She thought of what Joe Clay told her the first time she drove down to Spanish Fort. “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.”
“That’s pretty much the story of Cornish except that I just blinked, and it’s already gone.” To keep her mind off what she had left behind, she switched on the radio.
Blake Shelton singing “Goodbye Time” filled the truck. Pepper put a paw over his ears, but Bernie didn’t turn down the volume. The song was about a woman who left a man, but it seemed fitting that afternoon as she saw the sign on the Oklahoma side of the Taovayas Bridge over the Red River. She stopped the truck. When she crossed over to the other side, she would be in Texas.
“A lifetime behind me that accounts for more years than the one in front of me. This is it, Pepper. When Imoved into the apartment at the Chicken Coop, I swore I would never go back to Texas.” She took the last two sips of her coffee. “There, I just swallowed my words. It’s better than getting old and going to a nursing home. I’ve always heard that life is what you make it. So, goodbye, Oklahoma, and look out, Texas! Mary Bernadette is about to enter the state, and it will never be the same.”
She drove across the bridge without a single glance in her rearview mirror.
Pepper hopped back onto the console and was focused on the road ahead the rest of the way. Bernie reached over and scratched his ears, and said, “I don’t know if you can read English, old boy, but if you can, that sign back there said, ‘Welcome to Texas,’ and the little one under it said, ‘Don’t Mess with Texas.’ That doesn’t mean something ugly, but it’s a warning not to throw litter out on the car window or you will get fined. This ain’tThe Wizard of Oz, and you ain’t Dorothy or even Toto, but I can truthfully tell you that you are not in Oklahoma anymore. You are a Texan now, so get ready for a different world.”
He wagged his tail and kept his eyes straight ahead.
“Yes, there are squirrels and even rabbits where we are going. You are going to love it there.” Bernie wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince the dog or herself.
In a few minutes she flicked on the turn signal to turn up the lane lined with pecan trees. No one was on the front porch, so she figured she and Pepper couldsneak back to her trailer and unload her things before she even went up to the Paradise to see Mary Jane.
When she rounded the end of big house, she braked so fast that poor old Pepper flew off the console and landed in the passenger seat. A huge banner hung across the front porch posts that Joe Clay had built onto her trailer. She hadn’t expected both a porch in the front and a deck on the back overlooking a wooded area, but there they were with a big WELCOME HOME, AUNT BERNIE written in sparkling red letters.
People were everywhere and the aroma of barbecue came right into the truck through the air conditioner vents. She rubbed her eyes, unsure if they were working right, but nothing changed. Finally, Joe Clay carried over a long length of red carpet and stretched it out from the truck to a table where Mary Jane waited behind a chair that resembled a throne. He opened the door and offered her his hand.
“My job is to lead you to the place of honor,” he told her. “So, get a leash on your companion over there, and let’s go.”
“If I’d known there was going to be a party, I would have dressed up,” she whispered as she snapped the leash onto Pepper’s collar and put her hand in Joe Clay’s.
“This is just a gathering,” he said out the corner of his mouth. “We didn’t know until Saturday that you would be coming today, so this is the best we could do on short notice.”
Mary Jane rounded the end of the table with Endora and Luna right behind her. “We are so glad you are finally here,” she said as she hugged Bernie and then stepped to the side. “Come on around and have a seat. This is the chair we use at Christmas for Santa Claus, but today it is Queen Bernie’s throne.”
Endora wrapped Bernie up in another hug. “I’ll make you a plate.”
“And I will sit beside you and get your dessert when you are ready,” Luna told her after a third hug. “We plan to take lots of pictures, and it won’t be easy not to show them to the other five sisters, but we will keep your secret. Can you at least tell us why you don’t want Ursula or the others to know?”
“I want to surprise them all,” she said around the big lump in her throat. “Did Clara tell you…”
“Yep, she did,” Mary Jane answered. “But don’t you fuss at her. We want you to meet the folks who have hung on here in Spanish Fort with the hopes that someday it will be back to its former glory, only without the gunfights and brothels.”
“Bless that sweet child’s heart,” Bernie said.
Chapter 18
The twins, Endora and Luna, assured Bernie just before Thanksgiving that, even though it was the toughest secret they had ever had to keep, none of the other five sisters knew that she had moved to Spanish Fort. Ursula had finished her teaching job and should be there before lunch. Bo was flying in from Nashville. Rae, Ophelia, and Tertia were all driving and planned to be home by suppertime.
More than an hour ago, Bernie had snuck a little Jameson in her sweet tea and had claimed a rocking chair on the front porch to wait for the oldest Simmons girl to get home. She wanted to be one of the first to welcome Ursula home for the holidays. Little, other than this secret, had gone the way she planned since she left Ratliff City. She had thought she would get a phone call a few weeks after moving to the Paradise and Clara would tell her that Nash had proposed.
She had hoped that Clara would ask her to be the maid of honor, but oh no, that’s not the way things went at all. One of the first weekly calls that Clara made wasto tell Bernie that Hoot’s brother, who never married or had children, had passed away and left his small farm up near Shattuck, Oklahoma, to Hoot and Darlene. They had been talking about downsizing for a while, and they would like to move up there, but they didn’t want to live more than two hundred miles from the kids.
Then, as if Fate made the decision for them, the Chicken Coop caught on fire a couple of weeks later and burned to the ground.
Clara was inconsolable when she called to tell Bernie the news. “The fire department folks said a squirrel must have gotten into the attic and chewed through some electrical wires,” she said between sobs. “When the blaze reached the storage room and the bar, the liquor fueled the fire even more, and it went in a hurry. Oh, Aunt Bernie, I am so, so sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about, darlin’. Move to northern Oklahoma and start a new bar,” Bernie told her. “The Universe has spoken, and we could argue with it until we turn blue, but once its mind is made up, nothing can change it, not even a block of C4.”
“Aren’t you sad?” Clara asked.
“I am, but we both have our memories. Did you save any of your personal things?”
“Not even what was left of the old cigar,” Clara said between sobs.
