guide the horses out on foot. There was no doubt to John that his first evening out with Flora had gone well, she was all smiles and John felt as confident as a new umbrella in the rain.

On the road, the strong steed seemed to be leading them without guidance out to the Jenkins ranch, it seemed to remember the evenings task: leave the stable to pick-up the female human, wait in town, return the female human, go back to the stable for oats and water and sleep. Under the gray light of a half moon and the yellow flickering of the carriage lamps, the tall weeds and the sleeping spring flowers were barely visible in the brush on the sides of the road. On this straight road the horse needed no guidance, and so John took advantage to soak-in the beauty beside him. To not appear as the obsessed and swoon young man that he was, he pretended to be driving the coach, watching the road between his hearty drinking of the naturally intoxicating visual elixir beside him. Her dark and high trimmed eye brows seemed painted on by an Indian warrior for her to better scare her enemies. Her high cheek bones, her laughing muscles piled high with joy, shown a reddish tint even under this gray moonlight, her mouths cheeks were gentle indentations whats shadows pointed towards her mouth, their slope falling with ease to her jawbone which seemed designed to support her lovely full lips and a chin small and smooth that could barely be covered by a quarter dollar coin. Flora recanted the drama of the moving picture show and the romantic western imagery of Butch Cassidy and the train robbery scenes. John pretended to listen as her words became just sound in his ears. He imagined himself, a very tiny man, like Tom Thumb, riding a very small sled, sliding down Flora’s sharply pointed nose with its finely straight and narrow bridge, for a perfect ride, jumping over her perfect nostrils, resting on her perfect upper lip, where he would bask in the warmth of her breath and lay his head on her soft red and pillowed lips.

In front of the Jenkins home, John came around to Flora’s side of the carriage and helped her gently out of the seat.

“Mr. Irwin this has been a wonderful evening that I shall not forget possibly ever.”

“My dear Miss Flora, the pleasure of your company has been the highlight of my life thus far, second running to that popcorn ball situation, that is.”

“Mr. Irwin you don’t stop with the witticisms do you? I hope that you would come and pick me up this Saturday evening for dinner, if it’s not an imposition. I get so bored out here and I won’t cost you much, I promise.”

John was shocked but not dare show it, “she is asking me out!” He thought.

“Miss Flora I would be delighted to relieve you of any of the tedium you may be suffering out here. I’m rightly sure that my calendar is open for this coming Saturday evening.” John smiled.

“Wonderful John, good night now!”

Flora reached to John’s face and with her silk gloved hand she stroked the side of his face with delicacy, tickling John’s face with enticement while she held his eyes in contact with hers for a moment of precious time that in a solitary granted wish would stand still forever while the world passed them by. With that sweet touch, Flora stretched forward and upwards on her toes and kissed John on the side of his face, then without another word, she ran daintily towards the porch holding up her long skirt, up the stairs, through the front door and she was gone.

With joy of accomplishment John sang aloud to the horse and to the dark and empty road on the way back to Salina. He arrived at the livery stables at around ten o’clock, he helped the attending hand un-harness and put away the horse and tipped him a generous twenty-five cents. John was too restless and too excited to go home. In his mind it was morning and not ten-o’clock at night. Going back to his lonely room and possibly waking the relentless Mrs. Frattalone, who runs the boarding house like a prison warden, was too depressing. The champion’s courtship with new found confidence needed a drink. So he went to Quincys Saloon.

The saloon was mostly empty with a few men playing poker at one table in the corner and two men leaning at the bar. John joined the men at the bar and ordered a whiskey and a beer. He knew everyone and they all waved and said hello and good evening.

“What say you John?” Ron Bartlett the bartender asked, needing no answer.

“John.” Jeremy Lions to his right acknowledged John’s acquaintance.

“Where’s the accounting need to be done tonight John?” Shouted Smokey Smith from the poker table, smiling a grin.

John held his whiskey shot and swung around to face barroom and he leaned back against the bar and tipped his glass at each of his bar chums:

“Jeremy, Ron, Whitey, Felix, Mr. Rotter. All the accounting is right here tonight boys, you’re all accounted for!”

A uproarious laugh broke out that could only have existed after several hours of beer and whiskey consumption. John downed his glass and asked Ron for another. He laid out a one dollar bill for Ron to change. Leaning forward on the bar John heard boot-steps of someone walking up to him on his left from the doorway, he stood straight upwards and turned his head, and Ernest Bleckley was standing too close for social comfort and looking him right in the face.

“I know you. You’re the accountant fellow for the Kansas Pacific are you not?”

Bleckley’s tone was not cordial, not really interested in John’s workplace. His eyes were watery, his hair was uncombed, his vest was open, his tie was missing, and his shirttail was coming out of his trousers. He swayed back and forth like a cat-tail in a pond on a breezy day, as he awaited an answer from John. John knew this moment would come but was taken aback by the immediacy of Bleckley’s intervention.

“That is correct sir and to whom am I addressing?”

John feigned a friendly interest trying to smile. He knew damn well who was facing him, but also knew they had never before met. Bleckley’s tone was accusatory and belligerent:

“I think you know who I am. I’m the man who had his girl stolen out from under him by a railroad employee, I’m Ernest Bleckley. You strolled my girl through town tonight and I saw you.”

Bleckley was slurring his words with “s,” sounds like a snakes hiss. John was not certain how to handle this confrontation. Ron Bartlett the bartender stood by his beer taps with his hands hidden below his waist. John surmised quickly that whatever he might say to Bleckley, would not be enough to calm him down. Quiet mannered talking would be interpreted as patronizing and further incense the jealous drunk. If there was one rule of drinking John has learned it is “never argue with a drunken man.” Bleckley was out for trouble and there was little John could do to avoid it.

“Mr. Bleckley I certainly did not intend to do you any malice. I merely offered Miss Jenkins a choice of suitors. She is a fine and intelligent young woman and her parents have allowed her to choose her own suitor between the two of us. Again, I mean you no harm sir.”

John had taken the calming route in the conversation, expecting little good result from Bleckley. John’s words of placation did nothing good as Bleckley became angrier.

“Well we’ll see about that railroad worker! She was mine first, she goes with me, everybody knows it, I treat her good.”

Dramatically attempting to overcome his inability to converse with John, Bleckley pointed straight at John’s face with a threatening and shaky index finger. John then shunned Bleckley by turning his back towards him and looking back to the corner of the barroom. Feeling dismissed by John’s behavior, Bleckley turned around and started heading for the doorway, Ron Bartlett remained in place, John was hoping that Ron’s hands were on his shotgun, just in case. Still with his back turned to Bleckley, John picked up his second glass of whiskey and downed it quickly. At the saloon door-way, Bleckley turned around towards John, reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out a two shot Derringer and with his hands shaking, aimed quickly at John’s head.

“She won’t be able to choose you railroad man!” He yelled spitting.

The derringer began to aim anywhere in the vicinity of the rear of John’s head. Ron was caught off guard, he had began pouring a refill for someone. Whitey Smith jumped upwards out of his chair at the poker table and jolted forward at Bleckley. Bleckley saw Whitey coming and aimed the Derringer at him. Too late for Bleckley, Whitey lunged forward and pushed Bleckley’s gun-arm downward and away from himself. At that moment John saw Bleckley’s gun and turned into him and started running forward and to the right. With Whiteys hands wrapped around Bleckley’s arm and unable to aim well at John, Bleckley fired his gun twice before being tackled to the floor of the bar-room. John collapsed and grabbed his leg, as he saw blood saturating his pant leg. Ron Bartlett came around the bar with his shotgun and stood with his foot on Bleckley’s neck while pointing his shotgun down at him. Everyone in the bar was now standing, three men came quickly over to John, several men stood around Ron, Whitey and Bleckley. Recognizing a familiar situation, Ron Bartlett yelled out orders to his now immediately sober patrons:

“Jeremy go find the sheriff! Whitey I’ll hold Mr. Courage here, you go behind the bar and get some clean towels and see to John’s wound. Quickly!”

At seventy and some years old, Ron Bartlett had been a Sergeant in the Union Army and still serves in the Kansas militia. Taking charge in a crisis seemed natural to him. He was a leader among bartenders in Kansas.

John had turned pale and was sweating in panic. Whitey got him the cushion from the piano stool to rest under his head, then he took out a knife and cut open John’s right pant-leg. There was enough blood to make a good sized puddle on the pine board floor. Whitey tried to console and calm John.

“The bastard got you in you’re gimp leg John, you lucked-out. In fact it looks like he hit you right where you had the break from before!”

Whitey smiled down at John who, in shock still was able to smile back and nodded in agreement. Whitey held John’s shoulder with a firm and reassuring hand.

Bleckley, his head pressed into the floor by Ron’s boot was cursing like a cowboy so badly that Ron ordered two men out to the front, to make sure no women came near the profanity. Ron looked over at the bunch huddled around John and gave new directions:

“We need to take him straight over to Doc Tobys place. Heres what to do, take that towel and twist it tight and wide around the wound. Whitey, take off your pants belt and tighten around his mid thigh to slow the blood. Take a table chair and lay it down on its back next to him, lift him up gently and place him laying on the chair while handling that leg with kid gloves. Get a bootlace or something to tie that leg securely, but gently, to the chairs right leg, then four of you carry him over to Doc Toby. Keep the leg straight below his knee!”

The bullet that hit John had passed through his right calf muscle but not after shattering a large mass of bone from his upper tibia approximately four inches below his right knee. John held a bottle of whiskey on his chest and drank from it six times, as the men from the saloon carried him on the make-shift stretcher to Doc Toby’s office, three blocks away. Just before reaching the door to the doctor’s office the pain began to set in as a searing burn whats center felt like the site of a sledge hammer impact, and his entire right leg felt as though it was placed in a blacksmiths cauldron.

Doctor Toby was in his bathrobe and slippers, reading in bed with his wife fast asleep beside him, when the bell hanging next to his front door rang with a sustained clanging of urgency, and he heard a familiar call: “Doc, Doc!” Fumbling for his glasses he folded a thick book and got out of his bed to hurry down the stairway, griping the railing hand over hand, to prevent his heavy body from falling forward. He unlatched his door to reveal four panicked men holding John in a wooden chair laid backwards.

“Bring him in boys, to the left, in there, but him on the table, one of you put a hand on that wound, keep steady pressure on it. Don’t let the leg bend.”

“Ernest Bleckley shot him with a derringer in Quincys about five minutes ago Doc.” Whitey still in a panic informed Doc Toby.

“This is John Irwin from the railroad is it not?” Doc Toby asked.

Doc Toby looked down at John’s face now in a state of delirium and pale. John’s eyes opened a little wider to see Doc Toby, he lifted his head a bit and replied:

“He hit my gimp leg Doc, he got a lucky shot the bastard . . .” John mumbled something more but it was inaudible.

“John I’m going to give you some ether to make you sleep while I work on this wound.” Doc Toby tried to explain to John who was fast going into shock.

“You men can go on home now. I’ve got this under control, I think he’s going to live just fine but I may have to set his leg. You all did real good getting him here fast and careful. I’m sure he’ll appreciate all you greatly when he has come around.”

Doc began washing the wound and adjusted his overhead reflector. John’s blood, diluted with soapy water, began flowing into a large metal pan under the operating table. Mrs. Toby arrived in her nightgown carrying a lamp and began assisting immediately.

John awoke, in his own bed, two and one half days later. In less than one minute he felt the pain creep into his consciousness and he quickly recalled the nightmarish event prior to his slumber.

“Oh sweet Jesus. Damn!” He spoke out in disgust to his room empty of anyone who might hear him curse.

John looked at his leg tied-up to a metal stand that stood from the floor on each side of his bed and bent itself over his bed like a clothes rack. Two wires with hooks embedded into his plaster cast suspended his leg inanimate at a slight angle upwards above the bed. Beside him on the night table were towels, a pitcher, a wash basin, a book whats title he could not see and a tall brown bottle of medicine with a fancy label. A chair had been pulled up and facing his bed. Someone had been by his side during his sleep. It looked to be afternoon but John lacked a watch or a clock on his wall. He waited for what seemed to be a half hour and he became keenly aware of waves of pain traveling up his leg. Then someone knocked on his room door, and without waiting for an answer, opened the door.

