Chapter 6: Firsts

I wonder, is anyone reading this story?

Ida Mae Duran was seven years old and had known nothing but hunger and poverty for all the few years of her young life. She was hungry right then, as she sat in the sunshine and played with her stick doll. Her parents, failed share croppers, had done their best to make ends meet, but there just didn't seem to be enough meet to bring the ends together. Harley Duran was not lazy, not by a long shot. He felt he was just plain honestly unlucky. It was almost like there was an imp of misfortune perched on his right shoulder warning all good things to stay away.

If there were four job openings to be filled, it seemed Harley Duran naturally found himself to be the fifth job applicant in line and the fifth man to apply and all the others were good men and it just didn't make sense to hang around and hope somebody would get fired.

So Harley would walk off, only to find the next day that one of the men hired was a wanted felon. Then, after the sheriff came and arrested the guy, the crew was now short a man. However, Harley never found out about it until the next day, after they had already gone and hired another man. Harley felt that he surely had been born under a black star.

The only two people in Harley's life that mattered were Ida Marie, his wife and Ida Mae, his more wonderful that all others seven year old daughter. They were the whole reason for the thirty-year-old man to be on this earth. No matter where they happened to be, in their wanderings from town to town, Harley was ever on the look out work, any kind of work.

It wasn't like he was proud or acted in a way that would put prospective employers off. There just wasn't any work to be had anywhere. Or if there was a job available, Harley Duran was a day late and a dollar short. Somebody else always seemed to get there first. And of course, the big cotton growers had blacklisted him.

Then came that day in their wanderings when they found the old deserted farmhouse they now called home. The two windows, one in the front room and the one in the kitchen were both broken. Harley had patched the gaping holes as best he could as he used the corrugated sheet metal that he laboriously creased and bent back and forth till it broke apart at the bends.

He had no tin snips to shape the sheet metal with, only his bard hands. The covered up window openings blocked the sunlight, as well as kept the elements out. Harley admitted it was at least a shelter over their heads. The rickety bed in the front room sported a swaybacked set of sagging springs.

Probably, the previous tenants, failed wheat farmers who had moved to the Promised Land of California had left behind, the bed. Everyone knew there were there were plenty of jobs to be had for the asking in California.

The much-stained mattress with the stuffing coming out of one long tear along the side was barely better than nothing. Grateful for the shelter they moved in and knew this was it. They weary family could go no further.

When they first happened upon the deserted old farmhouse just three miles outside of Woodman, Oklahoma, Harley made a decision. "Ida Marie, we have done walked the length of this state and the breadth too. I been black listed with all the big outfits and the small ones ain't hirin' nobody. We stop here and either make it or go bust and die. I'm tired. I failed you and I failed th' baby. Christ, I'm all done in. I just can't go no farther."

He stood in front of his small wife and wept, ashamed he had failed them so miserably. She shared his despair in silence as they hugged and drew scant comfort from each other's closeness.

Ida Marie had carefully and gently washed his shirt and overalls whenever she could find clean water available. She did this, even though Harley wasn't getting enough work to raise a sweat and make them stink much. Harley sat naked inside the old house and patiently waited while his only clothes were being washed. They were then hung on the make shift line of baling wire to dry in the hot Oklahoma summer sun. About a half hour or so was usually enough time to get them mostly dry and on his back again.

"Little Ida," long accustomed to her father's nudity at times like these, ignored him and cradled a stick in her scrawny little arms that she pretended was a baby doll that she pretended was a real baby.

"Now I'm going to fix you a real nice supper of beans and greens and taters," she promised the stick doll she held in her thin arms. "I will always feed you and take care of you like my pa does me. We must always take care of our babies and not let them get too hungry."

Tears of rage and frustration filled the despairing father's eyes as he listened, helpless, as his daughter prattled on in her wish fulfilling fantasy. He clenched his work-hardened hands into club like fists and unclenched them again, angry at his helplessness.

"If there is a God over this here world, he sure is one mean son of a bitch." he muttered to himself. He took a deep breath and let it all out in a long sigh God dam' it. Why in the ugly name of all mighty Hell wasn't there one single solitary thing he could do?

