The Widows of Wichita County

October 12

Just after midnight

County Memorial Hospital -A makeshift ICU room

Pain materialized one inch at a time into his mind until it filled every pore, every cell of his body. He couldn't move. lie wasn't sure he was even breathing on his own. There was nothing but fire seeping into his skin where it continued to smolder, burning all the way to his bones.

The weight of the sheet pressed agonizingly against him, while a tube choked past his swollen vocal cords, holding back a scream. Fighting with a strength borrowed from the deep recesses where life struggles to survive without consciousness, he pulled at tubes clawing their way into his arms. But his fingers had been individually wrapped with fine gauze and cupped, as if to hold a can, around a soft mass. The gentle splint rendered his efforts to touch anything useless.

Figures moved around him. Shouting. Ordering. Begging him to stop resisting.

He stilled, more from a need to conserve his last bit of strength than from cooperation. He tried to open his eyes but couldn't tell if they were bandaged or swollen closed.

"Please don't move, Shelby," a soft voice cried close to his ear. "You'll only hurt yourself more. Skin is coming off each time you move. Please be still."

He couldn't make sense of the madness.

"They're giving you morphine for the pain," the woman whispered between sobs. "It won't hurt so bad in a few minutes. Hang on, darling."

The fight to stay conscious was lost before he could tell her no one had ever called him darling. He drifted on an ocean of turmoil so constant it became commonplace, a part of him.

"Shelby?" the soft voice came again. "Shelby, can you hear me? They're changing the bags of saline on each arm. I know you hurt, but hang on, darling. Hang on."

He tried to open his mouth to tell her she was wrong. Somehow there had been a mistake. He didn't want to hear, or think, or feel. A dark void finally lulled him into numbness. Her words pulled him back to the surface where the horror stayed vivid. He wanted his suffering to end.

Let me die! he tried to beg. But he could not make words form. Let me die! Please, God, let me die!

Pulling at his bindings, he fought to take flight. If he could run fast enough and hard enough, he could outdistance the pain. He was surrounded once more by shouting and movement and machines. As he fought, he realized he couldn't feel his legs.

Let me die! his mind screamed. What did it matter? He was already in hell.

The woman was there in the chaos, begging him to live. She didn't understand. If she knew his torment she would not keep asking.

The sound of her crying finally eased him back into the blackness where his mind could rest even if his body still throbbed.

When he awoke the third time, the pain was too familial to be shocking. Drugs had taken the edge off of hell, nothing snore. This time he heard the drone of machines forcing him to breathe. He cursed the technology that kept him alive.

He drifted, trying to make his lungs reject each breath. Trying to force his heart to stop pounding. People moved around him, whispering like gnats in the night air. Nobody heard him beg for death.

Someone must have understood a fraction of his suffering. He heard her near, crying once more. He no longer resided alone in fiery hell. She stayed at his side. Unwanted. Unbeckoned. Unneeded.

Time lost all meaning. He would wake and force himself to take the blast of agony before his captured screams drove him mad. Then he'd hear the voices, and the woman sobbing softly at his side.

Sometimes, she would talk to him, low and Southern. For a second, he'd remember life before the pain. Moments, frozen like photographs, but real with smells and sounds. A ball game played on fresh-mowed grass. Drinking cold beer on a hot day. He felt the chill slide all the way to his gut. Sleeping on the porch in summer, with music from the house competing with crickets outside.

He forgot about his pain and tried to move. Volts of fire sliced through him. All thoughts vanished when the drugs dulled his mind once more.

Time passed, others came and went. The light grew softer, then brighter with an electric glare. Once, in the moment between blackness and agony he was aware. He made no effort to open his eyes, but listened to the sound of rain on the windows and a conversation hovering near.

"Look at the bastard," a man mumbled. "He can't live much longer. That special nurse said it was a miracle he's hung on this long. She said there's a rule, age plus percentage burned equals chance of death. The old man's fifty-eight with a sixty percent burn. That equals no chance in my book."

