Finally the trooper, red-faced and ready to explode, stopped and said, “Listen, you little fairy, you snap your fingers at me one more time, I’m gonna rip them off and shove them up your fat ass.”
Cecil stood and blinked at him, “What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
Cecil frowned. “Don’t you make me waste my valuable rehearsal time fooling with you. I am the director of this show and you are going to do it and you are going to do it right.”
“Over my dead body,” said Trooper Childress.
Cecil glanced at his watch. “Take a fifteen-minute break, people. I want you all back here onstage at exactly one-forty, ready to take it from the top.” He then pointed at Trooper Childress and said, “And I want to see you downstairs right now, mister, let’s go.”
When they got downstairs to the large rehearsal hall, Cecil closed the door and said, “Take off that shirt. I’m not having you rip up a new shirt when we don’t have time to order another one.”
The trooper did so with glee, just itching to wipe up the floor with Cecil. The last thing Ralph Childress heard before Cecil hauled off and beat the living hell out of him was “I will not have a cast member setting a bad example.”
Fifteen minutes later Cecil came back into the auditorium clapping his hands. “Let’s go, people . . . right from the top.” Behind him came Childress, limping slightly. A few minutes ago, he had been lying on the floor too exhausted to get back up, while Cecil had stood over him with his hands on his hips and asked, “Now, are you ready to get back to work or not?”
The trooper had been so surprised that he’d laughed and said, “Yeah, I guess so.”
Cecil may have looked pudgy but he was as solid as a rock and as strong as a bull. He had been lifting dead bodies and caskets all his life. Although most of his military service had been spent arranging teas and bridge parties for the officers and their wives, he had been trained to defend himself. Nothing more was made of the incident but when the others asked Ralph what had happened he replied, “Aw, he’s all right . . . just trying to do his job.” In trooper language that must have meant a lot, because Cecil never had any more trouble with any of them and eventually they even came to like him. As a matter of fact, some came to him when they were having trouble with their wives or girlfriends and asked his advice. He seemed to understand women much better than they did.
And it was true in one important case. He had noticed Hamm and Betty Raye drifting further apart. After the pageant, he went into Hamm’s office and closed the door. “You know I don’t care what you do in your personal life but you need to start paying a little more attention to your wife.”
Hamm, distracted, said, “What?”
“Betty Raye. She hasn’t been anywhere with you in the last six months and that’s not right.”
“Oh yeah . . . yeah, I guess you’re right. Maybe I should take her to dinner or something.”
“It had better be something,” Cecil said, “and soon.”
Hamm said, “Yeah, I will as soon as I get a free night.” But the free night never came. Betty Raye never said anything but she was lonesome. She really did not have any close friends in Jefferson City. Since it was the capital of the state, most people there were either in politics or married to someone who was. Betty Raye did not know a thing about politics except that it had taken her husband away, and she had nothing in common with the other wives, who seemed to love it. Alberta Peets, the ice-pick murderess, was her closest friend. She kept Betty Raye amused with stories of her many boyfriends, but when Alberta went home on a weekend furlough and the boys were off at camp, Betty Raye rattled around all by herself in the upstairs portion of the huge mansion.
One day in the middle of the afternoon, the phone rang at Neighbor Dorothy’s house in Elmwood Springs. It was Betty Raye.
“Well, hello, honey, what a nice surprise.”
“I didn’t want anything,” Betty Raye said. “I was just thinking about you and thought I’d call and say hello.”
They chatted for quite a while. Betty Raye asked about everyone and wanted to know how Jimmy was doing and said to tell him hello. When Dorothy asked how she was enjoying being the first lady of the state, Betty Raye said, “Oh fine.” She did not tell Dorothy but she often thought about them and her time in Elmwood Springs. And lately, there were times when she wished she had never left, but then one of her boys would run in looking for her and she’d be happy again.