“Why Mr. Irwin you have come around! I’m Sally Muir and your boss hired me to see to you. How are you feeling?” Are you hungry?”

Sally announced herself adding two too many questions for the just conscious John as she strolled into the room holding a tray of food and drink. Immediately John felt embarrassed and grabbed his covers to pull them up to his neck. Sally looked to be a young teenager and she wore a white bonnet, and a tailor-made woolen dress with an apron, and a white skirt that dragged across the floor. Sally approached the bedside closely and looked at John’s face to closely examine his condition. John peered upwards into her smiling face.

“How do you Sally. Good to meet you.” John replied less than enthusiastically.

“I had not really thought about food, but I guess I am hungry, I know that I have a great deal of pain and my leg itches like the dickens.” John said.

“Well your breakfast is right here and I’ll help you with everything. Doc Toby will be here later today to look in on you. This bottle of medicine, Doc Toby says, will allow you to deal with the pain.”

Sally picked up the tall brown bottle and read the label to John:

“Dr. Jacobs Guaranteed Laudanum. For instant relief of aches and pains and general discontent. Also good for dyspepsia, consumption and irritability of the mind. Imported by Sears and Roebuck Co. Inc.. Then down at the bottom it says to take one or two tablespoons, depending on the size of the patient, two to three times per day, for best results.”

John rolled his eyes in disbelief. To John’s sense of memory, less than an hour ago he was feeling like he was the king of Kansas. He was tipping back a whiskey and congratulating himself on a seemingly perfect first date with Flora Jenkins. But now he is immobilized in his room, in intense pain and receiving a snake oil advertisement from a thirteen-year-old nurse.

“Well, give me two tablespoons I guess, I’ve got to do something about this pain and it is too early in the day to get drunk.”

Sally poured him his medicine and spooned it into his mouth as if John had no arms or eyes to do it himself. John did not correct her, he was too disparaged to complain or correct the good intentioned young Sally. Sally pulled from her apron a notepad and a pencil and set it on the nightstand. She then took John’s temperature with a heavy glass tube under his tongue, red lettering on the end of the tube indicated it was an ‘Accurate Thermo-Meter,’ John read as he waited for Sally to remove it. Sally wrote down the number on the notepad.

“Now let’s eat shall we?” Chipper Sally announced as if there was going to be a choice to eat or not.

“After breakfast Sally I am going to need to, umm bathe if you gather my meaning.” John stated and looked to Sally’s face for understanding.

John intently hoped that she did understand and would not need elaboration, but Sally paused as if puzzled.

“Mr. Irwin we cleaned you up right well two days ago when we brought you in, you should be fine for at least two or three more days, after all it is not as if you will be perspiring yourself. Oh! I’m sorry Mr. Irwin. Yes. I will bring that low table over there, to the left side of the bed and leave it there beside you, with fresh hot water and a chamber pot before I leave with the breakfast dishes. Pardon my misunderstanding Mr. Irwin.”

“There, she had done it,” John thought. She had caused John to be discussing his bathroom functions with a stranger, worse a young girl who is somebody’s daughter whom he has never even met. John recalled another John from one of his favorite literary stories; Little John was a fat fryer from Nottingham who ate whole chickens and was good in a fight with a quarter-staff. But now in reality, Humble John was a helpless man in a boarding house, incapacitated with his cast in a leg who has to defecate in a porcelain pot to be carried off by a thirteen year old girl with an annoying overly chipper attitude.

Later, John was distracting himself from the pain by reading one of his many books while his back and neck were propped up by possibly ten pillows. He was finding his state of mind to be pleasantly altered by the Laudanum elixir, whats only drawback was that he was unable to stay awake for more than an hour at a time. Doc Toby had stopped by in the late afternoon and informed him that the leg had to be reset during surgery. He had brought good news; the calf muscle will repair itself given he stay off the leg for at least two months and the bone was reset on the old break from when he was sixteen years old, so it was very likely he could walk or even run like a normal man again. John was delighted, even through the pain in his leg, that his gait might return to normal, that he would no longer be referred to as the man with the gimp leg. He hated the term ‘gimp.’ He used it himself and still hated it.

On Saturday night, at around eight o’clock, in the pitch dark night, after four days in bed, Flora tip-toed up the second floor hallway and then knocked on John’s door and entered slowly as if not knowing what to expect to see.

“Oh Mr. Irwin it is so good to see you are up and reading.”

“Miss Jenkins!” John closed his book and pushed himself upward in bed.

Flora was dressed rather formally, carrying a beautiful white flowered hat at her side, white kid gloves, and draped around her shoulder was a black leather cloak she held closed around her neck and wrapped tight and held high near a vested and bustled array from her blouse. Her black boots were barely visible as they stepped forward out of the bottom of her skirt and tapped a sultry wood on wood sound with seemingly perfect rhythm, as she came into the room as if choreographed.

“Oh, Mr. Irwin this is my fault. I am riddled with guilt for my neglectful and selfish ways that resulted in this calamity which nearly took your life.” Her apology was overly sincere as she shook her head left and right.

Flora did not let John interrupt her confession. She unwrapped her cloak, hung it on the hat rack by the door, she pulled off her gloves while walking to John’s bedside, and she pulled out the chair and sat herself gently down. John was surprised that she was there at all, wordless and in awe at her appearance and of the beauty that has so rapidly changed the dull and dry, sad and dark, room of recovery and persistent pain, into what might be a brightly lit ballroom on a Saturday night.

“I have not stopped thinking of you since the morning after it happened and our hand, Jeff, reported to us the whole event. Ernest Bleckley and I had been going out for almost a year and I should have told you all about him. I under estimated his civility. I thought he would be a gentlemen about it. I was going to tell you about him on the Saturday after. This is my fault. The blame lies solely in my selfishness, my wanting, and my lust for you John.” Flora’s eyes were tearing and looking to John for acceptance.

“Lust for me! Holy cow!” John’s mind, and body, was suddenly alert.

“Flora I knew about Bleckley and I took the chance, I made the decision to have to deal with him. I knew that you were making a choice of suitors and that your parents granted you that privilege. So you see, it’s not really you that is at fault, it could not be, it’s mine. I guess a real gentleman would have spoken to Ernest Bleckley first.”

“Mr. Irwin your modesty and humble words warm my heart and I thank you for your graciousness in this state of being you are suffering through. You are a very sweet man.”

Flora reached over John’s chest and grabbed his hand wrapping her fingers over and around his. Opposing his natural inclination to be shy and timid, John covered her hand with his, he looked into Flora’s sincere and sorrowful eyes, and the two exchanged several moments of silent understanding. Flora’s guilt became a sense of responsibility in repose, and her compassion for the wounded John became empathy for the wounded person that existed behind John’s eyes. John saw a young woman entitled to the same number of mistakes that anyone would be who is learning love, learning the often awkward dance of society and courtship.

“Oh John.”

“Thank you for coming to see me Flora. I have not stopped thinking of you.”

Suddenly there was a hard knocking on the door to John’s room and a demanding womans voice from the hallway outside.

“Mr. Irwin. Mr. Irwin do you have a woman in there? I thought a heard a woman come into the house. You know there is no fornication allowed here Mr. Irwin!”

It was Mrs. Frattalone the warden, the great plains oppressor of men. John didn’t answer at first. Flora applied pressure to John’s hand in fear of being caught. Flora covered her mouth as if to prevent words from coming out.

“I run a clean house here Mr. Irwin. The cat-house is two blocks over and three blocks up Mr. Irwin.!”

“Flora get in that closet back there and hide behind my raincoat, quietly, walk very slowly!” John whispered very softly with urgency.

John and Flora were now reduced by rules to the level of children sneaking around to not be caught. As soon as Flora softly closed the closet door behind her, John answered Mrs. Frattalone:

“Oh, umm, is that you Mrs. Frattalone, come in the door is open.” John said doing a poor job of acting innocent.

Mrs. Frattalone opened the door and put one foot inside, she looked left and right and just behind the door.

“Oh. Well, I’m sorry Mr. Irwin. It may have been one of the other men. Of course you wouldn’t have a woman up here, not in your condition. Can I get you anything Mr. Irwin?” She said apologetically, as she backed out of the room to the hallway.

“No apology is needed Mrs. Frattalone, you keep a well house here and I do expect you to uphold the rules. You are very kind but I am doing just fine at the moment. I’ll be falling to sleep soon.”

Mrs. Frattalone went down the hallway to the next room and repeated her diatribe to the next boarder, same knocks, same words, same directions to the Salina brothel, continuing to seek out the owner of the soft boot-steps that entered the house ten minutes prior. Flora slowly came out of John’s closet, shaky, excited, draped by pillow cases, and whispering:

“Oh my John, I had not even considered I would not be allowed in here, silly me, of course women are not allowed in here!”

“I thought, when I saw you, that she had made an exception because I had been shot and all, that you could come up and visit.” John said.

“Oh no, I just walked in the front door. But now there is a far greater problem John. How on Gods green Earth am I going to get out of here?”

John took a hefty swallow of Laudanum straight from the bottle and contemplated that question. Flora went to her handbag at the floor and reached in.

“I almost forgot. I brought you a gift. It’s called science fiction. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. Jules Verne. I think you will like it, my father brought two copies back from Topeka, this one he wants you to have.”

“This is wonderful thank you, and be sure to thank him for me, my old books I have read over and over. This is wonderful. I think I know how to get you out of here unnoticed. Outside my left window is an iron fire ladder, all you have to do is stand in the window, climb onto it and ride it down, it stops about six feet off the ground so you will have to hang off the end and let yourself drop the rest of the way.” John said in a very low voice.

“My horse is out front, what if she sees me mounting and riding off? She’ll know it was me in here.” Flora whispered back.

“Well, she mostly sits in the back of the house near the kitchen, so it is not likely she will be watching the front, besides it is a dark night enough that she would not easily identify you, even if she does see you.” John assured her.

Flora leaned over John and placed her hand on his chest. Her perfume enveloped John like a mystical vapor meant to cast a spell. He looked into her brown eyes by the lamplight as she smiled a content look of a wife, or of a mother, she then pressed her face against his whiskered cheek, then turned in towards him and softly kissed his face. Quickly she stood up, as if for fear, of any further contact of intimate nature. Flora softly retrieved her cloak, her hat and her handbag then went to the side window of the room.

“Easy at first, it might be stuck, push on the wood gently.” John warned.

The three foot wide window frame creaked upwards with resistance, but Flora lifted slowly until it was fully opened. She leaned her head out and looked down to the alley below, she looked left and saw the fire ladder, she then dropped her hat, her handbag, and her cloak to the bricked alleyway below. She stood up straight and reached behind her neck and unfastened the press buttons that were restraining her neck in a giraffe-like pose. She rolled both of her bustled long blouse sleeves upwards until they were tight around her upper arms. She reached out to grab the edge of the ladder and stepped into the window. In a smooth and seemingly experienced motion she swung her right leg out and onto the ladder, then she pulled her left leg through the window and onto the ladder. Flora was now gone from John’s view and the window was wide open. Flora whispered loudly from outside his room, hanging to the iron ladder:

“John, it is not going down! What do I do now?”

“You have to jump on it a bit to start it down, be sure to close my window or I’ll have a shattered leg and pneumonia!”

“Right.”

Flora jumped a small jump to jostle the fire ladder loose. With that the ladder abruptly dropped about five feet and stopped six feet short of the alley. A tearing sound was heard as the ladder fell into place, a long tear of cloth, then a long silent pause. Flora waited at the bottom of the ladder still a daunting distance from the brick alley floor below. John lay suspended in anxiety waiting to hear from her, his ears intensely listening for a sign of Mrs. Frattalone being disturbed by the noise of the ladder, or better the sound of Flora returning up the ladder to close the window before she leaves. Flora was not to be seen nor heard. She was in a state of embarrassment and social shock, clinging to the ladder and looking upwards at a yard and a half of cloth, that was hooked to an iron wheel that was protruding from the brick wall next to the fire ladder, cloth that used to be the whole of her skirt. At first she could not fathom the reality she had placed herself in, hanging off the side of a building, in her knickers and showing her buttocks and legs to anyone who might be walking on Country Club Avenue. It was beyond doubt the most embarrassing moment Flora might ever experience in her lifetime. Her thoughts raced in panic.