The male voice laughed. "The staff wants to move him to a bum unit in Dallas, but Crystal's following Daddy's orders and keeping him here. He'd already be there if they could have gotten the helicopter from Parkland Hospital through the storm the first few hours after the explosion, before they knew who he was."

The man's low voice grew closer. "Now he has next of kin. It's Crystal's choice, and she's not likely to forget his ravings every time he got drunk and talked about never being taken out of the county to die. He used to swear the big city hospital killed Mom. Too bad they couldn't do the same for him."

"Stop talking about him, Trent. He might hear you," a woman's sharp tones answered. "The hospital is doing what they can. They've turned this room into an ICU, and equipment from the city is coming in by the hour. He's got as much chance here as anywhere. Stop talking about Daddy as though he's already left us."

"He can't hear. Hell, he wouldn't even be breathing if it wasn't for this machine. All I'd have to do is reach up and…"

"Stop it, Trent! You don't have the guts to kill him."

"Or the need. What the rig explosion didn't do, the old man's stubbornness about being transferred to a real hospital will. He may have blamed the Dallas hospital for killing Mom, but I'll be able to thank this little place for not having the ability to keep him alive. In a few hours, I'll be running Howard Drilling. Even if he lives, he'll be a vegetable, and I'll take over."

The woman's tone was cruel. "And our dear little tramp of a stepmother will be back to waiting tables where shc belongs. I'd feel sorry for her if I thought Daddy ever loved her. But she was just his toy. I'll always believe he married her just to irritate you."

"He did a good job of that."

The woman laughed. "Wait till you see what I brought her as a change of clothing. I find it hard to believe she had the guts to even ask me to do such a thing. She hugged me as if she could comfort me and asked if I'd do her a great favor. She even said it didn't matter what I brought, she just needed a change because she wasn't leaving the hospital until Daddy did."

"All she'll have left is guts as soon as the old man dies." Trent laughed.

A door opened. The conversation ended. He drifted with the pain for a while before he heard someone crying again.

"Don't die, darling," the soft Southern voice whispered over and over. "Please don't die."

Her fingers pressed lightly over the bandages on his hand. She willed him to live with a determination stronger than his need to die. Whoever she was, she wasn't giving up. She wasn't letting go.

Through the pain he realized he didn't want her to give up on him. She was the only hope he felt he had ever known.

Sleepy little farming towns flooded overnight with thousands of oil field workers, teamsters and speculators. Gambling houses, saloons and shacks called parlors offered entertainment for a price. Small-town sheriffs from Borger to Port Arthur called in the Texas Rangers to help maintain a modicum of control. When the boom died, the local law stood alone as the towns drifted back to sleep.

October 12

1:45 a.m.

Frankie's Bar

The bartender leaned as far over the bar as his huge belly would allow and whispered, "We're closing, Randi, you want another one?"

Randi Howard stacked her last shot glass beside the others and shook her head. "Can't seem to drink enough to feel it tonight, Frankie."

The old boxer behind the bar nodded. "I've been there, kid, believe me." He used two of the glasses she'd emptied to pour them each a shot of tequila. "Jimmy was a good man and he'll be missed. Here's one to him."

Randi didn't down the offered drink. She just nodded. "He was a good man. Best damn husband I ever had." She looked up at Frankie. "He never beat me. Did you know that? Not once."

Frankie moved down the bar to the next customer; sympathy and advice were doled out like whiskey, in short shots. He'd been a boxer and a biker before settling down to tending bar. Randi guessed he'd heard every hard luck story over the years, and hers was just one more.

She lifted the last drink to her lips. "To you, Jimmy. I might not have been able to stand the boredom of living with you any longer, but I'm sure going to miss you now I know you're gone and I can't come running back."

Blinking away a tear, she remembered how he once told her that she was a one-woman wrecking crew leaving broken hearts wherever she went. He always said things like that to her before they married. Afterward she swore sometimes he looked right through her. He worried more about his uncle Shelby's business than he ever did about her. If the accident hadn't happened, he probably wouldn't have noticed she was gone for at least a week or two.

