Chin Up, Honey. Curtiss Matlock Ann
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recliner and him not in it. She could not do it. In fact, she felt a little panic about it.
It suddenly occurred to her that she was doing exactly what John Cole had said she did: thinking everything six ways from Sunday.
And a very good thing that one of them did some thinking, she thought, going into the closet and putting on her slinky silk nightgown that she liked to wear to remind herself—and hopefully John Cole—that she was a woman.
She fluffed the large bed pillows and settled herself against them in an artful, womanly manner. She wanted to present an attractive picture when John Cole came through the door and found her there. She imagined a number of compelling things to say to him.
It turned out not to matter, though, because John Cole did not even come to bed. He fell asleep in his recliner and slept there all night. Probably not thinking at all.
10
Winston and Willie Lee
Earlier in the spring, when elderly Winston Valentine came upon an old electric wheelchair at a yard sale, he bought it and began using it to help him get around town. The wheelchair’s electric motor shortly proved unreliable, however, so Willie Lee often ended up pushing. Quite quickly the pair became a familiar sight on the streets of Valentine—the old man wearing a straw cowboy hat and riding in a wheelchair pushed by a boy with a Dallas Cowboys ball cap, invariably on crooked, and followed by a spotted dog.
Most days after their morning radio program, Winston took Willie Lee to the Main Street Café for lunch, because Willie Lee’s mother hounded them both about eating vegetables. Afterward they would go across the street to Blaine’s Soda Fountain to get ice cream.
Winston insisted that Willie Lee abandon the idea of the extra distance required to use the crosswalk and cut across in the middle of the block, often holding up traffic. Winston often quite boldly used his advanced age and Willie Lee’s position as an eternally sweet mentally challenged person to do just what he wanted to do.
No one minded except First Deputy Lyle Midgette, and he had given up trying to get them to quit the illegal and hazardous practice. Deputy Midgette would much rather face any criminal than Mr. Winston’s sharp tongue. Half the time he was not even certain what Mr. Winston was saying. Whenever he saw the two crossing illegally, he would turn around and go in the opposite direction, so that he did not have to feel he was derelict in his duty. It was a comfort to know that the sheriff had admitted to the same thing, saying, “There’s no one who can tell Winston what to do.”
The boy would push Winston in the wheelchair through the door of the drugstore, and the old man would rise and call greetings to everyone as he walked across the room to the soda fountain. There he would spend half an hour or so holding court and pretty much pretending that he was at least twenty years younger. He would hand out cold sweet tea and latte and barbeque and banana splits, along with advice and opinions. On good days, Claire Ford would come in, slip up on a stool, smile at him and ask for a strawberry milkshake, her favorite. He would make it extra thick and watch her rosy tongue savor the sweet pink cream off the long-handled spoon. On really good days she would be without her husband, and Winston would imagine himself at least thirty years younger, and sometimes he almost got some excitement in his pants.
During this time when Winston was occupied, Willie Lee, with Munro quietly at his heels, would occupy himself in the magical world of the magazine section. The plate-glass windows of the drugstore had wide wooden windowsills just right for sitting and reading, which was why Belinda Blaine kept insisting the magazine section needed to be moved, but she could not figure out where else to put it. Willie Lee would sit on the windowsill, and look at magazines about bicycling and skating and skiing and car racing. He could not read the words, had even quit longing to read the words, but he looked at the pictures and dreamed of doing these things himself, just like a normal boy.
“Where’s your mama?” Winston asked Belinda on that afternoon’s visit to the drugstore soda fountain.
“She’s gone off with Jaydee.”
“With Jaydee?” This was a surprise. Startling, even. “Gone off to where?”
“I don’t know, just off.” While he was dealing with this, she added, “And Claire was already in earlier. You missed her. She and Larkin were goin’ off this afternoon to Dallas.”
Everyone was off, and here he was. His Claire had not even informed him about a trip to Dallas. There had been a time when she told him just about everything. Now, more and more, she was slipping away from him.
That day’s visit to the soda fountain proved a total disappointment. Not one person he even faintly wanted to see appeared. Lillian Jennings, who was always going on about something in history, came in and wanted to know what Winston knew about the War Between the States. He told her, “Nothin’. I’m not that damn old.” And then Deputy Lyle Midgette came in and said that they had not yet nabbed the thief who had made off with two wrenches and a cash box containing fifty-five dollars from Sybil Lund’s perpetual garage sale.
Winston had not told anyone about seeing the young man that the deputy had been chasing jumping over the pasture fence and hiding, and he didn’t want to speak of it now, because he didn’t want to appear old and forgetful. That he was becoming old and forgetful was too much to bear.
He realized that he wasn’t only forgetful, but that he was being forgotten. His two best friends were Vella and Claire, and they were at that moment occupied with other men. Younger, livelier men. And it was not too hard to be younger and livelier than him, who was in the very twilight of his life.
Over on the windowsill, Willie Lee felt Munro get to his feet and press against his leg. He looked at the dog, who looked back with dark eyes.
In his familiar manner of knowing things without hearing words, Willie Lee immediately put the magazine back in its correct place on the shelf, then went straight to the wheelchair and rolled it to the end of the soda fountain counter, where Mr. Winston was leaning on the freezer.
“Ah…buddy,” Winston said, taking note of him. “Let’s get our ice cream and blow this joint.”
He started to make their ice-cream cones, but Belinda said that she would do it and told him to sit down.
Vaguely aware that Belinda had ordered him and that he didn’t have the gumption to go back at her, and that she had never before offered to make him anything, he allowed her to do so and settled himself heavily into the wheelchair.
Willie Lee could not recall ever seeing Belinda make ice-cream cones. He stood nearby and watched. She was skimpy on the ice cream, but he didn’t think it a wise thing to say so to her.
With Winston carrying the desserts in a cardboard container on his lap, Willie Lee rolled him out onto the sidewalk and over to a bench beneath the shelter of a redbud tree, where they sat side by side and ate their cones, Munro licked his treat from a dish, and vehicles and people passed by. Most everyone cast a wave or called a greeting.
One of these was pretty little Gabby Smith, who waved enthusiastically out the passenger window of her mother’s minivan as the vehicle slowed in a line for the stoplight. “Hi, Willie Lee! Hi, Mr. Winston!”
There was in this feminine enthusiasm enough energy to cause Winston to smile and wave in return.
Willie Lee reacted by scrambling to his feet as fast as he could. Winston saw the boy’s ice cream tilting precariously on the cone.
“I heard you on the radio this mornin’,” called Gabby, pushing her curls out of her face as the minivan began to roll forward.
“I…I…hel-ped.” Willie Lee was on tiptoe at the edge of sidewalk.
“I listen every day. Come see me, Willie Lee!” Gabby called, leaning out the window as the minivan rounded the corner of Church Street and disappeared.
Winston reached out just in time to catch Willie Lee’s ice cream. It plopped into his hand. Willie Lee, blinking behind