A Work in Progress: The Gambler's Daughter Chapter 2
Faith in Both God and Water
Spoiler Alert
The Gambler’s Daughter takes place about ten years after the close of So Long As It’s Wonderful. If you don’t want spoilers, you might want to save this post for later. But honestly, it’s probably not giving away anything you didn’t see coming.
The Set Up
This is the working draft of a new Roosevelt County Novel about Maxine and her best friend Cleo, ten-year old girls growing up in Eastern New Mexico in the 1930s. Think Little House on the Prairie, but on the edge of the Dust Bowl and Pa is a gambler.
In these installments, I’ll pull back the curtain on my revision process. I’ll post chapter drafts-in-progress, complete with the typos, question marks, and random “add more here!” notes to self. I’ll explain what has me “stuck” in the chapter or what problems I’m still working to resolve.
For aspiring writers, I hope it gives you permission to write terrible drafts, and learn to work with them to make mediocre drafts, and then keep working until you have something great.
For fans of Roosevelt County fiction, you’ll get early access to my next novel and see how the story unfolds along the way. You’ll also be invited (begged) to give feedback, so stick around for the Issues section and comment button.
Chapter 2
The next morning everyone, including Daddy, crowded into the front seat of the pickup, but Claude climbed out again and ran inside. Maxine counted the seconds as her frustration rose. She needed Momma to have time to ask the other mothers about her birthday dinner before the worship service started.
“Great day in the morning,” Momma said after they’d waited a couple of minutes. When Daddy laid on the horn, Claude came running and squeezed into the cab behind Maxine.
“Had to run back for my Bible,” he said, and he held the good book up for everyone to see.
Daddy drove across the dry farmland holding a cigarette out of the open window. The Inez Methodist Church was six miles west of the Musick place. Like most of the region on the New Mexico-Texas border, Inez had been established by homesteaders about thirty years earlier. Men, and even some women, had proven up on quarter sections of land, digging wells and building dugouts to show the government they planned to stay. Inez had its own post office and general store, but the school had closed and the nearest bank was twenty miles north in Portales.
The Musick family’s first one-hundred sixty acres had been a wedding gift from Grandfather Tollett, who had arrived from Oklahoma to claim land in 1907. Daddy said it wasn’t much of a gift, more of a wasteland out on the breaks. Maxine gathered from overheard bits of conversation that her father felt insulted that the gift was only given to her mother; John Musick’s name was not on the deed. Momma said it was lucky he’d given them anything after they’d run off to get married. John Musick took a loan from the bank to buy the adjacent quarter section seven years later.
Maxine noticed Daddy drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Even getting near the church grounds made him twitchy. She could tell by the dirty dungarees cinched around his thin waist that he had no intention of going inside. Claude noticed as well. “I’ll stay out here with Daddy,” he announced when the pickup stopped in the dirt clearing in front of the church.
“No, son. You’ll go inside,” Daddy said. Claude shrugged his shoulders as if he had known that would be the answer. According to her grandfather, it was Daddy’s job to “raise the boys up in righteousness.” Maxine wasn’t sure what that meant, but she suspected it would include coming in to church with them. As Claude continued his argument, Maxine watched the congregants who had been standing and talking begin to file into the building. Even as they got out of the pickup, Maxine knew they’d missed the chance to talk to the other parents about her birthday dinner.
Maxine walked beside Gordon, who held hands with Momma, and Claude trailed behind. Maxine blinked seven times. The graveyard was on the North side of the white-washed one-room church house, and everyone knew if you looked at a graveyard, you had to blink seven times to avoid bad luck. At least that’s what her friends told her. They walked past the tall junipers standing like sentries on either side of the open double doors and proceeded down the center aisle. Maxine gave a small wave to Freeda Mae and Deanne, already seated with their families on the first and second rows. All three of the girls’ grandfathers had been founding members of the congregation, even donating portions of their land for the church to be built.
They filed into their usual pew, third from the front. With the exception of the pastor and his wife, the first four pews were filled with her kin. The scents of tobacco, coffee, and vanilla blended into a single, familiar bouquet that Maxine associated with the Tollett family. Maxine sat between her two brothers. Gordon, of course, sat next to Momma who was next to her brother Thurston and Grandfather Tollett. Grandmother Tollett did not attend Sunday services. Momma said it was because small-minded people didn’t want a Cherokee woman in their congregation. As one of the church leaders, Grandfather could have put up a fight, but Grandmother wouldn’t hear of it. She was never one to make noise or be the source of dissension. Maxine understood. She didn’t like to ruffle feathers either. In fact, she’d do just about anything to prevent discord, especially in her family.