Randi closed her eyes wishing she could write the kind of sadness that settled in between them into a song. But singers don't sing about love dying by inches or how it feels when there is nothing to feel anymore. None of the sad country songs she knew could ever make her hurt as badly as watching Jimmy slowly stop caring.

She hadn't lost him in an oil fire. She'd lost him a fraction at a time…the day he stopped calling her name when he entered their trailer… the first morning he forgot to kiss her goodbye… the night he rolled away even though he knew she wanted to make love. She hadn't known how to say goodbye then. She wasn't sure she knew how to say goodbye now.

Maybe she should have had a farewell song ready the day she married. Then, every time something cut off a piece of her heart she could have turned up the volume a notch. Eventually, he would have heard it and then her leaving wouldn't be a surprise.

The only thing she could think to do now was to stick with the plan she'd come up with less then twenty-four hours ago. She felt like she'd wasted most of her life trying to figure out what to do. She had been leaving him, heading to Nashville to give herself a chance at a dream she'd had al i her life. She would just pretend Jimmy was back here waiting for her. That he still cared. It shouldn't be much of stretch really, she'd been pretending someone cared about her most of her life. Pretending was easier than believing. Believing could get her hurt, but pretending could go on forever. But now that she had finally decided on a direction, she would cut and run.

"It's time to face the champ!" Frankie yelled from the end of the bar as he raised his fist and tapped the set of boxing gloves hanging above his head.

A young cowhand a few stools down leaned toward Randi. Long past drunk, he smelled of smoke. "What's he talking about, ma'am?"

Randi smiled, wondering how many times she'd explained Frankie's last call. "It's time to face the champ. When anyone says that to a fighter, you can bet it is your last round for the night."

The drunk nodded as if he understood.

Randi lifted her purse along with his hat off the empty stool between them. "Come on, cowboy. I'll walk you to your pickup."

"How'd you know what I drove?" he said as she turned him toward the door.

"Lucky guess."

Parking lot of County Memorial Hospital

2:15 a.m.

"Can you drive home, Meredith?" Sheriff Farrington knelt beside the open Mustang door as he helped Meredith Allen into her car.

She worked summers and holidays at the county clerk's office just down the hall from his office, but she could never remember him using her name. Funny, when you are a schoolteacher in a small town everyone calls you by your last name. First students, then their parents. Even the other teachers in the building referred to one another as Misses or Misters. Slowly, the town knows you that way.

Meredith knew what people thought of her. When she had been in school, she had been a "good girl," the type boys remembered to open doors for. She figured she would grow into middle age and become a "fine woman." Then her hair would turn from auburn to light blue and she would take her place up front in church with all the other widows and become "a sweet old dear."

Only now she was already a widow, and not one hair of her curly mass had turned gray. Something had gone wrong with the order of things.

"I'll be fine, Sheriff. Thanks for sitting with me." She took a long breath and leaned back against the headrest. "I just didn't want to leave until the funeral home picked up Kevin. It didn't seem right somehow to leave him alone."

"I understand," he said, his voice still cold but less formal than usual. "Restlawn would have been here faster if they'd known you were waiting. I guess they didn't figure it mattered, so they sat out the rain."

She looked up at him. "They will take good care of Kevin?" She knew she was making no sense, but she had to ask. Restlawn was the only funeral home in town. Kevin was dead and far too burned to have an open casket. What difference could the care make?

"Of course they will." He played along with the fantasy. "Those boys have known your Kevin all his life. They'll be taking care of one of their own."

Meredith nodded.

"You call me if you need anything," he offered.

"I will," she answered, knowing she never would.

He stood and closed her door. She watched him walk back into the hospital as she pulled out of the parking lot. It was good of him to sit with her even if they had not said more than a handful of words to one another.

Meredith drove through deserted streets, trying to make herself believe Kevin was gone. Even after the long day at the hospital, it seemed impossible. She had loved and worried about him for more than half her life. He had always been there, through high school and college. Even before they married, every action, every thought, every decision had Kevin factored in. Then, today, for one second she blinked and the world changed. He was gone.

How could the town, the people, look the same? Didn't they know the earth had tilted? Crystal Howard said she had felt something in the wind, a shifting. She was right. After this day, life would change for them all.

But the grain elevators still loomed like a miniature skyline behind the old depot. Main Street still ran in front of the courthouse with store fronts sliced in between vacant buildings, just as they had that morning when she drove to school.

Several years ago, a senior class had taken on a project to install displays of the history of Clifton Creek in the empty store windows. The undertaking was a great success but, as the years went by, sun and dust faded the efforts until they matched the dilapidated buildings that housed them. Tonight they loomed through the fog like ghosts of the past.

Meredith fought back tears, forcing herself to maintain control. Kevin always says getting emotional doesn't help.

Kevin always said she corrected, as if a red pen sliced through her thoughts.

He could always tease her into smiling, no matter what happened. Only Kevin was no longer here. He would never be here again. Not to tease, or to gripe about the town, or to speed down Main when he thought he could get away with it.

He was gone. Not for tonight. Not for a few days. But for forever.

Breathe, she instructed. Breathe. Drive. Think.

The town Kevin swore never changed, had done just that. It was no longer small and welcoming, but cold and drab. The foggy air that hung on after the storm left Clifton Creek's streets as colorless and as empty as her heart.

Meredith focused her eyes straight ahead. She was afraid if she turned to look at any place in town, she would see a memory. Kevin may have died, but she didn't want to turn and catch a glimpse of him sitting on the bench outside the cafe, or walking across the grass on the square, or watching her pass from his office window at the bank. He loved to wave as she passed and then run out the back door of the bank and beat her home.

Meredith blinked hard and stared at the shiny black road. She had to think. She had to plan. This time he wasn't racing home to greet her.

Where was she going to get the money for a funeral? The last time she checked, she had forty-three dollars in her savings account and even less in checking. She had called her mother and aunt a few hours ago. They told her they doubted they could afford to come. She could not ask them for a loan.

Tears bubbled over, blurring her vision until the streetlights were starbursts. She hated thinking about money now. She hated that she had to.

As she opened the door to their one-bedroom house, she caught herself almost shouting, "I'm home." The place seemed quieter than she ever remembered it.

The living room was a mix-match of furniture they had either been given or had bought in garage sales. The couch was Mission, the chair Early American, the coffee table Modem. The tiny kitchen was cluttered, with a colorful plastic flower arrangement covering the burned spot on the counter.

"Our starter house," Kevin had called it. Something they had bought right out of college, planning to move up in a few years when Kevin's college loans were paid off. But the years passed and up never happened. Not that she minded, she told herself. This was home, easy to clean, close to school.

Meredith put her purse and the tote bag that served as a briefcase on a bar chair. She wiggled out of her sweater and straightened the cotton blouse she wore beneath. It's ruined, she thought, as she folded the sweater. She had picked at loose thread ends so often today that several of the letters were now missing. The L had rolled up like a retracting tape measure. What good is an alphabet sweater with twenty-one letters and a curly L?

She pulled out a lesson plan book and tried to think of what to tell the substitute to do for the next week. She told Principal Pickett she could come back the day after Kevin's funeral, but he insisted she take some extra time off.

Walking to the kitchen, she pulled down a mug and coffee canister. Why was it people thought teachers got a day off when they were not at school? she wondered. The substitute's plans were harder to do than showing up for class.

She opened the canister and smelled the aroma of coffee then remembered the coffeemaker lay upside down on the tiny kitchen table. Parts were scattered among tools. Kevin had promised he would fix it last night before he came to bed. But, as always, he had not even tried.

Meredith calmly put down the mug and walked to the back door. On the screened-in porch, she found two mops, a dust pan and the hatchet Kevin had borrowed from the neighbor a month ago. He had planned to trim a branch that kept scraping the bedroom window.

She lifted the hatchet, ran her fingers over the handle and tromped back to the kitchen. The first blow hit the broken coffeemaker with enough force to send parts bouncing off the ceiling. Whack! Whack! The fourth strike cut deep into the linoleum tabletop.

All the anger she had bottled up for years exploded with each swing. "He…never…fixed…anything!" she said almost calmly between attacks.

