The Avesta, Volume 21, Number 2, Summer, 1942 Page: 21
36 p. : ill. ; 30 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Be a brave girl. Take Baby and Sis
and run to Miss Minnie's."
Clutching the startled and disar-
ranged baby on a hip and dragging
the terrified Sis along by her hand,
Ethel ran. When the children were
out of the house, Rivers got his
straight razor out of the drawer
where he kept it and quietly cut
his throat.
The men who got there first said
they had never seen so much blood
outside a slaughterhouse.
That was the most dramatic thing
that ever happened in our commun-
ity. People flocked to the double
funeral, and for months the murder-
suicide was talked to the exclusion of
all other topics. I remember the fun-
eral vividly: the only ones of all the
community who were not there were
the little Rivers girls. Lolly had
wealthy relatives in Oklahoma, and
they'd taken the kids away the day
after it happened.
I remember being led to Rivers'
coffin by my mother. Strongly re-
pelled, I was pulled on by morbid
curiosity to look down on a dead
face. In that moment I stood trans-
fixed. I heard my mother whisper to
Miz' Ballard, "Doc's a marvel. Mak-
in' him look so natural after all that
loss of blood."
Rivers didn't look natural to me.
He looked dead, and I was horrified,
but the spell was broken by my
mother's whisper, and I moved on,
clutching her rough hand and wish-
ing passionately, above a very sick
feeling, that I hadn't looked.
I suppose it was a sad thing; cer-
tainly it was tragic, but more than
that it was dramatic. It affected the
community intensely. I believed that
my novel could be woven around its
differing effects on different people.
I'd talk to them, and let the plot
take shape as I worked.
At Dallas there was a wait be-
tween buses. Remembering how bad
the service had been, I loitered too
long over coffee and a magazine and
got back to the station ten minutes
after my bus was gone. The night
bus was too late; I'd wait until
morning.
Seattle was almost as I had re-
membered it. Almost, but there was
a new court house, and a new resi-
dential section was spreading out
from the west side. The old Van-
nintine dry goods house still had the
name "Frank Vannintine" painted
on the red brick facade, but the new
owner was a brisk young man named
Smith, with a dime store line and
three high school girls for clerks.
It was to my own father that I
mentioned first the thing thatbrought me back. "Dad, you re-
member old man Rivers-"
"Sure." We were eating and it
made a good table topic, although
Mother looked pained when Dad
launched out on the subject.
"Do you have to talk about that
awful murder at the table, John?"
My father gave grave attention to
the proper buttering of an over-sized
roll. "In my opinion, there was no
murder to it."
"John Welby, do you mean to
sit there and deny, after all these
years, that Tom Rivers didn't delib-
erately kill his wife?"
"He killed her, yes. Deliberately
-no! I knew Rivers ten years, and
I liked the man. He wouldn't have
hurt a kitten. He was a bad farmer
and a bad manager, I'll grant; he d
a sight rather be reading a poem than
plowing a furrow, but he had a fine
mind. That Lolly was a shrew-
nag, nag, nag, that was her daily
occupation. She'd have driven any
saint crazy and she drove a man who
was naturally gentle and kind to
commit a terrible act, but I wouldn't
call it murder. Tom's hand lifted
the dipper that killed his wiie, but
he didn't aim to kill-he didn t aim
to hurt her."
"John Welby, are you trying to
excuse that killing?"
"Killing ain't rightly excusable,
Mother, but if ever a man had pro-
vocation, aye, justification even, 'i om
Rivers had it. You know yourself
that when they came here she was
forever at him, not minding that
they were in company. Her and the
younguns were always starving and
in rags, and Tom was too lazy and
worthless to do anything about it,
to hear her tell it."
Author
NaDeane Walker has written only
four or five short stories, but her writ-
ings evidence the skill of a seasoned
tvriter. "Ticket to Seattle" is one of
those rare stories which break away
from a set pattern. Having neither
main characters no- plot, it is about
something which was not a story-
only life. Her skillful handling of dra-
ma:ic details and her terse, clear-cut
analyzation of characters and situa-
tions are fully demonstrated by the
three contributions appearing in this
issue of the Alvesta: her staunch de-
fense of modern art, an article, and the
two short stories, "Eleven-Fifteen" and
"Ticket to Seattle.""Well, John, you know it was
true they were dirt poor, and Lolly
had been used to better. I remember
well that I gave her a pair of Luke's
shoes for her biggest girl just a while
before it happened. They were sizes
too big for her, but the poor child
hadn't a shoe to keep her foot off
the ground, and Lolly was proud to
get them.
"The worst thing about what
Tom Rivers did was the way it hurt
his innocent children. I'm sure little
Ethel could never have got over it.
It must have ruined her life."
We talked of other things then,
until my father was reminded of a
news item recently gleaned at the
cross-roads store. "Old Doc Winston
is dead."
'"That thirst ailment finally carry
him off?"
"They said he died on a roaring
drunk. They're shipping him back
to be buried here."
My mother remarked that she was
not one to speak ill of the dead, but
the grim way she shook her head at
the mention of old Doc expressed
the unanimous opinion of the "de-
cent element' about the late Doctor
Winston.
"He could have been a big doc-
tor: his early career was so prom-
ising." That was the worst indict-
ment.
"We were talking about the Riv-
ers killings a while ago," my father
spoke slowly; "I remember that Doc
Winston was one of the first to get
there after it happened. He pro-
nounced Lolly Rivers dead and
closed her eyes; he pronounced Tom
Rivers dead and sewed up his throat,
and then he shaved Tom's face with
the same razor that ended his life.
"There was a bunch of us men-
folks gathered in the room, and none
of us are the kind to faint at the
sight of blood, but we later agreed
that the remarks Doc made at the
time were hardly fitting to the oc-
casion or a credit to his profession.
'Hold still, old boy,' he'd say to the
corpse, 'You've got no call to fear a
razor now.
"He was probably half drunk
then," my mother offered.
"No, as I remember it, the guz-
zling didn't start till some time later.
I got the impression that he talked
that way to cover up the fact that he
didn't like his job. He was jittery
and nervous; looked downright pale.
I guess it was hard on him. He hadn't
been practising long, and that was
his first case like that. Tom had been
his friend, too.
"John Ballard told me once that21
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North Texas State Teachers College. The Avesta, Volume 21, Number 2, Summer, 1942, periodical, Summer 1942; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2105649/m1/23/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.