“Oh no, what to do, what to do, I can’t yell to John for help, what if it gets worse when I climb back up, what if my knickers are also tearing off! Oh lord in heaven why did I do this?”

John is now beginning to panic, “did she fall, is she hurt, what if she is unconscious?” John thought of the worst scenarios as he waited a short eternity for any sound or word of Flora’s condition from outside his wide open window.

“It was a stupid idea, a woman climbing down a fire escape at night, climbing out a window, a lady of her caliber, I am a fool to have suggested this! Maybe if she gets on with it soon, I can start reading this book. Dammit I have to piss again! Where is she?”

She had no choice, Flora had to close John’s window because it was a cool night and he would surely catch cold in his weakened condition. She began her ascent slowly, being careful to place her boot bottoms on the rungs and not to catch her heels. She reached the window’s bottom height and with one hand she rigorously tore the snagged end of her skirt off of the iron wheel that guided the side of the ladder, her skirt now fell below her like an advertisement banner for John’s room that may have read “ . . come all - see the tantalizing half naked woman on the side of a building at John Irwin’s!” She leaned in to see John whose face was affixed towards the window waiting to see her.

“My God Flora what happened, are you well?” John whispered with great relief.

“Yes but I’m half naked out here, my skirt ripped nearly all the way off! Is there anything, like a bedsheet maybe, that I could wrap around myself for the ride home?” Flora said, her voice trembling and hushed in desperation.

“Mrs. Frattalone takes everything when she changes the linens, I’ve got nothing.”

Suddenly a knock at John’s door, it was Mrs. Frattalone again, back to inquire about the noise:

“Mr. Irwin, Mr. Irwin there was a strange noise up here!”

The door knob began to turn, Flora quickly disappeared from the window and leaned herself away from the windows view, hugging the ladder closely to reduce her visible profile. Mrs. Frattalone strolled in abruptly without asking permission, glancing left and right looking for a woman without even looking at John, who by this time was noticeably sweating from the tension of the escapade.

“Land sakes Mr. Irwin I could just swear that I heard a scraping noise and a womans voice on this floor!”

She pronounced as if to excuse the invasion of John’s privacy. Immediately she spotted the wide open window and without hesitation swiftly crossed the room, closed it and locked it.

“You’ll catch your death of the consumption Mr. Irwin. Was this window open before? I had not even noticed it!” She turned to John for an answer in seriousness.

“Oh uhh, young Sally had opened it before she left tonight, I umm, I must have forgotten to ask her to shut it. Thank you very much Mrs. Frattalone, you are so kind.” John replied and forced himself to smile.

“Well I must be getting too old, because apparently I am hearing things that do not exist. I’ll take that chamber pot for you and bring you another. Do you want an extra blanket while I am going down the stairway?”

“I’m very comfortable Mrs. Frattalone, thank you kindly, but I am warm.”

Suddenly Mrs. Frattalone was cordial as if nothing was wrong. John thought this puzzling since she had seemed so determined to find the mystery woman only a minute prior. She came close to John at his bedside and leaned over to his face, she then whispered:

“If she is still out there hanging on in ten minutes or so, I’ll send for the fire department, they’ll get her down safely. Good night Mr. Irwin.”

Mrs. Frattalone was nobody’s fool. John could think of no response. She gave John a corner of her mouth smile as if to say, “you mischievous youngsters!” She closed the door behind her and turned down the hallway lamps and went downstairs.

Flora climbed down several rungs of the ladder watching as the remains of her skirt inched closer to the street level. Then she heard the sound of footsteps, a couple was walking towards the building on the sidewalk. Flora became paralyzed with fear of embarrassment. She held herself very still on the ladder and stared straight at the bricks on the wall in front of her, hiding her face from view of the street. The couple walking towards her were engaged in conversation and this was a relief to Flora, for they may be too distracted to look upwards and down the alley-way. They passed without incident and Flora paused to catch her breath before letting her self drop to the alley below. Her skirt could not be salvaged for use of any kind, it was ripped and shredded in three directions, she peeled if off from her blouse and tossed it aside. Her horse was tied directly in front of the boarding house a mere twenty feet away, which might as well have been a mile. A street lamp was illuminating her horse well enough for it to be seen from a block away or more. It was now nearly nine o’clock and the lamps should be getting turned down soon. But the town’s lamp lighter was no where to be seen. Flora stood in the alley in her knickers and boots, her hat on her head, her handbag in hand, cloak around her shoulders, clutching the corner of the building and spying her horse. Her face was full of worry as if staring at her own future death. Five minutes passed and she sprung out for the hitching post, holding down her hat as she ran right out to the street to avoid the wooden planked porch of the boarding house, and made a rightward turn for her horse and she mounted swiftly, throwing her half-naked leg upward and over like a cowboy, she reached for the reins, but they were not there. She had forgotten to untie her horse from the hitching post. Quickly dismounting and in three swift steps she reached the post and unwrapped the reins. Throwing the reins over the horses head and onto the saddle she mounted again, her leg flesh flashing up into the night for any bystander to see. She grabbed the reins. The evening breeze swept down the street and blew her hat clear off and she watched it hop with the wind, thirty feet way, up into the air above the sidewalk and one hundred feet away to rest on the top of an azalea bush. If Salina were a larger city she could leave the hat right there in the bushes and some lucky lady would have a free hat. But Salina is small enough that the hat would be recognized and reunited with its owner with little effort. The Salina Courier had a Lost and Found area on page three. The Lutheran Church where she attended has only fifty or so parishioners, and for certainty, all of the women there would know whose hat it was, one of them probably lives on Country Club Avenue, and may even find the hat. She will have to retrieve the hat, under the lamplight, half naked, on horseback. Flora pulled a rein strong and kicked her horses rear sides swiftly and galloped towards the hat in the azalea bushes, she rode up onto the sidewalk, past one house with lights on inside, past a second house, she bent over low to hide her head, she readied to grab the hat, she reached out her arm and snatched the brim so fast she could hear the sound of wind inside the hat. She rode into the night, embarrassed, her heart throbbing. She would feel no relief until she reached her own bed and pillow. Four miles from the ranch and the horse ride of Flora’s life was coming to an end, and she was beginning to feel safe, she could see the turn off to Topeka Road that she would pass by, marking the third and final leg of the trip back from Salina. Then lamps came off of Topeka Road, it was a Model T flatbed, heading south and coming towards her. She had no choice, the area she was in was wooded, and there was a drainage ravine on both sides, making an escape on horseback in the night dangerous for her and the horse. She had to pass right by him. The road was not wide enough for two wagons, one always has to pull over should two meet in opposition, and it was Flora’s hope that the driver of the Ford would see her soon enough to hug the side of the road and let her by safely. Flora let out a “Yahh!” She galloped quickly towards the Ford and indeed the driver saw her and pulled over enough to let her gallop past.

The following Monday edition of the Salina Courier had an interesting one inch by two inch column story on page two, down low on the left: “Lady Godiva Seen Riding North Saturday Eve.” Flora had been immortalized in print. When John read the news, he laughed with glee so hard that he shook his wounded leg in its cast, sending pain straight to his mind, but it was worth it. On that following Monday morning, Mrs. Frattalone sat in her kitchen and upon reading the story, spit out her tea all over her kitchen table and had a hearty laugh. She cut out the clipping and hung it on her ice box.

Three weeks after the shooting, John chose to abstain from the Laudanum elixir, but with great difficulty. Doc Toby had hired a Chinaman to come by and he had provided John with a strange and putrid tea which he drank approximately three times a day while going through the extreme discomfort of the absence of Laudanum in his body. Like millions of drunks who swear by God while vomiting out their insides that they will never drink again, during his withdraw from the drug, John promised himself he would never use it again no matter how much pain he was in.

Four weeks after the shooting John was no longer bed bound with his cast in suspension. He was getting up, hopping around and using a crutch, clumsily. His cast was so heavy and awkward it was still too dangerous for him to finesse the stairway of the boarding house, or the stairway at the railroad office. John’s boss, Mr. Auburn, the owner of the Kansas Pacific Railway Company, was determined to keep John’s job ready for him. He would stop by John’s room every couple of days and bring him receipts and invoices and the bookkeeper’s entries from the previous business day, to balance the books while in his room.

Over the course of ten weeks Flora had returned to John’s bedside many times. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins were under the impression she was attending choral practice two nights a week at the Church. Flora would leave her home dressed proper and in the stable, each night before riding into town, she would change into riding chaps and a vest and suit coat, and she would put up her hair and put on a mans straw hat. Flora’s years of kindness to her little brother had proven valuable. Jeremiah would help, watching out for her parents and see that the view from the front gate was clear then he would signal Flora to safe passage. Flora’s nighttime visits were the saving grace to John’s sanity while he was trapped in his room.

It was Flora’s eighth clandestine visit to his room that John would always remember fondly and privately, with a smile and a twinkle in his eyes. John wound up the new phonograph machine purchased for him two weeks prior by Ernest Bleckley’s father Theodore Bleckley, in an obvious attempt to alleviate his guilt. John gracefully accepted it because he had wanted one. John selected one of five cylinders he had received with the phonograph, a piano rag song labeled: “Solace, A Mexican Serenade, by Scot Joplin.” John dragged his cast leg back to his bed and reclined with pillows under his back. He checked his pocket watch to see how much closer to eight o’clock he was than he was three minutes before. Eight o’clock was the time that Flora had been consistently arriving to his four walled and two windowed restricted world. It was still light out as summer had arrived in Kansas. Flora would trot east on Country Club Avenue with her head down to hide her feminine facial features. She appeared to be just another salesperson or trader or supplier leaving town or heading to Topeka. She learned to tie her horse to a tree two houses down in front of a small park and that perhaps people would think it had belonged visitors at the house. She arrived under the fire ladder at one minute after eight, and pulled a five foot horse whip out of the belt of her pants. She flung the leather upward with expertise and swiftly caught the last rung with the end of her whip and it wrapped around tight, she pulled down the ladder with a consistent smooth, single motion. John put down his watch after checking for the third time in a couple of minutes, he heard the ladder in the background of the piano music from the phonograph, “she is here!” He cupped his hand over his mouth and exhaled to smell his breath. He brushed back the part of his hair with his fingers and pulled the sides of his thin mustache, twisting the ends with his thumbs and forefingers to shape and matte the upwards curl on both sides. The ladder began to shake as Flora climbed up. The window had been open all day in preparation for the night. Keeping his cast leg on the bed, John leaned over the side of his bed and stretched to reach the bottom shelf of the nightstand, he pushed aside a three inch thick book of The Collected Works of William Shakespeare to reveal a green wine bottle and two glasses. Mrs. Frattalone was a known Temperance advocate, rule number two at the boarding house, and so John did all in his power to conceal the “Devils Fluids.” On the nightstand he set up the miniature bistro he and Flora had become accustomed to. She entered with her right leg first, swinging her body through with grace.

“My God woman you are late. I thought the Church Chorus finally caught you!”

“Then I would have to sing, what a horrible thought!” Flora said while smiling and flush with fresh air.

She pulled off the straw hat and pulled out her hair comb and her gorgeous raven hair fell down and bounced to a soft landing below her shoulders. Flora let her suit coat and vest drop on the floor beside John’s bed and she gently climbed onto his bed, her leg covering his and her breasts pressed against his side, she caressed his chest in circles, and teased at his mustache. John reached over and pulled the cork on the wine and poured two half glasses and handed one to Flora. Flora sipped the wine slowly, without even a small noise, without a splash or a bubble, the red wine barely reached the supple shores of her upper lip when the nectar kissed her red pillowed flesh, then receded back into the glass as if waltzing together.

“Mmmm. There is a bit difference from the wine the other night. Better I think.”

“This is called Rosae, it’s a Spanish wine, the Mexicans drink it a lot.” John delightedly looked into her eyes.

“I brought you another book.” Flora grinned and watched John’s reaction.

Flora produced a small book as if by magic from underneath her, in her concealed right hand. Flora likes timing and surprises and perfect moments with right words. John plays the game well, it comes from being well read, the drama and action is always conducted with perfect timing in a good book, no awkward breaks in book-world, no stuttering, no inappropriate noises or smells. Flora wants life to emulate that, John knows and tries his best. Flora held up Mark Twains The Tale of a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court, and she smiled.

