Do not call me. Do not write me. I do not want to see you.
Lois
When he went home that summer and told his mother what had happened, she did not say anything but he could tell she was not pleased and for some reason seemed to blame him.
He called Anna Lee in Seattle to talk it over.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with Lois. She’s acting crazy.”
“What did you do to her?”
“Nothing. I just told her I thought we should think about seeing other people for a while.”
“I see.”
“I can’t marry somebody just because Mother likes her.”
“I know.”
“I have to be the one to make the decision, this is my life.”
“You’re right, Bobby, you have to do what you think is the best for you.”
“Anyhow, I need to get out of here for a while. Can I come out there and see you?”
“Of course you can. You know you are always welcome anytime, and stay as long as you like. The girls would love to see you, and so would William and I.”
“Thanks, Anna Lee.”
Bobby was in Seattle with Anna Lee for a month. He went out with a few girls Anna Lee and William had set him up with and they had been fun. One pretty nurse was a lot of fun. But he always went back to his sister’s house feeling lonely and feeling like he had just cheated on Lois and his mother. One night around three A.M. he sat up in bed and broke out in a cold sweat. A thought had hit him like a ton of bricks. What if Lois had met someone else and he had lost her? He immediately went into a panic, jumped up, put his clothes on, and ran out the door to find a pay phone so he would not wake the entire house. He ran up the street; he had to get her back before it was too late. What had he been thinking of? By the time he found a phone his imagination had her already married with two children, even though it had only been a few months since he had seen her. He called her parents’ house and was so relieved to hear her voice and know that at least she had not married anyone else yet and he still had a chance. She did not hang up on him and listened to what he said about what a fool he had been and how he wanted to get married right away, how sorry he was he had put her through anything, and how he had never been surer of anything in his life. But after he had poured his heart out, there was a definite coolness in her response. She informed him that now she was not really sure how she felt about him anymore and now she needed more time to think.
More panic. He ran back to Anna Lee’s house, packed in the dark, left a note, and headed for Poplar Bluff. Now he had the drama and the conflict he had wanted but it was not like it was in the movies. This was terrible. He might lose her forever. When he thought he could not have her he wanted her more than life itself. She had a student-teaching job and two days later he was standing outside the school when she came out, hoping that just the sight of him would change her mind, but it did not. Of course she was more beautiful than he had ever remembered, more everything than he’d remembered, but it took him a long time to convince her that he was a changed man, that he was sure he would never doubt the way he felt about her again. He was shameless. He even had his mother call and plead his case. “Lois, it’s Dorothy,” she said. “I know you have to do what is best for you but if you care anything at all about this son of mine”—at this point she glared at Bobby, who was standing there—“although I don’t know why you should after the way he has acted, you better come over here and take him off my hands because he’s not going to be of any use to himself or anybody until you do.”
Finally he got her back and after all that, just like a man, the night before his wedding he wondered if he was doing the right thing after all and was it too late to back out now, all the things you think right before you jump off a mountain. But his best man calmed him down with these few words of wisdom. “You stupid jackass,” Monroe said. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to you.”
Yet the next day, after Mother Smith played “Here Comes the Bride” and Anna Lee and her three little girls started the wedding procession, he felt like he wanted to leap through a glass window and run. Then he saw Lois coming down the aisle. She looked at him and smiled and Bobby almost fainted when he realized that this beautiful woman was actually going to marry him.
Cecil Saves the Day
In 1956 Betty Raye had just had another little baby boy and was enjoying life as a wife and mother, even though they still lived in a rented house. Hamm was saving money to make a down payment on it and buy it. Everything was going along according to plan until, after serving only two years as state commissioner of agriculture, he found himself becoming angrier and more frustrated by the day with the way the small farmer was being ignored. He drove all the way to Jefferson City, the state capital, to have a meeting with the governor but was told, as usual, that something had come up and that he would have to reschedule. This was the fifth time this had happened. That day he walked over and stood outside the huge governor’s mansion and stared at it. It’s not all that big, he said to himself. That day he made up his mind. He was finally so fed up with not having any power to do anything that he decided to enter the Democratic primary for governor of the state of Missouri. Despite Betty Raye begging him not to.
It was not only Betty Raye who thought it a bad idea. Everybody tried to tell him he was a fool to think he could launch a gubernatorial campaign out of nowhere and with no money but he had made his mind up and he refused to listen. “Betty Raye,” he said, “honey, if you just go along with me just this one time, I promise you if I lose I will get out of politics for good. But I can’t give up without even trying.” All she would have to do is just pose for one picture with him and the kids, and after that she would not have to be involved and would never have to appear in public. He would do the rest.
What could she do? She loved him. So Hamm Sparks entered the primaries with nothing more than a good reputation with farmers, a name that sounded vaguely familiar, and a willingness to work night and day if he had to. He was convinced he did not need flashy billboards or fancy campaign headquarters with a staff of political advisers and so-called experts. He said his headquarters would be the back roads and small towns across the state. All he had to do to get his platform across was look people in the eye and tell it to them like it was. Tell them they needed someone who would be on the side of the veteran, the workingman, and the small farmer. “Why, there are smart people all over this state who can make up their own minds and not be led into the polls like sheep by some big-city political machine. All I need to do is find them and explain how they’re being taken advantage of by the big mules running the party in Kansas City.” This sounded good but after running up and down the state for over a month in a field of twelve hopefuls, he was running dead last. Most people in the state had no idea who he was and he did not have a snowball’s chance in hell of even making it through the primaries if he could not do something about that—and fast. He had already gone through their savings. He scrambled around and got some backing from a few friends but the kind of money he needed to get his name and platform out to the public was much more money than Rodney Tillman had. More than anyone he knew or had ever met . . . or so he thought.