Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

Doris Mae found herself drawn to him. Being with George seemed safer to her than where she was. He had a pretty good job as a truck driver, and that meant stability to her.
    George Light was her ticket out of a home where her life was totally miserable. Doris was tiny and slender, and she had a face like a bruised pansy. She had no education, no skills, and clearly no talent at all about judging men. George was nicer to her when they were dating than any men she’d known so far, and she linked her fortune to his.
    Despite her frail body, Doris Mae was soon constantly pregnant. She bore five children in rapid succession. When George was in jail—a frequent occurrence—she and the children lived on welfare payments; when he was out, she often served as his punching bag. If she had felt trapped before, Doris Mae was really trapped now.
    Nobody knew exactly why, but in 1970 George packed up his family and headed west to the state of Oregon. Maybe things were getting too hot for him in Illinois. Their trip was reminiscent of desperate families escaping the Dust Bowl in the thirties. They had barely enough money for gas and baloney sandwiches along the way, and no money at all to rent a house when they reached their destination.
    Salem, Oregon, in the fertile Willamette Valley, looked like paradise in the spring and summer, and George assured Doris Mae he would find them housing. His selection of a home was expedient and economical, if not luxurious. He spotted a deserted farmhouse near Salem on the Powers Creek Loop Road. It was a two-story structure, with a sagging porch, broken windows, and a yard overgrown with weeds. When he peeked in the windows, he deduced that it had obviously been empty for a long time.
    George kept his ears open as he drank a beer at a local tavern, and with careful questions, he found out the farmhouse was owned by someone who lived out of state and never came around. He smiled when he heard that, and he soon moved Doris Mae and their five children into the abandoned house.
    The old car that had barely gotten them to Oregon soon died. George parked it over an abandoned open well so the kids wouldn’t fall in. Doris Mae was discouraged when she surveyed the creaky old house, but her husband told her they would have to live there until he made a stake.
    She had lived in a dozen or more places since their marriage and this leaking farmhouse was just another in a string of dumps. She put cardboard over the windows, stuffed newspapers in the cracks where the wind whistled through, set out pans where the roof leaked, and tried to make the best of it. It was kind of pretty outside by the grove of fir trees, and she noticed there were cherry trees that might blossom in the spring. Maybe she could even start a garden if they stayed that long. But they never stayed anywhere long, so she didn’t count on it.
    George got a job in the lumber mill in the hamlet of Molalla. It was twenty-four miles away, but he got a ride to and from work from a generous neighbor. The money from his mill job wasn’t bad and he could have taken adequate care of his family—except that he spent money for liquor first and groceries second.
    George Light was not a man who became cheerful and amenable when he drank. Not at all; he was a mean drunk. Doris had long since learned to dread the sound of his footsteps after he’d lingered at the tavern. She weighed 95 pounds, and George weighed 160, and if she said or did the wrong thing, she could expect a new crop of bruises or a black eye that no amount of makeup would cover. It was a way of life for her, and she did her best not to irritate him.
    She enrolled their three older children in the closest grade school and spent her days with the two babies, one of whom was only a few months old. She lived a lonely and solitary life. About the only time she got out to talk to people was when she shopped at the Lone Pine store for groceries.
    And then a Christmas Eve visitor changed the direction of Doris Mae’s life, not to mention George’s.
     
    Larry Light, thirty now, had been recently paroled from prison after serving almost eleven years. His parole papers stipulated that he was not to travel outside the state of Illinois, but he ignored that edict, figuring that no one was going to chase him all across the country. He decided to surprise his brother and sister-in-law and join them in Oregon for Christmas 1970.
    Laden with presents and several fifths of whiskey, Larry