Where You Once Belonged(19)

“Yes. What’s your little girl’s name again?”

“Toni.”

“Toni. Well she’s cute. And she had the prettiest little dress on. I wanted to hug her.”

“She’s got some of her mother’s good looks at least. But she’s stubborn as hell. Maybe you could come over and help us out at nap time.”

“I would,” she said. “Just let me know.” She was serious. “Anyway I think you’re lucky.”

“Oh? I don’t know,” I said. Because I didn’t think of myself as being lucky. Not in marriage anyway. But of course Wanda Jo meant that I was lucky being a father. I would have agreed with her about that. At least at the time I would have. Toni was what kept Nora and me together.

“But I hope to have children myself,” Wanda Jo said.

“Do you?” I said.

“Don’t you think I’d make a good mother?”

“Of course.”

“I think I would. Only it’s getting so late. Sometimes I wish Jack would just hurry up and make up his mind. He says he will but then he keeps putting it off.”

“That sounds like him.”

“Did you know we were going to be married last summer?”

“No.”

“We were. I bought a dress and wedding invitations. But Jack decided he wasn’t ready yet.”

“I don’t suppose he was.”

Wanda Jo stopped twisting the straw and looked at me. “Of course he will eventually. I have to think that. Otherwise, what else is all this for?”

“He’ll come around. He’s just not done playing yet,” I said. Then I took her hand; I squeezed it and she smiled. But the smile didn’t last long; it didn’t change anything in her eyes. Afterward she looked unhappy again.

“Let’s have another drink,” I said.

So we talked about other things for a time and drank another round or two. And in the end Wanda Jo Evans became drunk while Jack Burdette went on talking to his circle of male friends.

Finally I decided to go home. It was after midnight and they were closing the bar. When the lights were turned on Jack came over and put his arm around Wanda Jo and they walked out to his car together. Outside on the sidewalk he said something which made her laugh, but her laughter was too loud and you could hear it along the storefronts, hanging in the air like fog. I stood on the sidewalk and watched them get into the pickup. Then they drove over to Chicago Street.

So it might have gone on indefinitely. It had already gone on that way for most of a decade. Then in 1970 Doyle Francis turned sixty-five and decided he wanted to retire. And Doyle’s retirement turned out to be the first in a series of events which ended it for Wanda Jo Evans, although neither she nor anyone else knew it at the time.

Doyle Francis was the manager of the Farmers’ Co-op Elevator in Holt. He had been the manager for more than thirty years—for as long as anyone could remember—and he had worked hard and he had performed valuable service. But now he was tired. He wanted out. He wanted to play golf and to see if he could raise asparagus in the garden behind his house. Consequently early that summer he had notified Arch Withers and the other members of the board of directors of the Co-op Elevator that he would retire in the fall, after corn harvest.

In November, then, about two weeks before Thanksgiving, the board invited all of the local farmers who were shareholders in the elevator, and all of the Co-op employees and the mayor and the town councilmen and all of their wives, to a banquet to be held in Doyle’s honor at the clubhouse at the golf course east of town. And Nora and I went too, so I could cover the occasion for the Mercury. I don’t suppose such an event would have received much play in the Denver Post or the Rocky Mountain News or, for that matter, in any other newspaper along the Front Range, but in Holt, on the High Plains, it was front-page news. It was a matter of local concern to see how Doyle’s retirement would affect things at the elevator.

At the banquet there were the usual long rows of tables set up with chairs along either side and there was a head table established up front. For dinner we had the customary roast beef and mashed potatoes and green peas and coffee and a form of fruit cobbler. Afterward we listened to several brief speeches and testimonials. Then a few of the farmers who were present stood up voluntarily—but a little awkwardly too, with their white foreheads shining fresh and clean for the occasion, under the clubhouse lights, with their big calloused hands showing red beyond the cuffs of their suit coats—and once they had stood up they began to tell stories and jokes at Doyle’s expense, stories about Doyle which everyone in attendance had heard three or four times before and in more profane and expansive versions. But it was a success nevertheless. And of course Doyle took all of this good-naturedly. Then Arch Withers, the president of the elevator board, called Doyle up to the lectern so he could present Doyle with a gift. It was a sizable box wrapped in silver paper and a red bow. Everyone was watching him open it, although Withers and the other members of the board who were sitting with their wives at the head table were more than just watching him: they appeared to be beside themselves. There wasn’t a straight face among them. But finally Doyle got the silver wrapping off the box and opened it. Peering inside, he looked bewildered at first, dumbfounded; then he grinned and reached inside and held up the contents of the box for all to see. And what he showed us was not the usual pocket watch or a brass pen and pencil set that would gather dust on some desk. No, it turned out that the board had presented him with a good sturdy outdoor hammock to lie in—and a five-year subscription to Playboy magazine to read while he was lying in the hammock. Doyle grinned largely. Then he spoke: