A Texas Story
by CS Norwood
©1992, 2026 CS Norwood. All rights reserved.
The flat light of midafternoon washed the solitary lavender-clad figure almost as pale as the bleached brown dust she stood in. A lone crow cawed from his perch in the mesquite thicket at the end of the draw as two red and white speckled longhorns across the roadway stepped forward in unison, heads bowed as they cropped the sparse, dry blades of grass. None of them, however, seemed mindful of the old woman who endured the silence and tolerated the air of indifference in her usual manner. She stood with her head held unnaturally high, looking neither right nor left, but with eyes focused straight ahead on what may have been some far-off thought. Even the powerful Texas-sized jackrabbit that hopped in slow motion, kangaroo style, not ten feet from her side paid her any notion. In a world of butterflies, lazy buzzing bees, jackrabbits and longhorn cattle, Violet Sheldon stood alone and virtually colorless.
“It’s about damn time,” she mumbled flatly, as first the drone of the powerful engine and then the silver dome of the Greyhound topped the rise. She bent her knees and retrieved the blue flower-covered valise at her side as the bus slid to a stop in front of her, stirring a cloud of dust to accompany the noisy hiss and metallic squeak of air brakes and automatic doors.
As Violet gave herself up to the sleek beast, not even the jackrabbit poised motionless in the dry thistle took notice.
“Pardon me, is this seat taken?”
A slight blonde teenager in blue jeans and jacket, appearing to be wired directly into a yellow Walkman radio, lifted her eyes rather blankly at Violet’s question, then cast scornfully about at the dozen or so empty seats surrounding them. She shrugged her angular shoulders, focused straight through Violet’s eye sockets, and pinpointed somewhere on the other side of her skull.
“Be my guest, lady,” she clipped, and turned her head to stare at the blur of the roadside. At once the girl resumed her head bobbing and chin jutting that Violet assumed coincided with the musical rhythm emanating from the Walkman.
Violet Sheldon seated herself beside the silent, undulating girl and was, again, alone in the world.
“Dammit!”
The sudden expletive jarred Violet’s sweaty half-sleep. She moved her sore neck slowly and wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth. The highway sped by as she collected herself.
“Damn…lady, ya got any triple A’s in that purse a yers?” The teen drawled as she mashed buttons and snapped tiny compartments on the radio.
“I’m not accustomed to carrying ‘triple A’s’ with me.” Violet retorted as she smoothed some invisible creases on her dress.
“Well, that cuts it!” Teen snapped as she yanked the headset from her ears. Violet wondered how long this young girl would survive disconnected from what seemed to be her life support system. “What’m I gonna do for the rest of this bor-ing trip!?” The girl flung her head back onto the black vinyl of the seat in a gesture of total dejection.
“Well, we could talk…” Violet offered.
The round-faced teenager stared at her as if she had just dropped in form another planet. “Talk? About what?”
“Well…my name is Violet Sheldon. I’m from this side of Bronte. My house is just down that lane where I got on the bus. About a quarter of a mile…” She hesitated. When there was no response, she continued, “I’m on my way to see my sister in Dallas; it’s my birthday tomorrow. And Lydia—Daddy and I just called her Sissy, you know—Sissy always invites me to spend the day with her on my birthday. Sort of a little tradition, you know.”
Her words drifted off into silence, but when the silence continued and Violet was certain the girl’s life must be ebbing away, she prompted, “…and you are?”
“Oh, ‘scuse me. I’m Laurie Fallman. From San Angelo. At least that’s where my dad lives now. I live there too, with him. My mom lives in Fort Worth. I’m going up there to see her. I guess it’s kind of a coincidence. It’s my mom’s birthday tomorrow, too.” Laurie indicated a designer shopping bag wedged between the side of the bus and her feet. “I didn’t get her much. Not that it’s any big deal or anything…”
Laurie’s voice trailed off as she turned to stare at the receding landscape. Baked brown hills covered with wiry, tenacious honey mesquite and interspersed with prickly pear, yucca and dusty clumps of broom grass monopolized the view. Occasionally, behind the ever-present barriers of cattle fence and barbed wire could be seen deer grazing with the lean Brahmas or fat Herefords Texas cattlemen doted on.
“God, there’s nothin’ out here. What’s it like livin’ so far from anything? I’d be bored outta my skull!” Laurie emphasized the last three words but never looked at Violet’s face for her reply.
“Oh, it’s not so bad as you might think, my dear.”
“But there aren’t even any boys out here,” she whined.
“Maybe not so many now, but things were a little different here when I was a girl your age,” Violet said. “We’re almost to Abilene. Lots of cowboys in Abilene when I was a girl. Over in Sweetwater, too.
“Yeah?” Laurie was listening now, intently studying Violet’s face for the first time.
