Cold Tea On A Hot Day. Curtiss Matlock Ann

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СКАЧАТЬ before explaining this, and the glint in his eye that showed admiration, gave her courage.

      She explained that until this year, when she had enrolled Willie Lee in school, her arrangement with Ms. Porter allowed her to often work from home, and she had managed very well.

      “I have made arrangements with a high school girl to help me in the summer,” she told him, “but until school ends, I will only have her occasionally in the evening hours.”

      “Well now, I don’t see any problem at all with you workin’ from home,” said her new boss and publisher. “I already have laptop computers coming for everyone, and we’ll be installing a networking system so that any of us can work from anywhere in town, or in the nation, if need be.”

      Marilee thought that The Valentine Voice was suddenly on a rocket, being blasted into the twenty-first century.

      Moving purposefully, her boss went to stand behind his desk, placed his hands on it and leaned forward. “I want you to keep this to yourself for a few days. I’ll tell everyone shortly, but for now, I’m just telling you.” He paused. “We’re going to have to cut the paper to a twice weekly.”

      She took that in.

      He said, “I don’t imagine that comes as any shock to you.”

      “No…it doesn’t.” It saddened her, but it was no surprise. Everyone knew that Ms. Porter had been subsidizing the paper for years, and Marilee, having taken over for Ms. Porter, had consulted a number of times with Zona and knew the great extent to which that subsidizing had run.

      Tate Holloway eyed her with purpose so strong that he leaned even farther forward. “It is my intention to get this paper to be payin’ for itself. I’m out to build somthin’ here, Miss Marilee. And I’m going to need your help to do it.”

      “I’ll do what I can.”

      “I’m countin’ on that, Miss Marilee…. I sure am.”

      Gazing into his twinkling baby-blue eyes, Marilee kept tight hold on the chair back, as if holding to an anchor in the face of a rising, rolling sea.

      Six

      Maybe She’s Human

      Marilee came out of Tate Holloway’s office and closed the door firmly, then held on to the doorknob for some seconds. Behind her, through the door, the low tones of music began—Charlie Rich singing from Tate Holloway’s stereo.

      Pushing away from the door, Marilee wrestled with high annoyance at her new boss. Tate Holloway was way too full of himself.

      The next instant Reggie was sticking a pen in front of her face, saying, “Tell us the news, Ms. James. Are we all goin’ to be swept out to make way for new employees to go with the new publisher?”

      This had been a major worry of Reggie and Leo’s, both being employed at the same place. Mainly it appeared to be a great worry of Reggie’s, since Leo wasn’t given to worrying over steady employment. Before coming to work at The Valentine Voice, he had held various positions in automobile sales, insurance, cattle brokering, photography, trucking and a half-dozen others, several for no more than a week or two before either quitting or being fired. While Reggie defended her husband as trying to find himself and being a victim of too much feminine attention, it had been fact that he had not been able to keep a job of any secure endurance, until he had landed the one of sports reporter at the Voice. He proved excellent at it, and the one time he had shown any inclination to quit, Reggie had come in behind him and finagled a job of her own, thereby being on the scene to make certain he kept his position.

      A part of Marilee’s brain tried to be sensitive to all of this, but seeing everyone’s eyes, even Willie Lee’s and Corrine’s, turned in her direction made her very irritated.

      “Don’t put that thing in my face, Reggie. I need both my eyes.” She pushed Reggie’s hand aside and strode to her desk and began shuffling through files to take home.

      “Okay. So are you pissed off because you do not want to tell us that we are all about to be fired?”

      The breathlessness of the question struck Marilee, and she looked up to see Reggie’s thoroughly uneasy eyes. The precariousness of all their positions came fullblown into her mind, and she felt sorry for her short temper.

      “Of course we aren’t all going to be fired. Who would he get to replace us? The paper can barely pay for itself now.” Just a mild fib. “He can’t afford to be hauling in a whole new crew of Pulitzer prize winners to Valentine. Right now he’s dependent on us. We are all he’s got.”

      She felt as if she were withholding from her friends, being unable to tell the entire truth about the change from a daily to twice weekly. Darn him for confiding in her.

      Turning from this dilemma, and from Reggie’s searching eyes, she said, “He said it will be fine for me to work at home,” and went on to briefly explain about Willie Lee and Corrine not going back to school. “I want to be home with them, like I used to be with Willie Lee, and this will work fine, because Mr. Holloway is getting us all laptop computers and a networking system.”

      “Wow,” Reggie said. “Guess there’s more money than we thought.”

      She jumped from Marilee’s desk and went over to hug Leo, who said quite practically, “Doesn’t mean money. Just good credit.”

      “I finally got my machine working how I like it,” Charlotte said, frowning. She had gotten so furious with the technician who had first set up her computer that she had refused to allow him to touch it again, read the manual front to back and now knew enough to maintain her machine herself.

      Marilee, who was gazing at her typed up notice for Lost and Found, crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the trash. The dog was Willie Lee’s now, she figured, and she was going to let it be.

      “Let’s go get some ice cream,” she said to the children. “You, too, Munro,” she added, when Willie Lee opened his mouth to remind her.

      

      With Willie Lee holding one hand and Corrine the other, and Munro running along beside them, Marilee headed directly to where she went whenever she felt her spirits in disarray—to her aunt and uncle’s drugstore.

      Blaine’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain had been in business for over seventy years, in the same spot on Main Street. There was a rumor that the outlaws Bonnie and Clyde had once gotten lemonade and bandages from the distant relative of Perry Blaine who had opened the store in 1920. Perry had taken over from his father in ’57, when he had come home from Korea. Things had been booming in Valentine in the fifties, with oil pumping all around, and farming and cattle going okay. That same year Perry had installed the sign with the neon outline that still hung between the windows of the second story.

      Ever since the fateful summer of ’96, when it had been featured in both the lifestyle pages of the Lawton paper and then on an Oklahoma City television travel program, Blaine’s Drugstore had received visitors from all over the southern part of the state. People, enough to keep them open on Friday and Saturday evenings in the summertime, came to order Coca-Colas and milk shakes and sundaes in the thick vintage glassware. Some of the glasses were truly antiques, and to keep the visitors coming, once a year Vella drove down to Dallas to a restaurant supply to purchase new to match. She would covertly bring the boxes into СКАЧАТЬ