Little Town, Great Big Life Read online

  The caller was old Mr. Northrupt from across the street. “I want to talk to Tate!”

  “Yes, sir,” was the only reply to that.

  Checking to make certain her robe was securely tied, Corrine stepped out into the hall and almost ran into Papa Tate heading into the nursery, looking all tired and with his hair standing on end, as he often did in the morning. Handing him the phone, Corrine went to take care of her tiny niece, who was climbing over the toddler bed rails. She could hear Mr. Northrupt’s voice coming out of the phone. “Did you cancel my show? I think you could at least have told me. I didn’t have to find out by hearin’ Winston on there. Did you know he’s on there? Well, he is. He’s doin’ a reveille.”

  Papa Tate calmed Mr. Northrupt down. “Winston’s just playin’ a prank. You still go on at seven.” He had to repeat this several times in different ways. Then Papa Tate hung up and told Corrine that he had changed his mind about the fun of owning a radio station.

  Across the street, Everett Northrupt was not appeased. He stomped around, mad as a wet hen. He was the host of the 7:00 a.m. Everett in the Morning show. He liked that his show came right after Jim Rainwater playing a solid block of instrumental music, of a respectable nature. It was a perfect intro to Everett’s two hours of easy listening and intelligent commentary on the news and world at large. He considered his show an equal with NPR, and one of the rare venues in town for raising the consciousness of his listeners. Why, he had even interviewed by phone half a dozen state congressmen, one U.S. senator and a Pulitzer nominee (who happened to be station owner Tate Holloway).

  Now old Winston was going to ruin all that. Winston stirred everything up with his rowdiness and wild musical leanings.

  Emitting a few curses and condemnations as he pulled clothes from his neatly arranged drawers and closet, he woke his wife, Doris, who wanted to know what in the world was happening.

  “It’s Winston…that’s who it is!” shouted Everett, jerking up his trousers. “Big windbag.”

  His wife said, “Well, for heaven’s sake, shut up about it!” and threw a pillow at him.

  Out at the edge of town, John Cole Berry was tiptoeing around his kitchen, attempting to slip out to a crucial early-morning business meeting without waking his light-sleeping wife, Emma, who was sure to want to make him breakfast. Emma thought food solved all problems. John Cole had just lifted the pot from the fancy stainless coffeemaker that Emma had recently bought, when some voice started yelling to get up and get his body fed.

  Surprised, John Cole sloshed hot coffee all over his hand and the counter. He stared at the coffeemaker, a brand-new modern contraption that Emma had bought just the previous week, which did everything in the world, except make good coffee. It apparently had a radio in it. He went to punching buttons to shut it off. Why did a coffeemaker have a radio? Had Emma programmed it to say get fed? It would be just like her.

  The radio, now playing music, shut off just as Emma called sleepily from the bedroom, “Honey…”

  Grabbing his travel mug and sport coat, he slipped out the back door, leaving the telltale coffee spilled all over. He would tell her that he had missed cleaning it all. He could no longer see crap without his glasses. Somehow having the world by the tail at twenty-two had turned into the world having him by the tail at fifty-two.

  Down in the ragged neighborhood behind the IGA grocery, seventeen-year-old Paris Miller, sleeping in the front seat of her old Chevy Impala because her grandfather had been on a drunken rampage the night before, had just turned on the car radio and snuggled back down into her sleeping bag. Her life was such that it was prudent to keep a sleeping bag in her car. All of a sudden a voice was shouting out.

  Paris came up and hit her head on the steering wheel. Seeing stars, she fell back onto the seat, until, at last and with some relief, she figured out it was not her grandfather hollering at her. She thought maybe she had dreamed the yelling voice, because now Martina McBride was singing.

  She snuggled back down into the warmth of the sleeping bag, dozing, until fifteen minutes later, when the yelling came out of the radio again. This time she recognized it as Mr. Winston’s voice. She started laughing and about peed her pants. Mr. Winston was always doing something funny.