The worship service followed its customary routine, but Maxine could not settle in. She giggled at her baby cousin Parthenia who blew slobber bubbles in the pew in front of the them. Twice Momma reminded her with a tug on the ear to face forward when she tried to make eye contact with her friends. The third time, it was Grandfather Tollett, with his narrow face and deep-set eyes, who looked down the row. Maxine didn’t dare turn after that.
After an opening prayer by Brother Greathouse, Deanne’s grandfather, they sang the hymns that they did most weeks: The Water of Life, The Fountain Free, and There is a River. Pastor Ludlam retold the story in which God brings forth water from a desert rock, and Grandfather Tollett delivered a fervent prayer for rain. It seemed to Maxine that the church gathered to affirm their faith in both God and water with little distinction between the two.
Pastor Ludlam invited everyone to stay for the quarterly conference following the fellowship dinner on the grounds and, at last, offered his final prayer and amen. Maxine wanted to hurry toward her friends, but she was trapped between her grandfather on one end of the pew and Momma’s spinster Aunt Chloe on the other. Parthenia reached out for Maxine to hold her, and though she didn’t want to be stuck with the baby, she didn’t feel like she could say no. She watched as Aunt Ella Bea and Uncle Lester made their way to the open doors. Maxine wished she could be like Gordon, who crawled under the pews to freedom.
“Momma—” Maxine said, hoping her mother would hear the request without her having to make it.
“I know, sugar,” Momma said.
Momma excused herself, squeezed past Aunt Chloe’s disapproving countenance, and made her way to each of Maxine’s friends’ families. Maxine could see from the parents’ nods and her friends’ smiles that they all had permission to come for dinner.
Grandfather Tollett left his post, opening the path for Maxine to get out. Now all she needed was to return the baby and meet up with her friends and father.
She found Aunt Ella Bea standing outside with Momma and Thurston.
“He’s not gonna like it,” Aunt Ella Bea said. Parthenia rubbed her eyes and reached for her mother.
“But when did that ever stop you?” Thurston added. Her seventeen-year-old uncle’s voice had an unmistakable tone of awe and envy.
Maxine guessed their conversation was about the birthday dinner.
Sure enough, Grandfather and Aunt Chloe approached just then.
“Father, the boys and I will need a ride home after the meeting today,” Momma said. “Maxine and her friends are going home early to have a birthday dinner.”
“You’re not letting her drive, are you?” Grandfather said with a wink at his granddaughter.
“John is driving them back to the house. The boys and I will stay for the meeting.” Maxine noted the tension in her grandfather’s jaw at the mention of her father.
“I don’t recall seeing your husband here this morning,” Aunt Chloe said. She and Grandfather exchanged a look.
At just that moment, Daddy approached their small huddle. “I’ve been out here,” he said.
“You came all this way, but couldn’t bring yourself to join the brethren in worship on the Lord’s day?” Grandfather said. “Is it your intention to disrespect me or only to bring damnation upon yourself?”
“Neither,” Momma said before Daddy could answer. By the smirk on Daddy’s face, Maxine suspected he was enjoying this. He was the only one. Momma was clearly irritated, though Maxine didn’t know who with. Her “tell,” as Daddy would say, was to tap her forefinger against her thumb. Maxine made it her business never to set Momma to tapping her thumb.
“What will you girls eat?” Aunt Ella Bea asked while twirling one of her red curls around her finger. Maxine recognized her tell for being nervous.
“Maxine started their dinner this morning,” Momma said.
“And we’ll finish making it together,” Maxine said. She was glad for the shift away from the subject of church attendance. By this time, her friends were gathered at her side.
“Ready girls?” Momma asked.
“Let’s load up,” Daddy said. Then he turned and walked away with Momma by his side. Maxine gave her grandparents a hasty wave, then followed her parents, skipping ahead of them with her friends. It was warm enough today for the girls to ride in the pickup bed, so Momma laid out a quilt to keep their dresses from getting soiled before she returned to the activities of the church.
As they pulled away from the building, the girls waved to their mothers and the other ladies setting up tables for the potluck. Maxine felt an uncommon rush of self-importance. Daddy spared no time driving away, and they laughed as the wind blew their hair in every direction. Momma’s quilt was a wasted effort, since a layer of dust covered their clothes and faces as soon as they pulled onto the road.
The Issues
The big one here is pacing. I develop the setting and introduce new characters in this chapter, but not much is happening. Is it enough to introduce the dynamics and build tensions and between characters? It’s only the second chapter, after all. Or did you feel like it was slow or (gasp!) boring? Be honest.