Act One

Nora Lynn Manning was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on 6 December 1941. Her parents, Arlene and Jay, were high school sweethearts who realized too late that they did not like each other all that much. Still, they chose to marry before Arlene began to show. Like so many hideously bad ideas, it was considered the “right thing” to do.

For Americans not named Jay Manning, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, one day after Nora’s birth, was an infamous event. But those Americans hadn’t spent the last six months working nights at a gas station and arguing constantly with a perpetually petulant pregnant wife in a crappy apartment near the stockyards by day; the experience exposed a hitherto unknown silver lining in the prospect of going to war. So, Jay took advantage of his family being at the hospital and enlisted in the Army on the 8th. Then he promptly died in a bus crash on his way to Basic Training two days after Christmas (he was the only fatality in the accident). Some people are like that; they simply don’t have the wherewithal to outlast the second paragraph. It’s why God invented bus crashes.

Jay’s death did not weigh heavily on Arlene; oh, it made her sad, but she was grateful that her lack of tears was explained by “shock.” She thought she was enduring it all very well. But a reaction to her lack of a “proper” reaction germinated in her mind. A tremendous guilt took, like cancer. And from the tumor, insistent little voices, barely audible at first, rose in pitch and questioned her humanity.

But before the voices shouted down rational thinking, there was reality and an infant to deal with. Even after her mind turned on her, Arlene had sticktoitiveness. She moved in with her folks and got a Rosie the Riveter type of job. She also took stenography courses in the evening with an eye on earning a living once the war ended and the men returned. Arlene had all kinds of big plans. But in late 1944, she began to do odd things, such as stealing pepper shakers from restaurants. And then you’d catch her behaving like someone persecuted by invisible insects, which is a fair comparison to the swarms of voices that filled her mind. Two months after VJ day Arlene took a dive off Steel Bridge into an empty gulch. Along with some seventy odd pepper shakers was a two word suicide note: “I’m sorry.” They were two more children murdered by doing the right thing.

Not quite four when Arlene died, Nora had only mental snapshots of her mother; all in black and white. But for a few years she had a happy childhood living with her maternal grandparents, Ethel and Tom Anderson. (Her father’s parents, the Mannings, kept their distance; word was they somehow blamed Nora for their son’s death; a sort of sin she had inherited from Arlene. Fortunately for us, they had moved to Kansas and rate no further mention on account of being assholes.)

The only problem with the Andersons was a consumption pyramid composed almost entirely of lard fried foods, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Raleigh cigarettes (they collected the coupons, which was something that Nora did later as an adult). But they loved her and perhaps the only good times Nora had in life were in their care. But Tom dropped dead from a heart attack at fifty-three when Nora was nine and Ethel suffered a stroke the next summer; it didn’t kill her (she’d beat on for another six years), but disabled her to the degree that she spent the rest of her life in the care of an older sister, who had no room for a child. This resulted in Foster Care because no other relative came forward to claim Nora.

Maybe it is unkind to disparage the institution of Foster Care, after all the next Marilyn Monroe has to come from somewhere. But there was once a time when fostering was how some people augmented their income. They would bring in as many kids as possible and collect cash every month from the state for each one and use as little as possible on the children. Nora spent five and a half years working as a slave on a farm, ostensibly “raised” by the Ollsens (who never had fewer than six Foster kids). “That’s Ollsen with two L’s”–was what Delores Ollsen told everyone, like it was something special. “That’s Cow Cooze, with three O’s” was Nora’s estimation of Mrs Ollsen, a pushy loudmouth who often took her pick of stuff that had been sent to the children. Mr. Ollsen hardly ever spoke and Nora believed (correctly) that he saw no difference between children and livestock.

There are some seriously fucked up kids in foster homes, and the Ollsens sure knew how to pick em. They had one named Royce, who was a year older than Nora. He attacked and raped her when she was thirteen, while she was alone in the barn, feeding the Ollsen’s horse Topper. After it was over, Royce told her to keep her mouth shut, or he’d kill her. That woke something very dark and cold in Nora. She arranged to be alone in the barn again a few days later and made sure Royce saw her enter with Topper’s treat bag. Royce took the bait and the instant he arrived at Topper’s stall she whirled and blasted him in the head with a horseshoe she had stashed in her coveralls. One shot was all Nora needed.

Royce lay there, unconscious, bleeding like hell; she enjoyed seeing that. Although she was slightly disappointed to see Royce still breathing, she figured that maybe some good could come from that down the line. As planned, Nora fled the barn, and after making double-certain no one was around, she dropped the bloody horseshoe down the well. She then made herself feel the filthy shame and pain that being raped had caused so she could whip up some tears to shed when she ran crying into the house and told the Ollsens that Topper had kicked Royce in the head (no way Topper would be in danger; they liked him better than the kids; probably checked to make certain he hadn’t chipped a hoof first).

