by W. Arthur
It may be true that some people - men, in particular - are born to bad luck while others bring it on themselves. I can't tell you which of these applies to me; I can only say that, at least in my early years, I had my share of it.
My brother Raymond, born three years before I was, was the proverbial apple of my parents' eye, the perfect son to carry on the family name. I came along as an afterthought, unworthy and unfit for anything other than cleaning up after my brother.
My father, a veteran of the old army who was wounded in Cuba in 1898, was a heavy drinker. When he was drunk - which was about half the time - he either cried or flew into rages. He had trouble holding a job. When Raymond enlisted in the army and was killed in France in 1918, my father practically fell apart at losing his favorite son.
Then, when my mother, who was herself very strict in a religious sort of way, got sick during the flu epidemic and subsequently died in January of 1919, he started to drink even more heavily than he had before. I was sixteen at the time, on the cusp of discovering my manhood while also grieving the loss of both my brother and my mother. I had to quit school and go to work because my father couldn't hold a job. Bad luck, misfortune, whatever you want to call it.
Then, for a short time, things brightened. When Prohibition became law in 1920, while much of the country seemed to go crazy, my father actually stopped drinking. He got a job in a factory and married Myrtle O'Hara, a staunchly religious thirty-year-old woman who was both a widow and childless.
I didn't necessarily like or dislike Myrtle. She was good for my father, and we, more-or-less, ignored each other. And for a short time, life in the Huddleston household wasn't too bad.
But then, my father got sick. Apparently all those years of hard drinking caught up with him. His liver failed. He lasted six months with Myrtle and I taking turns caring for him.
The day after he was buried, I found a speakeasy and got drunk for the first time in my life. The following morning, after I had sobered up a little, Myrtle took me by the ear, bent me over the kitchen table, and spanked me mercilessly with her big wooden hairbrush. Being slightly hungover, I was in no condition to offer more than token resistance.
Later, when I had calmed down, she informed me that my drinking days were over and that I was to accompany her to her church, get down on my knees, and pray for forgiveness. I said some bad words, packed up my few belongings, and stormed out of our small house. This was the early summer of 1922; I was nineteen and raring to discover life for myself, free from all familial and religious restraint, not to mention the threat of additional spanking.
And discover it I did. I immediately fell in with what my stepmother called a 'bad crowd' -young men who were primarily interested in women and whiskey. Their only religion was hedonism. I drank and smoked and found easy employment driving for bootleggers. Every time I was behind the wheel of one of the transport trucks, navigating the back roads with a load of hooch, I felt like I was on top of the world, especially knowing that at the end of that road were willing young women and a fistful of cash. And no crusading stepmother to confront me with her hairbrush.
This dream of a life I had carved out for myself lasted until late summer of 1923. And then the Prohibition agents began to close in on my employers, making it more and more difficult to operate with impunity. Like many of my fellow bootleggers, I became a target and narrowly escaped capture more than once.
When I myself became known to the agents as more than just an anonymous driver, I knew it was time to lay low for a while. But where to go where they wouldn't find me? Where could I find sanctuary? During my last run, I remembered that Myrtle had inherited her family farm three hundred miles away. Maybe she would take me in; after all, I was her stepson and her religion preached forgiveness. With that thought in mind, I dropped my last load and headed for Butler County.
I hadn't actually seen Myrtle since I stormed out of the house after she spanked me that first and only time. However, we did correspond occasionally, at least enough so that I knew where she lived. I never told her what I was doing except to say that I was working as a delivery driver. Still, she was not a stupid woman and kept up with current events so I imagined that she had pretty much figured out what I was delivering.
I found the old farm late in the afternoon. My first impression was that, although there was a decent crop of corn in the fields - perfect for making corn liquor- the house and barn appeared tired and rundown. There was not a modern convenience (electricity, running water) anywhere in sight. When making my deliveries along the back roads, I got used to rough conditions. However, when I was in the city, I appreciated what the city offered. Immediately, I knew living on this farm would probably not be pleasant.
I wasn't wrong about that, as it turned out. I pulled up to the house in my worn-down 1917 Ford truck and was greeted first by a large collie, who came bounding down from the wide front porch, barking loudly.
Before I had a chance to get properly acquainted with Prince, Myrtle appeared at the door. I smiled and waved when I saw her. "Hi, Myrtle," I said as cheerily as I could, given the circumstances of my unannounced arrival.