Like a lumberjack discovering the power of the ax, she widened her stance and lengthened her swing. Pieces of plastic and cord and metal flew around her.

Just as a chunk struck her on the cheek, the doorbell rang.

For a moment Meredith stood, hatchet ready, like a crazed killer seeking the next victim. Then slowly she wiped a drop of blood from her face and walked to the door.

"Yes," she said, trying to hide the hatchet behind her.

"Are you all right?" Sheriff Farrington's voice sounded from the shadows of the unlit porch.

Meredith calmed her breathing. "I'm fine. I was just fixing the coffeepot."

There was a long pause. Meredith guessed she should say something else or turn on the light, but she made no move. It would be better if he could not see her face.

Finally, the sheriff cleared his throat. "I forgot to ask you what you want me to do with Kevin's car."

Meredith could not fight down the smile as she gripped the hatchet. "I'll take care of it tomorrow."

She could almost see the sheriff raise an eyebrow. His hand went out as if to touch her, then he pulled back. "Meredith, are you sure you're all right? I could call someone. A friend or relative."

"No," she answered, surprised at the sheriff's concern. She had passed him in the halls of the courthouse for year and he had never said more than a few words. He was like her, an observer, not a participant. Two onlookers rarely have much to say to one another.

"Where is Kevin's car?" She had no intention of tellint, him how few friends she had. She knew almost everyone üi town, but could think of no one to call to be with her.

"It's in a two-hour parking spot at the bank," he answered. "He must have ridden out to the Montano place with Shelby or Jimmy. I saw both Howards heading into the bank yesterday morning."

She nodded. Everyone in town knew the sheriff observed folks passing on Main Street from his window with the same intensity that a sailor studies the sky.

"Don't worry about Kevin's car," Farrington finally mumbled. "I'll see it doesn't get ticketed. You can deal with it after you've had some sleep."

"Thank you." Meredith slowly closed the door, thinking maybe she could sell the car to help pay expenses.

Kevin wouldn't want anyone to know money was tight. Over the years she had seen him insist on paying, or throw money into a pot even when he knew it would run them short for the month. Once he had given a hundred dollars to help send the extras on the basketball team to the state tournament. The boys made it to Austin, but Meredith and Kevin ate macaroni and cheese for three weeks. That was the year they were so broke they got religion. The Baptist church had a young couples' dinner every Wednesday. For all couples under thirty there was no charge, the church's way of helping young folks get started.

She could continue to play the game alone. Meredith closed her eyes and reminded herself one more time to keep breathing.

"Our money is nobody's business but ours." She could almost hear Kevin saying.

"But mine," she corrected.

October 12

After midnight

The Whitworth home-Pigeon Run

Across town, money also pestered Helena Whitworth' mind. She wrote two checks to her daughters. Since she had got home from the hospital, they had worried about little else except the fact they had nothing black to wear to J.D.', funeral.

Paula and Patricia were fraternal twins born to Helena when she was still in her teens. Paula was the brightest of the pair. If one can compare the brightness of flannel. She managed to fail two years of college before dropping out. Patricia quit her first semester because the books were too heavy to carry across campus.

"You don't have to do this, Momma." Paula blew the ink dry on her check. "I could have charged what I needed at Sears. I know how important it is for you to have us dress properly and there is never anything in Helena's Choice in our size."

Patricia fidgeted impatiently. "I'm sorry I have to run, but Bill's home waiting up. He says he can't sleep without me beside him in bed. You know how it is." She took her check then glanced up at her mother. "I'm sorry, Momma. I didn't think. I'll get someone to keep the baby tomorrow and come over and help you."

"That won't be necessary." Helena tried, as always, to keep her words kind, not out of fondness, but out of selfpreservation. When the girls were upset, whining leaked into every word they communicated.

"Oh, Momma, I don't mind coming to help." Patricia lifted the three-year-old she still called "the baby." He'd had a plug in his mouth so long Helena sometimes wondered if it were a birth defect.

"You need to get rid of J.D.'s things, Momma, as soon us possible. It's not healthy to keep them around making you sad and all. Bill could probably wear some of those golf shirts on his Saturday runs. They're not real strict about the uniform then."

