Chapter 20

The train arrived in Colorado Springs and we were greeted by Dewey C. Howe Junior Esq.

“Hello Paul, I’m Dewey Howe.”

“Hello! It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. It’s been a long time since I saw your father. I’m sorry that I couldn’t come to the funeral, but I couldn’t get away. Mother really liked your dad.”

“Father always told my mother that she was such a special woman that he wouldn’t leave her, even for Opal Anne O’Dell!”

We laughed together as I led him to the family.

“Dewey, this is my wife Patty and my son, Michael, and his wife Penny. This is Penny’s mother, Wendy. This is Michelle, Mick O’Dell’s daughter and her friend, Juanita. Pauli and her husband, Creighton, couldn’t make it. Influenza was running through her six kids. I assume that you’ve got all the arrangements made.”

“I do. I think everything will meet with your approval.”

Grams casket was unloaded from the train and onto a truck and the rest of us got into a couple of cars for the drive to the plain. The stories I’d heard led me to believe that the plain was out in the middle of nowhere and was virtually inaccessible, but in fact there were paved roads all the way.

As we drove next to the river course, Dewey pointed out the spot where Mick O’Dell had been killed by the men from the Pueblo Cattle Company. We drove down a road that was near the O’Dells gold camp where Rory, Raylene, and their son Roddy were killed.

The plain had been made a National Monument. It had a visitors center and parking for many cars. The old stone buildings and the hogans Grams had told us about were still there. We turned off of the main drive and followed a narrow road out behind the public area to a winding trail that ended between two hogans. We parked and a man in a suit came out of the nearest hogan, along with three others who were in uniforms of the National Park Service, to greet us. I found out later that the other men were also interpretive officers.

“Hello, I’m Martin MacClearen, I’m the director of the site.”

“MacClearen? I know that name,” Paul said, as his mind tried to remember.

“Your parents convinced my grandfather to help Doctor Pierce build the first hospital in Colorado Springs and along the way his wife Daisy Pierce introduced my grand dad to one of the unwed mothers at her home and the next thing you know he was a happily married man, with a ready-made family. Those people educated him and my father, and that meant my father was able to send me to college. Now I manage this national monument.”

“I remember Grams telling me about him,” I said. “She always wondered what happened to the men who delivered their furniture.”

“Well, Isaiah Cutler was the other man and he was sort of a father to my dad. He taught my father to read and write a little so when he did start to meet ladies, they wouldn’t think he was a worthless fool. Isaiah passed away only a few years after they delivered your grandmother and grandfather’s furniture. I still remember the look on my father’s face when he told us that your grandfather used to control that mule of your grandmothers’, Thumper I think was its name, by showing it his dick and making him jealous and depressed. Oh! Excuse my language, ladies.”

Then everyone laughed out loud because they all knew the story, then he took on a very serious countenance.

“Without Opal Anne and Paul O’Dell, my entire family would not have existed. I owe your family everything.”

“From the looks of the way you’ve kept this place up, you have more than paid any debt that might have existed.”

“Thank you. Let me show you to the burial ground.”

“Burial ground?”

“I can’t bring myself to call it a graveyard, especially being here amongst the remains of the Ute village. Burial ground seems to give it a more honorable or reverent presence. Let’s take Mrs. Opal Anne O’Dell home.”

My father, I, and Martin and his park rangers lifted the casket off of the truck and carried it the last quarter-mile to the burial ground. We set the casket down on the ground and looked around. The place was the most beautiful I’d ever seen, even greater than my dreams when Grams spoke of it. The valleys and hills that the site overlooked were amazing. I wondered why Grams had never brought us kids here on our trips.

And there, on this beautiful site, were the graves of my grandfather, his brothers, their wives and Rory’s son, Roddy. My father and I were overcome with emotion as we stood on what seemed like our family’s holy ground.

Michelle went to her father’s grave and knelt, Juanita’s hand resting on her partner’s shoulder. Michelle said a silent prayer over Mick’s resting place, before moving to fulfill her promise to Pauli that she would say a prayer over her father as well.

Martin reverently walked to my father’s side and spoke quietly so as to not disturb Michelle or Juanita

“Paul, we didn’t want to drive a backhoe up here and disturb anything. My grandfather told me that these graves were all dug by hand. I figured if it was good enough for them, it was good enough for Opal Anne.” As he explained, two of the rangers returned from a run back to the truck to retrieve picks and shovels.

“I agree.”

“Paul, none of the other graves contain caskets. Do you want this one to?”

My father thought for a second and answered, “No. She loved this place and the earth it was made of. She should rest in it.”

And with that word my father and I broke ground on my grandmothers final resting place. After we’d initially broken ground, the rest of the men joined in and soon a sizable hole was made. Dad then broke open the casket and he and I removed Grams body and reverently laid it in the hole. Everyone then gathered around for a moment of silence and then each dropped a handful of dirt into the grave.

It only took a few minutes to fill in the grave and place a wooden cross, made of two sticks we picked up off the ground, at the grave.