For several seconds, my stepmother remained where she was, as though she didn't recognize me. Then, she pushed open the door and came out on the porch.
"Prince, come here," she called.
The dog immediately stopped barking and went back up on the porch.
Myrtle gazed at me, her blue eyes squinting. "Roland, is that you?"
I took several steps toward the porch. "Yes," I said. "I've come for a visit."
She shifted her eyes back and forth between me and the old truck. "I didn't expect to ever see you again," she said. "Is that your truck?"
That seemed to me to be a strange question piggybacked onto a strange comment. However, under the circumstances, the world seemed strange. I thought about the truck. It wasn't exactly mine - at least in the sense that I bought it - but I figured, with my employers facing probable prosecution, it was mine now.
"Yes, it's my truck," I said. "And I would have called, but you don't have a phone."
She nodded. "Life's pretty simple out here," she said. "Now, since you're here, you might as well come in the house and tell me what brings you to this out of the way place."
Good old Myrtle, I thought. She hasn't changed. And, in fact, as I got closer to her, I saw that she really hadn't changed, at least not physically. When we lived together, I hadn't much appreciated her religious zeal or her apparent disdain of pleasure; however, I did appreciate that she was a reasonably attractive woman. She now appeared a bit more worn, but she still had a pretty face and a slender but well-proportioned body, even as it was hidden beneath her long work dress.
I thought about the several young women I had been with over the past year or so. A couple were what I would call attractive - although, as a young man full of juice, I was more than willing to sacrifice attractiveness for promiscuity. However, none of the women I had been with possessed the simple and unassuming beauty of my stepmother.
For a moment, I wondered what she looked like under the dress. Then, I dismissed the image. Myrtle had buried two husbands and was more than ten years older than I was. Plus, she was deeply conservative and religious. More than likely, she would have punished me severely and ordered me off her property for even thinking about her as an attractive and available woman. All right, I told myself, you need sanctuary and this is it. Now, go do what you have to do.
We entered the house, which smelled of wood smoke and coal oil. She led me into the large kitchen, which contained a wood stove and an ice box. It also had a small pump over the cast iron sink. She invited me to sit at the round oak table and offered me a glass of water. I accepted.
She was eerily silent as she got two glasses from a wooden cupboard and filled them with water from the pump. I started to get extremely nervous. I knew very well that I didn't belong here. "How big is the farm?" I asked, mostly to break the stifling silence.
She set the glasses down on the table. "Used to be three hundred acres," she said. "I had to sell a hundred acres to pay the taxes and do some repairs."
"How long has your family lived here?" I was stalling for time. I definitely didn't want the conversation to shift to me.
"Since right after the Civil War," she said. "My father's father and his father built the house and barn. My father was born in the bedroom upstairs, as was I and my brother."
"So the farm has always been in the family?"
"Of course. By rights, the farm should have gone to my brother, but, like your brother, he was killed in France. My father tried to work the farm alone after my mother died, but it was too much for him. After he died, I could have sold it, but I wanted to keep it in the family, even though I'm the only family left."
"Do you work it all by yourself?"
She shook her head. "No, there's a family down the road that has four sons. They help me out by doing all the heavy work." She paused and looked at me with her hard eyes. "Now, what really brings you here?"
I hesitated and took a deep breath. "I... had some time and thought... I might want to see you, see where you're living."
She huffed. "Don't lie to me, Roland. Lying is a sin before God. You're in trouble, aren't you?"
Time to come clean, whether I want to or not. "Sort of," I said.
She shook her head. "What does that mean?"
"Myrtle, it's not that bad," I said. "After I left home, I had to make a living, so I got a job driving for some guys. It turned out these guys were selling alcohol, although I didn't realize it at the time. They threatened to turn me in to the Prohibition agents if I informed on them or quit. Well, I just quit." The lie sounded pretty good to me and really wasn't that far from the truth.
Myrtle fixed me with her eyes. "Roland, your face gives you away," she said after an awkward silence. "You reek of sin. Is the law after you? What about those agents of Satan you work for?"
I swallowed hard. As I said, my stepmother was a smart woman, wise to the ways of the world even as she rejected those ways. "The agents don't know who I am," I said. "And anyway, they've got better things to do than come after me. And the bootleggers will just assume I got caught."
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