Chapter 9: Oklahoma Pygmalions

I thank you all who have written and complimented the story. However, if you have any negative comments, I'd like to hear them as well. That's how I improve my writing.

Harley Duran woke from his fretful sleep, quietly slipped out of bed and put on the dead man's pants. He grimaced at the thought. Then he smiled a hard lipped smile as another thought came to him, of the way the railroad bull fell in a sodden heap when he went down. Then he grinned as another thought came to him, of hoe Ida had rough stitched the pants to make them fit him. "I might as well fill his pants, I've already stepped into his shoes," he mumbled to himself.

He was groggy and felt the need for more sleep. His muscles hurt when he headed to the community bathroom down the hall from their room. He entered and shut the door. After he relieved himself, he laughed aloud at the noisy flush toilet. It was only the second one he had ever seen in his life. He eyed the bathtub and the shower. That shower looked interesting. He stepped out of his trousers and into the tub. Harley turned the faucet handles on and luxuriated in a spray of tepid water.

Harley decided, by God, this was a pretty good idea. He saw a sliver of soap someone had left behind. It was perfumed and smelled like lilacs. He used it to lather all over everywhere he could reach and rinsed clean. He stepped out and put his pants on without drying off. He had no towel. He grinned, "Hell, a man could take one of them showers every day. They could by god get to be habit forming," he told himself and gave a little chuckle.

He walked bare footed back to the room and removed the trousers. Though he was still damp, Harley donned the underwear and then finished dressing. He looked into the cracked mirror over the sink in the room and combed his shaggy black hair with his fingers. He decided he better get a haircut and buy a comb. He already came to the conclusion his appearance was too rustic for "city life." He also decided to look over the boundaries of his new domain. Harley was of the opinion a man can't get too early a start on things, for certain.

He bent down and kissed his still sleeping wife on the forehead and left. He wandered the length of Main Street, running east and west. Then he walked Eighth Street, the main drag going north and south. He already knew the area around the train depot. He had walked in to town a number of times when he still was in need of a job.

A sleepy looking man unlocked the door to the depot and entered. Harley followed the man in. "Hey, you ain't allowed in here." he yelled at Harley.

Harley showed the man the badge pinned inside his vest and asked, "You rassle telegraph key?"

"Yes, who are you?"

Acting on inspiration, Harley answered, "Send this message up line to headquarters saying Lute Halverson quits."

"How you going to pay for this, by voucher?" the telegrapher asked.

The big man had no idea what a "voucher" was. "Look, I ain't got none of them vouchers with me. This is company business, just send it."

The telegrapher reached under the counter and pulled out a thin booklet of forms. "Here," he said self importantly, "This is a voucher. Now if you will just fill one out." He shoved the pad at Harley who shoved it right back.

"Look, I got a hurt paw," he showed his bruised fist and swollen palm. "I did this beating the shit out of a scrawny peckerwood and it hurts to write. You take care of it and just sign it for me, I don't want to hurt it nobody no more than I have to."

The all at once frightened telegrapher gulped and nodded. He turned away and got busy. "Where will I sent the answer?" he asked.

"I'll pick it up here tomorrow." Harley turned on his heel and left

Once again out in the early morning light he continued his patrol of the town. All was quiet and peaceful. A barber had just opened his front door. Harley nodded and asked, "You open for business?"

"Yep, if you got the money to pay," the old man answered.

"Oh, I might find four bits in my pocket somewhere," Harley answered him.

"Well then, come on in." He held the door open with a flourish and the big man entered.

Harley gingerly sat in the barber chair. He was about to get his first "store bought haircut." The barber draped a fresh cloth over him and tucked it in at the neck. With scissors and comb he attacked the thick shock of blue-black hair. He worked in silence. Harley's thick mane was not amenable to a close cropping. "Look, Mister, I can give you a loose business man's cut. If I try anything else, it's going to look botched. Your hair is thicker than barbed wire and twice as tough.

"Oh hell, just cut it any which way you think will look good in town. I'm the new marshal, Harley Duran."

"Well, I'll be." the barber exclaimed. "I want to thank you for running that dead beat son of a bitch out of town. He never paid me a cent, ever."

"Well, I'll always pay you. But I'll shoot you if you mess up my hair." The barber laughed nervously at the joke and hoped Harley was joking.

When the haircut was finished, Harley paid him the asked for fifty cents and tossed him another two bits. He nodded and left to complete his rounds.

As the sun went higher in the sky, he walked back to the hotel and found wife and child waiting for him. "Where you been, Hon? We was worried about you."