Upon the conclusion of her perfectly executed plan, Nora ran into the pasture and began to laugh and laugh until she nearly peed. She made certain that she memorized every detail of her victory, the angle of the sun, the breeze in her hair, all of it. Nora knew it was destined to be one of the happiest, most important moments in her life; a definer that would forever separate her from the weak.

Royce didn’t regain consciousness for twelve hours, and he was never quite the same after that. He could still work but he’d acquired a stammer and one side of his face appeared to be lower than the other. Nora didn’t give a shit if he told, but figured he wouldn’t, all things considered. Anyway, he said he couldn’t remember. Maybe so, but he sure gave Nora a wide berth after that. Every now and again at the supper table she’d gaze at him until he finally looked up. She’d smile, wink and mouth “whammo” then spear something off his plate, whether she wanted it or not, because it was his cost for breathing.

Act Two

Nora had common sense, but she was not strongly educated. She could read and write (most of that won while still with the Andersons), but was never allowed much time to do homework (the Ollsens grudgingly sent the kids to school because it was one of the very few foster parent requirements). Nora was able to see herself objectively. She understood that she was pretty and clever enough to do a whole lot better than the Ollsen’s farm, thus she began planning to get away from them and the dusty state of Oklahoma (which had hardly been good to her) long before she reached her majority. Running away was no good without someplace to run to. Marriage, however, would be the quickest ticket.

She found a nice enough, cute enough fella named Joe Hazzard working at the neighbor’s farm. After a few months of one way, insincere yet convincing wooing on her part, Nora eloped with Joe on 7 December 1957, the day after her sixteenth birthday.

At that time sixteen was a legal marrying age, as long as you had permission of your guardian. The Ollsens eagerly gave their blessing because, well, they had become a little afraid of Nora. Although nothing could be proven, they eventually suspected her involvement in the Royce affair. It didn’t seem coincidental that the girl’s confidence and cheerfulness should have grown vastly immediately after the boy’s downfall. Moreover, there was something about Nora that made her uneasy to be around. You couldn’t threaten her with a damn thing because of a queer light in her eyes that dared you to try; and if you dared ask her about anything, she’d just smile and wink, all disturbing like. Always smiling; always winking. Since they weren’t any further evolved than livestock, the Ollsen’s smelled danger on Nora, so they let her go. Besides, Foster kids could be had by the gross.

Nora didn’t love Joe Hazzard because she did not believe in love. But, again, he was cute and nice enough, and provided her with a cool sounding last name. She was not going to be all in for anything for the long haul. Ever since she could remember Nora knew she would die young. The certainty was always with her; it never scared her and in times of pain it was a comfort. Instead of waiting for the other horseshoe to drop, so to speak, Mrs. Nora Hazzard meant to grab as much life as she could.

Nora figured she’d have to put two years into the marriage before she could run away. Age eighteen was a magicland in her mind, tantalizingly out of reach. Until then, history tried to repeat itself; Joe took a job at an all night gas station in Norman, Kansas, where they settled because his car couldn’t go an inch farther; Nora got an assembly line job at a textile plant. But instead of stupidly “catching pregnant” Nora insisted on birth control (later in her brief life she became a firm advocate of the pill, which was not yet available in the late fifties). She gave Joe a “Free Pass” as long as he “suited up.” The last thing she wanted was a permanent connection with anyone, living or unborn.

Then Nora’s stars shone kindly, if only in the sky just once. Grandma Anderson passed when Nora was seventeen. A registered letter from an insurance company contained a check for five thousand dollars. Somehow the loot had passed through many hands that would have snatched it, but there it was. All hers. Nora was dumbfounded and grateful that the mailman hadn’t come when Joe was home. A new plan was hatched; Nora was extremely quick to adapt.

A few days later Joe came home and found that Nora had left him a goodbye letter, a thousand dollar passbook account in his name and her wedding ring. The letter was nearly as terse as her mother’s suicide note, but the message was clear: “It’s been a hoot, hon–but forever is an awful long time to spend together.” Joe knew that this day would come and didn’t look too hard for his wife. Besides, he too had found her a tad uneasy to be around.

Nora recalled the advice some dead guy gave people about heading west and figured it was as good a plan as any. After spending five hundred dollars on a solid used car and twenty on a necklace with a horseshoe charm on it that she just had to have, Nora headed west in a rambling Route 66 sort of way.

