Right From The Start
The first time she felt the weight of his eyes was the summer of 1941 at a rodeo in Dallas, Texas. She was leaning over a weathered wooden barrier, her white blond hair falling in wisps around her elfish face. Her hair attracted a lot of attention in those days, so she knew what a mans eyes felt like. She looked at him shyly through her fair lashes, appreciating the quickness in his blue eyes, enjoying the warmth from his slow but sure smile.
It was hot- real hot- they didn't get this kind of humidity back in New York City. She thought back to some of the hottest days spent in Hell's Kitchen, days in which she felt that the heat was unbearable and yet it didn't come close to a summer in Dallas.
She recalled standing in an airless kitchen back home and watching the boys downstairs run shirtless through a flowing hydrant. Boy, she'd wanted to join them, to feel the relief of cold water splashing against her sticky skin. Even if it had been acceptable behaviour for a young woman, her father would never allowed it.
She allowed her gaze to drop slightly; demurely- she did'n't want to appear brazen- but she couldn't tear her eyes away for very long. The stranger was drinking her in lik she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Men like this man were the exact reason her father didn't think women should go out unaccompanied. But times were changing. And Aunt May, her host here in Texas, was younger and a lot more progressive than her own parents. She'd let her go to the rodeo with their neighbour's daughter, Shirley. 'To watch the pretty ponies' Shirley had told
Aunt May, fingering her long red curls and smiling her sweetest smile. Shirley was still practicing that smile on a handsome cowboy who had just won first place in the bronco saddle.
"How ya doing?" The stranger was in front of her now with tousled hair and a confident smirk plastered across his handsome face. He wasn't as tall as she would have liked-and his shoulders were slender- but there was something about his hard wiry body that seemed able and masculine.
"I'm Eddie," he told her, reaching for her hand before she had a chance to decide if she wanted him to touch her. He touched her anyway and when his rough calloused finger closed around her knuckles, it took all she had to keep standing. His touch sent a fire through her like nothing she had ever felt before. He smelled like fresh sweat and cigarettes, a manly smell that she wished she could trap in a jar and carry with her everywhere.
He smiled wickedly at her, as though he could feel the butterflies in her stomach.
"What's your name, honey?"
"Lucille," she told him."But my friends call me Lucy."
She felt him study every inch of his face before he brushed back a tendril of her white blond hair.
"I like Lucille better."
Eddie was a stable hand and originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, He worked the rodeo circuit, moving from place to place to follow it country wide.
The more he talked, the more she was captured by him. She loved the way he spoke and the way he gestured, but his smile- it made her feel like the first time the tree lights went on at Christmas. Lucille would have given anything to keep Eddie smiling.
And that was exactly the reason why she let him get her drunk twelve days later. He'd showed up at her Aunt's houses several times before this occasion, all charm and perfect teeth. He'd taken her to the movies, for a walk downtown, to a nice restaurant on pay day.
But the last time, he'd seemed preoccupied. He'd drummed his fingersabsently on the wheel of his beat up old truck before he told her he had to check on something down at the stables before they went any place.
After he led her inside the large barn, he'd pulled out a blanket and told her she could sit on a pile of straw until he was done. She did as he asked, but when he reappeared, he was holding a whiskey bottle, the dim artificial lighting reflecting off the shiny glass. It didn't take much persuasion to make her drink some; a few comments about her being young and naive and she was practically snatching the bottle from his hands. And then, when she was dizzy, he kissed her until she was breathless.
Afterwards, Lucille Melford knew that what she let him do to her was wrong. They weren't married, she barely knew him; but she hadn't stopped him either.
The next morning she wept in her Aunt's guest room, and prayed that she would never have to see him again. Her cheeks felt hot when she thought about what she'd let him do to her and the idea of having to look him in the face made her stomach turn.
But Lucille needn't have worried. Because after that night, Eddie never showed up at her Aunt's place again.
She took her shameful secret home with her. She told herself it was a lesson learned and she would never make the same mistake again. That promise didn't matter though.
Once was enough and when eight weeks had rolled around and Lucille's monthly's hadn't arrived, she knew she'd been caught out.
She told her mother first, hoping for mercy, praying that her mother would smooth things over with her father. She couldn't have been more wrong.
"She's what!" Her father roared. And he belted her across the face, his watch splitting her cheek bone wide. As she desperately tried to mop up the blood, her father made one thing very clear. Either she married the baby's father or she never spoke to he or her mother again.
