Here are a couple more stories. different genre and theme from the western ones of last week. My 1956-7 work was all western in a way but some were far from the shoot 'em up and ride 'em cowboy style. The 1968 tale was not literary, but sliding into that a little more than any other theme. I have to admit that after The Fighter, all of my stories were built from my ongoing exeriences in one way or another The old 'write what you know' notion seemed to take root. In fact, life was the starting to spark for most of them. I cannot envision anyone plagarising any of them but they are in actuallity copyrighted as of the final date they were digitized and saved in a file. They are my 'intellectual property' FWIW! I have tried to fix all typos but no promises!
Fire on the Friscos by Gaye Morgan (c: 1957)
Margaret “Meg” Scott walked quickly down the long pen-bordered drive. Turning, she looked back up at the big stone ranch house that was the headquarters of the Arrow S horse farm. She was a pretty girl with brown hair and eyes.
She entered a big pasture full of horses and caught ayoung mare that was black as night. “Come on, Black Magic.” She put a lead on the mare's neck and tugged it gently. They went back to the tack room. As she was saddling up, a young boy of about fourteen came up leading a prancing bay colt with four white feet.
“Boots and I are going riding too, Sis,” he said.
“Okay, Jack,” Meg replied.
They started off toward the towering peaks above the ranch, following a narrow road that wound up the lower hills. “It surely looks clear this morning, doesn’t it Blackie. You could almost touch the old Friscos up there.”
A few minutes more, they came to a gate. Just as she jumped off to open it, a young man in a green Forest Ranger uniform stepped forward. “I’m sorry but the forest is closed now because of the fire danger, miss.”
“Thank you, sir. I guess that means we have to turn around. I’m Meg Scott from the Arrow S down the hill and this is my brother Jack. We ride up here a lot. Who are you?”
“I’m Ron Bradley, one of the district rangers. Thank you for cooperating with the closure.”
After that they turned and rode back toward the ranch.
Later that afternoon, two rough looking cowboys came down off the hills past the ranch. Meg stopped them.
“Don’t you know the forest is closed? You didn’t go past the fence, did you?”
“We don’t pay no attention to that kind of stuff. We can ride wherever we want to,” one said. He tossed the butt of his cigarette close to her feet as they spurred their horses and galloped off.
By late that evening, the smell of smoke was heavy at the ranch. By the next morning, they could see the fire, burning fast and hot.
About eight thirty, Ron Bradley came down the road. He was galloping his big bay horse. He reined in at the yard gate. Jack dashed out to see what he wanted.
“Get down and come in,” Jack offered. Ron shook his head.
“I don’t have time. I just needed to see if we can get water here for the fire fighters.”
Mr. Scott had come out to hear what was going on. “You sure can,” he said. “We’ll leave the gate open to the big tank. Help yourselves. The kids told me about the guys who came by yesterday. We wonder if they might have started the fire, dropping a cigarette or even on purpose.”
For a week and a half, the fire raged but they got it contained and finally put out. It never threatened the Scotts but they worried for a few days. They all helped as much as they could. Mrs. Scott cooked extra food for the fire fighters, Mr. Scott loaned tools and horses and Meg and Jack rode back and forth to carry messages since the phone at the ranch was the main communication for the crews. They soon became good friends with Ron and some of the others.
In the end almost 10,000 acres of beautiful forest was destroyed, timber, brush and grass all burned to ash. The evening after the fire was declared safely out, four men came to the ranch. They were Carl Markham, the chief forester and Joe Anderson, chief of the firefighters, Ted Lovell, the local sheriff and Ron Bradley. After they praised and thanked the Scotts for their generous help. They announced the fire was definitely man-caused and asked the family if they had any clues as to who might have done it.
Meg and Jack remembered the scruffy cowboys and their rude attitude. They gave the rangers and officers the best description they could remember. One had ridden a buckskin horse and the other had called him Sam as they started off. That one had ridden a gray with a brand from down the valley. Jack added that both men had been smoking and Meg told how they were scoffing at the “forest closed” signs.
“We’ll be on the lookout for those guys,” the sheriff assured before they left.
