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Authors: With Hope

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Chapter One
R
ED
R
OCK
, O
KLAHOMA
—1932
The bus was an hour late, but it didn’t matter to the man who leaned against the side of Millie’s Diner. He wasn’t meeting anyone. When the bus finally arrived, the passengers poured out and hurried into the café to sit on the stools along the bar for the thirty-minute supper break. Converted from an old Union Pacific railroad car that had been moved to Main Street ten years ago, the café, one of two in town, had only two things on the menu this time of day: chili and hamburgers.
A woman with a skinny teenage girl slouching along behind her was the last to leave the bus. The woman patted the top of a ridiculously small, flower-trimmed hat firmly down on her head and walked behind the bus to where the driver was unloading a straw suitcase and a box tied with a rope.
Cupping the bowl of his pipe in his hand, the man watched the mid-calf-length skirt swish around her shapely legs. He enjoyed seeing the grace of her slender body, the tilt of her head, her curly brown hair, and heavy dark brows. He noticed the brows because most women had taken to plucking them to a pencil-slim line that, to him, made them look bald-faced. He knew who she was—Ed Henry’s daughter. He judged her to be three or four years younger than his own age of twenty-eight.
He waited until the walk in front of the diner cleared, then headed for the lot behind the grocery store where he’d parked his Ford roadster. He had put the car together himself back in ’25 when it was shipped, and he’d kept it in tip-top shape. When it was washed and polished, it looked brand-new. He treasured it next to his three-year-old son.
Stopping, he knocked the ashes from his pipe on the sole of his boot and put the pipe in his pocket. Sooner or later he might have to sell the car. That would depend on whether or not he had a fairly good cotton crop and what price he could get for it. But for now he’d put off having to make the decision by offering to install a new motor in the grocer’s truck and taking pay in trade.
* * *
Henry Ann Henry thanked the bus driver and picked up the straw suitcase.
“We can leave the box at the store and come back for it later.”
The girl snatched the box from the driver.
“I’ll carry it. How far do we go?”
“A mile after we leave town.”
“That far? Well. I’m not leavin’ my stuff for some shit-kicker to glom onto.”
“Mr. Anderson wouldn’t let that happen. But never mind. Let’s go. I want to be home before dark.”
The few people passing them along the street nodded a greeting to Henry Ann Henry and curiously eyed the girl with her. Henrys had lived in the Red Rock area since the town’s beginning. Ed Henry, Henry Ann’s father, was a hardworking dependable man who had made the mistake of marrying Dorene Perry. According to the opinion of most folk here, the Perrys were trash then and the Perrys were trash now.
“’Lo, Miss Henry.” A small girl playing hopscotch moved off the sidewalk to allow them to pass.
“’Lo, Mary Evelyn. How’s your mother?”
“Fine.”
Those who saw Henry Ann walking down the street, even the young girl, wondered about the stray waif she was bringing home this time. More than likely another one of Dorene’s bastards. The last time Henry Ann had left town she’d returned with a surly fourteen-year-old boy.
Only a few miles and the Red River separated Red Rock, Oklahoma, from Texas. The business district of Red Rock consisted of two blocks of store buildings—a fourth of them now unoccupied. The grocery store, the bank, the shoe-repair shop, and the Phillips 66 gas station were across the street from Millie’s Diner, the barbershop and the Five and Dime where Henry Ann had worked on Saturdays back when the owners could afford to hire help. But money was tight now, and the owners were very close to losing the business.
Red Rock was a place of ruined dreams, of good people facing bad times, of farms and ranches gone bust or on the verge of it. It was a town on the plains of Oklahoma hit hard by four years of drought and failed cotton crops. Cotton was bringing in only five cents a pound and wheat twenty-five cents a bushel. Beef was selling for seven cents a pound.