“You wanted this one. Am I right?”

“Yes, yes, most definitely. I have always wanted to read this, thank you dear!”

They kissed softly, John holding the back of Flora’s head with a Mark Twain novel while holding his glass of wine in his other hand. Their faces pulled away from each other and they relished the texture of lifting away from the surfaces of each others moist lips, then to press them together again and enjoy the comfort of softness and the warmth of each others breath as if presented as gifts to each others cheeks. Flora pulled back to look into John’s eyes and she grasped his breast muscles to push up and away from John, over him her face turned from lustful to serious. John sensed she had news or that something was bothering her.

“John I can longer stand it. I don’t think I can wait another month, or another week or another hour.” Flora confessed without taking her eyes from John’s.

“Darling, what do you mean?” John inquired.

John knew what she was feeling but he was afraid of this moment. He had never been in love and he had never been physical with a woman, before Flora. He had never even kissed a girl or a woman before. His sexual education had been limericks and dirty jokes he had overheard from the men at the Cattle Exchange when he was a teenager. Sex had been a vague idea, a mystery to be disclosed inevitably in his future, an enigma with images for clues, with innuendo to imply what steps are to be taken and when.

“Oh John you know how I feel. I am burning John. I feel a fire that can not be satisfied. John, just the smell of you, of your clothes, your soap even, make me mad with desire. It feels right John, it feels natural, so I’m not afraid John. It is as if I have waves of water within me, down low, and they flow towards you, each wave presses against my lower area from deep inside, for you. I can not ride my horse home, after seeing you, without succumbing to some sort of delirious tremors, several times before arriving home. We have been together too closely to avoid what must be John.”

John’s heart began racing faster than the four hooves of a horse in gallop. He sensed the inevitable. Flora began to move her left hand up and down his bare torso, squeezing his right breast with each upward stroke.

“Would I go to hell for having sexual intercourse before marriage, was there a hell, was there a god? Oh shut up John with the Jesus shit! If not, why not go ahead and indulge the body? What about her parents? Would Mr. Jenkins hunt me down and kill me? What if I get wounded again and not killed. Ouch! What if Bleckley escapes from the sheriff and hunts me down and shoots me again! Would I have to learn to be a gunslinger? Hmm, that wouldn’t be so bad. What if Flora chooses someone else? After all she has already changed her mind once for me!”

Flora’s hands quickly distracted John’s mind from the wondering doom saying that was leading him down a path marked by a sign that read “No Pleasure Just Ahead.” All things were just right, like Flora liked it, timing, atmosphere, like a novelette. John had no excuses except the ones that only sound irrational when spoken aloud and not through the mind. Maybe it was the ragtime music playing over and over again on the Edison cylinder, or the breeze of the summer night coming through the room, the safety afforded by Mrs. Frattalone being cleverly fooled by their antics, or was she? The wine warmed their thoughts, and the air warmed their bed and Flora Jenkins needed no further assistance in getting warm.

John never remembered the shaky nervous undressing and the self conscious repositioning of the hands and body, the excessive sweating, or the accidental outburst of moaning that scared them both into thinking they had been caught. He would always forget that he fell out of the bed that night, with a thud on the floor from his cast that caused them to wait in silence and anticipation for the dreaded Mrs. Frattalone, for ten minutes, before continuing their interplay in relative safety. John would remember that Flora spilled the wine all over the floor and it took a week to get the smell out of the room. John would eventually forget that Mrs. Frattalone had confronted him three days later in the hallway, in front of two other men, about that “peculiar stain that wouldn’t come out,” of his bed sheet.

John would never forget that Joplin song again, because by the thirty-second time it played that night, he desperately wanted it off, but did not want to leave Flora’s embrace for a technicality. John would never in his lifetime forget the site of Flora naked and above him, her back arched upwards, her breasts separated and free, her hair wild and wispy, her shadow in the lamplight casting an erotic dance on the ceiling above her. He would never forget the feel of her soft womanly flesh, rounded, warm and smooth under his fingers that seemed a perfect fit for his hands. John would never forget the way that Flora wrapped her arms under his and grabbed his shoulders from behind and with her lower region nearly on John’s stomach, pushed herself downward on his hips, over and over again onto John as if attempting to break his private parts. Never will John forget the way she soon quivered through her entire body, squeezing his groin with her damp thighs as if to smash a walnut, and shaking like a leaf on a tree ready to fall in a hard wind. She breathed hard and a sound of moaning came from deep in her chest and then she calmed for a short time after. Far be it that John would ever forget being enveloped by Flora, encased in her love, and embraced by her feminine muscles.

The next day after supper John made a special request to young Sally Muir.

“Can you keep a secret Sally, a really big secret for me?”

“Well it depends Mr. Irwin, I won’t go against God or my family for any secret or for anyone. But I do keep a lot of secrets for my friends at school and Church.”

“Well Sally, my secret is nothing that would offend your principles, it really is rather simple. I am going to ask Miss Flora Jenkins for her hand in marriage.”

“Oh my Mr. Irwin how exciting! Flora is a wonderful girl. She used to tutor me in writing when I was in the primary school, she is a fine catch, as my pop would say, Mr. Irwin!”

Sally’s eyes were wide with wonder, as she visualized in a child-like haze, of the romance that she hoped, would one day be hers.

“Here is what I need from you Sally. I need you to go over to Iron Street, to Seitz’s Drug Store, and find Mr. Seitz or Mrs. Seitz. Explain to them my situation, although they probably know my situation, tell them I need to shop for an engagement ring befitting a Kansas princess, and don’t mention who she is. Although they probably know that too. See if one of them can come over here and show me several rings to choose from. You can also tell them that I can not spend more than three hundred dollars and that I have no gold and can write them a bank note.”

“Why that’s an easy task Mr. Irwin, I am sure the Seitz’s will be able to accommodate your wishes!” She smiled eagerly.

“Thank you Sally. There is also an incentive if you can keep this secret until I have Flora’s hand. I’ll order anything you want from the Sears and Roebuck, and it can cost as much as five dollars.”

“Oh Mr. Irwin, you are too kind! Why I could get a dozen Edison cylinders for that much money!” Sally actually jumped up off the floor, shaking the lamps and the windows.

“Easy now Sally, remember the secret has to be kept, you have to let the Seitzs know too, and don’t let anyone in the drug store overhear you. Besides the five dollars you’ll earn for your silence, you have also earned this gift for your meticulous care of me while this confounded leg heals. You have been an angel in this room.”

People that John would meet or greet after the shooting and while his leg was recovering would all make the same statements to the affect of: “Thank goodness you are alive and well!” Or, “what a lucky man you are!” John would always acknowledge he agreed, but it felt uncomfortable, conflicted, because he felt just as glad that Bleckley was going to prison, and he felt especially relieved that the competition for Flora had been eliminated from his world. Taking comfort in the bad decisions of another was a new, yet a dark feeling for John. John did not believe in fate or destiny, but he often considered in the context of this entire mishap that if such a concept as fate did exist, it had definitely favored him, for Flora was to be his girl.

Ernest Bleckley was tried in Superior Court in Topeka two months and one week after shooting John. Due to the distance, the witnesses from Quincy’s that night, were able to submit affidavits certified by a Justice a month earlier. Bleckley was sentenced to ten years for assault with a deadly weapon. His claim that the gun had went off, twice, accidentally was made believable thanks to a high priced defense lawyer from St. Louis. If not for his fancy defense he may have been sentenced to life in State Prison. Mr. Bleckley Sr. had attempted to bribe the judge and had to spend thirty days in the Topeka sheriff’s jail house, sharing a cell with his son Ernest. They fought like mad dogs in the cell on more than one occasion; requiring doctor’s visits both times to patch them up.

With John’s cast off he was more free, out of his room, and back at the office, being vital again. He used one crutch and was putting slightly more pressure on his leg every day. When news of his engagement to Flora reached the Jenkins, John was warmly welcomed into the family without hesitation. Many afternoons and weekend days he would travel out to the ranch to spend time with the family, while enjoying meals that could only be so delicious when prepared with the care of a family, care provided by Thelma and Mrs. Jenkins. He would often play with young Jeremiah, jumping from the loft in the barn into huge piles of hay, fishing for catfish and hunting rabbit and fox, or playing catch and baseball in the yard behind the house. Mr. Jenkins taught John to operate the Model T, how to start it, how to change the oil, change a tire, add water, drive through mud. Flora taught John to throw a rope, and how to lasso a cow, how to throw a knife and hit a tree, and how to be helplessly in love with a prairie goddess.

On the last Saturday of September, nineteen o-seven, the wedding of Flora Jenkins to John Irwin on the town common, next to the pond, on the bandstand, was the event of the season for all of Salina. Mr. Jenkins had provided food enough for half the town to gorge on. The brass band played old favorites, and Quincy’s bar had wheeled their piano down the street and hired a ragtime player for after the wedding. Twenty tables on the green held nearly every one known by both the Jenkins and John. A sea of parasols, ladies flowered hats, black silk covered top hats and straw hats bobbed up and down and mingled on the green all day and into the night.

About an hour before the wedding John and Ron Bartlett took the stage of the bandstand and held an award ceremony for Whitey Smith. “For Courage in the Face of Drunken Danger,” read the plaque underneath the bowling trophy. “Special thanks always from John Irwin.” Read the inscription. All had a great laugh but the seriousness of John’s gratitude came through. Everyone shook Whiteys hand and thanked him for acting so quickly and for saving such a fine citizen.

Beside John at the alter, Flora was a graceful living statuette, she was a tribute to all earthly beauty loved by mankind. In brief moments of time to be compared with all future times in John’s life, the time looking through Flora’s veil at her gently smiling face, would be the one time John would choose to live in. Her lacy and bustled wedding dress matched her to the standard of a queen, and through the sunshine of the afternoon, her veil disclosed the slim body and face of an eighteen year old fit for a young queen’s throne. After the ceremony began, there must have been twenty or more women sobbing in the audience, with Mrs. Jenkins front and center isle conducting the crying orchestra by kerchief as if waving a baton, and as if on cue in a burlesque chorus line, the men would pull out their handkerchiefs and hand them over to the women. John remembers that God had been inserted throughout the vows and the ceremonial lecture from the preacher, but he ignored the diatribe and did not care and said his “I do” with all seriousness.

Chapter 4 - Birth and Vanishing

2006-07-27T08:21:00.003-04:00

It was a cool day in the end of the winter of nineteen o-eight and for one-thousand and one-hundred dollars, including the two hundred dollars down payment, the Irwin’s new house on Santa Fe Avenue was three bedrooms and three stories tall, including the attic. With three gabled windows on the second floor, a porch that wrapped half way around the house, a copper roof tinged with the patina of nearly twenty years of air, the house expressed comfort. Flora had insisted on painting the house pine green with rose trim and white columns and white shutters. The front yard had an oak tree that may have been thirty five foot high, its buds had just come out one or two days before, with thick branches on three sides, on which one of, John had installed a rope swing. Flora sat inside in the drawing room on a wicker rocker, letting out a pair of John’s striped pants an inch or so. In Flora’s womb a baby kicked hard and she froze in place and grabbed her abdomen, looked straight ahead, breathed deeply, waited, then returned to sewing and rocking in her chair.

According to Salina’s principal stork, doctor Rothschild, Flora was eight months pregnant and having a normal pregnancy. Flora had grown impatient wanting the baby to come as soon as possible. She projected her impatience onto nearly every one she knew. In several weeks time she was frequently snapping at delivery people, the milkman, the paper boy, the grocery delivery boy and the postman. One morning, while John slept deeply in the master bedroom at the rear of the house, Flora awoke at five in the morning and quietly stepped her way out of the house to sit on the front porch. There hidden on a stool behind one of the columns, and close to the front steps she waited with great patience, in the darkness, as the morning light began to peek over the horizon. She observed the bluebirds and sparrows leave their heights in the trees and search out morning worms on the lawn. She cared not for the serenity nor the beauty of this sunny and cool morning because she was on a mission that required her intense focus. Flora was motivated by the nearly psychotic hormonal anger of late term pregnancy, manifest as a vengeful determination to correct a great injustice to her household: sloppy newspaper delivery to her front lawn. She spotted the paper boy coming her way from the north on Santa Fe Avenue, and she ducked low to hide her self below the railings of the porch.