A week later the newspaper told how Jed Crowley and Sam White had been arrested and would soon go on trial for arson, having either accidentally or deliberately caused the fire. The Scott family went to witness the trial but were soon more involved in it.
Much to her surprise, Meg was called as a witness. The courtroom was silent as she took the oath and sat down. She told her story in a clear voice and answered the lawyers’ questions calmly. Nothing could shake her statement.
The jury did not take long to decide the two men were guilty and both received harsh sentences.
That evening Ron came out to the ranch again. He and Meg went for a walk. They reached a hilltop overlooking the valley and stopped to enjoy the sunset.
“We need a smart girl like you in the Forest Service,” Ron said.
“How do I go about getting hired?”
He laughed. “Just take this ring and I’ll get an application and help you fill it out.” He sounded half serious and half in fun, but when Meg held her hand out, he slipped a small gold band over her finger.
She drew a deep breath as she looked at the ring. “Isn’t twenty-one too young to think about serious choices like a career and getting engaged or married?”
“Twenty-one is a very good age to do that,” Ron replied, a twinkle in his eye. “Especially if a person is very wise and mature for her age.”
“But we went to get women involved too,” Ron said. Then he kissed her.
Hand in hand, they turned and went back down to the ranch. The Scott family was a little surprised but soon agreed that this was a good step for everyone. Jack ran around delighted, yelling, “Wow, I’m going to be the brother of a forest ranger. Wahoo!”
Homecoming by Gaye Morgan (c: 1968)
She swung down the three steps from the big bus, answering the cocky grin of the driver. He handed her the trim little blue suitcase when she was on the ground. “Still think you ought to give me that neat jacket,” he said, with a wink. She tossed back her long hair. “A fine gentleman you are,” she pouted. “You’re going south where it’s warm. I’ll need it Sunday night when I head back up to the high country.”
He could not deny her logic but insisted on having the last word. “I’ll trade you even,” he said, indicating his uniform jacket, neatly folded on the dash. She shook her head, “No dice.” He climbed back up and the bus roared impatiently to life and away; leaving her standing alone. The ugliness of the dirty little town crouched there along the highway hit her with a sold thud. It was as if she had never seen it before. Three months away at college had changed her.
Squaring her shoulders, against the weight of her suit case and the armload of books, more to impress the family than to study, she turned to the dust-deep trail worn into the hillside above Main Street. Dust powdered her new black boots, dulling their shine. It clung to the bottom of her snug black bell-bottoms, even settled on the new jacket, her pride and joy. At the top, she paused, breathing a little raggedly from the now-unaccustomed exercise.
Her eyes swept the straggle of shacks strewn on the hilltop and her face contorted as a wave of sickness welled up inside her. “Oh, my God.” she whispered. A wild urge to run back down the hill and wait for the next bus swept over her, even walking back in the direction from which she’d come, up the long, lonely highway. Anywhere but home. Home?
Could she really have lived here for years, climbed this hill, wallowed in the dust, the mud when it rained, and lived in this squalor and never minded it? A swarm of children in ragged Levi’s and faded shirts played there among the houses, much as she had once played. At first they did not see her, but suddenly some did. At first they stared, wondering, not recognizing. Then one boy, a little taller than the rest, broke from the group and came racing toward her. A girl and a smaller boy soon followed. Now it was too late to run.
The three children flung themselves at her. Sticky, dirty hands and faces pressed, leaving their m arks on clean clothes. For an instant, she shrank, but the love and pride in their eyes was too powerful to be ignored. With a younger child on each hand, she turned to follow her brother who had taken the suitcase and the books and carried them like a sacred burden. They led her to one of the shacks, a building of varied construction, tarpaper and shingles and cheap, warped salvage lumber and rusty corrugated roofing. Every wind seemed to threaten its very existence. Then the front door with the torn screen was flung wide and she was enfolded in her mother’s embrace. They all crowded in after her and jammed together. She walked across the uneven floor and knelt beside her father in his battered wheelchair. For a long time he studied her without speaking.
