A year ago, I set a goal to pitch one of my books at Storymakers 2021 and I did it! I just pitched The Cost of Deceit to Samantha Millburn, Managing Editor at Covenant Communications and I am ramping up my on-line presence as suggested.
I have my book out to test readers. Let me know if you would like to be one!
Enjoy Chapter One as it now stands!
Chapter One
As the American Airlines Embraer approached the runway into the small airport in Lawton, Oklahoma, my mind wrestled between the initial feeling of arriving home again, and the horror that this thought could ever find place in my heart. It’s just that this land seemed harsh and dangerous compared to my roots. In Utah, you had to really look to find a dangerous insect, but at the farm in Indiahoma, scorpions actually came up to the front door with their curly venomous tails poised to strike patiently, waiting to be let in. And I’ve seen my fair share of roadkill in Utah, but here tarantulas scurry and snapping turtles meander across the road left and right as we drive what feels like forever to get to civilization. It feels like I’ve gone back in time 50 years when I visit.
Oklahoma was not my place of birth. Far from it. I was born and raised in good ole’ Salt Lake City, Utah. But in the past year, I counted up the days I had spent in Lawton and was shocked to realize that they added up to one-third of my year. “Get it together girl.” I rid myself of the thought with a bit more positive self-talk. “It’s just for a few days and you’ll be back to 2016. You’ve got this chickee.”
This time, my husband was with me, as he should be. After all, we were there to visit his parents. This was his place of birth, not mine. I had come alone in the past, spending up to three weeks at a time, caring for my in-laws. They both suffered from COPD which they both earned from years of smoking before finally kicking it just before I entered the picture 16 years earlier.
While my mother in-law, Collene, suffered from recurring bouts of bronchitis and pneumonia, congestive heart and kidney failure, my father in-law, Harold, was in his third battle with lung cancer. This time, it didn’t look like he was going to make it out the victor at least with body still intact.
In fact, our reason for this visit in March 2016, was because the report from my husband’s only sibling, his sister, Lisa, was that Dad had stopped eating and getting out of bed. It seemed that death might be imminent, and we opted to fly rather than drive the 19 hours this go-round.
After the plane landed and the boarding stairs were wheeled into place and locked, we deplaned and walked into the small terminal. This one-man-band show was complete with the same employee who docked the air stairs in place, lifting the gate to the baggage claim and begin placing our suitcases, none to gently, on the stationary shelf for us to retrieve. We then headed the few strides to the curb where we were picked up by cousin, Patsy. Getting us situated was a real family affair.
Lisa was otherwise engaged and had been for the past two years, when her partner, Deb, had succumbed to a brain aneurism. It wasn’t actually the aneurism that took her mobility, but the treatment following the precarious operation. Deb’s blood supply was hooked up to a pressure machine to keep the blood flowing through her veins and arteries and as more often than one would like, the treatment found another weakness in her brain and an artery in her speech and motor areas blew. Deb’s survival was a miracle in and of itself, but be that as it may, she required 100% care and Lisa had her hands full.
Cousin Patsy dropped us off at the Brentwood Assisted Living Facility on Lee Blvd and then headed 20 minutes west to their small home in Indiahoma where she had moved in to take care of Aunt Colleta, Mom’s 86-year-old identical twin sister. They lived in Indiahoma proper. The farm I knew too well, was another 12 minutes past town on bouncy dirt roads that seem to never end. Trent once thought it was a great idea to let our oldest daughter drive a couple years before she was eligible for a driver’s license. He warned her that if an animal crossed in front of her, hit the gas because if you slowed down, you’d certainly do more damage to the vehicle and its occupants. She was a quick learner apparently. She took out a poor doe who was minding her own business. The truck didn’t have a mark on it though.
We walked up to the back entrance and punched in the 4-digit key on the pad, which had not changed since our visit a few months earlier.
Our son, Steven’s flight benefits had come in handy with our frequent visits. Stand-by flights were hit and miss, but more often than not, we were able to make it from SLC to DAL and then on to LAW for a fraction of what we would have paid otherwise.
I felt the somberness of the occasion as we made our way down the papered hall. The cascade of roses and deep green foliage blended well with carpet. It was dated, but not dreadfully so. I sensed that sometime in the past decade, someone spared no expense to make the place a show piece. The owners had changed hands about the same time my in-laws became residents. I had flown out sans Trent to take care of Mom and Dad while we made arrangements, even helping them move in when it became apparent that they could no longer take care of themselves. As I said, Lawton was feeling more like home than I was comfortable with.