Men were out of work here as they were across the nation. In the cities entire families were lining up at soup kitchens to keep from starving. Rioting had erupted among men who were desperate for work. Hard times had led some folk to pack up and head west, where they had heard that jobs could be found in the fertile fields of California. Lack of respect for the laws of a nation that seemed unable or unwilling to help its people caused others to turn to the crime of bootlegging and robbing banks.
The row of small neat houses Henry Ann and the girl passed ended at the railroad tracks as if an invisible fence had been erected. A block farther on down the road they came to the smaller, tighter, shabbier row of dwellings that housed Red Rock’s Negro community.
“’Lo, Missy. Figured you be gettin’ off the bus.” A heavyset woman beamed at them from a rocking chair on a porch bright with pots of blooming moss rose. A blue cloth was tied about her head.
“Hello, Aunt Dozie. How’s your rheumatiz?”
“Fair to middlin’. How was thin’s up dere in the city? Cold up dere?”
“About the same as here.”
“I allowed as dat dey might have snow up dere.”
“Not this time a year, Aunt Dozie. Sorry I can’t stop and visit. I want to get on home before dark.” Henry Ann had known Dozie Jones all her life. Dozie knew about Dorene and about Johnny. Responding to her curiosity about Isabel would take too much time right now.
“Ain’t blamin’ ya, child. Keep yore eyes peeled for dem tramps. Hear? Dey’d steal yore eyeballs if ya warn’t lookin’. Dey is thicker’n fleas on a dog’s back after de train come in.”
“I hear, Aunt Dozie. ’Bye.”
Two more houses after Aunt Dozie’s the dusty road stretched ahead.
“Tired?”
“A little. Where’d that old woman think ya went? Don’t she know where Oklahoma City is?”
“It sounds a long way off to her.” Henry Ann stopped, lowered the suitcase to the ground, and flexed her stiff fingers.
“He ain’t goin’ to want me, is he? And I ain’t wantin’ to go where I ain’t wanted,” Isabel said abruptly. “Mama said he was a shithead.” The girl’s small features hardened with a look of defiance.
Henry Ann studied the girl’s face. She had to remember that Isabel had never had a normal childhood. She’d been exposed to things that most young girls had never heard about.
“You shouldn’t use that language even if Mama did. Wait and judge Daddy for yourself.”
“Your daddy. Not mine. The woman from the courthouse wanted to put me in a home where I’d help take care of orphan kids and work for my keep. If she’d’ve took me, I’d’ve run off.”
“I came as soon as I got Mama’s letter.”
“Why didn’t you take me when you took Johnny?”
“I couldn’t take you without Mama’s permission. I offered, but she wouldn’t let you come with me.”
“She should’a died then.” Catching the murmured words, Henry Ann shuddered at the thought of what this girl had seen during her short life. She thanked God that she had been left with her daddy. Her mother’s selfishness had turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
“You shouldn’t say such things,” Henry Ann felt compelled to reply.
“Why not? She just wanted me there to keep house and cook while she went to the honky-tonks and flipped up her skirts.”
“You . . . never . . . did—?”
“Whore? No. She made me stay out when new men come.” Isabel snickered. “Reckon she was afraid they’d want me and not her.”
“She loved you . . . in her own way.”
“He ain’t goin’ to like me usin’ his name.”
“Who? Daddy?”
“Mama said he’d have a shit fit if she sent him another one of her kids!”
“I don’t want to hear what Mama said about Daddy. She left us and went off with a car salesman. I was just three years old. Daddy had to work and take care of me, too. She came back from time to time . . . when she needed money. As far as I know Daddy gave her what little he could when she asked.”
“She said he was a . . . tight-ass.”
“Isabel! No more of that. She was far from perfect herself.”
“She was a whore.”
“Lord have mercy!”
“Poot! What do ya call a woman who changes men about as often as she changes the sheets, and sleeps with others on the side?”
