My Redacted Life: Chapter 27 (Cont._2)

Our visit with the parents went well. They were the kind of people I had known all my life, only lacking some of the prejudices that so stain the South. We discussed those on the way back and both felt that perhaps things were improving racially. On the other hand, perhaps then, in 1972, the old hatreds were simply disappearing underground, waiting to re-surface into a more welcoming environment someday. Who knew? We didn’t.

Back at my apartment, she found an old hat that Gary Toler had solemnly presented to me after a night of drunken singing. I was straightening a closet and had laid the hat on the bed. He claimed it belonged to a Texas grandfather of his who had been a genuine cowboy. I had intended to return it to him, but, as you will see, that never happened.

It turned out that Brenda had an uncommon fondness for all things Texan. Her own grandfather had been born there before his family moved east. Her grandmother had married and moved to San Antonio when she was 15, living there until widowed, returning to Arkansas to marry Brenda’s grandfather and start a new family.

Anyway, she put on the cowboy hat and it became hers in that instant. I wondered, as she admired herself in the mirror, if it meant we were “going steady.” I hoped so. A man couldn’t keep company with a cuter person than the one I saw modeling that ancient hat, whether it had belonged to a real cowboy or not.

We went to the patio to enjoy the last of the daylight. Putting on the hat must have performed magic. It unloosened a flood of memories and thoughts that left me spellbound and stricken. Sitting across from me, her hair cascading from beneath the time-stained felt, she smoked, sipped a beer, and talked.

She told me about how her grandmother’s first husband had died of tuberculosis shortly after their child was born. The young widow, still in her teens, had boarded the train in San Antonio with her infant child and made the long trip back to Arkansas alone. The husband, whose family lived back East somewhere, lay in an unvisited and lonely grave outside a small Texas town, unknown, as the immortal tribute goes, “except to God.”

“His family did construction projects for the railroad,” she said. They sent him to Texas thinking the dry climate might be good for TB. It didn’t work.”

She reached and tipped the brim of the hat up an inch and looked at me with a solemn intent that almost caused chills. “Someday,” she said, “I’m going out there and find that grave. He deserves a visitor.”

I had no doubt she would, as she looked at me in that bizarre hat. Lord, what a woman. Outside, the sun set, bidding farewell to a marvelous day and leaving red skies of delight as a final blessing. The world turned mellow as she talked about Texas and other things. I decided then and there to attempt an escalation of our budding relationship. Did I dare? Why not? Success awaits the bold.                                 

“How would you like,” I said, “to go with me to a planning commission meeting this week?

Heck you would have
fallen for her, too.