Song of the Road by Dorothy Garlock

Author:Dorothy Garlock [Garlock, Dorothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Adult, Historical, Western, American, Frontier and Pioneer Life, 2000s
ISBN: 9780446693059
Publisher: Warner
Published: 2003-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

IT WAS MIDMORNING WHEN OCIE CLAWSON drove into town and parked his car on a side street. He sat for a minute and watched a motorcycle with a sidecar go by and envied the man straddling the machine. If he didn’t have the responsibility of the ranch, he’d be tempted to get on one of those things and ride down the highway to the faraway places he’d only heard about.

Heaving a sigh, he looked around, then got out of the car and turned into the alley behind the row of buildings on Main Street. He went up the back stairs to the second floor of the Bison Theater building, then paused before pushing open the door with gold lettering on the glass. WILLIAM MILLER AND SON, ATTORNEYS.

“Hello, Mr. Clawson.” He was greeted by the woman behind the desk. She was his age or older and had two double chins. Her plump face was framed with soft brown hair, scalloped and held in place with long bobby pins. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen you.”

“Hello, Miss Dryden. Is Bill in?”

“Junior or Senior?”

“Senior.”

“He was getting ready to go home for lunch —”

“Who’s out there, Madge?”

The woman shook her head. “Nothing gets by that man. It’s Mr. Clawson,” she called.

“Did he come to see you or me?”

Madge rolled her eyes and jerked her head toward the back office.

“You, Bill,” Ocie said, as he came through the door.

“Good. I’m not wanting to lose Madge to some clabber-head wanting a good cook and a warm bed. When I’m gone, Junior can get one of those flapper gals to sit out front. Sit down, Ocie. How’ve ya been?”

“Fair to middlin’, Bill. You?”

“Not getting any younger. Hell, I’ll be eighty my next birthday. It’s a damn good thing the body goes downhill before the mind or I’d be a bloomin’ idiot.” His laugh was dry as corn shucks.

“Time waits for no man, Bill. That’s why I’m here. I want to make out a will.”

“A will, huh?”

“Yeah. You handled my father’s will. He thought a great deal of you.”

“Temple Clawson was one of the best friends I ever had. I would have trusted him with my life.”

“He felt the same about you.”

“In our younger days we even liked the same girls.” A devilish glint came into the old man’s eyes. “He was a good-lookin’ son of a gun. I didn’t have a chance after they got a look at him.” He began to laugh, remembering. “There was this girl we both liked, but she had her eye on Temple. I had to think of something to get her attention, so I told her that Temple had fits about once a month. She dropped him like a hot rock. Hee, hee, hee. He was madder than a pissed-on snake when he found out. Later, he wished that I had got her. After she married, she turned to fat, and I mean fat . . . three hundred pounds.”

Ocie thought about his sweet and gentle mother, so different from the sour, nagging woman he had married.

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