“We were wondering if you would come,” he said finally. “Thought maybe you would rather spend a holiday with one of your new friends.” She shook her head, blinking against the sudden tears. His words were too close to the truth.
“No,” she answered, slowly. “My roommate invited me, but I thought it would be better to come home. I haven’t been home since September 6. That’s a long time.”
And it had been a long time--for a girl who had never spent a night away from home before that day. It was so long she might as well have died and been born again. For the moments of greeting, the shock had faded, but as she stepped into the cramped room she had shared with her two sisters, it came again.
Her eyes absorbed the room, familiar details somehow alien and strange. The old metal bedstead with its pain peeling, the two wooden chairs held together with wire twisted around the rungs, The tipsy dresser with its misty mirror and the book shelves of apple boxes. She heard again the sarcastic comments of the girls on the “inconveniences” of the dorm, in which she had sometimes joined, just to belong. Remembered now, it seemed the epitome of luxury.
Johnny sat her suitcase carefully on the floor and spilled the books onto the faded patchwork cover of the bed. “Gee, Sis, it’s so great to have you home.” The other children nodded agreement. “We all missed you.”
She suddenly felt very tired. When she sat down on one of the chairs, it creaked alarmingly, even under her slight weight. A sudden worry crossed her mind. “Where are Tom and Margie? Still working?”
“Yeah, Margie is,” Johnny said, as his gaze shifted from hers for a moment. “Tommy is in jail. Rick too.”
“You’re kidding!” She cried, voice going sharp. Her oldest brother in jail? And with his best friend, the boy who had been her steady boyfriend for almost three years? It was impossible! Tom and Rick were a year older than she was but Tom had graduated with her and Rick had quit, just weeks away from finishing. They had never taken school seriously until that last year. Then it was too late to bring their grades up to anything near scholarship level. She was not sure how or why she had been different. She had not realized until she was leaving for college how disappointed and depressed they both were. There was really nothing for them to do now. There were only a few odd jobs in the neglected area, no businesses, factories or even a working mine.
“It was when we got your letter, about getting invited to California for the vacation and that guy with the red Mustang. Rick got upset and went out and got drunk. Tommy couldn’t let him go alone. He wasn’t really drunk but just try to tell old fuzz Buckingham that. Both underage and doing wrong to him. The boy’s voice was bitter, contemptuous. Judge Norton gave them fourteen days. They’ll be getting out this evening. He said they needed to learn a lesson, even if they were still barely juveniles.
It took a few minutes for the words to soak in. When their significance crystallized, a slow building rage began to mount inside her. It was a rage as many armed as an octopus that reached out to slash at all the injustices in the world, a rage as many faceted as a diamond that flashed blinding bright into all the dark corners of misery. Now school seemed a vague dream again, and reality was here. It was ugly, but it needed her, needed her like red Mustangs and apartments in Los Angeles never would. She could resent and resist that need but it would not release her.
She walked down town with Johnny at 5:00. The deputy brought Tom and Rick home from the county seat across the hills. They crawled out of the patrol car, muttered goodbye to the deputy chastened yet still defiant. Tom grabbed her in a fierce hug.
“Boy am I glad to see you, Sis, I figured you had gotten too good for us.”
Rick hung back, a mixture of pain and anger in his dark eyes. She untangled her brother’s arms and turned toward him, a jumble of memories crowding her mind, spilling over into her eyes. She held out both hands to him, replying to her brother’s words but speaking to the other youth. “I’ll never be too good for family…or friends. Just don’t get too bad for me.”
Rick hesitated, not speaking but finally embraced her, more gently and less enthusiastic than Tom had. When h e released her, she linked arms with each of them. Following Johnny they started up the old path.
For the next three days, she tried to go back to the old times. It wasn’t quite right, but she pretended. She could fool Tom, but she knew Rick realized she’d never be her old self. It was hard to ignore the inevitable comparison between Jack and his red Mustang and Rick and his old fourth or fifth hand Chevy pickup, between the limp hamburgers or Dairy Delights and steak dinners and cocktails. They went to all the old hangouts in their village and the closest town and saw the old crowd, some of them. Many had married, moved or simply disappeared. She was shocked to find Rick and Tom were almost heroes to some of the younger boys because of having been in jail. All the girls wanted to know what college was like, curious, envious. Some envisioned a fairyland fantasy while others scoffed, downgrading what was forever beyond their reach.
