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Tilda stayed at Palo Duro Canyon long enough for all three children to come in for her husband’’s funeral service.  A minister from Amarillo said words that were kind, if generic.  They scattered his ashes on the edge of the canyon at sunset, not sure of the legality, and well after the minister was on his way back to Amarillo.

Each of the kids offered for Tilda to come live with them, opportunities she wasted no time in declining.  There was no point in returning to Fort Stockton; her life there was over just as surely as Cal’s had been at the picnic table.  At 58, she was on her own for the very first time in her life.  After the departure of the last of her progeny she hitched up the Spartan Manor Model 25 and headed west.  Where to, she wasn’t sure.

The minute Tilda pulled into Santa Fe she decided that’s where she’d put down stakes, at least for a while.  Pulling the Spartan behind the huge Buick wagon from Amarillo to Santa Fe had been nearly as daunting as facing her future alone.  She took a slot at the Roll-In Trailer Park and had no intention of leaving anytime soon.  She drove the ’47 Buick Super Estate wagon, new with less than 800 miles on it, to Albuquerque after locating Big Chief Buick-Olds-GMC in the Yellow Pages in the office of the Roll-In.

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“Why you tradin’ this beauty in, after less than two weeks?” the sales manager of the dealership asked her.

“Too big.  Too sad.  More than I need,” she told him, not wanting to share any more detail than that.  She wanted the cash out of the  Buick wagon and found a 1940 Buick Series 50 Super Sport Coupe on the used car lot she thought to be perfect.  English Gray, though it looked like a deep green to her, over tan Bedford cloth.  Fantastic in the way it looked nothing like what a widow would drive.  

When she pulled up beside the Spartan Manor back in Santa Fe, she studied the reflection of the racy Buick coupe in the shiny aluminum of the Spartan Model 25.  She wasn’t sure if she made the Buick look good, or vice versa, but she knew she’d made the right choice.  The eighteen crisp one hundred dollar bills in her pocketbook enabled her to not touch her savings for at least a year.  The Buick wagon was sold at full sticker price as a demonstrator the minute she left the lot in the Buick coupe.  The trade had been good for everyone involved.

Tilda spent her afternoons at the public library reading up on the history of New Mexico, the oldest city in America, returning to the Spartan for a simple dinner with a stack of books she’d checked out.  After about a month she bought a used Underwood Champion typewriter at the Kwik-Buck pawn shop a block off the square and started tapping out westerns, driving the Buick to locations nearby for factual accuracy and literary inspiration.

Within a year she had a collection of short stories she sent off to several different publishers.  Knowing the odds for success favored male authors, she used the pen name Charlie Underwood.  Had a ring to it.  A handful of stories were featured in, ironically, ladies’ magazines.  Her editor encouraged her to take one of the best, Turquoise and Tombstones and turn it into a novel.  Her new artist friend, Georgia, howled while reading it  aloud from the passenger seat as they made their way to Taos for a weekend getaway in the Buick.

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