This is the original unedited version of the first chapter of my partner's mystery-thriller. He has fabulous ideas, but hasn't quite grasped the mechanics of writing. Together, we created a great story. Click The Day of the Rose book cover to go to the final version of this chapter.
The Day Of The Rose
by Larry Hobson
It was May 30, 1965, and I was at the train station waiting for the train from Kansas City. The sky was as black as the crude oil under the Oklahoma soil and the wind was blowing about 40 miles an hour. It had rained a few minutes before and the sky was just full of lightning. I knew by the looks of things that it would be just a matter of time before the sky would open up and buckets of water would start falling. I noticed a young woman standing with two small children, one in each hand and in her left hand along with the small child's hand was a red rose. The baggage handlers were getting the baggage carts really to receive the baggage from the train that was now due in. It was now 7:00 pm and the train was due at 7:10 pm. I went back to the company limo and had the driver pull the vehicle up to the side of the train tracks and wait. Looking down the tracks I could see the light on the front of the train about two miles down the track. The woman walked toward the tracks with the two children and so did about twenty other people waiting to either board or pick someone up from the train. As the train reached the station and came to a stop, people started coming off the train. I was waiting for my boss, Brian Roberts of Roberts Oil and Mining Co. He was president of the company and a very good friend of mine. My name is Dean Hobson and both our great grandfathers were very also close friends. About thirty people had now came off the train and the woman was still there looking at every person leaving the train. All of the other people had met up with whomever they were waiting on but myself and the woman. Just then Brian came off the train and walked to the limo. Our driver had gone to pick up the baggage and we both got into the limo and were waiting for the baggage. It didn't look like anyone else was coming off the train. A few minutes later a car drove up by the limo and two men got out and went to the woman with the rose. They were telling her something and what ever it was it wasn't good. The woman broke down crying and the two men took her to the car and she climbed in. I could now see Bill, our driver, coming with Brian's baggage and it was time for us to leave. I thought about the woman all the way back to the office wondering what had happened. After taking Brian home, Bill drove me to my car in the company garage and I left for home. I was still thinking of that poor woman at the train station. The only thing I could think of was that her husband must have been coming back from Vietnam. She must have got news he had been killed or something. There was always someone coming home from there and a lot of them came back dead. It was a bad war even if they said it wasn't a war at all. Just a police action they said. What a cruel joke. Here in the states people, including hippies everywhere, were protesting the war by burning their draft cards and the American flag. I hadn't seen anything like that before. I put my two years in the Army fighting in that so-called police action and had seen plenty of friends die over there. Then you come home to what?--people calling you baby killers, no thanks for putting your life on the line, no parades--just people filling the streets with hate in their hearts for men like me. But that's enough about that place. I don't even like thinking about it. Was the woman with two children at the train station waiting for a husband who had put his life on the line and wasn't coming back? Maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe I am just reading more into it than what really was going on. Maybe her husband had just left her and told her he was coming back and changed his mind or something. After all, the military usually sends someone to tell a wife when her husband was killed. Oh well, I had other things that I had to think of. I was in charge of the oil platforms over in the Middle East and had to leave tomorrow and fly to platform 9950 which was one of the company's newest wells. They had been having a lot of trouble with that well from the start. If it wasn't bad weather it was the help. I finally got home and by now it was pouring down rain outside. The word was out that there had been a tornado spotted in Ponca City which was about 60 miles west of here. The wind had picked up and the trees had limbs broken off. One of them was lying right in the middle of my driveway. I had to get out of the car to move it before I could even get my car in. Nothing like getting soaking wet, but I was ready for a nice hot shower any way.