Bobby Perkins was eleven years old, he had the job for the Courier for over a year, and he delivered to sixty homes five days a week. He pushes his scooter up each street with his heavy canvas bag hung over the handle bars and he stops in front of each home and tosses a paper towards the front porches. Sometimes, he’ll tie a small length of string around each paper to keep it rolled up, but if he is out of string, he has learned to finesse his toss so that the paper lands still, and folded on the customer’s property. His eyes still puffy and weak from slumber, and working in an almost dream-like state of being as he stared down Santa Fe Avenue, he was tossing papers and generally holding his head downward, watching the dewy morning ground under his scooter pushing foot falls. No one is on the street when he does his route, ever, so there is nothing to watch out for, no one to expect to have to talk to. Bobby approached the Irwin’s house, a corner lot what’s porch is a longer distance from the street than most of the other houses, and so he leaned his scooter against the oak tree and took their paper towards the porch. He stopped ten feet from the porch steps and gently tossed the paper, flat, onto the porch. Before he could turn around to leave Flora sprung up like a scary clown from a Jack-in-the-Box toy, her hair loose and wiry, in her nightgown and looking to a child like the visible angry ghost of a woman. Bobby left the ground by a few inches and his arms and legs jutted outward momentarily as every nerve in his body was shocked into fright, his hair stood on end and he let out a yelping high pitched scream. Then he froze on the Irwin’s walkway, his mouth hanging open, taking in the reality of what he was seeing, and Flora wasted no time in letting him have a piece of her mind as if little Bobby was destined for consumer service hell. Flora instantly began hollering at him with a fury, threatening his job, accusing the boy of laziness for delivering a loose newspaper the day before that had to be picked up, put together and refolded. Bobby, in a state of shock, could not really hear her words, just see her anger, and feel his own blood stop cold as the ghostly specter berated him from atop the porch. She concluded:

“The very next time young man, I’ll personally visit your boss, and see to it that you are without a job!”

Flora calmly went back into the house; she climbed back into bed, smiling at John who was barely awake. She told no-one of her exploit into the world of domestic vigilante justice. To some fifty neighbors, Flora’s dawn outburst, nearly at the sound level of a train whistle, became just another early morning voice from the ether, in their dreams and nightmares. So they did not wake up that morning, their sub-conscious minds having made the logical assumption that “no-one would be up hollering about newspapers at five-thirty in the morning, so keep dreaming, go back to sleep.” Ramifications of this morning last to this day, as a legacy of unknown origin that remains in Salina, Kansas, of perfectly hand delivered papers.

Until after the baby came Thelma had agreed to ride into town five days a week to care for and to keep company with Flora while John is at work. Upstairs, Thelma a friend and a loyal employee of the Jenkins’ for many years, was making the bed and gathering laundry. The house was clearly too big for just Flora and John, even too big for themselves and a baby. Flora had been trying to talk Thelma into moving in to stay on permanently with them, leaving her mother’s household. Thelma would like nothing more, but her sense of loyalty is strong to Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins.

John was at work at the First Kansas Home Trust Company on Iron Street. The portly Mr. Godfrey had approached John on the evening of his wedding with an offer he could not refuse: a two hundred dollars sign on bonus and three hundred dollars per month plus ten percent shares and five percent commission on new loans that he himself acquired. He apologized to Mr. Auburn of the Kansas Pacific and it was agreed that he should leave for the mortgage bank. The change meant everything he could want for Flora, a home of their own, new clothes, a carriage and two horses, a maid and maybe a Model T of their own.

John was face down in his ledger books in his office when he heard something that caught his attention from outside his office. He picked up his empty coffee cup for an excuse to go to the main room. It was his old boss, Mr. Auburn of the Kansas Pacific Railway, with his back turned to him, talking rather loudly and raising his arms to Mr. Godfrey. John walked to the back of the main room to the pot belly stove where coffee was kept warm and poured a cup. He tried to hear the conversation, but Auburn and Godfrey quickly moved into Godfrey’s office, the door slammed behind them, and the conversation became accusatory and defensive, with muffled intonations only. “Very strange.” John thought.

“They had a couple of loans with us, I remember checking the numbers. Hmm . . the loans were made twice, big amounts, for labor to, to . .Chicago Box Cars to put up the cash to build cars he needed. Nothing wrong with that. What could have gone wrong?”

John sipped his coffee, burned his tongue and without thought cursed aloud. Realizing he was being a busy-body he returned to his ledger books, closing his office door behind him. It was time to go home to Flora in less than a half an hour and work had to be finished rather hurriedly. “Thank goodness for Thelma!” John thought to himself as he sat down, wishing he could see Flora now, knowing that Thelma was back at the house tending to her needs, eased his mind greatly.

John was able to walk to work and back from Santa Fe Avenue and he enjoyed the time, stopping often for pastries for after dinner. Sewer and drainage work seemed a year after year ongoing process in Salina, with large trenches with hazardous planks covering them, tempting pedestrians to cross them, lining several streets at a time. The state of perpetual construction reminded John of any street in Chicago when he was growing up there. In Salina, people would fall into the trenches on a daily basis, horses and carriages would slip in and become stuck whenever it rained, and sidewalks near the trenches would cave-in creating more chaos for the town. But the patient townspeople felt certain it would all be worth it. Soon it would be planting time in the fields, mostly for wheat, in the hundreds of square miles surrounding Salina and the town would fill up with outside labor, contractors and salesmen. Many of the hobos, whose hundreds of small encampments line the train tracks from Topeka and Wichita and Denver to Salina, would find day work with the farmers and the petty crime would slow, the muggings and the occasional store break-ins would cease for a few months at least.

John arrived home with pastries and a warm smile and a kiss for Flora, but Flora’s affection in return was not genuine, pecking him on the cheek and returning herself to a state of frustration with a frown. Secretly John loved the new agitated, bloated, cramping, violent throwing of objects woman that Flora had become during this near end of her pregnancy. Knowing it was temporary he could manage her many frustrations. A so much different woman he had never seen in Flora. It was almost refreshing that she now deplored annoyances and that she now wanted help from others, now relied on Thelma and him for assistance. There was now a veritable little devil inside his angel that had been waiting for an excuse to reveal itself. Flora had been a perfect, strong and independent woman, who was now made vulnerable by pregnancy. Before the attitude adjustment, that was her pregnancy, she had been an amenable presence of perfume and kisses who had never said no, who was always first to rise and fetch to please, who now cared not for that pretentious servile behavior, not while a child was within her, turning and kicking, sapping her energy and consuming her nutrients, and according to Flora, stabbing her with a stick whenever she went to sleep. John and Flora had decided months ago, the stick stabber would be would be named Sydney if it were a boy and Isabel if it were a girl.

John was in the stable out back feeding the horses and putting away tack at around five-thirty. In the kitchen an herbed chicken was roasting in the oven and spreading its aroma around the house. Thelma was gathering her things to ride home to the ranch when Flora screamed with intense pain from the second floor bedroom. Thelma dropped her bag and ran up the stairs.

“Miss Flora miss Flora, talk to me honey, what is the matter!” Thelma shouted as she rounded the hallway into the bedroom.

Flora was on the floor flat on her back holding her abdomen, a puddle of fluid was underneath her.

“I think it is nearly here Thelma!” Flora cried out and gasped with deep worry on her face.

Flora then became focused and Thelma started to panic. Flora was relieved that the birthing process may now be starting.

“Help me up onto the bed dear.” Flora grabbed the bedpost and leaned upwards from the floor.

John’s rapid and hard foot steps traversed the inside of the house, he swung himself around the banister post at the bottom of the stairs and dashed upwards into the bedroom and was there in less than fifteen seconds. Flora was in the bed and Thelma was propping her back with pillows and covering her.

“You lost your water, it’s coming, and it’s starting! Honey are you fair? Does it pain you?” John was now in a panic and breathing hard from his flight to the second floor.

John came to Flora’s side and grasped her shoulders, and with great care he looked into her eyes and consoled her.

“Darling, every thing is going to be fine, we’ll get through this just fine, it is all going to work out, we are ready for this.” John said softly.

This was the extent of John’s plan for this birthing. All else was assumed by him to be handled by others, or some mysterious group of child-birthers that came from out of nowhere to brush the man aside and manage the rest of the process. He realized he did not know what he was doing and had in actuality planned poorly. He looked at Thelma with the intensity of a man at war.

“Thelma what do we do next?”

“Mr. Irwin what are you asking me for? I ain’t never done this before!” She said with incredulous tone.

Thelma also had assumptions about the matter, that the Irwins had it all planned. She thought about the doctor.

“Doc Rothschild Mr. Irwin, we have to get Doc Rothschild here!”

Flora began panting, the second floor room was warm and all three were sweating, Flora took control.

“John, get on your horse, ride over to find doctor Rothschild. Thelma, open that damn window then go down to the sink and bring me a pot of cool water from the well tap before I burn up, and bring an armful of extra towels and sheets. I think that I will manage for a little while.” Her tone was reassuring.

The patient was in control of the orderlies. John disappeared like a fireman leaving a burning building. Thelma hurried down the stairs to the kitchen, she took the chicken off the spit and tossed some water on the fire, she filled a big pot with water and returned to Flora’s side. John found Doctor Rothschild at Quincy’s after being routed around town by three different people. Throughout town the word was spread that the Irwin baby is on its way. At the moment that John burst into to Quincy’s and spotted Doc Rothschild every one inside knew why. Doc Rothschild knows that a labor could last many days, but he also knew that the husband of the expecting mother can not be argued with and not be kept waiting. Doc Rothschild stood up from his barstool and belted out some orders immediately.

“Ron, two whiskeys. John, you down this whiskey with me and we’ll go, a calm father is a father that a mother will appreciate at this time. Then go to the carriage house and tell them to rig my carriage. She’ll be fine John. Over the teeth, past the gums, look out stomach, here it comes!”

“Great!” John thought, “At a time like this Flora will be tended to by two men reeking of whiskey.”

“Doc you take my horse and I’ll bring your carriage over to the house after it is ready!” John said seeking expediency.

At the house Mrs. Jane Schmidt from next door had arrived, having heard Flora’s initial scream and realizing what was happening, was ready to help. Mrs. Schmidt had started boiling water in case of a quick labor, and had propped Flora’s feet upward and spread out with pillows. Doc Rothschild arrived and began listening to the baby’s movements and heartbeats and palpating Flora’s abdomen attempting to determine where the baby’s head was. John seeing clearly that he was in the way, rode out to the Jenkins ranch to inform the grandparents of the event. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins along with Jeremiah, returned by car, ready to stay at the house until the baby was born. It was now a full house of attendants. John was greatly relieved. He and Mr. Jenkins took Jeremiah and went to Quincy’s to drink and wait. Jeremiah would be the messenger between Quincy’s and the house.

Women did not get priority in medical care in nineteen-o-eight. It was likely that a woman’s female friends and neighbors knew more about the signs and symptoms of an illness of a woman’s uniqueness than did the local male doctor. It was an embarrassment for a man to allow his wife, or daughter to see a male doctor for fear that the doctor might gaze upon the woman’s private parts where only he or his wife are allowed to gaze; perhaps looking into her vagina, or examining her breasts or her colon. This chauvinist limitation, this virtuous conservatism influenced by cultural and religious ethics, was the basis of the ignorance of women’s health, and was the unwritten reason that the category of Women’s Health was not part of medical collegiate study for decades to come. It is the reason that a woman or a girl often died before seeing a physician, or would be close to death by the time she obtained a physical examination, too late for treatment.

Sydney Orenthal Irwin was born at Eleven-O-Three p.m., feet first. Doc Rothschild had walked into Quincy’s with a big grin on his face at approximately Eleven-Thirty that night, and ten minutes later John was holding his sleeping son in his arms. The joy was measurable by the width of the smiles in the Irwin house that night. The Jenkins were bursting with pride at being grandparents. Thelma visibly shared the joy as if the baby were hers too, grinning ear to ear and glowing as she carried sheets and towels up and down the stairs. Flora, still ecstatic with relief of a healthy baby and a delivery over with, began to subside into sleep, but not before John joined her in bed and together they touched baby Sydney all over his face, stroking his head over and over, playing with his little lips, squishing his little nose from side to side and a lot of feeling his little fingers on their own hands. Flora was beyond exhausted and sore and happy and she fell asleep looking at Sydney.

