Winds of Change Page 3

  “Wendy will find it.” Allie nodded confidently. “I just hope they’re not late. It was a long drive all the way from Nashville.”

  Owen glanced out at the hills, noting that the trees were stripped naked, and suddenly said, “Look, I must’ve shot a thousand squirrels in woods like those over there.” He thought of the days when he had grown up on this rocky, Ozark farmland, and nostalgia came to him. His lips curled upward in a smile and as Allie watched she thought, He’s still handsome. He doesn’t look fifty-seven, either. She said aloud, “You know, for a preacher you’re not a bad-looking man!”

  Owen grinned, enjoying her teasing. He was, in fact, an evangelist and relatively well known over the United States. Most of his ministry in recent years had been tent meetings outside of large cities. He had lost his right hand in the Great War, and previous to that, he had been a prizefighter. He’d met Allie when he was taking on all comers in a carnival. The two of them had had a rocky time of it after they’d married, for preachers made little money—especially evangelists. Now he looked over at her and said, “You’re not bad looking for a preacher’s wife!”

  Woody nudged Will with his elbow. “Will you two stop romancing, and let’s get on with it!”

  “I’m hungry,” Allie said. “Can’t we stop up there and get something to eat?”

  “I guess so. We need to gas up anyway.” Owen pulled the car in front of the gas pumps, which featured large glass enclosures at the top. “Look at the price of that gas—eighteen cents a gallon! Might as well make cars that run on pure gold!”

  They all got out of the car and stretched their legs. It had been a long ride from Nashville where they made their home. Owen was gone much of the time with his meetings, and usually Allie went with him.

  They all waited as a raw-boned, youthful attendant came out and grinned. “Fill ’er up?” he inquired.

  “Yes, and check the oil.” Owen watched as the young man serviced the big automobile, then pulled it around in front of the cafe, which bore the image of a large ill-drawn bumble bee. Beneath it in large handmade letters were the words, The Busy Bee Cafe. Sounds of music came forth, and Owen grumbled as they moved toward the front door. “They have one of those blasted jukeboxes! I wish they didn’t—I like to eat in peace!”

  They entered and were greeted by the raucous music. It was a long building with the gleaming jukebox at one end and a small floor space allowing two or three couples to dance. Close beside it sat a pinball machine where three young men in overalls gathered. One was shifting and punching at the machine while the others gave him encouragement in loud voices.

  “Let’s get as far away as we can from that mess!” Owen murmured. He led them down to the other end of the cafe. A door at the back led, evidently, to a kitchen. Along one wall were three booths, and there were four round tables with cane-bottom wood chairs scattered around them. Owen said, “Let’s sit at a table; I hate those little dinky booths.” He pulled out Allie’s chair. They all sat down and were approached by a heavyset young woman with a discontented look on her face. She had brassy yellow hair in tight curls and wore too much lipstick. Her fingernails, Owen noticed as she handed them some flyspecked menus, were bitten off short, which accounted for the fact that they were not dirty. Her apron was stained with the remains of several encounters with the food, and she said, “What you gonna have?”

  Allie glanced down the menu and said, “I want a hamburger with lots of pickles.”

  “You want onions?”

  “No.”

  “They come with the hamburger; you can have ’em if you want ’em.”

  Allie smiled at the woman and said, “No, thank you, just a hamburger.”

  The others found nothing better, and all four settled for hamburgers and Cokes. After the waitress left, Owen glanced toward the pinball machine. “Those things are doing a lot of harm. I’ve been doing some research on it.” He settled back and waited until the waitress had brought four bottled Cokes and set them in front of them. Owen looked up and asked, “Can we have some ice in glasses, please?”

  “I guess so.”

  After the waitress left, Owen said, “I read about these things. It’s kind of interesting. You’d never believe where they started.” He launched into a discussion informing them that bagatelle had been a game mentioned in Dickens’s novel Pickwick Papers. “They used a billiard cue to shoot balls into holes located in the middle of a table,” he said. “Then later on, in America, there was a game called Log Cabin. It had pegs and holes in it and this article had a picture of President Lincoln playing Log Cabin, but it was a pretty sleazy outfit, I think.”