Act Three

Nora fell in love for the only time in her life in 1960, at Charleston, Washington. She had run out of west to explore due to the Pacific Ocean getting in the way. She tried Canada, but they wanted to know too much about her, so she turned south at the border and headed toward the Puget Sound that she had found to be like an enchanted fairyland, compared to Oklahoma.

Anyway, the state of Washington was a good enough place to stop; the car was used up and she was down to her last fifty bucks– earned from picking fruit in Oregon. Nora didn’t know if she was still married to Joe or not–she neither took action nor was served because she was pretty tough to find–so, she figured she probably was. But it came in handy when she wanted it to. When folks got too nosey Nora told them her husband got killed in a bus wreck in Bum-fucked Egypt while serving in the Army. But few people got nosey with Nora, because of the uneasiness she could create at will.

She sold the car to a junk dealer for twenty five bucks, took a room in a converted great house that had fallen on hard times and won a job working at a hardware store all in one day. She met a young woman who worked at the store and who also lived downstairs in the same building. A fellow sinner, one just as capable of creating unease: her name was Kaaren.

“Why two a’s?” Nora asked, thinking about Mrs. Ollsen, while they were seated in the nearby White Pig tavern. Neither were of drinking age, but pretty young women always attracted male customers, so any pretty gal who looked close enough to twenty-one was welcome.

Kaaren smiled and struck a match on the bar top. She lit a cigarette and leaned close and whispered, “Cos I fucking say so–wanna make something of it?” Then she playfully reached out and tapped the horseshoe charm on Nora’s necklace. “This means something, right?”

“Maybe.”

“Sure it does–you wear it everyday. Nobody wears the same nothing necklace everyday unless she’s a nun.” Kaaren was raised a ward of the Catholic church and openly shared her opinions on the subject of nuns.

And for the first time, Nora told the Royce story. No tears, all laughter. She never once considered telling Joe, but she knew that Kaaren would understand. She knew that there would be that right person to tell it to someday. Someone who’d understand with humor and a singular insolence that you find only in the one right person for you.

“Good thing Mr. Ed wasn’t there–the fucker would have ratted–”

The bartender brought two glasses of wine that they hadn’t ordered.

“What’s this about, Earl?”

“Guys at the second table–like you don’t know…Sure’d be nice if you’d hit the goddamn ashtray once in a while.”

Kaaren stood, raised her glass to the guys and whinnied like a horse. Then without looking away Kaaren poured her wine into the bar towel bucket, much to Earl’s annoyance.

Nora laughed and followed suit. Yes, she thought, I told the right person.

Act Four

We have arrived at the part of Nora’s story that some of you will not like much. But we should hope that there will be people who won’t like what happens to us, after the good parts have been told, when our stories reach the mandatory “The End.”

Nothing much happened to Nora after discovering love, except for a life that contained more humor than pain. How does one properly convey the passage of fourteen years with words? Which symbols does one use to make the connection? Imagine seeing snow for the first time at twenty-one. Think about five hour laughter filled all-night conversations at formica tables in avocado kitchens. Imagine speeding across the sky when it was still possible to live forever and plenty of time to hold onto foolish dreams that you know will fall apart upon touch. Maybe those images are good enough to know the second half of Nora’s story.

Then came the day when something inside her—something that perhaps wanted to avoid the shabby years of analysis and regret–threw a switch that released bad, hungry cells, which multiplied swiftly and created something that was too late to do anything about when the doctor finally let the light in.

Act Five

The fact that death comes for everyone is the only thing fair about it. When death comes suddenly from a poor decision on the freeway, it can be viewed as merciful; when it lingers in white hospital halls, indifferent to the task, then death is an unfair, lazy, cruel bastard. A life may be lived low, but death shouldn’t slouch. Nor does it compare with a cat. A cat follows her nature, death has choices.

And so it was for Nora, who lay dying of uterine cancer at thirty-three. She figured that death had to be a guy. She named him Roy.

“Roy’s coming tonight,” Nora said to Kaaren. It had been hours since she had last spoken. But Kaaren knew she’d come back because saying “No” to an enema shouldn’t be a person’s last words.

“Hi there,” Kaaren said.

“How am I looking?”

“Like Peter Cushing.”

Nora smiled. That’s what she loved about Kaaren. “Fuck you.”

Those were her last words; much better, poetic, thought Kaaren.

After it was over, Kaaren fastened the horseshoe necklace around her friend’s neck. Nora had given it to her when Roy became a sure thing.

“I can’t keep this. Show God your medal.”