The next day Mr. Jenkins pulled into the drive and shut-off his motor, right outside the kitchen where Thelma and John were having breakfast, beside a bassinet containing the newborn Sydney, and Mr. Jenkins entered the kitchen.

“Good morning daddy! Good morning Thelma dear. I have got something for my grandson, sort of for my grandson!”

Mr. Jenkins was jovial like a stage announcer or a medicine salesman, his face was glowing with glee.

“I want my grandson to have good transportation and so I’m giving you my Model T!”

John’s mouth dropped and he gazed out the window at the car. Excitement filled his body and for the moment he was a boy again as if gifts of wonderment were before him.

One year and two weeks after Sydney was born Flora gave birth to Orenthal. He came out head first and the birth was easier for Flora and the preparation and readiness for the new family member was hyper-organized by John and the Jenkins. He was heavier than Sydney, Doc Rothschild said Flora carried longer and that was why he was a “fat little gentlemen.” John had named him for his father, whose absence in his life, ever since Sydney was born, had been gently chipping away at John’s conscience for the past year or so.

Flora was different after Orenthal was born. She held him constantly for two days rocking him and even singing to him though still in pain from delivery. She was kind to Thelma, she would affectionately express her love of the new baby and of John.

But for the first three days of his waking life O.W. would not breast feed at all, he slept too much for the comfort of Flora or of Thelma. Flora became obsessed with getting him to feed on her milk. Thelma began helping Flora to draw milk into a cup. O.W. would drink from the cup but it was difficult at first and he would spit it up, too often to gain enough nutrients, for a newborn. Flora’s patience grew short and her temper grew shorter and she became intensely frustrated. It was on the fourth night that O.W. began to feed normally. Relief was felt throughout the household, John was delighted, Thelma and Flora began to sleep along with O.W.’s and Sydney’s inconsistent and staggered hours.

In the days that followed the feeding crisis of the newborn O.W., Flora’s body began to recompose, her soreness from delivery changed slowly from throbbing waves of pain, to stinging and aching, to dull ache. She began to venture from the bedroom, spending some time in the kitchen with Thelma, eating breakfast with John once or twice. O.W. was a voracious breast feeder, impatiently he would bite and pull like a wild animal as if to draw more milk at once. Flora’s nipples became sore and chapped, often bleeding. To Flora’s perspective the salves and creams that now occupied all available space on her bed-side table, became as much a part of the problem, as a solution. Flora had become more quiet, thinking only of the new baby, almost as if unable to talk to anyone. She would stare at O.W. in his crib, on her lap, at her breast, not taking her eyes off of him, even when others entered the room, as if she were reading a book intensely. Her obsession became worrisome to John and Thelma.

A new mothers desire, to succeed in rearing her infant, is inborn to her physiology, it is encouraged by the releasing of a flood of hormones initiated by the entire process of pregnancy and child birth. But a good physiologically driven behavioral trait can be poisoned, overcome, by the mind. Flora’s expectations had been elevated in the past year and several months since her pregnancy with Sydney had been trouble free, having unfolded like the pages in a mothers “How To . .” book. It was the shattering of her expectations and subsequent confidence which may have caused her reaction to the problems with O.W. to be extreme and obsessive.

It was mid-morning and Thelma carried into Flora’s bedroom two clean bottles on a tray for Flora to fill for storage in the ice box. This event had become torturous for Flora and frightening for Thelma, who had to watch the pain and aggravation of her best friend attempting to fill two to three baby-bottles every morning from chapped and bleeding nipples, tender from O.W.’s rough handling. It was no longer helpful to switch from one nipple to another. Thelma and Flora filled the first bottle half way as tears came to Flora’s eyes from the pain. Flora grabbed the bottle from Thelma’s hands and threw it hard at the rear wall of the bedroom. The bottle smashed against the hard plastered wall and the milk splattered against it and dripped to the floor. Thelma stood up shocked but not surprised.

“That’s enough! It’s useless! It’s not working anymore! I’ve had it Thelma!” Flora’s voice was strained and loud.

“Honey you’ve got to try. How about using some salve and I’ll come back in a while?” Frightened by the out-burst, Thelma attempted a compromise with a quiet voice.

“Fuck the fucking salve Thelma!”

Flora picked up one of many brands of skin salve from the bedside table and threw it at the wall, smashing it to pieces, leaving the contents globed onto the wall with shards of green glass.

“Get out! You don’t know what I’m going through, you don’t have to!” Flora yelled.

“You want I should clean up that mess?” Thelma said tamely.

“Just get the hell out, now, stay out, now go!” Flora pointed at the doorway.

In twenty years of being with Flora, nearly every day, Thelma had never seen her in a state of rage. Thelma scampered out of the room for fear of Flora throwing something at her, frightened, her face deeply concerned, her lips quivering in readiness to cry, she swiftly closed the bedroom door behind her. Thelma hurried down the stairs with tears flowing down her cheeks. Upstairs in the bedroom, Flora could hear her friend’s moans and her sobs from the kitchen below her, but she did not care. Rage had implanted its ugly colors in her mind, putting aside all care for others, the babies included.

After that morning, she ostensibly abandoned the babies, and she became quiet, staring out the window depressed and unconcerned with O.W. and Sydney’s critical needs. She never apologized to Thelma. She would not answer John’s desperate inquiries as to her state of being. In the day her hands would shake and she tried to hide them from Thelma and John as if ashamed, as if this mysterious symptom was one of many signs that she was failing as a mother. Cold shivers came and went up and down her spine in between aggravating heat spells, as she lay in bed creating a damp lining of sweat in the shape of her recovering body. Thelma became a hand and foot assistant while Flora remained camped in her own bed for weeks. Flora refused to talk about whatever was wrong, not with Thelma, not with John, not with her own mother who once again began to visit on a daily basis. Days upon days would pass without Flora picking up Orenthal. Flowers were brought to her room in an attempt to bring cheer, only to be ordered thrown out, or their vases used to hurl at the wall by the agitated mother. She ordered Thelma to remove the baby’s cradle from her room and take O.W. to the kitchen downstairs. Docile and disconnected from Orenthal, Flora’s condition became a crucial matter fast to John and the Jenkins. Doc Rothschild recommended locating a nurse maid, immediately, to provide breast milk for the newborn Orenthal. John inquired to neighbors about a nurse maiden, but there was no woman available in all of Salina willing to assume the commitment. Finally a newspaper advertisement from the St. Louis Dispatch, revealed a service run by a woman who manages a rotating team of Nurse Maidens, John wired her immediately. Worried that a nurse maiden may not be available immediately, John had indicated in his telegram “Colored Okay.” Five days later Mary Coons arrived at the Irwin household, a buxom and cheerful black woman in her mid thirties with a trunk and a carpet bag. Twenty-Nine day old and ten pound Orenthal was saved by the milk from Mary’s breasts. He would not have lasted another couple of days; he had been poorly consuming cow’s milk and had become lethargic, silent and barely awake. Mary Coons saved the family and John let her know it, he took her shopping in downtown Salina, where she was treated to a new dress, a new hat, a necklace and a spelling book at John’s insistence. Because she was black, the female shop keepers were kind enough to size her from out on the sidewalk, and then show her apparel from inside the display windows.

In the weeks and days since Flora’s initial out-burst at Thelma, her disposition became more solemn and sheltered. Withdrawn to her bedroom she became a hermit in her own home. Except to use the bathroom, she had only gotten up and out of the bed a couple of times. She began snapping at Thelma for the most trivial of matters. She threw a hair brush at her in frustration at what Flora perceived was a pitiful attempt on Thelma’s part to beautify Flora’s appearance, by bringing her make-up. She barely ate, refusing breakfasts and lunches and only nibbling and picking at her dinner trays.

Doctor Rothschild visited many times in those first weeks after delivery. He was as frustrated as John and Thelma, unable to stop a situation he was familiar with. On the front porch on the evening of the most recent, of many, object throwing tantrums John consoled with Doctor Rothschild.

“It’s the baby blues John. It’s not entirely uncommon. Some women get it real bad. With some it comes and goes right quick. But John, this one is a real hum dinger. I am at a loss for remedies John.” Doc confessed.

“Doc this can’t go on like this!” John pleaded with Doctor Rothschild.

“I know John. There are things you can do, but unfortunately they all require her cooperation and if she doesn’t want to do something, it’s not going to work.”

Doc Rothschild started Flora on Laudanum dosages. The opiate liquid medicine gave Flora a lift temporarily. For a few weeks, she was out of her bed, holding Orenthal now and again. But the artificial mood alteration tapered off to return to a depressed state. She continued the opium dosages and began requesting two bottles per week from the doctor. In most of her waking hours while in her room, she darkened the windows, claiming the light gave her headaches and she had demanded that three blankets cover each window. John brought her an Edison Cylinder player and twenty new cylinders of mostly classical performances. Rarely would Flora smile, she shunned house guests, her mother would visit and Flora would withdraw into solace and silence. Her father would visit bringing his natural jovial optimism and this would receive a contrasting reaction from Flora, a rejection of the joy invoked as if through a subconscious response. Flora recognized when she was being patronized and lashed at anyone she suspected of doing so. A kind of jealousy seemed to be occupying her. She refused to accept that the people who have loved her were genuinely concerned for her and not trying to “fix the family,” for the sake of the children, the grandparents, the husband, the house maiden, but not for her own sake. She became paranoid that Thelma and Mary were trying to somehow take the babies, by caring for them better than she could. She would hear Thelma and the babies laughing and cooing, playing with them happily downstairs and immediately she would yell out for something, food or a glass of water, causing Thelma to leave their attention momentarily.

In a sign that Flora knew and accepted that she was ill, she began reading her bible as if trying to understand her condition, carrying it with her through the house, falling asleep in her bed with the book flat on her chest. She returned to the Lutheran Church where she had not attended for more than two years. But at services she would talk with no one and sit in the rear pews. Arriving late she would slip through the side entrance and leave before services ended. Her friends from the congregation would attempt to talk with her but she would physically run away when seeing them approach. She began wearing a heavy bonnet around town, hiding her face, and she would use a parasol to shield the gaze of townspeople. Thelma and Mary had assumed all care of Orenthal and Sydney. Flora’s eye sockets were dark pits of depression, the bone’s of her face were more defined than ever as her diet was suffering. Sleeping was an activity of ten to fifteen hours per day. John would bring her the paper and read humor and stories with little response overall. John saw no good reason to wean her from the laudanum, Doc Rothschild agreed. During her periods of laudanum euphoria, usually in the afternoon after her second dosage, were the only times that Flora could be seen smiling, softly, gently, as if thinking a pleasant memory from somewhere else in another time and place.