After passing 5 doors, we arrived at number 108 marked unmistakably with the orange and white Pistol Pete door sign that announced the OSU fan club behind the door. We knocked three times, before showing ourselves in. The scent of stale coffee permeated the room overpowering any body odors or musty scents that might have otherwise made themselves known. Mom remained seated in her recliner in the far corner of the room as we entered, waiting for our hugs as though they were a given… because they were. This routine had long since been established. I placed my computer bag and coat down on the couch while Trent set down our luggage and went to give Mom a hug and kiss to her forehead. Dad was within hearing distance in the only bedroom just to the left of the entrance into the apartment. We both made our way to him as he laid in his adjustable bed just inside the doorway.
“What’s this I hear about you not eating or getting out of bed?” Trent wasted no time getting down to the purpose of this visit. He just needed to give his dad, what’s for.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it worked. Trent would tell Dad he needed to fight this disease and he would jump up and join us for dinner in the facility restaurant. It usually worked. His parents often did just what he asked (demanded is more like it) and I would sit back, watching, appalled at how Trent could tell them what he wanted, and they seemed to jump to it. I had never dared try that approach with my own mom and dad. It felt disrespectful to my way of thinking.
“I don’t feel like it, Trent.” Dad responded to Trent’s appeals to eat. I gave Dad a hug and stood back while Trent worked his magic. I glanced around the room, looking for any changes since my last visit, finding none. The breathing machines, scattered magazines, and medical instructions left over from doctor’s visits and oxygen deliveries were not new to me. When I started feeling like a third wheel, I excused myself to the living room preferring to let father and son hash things out. I figured it could only go on so long and it wouldn’t be long before Trent’s stomach won out and we were headed for supper.
I long ago accepted that I think too much, especially when visiting Lawton and killing time. For example, it wasn’t long after my in-laws moved into the Brentwood that I discovered that the evening meal was “supper” a word my dad had been known to use to describe one of our meals growing up. I never quite understood it then and no one else but my dad used the term. After all, we lived in the big city, if Salt Lake City could be so qualified. New Yorkers, hold your tongue.
The menu at the Brentwood included breakfast in two shifts at 8am and 9am, dinner at noon and one and supper at 4pm. I was used to my three meals of the day being breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was fixated on making sense of this term “supper,” eventually concluding that supper was to lunch in the north as supper was to dinner in the south. That is, the farmers had their heavy meal (or dinner) in the middle of the day after the morning’s heavy chores and the lighter meal, supper in the evening before retiring early to bed. I surmised that Southern Utah, while to most would not be considered “the south” at least as far as the term supper was concerned had found a home in my paternal line.
“How are you doing, Mom?” I gingerly asked as I made my way back to the sofa. I loved my in-laws, but the terms of “Mom” and “Dad” never came quite as easily off the lips as they did for my husband with my parents. I was interrupting Gun Smoke. When we visited, the television was always on, even when we left the apartment to walk the walk to the dining room. I so hoped that when I reached my 80’s, I found more to do with myself than watch Bonanza and Golden Girls reruns, not that they weren’t entertaining the first time around. I just wasn’t a fan of re-runs from any genre, but especially ones from before I was born.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved my in-laws. They were the best! Compared to my first set they were my guardian angels. Harold and Collene were all about making my life easier and loving their grandkids. When I was having our babies, they would fly out and spend 10 days two or three times a year. I loved their visits. They came to lighten my load, doing my dishes, mating my stray socks, babysitting so I could get to my to-do list.
Lisa had never given them grandkids, although Collene seemed not to have given up hope, despite Lisa being well into her 50’s. I remember thinking to myself that Mom had lost track of Lisa’s age when Collene made the comment a few years earlier, “Lisa better get to it, or she won’t be able to have kids.”
I assumed Mom maybe didn’t realize that Lisa and Deb weren’t equipped that way. Now I wonder, maybe she knew more about it than I did, but at the time, other ways of them getting kids didn’t enter into the picture for me.
As I crossed one leg over the other and thought and fidgeted I debated about how many minutes I needed to wait before I pulled out my MacBook and opened up my browser. I had long ago discovered the internet password and my computer new the way. I glanced at the magazines and open package of half-eaten crackers on the end table complete with the old plastic mug that was a static fixture. My in-laws drank coffee non-stop from morning to night. The temperature didn’t matter. Luke-warm was as good as hot to them. At least that is how my husband described it. It wasn’t that we didn’t talk, but the talk seemed to be about items on the surface. I longed to make use of these precious moments we had left, to share and record memories that I knew would go with them to the grave. It was hard not to feel that the time glued to the T.V.was a waste, but I felt powerless to do anything about that. Most of my questions were answered, willingly, but succinctly.
