Closing and Opening
Once Ted decided to come to Holliday, leaving home should have been easy. He knew his mother would take it hard, but he didn’t realize just how hard. She created every possible chore to delay him. She had promised him she’d tell—someday -- about her days in Ohio and the life she lived with his father. It was now someday.
Ted had never seen his mother so emotional. Every time she spoke about his father she choked. She was devoted to Marty and their Texas home. But, her soul mate was her childhood sweetheart; Ted’s father, Ezek Skillman.
The story seeped out like ground water. Mattie always said that Ezek was killed in a farming accident. Truth was: Ezek was shot when he stopped a Kentucky bounty hunter from capturing a black man who worked the same farm. The bounty hunter claimed the black escaped from a chain gang. Ezek stepped in.
When the Kentuckian shot Ezek, the black man knifed the shooter, and carried the dying Ezek home to Mattie. That night he, with his woman, fled to Canada, up the old Underground Railroad.
Mattie wept that silent cry, evidenced only by tears. “His last words were, ‘sorry, Mattie, but that bounty hunter was taking the man, like he was property. It warn’t right…’ He closed his eyes; died in minutes.”
Clara Maud burst into the room with a tray of food, and proceeded to feed and inform Ted until mid afternoon. She was a plain woman, about forty; had lost her girlish figure. With a little less hard work and a little more polish she might have approached handsome, but, what she lacked in grace and youth, she more than made up in warmth and wit.
“Time for you to get to work, cowboy. We got thieves in this here town, and you’re behind in tracking ’em down. Dinner’s on the house.”
Ted stuffed his money back in his pocket. “I’ll accept that as a friendly gesture this time, but after I’m sworn in, I’ll have to charge you for trying to bribe a peace officer.”
Her bold laughter followed him through the door.
Out on the street his mind instantly turned to business. So someone stole a side of bacon from the restaurant store room. A brace of dressed-out rabbits showing up in the smoke house… Wonder if it’s connected? Clara Maud wasn’t too clear about that.
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