Authors: More Than Memory

Dorothy Garlock (44 page)

BOOK: Dorothy Garlock

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Nelda laughed happily. “You’re a spoiled little boy, Lute Hanson. You get plenty of attention.”

“Not enough, huh, Chris?” Lute took his son from Nelda’s arms, slipped his hand up to the nape
of her neck, and pulled her to him. He kissed her gently, then kissed her again as if in desperation. “I never get enough of you. How long will it be until I can keep you in bed all night long?” he said between kisses.

“You had me all night long last night. You’re the one who brought Chris to bed with us.”

“—And had to share your attention,” he pouted.

“Oh, poor you.” Her eyes bright with happiness, Nelda headed for the kitchen, confident of his love.

Lute followed and sat down on a stool to watch her. It was pure pleasure just looking at her . . . his mop-head, the sweetheart of his youth, his love, his only love. He had given his heart to her when he was seventeen and she would still hold it in her two hands if he lived to be 110.

Dear Lord, how was it that this small woman could make him feel like this with just her smile and a few soft words? The chilling emptiness that had accompanied him for the past nine years had completely vanished. Right here was what he’d dreamed of having when he was a callow youth working his butt off in the onion fields to earn money to take her to a picture show.

“Marlene called to say Norris wanted to buy Chris an antique rocking horse. She persuaded him that Chris was much too young.”

“He’s already bought him so much stuff I’ve had to put some of it in the attic. They take being god-parents too seriously. I never thought I’d like the guy, but he’s fond of my son, so I guess I can put up with him.”

“Come on now. Admit that you like him a lot.”

“He’s lucky he survived those few months when I thought you were in love with him. I almost broke his neck a time or two.”

His blue eyes danced over her face reddened from the heat of the oven. She removed the oven mitts, and came to wrap her arms around his neck. She placed kisses on his face until their son, sandwiched between them, began to wriggle in protest.

“My sweet, darlin’, beautiful man, how could you have thought I’d love anyone but you?”

“There’s only one way you can convince me,” he replied haughtily.

“And I know what that is. I’ll give you all the lovin’ you can handle tonight,” she purred with a wanton little smile, “if you’ll lift that twenty-pound turkey you insisted on buying out of the oven for me.”

“Hear that, Kelly? This is going to be the longest day of my life.” He cupped her chin in the palm of his hand and captured her mouth with his in a deep kiss.

When he heard his name, Kelly lifted his head from his bed in the corner of the kitchen just long enough to say:

“Arrr-woof—” Then he stretched out and went back to sleep.

This is the recipe for the casserole dish Linda made on Christmas Eve. (I do not know the origin of its name.)

TED-A-RENA

(All ingredients can be adjusted to size of family.)

1 pound of lean ground beef

small onion

one-half of a green pepper

Sauté onion and green pepper in butter, add ground beef, and cook until brown and crumbly.

Parboil for a few minutes the following:

1½ cups cubed raw potatoes

1 cup sliced carrots

1 cup broken uncooked spaghetti

Drain and add to meat mixture.

Add a cup of shredded cheddar cheese.

1 can of cream of chicken soup—with a can of milk.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Sprinkle top with shredded cheese.

Bake 45 minutes in 350° oven.

Dear Reader Friends,

For a long time, I’ve wanted to set a romantic novel in Clear Lake, Iowa in the 1950’s, the time when my husband and I came here to make it our home. I had also wanted to memorialize, in my own way, the tragic event that is now called “the day music died,” when Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, J.P. Richardson, and their pilot Roger Peterson died in a crash north of town on February 3, 1959. That is how this story of love and forgiveness, MORE THAN MEMORY, came to be. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it. I intend it to be a single book which will have no sequels or prequels, unlike my series set in the Great Depression and its follow-up book, AFTER THE PARADE.

As you can see, if you turn the page to the excerpt that follows, I am starting another series, which begins with the novel, THE EDGE OF TOWN. It will chronicle the adventures of the Jones family in the 1920’s, a dynamic time, when America began to come into its own. It will be published in hardcover in April 2001. I hope you will look for it then.

As always, I very much appreciate hearing from you and will answer your letters as time permits.

Clear Lake, Iowa

More
Dorothy Garlock!

Please keep reading
for a
bonus excerpt from

The Edge of Town

Fertile, Missouri
August 1922

“Lillian Russell’s dead!” Jill made the dramatic announcement and waited for her sister to comment. When Julie continued to wash the dishes and drop them in the rinse pan, she said, “All the wonderful women in the world are dying. First Nellie Bly and now Lillian.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Ricky May told me last night. Lillian was so beautiful, so elegant. All the men loved her.” Jill lifted her arms in a circling motion. “I’m going to be just like her.”

