Round two - the Carter County pharmaceutical higher power...

Ardmore, Oklahoma is in Carter County. When I was released from the hospital after my birth, my parents took me home to Carter County. Despite this, when I grew older, my Daddy always warned me against the place. It is dangerous there, he said, lock your doors when you cross the county line. My experiences to this point had only proved him right.

I have been professionally treed only three times as my life and one of those times was in Carter County. Once, in the hill country just inside Carter County, I emerged from my car pulsing the authority of the State of Oklahoma only to be met by the biggest Goddamned TURKEY ( and I am talking the living, breathing, Thanksgiving-type of Tom fucking TURKEY with a lengthy wattle and a prehistoric wingspan) I have ever laid eyes on. Less than a minute after I was on his territory, I knew I had made a tactical error. "Big Tom," as I have always thought of this particular turkey, came at me hard and fast, beak distended, beady black eyes focused and huge wings beating the air. I had a co-worker with me that day and she was dawdling in getting out of the car. Running back to the shelter of the vehicle, I hollered "TURKEY" in much the same way as soldiers must scream out, "Incoming!" My co-worker stood stock-still, confused. Who wouldn't have been?

She got sorely pecked in Carter County that day. We both spent a half hour smoking in the car, while that larger than life turkey stalked us, staring into the windows and pecking the tires from time to time. But isn't everything in Carter County much larger than life?

I thought about that damned turkey as I crossed the Carter County line today, on yet another mandated professional mission. Two things were different than they were when I was young and working emergency services in isolated, perverted and turkey-infested places no one else knew of. First of all, I was meeting a blind, albino lawyer and felt fairly certain that there would be no turkeys there. Secondly, I was making that long, lonely drive while actually trying to quit smoking.

The Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) medication that my ex-husband gave me was dampening the urge to smoke, ingrained in me as second nature for the last 30 years, but it wasn't making me comfortable enough to sit still. Despite this, I smoked my last morning cigarette as required by my program, locked my makings in the trunk and set the cruise on 70 mph south.

I made it smokeless and, once there, was glad that my attention was focused by the blind lawyer, who delayed our conference for a half hour while she showed me her pictures of Spain, having only returned early that morning from her six-week stay there. She was dressed as I have always known her to be, in blue jeans and boots with a ballcap pushed down over perfectly white hair. She did not amend her conversational style when her client came in for my interview. It was "son-of-a-bitch" this and "goddamned" that as the interview proceeded.

Client gone afterwards, the blind lawyer pointed out in her typical direct and almost obscenely blunt manner that I would have perhaps been a more effective interviewer had I not had gum in my mouth as I talked. Hmmmm. Now, I don't have a history of being intimidated by this particular lawyer. I didn't bow before her scathing defense of a rape allegation brought many years ago before the Carter County District Court on behalf of a mentally retarded deaf girl who claimed oral sodomy by a County Supervisor who just happened to be her foster father. Smokeless, I wasn't about to take any shit from the blind lawyer now.

I'll have you know that I am trying to quit smoking and that "gum" was the medication I am using.

I hadn't said those words to anyone. As with all my failings, complexities, pains and tears, I kept it to myself. It felt funny to say the words. I should have said I was cutting down on my smoking.

The blind lawyer's reaction was instant and unexpected. She went from distant and arrogant in the blink of an eye: I did that a couple of years ago. It was awful but I did it.

What was I supposed to say to the woman who had just moments before been my long-time, comfortable adversary? I didn't have time to ponder my own response before she began peppering me with lawyerly questions. I found myself abandoning my own distance and answering her, a sudden, willing witness who needed the information and, most of all, the experience.

The blind lawyer knows everyone in Carter County, including the pharmacist at the local Wal-Mart. After a couple of phone calls interspersed with more questions from her and answers from me, I was sent off somewhat bemused to see the pharmacist.

I found no way to identify the Wal-Mart as being specific to Carter County. There was no sense of menace about it and the older lady pharmacist was easy with me as she pointed out that I was using the wrong dosage of the medication that was supposed to make it easier for me to slowly ease away from the habit that seemed only a few days ago to be a inseparable part of my soul.

Like the lawyer, the pharmacist was efficient. I quickly found myself $40 lighter and in the car, wondering if it could be true. Could I have lunch, drive a hundred flat and endless miles across the nondescript winter prairie and not smoke? Was it even possible?

The new dosage worked and, smokeless, I made it home. The Goddess of my willpower has always been elusive, more captured by the concept of absence and remission than present recovery. Ironic, huh, that for a single afternoon, the dangers of Carter County receded just enough to give way to my pharmaceutical higher power? Living one simple moment at a time, I ain't asking no questions....