Magnolia City (32 page)

“I’ve had it!” Hetty lost all patience when her shopping bag split open as they stood in the rain outside Brown’s Drugs waiting for Garret. “We have to pay to go to the bathroom and because we’re women we can’t even take a goddamn shower.”

“Now don’t go borrowing trouble,” Pearl said, stooping to rescue the groceries. “We just need to get us some big tin washtubs. That’s all we had to wash ourselves in when I was a girl.”

“Great! I can hardly wait.” Hetty sighed, glad that she’d followed her hunch about bringing her friend along. The rain seemed to reach right down to Pearl Weems’s East Texas roots and bring them cracking back to life. She was putting out feelers, taking charge. Under a tarp Pick had slung between two pines, she’d already set up kitchen—firing up the kerosene stove and unpacking Nella’s cook kit. At the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company over on Main Street, she’d shown Hetty all the best brands to buy: Marrett’s Potted Meats, hominy grits by Red and White, lard from the Wickham Packing Company. “There’s lard and then there’s
lard,
” she’d said, picking out a meaty ham bone to throw into a pot of black-eyed peas for supper last night.

Now she was out there fixing breakfast. Hetty could smell the pungent fumes of bacon and coffee. She finished feeding and changing Pierce, then rocked him back to sleep in his cradle. She sat there letting the chill creep over her, losing heart, wondering how she was going to endure another cold, wet day of camping. And another haunted sleep. The divining rod of her dreams had dipped last night, and she could still feel it quivering inside her. The gleam had gone, and she had no idea what it meant. She never did. Forcing her stiff body up, she pulled on a sweater and worked her feet into the knee-highs. She slid across the car seat and stood up outside, stretching.

Garret heaved a satchel between them on the seat of the Wichita and throttled the engine into motion. He’d heard that farmers out along Caney Creek were selling leases cheap. They got up to Commerce Street without bogging down and stopped at Tulsa’s on the way out of town.

“Want a shower, kiddo?” he said, kicking the door open.

“Don’t tempt me.” Hetty looked at him askance.

There was a lot of activity both inside and outside the popular barbershop. Pipes were being unloaded off freight cars, while a team of twenty mules hauled huge boilers down the street on a wooden wagon. Model Ts followed in its wake, sporting license plates from Arkansas, Alabama, Kansas, and New Mexico. Through the gleaming windows under the spinning candy cane, Hetty watched the men of the oil fraternity getting their brogans shined while they traded leases and waited for an empty barber chair.

After an hour, Garret emerged transfigured: clean-shaven, hair slicked back, tie freshly knotted. He had to leap from the sidewalk to the running board of the truck to keep his pin-striped pants from getting spotted. The minute he entered the car, she practically threw the baby at him. “Here! I hope he spits up on you.” She had to walk two blocks and pay a dime just to use a toilet.

When she returned, Garret backed slowly into traffic and followed it across the railroad tracks. Keeping the truck in the lower gears, he dodged potholes and mud traps as best he could. Hetty was still tossed about quite a bit. She held Pierce close. Town buildings gave way to farmhouses fanned out all across the open hills. Garret drove through several cotton farms, but decided none of them would do because there was no ready source of water.

“You got to have water,” he said, “for the slush pit. That much I know.”

Then, about the time Hetty felt hope slipping away from her, Garret found a little crow’s foot of a road that paralleled Caney Creek. He passed a mailbox with the name Hillyer spelled out in black paint that had dripped down. He backed up and turned into the drive. The farmhouse was on a hill, a wing of smoke lifting out of its chimney. Down below, a flock of weeping willows bare as bird claws grew on either side of the water. Garret followed their line until he reached the creek, glistening over a sandy bottom. Hetty gazed at the brown pine needles scattered on its bank and had a moment of déjà vu. A trace of sunlight emerged. She looked across. The stream here flowed around an embankment that rose on the opposite side. Hetty’s eyes followed it up. And there they were. The two pines bent together. “Drill over there,” she said, pointing.

