Good Hope Road (11 page)

I knew that as soon as these days passed, things would go back to the way they were before, and they would say those same words again. Words like that don’t go away just because a tornado blows through town.

I heard Mrs. Gibson coming after me, her feet scrunching heavily in the gravel as she walked around to the steps. I knew she was right behind me with the two bowls of chili.

She caught up with me just inside the door. She looked past me instead of at me, and shifted her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. What she hadn’t said hung between us. Both of us heard it.

She straightened her back and puffed out a determined sigh. “Jenilee Lane, you take a break and eat this food,” she scolded, then turned to Doc Howard, who was standing nearby. “You too, Doc.”

Doc Howard accepted a bowl, sinking wearily into a chair to eat. He looked pale and his hands were shaking as he lifted the spoon to his mouth.

Mrs. Gibson noticed it, too. “Doc, you need to get some rest. You’re gonna give yourself another round of heart trouble.”

Doc Howard rolled his gaze upward. “You been downtown talking to my wife.” He smiled beneath his thick white mustache. “She send you up here to mollycoddle me?”

Mrs. Gibson huffed and braced her hands on her hips. “No, but I did see her downtown, when we took some chili to the sheriff’s temporary station down there. She’s pretty busy running the dispatch radio, but she’s worried about you. A man who just got over a heart attack ought not to be doing this kind of work. Not for this many hours, anyhow.”

Doc took a bite of chili and rolled it around in his mouth. “Not much choice about that. Anyway, I’m just helping out since they brought that Dr. Albright in here late last night. It’s not so bad now that we’ve got a real doctor.”

Mrs. Gibson glanced suspiciously around the room. “Don’t see him here.”

Doc shrugged, wiping a chili bean from his beard. “He went out the back door. Reckon he had to use the bushes. Why don’t you go check, Eudora? He might be in some kind of trouble out there.”

“Oh, Doc, you hush!” Mrs. Gibson flushed red. “Honestly!”

Mazelle Sibley piped in, from where she was carefully arranging bandages on the supply shelves. “Dr. Albright
has
been gone over-long. Maybe someone
should
check. . . .” She flushed, as if she’d suddenly realized what Doc had meant by
use the bushes
.

Doc Howard looked proud of himself. He always called Mazelle Sibley, Mrs. Gibson, and the rest of the garden club “the bossy biddy society.” He liked to get the best of them when he could. “Mazelle, for heaven’s sake, leave the man alone,” he said. “Reckon he’s entitled to a minute to himself. It’s been a long morning. You been hanging on his coattails since the minute you got here.”

Mazelle coughed indignantly, then threw her chin up and went back to arranging bandages. “Well, it only comes natural, my father having been the
doctor
in town for
sixty
years. You know I always was his best assistant.”

Doc Howard rolled his eyes. “Yeah. I know. You told me that. Once or twice.” He glanced sideways at me and winked, then went back to his chili.

Mrs. Gibson leaned over to look in my bowl. “You eat that chili, Jenilee Lane. You need something to eat. The sheriff told me you been savin’ lives this mornin’.”

Over by the medicine shelves, Mazelle coughed and smacked her teeth just loudly enough for us to hear.

Mrs. Gibson opened her mouth to say something, but the wail of a siren outside drowned her out as a car skidded up to the loading platform.

Doc set his chili on the floor and stood up as a highway patrolman rushed in carrying a mud-covered toddler bundled against his chest in a blanket.

“Doc! I got a little boy, probably around two years old.” The highway patrolman unwrapped the blanket and tried to lay the naked, mud-covered toddler on the floor, but the baby screamed and hung on with all ten fingers and toes.

Doc Howard chuckled, relief lifting the corners of his thick white beard as he took a rag and wiped the dirt from the baby’s eyes and mouth. “Can’t be too much wrong with this one. He’s stuck like a tick.”

The patrolman smiled, and I was surprised by how good it felt to see someone smile.

“This one’s a miracle,” he said. “I was just driving along Highway Forty-two, and I looked over and saw a ball of mud moving in the ditch. No houses around or anything. I’m thinking I’m going to rescue a dog or something. I climb down the ditch and pick up this thing, and there it is, a little boy. He grabs aholt of me and he ain’t lettin’ go. Don’t have no idea who he is, but I put it out over the radio. You know someone’s desperate to find this little guy.”