  Woody looked over at the three youths and said, “It’s just a game, Pa.”

  “It’s a waste of time, and I wish it had never been invented!” He was a man who liked to know about things, and he persistently informed his family. “A fellow named David Gottlieb made a game called Baffle Ball; had seven steel balls. He sold fifty thousand of those things, and now everywhere you go we got these pinball machines. It’s as bad as that jukebox!”

  “Why, Pa, you always liked music,” Will grinned. The song that was playing was a hillbilly song about a pickup truck, whiskey, blood on the highway, and a mournful mother. “Why, that song’s got a message! You ought to like it!”

  Owen gave Will a disdainful look. “Like that kind of mess? I’ve heard cats fighting that sounded better than that fella!”

  “I guess you looked up the history of jukeboxes, too!” Woody said, winking at his mother. “You sure are a fellow for studying things, Pa.”

  Owen had seen the wink but nevertheless said, “I remember when they started. Allie and I both do.”

  “That’s right,” Allie said. “They started out where you went to a parlor to hear recorded music.” She leaned forward to put her chin on her hand. “Every box had listening tubes, and you had to hold them up to your ear. There wasn’t any amplification, and the music then was a little better, mostly classical.”

  “Well, the stuff on that jukebox sure isn’t classical!” Owen growled. He continued to pontificate against the evils of pinball machines and jukeboxes, adding, “You know what juke means?” When no one spoke up he said, “It comes from Africa. It means a house of prostitution, and that’s what our young people are doing today, listening to immoral music off of a machine that’s named after prostitutes!”

  Finally the waitress brought the hamburgers, and they all ate heartily, ordering another round of Cokes. When Owen paid the bill, which came to two dollars and sixty cents, he left a quarter on the table for the young woman, saying, “I guess it won’t hurt to overtip a little bit. She looks like she needs to buy some Lifebuoy soap, something with carbolic in it, to get that mess washed off her face.”

  They resumed their journey, and Owen became more cheerful as they came closer to his old home.

  “It’ll be good to see everybody again. I look forward all year to Christmas.” As if they didn’t know, he said, “My brothers and sisters and I have always said we’re going to have this reunion no matter what else we miss. So far we’ve been able to do it.”

  “It may not be possible for a while, Pa. This war that’s coming up, it may put a stop to a lot of things,” said Will.

  His words fell on the others, and there was silence for a while. Owen finally said heavily, “You’re right about that. That fella Hitler is sure doing a lot of damage in this world.”

  “Isn’t she darling?” Carol Davidson stooped down and cooed as she ran her hand over the silky hide of the calf that had come tottering up to stand beside her. She stuck her finger out, and the calf immediately began sucking at it. Looking up, Carol said, “Isn’t she precious?”

  Clint Stuart leaned against the corner of the barn. He was a tall, lanky young man of twenty, with tow-colored hair and hazel eyes. His hands were hard, and working under the sun in the fields had given him a deep tan. He had craggy features and a wry sense of humor.

  “She looks delicious!” He
waited for the complaint that he knew would come.

  “Clint, what an awful thing to say!” Carol exclaimed.

  “Well, that’s what we’re raising her for, to eat! I didn’t notice you turning down any of those pork chops we had, and you loved that little pig they came from, remember? You called her Teeny when she was born.”

  “I don’t like to think about such things!” Carol rose to her feet. She was a small woman, but very well formed. Her hair was black as hair could possibly be, and her eyes were deep blue. She was wearing a woolen black-and-red mackinaw that belonged to Clint, and her hands receded from view as she stood up. Glancing up at him, she said, “You do say awful things!”

  Clint reached out and pulled her forward, holding her in his arms and looking down at her. He wore thin jeans and a blue wool shirt, despite the cold in the December air. Weather seemed to have no effect on him. He could put in a day’s work under a 110-degree blistering sun, and while others were dropping from heat exhaustion, Clint could virtually ignore the temperature. Cold weather had no effect on him either, it seemed. His shirt was open at the collar, and he shoved the green John Deere cap back on his head. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, holding her closely, enjoying the sensation of her young curves pressed against him, “I been thinking about starting a new business.”