“You’ll have to grow some,” Julie said dryly. “She had quite a bosom. They were out to here.” Julie held her cupped, wet hands out six inches from her slender body.

“And a tiny waist.”

“Helped by a tight corset.”

“She was beautiful-—”

“—And old enough to be your grandma. Dry the dishes while you’re grieving for her.”

Jill took a plate from the hot rinse water, dried it, and set it on the table.

“The men who gave her diamonds must have liked a woman with a big bust. Diamonds show up best lying on soft white flesh.”

“Soft white flesh? Glory be! Well don’t worry about it. You’ve got a good start for a fourteen-year-old.” Julie slid a greasy skillet into the sudsy water.

“Jack said they were like half oranges stuck up there.”

Julie looked at her sister and frowned. “Why would Jack be making a remark about his sister’s breasts?”

“I asked him.”

“Justine Jill Jones!”

Jill rolled her eyes on hearing her full name. “I hate it when you call me that.”

“It’s the name Mama gave you.”

“I’ll never know why she added Justine to it.”

“She didn’t. She added Jill.”

“Kids at school laugh about our names. They say if Mama’d had more kids, she’d probably have named them Jericho and Jerusalem.”

“And what did you say to that?”

“Nothing. Ricky May Jacobs said she should’ve named two of us Jenny and Jackass.” Jill giggled.

Julie’s shoulders shook with silent laughter. That all their names started with a J didn’t bother her. She rather liked it.

“I never asked Jack about my bosom,” Jill said after she placed a stack of clean plates on the shelf. “I asked him if the boys at school thought I was pretty.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said . . . oh, he was so mean!” Jill flipped her long blond curls over her shoulder and tilted her freckled nose. “He said only the dumb ones thought I was pretty. He said my hair was like straw, my nose was so turned up he was surprised I didn’t drown when it rained.”

Julie laughed in spite of the serious look on her sister’s face.

“Never ask your brothers if you’re pretty. If you were a raving beauty, they’d not admit it.”

“That’s when he said my breasts were the size of half an orange.”

“It’s a pact made between brothers to tell their sisters that they are ugly as a mud fence even if they are as pretty as Mary Pickford.”

“I hate brothers!”

“Mable Normand is pretty.”

“She’s in
Molly O
at the Palace. I want to see it, but Papa said picture shows cost almost as much as a pair of stockings, and I need stockings more.” Jill sighed heavily.

“Julie, Julie, guess what?” Ten-year-old Jason always shouted if he was excited and even at times when he wasn’t excited.

Since their mother’s death four years earlier, Julie was the person her brothers and sisters came to with news, hurts, and needs.

Jason stumbled onto the back porch, yanked open the screen door, and bounded into the kitchen, shutting the door just in time to keep the shaggy brown dog, his constant companion, from
following him. Besides being small for his age, Jason had been born with a deformed foot that made it necessary for him to wear a special shoe.

“Julie, guess what?” He was breathless.

“Well, let me think a minute. Oh, yes, I know! Bananas are growing out of the old stump out by the woodpile.”

“Ah, Julie, you’re so silly sometimes.” Jason stood as tall as his slight frame allowed. His muddy shoes were firmly planted on the clean kitchen floor.

“Look at his shoes!” Jill sneered with sisterly disgust.

“Shut up.” Jason turned on his sister. “Open your trap again, and I won’t tell ya!”

“What’s your news, Jason?” Julie poured water from the teakettle over the dishes in the pan.

“Joe . . . said that we’re havin’ a baseball game tonight. Both Birch families, the Humphreys, and the Taylors. Maybe the Jacobs and Evan Johnson. He helped the Humphreys today.”

“Who cares about
him
?” Jill snorted.

Jason knew he would get the full attention of his younger sister when he mentioned the Taylors. She had been eyeing both Roy and Thad Taylor, who were a grade ahead of her in school.

“Joe told me to get out the stuffed bags we use for bases. I hope mice ain’t chewed ’em up.”

“Haven’t,” Julie corrected. Then, “When was this decided?” She stopped working on the greasy skillet to give her full attention to her brother.

“I dunno. They’ll be done hayin’ by
midafternoon. Pa said to tell ya they’d noon at the Humphreys.”