Doc continued trying to check over the child while he clung to his rescuer. “See if he’ll let you hold him, Jenilee, so I can get a good look at him. Mazelle, go see if you can find Dr. Albright.”

I reached out tentatively, but the boy turned his face away and clung tighter to the patrolman’s jacket.

Doc ruffled the baby’s muddy hair and chuckled again. “I think you’re stuck with him, Ray. He’s adopted you whether you like it or not.”

Ray chuckled. “Well, that’d be fine, except I’ve got to get back out in the car and drive those backroads. There’s still people out there needing help.”

No one answered. None of us wanted to consider the idea that there might still be injuries or fatalities.

Looking at the little boy, apparently still strong and healthy under that coating of mud, I felt my spirits rise. If something so tiny could survive the storm, then surely Nate was all right.

“O.K., Jenilee, you’re going to have to take him and turn him around so I can get a better look at him,” Doc ordered. “I’m amazed to say it, but as far as I can tell so far, all this little guy needs is a bath and his mama.”

“Wow, that
is
somethin’,” the patrolman said. Hugging the little boy against his chest, he rested his chin on the boy’s head. He closed his eyes for just a moment, then began to pry loose the grip on his jacket. “Come on, little fella. Time to go now.”

“Have you seen a white four-door Ford pickup with a brown stock trailer behind?” I asked, unwilling to miss the chance for outside information. “My brother and my father were headed to the cattle sale in Kansas City yesterday. They should have been on their way home when the tornado hit.”

“I haven’t seen it. But I’ve only been in this county. Could be they’re stopped somewhere farther north. All the roads are blocked up there. No phones, so don’t give up hope. A lot of people out there are still trying to get in touch with family.” He looked at the boy in his arms again, seeming reluctant to give him up. “Just like this little guy. You know, there wasn’t a house or an abandoned car anywhere near where I found him. Could be he’s been wandering a while, maybe from one of the campgrounds or something. How he survived is just . . . well, a miracle.”

I nodded, not knowing what to say.

He peeled the little boy loose and handed him to me. I held him clumsily as he squirmed in my arms and started crying, trying to get back to the patrolman. Mrs. Gibson was beside me quickly, taking him away. She held him while Doc finished checking him; then she picked up the blanket and nestled him to her chest. He stopped crying and burrowed against her like a kitten.

“There, that’s better,” she said, laying a hand over his hair and bouncing him gently up and down. Clinging to her flowered house-dress, he sighed as his eyes started to close. She looked at me and winked. “Whenever you hold a little one, you bundle its face right here. Right against your heart, see? So he can hear it. It reminds him of his mama, and that’s a comfort.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know the first thing about holding babies, not human babies anyway. “It works with kittens, too,” I said, because I knew about kittens, and puppies, and calves, and other orphaned baby creatures.

Mrs. Gibson smiled, her violet eyes twinkling. “Every living creature needs to hear the beating of another heart once in a while.” Her words were quiet, almost as if she were only thinking them, not speaking at all. “Nothing God made on this earth is meant to go on its way alone.”

I nodded without knowing why.

On his cot by the door, old June Jaans moaned in his sleep, then opened his eyes and looked drowsily at us. “Lordy, what you got there, Eudora?”

“You just—” Mrs. Gibson stopped as the hiss of air brakes filled the room. “What in the world . . . ?”

We walked to the door and looked out. In the parking lot, an enormous white motor home with glittering mirrored windows roared past the front of the armory, towing a matching enclosed trailer. Mrs. Gibson and I looked at each other in confusion, then watched the vehicle roll onto the baseball field down the hill. Shiny and freshly painted, it glittered in the noonday sun, a stark contrast to the dirt-covered, tumbledown town reflected in its windows.

June Jaans twisted in his bed, trying to see. “Well, what is it? Sounds like someone landed a plane out there.”

Mrs. Gibson read the grandly scripted letters on the side of the motor home. “Lake Oaks Church Men’s Relief Mission, St. Louis, Missouri.” She shifted the toddler on her chest. “Well, praise be, finally help has come. And all the way from St. Louis.”