The Dancing Storks
L
UCKILY FOR
Bobby and Lois, Charlie Fowler was a man of his word and as the company began to grow, so did Bobby’s salary. Within a year after their son was born they were able to buy themselves a nice house and a new car. They found that they loved living in Kentucky and even brought Doc and Dorothy and Mother Smith and Jimmy over for the Kentucky Derby. Dorothy had just lost Princess Mary Margaret to old age and the trip did his mother good. It was especially wonderful when she met her new blond, blue-eyed grandson, Michael.
That year Poor Tot had lost her mother as well. Literally. While she was at work her mother had wandered off from the house and apparently had gotten into a car with strangers, who drove her all the way to Salt Lake City, where she wound up living in a Mormon home for the aged. By the time they found her she said she did not want to come home, but Tot still had to pay for her room and board each month.
On July 6, 1962, Macky and Norma Warren were celebrating a special day and early the next morning Norma called Aunt Elner, even before Elner had called, which was a first.
Aunt Elner wiped the flour off her hands on her apron and picked up. “Hello.”
“Aunt Elner, it’s Norma. Do you have your hearing aid on?”
“Yes.”
“You are not going to believe what Macky got me for our anniversary. It is the cutest thing I have ever—”
“What did he get you?”
“Well, remember how mad I got at him last year when he gave me that stupid Rainbird sprinkler for the lawn?”
Aunt Elner laughed. “I remember. Poor little Macky.”
Norma said, “Poor little Macky? Of course, I was upset. Can you blame me? Our thirteenth wedding anniversary and he buys me something for the lawn. He takes me outside, turns on the water, and says, ‘Happy Anniversary.’ I said, ‘Macky Warren, after thirteen years of marriage I get a
sprinkler
?’ And not only that, he got it out of his own hardware store. He didn’t even shop for it. After I had driven all the way to Poplar Bluff and bought him all those cute boxer shorts, remember, with the little hearts on them, and baked him a cake. I could have killed him on the spot. Well, anyhow, this year he made up for it. Wait till you see what that crazy fool bought me. I’m looking at it right now.”
“What is it?”
“It is the cutest thing you have ever seen. It is these two storks, at least I think they’re storks—aren’t they the birds with the long beaks? Anyway these two storks are all dressed up and are dancing. The male stork has on a tuxedo and the female is all dressed up in a green evening gown with a red headdress and they are dancing on this pedestal, and you turn it over and it’s a music box. When you wind it up, it turns around in a circle and plays ‘The Sheik of Araby’ while they dance. I said to Macky, ‘This is the cutest thing I have ever seen.’ Listen, I’m going to wind it up for you.”
Norma put it close to the phone while it played. Aunt Elner sat and listened. After about a minute Norma came back on the phone. “Can you hear that? Is that not the cutest thing you ever heard?”
Aunt Elner agreed. “Yes it is. I always loved that tune.”
“Me too, I’m just tickled to death with it, and I said to Macky, ‘This is more like it, this is much more romantic than a sprinkler.’ Men, aren’t they silly sometimes? He won’t tell me where he got it, but it says on the bottom it was made in Czechoslovakia, so it must have cost him a fortune. He said he bought it for me to put on my knickknack shelf and I said, ‘Macky, this is not an ordinary knickknack.’ I’ve been thinking about where to put it and think I’m going to keep it in the living room on my end table. I mean, it certainly is a conversation piece. After all, how many homes could you go into and find storks dancing to ‘The Sheik of Araby’?”
Aunt Elner said, “I’ve never seen it.”
“No, as a matter of fact, I was surprised Macky had the good taste to pick it out all by himself. You know the kind of junk he usually gets. So I said to him, ‘Macky, you can still surprise me. That must mean we have a good marriage.’ He said, ‘We must have, because you surprise me with something every day.’ I said, ‘Well good, I don’t want you to get bored.’ And he said he was anything but bored, wasn’t that sweet?”
“Yes, it was. How did he like your present?”
“He loved it, but you know Macky—anything with a fish on it and he’s happy.”
Not every marriage was as happy as Macky and Norma’s. Over the past few years things had started to change even more between Hamm and Betty Raye. It was not so much that they had stopped caring for each other; they had just slowly started drifting apart, until gradually, even before they were aware of it, he was living one life and she another.
