CHAPTER 1

 

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, October 1992:

 

          Clarence Miller was pulled from a restless nap by the warning buzzer on the respirator attached to his wife. He squinted at the gauges and dials on the front panel of the breathing apparatus, waited for his seventy-nine year old eyes to focus, then relaxed.  When the machine had first been hooked up to his wife of fifty-four years, he would look at the maze of gauges and become frustrated, angry, because he was unable to understand what the gauges were trying to tell him.  Now, after three weeks of practice, he needed only a glance to see what had triggered the alarm.  Occasionally, Mae would come close enough to consciousness to reflexively blow against the machine that was forcing life-sustaining oxygen into her lungs.  The increase in pressure would be sufficient enough to set off the alarm, but never quite enough to shut the machine down should the patient regain consciousness and breathe on her own.  This was another of those occasions.  The giddiness that hope provided through anticipation went away.

          Clarence got up out of his chair and walked over to Mae’s bed.  Sadness enveloped him as he looked down on her.  Never one to carry extra weight, Mae had lost enough over the past three weeks to begin to show the true frailty of her age.

          He reached down and gently brushed a couple stray hairs in place with the palm of his work-scarred hand.

          “Everything’s going to be okay, Momma,” he said, noticing for the first time the gray starting to show at the roots of the hair that Mae so meticulously cared for.  She had always refused to let the gray show or even allow herself to ever be seen in need of a brush in public.

          Clarence sighed and sat back down in the padded, straight-backed chair, trying without luck to get comfortable in an uncomfortable situation.

*           *           *           *           *

          The alarm on the respirator sounded and in her subconscious mind, Mae Miller rolled over and turned off the alarm clock that sat on the small table next to her bed.  She quietly got out of bed, staggered with a yawn into the kitchen, and put on a pot of water to boil for the morning coffee.

          “Get up, Coon,” she yelled after the water started to boil.  “Coffee’s on.”

          She put two teaspoons of instant coffee into two old, chipped coffee cups, stained with coffee on the inside and very little of the original color left on the outside.  She poured boiling water into each cup from a tin coffeepot, blackened from years of sitting on top of their gas cookstove.  A generous amount of milk lightened the coffee in each cup.

          Clarence, known as Coon to both family and friends, walked into the kitchen in a faded pair of bib overalls.  He had yet to put on his shirt.

          “Coon, I need you to go to the store today.  Kenny said he’d be over after breakfast to drive you,” Mae said as she handed her husband an old envelope, an envelope the electric bill had come in, with her grocery list written on the back.

          Clarence held the list up to the light shining through the kitchen window and read it back to Mae.  “Milk, eggs, bacon, bread, lard, cocoa, pork chops, coffee, Bisquick, Karo Syrup.”  Lacking formal education, Clarence was proud of the fact that he could read a grocery list.

          “Momma, if the ‘maters are any good, I’m goin’ to pick up some,” he said as he put the two twenties that Mae gave him along with the list into the breast pocket of his overalls.

          Mae set three medium-sized pancakes and a half dozen pieces of bacon down in front of him then sat down and picked at a piece of bacon while Clarence ate his breakfast.

          “Momma, what’re you doin’ today?”

          “I thought I’d trim back the rose bushes and watch my stories.  It’s Friday and you know I can’t miss my stories on Friday.”

          “Want some help with the roses?”

          “Naw.  I want to take my time and enjoy the pretty day.”

          After breakfast, Clarence put an old, but clean, flannel shirt on under his bib overalls and waited on the front porch for his son-in-law Kenneth Lumpkin.  Mae went out into the back yard and began to trim her rose bushes.  Her neighbor stepped out into his back yard to feed his dogs and saw her working at her roses.

          “Hey old woman, don’t you be throwin’ any of those cuttings into my back yard,” he yelled over the four foot, woven wire fence that separated their properties.

          “Why don’t you hush up and go to work.  I’ll throw them in your yard if I’m of a mind to,” she replied, not the least bit intimidated by her six foot four neighbor.

          “Yah, you do Granny, and I will have to set my dogs on you,” Steve, her neighbor and grandson, said.  Laughing, he disappeared back into his house.  Mae laughed and turned her attention back to her rose bushes.  She heard the crunch of gravel as Kenneth pulled into the driveway.

          “’Bye Momma, I’ll be back soon.”

          Mae heard Clarence yell from the other side of the house.  She heard the squeak of a car door and smiled.  Somehow, Kenneth managed to keep the driver’s side door oiled, yet continued to ignore the passenger door despite being reminded by everyone who ever rode with him and had to open that squeaky door. Poor Kenney, she thought, he stays so busy. Always working or running errands. Probably doesn't even think about the door since he doesn't use it.

          Mae’s smile continued when she heard the slamming of the car door following closely on the heels of another squeak.

          "Goodbye Coon," she said to herself as she heard the crunch of gravel again.  Clarence still felt a need to say goodbye anytime he left her, even after more than a half century together.  She liked that.

          She finished the first rose bush and stood up, dusting grass and leaves off the back of her pants.  Bending over, she grabbed a double handful of cuttings and stood back up.  She got a sudden dizzy rush followed by the beginnings of a headache, just a slight irritation between her eyes.  Making a mental note not to stand up so quickly next time, she stuffed the cuttings into a large plastic trash bag then sat down at the next rose bush.

          She grabbed a thick limb and applied pressure to the handle of the pruning shears.  Mae felt a pop in her forehead followed by the feeling of wet warmth spreading across it.  She reached up with a gloved hand to feel for blood, before she could get her hand there her forehead erupted with blinding pain.  So severe was the pain that she was instantly sick to her stomach and threw up on the grass beside where she sat.

          “Coon,” she hoarsely yelled, forgetting he was at the grocery store.  She tried to stand up, but the pain was so intense that she immediately lost her will to stand and sat back down.  Nauseous from the pain, determined not to throw up again, Mae crawled toward the back door.  She covered the twenty feet across the yard but couldn’t crawl up the three steps that lead to the door.  Mae curled up on the ground and placed her head in her hands....

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AUTHOR'S NOTE

In the rest of Full Circle: A Life Story, through flashbacks, Mae and Clarence tell of their early lives before they meet.  How they both ended up in the same cotton camp in Gilbert, Arizona in the 1930's. Their quick courtship followed by marriage and children. See how they overcome the hardships of the cotton camp to start and raise a young family. Follow them back to Oklahoma where they eventually make a home in Kingfisher.