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THE FIRST IN A SERIES OF SIX STORIES.

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Arabella Edwards was a southern lady of immeasurable charm.  She wasn’t raised in Fort Stockton but came to embrace it as though it were her own when she married Vince Edwards and they returned to his hometown after their wedding.  

They’d met at Howard Payne University in Brownwood where she got a teaching degree and he majored in business.  In reality, she never intended to teach and he was already set up in business, a result of having been born into a fairly wealthy family.  College was more or less an extension of high school for each of them, but more importantly an opportunity to scout for a spouse from a more desirable field of prospects than his hometown of Fort Stockton or her hometown of Waco afforded each of them.

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There was never any question they’d return to Fort Stockton.  Vince’s family ties to the area went back generations, whereas Arabella’s only tie to Waco, where she grew up, was the aunt that had raised her.  Fort Stockton can be funny regarding people who aren’t born and raised there.  Folks who can only trace their origins back a generation or two are sometimes still considered ‘newcomers’.  But Arabella never had any issues with such things.  Partly because of Vince’s history in the area, and partly because she was just such a friendly, outgoing young woman.

They immediately became members of Almost United Methodist Church, where Vince had been confirmed.  Of course, they were members of the Fort Stockton Country Club, where folks of means socialized, played golf, and compared notes.  Arabella and Vince fit into the community just like one of the elbow length gloves she wore to dinner out at the Silver Slipper Supper Club overlooking Lake Leon.  Well, except for one thing.

The young attractive couple never had children.  Others in their circle and general age bracket in the fifties started popping out progeny like rabbits as soon as the preacher said, “You may now kiss the bride.”  (Some started that process long before the preacher even spoke the words and then timetables needed to be adjusted in order to compensate.)  But not Arabella and Vince.

In the Ladies’ Club at the church, hints would be dropped as to when there would be a bun in the oven.  Arabella never responded.  At the country club, friends and associates would slap Vince on the back and joke about him needing to keep his new young wife barefoot and pregnant.  He’d only smile and nod, but never really offered a comment.  When their fifth anniversary rolled around and they were still childless, people really began to wonder what was going on.  Nobody back then ‘chose’ to not have kids.

Nobody knows what discussions may or may not have taken place between the two of them.  That was never shared.  Perhaps one or the other of them simply had a condition in which Arabella was not able to conceive.  If that was the case, whether or not they ever sought out medical advice is unknown.  While some in that situation choose to adopt, nobody knows if they ever considered such a thing.  They certainly had the means.

People said, in whispers outside earshot of Arabella of course, that it was a blessing they didn’t have children in early 1964 when Vince was killed.

They’d left a party out at the Livingston place west of town and were headed home.  It was dark, obviously. Arabella later said that Vince had had a cocktail or two, but certainly wasn’t drunk.  Others at the party vouched for that fact, not that it was ever really questioned. Headed east back towards Fort Stockton in their Cadillac, a 1959 Ford Country Sedan crossed the double line of the highway and hit the Edwards’ car head-on.  Vince was killed instantly, as was the driver of the Ford and his wife in the front seat.  Their kids in the back seat were injured, one pretty severely, but survived.  Arabella sustained only minor cuts and bruises.  Police later surmised that the driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and the Ford had crossed over right in front of Vince just before impact.  There was nothing he could have done.  

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Once she’d buried Vince and recovered from her injuries, Arabella went down to Buckboard Buick and bought a new car to replace the Cadillac that had been totaled in the accident.  She decided on a 1964 Buick Electra 225 Convertible, white with a white top and a blue and white interior.  “She seems to be holding up well,” the salesman later told folks who asked.  “She didn’t show a lot of emotion one way or the other.  Probably still in shock, I suppose.  I mean it was just out of the blue.”

“Grief is hard,” she confided in a friend from church.  “I mean, I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.  And the looks of sympathy at the Piggly Wiggly  and awkwardness displayed by people Vince and I were friends with for years is just more than I can handle sometimes.”  

The friend nodded and tried to be supportive.  “Maybe you just need to get out of town.  Get behind the wheel of that new Buick, put the top down, and clear the cobwebs. Turn up the radio and have yourself a good cry. Disappear for a week or two.  People will understand.” Arabella just looked at her with surprise.  “And screw them if they don’t.”  Those words of wisdom from her friend were what finally decided the situation.

Two days later, there were a couple bags packed and put in the massive trunk of the new Buick convertible and Arabella was headed north towards Waco.  She’d called her aunt and told her she was coming up to spend a few days.  “It’s been way too long.  We need to catch up.” Truth be told, Arabella felt guilty about just how long it had been.  Her aunt, while only in her 60s, seemed to be aging quickly.  She sounded frail on the phone.

The trip to Waco was just what Arabella needed.  A scarf around her bleached blond hair and blowing in the wind behind her, the Buick proved that it was a fine road car. The 401 cubic inch V8 was as smooth as silk, eating up miles of road while the AM/FM radio played Sinatra and Dean Martin and Arabella thought about fate and the finality of it.  The trip to her aunt’s house was leisurely, stopping for lunch and later pie at a coffee shop that she’d heard about in Hamilton.  When her aunt greeted her as the big Buick pulled into the driveway, Arabella was stunned at how much she’d aged.

Of course, she wasn’t nearly as stunned as she was two days later as the pair of women sat at the breakfast table and her aunt, with voice shaking, said, “Honey, I love you.  You are more dear to me than anything.  But I am not really your aunt.”

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