She did not know what to tell them now. It would have been different the first morning when she could have painted them a glowing picture. But now, the first shock of her homecoming and her discontent had started to rearrange itself. She couldn’t understand it yet but she sensed something important was happening in her heart, her spirit.
The round of parties she had enjoyed the last three months were losing their sparkle, even in memory. The endless procession of activities no longer looked so exciting, and the series of threes on her first quarter’s grade report loomed ugly when compared to her high school record. Not that the shacks, the dirt, the ugliness had become more appealing, but there must be some middle ground. Wasn’t there a place or a life with a semblance of balance, of justice and reason? Searching for place suddenly became a goal, a purpose for her existence. Rick seemed to sense it even before she was fully aware herself of this shift. His anxious manner of trying too hard to please her faded. He was changing also, beside her if not with her.
Suddenly, too suddenly it was Sunday evening and time for her to go. Rick drove her to town, wedged between him and Tom while the younger kids giggled in the pickup bed, huddled against the dusk chill. They parked across from the bus stop to wait. There was no pretending now. They talked seriously after avoiding those subjects for the week,
“What are you guys going to do?” she asked. “Lay around here, mess around and get drunk and land in jail again?” She let her words fall heavy, a little roughly, on them. She wanted to jar them, sensing that was all they needed to push them past the stage of just thinking to the stage of acting.
“Nooo.” Rick said, slowly. “I was figuring I might join the Marines or at least the Army. I could finish high school quickly and I think I’d make a decent soldier. Just go on in before they draft me.”
“It’s about the only way out of here if you haven’t got any skills or training.” Tom put in. Maybe we could learn a trade or something. Maybe we could, when we come back maybe even go to college.” A note of wistfulness came through, like a small boy’s, odd in his deeper voice.
“We? Since when?” Rick exclaimed.
“You don’t think I’d let you go without me, do you?” Tom sounded indignant, Then, suddenly restless, he got out. “I’ll go see if the bus is on time and if Margie can get off work and ride back with us.”
Rick looked at her then, a question in his somber, level gaze. She looked back, slid closer to him. “I’ve been thinking…too. I don’t believe I want to be an office girl, like a trainee for management somewhere. That isn’t going to help anybody but me. I don’t quite know, maybe sociology or something about working with people, helping. I’ll have to go talk to someone. My academic counselor may help me sort this out.”
Rick nodded. “I know. It hit me while I was over there in jail. At first Ii was just mad as hell but then I started thinking. There are lots of guys like Tom and me, kids who get in trouble, and lots of people like my mom and your dad who have a lot more owed to them after getting hurt then they will ever get. I thought I would like to become a lawyer to help them through those times. Crazy notion for a dumb Chicano, no?”
“Three years is not too long,” she said. And by then maybe I’ll be almost through if I go to summer school and take more than just the standard twelve or fifteen hours each semester.”
He laughed, a faint chuckle. “What are you getting at?”
“Well, in three years you could finish an enlistment and could prob’ly go to school. And I’d be graduated and I could goo to work….”
“What about the boy with the red Mustang and the Tri Delta sisters?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think I’ll have time for all that. They say eighteen hours a semester keeps you really busy. I might even just do sixteen or a bit more and get a part-time job, try to save up some money. I’m sure that would be better, in the long run, for me and everyone. Worth a lot more, too. Don’t you?”
He drew her over against him and his reply was a warm whisper against her ear. “Yeah, I do. I think its way better. And in the service it would be real nice to have a girl waiting for me at home to tell the other guys about. Especially one who is too busy for uptown guys with red Mustangs.”
NOTE: The jailing is iffy unless the boys were of age under state law and regional custom. At 19--assuming the narrator is 18 as a recent graudate, they could be no longer considered juveniles. Call it artisitic licesne! Never giving her a name was intentional. It is all intended to be from her POV.
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