Oh, the wrinkles, Violet thought. She restrained the hand that threatened to call attention to the lines and valleys that marked her years. That’s all anyone ever sees anymore. If only this shallow little girl could have seen me when I was young. When I was the most beautiful girl this side of Dallas! And everyone knew it!
“My daddy named me for my violet eyes, you know.”
“Really?” The girl looked closer, peering into Violet’s eyes. “Hey, they really are violet, aren’t they!”
Violet, ignoring the girl—she surmised that Laurie was probably not very bright, and probably totally self-absorbed anyway—continued her soliloquy.
“I was the apple of my daddy’s eyes. He was rich too, you know!”
“Really?”
Violet paused again, lifted her chin, and looked through her bifocals at this monosyllabic adolescent. “Yes, my dear, really.” She was hoping her abruptness would serve to curb Laurie’s interruptions.
“He liked me much better than Sissy, or even Mamma for that matter! He was a wealthy man…owned acres and acres of land. Why, we had the largest ranch in Bronte, back then. Of course, when the war started, he had to leave. Well, when he was killed ‘somewhere in the Pacific,’ you know, well—I did believe my heart was going to bust wide open, and everything inside me would spill out on the ground!”
Her slight fist tapped her chest and then she flung her arms wide. Tears welled in her eyes as she spoke, and hard little lines tightened downward at the corners of her mouth. Almost immediately, however, she recovered with a sigh and a smile.
“When I was nineteen, Daddy bought a brand-new Packard automobile. It was the most beautiful automobile I’d ever seen. All black and shiny. Hum,” she laughed. “Why, I can still see my reflection in that car!” She rested her head on the back of the seat and closed her eyes to drink in the memory. “Those seats were the finest, plushest velour, too. Not this old vinyl stuff they started usin’ after the war!” Violet grimaced and slapped the seat covering in disdain.
“Did he let you drive the car much?”
Violet remembered the girl and shot her a withering look.
“Why, of course! Curtis Mahan lived down the road a few miles from us. Down in Tennyson, maybe you remember passin’ it before my stop?”
Laurie shook her head and returned a blank stare and half smile.
“Anyway,” Violet waved her off, “as soon’s my Daddy brought that car home, I grabbed Sissy, who really was a sissy, you know, couldn’t even drive a stick shift automobile, even though she was a year older than me, and we drove straight down to see Curtis.
“His daddy owned a very large ranch in Tennyson. The biggest spread there. Over 3,000 acres. Not quite as large as my Daddy’s though, you know. Well, Curtis Mahan was without a doubt the handsomest boy outside of Abilene and, mind you, there were some handsome fellas in Abilene. He was tall, dark as an Indian, and Oh! He was strong. I was so in love with Curtis,” she sighed. “Everyone said that we were the perfect couple. We were going to get married that very summer. I thought then that I was the luckiest girl in the whole wide world. I had my Daddy, and I would soon be Mrs. Curtis Mahan!”
Ecstasy of past memories lit her face and then suddenly vanished. After a moment, she continued, “I didn’t know it then, the day Sissy and I first drove that Packard down to see Curtis, but I found out later—Sissy was in love with Curtis, too. She turned his head. That little tramp…” Violet’s jaw tightened, her face became hard, her eyes narrowed, full of hatred. Her fists clenched until the thin, translucent skin of her knuckles seemed to disappear across the white bone beneath. Then, suddenly, she seemed to remember where she was, and that time had far removed her from the day she discovered the treachery of the man she loved and her own sister.
“Look, we’re in Abilene, the bus is pulling in.” Laurie, appearing grateful for the opportunity, interrupted Violet. “I have to use the john. You better go too, Mrs. Sheldon; it’s gonna be a long ride from here to Fort Worth.”
“It’s Miss Sheldon, my dear. I never married.”
“Oh…well. You might need a Coke or something.”
Violet emerged into the late evening glow of the once bustling cattle town. The vermillion orb of the setting sunbathed the streets and buildings in its peculiar light. The intensity of the summer heat softened with the setting sun and the bent, stoop-shouldered little woman pulled on her sweater.
The bus driver called a ten-minute stop. As Laurie ran first for new batteries and then for the lady’s room, Violet dug for a few quarters and deposited them in the Coke machine. It rattled and clanked, then delivered the dewy red and silver can with a vengeance. Never having trusted these things, she was certain that by the time the can had made its furious descent, the liquid was so shaken and jostled that its contents would explode. She held the can at arm’s length before she snapped the top open.
Violet stood in the fading light, sipping delicately, as a soft breeze ruffled the hem of her chiffon. The breeze carried with it the soft scent of sage and dry desert. Her eyes looked beyond the station, beyond the town, out across the barrens of the surrounding hills. These were the same hills she and Curtis had roamed wild and free that summer before the war. The wind rose and she could almost hear Curtis’s voice carrying on it.
