Cold Tea On A Hot Day. Curtiss Matlock Ann

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 the storeroom and place them behind the big boxes of napkins and foam to-go containers.

      When taken to task by her daughter Belinda for perpetrating a hoax, Vella said with practicality, “People like thinkin’ the glasses are old, and they would rather not be apprized of the truth. Besides, they will be antiques in another fifty years—and I sure pay enough for them to be looked at.”

      As Marilee and the children entered the store, the bell above the door chimed out. Immediately Marilee was engulfed by the dearly familiar scents of old wood, simmering barbecue and faint antiseptic of the store that had not changed since she was a nine-year-old child and so often came running down the hill to escape the sight of her father sitting in his cracked vinyl recliner, beer in hand and glassy eyes staring at the flickering television, and her mother in the kitchen gone so far away into country songs on the radio that she would not speak.

      “We have come for ice cream,” Willie Lee said as he went directly to his Great-Aunt Vella, who was sitting at the rear table, with glasses on the tip of her nose so she could more easily read the IGA ads in the newspaper spread wide before her.

      “You’ve come to the right place then, mister,” said Winston Valentine, who was sitting across from their aunt and who nudged an empty sundae dish that sat in front of him. Being yet spring and midmorning, the place was empty except for these two.

      “Hel-lo, Mis-ter Wins-ton,” Willie Lee said.

      “Hello, Mister Willie Lee.”

      Willie Lee extended his hand, as Winston had taught him, and Winston shook the small offered hand with great respect.

      Marilee saw that Winston’s big, gnarled hand, when it released Willie Lee’s, shook slightly. The blue veins showed clearly when he used that same hand to push his tall frame up from the table.

      “If you ladies and gentleman will excuse me,” he said, polite as always, “I have to walk on home and make sure Mildred has not drowned Ruthanne in her bath this mornin’. The nurse has the day off.” He checked his watch. “They ought to be done by now.”

      Mildred Covington and Ruthanne Bell, two elderly ladies, shared Winston Valentine’s home. Since Winston’s stroke the year before, a home health nurse came in to check on all three of them three times a week. Aunt Vella had once told Marilee that on the days the nurse did not come, Winston, after making certain the women had breakfast, tried to leave home at midmorning, so as to not be present when the women were getting bathed and dressed; Mildred seemed to have a penchant for running around naked in front of him whenever she had the chance.

      “Winston’s really aging now,” Marilee said, watching the old man lean heavily on his cane as he went out the door. He was eighty-eight this year, and only since his stroke had he slowed any.

      “There’s more life in him than many a man I know,” Vella said, and in a snapping manner that startled Marilee a little. It only then occurred to her that her Aunt Vella was not getting any younger, either; no doubt it was distressing to her aunt to see a dear friend declining and heading for the border.

      Marilee found the fact depressing, as well. She felt as if her life were going down a hole, and she could not seem to find the stopper.

      “Now, what’s this about my darlin’s wantin’ ice cream?” Aunt Vella asked.

      “We want sun-daes,” Willie Lee told her and scampered over to haul himself up on a stool at the counter.

      “We’ll have three chocolate sundaes, please,” Marilee said, slipping onto a stool.

      She set herself to getting into a better mood. Children learned by example and picked up on things easily. She did not need to add to any of their numerous wounds by being in a poor mood.

      “Me and Mun-ro want va-nil-la,” Willie Lee said. “Cor-rine says dogs should not ev-er have choc-o-late.”

      Marilee only then remembered the dog and looked down to see him already curled beneath Willie Lee’s feet, as if knowing that he would need to be quiet and unseen to remain.

      Aunt