Henry Ann looked into the face of the youngster and grieved for the sordid life she’d had with their mother. She’d had only a glimpse of her half sister four years ago when she had gone to fetch Johnny. Dorene had written to say that she was sending him to the State Reform School. Henry Ann had begged her father to let her go and get him. At the time they were milking six cows and taking milk and cream to town. She suggested that perhaps he would be a help on the farm. The boy had been so surly and resentful that it had taken a year for him to halfway adjust to a regular routine of work.
“You’ve got to put that life behind you, Isabel. Things will be different here. You’ll have me and Daddy and Johnny to look out for you and love you.”
“Johnny won’t.”
“You don’t know that. It’s been four years since you’ve seen him.”
“Mama said he was just like his daddy—a hard-drinkin’, hard-peckered blanket-ass.”
“Goodness! I realize that vulgar words have been a part of your vocabulary all your life, but in our home, yours now, they are not acceptable.”
“Who says?”
“I do . . . and Daddy, too. We will not allow it. You must break the habit before you start to school if you want to make friends.”
“They ain’t goin’ to like me, and I ain’t sure I’m goin’.” Isabel picked up the box and started down the road.
Henry Ann had not seen her mother for four years when the letter came that said she was dying. She had journeyed to the city and found that her once-beautiful mother had become a wasted woman who looked twice her thirty-nine years. Less than six hours after Henry Ann arrived the end had come.
Ed Henry had adored his fifteen-year-old bride but had never been able to make her happy. She so despised being a wife and mother that she had bitterly named their baby girl Henry Henry. After all, it was his child; she hadn’t wanted her. Dorene had left him and their child a few years later. Ed had not filed for divorce, and it had not seemed important to Dorene to make the break official.
Henry Ann was used to her name and liked it even though she’d had to endure a lot of good-natured teasing. Of course, the kids at school had thought it odd. Her musings were interrupted by the sound of an automobile coming up behind them. She urged Isabel to the side of the road, and they kept walking. The car slowed, then inched up beside them. It was a Ford roadster with a box on the back. She had seen the car go by the house several times but had never met the neighbor who owned it.
“Do you want a ride?” The hatless man was big, dark, and held a pipe clenched between his teeth. His midnight black hair was thick and unruly, his eyes dark, and his expression dour. “You’re Ed Henry’s girl. I’m Thomas Dolan. I live just beyond your place.”
“I remember when you moved in. I met your wife.”
“You can ride if you want. If not, I’ll be getting on.”
“We’d appreciate it.”
“Put your suitcase in the back and climb up here. Careful. I’ve got a glass lamp back there.”
I’m hoping it’ll last longer than the last one. Glass lamps aren’t made to be bounced off the wall.
Isabel waited for Henry Ann to get in first so she’d not be next to the man. He started the car moving as soon as they were settled in the seat. Henry Ann turned so that her shoulder was behind the man’s, but her hip was pressed tightly to his. In order to keep from looking at him, she kept her eyes straight ahead.
“How is Mrs. Dolan?”
“All right.”
“She’s very pretty.”
He grunted, but didn’t reply. An uncomfortable silence followed.
“We have a quilting bee twice a month at the church. I’d be glad to take Mrs. Dolan if she would like to go.”
“I doubt she’d go.” After a long pause, he added, “She doesn’t go to church.”
“Oh . . . well—”
The awkward silence that followed was broken when he stopped in the road in front of the Henry house, and Isabel asked, “Is this it?”
“This is it. Thank you, Mr. Dolan. Tell your wife I’d be happy to have her pay us a visit.”
“Why? You didn’t get much of a welcome when you called on her.”
“How do you know? As I recall, you weren’t even there.” She looked at him then. His dark eyes caught and held hers.
“I know my wife.”
Black hair flopped down on Dolan’s forehead and hung over his ears. The shadow of black whiskers on his face made him look somewhat sinister. His dark eyes soberly searched her face. If she could believe what she saw in his eyes it was loneliness . . . pain. Big hands with a sprinkling of dark hair on the back gripped the steering wheel as he waited for her to step down from the car.

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