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Lester Deeson had never stayed at a Motel Delight, but he imagined this must be somewhere near the equivalent. For a moment it was just a very uncomfortable position and time to turn over. That is a mistake if you happen to be asleep on a chain suspended swing on the front porch of a farmhouse somewhere in the area of
Muncy, Ohio. It was this, or share a bed with two or three relatives. Lester did not fall out, but caught himself with the aid of his knee and most of his right ear and cheekbone.
“There’s a funeral today. Right. I’m here as loving, caring, family. Right!” The thought was a whisper as he repositioned his body on the pad under his rear end. The quilt was too short and smelled of cedar. He got comfortable and placed one hand down on the porch. A gentle push and the bench swayed back and forth ever so slightly. He dozed.
The mist was rising off the distant farm fields. A
whip-por-will pronounced its name close by. Lester witnessed the dawn with one eye. The full moon became bathed in a thin fog. It was elegant.
The flight from Dallas was boring. It was back in Dallas tonight to cover a basketball game. The Darts had won their last six games. They were hot and right now, Lester was not. He yearned for the lights, the noise and even the stale nachos and the mystery meat hog dogs. That game would come none to soon because these little towns gave him the blues.
The edge of the rising sunlight started out near the mailbox and slowly made its way toward the bricks that stuck in the ground, forming the flowerbed. Aunt Lisa had been strong and active even at age seventy-nine and the flowerbeds were neat and tidy. After all, she had tended them just two days ago. Uncle Dean had been up since those stupid roosters had started screeching around five. The old farmer was a creature of habit and the coffee had to be ready at the same time that the morning sun hit the house. The smell of fresh brewed coffee combined with this country air gave Lester a slight tinge. That feeling did not fit into the psyche because he was big city born and raised. The sounds of clanking and bumping of a garbage truck in the alley seemed more comfortable.
Just like everything else in this town, the church was only a few blocks away. Lester parked his rent car at the side of the building. His father used the rent car as an incentive to make this an easy experience. It was a Lincoln Continental that had enough extras to do everything but make coffee.
“If a trip around the world cost a nickel, I couldn’t even afford to go across the street!” Lester loved to use that line concerning his finances. He really hated it when his dad paid for everything.
The funeral procession line-up was being formed around at the front of the building, and was directed by dark-suited stiffs who worked for the home. Being in a slow moving parade for a grave visit was not in his itinerary. The service was at ten and his plane left at two. The Toledo airport was an hour drive so his timing was critical.
The name, “Olive Branch Funeral Home and Memorial Garden” was etched in a big stone sign out near the road. It looked like a tombstone. The building looked like a prison unit or perhaps an extra large rest room. Out on the lawn near the street were ten different models of headstones displayed in their best advertising position.
“You really want to see that on your way in to grieve for a dead person,” he thought to himself. After walking past strangers dressed in their country best, Lester found a seat on the end of a pew next to his grossly rotund older sister. Over the last five years he had seen her twice. Both times had been at funerals.
“Hey Michelle,” he whispered.
“Hey Les, how you doin’?”
“You don’t have time.”
“What?”
“I’d get about ten minutes into it and you would just leave!”
She laughed. Her little brother always made her laugh. Michelle did not get to laugh much. She was a single parent of two children, both under five years old.
This would be a classic Baptist funeral and Lester made a game of what usually happened next. He sat there in the straight-backed, uncomfortable pew secretly wishing he had his camera. Everything about this country culture would be unbelievable back home in his circle of friends. He had no camera, but he decided it might make a good story later down the line. He always carried a small spiral notebook in his pocket. He loved to write things down. It was a habit he got in college when he was editor of The Daily Campus. All eyes were looking at the casket so nobody noticed him making notes.
There were about thirty people present and most of them looked homeless, but were actually home owning residents. I tried without success to position my head behind one of many piled up, puffed up, cotton candy, and fresh from the beauty shop, hair-do’s. I don’t like the hair and I really did not like to look at a dead person’s nose and forehead sticking up just above the edge of a casket. Then came the organ music. I am convinced that some of it sounded as if it were being played with elbows. That finally stopped and then came recorded bagpipes.
“Michelle! What’s the song? Quick!” Michelle just smiled slightly and shrugged her shoulders. Lester whispered, “Amazing Grace, there was no other song ever written for the bag pipe!” She put her hand over her face to hide a giggle.
