Runabout (20 page)

}"Sounds good to me," Arthel agreed. As he reached the end of the alleyway, he turned out into the street and then honked his horn loudly.

}Luther sat up in the passenger's seat. Tulsa May, dressed primly in a dark green walking skirt, had just emerged from the newspaper office.

}"What's the latest news?" Arthel called out to her. He'd stopped the truck in the middle of the street and Tulsa May was obliged to walk over to talk to them.

}"Oh, the world just carries on as usual," she answered as she stepped up to the door on Arthel's side. She glanced into the interior, and smiled at Luther. "The picture show at Guthrie is Mary Pickford in
The Foundling.
The state house voted twenty-eight thousand dollars for bridge contracts, and Victrola Company's new musical record for May is 'O Sole Mio,' by Enrico Caruso."

}"Guess I don't need to buy a paper then," Arthel said. "I got the best of it straight from the horse's mouth."

}Tulsa May put her hands on her hips in feigned fury. "I do not, sir, consider myself a horse."

}"Youngsters!" Luther complained with a long-suffering sigh. "Arthel, you should have said that you got it from the
prettiest
mouth on the paper."

}Tulsa May actually blushed at his compliment, and Luther felt stupid for having embarrassed her.

}"We're heading out to Frogeye Creek," Arthel said to her. "Why don't you run home and pack us up a good home-cooked picnic and come along?"

}Tulsa May's eyes widened and her cheeks paled. She looked past Arthel to see that Luther appeared very uncomfortable. "I... ah, no... I don't think—"

}"It sounds good to me," Luther said quickly. "We were planning to go out there and I'm sure Miz Constance has a little something in her kitchen to stave off our hunger."

}"Well—"

}"Oh, come on, Tulsa May," Arthel said. "Luther may get to see you all the time, but I sure don't."

}Recovering herself, Tulsa May smiled deviously. "I can't really go out to the creek with two young men. I'll only come on one condition."

}"What?"

}

}Frogeye Creek was a lazy-flowing sweet-water tributary that twisted in and around three sides of the town of Prattville before joining with the Cimarron River. North of town, down a dusty red dirt road and back in a pretty wooded glade, the creek made a small falls, not more than four feet high. The creek then pooled into its widest, laziest point. This area, a familiar spot to all locals, was a summer swimming hole as well as the usual site of church baptisms.

}On this particular afternoon, two automobiles, one shiny commercial vehicle loaded up in the back and one old but well-loved wine-colored one, were parked in the shade of the trees. Closer to the water a heavily laden picnic cloth was spread across the grass.

}Maybelle Penny, dressed as daintily as the first flower of spring, held a pretty pink-trimmed parasol above her head to protect her from the few rays of sun that shone through the heavily leafed branches.

}The other young lady was also protected, but she had worn the wide-brimmed straw hat more to hide her hair than to shield her complexion.

}The gentlemen lounged casually nearby. Luther Briggs was amused. His brother was sullen.

}"I swear, Tulsa May." Maybelle giggled. "Your mother does make the sweetest cinnamon bread I've ever tasted. Do you want another piece, Luther?"

}Arthel looked up from his plate, displeased, his tone as cold as winter. "If he wanted another piece, Maybelle," Arthel said, "he would take one."

}Maybelle glared haughtily at the younger man. "Oh, excuse me, Sitting Bull. I forgot that good manners are a white man's custom."

}Arthel's cheeks swelled up like a toad ready to spit.

}Tulsa May glanced over at Luther, who loudly cleared his throat. She suspected he was trying to hold back a laugh.

}Originally, Arthel had flatly refused to accompany Maybelle on the picnic.

}"Do you want to ruin my day?" he'd asked Tulsa May when she'd suggested the idea.

}"Maybelle would be perfect," Tulsa May insisted,. "I can chaperone her and she can chaperone me. I'm not going without her."

}Maybelle had not been much easier to convince.

}"I don't want anybody to see me with
him,"
she'd said fussily.

}"There won't be a soul there besides us," Tulsa May assured her. "Besides, I need you there. My parents would never let me go alone on a picnic with Luther Briggs."

}Putting one over on the adults was what had finally convinced Maybelle, and the young lay was determined to enjoy herself.

}She was not the only one with qualms about the outing. Luther found that if he kept hi gaze squarely on Tulsa May's familiar freckled face and gap-toothed grin.ihe was his same Tulsy as always. Unfortunately, his eyes seemed to be defing good sense, and repeatedly through the afternoon, his glance slid downto the discreetly covered bosom that he had imagined so vividly in his drems.

}Tulsa May suffred her own demons. She feared that her true feelings must be shining in heieyes. For her part, she tried not to meet Luther's gaze at all. This ran direily at cross-purposes to Luther's own plans.

}The only real distraction for the two was Arthel and Maybelle's bickering.

}"Let's put up the swing," Luther suggested finally. It was something sure to keep them gainfully occupied for a good half hour with little chance of private conversation.

}Arthel agreed without enthusiasm, but set out to fetch the rope from the truck while Luther walked with one lady on each arm along the bank of the stream to search for the perfect tree. Tulsa May spotted a huge red oak, nearly as wide around a£ kitchen table, which stood strong and sturdy near the top of the falls.

}"We could hag it from that long branch there," she said, indicating a thick, bark-covered limb high above them.

}Luther looked skeptical. "It won't be easy to climb up there."

}"We don't wat the
easiest
swing," Maybelle assured him. "We want the best."

}He studied the branches above him. "Oaks are the hardest trees to climb," he mused aloud. And the lowest place for a foothold is nearly eight feet up."

}Tulsa May was about to resume the search when Maybelle piped up.

}"Oh but you ;nflemen can do that." Maybelle gave him a wide-eyed, winsome smile that she used frequently to get her way. "And this one is perfect. We'll be able to swing right out over the falls."

}"It might be a little dangerous," Luther said.

}"I love dangerous!" Maybelle proclaimed. No one contradicted her. Arthel just looked disgusted.

}It was hard to believe that Arthel Briggs and Maybelle Penny had once been seen together as commonly as ham and beans. Before Maybelle was old enough for the schoolroom, she had taken to the young boy and had followed him like a shadow for years. For his part, Arthel had enjoyed the worship of the pretty little pest. And ultimately, they had become companions.

}Yet two summers previously, their friendship ended abruptly. The two had been hiding out in the big pecan tree that overlooked the pretty little white house known as Briggs Cottage. It was their special place, their secret place.

}Arthel was whittling a broken twig as the fourteen-year-old Maybelle sat cross-legged on a large branch. Barefooted and scrape-kneed, Maybelle was daydreaming of her future and the empty cottage below them. Built by Arthel's father, the cottage was a replica of the Briggs Mansion downtown. To her young mind, the empty cottage built for a bride was exquisitely lovely. The expression on her face was far away, soft and wistful.

}"What in the world are you thinking about?" Arthel had asked her. "You look sort of dispeptic."

}"I was thinking about us. Arthel, that little cottage is so romantic, don't you think?"

}He glanced down at the weathered small white building and shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so."

}Maybelle sighed. "I think that's where we ought to honeymoon."

}He stopped his whittling. "Honeymoon?"

}Maybelle smiled. "Well, I know it's more fashionable to go down to Turner Falls or the Eureka Springs. But don't you think it would be romantic, just the two of us in that sweet little house?"

}At sixteen, Arthel was hardly ready to think about marriage. And gazing across a pecan-tree branch at a scraggly, flat-chested fourteen-year-old with grass stains on her skirt was not something to put him in mind of it.

}"What makes you think we're going to get married?" he asked. "I don't recall posing the question."

}"Well, of course we're going to get married someday," Maybelle replied, somewhat puzzled. "I can't imagine marrying anyone else."

}Arthel snorted. "Well, I must have a better imagination than you."

}It was a childish argument that went on for half an hour. In the end, both were unkind, both were cruel.

}"You're not even thinking about marrying me, and I'd already decided that I would go against the wishes of my parents to marry you. Do you think Mama and Daddy would
want
me to marry an Indian?"

}Part of knowing someone very well was knowing the soft spots, easy to injure. Arthel's soft spot was his Indian heritage. And Maybelle's careless, bratty words hit right on target. The half-whittled wood he was working on snapped in two beneath his fingers. Her words had broken the branch as surely as they had severed the friendship.

}Arthel dropped to the ground and walked away. Since then he had taken up a course of ignoring Maybelle. A course he continued to follow. Maybelle had also taken up a course. A course of annoying him, calling him anything to get a rise out of him and avoiding being alone with him.

}That was until now. "Come on, Luther, this is perfect."

}Luther took one quick look at Tulsa May, who shook her shoulders, deferring to him. Maybelle's hands were clasped in a hopeful gesture. All he could do was shake his head.

}"I suppose it will be fun to swing right over the falls," he admitted.

}"Yea!" Maybelle cheered happily, clapping her hands gleefully like a child.

}By the time Arthel arrived with the length of rope slung over his shoulder and carrying the swing seat, all three of them were waiting hopefully. Luther took the seat, a sanded and shellacked pine plank about four feet long, and leaned it against the side of the tree.

}"This looks like a likely tree to us," Luther said.

}Arthel glanced upward. "Looks pretty high."

}"Let me give you a leg up," he said. "And you shimmy up to that first big branch on the creek side."

}"Me! Why do I have to climb the tree?" Arthel protested, his arms folded across his chest stubbornly.

}Luther shrugged. "There are times when age has its advantages. This is one of those times."

}Arthel raised an eyebrow and appeared chagrined. However, after a quick glance at the ladies, he slipped the coil of rope around his neck to free his arms and stepped into his brother's offered hands. "Up I go, old man, but don't forget I did this for you, if I fall and break my head."

}"Your head is far too hard to break," Luther assured him as Arthel climbed higher up to stand on his brother's shoulders. Within moments he had scaled the trunk and had the ends of the rope hanging down toward the ground. To test its strength, he slid off the limb and hung by one dangling rope end and then the other. Neither gave or slipped and the branch barely wiggled with his weight. Satisfied, he let himself down the rope, hand over hand, until he was only a couple of yards from the ground. Then he dropped easily, landing without problem.