  She had to get up then, and the cold made her really have to hurry. She raced across the crunchy grass, into the musky-smelling kitchen, hopped over an empty vodka bottle and on to the bathroom. Glancing in the medicine-cabinet mirror, she was dismayed to see a bruise, good and purple, high up on her cheek, where she had not been able to duck fast enough the previous evening.

  Down at the Main Street Café, owner Fayrene Gardner, tired and bleary-eyed after a lonely night kept company by a romance novel, a Xanax and two sleeping pills, was just coming down late from her apartment. Her foot was stretching for the bottom stair when Winston’s shout came crystal clear out of the portable radio sitting on the shelf above the sink, which happened to be level with her ear.

  Fayrene popped out with “Jesus!” stumbled and would have plowed headlong into the ovens had not someone grabbed her.

  Over at the grill, Woody Beauchamp, the cook, said, “Miss Fayrene, I’m gonna assume you’s prayin’. We wouldn’t want to give this visitor a poor impression, would we?”

  Fayrene assured him that she had truly been praying. She was now, anyway, as she found herself gazing into the dark eyes of a handsome stranger, who had hold of her arm. Dear God, don’t let me make any more of a fool of myself in front of this handsome man.

  The dark-eyed stranger grinned a wonderful grin, and Fayrene wondered if she might still be dreaming. Those sleeping pills were awfully strong.

  Across the street, at Blaine’s Drugstore, which was on winter hours and not set to open for another hour, Belinda Blaine, who was not a morning person and not feeling well, either, was in the restroom peeing on a pregnancy-test strip. Somehow the radio on her desk just a few feet beyond the door, which she had not bothered to close, had been left on. (Probably by her cousin Arlo, when he had cleaned up the previous afternoon—she was going to smack him.) Hearing Winston’s familiar voice within two feet got her so discombobulated that she dropped the test strip in the toilet.

  “Well, shoot.” She bent over and gazed into the toilet, trying to figure out the exact color of the test strip.

  “Belinda? You in here?” It was her husband, Lyle, coming in the back door of the store.

  She yanked up her reluctant panties and panty hose, while Lyle’s footsteps headed off to the front of the store. The panties and hose got all wadded together. Her mother swore no one should wear panties with panty hose, that that was the purpose of panty hose. As much as she hated to ever agree with her mother, this experience was about to convert Belinda to the no-panty practice.

  Snatching up the test-kit box, she looked frantically around but found no satisfactory place to hide it. She ended up stuffing it into the waistband of her still-twisted panty hose.

  “Of course I’m here. I was in the bathroom, Lyle,” she said as she strode out to the soda fountain.

  Lyle was on his way back, and Belinda almost bumped into him.

  She asked him where he thought she had been.

  “Well, honey,” he said, with a bit of anxiety, “I saw your car out back, but didn’t see any lights turned on in front here, so I just wanted to check things out.”

  Lyle was a deputy with the sheriff’s office next door. He had just gotten off night duty, and wanted coffee and to chat with her before he went home. Lyle listened to a lot of late-night radio when he was on patrol, which seemed to be encouraging morbid thoughts. Late-night talk shows were filled with a lot of conversation about scary things, such as UFO invaders, terrorist cells and, last night, the report of murderers who broke into the house of an innocent family up north and ended up killing them all.

  Belinda, who made it a point to never listen to the news and really could have done without her husband telling her, ended up walking around with the test-kit
box rubbing her skin while she got Lyle a cup of fresh coffee and tried to look interested in his report of world affairs and the idea of installing a security system at their home. Since she was already at the drugstore and had coffee made, she ended up opening early and got half a dozen customers coming in. At least Lyle had someone else to talk to, letting her off the hook.

  All around a radius of the radio signal, roosters came out to crow, and skunks, armadillos and other annoying critters headed back to their dens, while early risers got up to let out the dog, let in the cat and look hopefully for the newspaper, which was often late. Word of Winston Valentine’s wake-up reveille spread, and Jim Rainwater began to take call after call, and to keep a running total of for or against.