We watched from the doorway as the air brakes let out another loud burst, startling the people on cots in the parking lot. Several sat up and shaded their eyes, looking at the vehicle as if they were encountering something from another planet.

The motor home door opened, and passengers began filing down the stairs—men in bright jogging suits, clean casual clothes, jeans and golf shirts, clean white sneakers and expensive loafers. They talked and stretched like participants on a Sunday-afternoon golf tour.

Mrs. Gibson watched them with her brows cocked doubtfully. The men below hardly looked prepared to save anybody, much less a whole town of tornado victims. In fact, they seemed unsure about how to open the cargo hatches on their bus.

Mrs. Gibson crossed her eyes at me, and the expression made me giggle.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Covering her mouth, she chuckled, and we stood there for a while watching the men try to figure out how to open their truck and trailer. Finally Mrs. Gibson snorted. “Well, heck, I guess them fellas are badly in need of a woman to tell them what to do.” She braced her hands on her hips. “Doc, you oughta come see this.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, look, Doc’s fallen asleep.”

Doc Howard was sitting in the lawn chair sound asleep with the bowl of chili about to spill onto the floor. I stepped over and took the bowl away, then went back to the doorway. “I think we better see if we can get Doc to go lie down somewhere quiet,” I said. “He really doesn’t look good.”

Mrs. Gibson nodded. “I’ll leave that to you. I’d better walk down there and get those St. Louis gents lined out. Looks like they just ain’t gonna be able to function without some female instruction. Sometimes the Lord picks the strangest times to show a sense of humor.” She moved to hand the little boy to me.

Mr. Jaans shifted and pulled his blanket back with a quivering hand. “Put that little boy in here with me, won’t you, Eudora? I’ll keep care of him.”

Mrs. Gibson frowned over her shoulder at him, then looked at me, muttering, “. . . put this child in with that filthy old codger.”

I felt sorry for Mr. Jaans. I leaned close to her, touched the baby’s mud-streaked face, and whispered, “Right now, Mr. Jaans is cleaner than the little boy.”

Mrs. Gibson set her lips in a hard line and tipped her chin up, the wrinkles around her mouth deepening. I remembered that frown. It was the same scowl she used to have when we walked past her house after getting off the school bus each day.

“We can’t put the baby in bed by himself,” I pointed out, “and I have to help Doc get somewhere to rest, and . . .” She didn’t seem to be softening, and I couldn’t imagine why she was being so gripey about it, except that she’d always had a hateful streak a foot wide. “The baby doesn’t care
whose
heartbeat he hears.”

She huffed and rolled her eyes. “He’s a dirty old
drunk
.” She said it loudly enough for Mr. Jaans to hear.

Anger welled up inside me, and I remembered all the times I’d heard her and those other old bats from the garden club whispering about me. “Yes, but he has a heartbeat. Even dirty old drunks have a heartbeat.”

She rolled her eyes again, and I felt my temper boil over. For a change, I found the courage to say what was on my mind. “I’m going to give him that little boy the minute you leave, anyway. You may not like Mr. Jaans much, but he was the
only
one who
ever
came around and asked about my mama in all those years she was sick. He brought over fresh milk from his cows and vegetables from his garden all summer long. There’s nothing wrong with his heart. It’s better than a lot of people’s around here.”

She opened her mouth in astonishment. I realized I had struck a nerve, and I wasn’t sorry. Inside me, there was that deep resentment of her and of all the rest of them who had treated us like we were less than everyone else.

Mrs. Gibson huffed a breath of air, her nostrils widening. “Well, all
right
,” she said, then walked over to Mr. Janns’s cot and pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you roll over on this baby, June Jaans—you hear me?”

“Yes, m-ma’am,” he said, stammering, face flushed. “I’ll . . . I’ll take good care of him. You can count on that, Eu-Eudora.”

“All right, then.” She laid the toddler in the bed, brushing the mud-covered strands of hair from his sleeping face before she pulled the cover over him. “If he wakes up, see if he can tell you his name. We need to find out who he is so we can get him back to his folks.”

“Yes, m-ma’am,” Mr. Jaans stammered again as she turned and headed for the door. He watched her walk away as if she were Miss America gliding down the red carpet.