Hers was a quiet life, trying to stay out of the spotlight, while it seemed he was always running toward it. His hours were so erratic—he only slept three or four hours a night—that they finally stopped sleeping together. He started to use the small room off the master bedroom so as not to disturb her and never came back. She had her two boys, whom she adored, and spent most of her time with them but still, being so in love with Hamm and not really having him was hard.
It was sometimes difficult to keep up a happy face all the time, particularly when her mother came to visit.
Minnie had just come from one such visit to the governor’s mansion to see her daughter and her grandsons. Being that they had another few days off, she and Beatrice Woods had decided to have Floyd drive them down to Elmwood Springs for the day. Everyone was glad to see Beatrice again. She seemed very happy and still laughed at everything Chester the dummy said.
Why? No one knew. Ruby Robinson said if she could see him she wouldn’t think he was so funny.
Like all mothers when they get together, the conversation usually revolves around the happiness and success of their children, and Minnie and Dorothy were no different. At this point Minnie could discuss success with authority. Her daughter was married to the governor and the Oatman Family Gospel Singers were doing so well they had just purchased another brand-new Silver Eagle custom-made Trailways bus and had a new hit album.
Minnie said, “With it all I’m so blessed and thankful to have the relationship with the Lord that I do. I look around me and people don’t seem happy with all the money they’ve got. It’s never enough. They always think they need more. And all you really need is the Lord. Money just don’t do it, does it?”
Dorothy said, “Not in a lot of cases, I guess.”
“I told Emmett Crimpler just the other day . . . I said, Emmett, just how many new suits do you need? You can only wear them one at a time. But every time we stop near a Sears, he’s got to run in and buy him another one. He says it’s ’cause he used to be so poor but I don’t believe it.”
“No?”
“No. He thinks all them new suits is gonna bring him happiness. But they ain’t. You know, Dorothy, up to now I’ve had to scrimp for pennies every day of my life, trying to make ends meet. I’ve been poor as long as I’ve been alive and, you know, when you is poor, most won’t give you the second time of day. Why, I can remember when I was nothing but a li’l ole barefoot child living in a little ole shack my daddy built us, setting on the top of a slump slab out in the country. Daddy worked from first light to last, picking out a few lumps of coal for us and the neighbors,
but
we was happy. Now that we’ve got money, I look at my boys and see they ain’t happy. Bervin is chomping at the bit to run off and be the next Elvis and Vernon is on his third wife and is gone cold on the Lord.” She sighed. “And Betty Raye . . . I just don’t know what’s the matter there. Here she has a cute little husband and two sweet boys but . . . Oh, she tried to put on a good face for me but a mother can tell when something’s wrong.
“Something’s wrong. I can’t put my finger on it but the whole time we was there Hamm goes one way and she goes another. It don’t seem right to me. Ferris and me was never apart a day or night from the first day we was married in 1931, by the Reverend W. W. Nails. He said, ‘Who God is joined together let no man put asunder,’ and I never forgot it . . . and I’ve got me a feeling that there’s something asunder going on.”
Vita Green
H
ARRY
S.
T
RUMAN ONCE
said there were three things that could ruin a man: power, money, and women. Hamm already had power and the promise of money. And a woman was getting ready to walk in any day now.
Hamm was determined to be the best governor he could and he worked hard at it. He made sure he was informed about how people felt on every issue. Along with talking to as many people as he could, he also read every paper in the state before starting work each morning. Although he never paid much attention to the society pages, he did begin to notice something in the Kansas City papers. He kept seeing pictures of this one woman, always photographed at some party or function. He usually did not have much use for the rich or any interest in their silly activities but as the weeks went by he found himself starting to look for pictures of her in the paper and being disappointed when she was not there.
One morning he called Cecil into his office. “When you were in the funeral business in Kansas City, did you ever know a Mrs. Vita Green?”
“Know her?” Cecil said. “She was one of my best customers and still is. We do the flowers for all her parties.”
“Is that so?”
“One year she gave a party for my theater group and we did her entire terrace in white roses. She has the whole top floor of the Highland Plaza apartment building, with a view from every room.”