  “A business?” Carol looked up at him. He was a handsome man to her, and she resisted the impulse to reach up and stroke his cheek. “What kind of business?”

  “I’m thinking of starting a business called Edible Pets.” Clint’s face was totally solemn, and he nodded, “Yep, what I’ll do is sell little cuddly things like rabbits, and kids can play with them. You know how kids like little rabbits. And then when the bunnies get big enough—why, the kids can eat ’em.”

  Carol burst out into laughter and began to beat his chest with her fist. “Let me go, you beast! That’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard of in my whole life!”

  “If I’m so horrible, why do you love me so much?” Clint suddenly leaned over and kissed her. She put her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him. There was a passion in this young woman that matched his own, Clint had found, and he savored the moment, the softness of her lips, the clean smell of her hair, and the light perfume she wore.

  Carol pulled away and said breathlessly, “That’s enough!”

  “For you maybe!”

  “For you, too! You’re a selfish pig. I’m ashamed of you sometimes!”

  “Because I love you?”

  “No, I like that,” Carol smiled. Then she said, “Listen, isn’t that a car?”

  Clint lifted his head for a moment listening, then nodded. “Family probably starting to arrive,” he said. He paused a moment and then studied this woman before him. “I want to get married as much as you do, Carol,” he said abruptly. “But I don’t see how we can.”

  “Well, why can’t we?” Carol had decided firmly that Clint Stuart was the man she wanted for a husband. They had had a slow courtship, for she had been popular with the more affluent neighbors in the community. She had had a serious suitor, the son of the local banker, and she was well aware that Clint had hung back knowing that he could not compete with the fancy automobile and the entertainment that Dale Turner could provide. Still, Carol had known her own heart. She saw in this tall, rugged man before her the man she loved and said, “I don’t care what we have or where we live, Clint. It doesn’t matter, if people love each other.”

  “I think it does!”

  Carol stared at him, surprised. “You think money is that important?”

  “Sometimes I think it means the difference between success and failure.”

  “Your parents didn’t have any money, and they’ve had a good marriage.”

  “Lots of people don’t, though. I expect lots of marriages break up over fights over money.” Clint heard the car pull up and turned to walk to the house, still holding his arm around her. “Anyway,” he said, “they started the draft last month. I expect I’ll get drafted into the army. I’m the right age and I’m not married.”

  “Then let’s get married and you won’t get drafted!”

  Clint looked down at her and grinned. She was impulsive, and he loved her more than he was ever able to say. “I don’t think that’s a good enough reason for getting married. Let me get myself established, Carol.” He became serious. “I’m studying hard, and one of these days I’ll find a way to become an engineer.”

  Clint Stuart was a farmer, for that was the life he had been born into. He still lived with his father, Logan, and his mother, Anne, on the farm that had been the Stuart farm for generations, but he did not really like the farm. He liked to build things, and he liked to study. He had taken every study course that he could find through the mail, and everyone in the community knew that if an engine or anything needed fixing, Clint Stuart was the man to take it to.

  “Just give me a couple of years, and then we’ll be ready.”

  “Two years?” Carol shook her head. “We can’t wait two years!”

  “There’s the matter of your father. He needs you pretty bad.” Ralph Davidson, Carol’s father, had been ill a great deal, and it had been difficult for her. She’d lost her mother when she was only six, and the relationship between father and daughter had become very strong. Sometimes Clint thought that it was too strong—for Carol relied on Ralph to make all her decisions. When Davidson’s heart attack had come, six months earlier, Clint had seen Carol through it. Now as he looked down at her, he thought, She’s still a little girl in so many ways. And she leans too much on her dad.

  Carol heard the horn blow, and voices began to call out. “We’ll talk about it later, Clint—but if we love each other we won’t have to wait that long.”