Laurie returned presently, batteries in hand, examining the zipper fly of her jeans.
“That’s where it happened, you know.” Violet indicated with a nod toward the east. To Laurie’s puzzled look, she continued, “Up on that ridge. That’s where they found Curtis’ body. It was after the war…still in ’45. Curtis finished serving his country. He didn’t seem to be scared by the fighting like some of the other boys around here. It’s ironic, isn’t it? To come through an entire world war without so much as a scratch—They said his horse must have been spooked by a rattlesnake or badger or something. Plenty of both up there.”
The old woman and young girl stood silently together, gazing back across time, one caught in her past, the other not yet old enough or wise enough to understand that each heartbeat gone by was her past.
“Time to go, ladies,” the driver called.
Laurie spent the next few hours plugged in to her life support system. Violet dozed.
“Looks like we’re almost to Fort Worth,” Laurie remarked.
Outside their window, the night scenery had changed from occasional sights emanating from the low, squat ranch houses to spotlights on the facades of towering, overdone mansions sporting Greco-Roman columns and ghostly floor-to-ceiling windows. Soon the east-bound highway lanes increased from two to three, then four, and restless buildings began to crowd in upon one another in a hodgepodge of old and new, large and small, business and domicile.
“I’m sure your mother will be very happy to see you.” Violet spoke softly in the dimness of the bus.
“Yeah, like I said, I didn’t get her much. Just a paisley scarf.” She indicated the package again. “I hope she likes it. She was a 60s flowerchild, and I thought she might like paisley…sort of for remembering when she was my age, you know. So maybe she’s gonna like it.”
“I’m certain she will like it very much,” Violet said.
“I was thinking, while you were asleep and all, about what you told me. That’s really sad. I mean, about losing your dad and then Curtis like that,” Laurie said.
Violet bent her head and smoothed her dress.
“You said you didn’t know that Sissy and Curtis were in love that day, the day you drove the car over, that day before the war. When did you find out?” she asked.
Violet’s gaze focused again on nothing in particular, but turned inward, on the past.
“I didn’t find out for certain until after the war. It was the day he came home.” Her voice could not hide the bitterness she felt. “Oh! How I remember that day!
“By the time Curtis was discharged,” she continued, “Daddy had been dead for almost a year.
What with him gone, and Mamma not a very good manager and everything, we were already starting to sell off our grazing land. I was near total despair. Mamma’s heart was broken. She was almost as devastated as I was, but I still had Curtis, you see. And when Curtis got off that train in Abilene, I fairly flew into his arms. I could feel his arms around me, but Sissy had come with me to meet him, too, and even in Curtis’s arms again after what seemed to be an eternity apart…well, I was such a sensitive girl—I felt—I knew, that something was not right. Something had changed. Maybe it was that he just didn’t hold me as tight as before…something…I knew! I pushed him off at arms’ length so I could study his face, and then I saw it. He wasn’t even looking at me! There was nothing for me, nothing but pure longing in his eyes looking right past me at Sissy. They were actually holding each other with their eyes…
“‘Curtis! My darling! No!’ I looked from one of them to the other, and I can remember shoutin’ and blubberin’ like a little baby. I could hear the questioning and the fear in my own voice. I can still hear it. I wanted to shake him to pieces; I know I tried. My whole world had just ripped apart! I was literally pleading for him to pay attention to me, but it was no use. They were infatuated with each other, irreversibly drawn together. Sissy tried her best to explain it to me later, to say how so very sorry she was…they couldn’t deny their true love for each other. What could I do…”
She looked down at the shadows of the large blue veins that ran like highway routes across the maps that were her hands. Why do they look so much more ancient at night, she wondered and sighed.
The driver maneuvered the bus expertly into the Fort Worth terminal, and the doors swung open.
Laurie searched the platform. “There’s my mom! I’ve got to get my bag. Come with me to meet her.”
The three stood on the platform of the bus terminal exchanging pleasantries until the driver again called for Violet to board the bus. She had spoken kindly and glowingly to Laurie’s mother in praise of the girl’s company. She was polite enough not to mention her thoughts that the mother’s daughter was rather shallow and might benefit from at least a trial separation from her Walkman.
In the absence of her young friend, Violet moved to the window seat. The bus moved steadily through the empty streets, and she was settling into the rhythm of flashing streetlights and the glare of headlights from passing cars when something brushed her leg. With a start she realized that it was Laurie’s package—her birthday present for her mother. She slipped the gold foil-wrapped gift from its designer shopping bag. The flawlessly wrapped box was tied together with ivory ribbon looped in the center into a perfect bow. Obviously, Laurie had had the gift shop-warped, Violet thought. The job was too perfect for something the girl would have done herself.
“Well, it will do no good to try to find your owner,” she said as she ran her fingers over the perfect package. “I wouldn’t have a clue where to start to find Laurie.”