"Harry is J.D.'s shoe size," Paula interrupted. "Don't go giving his shoes away until Harry tries them on. We'll be over first thing tomorrow, too."

Helena closed her eyes, thinking of something J.D. used to say. "Even the bottom of the gene pool rises after a rain." It must have flooded the day she conceived. Though she loved her daughters dearly, they were a trial. Paula forever bossy, Patricia forever needy.

Both always wanted to help her. They meant well, but Helena hated discussing decisions that were hers to make. J.D. understood that about her. She was a woman who knew her own mind and did not need to take a poll to determine her actions.

"What are you going to do with all those hats he's got?" Patricia shook her head. "They're not even proper to give the Salvation Army-the ones he wore in the Marines. You know, the ones he always made us call `covers' instead of hats."

Paula snorted a laugh. "Can't you just see the homeless wandering the streets wearing a colonel's hat? And the old things he wore to watch birds wouldn't be fit for fishing."

Helena had had enough. She headed toward the door.

Like puppies hearing the paper being rolled, both girl looked suddenly guilty. "We're sorry, Momma," they chimed. "We didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

Both opened their arms to hug Helena, but then decided it would be safer to hug each other. Between ample bodies and ample breasts, they looked like huge Humpty Dumpty toys trying to dance but only succeeding in wobbling.

"I'm really going to miss the old guy," Paula cried on her sister's shoulder. "He wasn't so bad once we got used to the sin of Momma marrying him."

Paula never missed a chance to remind Helena that she and J.D. were first cousins. Everyone in town seemed to have forgotten except "One-track Paula."

"I'll miss him, too," Patricia added, but from the confused expression in her eyes, she couldn't remember any sin. "Even if I didn't understand what he was talking about half the time. He was always naming some place I never heard of like it was important and I should drop everything and go home and look it up on a map."

"Good night, girls." Helena held the door open as her offspring hurried out. They were her flesh and blood. The only part of her that would live on in this world. But they did not hold her heart. No one had until J.D.

Both daughters stood on the front step when she spoke again. "No one…I repeat, no one, touches J.D.'s things."

They looked at her as if they felt sorry for their mothers inability to face the facts.

Helena tried to keep her anger in check. "If either of yew do, you will never be welcome in this house again."

"Oh, Momma, you don't mean…"

"I mean every word. J.D.'s things stay untouched." Helena closed the door, wishing she could talk to her daughters without getting angry.

She walked slowly up the staircase to the bedroom that had been hers and J.D.'s for over ten years. His things surrounded her. Welcomed her. She closed her eyes and relaxed for the first time since the call from the hospital.

His robe hung on the door, his reading glasses were on an open book, his running shoes lay between the chairs by the window. He couldn't be gone. She could still smell him near. Still feel the warmth of his gaze watching her. Sometimes when they were sitting side by side, paying no attention to one another as they read or watched the birds, Helena would match her breathing to his. If she were still enough she knew she could do that now.

"Don't leave me, Cousin," she whispered across the shadows. "Don't leave me alone."

Helena closed her eyes and forgot about all that happened. The nightmare of reality ended. Need brought in the dream.

In the stillness of their room she heard him whisper, "I'm right here. Waiting. Come here, Hellie."

Helena slipped beneath the covers and into the arms of the only man she ever loved. His chest was bare and hair tickled her nose as it always did. His arm was strong about her. The smell of his aftershave blended with his favorite brand of pipe tobacco.

"Don't go just yet," she pleaded. "I couldn't bear it."

She felt his gentle kiss on her forehead. "I'll be right here as long as you need me. Remember when I came back? I gave you that silver dollar your mother had given me to take to war for luck. I promised I'd never leave you alone. Let the storm come, Hellie, let it come. You'll always have my arms to protect you."

There were folks who believed God put oil in Texas because it was the only place on earth where the rigs could be seen as an improvement on the landscape. On a windy day tumbleweeds would blow into the eaves of a rig making it look like a skeleton Christmas tree covered in huge, hideous ornaments.