“Then I’ll go to town this afternoon. We’ll have a cold supper.”

Julie put the kitchen in order. As she hung her apron on the back of a chair, Jill, with the youngest Jones child, Joy, in tow, came through the kitchen on the way to the front porch. Julie went upstairs to the room she shared with her sisters and changed out of her dress and into a white blouse with a drawstring neckline and a blue skirt. Julie knew herself for what she was: a strong, slim woman with clear skin and a wide mouth, and the responsibility of raising her siblings weighing heavily on her shoulders.

With a wide-brimmed straw hat set squarely on her head to shade her face as much as possible, she picked up the cloth bag she would use to carry home the few things she planned to buy at the store.

• • •

By the time Julie crossed the railroad tracks and headed back up the hill toward home, there were rings of perspiration under her arms, her forehead was beaded with sweat. She enjoyed her forays into town but was always glad to get back to the sanctuary of the farm. Each and every time she came to town she grew more certain that she would never want to live there.

She trudged up the hill, shifting the carrying bag from one arm to the other. The two books she had selected at the library for Jill were heavy. Deep
in thought, deciding what she was going to give the family for supper, she was unaware of the wagon coming up behind her until it was just a few feet away. She moved over to the side of the road and glanced back over her shoulder. Panic crept up her spine, throbbed in her temples, choked off her breath. She was deathly afraid of the man on the wagon.

She had a right to be.

Walter Johnson was big, whiskered, and wore a straw hat smashed down on a head of gray-streaked hair. He spat a yellow stream of chewing tobacco out onto the dirt road. Julie choked down the panic that clogged her throat as he pulled the wagon up alongside her and stopped the team.

“Wal, looky thar!” He laughed as she continued to walk and passed the team. “If’n it ain’t Miss Prissy-tail Jones. I ain’t seen you for a right long spell.” He walked the horses until he was even with her. “Climb on up here, and I’ll give ya a ride home.”

Julie tried to ignore him. There wasn’t a house or a person in sight. Her heart pounded with fear. The man moved the team so that the wagon forced her to walk in the grass that edged the road.

“Seen ya in town a-switchin’ that purty little ass around. Ya wearin’ any drawers, gal? Be handier if ya ain’t.” He chuckled low in his throat. It was more like an animal growl that came from him. “Come on up here now. After a swig or two from my bottle, ya’ll be more’n willin’ fer me to plow ya deep and hard. Ya’ll be beggin’ for it.” He rubbed
his maleness with the palm of his hand and snickered.

Julie felt her face grow hot with humiliation and anger. Determined to defend herself, she switched the cloth bag to her right hand and prepared to swing it at him if he got down off the wagon.

“Ain’t no need ya bein’ so snooty. It ain’t like ya ain’t never had a man.” He leered at her and lifted his brows. A short guffaw of laughter came from him.

Julie was so frightened she could hardly comprehend the man’s hateful words. She feared he would force her off the road and into the woods ahead. She glanced behind her to see if anyone was coming. There was not a soul in sight!

Julie spun around and ran as fast as she could back toward town. She wasn’t going near that woods as long as she was on her feet.

“It’ll be you . . . or that gimpy kid. I ain’t a bit choosy when it comes to gettin’ my rocks off. Come back here, ya split-tailed bitch!” he yelled.

What does he mean? Oh, Lord. He means Jason!

She heard a yell and looked back, fearfully thinking he was coming after her. A rider on a buckskin horse had come out of the woods and was racing down the road toward the wagon. He reached it, whirled his horse, and lashed the team with the ends of his reins.

“You rotten son of a bitch! Get the hell away from her!”

Evan Johnson lashed the team again, and they shot off up the road. Walter Johnson was
bouncing on the seat, roaring with rage and trying to hold the frantic mules.

Tears of relief rolled from Julie’s eyes and down her cheeks. She hadn’t realized how frightened she was. She stood in the middle of the dusty road and dug into her bag for a handkerchief to wipe her eyes. The square of cloth still had eluded her searching fingers when Evan Johnson rode up beside her.

“Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head and brought the handkerchief up to wipe her eyes. She turned her face away to keep him from seeing the tears and peered anxiously up the road to be sure her tormentor was gone.

“I’m sorry, Miss Jones. I’m real sorry.”

Evan was a big man. He was tremendously tall and his eyes, shadowed with concern, were studying her with intensity.

How could this man possibly be the son of such a despicable character as Walter Johnson?

To read more, look for
The Edge of Town.

BOOK: Dorothy Garlock

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