As I sat there, thinking about what I could do to fill the time while the television droned on, I thought about my father in-law. Harold had the genealogy bug. When I first met him, he came to church with us and was thrilled to learn that one of our Sunday School classes was on genealogy. Something his Methodist Congregation in Indiahoma did not offer.
That may be why our parents hit it off so well when the two couples met at our wedding. My mom felt her reason for existing was to find her lost ancestors. I grew up typing my own copy of the family pedigree charts, writing my own history and helping her in writing her story. Harold and my mom shared that love and the four-some had made it a must to go off on their own adventures each visit. After helping me non-stop for days and days, who was I to complain when they would announce that they had made their own plans to go for a drive to the Golden Spike for the day with each other and I wasn’t invited. I loved that my parents and Trent’s loved spending time together. My parents were a decade younger than Trent’s, but they had a lot of things in common.
Harold and I loved talking genealogy, after all, his discoveries were my discoveries, and I wasn’t a huge fan of putting the puzzles together. I loved it when he would share that he had found yet another great in the line of great-great-great-grandparents. It turned out there were twins on both sides of the family. Not only the McLinn line evidenced by my mother in-law’s identical twin status, but the Hunts had Job and Joab born on the same day to the same parents in their family line as well.
Trent and I had decided we were done adding to our own family after suffering two miscarriages just as I was entering my 40’s. The first appeared to be fraternal twins that didn’t progress, and the second loss was termed fetal demise. We decided my eggs were no longer viable and we should stop trying for a boy of our own. I had given birth to three beautiful girls and we loved them dearly. I’d like to say it was an easy decision. It wasn’t. Silly thoughts like the end of Grandpa Byron Hunt’s family line dying out, or Trent’s fated hope of having a son to follow in his wrestling, football blocking, rugby scrumming footsteps had run their course and we had accepted that our only son would be the one I brought with me into our marriage along with my daughter, Chalyse. Five kids was plenty to raise and although Steven wasn’t into team sports, he was an awesome son we were so proud of. We had the opportunity to attend plenty of sporting events to watch Chalyse cheer her heart out and wave her pom-poms. My two had graduated to adulthood and I was loving being a mom of elementary and middle school kids. I had spent my fertile years anticipating the possibility of having twins. My sister had given birth to fraternal twins and with the trend on Trent’s side, I figured it was always a possibility that never came to fruition,
After I made small talk for what seemed the appropriate amount of time and Trent came back into the living room and took his seat in his father’s recliner, I fired up the computer. It had occurred to me that when Harold passed, I would be the only member of the Byron Hunt & Valiera Hasty tree to continue his work and that had me a little worried. As I thought, I also considered Collene’s line. Other than her identical twin, she had 4 older siblings. Her mother had died when she and Colleta were only 5 years old. She told stories of standing on chairs to reach the sink at that young age being in charge of doing the dishes and making sandwiches to feed Grandpa McLinn and the older siblings when they took their break from working on the farm. I couldn’t imagine how hard that must have been for the preschoolers. I had met Aunt Deronda and Uncle Kenneth and his wife, Aunt JoAnn. Uncle Gary, the first blind lawyer in Oklahoma had died of diabetes several decades earlier, before Trent was old enough to remember him. I realized then, that I had never met Uncle Delmar and, in fact, rarely heard much about him or that branch of the tree. With that, I googled Delmar McLinn and to my surprise, an obituary popped up. It turned out that not 9 months earlier, Trent’s oldest cousin in that line had died. All eight siblings and their spouses were listed as well as that Delmar had preceded her in death.
“Mom, how come I have not met your brother Delmar at any of the family events over the years?”
“His wife didn’t like us. She was jealous of how close we were and didn’t want him spending time with us.”
“Oh.” I didn’t quite know what to say, other than, “That’s too bad.”
My mind kept working. Before coming across the obituary, I didn’t have the names of this line. It was almost like I had stumbled across a gold mine, at least as far as genealogists were concerned. I did not consider myself a genealogist, still considering them a group of retirees with nothing but free time on their hands. I wasn’t sure I was ready to come out of the closet on that one.