Garret cranked the Wichita into its lowest gear and climbed the hill to the farmhouse. They followed along the barbed wire fence that held back a few grazing cows and parked in the spidery shade of an old gum tree that rose above the chimney. Smoke hung like moss in its bare branches. Down the dog run that split the house in half, Hetty saw two children in overalls dodge into the backyard.

Garret took the satchel up to the front door and knocked politely. A chicken clucked by when the farmwife peered out, face as weathered-down gray as the old clapboard house, frowning at Garret while he talked. Hetty watched as she retreated into the parlor. More chickens strutted forward, but not too close. They scattered when the farmer came around the corner, wiping his fingers. He smiled as he shook hands with Garret, his rusty face corroded from years of hot Texas sun.

“Hollis, Oleta, y’all come in here.” The farmwife leaned out and shouted down the dog run. “Them’s oil people.” The children came running, and she gathered them under her arms and ushered them inside.

If Hetty listened carefully, she could hear snippets of what Garret was saying to the farmer:

“Lease ten—”

“Hundred dollars per acre—”

“A bonus of two—”

He didn’t get much response from the man, until he opened the bag and showed him the stacks of bills. The farmer staggered back as if there were a rattlesnake in there, instead of more cash than he’d probably ever seen in his life.

Garret’s hands moved as he talked, and the farmer shrugged and looked away, or just smiled and nodded. His wife materialized behind the screen door occasionally to shout comments: “You ain’t forgetting what your cousin told you, are you, Roy? Jessie let them drill a well on his land and the salt water ruined his vegetable garden.”

“Not on your farmland—” Hetty heard as Garret pointed down toward the creek, and the farmer craned his neck to look that way. Then he eyed the satchel and circled it warily.

The wife appeared at the door again.

“Don’t forget what they bring with them. Those painted women in beach pajamas. That’s probably one of them sitting in the truck.”

Garret had told Hetty to stay in the Wichita and let him handle the negotiations with Mr. Hillyer. But she couldn’t hang back any longer. She wanted more than anything to see a derrick rising beside those two bent pines from her dream, pumping down through the sandy soil by the creek. It was the place to strike oil; she knew it even if nobody else did. Now she just had to convince the owners of the land that she was right. For once she was glad she hadn’t worn any makeup and wouldn’t be considered one of the “painted ladies.” She probably looked downright bedraggled next to Garret, but maybe that would win her some points from the Mrs., who was, like Pearl would say, plain as a mud fence. She cracked the door open, cradled Pierce in her arms, and stepped down.

Garret eyed her warily. “This is my wife and our new son, Pierce.”

Hetty smiled at the woman behind the rusty screen. “No beach pajamas.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” the woman said. “I’m Ada Hillyer.” She stepped outside, a faded apron hung over her gingham wash dress.

“We’re the MacBrides,” Hetty said.

Ada shook their hands. “Don’t mean to be unfriendly. We’re God-fearing people, Mrs. MacBride.”

“I know. That’s why we’re here. My husband’s looking for a quiet place to do some exploration away from that mess. We’re just a family, Ada, like yours.”

“What makes you want to drill way out here?” Mr. Hillyer asked.

Garret stammered to come up with a reason, not wanting to say, “Because your land is cheap.”

Hetty hesitated, listening to Garret ramble on. She never told anyone about her dreams, not even her husband, for fear that they would stop. She felt the bud of a blush about to open on her cheeks. What would these simple country people think if she told them what she’d glimpsed before waking this morning? But they were churchgoers; they read about such things in the Bible. Maybe they
would
understand, even more than her own husband. She could tell that his arguments weren’t convincing anybody. Mr. Hillyer was shaking his head. Ada was squinting sideways, all wrinkled in doubt, hands plunged in apron pockets. Hetty decided to speak up. “Excuse me, Garret. I want to tell the Hillyers about the dream I had this morning. I saw two bent pines growing next to a creek. Then an Indian woman appeared.”

“Honey, I don’t think these folks—”

“An Indian woman?” Ada interrupted. Her eyes flashed as she turned to Hetty. “What did she look like?”