Next came the obligatory, “Old Rugged Cross” which started the sniffling throughout the congregation. I nudged my sister one more time. I told her that if she didn’t come to my funeral I promised I would not be offended! The Baptist preacher walked silently to the pulpit. I just wanted to mess up his hair and see if the stress would render him comatose. The evangelist spent the next twenty minutes convincing the crowd that he had never even met Aunt Lisa. I had not noticed that the pallbearers were already seated when I came in. The preacher said “Amen” and the boys stood up. There were eight of them and only one had on a tie. You could tell it was clip-on because one of the plastic stays was sticking out from his collar. He had no hair, and the short-sleeve sport shirt he had on was at least one and a half sizes too small for him. The buttons down the front begged for relief. The other caskest-toters were wearing slacks and long-sleeved dress shirts. Then came the guy on the end. He wore black motorcycle boots, sloppy jeans, and a Grateful Dead concert T-shirt! He had a pocket book chain that hung to his knees. Shoulder length hair, funny goatee, and long sideburns that rounded out ‘the look.’ We all stood while the house ushers guided one pew of mourners at a time to file by the casket. I was not about to go up there and say something about how natural she looked. She looked dead! I slipped out quietly. And, then he did.
“This is your captain speaking. We found a favorable tailwind over Arkansas so we will be arriving at DFW a few minutes early. On behalf of the pilots and crew, we hope you have enjoyed your flight on Delta and that you will think of us for your next trip.”
Lester was sitting at a window seat with notebook open, pen in hand, and studying an Application for Employment. He was whispering to himself. “The Times Mirror could use a really good sports photographer. I’m it! Let’s see, NAME, Lester Alexander
Deeson, D.O.B. 10-10-74, AGE 22, SEX, “Wonder how much longer that question will be politically correct?” Too loud. The lady seated next to him looked up from her magazine. Lester tried harder to just think more softly. HEIGHT: 6’ 3”, WEIGHT: 214, EYE COLOR: Blue. Lester looked like his father’s younger brother. They both had slightly slanting, blue-gray eyes, prominent ears and a round face. “EDUCATION, BA. Photojournalism, Southern Christian University.”
“Please be sure your seats are in the upright and locked position,” came the announcement over the speakers. Lester folded his notebook and put it back in his bag. He looked out the window and tried to dream. He would make it in the world of photography. He would move from this community newspaper and some day his photos would appear in Sports Illustrated. It was fun to dream.
All went well and he had time to stop by the newspaper office for his messages and e-mail. The Ridgeview Star Courier was housed in a slightly remodeled former grocery store building. The entire operation of this 23,000-circulation newspaper was nestled in this building. The photo department consisted of two full time photographers, and one snapshot goof off. The goof-off was the editor’s son.
Lester paused at the opening to his cubicle. His desk, actually a table, was still cluttered. The Dilbert screen saver was hard at work. He hadn’t left the computer on for two days, but he shared it with two other photographers and it hardly ever got turned off. There were two pink telephone notes on the desk pad. He sighed and satisfied himself with the thought that his career had to be uphill from here. This set up must be the bottom. The first slip was attached to a press pass. The note said, “Lester from C, concentrate on Brad Smith tonight. Need locker room shots.” Lester mumbled, “Musta caught ol’ Brad with his drugs hangin’ out! This might be front page.”
The six-foot-eleven star center for the Dallas Darts stood out in more than just a physical sense. If there was a team scandal, Smith was the center always right in the center.
The other note read, “Lester from C, get out to Weston, TX on Saturday. Got a report there’s a HS senior girl who can run the 100 m in 9 flat and doesn’t want to go to college. Last track meet, it starts at 10 am.” Lester mumbled again, “Where the hell is Weston, Texas?”
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The little green sign at the highway shoulder did not offer anything like “City Of,” or “Pop.” it just mentioned a road. Lester exited and thought about driving until he found anything that looked like a town. His note said the meet would start at ten o’clock. It was now nine-thirty-seven.
Just two blocks from the interstate the scenery changed dramatically. The flat Texas prairie changed to low green hills. The post oaks were all a dreamy green and the leaves seemed to stretch so far toward the sun that Lester was tempted to yawn. To the left the neatly divided farm plots with barbed wire fences that were hidden in most places by oak tree windbreaks. It all passed by at fifty-five miles per hour as corn, grain sorghum, cows, more corn and then just Johnson grass on both sides of the two-lane.
Coming up on the right were the human dwellings that varied from Victorian farm houses, with a porch all the way around, to broken down house trailers with one chained-to-a-stake dog in front of each one. There was a produce stand in front of or near each trailer house that announced the sale of “Real apple cider,” and “Fresh Truck Farm Produce.” Lester slowed when he saw huge, brightly painted, wooden cutouts of assorted farm animals staked around a little front yard. He grinned when he thought about the only farm animal he would tolerate would have to be one of these low maintenance wooden statues. It was now nine-fifty a.m. and there was still nothing that looked like a town.