  Clint moved around the house, following Carol, doubt coming to him strongly. He had seen enough poverty in the hills of the Ozarks, enough women worn down with one child after another as their husbands tried to eke out a meager existence from the rocky hillside farms, and he wanted none of this. As he looked up and saw the black Packard pulled up in front of the house and his uncle Owen and his cousins piling out, he wondered if there was any way to become an engineer without money.

  Logan and Anne Stuart had come out of the house to greet the visitors. Logan was fifty-five, and wore a pair of faded overalls and a blue sweater over a worn cotton shirt. Anne was a small woman, rather plain, and wore a simple cotton dress and had put on a brown sweater to come out into the cold.

  “You’re late,” Logan said, shaking Owen’s hand hard and clapping him on the shoulder. “We’ve kept the meal hot.”

  “We had hamburgers on the way, but I could eat again. You’re looking good, Logan.” Owen turned to Anne, greeted her, and Anne smiled saying, “Come inside; everything’s on the table.”

  They went inside and, despite the protest of the visitors that they had eaten recently, soon were all sitting at the round oak table eating fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and canned green beans.

  Logan leaned back in his chair and listened as the others talked. Before long, he asked, “What about Wendy? She didn’t come with you?”

  Owen hesitated only for an instant, but even so, it caught Logan’s attention. “She’s driving from Nashville,” he said briefly.

  “Alone? Why didn’t she ride with you? Isn’t that a long way?” Anne inquired.

  Owen picked up his cup of coffee, swirled it around, then drank it. “Well, actually she’s driving down with a friend of hers, a young man named Alex Grenville.”

  Clinton lifted his head, interest brightening his hazel eyes. “Is he a boyfriend?”

  “You might say that,” Owen nodded. He seemed preoccupied for a moment, picking up his fork and pushing his mashed potatoes around aimlessly. Looking up, he grinned and shrugged his broad shoulders. “Wendy has a man—at last!”

  “Tell me about him,” Carol said quickly. “When did she meet him? What does he look like?”

  “Maybe you
ought to hear Allie tell it,” Owen suggested. He seemed disinclined to talk, which was unusual for him. He leaned back in his cane-bottomed chair and listened as Allie began to speak. “He’s a musician,” Allie said quietly. “Actually, he is a professor at the Nashville School of Music.”

  “A professor? Is he a pretty old guy?” Clinton inquired.

  “Not at all. He’s twenty-three, five years older than Wendy, but he was some sort of a musical prodigy. He not only teaches at the music school but conducts a symphony orchestra.”

  As Allie described Wendy’s young man, there was an air of dissatisfaction about Owen, and although Logan said nothing at that time, later when the meal was over, he and Owen stepped out on the porch. The two talked quietly for a while, mostly about who was coming to the reunion. Finally, Logan asked, “What’s the matter, Owen?”

  “The matter with what?”

  “You don’t care for Wendy’s young man, do you?”

  Owen gave his brother a glance. He tried to smile and shrugged his shoulders. “I never could fool you very much, could I? Well, we’ve been wondering when Wendy would become interested in some young man. Most young women by the time they’re eighteen have already made some headway in that direction. But she just never showed any interest—not until she met this fella.”

  “What’s wrong with him, Owen?”

  Owen shifted uncomfortably on the porch. He reached out and tapped the railing with his steel hook tentatively, then turned to face Logan. “He’s got everything a man ought to have, Logan—except he doesn’t know the Lord.”

  Logan blinked, then shook his head. “Wendy’s always been such a fine Christian. I’m surprised she’d take up with a fella like that.”

  “I’ve talked to her about it. She says she can change him.”

  “Maybe she can.”

  “Maybe so—that’s what Allie and I are praying about. You can pray with us.” Owen looked out across the field. Over three hundred yards away, two does stepped out from a grove of pine trees. They stood immobile for a moment, then something startled them. They broke into that beautiful run, punctuated by graceful leaps, and Owen watched them until they disappeared into the thickets. “That’s beautiful, isn’t it? I’ve missed that in the cities.” He was silent for a moment, then shook his head and said, “I hope we have a fine reunion. It’ll be good to see everyone again.”