Verna went out to feed the chicks. Eight A.M. was a little later than usual, but she had stayed up last night ironing, first Grover's uniforms and khakis, then the boys' clothes, with a little starch for the shirts. And as she ironed she had worried. Why hadn't Grover met her after the movie? Why hadn't he come home? Was he with another woman? In their more than thirteen years of marriage, he had stayed out all night like this only once. It had hurt her feelings terribly, but she had said nothing. Where is he?

It was a quiet Sunday morning. This whole May had been a bad month for tornadoes. The air was getting sultry as Verna stepped off the back porch and onto the gravel path that led to the garage door a few feet away. Ten years ago, when construction on the house had begun, this had been just a big field, with a farmhouse in the distance and one other house, newly built. Now, in 1933, Grover and Verna's house was surrounded by others, part of a neighborhood. It even had a paved street and city water.

Verna noticed that the padlock on the garage door was unlocked and that the door was ajar, but she couldn't remember whether or not she had closed it the day before. It didn't matter. There wasn't anything inside worth stealing. As she swung the door open, she could hear the baby chicks cheeping.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark. Then she saw Grover lying on a makeshift pallet on the floor, his blue coat folded neatly under his head.

"Why . . . honey, did you sleep all night out here?" she asked.

Grover didn't budge.

As she kneeled down and gently shook his shoulder, his head lolled to one side and saliva spilled from the corner of his mouth.

In shock, Verna ran next door and told the neighbors. Then she rushed back to the house, woke the boys up, and told them straight out that their father was dead.

It must have been the neighbors who called the fire station where Grover worked, Engine Company Number 11, and at 8:10 the station called the police. In no time Verna's back yard was filled with people.

Assistant Fire Chief L. J. Bullock, County Investigator Jack Bonham, and an unidentified third official arrived at the scene and conducted an investigation. Then the body was removed to a funeral home.

The next morning, the front page of the Tulsa World announced: "Mystery Shrouds Fireman's Death." The article stated that Grover F. Padgett, for eleven years a member of the Tulsa fire department, had been found dead under mysterious circumstances in his garage. Grover's car "was locked and the motor not running, which eliminated monoxide gas as a cause of the death. There was not a mark upon the body to indicate violence . . . [and because] the man might have taken poison, a thorough search was made of the premises for some container in which it might have been carried. None was found. Also the physician who examined Padgett pointed out that there were no traces about the man's mouth to indicate that he had poisoned himself."

Later that same day, the unnamed third official wrote a report to the Fire and Police Commissioner, saying, perhaps in response to the wording of the World headline, that he and County Inspector Bonham were "satisfied that the death was not shrouded in mystery." However, his report made no attempt to explain the death.

The death certificate did, though, at least partially. Dated May 31, 1933, and signed by F. E. Rushing, the autopsy physician, the certificate listed the cause of death as "carbolic acid poisoning (suicide)." Grover's brother Roy had been present at the autopsy. "Grover's insides were cooked," he told a relative.

Carbolic acid is a powerful antiseptic that was discovered in coal tar in 1834. By the early 1900s, ingesting it was a common method of suicide. In 1933 carbolic acid solution was available over the counter at any pharmacy, and twenty cents' worth was enough to kill a grown man.

But where was the bottle that had held the poison? If Grover had killed himself, he couldn't have done it in the garage. If he had killed himself, where had he done it? If he had killed himself, how did he get home? He couldn't have done all of it by himself. It just didn't add up.

Maybe he hadn't killed himself at all. Maybe someone had "helped" him swallow the poison. Maybe they had forced a funnel down his throat.

Verna's three sons quickly came to believe that their father had been murdered. One of them, barely eleven years old, had heard things to that effect at the funeral. Week after week he lay in bed at night listening to his mother's sobbing, and vowed revenge on the murderers. No matter how long it took, he would find them. Wayne would track them down and kill every last one of those sons of bitches.

Oklahoma Tough is available from University of Oklahoma Press.