Violet held the package on her lap and stared out into the passing night. She dozed.
“We’re here, Ma’am.” She felt the driver’s hand gently touch her shoulder.
“Oh! Yes. We are in Dallas, aren’t we?”
She collected her things, her sweater, purse, blue flower-covered valise, and the designer shopping bag containing the perfectly wrapped paisley scarf, then stepped into the damp coolness of the Dallas night.
Violet left the terminal and walked the block-and-a-half to the Ardmore Hotel. There she roused the disgruntled desk clerk and registered for two nights. The dim, shabby elevator lifted her and all her belongings to the second floor and Room 210.
The room was stale and stuffy and smelled slightly of cigarettes and old wine, but Violet had become accustomed to it over the years.
She sat on the edge of the broken-down mattress with its stained bedspread rumpled beneath her and rested a moment.
“I need a bath,” she mumbled. Wearily and with an effort, she forced herself into the bathroom.
After she had adjusted the water to a steamy temperature, she returned to the bed and removed her lavender chiffon. She left her slip on as she laid the dress across the foot of the bed. Suddenly, her attention was again drawn to the designer shopping bag. She removed Laurie’s mother’s birthday present and lay it in the center of the dingy mattress. It looked so out of place — almost glowing in the shadowy room. Violet stood staring at the package for a few moments, then padded on stockinged feet into the bathroom and turned the water off.
She returned to sit on the edge of the bed and placed the present on her lap.
“I am so tired of being alone,” she whispered and then, as if speaking to Laurie, she said:
“You know, Sissy doesn’t really live in Dallas. Actually, I don’t know where Sissy lives. Hum, I don’t even know if she’s still alive. I think she is…I believe I would have felt it somehow…if she had died.
“Every year on my birthday, I come back here, to this same shoddy, dump of a hotel. You’d think they’d remember me here, but they don’t.
“Why do I come here?” Her fingers played across the satiny softness of the ribbon as she looked to her side, as if she were again seated beside Laurie.
“Because…I suppose I have to keep up appearances…the neighbors, you know.”
“You see, after Daddy was killed in the war, and after Curtis died up there on the ridge and Mamma died of her broken heart and Sissy ran off and vowed never to lay eyes on me again…well, I lost all the land. Everything except the house and garden. I was totally despondent, you see.
“Everyone blamed me for killing Curtis, and…and I suppose I did…” Frown lines creased her brow, and the corners of her mouth turned downward as she stared at the ancient carpet.
As if puzzled now, she continued, “You know, I remember wanting him dead. I remember that hunting trip up on the ridge. Sissy and Curtis were riding along the ridge together, and I…I stepped out on the rail in front of them. I slipped when I fired my rifle…I must have jumped out on some loose shale…everything was so fast. I was going to kill them both, you see. Curtis and Sissy. But the rifle fired into the air, and Curtis’s horse reared and he fell backwards, and his head smashed open and his brains poured out on the rocks. Sissy’s horse spooked and wheeled and ran back down the trail toward our campsite. I just stood there, holding my rifle and watching her on her horse and Curtis’s horse running off down the trail. Mr. Mahan, Curtis’s dad, pulled her off her horse when they stampeded into camp. He said she was in hysterics, and all he could understand was her screaming that Curtis was dead.
“He died instantly. I dropped my rifle and ran to him as soon as Sissy was gone. I can still see him lying there, just staring up at the sky. I kissed him goodbye and closed his eyes, you know. He belonged to me, after all.
“Sissy never told anyone what I had done, I suppose. She just left one day and never came back. I think Mr. Mahan guessed. He never spoke to me again and never looked at me again, either. People around town started pointing, and sometimes I heard them all whispering behind my back, but I didn’t pay them any mind at all, you know.
“I got lonesome, though, after they were all gone, so I started coming here, to Dallas, every year on my birthday. Used to, I’d just come here and find some company for a few days, you know…a gentleman friend. Now I just come here. People back home think I come up to Dallas because Sissy invites me for my birthday every year.”
With the faint sound of dripping water in the bath, she bowed her head, paused, and wiped a stray tear from her cheek, then carefully untied the ivory ribbon from the gold box. Gently she lifted the paisley scarf from the folds of tissue paper surrounding it.
“Why! It’s got violet in it, and shades of lavender, too!” she exclaimed, holding the shimmering scarf out in the dim light. Then she jumped to her feet, laughing merrily as she wrapped the perfect paisley scarf around her thin, bare shoulders. “Sissy, darling! It’s exquisite! What a wonderful birthday present! It really is true! You definitely are the most wonderful sister in the whole wide world!”
And in a world filled with streetlights, passing cars, honking horns, and wine-besotted derelicts, Violet Sheldon danced, danced, danced around the dingy room—alone again.
THE END