There were a few blocks of solid trees and then a slight curve in the road. Lester slowed. He saw a small, wood frame, white building standing a few yards off the road. Small building meaning no more than eight feet by eight feet and about eight feet tall. The sign on the front was elegantly carved. It sported a fresh white coat of paint on the background that made the big black letters attention grabbers. “WESTON TEXAS, U.S. POST OFFICE.” Lester was in the right place, but there was no town. Judging from the size of the post office he may have blinked and missed the place. Directly across the street there sat a square red brick building with a new, hand-painted with an unsteady hand, sign that read, “Gracie’s Restaurant.” There was a big white
Redi-Ice freezer parked on the sidewalk against the wall right on the seam of where an attached faded gray wooden building began. It leaned a few degrees off plumb. The metal above the eaves showed only the letters “ORE” and the rest was faded and covered with rust. There were four wood posts that held up the overhang and two elderly men sitting in leaned-back chairs that appeared to hold up the posts. The men weren’t talking, chewing, or whittling, as one would expect in this quaint rural setting; they were just sitting. Dirty jeans, dirty boots and washed-but-not-ironed shirts were the dress of the day. Lester pulled of the road and slid a bit in the loose gravel as he braked to a halt. The two men looked in his direction as if that just to move took a little thinking and a lot of effort. Lester got out slowly and fixed a grin on his face.
“Hey fellas, it hot enough for ya?” Lester kicked some loose gravel trying to act as laid back as the two old codgers looked.
One of the men adjusted his John Deere cap and grinned at the other. “Naw. I’d like it to be about forty more degrees hotter,” he replied.
There was a pause and then both the men broke out laughing. Lester stood there thinking they had been saving that reply for many years just waiting for him to come along and ask that dumb question. He laughed a little.
“I’m looking for the school track and field stadium. I’m a newspaper reporter and I’m supposed to cover the track meet today.”
The old dude without a cap, who looked as if he had to wind up to speak, replied. “Well, there’s a runnin’ track ‘round Dalworth football field but it ain’t ever been a stadium. It’s down there ‘bout a mile.”
The bald guy then pointed. He looked back at Lester and then at his friend.
“I guess me and Frank are both wonderin’ why a newspaper would want to come all the way out here to do a story on one our school things?”
Lester kicked some more gravel. “You guys know Peggy Jacobs?”
The air of rural nonchalance changed suddenly. Frank became the spokesman and he noticeably guarded his words.
“She’s on the track team but she probably won’t talk to you and she may not want her picture took. Peg’s a little different that way.”
This is getting interesting Lester thought. These guys acted as if he had asked about a wanted criminal or person who held their mortgages in their hands. He could not tell which.
“You best be careful and not rile her up. She’s got a nasty temper and she’s strong as a horse.”
Now Lester could visualize a seven-foot tall, two hundred-pound, shaved grizzly bear of a teenager with attitude, and could run like the wind. And, what made these old men bring up that point?
It was ten-o-five and time to move on down the road. They said their
thank-you’s and see-ya’s and the two old men resumed their positions and stares.
There were six or seven cars and one big yellow school bus parked head-in to a field between the road shoulder and a chain-link fence. Maybe twenty spectators were sitting on quilts, in plastic and aluminum folding chairs, cross-legged on the grass or just leaning against the fence. There were little kids running and screaming in every direction. The athletes could be recognized as the kids in two color sets of uniforms. There was the gold over black and the red under white. Some had numbers and some did not. Lester scanned the young bodies for the bald grizzly girl. The one standout physique in the group was just the opposite. She had waist length ash blonde hair tied in a ponytail. She stood, hands on slim hips, at the edge of the red packed clay track. Her skin was not so much of a tan as it was a type. It was flawless, creamy, lightly tanned and, from where Lester stood with his mouth open, absolutely beautiful. She must have been born that way. From top of her sweat socks to the bottom of her flared red shorts, Lester noticed the most beautiful pair of young legs he had ever seen. His gaze skipped the torso and went straight to the face. He suddenly became fixed in place and his mind went completely blank.
“Pardon!” A spectator whispered loud enough to be heard all along the line of lookers and above the screaming kids.
“Scuse me!” Even louder.
Lester woke up and moved quickly off to one side. He squatted at the edge of the track and began assembling his camera and telephoto lens without taking his eyes off the girl’s face. He could not seem to think of much of anything.
There were six girls on the track, three Weston Warthogs and three Prosper Pirates. This would be the first heat of the hundred-meter dash. The girls were stretching and pressing themselves into contortions reserved only for the young. There was a lot of hopping, twisting and running in place. That girl just stood and waited.
“On your mark!”