He stepped naked out into the bright noonday sun and walked over to his wife. He threw his arms around her and kissed her on the back of the neck. "You are the best God dam' thing that I ever had happen to me in this life. Well," he amended, "You and Little Ida Mae. I'm just so sorry that I've let you down so bad. Some how, some way I'll find something that will get us out of this sorry mess."

Ida stood straighter and backed up to her naked husband and laid the back of her head against his thick barrel chest. "Oh, Hon," she told him, rubbing her head back and forth, "it ain't like you was tryin' to be a slacker. You are about the steadiest one man I ever seen in my whole life. There has to be a way for us and you'll find it, I just know you will." He kissed the top of her head and put the still damp clothes on.

The first time Harley Duran came to the town of Woodman, he was hungry and that hunger showed quite plain. There was no fat on him anywhere. His bib overalls were clean, as was his shirt. They were now a couple of sizes too big for his thinned down frame. He spoke in quiet tones as he asked for work. Even with the glint of near starvation showing in his face, he had a personal presence that was hard to deny. His face seemed almost completely composed of slabs and angles of skin and bones, like a raw, hard sculpture of a desperate man. Harley Duran was desperate.

Although he hung around town all day, drifting to the pool hall, then to the town square and finally to the back to the pool hall, there was no work to be had anywhere. The new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had promised that there would be jobs aplenty. But nobody had seen any around Woodman, Oklahoma, except for the bridge project.

Of course, the people who were locals and knew someone already working on the job got first crack on the few jobs that came available. A little after sundown he gave up for the day and headed out of town, to his waiting family. He stopped by someone's garden long enough to steal a few beets and carrots and dig some potatoes out of the soft earth with his bare hands.

He was filled with anger and disgust for the straits he found himself in. How had he sunk so low as to steal food from poor people? Yet he knew he would steal and do even worse things to feed his family. He carried his load of food back to the old house where his family waited for him.

The next day he trudged into the town of Woodman and found others, all equally desperate men, ahead of him also looking for work. After he wandered the town all day, even knocking on the doors of private residences, he again stole some vegetables from another garden.

A big mean looking hound came in silence at the kneeling man, growling only when he opened his mouth to bite. Harley's hand shot out faster than a striking snake and grabbed the dog's throat and choked the unfortunate beast into submission. The old hound whimpered and ran under the back porch of the owner's house to nurse his sore throat. Harley hated to hurt the dog that was only trying to protect his master's property.

He took his loot and carried it "home." He did not say a word as he handed the vegetables to his wife Ida Marie. Then he said, "I stole 'em again." As she took them, she patted his shoulder and went to the old dilapidated iron range and started a fire. The broken down cooking stove just hadn't been worth taking along when the previous tenants moved out, probably heading for the promised land of California.

She put the big old cast iron skillet on the stovetop; its bottom covered the hole where one of the inserts was missing. With no grease, she poured water from the small stream that ran by the house into the skillet. Ida used the old boning knife she had salvaged from their abandoned possessions, cut the vegetables into small chunks and dropped them in. For seasoning she crumbled a bit of salt from a salt block that had been left behind by some someone.

Ida May, their daughter watched with hungry eyes. "Mamma, kin I have a bite of that there beet you're cuttin up?" she asked. Ida Marie didn't answer. She cut a beet in pieces and gave her daughter a third of it to eat while the sparse meal was prepared. The little girl chewed slowly, savoring the taste of the sweet vegetable as only a truly hungry person can enjoy the flavor of food.

Harley watched his daughter take such great pleasure from what most children took for granted, something to eat. He swore to himself that murder, robbery, whatever it took, his family would go hungry no more.

The next morning, after she had rewashed his overalls to get the dirt stains from the knees put there when he had stolen the vegetables, he told her, "I'm goin' to put my things on wet and walk 'em dry on my way into town. I'll ask around the stores and see if there is anything at all they need done, anything at all. Hon, I just love my two girls so much in my heart. It purely kills me to see you all go hungry and without decent clothes or a decent place to live. I got to find something." She nodded.