  Out front of the small cement-block radio station, Tate Holloway, who had received a number of telephone calls, and Everett Northrupt arrived at the same time. Everett, a short, rather bent man, was in such a state as to forget that Tate was the owner of the station and therefore his boss, and to jostle him for going first through the door. A man with a good sense of humor, Tate stood back and waved the older man on.

  They reached the sound studio doorway just as Winston put his mouth to the microphone for his final reveille. “Gooood Mornin’, Valentinites! This is your last call. GET UP, GET UP, YOU SLEE-PY-HEAD. GET UP AND GET YOUR BOD-Y FED!”

  This time Jim Rainwater over at the controls played a symbol and drum sound, and he and Winston grinned at each other. Jim had more fun working with Winston than he did any of the other volunteer disc jockeys.

  Winston saw Everett Northrupt glaring in the doorway. His response was to lean into the microphone to say, “Well, folks, we’re leavin’ you now that we’ve gotcha woke up. Stay tuned for my good friend Everett, who will ease you into the day. Join me again for the Home Folks show at ten, and until then, remember Psalm 30, verse 5—For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; Weeping may endure for a night, but a shout of joy comes in the mornin’.”

  The men, all except Everett, chuckled.

  CHAPTER 3

  Belinda Blaine of Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain

  THE MORNING RUSH STARTED. TING-A-LING WENT the bell over the door. Brrring went the cash register.

  “Mornin’, Belinda. Hey, Arlo. Get up, get up, you sleeepy-heads! I’ll take three lattes and two Little Debbies to go. Hurry up, I’m already supposed to be in Duncan.”

  “Just a large coffee this mornin’. Black. Get up, get up, you sleepyhead. Get up and get your body fed! Uhmmm…second thought—I’ll take a honey bun, too.”

  “Hey, y’all. Get up, get up, you sleeeepyheads! Oran, you got my wife’s prescription? I’ll be back in a minute…wanna get a coffee.”

  “Two large Coca-Colas to go, and here, four packages of peanuts, too. I’m gettin’ my body fed. You know, it’d be great if y’all would serve sausage biscuits.”

  “Whoo-hoo! Everybody get up, get up…and get your bod-y fed!”

  “What is this all about?”

  “Didn’t you hear ol’ Winston this mornin’? Well, he…”

  Whatever happened in town, and of any interest anywhere, would be told and discussed first, or at least second, down at Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain. Built in 1909, it had escaped two tornadoes, a small fire and been in continuous operation by the same family since its beginning in a tent during the land run. It had been written up in every insurance magazine in the state, been filmed for two travel shows, included as a backdrop in one movie and featured in OklahomaToday magazine. The previous year Belinda Blaine had succeeded in getting the store on the state register of historic buildings. Now the building bore a bronze plaque that Belinda polished once a week.

  The original black fans turned slowly from the tin-lined ceiling winter and summer, lemonade and cold sweet tea were still made from scratch and sundaes were still served in vintage glass fountain dishes at the original granite counter. Old Coke, Dr. Pepper, headache powder and tonic signs graced the walls, along with a number of autographed pictures of notable people who reportedly had dropped in, such as Governor “Alfalfa Bill” Murray and Mifaunwy Dolores Shunatona, Miss Oklahoma 1941 and the country-music stars the Carter Sisters, Hoyt Axton and Patsy Cline.

  The Patsy Cline one was a fake. Fenster Blaine, who had been working all alone one day in 1962, decided to tear the photograph from a country-music magazine and sign it himself, and tell everyone that Patsy had come in. A number of people at the time had recognized his handwriting, but as the years had passed, the photograph remained on the wall and the truth was lost.

  The store was a favorite hangout for teens after school and the first place that parents allowed their young daughters to go when beginning to date. It hosted Boy Scouts and Brownies, the Methodist Ladies’ Circle and Baptist Women on a regular basis. Romances had begun, marriages had ended, business and political deals, large and small, had been struck, at least three holdups had happened, along with several heart attacks, fist-fights and two deaths.

