Hugh Wilcox, Frankie’s dad, was right well off. He had one o’ the best dairy farms in the county. Frankie’s ma’s been dead a long time and Hugh had the rearin’ o’ the twins all to himself. He warn’t a man for coddlin’ and as soon as they was old enough, each of ’em had to pitch in with the chores.
I reckon Jessie Bilbo was the nearest to a mother the twins ever had. She was a widder who done the cookin’ and housekeepin’ for Hugh when she was needed. She come in by the day, havin’ a cottage of her own down in Donkey’s Holler. Her son, Oz, had the run of the Wilcox place like he was one o’ the family.
In high school, you couldn’t mistake Frankie for a boy no longer. She was fillin’ out the way a girl should but she still had the name of a tomboy. She let her hair grow long and wore dresses but she didn’t go in for dancin’ and such. She’d a heap rather shoulder a gun and spend a day in the woods huntin’ with Johnny and Oz.
The summer Johnny was eighteen, he and Oz got called up for the draft. They were both right happy to go and seems like the whole o’ the town was down at the bus depot to see ’em off. Johnny never did come back to Cripple’s Bend. He was killed in an accident in trainin’ camp. Oz did his hitch and then reenlisted. In all he was gone nigh on to six years, most of it spent in Europe.
Meanwhile Hugh Wilcox is crippled up with arthritis and it’s Frankie as keeps the farm in apple pie order. You drop by the Wilcox place most any day and you can see Frankie in overalls, pitchin’ hay, milkin’ the cows or scrubbin’ down the barn. She’s still slim and straight and she handles herself like a man. In her shapeless clothes, you’d swear she is one till you get up close. Then there’s something downright appealin’ and feminine in her face.
More’n one of the local boys has come around to pay her court. But they might as well a-stayed at home for all the good it done ’em. Frankie makes it plain she ain’t in no marryin’ mood and mebbe she’s right when she reckons the farm is as much of an attraction as she is, ’cause there ain’t no denyin’ that anyone as marries her is latchin’ on to a fine piece o’ property.
Folks around say as how she’s savin’ herself for Oz Bilbo when he comes home. But it don’t work out that way. When Oz returns to Cripple’s Bend he ain’t much like the boy who went away. He’s grown up, filled out and become a man. There’s something gruff, hard and independent about him. He settles down with his ma in their cottage in Donkey’s Holler but he don’t as much as set a foot on the Wilcox land.
Oz has been home for quite a spell afore he meets up with Frankie on the main street. They stop and chat like a couple o’ near strangers. Then Frankie walks off, cool as you please, her head high and starin’ straight ahead. Oz looks after her and takes a step or two like he’s goin’ to foller her but then he shrugs and strides off in the other direction.
Frankie don’t show up much in Cripple’s Bend but she sings in the choir of the Community Church every Sunday and usually attends the Tuesday night dinner and player meetin’. Oz goes to church too, but he sits in a back pew and don’t speak to nobody. He even keeps his mouth shut durin’ the hymnsingin’. He just ain’t a musical man.
At first Frankie smiles and speaks a word or two to Oz when they meet. But pretty soon she don’t even do that. She flounces right past him, pretendin’ she don’t know he’s there.
It’s about this time that Reggie Van der Breughe arrives in town. He comes a might ahead o’ the summer crowd and demands the best room in Cripple’s Inn. He’s a character is Reggie. He’s tall and skinny with curly, bright red hair parted in the middle and china blue eyes. He has a funny little paunch, a high-pitched pompous voice and a struttin’ walk that makes you want to laugh. He goes in for silk suits, pale lemon vests, two-toned shoes, bow ties and yeller socks. His trademark though is a bamboo cane with a carved jade head. He’s always swingin’ it when he walks, or twirlin’ or flexin’ it when he’s standin’ still.
Reggie sort o’ takes the town by storm. In no time flat he lets it be known he’s plannin’ to settle in Cripple’s Bend. He says as how he’s done a lot o’ travellin’ in his time but no place has ever taken his fancy so fast.
Before a week is up, he’s joined the Cripple’s Bend Community Church and made a hundred dollar contribution to the Parish Fund. So when he asks Parson Beam if he can join the choir, the parson can’t very well refuse. It turns out Reggie can’t sing for sour apples. No one can say he ain’t tryin’. He bellers out the words but he ain’t only tone deaf, he can’t keep time neither.
Usually Parson Beam ain’t much of a diplomat but he knows he’s got to use kid gloves with a heavy contributor to the Parish Fund. All the same he’s got to muzzle Reggie or pretty soon he’ll be preachin’ to an empty church. He’s half-expectin’ Reggie to blow up and demand his money back, so he asks me to come along in ease o’ trouble. Reggie surprises us by bein’ real meek and docile. He explains it’s been a life-time ambition of his to sing in a church choir. He looks so sad I’m afraid he’ll bust out cryin’.
Then he brightens up. “What about a deal, Parson? Just let me sit in the choir and I promise not to utter a word. I’ll feel I’m a part anyway.”
Parson Beam thinks it over. “It’s a might irregular,” he admits. “But there’s nothing in the Bible as says it’s wrong.”
The way Reggie thanks him, you’d think the Parson had handed him a million dollars.
The Parson’s a bit doubtful of Reggie keepin’ his word but he needn’t a-been. After the first Sunday it’s pretty clear Reggie ain’t payin’ much attention to the sermon or the hymns. All he’s got eyes for is Frankie Wilcox. He sits there a-watchin’ her and every now and then heavin’ a deep sigh. Frankie’s dressed up prettier than I ever seen her before, in a silky dress the color o’ rose petals. She’s wearin’ a frilly little hat with rose-buds on it and a pearl necklace that used to belong to her ma. The flush on her cheeks is right becomin’ too. She tries to make like she don’t notice Reggie oglin’ her but she ain’t foolin’ nobody. Least of all Reggie.
He don’t say nothin’ to her till the Tuesday night church dinner when he maneuvers a seat right beside her. He keeps talkin’ to her in tones so low that nobody else can hear. But the whole room is watchin’ her blush and listenin’ to her laugh which is nearer to a giggle than anyone ever expected to hear from Frankie Wilcox. Afterwards Reggie takes her home in his car, which is one o’ them low-slung foreign jobs where you have to crunch all up to fit in. He makes quite a production of helpin’ her to settle down, while the church women are oh-in’ and ah-in’ on the steps.
Pretty soon the whole town is buzzin’ about Frankie and Reggie. Seems like he’s spendin’ most of his evenings up at the Wilcox farm. Maudie Jenkins, who lives nearby and ain’t above a bit o’ snoopin’, tells as how she’s seen him a-kissin’ Frankie’s hand. And all during choir practice, Reggie keeps passin’ Frankie folded sheets o’ paper. One day Frankie drops one o’ them notes and Maudie scoops it up quick as lightnin’ and stows it in her bag. ’Tain’t no time at all afore the word goes ’round that Reggie’s writin’ poetry. People say it ain’t bad neither, even though Miss Lettie Cushman, who teaches English at the high school, claims as how he cribbed it from some feller named Browning.