“Paul, the other wooden crosses are long gone, but we were thinking that there should be some sort of monument here. Visitors will never come here to see it, but it seems to cry out for some sort of way to tell a part of the O’Dell story. Would you mind if I came up with something?”

“Not at all. Let me see it before you do anything, and I’ll pay for the development and creation of whatever we agree to. I want this site preserved forever, regardless of the cost.”

“Not a problem, Paul. Your family still owns the land this National Monument is on and all access to it. The land grant from King Phillip remember?”

I nodded, we shook hands and then carried the empty casket back to the truck, loaded into the cars and backed down the trail to the narrow road, then drove back to the main parking area. We took a tour of the facility, walked down the restricted staircase to the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, and my father and Michelle actually straightened out some misconceptions that the interpretive rangers had. The story of the plain and the O’Dells would now be more accurate.

We stopped back in Colorado Springs to visit the Pierce Hospital and the O’Rourke Home. The Home still hosted pregnant girls and gave them a leg up on a better future for themselves and their babies, whether they kept the baby or gave it up.

We spent the night in a bed and breakfast that had at one time been the hotel my family had stayed in when they came to Fountain City. What used to be the livery stable was now a car dealership. So much change and yet the fingerprints of the O’Dells were everywhere.

During the trip home I was filled with a sense that the O’Dell name had begun to be passed to me.

Penny had caught on or about or before our honeymoon and was just a glowing example of pending motherhood. Over the past almost nine months we’d shared every experience that new parents can experience. Some were loving, some sexual, some were in anger or frustration. Some were just funny.

It turned out that pregnancy made Penny fart a lot. She would roll over in bed and let one rip as she rolled. I would laugh and she would pout, until I kissed her. After one very odoriferous blast, I kissed her holding my nose. She punched me in the shoulder. Hard.

One time, Penny was waddling through the house and she let out a toot with every step. Being the loving husband I am, I couldn’t stop laughing and mocking her and I ran through the house with her trying to chase me. With every step I took, I made a loud farting sound with my hand and mouth. She was so angry when she caught me that she demanded I take off my clothes and lay on my back, with her straddling me, for almost an hour.

But I have to tell you that bullets flying around your head; bombs going off; rockets flying in without warning; none of it was as horrifying as sitting in the delivery room, worried whether my baby would be born and be whole and all right.

The fear was temporarily replaced by blind rage. During one of our visits to her doctor, we were informed of the process of birth. Penny would be rolled into the delivery room, be given an anesthetic and knocked out until the baby was born and I would not be in the delivery room. Well that set Penny off like a bomb! An A-bomb!

“The O’Dell men used to deliver their babies and I’ve decided that we will not be much different. My husband WILL be in the delivery room with me and I will NOT by unconscious.”

“Penny, if that’s how it’s done now...”

“Mick O’Dell! If Paul hadn’t died saving your grandmother and the kids, he would have delivered your father,” she announced in no uncertain terms.

“Mrs. O’Dell that is just not how it’s done,” her doctor told her. “In order to decrease the chances of something going wrong, the mother must be under anesthetic. It’s settled science.”

“Settled science my ass!” Penny was not happy. “My husband WILL be there with me or we will go elsewhere for the delivery.”

“Where will you go?”

“There are other hospitals in the area. I’ll go to Meridian or Nampa or even Caldwell! I’ll find a midwife if needs be.”

The doctor took a breath and calmed down.

“Mrs. O’Dell. Penny,” he spoke in a condescending manner so familiar to doctors. “The birth process is painful and there can be tearing of the vagina as the baby comes out. You may be in labor for hours and hours.”

“Doctor Smith. Zachary,” my wife said echoing his condescending tone. “I know that. Mick’s mother and grandmother gave birth without the settled science and they and their children all turned out fine. So, are you going to do this my way, or are you going to step aside for another doctor or a midwife?”

The doctor finally relented and agreed to Penny being awake and to me being with her. I was going to have to scrub up like a doctor and wear a mask and gown and gloves, but I would be there. That made Penny happy and grateful and a lot more calm.

However, when the big day came, and it was time for Penny to deliver, I scrubbed up and got dressed and walked into the delivery room in time to see Penny fighting to fend off some guy trying to put a mask over her face. At the same time a pair of nurses were trying to restrain Penny’s arms in straps against the table.

I made my presence known, loudly, “What the hell is going on?”

Penny called out to me, “Mick, he’s trying to put me out!”

It only took three steps to get the anesthesiologist and restrain him. He struggled back and I was about to level the guy when the doctor walked in, trying to be in charge.

“Mr. O’Dell! Stop! What the hell are you doing?”

“This guy was trying to use anesthetic on my wife. Our understanding was that was not going to happen.”

“I changed my mind,” the doctor said sounding rather imperial.

With those words, Penelope O’Dell, wife of Mick O’Dell, granddaughter, and granddaughter-in-law, of Opal Anne O’Dell, literally jumped off the delivery table and took off after the doctor. The nurses who had tried to restrain her and keep her from harming herself, got black eyes and loose teeth for their trouble.