Orenthal was fourteen months and several days old on that one of many days that a march of rain and lightning storms had crossed the plains, drenching the streets of town that had no brick and still no drainage, making most of the roads in Salina nearly impassable. Thelma, Mary, Orenthal and Sydney, had left the house and had taken one of the new Salina Transport Wagons, to the Fair Market Mercantile for groceries. Flora sat reading her bible by the fireplace in the drawing room. A half empty bottle of laudanum by her side sat on a small table. Thin and pale, dressed for sleeping, although it was two o’clock in the afternoon, she stopped reading and stared forward at the flames of the warming fire. She slammed her Bible closed and stood, and she tossed the book onto the fire. She turned to her bottle of laudanum, took off the cap and held it upside-down over her lips and allowed an entire half bottle to pour down her throat as she swallowed it all without pause. Then threw the bottle into the fire, impacting against the rear bricks, cracking the bottle open, the wet remaining contents spread over the burning logs and created a bluish green wave of flame that then flickered out as Flora stared at it, mesmerized by the colors. As if pulled by a string fastened to her abdomen from somewhere outside the house, Flora left the house and walked off the front porch and stepped into the front yard. Outside under the rain storm it was as dark as a full moon night. The rain itself was loud and heavy as large droplets pounded the green leaves of every tree nearby and slammed into the Earth and the cobble stones and the copper roofs of every home and tapped hard upon Flora’s head and shoulders. She ignored the chill in the air and the water drenching her hair, an embarrassment and discomfort someone else would feel if standing in the rain, on their front yard, in slippers and a nightgown. She stepped off the curb into the deep mud of the street. She turned left to the north and away from the center of town, and she slowly and steadily began walking, emotionless and not looking downward nor to the left or right. Her slippers suctioned in the deep brown mud and then abandoned her feet in the first few steps leaving her barefoot, but of no concern to her. Her nightgown quickly became heavy with rain water and her hair straight and fallen over her eyes and face. No one in Salina came to their doors or windows while Flora trekked by their homes in a slow rhythm of despair. Not one person witnessed her as she slowly passed by more than twenty homes on five streets that rainy afternoon. Flora’s body was but a burdensome vessel for her mind to carry itself north while bewildered in the barely lit afternoon. It was a solitary and very private experience within the now wet skin that was the woman she was leaving behind her. She had felt the emptiness for too long. The deep chasm of shadows, of solitude, and of an unexplainable wanting for an end to it all, had enveloped her completely. She could not will her own body to turn around and go home. She reached the outskirts of town, and the painted houses of columns and shutters became the staggered shacks of the poor and servant class. Later the shacks gave way to cattle fencing and weeds along the empty road she tracked, still unseen.

Thelma, Mary and the boys arrived home at Three-Fifteen, approximately two hours before John was due home. Thelma noticed the front door open and thought little of it. Both Thelma and Mary assumed that Flora had gone to rest in her bedroom and so continued with their chores, starting dinner and putting away groceries, putting Sydney down for a nap, and feeding Orenthal. Neither Mary nor Thelma had looked into to Flora’s bedroom. When John arrived home he followed his after work habit of holding the children, bouncing Sydney on his lap, helping to feed Orenthal, and playing with the boys on the floor of the drawing room. Waiting for Flora to awaken, John warmed his feet by the fire and read the newspaper. Then he became curious and softly climbed the stairs to their bedroom. He entered and became shocked and scared. Running down the stairs he cried out:

“Thelma! Where is Flora, she’s not in her room!”

“Mary, is Flora with you? He yelled out as he ran into the kitchen.

“She was sleeping Mr. Irwin!” Thelma responded.

“No, she’s not up there!”

“When did you see her? Did she say she was going out?” John inquired urgently.

“She said nothing to me.” Mary added.

“She said nothing.” Thelma replied.

John checked the coat rack in the foyer. Flora’s cloak, her hats hand her handbag and parasol hung in place as if she were home. John ran out of the back door and into the barn.

“Flora! Flora!”

He ran out of the barn leaving the doors open behind him. He ran back into the kitchen where Thelma and Mary, holding Orenthal, now stood watching him with shock in their expressions.

“I’m taking a horse to town to look for her! If I’m not back in an hour’s time, go next door and get the Perkins boy to go to Sheriff Malloy and tell him what has happened. Give him a quarter.” John belted out orders as he turned for the barn.

“Yes sir Mr. Irwin.” Thelma and Mary replied in tandem.

John rode on every street between the houses and past any store or house that Flora might go to. He went into seven shops, telling the owners to look out for her, he checked inside all three bars and the two saloons and the playhouse, he trotted in the pouring down rain down of every back street of Salina. An hour and a half had passed and he galloped back to the house, puzzled, extremely worried, dumbfounded by Flora’s disappearance. Sheriff Malloy’s four seat Model T was parked out front. John tied his horse to the front porch railing and ran inside.

“Flora! Flora?” Hopeful, he yelled out for her.

Sheriff Winston Malloy approached him in the hallway outside the kitchen, wearing a rain cloak and leather rain hat, and he held his hand upward as if to stop John from running further into the house. Before John could say anything, Sheriff Malloy informed him of his plans.

“John my man is coming back here right now with chains for the car, and me and him will take it out and start looking. Take a breath and tell me where you have looked so far.” Winston Malloy’s tone was calming.

John looking defeated and tear in his eyes, dropped his shoulders in despair, while Sheriff Malloy embraced the sides of his arms to console him. John breathed deeply to capture wind enough to speak.

“Winston. I have been all over town, into every shop she might go, the bars, the playhouse and even the saloons. She did not even take her cloak, or hat or a handbag! I rode on every street in Salina. She is nowhere!” John’s emotionally crippled voice rose up in frustration.

“We’ll find her John. I’m going to send a rider out to the Jenkins ranch to see if she is there; if she is not there that rider will be joining our search. Now, John, it’s going to be nighttime in just over an hour, so I’ll take the car with chains to the outsides of town and use my search lantern. I think you should keep riding in town, with a lantern, to see if she turns up.” Sheriff Malloy said in a reassuring tone.

By ten o’clock that night more than twenty people were involved in the search for Flora, with three cars, two motorcycles, and five riders including John. Children on foot were scouring the neighborhoods calling her name, looking behind trees inside of barns and in wooded patches. The street lamps were left on all night to illuminate the sidewalks and streets so that she might be seen from front porches. Several men from Quincy’s Bar had taken to the street to patrol for Flora. John would keep returning to the house every forty minutes or so, with all the house lamps on, Thelma and Mary and Mrs. Jenkins waiting inside, hoping the nightmare would be over. It was not. By midnight those who knew and loved Flora were sensing a dire situation. It was no longer a matter that there may be a misunderstanding that Flora may have traveled and forgot to leave a message. The situation had become terrifying. John persisted all night and into the morning to ride the streets of Salina. Sheriff Malloy had driven over seventy miles on the roads of all four directions in and out of Salina. Flora was nowhere to be found.

At ten o’clock that following morning the sky had cleared, and the air was warming, and the moisture was rising as a wispy fog off of the streets and lawns of John’s neighborhood. He rode in a slow trot toward his home, slumped over his horses neck and nearly unconscious. Sheriff Malloy’s car was on the street in front of the house. John sprung upwards with hope upon seeing the car. John dismounted quickly and let his horse stand free near the front porch and he entered the house to hear what news he might. The drawing room was filled with tired people, the Jenkins, the sheriff’s three deputies, and a few of the guys from Quincy’s. Silent they sat and kneeled around the room, still wearing their coats, too guilty of failure to remove them in John’s home. The fireplace was warming the searchers and they all turned their tired eyes towards John as he entered the room.

“No?” John asked the crowd.

“No.” The men answered in low voices, several at once, in the same apologetic tone.

John’s knees buckled underneath him and he collapsed with three slow thumps as he landed on the wooden floor and he curled up, grabbing his knees. He could not cry, his tear ducts were dry at this point of the end of a long night of crying. No one in the room came over to him to express a sharing of his sadness, it seemed inappropriate, intensely delicate. Everyone got up after a minute or so and John remained on the floor, staring forward at a wall, exhausted. The volunteers filed out the front door, and Whitey and the Sheriff stopped short of the front door and turned and looked down to John.

“John, we need a couple of hours of sleep and we will be back with the car to start searching again.” Whitey said.

“We’re not giving up yet John.” Sheriff Malloy added.

John nodded in acknowledgment and remained on the floor. Thelma brought him a blanket and a pillow for his head, covered him and closed the front door shut and Mary placed a cup of hot tea in front of him.

That next day’s search turned up no sign of Flora. The impending sorrow of the possibility that her absence might be permanent had set in. The possibility she was dead somewhere, although unthinkable, began to morbidly enter the thoughts of the searchers and John. John was heavily fatigued and insane with sorrow. After two days since her disappearance he had begun to cry again. On the third day he and Whitey and Mr. Jenkins were the only men searching but with no outcome, not even a clue. On the end of the fourth day a boy who lived a block away knocked on the front door and presented Thelma with a pair of dirty and trampled women’s slippers he had found in the street in front of the house. Mr. Jenkins suggested that she may have run away, knowing her to have been a wild child in her early teenage years. John could not accept that, but accepted Mr. Jenkins proposal that he travel to Topeka to begin searching for his only daughter there. After finding no sign of her in Topeka, and after showing her photograph to hundreds of people, Mr. Jenkins drove to Wichita, and a repeat of the same sad outcome, then to St. Louis, then back again to Salina. He had one thousand posters made and distributed them everywhere; he had them printed in four newspapers, and hung them in store fronts, and in train depots and post offices. On the fourth week since her disappearance, Mr. Jenkins loaded his car onto the Southern Pacific and left for Denver, returning two weeks later with the same sad news.

John would not accept she was gone, rather he would accept that she was missing and he held-out hope that one day she may return. Now that she was gone he felt his love for her more than ever before, but now it was love as a pain, a knife had been run through his gut, and had stuck there and was rusting and growing his sorrow. With his sense of hope came hallucinatory images and sounds of Flora that were frequent throughout the months to follow, as Flora’s face appeared to him, ghost like, in front of his sight or out of the corner of his eyes, reflected in windows, or in puddles of water, shaped by passing clouds and framed between the branches of trees, outlined in the constellations of the stars. Her voice resembled that of many of the women he would hear in public, “John,” seemed to chime out of crowds in a lilting soft and quiet high tone. He would turn his head and search out crowds for her face. Disappointed again, the knife turned inside him.

Sydney and Orenthal were too young to feel the pain in a manner they may remember. John was relieved to see their adaptation to their mother’s absence. Sydney cried for his mother many times for a week or two, sometimes throwing tantrums and breaking toys or kicking walls. His little brother Orenthal cried more than usual for his mother. He cried for wanting a mother’s affectionate arms around him, a mothers reassuring tones responding to the slightest discomfort of her baby, a mother’s smell that never washed off and that was uniquely hers, a smell known since the nostrils of the child first breathed inward. Thelma was indispensable at this time, both as a replacement to Flora’s motherly presence and as relief for the chores of family care that would have crushed John under the many responsibilities. Her dedication and love for the family made it possible for John to survive the ordeal without losing patience or going mad.

Mary remained with Orenthal until soon after he began eating solid foods and broths and apple sauce. Mrs. Jenkins hired her on at the ranch, to cook, and Mary could not have been happier with that arrangement, feeling well accepted already by the Jenkins and the Irwin families.

John had to keep going, and keep living and continue the family now broken, in more than half, and he had to remind himself of this fact to build his emotional defense against the heartbreak. Broken emotionally in pieces so small that the feelings could not even be picked up and be examined and held in one hand to say for example: “this is it, this is what went wrong, this handful of shard and pebbles and splinters, this represents the entire situation of Flora being gone.” Flora’s colors, her fabrics and her furniture and her photos, and her smell seemed to be in every corner of the house. John would walk the hallways and climb the stairs while keeping his face down, as if foot steps took concentration, and to avoid the pictures that lined the stairwell.

Chapter 5 - Thelma

2006-07-27T08:17:00.003-04:00

Chapter5
Thelma

ThelmaLincoln and Flora Jenkins had grown up together to become two beautiful andcharming young women. Thelma walkedthrough life in the footsteps of Flora, and a more comfortable place to bewalking, she could not imagine. Florataught Thelma to read, who in turn taught her own mother and father. They played daily. Their games and their amusements had maturedwith them, from dolls to mud pies in the backyard of the Jenkins’ home, to hideand seek and dress up in their mother’s clothes, to horseback riding and ropetricks with the ranch hands. Thelma grewup in constant view of the rear of the large Jenkins house, in a shack ofunpainted wood with a thatch roof and a small porch, on a lot of land grantedto her father by Mr. Jenkins’ father. Thelma had slept for twenty years on a bed of hay stuffed into a cottonbed-sheet, against a wall in back of a pig-pen where the grunts and snorts ofpigs and their little ones became the comforting white noise that eased her tosleep every night.