  Pharmacist Perry Blaine, Belinda’s father, had been gone several years now, but a good replacement had at last been found in Oran Lackey, who could not only dispense modern medicines, like Viagra and Cialis, on an up-to-the-minute computerized system, but he also knew the ages-old art of compounding medicinals such as cough-suppressant lollipops and natural hormone creams, just as Perry had done. Because of this ability, the store was growing an ever-enlarging mail-order business and even made some veterinary medicines. They also carried vitamins, herbs and homeopathic remedies, all of which were coming back around in popularity.

  Vella Blaine had installed Oran in the apartment above the drugstore, enabling him to be available day and night. Some people wondered why in the world Oran would take on such a job, when he could have gone with Walgreens over in Lawton and not had to work nearly so hard. Oran, who had been a medic in the army and gone through some tough times in Somalia and Afghanistan—fights hardly anyone back home knew about but which had left him with chronic fatigue and a bad limp—was a shy, solitary man who did not like the bustle of a large pharmacy. He came from Kansas City and had absolutely no family. He had found one when he came to Blaine’s Drugstore. Not only the Blaines but the entire town needed and wanted him. He knew all of his customers by name, and was privy to many intimate details of their lives. He had on numerous occasions saved people money and possibly from death by his careful monitoring of their medications. He had embarrassed quite a few doctors and made them hopping mad because he found their mistakes. He had, very quietly and as only Belinda knew, put one unscrupulous doctor out of business.

  Most people had pretty much forgotten that Vella and Perry had two daughters. Their eldest, Margaret, who had grown up the favored and really beautiful one, had left town some twenty-three years ago in the Ford Mustang her parents had given her as a high-school-graduation present. She had gone all the way to Atlanta, which she apparently considered far enough away and where she had built a good career as a travel specialist. Margaret had come home only three times. The last time had been when Perry Blaine had died. She attended the funeral and the reading of the will, got her inheritance in cash and picked up a few mementoes her mother thought she should have and left again, this time going all the way to a new home in Miami.

  Belinda was the daughter who had stayed. Except for a year and a half away in college—she had quit during her sophomore year—she had lived all her life in Valentine. This was not something she had planned, although she did say, and without apology, that she never had desired to live anywhere else. She had begun working in the store at nine years old. She thought it silly to go out and struggle to find a job when she had a perfectly good one handed to her. Belinda had never possessed much ambition, and she was not ashamed of this. She considered herself a smart woman, and found ambition highly overrated.

  Belinda’s keen intellect—she had surprised everyone by being valedictorian of her graduating class and the second highest in academics for the entire
state that year—combined with a blunt nature, had tended in her early years to discourage male attention. She had seen the unhappiness in her parents’ marriage and calculated that her chances of following in their footsteps were high, so she felt she would do best to avoid such a union. Also, she did not care to change herself to accommodate a man, and this, as far as she could see, was the foolish thing that women kept doing.

  Then one fall evening, as she was driving home, Lyle Midgette came by in his brand-new police car and pulled her over for speeding, and actually gave her a ticket. None of the other officers, not even the sheriff, ever gave her a ticket. Lyle was such a pleasant, even-tempered man that no insult she threw at him affected him. And even further, after that he went to following after her like a puppy dog.

  Lyle had moved up from Wichita Falls to take the deputy position in the sheriff’s office. He was a man dedicated to law enforcement, something of the complete opposite of Belinda, who lived by her own rules. He was also a Greek god in his tan deputy sheriff’s uniform. The instant Belinda saw him, against all of her good sense, she had fallen into such lust as she had never known. For Lyle’s part, he often said that the minute he laid eyes on Belinda, he fell in love.

  Belinda asked him if he did not mind that she was of a womanly shape. He said straight out, “Oh, that’s what I like. You remind me of my mother.”

  Another woman might have been offended. Belinda was practical. She asked to be introduced to his mother, who lived all the way down in Wichita Falls—another really good thing, as far as Belinda was concerned.