Hetty described her shiny, fringed dress and the clay vessel with the blue-black water. “She said it would heal me if I drank it.”

“And it would.” Ada spoke with conviction. “Were there any markings on her face?”

“Yes, a line right down the middle. And a triangle at each eye.”

“Judas Priest! That was a Caddo Indian you saw.” She blinked at Hetty in amazement. “You hear that, Roy? This lady had a dream about a Caddo Indian woman.”

“Well, I’ll be . . .”

“Does that mean anything?”

“Mean anything? Lady, East Texas is Caddo country. When the Spanish granted this land to my great-grandfather, there were still Caddo on it. They came to the creek for the sour dirt, used it for rheumatism. That woman you dreamed about—was she wearing a cloak?”

“Yes—I’d forgotten about that. When she walked away, I could see it.”

Ada eyed her intently. “And what was it made of?”

Hetty strained to remember. She knew she was being tested. She saw the figure walking away from her . . . into the woods. She saw the pine shadows shimmering over the cloak . . . saw it mottled . . .

“Turkey,” she said. “I think it was turkey feathers.”

Ada’s hands fluttered out of her apron pockets and landed on her face. “My God, it’s her. Dead out.”

“What are you saying, woman?”

“Roy, it’s a sign.”

“But, Ada, the farm. You were always so hidebound . . .”

“I know I was. But there’s something I never told you. That hill over there, other side of them two pines. That was one of their mounds.”

“Mounds?”

“Yes, Roy. Where they had their ceremonies. Don’t you see? It’s a sign from above. Like in the Bible. This is consecrated ground. God is speaking to us through the Indians.” Her hands worked themselves around her neck as she breathed the surprise in and out. “Lord, Lord, what a day.” She raised her shoulders and looked to the sky. Hetty could see she was turning the matter over in her mind. “Well . . .” she said after a few moments. “Folks say Daisy Bradford had a dream telling Dad Joiner where to drill. I could be like her.” She cocked her head at Garret. “If we do let you drill a well, mister, would you name it the Ada Hillyer Number One?”

“What else?” Garret said. “But why stop there? We could have the Ada Hillyer Two and Three and Four. Tell you what, ma’am, as well as paying to lease your land, I’m prepared to give you folks a one-eighth interest in every well I drill.”

The farmer hitched up his pants. “A one-eighth interest now?” He squinted, trying to wrap his mind around the fraction.

“It’s generous,” Hetty said. “You’ll be rich as Croesus.”

But Ada wasn’t listening. Hetty could see she had no idea how much money they were talking about. She was gazing past them, watching her own local dreams write themselves across the sky. “I could be in the papers like the others,” she said, almost breathless. “Like Daisy. Like Lou Della Crim. My grandchildren would read about me in history books. The Ada Hillyer Number One. I like the sound of it.”

Roy hunkered down and peered into the leather satchel. He cleared his throat. “It is an awful lot of money.”

Ada pursed her lips and put her hands on her hips. “Well . . . I could use a new cookstove.”

Once Garret had drawn up the abstracts and secured the lease at the title company, the Hillyers couldn’t have been more helpful. They invited the whole party to move out of the Hollow and pitch tents on the farm within walking distance of the outhouse. Ada gave Hetty fresh-churned butter and showed her how to dry clothes East Texas style, on the barbed wire fence so she didn’t need clothespins. Near the future well site, they let Garret and Pick throw up two shotgun houses, which you could buy in a kit for seventy-five dollars—long, stringy things with no hallways, just one small room opening into another.

“I reckon I can share a house and a bathroom with a black man,” Pearl said. “Seeing as how it’s Pick.”

As soon as the simple frame houses were finished and woodstoves installed, the men unpacked the Wichita while the women tried to dry the furniture out and get some kind of kitchen set up. They bought new beds for everybody at the Horn Brothers’ Furniture Store on Main Street. Hetty didn’t even mind the sound of the rain drumming all night on the tin roof as she slept in a real bed with clean sheets for the first time in two weeks.