For Thelmathe comforting site of the Jenkins’ beautiful home would disappear on somemornings, in spring and in fall, when at times a thick fog obscured the view ofthe house from her front porch. To the Lincoln family, the fog was a menacing lookat a life that might be. It was a lonelyfew hours on those mornings, before the heat of the land pushed upward on thecool blanket of fog. It was a few hourswhen the Jenkins family were not spoken of by the Lincolns, as if to do so wouldsuperstitiously affirm their own unspoken fears of sudden independence from theJenkins. During these foggy morningsThelma and her family entertained their own thoughts about life without theJenkins, foggy thoughts that includedfeelings of insecurity and feelings spawning separation anxiety. As Thelma had matured she began to realize itwas on these clouded mornings her parents would be forced to consider thequestions of where would they go, and what would they do if something happenedto the Jenkins, if the Jenkins’ house burned down, or if the Jenkins got sickand died. The “coloreds,” of Kansas had been free for a long time, butthis type of relationship was common for most in these years of Jim Crow law,that called a race of people “free,” but in reality were still enslaved by anunbreakable economic dependence upon the white ruling class. Families symbiotically living, co-dependant,separated by dirt and hogs and thatch, and walled off on occasion by animpenetrable fog. Fog divided theselives of polar existence on the same land, connected by a hundred yard dirttrail, connected by the proud ownership of a small piece of gifted land barelyworth one horse, chained by wages that disallowed choice, roped by emotionalinsecurity, all unspoken of, especially on foggy mornings.

It was about ahalf a year after Flora vanished when John began to see Thelma in a differentway. After Flora’s disappearance,Thelma’s steadfast loyalty to the family, to the boys, and to his own care, hadseemed crucial to their sustained survival. It seemed that she was always there close, or nearby, for everyemotional and historic moment of the past many months. She had become an extension of John’s dailylife experience. She was as a healthyand vibrant tree on a large field, providing a place for the family of two boysand a man to take comfort underneath her. She kept the soil beneath them cool, moist and fertile, soft and grassy,and her lush leaves provided pleasant shade from the harsh sunshine, andcleaned the air above them. Without her,living in normalcy in the house on Santa Fe Street,would have been almost impossible.

John’s momentof realization of who Thelma was to him, of her importance and her intimacy,came to him on a winter evening while in the living room, in front of thefireplace while Thelma sat on the floor playing with the boys. John rested with his legs propped up on a teatable, feeling the warmth of the fire, and enjoying the gaggle of laughter andplay from the boys and Thelma in front of him on the floor. Thelma was sitting on her hip with her legsfolded under her as she held herself up with one hand on the floor. John found his eyes had fixated on thecurvature of her buttocks and hip and his eyes scanned lower down her bodysavoring her legs and he held his gaze examining the perfect uniformity of herdark skin at her calves and ankles. “Splendid,”came to his mind as he continued his vision tour upwards to her archedback, and her fine curled black hair tucked upwards with a silver hair comb. He breathed deeply through his nose at herdirection and from five feet behind her his sense located her smell, herfamiliar lilac oil perfume. John feltthe rise of his libido, which he had not felt in over a year, and his heartbeat increased and his conscience became embarrassed for his ego that was nowtaking over with impulsive and animalistic instinct. For no apparent reason Thelma quickly turnedand looked directly at him, catching his stare, he immediately diverted hiseyes back to his newspaper. He removedhis legs from the table in front of him and folded one up over the other tohide his increasing physical arousal from view of Thelma, in case she lookedback at him again. Thelma leaned overfurther away from John to reach some toys on the floor and John soaked-in thesight of her buttocks lifting, rolling forward, then returning to the floor topress against the rug and spread out slightly under the weight of her uppertorso. He kept smiling, as if payingattention to the boys and their play, and he held his newspaper stiffly uprightto conceal himself.

It was time forthe boys to go to bed and Thelma ushered them upstairs to the bathroom to washand change them into their night robes. Still reclined on the couch in the living room, John gazed at the firewhile hearing the familiar sounds of the boys preparing for sleep and Thelmagiving instructions and answering Sydney’smultiple questions about life.

“Jesus I’m filthy, an out of control lustful idiot. Damn she is most desirable. Why I have notnoticed this fine body before, I do not know. What am I to do? Will she be receptive to me? Am I no better than a drunken masher, aboutto take advantage of a young woman under my authority? What if she feels thesame way? Is it wrong then? Damm, Jesus H. Christ!” John ponderedwildly.

John picked uphis tea cup and went into the kitchen to conduct some mundane activity todistract himself from his lust. He wasadding sugar to a fresh cup of tea when Thelma’s voice startled him frombehind.

“Yougoing to stay up a little while longer Mr. Irwin?”

Startled, Johnspilled tea on the counter top as he picked up his cup and turned swiftly toThelma, who was smiling and standing just a few feet behind him, holding someof the boy’s laundry.

“Um, yes, well I wasfeeling a bit restless, so I thought I would sit awake and read some morebefore turning in, yes a bit restless.”

Thelma walkedover to the wash basin and unloaded her arms of laundry. She turned to John and looked him over, stillsmiling, but more deviously now, she looked in his eyes, then lowered her gazeto John’s pants, allowing John to see that she saw his arousal. John was intensely embarrassed now.

“Itlooks to me Mr. Irwin, like you are a little bit more than just restless thisnight.” Thelma gently smiled.

John blushed sointensely he could feel the warmth rush to his face. Wordless he stood, caught, beyondembarrassment he stood, a man animal, a lustful puppy, discovered. Guilt was a feeling still new to John, foran honest man enjoys the comfort of no reason to feel guilt. Flora had been gone for many months and anyhope of her return was greatly diminished now. A woman was close to him. Avibrant and young woman. A loving womanwho has gone beyond the call of hired help time and again for John and hisfamily. A complex range of a multiple ofemotions was now in John’s mind. Betrayal of matrimony to Flora was a feeling he could not ignore. Taking advantage of Thelma’s convenience ofproximity to him was another matter that would grow guilt in his psyche. His relationship as her employer provides himthe ability to intimidate her, to coerce her, to be a source of threat to heremployment and this was a matter of ethical concern to weigh, or to ignore, inmoments of animal indulgence.

Then there werethe social norms that may be violated if John was to engage in an intimaterelationship with Thelma, as interracial coupling was reason for lynching insome parts of the south although it never has been in Kansas. The Klan was very active in central Kansas,John knew two men who participated in their meetings and had been asked to joinon more than one occasion. But John hadnot known racism in his own personality, mostly because he had boyhood friendsin Chicago who were black, his bestfriend at the Worley’s hog farm had been black, and Thelma’s brother and hermother and father had become extended family to him and to the boys.

But racismprevails in this society. The separationwas everywhere, “coloreds” had to have their own restaurants, their own moviehouse, and no whites would wash their laundry where the laundry of “coloreds”was washed. Thelma like so many lesspolitically aware coloreds of her time did not think of the segregation asracism, she did not well know the word, as an expression of life in Kansasfor her and her family. The racism wasdeeper than a well, more fixated in the culture than the mortar betweenbricks. Women could not vote and so wereless than citizens in the eyes of the white male hierarchy. Coloreds could not mix their physical bodies,their fluids, their touch or their very flesh with that of whites and so beingrespectable citizen members of society was not even a hope, not even a whim intheir futures. Integration was a rumor,it was a myth and a wish, or a dangerous thought. A white man taking a colored mistress wasmore common than it probably should be. But the act in itself was a left over from the slavery days. It was an unspoken practice accepted among men’sclubs that dotted the rural communities and plantations of the south andcentral plains.

John had notfelt so strong for a woman since he began courting Flora over four yearsprior. Here at this moment stood beforehim a beauty with ties to Flora possibly more strong than his own as herhusband. Flora’s girlhood best friend,her confidant, and a friend dearer to Flora than anyone could have been. It was clear to John, in knowing Thelma inthese past years, that her personality was forged on the ranch alongsideFlora. The witticisms and sayings, andthe giggles in secret shared behind walls in the house were clearly familiarmusings known only to two best friends, sisters in spirit. To John, reminding himself of Thelma’srelationship to Flora allowed ethical concerns to be easier, as if Thelma couldbe viewed as an extension of Flora’s embodied memories.

“She isvery much like Flora, like a part of her all along, all this time right here inmy house with me.” He thought.

John kept hiseyes on Thelma’s face while he fumbled behind himself to find a landing placeon the counter for his tea cup and while holding himself up with his other armagainst the counter-top.

“Why Mr.Irwin you was looking me over tonight, wasn’t you?” Thelma cracked the ice, smiling as if havingfun.

“Umm,well. Well Flora, I mean, oh sorry. Thelma, I suppose, being a man without awife, I did indulge in the sight of you this evening. My apologies Thelma, I have been like animpulsive dog.”

“You’re no dog Mr.Irwin. You are a sweet and kind man who needs comforting like any manwould. I don’t take any offense to yourstares at my body, after all, I like it, I’ve been looking you up and down fora long time.” Thelma’s words relaxed theenvironment.

Johnsmiled and his embarrassment subsided. Thelma took two steps toward John and she looked up into his eyes. John then embraced her by her shoulders andpulled her close and she wrapped her right arm behind John’s back and rubbedupwards and downwards as if to tell him he has permission and that she wantshim to relax and to enjoy her. LikeGoddard’s rocket, John’s own atmosphere piercing launch occurred in his brainthe instant Thelma’s hand trapped his. In his mind an explosion of blood and heat. Thelma’s calming hand on his back kept himfrom launching though the ceiling and out of the roof. John’s thoughts raced by indistinguishable,like the blurred faces of passengers behind the windows of a passing train. John braced the rear of Thelma’s head andplanted his lips on hers with a force equivalent of his animal emotion. Thelma returned his strength and their facesbecame engrossed in a fervor of movement, of moist exchange and of pressingsensual lust for each other.

“Oh Mr.Irwin, Mr. Irwin, please don’t stop Mr. Irwin. I was waiting for you.”

“PleaseThelma, don’t call me Mr. Irwin, it’s John, John Thelma.”

John hadno doubt at this moment of having to worry about taking advantage ofThelma. He was greatly relieved that shetoo wanted him, that she too had been watching, waiting and thinking of hisbody as he was hers.

Underthe light of a single gas lamp on the kitchen wall the two newly found loversrocked forward and backwards on a cold floor in a hot and moist embrace, tryingto be silent, failing to be. Thelmawanted to see John’s face and he hers, and they stared into each others eyes,all but frozen by their minds perception of sheer pleasure.

Withoutleaving the kitchen the two made love on the floor, half clothed, and half outof their minds. Time moved slowly forboth lovers and yet the event was over all too soon. Afterwards John and Thelma barely had a halfa minute to kiss each other in gratitude and acknowledgement of their newrelationship, sweat covering their heads and their breath panting. The kids were starting down the stairs tosee what all the ruckus was. Thechildren’s foot falls on the wood floor struck terror in their minds. Thelma quickly moved to the kitchen table andcomposed her hair, wiping her sweat from her face. John jumped into his pants and fastened themon, leaving his shoes and leggings sloppily displayed on the corner of thefloor. Sitting at the dining tableacross from each other, they waited the three seconds for Sydney and Orenthalto appear in the kitchen doorway, with questions.

“Daddy? Thelma? What happened? Is everything allright? You yelled, what’s wrong?” Sydneywas first at the doorway with his forehead creased in question.

Orenthalwas silent waiting for an answer to Sydney’sinquiry, rubbing his eyes, he had just fallen asleep when awoken by thisunusual occurrence. John looked atThelma and gently nodded his head to signal to her that he would tell themsomething. Thelma remained semi composedhoping the dimness of the kitchen would conceal their physical appearance.

“Your father stepped ona nail boys and it went in pretty far, you must have heard me yelling inpain. But I think I am just fine. Thelma is helping me put a bandage around it. Go on back to bed now.” John said as he forced a smiled.

Inconcert with John, Thelma smiled at the boys to reassure them things were allright. Sydneylooked over at the shoes and leggings on the other side of the kitchen andaccepted the story right away. Nail-heads had been pushing up through the floors of the houselately.

Thelma well understood what she wasgetting into by being involved in a loving relationship with John. She would have to be the secret lover, butthat seemed acceptable to her, and she enjoyed knowing John in this newway. She cherished immensely the fewtimes, during any passing month, that they could actually be alone and lovingtowards each other. She would be by hisside, close in emotion, distant in physical proximity. In town, she walked behind him by four orfive feet, following in the footsteps of a man she loved deeply, beside him inher heart but behind him just as a colored woman in nineteen-eleven shouldbe. The boys would never know of therelationship as children. If they toldsomeone in town, it could spell trouble for Thelma, it could cost John his joband perhaps a visit from the Klan.