It didn't take long to track Eddie down. He had long left Dallas but Shirley, her Aunt's pretty neighbour managed to sweet talk the stable manager into giving her Eddie's home address.
She turned up at his front door in Tulsa, Oklahoma with eyes sore from crying, the gash from her father's hand still evident across her cheek. Eddie seemed surprised but not annoyed to see her.
"I'm pregnant," she told him, standing on his leaking porch while his nosy mother cracked the kitchen window open.
Eddie looked at her for a long time before he struck up a match and lit his cigarette.
"How'd you know it's mine?"
The words stung but she answered him automatically.
"You're the only one I've ever been with."
Eddie considered this for a while.
"Do your folks know?"
She nodded. Told him the whole deal about getting married or never speaking to either one of them again.
"Well, I guess we better get ourselves married then."
She didn't know it then but Eddie wasn't being honourable. He was tired of living at home with just his lazy mother and the thought of a pretty wife to keep house and tend to his needs sounded mighty sweet in that moment in time.
Lucille was relieved. They had a small wedding at county hall with only their immediate families present. Her father and mother stood tight lipped at the back of the room and refused to come back to the house afterwards.
Eddie relegated his mother to the smaller room in the house and with that, sealed her eternal hatred for Lucille.
"Damn Yankees. They took everything including my own damn son."
Lucille was quiet for a long time, trying to fulfil her duties, trying to make the best of her situation. But as the months went by, and she became more pregnant and more weary, her patience grew thin. She'd had enough of Eddie's lazy ways, enough of his grabbing hands, and more than enough of his loud mouthed mother.
The first time Eddie slapped Lucille across the face, he learned something new about her. His new wife was not a wallflower. In fact, there was a little part of her that almost scared him. Because seven months pregnant or not, she picked up one of his beer bottles and crashed it over his head.
All hell broke loose.
He hit her again, and when she came back at him, he kicked the coffee table against the wall, splintering it in two. She threw an ash tray in return. The ashtray hit him squarely and he was furious enough that he ran at her, jamming her against the den door, squeezing her windpipe tightly between his fingers.
The rush of liquid that came from beneath her oversized dress surprised them both. He loosened his grip on her and she sucked in much needed oxygen before looking down in dismay.
"I'm having the baby!" She wailed, and he automatically released her, stepping disgustedly out of the puddle of amniotic fluid.
"It's too damn early!" He yelled, but early or not, Lucille was in labour.
Eddie fetched the ir neighbour nurse from across the road to help them. Between the nurse and her mother- in-law, Lucille was pinned down on the den floor, while the baby writhed and pushed it's way out without mercy.
"Stop! It's too soon!" Lucille screamed.
Her mother-in- law pushed a towel towards her, forcing it between her teeth.
"Shut up and push, you spoilt brat!"
Lucille bit down hard, screaming in pain as her mother-in-law yelled at her and the burly nurse forced open her thighs. And that was how their tiny son came into the world. Despite being premature and underweight, his cries were loud and strong. He was red faced and bellowing, stretching out tiny arms and legs in an attempt at protest.
"Is he okay?" Lucille gasped, and the nurse nodded. He seemed okay to her.
By the time Eddie had re-entered the den, Lucille and the baby were curled up on the couch, the baby still screaming his lungs out.
"Noisy little fucker, eh?"
Lucille looked up at her husband, who was smoking a cigarette over their heads and hadn't shaved in two weeks. She looked back down at the crying baby that she had never really wanted. And it was then that she realised how massively her life was about to change.
Ducking her head to hide her tears, she tried to soothe the distressed newborn, but it was already clear to her what a useless mother she was.
"We gonna give him a name or something? How about Eddie Junior?"
She could still feel the imprints of Eddie Senior's hold around her neck.
She thought about their brief and torrid relationship that had started on a summers day at a rodeo back in Texas.
"Dallas," she whispered. "I want to call him Dallas."
Eddie's gruffness thawed slightly, and he blessed her with that same slow smile he had given her the first time they'd met.
"I like it."
He probably thought she was romanticising their relationship, the way most women do. 'That's where we first met' they'd tell people. But the new Mrs Winston was no fool.
The name wasn't to commemorate a special time. He was the start of a life changing downward spiral. And that downward spiral began in Dallas, Texas in 1941.
Naming the kid after the city somehow seemed fitting.
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