Not a word passed between me and Clete as we made our way west, away from Tulsa’s raggedy edge and into proper neighborhoods. Years prior, when Mama and Pop purchased the house where I grew up, our street sat on the lower boundary of town. Every residence there was spit-shine new at the time, but in the years that followed, bigger and grander homes went up further and further south, casting what Pop considered to be a long shadow over our respectable foursquare bungalow.

The newest bit of town had been dubbed “Maple Ridge.” It was to be a silk-stocking district where hardscrabble oilmen could build mansions befitting their brand-new fortunes and set about convincing themselves they were every bit as cultured as the steel and railroad barons back east.

My father, a shopkeep of respectable but moderate means, took each and every one of those mansions as a taunt. He set to convincing Mama we should have a Maple Ridge estate all our own, saying she deserved it, and needed something grand to ease the grief that had consumed her since influenza took my little sister, Nell, during the epidemic three years prior.

Mama, you see, was a full-blood Osage Indian, and as such had been allotted one headright—one equal share—of all profits earned from oil pumped out of tribal land. She’d also inherited her brother’s headright after he died in the Great War, and her own mother’s not long after that. Mama was a woman of substantial means.

A year earlier, and just ahead of the US government declaring that every Osage without a certificate of competency would need a white guardian to manage their money, Mama gave in to Pop’s wheedling and purchased a parcel of farmland from a Muscogee Creek woman at the southern edge of Maple Ridge. They commissioned a fine three-story residence soon after, all red brick and columns, and more mansion than house. Then, when that fool-headed legislation passed in March of ’21, Pop was appointed Mama’s guardian, and Mama lost what little voice she’d had in the project to begin with. Construction continued apace, with Pop in charge.

All that’s to say that while there were plans afoot for me and Mama and Pop to move later that year, the house where Clete dumped me off after the Two-Knock was the same one where I’d been birthed.

I tried my best to sneak in quiet. I truly did. But any hope I’d had of avoiding capture died soon as I bumped the umbrella stand in the hall with my bad hand. Hearing my howl of pain, Pop called me into the parlor, where he and Mama had been sitting. And I knew soon as I crossed the threshold that there was no way to hide the reek of Choc on my breath, or the ugly spectacle of my wrist.

Nothing I said could have helped my case, so I spoke as little as I dared, gritting my teeth against the pain while Mama looked sad and Pop paced the parlor floor.

The first thing Pop asked was who I’d been with, and if all I did with my free time was drink and get into heaven-knew-what kind of trouble. When I only shrugged, he said, “You’d best speak up now or you won’t leave this house on a social call until you’ve left it for good.”

So I mumbled, “Clete,” and Pop glared at me and asked why Clete hadn’t had the decency to walk me inside. To which I replied that he’d seen me to the porch but been too afraid to go further.

Pop paced and twisted the tips of his mustache for a long while, then asked me to tell him exactly what had happened. “I fell, is all,” I replied. “I wanted to see what the fuss over Choctaw beer was about, and after I’d had a glassful I got dizzy and tripped.”

Then he asked was it the first time I’d drunk alcohol, and I said yes sir and toed the flowers on Mama’s oriental carpet. Pop didn’t like that response, most likely because he knew it was a lie. So he said I should look him in the eye and say it again, and I never wavered once doing it.

Mama’s chair creaked. Pop gazed out the front window and told her to have the doctor come set my wrist. Mama stood up and went to the telephone stand in the hall without a word.

“I know your mother gives you money,” Pop said, staring out into the dark. “And I suppose it’s a woman’s prerogative to coddle her son. I’ll not tolerate sloth and foolishness, though. Starting tomorrow, you’ll work for me every weekday from the end of school until closing. All day Saturday, too. On Sundays you’ll attend church with your mother in the morning and spend the afternoon on chores of her devising.”

My stomach fell to somewhere below my knees as I felt my theretofore unappreciated freedom slipping away. But I held my tongue nonetheless.

“So long as you live under my roof,” Pop went on, “you’ll earn your keep.”

I mumbled that I understood, and tried not to look too ashamed when Mama came back and told me to go wash the stink off myself before the doctor arrived. “You reek of alcohol and sin,” she said. For she was a godly woman, though of the pragmatic sort. Then Pop dismissed me with a wave of his hand, saying, “This will never happen again, William.” And it wasn’t a question, either; he was telling me the way things were going to be.

I was nearly out of the room when Mama’s voice stopped me short. And I swear that when I spun about to face her, the corner of her mouth twitched like she was hiding a smile. But the twitch disappeared like all my pride had done, and in its place came a weary sadness that made me feel lower than pond scum.

“Chew some parsley from the pot on the kitchen sill, William,” she said. “I won’t have the doctor smelling that poison on your breath.”

Then I slunk away, arm pressed to my belly, bearing the burden of my punishment near as hard as the sting of Addie’s disdain.