Oklahoma Wind, a novel by M. B. Baldwin. (continued) Chapter One .

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If you have any comments or questions about this story please visit our forum. http://pub2.bravenet.com/forum/161188529 OKLAHOMA WIND CHAPTER ONE In that tiny Texas town, on the Southern Gulf coast, everyone knew everyone else. If that wasn’t quite true, everyone certainly knew the Palmer family. The Palmers were the most prominent people in town, even though there were only three of them. Mr. Palmer was the Superintendent of Schools. He also worked with the Boy Scout troop. Mrs. Palmer was the president of the Ladies’ Auxiliary. Dolores, known to everyone as Dory, was their daughter. The family was affluent, but they were not, by any means, snobs. They were likable and neighborly. Dory was a truly beautiful girl. At sixteen, she stood five feet, two inches tall and was very slender. She had curves of all the right proportions in all the right places. Her hair was dark, thick, and long, almost all the way down her back. There were wild natural waves in her hair. It flowed freely behind her, a sort of materialization of the beautiful, wild spirit that was inside her. Her eyes were a striking green, and they sparkled like the water in a clear mountain stream on a sunny day. Her complexion was flawless. She smiled a great deal, and she loved to laugh. JoAnne and Damon were a conservative couple, definitely proud of their positions in life. They tried to raise Dolores well, but Dory rebelled. She behaved well if her parents had company, so friends and co-workers thought she was an ideal child. When people were not around to be impressed, there were terrible arguments between Dory and her parents. When there was something that JoAnne or Damon didn’t like, the two of them would join forces against Dory, or so it seemed to her. She was constantly defensive. Dory had the potential to be a good student. Even though she got mostly C’s, her teachers were aware of her ability. They spoke about it to her and to her parents. JoAnne and Damon spoke to Dory. Dory just let the whole thing pass in one ear and out the other. When everyone else had had their say, she voiced her feelings. “I hate school!” she told them. I really hate it, and I just don’t care. If I fail, it’s my problem, and I’ll deal with it, so just leave me alone!” With that she would get up from the dinner table, the setting for all family discussions, run to her bedroom, and slam the door. Dory had a job as a waitress in a small, local diner. Her parents tried to talk her out of taking the job. They said it was not respectable for a young girl from a family like theirs. She took the job anyway, and they tried to talk her into quitting. “I like my job,” she told them. “I won’t let you run my life. I won’t!” She got up and walked away from the dinner table again. That was always the way the scenes were played. The clientele at the diner was a mixture of regulars and truck drivers. The regulars were mostly lonely, gruff, middle-aged men. They came in to drink coffee by the gallon and to smoke cigarettes by the carton, as if they had no better way to spend their days. They liked Dory, and she liked them. They enjoyed talking to her and making her laugh and smile. She was their sunshine. The truck drivers couldn’t talk to her quite the same way the regulars did, but she was just as friendly with them. Her mere presence, her brightness, was enough to get them to overlook the bad coffee and greasy food. She was always cheerful, not harassed by the truckers’ existence the way some waitresses seemed to be. All the diner’s customers saw something in Dory that they could never mention to her, except—perhaps—under the cover of a joke. She turned them on. The strange thing was that they could never tell if this sixteen year old kitten was teasing them unintentionally or otherwise. Dory was friendly with almost everyone, but there was one small group of people that was particularly special to her. JoAnne and Damon, of course, didn’t approve of these friends. They said that these people had a bad influence on Dory. “You’ve never even met them,” Dory said. “You have no idea what you are talking about!” As usual, she gave them no chance to reply. They don’t love me, she thought. All they care about is impressing their friends. I’m just something among their possessions to be shown-off. But someday, I’ll be my own person. The sad part was that, to a large extent, she was right. Someday, I will be my own person. No one will own me anymore, but my friends will still care about me. Real friends always care. The opinions of Dory’s closest friends were very important to her. She was cautious about what she did socially because if she associated with the wrong people she might be shunned by the people in her own group—the right people. There were, however, boys outside the group who liked Dory, and she liked them. She said hi to them quietly in the halls at school so none of her other friends would hear or see. If the outside boys called her on the phone, she talked to them, but she made a point of keeping her conversations short, so her other friends would not call and hear a busy signal. If one of those boys asked her for a date, she said she was busy but maybe another time. She didn’t want to hurt them or chase them away, but she couldn’t let herself be seen in public with them. After they’d been turned down a couple of times, most of them would stop asking. They were nice, but most of them were younger than Dory anyway. She preferred guys older than herself. The guys in her group were older. In fact, the girls were older, too. Everyone else in the group was eighteen or nineteen. Dory was everybody’s baby sister, and she loved it. These were really good friends. They were like her because they didn’t care about respecting their elders. They didn’t care about the value of education. They all liked to laugh and smile and have a good time. Sometimes they drove to the city to look for fun. Their hometown was a small boring place. They took Dory with them, but not into the bars. They went instead to stores, and bought bottles, ice and plastic cups to take to their cars and share with Dory. They’d hang out behind the places that were closed for the night, in back alleys and deserted lots where they could make some noise, being careful not to get caught. These friends really seemed to understand Dory, and they really seemed to care. She had been taken into the group partly because of her problems at home. As a freshman in high school, she had dated Jerry Garret, a senior who was part of the group. A couple days after they met, she had trusted him enough to pour her whole heart out to him. He had listened to her, and then had told her, “I have some really close friends you should meet. You need someone to listen to you, to care for you, and I know my friends will. You’ll like them a lot, Babe, I’m sure of it.” He was right. Dory fit into the group with no problem. It seemed to be just what she needed. Counting Dory there were four girls and six guys. They guys were all very macho. They said they would never let anything hurt their girls. They were well built and attractive. They were independent, too, none of them wanting to become attached to any one girl. The girls accepted that. Going to bed with one of these guys some Friday evening was not an action of commitment. He might be with your best friend on Saturday. Each guy did have a favorite girl and vice-versa, but no one felt really obligated to anyone else in particular. The girls never worried about being “good girls”. It just wasn’t the way things were done. Dory never had any education of any kind about birth control. She knew she needed it not to have kids, and that was all. Her parents never talked to her about the facts of life, and she never asked them any questions. The girls taught her what they said was everything she needed to know. They taught her how to protect herself without seeing a doctor. She trusted them completely. The dangerous combination of youthful passion and carelessness was not an issue for these girls, so it was not an issue for Dory. They made it clear to her that accidental pregnancies were handled as easily as abortion without questions. For Dory, who liked children, there was a question, but she never bothered to try discussing it. What these girls told her she took to be the law of life. Dory was very good at being bad. She lost her virginity to Jerry, but every guy in the group had her before a week went by after that. They really liked her. She always said yes. To Dory, it was an unbeatable feeling to be held and touched. It meant that a person really cared. She thought it was beautiful how everyone in the group really cared for everyone else and no one was afraid to express it. To be continued... Copyright, M. B. Baldwin, All Rights Reserved.