"No, what company is she with?"
"Aetna… Insurance… So I told her that my niece and her husband handle all that for me."
"Good, what did she say?"
"She said she wanted to know where you lived so she could ask you about it."
"Good Lord, you didn't tell her, did you?"
"Well, I had to. She asked me."
"How long ago…?"
"Just a little while ago".
"Oh Lord…"
"She's real nice. She has on a green suit and…"
"Aunt Elner, let me call you back."
"Okay… I just wanted you to be on the lookout."
"I'll call you back." Norma put down the phone and ran into the living room and looked up and down the street and shut the front door and closed her blinds and pulled the curtains. She went back to the kitchen and closed those blinds and she hid down under the wall phone, reached up, and dialed Macky's number. When he picked up she whispered, "Macky… when you come home, don't come in the front door, come up the alley and come in the back. And knock three times so I'll know it's you."
"What?"
"Aunt Elner gave some insurance woman our address and she's headed over here… and I don't want to have to deal with her."
"You don't have to deal with her just go to the door and tell her you don't need any insurance."
"I'm not going to be rude to her, for God's sake."
"That's not being rude."
"You can't just say no, until you let them go through their sales things. You don't know why that poor woman is having to work… she might have children to support. You might be able to break her heart but I can't."
"Norma, you are not going to break her heart. She's an insurance salesman."
"She's probably married to some alcoholic and… shhh." There was a knock at the front door. "Oh my God, she's here… be quiet!" She pulled the phone into the pantry and hid.
"Norma, just go to the door and tell her thank you very much but we don't need any insurance. If you don't go now, she'll just come back. You don't want to get her hopes up… that's even worse. You have to learn to say no. You don't have to be rude. Go on now, get it over with."
The woman at the door continued to knock. She was not going away.
"Oh, Macky, I could just kill you."
Norma put the phone down, stood there for a moment, screwed her courage to the wall, took a deep breath, and headed for the door.
About forty-five minutes later the bell over the hardware store door rang and a lady of about forty, wearing a green suit and carrying a brown attach^ case walked in. She approached Macky with a pleasant smile. "Mr. Warren?"
Macky said, "Yes, ma'am, what can I do for you?"
"Mr. Warren, I'm June Garza from Aetna Insurance and your wife said that you might be interested in hearing about our new three-an done policy… and I wondered if now might be a convenient time?" The phone rang. "I can come back after lunch if you like…"
Macky was caught. "Uh, well… excuse me, Mrs. Garza… let me get that." He picked up the phone. Norma was on the other end.
"Macky, is she there yet?"
Macky smiled back at Mrs. Garza. "That's right."
"Now, before you get mad at me, I just wanted you to know her husband is a diabetic and lost his left leg and is probably going to lose the other one somewhere down the line."
"Yes, well, thank you very much."
Norma continued. "And her mother-in-law has had three strokes and is on very expensive high-blood-pressure medicine. And one of the reasons she has to work today is because they didn't have insurance."
"All righty, anything else?" He pretended to be writing down a list of things.
"I know you're mad at me… but…"
Macky tried to sound pleasant. "That's correct."
"Don't take it out on her. Just come on home and take a gun and kill me, shoot me in the head, put me out of my misery."
"Thank you, I'll be sure and do that. Good-bye, Mrs. Mud."
Macky wound up buying two home-owner policies, one for them and one for Aunt Elner.
If a stranger walked down the street past the barbershop in Elmwood Springs on Saturday afternoon and glanced in, he would see a group of middle-aged, gray-haired men sitting around chewing the fat. But if you were one of the men inside you would see six friends you had grown up with, not old men. Doc didn't see the wrinkles on Glenn Warren's face or notice that his neck had turned red and sagged with age or the wide girth straining his suspenders to the breaking point. He saw a skinny boy of seven with lively eyes. They were fixed in one another's eyes as the boys they used to be. When Doc looked at sixty eight-year-old Merle he saw the blond boy of ten he used to go swimming with. And to all of them, the balding man in the short sleeves with the little potbelly was still the boy who scored the winning touchdown that won the county championship. There wasn't a secret among them. They knew one another's families as well as they knew one another. Their wives, now plump gray matrons in comfortable shoes, they still saw as the pretty dimpled girls of eight or twelve that they had once had crushes on. Since they'd all grown up together, they'd never had to wonder who they were; it was clearly reflected in each other's eyes. They never questioned friendship; it was just there, like it had been when they were children. They had all been at one another's weddings.
They'd shared in all the sadness and happiness of one another's lives.
It would never occur to them to be lonely. They would never know what it was like to be without friends. They would never have to wander from town to town, looking for a place to be; they had always had a place to come home to, a place where they belonged and where they were welcome. None of these men would ever be rich but they would never be cold or go hungry or be without a friend. They knew if one died the others would quietly step in and their children would be raised and their wives would be cared for; it was unspoken. They had a bond.
Small-town people usually take these things for granted. As a certain young man named Bobby Smith was to find out for himself that year.
On January 3 Dwight D. Eisenhower was sworn in as the president of the United States and Tot Whooten was not happy about it. She said, "Just my luck. The first time I take the trouble to vote and my man loses."
On January 21, Neighbor Dorothy and Mother Smith traveled all the way up to Kansas City to welcome Harry and Bess Truman back home to Missouri. They stood in the crowd at the station along with ten thousand other people and waited for the train. It was an hour late but they were there as Harry and Bess arrived and the American Legion Band played the "Missouri Waltz." It was hard to realize that Harry would no longer be in the White House but, as they say, time marches on. Yet, even though other things in the world may have changed, The Neighbor Dorothy Show remained the same. She still had her same loyal audience, who would no more think of missing her show than not having their first cup of coffee in the morning.
February 19 was a cold, wet, windy day in Elmwood Springs. Dorothy had just finished her last Golden Flake Flour commercial and was rather circumspect and subdued. As the show was ending she said, "You know, so many of you have written in over the years and asked me what is the best thing to do for a blue mood… and asked if I have ever been in a blue mood, and yes, you can be sure I have. I can only tell what helps me and that is baking. I can't tell you how many cakes I have baked over the years, how many cups of flour I have sifted, how many cake pans I have greased, all because there is something about baking a cake that gets me out of a mood, and so I'll just pass that on for what it's worth. Speaking of that, you all know I've been a little blue lately, missing my children, but I feel so much better today and I'd like to share a letter with you we got from Bobby yesterday…
Dear Mother,
Since you gave out my address over the radio, you would not believe how many cards and letters and other good stuff has come my way. Please thank them all for me and the rest of the guys. A lot of these guys don't get mail and they are getting a big kick out of reading mine and helping me eat all the cookies, fudge, and cakes that have made it all the way to Korea. Most of the guys in my company are from big cities.