The starter was either a participatory father or an assistant to the assistant coach. Peggy and her long legs casually sauntered over to the starting blocks at lane two. She leaned forward gracefully bending at the waist. Lester adjusted his camera focus on the side of Peggy’s head. That was another first for him because this telephoto could focus on nose hairs and others. She put first one group of delicate fingers down on the hard clay and shifted her weight. Her weight must have been all of one hundred ten pounds. The other hand did the same.
“Get set!”
Her muscles tensed slightly and then froze like a cocked spring. Lester pressed the shutter release.
“Click! Whirrr!”
Peggy’s head snapped to the side and she stared straight at the camera. Lester was startled and he backed away from the viewfinder. He gave the camera a quick glance as if it could explain why that a beautiful runner from over fifty yards could hear almost inaudible sound away.
“Bang!”
It seemed to Lester that the race was over before he even had a chance to look back at the track. By the time he raised his camera, Peggy was gliding in a relaxed stride slowing to a stop. The other five girls were pulling up behind her. The looks on their faces reminded Lester of the stupid animated face of Wile E. Coyote after roadrunner disappears in a cloud of dust. The other runners stopped at various points along the track, grabbed their knees, and gasp for new air. Peggy walked nimbly over to a bench and sat down. She pulled a big nylon equipment bag over to her feet and began to untie her shoes. A huge woman dressed in Khaki shorts and tight T-shirt waddled over to the bench. She marked something on her clipboard and then gave Peggy a light pat on the shoulder. There were judges in same colored baseball caps scurrying around comparing stopwatches and then looking in Peggy’s direction. She had broken another record.
Lester gathered up his camera bag and started toward the bench. He approached and asked, “Are you Peggy Jacobs?” She straightened up.
“Why did you take my picture?” She glared.
Lester wanted a smile and maybe hello or nice day isn’t it? He was suddenly on the defensive. He began with his newspaper photographer status and Peggy listened to most of about two sentences. She got up, which was more like sprang to her feet, and began to move quickly away. Before Lester could get out another word she broke into a trot and was running toward the opening in the chain-link fence. She did not seem in a big hurry but there was a determined pace to her movements.
Lester stood there feeling like the famous coyote. Peggy left her bag. Lester picked it up and sauntered up to the round lady in the khaki shorts.
“Could you please tell me where Peggy Jacobs lives? I need to return some equipment to her.”
The coach pulled a big yellow pencil from her mouth, spit out some chewed eraser and pointed.
“Her farm is a coupla miles up there on the right. Ya can’t miss it.”
Lester drove close enough to the gate to see that the lock was actually snapped shut. The house was at least a hundred yards up the gravel road. There were hedges along each side. He would just have to park and walk. As his feet stepped carefully across the cattle grate, his city-boy upbringing came right to the front of his thinking. He wondered about stepping through the bars, breaking an ankle and whom he could sue. A brightly colored striped lizard dashed from beneath his feet, ran straight up the road for a short distance, and then disappeared into the hedgerow. A few more steps made a small patch of the pea gravel move. It was a big old Texas horny toad. Lester smiled as he pondered how someone could ascertain the level of sexual need in a lizard. These creatures once occurred in great numbers on every baseball diamond anywhere Lester played in the Dallas area. He had not seen one in years.
As he approached the house there was a fork in the drive that led off to the big harvest gold colored barn with a brown shingle roof. The barn looked much fancier than the house. Lester could see a person standing at the fence. The hair told him it was Peggy. She seemed to be studying a horse.
Lester approached quietly, but he sensed that this girl had heard him get out of his car which was parked a quarter of a mile away. Peggy was resting her chin on her folded arms on the fence. The ball of one bare foot was resting on the instep of the other. It arched her hip in a way that made Lester pause to breathe. She was wearing a white sleeveless blouse and blue jean cut-offs. He now feared that his mouth might open but nothing would come out.
“That’s a really big horse,” Lester blurted out and wished instantly he could take back.
“He’s sixteen hands,” she said with some authority.
Lester controlled his impulse to make some crack about the fact that all he could see were four hooves.
“Is he yours?” He was trying to sound as pleasant and as relaxed as possible.
Peggy offered a short story of how she had rescued this big bay gelding from a traveling rodeo show after it had been injured in a
bronc-riding event. Lester listened with real interest because this beautiful teenager mesmerized him. She could have been reading the telephone book for all he cared.
A flash of sunlight caught the bifocals that peeked through a slightly lifted Levolor blind. From behind the glasses stared a pair of cow manure brown eyes. Mary watched the pair standing by the fence. Her heart was once again beginning to hurt. She knew what she must do and it made her very unhappy.
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