Little Ida threw her arms around a leg and squeezed. Then she hurried back to her cot and picked up her doll and showed her father. Harley took the doll from his daughter, smiled his appreciation for it and handed it back to her.

"Are you hungry?" he asked them both. They nodded and he held the door open for them to leave. They walked across the street to the café again and sat at the same table from the previous evening. There were two coffee drinkers at the counter and no sign of any other business.

Another waitress was on duty, this morning, a younger one. She brought the menus over and presented them with a flourish. Good morning, Marshal, ma'am. Y'all know what you'd like?"

"Well, I ain't no marshal till' tomorrow, But you know who I am?"

"Oh yes siree. We all know who you are. I was over to the bank yesterday when you took the old marshal down a notch or two. You really showed him what for."

"Bank? Harley. What happened at the bank? You didn't say nothing about no bank." Ida Marie looked troubled and a little scared.

"Oh hell, it wasn't nothing at all, just a little misunderstanding." He looked at the table after his face burned red.

"Oh yes it was too something." the waitress was excited thst she could tell someone new about Harley Duran's set to at the bank. "He grabbed a rifle out of the marshal's hand and threw him on the floor like, just like he was a rag doll, and scared the living sh ... er bejeesus out of him. It was real exciting. Your man moves like greased lightning."

"Yes, my Harley, is old greased lightning his own self." Ida Marie turned to her embarrassed husband and asked, "Harley, why'd I always have to find out things from other people?"

"Ida, it ain't much. Kin we just forget it?" He looked up at the waitress and asked, "You got flap jacks?"

"Well, we got pancakes." The expression on her face said this was a quality restaurant. Nobody would get mere flapjacks here. Only low class people ate fried biscuit dough.

"Hell, call 'em what you want, just give me a big platter full. Oh and butter and syrup or sorghum an' more coffee. You all make fine coffee here."

"Let me have three of them, please, ma'am," Ida Marie asked her and added, "An' one for my daughter."

One and two at a time, the café began to fill with the regulars. A gray haired man and woman sat at the table next to theirs. The man kept staring intently at them. Harley caught the stare and stared back at the stranger with a hard, challenging glare. "You want something?" he asked.

"Oh. Please forgive my rudeness. I thought I recognized you. You remind me of a man I saw a few years ago in the eastern end of the state. It was rumored he threw a desk through a wall."

"Hell, Mister, it was a pure accident, what happened. Those people made me mad and I lost my temper." Uncomfortable, Harley shifted in his seat. It shook him considerably to find the past was not buried so deep after all.

Ida Marie tried to defend her husband; "We would like it better if it didn't never happen. My Harley is a real gentle man who wouldn't hurt nothing."

The gray haired couple smiled and the man introduced themselves to Harley and Ida Marie, "I am Brother Moore and this is my wife Lenore. I am pastor of the United Brethren Church and we would like to extend an invitation to you and your family to attend our Sunday Services."

"Oh yes." the gray haired minister's wife urged, "Please do come. It would be so lovely to have you." Her soft, cultured voice hinted of a genteel Georgia background.

Harley listened closely as they spoke. Both of them sounded high class and refined. Harley had another inspiration. "Do you all think we could go some place an' talk? Me and the wife got a problem and I think you got the answer."

"Why, please come over to our house. We would be honored to have you." the minister exclaimed.

"Oh my yes, it would be so very lovely to have you call." The magnolia in her voice fascinated Ida Marie.

"How 'bout this morning?" Harley asked. "We would shore appreciate it." Ida Marie looked at her husband, a question in her eyes.

"Very well, we've finished eating and I have a small errand to run and we can be home in an hour. Do you know where we live?"

"No sir we surely don't. But if you all would tell us, we'll find it fine." Harley was anxious to meet with them; Ida Marie wondered what scheme he had up his sleeve now. She had faith in her husband, but she still worried a little. He just seemed so sudden in his actions lately, especially ever since he had the trouble with awful dead railroad bull and it left her feeling breathless.

Brother Moore gave them explicit directions; then he and his wife left. "Harley, what you got going on in your head now?"

Little Ida echoed her mother, "Pa, you got something in your head?"

He smiled, "Not much, Punkin', not very much a' tall."

To his wife he explained, "Hon, if we live in town, we got to learn not to talk like red neck white trash." He saw his wife recoil at his words and continued, "Haven't you noticed how some o' these folk smile when we talk?" She gave a reluctant little nod.

"Well, it's because we don't talk like them an' they look down their noses on the way we talk and at the way you dress an' them old shoes and Little Ida's bare feet. I see all this and it bothers me because they're right. I been trying to learn in the few hours since we been here. But, sure as corn pops in Hell on a hot day, it is a hard row to hoe. We need help."